***chapter 29***
***Escape***
The voices echoed vaguely from far, far away, her mind consumed only with playing out over and over vivid memories of the attack. Until physical pain overcame even her emotional trauma. The desperate flight through deep, uneven snow in fashionable, impractical footwear had taken its toll. Kathy stubbed out her cigarette, and pulled off the sharp-heeled boots that mercilessly pinched her aching feet, all the while watching in terror lest Gilmore still prowled out there somewhere in the dark, lonely night.
She hobbled across on weakened ankles to double-check the lock and pocket the keys, chiding herself that she hadn't done so before. Heart thudding loudly as a beating drum, she peered timidly through the frosty window into the small backyard. All dark, all alone, all silent and still, save for the swirling white snowflakes.
And the voices.
Soft voices floating down from above. The need for company drew her closer, the need yet to hide made her approach uncertain. Silent as a ghost, she crept to the bottom of the staircase. A glint of pale yellow light shone through the crack of Steven's half open bedroom door. Alfie must have decided to tell the brat a bedtime story. People, foolish people, who spared the rod and spoiled the child, indulged them with toys, sweets and attention, with once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters. As if the world was even remotely like that! Small wonder everywhere she went there were pampered, whinging, demanding kids. Well, Steven knew his place. A good slap worked wonders.
Kathy stepped soundlessly on the first stair. Little b*****d must have begun bawling the place down with one of his frequent nightmares and disturbed poor Alfie. Though it was odd that he'd woken.
Not wanting to lose her friend as a babysitter almost before he began and with an eye to keeping him sweet, both to request future babysitting favours and keep the police off her back if she left the brat alone, she had ensured, or so she thought, that Alfie's initial stint would be an easy one by pouring a generous amount of wine into a mug for her son to drink. Being a good little Catholic girl, Kathy had tasted wine herself when she made her First Holy Communion at the age of seven and liked it, but of course, Steven's sole purpose in life being to torment her, he decided he didn't and immediately spat it out again. The difference of opinion, with Kathy trying hard to make him to drink and her son clenching his teeth, wildly shaking his head and trying hard to keep his mouth firmly shut, lasted until she grabbed him by his hair, tilted back his head and forced the alcohol down his throat. After a while, coughing, spluttering and sobbing, he'd gone out like a light.
Kathy took two or three more steps, her anger increasing as she heard Steven's whiny, sleepy "Nooo, donwanna". Alfie must have the patient of a saint. His answer was too low to be intelligible, but the tone was gentle, cajoling. Probably trying to persuade him to go back asleep. She'd shake her son to Kingdom Come, she would, for all this carry on. If Alfie so much as hinted that he might never babysit again she'd knock the stuffing out of Steven. She needed to vent her anger at Stanley Gilmore on someone. She needed to hide what had happened to her tonight by screaming and yelling and using her fists on someone too weak to fight back.
Intending to startle her son and thereby add to his fear of the hiding that was to come, Kathy crept up the final few stairs and softly pushed the bedroom door wide open. But words died on her lips, unspoken, and instead she froze. What she saw there would haunt her forever…
The low wattage light-bulb poured a pool of dim light over the tiny bed. The bed-covers, two musty-smelling blankets, an old overcoat of Ste's and a woollen cot blanket that served as a top sheet and was far too small for the bed, had been firmly pulled down to reveal the crumpled bottom sheet, a double size, far too big for the bed, lately washed but yellowed by age and with a gaping hole in its centre. The chipped mug that he'd been made to drink wine from leaned haphazardly on a ridge in the dirty carpet. Beside it, on the rickety wooden chair, exactly where she'd left them, were piled the clothes he had worn that day and would wear again tomorrow.
But on top of these had been placed what he'd worn to bed: his little ragged grey vest; the space-rocket-theme-patterned pyjama bottoms Ste bought him before he died; the bobbled red jumper with a hole in its sleeve that had replaced the matching space-rocket-theme-patterned top after it was used as a floor cloth. A thousand thoughts arose within her to divide and scatter like the snowflakes melting into the cold, white earth.
She'd heard there were people like him, but never imagined…
Never dreamt…
Even back in the Catholic Home…
They said…
But she never saw…
If Gilmore hadn't attacked her…
If she'd been five minutes late…
If she'd been drunk…
Alfie had plied her with drink before she left…
Wormed his way into her home…
Waited until he thought her safely gone…
Because Steven…
Little Steven, he…
Stevie, he…
…staggered, hardly able to stay upright in his haze of alcohol and sleepiness, frightened, naked and shivering, and Alfie stooped down with his large hands on his skinny little body, in the act of lifting the child on to the bed.
She heard a strange cry, as though from some wounded animal and realised it came from somewhere deep within herself. Alfie Simpson jumped up and swung round as though he'd been shot. His face turned deathly white, his eyes bulged in fear, a nervous tic throbbed in his neck
"He wet…"
But he saw at once she didn't believe the lie.
"I'll pay," he stated in a flat, business-like voice that sent a rush of abject coldness through every fibre of her being.
Perhaps her face registered her disgust, perhaps she spoke, she didn't know, she couldn't tell. Because at that moment somebody screamed, a peculiar long, throaty scream, jagged and broken and breathless, like a voice lost attempting to find its way, blotting out all other sound. Keen to save himself from a lynch mob, Simpson abruptly flung the little boy down on the bed to elbow her roughly aside, his footsteps thudding quickly downstairs, the door banging just once behind him.
Kathy's scream died into a whimper, leaving her mouth dry as sandpaper, her throat burning and raw. And for the second time that terrible night nobody answered. Next door lived, or half lived, Elsie Johnson, a frail, elderly widow, stone deaf, and in the early stages of dementia. The Palmers, her neighbours at the other side, had yesterday put two large suitcases in the boot of their car, two noisy children in the back of it, and driven away somewhere for the weekend. But even had anyone heard, would they have bothered to come?
Fat tears splashed down her cheeks and dribbled off her chin. Women hated her and all she was to men was something to be used, then cast aside like last week's rubbish. Nobody in Mereden gave a damn about her. Nobody cared if she lived or died and now she had to deal with…with this…
Tonight the world had spun off its axis and crashed and she was all alone and she didn't know what to do. The bed creaked as she sank down, feeling suddenly exhausted, vaguely aware that Stevie held the baggy yellow sheet around himself, too frightened to cry. It never occurred to Kathy to cuddle him. Alfie's actions had been abhorrent to her, but she felt only her own pain. Cold and callous as this may seem, Kathy Ross genuinely believed it was enough that she had stopped Simpson in his tracks and she was being a good mother. Her son was detached from her, a child she never wanted, almost a stranger. The horrendous events of that fateful night she viewed only from her own perspective, unable to imagine how lonely and terrified her little boy had been. Must still be.
Her mind raced. She couldn't call the police. The police would say she was to blame. They would point out she'd been drinking, invited Alfie Simpson into her home, left him alone with a child. She might even be jailed. And then what about Stan Gilmore? Even if she could confide in anyone, and just now she felt too distraught to talk to anyone, who was there to confide in? There was not a single person in Mereden she could count as a friend.
On top of all her worries, Stevie was still sitting up and staring silently at her with his large, dark eyes. Ste's eyes. Albeit with a defiance that unnerved her.
Through a mist of self-pitying tears Kathy looked past him, to the small framed picture that hung on the wall behind, a watercolour of several jet black horses running through a snowstorm by night. She had thrown everything she could find, pots, pans and plates, at Ste the evening he brought it home, the worse for wear, happily declaring he'd paid some amateur painter he met in a pub a fiver for it. Even Kathy, who knew next to nothing about art, could see it wasn't very good. A couple of smears told where the artist had tried to cover his mistakes, the sky streaked and the silhouettes of barren trees seemed to be the wrong scale. But once Ste dug his heels in over something, he dug his heels in. In the light of day, and sobriety, he too could recognise the painting's poor quality, but he flatly refused to admit it. So they argued instead about whether or not the sky should be black and a full moon shining benevolently over the scene if it was snowing, but still he stubbornly rebuffed the idea of asking for his money back. Around the same time the stupid b****r actually switched his brand of smokes because Quality Cigarettes began enclosing cigarette cards of famous sporting legends in action. Including racehorses.
Dozens of small pictures of champion racehorse, crossing finishing lines over dozens of years, still adorned the headboard of Stevie's bed where Ste had annoyingly sellotaped them. Although it annoyed her, Kathy had never bothered to remove any simply because it seemed too much work. Never, until now, even glanced their way other than to throw away those that fell down over time. Like his father, Steven was fascinated by horses. It was more than a hobby, it was bloody psychotic.
But as she looked now, from the galloping black horses of the watercolour to the cigarette cards showing sleek horses racing to glory, one answer to all her problems came.
Run.
