Heartless (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

“Which room do you think is hers?” Jonathan whispered, as they crouched down behind the low brick wall that framed the tiny front garden.

It was almost two am and, apart from a glow of light coming from the hallway, the house stood in darkness. Squatting down near to his brother, Tommy was shaking and thought he might throw up; he deeply regretted the second helping of dinner that he had gorged on earlier this evening.

“I don’t know about this, Jonathan. Shit... what if her dad comes out and sees us?” Tommy was starting to sweat. His desire to make sure that Sophia was okay was gone, replaced by fear.

It had been two days since the party, and he hadn’t seen or spoke to her in that time. He had gone upstairs to check on her after everyone had finally left only to find an empty bed and the bucket next to it full of vomit. He hoped that she wasn’t avoiding him now because she was embarrassed about getting so ill. Tommy was glad that Sophia had gone when she had, though; he would have hated the thought of his mum seeing her in such a state. Things were already bad enough as it was. His mum had come home as he had gone upstairs, and on finding her house trashed had started bellowing at Tommy and Jonathan like she was the anti-Christ. Tommy had never seen her so angry. And once she saw that her mother’s urn had been knocked over, the tears started. Their dad, who rarely lost his cool with them, had shouted at them as she sobbed. Tommy had tried to reassure his mum that he had managed to pick up almost all of the ash and put it back, but Jonathan had brazenly dropped him in it by telling her that he had vacuumed up much of it. After hearing that and seeing the large grey patch of ash that was engrained in the carpet Bernie had grounded Tommy and Jonathan indefinitely. They had spent the following three hours on their hands and knees scrubbing away sick and picking up broken pieces of glass. And Bernie had vowed to never so much as let them have a friend over again, let alone a party. Since then, the only chance Tommy had to see Sophia was at school, but she hadn’t been there. More worryingly, no-one had heard from her.

Tommy knew that something wasn’t right. He racked his brains to think of what he could have done to upset Sophia, and came up with nothing. Worried out of his mind that she was still sick from the alcohol that she had drunk, or worse still that she had got in serious trouble with her dad when she got home Tommy just had to see that she was okay.

Now, he and Jonathan were standing outside Sophia’s house in the moonlight. Tommy wasn’t convinced they were doing the right thing but Jonathan had insisted that if Tommy was going to see her, he would come too. Just to make sure that she was okay.

Tommy was glad that his brother had come; he knew if he wasn’t there he would have gone home, though why Jonathan had thought it necessary for them to dress up as though they were something from the Special Forces branch he couldn’t fathom. Tommy’s balaclava not only made his skin itch, but the musty odour that it gave off was not helping the feeling of nausea that was rapidly sweeping over him as his nerves set in.

Jonathan rolled his eyes up at his brother, as he watched him fiddle with his hands nervously. Jonathan knew Tommy better than anyone, and he could tell that he was losing his bottle: he should have guessed that Tommy would try and chicken out now that they were here. Jonathan was hoping that Sophia was avoiding his brother because she was so ashamed and embarrassed about having sex with him at the party. The only reason that he had suggested coming along was just in case the stupid bitch decided to tell Tommy what had happened. He thought that when Sophia saw him here pretending to be all concerned about her it would just add insult to injury, which Jonathan couldn’t resist.

“I don’t know about this, Jonathan, what if we break the glass? Her dad will catch us, and he might really hurt us.” Tommy’s eyes were wide with panic. He couldn’t see how this was going to have a good outcome: he shouldn’t have listened to Jonathan earlier. This was a stupid idea. Sophia would probably be back at school tomorrow.

“What if, what if? Will you just chill out, Tommy? Nothing’s going to happen to us, you Muppet. Trust me!” Jonathan looked up to the window and tried to suss out which bedroom belonged to Sophia. Jonathan guessed that the one directly above them was the master bedroom, as it was the largest, so that probably belonged to her parents. “I bet Sophia’s is around the back. Come on.”

Jonathan kept his body low as he led the way around the path to a large wooden side gate. “Stay close behind me, Tommy.”

Jonathan knew that Tommy would have skulked off home if he could have, but Jonathon wouldn’t give him that option. They were here now, and the sooner that Tommy saw that Sophia was okay the better. Then they could go home, and hopefully Tommy would stop harping on about her the whole time.

Carefully pushing opening the gate, the boys traipsed through the overgrown grass as they crept around to the back of the house.

“Sophia’s dad’s not exactly Alan Titchmarsh,” Jonathan observed, as he searched around by the back door for any small stones. “Guess it wouldn’t be wise of him to ‘drink and mow’ though eh? Didn’t you say that he’s an old pisshead?”

Jonathan found several stones that were a suitable size to throw. He bent down, scooped them up and indicated to Tommy that he should take them. Tommy did, then stood there looking at his hand. He didn’t know for sure it was Sophia’s room that they were standing below, let alone whether the stones would wake her up without breaking the glass.

“Go on then, Romeo. You’re her boyfriend, aren’t you? You’re the one that wants to make sure that she’s okay. The last thing that Sophia would want to see when she opens her window is my ugly mug staring back up at her,” Jonathan said.

Tommy reluctantly threw a stone at the window. There was a small tap and then it bounced straight back off it. The boys crouched down in the long dewy grass, shivering from the cold. Tommy looked up to see if they had been heard.

There was no response.

“You got to throw it with a bit more force, Tommy: like this.” Standing up, Jonathan lobbed the stone with more power than his brother had. This time the noise of it hitting the window was much louder. Jonathan ducked down into the grass where his brother was crouching down. “She’s got to have heard that, surely?”

They both stared up at the window.

After throwing a few more stones, the boys realised that their plan wasn’t going to work. Tommy started to feel frustrated. “What are we going to do, Jonathan? She’s either in there asleep and can’t hear us, or she isn’t in there at all... and either way, we’re back to square one because I still don’t know if she’s okay or not.”

Tommy looked up at the house, confused, wondering if they had been throwing the stones at an empty bathroom. But the curtains indicated that it was a bedroom window.

“We may as well just go home. This was a stupid idea anyway,” Tommy declared, feeling completely useless. He couldn’t understand why no-one had come to the window. Unless, he thought, something really bad had happened to her.

“Well, if you really want to see if she’s okay, there is one more thing that we could do.” Jonathan lifted up his balaclava and reached into his backpack, pulling out their dad’s torch that he had taken from the shed earlier when no-one was looking. He switched on the button and shone the light under his chin as he said menacingly: “Let’s break in.”

Tommy watched the creepy shadow that the beamed out from the torch, as it lit up the big grin on Jonathan’s face before he realised that his brother was actually being serious. Seeing Jonathan pull out a screwdriver, Tommy gulped.

“I knew this would come in handy,” Jonathan said smugly. As he noted the look of alarm on his brother’s face he added: “Don’t worry, Tommy. If anyone was awake in there, they would have heard the noise at the window by now; they didn’t, did they? They’re probably all sparko. We can sneak in, make sure Sleeping Beauty is okay and be back out of there within ten minutes. You do want to see she’s alright, don’t you?”

Standing underneath Sophia’s window would have been enough to freak her out once she saw that he was there too, but the idea of her waking up to find him at the end of her bed excited Jonathan even more. The stuck-up little cow would be distraught.

Tommy wasn’t sure about this new plan. Chucking stones at a window was one thing, but breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night: well, that was a whole other.

Before Tommy had a chance to protest, Jonathan had made his way to the back door and stuck the screwdriver in the gap between the door’s edge and the PVC frame. Levering it back and forth as he tried to force the door open, he placed all his body weight behind the screwdriver as he twisted the metal tool hard. Tommy watched Jonathan struggle, praying that he wouldn’t be able to force the door open. He had a bad feeling about this and the sooner they got out of here the better. But to Tommy’s disappointment, after a few more twists of the screwdriver, the door popped open.

“Fucking hell, Tommy, I think I’ve found my true calling,” Jonathan smirked, pleased as punch with himself for getting the door open so quickly. “Come on.”

From what Tommy had heard about Sophia’s dad, Mr O’Hagan, he was a nasty bloke and Tommy was so terrified at the thought of him catching them in his house that he couldn’t even talk. His heart was beating loudly inside his chest, thumping so hard that he was convinced that even though Jonathan was a few steps ahead of him he could hear every beat.

The boys stepped inside the house then tiptoed through the dark lounge. Jonathan shone the torch around the room, checking the floor was clear. The beams of light cast shadows around the room as it reflecting off surfaces and lit the way. The place was a mess. The stagnant smell of stale cigarette butts sitting in an overflowing ashtray on the coffee table hung in the air, and Jonathan stepped over a pile of empty beer cans that had been crumpled up and left scattered about on the floor. He turned his nose up in disgust, surprised that Sophia lived in a house like this.

No wonder she had told Tommy that he wasn’t allowed to come here.

“Be careful,” Jonathan whispered, as he shone the torch onto the floor. The light revealed a bookcase turned on its side, and books strewn everywhere.

“Looks like Sophia wasn’t exaggerating when she told you her old man had a temper. Do you reckon that this was him kicking off?”

Jonathan didn’t wait for an answer, as he peered into the narrow kitchen. Spotting a large knife block just inside the doorway, he grabbed a bread knife and concealed it up his sleeve, hiding it from Tommy as he knew that he would freak out if he saw it. From what Tommy had said about Mr O’Hagan and going on the state of the place, Jonathan thought it was wise to have a Plan B in case they did run into the old nutcase. Jonathan looked into the lounge to see Tommy standing in there, unmoving.

“Come on, we’re here now, Tommy, stop being such a pussy,” Jonathan whispered. They had come this far, Jonathan didn’t want to go home without finding Sophia.

“But Jonathan...”

Jonathan shone the torch up to his face and placed his index finger up to his lips, signalling to Tommy to be quiet.

“Your bloody whining is what will get us caught, Tommy, now come on.”

Wishing that he had the guts to stand up to his brother, Tommy followed him up the stairs.

***

Having spent the last few hours tossing and turning, her mind reliving the past days’ events, Nessa decided that she may as well get up and make herself a cup of milky tea, maybe then she would be able to get herself the forty winks that she needed.

Tucking the duvet around a snoring Rascal, Nessa smiled down at him. He was a little twitcher tonight. Daft mutt, she thought, as she watched his tiny legs moving rapidly in circular motions; she imagined that was mimicking running around in some field chasing rabbits. Quietly getting up, Nessa left him to his dream.

Treading quietly on the stairs, Nessa went into the kitchen. She put the kettle on and got a mug from the cupboard before tiptoeing over to take a peek into the lounge.

“Are you alright, sweetie?” Nessa whispered, surprised to see she wasn’t the only one awake. Sophia was sitting on the floor, her back against the sofa that her mother was lying on. Nessa saw that Kaitlin had her eyes open, and Sophia was stroking her mum’s hair.

“Kaitlin lovey, how are you feeling?” Nessa beamed, relieved that her daughter-in-law looked a bit better than when she had first arrived here.

Since she had got here all Kaitlin had wanted to do was sleep. The poor woman was more hurt emotionally about what Jamesie had done to her than she was physically. Heartbroken, she was.

It had been two days since Sophia had turned up on her doorstep propping up her very battered and dazed-looking mother. Nessa had been amazed when she had seen them both standing there. The pair of them had looked like they were in a right old state. Sophia had been crying hysterically; Kaitlin had been silent.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, girls... what in the name of God has happened to you both?” Nessa had asked, horrified at the sight of them. Sophia looked battered and bruised and Kaitlin was covered in blood, Nessa felt her stomach turn at what her son had done.

“I swear to God, Nan, I’m going to kill my dad for this. Look what he’s done,” Sophia wept, her voice trembling as she fought to hold up her mother.

“I’m going to kill him,” Sophia said loudly, over and over again. She was convinced that her father had almost murdered her mother and had started to go into shock at the trauma. Glancing over the road, she was terrified that her dad would come over and continue with what he had started.

“Everything okay Nessa dearie?” Mary Simpson leaned out of the neighbouring window to see what all the commotion was about. She was one of the many who knew that Jamesie O’Hagan was a wife beater: once he started with his ranting, the whole street could hear. Mary would be telling the ladies at the Gala Bingo hall about this.

Nessa ignored her neighbour’s question, Mary’s ears were probably honing in on the conversation like bloody satellite dishes, dismissing Mary with a mere shake of her hand. Her granddaughter was deeply distressed and Nessa needed to get her safely inside: she didn’t have the time or the energy for anything else.