Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 1656
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(aka Bike) Part 1656 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad
All Rights Reserved. |
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I pleaded with Stella to go and collect the girls for me, and she did so on condition she could use my car. I reluctantly handed over the keys. I was left with her two who were asleep at the moment, and my still sobbing baby–not counting, a probably sobbing twenty year old, as well.
I cuddled Catherine and she finally stopped crying. I placed her in the play pen with her favourite doll and dashed upstairs. Jacquie’s door was shut with a chair wedged behind it. I hope I don’t need to climb in the window again because I can’t get the ladder up by myself, Simon had to do it last time.
I listened against the door, there was crying coming from within–so she hadn’t tried to kill herself–yet. “Jacquie, will you open the door, please?”
The crying stopped for a moment, then, a response, “No, go away.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sweetheart. So either you open the door for me or I’ll have to call someone else to come to see you.”
“Who?” her tone sounded more anxious than aggressive.
“Your therapist, or I could call the probation service if you’d prefer?”
“No, I don’t want to see them.”
“Please open the door.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I need you to, Jacquie.”
“Please go away.”
“I will once I’ve spoken to you.”
“Promise?”
“If you promise not to harm yourself, then yes.”
“You’ll try to trick me.”
“I promise I won’t. I just want to talk.”
I heard a chair move and then the door opened a crack and half a face peered out of the split down the side of the frame. “Talk,” she said.
“Open the door properly, please.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Please, as head of this family, I have the authority to ask you to do as I say.”
“Tom is head.”
“That’d be news to him.”
“Simon, is then.”
“That would be an even bigger surprise. I’m in charge here, so please do as I ask, like a good daughter would.”
“I don’t want you as my mummy anymore, you don’t trust me.”
“That’s for you to decide, but you’re still under my roof so you must respect my rules.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“An’ if I refuse?”
“I will call the probation service.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Who is your probation officer?”
“Maggie Swinton, why?”
I pulled my mobile from my jeans pocket and pressed speed dial. “Could I speak to Maggie Swinton, please? Thanks, I’ll hold.” I looked at the horrified face at the door. “They’ve gone to look for her, she’s in the building.”
“No, please, Mummy, I’ll open the door.” The chair was moved again and the door opened. I clicked off my phone after saying to my answer service, “That’s okay, I’ll try again later.” I replaced the phone in my pocket.
She let me into the room. “Would you have sent me back?” she sobbed at me.
“I didn’t come to discuss that, I came to apologise. I panicked when I discovered that Catherine was missing, because I genuinely didn’t hear you say where you were going.”
“You actually thought I’d hurt her, Mummy?”
“I wasn’t thinking at all, sweetheart. Stella had wound me up and I discovered her missing and didn’t know where she was or where you were. I rushed all round the house and Stella said you’d gone out.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Mummy?”
“I did, I didn’t know what I thought. Possibly, part of me did relive old prejudices, I don’t know. If I did then I am ashamed of myself, because I know you didn’t hurt that little boy, so I honestly don’t believe you’d hurt any other child, especially one you knew.”
“You’re trying to confuse me now, aren’t you?”
“No, I’d like to help you, and I’d like you to trust me again, as I trust you.”
“But, Mummy, you didn’t trust me, did you?”
“Part of me did, part of me was so frightened I wasn’t thinking at all.”
“Why were you frightened, Mummy?”
“Because I worry about you.”
“In case I hurt your babies?”
“No, more in case you hurt yourself. I think you are far more at risk than my children.”
“That’s really why you came to see me, isn’t it, in case I revoke my promise and kill myself–that would really embarrass you, wouldn’t it?”
“Do you really think that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, I’ve been very embarrassed before and lived through it–so think on that.”
“You don’t love me, do you, Mummy?”
“Why d’you think, I’m here now?”
“So you don’t have to explain to the police.”
“I’ve dealt with worse things with the police.”
“I don’t believe you, Mummy?”
“How about them finding someone in the drive with one of my arrows in him?”
“You shot someone with a bow and arrows?”
“It was self defence.”
“And they believed you?”
“He was going to shoot a bodyguard we had here.”
“And you killed him?”
“No, I hit him with an arrow, I don’t think it killed him.”
“Not much of a shot then, are you, Mummy?”
“It might be harder to disable someone than kill them.”
“Did you know the police don’t shoot to disable, they shoot to kill, they say because a disabled gunman can still shoot back. So they shoot to stop someone, or so one of my friends in the YOI said. Her dad was a copper, didn’t stop her beating an old lady to death for her pin number.”
“Charming friends you have.”
“She didn’t shoot someone with a bow and arrow.”
“Robin Hood did.”
“So are you, Maid Cathy, then?
“I think by being married, it would make me Mistress Catherine, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, I s’pose so.”
“Do I take it, you’ll honour your promise to me?”
“Why? You gonna shoot me full of arrows if I don’t?”
“Nah, it blunts the tips and the blood stains the shafts.”
“Ugh, gross, Mummy, too much information.”
“Probably. I must go and check on the baby, unless you’d like to do it for me?”
“Aren’t you frightened that I’ll kill her, I am a convicted killer you know?”
“No, you won’t harm her, remember you told an old lady that she was your baby sister–so that means you love her.”
“I could do it for badness.”
“I could say the same about calling the probation service or the police.”
“Or filling me full of arrows?” she smirked.
“Yeah, that too. Of course if I did that we’d have to dispose of the body, but we have a pit out the back, so some quicklime and you’d be no more very soon. Or we could do an old fashioned cremation on a log pyre, that almost completely destroys a body.”
“You are sick, Mummy, gross.”
“Not really, I’m a pragmatist. You hurt me, you pay for it.”
“But you’re an angel, Trish and Julie said so.”
“To some, the angel of death.”
“I thought you were a healer, not a killer?”
“And I thought you were wrongly convicted by a miscarriage of justice.”
“I was, Mummy.”
“So maybe, I really am a healer, an angel–but do you really want to test me? What if angels can also destroy? What about the last plague to befall the Egyptians, the Passover and all that?”
“I don’t think I like you, Mummy, you frighten me.”
“Do I? I don’t mean to, but to everything there is an equal and opposite reaction. At least according to Newton, there is. Perhaps he was right, but would you take that risk?” I felt like Dirty Harry, ‘This here is a magnum, the world’s most powerful handgun...’ it wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
“But I want you to love me, Mummy, not hurt me.”
“Which is exactly what I want to do as well, so will you go and check on Catherine, while I check Fiona and Puddin’?”
She went off down the stairs and I went into Stella’s rooms–her two were still asleep. I wandered back downstairs wondering what I’d achieved–not much, I’d probably frightened her, I’d certainly frightened myself with my cold bloodedness, or pretend sang-froid. Sometimes I didn’t like myself at all, now might be one of them. But at least we were talking–so far.
