Broke (28 page)

The bed was already sweat-soaked, but when she threw up on the duvet cover she dragged herself into the living room. Unable to sit still, and too weak to pace, she stepped out onto the tiny balcony. Tears streamed from her eyes when the wind whipped into her raw flesh like a million knife slashes, and she put her foot on the bar at the bottom of the iron railing and stared down at the road below, wondering how long it would take to land if she fell.

Terrified of merely breaking something and causing herself even more pain, she quickly stepped down and rushed back inside. The blister pack of tablets was still sitting on the table. She grabbed the bottle of JD and twisted the cap off, then popped all the tablets out of the pack and shoved them into her mouth.

The kids already didn’t want to see her, and they would soon forget all about her if she was gone. And it would certainly be a weight off Mark’s mind, because he’d be free to get on with his life without worrying about her popping up to ruin things. And her mum and dad would be relieved, too. They had already washed their hands of her, and she couldn’t blame them because she had shamed them in the most unforgivable way. She just hoped that they would find it in their hearts to bury her so that she wouldn’t have to spend eternity in an unmarked grave. But she would understand if they didn’t want to waste any more time or money on her.

Tears rolling down her cheeks, she drank from the bottle until it was empty, then lay down on the couch and waited for death.

Kelvin eased the bedroom door open when he got home from work the next morning. Knocked back by the stench of vomit and sweat, he saw that Amy’s bed was empty and went to the living room. Amy was lying on the couch with his coat pulled up over her shoulders. Her face was grey, and she didn’t seem to be breathing.

‘Oh, no,’ he moaned, dropping his bag and running to her. ‘Please, no . . .’

He touched her face, but snatched his hand back when he felt the icy coldness of her skin and pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. About to call for an ambulance, he hesitated when Amy made a noise.

‘Amy?’ He dropped to his knees beside her and shook her gently. ‘Amy . . . wake up.’

‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered, peeling her eyes open.

‘Oh, thank God!’ he croaked. ‘I thought you were dead. Don’t ever do that to me again.’

‘Sorry. I must have fallen asleep.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Not too good, everything’s aching.’

Kelvin looked around for her tablets, and a cold chill ran through him when he saw the empty packet lying on the floor next to the empty bottle. ‘Oh, Jeezus, Amy, please don’t tell me you tried to kill yourself?’

‘No.’ Amy blushed and shook her head. ‘I just wanted to forget about it all.’

‘Swear?’

‘I swear.’

Kelvin was shaken, but he wanted to believe her –
had
to, because the alternative would make it impossible to leave her on her own again.

‘Right, I’m going to ring my doctor when the surgery opens,’ he said decisively. ‘This obviously isn’t going to be as easy as we thought, so I’ll get him to do a home visit – see if there’s anything he can give you to help you through it.’

‘No!’ A look of terror leapt into Amy’s eyes. ‘I can’t see anyone. What if Lenny—’

‘Don’t worry about him,’ Kelvin interrupted. ‘I’ve already seen him, and he doesn’t suspect a thing.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He turned up at work just before we opened last night and asked if anyone had seen you. I played dumb, and the girls obviously couldn’t tell him anything, so it’s all good.’

‘You sure he believed you?’

‘I doubt I’d still be here if he hadn’t,’ said Kelvin, smiling as he stood up. ‘Think you can manage a cup of tea?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Amy, pushing the coat off her legs. ‘Have you got a washing machine? I made a bit of a mess of your sheets, but I’ll wash them in the bath if you haven’t got one.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kelvin said, pushing her gently back down when she tried to get up. ‘You just stay there and rest. I’ll fetch you my quilt.’

‘No, you need it,’ Amy protested. ‘I’m all right with your coat.’

‘Quit arguing and let me look after you,’ Kelvin ordered. ‘I’ve got a blanket in the cupboard – that’ll do me. Now just lie down.’

Amy thanked Kelvin when he fetched his quilt and laid it over her. Shivering by now, she pulled it up around her throat and closed her eyes when his scent rose up to her nose. It smelled clean and manly, and it made her feel even more dirty than she already knew she was. It was no wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell his mum that he was bringing her here: he was probably ashamed of her – and rightly so.

She was asleep when Kelvin came back with her tea, so he left the cup on the table and tiptoed into her room. After stripping her bed and putting the soiled sheet and duvet cover into the washing machine, he jumped in the shower and then climbed into bed.

He was already knackered, and this was going to get a lot more tiring before it was over, he was sure. But he was all Amy had right now, so he would just have to find the strength to deal with it.

27

It was three weeks before Amy turned the corner, but she knew she was through the worst when she woke up one morning thinking about the kids instead of craving heroin. But as bad as the physical pain had been during that time, it was nothing compared with the guilt that now swamped her. Without the smack to dull her thoughts and stop her from feeling, the full horror of what she’d exposed the kids to hit her. She would never forgive Mark for bringing Yates into her life, but she had to admit that he’d done the right thing in taking their children away from her. Cassie and Bobby were her life, but she’d neglected them when they had needed her the most, and she was grateful to Mark for saving them. And, as much as it still killed her to think of Ginger Jenny taking her place, she was even grateful to
her
, because at least the children were being looked after by somebody who cared about them and wouldn’t put them in danger like she had done.

But that didn’t mean that she was going to let the bitch steal her children from her for good. It wasn’t going to be easy to convince the social workers that she was fit to have them back, but she was determined to do it. The first thing she had to do was find a new place for them to live. Even if the old house was still standing after the fire, she couldn’t go back. She had too many enemies round there; too many idiots who had been taken in by Yates and would probably get straight on the phone to him if they saw her. It saddened her, because that house had been her and Mark’s first proper home together, and everything she owned was still in there. But that life was over, so she was just going to have to get over it.

Filled with a new determination to get her life back on track, she got up and took a bath, then set about cleaning the flat to repay Kelvin for putting up with her.

Kelvin was surprised when he came home from work to find not only the flat spotless, but Amy looking and smelling clean, with a light in her eyes and a fresh glow to her skin. It was the first time he had ever seen her like this since he’d met her, and he liked it.

‘Does this mean you’re feeling a bit better?’ he ventured.

‘A
lot
better,’ said Amy, smiling for the first time in ages. ‘Sit down – I’ll make you a cup of tea. I’d make you some toast as well,’ she added sheepishly, ‘but I finished the bread. Hope you don’t mind?’

‘
Mind?
’ Kelvin followed her to the kitchen and leaned against the door frame. ‘I’m made up that you’ve finally got your appetite back, babe.’

As soon as the word left his mouth, Amy blushed, and Kelvin mentally kicked himself. So many men had already taken advantage of her, and now she probably thought he was trying to do the same.
Idiot!

‘I’ll, er, go and get cleaned up,’ he said. ‘Won’t be long.’

Amy put her hands on the counter top when he’d gone and exhaled a shaky breath. The word hadn’t meant anything, and Kelvin had obviously been horrified by her reaction because he hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. She was a stupid, stupid woman, and she wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke to her again.

‘I’ve decided to ring the council when the office opens,’ she told him when he came back.

‘Oh, right,’ Kelvin murmured, trying not to let his disappointment show. ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’

Amy shrugged. ‘Probably not, but I’ve got to do it sooner or later or I’ll never get the kids back. Anyway, I’ve been here long enough, and you need your own space back.’

‘I’m cool,’ Kelvin assured her, annoyed with himself for scaring her off. God only knew where she was going to end up now thanks to his over-familiarity. A hostel, a park bench, maybe even back to Yates – any of which would be bad, and it would be his fault if anything happened to her. But he could hardly ask her to stay now that she’d made it clear that she wanted to go.

After drinking his tea, Kelvin went to bed. But, exhausted as he’d been when he’d left work, he couldn’t get to sleep. It hadn’t been a barrel of laughs watching Amy suffer, but her presence was all over the place and he would miss her when she was gone. He’d always thought she was pretty, but without the stress she was beautiful. And, as rare as they were, her smiles lit up the room – and his heart.

He was still lying there deep in thought when Amy eased the door open a short while later.

‘Are you awake?’

‘Yeah, what’s up?’

‘I’ve just spoken to a woman at the council.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Kelvin sat up. ‘What did she say?’

‘It’s all a bit of a mess,’ Amy told him miserably, sitting down on the end of the bed. ‘She said my rent hasn’t been paid in ages. They must have cut my benefits off after I stopped signing on, but I was out of my head back then so I couldn’t keep track of when I was supposed to do what. Anyway, they sent someone round to see me about it, but one of the neighbours told them I’d done a runner, so now they’re in the process of getting a repossession order.’

‘Shit,’ Kelvin murmured. ‘What you gonna do?’

‘I don’t know.’ Amy shrugged. ‘I told her I had no choice about leaving, ’cos someone set the house on fire while I was in there and I was too scared to go back. But she reckons I need to get a crime number off the police before they’ll consider stopping the court proceedings.’

‘Well, you can get that, can’t you?’

‘No.’ Amy shook her head. ‘I never told the police anything when they questioned me. I didn’t even know about the fire, and there was no way I was going to grass Lenny up for hitting me, so none of it was logged.’

‘It
is
a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’ Kelvin said thoughtfully. ‘But there must be something they can do. Do you want me to talk to them?’

‘No. I didn’t tell them I was staying with you in case they thought something was going on. You know what they’re like.’

‘So what now?’

Amy shrugged again. ‘She says she’ll make me an appointment to talk about getting me into a refuge while my case is being assessed. But I’ve got to take ID, and everything’s back at mine.’

Kelvin sighed and flopped back on his pillow. He didn’t like the idea of her going into a refuge, but if it was the only way she could start the process of getting her kids back, he wasn’t about to stand in her way.

‘Tell me what you need and where it is, and I’ll go and get it,’ he said.

‘No, you can’t – it’s too risky,’ Amy argued. ‘Someone might see you.’

‘Not if I go straight from work in the morning,’ said Kelvin. ‘Just ring her back and make your appointment, and leave the rest to me.’

28

Marnie was up, dressed, and sitting at the dressing table drying her hair by seven. It usually took a firework up her backside to get her out of bed before noon, but she had an appointment for a 3-D antenatal scan at a private clinic this morning, and she’d hardly slept for excitement at the thought of seeing her baby for the first time.

Yates was still asleep and snoring loudly in the bed behind her. Marnie glanced at him in the mirror and smiled. When Amy had disappeared, so too had some of the initial thrill that Marnie had got from sleeping with her man. She couldn’t help it; she’d always preferred attached men. It was the ego boost of knowing that the blokes would rather shag her than their own wives and girlfriends that did it – that, and being able to tell them to fuck off when she was done with them, knowing that they couldn’t harass her for fear of wifey finding out.

It was a hard habit to break, so she had carried on sleeping with a few of her other men for a while after she and Lenny got together. But she’d stopped all that as soon as she’d found out she was pregnant. And now that Lenny had effectively moved in, she knew she wouldn’t be getting rid of him so easily. But she didn’t really mind. It was a bit weird having to take someone else into consideration after years of doing her own thing but, pros versus cons, she’d rather have him here when the baby was born, because the thought of having to look after it by herself filled her with dread. She just hoped it didn’t come out looking like him. But if worse came to worst and it was an ugly little fucker, at least it would be the best-dressed ugly little fucker in Manchester.

Dragged from her thoughts by a noise on the other side of the wall, Marnie cocked her head. Nobody had set foot in Amy’s house since the fire, and she wondered if the council had finally decided to clear it out. Curious when she heard footsteps clattering down the uncarpeted stairs, she rushed to the window and eased the edge of the curtain back in time to see a man come out with a sports bag over his shoulder and a plastic bag in his hand. He walked down the path with his head down but, when he paused at the gate and glanced up at her window, she gasped.

‘What’s up?’ Yates woke with a start and reached under the bed for his cosh.

‘A man just came out of Amy’s,’ Marnie told him. ‘I thought it might be council, but I’m sure it’s the bloke who called round there the day I found out I was pregnant. Remember I told you about him?’

‘You what?’ Yates jumped up, rushed to the window and shoved her out of the way.