Broke (36 page)

‘What about Bobby?’ said Jenny. ‘You can’t just go out and leave him.’

‘He’s asleep,’ Mark reminded her. ‘And considering what you’ve done, the least you can do is watch him till I get back. But I won’t be stopping when I do,’ he added coldly. ‘So don’t bother acting like everything’s all right, ’cos it ain’t.’

He threw her aside now, and stormed out.

36

Amy hadn’t seen Mark since that awful day at the court months earlier when he’d been granted provisional custody of the kids, so when he walked into Steve and Layla’s front room now her heart skipped several beats. He was as handsome as ever, but she could see from the dark shadows beneath his eyes that full-time parenting hadn’t been a breeze. He had only been doing what she’d had to do on her own before he took them away from her, but she hoped it hadn’t been as hard on the kids as it had apparently been on him.

‘Got my message, then, did you?’ Steve said, waving for him to sit down. ‘Sorry it was so vague, but I didn’t want to say too much in case Jenny picked it up.’

‘She did,’ said Mark, staying on his feet. ‘And it’s kicked off good style.’

‘Sorry,’ Amy murmured, misunderstanding him. ‘I didn’t mean to cause trouble between you, I just wanted to make sure the kids were okay. There’s things going on that you don’t—’

‘He’s got Cass,’ Mark blurted out before she could finish. ‘And he says he’ll only give her back if you go to him.’

‘What?’ Amy gasped. ‘
No!
Please, God, no!’

‘Jenny reckons he won’t hurt her,’ Mark went on. ‘But he’s got a gun, and I’m scared what he might do if he doesn’t see you. You’ll have to go to him. He says you’ll know where to find him.’

‘Let’s go . . .’ Steve was already pulling his jacket on. ‘I’ll drive.’

‘No, she’s got to go alone,’ Mark told him. ‘He said he’ll kill Cass if anyone else goes near.’

‘And he’ll kill Amy if he gets his hands on her,’ said Layla.

‘No, he won’t, he just wants to see her,’ argued Mark. He turned to Amy now and gave her a pleading look. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you and him, and I don’t really care, but you’re the only one who can stop him.’

‘No, you don’t know what’s been going on, do you?’ Steve interjected angrily, unable to keep his thoughts to himself any longer. ‘He’s been beating the shit out of her and forcing her to sell herself, and now you want her to go and face him on her own?’

‘I should never have left,’ Amy murmured guiltily. ‘He said he’d get Cassie if I did. This is all my fault.’

‘Too right it is!’ Mark turned on her angrily. ‘You knew he’d do this, but you took off anyway? Christ, I knew you didn’t give a shit about the kids, but that’s low even for you.’

‘Shut your mouth,’ snapped Steve. ‘It’s not her fault, it’s
yours
. You’re the one who borrowed the fucking money and left her to pay it back. Did you think he was just going to forget about it and walk away?’

‘She ain’t the little innocent she’s making out,’ Mark shot back indignantly. ‘She was shagging him before my side of the fucking bed was cold. It ain’t
my
fault they’ve had a barney and he’s pissed off with her.’

‘Are you thick?’ Steve roared. ‘Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? She wasn’t sleeping with him ’cos she wanted to, he’s been
raping
her.’

‘Not according to Marnie and Gemma,’ Mark yelled back. ‘And they should know, seeing as they watched her sneaking him in over the back fence for months on end. Who does that if they’ve got nothing to hide?’

On the couch, her hands over her ears as the argument raged, Amy snapped and slammed her fists down on the cushions. ‘Shut up, both of you! This is getting us nowhere.’

‘Yeah, well, you shouldn’t make out like I’m the bad one,’ Mark muttered. ‘
They
might believe you, but they don’t know what you’re really like.’

‘To be honest, I don’t care what you think about me any more,’ Amy told him wearily. ‘I just want to find my daughter.’

‘Can you think where he might have taken her?’ Steve asked, swallowing the rage that had almost propelled him to smack his one-time best mate in the mouth.

‘No.’ Amy shook her head, her mind racing over various possibilities. ‘I’m trying to remember where he’s taken me in the last few months, but I was out of my head most of the time, so it’s all hazy.’

‘Well, you’d best hurry up and start thinking,’ said Mark irritably. ‘The longer he’s got her, the more chance he’ll have to hurt her.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Amy glared at him. Then, standing, she marched towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Steve called after her. ‘You’re not going on your own – we’re coming with you.’

‘I just need the toilet,’ she lied. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Steve turned to Mark when she closed the door and shook his head. ‘This is all your fault, this. You’ve got no fucking clue what you’ve done to that girl, have you?’

‘What
I
’ve done to
her
?’ Mark retorted indignantly. ‘You saw the state of the kids when I took them.’

‘What did you expect? You abandoned them! And now you’ve got the cheek to stand here and make out like—’

‘Steve, she’s going!’ Layla interrupted, struggling to pull herself up out of her seat when she saw Amy running down the path. ‘Quick, go after her!’

Aware that Steve and Mark would follow when they realised she had sneaked out, Amy ran down the road and hid in an alley until Steve’s car had driven past. Then, zipping up Kelvin’s freshly washed hoodie, she set off in the opposite direction. Yates had said that she would know where to find him, but she didn’t have a clue. But she wasn’t going to find him by standing there thinking about it.

As she walked, a cold feeling of finality began to settle over her. Mark had been her world since she was fourteen years of age, and even after everything that had happened because of him her heart had still ached at the sight of him. But he’d made it quite clear that he considered her responsible for all this, and that had killed off the last stupid bit of hope she’d been harbouring of them getting back together in the future. Whatever happened now – if she even managed to get out of this alive – there was no going back. Mark was as dead to her as she had obviously been to him for the last few months.

37

Cassie’s tear-swollen eyes were stinging from the effort of trying to keep them open. Uncle Lenny had taken her to his flat after leaving Jenny’s and they had stayed there for ages, which had been horrible because it smelled bad and there were flies everywhere.

He had been nice to her to start with, giving her a can of Coke and a packet of crisps, and putting the TV on so she could watch cartoons while he smoked his strange-smelling cigarettes and sniffed his medicine powder. But, after a few hours of constantly getting up to look out of the window, he’d started to pace up and down the room and talk to himself. And that had scared Cassie, so she had tried to shrink herself into the corner of his dirty couch in the hope that he might forget she was there.

But he hadn’t forgotten, and when it started to get dark he’d taken her back down to the car and driven her here. Although she hadn’t realised where
here
was until they reached the house, because he’d parked a few streets away and made her walk through the field before lifting her over the back fence.
Then
she’d known, and her heart had soared at the sight of Bobby’s old bike sitting where he’d left it in the middle of the overgrown grass alongside her old skipping rope and headless Barbie doll. But the joy had quickly turned to sorrow when Yates opened the back door and pushed her inside.

In her dreams, Cassie always saw the house as it had been back when they were still a family. But the reality was shockingly different from those happy memories. It smelled even worse than Yates’s flat and, as dark as it was, she could see heaps of rubbish everywhere she looked. And without electric or gas, there was no TV to watch, or heating to take the chill off. But, after telling her to lie on the sofa, Uncle Lenny had brought down the quilt off her mum’s bed and covered her with it, so at least she was warm now.

As the faint, almost forgotten scent of her mother rose to her nostrils now, she lost the battle to stay awake and Yates, whose eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark, smiled to himself when he saw that she’d fallen asleep.

It wouldn’t be long now.

He’d made a mistake going to his own flat, but he’d forgotten that Amy had never actually been there. Still, she’d find him now, he was sure, because mothers were like that. Where their children were concerned, they had an inbuilt radar. At least,
decent
mothers did. The alkie bitch
he
’d been cursed with wouldn’t have spat on him if he’d been rolling on the floor in front of her with flames coming out of his eyes. But Amy loved her kids, so it wouldn’t be long.

Amy’s legs felt like jelly by the time she reached the house. She’d been walking around all day, and had just about given up on ever finding Yates.

After leaving Steve’s place she’d gone to Levenshulme, to see if anyone at
Hawaii
had seen him or heard from him. It had been closed, so she had gone to Moss Side instead, to The Beehive pub where Mark had told her he’d first met Yates. Nobody there knew where he lived – or, at least, they weren’t about to tell her if they did. So, from there, she’d walked aimlessly around the streets of Moss Side in the hope that Yates might drive past and see her. But he hadn’t. So now, finally, she had come home. Not because she expected Yates to be here, but to ask Marnie if
she
knew where he might be.

As she was walking past her own house en route to Marnie’s, a movement at her living-room window caught her eye and, even though she couldn’t see him, she instinctively knew that it was Yates.

Heart in her mouth, she turned and walked up the path.

Yates opened the door before she reached it and stepped aside to let her in before closing it again – quietly, so as not to alert the neighbours that something was going on. Then, turning to face her in the dark hall, he peered at her closely, a mess of conflicting emotions raging through him.

He knew she was scared: he could feel it and smell it. But there was a glimmer of defiance in her eyes, and her chin was raised as if she was ready for a fight. It was as if the old feistiness which had first attracted him to her had returned, and that excited him.

But it didn’t mean he was going to let her get away with making a fool of him.

‘So, the wanderer returns,’ he said, grinning nastily as he took a step towards her. ‘What’ve you got to say for yourself?’

Amy forced herself not to flinch as his breath enveloped her face. Her instincts, which had been dulled for so long, were sparking back to life with a vengeance. She sensed that he wanted to punish her for escaping him, but the fact that he hadn’t yet made a move made her wonder if she might not be able to turn the situation around. It would be tricky, because he wasn’t stable at the best of times, but even if he ended up killing her, she had to try – for Cassie’s sake.

‘I had to get away,’ she told him quietly. ‘My head was messed up, and I needed to sort it out.’

‘Is that right?’ Yates drawled. ‘And you really thought I’d just let you walk out on me?’

‘No, I knew you’d find me,’ said Amy, keeping her voice even and calm. ‘But I had to get straight, or I wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

‘A chance to what?’ Yates narrowed his eyes. He’d been waiting for this moment for weeks, had dreamed of torturing her and making her beg for mercy. But she was acting as if she was here of her own free will, and that threw him.

‘To sort this mess out,’ said Amy, choosing her words carefully because she sensed that she was only going to get one shot at this. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I left, and I kind of understand why you got so mad at me. You were good to me after Mark left, and I was horrible to you. But you should have given me a bit more time.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Amy shrugged. ‘To get to know you, I suppose. Mark’s the only lad I’d ever been with before you, and I felt guilty.’

‘He cheated on you,’ Yates reminded her. She sounded sincere, but no one had ever been truly sincere towards him before, so he wasn’t sure he could trust her.

‘I know.’ Amy sighed. ‘But I don’t care any more; I’m over him. So where do we go from here?’

‘Are you fucking with me?’ Yates was staring at her intently. ‘’Cos you know I don’t like being fucked with, so if you are, you’d best quit while you’re ahead.’

‘I’m too tired for games,’ Amy told him wearily. ‘If you’re going to do something, just do it. I’m not going to fight you. I just want to see Cassie and make sure she’s all right.’

‘Course she’s all right,’ snapped Yates. ‘What did you think I was gonna do to her?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Amy replied quietly, annoyed with herself for upsetting the fragile balance she’d achieved. ‘I just meant it’s late, and she must be scared. She’s not used to being away from her dad for so long.’

‘Yeah, well, she’s fine,’ Yates muttered. ‘Fast asleep.’

Amy licked her lips. ‘Can – can I see her?’

Yates pursed his lips and carried on staring at her for several long moments. Then, jerking his chin towards the living-room door, he said, ‘She’s in there.’

‘Thanks.’ Amy gave him a tiny grateful smile.

Her eyes brimmed when she entered the room and saw her daughter’s silhouetted shape beneath the quilt on the sofa. Treading carefully to avoid tripping on the rubbish that was strewn all around, she tiptoed across the floor and knelt beside her. It was the first time she’d seen her in months, and she couldn’t believe how much she’d grown. This child and her brother owned Amy’s heart, and she couldn’t believe that she had put them at risk. But whatever happened next, she would make sure that no harm came to them. And if the price of keeping them safe was to offer herself to the devil body and soul, then that was what she would do.

Yates was standing over her. Turning her head, Amy gazed up at him with tears streaming down her cheeks and whispered, ‘This is all I ever wanted, you know? That’s why it didn’t work out for us, ’cos it was killing me not to have them with me. But it’s too late now,’ she went on, regret thickening her voice. ‘They belong with Mark now, not me.’