Fractured A Slated Novel

Chapter FORTY SIX



* * *





Coulson has one of the Lorders drive me home after a stop at a local hospital for stitches. In one of their black vans, but this time, sitting in the front. Distaste is all over his face at the state of me, but I don’t care. Too much caring screams inside.

It is late evening now. Dark. As we go down the main road of our village, I wonder absently if curtains twitch in kitchens and bedroom windows at the sight of a Lorder van going by?

It pulls up in front of our house. Dad’s car is here. The front door springs open: Mum.

‘Get out,’ the Lorder says, voice flat.

I open the van door, step down. Start walking stiffly to the house as he pulls away.

‘Oh my God,’ Mum says. ‘What has happened to you? What have they done?’ I sway on my feet, and she tries to grab me.

I shrug her off. ‘I’m fine,’ I say, the biggest lie of all, and walk through the front door.

Amy’s shocked face appears from the kitchen. Silent.

Dad walks over from the lounge, and looks me up and down. Smiles. Claps his hands: once, twice, again; slow and deliberate. He knows; somehow, he knows. Lorder, my mind processes. Not just an informer, but one of them.

Mum looks between him and me.

‘Kyla?’ she asks uncertainly. ‘What has happened?’

But I stare at Dad. ‘You didn’t just report me to the Lorders. You’re one of them.’

He doesn’t answer; his eyes shift uneasily to Mum, and back again.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say, realisation sinking in. Cam was here, worming his way into my life before I even made that drawing of the hospital. They were keeping their eyes on me anyhow, like Coulson said. All Dad did by reporting me and getting us hauled in was tip me off that I was watched. ‘You’re a small fish, aren’t you? They didn’t even tell you what was really going on in your own home. Then when you finally noticed something, they told you to shut up and keep out of it.’

His mouth starts to open, then shuts again.

‘Kyla?’ Mum says again, but I can’t talk any more, not now.

‘Excuse me,’ I manage. ‘I need a wash.’ I walk up the stairs. Lock the bathroom door. Strip and chuck my clothes covered in a bit of mine and more of Katran’s blood into the rubbish bin. Moving stiff, slow, like a puppet. Not quite in control of my body with so much control required elsewhere. To stop me from curling into a ball in the corner and screaming, over and over.

Blood washes away, I know this: soon I’m clean, skin soft, smooth. A few new scars on the way courtesy of Cam. Half a dozen stitches in my shoulder, more on my side. Painkillers still in my system to help me go on, but they do nothing for the real damage, inside.

But I’m never forgetting anything, ever again. No matter what it is, or how bad it hurts. Nico and that doctor – Doctor Craig – in that place I didn’t even remember properly until this afternoon: they taught me ways to forget, to hide. And my missing years, between Lucy disappearing at age 10, and Rain taking over at 14? That is where I was. With them, being forced to split down the middle, so that part could be hidden behind a wall in my mind, and survive Slating.

And the brick, big enough to smash me in two: now I know what it was. Watching Nico kill my father. When Katran died in my arms, it brought it all back.

In my room I get into pyjamas, and wrap a blanket tight around myself. There is a light knock at the door.

Amy peeks in. ‘Want some company?’ she asks, hesitant. I shrug. She comes in, and Sebastian follows. He jumps up on the bed, climbs into my lap. Amy gets up next to me. Puts an arm around my shoulders. I wince and move her hand so it isn’t on my stitches, then droop against her.

There are echoes of voices downstairs. Heated voices.

‘They sent me upstairs,’ Amy says.

‘Oh?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘For telling Dad about your drawing. Mum got him to admit he reported it. I can’t believe it.’ Amy’s face is a picture of shock.

‘What else did he say?’ I ask, my voice sounding dim and distant to my ears, like I’m talking under water, and not really here.

‘Stuff I can’t believe. That you’ve been some sort of double agent for the Lorders. Mental.’

‘Yeah. Mental,’ I whisper.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I shake my head and instead of asking twenty questions like I expect, she seems almost relieved, says nothing else. But she stays, warm and solid, next to me.

There is a sudden slam of door downstairs. A car starts out front, squeals up the road and is gone. There is a long pause, then footsteps on the stairs. The door opens and Mum stands there, quiet, taking in the two of us and the cat snuggled up together.

‘What a good idea,’ she says, and manages to slot herself in by my other side. A tight squeeze.

I must drift to sleep. Hours later when I wake, the room is dark, and the only one still with me is the cat.

The numb blankness is seeping away, leaving nothing but pain behind. I cry for the little girl I was, who I can’t even remember apart from the fact that she loved her dad. I cry for him, and all he did to try to rescue her, no matter how she ended up there in the first place. I cry that I failed him, utterly: never forget who you are, he said, and I did. I cry for Katran, whose flaws were obvious, but whose caring was not. When he could have run, got away like Nico, he came back for me. Trying to save me led to his death.

And I cry for myself, who I am now. Where is my place in this world?