Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [66]
Christ, it was Granny! Where did she come from? How long had I been unconscious? It didn’t matter. I was in too much pain to think about my language now.
‘Fuck off!’
Bearing in mind that she’d threatened me with a carving knife when I’d said ‘bugger’, you can imagine what went through her mind now.
But it was okay. I was fixed up and allowed to leave and Granny came round every other day to change my bandages. She didn’t have to do that and it was good to see her. Like a lot of families, we probably got on better once we weren’t under the same roof. Looking back, her visits remind me of the times she used to arrive with food for Mum and me.
The only problem was, I had to have a couple of months off work. By the time I was ready to return, they said they would not be renewing my contract. That was it. Cast onto the scrapheap at sixteen. I was confident I could find another job, but I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Sixteen years old and life was going wrong already. Just like Mum.
Without my job, life with Simon was suddenly worse. You don’t like to think money plays a part in matters of the heart, but when you find yourself arguing about bills and all that nonsense, it does. We were so young. We didn’t know what we were doing. Still, I hated the idea of walking out without a fight. I’d left Tremola Avenue to set up home with this guy. It would be a failure – a personal failure – if it didn’t work.
Looking back, was this my teenage response to my father walking out on Mum? Was I attempting to rewrite history with my own life? Either way, I promised myself, I will not give up on this relationship. It would be a position I would take again – and live to regret.
But then fate intervened and presented me with a way out. We were in bed one night, sound asleep, when suddenly I was awoken by a fierce banging. There was shouting as well.
‘Simon!’ I said, startled as hell.
By the time he came round, I’d realized where it was coming from. An old metal fire escape ran up the side of the house and there was someone standing on it outside our bedroom window.
‘Christ,’ I said, pulling the covers up, ‘it’s a burglar.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Simon said. ‘Listen.’
Above the sound of my heart racing, I could just about make out the words coming from outside.
‘It’s all right, it’s your neighbour from downstairs!’
‘Thank God for that,’ I said. ‘Are you going to answer?’
Simon shrugged yes, pulled on some trousers and went over to the window.
A second later there was more shouting and a bloke I’d never seen before was suddenly standing at the end of my bed. He was long-haired, scruffy and absolutely out of his mind with rage and who knows what else. And he was waving a long, sharp knife.
‘What have you done with it?’ he screamed. ‘Where have you put it?’
I just wanted to crawl back under the sheets, but he was crazy, slashing the knife into the air like he was already in a sword fight in his head.
‘Put what?’ I managed to say.
He claimed he’d left his window open and someone had taken his jewellery. It had to be someone with access to the fire escape.
‘Anyone could get up there,’ Simon told him.
He wasn’t having it. ‘It was you. I know it was. If you don’t cough it up you’re getting it.’
The way he was swaying and flailing that knife around, I knew he wasn’t right in the brain. I’d seen it before at Telscombe Cliffs. He was high on something. Maybe he’d injected, I had no idea. I just knew that logic and reason and truth meant absolutely zero to him. There was nothing he wouldn’t do at that moment.
At one point he accused me of hiding the jewels in the bed, so he ordered me out to check it. I was stark naked and even though he was too far gone to bat an eyelid, you never feel more vulnerable than when you’ve nothing on. I honestly thought he was going to finish us off there and then.
Eventually, though, he calmed down. ‘I’ll give you twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Bring it down to me and it’s no hard feelings.’ He went to leave. ‘Don’t bring it back,’ he added, ‘and I’ll kill you.’
The second he was gone