Читать книгу Home Truths - Susan Lewis - Страница 10

It was early on Sunday morning. Angie was in the bathroom staring through specks of water on the mirror’s surface at her tired blue eyes as they assessed her reflection. It was as though it belonged to someone else, someone who looked vaguely like her; a kind of clone living another life over there in an alternative world.

Angie through the looking glass.

Maybe, in that elusive back-to-front place, things were actually as they should be, continuing unassumingly, happily, along the path she’d been on since she and Steve had moved to Kesterly fourteen years ago. OK, she’d understood that the odd curve ball could be lobbed in from out of the blue now and again, meaning tears had to be dried and hurdles overcome. Sometimes, Liam was picked on at school, and three miscarriages had followed Grace’s birth, making a total of seven altogether. In spite of the challenges they’d loved being parents right from the start; holding Liam in their arms knowing he belonged to them, that he was them, had made them feel as though they’d found the right way in the world. They were meant to create a family full of love and laughter, understanding and adventure, and for the most part that was how it had been. Now their youngest, Zac, was soon to be seven, making six years between each of the children, though somehow it had never seemed to matter – until one day they’d realized that it did.

The first time Liam had been brought home by the police he was only eleven – eleven. His PE teacher had found a stash of drugs in his school bag and instead of contacting them he’d reported it. It was all a big mistake, of course, Liam didn’t even know what drugs were, much less how to get hold of them – or so they’d believed at the time. It was only later that they’d discovered how wrong they were, how life had already started slow-rolling the worst curve ball of all.

In the weeks and months that followed, the problems increased in ways they’d never have imagined possible for their sweet-natured little boy who’d always been desperate to be noticed, to feel he belonged, to impress those he considered friends. They seemed to lose all connection with him as he was sucked deeper and deeper into the worst kind of crowd. He all but stopped going to school, and began spending his days hanging around street corners and municipal parks with kids from the notorious Temple Fields estate, thinking he was as cool and smart as them when he was anything but. They used him, abused him, had fun at his expense and he never saw them as anything but heroes. When he was expelled from school he wore his disgrace like a badge of honour and reviled his parents for trying to punish him. He began disappearing for days on end, and after the first few occasions the police simply told them that he’d come back when he was ready. His known involvement with the Satan Squad, as the biggest gang on the estate had ingloriously named itself, made him of far less interest to the overstretched authorities than any normal child of his age would be.

No one had ever told his parents about the county line gangs that infiltrated small communities, priming local gangs to prey on vulnerable children and turning them into couriers or addicts, or both. They’d had no idea until it was already too late just how cruelly Liam was being exploited, manipulated and brainwashed by forces so evil that neither Angie nor Steve knew how to combat them. Even the police seemed to struggle. By the time he was fourteen they’d lost all contact with the sweet, innocent boy he’d been. He behaved as though he despised them.

Steve became gaunt with worry, so stressed and fearful that it began affecting his health. Each time the police knocked at the door they expected the worst, that Liam had been stabbed, or he’d overdosed, he was in prison or he’d killed someone. Usually the police came because he was thought to be a witness to a crime, but they never found him at home.

It was the day Steve spotted five-year-old Zac with an old syringe, making to jab it into his arm, that he’d finally lost it.

Angie hadn’t been at home; if she had maybe she could have stopped him. As it was she’d been at the end of the phone when he’d said, ‘I’ve had enough, Ange. He’s no longer a son of mine.’

‘Don’t say that, Steve. Just tell me what’s happened. Where is he?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find him and when I do …’

‘Steve,’ she cried in a panic. ‘‘Don’t go! Please … Oh God, no, please don’t …’

‘I can’t take any more, Angie. I swear … If you’d seen what I just have …’

‘Whatever it is …’

‘Our five-year-old son had a syringe in his hand.’

She’d all but choked on the horror. ‘Oh my God. Oh Steve …’

‘I’ve got to go,’ he told her. ‘I need to find Liam, and when I do I’m turning him in to the police along with every other one of those lowlife bastards …’

‘No! No!’ but the line had already gone dead.

She’d arrived home fifteen minutes later to find the house with its front door wide open, and no sign of Steve or his van. She tried telling herself that he wouldn’t actually go to that terrible estate, that he’d turn off and stop somewhere to calm down. But he wasn’t answering his phone and a sickening, terrifying intuition was taking hold of her.

It was around five in the evening when a female detective came to tell her what had happened on the estate. Angie would never forget the earth-shattering moment when her world had spun out of control. They’d beaten Steve to death. With iron bars, clubs, chains and heavy boots they’d laid into him with so much savagery that they hadn’t been able to stop, this was how a lawyer later described it in court.

Five of the attackers were arrested and charged the same day; Liam had also been taken in, but Angie received a call twenty-four hours later to tell her he’d been released on police bail.

‘Where is he now?’ she asked the officer who’d rung to let her know, her throat raw and tight with grief, her head gripped in a throbbing vice. Grace sat with her, holding her hand, dabbing away their tears, while Emma took charge of Zac and her own two boys. Angie felt almost as horrified by the thought of Liam coming home as she did by the fact that Steve never would.

It turned out no one knew where Liam had gone. He didn’t show up that day, or the next. Apparently he’d been present during the attack on his father. He’d told the police that he’d tried to stop it, and realizing he wasn’t the entire full shilling, as one insensitive officer had described him, they’d held back on charges for the time being.

He came home eventually, three days after his release, so foul-smelling and spaced out that he could barely speak. Angie didn’t even let him in the door.

‘Get out!’ she’d yelled into his stupefied face. ‘Get out of this house and don’t ever come back. You’re dead to me, do you hear that? Dead, dead, dead.’

What she hadn’t spared a thought for that day, or many days after, was what it must have been like for Liam to watch his father die in such a horrific attack. How had he felt when he’d realized he had no power to stop it, for she didn’t want to believe he’d been a part of it. No! No matter what else he was capable of, he surely to God didn’t have it in him to murder the father he’d once loved so much. Afterwards, he just hadn’t been able to cope with what had happened, and then his mother had lost her mind and told him he was dead to her.

During the months following Steve’s funeral, Angie had thought so much about Hari, their dear friend and landlord who she knew would have done anything to help her had he not lost his battle with leukaemia the year before. Having no other stabilizing or fatherly influence to guide her she’d acted alone, doing everything she could to find Liam, even venturing into the dreaded zone of Temple Fields when everyone had warned her to stay away. The streets, tower blocks, shops, pubs, were not so very different to any other housing estate on that side of town, at least on the outside. On the inside … things were different. Every other window was boarded up, burned-out cars lurked like decaying teeth between shinier new ones, the stench of urine, cooking and vomit soured stairwells, and a chilling sense of menace filled the air. The families and fellow gang members of those in custody for Steve’s murder were all in this area, and she was sure she could feel them watching her. No one wanted to talk to her; a pub landlord told her to go home if she knew what was good for her, and aware of the hostility and resentment her intrusion had triggered, she remembered her other children and took his advice.

The police hadn’t been interested when she’d tried to report Liam missing. Given his age and who he’d hung out with they didn’t even bother filing a report. As far as they were concerned the London gang that controlled him had reeled him in and no doubt set him loose on some other undeserving community a long way from here. Though Angie knew how likely that was, she’d still tried the homeless shelters, rehab centres, helplines, missing person charities, Salvation Army and even the government’s prisoners location services in her efforts to find him. If she’d had the money she’d have hired a private detective, but with Steve’s income gone and her own barely covering the rent that she now paid to Roland Shalik, Hari’s son, she’d already had to apply for benefits to help keep her reduced family going. Then, due to cutbacks in the local education budget, she’d lost her job as a teaching assistant. It had been the last straw. Grace had come home that day to find her mother scratching herself frenziedly, tearing her clothes, sobbing and begging God to tell her what to do.

Summoned by Grace, Emma had rushed straight over, rung the doctor, and eventually, between them they’d managed to calm Angie down. The sedative knocked her out until the following morning, and when she’d woken she’d been too groggy to remember much of what had happened. It had come back to her during the day and realizing how much she’d frightened her daughter, and her sister, she’d vowed to herself and to them that it would never happen again. She needed to get herself back in control, and to find another job before someone turned up from social services to take her children into care.

Two weeks later, after a soul-crushing interview at the jobcentre, Emma had called, all excitement, to tell her about the opening at Bridging the Gap.

Exactly why their predecessors had decided to recommend her and Emma as their replacements to run the organization’s two transition houses, Angie had no idea. What she did know was that it had been a lifesaver for her in so many ways, not least of all because it allowed her to focus on those in a far more vulnerable state than she was, and to take heart from their courage. It was as though helping them back to a better world was helping her too, and though she’d never admitted this to anyone, Craig at Hill Lodge had soon come to represent Liam. They even looked vaguely alike for her, with the same ragged mop of curly hair and lazy gait. Craig was older, but his learning difficulties made him seem younger, and Angie had it fixed in her head that as long as she took care of this boy, someone else somewhere would take care of Liam.

Liam was turning nineteen today and she still had no idea where he was.

He could be dead.

This was her biggest fear, the one that kept her awake at nights, that tore at her conscience so savagely that she wanted to scream as though noise could somehow drown the pain and madness of it all. Even after everything that had happened, the mother in her continued to see past all the horror and heartache to the small boy who’d never even thought about harming anyone. He hadn’t had it in him before the gangs had got hold of him, and she’d asked herself many times why they’d picked on him, what – or who – had really been behind the grooming and corruption of her and Steve’s innocent boy.

Steve. Oh God, Steve.

She missed him more than she could ever have imagined possible, and it wasn’t getting any easier. If anything it was becoming worse.

‘Mum?’

Angie was still at the bathroom mirror rigidly trapped in the worst time of her life, but as her eyes moved to the other face reflected behind hers, a smaller, younger image of her own, and yet like her father too, she felt her limbs start to relax.

‘Grace,’ she said, and bringing up a smile she was aware of her anxiety retreating into a small, contained ball, as love for her thirteen-year-old daughter eclipsed it. ‘What are you doing up so early?’

Grace’s normally bright eyes were circled with shadows of worry, and grief – Angie must never forget that the children were suffering too. Two years had passed, and she wasn’t sure any of them were close to getting over what had happened to Steve. Grace and Zac had loved their father every bit as much as she had, and the last thing they needed was to feel afraid that she couldn’t cope. It was how she often felt, but she must never let it be true.

Except it was already true.

‘I could ask you the same question,’ Grace responded. ‘It’s Sunday. I thought we were having a lie-in.’

Relieved that Grace hadn’t come into the bathroom to find her mother filling the luxury shampoo bottle with the same colour washing-up liquid, a regular occurrence, Angie said, ‘And so we are. Come on, let’s go and snuggle up under the blankets.’

It was still only seven o’clock; the heating was due to kick in at eight – always later at weekends, even if they had to get up early for one reason or another. Every little saving helped, or it was supposed to anyway. She wasn’t sure that the smart meter she’d had installed was really onside, for it wasn’t making anything less expensive, it just kept going round and round like a horror ride at the fairground, showing her how much it was all costing.

She wouldn’t have minded a cup of tea, something warm to help soothe her gently into the day, but it took electricity to heat the kettle and they were going to need what was left on her key card for showers in a while. She just hoped the remaining credit would be enough to cover all bases, since the post office was closed on Sundays and so were the nearest PayPoints.

She should have sorted it out yesterday while everything was open, and she would have had she not needed to put petrol in Steve’s van, now hers – five pounds’ worth instead of ten, so there was enough left over to give Grace some spending money for bus fare and a coffee in town with her friends. The other twenty in her purse had gone to Lidl, so at least there was food in the cupboard – for now.

It was the roll-out of universal credit fourteen months ago that had tipped her from the precarious edge of just about managing into the terrifying downward spiral she was now caught in. Nine entire weeks had passed without any benefits at all, so she’d simply been unable to pay her bills. True, she’d still had her widow’s pension – something they hadn’t taken into the universal system for some reason – but thirty-four pounds a week was an impossible sum for a single person to live on, never mind a family. The only way she’d managed to survive was by running up her credit cards, going overdrawn at the bank and selling her car. Her rent, council tax and utility bills had gone into arrears and that was how they remained, with the outstanding amounts getting bigger all the time. She could no longer bear to open the envelopes when they dropped ominously through the letterbox like voices with only doom to deliver.

She was receiving her benefits again now, but she was two hundred crucial pounds a month worse off than before, over three hundred if she counted the loss of her widow’s pension. That was only paid for the first year following a death so it had run out eleven months ago, and she supposed she had to feel thankful that Steve had been forty-five by the time he died, any younger and she’d have got nothing.

Her head began hurting as she ran through everything she had to pay out this coming week. By the time she’d topped up her electricity key, retrieved Grace’s boots from the repairer’s, put a fiver aside for Zac’s upcoming birthday party, paid a token amount towards the water bill and covered their school lunches, there might be enough left over to pay a little bit more than the interest on her credit card.

There would be nothing at all for the rent, or the council tax.

The breath was so tight in her chest that it felt like a solid mass of fear. She didn’t want to admit it, even to herself, but things were moving out of her reach so fast that she was terrified of where they were heading.

A cuddle with Grace might help to relieve some tension and even somehow set her up for the day.

Feeling her teenager’s slender body folding into hers, those smooth, gangly limbs and the sleepy morning smell of her opened Angie’s heart to how blessed she was to have her. She was a beautiful girl, full of life and fun, but thoughtful and patient with an understanding of situations and people that sometimes made her seem twice her age. She worked hard at school, was a favourite amongst the teachers and other students, and possessed not a mean bone in her body. She was, in fact, just like her father, always seeing the positive side of a situation; the first to help in a time of need, and able to summon a sense of humour when the rest of the world was losing theirs.

Angie guessed Grace didn’t find it so funny losing her beloved Lush cruelty-free cosmetics, Boux Avenue undies and weekly pop magazines – or the subs she had to pay to belong to the Fairweather Players. Her great passion was acting, and she was good at it. She’d been cast in many parts for the local am dram society since the age of eight and always received great reviews. She sang too, and danced, but for the time being she’d had to give up those lessons along with her Players membership – although her best friend Lois had bought her three months’ worth of dance classes for Christmas. What a blessing that had been, and how guilty it had made Angie feel knowing she was unable to do it herself.

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Grace had whispered when she’d realized this. ‘I know things are difficult now, but it’ll all come good in the end. Promise.’

How like her father she’d sounded, and for one heady moment Angie had felt as though Steve was trying to communicate through their daughter. Whether he was or wasn’t hardly mattered now, for the debts were still piling up and only two weeks after Christmas she’d been forced to sell Steve’s beloved piano. She’d cried as hard that day as she had on the day they’d cremated him, for it had felt as though a special and intrinsic part of their marriage had been carried out of the door by strangers, who’d given her fifty quid less than she’d asked for it.

‘You and the children matter way more than a dumb old piano,’ she’d heard Steve telling her, and of course he was right, but it hadn’t made her feel any better. If only he were here now to tell her how to handle Roland Shalik, who’d taken over his father’s businesses when Hari died, and had, if the rumours were true, incorporated them into various far shadier dealings of his own. He liked to portray himself as a tough guy, someone of influence, not to be messed with, and on the whole he succeeded, though Steve had never really been taken in by his bluster. In fact Steve had mostly kept out of his way and for the most part they’d seen or heard little of him, probably because they’d never been short of money to pay the rent then, nor had they complained when Roland had increased it. He’d only done it once, and not by a huge amount, but since Steve had gone and Angie had fallen into arrears things had changed. Roland had none of his father’s softly spoken, courteous manner, nor, it turned out, did he feel any sense of loyalty or duty of care to the many tenants around Kesterly who’d been fortunate enough to have Hari for a landlord.

‘Mum, you’re squeezing too tight,’ Grace murmured in protest.

Realizing she was, Angie slackened her hold and stroked her daughter’s tangled red hair, careful not to catch any knots. She felt a glow of love, remembering how proud Steve had been of his precious girl.

Hearing a thud in the next room, followed by the hurried patter of feet and needless cry of ‘I’m awake,’ she felt rather than heard Grace laugh, and broke into a smile of her own. She wasn’t going to think any more this morning about what had gone before, or how desperately she still missed Steve, or how much she hated herself for throwing Liam out. She was going to give all her time and attention to the two children who’d never caused her a moment’s concern, apart from how to keep a roof over their heads, food in their mouths, clothes on their backs, vital gadgets in their pockets and ears … She could go on, and on, but her boisterous, fearless, head-first-into-the-bed six-year-old had just landed, and simply had to be tucked in tightly with them, or tickled.

It turned into a tickle, which she ran away from when they decided she was next. She loved them so much she could eat them, but they always won at tickling so she needed a refuge. Too bad the bolt inside the bathroom door was hanging off, she’d have got away if she’d remembered to fix it, but she wasn’t sure how to – and no sooner had she shut herself in than they were there with her, putting their arms around her, telling her not to be scared.

‘Scared!’ she cried. ‘Who’s scared?’ and putting on her most ferocious monster growl she ran after them.

Who needed heating when there were two children to play with?

OK, they did when the excitement was over and they finally settled down to breakfast, but a few minutes later the radiators clicked and rumbled into action and by the time the Lidl cornflakes had been devoured and Grace had finished her porridge the water was hot enough for showers. It might be Sunday, but they had a busy day ahead, and any minute now Angie would remember what they were supposed to be doing. For the moment her mind was filling up with figures that she couldn’t make add up anywhere close to where they needed to be.

Don’t stress. Just don’t. It’ll be all right. You’ll find a way out of this.

Her own breakfast was the mouthful of porridge Grace left. Never mind that she was hungry enough to down half an elephant, a cup of instant coffee should deal with the pangs, and to save on hot water she’d treat herself to a damned good wash instead of a shower. They’d be OK at the end of the month when her salary was due to be paid into the one bank account she had that wasn’t overdrawn. Well, not OK, exactly, but better than today, for her quick calculations were already warning her that by the end of tomorrow she’d have no more than sixteen pounds fifty in her account at Santander. The account at HSBC was already overdrawn by six hundred pounds with monstrous interest accruing by the day, so she couldn’t go there for anything at all.

What utter fools she and Steve had been not to take out life insurance. They’d meant to, had even sent for some forms, but they’d never quite got round to filling them in. Angie had found them days after the funeral, exactly where she’d put them when they’d arrived, in a tray on Steve’s desk with a prepaid and ready-addressed envelope attached. She’d stared at them, dumb with misery, rigid with the worst kind of understanding. She was holding a lifeline with nothing and no one attached to the other end, a limp rope in the water, an illusion of safety that would disappear in the cold light of day. She could do nothing to save herself or her family; these papers meant they were going to drown.

She’d told herself right away that she wouldn’t let it happen. As though using up fierce and determined last gasps of air, she’d silently promised herself that Grace and Zac would never, for a single moment, feel any less special than they had while their father was alive. She’d quickly let it be known amongst her friends and neighbours that she could fill in people’s shifts if they needed cover, whether cleaning, waitressing, delivering, babysitting: whatever was in her gift she would give it to make sure her children didn’t go without.

She’d been in no doubt then that she could make everything work, and right up until she’d been made to wait for universal credit, she’d somehow managed to keep their heads above water. Now, in spite of still taking on all the extra jobs she could, it was impossible to make ends meet.

Grace, because she was Grace, had lately begun challenging her mother and brother to find the best bargains online or in charity shops, and they’d had some stunning successes: a pair of brand-new Nikes at Oxfam for Zac, price tag still taped to the bottom and half a size too big so he could grow into them, how perfect was that? A last-season white Zara blazer for Grace that would have cost fifty quid in the shop, and was just two pounds at Blue Cross (only a button missing, which was easily fixed). They’d even found a padded winter coat for Angie and wrapped it up for her birthday – what a memorable moment it had been when she’d opened it – it fitted, and they’d told her it had only cost a tenner (five quid contributed by Auntie Em). They’d jumped up and down with triumph, thinking themselves the smartest (in every sense) people alive, and how stupid was everyone else to pay full price?

It had also been Grace’s idea to try and sell their old toys and clothes on eBay or Depop, while Angie began visiting a pawnshop in the old town, a place she hadn’t even known existed while Steve was alive. By now she’d forfeited the white-gold watch he’d given her for her thirtieth; an emerald-studded bracelet he’d once accepted from an old lady in lieu of payment for decorating her kitchen; a pair of binoculars that had belonged to his father; his paintbrushes, best toolkit and protective gear; the rocking horse he’d carved for Liam; his surfboards; just about everything she could raise a few pounds for, right down to the electric heaters for when it was especially cold. Each time she went she felt as though she was giving away more pieces of her heart. All she had left to pawn now was her wedding ring, and the nine-carat gold locket Steve’s mother had worn on her wedding day, and Angie had so proudly worn on hers.

She wasn’t going to think any more about all that now, though. Instead, she was going to try to make herself believe that all would come good, maybe even by this time tomorrow. God only knew how, unless she caved in and took out one of those lethal payday loans … The fact that she was actually considering it made her feel sick inside, but what choice did she have when Roland Shalik had already begun the eviction process?