Bloody Mary (5 page)

Once I was seated again on the hard chair, Beryl continued. “Sophie told Harold about the baby, and he was really pleased, he’s such a gentle man, his family mean the world to him.”

The words grated at me, after all, if he was such a ‘family man’, why did he give my two babies away so freely. Losing two beautiful children for what? To save face? Oh yes, the anger was well and truly back!

“She wanted to know that, if he told me about the baby, would it change my mind about seeing her, and he told her what I probably would have said: that it didn’t change anything until she was rid of Darren. I was shocked when he told me that she spat a few words at him and slammed the phone down, that really isn’t like her. The next thing we heard was that she was in hospital.”

Since Darren’s car had been vandalised, they had agreed that he would use Sophie’s car and she would take the bus to work in Derby, so, as she ambled along the long gravel driveway towards Iris Cottage, still feeling deflated from the mishandled conversation with her father, Sophie was surprised to see her Fiesta parked outside.

Although the morning’s events had been disturbing, the rest of the day had been easy, with few clients to see, so she’d left earlier than usual. Darren shouldn’t have been due home for at least another hour, so why was he here? She increased her pace, curious to find out what was going on.

“Darren?” He wasn’t in the living room or kitchen, and the bathroom door wasn’t locked. She wandered if he was either at the local, or in a drunken stupor on the bed, and she climbed the stairs, hoping it was the former: she wasn’t in the mood for treading around him carefully today. “Darren?”

Her shoulders sagged as she heard a chink of glass against glass from upstairs, he was drinking and was still awake, and she prayed she’d find him in a good mood. Tentatively stepping through the door of the bedroom, she saw Darren sitting on the side of the bed, a tumbler full of brandy in hand, and a scowling face glowering at the carpet. Her first instinct was to run away, she’d had enough of the day already without her husband in a bad mood. But she ignored the inclination. “What’s up, Darren? Why are you home so early?”

“Bastards!” His yellow-brown eyes met hers and directed a vile disgust at her.

She flinched, feeling the flames from his internal rage. “Who? What’s happened?”

Darren gulped a large mouthful of brandy, rage bubbling. “I phoned the insurance company today. They told me they’re not paying out.” Another swig. “I came straight home.”

Her instinct was to run away, Darren and alcohol weren’t a good combination, but Darren plus alcohol plus anger were dangerous. But it wasn’t her he was angry about, so she guessed she was safe, and sat on the bed beside him. “That can’t be right, why have they said that?”

“They said that, after reading the police report, they believe it was an inside job.”

“What do you mean, an inside job?”

“Basically they think either I did it, or paid someone to do it.” He downed the last of the brandy, hastily replenishing the glass, and Sophie sneaked a discreet glance at the bottle to see how close he was to passing out. Very close, it was nearly empty. She breathed silently with relief. “Fucking bastard insurance bastards. I’d kill to see what the fucking pigs put on their notes. Bastards.”

“But Darren, don’t worry, I can testify that you were in bed with me when the noises woke us up. Nobody’s asked for my story yet.”

Darren was wobbly, but he was up and striding across the room, thunderous one way, thunderous back. “That’s what I told them, but they said they couldn’t accept your story because you’re my wife.”

Sophie had no idea why, but she stood, feeling as incredulous as he had probably been when he’d heard the news. “That’s ludicrous!”

It happened in an instant. His hands were on her chest, a rough shove and she was lying on the floor. “Please, no!” She was begging him, her eyes pleading, as her hands went up in self-defence.

He loomed over her, fists clenched, a cruel sneer on his face. “Maybe you arranged this. You’re the bloody solicitor. Maybe you arranged for someone to do this just to spite me, knowing your story wouldn’t back me up.”

“No! I wouldn’t do that, you know that.”

His hand grabbed her collar, the seam digging deeply into the back of her neck, and he shoved her brutally back on the floor. “You’re a bitch, Sophie, you’re a two-faced bitch!”

Sophie was edging back, desperate to escape, she’d seen and heard this all before, but now she had an added reason, a special reason, not to take a beating. “Darren, don’t, you can’t do this now, please.”

He grabbed his drink and slugged half away, giving her an opportunity to get back on her feet while he staggered about, trying to find the coordination to set the glass back down. She bolted for the staircase, perhaps in his inebriated state she could outrun him. Please! But he had her, his arm crooked about her neck from behind, squeezing the breath from her, controlling her with his strength.

“Think you can run from me, do you, bitch! Fuck off!”

Dragging at his arms with her nails, his grip loosened slightly and she sunk her teeth into his hand, he emitted a low growl of angry pain. In a swift movement, his other hand drew a fist and smashed into the side of her head, knocking her across the landing into the banister. Intense pain burned from her ribcage. Winded, she tried to speak, tell him about the baby to stop him, but no words would come.

Upon her again, grasping hands yanking her golden curls viciously as he tried to drag her back towards him, her resistance leaving clumps of torn hair between his fingers, but her tiny frame against his towering strength was pathetic. She felt the thunderous blow in her belly, once more sending her crashing into the banister, this time hitting it with her back. The final attack came as strong hands lifted her underneath her arms, her legs leaving the floor, and she could feel the banister underneath her as she realised what he was doing.

The last thing she noticed was her dripping blood hitting the wooden stairs before her face did, and the light in her head blackened to silence.

Beryl was finding it hard to relate the distressing story, but I was adamant now, remembering my Anna and Andrew, that I would keep my empathy in check. I ooh’d and ahh’d in all the right places, but it didn’t come from the heart. “We got the call from Darren telling us he’d found her at the bottom of the stairs when he got home from work. Of course, we had our suspicions as soon as he said she was hurt, but, well, for the time being, at least, we had to take him at his word. We got to the hospital as quickly as we could.

“She was in the intensive care unit, and there was no sign of Darren. The only sounds in the darkened room were the beeping of the heart monitor, and the swishing noise of the ventilator. As soon as I saw her I started to cry, she was in a bad way. The nurse explained that she was unconscious when she’d been taken by the ambulance to the accident and emergency department, and she hadn’t regained consciousness since.

“We asked about her injuries, and she explained that the bruising on her chest suggested she had broken ribs on the right hand side, but an X-ray was impossible until her condition stabilised. She said that her condition wasn’t life threatening, she was on the ventilator to ease the shock to her body. They said that if it was removed she would breathe, but the consultant wanted to keep her on it for a day or so to give her body time to start healing.”

Beryl’s eyes were blank as she glanced into mine, red-rimmed from the tears, but the anguish in them was now replaced by reticence. “Do you have children, Mary?”

I felt my jaw tighten, the anger against Harry beating me from inside, and it was hard not to grit my teeth when I replied. “I have five. Four sons and a daughter.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor again, her voice weak. “Then you’ll be able to understand how I felt at that moment.”

Yes, I thought to myself, but your daughter wasn’t taken away. Mine was. Again, I hated Beryl, I wanted to smash her head in, kick her, beat her, see her blood spill, because she still had her daughter, and I didn’t.

“I sat on one side of the bed, Harold on the other, and we each clutched her fingers. We couldn’t hold her hands because she had a cannular in each wrist. The left side of her face was swollen, completely misshapen, the bruising was deep blue, and she had a deep cut on her forehead, which had been stitched. I was in a panic, and I looked at Harold for reassurance, and, bless him, he told me she had a strong enough character and constitution to recover from this.

“Then the nurse came back in with Sophie’s notes and she quietly told us that she’d forgotten to tell us that Sophie had lost her baby in the fall. I met Harold’s eyes again and growled at him that Sophie wouldn’t recover from
that
so easily, as if it was
his
fault.”

A bustle of cool air through the door brought Steve into the room, and at the sight of his younger sister, so helpless, so peaceful, so hurt, he let out a pained gasp. Harold instantly retrieved his son’s frozen statue with an arm around his shoulder, and guided Steve to the seat he’d just occupied. Steve’s eyes flitted from his mother, to his father, to his sister, water-filled, black, screwed beneath the frown with incomprehension. “What happened?” His voice was creaky, barely there.

Harold took the question, knowing Beryl’s sobs would choke her words. “Darren said he found her at the bottom of the stairs when he got in from work. He got an ambulance straight away.”

The water drained from his eyes, back inside his body, and a flash of anger replaced the unspent tears. “Where is he? I want to talk to him.”

Beryl and Steve made eye contact, ebony to ebony, he being the child who resembled her the most: Sophie was the image of her father. “Is she going to be okay?”

Her voice cracked with the first words she’d spoken in hours, her forgotten throat parched. “She’ll be fine. They suspect rib fractures, but the rest is just bruising…”

“But what about…” Unable to continue, Steve gestured to the ventilator.

Harold waved his hand, dismissive. “No, she can breathe, it’s just taking the stress off her system for now. She’s going to be fine, son, maybe a couple of weeks of rest. Peace and quiet.”

“She was pregnant, Steve. She lost the baby.” Beryl’s words were bitter.

“You think he did this, don’t you, Mum?” He was becoming agitated again, more so when his mother didn’t respond. He stood, leaning over his sister and tenderly kissing the un-bruised cheek. “I can’t stay, not just now. I’ll be back later, I’ve got something I have to do.” He strode to the door, head high, shoulders back, and Beryl guessed her proud son needed some tears: crying wasn’t something he would do in front of anybody, even his parents.

Harold reached across to Beryl, taking her free hand, the unspoken words hanging in the air. “Do you think he did it?”

She nodded, fixing her furious eyes on her husband’s. “Yes. I do. And now you have to understand why I can’t see her, why we can’t see her. Because until she leaves him, this is going to keep happening. Or worse. I can’t support my daughter being married to a man who may well kill her one day.”

While Beryl and Harold were tending their daughter with sadness and despair, the atmosphere was the opposite in the White Horse Pub, Darren’s local haunt. Being a Monday night it was predictably quiet, just a few regulars, mainly consisting of older men. Most were divorced or widowed, visiting the pub every night simply for company, a few still married but frequenting as often as possible to flee the nagging wives at home. Yellowing walls, stained floorboards, the atmosphere had a stale odour attributed to hundreds of years of patrons smoking. It was a working-mans’ pub, through and through.

Darren, his thirty-three years easily making him the youngest in the bar, had been drinking alone at a table, nodding the occasional ‘alright’ to the other lonely drinkers. He downed the dregs in his glass and strolled to the bar. He’d already had five pints of Stella, but knew he could handle a few more before going home to a few shots of whisky. Jayne, not so attractive, but chatty enough with the customers to warrant her job, took his glass and began to refill it without asking: she knew him too well. “No Sophie tonight?”

Darren perched himself on a bar stool, five pints being plenty to free his tongue. “She’s in hospital, went in this afternoon.”

Jayne’s eyes flickered to his briefly, she continued pumping the golden liquid, pouring off the excess froth masterly as the glass filled. “Oh? Nothing serious, I hope.”

Darren felt in his pocket for the cigarettes, returning them when he remembered the smoking ban. “She must have fallen down the stairs, I found her lying there when I got home from work. I called an ambulance straight away.”

She stopped pumping the drink, astounded, and stared at him. “She’s in hospital from a fall and you’re here!” Hastily aware her judgement wasn’t in the job description, she finished filling the glass, averting her eyes.

He held his hands in the air, questioning, innocently playing the wounded little boy. “What could I do? There’s no point me being there watching her sleep, she’s in the right hands. I’ll go and see her tomorrow.” Passing the right change to Jayne, Darren took his drink, patted the cigarettes in his pocket, and strode towards the door to the car park where the smoking benches were littered. He needed some nicotine.

The best part of half an hour passed and he was on his third cigarette, each lit from the previous stub: chain-smoking was imperative for everybody now they couldn’t light up inside. Old Ernie and his fourteen-year-old Jack Russell, Lucy, had sat with him for the past two cigarettes, passing the time of day, general comments about the news, the weather, nothing substantial, but now he’d returned inside for another Guinness, leaving Darren alone.