Martin knocked on the door, softly.
‘It’s alright, Martin,’ I called out. I could see his frame through the obscured glass of the door. Martin’s silhouette shifted off and disappeared.
‘I’m sorry,’ Carol said dejectedly, raking her hand through her hair. ‘I shouldn’t take it out on you. You’re the only person I can talk to about all this. The only person that’s been there for me.’
I slid onto the seat beside her. ‘So you didn’t tell your brother the truth?’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. He has James on a pedestal. It was James who made it possible for him to get a job in politics after all.’
‘But still …’
‘No. it doesn’t matter now anyway.’
Carol reached down into her bag and fished inside before bringing out her mobile phone and handing it to me.
‘Would you mind … taking photos of my injuries please.’
She sniffed hard and sank her chin, closing her eyes. I could see Carol’s hands begin to tremble, and her breathing turned to gasps. Tears streaked over her cheeks, adjoining the stripy residue of dried blood. The poor woman was in her late fifties, shaking like a baby in front of me.
It was going to be a very trying day for me. Not only did I have to deal with my own personal problems and the hell of the people I had to help, but now I served as a first-hand witness to a broken woman I held very dear. Not for the first time in my job, I wanted to cry at the injustice of it all – the people who got away with inflicting harm on another person, male or female, the broken homes the killing of another person’s soul. And for what? Control? Power? Superiority? All because abusers were weak. Did I really want to bring a child into a world like this where she or he could end up falling in love with someone like James?
Carol broke into my thoughts, calling my name.
‘Katie, are you going to take the pictures?’ she asked.
I handed her a few tissues and cleared my throat. It was so hard to look at her without breaking down.
‘I’m sorry, of course,’ I hardly managed to utter as I tapped on her mobile phone’s camera icon. Carol complied with my every request to capture the true horror of what her husband had inflicted on her. I knew it was going to take a while to get the images out of my mind.
Jordan knew about my nightmares, the dreams that had me waking in tears, calling my clients’ names. He knew why I ached to comfort them, and why the trauma of their abuse would never let me rest. Sometimes I could see Jordan’s frustration at my ineptitude at separating my personal life from my work. Some of those nights, he would just sigh as if he was growing tired of my weakness, but he always argued it away. At least, he never raised a hand to me and never told me to get over it like a lot of men did. But perhaps his indifference was far worse. It made me feel as if my pain was mine alone while I shared all his burdens with him.
All Jordan cared about was his mother’s dramas. He rushed to her side whenever another prospective husband she latched onto dumped her, and then I would have to listen to him raging about insensitive bastards who hurt his mother’s feelings. It pissed me off, but that was the nature of our relationship when it came to me versus Martha. Eventually, I made peace with the fact that she would always win, but at least, I was his wife. She would never get that chunk of our lives.
That morning, I took twenty pictures of Carol’s injuries. Every scratch, every split skin, chafing, skinned knees, broken teeth ... Other than that, I helped her get cleaned up and then I drove her to the hospital. She was reluctant, in case she was recognised, but I gave her my sunglasses and convinced her that nobody would even notice since the emergency room would be full of injured people anyway.
Carol seemed to find that comforting, and I promised her she could smoke as much as she liked in my car. She had to be home before James came back from work – before he realised that she had left the house. All the more, if he knew that she allowed others to see the extent of her injuries, he would do much worse.
By lunchtime, Carol’s wounds had been seen to. The physical ones, anyway. James was going to see the stitches, so I suggested she make up a believable white lie to keep him from getting aggravated or suspicious.
‘If he sees your stitches and bandages, just tell him ...’ I tried to prepare her, but Carol jumped in.
‘He’s going to kill me, Katie!’ she said, bordering on hysteria. ‘He’s going to be convinced someone will tell the media I was in the hospital.’
. My heart broke for her. ‘Tell him you gave a false name and that you told the hospital staff that you were in a car accident, okay?’
Immediately, she looked relieved. Once she gave my suggestion a bit more thought, she nodded.
‘It does look like I’ve been in a car accident,’ she said, looking in the cars drop down mirror. ‘Like he’s always telling me, no one would believe me if I told them the truth, anyway.’
Before I could respond, Carol turned her gaze to me and gripped my hand in her own. ‘But you believe me, and that’s all that matters.’
I took her home to an imposing detached house she shared with her husband and helped her clean up the broken crystal glass, toppled furniture and bloodstained shag pile carpet.
No, it wasn’t part of my job to do house calls, really, neither was it protocol to help clean the scene of an altercation. But I adored Carol and desperately wanted to help her recover, to get out. I knew she would feel stronger and better about herself if she knew there was a way out, even though she would have to go through hell as she gradually waded toward the exit sign.
Chapter 5
‘Where’ve you been, madam?’ Pam complained teasingly as I walked into our shared office on Tuesday morning.
It was a compact room with two desks facing each other and not nearly enough space for the excess files that we couldn’t fit in the filing cabinet. Pam was stacking a new batch in a neat pile in the corner.
‘Me? If I’m correct, you were the one who came in late yesterday,’ I reminded her.
‘So? I’m always late!’ She grinned, pushing herself up to full height and dusting her hands off. ‘I come in here, spinning like a top, dying to hear about your birthday and what surprise you got and ... nothing. Nothing. Gone! Where the hell were you?’
Pam was a tall, statuesque woman in her late forties, with green eyes that could challenge the Amazon jungle.
What I loved about her was her never-ending positivity about everything in life. She was the only person I knew who refused point blankly to wear any type of black clothing, even underwear. She claimed the colour was too depressing. That it made her feel like she was attending a funeral.
She was a much-needed breath of fresh air, especially in our somewhat daunting work environment. I envied her ability to switch off. She had told me on too many occasions to remember that if I was going to help the people who needed me most, I needed to be mentally strong. Which meant leaving work at the door when I went home. I knew she was right, but it was still so difficult for me.
Watching the way Pam interacted with our clients was amazing. The way in which she could make people feel at ease while she was actually picking their brains and pulling apart their souls for honest examination was exquisite.
One person she couldn’t easily pick apart and analyse, was, of course, me. I prided myself on that fact, and she always cracked psychological jokes with me because she knew I could see through her methods. Also, I knew her weakness and what to talk about if I wanted to divert our conversation away from me – boots. Every week, Pam seemed to buy a new pair until I told her what I’d read in a pseudo-science journal – that a deep-seated psychological dependency on footwear meant she secretly wanted to be a lesbian. It was hilarious! And though I said it while heavily inebriated, nay, paralytic, in fact, she never let it go. It was still our go-to joke even after five years of working together.
‘I was rushed off my feet yesterday,’ I said, taking a quick sip of coffee before continuing. ‘I
spent the morning taking care of Carol Wicker, and that left me with paperwork in the afternoon and a meeting with Jennison and Peyton in Oxford. I didn’t have time to take a pee, let alone come back to the office.’
Pam lowered her voice, ‘What happened to Carol?’
I sighed, remembering the state of the woman. ‘James beat the shit out of her over the weekend. Apparently, he didn’t like her staying overnight at her brother’s place.’
Pam’s face sank in disbelief, ‘Excuse me? What the …? And to think I nearly voted for that bastard! Oh, how I wish I could l could expose him and let the voters really see what he’s like.’
‘I know,’ I told her as I put my purse in the drawer and sat down. But we knew that was never going to happen. Not by us anyway. Our careers would be dead in the water if we ever broke a confidentiality clause.
‘I don’t know how he’s gotten away with it for so long,’ she said frowning.
‘Because we’ve been conditioned into thinking that middle-class men, especially politicians, wouldn’t beat their wives. They’re deemed to be civilised,’ I retorted.
‘Civilised! He’s an animal, that’s what he is—’
‘You’re preaching to the converted, Pam.’
‘It just makes me so angry!’ Pam inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. ‘And breathe,’ she said letting out a measured breath. ‘I’m not going to give that man any more of my head space.’
‘Good.’
She opened her eyes, and the frustration that was there seconds ago was gone. ‘So tell me, what did Mr gorgeous give you for your big three-o?’
The change of topic was more than welcome at that stage. I smiled and leaned back in my seat. Pam was my best friend, the type of friend you could call up at 3 a.m., and cry like a child, and she would stay up with you, even on a workday. With all my heart, I wanted to tell her about what I desired, the clarity that served me with that sweetness I wanted so badly now. But if I said it out loud, there’d be no turning back. It would be real. Was I ready for that?
‘What happened?’ she asked raising her brows. Her eyes bored into mine, searching. ‘You look like you’ve been traumatised.’
My smile must have dimmed somewhat, but I was intent on pushing away that heavy cloud over me that Pam just detected. ‘He took me skydiving! Skydiving!’ I exclaimed, effectively cheering about it.
‘Oh, my good God! You? Jump out of a plane? You have got to be having a laugh!’ She burst out laughing and asked, ‘Did you piss in your jumpsuit? I would have! I swear I would have lost my mind. I hate heights!’
‘I never knew that!’ I confessed. ‘You ... are afraid of something? That’s a first.’
‘What? Heights give me panic attacks. I have to take a bloody Valium every time I have to fly somewhere,’ she said with a chuckle. Then she leaned forward with huge saucer eyes, ‘What was it like? What made you actually step out of the plane, because that part ... I would never get myself to actually step out. I would have a heart attack!’
I laughed, feeling proud of my feat for the first time since I did it. Finally, somebody admitted that what I did was a positively horrifying dare that I happened to have braved. In hindsight, maybe it was a rite of passage, in more ways than one.
‘I thought I was going to die, Pam,’ I groaned. ‘When we leapt from the edge, I felt my guts in my head!’
‘What did it look like?’ she asked, dropping onto her swivel chair.
‘Well …’ I laughed. ‘My eyes were closed for the first eternity, but once I opened them it was magnificent! I saw the world differently. Quite literally, I might add. I saw my life flash before me, of what I wanted ...’ I took a moment. ‘It’s amazing how clear things become when you think you’re about to die.’
‘I’m so proud of you,’ she said. ‘You have balls of steel. Imagine that. Katie Winston throwing herself out of a plane – even if she was safely attached to an instructor, hey?’ She winked, and I bit my lip, still smiling. I was reluctant to spill my secret, but this was Pam. I could tell her anything and trusted her with my life.
‘Yes, it still took courage, don’t you forget that!’ I said playfully. And playfully was precisely the way in which I intended to share with her. ‘When I floated above the world, I realised ... that I don’t want to go through life just travelling with Jordan.’
‘How do you mean?’ she asked, chewing on a pencil she picked up from her desk.
‘I can’t believe what I am about to say, but it’s true.’ I sighed and pursed my lips. ‘It was what I realised when I floated up there. You know how I always said I never want to have kids?’
‘Yes?’ She stretched the word as if she already knew where I was heading.
I hesitated for a moment. Slowly, I said, ‘Well, I decided that I want children after all. Even if it’s just the one.’
She sat stunned for a few seconds, and slowly her brow shifted from a frown into a plain sheet of comprehension. Pam was slowly processing what I just told her, a life-altering thing that she never thought she would ever hear from me. I could understand that it would shock her a little, but she took it far better than I had expected.
‘I mean, not right now, of course,’ I added quickly. ‘I just decided that children are not as taboo as I once thought, you know? I want to pass my bloodline on. I’m an only child, and if I don’t have any children, my family will sort of ... you know, be ...’
‘Extinct?’ she finished for me.
‘Yes. But not just that. There should be more to life than where you go on holiday and what expensive car you buy next year. A child, I think, would give my life more meaning.’
Pam started to smile. She reminded me of a naughty child who just found out something important and could not hold it inside. I wanted to smile, but I wasn’t sure if she found it all ludicrous or if she was happy for me.
‘What’s Jordan got to say about this sudden change of heart?’ she asked suddenly, her face wild with excitement.
‘He doesn’t know yet,’ I said plainly, waiting for the bomb to drop.
Pamela uttered a devilish giggle and winked, ‘Oh, this is going to be good!’
Chapter 6
Martha Winston only kept her first husband’s name because he was the original source of her average wealth and her middle-class status. In truth, once she had his name, the pedigree she needed to be more than the nothing she was to her extended family and hometown, she used it to manipulate her way into various different organisations and wedge her presence into seats far higher than her abilities would allow.
When she gave birth to Jordan, she was furious that her freedom to flirt and sleep around was suddenly dampened by a screaming brat and the realisation that men were no longer flocking to her door. It made her hate Jordan’s father, strangely enough, and at first, Jordan himself. I learned all this through drunken stories told to me by Jordan’s relatives at social gatherings.
I have never been one for gossip, but listening – just listening – most of the time gave me all the pieces of the puzzle to effectively profile Martha’s sometimes completely ludicrous behaviour and ideologies. Of course, Jordan never realised this, or simply would not believe it, but his mother didn’t discourage him from having children for the reasons he thought.
From everything I had been told, and everything I could judge for myself, it was clear. Martha did not want her son to have children because being a grandmother would once more lock her into a status for which she did not have the aptitude. She would have to resort to behaving properly and being available for events like birthdays, babysitting and Christmas parties. But the one thing she wouldn’t be able to come to terms with was the thought of being a grandmother.
It was never about Jordan and me having fun or being free to blossom in our careers. No, it was clearly about avoiding her last few years being smothered by children when she was desperate to still recover the petty, fading remnants of her pallid life.
Make no mistake, I am all for being forever you
ng and being a fun-loving senior who blew away the boundaries of traditional old age. But there was mischief and fun, and then there was seductive dress and inappropriate manners, the latter of which Martha thought was some sort of power. Poor Jordan often sank his face in ignorant shame at the way she blabbered loudly about her active sex life during get-togethers. He would never admit it, though. To exacerbate his level of denial, he would still refer to his mother as a beautiful woman that he was proud to show off, instead of some bedridden old bat, as he put it.
I found it sad that a liberal and happy marriage like ours, almost perfect in every way, had to be crippled by a possessive, manipulative mother figure. I knew that once she found out I wanted a child with Jordan, she would realise that her hold on him would be weakened. That was a good thing as far as I was concerned.
***
Jordan was packing for a weekend in Skegness where various producers and writers from the BBC were meeting to discuss a new period drama they wished to film in Ireland. Jordan was going to be the lead writer.
‘This is going to look great on your CV if it all pans out,’ I marvelled, plopping down on the bed next to his barely lined suitcase. ‘Are you taking your willies in case it rains?’
He laughed at my blooper and pelted me with a pillow. ‘You and your willies! You know that Caterpillars are sturdy boots to have in both wet and dry conditions.’ He peered long at the beige boots lying timidly in the bottom of the suitcase. ‘Let me concentrate before I forget what I need to pack.’
I watched Jordan mull things over in his head, then walk over to the mirrored wardrobe and take out a black suit, a couple of pairs of jeans and several shirts. Outfits that his tall, lean body looked absolutely gorgeous in.
‘I hope there aren’t going to be any fair maidens chasing you about,’ I said, feeling an unexpected twinge of jealousy.
‘There could be a million, for all I care. None of them would be a mark on you.’
Mine To Lose Page 3
