Besides, escape had been fully occupying my mind. That and protecting Nicky and Mrs Dixon. No way could they be subjected to violent recriminations because of me. Eldersgate was an estate where laws were enforced by a few individuals, and Earl Hart was the boss of that mob. Escape to where, though? There was only one obvious option, and that was to track down my dad – seeing as how he lived so close.
The loaded rucksack banged into my spine as I hurried down the gennel linking our street to the main road. The priority was to put as much distance between me and Earl as fast as possible. By the time he worked out I’d packed and gone, hopefully the agonising pain would have kicked in, an ache somewhere deep inside his scrotum – a sickening thump that would consume him to distraction. He’d have to sit down for a moment while his eyes watered.
On the main road, level with the bus stop, the street opposite led to the nursing home where Mrs Dixon worked. On the left, about halfway along was a row of shops that included a newsagent, and it must be that one Mrs Dixon had referred to. It was still impossible to comprehend – that all these years Dad had been living just around the corner. I mean, why say he lived in Leeds? He must seriously have wanted to avoid me.
My stomach clenched into a fist that wanted to punch someone. It just hurt. I can’t tell you how much it hurt. I was going to ambush him next morning, anyway. And he was going to explain this and also disclose where my mother was. God, what had happened that was so bad she’d ended up insane and their only child had to be dumped with a violent man?
I’d find out. Damn right I would!
Careful, the hyenas are out – a young girl alone, with money… and a bag of belongings…
Once again I thanked that silent voice. To the rear of the newsagent was a locked yard containing rubbish bins and a rickety shed, presumably for the newspapers? Well then, that would provide a few hours of undisturbed protection. Not comfortable, not by any means, but I had a couple of sweaters in the rucksack to sit on, and it wasn’t cold.
Strange what happens on the streets at night. Sleep was impossible amid drunken shouts from those falling out of the Greyhound pub and cans being kicked down the road. This estate was rougher than ours and scrawled with hate-filled graffitti. It pulsed with anger, fear and resentment, many houses boarded up, and the thin-walled maisonettes of the elderly quiet and dark.
At one point a crash jarred the padlocked gate to the yard, a fight or scuffle broke out, followed by a nasty laugh. And then it was quiet, as silent as death, the drugged and the drunk finally falling into slumber before dawn filtered in.
I was out of the shed well before the papers arrived, rubbing my hands, standing in a single ray of light opposite the shop. Waiting.
He showed up exactly as Mrs Dixon had said, at the same time she would be passing on the bus for her morning shift – ten to eight. As he came out of the shop, scanning the headlines of a tabloid, he shook out a Silk Cut and fished in his denim jacket for a light.
“Hi, Dad!”
The cigarette on his lower lip wobbled precariously. It seemed a lifetime ago that he’d popped round on my sixteenth with that cheap radio. He had of course been a different man two days ago – a busy, successful one preparing for a new life with a new family. A man sorted after a difficult relationship with a mad woman. Only that was a lie. Wasn’t it, Dad?
“It’s not what you think,” he said, removing the unlit cigarette and wedging it back into the packet. “Come on, we can’t talk here.”
We walked back to his house in silence, both of us trying to cohese our thoughts. Eventually we rounded a corner into a cul-de-sac of pebble-dashed semis. His was at the end – the one with a rusting gate, an overgrown front lawn and dingy curtains. This was not my dad. He wasn’t like this, he wasn’t!
“Come on in; don’t mind the mess. I’ll put the kettle on.”
The front room was drear, with an Artexed ceiling and a swirly orange carpet. The tea he made sat cooling on the coffee table while we sat there wondering where to start, the only sounds those of screaming, shouting children from the nearby primary school. He was poor and broken, that much was obvious. How on earth he’d managed to put on such an act for me and his parents, I couldn’t guess. It explained the cheap radio, anyway, that image of three other children having everything I did not, now dissipating as quickly as the illusion itself. There was no new family, was there?
He glanced at the rucksack. “Going somewhere?”
“Yeah, I was coming to you.”
He stared at me for a long time before speaking, before deciding how best to phrase this. He had no need to explain how it was for him here, with the cardboard-thin walls, empty beer cans, overflowing ashtrays and well-thumbed tabloids. But he told me anyway. How they’d taken a bank loan for the trip to Bavaria, not wanting anyone in the family to know about it on account of Earl’s aversion to all things German. He couldn’t ask his dad, he said, for the flight money, so he’d taken out a bank loan. At the time they’d both been in work and I was healthy.
“Of course, when we came back, you were ill and then your mother lost her job.”
“And you bought an expensive house.”
This he acknowledged. But my mother had been unable to find another job, he said, with the hours she’d had before – the ones enabling her to babysit me while he worked shifts. And as my health deteriorated, there had been no other option but for her to stay home pretty much all the time. The mortgage, bank loan, and building jobs on the house had sunk them, he explained, and as a result, they’d had to leave me with his parents so Alex could work full-time. At least until I got better and they’d paid off some bills.
“For a short time, you said. Not eight years!”
He looked at his hands, examining the nails. “Aye, well—”
“Eight years with Earl Hart, Dad. When you knew, didn’t you, that he was violent?”
He looked up sharply. “He’s handy with a slap, but—”
“You left your eight-year-old daughter there, when in your own words he was ‘handy with a slap’? I get that my mother needed a job, but you didn’t have to dump me there for the rest of my childhood when you knew! You knew he hit Gran and that he’d hit me, too. Did you know he was a rapist, as well?”
He looked as if he’d been punched, and at the sight of his shock, all the bitter recriminations of rage, pain, fear and bewilderment fired out in a volley of despair. It consumed the whole of me, and even when the look on his face told me all I needed to know, that he was saddened beyond words, I still couldn’t stop. I kept on going until I was shaking and crying.
He hung his head, staring at the swirls on the carpet.
I was past needing to be hugged and consoled – that never happened – and far too upset to just sit there. Pacing back and forth, I railed at him through blinding tears. “I need to know why you lied and continued to lie. Why tell me you were in Leeds when you were here all along? And how come I never got to see my mother ever again? No one would tell where she was. They wouldn’t even say what happened to my cat! Nothing, bloody nothing.”
“She went to the neighbour,” he said quietly. “The lady next door took Sooty, love.”
“So why couldn’t I be told that?”
“In case you wanted Sooty and made a fuss. I couldn’t leave the cat in his house, could I? The man shot his own dog when I was a kid.”
The view through that front room window was depressing: gardens piled with discarded furniture and rubbish, bedroom curtains still drawn, gates hanging off.