Ten Years Gone Chapter 1, a hollyoaks fanfic

CHAPTER ONE: Year 2021 – Leah

For the fourth time in fifteen minutes, Leah felt a tug on her sleeve. She sighed heavily and swivelled the wheel on her iPod to mute the volume.

"What?!"

"See there? That's the school me and your mam went to, that." He was gesticulating earnestly towards an average-sized, average-shaped, average-coloured school, half an eye cast on the road in front of the second hand Passat as it made its way slowly along.

"One time, right, this teacher, Davis, he caught me burning an 'ole in the desk and…"

But Leah was already swivelling the volume back up, drowning him out angrily. Amanda was probably plastering herself in fake tan this very minute. This was so unfair!

"But whyyyyyyyy?" she had whined at Mum two days ago, when the weekend trip was sprung on her. Mum had waited until after dinner to drop the bombshell. Probably thinking she'd be more likely to agree on a full stomach. Wrong again, Mum. "It's a business trip! Why do me and Luke need to go?!"

"It'll be nice getting to see the place where you two were born," Mum coaxed. "You spent the first five years of your life there, love, aren't you curious to see it?"

Leah hadn't even dignified that with a response. How could she not understand? Amanda's party! THE party! Of the year! Of the decade! Of her entire teenage life!

"You're doing it for your Dad, guys. He wants you with him," Mum cajoled.

Low blow. Leah folded her arms tightly across her chest, blocking out the sneaky attack. She thought of Ed Bracken's lopsided smile at the bus stop that morning. Maybe see you at the party, he'd said.

Maybe see her at the party! Her, Leah!

"He always wants us with him," Luke mumbled, digging his spoon into the Vienneta in front of him.

"Of course he does, he's your Dad," Mum said softly, and Leah couldn't miss the forlorn little glance she exchanged with Lee. With effort, she kept the scowl etched onto her face, trying not to think of Dad at that moment, sitting in his little flat in East Manchester with a meal for one.

Ed frickin' Bracken, for Christ's sake!

"Look guys, this is a big deal for your Dad," Mum continued to needle. "Hollyoaks was the very first branch of Carter and Hay. It's kind of… special to him. I know he hasn't lived there for years, but he's gutted to let go of it."

No, this was playing dirty!

"He needs your support, guys," Mum was still needling. "It'll be the first time he's seen Doug since he married that bloke from Liverpool."

Leah'd never even stood a chance.

She'd been blaring the angriest music she could find on her iPod since she climbed into the car that morning, trying to drown out Dad's incessant nattering, thinking of the torturous shopping trip she'd had to go on yesterday where she watched her friends pick their outfits for Saturday night. Her life was over, she hoped her stupid selfish parents knew that. Over.

And now, as the battered Passat finally cruised into the oh-so-famous Hollyoaks, it seemed like every post-box they passed was reminding Dad of some pointless waffling anecdote.

"Here, if you go up that side street there, and turn left at the end, that's our old flat there! I'll take you to see it later, if you like, kids?"

Leah groaned inwardly at the thought. How could this be happening to her? The most important social event of her life so far and she was missing it to get a guided tour of some grotty old flat? Eventually, they halted in front of a small shop-front, an aqua-blue sign embossed with the familiar lettering "Carter and Hay". Leah was surprised.

"Is this it?"

"Course it is," Dad responded, screwing his lips into a fond little smile. "Where it all started."

"But it's tiny!" she blurted. This was a quarter of the size of the sprawling, bustling Manchester branch they were used to.

"Well you gotta start small, Leah," he told her with an irritating know-it-all wink. "Paris weren't built in a day, y'know."

"Rome," she corrected automatically but he wasn't even listening. His eyes were misting over as they drank in the modest little shop. Leah rolled her own. God, Dad could be so soppy sometimes, it was beyond embarrassing.

"This one time, right," he was choking. "There were this dead posh kid working here, Barney his name was… think his mam were like a third cousin of a duke or summat… and he picks up this tray of cups, right, like twenty-six of 'em, and–"

"And he smashed them," Leah finished for him. She had heard this story a hundred times already. Just like all of Dad's stories.

"Yeah," Dad sniggered, the hilarity of the memory swatting away his nostalgia temporarily. Thank Christ. "Right, come on you lot, let's go find Doug shall we?"

"What's that Dad?" Luke asked placidly as they climbed out of the car. Leah swivelled round to glower at him. What was he doing?! The last thing Dad needed was encouragement to tell more pointless anecdotes.

Dad followed his finger to a grey, dominating construction across the street. Leah followed it too. It was enormous, pressing the buildings around it into submission with its towering presence, rudely interrupting the generous rays of sunlight that were trying to warm the street. Leah couldn't place it. She scanned through the countless stories and descriptions she had been fed over the years but none seemed to allude to this monstrosity.

"It's… well, it's a nightclub, innit? I used to work there, once," Dad answered softly. Leah waited for the "this one time, right", but it didn't come.

As they stared, a door on the first floor slammed open and a man stomped out onto the balcony, broad-shoulders filling out a tailored suit, black hair slicked back with gel, fists bunched up in a frustration that matched the hard line of his mouth. Suddenly, he looked down at them, as if he felt their gaze on the back of his neck. Leah shuddered involuntarily. His eyes were dark, angry, but she felt like they were screaming in terror at her too. As he watched them the hard line of his mouth slowly relaxed and it fell open, surprised recognition.

"Was that your boss?" she whispered, disliking the intense, curious way the man was looking at her father.

"Naw, that's just some jumped up little wannabe," her Dad replied, his voice uncharacteristically bitter. Leah's gaze broke from the stranger and swung to her father instead, surprised to see his eyes narrowed as he stared up at the other man. "Got handed a nightclub as a present from his daddy, didn't he?" He paused before he spoke again and when he did, his voice was softer. Sad, Leah thought. "No, the bloke I worked for moved away from here. A long time ago."

Without warning, he turned on his heel and disappeared through the aqua-blue door, bell jingling merrily above his head. Slowly, Leah and Lucas followed him inside.

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Was it possible to die from boredom? If it was, Leah was definitely having a near-death experience right now.

Three hours, that's how long she'd been sitting on that uncomfortable bar stool listening to Dad say "d'ya remember the time, right" over and over again and smiling politely as perfect strangers told her she was the image of her mother.

"D'ya remember that time, right," Dad was telling a broad grey-haired man called Tony, "when me and Doug, we was both trying to get the job in College Coffee? And he only went and put salt in the coffees I'd made!"

Leah smirked at the way Doug shifted uncomfortably on his stool. That's right, Dougie-boy, squirm! She hated everything about him. The weedy, bunched-up frame. The grating American twang. The heavy, undulating eyebrows that reminded her of caterpillars. The little fleeting glimpses of deadness she saw in her Dad's eyes sometimes, between his prattling stories and ceaseless chatter. She'd seen one today when they met Doug's shocked face and uneasy smile and worried protest that her Dad shouldn't have come all the way, he could have taken care of everything himself.

She could barely remember the night that Dad had shown up on their doorstep in Manchester, dripping with rain and tears, telling Mum that he and Doug were over. But she knew he had never fallen in love again. All of her memories from childhood were of him throwing himself into work with a frenzied maniacal obsession, building his business like his life depended on it, like he couldn't bear to stop for one second and let his feelings seep through. Even today, as he presided over a successful chain and could finally rest back on his hunkers now that all his work had paid off, the only people he wanted to spend time with were her or Luke or Mum.

Unbidden, the memory of that eavesdropped conversation floated from the back of her head where it wavered, inerasable. She was eleven. One a.m. Dad was babysitting while Mum and Lee were at some work function. She had purposely forced herself to stay awake, and was just preparing to creep down the stairs and curl herself under Dad's arm with a little fib about not being able to sleep. She just wanted to make the most of him while he was here. But as her feet reached the top step of the stairs, Mum and Lee crashed through the door, whispering loudly about staying quiet. She waited a few moments at the top of the stairs, wondering whether to go back to bed. But she could hear Lee snoring on the couch now and Mum and Dad were talking to each other in low, murmuring voices, using those hushed tones that pique curiosity. Silently, she eased her way down the stairs and pressed a delicate ear to the door. Mum's voice was imploring, thick with worry.

"It's been years, Ste. You have to let go of him. Everything he's done to you… All the times he hurt you, Ste… And he's still hurting you now, when he's not even here."

Leah's pulse pounded in her throat. She held her breath, sure that even the slightest whisper would get her caught.

Afterwards, she wished she had been caught. Anything to stop her hearing her gentle, funny Dad's response.

"You don't get it, Ames." He coughed it, an awful, tearless sigh. "He's in my bones."

Now, she glared stonily at the protesting American as he defended himself against her Dad's laughing accusations. Whatever Doug had done to her father, he had left him half-broken living a ghost life.

"Boss!" a new voice cried, cutting into her thoughts as it bellowed loudly beside her ear. What was wrong with people in this village and their invasion of personal space?! "Back to sell the old business, eh? Ah, we had some jolly good times in there!"

"Yeah, yeah we did!" Dad was nodding eagerly. "'Ey, Leah and Lucas, this is Barney, this! D'ya remember the time you smashed all them cups, Barney?"

The floppy-haired man peered down at them, affability dripping out of him.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, looking at Leah. "Has anyone ever told you you're the image of your mother?!"

Leah couldn't take it any longer. She announced she was getting a drink, stomping her way from the raucous table to the bar with Dad's shouts to make sure it was non-alcoholic ("you're only sixteen, remember!") wafting behind her.

"Parent's, who'd 'av 'em?" a deep voice breathed into her ear from behind. With a jump she whirled around and found herself nose-to-nose with bright white grinning teeth and dark twinkling chocolate eyes. Her breath stuttered, unable to string itself into a sentence with the face so close to her own.

"I'm Charlie," he smirked, and she felt her stomach lurch at the way the corner of his mouth tugged upwards when he spoke. "My aunt and uncle run this place."

"Leah," she breathed, finding some air inside her chest to get the syllables out. His chocolate eyes watched her closely as she spoke. "Save me, please?"

"Shhhh," she whispered and then ignored her own warning by dissolving into helpless giggles. She was looking at her brother's backside as he hung, halfway-in and halfway-out of a toilet window.

"Come on, Luke, move it!" she hissed, gathering herself together again.

"I'm… try… ing…" he panted as he wriggled. Suddenly, he disappeared and Leah heard a low thump as his body hit the ground. "I'm okay!"

"One down," she affirmed herself.

Okay, so the plan wasn't perfect. When she'd sidled up to Dad with a sickly sweet smile on her face he'd seen through her immediately, and as soon as she suggested that she might go exploring, he'd hitched Luke onto her coattails as a precaution. But Luke was malleable, and it had taken Leah all of about ten minutes to convince him that wriggling through the window of the female toilet in the local nightclub would be a great adventure. Now, as she slid her way through to join him in a crumpled heap on the floor, she allowed herself a moment of triumph.

"Right, come on," she whispered, clambering to her feet and dragging him up too. "Let's go find Charlie."

"Leah," he started to protest. "Look at me."

Leah chewed on her bottom lip as she drank in his scuffed runners, his faded jeans and his Man City jersey. Not to mention his round, fourteen-year-old face. But she'd come too far at this point. Charlie was in there somewhere. She was going back to Manchester with a breath-taking story for Amanda. End of.

"There'll be loads of people, no one will notice," she reassured him before grabbing him by the arm and yanking him out into the club.

The place was packed with bodies, shouting noisily over the pulse of techno that hummed through the floors and walls. The smell of sweat and perfume filled her nostrils, hot from people. Self-consciously, she ran a hand through her hair. How was going to find Charlie in this mess of people?

"Hey, Leah!" a voice shouted. Two heavy hands were on her arms, spinning her around. "You got in!"

Again, she felt her breath falter as she met those brown eyes, now almost black as his pupils dilated in the darkness. He was bobbing, moving his body to the beat of the base.

"Drink?" he asked, offering her a glass filled with black-coloured liquid. She took it and drank deeply through the straw, hoping to stave away some of the self-consciousness that had started to seep into her since entering this foreign land. She bit back the cough when the liquor hit the back of her throat.

"Hey, what about me?" Luke demanded. She smiled, threw a playful smack against his ear. She was a tiny bit glad he was here, in this unfamiliar place with her.

"You're too young to drink," she reminded him.

"So are you."

"Fair point."

She conceded, offering him a gulp from the glass.

Then time fractured into racing, slowed-down moments. Charlie's finger pressing into the small of her back. Luke sliding the black drink out of her grasp, sucking hungrily. Tugging lips leaning into her. Luke flying backwards, choking cry whipping her ears. Charlie's hands falling away, abandoning her. Luke's limbs flailing, toes scraping the ground, gasping against the reefed-up collar of his jersey. A giant wrapping his fist around the collar, a massive expanse of black, furious eyes boring into her brother, vein throbbing grotesquely on his forehead.

Real time flooded back in a rush of colour and noise.

"Get your hands off him," she shrieked, flinging herself at the giant's claw where it was wrapped around her brother's collar, strangling the air from him.

"Back off, little girl," he growled. The boring eyes swung to her, bloodthirsty and black and maniacal. Her fingers were useless, prising at the iron claw. Luke coughed, choking against the material.

"Brendan… Brendan, it were only a drink," Charlie stammered, shaking fingers finding their way onto her back again.

In an instant, Luke was dropped to the floor and the giant's claws were squeezing against Charlie, slamming him back into the toilet door. He opened his thin, blood-red lips to bare snarling teeth.

"And who bought it for him?"

Leah's heart was stuttering to a slower rhythm now that Luke was freed. Immediately, her arms wrapped themselves tightly around the boy.

"Let him go," she ordered, pouring courage that she didn't feel into the words. Terror was jumping from Charlie's face and filling her up dreadfully. "Let him go, or we'll get you done for assault."

She heard the giant inhale deeply, a rasping ragged sound that flared his nostrils. His fingers twitching undecidedly at Charlie's neck, teeth still bared ferociously.

"Will you… now?" he asked, his voice strangely conversational against the backdrop of his massive leering frame. "Now really, I don't think Charles, here–" he slapped Charlie's face face lightly "–would do that. I don't think that Uncle Darren would think that was a very good idea."

Charlie's face was screwed up, trying to block out the hot, wet breath laced with heavy threat.

"Maybe his uncle wouldn't, but my Dad would!" Leah bolstered, arms still wrapped tightly around her little brother.

Charlie was thrown aside. Now the giant's face was pressed up into Leah, clammy breath on her chin, whiskers from his moustache scratching the soft skin of her cheek. His voice bled into her ear, laughing.

"Well then your Daddy is a fool."

Leah could feel her body start to tremble, the molten threat leaking through her bravado. She bit back the tears of fear that were forming at the back of her eyes as the long, twitching fingers hovered near her cheek.

"Hey, Brendan! Brendan, get away!"

The giant was suddenly reefed backwards by strong hands. Dimly, Leah was aware of the man they'd seen on the balcony earlier, arms wrapped around the chest of the giant, imploring him to calm down. The giant shook him off, but the maniacal eyes seemed quieter.

"They're underage," he panted, by way of explanation.

"Brendan," the other man breathed, horror spilled across his face.

"Get them out of my club," the giant spat at Charlie, jabbing an index finger into his chest before turning to be swallowed up by the pulse of bodies.

"What's happened?!"

Dad's voice was tight, barely holding back the surge of panic at the sight of Leah's tearstained face, Luke's painful coughs. His eyes fell to Charlie and in a second he had him pinned just like the giant at the club.

"What 'ave you done to my kids?"

Some of the other men were climbing to their feet now, telling Dad to take it easy, but he was deaf to them. Leah reached a shaky hand out and placed in on his arm, pulling him back.

"Dad, it wasn't his fault," she said, trying to bite back the whimper from her voice. What was wrong with her? The moment they had stepped out of that black pit into the night air she had dissolved, inconsolable, all attempts at a front gone. She could still feel the hot breath against her chin, terrible powerlessness engulfing her.

Dad's grip on Charlie's collar relaxed minutely under her touch. She tightened her fingers on his arm.

"It was the bloke who owns the nightclub," she battled on, pushing the frightened tears back down. "He grabbed Luke, Charlie tried to stop him." The scene was playing out in slow motion in her head as she recounted it. "And then he started on me."

Dad's hands dropped from Charlie's neck and when he turned to face her she felt more afraid than she had at any point so far. He was ashen, features twisted into a grotesque combination of livid fury and nauseating fear.

"Did he touch you?" he whispered.

"No," she hurried, trying to swallow the racing pulse she could feel in the back of her throat. Some vague flush of colour came back to his cheeks when she said that, at least.

"Well he ain't getting away with it, not this time," Dad said, fury roaring to the fore now that the fear was somewhat abated. "That little Scottish upstart don't get to push my kids around!"

"No, Ste, it's not–" Doug was on his feet, shouting after him but Dad had already stormed out of the pub.

Leah stared after him. "Well then your Daddy is a fool". She heard the words, bleeding mirthless laughter into her ear again, maniacal eyes dancing over her trembling skin. Her stomach lurched.

"Dad, wait!" she cried, racing out of the pub after him.

She didn't catch up to him until he was on the shaky metal staircase leading to the entrance.

"Dad, I don't think you should go in there," she pleaded. The vision of those giant hands, pinning Charlie effortlessly against the wall, floated in front of her.

"Leave it, Leah," he bit, his eyes determined.

"I'm okay now, Luke's okay!" she wheedled, begging him to come back. It was useless. She knew better than anyone. She got her stubbornness from him, everyone said that.

"We need a word with your boss," Dad barked at the bouncer, shoving him roughly aside, plunging into the heaving, writhing pump of base and bodies. Leah dived after him, pathetically scrabbling at his heels as he marched to a heavy metal door in the back wall. He flung it open without knocking and barged in.

"Oi, Dexter, I want a word with you!" he bellowed at the man he met behind the door.

But no, this wasn't him. This was the man who dragged the giant away.

"No, Dad," she tugged at him, looking around in confusion.

Suddenly, her eyes fell on him, standing a metre away to the side. The giant. Massive and dark and terrifying.

Only he didn't look like a giant now. She was confused. He looked tiny now, cowering and shocked, like he was about to be smashed into a million little pieces.

"No, Dad," she said again. "That's not him. It was him, there."

Dad followed her shaky finger to the tiny giant. The giant's face crumpled, like that smashing blow had invisibly come down on top of his head.

"Stephen," he choked out.

Leah was stunned. Her eyes flew from the crumpled face of her tormenter to her father's. He was frozen, furious eyes bulging dangerously, face ashen with nauseous fear again, lips curled into a yearning whimper. She felt her heart stop.

The moment swayed like that, incredibly still without her own heartbeat. Suddenly, Dad's face contorted into some undefinable mess of emotion and he threw it all into the tightly balled-up fist that swung through the air, meeting the giant's face with a sickening crunch of skin and bone.