I'm so sorry it's been so long again! As some of you know I had a lot of real life stuff going on last month, but I'm starting to get back into writing now and I will really try to make sure you don't have to wait so long next time!
Reviews would make me very very happy, I always worry I'm going to lose all my readers when I go a while without updating, so please do let me know if you're still reading this! And thank you so much to Godxrd for reviewing the last chapter!
-IseultLaBelle x
Chapter 15
Glasgow, One Week Earlier
Several hours pass, before Chloe finally musters the courage to go through with it.
She spends the first hour curled up on the double bed in her hotel room with Emina on speaker phone, Emina desperately trying to convince her to leave, leave now, pack her suitcase and drive, just drive, head back down to Holby just in time to catch her mum and Dom and Fletch on their last round of drinks in Albies, or wherever it is her mum said they're off to this evening for their vigil, silent mourning of the night her mother's life was ripped apart and she was forced upon her- Chloe can't remember if her mum even mentioned where they were going.
She needs to tell her mum, Emina insists. And she understands if Chloe doesn't want to tell her today, all things considered, but she needs to tell her, to explain why she's now even more distraught about it all and full of self-loathing than she was before.
Her mum won't be angry with her for looking, Emina had tried to reassure her. Perhaps she'll wish that Chloe hadn't done it- especially now that it's caused her so much distress, had her so filled with self-hatred that she got through an entire pack of plasters and half the toilet paper supply provided in her hotel bathroom dealing with the aftermath.
She hasn't told Emina that part, of course, but she isn't stupid. Chloe knows she'll have worked it out- will have heard the pain in her voice, if nothing else. (Stupid, Chloe, stupid. If only she hadn't cut so deep she might not have given the game away.)
Emina had been adamant, though, fought to get through to her that her mother wouldn't be angry if she told her. That any initial upset Ange might feel at having it all dragged up again by her own daughter would be immediately displaced by concern for her, because she'd understand. She'd know how shaken Chloe must be feeling now, too late to take it all back, pretend she never saw it.
Her mum would understand why she did it in the first place, come to that.
Chloe didn't mean to.
She really didn't.
She never really wanted to.
But the morbid curiosity that's lain dormant within her for so many years seemed to rise to the surface again after everything with Dom came out, after her mum's decision to keep her despite how she had her suddenly began to make even less sense, and she tried so hard to not let it tear her apart but she just couldn't do it. And then Evan…
Evan.
It would be better if she knew, Evan had said. He'd claimed that it would help her lay it all to rest, that she'd be able to move on, once she knew everything there was to know, and she certainly wasn't going to be getting the information she needed to do that from Ange.
She needed to see it all for herself, the truth of it, the details, if she was ever going to break free of her self-harming cycle, stop seeing herself as a monster.
That's what Evan had told her.
And so she went along with it, on self-destruct, almost, because she's an idiot, and even now, even with him practically stalking her, having lied to her, manipulated her into a marriage, covered up an ex-wife and child and refused to let her walk away from him, move on, she's still taking his advice.
Why is she still taking Evan's advice?
Even now, here, parked in the car park of the Auldhouse Arms, Pollokshields, after the trauma of this morning at the Glasgow City Archives, she's still taking Evan's advice.
Even when it's so perfectly clear to her that the real reason he wanted her to go through with this is because he knew it would break her.
Because he knew she wouldn't survive it on her own, would only end up leaning heavily upon him again in her torment, break down, spiral back into the grasps of self-destruction again and then he'd have her exactly where he wanted.
Weak.
Dependent.
Trapped.
She's such an idiot.
She's such an idiot, and she just wants her mum, but Chloe is too ashamed to go to her.
Her mum wouldn't even hesitate to offer her the reassurance she needs just now, Emina had told her. (And Chloe knows that, of course; she's not totally lost it, not yet.) Her mum will tell her that none of has ever affected the way she's seen Chloe, that she's herdaughter, not his. Her mum will tell her that all the thoughts racing through her head now, threatening to consume her, are simply not true, that she loves her, that no part of her has ever regretted her, that it's just DNA, just cells, meaningless, not what makes her Chloe.
Her mum will understand.
Her mum will put her mind at rest, make it all seem better, insignificant again.
Except it isn't that simple, Chloe had protested to Emina.
She can't tell her mum.
She wants to.
What she's discovered today has shaken her more than anything else has ever before, more than her mother's initial confession to her as to how she was conceived, even, and Chloe had truly believed nothing would ever come close to that again.
She wants her mum to comfort her.
She wants her mum to hug her tightly and tell her that none of it matters, that it doesn't bother her, never has.
She needs her mum to tell her she loves her, more than ever before.
But she's scared.
She's scared that her mum has never loved her, that her suspicions back when she first discovered she had a half-brother were right after all.
That's the truth of it.
She's scared that her mum has always viewed her exactly as she can't imagine ever not seeing herself again now; as an abomination, evil, tainted by the violence and the pain and the devastation and the trauma brought about by her father.
She's scared that she's unlovable, that her mum has never truly been able to separate her, her daughter, from the man who raped her, simply spent the last twenty-nine years telling her that she has, maybe even telling herselfthat she has, because she didn't have another choice.
She's scared that her mum wouldn't have even hesitated to book herself in for an abortion if only she'd known she was pregnant with her early enough to make that choice, that ever since, her mum has been desperately trying to keep up her façade, convince herself as much as she's tried to convince the world that she wanted to be her mother, but really…
She's scared that deep down, her mum has always known she's a vile, corrupted, worthless waste of space. She's scared that her mum never wanted her, not even for a moment, has perfected the art of pretending otherwise but that's only because she's too kind to let her suffer, when really, all along she's resented her, given up her life to raise her unwillingly, prayed every single day of the last twenty-nine years for the daughter she never wanted to disappear.
She's scared that her mum never wanted her at all, not really.
That all these years, what she really wanted was her first baby back.
And she couldn't have him, so she settled for Chloe.
But now her mum has Dom in her life again, stronger and emotionally independent of her and free of anxiety and terrible coping mechanisms like she, her mother's pathetic excuse for a daughter, seems cursed to never be.
Where does that leave her?
Chloe shudders, slams shut the drivers' side door of her car, steps out into the gentle chill of Glasgow dusk.
She fought so hard to stop thinking of herself like this, when she was fourteen, and she hates that she's fallen to pieces over it all again.
And she doesn't want to blame Dom for it.
Chloe really, really doesn't.
It's just so hard not to see it all as so hopelessly intertwined.
She shouldn't be doing this, Chloe reminds herself, opens and closes the mechanism on her car key in her hand.
That's what Emina had told her.
Emina had pleaded with her, in fact, to pack up her things and walk away, not to torture herself like this.
She won't be able to un-see it.
That's what Emina told her, and Chloe already knows she's right.
It's only been a few hours, but already she knows she'll never get the police drawing from the newspaper out of her head.
She's a monster.
How can her mum even bear to look at her?
Slowly, shakily, Chloe makes her way across the pub car park.
She doesn't want to do this.
She doesn't want to do this any more than she wanted to step into the Glasgow City Archives this morning, any more than she wanted to look at that awful newspaper article.
She doesn't want to know, and yet she can't seem to stop torturing herself.
Trembling, she walks past the pub, arms wrapped around herself, defensive, exposed, feels horribly vulnerable and she can't explain why.
She has no right to feel vulnerable, Chloe tells herself furiously as she crosses past the pub, through to the other side of the car park and follows the wall until she finds the gate, pushes it open.
She knows where it is.
She couldn't quite imagine the layout of it all from the newspaper article- from her mother's account of the night she was raped and became pregnant with her, Chloe shudders, but she might as well call it what it is.
She'd had to look it all up on google maps, to be sure she was heading to the right place, to work out where she was going to park.
That's how she knows that there's a gate in the pub car park, over to the side, partially obscured by the bushes, but there.
That the gate in the Auldhouse Arms car park leads directly through to the back-alley that runs between the pub and the high street shops, the supermarket, the church, on the one side, and the Pollokshields council estate on the other where her mum grew up.
That the back-alley is just as the newspaper article describes it: dark, secluded, cut-off, overshadowed, view more or less obscured by garden fences and overhanging trees. That it's a long, narrow cut-through with no alternatives but to carry on walking, one end to the other, save the garden gates that must be kept locked, Chloe reasoned when she first saw it via google maps, a legacy of Victorian architecture; dead space, practically, useful for taking a shortcut across from the centre of Pollokshields to the very edge of the housing estate, but otherwise serving little purpose now the communal bread ovens and the coal sheds that once populated it are lost to history.
That for all its practically when it comes to avoiding the main roads, slipping through the backstreets into town and back home again, as her mum must have used it for to avoid the long way around and paying for a bus fare, it's every rapist's dream come true at night.
That's how Chloe knows this is the right place, beyond all doubt.
She saw it on google maps, and even the grainy, pixelated images, overly zoomed in on her phone screen, made it perfectly, horribly clear, how it must have all happened.
Because the alleyway runs past the back gardens of the houses on the one side, the back entrances, the yards, the bins, of the businesses on the other side.
Not the front entrances.
Late at night, there would have been no one to hear her mum scream when her father forced himself upon her mother, pinned her up against the Auldhouse Arm bins and raped her, left her with an abomination of a daughter she's been stuck with ever since.
Chloe's eyes fill with tears again.
God, she just can't seem to stop crying today.
She's a monster.
She's a monster by default because her father was a monster, because the way she was conceived was just so… so… so…
She's crying properly now, and Chloe curses herself, comes to a halt beside the gate.
She can't think like this, Emina had tried to tell her.
She's not her father.
Neither of them are.
They can't hold themselves accountable for their father's actions, have to learn to separate themselves from the violence and the horror and the trauma through which they were conceived, learn to let it go, to trust that their mothers don't love them any less because of it and stop looking over their shoulders, shut out the voices inside their heads trying to tell them that everyone knows just by looking at them, that they're scarred by it all, marked out, different, monsters.
They'll never be like their fathers.
Anyone, any thoughts, any voices in their heads reeking of self-doubt that try to tell them otherwise are to be shut out, ignored, dismissed, because they simply aren't true.
That's what Emina says.
Except it's different for Emina.
Chloe knows it is.
It's easy for Emina to believe they aren't their fathers, because Emina doesn't needto know what her own father looks like to know that she's nothing like him.
Emina looks so much like her mother they could practically be the same person.
How can Ange even stand to be around her? It doesn't make any sense, it just doesn't make any sense…
Slowly, surely, dusk is setting in over Glasgow now, Chloe realises as she pushes open the gate, crosses the threshold.
It's not dark yet. Far from it, out in the car park, at least.
But the moment she steps out into the alleyway, suddenly everything is overshadowed, buildings on the one side, trees, bushes, fences, garden sheds on the other obscuring the lingering sunlight.
It was the early hours of the morning, when it happened.
Chloe knows that much from the newspaper appeal.
There are streetlamps lining the alleyway, but they're scarce, overgrown, partially obscured by the trees in places.
There would have been hardly any light along here, when her mum was walking home that night.
Even if the back-garden trees hadn't been as overgrown as they are now, thirty years to the day later, it would have been horribly dark along here, in the middle of the night.
Seeing it now, early evening, Chloe can fully understand how her mum didn't see him coming.
Early evening… how is it already early evening?
It's like she's lost most of today. She can't remember… she remembers leaving the Glasgow City Archives, remembers driving back to the hotel, remembers phoning Emina, remembers curling up on the bathroom floor and sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, but beyond that…
She can't remember.
Why can't she remember?
She's going insane.
She's poisoned with the corrupted, evil DNA of her father, she's brought her poor mother nothing but pain and inconvenience and hurt and frustration and unhappiness, and now she's going insane, she's going insane…
This is where it happened, Chloe reminds herself.
Is this another form of her self-harming? It makes sense. It's as though she can't stop torturing herself with it all, because it doesn't seem to be enough for her to just be here; she's mentally running through the text from the newspaper article in her head to pinpoint the exact location (because she may have only discovered it this morning, but already she's read through it so many times that it seems to be burned into her mind word for word, that she worries that she'll never be able to shake free of it).
By the Auldhouse Arms bins.
That's where it happened.
By the bins, but not the side nearest to the gate.
The other side, pressed up against the wall, escape route blocked by the bins jutting out into the alleyway.
Nowhere to run.
It must have been.
It happened here.
This is where she was conceived.
How can her mum possibly not hate her?
It's dark.
It's dark, and it's dirty, and it smells awful, rotting waste and god only knows what else, bricks covered in a thick layer of grime and spider webs, wet leaves lining the pavement beneath her feet.
This is where she came from.
It's even worse than she imagined.
How does her mum not feel dirty, reminded of here, of how she had her, every time she looks at her?
How could she bear to keep her, why hasn't she cast her out long ago, rid herself of the daughter she never wanted?
She's vile. She's dirty- not just because of how she was conceived, but where, because she came from filth, from decay, from desecration.
She's worthless.
She's nothing.
She's a monster.
She doesn't deserve her mum.
She's crying again now.
She was crying before, admittedly, but now she just can't seem to stop, floodgates opened, distraught, can't stop, because her whole life is a lie.
For as long as she can remember, Chloe has always wanted to be like her mum.
But how can she be?
How can she possibly be anything like her mum when she came from that?
From him.
She's never going to be able to get him out of her head now, him, what he did to her mum, how he made her, is going to haunt her forever, she's never going to get it out of her head…
And then all of a sudden, there's a loud creaking behind her, and Chloe spins, alarmed, turns away from the bins, away from the alleyway.
A woman- about her grandmother's age, maybe a little older- stands in the doorway of the back entrance into the Auldhouse Arms- kitchen door, perhaps, easy access to the bins.
She stares.
"Nastassya?" the woman calls in a strong Glaswegian accent, frowns at Chloe, visibly confused. "Nastassya, is that you?"
She's so taken by surprise, so exhausted so hopelessly defeated and lacking all desire to fight on, so absorbed in hysterically sobbing, trying desperately to avoid descending into a panic attack, that Chloe just can't quite force herself to formulate a response.
"Nastassya?" the woman repeats. She approaches Chloe slowly, concern in her eyes, sympathy. "Nastassya? It is you, isn't it? Are you alright? What are you doing back in Glasgow? Nastassya? Why don't you come in, sweetheart, I'm due a break, we can…"
"I'm not…" Chloe trembles, voice shaking, breath coming in gasps between her tears. "I'm not, my name isn't…"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" the woman exclaims. "I'm sorry, I thought… you look just like someone I used to know, that's all, I was so sure you were…" she shakes her head. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Chloe forces out adamantly. Suddenly, she's cold, panicky and she can't quite explain why, desperate to get away. "I'm fine, I was just…"
"Are you on your own?"
She forces herself to breathe, nods shakily. "I'm… I'm meeting someone… back in…"
Why does she feel so threatened all of a sudden?
"Why don't you come in for a drink?" the woman offers gently. "Yeah? On the house?"
"I couldn't…"
"Hey, I'm not going to leave you out here this upset on your own," the woman tells her gently. "Whether I know you or not. Okay? It's going to be getting dark out here soon… You're not from Glasgow, are you?" she realises. "North east, is it?"
"A-Aberdeen."
"I can hear it now. You won't know, then. It's… it's not a good idea to hang around out here by yourself, once it's dark," the woman explains. "There's… you know. Incidents, from time to time. It's not a good place to be on your own. Why don't you come in, calm down, I'll get you a drink and it might not seem so bad in half an hour. You'll see. Do you want to talk about it?" she ushers Chloe in through the back door, along the corridor away from the kitchens, nods silently as Chloe shakes her head. "Okay. Well, if you want a shoulder to cry on. Someone who doesn't know you, you know? I'm still due a break." Gently, she guides Chloe over to the bar, slips behind it, frowns. "You're not related to the Kovalenka family, are you? Only you look just like someone I used to know- Nastassya, Nastassya Kovalenka. Spitting image. You don't half look like her brother, either, come to that."
Chloe's blood runs cold.
"No," she whispers truthfully. "No, I… I've never heard of them. Sorry."
Her phone vibrates softly against the table, pulls her away from the destruction in her head, the urge to take herself off to the pub toilets and rummage around for the razor blade she's stored in a pill box in the bottom of her handbag, just when she needs it most.
Mum: Love you sweetheart xxx
Chloe's eyes fill with tears as she takes the message in.
It's as though her mum knows.
It's as though somehow, she knows, knows that her daughter needs her comfort and reassurance in this moment, knows she's struggling with the horrors of her conception all over again and she can't quite convince herself she's loved and wanted, knows she needs to reach out to her and remind her.
How does she know?
Love you too Mum. Why? Xxx Chloe taps out in response, takes another sip of her whisky.
Umm, because you're my wonderful daughter and I wouldn't be without you for anything. Do I need another reason? Love you more my baby Xxx
Suppose not. Why are you telling me this now, though? Love you more xxx
She knows, of course.
Chloe knows exactly why her mum has sent her that message, why now.
It's not completely out of character for her mum to send her a text like that unprompted, in all fairness.
But today… after the conversation they had this morning, after the awful revelation that it's today, her mum had arranged to go out with Fletch and Dom without hertonight because it's today and the explosion that followed, after the way her mum was on the phone back in the Glasgow City Archive Café, desperate for her to listen, to believe her…
That feels like a lifetime ago now.
She was… lighter, somehow, then, Chloe ponders sadly. Lighter, unburdened, hadn't seen all that she'll never be able to un-see, wasn't… damaged.
Evan was right, after all.
She's damaged goods.
She was damaged goods since the day she was conceived, thanks to the other half of her biology, and it runs in her so fundamentally, so deep, that it can't ever be fixed.
She's poison.
Tears form in her eyes again as her phone lights up with her mum's latest message.
Because I miss you! Wish you were here too sweetheart. I'm going to give you a huge hug when I'm finally off work again okay? We haven't had enough mother daughter time lately, have we? Did you know there's a Wagamama opening in Holby next weekend? Love YOU more xxxxxxxxxx
Maybe it isn't an act, Chloe allows herself to believe again; slowly hesitant, but just about there.
Maybe her mum really does mean it, after all.
Miss you too. Shouldn't you be enjoying yourself with Dom and Fletch? I didn't! You're my mum, I love you more xxx
I can do that and text you too, can't I? I'll take you to Wagamama next weekend, then? My treat? I gave birth to you, I win this one. You're always going to be the most important thing in my life, okay? Always xxxxxxxxxxx
Chloe hesitates.
Promise me you mean it? Xxx she texts back, heart pounding in her chest.
Promise you I mean what? Xxx
Promise you love me? Xxx
She feels sick, those next few moments, waiting for her mum's reply.
Even then, when her phone screen first lights up displaying the message, Chloe's a little scared to read it.
Just in case she's right, what if she's right…
Except she's not, Chloe realises, relief flooding through her as finally she allows herself to take in her mum's response.
Love you more than anything else in the world, sweetheart. Promise. Okay? You're EVERYTHING. You alright? Do you want me to call you? Or I can come over? Xxx
I'm fine Mum, don't be silly, she types back quickly- because her mum can't decide she's coming over, she panics, not when her mum doesn't have the faintest idea her daughter is in Glasgow digging up the past, not at home in Holby at all. I'm fine. Just everything today, you know? But everything's fine now. Enjoy your night with Fletch and Dom, you don't need to worry about me xxx
Okay sweetheart. Let me know if you change your mind through, yeah? I'm not getting plastered tonight, if you want me to come over then I will. Or you can come and stay at mine if you want. Spare room's all yours. Love you loads my lovely girl. Always xxx
Chloe's eyes fill with tears again.
She misses her.
It's only been a couple of days, but she misses her, unbearably.
Love you too, she texts back. See you soon xxx
There's a dull, throbbing pain around the cuts to her stomach that Chloe just can't quite shake.