Watching Over You (32 page)

Mikey yelled and ran away but Billie stood and stared. If it wasn’t for the quick reaction of a new lady assistant, I’m not sure what would have happened to me. She came running over, pulled off her coat, and doused out the flame. Then she picked me up in her arms, took me back into the house, and called an ambulance before anyone could stop her.

I can still recall the smell of my skin singeing as the material stuck to it.

I can still remember my screams.

I can still remember the pain.

I had to have five operations to repair it, and skin taken from my thigh to put over it, the wound was so deep. It left most of my wrist and forearm burned and shrivelled away, twisted and bumpy, like the material of the jacket had seeped into my skin. The redness has faded over the years, changed to candy-floss pink, but I keep it covered anyway. I hate having it on show. It reminds me of a time when I was vulnerable.

I’m not vulnerable anymore.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Charley hadn’t heard a sound from the flat for a while. She wondered where Ella was, what she was doing, all the time trying not to think that anything terrible had happened to Aaron. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been trapped but she did know he would have arrived by now. An hour must have passed, probably more.

Once Ella came back, she was going to try and talk to her again. Persuading: she did it all the time for her job. Coercing frightened women to stand up for themselves was part of her role, even when she knew that if she’d been in their situation she would never press charges either.

Maybe if she could get Ella to offload, make her feel empathized with, she might let her out. Then she could make a run for it.

Feeling calmer for now, she sat still. If it took her all night, hell, what did she have to lose?

She would get out of this closet.

Ella stood in the middle of Jean’s room, clenching and unclenching her fists.

How the hell did she find you? She couldn’t have known about you. It’s too much of a coincidence. And who else knows? Does everyone know about you?

She stopped for a moment and looked across at her house, the front door left wide open in her hurry to get across to Jean.

It’s all her fault – that Charley.

Ella nodded slowly. ‘If she hadn’t come along and poked her nose in my business, none of this would have happened. She deserves to be locked in that closet. Until she can be a good girl, she’s going nowhere. I won’t feed her and I won’t let her out. No one knows she’s there. I can do this as long as I want. I can keep this game up forever.’

She stepped over Jean’s body, glancing at it briefly.

‘Why did you have to fuck my life up? What did I do? I wasn’t naughty yet I was punished every day. And now look what you made me do. I hurt Aaron and I killed Billie. It’s your fault.’

But just as quickly, her jumbled thoughts changed direction. Dropping to her knees, seeing not Billie but Jean’s face again,
distorted
by fear, eyes staring widely ahead, she froze. Had she killed her?

She touched her face, gently. She was warm.

She’s dead!

‘No.’

Was she still breathing? Ella wasn’t sure.

‘I’m in so much trouble.’ Then she frowned, looked around the room. Where the fuck was Billie?

She turned to the door quickly. ‘I have to get out of here.’

In the quiet of the closet, Charley’s heart began to boom when a door slammed shut. Then, footsteps. There was someone inside the flat. She stood up, pressed her ear to the door, praying it wasn’t her imagination.

‘Ella?’ She knocked on the door. ‘Aaron! Who’s there? Please let me out.’

‘You’re not going anywhere.’

Charley’s eyes welled with tears at the sound of Ella’s voice. She didn’t want it to be Ella. She wanted it to be Aaron. Why hadn’t he come to get her out?

She knocked on the door again. ‘Ella, please. I need to pee.’

‘Piss in the closet.’

‘I can’t do that. Please let me out and then we can talk again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘You never wanted to talk to me after you started seeing lover boy.’

Charley held in a sob as she thought of Aaron again.
Keep cool
, she told herself.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. But we can talk now.’

‘Like we have all the time in the world?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Sorry, I’m busy.’

‘Two minutes! You can spare me that much time, surely.’

‘Okay.’

She gave in far too quickly for Charley’s liking but, now she had her attention, she didn’t know what to say, or even where to start. But Ella filled in her silence.

‘You’re a support worker, right?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘What exactly do you do for your job?’

‘I help people, talk to them and listen to their problems. If I can get someone else to assist them, I do that too. Otherwise,
I encour
age them to help themselves.’

‘Maybe I could have got better if you had been my support worker, like you rallied round that woman, that Margaret Owen.’

Charley’s brow furrowed. How did she know one of her
clients
?

‘I followed you there. I saw you talking on her doorstep.’

Charley shuddered, goose-bumps rising over her skin. The last time she had seen Margaret Owen was just before she was due in court as a witness. That had been eight weeks ago, not long after she had moved in. Christ, had Ella been following her all that time?

No, she couldn’t have. She must be bluffing.

But the Ella she was dealing with wasn’t rational; she was quite capable of doing something like that.

‘If you were a proper support worker, you would have helped me anyway,’ Ella continued. ‘You would have listened to me, and not gone off at the first sniff of a man. You should have been there for me too.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I –’

‘Fuck you, Charley!’

‘But I care about you, Ella. Please, I can help you, if you let me out of the closet.’

‘Piss off. I’m not that stupid.’

Charley ran a hand through her hair and stepped back from the door. Then she tried a different tack. ‘Ella, did you assault
Brendan
Furnival the other night?’

‘No.’

‘It doesn’t matter if you did because –’

‘It was Cassie. She just hit him and hit him and hit him.’

‘I would have!’ she cried excitedly, realising she was getting somewhere. Ella had never mentioned the name Cassie before. ‘I know of him and what he’s done in the past. He’s an evil man.’

‘He was the father of my baby.’

‘Is that Amy?’

‘Yes.’

‘She died.’

Charley put her fist in her mouth to stop herself from crying out. She didn’t want to feel sorry for Ella but she could feel her anguish. The pain of losing their daughter two weeks after Dan had died came flooding back, grief ripping through her as if it were yesterday. It had torn her apart. She squeezed shut her eyes to stop the tears, trying to regain control of her breathing, stay calm. She had to keep it together.

Pushing away her sorrow, she tried to use the information to her advantage.

‘Ella, I’m so sorry,’ she replied, her voice now even and
authoritative
.

‘No one else was. They took her from me.’

‘Who took her?’

‘The angels. Amy was my little angel.’

‘How old was she?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

‘You would have been a good mother, I’m sure,’ she told her.

‘I know.’

A sniff: was Ella crying now? She tried to get her to open up some more.

‘Brendan Furnival wasn’t a nice man, Ella. If he hurt you, it wasn’t your fault.’

‘All men are nasty. I hate them all. Especially Aaron; he took you away from me.’

Charley had to ask, she had to know what she was up against. ‘Have you seen him this evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has he been into your flat?’

‘No. He’s been into your flat, though. And so have I.’

‘Have –’

‘He won’t come to your rescue. I made sure of that.’

‘What do you mean?’

Silence.

Charley banged on the door. ‘Ella, what do you mean? What have you done?’

‘I stuck a knife in him.’

‘NO!’

As Charley banged on the door, Ella rushed to her feet. What was she doing sitting on the floor having a conversation as if she had all the time in the world? Everyone would be coming after her soon.

You have to leave.

‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ Ignoring Charley’s protests, she reached under the bed for a suitcase and unzipped it quickly. Opening a drawer, she scooped up everything inside and shoved it in. Then she looked around. Was there anything else she should take?

You can’t come back.

Her books! She couldn’t leave behind her beloved treasures. But she wouldn’t be able to carry too many. There wouldn’t be room.

You know that, don’t you?

She would take three and that would be her limit.

You can’t come back. Ever.

Ella headed off to choose.

Charley sobbed as her hand slapped on the door again and again. The thought of Aaron lying wounded downstairs when she was locked up brought out the claustrophobia she had been battling to contain. What if he was bleeding, and there was no one there to tend to him? He might bleed out and die! He might even be…no, she couldn’t bear it.

With her breathing rapidly ascending into panic, the tips of her fingers started to tingle. She closed her eyes, trying to think of nothing. Keeping her mind blank was the only way she could calm herself down. She concentrated on conjuring up the colour purple. She’d read online somewhere that this helped focus the mind and return the breathing to normal. But all she could see was black.

Suddenly she heard a noise. She listened carefully. It sounded like a zip – then a drawer opening and closing a moment later.
A thu
mp as something dropped to the floor. Her breathing took on a life of its own again. Was Ella leaving? She’d be left in the closet. No one would know where she was. She could die in here and no one would know!

‘Ella?’ She knocked on the door this time. ‘Please let me out and we can talk!’ She listened for the front door to open but nothing. ‘Ella? Ella, are you there? ELLA! Where the fuck ar
e yo
u?’

‘I’m here, for goodness sake. Chill out.’

Tears of relief fell. Charley wasn’t sure if she could keep it together for much longer.

‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ she said. ‘Why would you lock me in here?’

‘Are you stupid? You’ve just read my notes!’

‘I know, I understand that, but –’

‘How can you understand with your perfect life and your perfect house and your perfect job and your perfect new boyfriend? Just because your husband died, you think you’ve endured grief? You don’t know anything.’

Charley closed her eyes, rubbed at them for a moment. How could Ella think her life was perfect when she had lost the man she thought she would spend the rest of her days with? She might be with Aaron now, and yes, it was a new beginning for her, but that would never take away the loss that she’d felt. She couldn’t even use that to talk to Ella about. In her mental state, Ella wouldn’t understand.