Love Thy Neighbour *editing*

"D'you think your wee babby likes swimmin', Evie?"

I went numb, staring at him in disbelief. I knew he was sick. I knew he was warped. But I didn’t think he was nearly as bad as to throw a child into the canal.

“No,” I whispered. “Please, Denny.”

He smacked me across the cheek again, so hard that my head smacked against the wall with the impact. He could beat me all he wanted; he could obliterate my face and my body and…everything else.

I just had to make sure that Riley Adam Gallagher would be okay.

“Don’t beg,” he barked. His face suddenly softened, as the bipolar-ness of Denny started to make an appearance.

“Ah don’t want tae do it, Evie,” he mumbled, lacing his fingers through mine. “But am hurtin’. It’s no’ right, y’see…You’re no’ meant tae have that tosser’s babby.” He glanced over his shoulder at the pram, whose resident was now making a startling amount of noise.

“See…ah wanted us tae have a babby one day. Wouldn’t that o’ been nice? Me, you an’ our wee babby.”

The thought of having his baby made me want to retch. The thought of having anything of his inside me made me want to heave up the contents of my stomach. The thought of being close to him again, after being on the receiving end of the kindness that came with Niall, made me want to crawl to a bush and throw up my organs.

And yet I nodded.

“Yeah,” I choked. “Nice.”

It was bloody obvious that I wasn’t telling the truth, and I was started to regret not being more enthusiastic about it. But whether he was too drunk to notice, or he was so desperate to believe that one day I would come back to him, he nodded with me, a bog standard smile tugging at his lips.

“Aye?” he murmured excitedly. “Y’want that?”

I shook, forcing my back against the wall to try and create as much space as I could between us. I couldn’t tell him yes, but I was too frightened to tell him no. I could safely say that Denny had turned me into a complete and utter coward.

Unsure of what to make of my silence, he took a step away, turning to face the water. I swallowed, rubbing the back of my head gingerly, and wincing as I felt blood.

“Yoor lad was rude tae me, Evie,” he said quietly, gazing over the canal. “He was very, very rude.”

I fished about in my pocket for my mobile, completely desperate. Suddenly, it didn’t matter at all at being seen as too “weak” to fight my own battles, as it would have done before. I knew that, if I didn’t phone someone to let them know what was happening, I could be faced with the grim reality of having to be put through of one of Denny’s wee games.

“W-Was he?” I stammered, tapping the keys of my phone quickly in an almost illegible text to Niall.

“Aye,” Denny mused, stretching. Various joints cracked, the sound echoing around the vast space beneath the bridge. “He laughed at me, Evie.”

“So he did,” I breathed, sagging slightly as the text sent. Denny made a sharp movement, almost as though he was about to turn around, only for him to kick a couple of stones into the bleak, dirty water.

What if Niall didn’t get the message? Or his phone was turned off for going to work? Or what if he hadn’t bothered to charge it again after it had lost battery? What if I was placing all my hopes on a rescue that would never come?

“Ah don’t like it when people are rude tae me, Evie,” he muttered. I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.

“No,” I said quietly. “It’s not nice.”