Mine To Lose (2 page)

We touched down with a rush of adrenaline and a hearty cheer of victory.

‘Well done, birthday girl!’ Mike panted with a great big smile.

I could not stop laughing with glee. Exhilaration possessed me, and my mind felt like the horizon at dawn. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to matter. I fell to my knees with a quiet smile and whispered, ‘I want a baby.’

‘Terrible thing happened to Carol over the weekend,’ Martin said as he closed my office door on Monday morning. I had arrived at work early, eager to tell my colleagues about the weekend and the life-altering epiphany I had, the fear of the jump, and my recollection of my grandfather’s stories, but that looked like it was going to have to wait.

‘What happened? Is she alright?’ I asked.

Martin was a man of little emotion, not because he was insensitive, but because he had such a logical mind, such a composed demeanour. He wasn’t the sort of man to exclaim or marvel over something; therefore, I was alarmed when he reacted this way to one of my regular clients.

‘As well as can be expected, given the circumstances,’ he reported, ‘He’s done a right job on her; even worse than last time.’

‘Don’t say that,’ I implored. ‘I had a feeling he’d kick off when she said she was going to go to stay with her brother on Saturday. I did warn her.’ I shook my head. I didn’t have to be a clairvoyant to know that her husband, James, was going to react violently to his abused wife testing the waters of freedom.

‘I remember you said something to that effect,’ he answered. ‘But don’t you think you should have lodged a stronger dissuasion at her suggestion?’

Martin Saxon was my colleague, although more like a supervisor, slightly elevated in status and experience at the Family Centre where I worked with abused women. He was a short man with broad shoulders and receding fair hair that was sure to be gone in a few years.

‘I did,’ I defended. ‘She wouldn’t listen. Look, I admit I was happy that she finally was finally standing up to him—’

‘I wasn’t insinuating that it was your fault she went ahead with her plan,’ he eased me. ‘You just have such a powerful penchant for persuasion, such a wonderful ability to make people feel they can take on the world. Maybe you should have been less ... enthusiastic.’

‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re accusing me of pushing her too hard for a change,’ I said, feeling a bit confrontational.

‘Please don’t make this a personal issue. There’s nothing wrong with your methods. In fact, they’re normally very effective. All I am saying is that perhaps your timing was out in this instance?’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked, genuinely perplexed by his statement.

‘As you know, correct timing is as important as successful counselling. I think you may have applied too much pressure on Carol to start making life changes before she was ready to sever the tie with James completely. Am I making sense?’ he asked in a less confident tone.

He did make sense. Now that I shifted aside my predetermined blame, I could see where he was coming from.

I nodded. ‘You think I should have waited for her to move into a refuge
before
I urged her to actually be more proactive, right?’ I replied.

Martin smiled, removing his bronze-framed glasses and proceeding to clean the glass with the bottom ribbing of his ever-present cardigan.

‘Precisely, Katie. Precisely.’

His argument really was a mute point. How could Carol’s circumstance change if she didn’t feel empowered to take the necessary action? I didn’t mention this, of course. It was too late now. The future was all that mattered, and how we were going to move forward. ‘Where’s Carol now?’ I asked.

‘She’s in the staff room. Sitting in reception was too much for her, and I don’t blame her,’ he said, putting his specs back on his nose. ‘I think the condition she’s in would elicit far too much attention and gossip, so it is better for her to remain there for now.’

‘Have the police been informed?’ I asked him as I removed my jacket and placed my bag in my bottom desk drawer.

‘Yes, the neighbours called them, but Katie, until Carol presses charges and wants to move out, we can’t do more than be a shoulder to cry on.’ He sighed, shaking his head and examining the floor with his eyes, as he often did when he couldn’t find a solution to a problem.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a chat with her and see where she wants to take things from here.’

‘Very good, very good,’ he said softly. He opened my door to leave, but glanced back, ‘Oh, when you have a moment, I want to hear about your birthday surprise.’

I smiled and nodded, waiting for him to leave before trying to focus on my meeting with Carol. It was difficult to get my brain in gear when I was still harbouring the secret of my revelation. Secrets had always been horrible things to me, brewing like a stew with a tight lid. When it finally exploded, it made a far bigger mess of things than it ever would have if the lid were just removed before the pot got too hot.

I knew it would be a long and arduous journey, if not an impossible one, to persuade Jordan to consider having children. On top of that thorn firmly in my skin, I would have to deal with Martha’s wrath too. My mother-in-law was also favourable to adult freedom but not in the way of successful careers. No, Martha divorced her husband when she was forty because she couldn’t bear having only one man. Neither she, nor Jordan would ever admit it, but by the psychology of their relationship and the history of their domestic life, I had managed to piece together what she was about over the years. Life on planet Martha revolved around Martha and Jordan, and no one else came into the inclusion.

That was the only thing I hated about my marriage to Jordan; the fact that I had to deal with Martha. Personal taste and an inadvertent nudge toward rudeness aside, the woman simply had no boundaries. Sadly, her son couldn’t see it.

Jordan meant so much to me that I elected to ignore Martha’s constant know-it-all dismissal of my opinions and his consequent sycophantic agreement with her. I decided to tolerate her overbearing insults of my upbringing and class –
class –
as if she even fathomed the meaning of the word! But she always approved of my concurrence with my husband on the matter of children. As she put it, children killed a harmonious marriage, decimated any romance between a man and his wife and were not worth the effort or money they incurred during their childhood.

I abandoned the urge several times to remind her that her ill experiences as a mother weren’t the benchmark by which all parenthood should be matched, but refrained for the sake of harmony between the three of us. She meddled in everything we decided as a couple as if everything had to carry her stamp of approval before her son, a grown man halfway through his thirties, could proceed with his life.

But it didn’t help that I was disgruntled by her over-involvement in our lives because Jordan was firmly in her talons and only too happy to be so. Much as he loved me, he loved and valued her respect just as much. With Martha’s maniacal influence, I knew I could never convince him, and that bothered me endlessly.

But I had to keep my secret to myself for now. The desire to have a child had suddenly become all consuming, and the more I thought about it, the more I started to feel a warm, safe feeling blossom in my heart. As I lay in bed next to Jordan, the previous night, I imagined us as parents. I imagined vividly the sound of little footsteps running to our bedroom door, warm little hands holding on to my arm and breath smelling of milk and cookies breathing in my neck.

My smiles from the sweet thoughts I nurtured had to be hidden from Jordan this morning; otherwise, he would have asked me what I was so happy about. If I had told him the truth, I was certain he would have dropped dead right there and then.

All this was racing around in my mind as I prepared to see Carol Wicker. I had to tuck it away for now, just like with Jordan.

As I left my office and made my way down the corridor, I felt deep sadness overcome me. I didn’t know who it was for. Carol. Or me.

Carol was seated on the sofa in our staff room. It had two armchairs, a two-seater sofa, and a small coffee table. It had recently been redecorated, and the dark blue walls had been repainted with a bright yellow. This was after years of staff members complaining that the blue was very depressing. Whether the new colour would make a difference remained to be seen. Carol was sat on one of the armchairs. Her back was against the armrest, and she faced toward the other side, her legs pulled up to her chest on the couch. Her shoes were tossed carelessly under the coffee table, and she was staring out the window at the pale morning sun.

‘Carol,’ I said as gently as I could, not wanting to startle her.

‘Can I smoke in here?’ she asked without regarding me. Her voice was sore and low, fraught with indifference. I had never seen her dressed looking nothing but immaculate, yet today, her usually neat blonde hair was unkempt and fell over a face stained with smudged make-up. The clothes she wore were creased and stained.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, moving slowly towards her, ‘but there’s no smoking in here.’

‘Christ, I’d kill for a one right now,’ she said, refusing to move or to look my way.

‘I know, I know. Once we are done with our chat, we can go outside, and you can have a cigarette,’ I said smiling, trying to appease her in even the smallest way.

I was surprised when she nodded in agreement. I thought she would rather delay our talk than miss out on a nicotine fix. It was only when I moved to the other side of the sofa to sit down that I saw her from the front. My heart stopped. Her bottom lip was cut, blood red from the chafed off skin, and two of her teeth were smashed, not missing, just chipped. It was then that I realised that the jagged edges of those teeth were the reason her lip was torn. Every time she said something, she would wince in pain from the sharp protrusions cutting into her flesh.

‘Did the police take pictures?’ I asked her plainly. With domestic violence of this severity, pictures were imperative.

‘No, I sent them away. They said they’d report it, but until I press charges, it’s not official or something. To be honest, they didn’t really look like they were much interested in me. They were too in awe of James,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know what story he told them this time, but they seemed to believe I was some kind of neurotic head case who self-harms.’

‘Carol,’ I started, but she locked her blackened eyes on mine. Only then did I notice that her nose was broken too because the light shifted across her face to accentuate the fracture.

‘Please don’t start the ‘I’m sure the police would take your case seriously, mantra’ she hissed. ‘What ‘sane’ person would believe a member of parliament over the ramblings of a woman with a history of mental health problems … caused by said husband, ironically.’

‘I believe you, Carol,’ I said.

‘And where’s that got me?’ her voice rose an octave. ‘Nowhere, that’s where. I’m still in the same position I was in when I first started coming here months ago.’

‘I’m sorry, Carol, but my hands are tied. I can’t force you into taking any of the actions I put forward.’ I was growing more upset by the second. My job dictated that I remain perfectly calm, no matter what the circumstances, but this morning, it had become exceedingly difficult for me.

Martin knocked on the door, softly.

‘It’s alright, Martin,’ I called out. I could see his frame through the obscured glass of the door. Martin’s silhouette shifted off and disappeared.

‘I’m sorry,’ Carol said dejectedly, raking her hand through her hair. ‘I shouldn’t take it out on you. You’re the only person I can talk to about all this. The only person that’s been there for me.’

I slid onto the seat beside her. ‘So you didn’t tell your brother the truth?’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. He has James on a pedestal. It was James who made it possible for him to get a job in politics after all.’

‘But still …’

‘No. it doesn’t matter now anyway.’

Carol reached down into her bag and fished inside before bringing out her mobile phone and handing it to me.

‘Would you mind … taking photos of my injuries please.’

She sniffed hard and sank her chin, closing her eyes. I could see Carol’s hands begin to tremble, and her breathing turned to gasps. Tears streaked over her cheeks, adjoining the stripy residue of dried blood. The poor woman was in her late fifties, shaking like a baby in front of me.

It was going to be a very trying day for me. Not only did I have to deal with my own personal problems and the hell of the people I had to help, but now I served as a first-hand witness to a broken woman I held very dear. Not for the first time in my job, I wanted to cry at the injustice of it all – the people who got away with inflicting harm on another person, male or female, the broken homes the killing of another person’s soul. And for what? Control? Power? Superiority? All because abusers were weak. Did I really want to bring a child into a world like this where she or he could end up falling in love with someone like James?

Carol broke into my thoughts, calling my name.

‘Katie, are you going to take the pictures?’ she asked.

I handed her a few tissues and cleared my throat. It was so hard to look at her without breaking down.

‘I’m sorry, of course,’ I hardly managed to utter as I tapped on her mobile phone’s camera icon. Carol complied with my every request to capture the true horror of what her husband had inflicted on her. I knew it was going to take a while to get the images out of my mind.

Jordan knew about my nightmares, the dreams that had me waking in tears, calling my clients’ names. He knew why I ached to comfort them, and why the trauma of their abuse would never let me rest. Sometimes I could see Jordan’s frustration at my ineptitude at separating my personal life from my work. Some of those nights, he would just sigh as if he was growing tired of my weakness, but he always argued it away. At least, he never raised a hand to me and never told me to get over it like a lot of men did. But perhaps his indifference was far worse. It made me feel as if my pain was mine alone while I shared all his burdens with him.

All Jordan cared about was his mother’s dramas. He rushed to her side whenever another prospective husband she latched onto dumped her, and then I would have to listen to him raging about insensitive bastards who hurt his mother’s feelings. It pissed me off, but that was the nature of our relationship when it came to me versus Martha. Eventually, I made peace with the fact that she would always win, but at least, I was his wife. She would never get that chunk of our lives.

That morning, I took twenty pictures of Carol’s injuries. Every scratch, every split skin, chafing, skinned knees, broken teeth ... Other than that, I helped her get cleaned up and then I drove her to the hospital. She was reluctant, in case she was recognised, but I gave her my sunglasses and convinced her that nobody would even notice since the emergency room would be full of injured people anyway.

Carol seemed to find that comforting, and I promised her she could smoke as much as she liked in my car. She had to be home before James came back from work – before he realised that she had left the house. All the more, if he knew that she allowed others to see the extent of her injuries, he would do much worse.

By lunchtime, Carol’s wounds had been seen to. The physical ones, anyway. James was going to see the stitches, so I suggested she make up a believable white lie to keep him from getting aggravated or suspicious.

‘If he sees your stitches and bandages, just tell him ...’ I tried to prepare her, but Carol jumped in.

‘He’s going to kill me, Katie!’ she said, bordering on hysteria. ‘He’s going to be convinced someone will tell the media I was in the hospital.’

. My heart broke for her. ‘Tell him you gave a false name and that you told the hospital staff that you were in a car accident, okay?’

Immediately, she looked relieved. Once she gave my suggestion a bit more thought, she nodded.

‘It does look like I’ve been in a car accident,’ she said, looking in the cars drop down mirror. ‘Like he’s always telling me, no one would believe me if I told them the truth, anyway.’

Before I could respond, Carol turned her gaze to me and gripped my hand in her own. ‘But you believe me, and that’s all that matters.’

I took her home to an imposing detached house she shared with her husband and helped her clean up the broken crystal glass, toppled furniture and bloodstained shag pile carpet.

No, it wasn’t part of my job to do house calls, really, neither was it protocol to help clean the scene of an altercation. But I adored Carol and desperately wanted to help her recover, to get out. I knew she would feel stronger and better about herself if she knew there was a way out, even though she would have to go through hell as she gradually waded toward the exit sign.