Chapter 13 – Katie
“Are you feeling ok, sweetie?” Katie squeezed her son’s shoulder.
“It still feels funny,” Nathan replied, trying to scratch around his hairline. His twin sister scrunched her nose up as she stared at her brother’s ear, trying her hardest to look right inside his head. “What does a gobbit look like anyway?”
“A ‘grommet’ Annie,” Katie corrected her, smiling as she gently lifted her son down from the hospital bed. “Right, shall we go home now and get that ice cream I promised you both?”
“Yes!” the four-year-olds cheered in unison and each of them took hold of one of Katie’s hands to leave the room together.
Outside the hospital was an impressive set of steps that ran the full width of the reception area’s glass frontage. Walking diagonally down them to take a more direct route to the bus stop, Nathan stopped suddenly. “What’s this?” he gestured to something at the bottom of the steps covered in brown parcel paper. Katie bent down to investigate and saw that it was an addressed package, presumably on its way to the post office.
“Has somebody lost it, Mummy?” asked Annie.
“I guess so, darling.” Katie picked up the parcel and turned it around in her hands. The destination address was in France. “You’re a long way from home,” she muttered.
“Shall we take it to the post office and send it?” Nathan asked excitedly.
Katie thought for a moment. She scanned around them and couldn’t see anyone that looked like they were searching for a lost parcel. Nathan’s surgery had gone well and Katie was in a good mood, so why not participate in a random act of kindness for a stranger? “It’s a bit too late to take it today, we’ve missed the last post, but we could take it home with us, and I can try to send it tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Can we have chips for tea?”
The trio neared their house, an anonymous abode on a street full of matching brick-built offerings, all with tired looking front doors and unkempt pathways leading up to them through paved and weed-spattered yards. They approached their door, and Katie unlocked it.
As she pushed it open, a figure slowly appeared from the shadows of the alleyway that led down to the rear of the building. “Hello, Katie,” the man slurred, stumbling slightly as he walked towards them. His tired-looking eyes locked on Katie’s. He smiled and added a greeting to the children. “Hey, kids.”
Nathan shuffled his feet and suddenly took great interest in a dandelion that was sprouting up from a crack in one of the paving slabs. Annie gripped her mother’s hand tighter and said nothing, unable to look away from the sinister man in front of her.
“Well?” the man prompted. “It’s not polite to ignore people.” He spat as he spoke, eyes narrowing at the snub.
“Hi Dad,” Nathan muttered, still staring down at the weeds.
Katie squeezed her daughter’s hand, breaking her out of her trance.
“Hello Daddy,” the girl muttered quietly.
There were an awkward few seconds where nobody spoke and the only movement was the man’s gentle swaying, but he quickly became impatient. “Let me in. I need to get some of my stuff.”
“Simon, you’ve been drinking,” Katie whispered, hoping that their children wouldn’t hear.
“Yeah? What’s your point?” Simon sneered.
“Perhaps another time might be better for–”
“No, now works for me.”
Simon took a couple of steps towards them and Katie ushered the children inside. He grabbed the door, preventing it from being shut so he could follow them into the house.
“I like what you’ve done with the place.” He gave an exaggerated nod full of mock approval. “Except the part where I’m not here anymore.” Simon’s voice had taken on a dangerous tone, one that Katie knew only too well. He turned to face her. His eyes were blazing with a fury that only she seemed to be able to bring about in him. It was then that he spotted the parcel under her arm. “What’s this?” he reached out and tore the parcel away from her, waving it in the air. “You’re getting gifts from your new fancy man now, are you?”
Katie recognised the signs, and knew what was to come. She just needed to try to calm Simon, even for a minute, to get their children safely out of the way. Keeping her voice calming, whilst her pulse did its best possible impression of a mouse’s rapid heartbeat, she spoke. “Simon, let Nathan and Annie go off to play, then you and I can talk, okay?”
Simon clenched and unclenched the fingers on his free hand, the parcel gripped in his other hand. He was still tightly wound, but seemed to at least stabilize on hearing Katie’s words. He jerked his head in a gesture towards the stairs. “Yeah, go on kids, you go off and play.”
Nathan and Annie looked up at their mother, who smiled at them apologetically, and led them by their hands to the bottom of the stairs. Keeping Simon in view out of the corner of one eye, Katie crouched so that she was eye level with her son and daughter. She held their hands to her chest as she spoke softly. “I need to have a little talk with your daddy because he’s a bit upset.”
“Has he been drinking alcohol, Mummy?” Nathan asked.
“I think he has, baby, but he doesn’t do it as much now does he?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Now, because Daddy and I need to have a talk, I want you both to go up to Nathan’s room and play together in there, ok Annie?”
“Yes, Mummy.” The little girl’s lip quivered.
“Nathan…” His mother made sure she had his full attention by squeezing his hand. He looked directly into her eyes, appearing to focus on her next words. “Do you understand what I am saying to you both?”
“Yes I do, Mummy. We’re both to play in my room together like you showed us.”
“That’s right baby,” Katie sighed, relieved. “Now go on upstairs and stay there until I tell you to come out.” She wiped away a tear that had collected in the corner of one eye as the twins ran upstairs and out of sight. Taking a deep breath, she turned to face her estranged husband.
Simon was already striding towards her. He grabbed Katie’s hair, yanking back her head so that he could speak straight into her ear. “Found someone else to put up with you then? Rushing straight off into the arms of anyone who’ll have you, like a common slut. And what’s in here?” He rattled the box next to his ear, his face feigning intrigue. “I wonder what he thinks you’re worth…” He paused, a sneer appearing on his lips. He spat out the next words. “To me, you’re nothing.” He released his grip on her hair then threw her to the floor. Without even glancing at the handwritten address on the package, he hurled it out of the open front door then slammed the door closed.
Upstairs, Nathan had ushered his sister along the landing and into his room. He had closed the door behind them as she went over to his chest of drawers. Annie pulled a portable music player from the top drawer, with two sets of headphones and an adapter to plug them both in. Wordlessly, Nathan opened the doors to his fitted wardrobe, and they both crept in behind Nathan’s Iron Man superhero outfit and pulled the door closed. Nathan rummaged around and found the torch that he kept in there, a wind-up one shaped like an elephant. He flicked it on and together they plugged in their headphones, put them on, and cuddled each other by torchlight as Stephen Fry told them tales of Roald Dahl’s Enormous Crocodile.
Katie knew better than to attempt to get up after Simon had thrown her to the floor. He would see it as an act of defiance, which would only serve to anger him further. He approached, standing over her, legs either side of her waist. He squatted over the mother of his children and struck her hard across the cheek with a violent backhand. “You’ll never be good enough for anyone but me. I’m the only person who can love someone as damaged as you. You’ll never find happiness with anyone else.” Simon punctuated each of his sentences by banging the back of Katie’s head into the floor. He didn’t do it hard enough to damage her skull, but she suspected that the resulting h
eadache would last for at least a week.
He pulled the dizzy woman to her feet to better deliver the next two blows. They were closed fist punches to her face, which caused Katie’s vision to blur and she began to tune out to what was happening around her.
Outside, the parcel had landed on the edge of the wheelie bin‘s lid in the front yard before slowly sliding off and ultimately perching precariously on the top of the red brick wall that separated the property from the pavement. A tortoiseshell cat was padding along the top of the wall towards Katie’s house. As it reached the section where Lois Everdale’s parcel sat overhanging the pavement, someone across the road beeped their car horn. The startled cat jumped onto the parcel to launch itself up out of reach to higher ground. Its powerful back legs catapulted the parcel off the wall and into the side of a car parked at the kerb. The parcel bounced off the car and finally came to rest on the pavement.
After a few minutes of exertion, Simon’s adrenaline had begun to wane, and his mood was calming somewhat. Katie looked up tentatively from her position on the cool laminate floor of her hallway. Her head felt groggy, her vision clouded by the swelling around her eyes and cheeks. Simon had retreated to the kitchen and was muttering to himself as he washed her blood off his knuckles. She lifted a shaky hand and felt her bruised face. Her fingers came away with blood on them, probably a split lip, she’d had enough to know.
In her periphery, she could roughly make out Simon’s blurry silhouette now moving slowly towards her. Katie expected what happened next, and in some ways it was the hardest part.
“Baby, look at you! What monster could do something like this? I’m so sorry.” He was always like this afterwards, apologetic, ashamed, full of promises to change. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, offering her a hand to help her to her feet. She accepted cautiously, and allowed him to pull her up to standing. “You know I don’t mean it baby, it’s just that I love you so much… I… I get carried away.”
“I know you do,” Katie mumbled, moving her aching lips as little as possible as she delivered her stock line.
“Let me go and get that parcel for you.” Simon opened the front door and went out to look for the package as Katie moved to the mirror to brave the view that would stare back at her. “I can’t see it out there anywhere. Someone’s already made off with it, I guess. What was it baby? I’ll buy you a new one, whatever it was.”
“I don’t know,” Katie muttered, gently touching her swollen face as she spoke the next words to herself. “I just hoped maybe an act of kindness for a stranger might make me hate myself a little less.”
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