Artifact

by Bowes, K T

  I am a child of God, he is more than able to keep me safe.

  Jayden refused to listen to Satan’s lies as he whispered how God hadn’t done a very good job when she was seventeen, because if none of it had happened, she wouldn’t be the person she was now. She liked who she was and acknowledged it inwardly, as Rita sat and scribbled on her pad. But the line of ‘ifs’ rolled out before her like a blood red carpet at an award ceremony, demanding that she walk its crimson pile.

  If Nick hadn’t taken her from the house by force, bundling her into his mate’s car and trading her to Wes for a cocaine hit. If her father hadn’t seen him from the hill where he had been checking the sheep, he wouldn’t have followed them to the dreadful squat in the centre of Bradford. If Dan hadn’t been willing to wade in to save his daughter from his son’s awful betrayal, he would never have been stabbed. If Dan hadn’t died, Hannah might not be sick.

  But if none of that had happened, she reassured herself, I wouldn’t be me. She would be Lily, probably pursuing some different life elsewhere, working for an interior design firm perhaps and plumping cushions at some lonely rich woman’s house. She wouldn’t have the skills she had now which made the difference in a marriage, in a desperate person’s life, in the changing of an adult’s perception about themselves. She wouldn’t be making the kind of transformations that she was now helping to forge and that was all because of her experience. Dan had shown his daughter that she was worth dying for and Jayden was not prepared to dishonour his memory by doing nothing with her life. She was going to love people, whether they wanted it or not.

  Having found her equilibrium again, Jayden visibly relaxed and so did Rita. The spirits hovered nearby, Fear and Self-doubt waiting for their moment to descend again into her headspace. It would come. It always did. Familiarity gave them right of entry.

  “My friend is going to give me some self-defence refresher lessons,” Jayden told her supervisor, “partly just in case and partly to help me feel that I am in control of my life, not my life in control of me.”

  Rita nodded with approval. Her bright orange hair was coiffed in a high style which barely moved in the breeze from the heat pump, testament to her skill with hair spray. They chatted for a while longer until the knock on the door heralded the arrival of Jayden’s last appointment for the day, the gentle widow who was valiantly battling the pressure of Agoraphobia in her lonely twilight years.

  The self-defence lessons went predominantly well. Jayden had forgotten nothing, fuelled by a frantic need for safety, rather than a whim or desire for physical activity. Her skill was accurate and confident, proved by a rather effective kick straight into Raff’s privates, leaving him rolling around on the wrestling mat for quite some time. Jayden was mortified as the tears streamed helplessly down the grown man’s face and plopped off the end of his nose onto the squishy blue fabric. “Just do that. You’ll be fine,” Raff grunted, still curled into a ball, face down, gripping his manhood in a clenched fist. “I’ll just put a sign on your back saying, ‘Don’t even bother’ and a photo of me like this.”

  “Yeah.” Jayden plonked herself down with a thud on the mat next to her friend and patted his back affectionately, her brain working through myriad scenarios. Raff sat up on his hairy knees, leaning back against the heels of his trainers and wiped his face with the bottom of his red tee shirt.

  “What’s wrong Jay?” he asked her, noting with satisfaction how her unguarded face betrayed her with the unexpectedness of his question. The screen came crashing down over her emotions with a second’s delay. Jayden’s eyes danced as she focused on different things around the gym, distracting herself from the answer she would not give. Three women walked on treadmills, chatting, laughing and waving their arms as they strolled, knowing that Raff was otherwise engaged and wouldn’t be chasing them to put some effort in for a moment.

  Jayden watched with the subtlest smirk on her full lips as Raff’s assistant approached the women from behind, his red tee shirt and shorts rustling gently against his tank body. They jumped in unison like a disjointed Mexican wave as he spoke to them and each guiltily turned up the pace on their machines. Fat lasses were not allowed to remain so at the Abbadeli gym. “When I’m here with you practicing, I know it all and I can defend myself just fine. But in the dark on my way home, it’s a different matter. I go to pieces and can’t remember what to do. I’m useless.”

  Jayden’s idle, nervous fingers sought a hanging thread which hung tantalisingly from the side of her trainers. She trapped it between thumb and forefinger and began to pull. Raff slapped her hand. “I bought you those!” he was indignant. “They weren’t cheap, woman!”

  Jayden mouthed a ‘sorry’ through pursed lips and Raff shuffled around so that he could wrap her in his muscular arms. The curve of his biceps acted as a firm pillow for Jayden’s soft cheek and she closed her eyes and enjoyed the safety that proximity with this strong male offered, albeit momentarily.

  “Er, hi.” Ed’s voice sounded awkward and Raff and Jayden pulled hurriedly apart, her brushing a hand across her eyes to dismiss the threatening tears. He was wearing an aged pair of shorts which had spots of white paint spattered down the side of the left leg and an old white tee shirt. He addressed his brother. “I just paid for a two-week membership, hope that was ok. I need to do some more work on my weights.”

  Raff jumped up in one fluid movement and Jayden was left sat on the floor, embarrassed. “It’s fine and you didn’t have to pay. Help yourself brother, what’s mine is yours.”

  Raff gripped his sibling’s upper arm and led him across to the weights area, thrilled to be interacting with him on home turf. It seemed to enthuse him with an infectious vitality that could be loosely labelled as ‘showing off.’ Jayden watched him, pleased and gratified for her friend’s opportunity to finally shine. She gathered her sports gear together and quietly left. By the time Raff had finished pointlessly demonstrating the nuances of his expensive equipment to his childhood hero, he remembered his client and returned to the mat, disappointed to find that she was long gone. Jayden was already marching quickly through the darkness home, fists at the ready with renewed determination.

  “Yuk!” The microwaved meal was insubstantial and tasted bizarrely of the container that it was cooked in. Jayden pulled her legs up onto the sofa and contemplated the uneaten contents of the white tray. It had claimed to be macaroni cheese but was clearly plasterboard with essence of fake cheese substitute doused with pepper. In misery, she got up and slung the offending object in the dustbin under the sink, placing the metal fork in the dishwasher.

  Numerous stylish bookshelves lined the living room end of the floor. Jayden’s passion was books and she had made no apology for the purpose built shelving. She was compulsive about neatness and so her books were all in height order on their shelves, neatly regimental like a small paper army. She fingered the collection of dust covers, settling eventually on an elderly copy of Daniel Defoe’s Roxana. Inset lights cast a soft glow over the spines of the various manuscript soldiers standing at attention and Jayden turned off the overhead lights and snuggled down in an antique chaise longue.

  She had read the book a million times already and found it humorous and calming. Defoe was a man who wrote in 1600’s England purely for the sport of it, an opportunist who unashamedly made money from his craft and yet spent his entire life in debt. Pilloried for offending the authorities, Defoe wrote a poem about being in the stocks called Hymn to the Pillory and paid a small child to sell it to onlookers for him. Legend told that instead of rotten food; the townsfolk threw flowers instead. It was the character of the man who attracted Jayden, the unstoppable verve of his thirst for life.

  Yet even Defoe’s energy had come to a grinding halt. He was reported as dying whilst in hiding from his ever persistent creditors, but the lesser known truth was that he had died of lethargy. It was a thought that had tortured Jayden as she tried to recover from the attack that had robbed her of both her spleen and her father
. She had pondered then on what it must be like to allow your body just to remain still until all energy and its will to live had drained completely from it. The long nights in the hospital had given her an insight far beyond her years and she clung to the battered book now, in fingers that had retrieved their purpose in life from the brink of the nothingness.

  Unable to fully settle, Jayden sniffed at the comforting musty smell of the book, running the spine along the end of her nose like a small child with a favourite blanket. A friendly meow came from the kitchen as Nahla enjoyed her night time kibbles and padded across on tiny pink paws for a cuddle. Friday for Jayden ended early with a shower, a small, sprightly ginger cat and a very old book, safely cosseted upstairs in the wide, squashy bed. Her phone stayed on the work surface in the Spartan kitchen and so she failed to hear the text that bleeped once and then fell silent, or the knocking of the worried brothers on her street door some time later.

  Sometimes people shrouded themselves in isolation as a protective blanket from potential hurt and inadvertently removed themselves from the blessing that interaction brought. They caused the thing they dreaded. Jayden knew all that. She spent each day calmly guiding other damaged souls to a lightness of being, but failed dismally at her own deeper healing. Nahla wittered and grumbled until Jayden allowed her inside the covers and then she settled near the footboard and cozied down, her delicately furry body nestled next to Jayden’s toes. In her own way, she offered the most ancient form of comfort to her human being, that which had originated in the Garden of Eden at the very beginning of time.

  Chapter 9

  Despite the early night, Jayden slept comfortably late, dozing until well after eight o’clock. Nahla had made her get up and let her out around six as usual, admitting a wintry blast of cold air in exchange for the fluffy ginger body and the straight snake-like tail, carried jauntily high. The woman had scurried back to her warm bed. On waking properly, Jayden decided to use her weekend wisely, packing her favourite things into the diminishing minutes of freedom and acknowledging that Raff couldn’t always be her only source of entertainment and friendship. She had no idea how long Ed planned to stick around, but then nor did Raff. The two-week gym subscription Ed had purchased was a clue.

  Prizing herself out of bed, Jayden showered and dressed in clothes that would be warm, whilst comfortable enough for a brisk venture up Steep Hill. She donned comfy boots suitable for negotiating the cobbles and set off after locking up securely. She hadn’t been setting the burglar alarm but recent events made her feel vulnerable and instead of occupying her hours away from home with worries about intruders, she decided to make the job a little harder for them from the start. She had begun to get complacent and the last week had been something of a wake-up call. Jayden pressed the button to arm the system and then reassuring herself that she could, in fact, remember the disarm code, left the building.

  By nine-thirty, Lincoln High Street was already buzzing with shoppers. Jayden’s flat was quite far north and situated where the pedestrian area narrowed. Stepping outside onto the pavement, she was pleased to see a watery sun making its hallowed appearance, relieved not to have the now familiar prickling feeling on the back of her neck of someone observing her. She congratulated herself that perhaps the sighting of her brother had only ever been in her imagination.

  At the bottom end of the High Street, the pace was always fast. People shot in and out of the larger stores as though their lives depended on it, resembling contestants on a game show who had to fill their trollies as fast as they could and run to the checkout. It could be frenzied and chaotic at the wrong time of day, especially on a Saturday when women seemed to take over the town, conducting their expert shopping expeditions with military precision. Woe betide anyone who stepped between them and the bargain rail in one of the department stores.

  Jayden’s end of town commanded a slightly different atmosphere. Apart from a small supermarket which was the last bastion of the big chain stores, the street was filled with clothes shops and boutiques, the stuff of tourists and specialist buyers. The pace was slower and more controlled, partly due to the start of the famed incline up to the cathedral, aptly named Steep Hill. And steep it most certainly was. Most sane people required a reason to ascend it; sighing as visiting relatives insisted, or desperately needing something themselves uphill and not wanting to move their car from the expensive downtown car parks and fight in the Bailgate for a rare slot. Steep Hill was Kilimanjaro-with-cobbles to the average stroller and not for the faint hearted.

  The buildings on the lower slopes were mainly three storeys with the odd four storey poked in between. Jayden was aware of other people living in the upper storeys of the buildings around her, but she never saw them. Occasionally, she would see upstairs lights glowing out into the street but anyone joining the throng of the High Street would be quickly swallowed up in its river of activity. Residents were largely invisible.

  After enjoying the sunshine on her face for a moment and observing the couples and family groups strolling past arm in arm bracing themselves for the ascent, Jayden dropped into the stream of foot traffic heading north like a gentle exodus from the city. She sauntered along, in no hurry to meet the foot of the forbidding climb. Jayden loved this part of the city. The buildings nestled together like primary school children lining up for something. No two buildings were the same height, the same period or the same architecture. Each was unique, with defining features that made it special and marked it out as Victorian, Georgian, Tudor or much older. Every building style over a few thousand years was out on show, sunshine glinting off hand blown glass windows and stone carved codes in the walls and pillars, left behind by expired stonemasons as their signature. Even for the most placid, disinterested observer, it was a feast of human ingenuity and beauty for the eyes, a free demonstration of how ‘different’ can fit together and produce something breath-taking.

  The original cobbled flags made up the centre of the road, skilfully blended with what had once been a pavement before the area was pedestrianised. Vehicles could access the road, but exclusively to unload. The surface had been so well trodden that it was pressed smooth like glass and treacherous in the rain or ice. In extreme weather the shop keepers would salt the area outside their doors, most locals knowing to stick close to the buildings and only the tourists breaking their necks in the centre of the street. Jayden’s father, Dan, had brought her here as a tiny girl. He had been visiting the sale yards and taken her along for the ride. They had climbed the hill and puffed to the top hand in hand companionably.

  Dan’s stories were sought after by his children, always fantastical with a hint of realism thrown in for good measure. “Tell us another one, Daddy,” Jayden had cried, bouncing on the balls of her feet with excitement. “He had told her how as a young man in the army, he had driven a huge truck down the cobbles of Steep Hill when it was still the thoroughfare of the city, almost losing control of it on the bend at the bottom. He had described everything for her so that she could be there, a casual observer as the tired corporal had struggled to get the huge air brakes to persuade the tyres to grip the road, coming to rest precariously and embarrassingly on a kerb edge.

  “There,” he had pointed to a chip in the ancient concrete which he had claimed was his. “That’s where the truck came to rest. Right there. Can you see?”

  The kerb had been carefully changed and made to look authentic by local council workers years ago, but Jayden knew exactly where it had been, the visions of that happy, special day ingrained on her memory for all time.

  Jayden strolled behind a family with four children. Two little blonde girls skipped and ran ahead, a matter of metres, the eye of the elder girl always flicking towards her parents. She was like a miniature mother duck, shepherding the other two who toddled behind whilst keeping an invisible cord attached to the smaller blonde who skipped ahead in a steady insular, oblivious rhythm. Not much older than any of them - mere months rather than years - she acted like a little
sheep dog while her parents strolled behind hand in hand. Always moving, always busy, she rounded them up whilst at the same time prevented them running on. It was curious to watch, her parents seeming to have passed on their incredible responsibility to this six or seven-year-old whilst passively observing her progress.

  At the corner of St Martin’s Lane on the left, road works had caused the cobbles to be dug up and orange and white barriers prevented anyone falling down the large excavated hole. As though by an unseen hand signal, the little girl dropped the reins of responsibility and looked to her parents who transitioned back into authority. “Come here Charlotte,” called the mother, holding her hand out to the blonde curly headed child who skipped back and held out her arm. Instantly the small boy ran back to his father on legs that didn’t quite seem long enough. His gait was awkward and he almost fell a few times, his baggy pants flapping around his limbs. “We need to be careful of cars in some places,” Mummy said and although no answering comment was made, the message was plainly received. The tiniest child aged around two, also curly headed with a strawberry tinge to her fine mop had already been closest to the adults and her immediate reaction was to hold out her arms to her father. He swung her up onto his hip easily and wordlessly sorted out a fracas between the eldest girl and boy, over who got to hold his remaining hand.

  The tiniest girl held onto her father like a monkey, wrapping her arms around his neck and clipping her legs around his waist, her hair bouncing with each footstep. Keeping the inside of his elbow around her thigh, he still managed to reach down and hold the boy-child’s hand and put the other arm around his blonde daughter. Jayden strolled behind, transfixed by their dynamic, feeling that she could easily watch them all day. It was fascinating. As soon as the danger was passed, the children escaped again like a waterfall from their father, tiny feet pouring down onto the cobbles and away they went, the older blonde child resuming her never ending mustering duties.