And so, seeing as you all asked so nicely….

I don't own Skins, but Effy Stonem owns my heart. Nor do I own the Cronenburg film that inspired the title, but it's a damn fine movie.

.

.

.

21. A History Of Violence

Effy

I can tell you to the precise minute exactly the moment when I fell in love. I know because I checked my phone right afterwards, wanting to record the moment for posterity in my head. Because in that moment my whole life had changed completely. I had just witnessed something unimaginable, something I had never witnessed before. Someone had stood up to my mother. The reason that I had never seen it before was that it was usually a life-threatening activity. Those who had dared it in the past had been so summarily dispatched, that others had learned to hold their tongue.

It would be fair to say that my family had a history of violence. My Dad had been an average criminal, certainly not a grunt but not so ambitious as to give his superiors cause for concern. He did his job, and controlled his little slice of their empire with the minimum of fuss. I'm not saying he was a saint. I know he had done questionable things. You wouldn't mess with Jim Stonem, and you wouldn't get in the way of his business, but he had the reputation of being fair rather than vindictive, and he certainly liked to keep the business out of the limelight. He was old school. He had rules.

But on the day of my ninth birthday party he was gunned down in the street in the crossfire of some new turf war, and I had the misfortune to watch it happen. I remember the delighted shouts of the other children at the party playing behind me as I stared eagerly out of the front window waiting for Daddy to come home with the extra special present he had promised me. He had pulled up in front of our house and got out of the car flanked by his two ever-present bodyguards. He looked up to see me waving frantically out of the window at him, and he raised his hand to wave back. Distracted, he didn't notice the other car hurtling down the street until it was too late.

It took only seconds from the moment I started screaming for my mother to be at my side, but as she realised what had happened I watched her concern for me morph into something else entirely. It was like watching a light go out in her eyes, to be replaced with something colder, harder and much, much darker.

I didn't just lose a father that day. I lost a mother too, or at least the one I used to have. Being only nine at the time, I had no idea how involved Mum had been in Dad's business up until then, but it had always seemed that she was there to be a proper mum to me and Tony. But that was the day she stopped being 'Mum' and became Anthea Stonem – a name that was soon to strike terror into the hearts of hardened criminals from here to the Mediterranean.

Anthea took over Jim's slice of the business and her first act in charge was to start a war. She waged a vicious campaign of revenge on the gang who had ordered the hit, soon controlling their stake in the capital as well as her own. The power behind Jim's modest throne had risen clothed in a black fury. She developed a talent for brutality unmatched by her closest competitors, and began making serious waves within the status quo. She used to tell us that she was doing it for the family, so that she could make us safe, and I'm sure that at the beginning her motives were simply to avenge the death of her husband, and destroy the people who had traumatised her little girl. But Anthea was a natural born killer, and she soon grew to love the power. Lesser criminals will always sense a shifting balance, and ally themselves with the strongest force, and soon Anthea's reputation began to hold considerable weight. With less ambition she could have satisfied herself with running the business like Dad did, leaving himself time to have a life outside of work, time to let her children have a stab at a normal life.

But Anthea knew she was better at this than Jim had ever been. In only a few short months she had massively increased her sphere of influence. The higher ups had recognised her talents, but they were concerned she was getting too big for her boots. They sent an influential envoy to reign in her enthusiasm and make sure she toed the line. He never left. Anthea saw this as another threat to her position and her family, so she started a revolution. And won. Anyone with any sense could see where the future lay, and soon she became more powerful still. It took another two bloody years for the dust to settle, but at the end of it, most of Anthea's rivals lay dead and her empire stretched across many international borders. I never did get that extra special birthday present my Dad had promised me, but for my tenth birthday Anthea gave me my first gun.

Anthea never tried to protect us from the harsh realities of our world, in fact she seemed to take it on herself to try to make us as hard as she was. Tony seemed to take to it instinctively, and as young as sixteen, he was already working for the family. It didn't sit so easily with me. It was all I had ever known, and I had watched us grow quite quickly from comfortably well off to super rich. I liked the feeling of money and glamour, and we swopped our London home for life on a luxury yacht. We mixed with pop stars and politicians. We were in Cannes for the film festival and Monaco for the grand prix. I wore fabulous dresses to casinos and fucked any man or woman I liked. Drugs and alcohol were readily available and I never had to worry about going to school. Anthea hired tutors for me, but I was under no obligation to attend their lessons. I was headed for a life of glamorous luxury paid for in other people's blood.

Except somewhere along the line I had somehow developed a conscience. I was surrounded by people who couldn't give a fuck, and I had no idea where this strange concept of morality came from. Maybe it was because I had seen the look of anguish in Dad's eyes as he fell, maybe it was because it was his death that had turned my mother into a monster, but I couldn't even contemplate inflicting that on someone else. But I was still only a teenager and in no way was I strong enough to stand up to the most powerful woman in the criminal underworld. I was even too confused and scared to voice my fears. So I ended up trying to discover what a normal life was like. I started hanging out with the crew of the boat, learning about the different aspects of their work and their lives. When we went ashore I would take the time to slip away from whatever glamorous event we were gracing with our presence, and walk over to the poorer side of town, to sit in local bars and watch the ordinary world go by. I became fascinated by the lives of the waiters and barmen who served us. When my mum first found me in a compromising position with one of the maids on our boat, it became a standing joke between her and Tony that 'Effy likes a bit of rough'. They looked on it as a bit of harmless fun that Effy liked to get jiggy with the help, but this increasing exposure to a normal world was fast leading me to the conclusion that I could never live like them. I didn't want to be responsible for other people's pain.

The problem with all my encounters though, was that my lovers always knew their place. They were always older than me and had a job they wanted to keep or a place they wanted to be. I hadn't spent much time around people my own age. I hadn't been to school since I was nine, so I never encountered regular rebellious teenagers who were still working out who they wanted to be. Rebellion was not a common occurrence around the Stonem family. It was always assumed I would somehow find my place within the family business, or at least under the umbrella of its protection. So whilst my lovers offered me a temporary solace and a way of forgetting for a while, they could never offer me what I really wanted. A way out.

By this time Anthea ran her empire primarily on fear. Her reputation alone would ensure compliance from both her employees and her clients. But every now and again there would be some troublesome new young blood who thought he had the balls to take her on, and occasionally Anthea would even venture back into the field herself to pay the matter her personal attention, just to prove to anyone who might be getting ideas that she was still as dangerous as she had ever been. Which was how we had found ourselves moored up outside a tiny little harbour in some arse end of nowhere village in rural Wales. I declined Anthea's offer of driving up to Cardiff with her and Tony whilst they took care of business and instead decided to explore. I went into a little café on the edge of the harbour and spent the morning chatting with a lovely woman called Rita who ran the place. I could have listened all day to her beautiful sing song accent and her tales of the fishermen and the village, but she persuaded me I had to go and see the beach. She even lent me a bicycle so I could ride over there.

It was a stunningly beautiful place, a long wide sandy bay sparsely populated by dog walkers and surfers. As I walked along the empty sands, I felt a strange sensation of peace, probably for the first time since that fateful birthday party. The people I encountered bid me friendly hellos and I realised that they didn't know or care that I was connected to the infamous Stonem family. I could just be a girl on a beach taking a walk on a breezy spring day. I walked all the way to the other end of the bay and back, unwilling for the simple happiness of that day ever to end. That's why I accepted the offer of a drink from the cheeky boy in the car park where I'd left the bike. With his raggedy edged good looks and his ridiculously forthright chat up lines, he would certainly do as my bit of rough for the night.

Anthea and Tony and their goons reappeared the next day clearly satisfied with whatever it was they had done, and Anthea declared that instead of pissing off in the boat again as I'd expected, we were actually going to hang around for a few days. It amused her no end to playact a normal family seaside holiday, even though we were followed everywhere by the usual bunch of unpleasant looking minders. Though the place itself was still as beautiful as ever, the experience was totally different as we steamrollered our way about with the usual arrogance of the rich. I affected my trademark 'bored with everything' persona to distance myself from Anthea and Tony, and I longed for the gentle calm of that first day and the easy company of people like Rita and Cook. At night we'd go back to the yacht, and I would find myself leaning on the rail of the deck looking back over the harbour, having fantasies about being moored here permanently living a simple life amongst people who weren't afraid of me.

It didn't take long for the novelty to wear off and for Anthea to declare that she was bored. She decided she would take us to dinner at the local pub, and that we would set sail for more interesting waters in the morning. I had to admit that the thought of yet another evening listening to Anthea and Tony banging on about stuff didn't exactly fill me with excitement, so the first thing I did when we got there was head off to the toilets for a monster line of coke. Of course that meant I was hardly in the mood for a big meal, so I picked disinterestedly at a salad, whilst I searched for something else to entertain me.

In typical fashion I started to fixate on the waitress. Even overworked and sweating and slightly grumpy she was stunningly beautiful. She was roughly the same age as me, which was a new and interesting bonus. Her brunette hair was starting to come adrift from where she'd pinned it up for work, and her tight little uniform accentuated a delicious selection of real woman's curves. She had fierce and lively brown eyes, and a magnificent pair of tits a girl could lose herself for days in. Even more impressive was the fact that she seemed totally disinterested in my mother's bullying antics, and my brother's crude attempts to grab her arse every time she came to the table. It looked like she was the only girl on duty that night, and only seemed to want to do her job, and get through her excessive workload as quickly and as fairly as possible, despite how difficult the rest of my family seemed intent on making that for her.

"Back off Tony," I hissed as she deftly manoeuvred herself away from his grasp once more.

"What's up Effykins?" he smirked. "Fancy a piece for yourself do ya? I know you have a thing for the service professions."

I merely glared at him.

"Whatever," he shrugged. "Bitch is all yours. Plenty more Welsh slags where she came from."

I didn't show it, but I was absolutely furious with him. I was used to him talking like that, but for some reason I couldn't stand him bad-mouthing this beautiful, fair, hard-working woman. He was right though. I did want her. Not just because she was gorgeous, but because she offered the chance of one last night with someone honest before I re-entered the sleazy world I reluctantly spent my days in.

We had reached the dessert by the time Anthea finally pushed her too far, loudly demanding that she brought us more wine whilst she was in the middle of serving someone else. She slammed her notebook down and marched over to our table fronting up to my mother like a tiny ball of pure fury. I was stunned. Never in my whole life had I seen anyone give Anthea attitude. She seemed oblivious both to my mother's intimidation tactics, and to the increasingly edgy goons on the tables around her. She knew she was in the right and she was determined to stand her ground. Anthea decided to goad the young woman, deliberately lighting up a fag in defiance of the smoking ban.

"I think you'll find that I can do what the fuck I like," she sneered.

"Not in my fucking pub you can't," retorted the girl. "Now put that fucking fag out or get the fuck out."

I was mesmerised. The fiery-tempered beauty was not going to back down. I felt my adrenalin start to rise. I didn't know what the fuck was going to happen, but I knew I couldn't let any harm come to her.

"Who do you think you are, little girl?" threatened Anthea.

Her tone in itself would have had most people grovelling and begging for forgiveness, but not this magnificent everyday warrior princess. She grabbed the fag from my mother's mouth and stubbed it out in her sticky toffee pudding.

"I'm Katie Fucking Fitch," she said defiantly. "Who the fuck are you?"

And that was the moment that I fell in love. Nine thirteen pm. Three years, two months and eleven days ago. I knew in that moment and in the few seconds standoff that followed it, that I would take a fucking bullet for that girl. Luckily I didn't have to. Somehow my mother managed to see the funny side, and actually admired Katie for her ballsiness. She bought drinks for everybody in the pub, and made sure she left Katie a massive tip. For Anthea it would become an amusing anecdote. Something for her to entertain her cronies with. The story of the little Welsh waitress with the stones to stand up to Anthea Stonem. But for me it was a life-changing epiphany.

I immediately abandoned my plans to get into her pants. Katie Fucking Fitch was far too important to waste on a one night stand. I wanted to woo her. I wanted to love her, and I wanted her to love me back. Her unflinching courage had shown me the way to mine. She had given me a reason to take a stand. She had given me a reason to live.

I went back to the yacht that night, but instead of leaning on the railings wistfully dreaming about the life I could have had, I started packing so I could actually go and live it. I didn't take too much, just a few clothes, a laptop and an iPod. I got one of the boat crew to take me ashore, telling him I was going to see a girl and that I'd be back in the morning. They were so used to me keeping myself to myself, it took them a day and a half to realise I was gone. When Anthea rang me, much to my surprise she didn't lose her rag at me, or immediately dispatch a bunch of goons to fetch me back. She merely laughed, and told me to let her know when I was done shagging the waitress and was ready to come home.

Sadly, my attempts to woo Katie hadn't exactly gone to plan, but I never went back. Home became a small boat in the harbour. I met Emily and the others, and found myself a reasonably happy life. And even though I wasn't with the love of my life, I was near her. Even though Katie hadn't turned out to be the faultless angel I'd imagined her to be, I still loved her, and there was no one who came close to her. For the first year and a half since I revealed my feelings, we had sparred angrily with one another, and I distracted myself with random shags and an extended on/off dalliance with Cook.

But then came that fateful New Year's Eve. The night she kissed me. The night I knew that she felt something too, however deeply it was buried. But she was terrified of it. It was just after that, that she decided to develop her obsession with that wanker Freddie. He had just formed his retarded little band, and in her eyes it seemed to make him suddenly cool. But he wasn't cool. He was a twat. The stupid little fucker had been following me round trying to get into my pants ever since I'd landed, even when I told him I was in love with someone else. In former times I would have retaliated. Gone out and fucked some random right up in her face, but ever since that kiss I knew that no one else could ever satisfy me. Even the thought of someone else touching me became repulsive to me. I promised her I'd wait for her because really, what other choice did I have? Everything I'd ever dreamed of was Katie Fucking Fitch.

Inevitably there were times when I got angry and frustrated. There were days when I cursed myself that I hadn't managed to fall in love with the kind, intelligent, daring, available and beautifully gay Emily instead. There were all those nights when I had to watch Katie throwing herself at yet another useless prick of a man, and all I could do was obliterate my brain with powerful cocktails of drink and drugs. But through all of that I could sense us slowly getting closer until there came a point where we could actually start to consider ourselves friends. Katie started to realise that she could trust me, and sometimes we could even joke about our situation. Unlike the rest of the world who were constantly trying to set me up with Emily, I began to think Katie was secretly flattered that I was sticking to my promise. There were points when I think she actively enjoyed her part in the platonic romantic friendship we had developed.

Bu though I mostly kept it from her for the sake of having her near, there was nothing remotely platonic about most of the Katie inspired thoughts that plummeted around my brain. I thought about her all the time, even dreamed of her at night. I thought about the taste of her lips, and how it felt to have my tongue reaching into her mouth. I thought about the delicious curve of her arse and the way her legs looked so fantastic in her heels. I thought about her open and panting beneath me. I thought about her dominating me, pinning me down and fucking me hard. And of course I would waste away entire days thinking about my face implanted between those beautiful tits.

I knew I drove Emily to distraction. She was convinced that Katie would never fall for my charms, and although she loyally sang my praises to her sister, she was desperate for me to find someone else and move on. I know she did it out of love. She wanted me to be happy, and hated it when I fucked myself up over Katie. But there was nothing I could do. All it took was one flashback to the way she had kissed me in Cardiff, and I knew I was a fucking lost cause.

We had been coasting along in comfortable stalemate for a while until the convenient cat amongst the pigeons that was Cat. I knew who she was even as she was playing her little game in the pub. I knew the Ninjas were sending someone to see me, and I thought it was fucking hilarious the way she chose to find me. Of course I had to fess up to Emily, but I did nothing to dispel the rumours to anyone else. I was interested to see how Katie would react to the possibility of me being with someone else after all this time. And even though I knew there was no chance of anything going on between me and Cat, she was a beautiful and exotic stranger. And I was not above pushing Katie's buttons to see if she took the bait.

I got my answer yesterday morning when she cornered me outside Rita's café. I could see the anger in her eyes as she approached, and she didn't stop until she had slammed me against the wall, her hands almost around my throat. I tried to ignore the rush of desire I felt at her aggression, and waited for her to say her piece.

"So?" she demanded.

"So what, darling?" I said coolly.

"Don't 'darling' me, Effy Stonem," she said angrily. "What the fucking fuck is going on with the fucking blonde?"

I decided not to give in to her too easily.

"Tall, gorgeous, little bit geeky but massively intelligent?" I suggested. "Totally in love with your sister."

"Don't," warned Katie ominously. "A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that I'm stupid. I never thought you'd be one of them."

"Oh, the other one," I conceded. "Shorter, but equally gorgeous. American. Hiring the boat to do some diving…"

"Enough," said Katie, her body still pressed closely against mine. "Is it true what they're saying? Are you fucking her?"

"Would it matter to you if I was?" I asked her.

"Of course it would," snapped Katie. "You're supposed to be in love with me."

"I am in love with you," I admitted. "I've been in love with you since the day I met you. That's not even a question. The question is, are you ready to do something about it?"

Katie stared at me defiantly for a few seconds before lowering her eyes. And then, as if only now realising how closely our bodies were pressed together, she pulled away.

"I don't know," she said glumly.

I let out a sigh of frustration.

"I'm trying ok," she said insistently. "I like you, Effy, but I don't want to fuck up our friendship. I'm not gay."

"Yeah, I think we worked that one out a few years ago," I scoffed.

"I can't pretend to be someone I'm not, Eff," she said. "I can't fucking lie to you."

"And yet the thought of me being with Cat makes you violently jealous?"

"It's fucked up. I know that," she said, shuffling further away from me.

Suddenly the pent up emotion got too much for me and I started smacking my head back into the wall, enjoying the distracting rush I was getting from the pain.

"Stop!" yelled Katie, her eyes wide in alarm. "When are you going to stop doing this to yourself?"

"When are you going to stop throwing yourself at unsuitable men?" I retorted.

"They're not unsuitable," she pouted.

"Oh really?" I questioned her, raising my eyebrows. "Let's see. Freddie – in love with someone else. Thomas – in love with someone else. That hideous bloke from Quicksilver – just plain slimy. Dave Blake – turns out to be married. Carl Evans – only after one thing. Tall Adrian – only after two things."

I stared pointedly at her tits.

"It's almost like you want them to fail," I said aggressively. "Why do you think that is, Katie?"

"Stop it, just stop it," she said, her eyes starting to fill with tears. "I don't fucking know, ok? I don't fucking know. Just leave me alone, Effy. Fuck's sake."

"Your wish is my command," I said bitterly, and stormed off to get wankered.

I spent the day at sea with Naomi, getting pleasantly stoned in front of her fish TV. It was relaxing, and her company was easy. She wasn't one to hassle a girl who clearly wasn't up for hassling, and she was content to drift off into her doubtless Emily filled daydreams. If I'm honest, it was watching their relationship flourishing that was making me feel restless. I couldn't begrudge my best friend her happiness with the beautiful blonde, but I couldn't help but be jealous of it. I was relieved when Emily relinquished her lover for the day to be with me on my birthday. I'd never told her why I hated it so much, but she always did her best to help me through it with the minimum of trauma. I was actually looking forward to spending the night with her at the pub, until that tosspot Freddie showed up with his ridiculous bunch of flowers.

I didn't want to make things any worse, so I just took myself off for a fag, hoping he would get the message and just fuck off and leave me alone. But any hopes of a quiet night had exploded when I'd come back in and seen him all over my Katie. I'd had to run. I'd had to get out of there. Not because of the way Katie was simpering back at him, but because in those few moments I had stared at them, I had actually scared myself. I had been angry before, but what I'd experienced then had been a furiously violent hate. I hadn't been able to control myself. I found myself actually thinking about ordering a hit on him, or even getting my fucking gun and doing it myself. In those few moments it was like I hadn't escaped my history at all. I wasn't the good person I had tried to make myself. Even after all my efforts, I was still Anthea Stonem's daughter and that's all I would ever be. If loving Katie could bring me to this, maybe it was better that I didn't love her at all. I turned on my heels and fled the pub, already half blinded by my tears.

Sorry Cat, had to sneak a dash of angst in here, but don't worry. It's not going to last.