Unbind (43 page)

I was an English Literature student at Sheffield University and Kay was studying Media at Hallam. I planned on doing an MA in Journalism after my degree. It would be costly but hopefully my modelling work would cover it. That MA, one of the best in the country, was my guarantee. I knew I’d get to work with the best as I studied and hopefully, be employed by the best afterwards. Kay was set to do a fashion course after getting her undergraduate qualifications. However, neither of us went on to do those things—life and its lessons got in the way…

We were on our way to a cinema on the outskirts of town, amongst a big retail park. It was student night and heavy discounts had the likes of us flocking to the movies on Tuesdays. As we walked, we passed Arena traffic queuing to get parked. What was the show that night? I didn’t know. Whatever it was, we wouldn’t hear the pop concert while safely sequestered in the cinema with our own sound effects to keep us entertained. I can’t remember what film we were going to see, either.

Anyway as I said, I was at the curb, and I wasn’t looking at the lines on the pavement as I walked.

“Isn’t that your sister?” Dario reached over to tap my shoulder.

I looked up. I might not have seen her unless he’d pointed her out. Like I said, my gaze was fixed on the road traffic, not on the fields around us which were next to Dario’s side of the path. Amanda was hanging about on a patch of long grass next to a building site of some sort. These kind of entertainment centres were expanding all the time and it looked like a pop-up McDonald’s was joining the Pizza Hut, Frankie and Benny’s and Burger King that were already there.

Amanda stood by a pile of bricks, thinking she was inconspicuous no doubt. She was fucking 14 years old for god’s sake. She’d always wanted to grow up too quickly, live too fast. She’d gotten in with the wrong crowds, had met the wrong people, thought she was all grown up with a boyfriend who had a car. Even Dario didn’t have a car, not yet. We were students for crying out loud. How Amanda had gotten all the way out to Sheffield on a school night, I expected it was down to her boyfriend. Did our parents know she was hanging about on fields, miles away from home?

Amanda pretty much hated me. We’d never got on. She was reckless and didn’t care about doing well in school. She told me I was a square, a swot, a boring old bookworm. Once, she and a friend raced up to me in a park and lamped me, thinking it was funny. I scared the shit out of them both by getting them sandwiched together in a Boston crab. It taught them a lesson but didn’t stop my sister hanging with the wrong people.

Perhaps Amanda had taken the brunt of my father’s evil. Had it affected her worse than Anabel and me? I had my studies, Anabel had her accountancy courses to focus on, but Amanda never had any interest in anything other than being popular. I wondered whether she was even more grown up than me…

Kay and the others stopped alongside me and we stared at the group of teenagers who were smoking, larking about, telling jokes and swearing. Kay knew some of the truth about my upbringing but the boys knew nothing, not a scrap about what I’d dealt with all through my childhood.

“I’ll catch up with you all,” I muttered to Kay, “go on ahead. I just need to make sure she is not doing something daft.”

“Sure?” Kay checked with me, holding my wrists for reassurance.

“They’re nothing I can’t handle.”

The trio padded onwards and I made for Amanda and her crew. They were all dressed in dark clothing to camouflage them against the night. As I got closer, I wondered how it had gotten to this point for Amanda. Why wasn’t she back in Barnsley with a gang of girlfriends, braiding hair or watching
Friends
? Why was it that she needed a boyfriend already, was hanging out with mostly blokes, dyed her hair black and chopped it, and wore six rings in each ear?

I arrived to a cacophony of wolf whistles and tried to ignore them.

“Hey, Amanda! A word?” I shouted above everyone else.

She whipped her head up; so she hadn’t seen me coming or else she might have scampered long ago. Everyone quickly cottoned on and chanted childishly, “Mandy’s in trouble! Mandy’s in trouble!”

Amanda stumbled over and I recognised she was drunk. On a Tuesday night. She was also smoking something that looked suspiciously like a foil spliff.

“Do the ’rents know you’re out? Why have you got a tattoo?”

I saw on her upper arm—a love heart with barbed wire. She most likely hid it while she was at home.

“What the fuck do you care?”

I gawped. When did that little baby girl I watched my mother nurse and change nappies on end up like this?

“Why shouldn’t I care? I’m your sister!”

“You left, right? Yeah? Fucking left. Get the fuck off with your friends and die somewhere.” She flicked her fingers at me, as if I was a fly she was irritated by.

“You’re 14. Why are you doing this?” This person in front of me was a semblance of who my sister used to be.

I easily stood half a foot taller than her. I didn’t know if she had started her periods yet but Mum had intimated Mandy was a late bloomer. It might have happened since I’d gone to uni, but I couldn’t get over the fact that my baby sister was suddenly caked in gunk and looked so jaded, already.

“You left, Chlo! Don’t you know how hard it’s been since
you
went! Don’t you?”

“Listen, okay. Right. Listen. I’m only doing what most regular girls do, you know? Striving for something better.”

She tipped her head back and laughed raucously, holding her belly like I’d just said the most ridiculous thing ever.

“I pay my way… I’m doing catalogue work now. I didn’t get any handouts.”

She rolled her eyes and I saw something in her that was wise beyond her years, yet she baulked at the world—had driven into the dark side of herself.

Her face scrunched. “He takes it out on us now you’re not there to protect us. Proud of that, are you?”

Why should I have felt guilty? I was 19, just living my life. What did I have to be sorry for? I wasn’t responsible for his actions but I did want to know exactly what he had been up to.

“Takes what out on you?” I demanded angrily.

“His anger. The usual, old stuff. Threatening us.”

“With what? What has he got to threaten you with?” I gritted out.

“Fuck do you care,” she retaliated, but I noticed how she absentmindedly touched her ribs like she didn’t think I was staking her body language. I lifted her top and saw bruising all along her rib cage.

“He did this? Did he do this?” She gave me no response but I knew it. I knew it. “You’ve got to fight back!” I demanded, even though I didn’t know how she could. I just didn’t have the answers.

“I am,” she smiled, gesturing back at her friends. She relit her cigarette and took a long drag. It was something heavier than weed, I knew that for sure. When she exhaled, the smoke was an odd colour and her eyes rolled around, her legs nearly buckled beneath her small frame.

“I don’t mean by rebelling. I mean by getting your GCSEs and showing him he’s fucked up… he lost and you won. Get out, like me.”

“You, left, us,” she repeated again, and wagged her head accusingly, like I was a criminal for leaving.

A few years back, I threatened to show him up in front of his pals down the
Bluebell
if he hit us anymore. At 16 I was already getting served in bars or pubs and he knew I’d follow through. I looked and sounded older than I was. I said if he pushed me, or my sisters about again, he would see how far it got him. His pals wouldn’t have time for a guy who hit his own daughters.

Seemed like since I’d moved out, he’d reverted back obviously.

“What do you want me to do, Amanda? Seriously? You’re a minor, your guardians are Mum and Dad. I am not the one responsible for you. If it’s that bad… seriously! What am I to do?” I fisted my own hair and threw my hands in the air. This was meant to be a rare night of enjoyment.

She clucked her tongue and her nose wrinkled in disdain. Her eyes swam in something, but they weren’t tears. Where Dad pushed me down and I sprang back, instead she just fell lower and lower into the quagmire. I felt like I couldn’t reach her, not where she’d gone and ventured to. She was cold, so cold, and that is what she’d become to survive.

“You don’t give a shit about me, Chlo. Fuck off back to your nice, promising future, and I’ll go back to my friends and die.”

She swivelled on her heels and turned, walking back to her friends. I folded my arms and stood still, watching her. Life continued to move around us, onward to the cinema or a restaurant… or home for the night. Why was it my little sister was more content on a field, smoking with seedy-looking types? Why did she think this was the only answer?

When I saw another gang approach the one she was hanging out with, I wondered. Her friends stood straighter suddenly, adopted stances more becoming of people doing business than those larking about smoking on corners. I watched the interactions carefully and against the hazy lights of passing traffic and nearby streetlamps, I spotted the brief exchange of money and a plastic packet. Such brazenness. This went on all the time, obviously. I can’t say drink or drugs ever attracted me—I was so ignorant or uninterested in that respect.

The realisation dawned. My sister’s boyfriend was a dealer. I shook my head and thought I was still unnoticed, but when he turned and looked right at me, I knew I wasn’t. The guy he’d just sold to had spotted me staring and he and his crew legged it instantly, having already gotten what they came for.

The boyfriend stomped over and became confrontational, marching right up to me so our noses were almost touching. His eyes were bloodshot and his breath stank. His face veined, he was at least ten years older than my sister.

I wasn’t scared of him.

“What have you promised my sister, eh? Opportunity? Freedom from the world? A nice house with the profits of your dirty little trade.”

He laughed, but only with his eyes.

“So, you’re Amanda’s big sis? She’s told me aaaaall about you, how you think you’re so amaazing. Crock ’o shit, if you ask me. Speak like you’re better than us.”

No, I just speak like a civilised human being
.

I lifted a hand, pointing a finger at him. “Stay away from my sister. All you can offer her is a grave!”

I was angry. Nobody wanted to see me angry, believe me. I’d stored it up many years but had somehow found an outlet. Kay roped me into karate lessons with her when she’d started to do it as a method of self-defence. I’d left plenty of opponents with lipstick spread to their foreheads, black and blue eyes, knees bleeding and outfits torn. That was just with the first touch, some of those. I was tall and big boned and you can imagine how easily I saw red, just thinking of
him
.

When I needed to get angry, all I had to do was remind myself of all the times I’d found Mum crying in the kitchen after terse words from Dad. I was reminded of the times he’d told me, “You’ll fail. You’re nothing.”

You don’t ask to be born into the world only to know that your very existence is a blight on someone else’s. When I looked at my mother, I often saw a woman with potential who’d been driven down so low that she often felt frightened to leave her own house and instead became reclusive.

The boyfriend kind of grinned, I wasn’t sure. A sick, sinister little glint shone in his eye. Amanda stalked over and flashed her smile.

“Sonny, come on. She’s cool.”

“She ain’t. She’s a cunt.”

Amanda laughed nervously. “Listen, Sonny… she’s harder than she looks, right? Her mate is that Kayla who kicks shit outta people for kicks, yeah. Come on, let’s go ’fore the cops turn up and move us on.”

I looked at my sister and tried to tell her with my stare,
Why are you allowing yourself to be brought down to their level? This isn’t you, we both know it
.

This Sonny character was offering my sister a sense of community, then? What else? Drugs? Sex?

“Are you fucking him?” I turned to her suddenly, the thought hitting me like a ton of bricks and making me so, very angry.

She stuck her tongue in her cheek and looked cocky, sharing a knowing smile with him.

Boiling. I was boiling. With rage.

“You should be locked up, Sonny. For paedophilia if nothing else.”

I grabbed Amanda by the elbow and tried to drag her off. I was quite successful to begin with. Like I said, I was strong and towered over my sister. I yanked her toward the main road, intent on putting her on a bus straight back home.

“Let her go, bitch,” Sonny shouted after us.

“You’ll be lucky.”

We got a few yards when Amanda spat at me. “Get off!”

I continued on, ploughing ahead. Nothing would deter me from getting her home. I was blinded by a violent, raging sadness. I needed to yank Amanda away and out of that lifestyle, far from those people.

My evening, ruined.

“You’re shagging him, aren’t you? Please, tell me you’re not.”

“I’m not,” she said in a stroppy voice, sniggering.

I stopped, took her shoulders, and looked right into her eyes. My heart was beating so loudly I could hardly hear anything other than the rush of blood in my ears. I swallowed the toxic ball in my throat and begged, “You’re not! Please, no!”