Just then, there was a knock at the door. “Pizza!” I grinned, but it was Shelagh, walking in and chattering, to stop dead as she saw Mark sitting on my sofa. She looked him up and down, her eyes narrowed, and as he rose to greet her, her hand came up to slap him so hard he sat down again. Shelagh has four huge older brothers, so she’d learned how to put some top-spin on a slap, and it must have rattled his teeth.
“That was for what you did, you bastard, and if you try and stand up, I will fucking knee you so hard in the balls…!” she hissed, and I had to step in front of her.
“Calm down Shel, it’s ok, Nia’s mum was right, Mark had good reason to keep far from me, but it’s over now.”
Shelagh looked at me suspiciously.”What’s over now?” she demanded.
“Mum was going to expose us, but now she’s in a dementia ward, she’s forgotten about us, so Mark and I are off the hook at last.”
Shelagh looked grimly satisfied. “Your mother has Alzheimer’s?” and Mark corrected her.
“No, she’s got Alcoholic Dementia, and God knows what else, maybe Korsakoff’s as well, who knows, all the booze finally caught up with her. She got sectioned last week, and she’s been confined in a secure Care Home in Richmond. There’s no more to say, she’s off in a world of her own, she seems to be happy there, she has no memory of us, and I’m glad, it makes ignoring her easier.”
Shel’s expression hadn’t changed much, she still looked angry, her eyes still narrowed.
“And you, it never occurred to you to drop Jules a line, to let her know you were OK? What stopped you picking up a fucking telephone?”
Mark looked weary, drained, his face red where the outline of her hand was clearly imprinted on his cheek.
“I couldn’t take the chance on Mum finding out; she used to give me the third degree nearly every fucking day, ask me outright if I’d contacted her in any way, and she could tell, she was like a fucking mind-reader, if I tried to lie to her, that would have been… I just couldn’t take the chance, not with the threats she made!”
Shelagh looked convinced at last, her face softening.
“I believe you, you always were a piss-poor liar! What was with the flowers, though, I mean, it was kind of… obscure, know what I mean?
Mark grinned his old grin.
“I’d seen this book, ‘The Language of Flowers’ a couple of years ago, seemed like the chick-lit book of the moment, everyone on the train was reading it, Victorian flower language was suddenly all the rage. I picked up a copy someone left on the bus and read it, and I thought it might be a good way to send Julie a message, if she was reading that book too, like everyone else on the planet, apparently. So I used it as a guide to send her messages. My colleague here in the London office used to drop them off, and if Mum was snooping around, she’d see a short African guy dropping off flowers, not me. Apparently I was too obscure, because I waited for a reply in kind, but one never came…”
Shel grinned. “Nia’s mum figured it out last year, she worked out who was sending flowers, and what they were saying!”
He’d taken my hand while he was talking, and I was stroking his face absently, and Shel suddenly decided she needed to be at Nia’s place post haste, so, with a big knowing grin, she left, almost knocking over the pizza boy in her haste to leave.
As we ate, I told Mark about David, what had happened, and about my adventure with Doreen, making him grin happily.
“At least you had some fun, Tink, you got to look around a little. I never had the chance. I had to be home every night to answer when that crazy bitch called, be there or have you take the consequences. Now I know what a lab-rat feels like when they make it run the maze every day for its piece of cheese. Every night at 7 o’clock, every morning at 11o’clock, she’d call, make sure I was where I was supposed to be, and for no reason other than she was a manipulative, vicious, vindictive lunatic.”
“She didn’t want me, she just wanted to make sure you couldn’t have me. She threw you out, but she made me run around like a slot car, same speed, same track, day after fucking day. I used to go up to the Clifton Suspension Bridge on my lunch-break, look at that 300 foot drop and think ‘how bad could it be? A few seconds of free-fall, then nothing, it’s got to be better than this’. When I heard from the police that they’d sectioned her, I actually celebrated, I felt liberated, like I’d just been rescued, so I went to the pub for the first time in two years, and spent an evening drinking and talking to strangers instead of watching the clock, then I came home; the rest you know.”
My eyes welled-up as I listened; she’d kept him on a short leash, run him around and tortured him, even driven him to thoughts of suicide…!
He’d been living in hell, with a madwoman pulling his chain every day, no wonder he looked so bad; actually, he looked fucking awful.
I huddled up close to him, with his arm around me, relishing the feel of him, trying to savour the freedom we had now, together at last. Mark played with my hair, slowly coiling it around his finger, before pulling me onto his lap and nuzzling my neck, burying his face in my shoulder as he spoke softly, almost whispering.
“Tink, I once promised you that I would take you away, go wherever you wanted, do whatever you asked, do you remember?” he asked as he lightly kissed and grazed on my neck, and I whispered that I did, that I had never forgotten.
“I meant it then and… I mean it now. Baby, you’ve been through enough, and I feel like I lost you somewhere, like I need to win you back, so I can make a life that only you can share. I don’t want anything else. Are we ok now? Have we said enough? Tell me how I can make it right again, because I can’t see anything anymore. I know I left you behind, but it wasn’t my choice, I swear, and the last couple of years have been a nightmare of suspense, living on my nerves, in sheer bloody terror that she’d do something to you just out of spite, even though she kept me dancing to whatever music was playing inside her rotten little soul. I’ve never been so frightened, so desperate to keep you safe. Maybe one day you’ll be able to forgive me for keeping you in the dark for so long, let me back in so we can start again.”
He sighed. “I’m so tired of being frightened all the time; whatever happens to me now, I’d welcome it; if I died tonight, at least it would be in the knowledge that it would finally be over for me, this whole mess would be over, and I could rest.”
I trembled for him as tears spilled down my cheeks, fear for my lost boy galloping around inside me, huge and almost unmanageable; dear God, he’d actually thought about killing himself! Now he was talking about dying just to get some peace, what the fuck had she done to him?