Fighting for Survival (The Estate, Book 3) (31 page)

And now it was Monday morning, the first day of her challenge to spend a week with Josie at The Workshop. Josie had been true to her word and arranged five, two hour sessions, one each morning this week, with different groups so that if she liked it, which she doubted already, she could decide which area she’d like to volunteer in. She hadn’t told anyone about her plans. Pete would go mad if he knew she was doing something for nothing. And even though, after joining in last night in a fashion, Rachel and Claire might think better of her for having a go at something, she wouldn’t tell them either. She wouldn’t tell anyone until it was over. She would do the week to keep Josie happy; then she’d either go back to being boring Gina or show an interest in something. She would have to wait and see how she got on. This morning she’d be helping out with the mother and toddlers group. Tomorrow was the self-assertiveness group. Wednesday and Friday mornings would be spent at the community house with the teenagers and Thursday was pensioners’ coffee morning.

Gina glanced at the clock again: ten minutes to six. She decided to get up and make a cup of tea. It was far more productive than lying in bed trying to get back to sleep. Besides, she needed to find some clean clothes if she was going to go out of the house. Leggings, what-used-to-be-white T-shirts and baggy cardigans weren’t called for today. That was if she decided to go at all. She had more than three hours to change her mind yet.

‘Did you leave a window open?’ Caren asked John when they got home that evening. She frowned; she could have sworn she heard music coming from their house. But that was impossible.

‘I don’t think so.’ John sighed. ‘Neither did I kick the wheelie bin over. There’s rubbish strewn everywhere. Bloody kids!’ He made his way up the path and stopped dead in his tracks.

‘What’s wrong?’ Caren felt the hairs on her neck rising. She shuddered involuntarily.

‘Some fucker’s broken in.’ John turned to her. ‘The back door’s been forced open.’

Caren followed him into the kitchen. Breakfast cereal scrunched underneath their feet. A four pint bottle of milk had been tipped over the kitchen table, left dripping onto the seat covers. Every drawer had been pulled out and smashed up, the contents thrown to the floor.

‘Christ, what a mess,’ said John.

Caren’s hand covered her mouth. A mess was an understatement: it was a pure act of vandalism. And after they’d worked so hard to make it into something decent.

‘Don’t touch anything. I’ll check upstairs and then I’ll ring the police.’

Being careful where she stood, Caren went through into the hallway, trying to ignore the lines of aerosol paint stretching from one end to the other. Framed pictures and the hall mirror had been thrown to the floor and smashed. Something, she dreaded to think what, had been crushed into the carpet.

 ‘They’ve been in every room,’ John told her when he joined her a few minutes later. ‘It’s as if we’ve been hit by a tornado. The portable TV’s gone; so has my laptop. The rest is mess to clean up.’

Caren stepped into the living room, tears pouring down her face. There were spaces where their television and stereo should have been. Both settees had been slashed, the stuffing pulled out in lumps and strewn around. Paint had been thrown over the fireplace and over the carpet. The aerosol can had been used in here too, around the middle of all walls and the door.  

Caren’s face crumpled as John pulled her into his arms. 

‘Who would do something like this?’ she asked him.

‘I don’t know. Let’s hope the police get some clues.’

When the police arrived, PC Mark White crunched through the kitchen. He pointed to the open door. ‘Any windows broken?’

‘No, just the door that’s been forced. We’d been out for something to eat – two hours at the most – and we get back to… to this!’

‘Have they taken much?’ PC Sandra Morton asked, getting out her notebook.

John raised his hands in exaggeration. ‘The usual stuff – we’ll have to make a list. If I could get my hands on the little bastards, I’d break them too.’

‘It’s easy to put it down to the kids on this estate. There’s not much for them to do so they get their kicks out of petty crime and vandalism. But in my experience, they usually take smaller items, things they can offload quickly to make a bit of money. Other than that, on an avenue like this, with no real easy access out if you come home early, I’d say you were targeted.’

‘Targeted?’ Caren cried. ‘No one would do this to us!’

‘Sadly most people have enemies, Mrs Williams.’

Caren noted it was said kindly, not spitefully. As the policeman checked the door in the kitchen, she hovered in the doorway, not wanting to enter yet not wanting to go back into the living room. None of it felt like her home anymore; she felt violated. Suddenly she retched. Covering her mouth with her hand, she managed to get to the kitchen sink where she threw up.

 Afterwards, she steadied herself on the worktop as she tried to gain her composure. She wondered about the neighbours but knew they probably wouldn’t have heard a thing: they were both in their eighties. She wondered if it was something else the thieves would have known before they’d broken in. Then she wondered about the women who had been at the nail party on Sunday – no, it couldn’t have been any of them, surely? But could she rule that out altogether?

‘I suppose it could be kids, getting their kicks out of breaking and entering,’ PC Morgan said. She held up the plug that had been cut from the wire to the microwave. ‘I could understand more if they’d taken things to sell on but blatant vandalism? Nothing like this ever makes sense. Do you have a spare key that you give to anyone?’

‘No.’ Caren tried to focus on anything in her kitchen that hadn’t been ruined. She glanced around: there was nothing. Someone was hell-bent on making them suffer. So far, all she could see was it costing them money; at least they were insured. But it didn’t take away the fact that someone had been into their home when they weren’t there.

PC White came back into the room. ‘I’ll arrange to get what I can fingerprinted and we’ll go from there. If you can provide your prints, we can eliminate you and then see if there are any different ones that might match up on our database.’

‘Do you think you’ll find anything?’

‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘But from what I’ve seen so far, I very much doubt it. It’s more likely that you’re not going to find out who did this.’

Once the police left, Caren and John tried to get their house back into some sort of order. 

It took Caren a long time to settle down when they finally went to bed. John spooned his body around her. Every window and door had been shut and checked, yet still she lay staring ahead into the darkness, listening to the sound of the house settling.

Damn it – she’d just started to get used to being back on the Mitchell Estate and now this had to happen. Her imagination working overtime as she heard a clank of a radiator, Caren sat up in bed. But John pulled her down again.

‘Relax,’ he said, his voice husky with sleep. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘There’s no way I’m leaving the house until you’ve changed the locks.’

‘Try to sleep.’ John kissed the back of her hair. ‘You’ll feel better about it tomorrow.’

‘Are you out of your mind? How can I ever forget what’s happened today?

John pulled her nearer into him. ‘The only way I can make you feel safe is to hold you. I don’t know what else to do.’

Caren squeezed his hand. Being so wrapped up in herself, she hadn’t given a thought to John and how he would be feeling.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into the silence, even though she hadn’t got anything to feel sorry about.

She lay awake for ages wondering who would do such a thing.

On Thursday morning, Gina made her way to The Workshop. It was her fourth session and the one she was looking forward to the most. Monday had gone okay as she’d helped out with the mother and toddler group. She’d panicked at first, thinking she’d be a glorified babysitter while the mums went off to attend classes. But the mothers and the toddlers stayed together, interacting with each other. It hadn’t taken long to get into the swing of things, even though most of the time she’d been making tea for the women.

On Tuesday, she’d helped out at the self-assertiveness class. That had been tougher than she’d imagined. After listening to a young woman from Adam Street talking about the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of her partner, Gina found herself in tears and thanking her lucky stars that even though her family were a little wayward at times, they all looked out for one another.

Josie had been true to her word and stuck by her side. Gina had thought she’d be an irritant but found, to her surprise, that she’d had a laugh with her. On mutual territory, they even shared a smile or two. 

This morning she was helping out at the pensioners’ coffee morning in one of the back rooms. By chance, she was topping up the tea urns when she heard a snippet of conversation from outside in the corridor.

‘Yeah, we trashed it good and proper,’ the voice said. ‘It was a total wreck when we’d finished.’

‘Did you come away with owt to sell on?’

Gina peeped around the door frame. She thought she recognised the voice. Yes, she was right. It was Sam Harvey.

 ‘A few bits,’ he continued. ‘I sold them on to Lenny. The place was rich-looking; she was a stuck-up cow considering she lived in Stanley Avenue. She got what she deserved.’

Stanley Avenue? Gina wondered if they were talking about Caren and John. Pete had told her their place had been trashed on Monday evening.

‘I bet Pete won’t be too pleased.’

Pete?
Gina held perfectly still.
Pete who?

‘I’m not walking away if I can make a quick buck.’

‘But he paid you, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah, fifty quid but only to pretend I was the bloke’s son. There was stuff there for the taking too. I wasn’t going to leave it. Plus if I’ve been lax with my prints, I’ve already been there so they’ll rule me out.’

Gina stayed quiet, hoping to hear more but when she peeped around the frame again, Sam and his mate were walking away. She frowned, trying to make sense of their words. Why would Pete set someone like Sam up to visit Caren and John? It must be Caren’s place as it was the only one she’d heard of lately that had been done over in the avenue. Apparently, it had been trashed beyond recognition. And although they didn’t particularly get on, she didn’t deserve that.

The urns topped up, Gina went back to the group, wondering what on earth was going on.

On Saturday, Rachel received a text message from Louise. She and Claire were in their bedroom. They’d been in there every evening since last weekend and hadn’t wanted to go out that afternoon either, feeling safe but putting off the inevitable. They would have to face Stacey and the gang soon.  

‘Who’s that?’ asked Claire nervously, already dreading her sister’s reply.

‘Louise.’

‘Oh.’

‘She wants to meet us on the square in half an hour.’

‘But we’ll get lynched if we go out!’

‘Not necessarily. Louise is still on our side, remember. Maybe some of the others have swapped back again. We might not be on our own.’

‘I doubt that very much.’

‘Well, we’ll soon find out.’

Outside Shop&Save half an hour later, Claire glanced up and down Davy Road but there was no sign of Louise.

‘What time did she say she’d be here?’ she asked Rachel.

‘Ten minutes ago. We’ll give her ten more.’

‘Maybe we should go now. We did promise not to fight.’

‘Yes, I know, but it’s only an excuse, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘We have to fight, to survive. Stacey will kill us if we don’t.’

‘She won’t
kill
us.’

‘Maybe she’ll get the message that we’re not interested in gangs anymore.’

‘It doesn’t ring true, though. Think about it. You were hell-bent on being the leader of the Mitchell Mob when Stacey came out of juvie. We’ve both been fighting all the girls who’ve swapped sides and then… then we stay in for a week. It doesn’t make sense. It seems like we’re scared of her.’

‘
You
are scared of her.’

‘Of course I’m scared of her!’ Claire shook her head. ‘But I’m not frightened by any of the others. I think we should finish off what we started or take a beating from Stacey and get on with it. We don’t have to hang around with any of them afterwards but at least we’d have street cred.’

Rachel looked away then, pretending to look out for Louise. She knew Claire was right; it was killing her to know that Stacey thought they’d chickened out. And she knew Stacey wouldn’t settle until she’d knocked them both down and taken back her crown.

Rachel sighed and lit up a cigarette that she’d lifted from Mum earlier. It looked wrong with painted nails. Since the nail party, she and Claire had spent a couple of hours over at Caren’s house learning more make up tricks. Caren had shaped their eyebrows and showed them how to style their hair a bit softer. The result had made them both feel feminine. It’d had a soothing effect on them, far more than any lecture from their mum and dad would have done.