An Unexpected Gift (6 page)

From
early on in their relationship, she always made it a point to go and meet him
in Old Street. And though they never discussed salaries, she got the impression
that he begrudged her her career choice, the idea that she might be earning
more than him and that she lived in a beautiful part of London.

At
first she put it down to him having had too much to drink. Not that that was an
excuse. The first time she had noticed that Carl was not the man she had
thought him to be was when they had gone to his friend’s party, about two
week’s after they first met. It was a barbeque in a house in Hoxton. Everything
had been going well. She had met his friends and started talking to them. Then,
right out of the blue, he had stormed up to her, grabbed her roughly by the
wrist and taken her off to a corner of the small garden. Even now, looking
back, she cringed when she recalled the embarrassed faces of his friends as he
marched her off. She remembered standing there confused and dazed. The
threatening tone of his voice, his bullying manner and the red mark around her
wrist where he had squeezed it tightly, had all scared her.

She
wasn’t used to this behavior at all. Even worse, she had no idea what she had
done wrong to be at the receiving end of his wrath. He had accused her ignoring
of him and talking to everyone else instead. She had been silenced by his
remark because she was in shock by what had just happened. Humiliated and
embarrassed, she had somehow plucked up the courage and had shouted back at
him, once the shock of his accusation had hit home. For a moment she had seen
the flash of anger ignite in his eyes and then it had subsided, just as
quickly. And just like that he had calmed down. He’d smiled his charming smile
and said he was sorry. He had apologized over and over for his behavior blaming
it on the drink. He’d had too many beers, he said.

So
she forgave him for that first episode because she had wanted to obliterate the
memory of the horrible scene that had just taken place. He had turned into
that
Carl again. The one she had first met at the pub, just a few weeks ago.

She
had fallen for the well built and funny charmer at a pub in Covent Garden. She
and Kerrie had been with a group of friends stopping for a drink at a pub after
seeing “Mamma Mia!” Carl was sitting with a group of his friends at a table
nearby. While Carl’s friends got chatting to Kerrie and a few other girls from
their group, Carl and Kerrie found themselves left out, sitting like loners on
their respective tables.

Carl
had smiled at her and struck up a conversation. It hadn’t been love at first
sight but she had fallen for his jokes and he had made her laugh.

He
had been so funny and charming back then. It had been hard to reconcile that
first Carl with the monster who had slowly emerged through the course of their
relationship. She had no inkling then of how quickly and suddenly he could turn
into a cold, uncaring and sadistic man who enjoyed inflicting cruel emotional
pain on her. He hadn’t been physically abusive towards her but she had the
uneasy suspicion that, had she stayed with him much longer, she would have
experienced that side of him too.

It
became a frequent occurrence, not his drinking but the vile temper and the
snide remarks he would make. Bit by bit she started to see the controlling part
of him slowly emerge.

First
he started telling her he didn’t want her wearing short skirts. Then he would
get possessive, starting a fight with anyone who looked her way and shouting at
her when they got back home to the flat that he shared with two others.

She
had never bought him over to hers, sensing earlier on that this might set him
off again, since he felt insecure as it was around her.

With relief, she now
looked back and realised this was the smartest thing she had done in the three
months she had wasted with him. Two months actually. She spent the third month
trying to escape from his needy clutches. And it had been hard.

Her
honeymoon period, which she referred to as the time when she only saw the nice
Carl, lasted about a week. She had the company of the nice Carl, the muscled
and fit golden blond boy for about two weeks. After that, the verbal abuse
started and slowly chipped away at her self-esteem, dampening her feisty
personality until, after a few months, she was a walking whimpering wreck of
her former self.

She managed to keep the
show going and to hide him away from Kerrie and her parents. She hadn’t told
her parents anything about the emotional abuse she was suffering. 

But Kerrie had seen the
change in her and one night, after a particularly destructive evening with
Carl, Caitlin had confessed all. It was Kerrie who had given her the strength
to end it. And in November, she had done exactly that.

She told him in a public
place that it was all over. And she had had Kerrie waiting for her outside the
pub.  Kerrie had stepped in when he had taken her roughly by the hand
and shouted that she couldn't do this to him or else.

"Or
else what you big bully?" Kerrie had shouted back at him, unable to watch
any longer. She had stormed into the pub and taking Caitlin by the arm, she
told Carl to get stuffed and to never contact Caitlin again.

That
was when he had turned really nasty.

He
texted her, emailed her and phoned her incessantly. At first she used to read
his emails but they were nasty, full of swear words and threats. After the
third or fourth one, she started deleting them without reading them. She
ignored his phone calls and deleted all his voicemails when he left messages.

In
the flat Kerrie used to delete all the messages when he left them and they left
the ringer on silent.  Then she had blocked his number. He started writing
horrible, nasty emails to her. She'd closed her Facebook account because he was
posting nasty comments on her wall.

And
when she hadn’t heard from him for most of December, she believed that she was
finally over the worst of it. Her initial thought was that he had found another
woman whose life he was going to make miserable. She hoped that he was out of
her life forever.

But
today DCI Osborn had shattered her hopes of rebuilding her life with the news
that her ex-boyfriend had gone to the trouble of finding and paying someone to
attack her.

She quivered at the
thought of what he would do next.

The
bastard.   I wish I could turn back the time and erase the moment I first set
eyes on him.

As
soon as Kerrie arrived home from work, Caitlin told her the awful news.

"You
poor thing," said Kerrie pensively. "I always knew he was
trouble."

"What
do I do now? The police want me to file charges.”

"You
are
going to aren’t you?” asked Kerrie, suddenly anxious that her friend
was going to back out and whimper down in defeat. “You have to Caitlin, you
can’t let him win. He won’t stop pestering you. You have to do something.”
Kerrie paced the floor, unable to contain her anger or her energy.

"Or
something," mused Caitlin, sitting on the sofa, deep in thought. "Like
getting a hit man." They both glanced at each other.

Caitlin’s
eyes were shadowed against her pale face. "I hate him so much. He's
messing up my life all over again. I thought I'd managed to get shot of
him." She buried her face in her hands.

Kerrie
placed her hand over her friend’s. "You will. Be positive. The police are
onto him now. They'll find the evidence they need. Don’t forget you’ve also got
the nasty emails he sent you and I’m sure the police can retrieve the texts he
sent you, even if you deleted them. You can get in touch with Facebook and they
might have your account archived off somewhere so you can still show the police
how he hounded you on there."  Caitlin's face softened a little as
she listened to Kerrie.

"I
still don't want to tell my parents anything. They’re so worried about the
attack as it is. They'll be mortified if they know that the bastard was behind
it all."

The
bastard. It seemed to be an appropriate name for her ex-boyfriend.

“We’re
going shopping tomorrow. Just as we planned, remember.”

Caitlin began to protest,
“No, I really don’t feel up to it Kerrie. Really I don’t.”

“So
you want to stay at home and hide under the duvet?  Do you really want to let
that bastard ruin your life more than he already has? Every time he chips away
at your self-esteem, he wins, remember that.”

“I
can’t.”

“Caitlin,
you can and you will. See if I don’t drag you out myself.” Kerrie was having
none of it. She wasn’t about to let Caitlin sit at home and drown in her
sorrows. What had happened to her was awful. And that perfect pig of a man had
managed to wreak even more havoc into her life. But she wasn’t going to let her
childhood friend suffer alone in silence.

A shopping trip in London along with lunch was what they were going to have tomorrow.

The
fight-the-January-blues plan was very much going to happen, whether Caitlin
liked it or not.

Shopping
in Oxford Circus and Bond Street was exactly the tonic that Caitlin needed to
get over the shock news from yesterday. Nothing could put a smile on a young
woman’s face faster than a leisurely browse through Top Shop.

Arms
overloaded with bags on either side of them, they made their way to Wagamama’s,
popping into shops along the way and adding more bags to their already heavy
arms.

“I
love our bargains.” said Kerrie, stopping momentarily to re-shift her arms and
get a more comfortable grip on the bags.

Caitlin didn’t say
anything. She walked with her head down, shoulders hunched together and the
weight of the world, not just the shopping bags, on her.

All
around them people were jostling to get by. She was so wrapped in her own world
that she wasn’t looking properly where she was going.

As they passed the Gap
store, they heard a shout. “Caitlin? Caitlin!”  Caitlin looked around
expectantly, hearing her name but not knowing where the voice came from.

She stopped abruptly,
impeding the way of others behind her. Kerrie pulled her out of the way of the
stampede of people rushing by and whistled to herself as she caught sight of
the man who had recognized Caitlin and had called out her name.  She didn’t
know who he was. But he was tall, blue eyed and blond. Lean and well groomed,
he was staring at Caitlin with a slow smile on his face.  He had with him
a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old.

Kerrie turned Caitlin
around so that she was face to face with the man.

“I
thought it was you,” he said and the smile never left his face.

“Daniel?”
Caitlin’s heart surged with the same feeling she often got from getting a bit
of static on her hand. When she looked up at him, a feeling of happiness
engulfed her.

Of
all the people in all the places, how odd and yet how wonderful that she would
bump into Daniel today and right at this very moment. She looked from him to
the young boy at his side and guessed it must be his son. “Hi” she said to him
sweetly. The boy smiled shyly at Caitlin, dark blond and with blue eyes too,
their features were so very similar.

“This
is Martin,” said Daniel. And turning to Caitlin, “Martin, meet Caitlin, a
friend of mine.”  

Daniel
looked at Caitlin. He had been thinking of her ever since she had visited him
at home. And here she was in the flesh. The sight of her had lifted his spirits
more than she would ever know. Kerrie cleared her throat, realizing that they
had all but forgotten her.  “Sorry,” said Caitlin guiltily, turning to
Kerrie who stood there with a frown on her face. “Daniel meet my best friend
and flat mate, Kerrie.” A charming wide mouthed smile spread out on Kerrie’s
face as she stepped forward to shake hands, a little too enthusiastically, with
Daniel.

“So you’re
the Daniel
?”
she asked, turning to Caitlin for verification. “She didn’t tell me you were so
cute,”

Caitlin
looked at her in horror.
Please don’t say another word or else I will never
forgive you.

But the mortified look on
Caitlin’s face failed to reach Kerrie. Caitlin had omitted to tell her flat
mate about the New Year’s Eve visit or the fact that Daniel was married and
also, as she had just found out now, was a dad too.

Daniel
smiled quietly. He wondered what Caitlin had been saying about him.

“Everything
alright with you?” he asked, never lifting his eyes off Caitlin.

She nodded in return and
had the distinct impression he didn’t want to say too much in front of the
young boy. Not that this stopped Kerrie.

“Well, apparently the
police have found out who it was now and it wasn’t a random attack either.” She
chirped away merrily, oblivious to the small eyes and ears that were taking
this in and fully loving the effect that this piece of news had on Daniel. His
eyes narrowed and he drew his head towards her, eager for the update.

“What
do you mean it wasn’t random?” he asked, his eyes flashing with curiosity.