Her room is plain magnolia with some of the paint chipped away, just like the rest of the place. Her bed is an old wooden thing, just a single, and her carpet is threadbare in places. What you can see of it, anyway.
It pains me to see how they’ve rampaged through her wardrobe, pains me further to find another used rubber in her bedsheets. They’ve taken her makeup and used it to scrawl obscenities over her dressing table mirror. The rest is trampled into the carpet. I pull a sweet white dress from her wastepaper basket, and it’s been shredded, ripped almost clean in two. The rest of her clothes haven’t fared much better, and my breath catches in my throat to see her torn knickers, cast from her chest of drawers and soiled in ways I don’t even want to consider.
I hear her footsteps on the stairs, but I’m too late to stop her. She wails as she sees the carnage.
I grab for her as she launches herself towards the bed, but I’m not quick enough. She doesn’t even see the grimy rubber, she’s too focused on what’s beyond.
And then I see it, too. A tattered bear, stuffing hanging from its dismembered limbs. She wrestles with her bedcovers until she finds its head, and she really does cry then, holding its broken pieces to her chest as she rocks back and forth.
I could kill the fuckers who did this to her.
She flinches when I lay a hand on her shoulder, and her words are broken. Choked.
“It’s Ted,” she sobs. “I’ve had him since I was a baby… I love him…”
“Shh,” I say, and it’s the most natural thing in the world to pull her into my arms. “I’ll fix him, Laine.”
Her delicate arms wrap around my waist, and she buries her face against my shirt. “Why did they do this? Why did they do this to Ted?”
“Because they’re assholes who don’t have anything better to do with their poxy lives.”
Her sniffles are so sad. “I’m… I’m so glad you’re here… thank you…”
And I know this is it. I’m done for.
Her words are muffled against my chest. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Mum… she’s going to be so mad…”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” I say. I take her cheeks and tilt her head up to mine, and her watery eyes are so beautiful. “Let’s go now.”
“Go where?”
“Home,” I say simply. “Home to mine.”
“But I can’t… I have to stay… I have to fix this…”
I brush her tears away with my thumbs.
“You don’t have to fix anything, Laine,” I tell her. “Not anymore.”
Laine
My heart hurts and I feel sick.
“You’re so kind…”
He takes Ted from my arms and finds his missing leg. My poor, poor Ted. His battered body breaks my heart. My voice is all choked up as I ask Nick the question.
“Do you think you can save him?”
“I’ll give it my very best shot,” he tells me, and I believe him. He looks around my bedroom. “There’s nothing else worth saving,” he says. “I’m sorry, Laine, we’ll have to get new.”
“But I don’t…” I cough to hide the embarrassment. “I don’t have any money… not enough… not even if I did have my purse…”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
But I am. I am worried about that. He’s done far too much already, and I tell him so. I tell him I can’t take any more from him, that he hardly even knows me, but he waves his hand, won’t hear any of it.
“I’ll call a locksmith when we’re back at home,” he says. “Some cleaners, too. They’ll salvage anything that can be saved.” He runs a hand down my chipped paintwork. “I think we’ll need a decorator, too. They’ve done a real number on the place, vile little cunts.”
I gasp. It shocks me so much to hear him swear like that.
“Sorry,” he says when he sees my open mouth.
But I like it. I like the way he sounds when he’s angry. He sounds so strong… so fierce…
“I just can’t believe there are people like this out there,” he snaps. “Low-life scum.”
“They didn’t do all of this…” I admit. I point at the chipped paint. “That was already there.”
“We’ll get the place spruced up,” he says. “I promise.”
I smile, say yet another thank you, and I even try to sound convincing.
It’s not that I’m not grateful, because I am. It’s not that I’m not aware how lucky I am that I ran into the road and into Nick’s path, because I’m very, very aware of that.
It’s because I know that when we leave this house, and all the tattered broken things in here, I’m never ever going to want to come back.
He digs out a box from the garage. It’s sad that one single box is going to be more than enough to contain the remnants of my life.
I’m relieved to find my college work intact above my wardrobe. I pack up my folders and text books, and place Ted on top, being careful with all his frayed pieces.
That’s just about everything I can save. Everything I want to.
Everything that matters.
Nick carries it out to the car. He loads my measly possessions into the back and smiles as I slip into the passenger seat and buckle myself in. He closes the front door and locks it, and I wait in the car as he calls at the neighbours on either side.
He says nothing about what they tell him, and I’ve never much liked the neighbours anyway, so I don’t ask.
I don’t want to know what happened here. I already know enough.
“I still think we should call the police,” he says as he reverses away from the house.
“No point,” I reply. “They won’t care anyway.”
“Of course they’ll care, Laine. They’re the police. It’s their job to care.”
“And this is a dead end street. There’s always crap going on around here. They’ll probably think it was a party I had myself while my mum was away. A party that got out of hand, and now I’m trying to cover my tracks before Mum gets back.”
“They won’t think that.”
“They will,” I insist, and he doesn’t argue. I guess he knows it too.
We head back towards Brighton, and the further away from Newhaven we get, the more relieved I feel. He parks up at a multi-storey in the middle of town, and I look at him curiously as he gestures I should follow him.
“You need things,” he explains as we head for the exit. “New clothes. Toiletries. A phone.”
“But I…” I grasp his wrist and he stops. “I can’t take all this from you. I just can’t.”
He sighs. “Laine, I’ve more than enough money. It’s nice to have someone to spend it on.”
I think of Jane. I think about all the people a man like Nick should have in his life. A wife maybe. Friends. Just… people.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say so, but his hands are on my shoulders before the words are out.
“Please, Laine. It’s my pleasure. Allow me to enjoy it.”
“Just a few bits…” I say. “Just to tide me over… and I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
“No,” he says. “You won’t.”