“Are you some kind of fucking imbecile?” Rory screamed at his crying wife as she sat hunched up on the floor. “What did you want to go and say something like that for you stupid bitch?”
“I’m sorry Rory, I’m so sorry” Vanessa sobbed.
“Look at the fucking mess you made” he roared indicating to the smashed ruins of the cup of tea his wife had made him. The cup was shattered on the floor and tea pooled all over the floor. The cup had caught Vanessa a glancing blow to the forehead when he threw it and blood mingled on the floor with the tea.
“I thought you’d want to know what Ruth said” Vanessa wept.
“I don’t want to know what any of your brain dead family has to say, especially that nosey interfering old hag” Rory sneered. “Do you think I’m ashamed Vanessa? Do you think I have something to hide? That I should be worried because your sister is home?”
Vanessa turned and looked at her husband for the first time in a long time. Her eyes met his and she stared at him with a disdain in her blue eyes that infuriated him.
“You should be Rory. You raped her.”
“You fucking little bitch! Your sister was a slag and you know it. A little whore.”
“My sister was not a slag” Vanessa said quietly. “She was a young girl who you raped and now she’s home a very rich woman, with a lot of power. You should be very worried you raping bastard. Very fucking worried indeed.”
Rory’s’ arm swung round and smashed Vanessa sideways before she could move. The pain exploded in her head immediately but Vanessa didn’t care. She didn’t care when he kicked her in the ribs or when he took her violently on the lounge floor and spat on her afterwards. It was nothing he hadn’t done before. She on the other hand had for the first time in a long time told her husband the truth, and she felt much better for it.
When he left the house and Vanessa hobbled painfully into the bathroom to tend her injuries, she was able to meet her eyes in the mirror properly since Jessie had left Porth Kerensa. She looked at the woman she had become and she shivered with disgust. Her husband, the man who had stood in Gods house and promised to love and cherish her had made her nothing more than his punch bag.
He had belittled her, beaten the life out of her, humiliated her in front of her children and violated her and her sister in the worst way a man could, he had hurt her son and she had been too cowed to do anything about it, or to stop it even when she had her father-in-law and her mother to help her. She had let Rory do what he wanted with her, was it any wonder she looked the way she did?
Enough was enough now as far as Vanessa was concerned. All of her life she had been pliant and submissive but now it was time to make a stand. Her father had been awake for two days now and he had been moved from Intensive Care onto a ward. Vanessa had been there when he had been told about Jessie and the public circus that was her life, she had watched him cry when Ruth told him that his daughter had been raped by persons unknown and Vanessa felt guilty; for she could give them all justice.
She could change her children’s lives, she could release Jessie from the shadow she lived under and give her a chance to start again with Jace and she could free herself from her violent oppressive husband if she would only tell the truth and speak up. She knew that Jessie would not tell the truth, she knew that Jessie would wait until Vanessa was ready.
The two sisters had walked the beach together yesterday; they had walked and talked about everything. Jessie quiet and respective of Vanessa’s reasons for staying in her marriage even though she must have felt like screaming and Vanessa cried silent tears when Jessie told her the horrifying truth of the night Vanessa had been in hospital. They had talked and they had cried and they had held onto each other.
And when they headed back up to the cliff steps Jessie had taken hold of her sisters’ hand and she had told her that it was up to her to change their destiny. Only she could decide as she had the most to lose but she also had the most to gain and all she had to do was ask and Jessie would get her whatever she needed to feel safe again. We have money she had reminded Vanessa gently and Vanessa had nodded even as she wondered wildly if money could buy peace.
Peace was all she craved. Was it too much to ask for? A peaceful life with her children with no fear and no crying in the night when the one who loves you makes you feel pain like you never felt before. That was all Vanessa wanted she had told her sister and Jessie had hugged her for a long long time.
I stand at the back door smoking a cigarette and looking out to sea. I listen to Kia, Jace and Annie laugh and chat while they play Old Maid, over the roar of the surf. The sun is setting, the wind whistles around the cottage, gulls screech as they fly overhead, and the waves crash on the beach. Familiar sounds I have missed without knowing I missed them. People, places and memories I have shut out of my heart for so long, do I have the strength to let them back in? Do I have the courage to tell them the truths they deserve from me?
Back in the old days, after my mother had left Porth Kerensa to start her new life in Manchester, Jace and I would sit and discuss Selina Harper. We would talk for hours and no matter how calm and reasoned the argument from Jace; I was never able to reconcile my feelings towards Selina. I had been unable to understand how my mother could leave us all, especially after the death of our brother. Jace would play devils advocate but it had never mattered to me, my own feelings were too intense to even consider how my mother felt.
In the long years since I fled Porth Kerensa I have made something of my life and I have been content with that, I might not have been happy without Jace but someimes I was content. It was the best I had thought I could hope for after Rory raped me. I believed that would be the worst thing I would ever have to go through in my life. I moved into the glare of the Hollywood lights and I forgot that it wasn’t a fairytale world where only good things would happen to me.
Colette was the one to remind me that the real world still exists. Now it is time to pay my dues, the fun has stopped and the public want their pound of flesh. They want the truth, my family deserves the truth, and for the first time in my life I finally understand why Selina never let us into her new life. For the first time I am saddened that I did not forgive my mother, and that she died alone and unloved.
How hard is it to admit that things have gone wrong? That my life has not been what I pretended it was when I ran away? It is the hardest thing I have yet faced so it is really no surprise anymore why my mother had been unable to. Selina had been crippled, blinded and scarred, how can you come back and ask forgiveness when you are so very different to the person who left?
It has been over a week since the whole thing blew up in the media and as I had hoped, it has blown over. I have hidden away and tried desperately to ignore it, only leaving the cottage to go and see Dad in hospital, Mom at the house and for a walk every day with Vanessa along the beach. People know I am here but they don’t intrude and the press has got bored now both Lee and I have released statements pretty much saying the same thing. At some point I will have to go and see a solicitor but Jace has not mentioned it and I have not either.
He goes to work every day and Kia and I go to the big house on the cliff. I have not been to Vanessa’s home and I have not seen Rory but I know that soon I will. For now I am content to not rock the boat but there is an air of change in the atmosphere. A feeling of something bad about to happen that I cannot shake even though I am with Jace and I should be happy. My father is awake and sitting up in bed, my daughter has accepted the changes in her life with surprising ease and Jace makes my heart soar with pleasure.
I hear Kia giggle and I smile as I flick my cigarette away and shut the back door. Kia, Annie and Jace sit at the table playing cards, all of them laughing and joking. Jace looks up at me and smiles and my heart misses a beat. I know my face is getting red and I know that he will tease me mercilessly for that later when the girls are tucked up in bed. It warms my heart to see Jace and Kia get on so well together, but when he turns his gaze on me my legs go weak and my heart speeds up. I can’t wait to be with him, to touch him, to listen to him talk and laugh, and to watch his face when he is inside me. Yet when we have made love and he sleeps next to me I lay and I look at him in the semi-darkness and I wonder if I am doing the right thing.
On a traumatic painful night many years before I fled from Jace, and I used Lee as my support, he held me up and helped me heal, and all I gave him in return was a half hearted love. I loved him because I felt grateful to him and surely that is one of the worst ways to love someone? My mother did it, and I repeated the sins of my mother. I tell myself I am not doing that again, that Jace is the only man I have ever loved and I love him how I should but in the quiet darkness of the night when he sleeps beside me I can’t help but worry.
Annie loved her overnight visit to the cottage where Jessie and Kia were staying for the foreseeable future. Jessie hadn’t really said much but Annie supposed that she had a lot to think about and it was enough to be there with her. Vanessa had joined them for a couple of hours though that had been odd Annie reflected as she lay in the camp bed on Kia’s bedroom floor. Jessie’s face had paled when Vanessa had arrived and Annie’s mouth had dropped at the sight of their eldest sister. She had cut her head quite badly and she walked stiffly. She had sat herself down and told them that she had fallen down the last six or seven cliff steps but Annie got the feeling that Jessie did not believe Nessa.
Annie watched her two sisters together and she wondered how different everything would be if only their mother had not run away from this beautiful village. Annie would not feel like such an outsider and maybe Jessie would stop looking at her like she didn’t really fit in. It wasn’t all the time but sometimes Jessie would almost jump like she had forgotten Annie existed and then she would look at her as if she had to remind herself who Annie was. She was never rude to Annie, she kissed her hello and goodbye and bought her gifts, but sometimes she had that look on her face.
It made Annie shiver for it almost reminded her of the way Selina had looked through her veil whenever Annie had spoken or moved. Sometimes Annie herself could not take her eyes from Jessie simply because she was so like Selina. It didn’t matter anymore to Annie that her mother had worn a veil and never shown her face. All she had to do was look at Jessie and she knew that was what her mother would have looked like. Jessie moved her hands and played with her jewellery like Mama used to and she even talked under her breath like Mama had.
Jessie had let Kia and Annie stay up as a treat and when Kia had fallen asleep on the sofa Annie had sat on the floor in front of the log fire with Jace and Jessie, while Vanessa sat in the armchair and they stared dreamily at the flames. Conversation had been peaceful and Annie had felt like she was part of the sisterhood in a way that she hadn’t before. They had talked about the old days and the games they had played when they were young and Annie had sat listening.
“What is your best memory of Selina?” Jessie had asked her and it had taken her a moment to work out that she meant Mama.
“You never call her Mama” Annie replied quietly and Jessie had looked thoughtful.
“She never felt like a mother to me” Jessie had said gently. “I call Ruth Mom and I can’t call Selina anything but Selina. It’s all she has been to me for the last eleven years.”
“My best memory of Mama was when she met Mrs Harrod and let me go and stay with Rachel.” Annie had known it was inadequate and she tried not to notice the pitying looks the adults gave her.
“Mine was when Bryan was born” Vanessa said softly. “She was so happy and proud of her baby boy that she smothered us in love for the whole two weeks she was in bed.”
“Then she was allowed up and went back to her walking” Jessie said sadly and Vanessa sighed.
They had sat in silence then all of them lost in thoughts of the woman who had given birth to them and Annie really knew for the first time in her life that she was a sister, that she had ties and connections and a shared history even when she lived apart from her sisters. And she felt like she had finally found somewhere to belong.
Max was sitting up in bed on the ward watching the woman opposite him fighting quietly with her husband when Ruth arrived for visiting hours. She had brought Annie and Kia in with her and Max beamed at them delightedly. He had been so happy when Ruth had told him that Jessie was home and had been in to visit him, and he had cried when his daughter had sat by his bedside and told him what had happened to her. He loved the visits where Ruth brought the children to see him and he was sure they made him feel much better.
His bruises were fading and the doctors had stabilised his heart and his lungs. Max knew he had been extremely lucky to survive the crash and every time he saw one of his family walk through the ward doors he thanked God he was still alive to see them. He closed his eyes gratefully when Ruth bent down to kiss him and Kia shyly handed him the grapes she bought him every day. He laughed even though it made his ribs hurt and he blew her a kiss and waved to Annie who perched on the end of his bed.
“Rory’s on his rounds this afternoon so he’ll be here in a bit” Max said with a weak smile.
He watched Ruth purse her lips and turn away and he wondered why Ruth didn’t like their son-in-law. Max couldn’t remember the last time Rory had been to the house on the cliff and Ruth had been adamant that Annie would not go on an overnight visit to her sisters’ house, in fact so had Vanessa, yet from all accounts Annie had enjoyed a lovely sleepover with Jessie the other night. Somewhere something in the back of Max’s aching head niggled at him and he felt frustrated that he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He felt like he should know something very important but he couldn’t make his memory work.
“Are you okay honey?” Ruth asked him and he sighed.
“I feel like I’m missing something.”
“No sweetie, everything is still where it should be, thank God you’re in one piece” she laughed; nervously he thought and he shook his head. He must stop this notion that he was being left out of something important.
“No, I feel like something is going on that I should know about. Something important.”
Ruth swallowed and he didn’t care how drugged up he was on morphine that was definitely a nervous look on her face. She busied herself tidying his bedside table and engaged the children in conversation that Max couldn’t possibly ignore but he vowed silently he would ask her later and she would tell him what the Hell was going on.
Rory bustled round the wards breezing through the patients with a reassuring smile and a calming voice. This was the bit he liked best about medicine, working in the hospital with his mates, ripping the piss out of the interns, being superior to the orderlies, auxiliaries and the fat ugly nurses, and flirting with all the pretty nurses and patients who looked at him like he was God. The day to day hum drum routine at the surgery in Porth Kerensa drove him mad with boredom. The old ladies with their offers of cake and the young mothers who whimpered helplessly when he injected the babies with vaccine, for Gods sake he was helping them, anyone would think he was killing them though sometimes he felt tempted.
Speaking of tempted, he thought as he entered the ward and viewed his mother-in-law with narrowed eyes. There was a bitch he could quite easily kill. If ever he wanted to beat a woman to death it was that one he thought viciously. Always poking her fucking nose in and making Vanessa say stupid things that only meant he had to hit her even harder to teach her a fucking lesson. For all her fucking brains you’d think she’d work out that Vanessa’s life would be more peaceful if she kept the Hell out and fucked off he thought as he walked towards her with his practised smile on his face.
She sniffed disdainfully as he drew closer just like she always did and Rory resisted the urge to shove his pen up her nose. He smiled and said “Cold Ruth?”
“No, I thought I could smell vodka but I must have been mistaken” she said haughtily and moved closer to the children who were sat on the bed.
“Afternoon Max” Rory said with a grin as he flicked over his notes. “And who have you got visiting today?”
“Annie, you’ve met and Kia, Jessie’s little girl.”
Rory stopped short and for the first time looked properly at the child on the bed. The little girl he knew was his daughter. He didn’t care what that bitch Jessie said on the telly; the girl was his daughter and he had never seen her in the flesh. He smiled at her and hunkered down so he could look her properly in the face and she smiled at him. A lovely smile that made him reach out to her but suddenly Ruth was there picking her up from the bed and ushering Annie off too. She looked at him with contempt in her eyes and quietly she hissed ‘Never’ at him.
Rory took a step back from her and coughed to cover his anger even as he thought how sorry he was going to make that bitch. Standing there holding his daughter and glaring at him like he was nothing. He turned back to Max with a smile who was drifting back off to sleep and briskly went through blood pressure and checked the dressed wounds then he bid him farewell, nodded curtly to Ruth and moved on to the next patient.
He worked his way round the ward and watched Ruth kiss Max goodbye and chivvy the little girls from the ward. She didn’t spare him another glance until she had reached the door then she threw him a look that made his blood boil and she pointed her finger at him like he was a child then she was gone. One of the nurses saw it and chuckled and he barked at her making her scurry off with tears in her eyes.
She would pay for that he thought angrily. That fucking bitch would pay for taking his daughter like that. Her and her whore daughters. Born from the womb of a slag and raised by a whore; by God he would make them fucking pay.
Ruth hurried from the hospital with a pounding heart and sorrow that Vanessa carried on living with such an evil brute. The look in his eyes when she had picked Kia up and moved away from him had made her shiver with fear. Now she didn’t know whether to tell Jessie that he had seen and touched Kia or not. Ruth knew what Rory had done but she had never told Jessie she knew, so if she told her this it was admitting she knew. Maybe she wouldn’t tell her but she'd make sure she was extra careful from now on when Jessie trusted her to look after Kia.
Ruth was stuck between a rock and a very hard place.
Jace and I have decided that we will take Kia to Bristol at the weekend to meet her other nanna and the rest of the family. Lisa has settled in Australia with a surfing hunk Jace tells me so I won’t get to catch up with her but I can’t wait to see Celia, Neea, Alice and the beautiful babies she has produced with her husband Jack. I am looking forward to introducing the gorgeous daughter that Jace and I made to the rest of his family and I am surprised.
I knew that Kia would have to meet them and I envisioned that Jace would take her to see them without me. But those imaginings were before I came home and this amazing explosive thing between Jace and I started. I am taken back by it, swept away by its suddenness and I know that the two of us going to visit his mother is making a statement. I wonder if I am ready for that and then I wonder how I can even think that I should stop this thing. I can’t live without Jace anymore, the thought of not breathing in the same air as him is enough to make my heart race with dread.
When he sleeps next to me it feels like he has always been here in this bed in this cottage, it feels like this is how my life has always been and I didn’t know it. It doesn’t seem too quick, it doesn’t feel like I should have some space from him or that I should question if we are going to stay in the cottage or make a home somewhere else. It just is and that’s safe. It’s the safest feeling in the world. We are here in this safe warm place together and that’s all that matters to me anymore. And if that means making statements then I’ll make as many statements as he wants me too.
I sit on the sofa and watch him write cheques for the various people who are demanding recompense for his cancelled wedding and I thank God that the universe was not against us on that timing at least. I sigh and he looks at me questioningly, I tell him and he chuckles.
“Whether you had come back or not I would still be sitting at a table writing cheques for a cancelled wedding Jess.” His smile is rueful and my heart swells with love for him.
“She was a fool for not appreciating you” I sniff and he laughs.
“No I was a bastard to love” he corrects.
“She was an idiot” I say firmly and he comes over to where I am sitting and kneels in front of me.
“I’m not going to win am I?” he says softly and I shake my head with a grin and kiss his nose playfully. “I figured we’d drive up to Mams tomorrow afternoon after you’ve been to see Max in hospital and we could come back Sunday, I booked us into a lovely bed and breakfast two doors down from Mams house so we can have privacy” he leers and I giggle.
“I love it when a plan comes together” I reply huskily. We kiss for a long time and only stop when we hear Ruth pulling up outside the cottage with Kia.
Kia is tired but happy to be home and Ruth seems pressed for time and reluctant to talk for long so I let her go knowing only too well how annoying it is when people demand time you haven’t got.
Jace and I prepare a meal together and afterwards we bathe Kia and put her to bed. I smoke a cigarette on the porch while Jace reads Kia a story and I listen to the waves on the shore and I think of what I am going to do with my life now. I throw the cigarette away and I turn to go back in but my attention is caught by someone sitting in a car just down the road looking at me. I cannot see them but I can see they are leaning forward intently and I wonder if maybe they are looking for a house or they have recognised me from the television. I go inside and close the door and pour the wine ready for when Jace comes downstairs to slip his arms around me and kiss my neck.
It is a lovely evening spent talking, drinking wine and kissing before he carries me to bed and loves me completely. It is warm and loving and passionate, yet when he sleeps next to me and I lie in the darkness and listen to the wind whistling under the eaves I can’t help but shiver and I feel threatened. The wind sounds ominous and I am frightened suddenly. I cling to Jace and I sleep eventually, holding onto him throughout the night.
And when the sun rises on a calm sea and a beautiful sky my fears of the night before seem fanciful and silly. Jace goes to work and I spend the morning packing overnight cases for me and Kia, and wrapping the presents I have managed to buy for them. Kia plays happily downstairs and I take a long shower before getting ready to go and see Dad at the hospital. Jace comes home and he wraps himself around me for a long kiss before I head off to see Dad.
All is right with my world and I am smiling.
Rory sat in his car and watched Jessie drive down the road; off to the hospital to keep her slut sister company. Annie would probably grow up to be a slag too he thought nastily but goddamn if his daughters would. Rory smiled at his daughter Susie in the back of the car and she grinned back at him while she licked the lolly he had brought her. He had waited until Bryan was looking after the children and Ruth and Vanessa had left before going to collect Susie, and he had told Bryan that she had a dentist appointment. Bryan had no reason not to hand Susie over to her father but Jace might be harder to convince.
Rory took Susie from the car and they approached the cottage together. He knocked and waited and when Jace opened it and smiled he knew then Jessie hadn’t told him that Rory had raped her. He smiled charmingly and told Jace that Ruth had asked Rory to pick Kia up as she was supposed to be going over there for an hour or so but Ruth was having car trouble. Jace had asked him to wait one moment and Rory had got ready to leave quickly in case Jace was ringing to check up. But the thought never even entered his head and why should it in this village where everyone knew each other and the local doctor was part of the family?
Jace had been cleaning Kia up and getting her coat for her. Rory stood and watched holding Susie’s hand while Jace kissed Rory’s daughter goodbye and he had to bite his lip so he wouldn’t scream out with anger when Kia called Jace daddy and kissed him before following Rory to the car.
He strapped the girls in and waved goodbye to Jace, then he drove away. He had no idea where he was driving to but no one would ever take his daughters from him again and they would not grow up to be Bitch Whores like their mothers, not while he had breath left in his body. He swore it and now he would see it through. He would take his girls and he would make a life where no one knew them.
Fuck Ruth, Jessie and Vanessa Harper. He hoped they grieved to death and rotted in hell for good measure he thought as he smiled lovingly at the two little girls on the back seat.
My little girls he thought. My baby girls.