Fighting to be Free by Kirsty Moseley (44 page)

“You let it happen so that your sister could eat? That’s, that’s…” I shook my head not having the words.

He shrugged as if it was nothing. “She was the most important thing, and when he was there things were better for her. I coped with it,” he stated casually.

“Jamie, I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He laughed humourlessly. “Sorry you ever met me, huh? Yeah, you probably should be. You don’t need someone like me in your life,” he stated flatly, shaking his head.

I stood up and walked the four paces over to him, gripping his hand, pulling gently to try and get him to look at me. He turned, but his eyes were firmly fixed on the floor again now. I’d never realised how insecure he was, he was like some sort of little lost boy thinking that everything was above him and that he didn’t deserve things. The thing he’d just said clearly told me what he thought about himself, and all of that probably stemmed from the abuse he suffered as a child.

“You’re wrong. I do need you in my life,” I corrected. I went up on tiptoes and tried to press my lips to his but he was too tall, so I settled for kissing the edge of his jaw instead. He made a sort of whimper noise as his hands went to my hips, pulling me against him so tightly that my body was almost crushed against his. He bent and buried his face in my hair as I snaked my arms around his waist, hugging him fiercely.

“I need you too. I love you, Ellie, so so much,” he mumbled into my hair.

We stood there holding each other until I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “What happened?” I asked, meaning with Sophie.

He sighed and guided me over to the sofa again. He sat and pulled me close to his side, his arm was too tight on me, my shoulders were starting to ache because he’d clamped me to him so tightly, but I didn’t say anything about it, he obviously felt like he needed to keep hold of me so I wasn’t going to ruin that security feeling for him.

“I decided to leave. I came up with a plan for me and Sophie to leave and that I’d take care of her on my own. I was already doing that anyway but I thought that if we left that it’d be better for both of us. Trouble is I had no money. I started asking around to see if anyone wanted to give me a job, but I was only twelve and no one wanted a school kid working for them. Then one day this guy came to the house and had this huge blow out with Ralf about something. I’d hidden at the top of the stairs and listened to them argue. Apparently Ralf had promised to do some robbery job for this guy and he was backing out or something. I followed the guy out and asked if I could do the job instead. He said no because I was a kid, but he did offer me something else. A delivery job. I didn’t ask what I was delivering, I didn’t need to know. All I needed to know was that he paid me a hundred bucks for it. I came back the next day and did another delivery after school and got more money, and then the guy asked if I wanted to do more jobs,” he explained.

Understanding washed over me. “This was how you got tangled up with Brett,” I said, nodding.

“Mmm hmm.” He nodded. “It started out easy, delivery job here and there. Then things got more involved and I got paid more. Money seemed to be all I could think about. The more jobs I did, the more money I got and the closer I got to having enough for me and Soph to start over on our own.

So I started skipping school all the time and I’d hang out at his workshop and the guys that worked for him. I started training with them all too, doing weights and fighting and stuff so I learnt a lot about self-defence, but I continued to let Ralf do what he wanted so that he wouldn’t know that I was planning on leaving with Soph. Ray, the head mechanic, he would let me help him with the cars, showing me how to fix them and stuff. By the time I’d been there for six months, I could strip and engine and put it back together again. Ray also showed me how to steal them. Turns out I was pretty good at it,” he said laughing quietly.

I smiled despite myself because for some reason the slight change in his tone of voice made the situation lighten, his tone when he spoke about cars was miles apart from when he was telling me about his childhood. I welcomed the rest bite in the bad stuff, I liked that he was happy about something - even if it was something illegal.

“I was saving up. I decided to wait until I was sixteen so that I could rent a place legally. A couple of years passed of it all, then one day I spent too long at the warehouse. Ray and I got caught up cooing over some sports car, funny how I can’t even remember what the car looked like now,” he said, frowning, as he obviously tried to recall that insignificant detail. “I was fourteen, and Sophie was seven. I was late home. He’d been drinking and I guess because I wasn’t there to-” He stopped talking and squeezed his eyes shut as he shook his head.

“Jamie?” I prompted when he didn’t carry on speaking.

“It was my fault,” he whispered suddenly.

“What? No.” I shook my head fiercely.

He nodded. “Yeah. I should have gone home straight away; if I had done then he wouldn’t have laid his dirty pervert hands on her.” He choked on a sob and I felt my heart crashing in my chest. “He….

hurt her. When I walked in the lounge she was sobbing in the corner while he sat there and-” He groaned and I dug my fingers in his thigh as I finished his sentence in my head. I’d never heard of anything so sick in my life. Who the hell gets off on seeing a child in pain? I felt dirty even thinking about it.

“Where was your mom?” I asked, the tears flowing down my face freely now.

He gulped. “Just sitting there,” he said disbelievingly. His chin trembled and I saw a tear fall down his face and drop onto his jeans.

I covered my mouth as I whimpered. She’d just sat there while her boyfriend had physically abused her daughter and then was getting himself off because of it? That made her just as guilty as if she’d done it herself in my book.

“Sophie was just cowering in the corner, crying, her nose bleeding, her lip split. He’d used the knife that he used to use on me, and sliced a big gash on her forearm. She was so little and he was just sitting there, jacking off while he watched her cry. I just totally lost it. I knew we couldn’t stay there any more so I told them we were leaving, I shouted at Sophie to get up and pack a bag, but he got between us. He said we weren’t going anywhere, that he owned us all and that Sophie was going to earn him money too when she was old enough.” His face was red from anger as he spoke.

“Ralf and I started fighting and the whole time my mom just sat there, watching with her glassy eyes, like she wasn’t even fucking aware of what was going on,” he ranted. “Sophie got in the way, she was trying to stop us fighting I think. He…. he grabbed her and he slammed her head against the wall.” His voice broke as he spoke. His fingers dug into my forearm unconsciously as he squeezed his eyes shut. “I can still see it, Ellie. When I close my eyes I can see it clear as day. I can still hear the crack that her skull made as he smashed against the plaster. I can still picture the smear that the blood made on the wall as she crumpled to the floor.”

I whimpered as I wrapped my arms around his neck, probably squeezing too tight to be comforting, as I tried to save him from the memory of it. I prayed with every bone in my body that I could erase it, that I could somehow make it better or take it away. But there was nothing I could do.

“I shoved him off me and he crashed into the sideboard and was drunkenly trying to get himself up from the floor. I ran to Sophie, screaming at my mom to call for help, but she just sat there. She just fucking sat there, Ellie!” he cried, wrapping his arm around me tightly. “I tried to help her but it was no good. There was blood everywhere, the smell of it made me gag. Sophie was so still, so still….”

I gulped, desperately trying not to picture it because I was trying to be strong but my mind was wandering there, grieving for the little girl I’d never met, the little girl in the yellow dress from the photo. I pictured a young Jamie, holding her in his arms, screaming at his spaced out, drugged up mother for help that never came.

“When she stopped breathing, I just lost it. I totally lost it. My reason for living was gone, and it was all his fault. I…. I killed him with my bare hands but I just couldn’t stop. I have no idea how long I was hitting him for, but apparently one of the neighbours heard screaming and shouting and called the police. They busted the door down and dragged me off. I was arrested for murder but I didn’t care. All I could think about was that there was no point to my life anymore, the entire reason for me being alive was to be a big brother and he took that away from me.” His voice was breaking through emotion as he buried his face into the side of my neck, his body trembling against mine.

I tightened my arms when I felt his warm tears wetting my shoulder. I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I stroked his back soothingly while he cried on my shoulder. I don’t think he’d ever had a proper release before and it was pouring out of him now. My chest was tight with unshed tears and grief, my stomach churning and twisting because the love of my life was in pieces in my arms and I had no idea how to help him or even if I could.

“It’s okay, everything’s okay,” I whispered, stroking the back of his head. He’d been crying for a couple of minutes, finally letting the grief and guilt out of his system. He’d been carrying it around for so long, I had a feeling that he’d never really dealt with it properly before. He was so young to cope with something like that, and he had no one to help him before - but he did now. He had me and he always would.

He’d stilled now, his body no longer shaking but he was still clinging to me as if he was frightened to let go. “It was my fault. She was killed because of me,” he mumbled, holding me tighter.

“No!” I said fiercely, pulling back so that I could look at him. “No, Jamie. It wasn’t your fault; none of it was your fault.”

He nodded, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “Yeah, if I hadn’t spent too long at the warehouse drooling over that fucking car, if I had just told a teacher or someone what was happening, or maybe if we’d left earlier instead of me stupidly deciding to wait until I was sixteen.

She would have been here now. She didn’t deserve that, Ellie, she didn’t deserve to die,” he said softly, looking at his hands in his lap, a heartbroken expression on his face.

“Jamie, you’re not to blame. She was lucky to have a brother like you who looked out for her all the time. You can’t blame yourself for something that someone else did, it wasn’t your fault,” I countered, shaking my head as I stroked the side of his face, wiping one of the tears away. That was the thing that affected me the most, that he was always so strong but right now he looked so broken that it actually hurt to look at him.

“My mom blames me,” he whispered.

If I didn’t hate her before, I certainly hated her in that moment. What the hell kind of person wrongly blames a child for the death of their sister like that? It was sick! “Why?” I asked disbelievingly.

He licked his lips and gulped. “She said that I started the fight, that Sophie got in the middle of something that I started and that’s why she got killed.”

My teeth ground together and I fought the urge to go and find this woman that I’d never met, and smack her in her sorry face for putting Jamie through that guilt. “Jamie, she sat there and let him hurt her, yet blames
you
for killing her?
She’s
the one that did wrong! She’s the one that didn’t protect either of her children from a sicko! She’s the one that deserved to go to jail, not you!” I ranted angrily.

Jamie smiled weakly. “She didn’t kill anyone though, I did.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Anger was still surging through my system making my hands shake as my jaw started to ache where I was clenching my teeth together so tightly. “You went to jail for killing Ralf?” I clarified. Jamie nodded. “But why though? If he killed your sister then surely it was self-defence,” I countered, confused.

Jamie laughed humourlessly. “Wasn’t self-defence, Ellie. They had to have a closed casket at his funeral apparently because of the mess I’d made of him. Brett told me that the only way the coroner could identify him was from his fingerprints because his face and dental records were unrecognisable,” he stated casually.

I cringed, thinking about Jamie doing all that to another human being, but to be honest I didn’t think badly of him for it like he was probably expecting. He killed a sick person who had probably hurt hundreds of people in his life - I wasn’t going to condemn Jamie for taking a paedophile off of the streets, even in that brutal manner.

“But the courts must have known the reasons for you killing him. Didn’t you tell them what he used to do to you? What he’d done to Sophie? Surely they could have been lenient on you because of extenuating circumstances,” I protested.

He frowned and shrugged. “I didn’t tell them anything about Ralf. I actually didn’t tell them anything, I was distraught with grief and guilt, I didn’t talk to anyone about it. But the investigation established that he killed Sophie first and then I killed him. I pleaded guilty to murder, but I didn’t tell them anything else. I didn’t want anyone to know. I guess I was ashamed of everything that happened. The judge was lenient a little, I didn’t get as long as I could have done,” he explained.

“What about your mom? Didn’t she tell them what happened either?” I asked, anger leaked into my voice as I mentioned his mom. I’d never hated anyone like I hated her and I’d never even met the woman.

He smiled sadly and shook his head. “No. She sat there in the booth and watched me get sent down for it. She didn’t even cry for me. She came to visit me once when I was in juvie. She told me that she hated me for killing Ralf, that I’d made her life unbearable because she loved him and I’d taken him away.” I almost growled with anger when he said that. She was angrier with Jamie for killing Ralf, even though her abusive pimp had killed her daughter? That was disgraceful. “She told me that she had no son. I never saw her again, well, not until she got in trouble with the loan shark anyway,” he stated, shrugging.