Catherine Hunt - Someone Out There

It was years later that Laura had to face the truth and it left her in bits. She was living in London and in the middle of her law exams when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor who found it also found serious bruising, vaginal and anal scarring and signs of old injuries. She had rung Laura, and the police, to say she suspected domestic abuse.

Jenny Maxwell left her husband but refused to give evidence against him and he was never charged. She came to live with Laura for nine months while she sorted out her life and beat off the cancer, but she would never speak about the violence however gently her daughter raised it. Just once, when Laura was going cautiously round the houses trying to approach the subject, she interrupted sharply, ‘Never let yourself be a victim. Never. That’s all I’ll say.’

A year later, when Laura was twenty-five, the cancer came back and this time Jenny Maxwell lost the battle. In an agony of guilt and regret, Laura wondered if the years of abuse had brought it on in the first place and whether, if she had realized what was going on and had spoken out, her mum would still be alive.

Laura forced the thoughts away. She picked up a dog-eared business card from her desk. It had the details for the Tunisian lawyer and she called his number.

The police guard made it impossible to get near Harry Pelham without explaining who he was and the reason for his visit. Ben Morgan had no intention of doing either. He’d had dealings with the police before and he didn’t want to renew the experience. He had been lucky to miss them at Harry’s house the day before and he had been lucky again to find out about the guard before it was too late. He arrived at the ward to find Harry nowhere in sight, so he asked a nurse for directions. She pointed to a side room and told him he’d have to ask the police officers if he could see Harry. There were two of them and one was standing outside the door to the room.

‘Why are they here?’ he asked.

‘No idea. All I know is any visitor has to get their permission if they want to talk to him.’

‘Do you think they’ll be staying long?’

She shrugged, then said, ‘He’s lucky he’s not handcuffed to one of them.’

Ben laughed nervously at that and the nurse said she wasn’t joking. She had heard them talking about it but, in the end, they’d decided not to.

‘Are you family?’ She peered at him curiously, as if he might be related to a serial killer. He was late thirties maybe, tall and skinny with a patchy beard and pale, restless eyes.

‘No.’ He hesitated, and when she obviously wanted more, said, ‘Just a friend.’

‘Looks like he needs one.’

‘Would you be able to give him a note for me?’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. She didn’t reply and started walking towards the policemen.

Ben Morgan turned the other way and fled, making himself walk at a normal pace. Then he heard the nurse call to him and he ran down the stairs and out of the building, hurrying away from the hospital as fast as he could.

He jogged for fifteen minutes along the sea front until he came to a bar beside Brighton beach. He went inside and asked for an orange juice. He didn’t dare risk alcohol. He ordered a sandwich but was too wound up to eat it. He sat by the window staring out to sea. It was wild today, whipped up by a strong onshore wind which had blown away the earlier rain. He could feel his high mood turning sour. He was edgy and irritable, frustrated that he hadn’t been able to talk to Harry.

‘I do not have to get angry over this,’ he muttered. ‘I am choosing not to get angry. Just chill out.’

Ben Morgan had been in Brighton for almost a month now. He had forced himself to be cautious and to check out the situation thoroughly before making his move. For once, everything he had done had been carefully planned. He was pleased with himself about that. He hadn’t jumped straight in with both feet and no thought as to the consequences. He had a habit of doing that when he was feeling good, he knew, and it needed to be controlled.

The medication did control it pretty well but he wasn’t always so good about taking it; it had been a bit random lately. He noticed that his right leg was bouncing up and down on the floor and with an effort he stilled it and took a few deep breaths to try to calm himself down. He recognized the signs. The anger, the desire for action, the ideas racing through his head, the total confidence in himself. He had learned to be wary of these things. Learned the hard way.

He had been watching Laura Maxwell, following her, studying her routines and gathering details about her life. When he first arrived he had stood across the road from Morrison Kemp waiting for her to come out. What a shock it had been to see her again, what nightmare feelings the sight of her had aroused, feelings he had tried to bury deep but which kept bubbling back to the surface. The experience had literally made him ill. He had scuttled away and been sick in an alleyway.

Ben Morgan felt sick now thinking about what had happened to him. And Harry’s case was so similar to his own – his torture, at the hands of Laura Maxwell, so exactly what Ben had endured. When he had discovered that, he had wanted to die. It brought back, in technicolour, all the trauma of six years ago.

Well, this time the result would be different, he would make sure of that. He had been there and would not stand by and let it happen again. Hatred and bitterness filled him. He was going to put a stop to it, once and for all.

Ben Morgan shook his head and tried, unsuccessfully, to get the ugly memories to go away. The Maxwell woman had made him seem like a complete danger to his young daughter, a father with a serious personality disorder. His medical notes had been taken to pieces by her, selective quotes taken from his psychology sessions, from his psychiatric assessments, from his previous medical history – he had been destroyed as a person and as a father. She had consigned him to hell.

He had sat in court listening to her make judgements about him, biased judgements designed to make him suffer, along with social workers and other so-called experts who discussed his bipolar disorder, discussed his behaviour and thoughts and emotions as if he were invisible, as if they were able to understand what was going on in his head. The whole inside of his mind had been invaded by her – someone who knew nothing about him or his illness. He had been violated and degraded and he felt it again now just as keenly as he had done at the time. The taste of acid filled his mouth.

He remembered how tormented he had been over what to do about it, what action he should take. Sometimes it had been so bad it was like a physical pain. It had only got better when he had stopped thinking about possible consequences and started following his instincts. But that, of course, had not worked out well. He had stabbed a police officer, been sectioned for hospital treatment, and lost all contact rights to his daughter.

The bar was starting to fill up with the lunchtime rush. He hated crowds and noise. They stressed him out and could trigger off his illness. He wanted to run. It was one of the few strategies he had for coping with stressful situations – to run through the streets, faster and faster, until all he could think about was the burning in his lungs and his legs. He liked to think it was a positive thing, a definite plan to help himself, but in his darker moods he felt that all it amounted to was running away.

The afternoon was cold and the rain was spitting again. Ben Morgan stood for a moment gazing up uncertainly at the heavens with a tense and troubled face. Then he set off at high speed for his appointment, his tall, thin figure racing towards the café near the crumbling West Pier.