One Night, page 14
Mark didn’t speak to him at all on the way home. Just before they reached the house Joel asked him why the boys had been chanting “oh boy”.
“It’s O” said Mark. “It means orphan. It’s because of you.”
Joel though that would be the end of the bullying but the next day it happened again. This time two of the boys held Joel while the others pushed Mark around.
It carried on for a week. Mark didn’t talk to him at all, not at breakfast, not at dinner, not at school. Joel knew that Bob and Jackie were trying to make him tell them what was wrong but he didn’t think Mark was talking to them either. He kept quiet too, the home had taught him that telling adults other kid’s secrets was usually a bad idea.
The weekend was a relief because they didn’t have to go to school, didn’t even have to leave the house.
But then Monday came.
All through the day Joel worried about the walk home but he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He could have walked a different way, left Mark to deal with the bullies on his own, but Mark was his brother. Maybe not by blood, maybe not for real, but in every way that actually mattered. So he walked with him.
It was the same as Friday. Two boys held him, held him tight so he couldn’t move an inch, while the others pushed Mark around, laughing and shoving and gloating.
And then the leader caught Mark when he was pushed at him. He let Mark go so the two of them were standing facing each other. He pulled out a pen knife.
Joel recognised the look on his face. The look of someone in love with the idea that they’re stronger than others, that they can turn people to their will. He’d seen it on the faces of some of the boys at the home. And the staff.
“You can stop us,” the boy said to Mark. “We’ll leave you alone. All you have to do is cut the orphan. He doesn’t mean anything to you anyway, that’s what you said, right?”
The other boys got excited. “Do it,” they shouted. “Cut him.” The two that were holding Joel forced him down onto the concrete. The leader guided Mark to him, kicked him in the back of his knees so his legs bent and he sat on top of Joel.
“Cut him,” the boys said again.
And Mark did. Joel lay there with his arms pinned by Mark’s legs as the boy he’d called his brother moved the blade closer and closer to his face. He could see that Mark was crying. Little beads of moisture forming in the corners of his eyes and being blinked quickly away. He felt the cold steel slice into his cheek and he knew it was all over. The pain of the knife cutting into him was intense but what was worse was the knowledge that there was no going back from this moment. He didn’t have a family anymore.
Bob took him to the hospital, he told them Joel had been cut by some glass from a window that he’d broken playing football. Joel didn’t say anything, he just let the nurse stitch up his cheek.
The next day he was back at the children’s home. His little cardboard suitcase in his hand packed with the same items he’d left with. Only two things were different. The scar on his face and the surety in his heart that he would never trust anyone ever again.
Eve didn’t say anything when he had finished telling her the story. She just kissed him on the lips and held him. Their heads were side by side as they hugged, she was looking at the wall, he was facing the cafe and the windows out onto the park. That’s why it was Joel who saw the silhouettes of the men outside.
Chapter Thirty Three
Joel didn't want the moment to end, not for any reason let alone the one that was staring him in the face outside the cafe. The men standing there.
He'd given Eve his body and now he'd given her his soul. He had opened himself to her in a way he never had with any woman and it felt good. Was this what love felt like? This emotion that seemed to fill every part of him. That had subtly changed every one of his senses so that the world seemed better, richer, sweeter.
They needed to run but before they did he needed to tell her.
"Eve," he said, his voice low. "I think I'm falling in love with you."
She was about to speak but he placed a finger on her lips.
"Later, there are men outside."
She looked at the window and saw the silhouettes there too. Her face changed, the glow of relaxation gone replaced by tension. She nodded and crawled away from him to her clothes. The sight of her naked round arse swaying as she went made him smile.
He moved to his own clothes and pulled them on quickly, keeping an eye on the window the whole time. The figures were still outside, three of them, wandering around. One of them had a torch and was shining it over the various rides and buildings. Had it been the light of the Carousel that had brought them down here? Maybe.
Joel realised he didn't regret it. The time he’d spent with Eve tonight had changed him, he could feel it. It was as if she’d healed something broken inside him. Fixed him. The time on the Carousel was a part of that, the most important part. It was there that his heart had softened enough to let her in.
He watched the men and tried to decide what to do. He knew he hadn't left any sign on any of the locks he'd picked. Jesus, he'd left the door to the cafe unlocked though, too swept up in the passion of the moment to care. All the men had to do was try the door and they'd know where the two of them were hiding. Besides, wasn't the cafe the most blindingly obvious place to take shelter in the whole fucking park?
He glanced over at Eve who was dressed now and motioned to her to keep down. Hand level, palm down. She recognised the gesture, learned from a hundred movies.
Joel crawled to the door and crouched at it, glad that the lower panel was solid rather than glass. He slowly raised his head and peered out. The men were still there, maybe twenty feet away, close enough that they might seem him if they looked in his direction despite the darkness and the film of sea spray coating the glass. They looked aimless, as if they were there because someone had told them they should be rather than because they thought there was any purpose to what they were doing. They seemed to be a different group to the one that had attacked them in the town, he didn't recognise any of them at least. They didn't have any masks on, probably figuring that even if they did find who they were looking for there wouldn't be anyone else around to see. One of them had a baseball bat held casually by his side, which ruled out the possibility that they were just extremely diligent maintenance men.
Joel ducked his head down again and pulled his lock picks out. He quickly locked the door and then crept back to Eve.
"They don't look like too much of a threat at the moment but I don't want to take the chance."
They crawled across the floor together, rounding the serving counter that faced the windows and heading into the kitchen beyond it. There was a door at the back, Joel could see bins through it. He unlocked it quickly and efficiently and then opened it an inch. Putting his ear to the gap he listened to the night. He could hear traffic in the distance but not the men.
“Let’s go,” he said and they stepped out together, Eve speaking quietly as they did.
"The trust thing, it's human, Joel. We have to trust so we don't feel that we're all alone in the world. When we lose the ability to trust we lose a little of what makes us human. That’s what I think anyway."
Joel thought about it, about the years before he met Danny. How he'd drifted through life, moving from one girl to the next, always leaving them as soon as he started to think he might be feeling something. The string of girls hadn't stopped when Danny had found him and taken him under his wing but maybe he'd stayed with each one a little longer, let them in a little more. As hard as it was to admit it with what had happened, his life had been better when Danny was in it.
The bins were in a small fenced area with a gate that led out into the park, Joel cracked it open and looked. He couldn’t hear or see the men.
He opened the gate fully and they stepped through it together and started running through the park, back to the hole in the fence they’d entered it by. Joel thought briefly about going for the bag but it was well hidden and the men were between him and it. There was too much risk in trying to retrieve it, especially as if he did manage to get to it safely he’d just be struggling under its burden again. He’d leave it where it was for now.
So they ran, together, as they had before. Ran through the night, leaving the three men behind. The fence was in sight, glinting in the darkness with the promise of escape when Eve’s phone rang.
She stopped short, struggling to get her bag open and find it. The ring was loud, some pop song Joel didn’t recognise. It carried through the quiet night, a beacon that would draw the men right to them. He heard the shouts just as she pulled the phone out, saw her start at the aggressive yelling, the phone slipping from her hand and falling to the path. He saw the glowing screen as it lay there, saw the name of the caller. Harry, it said.
She stooped and picked it up, rejected the call. Joel could hear the men’s footfalls now. Heavy, fast, running towards them.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her with him as she started running again. Behind them one of the men shouted, his deep loud voice carrying through the night.
“Eve!”
Joel kept running. Her was hand still in his, but something was starting to feel wrong inside him.
“Eve!” the man shouted again. “It’s okay we’re here now.”
That feeling inside Joel was getting stronger. An ache where his heart should be.
“Harry says thank you,” said the man, Joel thought he could hear the hint of a laugh in his voice. “Thank you for leading us to him.”
Joel looked at Eve and tried to read her face. She looked shocked, confused. She started to shake her head at him.
He heard a shout from ahead of them. Another man stood there. Joel wasn’t sure if he was the one he’d seen from the cafe earlier or not. It didn’t matter, what mattered was the baseball bat in his hands.
The man raised his bat as Joel and Eve ran towards him. Her grip on his hand was loosening, or maybe it was the other way around. The man swung his bat and Joel jumped to the side to dodge the blow. Eve’s hand slipped from his and he heard her gasp, he looked back and saw that she had fallen to the floor. She lifted her head and looked right at him.
“Run!” she shouted.
Joel ran, not knowing if he was escaping the men or her.
Chapter Thirty Four
Joel ran to the fence and threw himself through the tear in it. The ends of the wire tore at his jacket as he pushed himself through it and dug into the palms of his hands. He emerged on the other side feeling like something had changed, liked he'd been reborn. He was outside Adventure Island again. What had happened to him in there? What had she done to him?
He felt that devastating feeling of loss, the same one that had hit him when Bob told the doctor his cut was an accident or when Danny pulled the gun on him. It was so familiar, like a favourite item of clothing pushed to the back of the drawer and then found again. It fit him so well he was amazed he'd thought that he'd managed to escape it. That sense of betrayal, that feeling that no-one could want him, no-one could love him. Not Eve, not Danny, not Bob and Jackie, not Mark. Not his mother. Not his father.
His head was spinning. Had she done it? Had she led them to him? It had seemed so real the time with her. Her words, her touch, the way she made him feel inside. Had he been that wrong about her?
He tried to think back, put the pieces together.
When had he been away from her? When he'd broken into the operator's booth for the Carousel. Had she tipped them off then? A quick text message from the phone in her handbag? Hadn't she used that same phone in the pub just before she'd suggested which restaurant they should go to? And when they'd left the restaurant they'd been attacked. Was that it then? The whole time they'd been eating together, when they'd been riding the Carousel, she'd been waiting for the men to come and...What? Get him? Rescue her?
He thought further back. She'd made all the moves hadn't she? She'd approached him. She'd grabbed his cock under the table. She'd seduced him, pulled him into her world just like Danny had.
All of the pieces fit except one, the way she'd looked at him. He'd felt that connection deep inside him, was it real? Or was he so broken inside that his heart couldn't tell truth from reality?
The night air was cold in his lungs, on his face. He felt like it was waking him up. He ran. He needed to find somewhere he could hide and be safe. Somewhere he could think.
The bag was the key, he realised. If they went to the bag he'd know that she had betrayed him.
He heard the fence rattle behind him and turned to see the man with the bat squeezing through it. He thought about running but if he did that he'd just have to carry on doing it. Better to face this guy and then not have a tail.
He turned and ran back towards the fence, the guy was still struggling through the hole. The others, and Eve, were nowhere in sight. It seemed like a cheap shot but Joel took it anyway, running to the man and punching him hard in the face while his arms were still restrained by edges of the tear in the chain-link. The man’s nose smeared across his face and Joel followed up the blow with two more, making sure the guy was good and dazed before grabbing by the collar of his jacket and pulling him through the fence. The bat fell to the ground and Joel grabbed it up, advancing on the guy laying prone on his back in the dirt. Joel sat astride him, holding the bat with his hands two feet apart. He pushed the wooden shaft on the man’s throat, applying just enough just enough pressure that the guy would know he could apply a lot more.
“Who are you?” said Joel. “And who is she to you?”
The man’s eyes weren’t focussing properly but Joel thought he had heard the question.
“Who’s Harry?” he said.
Despite the punches he’d taken to the face and the baseball bat pushing down on his Adam’s apple the guy laughed. “Harry’s the man who’s going to be the end of you.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“She really got to you huh? Bad luck, mate.”
Joel could feel the anger and pain building inside him again, they’d disappeared for a minute as the adrenalin had taken over. He let go of the bat and punched the prone man in the face again.
“Who is she?”
“She’s Harry’s blood, that’s who she is.”
Joel brought his elbow down on the man’s forehead, knocking him unconscious, his head lolling to the side. There was still no sign of the others when Joel looked around himself so he went through the man’s pockets, finding his mobile phone. He could hear shouting from within the park now, the two men calling for their mate. Then there were more voices, more men sent to join the hunt for him. He took the phone and ran through the darkness, up and away from the park. There was a pedestrian walkway a few hundred feet from it, raised up with a good view across it and the beach. He checked behind him as he ran. There was no-one there, no-one following him. Was that because Eve had shown them where the bag was already or for some other reason?
He ran up the ramp to the walkway, ducked down behind the waist high wall at the top, then rose up a little and peered cautiously over the top. He could see the guy he’d knocked out, still lying there where he’d fallen. Joel couldn’t help hoping the guy was found soon, it was too cold a night to be on the ground for long.
He ducked back down again and looked at the mobile in his hand. It was an old Motorola flip phone, the kind that had been popular five or six years previously. Joel flipped it open and clicked into the address book. He found the entry for Harry straight away. No surname, just the one word. He dialled it.
The phone at the other end was picked up straight away, a deep gruff voice answered. A voice that sounded like it was built on two packs a day.
“Did you get him?”
“Yeah I got him, took the bat of him and shoved it up his arse.”
“Oh, it’s you,” said Harry. “I’m glad you called, I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”
“Then talk.”
There was a pause. He could almost hear Harry thinking.
“I’m sorry,” that gravelly voice said at last.
Joel didn’t respond, wasn’t going to rise to it.
“I shouldn’t have used Eve like that, wasn’t fair on either of you. She’s not a bad girl, just likes the boys you know. And pleasing her Uncle Harry of course.”
“Fuck you,” said Joel, he felt sick, like someone had punched him in the stomach hard enough force the contents back up his throat “And fuck her too.”
Harry laughed. “Did you? I bet you did. Quite a way with the boys like I say. Winds them round her little finger. Years of practice though, early starter our Eve. Her Dad, my brother, God rest his soul, would turn in his grave if he knew the things she’d done. The things she does.”
Joel was quiet again, he didn’t want to believe this man but every word was like knife in him, like that blade in Mark’s hand slicing into his flesh again.
“Truth hurts does it? Like I say, I’m sorry. All’s fair in love and war though. And trust me, this is war, you fucking cunt.”
Chapter Thirty Five
Harry hung up his phone and slipped it into his jacket pocket. This wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. When that same phone had rung that lunchtime telling him to be on the lookout for someone with a lot of money that didn’t belong to them it had sounded like a win win situation. A golden opportunity for Harry to raise his profile with the big boys in London if he found the guy. And if he didn’t who was to say they’d even come to Southend in the first place. At that point nobody had a bloody clue where he was, they just knew where he wasn’t. Not at the meeting point where the money should have been handed over. And not, apparently, amidst the pile of bodies at the house the money had come from. The job sounded like a fucking disaster, a burglary that should have been simple enough given the people involved turned into something from a Sam Peckinpah movie. There was even a kid messed up in it somewhere, so Harry had heard. And at the end of it one of the players had walked out of it with half a million fucking quid and then vanished.
