Chapter Six
The clock struck twelve in the empty house before Sophia dropped off to sleep. She couldn’t settle and the sense of isolation crowded around her like a dangerous fog. Noises which never bothered her before seemed threatening and sinister, floorboards groaned back into place and pipes clanked for no apparent reason.
The hammering on the front door came around two in the morning, frantic and loud in the silent hallway. Roused from sleep, her heart pounding, Sophia reached for her mobile phone so she could call the neighbour for help. Curiosity drove her down the hallway to the landing, peeking from a distance down the stairs and through the glass panels either side of the front door. Her breath came heavy with fear and she jumped as the knocking came again. “Oh, God, why me?” she pleaded as her eyes searched the darkness for answers.
A large, bright moon shone outside the door and through the frosted glass. Sophia crouched on the top step and fumbled to turn on her phone screen, glancing up to see a distorted face peering through the glass. Small and brown and at knee height, two small eyes reflected the moonlight. Then a tiny voice said, “She isn’t comin’. She isn’t gonna help us, Dane.”
Relief coursed through Sophia’s veins, chasing out the panic and leaving her shaken. “Wait!” she called. On wobbly legs, she hurried down the flight of stairs and unlocked the front door. Warm night air wafted in and she had a moment of misgiving, looking down and seeing her Sponge Bob pyjamas twisted round so the buttons were at the side and one of the trouser legs rolled up to her knee. “I didn’t know it was you.” Her hair stuck up on one side and as she raised her hand to her face, it contacted the tell-tale stickiness of dribble on her left cheek.
Dane stared at her as Sophia stood framed in the open doorway. He glanced behind him twice at the car on the driveway and chewed the inside of his cheek.
“Sorry, sorry, please come in.” Embarrassed, Sophia stood back to let them crowd into the hall. Maisie shivered in a pair of boys’ pyjamas that looked much too big for her and she clutched a little brown teddy in fingers with white knuckles. The first button of the pyjama shirt did up at her belly button and the legs were folded over and over above her tiny, bare feet. Sophia stared at William, who wore his school PE kit in the middle of the night and carried his library bag.
“Maisie went to sleep,” Will announced. “So her uniform got left behind.” He winced. “Now she can’t go to school.”
“I can go to school!” Maisie panicked. “I can, can’t I, Dane? I can go to school.”
“It’s fine.” Dane sounded exhausted. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days. A dark beard graced his cheeks and chin and his sparkling eyes contained a hardness which looked irreversible. His right eyebrow bled from a deep cut and a trail leaked down the side of his face, merging with the mess from a split lip. “He’s back,” he said, his tone flat. “I need to hide the car. Is there room in the garage?”
“Go downstairs and turn left. There’s a switch on the wall that opens the door. Park next to the station wagon.” She watched his wooden movements as he passed her. “Look, I’ll come and help.”
“No!” Dane said, shoving her towards his siblings. “Look after the little kids.”
He disappeared down the stairs to the basement, his dark head rounding the dogleg to the garage below. Sophia heard the sound of the garage door opening, grinding on its gears and then a car firing to life. Maisie and William stared up at her, expecting her to do something. The weight of the trust in their little faces made her heart feel as though it was tearing in two.
Maisie reached out a tiny hand and touched Sophia’s pyjama leg. “I love Sponge Bob,” she said and Sophia felt the growing knot in her chest as she suppressed her tears. Their innocence clashed with their awful existence and left the air molecules bouncing in disbelief.
“I know, let’s make some hot chocolate,” Sophia suggested, taking a little hand in each of hers and leading them upstairs to the kitchen. Maisie tripped over her pyjama bottoms twice up the steps until Sophia lifted her onto her hip. The child laid her head on the older girl’s shoulder and squashed the teddy bear between them. “Sit here then,” Sophia said in the kitchen, sounding confident and businesslike. She lifted them onto bar stools and set about heating up milk in a saucepan and adding chocolate powder. Both children appeared dazed and shocked and out of desperation, Sophia reached up above the fridge to the drinks cabinet and added a huge slug of Bailey’s Irish Crème to the mixture on the hob.
By the time the first bubbles broke the surface of the milk, Dane appeared back upstairs having moved the car and shut the garage door. “Front door’s locked,” he said. “But he’ll never find us here, anyway.”
Sophia doled out mugs of hot chocolate to each of them and the little boy and girl sipped with a watchfulness about them which belonged to much older war veterans.
When they finished, Sophia helped Dane take them to Matt’s room and settle them in the big double bed together. They snuggled up in the middle, clinging to each other like drowning swimmers clutching driftwood. Their living terror felt palpable and Sophia choked down silent sobs. Dane leaned over and kissed them both, trying not to drip blood on the sheets. “Watch out, Will,” he whispered to his brother as the boy clung to his neck. “I don’t wanna messy up Soph’s nice sheets.”
Maisie put her thin little arms around his neck and locked her fingers. “Don’t leave us,” she begged.
“It’s fine,” he soothed. “You’re safe now, go to sleep.”
“Can you and Soph get in?” she begged, fear leaking through her terrified brown eyes.
Dane shook his head. “Soph’s going in her bed and I’ll keep guard again. Just like I did last night and the night before. It’ll be fine now.”
“But what about Soph’s fambly? I need to see them first. They might want to hurt you, Dane.” Will pushed himself up in the bed and Maisie followed.
Sophia raised her hand. “My dad’s away. It’s just me here. Nobody can get in so you’re safe to go to sleep. I’ll stay up with Dane and it’ll be okay.” The hollowness of her own words struck her in the stomach. She couldn’t promise anything would be okay for them again.
“See.” Dane faked a determined smile. “We won’t let anything happen to you.” He smiled down on them like a loving parent and they snuggled under the covers, believing him.
Back in the harsh light of the kitchen, Sophia tried to attend to Dane’s cuts with her mother’s first aid box from the pantry. She did the best she could and Dane didn’t flinch or complain as she stuck wonky plaster strips onto the eyebrow cut to try and hold the folds of skin together. He seemed calm, but it felt as though every fibre in his body waited, poised for a fight. It made her nervous and on edge. “Dad’s away on business,” she breathed, concentrating on mopping blood from his chin. The damp cotton wool stuck in his stubble, leaving white trails she couldn’t pick out. “He won’t be back until Sunday.”
Dane nodded but made no comment. Sophia wanted him to tell her what happened, but couldn’t bear to ask. She picked the strands of cotton from his stubble, discovering more cuts and a black bruise along his jaw as the blood disappeared. She turned to grab a baby wipe and almost fell over the bag behind her. She looked at it, not recognising it.
“It’s their school stuff,” Dane explained, wiping the wetness from his cheek with his sleeve. “I got it ready in case.” He swallowed. “Will refused take his sports kit off. He’s got athletics on Monday and he’s in a running race. He wanted me to wag off and watch him. He thinks he’s gonna win.” Dane’s lips quirked upwards in a smile and the cut on his lower lip burst open.
“Sshh. You don’t need to tell me.” Sophia stroked the baby wipe across his chin to try and tease out the hanging strands of cotton wool. “I’ve made you look like Father Christmas.” She smiled and bit back the jibe about disguises. Dane’s hand reached up to Sophia’s waist, his fingers winding through the fabric of her pyjamas. He gasped when he felt soft skin, biting his lip as
his eyes flared with danger. He pulled Sophia into him, pressing his lips to her surprised, open mouth. It felt forceful and desperate, the passion of her first kiss shocking her to the core. But just as she began to enjoy his teasing tongue, Dane wrenched away, putting a hand over his lip and letting out a hiss of pain through his teeth. “Sorry, sorry,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
Sophia stood in front of him, wishing he would hold her for reassurance, but he didn’t. It felt so long since anyone put their arms around her and held her just for holding sake and Sophia thought she might shatter like crystal from the unexpected rawness the need uncovered. Dane McArdle unlocked the vat of emotion and then abandoned her, like everyone else. His termination of the kiss meant she lost something else she never really owned.
Dane used the bathroom and when he returned, he found Sophia sitting on the sofa picking at a loose thread on her pyjamas. “They’re asleep,” he announced. “Thank God. They’re so little; they can’t run on empty like I can.”
Sophia nodded. “What do we do now?”
“Get some sleep. You can go to bed if you like. He’ll be too drunk to look for us now. Drunk or busy.” Dane’s jaw clenched through his cheek at the connotations of his own words and Sophia didn’t ask.
“No, I promised I’d keep you company.” She curled her feet underneath her and rested her head against a cushion. Dane turned out the lights and plunged the house into darkness and she heard him shift around on the carpet next to her.
Sophia woke up ages later, stiff and cold, wedged in an uncomfortable position on the sofa. She wriggled around trying to get comfy, feeling sorry when Dane spoke to her from the floor. “I put the blanket over you. I found it in the other room. You were shivering.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered back. “I’ve got a crick in my neck. I feel like an eighty-year-old woman!”
He snorted with laughter and it was a good sound in the silent house. Sophia peeked over the edge of the sofa to see Dane laid on the carpet on his back with his arms above his head. His legs were crossed at the ankles and bare feet poked out from jeans with tattered hems. His white tee shirt seemed to glow in the dim light from the moon and Sophia saw the shadows of spiteful black bruises on his upper arms and another beginning under his right eye.
“Will your mum be ok on her own with your stepdad?” she asked, imagining some delicate, terrified woman cowering in a corner of the derelict house. To her surprise, Dane laughed out loud and shook his head without changing his body position. It was a nasty laugh, full of the angry black overspill from his damaged heart.
“She’s the one who let him come back. Silly cow. She can take care of herself,” he said and his voice sounded colder than an Antarctic wind. “She does it every time. He goes to jail; she gets clean and gets a job, starts to make a half decent mother and then back he comes. Before we know it, she’ll be wandering around stoned, unemployed and unable to take care of herself let alone the kids. He’ll put her in the hospital; she’ll refuse to press charges and then one day he’ll be picked up by the cops for dealing, burglary, maybe even some violent assaults before he goes back to jail. Then she’ll get in touch with me and expect me to come back and put the whole lot right again.” He sighed and touched the cut on his eyebrow. “I can’t do it anymore. I’m tired of it. I’ll get Maisie and Will settled and then I’ll shoot through, find myself a full-time job and a place to live. She can sort out her own mess from now on.” He smiled at Sophia in the half-light. “Thanks for letting us stay. You didn’t have to do that and it means a lot.”
His words felt so final, as though he thanked her before saying goodbye. It was as if their lives reached a massive crossroads taking them in different directions. Sophia wanted to ask him about his art, how he would be able to use his extraordinary talent, whilst hefting wood on a building site or putting mud into plant pots. She wanted to ask how he’d ever get to art college without school exams, but most of all, she wanted to ask him about her. It was as though something just started, life formed out of something beautiful which would never feel the light of day and perish before it began. It caused a lump to form in her chest and she fought the urge to cry hot tears of anger, sadness and regret.
Sophia turned on her side and pulled the blanket over her cold shoulders. Part of her wanted to stomp down the hallway and shut herself in the bedroom until he’d gone, but another part of her, some self-destructive, torturous element wanted to soak in his company for as long as she could before he disappeared from her life forever. She sniffed to stop the inevitable misery and felt his hand on her shoulder. To her dismay, he misinterpreted her distress. “Hey, I’m sorry. This must be rough on you. You’ve been so good about everything. We’ll be out of your way soon.”
Sophia bit her lip while her insides recoiled. She should be telling him not to worry. She wanted him and his tiny burdens to stay the whole weekend, the rest of her life to be honest, but she said nothing, cursing herself for never having the right words. She realised he didn’t see her as girlfriend material; just a useful acquaintance. Sandra would reclaim him, the diva and the stud. The dispute between them fell into place; her father wouldn’t help Dane against his own brother. It would pass and Dane could go back to Sandra’s wobbling breasts and forget Sophia ever existed apart from a nod in the corridor out of politeness.
She spent the rest of the night awake, convincing herself the boy less than a metre away from her was very much out of her league. Fate dictated they must each stay on their own sides of the tracks, for everyone’s sake. She thought about the origin of the saying, trying to recall what her dad told her once, back in the days when he actually communicated. Sophia couldn’t remember why they got onto the subject or even the context of the discussion. But the words he spoke clenched her heart in misery.
“The steam trains brought wealth, but they also brought filth and pollution. Towns grew around the railway tracks or if the town was there first, the railway line channelled straight through the centre for easy access. The wind blew the sooty fumes and black smoke from the trains around the town. Often the places downwind of the muck were poorer, less desirable areas to live. They were the wrong side of the tracks to be on. The divide grew and although folk strived to cross over to live on the nice side; they rarely managed it.”
By five o’clock in the morning, after very little sleep and far too much stress for her sixteen-year-old brain, Sophia decided it was a stupid analogy, with no bearing on real life whatsoever. She also convinced herself she should tell Dane how she felt about him. Then she fell asleep.
Opening her eyes and rolling over with a sigh hours later, she discovered the floor next to her was empty. A trip down to the children’s room revealed their neatly made bed and nothing to show they ever slept there.
Running to the front room window, Sophia watched a car pull up onto the driveway and a woman get out, followed by a man. Maisie and William ran to them, bouncing up and down as they were lifted up off their feet and given kisses. Sophia looked at her rumpled pyjamas in dismay and knew she needed to run down the stairs to Dane. “Do it now!” she pleaded with herself, but by the time she pushed her hands through her hair and plucked up the courage, Dane’s engine started and she heard the whirring of the garage door as it closed behind him. Sophia opened the front door onto an empty driveway and an equally cavernous heart. Closing the door on the world, she sat on the bottom step and cried, letting the constant disappointment wash over her again and again. God hated her. He’d pulled the plug on her happy, normal, oblivious life and left her with ashes. “I may as well not be here,” she sobbed.