Are You My Mother? (50 page)

I wanted to scream at them both, terrified that one of them would get killed, but it was as if all my energy had been used up. I opened my mouth, but nothing happened.

Squealing as if she was stamping on a large predatory spider, Stella rushed forwards before I could prevent her, and jumped hard on Charlie’s hand, making him release the bottle, before scuttling back to join me on the front door step.

‘
Hurry
up
,’ she moaned, fidgeting and pressing herself against the door, just as Ruth opened it, causing Stella to almost knock her over. I threw myself inside after her.

‘
I heard all the noise - what the hell’s going on?’ said Ruth, aghast, taking in the grunting and rolling around of the two men outside, and then the sight of us, like a couple of facsimiles of Edouard Munch’s
The Scream
. She was in her white towelling dressing gown, and her hair had a freshly-washed wave and sheen to it. I felt unutterably hot and grubby in contrast.

‘
Gavin, Emma’s ex,’ Stella croaked as Ruth shut the door on them. Stella and I both slid down the wall and sat on the hall floor, hugging each other and quivering with adrenaline and a sort of sickened astonishment, as the sound of a siren wailed in the distance.

Immediately afterwards we heard Gavin shout, ‘And if you EVER come near her AGAIN, you’re a DEAD MAN, do you UNDERSTAND?’ There was a loud crack, then a thud, and then a frenzied hammering on the door. The letterbox creaked open and I saw Gavin’s eye peering frantically through, looking as wild as a bullock about to be slaughtered.

‘
It’s me, Gav; let me in, Emma, quick.’ His voice sounded disembodied, like he was all eye and voice and violence.

I hauled myself up, renewed terror giving me back my own voice. ‘I don’t want Charlie in here!’ I screeched at him through the slot.

‘
He’s out for the count. I nutted him. Please, Em, before the Old Bill gets here!’

Cautiously, I began to open the door, and as soon as I did, Gavin had hurled himself inside and slammed the door behind us. He had a cut on his forehead, grazes on his knuckles, his eye was already beginning to swell, and he was breathing heavily. He bent down, palms on knees, to try and recover himself. We all stared at him as if he’d just beamed down from another planet.

‘
I don’t want to talk to the police. Let me out the back door, baby, OK? I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll have dinner.’

On cue, an eerie blue light swept around the hallway through the skylight above the door, and we heard the sound of car doors slamming.

I ushered Gavin down the hall and began unbolting the back door, pausing to look him full in the face. It seemed a bizarre way to formally end a long-dead relationship but, really, considering that it was Gavin, not very surprising.

‘
Thanks, Gav, I really appreciate your help; thank God you were there,’ I gabbled, aware that I didn’t have the luxury of time on my side. ‘But the truth is….. I’ve met someone else. We’ve been together since you left, and we’re really happy. I wish you all the best – but I don’t ever want to see you again.’

For a moment he looked utterly flabbergasted, and I felt offended that he appeared to be so amazed that anyone else might fancy me. Then he shrugged, ruefully. ‘So I’ve blown it, then. Well, can’t say I blame you, after all this time. I haven’t exactly been Boyfriend of the Year. Be happy, sweetheart.’

As I opened the door, he leaned forward and kissed me, briefly but very tenderly, on the lips. He smelled of sweat and the gristle of a fight, but nonetheless I caught a glimpse of the old, irresistible Gavin.

There was a heavy knock at the front door and the sound of a distant doorbell, and Gavin hared out into the night. My last sight of him was as he crashed across Percy’s regimented rows of geraniums and over the back wall, like Peter Rabbit trying to escape from Mr. McGregor’s garden. I knew I was never likely to see him again.

I hastily shut and bolted the back door, ran back up the hallway and hissed to Ruth and Stella,
‘Don’t let on we knew who Gavin was
’, before nodding at Ruth to open the front door.

There were the inevitable two officers in peak caps, a young and slightly nervous-looking woman police constable, and her partner, a lanky, skinny male one. I had a sudden feeling that the male one might have been the same as the one who turned up after Percy died, but then I wondered if policemen’s faces had all just blended together for me, into one shiny brass and dark serge amalgam of bad news. He was bending over the unconscious Charlie, pressing his ear against Charlie’s chest, which was claret-coloured from the stream of blood swirling slowly out of his nose and down his face and neck. Ruth, Stella and I all goggled out, horrified, at his prone form.

When the PC straightened up, he had blood on the side of his own cheek. The WPC silently handed him a handkerchief, tapping a forefinger on the side of her face to indicate the problem, and the PC wiped himself down before stuffing the blood-speckled handkerchief back into his own pocket.

‘
I’ll have that back when you’ve washed it,’ the WPC muttered to him, flicking open her notebook and dropping her chin down to order an ambulance into the walkie talkie at her shoulder.

‘
What do you know about this man?’ The policeman finally addressed us, jerking a thumb back to the prone Charlie. ‘We’ll need to take statements from whoever saw what happened. Who did this to him?’ It couldn’t be the same constable after all, for surely he’d have mentioned meeting us before.

‘
Why don’t we all go up to my flat?’ said Ruth. ‘Only I think these two are a bit shocked, and I’d like to make them some tea or something. Plus my baby is upstairs on her own, and I want to get back to her to make sure she hasn’t woken up.’

‘
Right you are. I’ll wait for the ambulance, if you want to start on the statements upstairs,’ said the WPC to her colleague.

Another ambulance, I thought wearily; more police statements. I felt like offering the Met our spare room, so we could have our very own PC as a lodger, to save them the cost of petrol and the little bulbs to swirl in their blue sirens.

I was beginning to feel more than a little unwell, actually, what with the earlier gory sight of Charlie, and then the discomfiting prospect of lying to the police about Gavin. Despite their by-now familiarity, the mere presence of the police still unnerved me – however friendly they were, I never seemed to get used to the strangeness of their uniforms and all the intimidating bits and bobs at their waists. The way they crackled constantly. They didn’t seem like ‘normal’ people. I tried to imagine those two down the pub on a Friday night, in mufti, smoking fags and drinking bottled lager, but failed miserably. All I could see was a nine year old Stella, sewing and watching Fantasia with Ffyfield on her lap, still unaware that her life was ruined whilst PC whatever-his-name-had-been lurked in the hall outside

We trudged upstairs with the constable, Stella and I on legs of jelly. In the mercifully calm sanctuary of Ruth’s flat he took us, one by one, through the by-now familiar rigmarole of the statement. It felt like being called to the headmaster’s study as he closed the living room door behind us individually, and we in turn gabbled and stuttered, gesticulated and hesitated, me hoping fervently Stella had managed not to drop Gavin’s name into the proceedings.

When he had finally done both of us, Stella was white with the effort of not crying, and I was red with the same effort - but at least it was over. We all reconvened in the kitchen while the PC finished his notes.

I glanced at my sister, sitting at the table rubbing her throat, with a spaced-out glassy wideness in her eyes. It hurt me to look at her, so I gazed around the room instead. Ruth’s kitchen was identical to ours, except that at that moment hers felt, in my feverish imagination, haunted. Haunted by the memories of plates and a troubled cat. I wondered what had happened to Percy’s cat. Had it run off, like Ffyfield? Unreliable beasts, I thought vaguely. Gavin was probably a cat in a former life. Then I remembered that the RSPCA had taken it away because we’d declined the offer to house it. It probably thought
we
were the unreliable beasts. I rested my forehead on the table, too weighed down to keep my head upright anymore.

I wished that Robert and Zubin were there, and just about managed to summon up the energy to check my watch; but it was only nine thirty, and they weren’t expected back from Milton Keynes until late.

‘
I want Robert,’ I said, pathetically, my voice muffled. My muscles were beginning to ache now too, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the tennis or the stress.

Ruth took over. ‘Do you need any more details from us?’ she asked the PC, who had reappeared in the doorway. He hesitated, and then pulled a business card out of his breast pocket, which he handed to Stella. It seemed odd, to think of the police having business cards.

‘
I’ve got all I need for now, I think,’ he said, consulting his scribbled notes. ‘Obviously, as soon your assailant is fit to talk, we’ll take a statement from him too. If you want to press further charges against him, then ring this number and we’ll take it from there. He was lucky to escape a charge last time. You might want to reconsider the matter in the light of a second assault.’

Stella shook her head, miserably.

Despite my exhaustion, I felt curious about Charlie’s apparent lack of any kind of common sense or self-preservation, under the circumstances of his last close shave: ‘Why
would
he risk it again? We think he’s been hanging around here on and off for months – surely he’d know it would make things worse for him if Stella changed her mind?’

The PC dipped his head knowledgeably, exposing a prematurely-thinning patch of sandy hair on top of his head, which reminded me of Gavin. I hoped he’d got away all right.

‘
You’d be surprised,’ he said, ‘how many of them take stupid risks. It’s arrogance, usually, or alcoholism, making them think they can do whatever they like without redress. We see it all the time. Out on bail, under court order, whatever – they keep coming back regardless. I maybe shouldn’t say it, but sometimes it takes a good kicking to get the message through in a language they understand. What I mean is,’ he added hastily, lest we were about to level charges of police brutality at him, ‘your have-a-go hero out there. We certainly don’t condone that sort of behaviour, but if I was Charlie Weatherby with my face all smashed in, I might think twice about coming back again.’

‘
Let’s hope so,’ said Ruth. ‘Have you got all you need from us now?’

The constable put away his notebook and replaced his peak cap, swivelling it briskly around to the correct position. ‘Well, yes. Unless‘ - he jerked his thumb back in the direction of the window to indicate where Charlie had fallen - ‘his story is significantly different to yours.’

‘
Which it probably will be, since he’s a deranged liar and an alcoholic,’ said Stella quietly. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to say that
I
did this to him.’

‘
He can’t,’ I said, reaching down and squeezing her shoulder. ‘There’s a witness this time. It’s over, I’m sure of it.’

After the policeman had left, we were all silent for a few minutes. Ruth put on the kettle, but then fetched a bottle of brandy from one of her kitchen cupboards, poured generous slugs into three glasses, and then carried them in the fingers of one hand across to where Stella and I sat at the rickety formica kitchen table. I envied Ruth her steady hands – mine were still shaking so much that it was beginning to get on my nerves. We were all so inured to the
principle
of grown men punching and kicking the crap out of one another, because we saw it on television pretty much everyday, but the reality of it - the bloody crunches and yelps of pain; the rage and the violence – that was an entirely different matter. I never wanted to witness anything like that, ever again.

‘
Let’s get this down us,’ Ruth said eventually. We each tipped back our heads and drank, making versions of the same strange noise at the back of our throats as the brandy seared us.

The baby monitor was on one steady red light – indicating Ruth’s extreme overprotectiveness, since Evie was only down the other end of the hall - and this somehow calmed me more than the comfort of the alcohol flowing down my gullet. I had an overpowering urge to creep into Evie’s room and watch her sleeping, but I felt too sullied by the night’s events. And surely, however bad I felt, Stella must have been feeling far worse.

‘
Are you sure you aren’t injured, Stell? Did he hurt you?’ I asked.

Stella put her hand to her throat again, exploring it, swallowing hard as if to see if she still could. There was a red mark against the white skin of her neck, but she shook her head. ‘I think I’m OK,’ she said croakily. ‘The bottle hurt, but he only pressed hard when Gavin appeared, and that was only for a second. It’s a bit painful to swallow, though.’ She paused, staring at me with huge eyes. ‘What’s going to happen now, Emma? Will I have to go to court this time?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. Probably not unless Charlie presses charges against Gavin, and then we’d have to be witnesses. But he can’t press charges against Gavin unless he knew who he was. And frankly he’d be insane to even think about it.’

‘
Have they ever met before?’ asked Stella, drilling her fingers into her temples and wincing. I moved round the table behind her and began to massage her head, until she gradually began to yield up some of her tension into my hands. It helped calm me, too.