by K. L. Slater
‘I wondered if you could have a word with Louise.’ He holds up a hand when he sees my face drop. ‘Just test the water, see if you can make a bit of headway, because she sure as hell won’t listen to a word I say.’
I think about Louise’s legendary temper, her scathing put-downs and the fact that I’m getting closer to my nephew. I don’t want that contact cut off. At the same time, I have to put Archie first.
‘All I can do is try,’ I tell him.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
I fire off a text to Louise to ask if Archie is staying over or if she’ll be picking him up later.
The curt reply comes about ten minutes after Darren has left.
Will pick him up about 9. L
Darren left it to me to ask Archie not to mention that his dad was here. I feel awful asking him not to say anything; it seems almost as bad as Louise telling him not to mention his head injury and nosebleed to his teacher.
I desperately wanted to ask Darren about the ‘secret’ Archie had mentioned to me, but it was a fine line I was trying to tread, trying to protect my nephew without getting him into trouble. Kids are kids and it’s possible it’s not a worrying kind of secret at all.
Still, I have more things to fret about now. I glance at the clock and see that I’ve got about an hour before Louise arrives.
‘Can we watch the Egyptian programme now, Auntie Alice?’ Archie asks me.
My heart sinks. I’d forgotten about that, but it only lasts for half an hour and I suppose I can just zone out while it’s on instead of pacing up and down waiting for Louise to get here.
It sounds as if her temper has reached a whole new level now, and that’s got to be addressed, especially if she’s taking it out on Archie.
She’s always been a bit snappy, even when she was really young, and she has a habit of speaking before she thinks, but I’ve been able to deal with that by reminding myself what she’s been through.
Ten years earlier
When she fell pregnant with Archie within three months of meeting Martyn, I sat down with her to tell Mum.
If Dad had still been alive, Louise would really have had something to worry about, but after he died, nothing much seemed to faze Mum any more. In fact, when we got home after his funeral, I remember her standing in the middle of the kitchen, closing her eyes and just exhaling for what seemed like an age.
Then she walked over to the worktop and emptied out the contents of her handbag, before turning the tap on full, allowing water to spatter everywhere.
Louise and I had exchanged glances.
When Mum opened the cupboard doors and mussed up all the tidy front-facing tins, I spoke up.
‘Mum, why are you doing all this? Are you feeling OK?’
She turned to us both then and smiled. She looked as though someone had rubbed a wrinkle eraser around her eyes and mouth. Her skin was brighter. She looked ten years younger.
‘I’m feeling great and I’m doing it for the best reason on earth,’ she replied. ‘Because I can.’
Then, on the day she had buried her husband and our father, she threw her head back and laughed.
So when Louise broke the news that she was pregnant, Mum simply shook her head.
‘Of all the men out there, you chose him to father your child?’ She looked sad.
‘I want you to be happy for us, Mum.’ Louise started crying and I sat there feeling hopeless, unable to help the two people I cared most about in the world.
‘You grew up watching how your father behaved,’ Mum said softly as she reached for my sister’s hand. ‘I didn’t want the same for you, darling.’
But her words inflamed Louise. ‘Martyn is a good man, Mum. He loves me… loves our baby. He’ll be a wonderful father.’
She aimed a warning glance at me and I duly bit down on my tongue. Mum wouldn’t hear the awful truth from me about Martyn’s reaction to the baby news, that was for my sister to tell her. It was still early days in terms of the baby – Louise was only eight weeks gone – but the more pregnant she became, the more Martyn’s lack of interest in her became evident.
I’d been doing a bit of digging on him, and to say that the stuff I’d found out was worrying was an understatement.
I couldn’t decide what to do about it. Stress Louise out while she was pregnant or let her continue in this fictitious world of Martyn’s that she believed unquestioningly?
If I told Mum, she’d worry herself sick and blurt it out at the first opportunity.
One evening, Mum felt unwell for no apparent reason and had already gone up to bed. We didn’t know at the time, but it was probably an early sign of what was to come.
Louise had said there was some kind of problem at their flat, and she and Martyn had decided to stay at ours for the night. I said goodnight and left them watching television, retiring early for the evening myself.
The stuff I had found out about him without really trying too hard at all – details that Louise could have readily discovered for herself had she had the curiosity and the inclination – prevented me from sitting in the same room as him, forced to buy the verbal diarrhoea that spewed so effortlessly from his mouth.
But I had an annoying tickly cough that disturbed my reading, and so after about twenty minutes, I padded downstairs barefoot for a glass of water.
I froze at the bottom of the stairs at the sound of Martyn’s vicious words.
‘I’ll tell you one final time. Get rid of it or I’m out of here.’
I heard Louise stifle a sob.
‘It’s our baby. Ours.’ Her voice sounded thin and tortured. ‘I can’t just—’
‘You can and you’ve got no choice. If you care about us at all, that is.’
When Louise spoke next, I knew she’d gathered some of her gumption again.
‘It’s my body and my choice, Martyn. Don’t try and bully me into doing this, because I’ll go ahead and have the baby alone if I need to.’
My bare feet shifted uneasily on the cool wooden floor outside the living room. There were a few moments of silence when nobody spoke but the air held a kind of dreadful weight, even out here.
Then I heard Louise gasp and give a soft cry of pain.
I didn’t think about it; I just pushed open the door and stormed into the room.
‘Leave her alone!’
He was bent over her, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her wrist, and he’d twisted her arm round the wrong way.
He immediately let go, the element of surprise catching him out.
‘Get away from her!’
‘Alice… it’s fine. Go back to bed,’ Louise pleaded.
‘Yeah, and mind your own business,’ Martyn snapped.
Every nerve ending in my body was on red alert. My fear and wish to avoid confrontation melted away in the white heat that burned when I saw how he was treating my sister.
‘Mind my own business? I wish I had, but it’s too late for that now, Martyn. I know some things about you that Louise might be very interested in.’
‘What? Shut your filthy mouth. You know nothing about me.’
‘Really? I know that your fancy duplex apartment never belonged to you at all but to the man you rent your gym building from.’
That had been a stroke of luck. I’d visited the apartment building after Louise had willingly given me the address early in their relationship to show that Martyn was a man of means. I’d waited until someone left the building and held the door open for me, and then I’d gone up to the fourth-floor apartment and waited.
It was my lucky day. When a tall, well-dressed man came out and I said I was looking for Martyn Hardy, the person who lived here, he’d laughed.
‘He stayed here one night while I was away, wanted to impress a woman, he said.’ He looked at me. ‘That was before he fell behind with his rent on the gym. You seem like a nice girl. My advice is to stay away from him. He’s bad news.’
‘Don’t listen to her.’ Martyn sat down next to Louise and reac
hed for her hand.
‘I googled your name and got an online newspaper report about your bankruptcy hearing. It was that easy.’
‘The online stuff is all lies!’ Louise glared at me. ‘It’s not true, is it, Martyn? You wouldn’t do that… Dad’s inheritance… I—’
‘Of course it’s not true. She’s jealous… pure poison.’
‘You’ve given him your half of Dad’s money? He’s been tried twice for fraud, Louise. For cheating people out of their savings. The second time, he was convicted.’
Martyn shot me a look of undiluted hatred and then stood up, all six-foot-something of him, towering over a cowering Louise, his face puce with rage.
‘You stupid bitch, you’ve ruined everything.’ He raised his index finger and pointed at me.
‘Martyn…’ Louise’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper. ‘Tell me it’s not true. Tell me Alice is mistaken. You said they’d lied, that—’
‘There’s no mistake, Louise,’ I said sadly. ‘There are no investors, no franchise deal. Your fiancé is stony broke.’
Louise touched his arm and he turned and raised his hand to her.
‘Leave her alone,’ I hissed, stepping forward and looking as fearsome as I possibly could in the hope he wouldn’t see me shaking. ‘I’ll help Louise, she doesn’t need you. And when the baby is born, I’ll help her come after you for maintenance. This baby wasn’t just her mistake; you had a part in it too.’
His nose wrinkled as he tried in vain to mask his fury.
‘Now you listen to me.’ He looked straight at me as he issued his chilling threat. ‘I will make you pay for ruining our relationship. It might not be now, or next week, or next year. But one day it will happen, of that you can be certain.’
Then he turned and thundered out of the house, slamming the front door so hard, one of the two opaque panes of glass cracked from top to bottom.
My sister sat shaking and crying. Terrified of him but wanting him to come back and tell her everything was going to be OK.
It was just like watching Mum with Dad all over again.
What I never expected, years later, was for Louise herself to exhibit those very same traits with her own husband and son.
CHAPTER SIXTY
LOUISE
Ten years earlier
The months after Martyn left felt like a wilderness to Louise.
The initial three-month tenancy agreement had lapsed on their flat and so she moved back home. Her mother and sister were waiting at the door to welcome her back, but that only served to make her feel even more of a failure.
For the first few weeks she was convinced that Martyn would come to his senses, realise what he’d lost. In her dreams, they would reconcile and find a way to sweep up the fractured pieces of their lives together.
Every time there was a knock at the door, every time the phone rang or a strange car parked outside the house, her heart leapt thinking it might be him.
But it never was. He never contacted her again and that was the thing Louise found hardest to bear.
She asked Alice to drop by the gym, see if he was around.
‘It was all shut up, no notice of closure or anything,’ Alice told her when she got back.
One day, in a weak moment, she texted him.
Can we talk? L x
But the text never delivered. She tried ringing him, but a detached robotic voice informed her the number had been discontinued.
‘Good riddance to him,’ her mother said when she found Louise crying over old photographs on her phone. ‘You should thank your lucky stars. I expect he’ll have found some other gullible fool to pay his bills by now.’
‘Mum, honestly!’ Alice sat down next to her and slid her arm around Louise’s shoulders. ‘It will get better. And you’ve got a wonderful thing happening in your life soon. Try and focus on that.’
But when Louise looked down at her bump, the pain in her heart increased threefold.
Nine years earlier
The day Archie was born, she fought exhaustion and forced herself to stay awake for hours, just in case Martyn had somehow heard he had a son and turned up at the hospital.
But there was no sign of him.
She lay on the maternity ward and looked at her son in the Perspex cot next to her. So tiny, defenceless and utterly perfect.
‘I’ll look after you, Archie,’ she told him, her face swollen and wet with tears. ‘We’ll make a life together, just you and me.’
Once she’d made the vow, she felt stronger.
Meeting Martyn Hardy and believing his lies had been the biggest mistake of her life, but all was not lost. Louise had learned a valuable lesson.
She felt different, as if some of the warmth inside her had turned to impenetrable ice.
She would never make the same mistake again.
The last thing she needed in her life was a man. She was done with them.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
ALICE
Archie bounces up and down, infected with enthusiasm from the programme about Ancient Egypt we just watched together. There’s no evidence he feels unwell from the bump to his head or the nosebleeds.
I didn’t see much of the programme. I was too busy thinking through what I was going to say to my sister. But I put on a good show and Archie is under the impression I’ve enjoyed it too.
‘Our alphabet has twenty-six letters and the Egyptian alphabet had more than SEVEN HUNDRED hieroglyphs!’ Archie grips his temples dramatically with the enormity of the idea.
‘Yes, so spare a thought for schoolboys back then trying to learn to write,’ I laugh.
Magnus saunters in and Archie bows low in front of him. ‘Cats were sacred animals to the Ancient Egyptians. Sorry I pulled your tail, Pharaoh Magnus.’
The cat brushes against his legs and Archie strokes his head. They’ve come to some kind of truce over the last couple of weeks.
‘And can you remember how long the bandages of an Egyptian mummy would stretch for if you laid them out?’ I quiz him on the one fact I did manage to retain during the programme.
‘Erm… I think it’s a very long way!’
‘Correct. One point six kilometres, to be precise.’
I glance at the wall clock. Louise will be here soon.
Archie grabs his school scarf from the arm of the chair and rolls up his sleeve.
‘I’m going to be an Egyptian mummy,’ he declares.
I leave him to it, tidying up plates and cups around him. Anything to keep busy.
‘Have you got any more scarves, Auntie Alice?’ he asks. ‘Or bandages perhaps? Then I could do my whole body.’
I look over at him. The school scarf is wrapped around his forearm and he has rolled his jumper further up so more arm is exposed.
He turns around, and that’s when I see them.
A row of perfect fingertip-shaped bruises that encircle his upper arm.
* * *
By the time Louise arrives, I’ve taken pictures of Archie’s arm on my phone and also called Darren.
He offered to come over so we could speak to Louise together, but he sounded so baffled and shocked about the bruising, I said I was happy to do it.
‘I can’t believe I haven’t seen it,’ he kept saying. ‘I feel like I’ve failed him.’
I assured him they are easy marks to cover up with a sleeve, but it does concern me that Darren is out of touch with his son. He was under the impression Archie had been football training, after all. Anyone who remotely knows Archie would be aware of his aversion to football. Darren obviously needs to step up the time they spend together.
I didn’t say any of that on the phone. There are far more important issues at stake.
Archie sits on the sofa now, subdued and staring at the television screen. Soon as he realised I’d seen the marks, he pulled down his sleeve and clamped his mouth shut.
When I insisted, he allowed me to take the photographs, but he wouldn’t answer any of my questions about who ha
d hurt him.
‘Do you want a drink or a biscuit?’ I ask him, but he just shakes his head.
The door entry buzzer sounds and Archie jumps. He wraps his arms around himself and backs into the corner of the seat as if he’s trying to make himself smaller.
* * *
I open the door and she sweeps past me without saying hello.
‘Lift dead AGAIN!’ She kicks off her four-inch heels and shrinks to my own height. ‘This bloody place drives me nuts.’
She looks frazzled. Hair less styled, lipstick worn off, eyes a bit wild.
It feels strange to look at her not as my sister, who I know inside out, but as someone who I’m not sure I trust any more.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Come through to the kitchen,’ I say.
When the door buzzer sounded, I turned the television back on for Archie and reassured him nothing bad would happen, I just needed to talk to his mum in the kitchen when she arrived.
He looked relieved more than concerned and stretched out on the sofa to watch a replay of a Harry Hill comedy show.
‘Where’s Archie?’
‘He’s in the lounge, Louise, he’s fine. But I need to speak to you before you go in there.’
‘What’s up?’ She punches her hands onto her hips and glares at me.
But I’m not going to be silenced. Not tonight.
‘Someone is hurting Archie,’ I say.
‘Rubbish! Don’t start all this again. Listen—’
‘No… you listen! He’s got a ring of bruises on the top of his arm.’
It’s hard to tell with her make-up but she looks to have paled.
‘He’s probably done it at school.’
‘He hasn’t done anything. Someone has grabbed him hard enough to bruise his flesh.’
‘Another kid, then.’
‘Maybe. Although kids tend to thump or kick, don’t they? It seems more of an adult thing to me.’
