Peter May - Runaway

‘Come in, come in, my dears,’ she said. She took off her pinny and draped it over the back of an armchair in a small comfortable lounge with a window looking out over a garden at the back. Sunlight came dappled through the leaves of a large chestnut tree, like daubs of yellow paint. A large TV sat on a cabinet in the corner. A radio on the sideboard was tuned to the BBC Light Programme, playing Housewives’ Choice . A woman’s bright, Home Counties voice read out requests and chattered like one of the birds in the tree outside the window, introducing records that were as anodyne as the paper pasted on the walls of this incongruously cheerful little room.

Miss Griffin took Rachel by the hand. ‘Now, you don’t need to worry about a thing, my love. I’ve done this many times, and I have medical training. Nothing invasive here. No needles or coat hangers poked up the uterus.’

She smiled, as if somehow this was reassuring. But all she did was conjure in my mind a picture of some dark dungeon filled with implements of torture. God knows what it did to Rachel.

‘The drugs I use are perfectly safe. You’ll spontaneously miscarry within the next twenty-four hours. You might experience some discomfort, and it’ll be a little messy.’ She laughed. ‘But we women are used to that, aren’t we, my dear?’

For the first time that day my eyes met Rachel’s, and all I could see in them was abject terror. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to scream, ‘Stop!’ But still I said nothing.

In truth, what I really wanted was for it to be over. I find it hard to believe now that it was me. That I was that person. That selfish, cowardly bastard who let the girl he loved go through with this. But it was me, and I did . And I will carry the shame of it with me to my grave.

Miss Griffin opened the door to the hall and said to Rachel, ‘The room on the right at the end, my love. Just make yourself comfortable. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

I saw her disappear into the gloom. The sun from the window at the back didn’t extend into the hall, and so I barely saw her face as she glanced back, black eyes like saucers in the palest of faces. Miss Griffin shut the door carefully and turned to me. Smiling still, no judgement in her eyes. How often had she dealt with couples just like us?

‘You have the money?’

I handed her the envelope that Dr Robert had given me and she opened it up to count diligently the notes inside it. There was something about the care that she took over it, and the mercenary look in her eyes, that must have found a reflection in mine. For when she looked up, satisfied that it was all there, her smile faded on seeing my face.

‘Don’t judge me !’ she said, in an ugly little whisper.

And she turned and left the room.

I stood for a long time, my face stinging with the shock of her words, before I turned and walked slowly to the window, hands in pockets, to stare out into a world filled with sunlight, in total contrast to the darkness in my heart. I paid a terrible price that day for what I thought of as my freedom. But the true cost was in allowing Rachel to pay it for me.

Miss Griffin, her smile restored but strained now, finally ushered Rachel out of the darkness and back into the living room. That brave little girl whom we had wrested from the clutches of her drug dealer in Leeds looked crushed. Her face was stained with tears, her eyes red with the spilling of them, and she absolutely could not bring herself to meet my gaze.

‘When you get her home, leave her be for a day.’

The coldness with which Miss Griffin looked at me almost froze my soul. But there was something else in her gaze, something that I have never been able to identify, which left me unsettled then, and still to this day. A look that has haunted my worst nightmares and darkest hours. Almost as if God himself had peered through a crack in the brittle shell of my mortality to pass his judgement upon me ahead of the grave.

The taxi ride home was painful. Rachel gazed from her window with unseeing eyes, her silent misery filling the cab until I could bear it no longer.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said finally. My voice barely a whisper.

But she couldn’t hear me above the rattle and roar of the taxi and turned cold eyes in my direction. ‘What?’

‘Rachel, I’m so sorry.’ And when she didn’t respond, ‘I wish—’

‘What do you wish, Jack?’

‘I wish... I wish I hadn’t let you do it.’

The oddest little smile soured her face, and cynicism stretched her voice thin. ‘A bit late now.’

Dr Robert was waiting for us when we got back. He was sitting in the breakfast room with a pot of coffee, smoking and reading the newspaper. I could see him through the open door as soon as we came into the hall. He folded his newspaper, stood up and came through to greet us. He ignored me, all his attention and concern focused on Rachel.

‘How did it go?’

She just gave the tiniest of shrugs.

‘I’ve had a room prepared for you up in the attic. It’s your room, Rachel.’ He glanced at me with cold eyes, then turned them back to Rachel. ‘I’ll stay home for the next twenty-four hours. If you need me at any time...’ He looked at me again. ‘I’ve moved your stuff down to the basement. Rachel’s old room. The four-poster’s out of bounds.’

Like a punishment. Although, in truth, I would not have wanted now to sleep in the room where Rachel and I had conducted most of our relationship. The bed in which we had conceived the child we had just destroyed.

But neither did I relish the little single room in the damp, dark basement where I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to face the disapproval of the others.

Dr Robert led Rachel up the stairs, and she disappeared round the curve of the landing without a backward glance, leaving me to stand in the sunlit hall, with my guilt and regret, feeling lonelier than I had ever felt in my life.

I was in my room in the basement when I heard the others return late that afternoon. But I couldn’t face them, and sat miserable and depressed on the edge of my bed. Their voices came to me from along the hall, sounds of laughter and wise-cracking. After a while they subsided, and I heard someone going back up the stairs.

Ten, perhaps fifteen minutes passed before there were steps on the stairs again, and I heard raised voices in the living room. It sounded like an argument, though I couldn’t make out what it was they were saying.

Then Maurie’s voice raised above the others, shrill and filled with rage. ‘Where the fuck is he?’

I heard his footsteps in the hall and stood up as the door burst open. His face was livid, dark eyes burning. He looked at me for the briefest moment. ‘You bastard!’ The words exploded from his lips in a breath, and he flew at me across the room.

The whole weight of his body knocked me over and we both landed on the bed before falling to the floor, Maurie on top, forcing all the breath from my lungs.

‘You fucking bastard!’ Spittle gathered around his lips, and his fist smashed into my face.

I felt teeth cut into my cheek and blood bursting into my mouth. A second blow broke my nose, and tears and blood blinded me. I made no attempt to defend myself. If this was the worst punishment I would receive for my sins, then I was getting off lightly. Of course, I know now that the punishment didn’t stop there. The punishment has never stopped.

I think that Maurie might very well have killed me if Luke and Dave hadn’t pulled him off. I don’t know where Jeff was, but the two of them dragged Maurie away, still kicking and shouting, and somehow I managed to get to my knees. The blood was streaming from my nose and mouth, dripping from my chin on to the carpet.