By evening, though, even sips of water came hurling back up. A sickly cluster of migraine worked its way from the back of my skull to the nerves in one eye, and all I could do was lie there in a fever of exhaustion, praying for relief. But that relief never came, and the racking pain continued through the night into the next day.
The following morning, on day two, a sore appeared on my upper arm – a large, oozing blister that pulsed and throbbed as if something live was pushing up from underneath.
Gran brushed the matted hair back from my forehead. “Well, I’m flummoxed – I don’t know what’s up with you, love. It looks like food poisoning. Summat foreign you ate at that party. Mrs Dixon, well, she’s not like us, is she?”
This was the Mrs Dixon who had fed and looked after me like a daughter all these years? The Mrs Dixon who cared, who laughed and danced and bought me treats and clothes the same as she did for Nicky, her own daughter?
“What do you mean, ‘not like us’?”
“Black.”
The shock of what she’d said dropped like a lump of dirty rock into a clear lagoon.
“Anyhow, I’ve to go and put your grandad’s tea on or – well, you know what he’s like?”
“I’m glad she’s not like you,” I said.
She patted my hand. “I know you’re a good lass, really, underneath, but your grandad’s right: once you’re better, you’ll probably need to think about getting a job and leaving school. He says you’re to stand on your own two feet from now on. I don’t think you can stay here much longer, love.”
I told myself it was their upbringing and a lack of education. I told myself that for a full minute after she’d left the room and plodded downstairs to grill his pork chops. But it didn’t work. I found I was gripping the sheets in both hands, screwing handfuls of them into balls, the pain of her ugly words beyond comprehension. I don’t think I could have ground my teeth together any harder.
I loved Mrs Dixon almost as much as I loved Nicky.
Give us work… Eva, give us work…
The demons were gleeful, laughing… triumphant… dancing…
Another sore appeared on my arm, followed by another and then a whole rash of them rose up in a plague, blistering and seeping. What the hell was I going to do? Was there anyone I could turn to? Who? Please God, there had to be someone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There was only one person, wasn’t there? I didn’t want to burden her with my darkness. But she really was the only one.
We sat on her sofa, Mrs Dixon and I. She took my hand in hers. “Oh, Lordy. Child, look at the state of you!”
I was bone thin, shivering and doubling up with colic every few minutes. Each seizure wrung me out. I couldn’t even sip water.
“Why hasn’t Maud called the doctor?”
“He were busy. She thought it were food poisoning and it’d get better. I dunno.” I squeezed her hand. “Mrs Dixon, I can’t stay there any longer. I don’t know what to do. I need some ’elp.”
Her eyes grew huge as full moons. “Can’t stay there? Why, whatever’s happened to make you say that? He been hitting you again? I know he’s handy with his fists, everyone knows—”
“Worse than that—”
I held her gaze until comprehension registered and a cloud of revulsion passed across her features. And then she took me into her arms and bear-hugged me while I cried.
“You’ll have to go to the doctor’s, and you’ll need a story.”
“No, I’ll wait and see first if, to find out if, you know?”
She nodded.
Nineteen seventy-eight and the police barely considered domestic abuse a crime. Besides, people like us would never consider legal action. Not only did we not have the money, but no one brought family business into the open like that. You didn’t wash your dirty laundry in public so that other people got to know and looked at you funny! Incestuous secrets were buried, and those it happened to thought they were the only ones, that they’d got what they deserved just like the abuser said.
Mrs Dixon, though. Well, the expression on her face was the first indication this perspective might be wrong, and the effect on me was that of fog rising off a murky pond.
After a while she said, “I don’t know how much to tell you, Eva, but it’s probably best you know a bit more about your grandad. And your dad, come to that. It might help you decide what to do.”
She worked in a care home for the elderly. And those old folk liked to talk – some of them about ‘Earl the Hammer’.
“The Hammer?”
She nodded. A few years ago after overhearing a heated discussion between some of the residents, she’d asked one of them, an elderly lady called Maureen, who they were talking about and what they meant.
“I was thinking about you, child, and so I asked her, ‘Didn’t he fight in the War? Are you talking about Earl Hart, the union leader?’
“‘Aye, ’im! And he were kicked out o’ t’ army an’ all, so don’t let him tell you no different. Dismissed for extreme violence, he were – bare-knuckled fights and an out-of-control temper that saw him slam a hammer in the back of a man’s head.’”
My hands flew to my face.
“Eva, I knew then I had to watch over you. And there’s more to it. Maureen said, ‘Aye, and I knew his missus an’ all. Miscarriage after miscarriage she ’ad because of how he knocked her about. And little Pete were never a day without a black eye. No wonder he left home at sixteen, poor little bugger.’”
I looked up sharply when she said that. “My dad? But he put me back here! With Earl. I was only eight.”
Mrs Dixon shook her head, confounded. “Maybe your mum and dad had worse troubles? Maybe they didn’t know what else to do and hoped it wouldn’t be for long? They must have had good reason, they must have.”
My heartbeat rocketed, the impact of this new revelation blurring all rational thought. My own father had abandoned me, dumped me with his violent father, and then left Mum for another woman. What had he done with her? Was she still alive? Had he killed her? Was he just as bad as his own father? Why couldn’t my mother even be visited? They’d lied and lied and lied. All of them. All lies.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. Sores had broken out all over my legs now, too. I couldn’t eat, my hair was falling out in clumps, and black fungus was growing under my fingernails. Gastric flu had me clutching at my stomach as it racked and twisted. The fatigue was overwhelming. I really couldn’t carry on like this for much longer.
“You’re not at all well, child.”
I shook my head as another wave of colic took hold. I gasped for breath, tears running down my face. “I don’t know what it is. Food poisoning or summat. I don’t know.”
She frowned. “Food poisoning don’t make your hair fall out, don’t give you sores, and it don’t turn your nails black—”
“What’s going to happen to me? What shall I do? And where’s my mum? I don’t understand.”
“All right, I’ll tell you what I think. I think you should go right now and tell your nanna you’re coming to stay with me for a while, and tell her why. Then come straight back here, and I will get you to a doctor.”
My tears dried. “With you?”
“You can tell her I’ve agreed and it’s so you and Nicky can study together for a year before college.”
“College?”
“Yes, college. You got to get some qualifications in this life. So, you can stay here until you’re educated – you’re a child and you have a right to be safe, do you hear me? So this is what we do – if your nanna objects, although she did say you had to go and get a job and live somewhere else, but if she does, then you tell her straight about your grandad and that you don’t feel safe in that house no more. If she refuses to believe you and threatens to tell Earl, then you tell her in no uncertain terms that you will go to the police unless she persuades him this is for the best. We’re calling her bluff with that one, but you focus on what you got to do and it will turn out just fine.”