This one skips back to the past a whole lot.
!ITALICS MEANS FLASHBACK!
Although that wasn't just a flashback, that was me telling ya…yeah you got it…ok
Well thanks to many who reviewed the last chapter:
Angel Dust, fiery red-haired girl, Dracula5555, britgirl2003, carby6, starbright, proffy and, all the way from Helsinki, alpinia
Thanks all!
Onto the tenth chapter now so, as ever:
Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
Beyond All Of Everything. Chapter Ten. Lullaby
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o SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 9: Carter believes Abby fell because she was drunk and that's what she tells him. But she actually wasn't. And he doesn't know
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Abby sits at the kitchen counter staring vacantly out of the window into the night. Ollie is asleep. Richard isn't home yet. The place is quiet.
She had come too close to saying something that she would've regretted. "Oh really, then would you like to tell me exactly what happened?" His bitter voice echoes in her head and she sinks her head into her folded arms. It was lucky she saw Ollie just then, she thinks. She was just about to tell him. It was lucky. Seeing Ollie forced her to recall haunting memories that still, after almost six years, have the power to terrify.
Abby stood by the cradle, a smile on her face. She could've stood there forever watching her baby son sleeping; tiny fingers curled around a blanket and delicate eyelashes stretched out from closed eyelids. Who would've thought something so beautiful could come from something that she'd always thought was impossibly bleak? The front door slammed and Abby was jolted out of her delirious trance. She slipped out of Oliver's nursery and closed the door.
"Don't wake him," she whispered across the living room to Richard. He turned around dazedly.
"Wake who?"
"Ollie." Abby reminded him, slightly confused. "What's going on?"
"You tell me," Richard replied and stumbled off to the kitchen.
Abby sits at the kitchen counter. Everything seems so real; she can practically see Richard stagger in, ignoring her sitting there, and peering inside the fridge.
"What are you talking about?" Abby eyed him suspiciously as he took a bottle of wine from the fridge and rattled through the drawers, looking for a corkscrew.
"Where the hell do you keep all of our crap?" he demanded. Abby approached him and grasped the neck of the bottle.
"Richard, I think you've had too much." She told him firmly. He refused to let it go.
"Get your hands off, Abby. Go do something useful – ironing or something, I don't know…" he laughed at himself.
"Shut up, you bastard," she looked at him with pure disgust. What an asshole. Richard's face changed and he tugged the bottle from her hands.
"You don't speak to me like that," he shouted, pointing the corkscrew at her. She looked at him and at his weapon of choice with cynically arched eyebrows.
"I'll speak to you how I like. What're you gonna do? Uncork me?" she answered.
Abby groans at her own stupidity. She should've known she was in dangerous territory – why did she have to go and say something like that?
"Fuck you, bitch," he roared and pushed her out of the kitchen. She fell to the floor in the living room and looked up at him in disbelief. He followed her out and she crawled away, across the floor but not taking her eyes off him.
Leaning around the kitchen door, she watches it all unfold again.
"You're my fucking wife," he yelled. "You'll do what I say. And when I tell you to shut up, you shut up." He landed a punch on her face but she made no sound – too shocked to speak.
"I'll do what I like," he continues, throwing punches with every fierce phrase. "And you'll go along with it. And right now, what I want to do is this." He threw the wine bottle to one side and ripped off her shirt, her jeans –
Abby looks away and stares down at the kitchen counter. She doesn't want to go through this part. She couldn't believe it then – she was married to the guy. That first time was the worst, only because she was so scared, so horrified.
She was curled up on the wood laminate floor again and she was sobbing. He threw her a towel or something.
"Clean yourself up," he told her. "You look a mess." She wiped the blood from her face and wrapped the towel around her. The cordless phone was on the sofa, she was so close she could've grabbed it if he hadn't been watching her.
"You'd never be so stupid as to tell anybody," he ordered. "You're smart enough to know that, aren't you Abby?" He leant his face close to hers and her empty eyes looked right back, unflinching despite herself.
"Because if you do, I'm going to have to take away what matters to you most," Richard snarled. She knew what he meant and it's a fear that lived on, laced with the stench of alcohol that clung to his breath. Baby Ollie woke up and began to wail. "It's your choice Abby; our little secret or our little boy."
Abby bit her split lip, forgetting how much it hurt. The wound re-opened and blood ran down her chin. Richard smiled nastily as he got up. How could this be? This was his own son. How could he talk like this? He found it funny – Abby cowering on the floor, clinging onto the towel around her.
"And for god sakes, shut him up," he warned her as the cries of the baby boy cut through the air. Then he went out again, as always, although she never knows where to. The sound of the door slamming shut on his way out was like the final blow she never got. She got up, found her clothes and went to quieten her baby.
Ollie was loud, despite being very small. Abby held the tiny baby who continued to shriek until he opened his eyes. Suddenly he stopped, leaving a ringing silence. The baby stared with wide wet eyes at his mother who was crying even more than he was.
Abby wipes her eyes with her sleeve. Carter will never understand – he truly knows nothing about her. And she'll keep it that way.