Rise and Fall (19 page)

He closed his eyes for a few minutes, exhausted. Resting his head against the back of the chair, he continued to wait.

Waking in complete darkness, Jamie realised he must have slept. He could hear a quiet moaning from the floor. He listened to the noise of her slowly start to try and sit herself up. 

She groaned in pain, as she tried to hoist herself into a sitting position. Every bone in her body had taken a battering, she thought, wincing at every movement she made.

She turned her head towards the figure sitting in the darkness, expecting it to be Jerell, and praying that he would show some mercy and leave her be. She wouldn’t be able to take another beating.

Switching on the lamp on the table next to him, Jamie watched the confusion set in, as her eyes flickered in shock as she slowly recognised his familiar face staring back at her, a ghost from her past. 

She couldn't believe what she was seeing was real: she must be disorientated after the ordeal. It couldn’t be him.

Just when she thought that today couldn’t get worse Jamie leant forward in his chair and spoke. 

“Hello Mum.” 

Louise was not happy. Tonight was the third time that week she had stayed at the new house with Reagan, and the third time that week that she had laid awake and listened to the sound of Tyler’s sobbing through the wall from the next-door bedroom. This was too much, she thought; something wasn’t right. 

Louise’s flat wasn’t a patch on this place. This house was wall-to-wall comfort, and snuggling up to Reagan each night had sounded like bliss compared to sleeping back at hers all alone. But so far she hadn’t managed to get one decent night’s sleep since she had been here.

Even though she had got used to her own space over time, it could be lonely; the live-in tenants that she shared the place with came in the form of about five hundred skunk plants, which didn’t make for stimulating conversation. Although there had been more than a few occasions, through boredom, that she had chatted to the plants as if they were listening to her. If anyone had seen her they would have thought she was a fruit loop. 

Louise struggled to properly relax at home, especially when she was alone at night. It was like living inside a ticking time bomb; any minute the police could raid the place, or rival dealers could try to break in and damage the place. She never felt completely at ease. She knew rationally that Jerell was too shrewd a businessman to let anything like that occur, he covered all angles and they all worked so hard to ensure that no one was ever on to what they were up to, but some nights she had been unable to sleep through the worry of what-ifs. Ultimately if anyone did get suspicious and raid the place, she was the live-in tenant, she would be the one to take the fall.

Her main living space was two downstairs rooms and a small bathroom. Louise’s compact lounge was also her bedroom, thanks to the sofa bed that Jerell had provided for her, and next to the lounge was a tiny kitchenette. It was a good job that she wasn’t claustrophobic, she had often mused, as she could touch the two opposite walls simultaneously if she stood in the middle of the kitchen. Reagan and Jerell had insisted that only two other boys, Ritchie and Michael, were allowed to go to the house. They helped bag all the gear up and organise the distribution so that Jerell’s other boys could make the drops. Apart from those two and Louise, no-one else was allowed to go near the place. Jerell had made sure that the utility bills and rent were paid for up front, before they were even due. He had also instructed that there was never allowed to be loud music or noise coming from there, he wanted the place to be low-key; he didn’t want to draw attention to the place and get people’s suspicions roused. He had no time for people poking their noses in on his business. Louise’s role in the whole operation was a bloody hard task, and she also knew she played her part well, so well in fact that she made it look easy, as Louise often liked to say to Reagan. Women were multi-task masters.  

Jerell paid Louise well in return for her hard graft; he knew that she was integral to their operation, and her doing her role without any fuss made his life easier. She was respected as a main player, and she felt empowered by the fact that they couldn’t run things without her. 

Louise had been over the moon when Reagan had told her that as long as Ritchie or Michael helped her out over there by taking watch for the odd night, then she could stay with him. It was nice having a boyfriend who didn’t live in her pocket like some boys wanted to. The odd night of staying here had turned into almost half a week now, and if it hadn’t been for her being kept awake worrying about Tyler, it would have been perfect.

“Reagan,” Louise nudged his arm. “Are you awake?”

Reagan awoke to the sound of Louise’s concerned whisper.

“I can hear him crying again,” Louise said. 

Tyler had seemed so jumpy and timid lately; it was out of character, and she didn’t know what to do to help. She had no idea what was upsetting him so much that he was spending his nights crying himself to sleep. Maybe Reagan had been right, maybe he was just homesick, but surely all this crying each night was a bit much? Louise had tried on a few occasions to question Reagan about what was going on, but he had shrugged off her curiosity by saying that it was probably nothing, before he swiftly changed the subject. She felt like maybe she was making a big deal out of it, but her intuition kept niggling away, telling her that there was more to this than met the eye.

“Hear who crying?” Reagan asked vaguely, as he turned towards her, still half-asleep; he could make out her silhouette, as she sat up.

“Tyler!” Louise answered despairingly; didn’t he pay attention to anything she said? “He’s crying again, listen. Can’t you hear him?”

Reagan could hear faint sobs coming through the wall. “Jesus, Louise, you must have ears like a frigging bat to hear that!” He tried to play down Louise’s concerns, but he too felt sorry for the kid. 

“He’s just homesick, Louise, like I told ya; leave it be, yeah? He’ll only be embarrassed if you mention it to him. He’s twelve; he needs to overcome it himself, doesn’t he? Don’t go babying him, or he'll never grow up.”

Reagan felt awful lying to Louise, but she would go mental if she found out that he knew about the abuse. He recognised that he was a coward for not doing more to help the poor kid himself. Reagan knew why the boy spent his nights crying himself to sleep. Jerell hadn’t been discreet in covering up the little visits he had been paying to Tyler’s bedroom since they had moved in. Jerell acted like he no longer cared that Reagan suspected his dirty secret, in fact Reagan wondered if Jerell purposely flaunted what he was doing. It was like he got a kick out of seeing the disapproval in Reagan’s eyes and was challenging him to see if he had the bottle to do anything about it. Which they both knew Reagan didn’t.

Just the thought of what Jerell was up to sickened him; Reagan remembered that feeling of lying in bed at night and feeling terrified that at any moment his door would slowly creep open. He had spent countless nights as a frightened boy just lying there staring at the door handle and willing it not to move.

Reagan had noticed that Jerell didn’t go to Tyler’s room when there were others about, so as long as the house was busy, Tyler was safe. Because of this, Reagan tried his best to keep as many people in the house for as long as he possibly could. The boys couldn’t get enough of the place, so it hadn’t been a hard task. They carried on as they had done on the estate. They turned up at all hours of the day and night and sat around chilling out, listening to their tunes and generally making the place their own. They always used the back entrance now, so as not to cause any more attention out on the close. They even had a large garden to park their bikes in; it was perfect. 

Reagan wanted to help Tyler without the boy cottoning on to the fact that he knew what was happening. He made it his mission to send Tyler out every day, running errands, anything to put some time and distance between him and Jerell. He had even used his powers of persuasion to get Jerell to agree to let Louise sleep over sometimes, thinking that the more people he could get to stay at the house at one time the better, anything to deter Jerell from getting the opportunity to try anything on with Tyler. He had thought that Tyler’s saving grace would be the fact that Rhys had moved in too, as the prospect of Jerell getting Tyler on his own would be harder seeing as Rhys’ room was just across the hallway. But hearing the boy crying himself to sleep, Reagan knew that Jerell was still finding a way to get to him somehow. 

“Poor kid, he must really be missing his mum to be this upset,” Louise said sadly; she hoped the boy would get over it soon, she wanted to help him and had thought that if she could speak to him, reassure him, then he wouldn’t feel so alone. But Reagan had constantly insisted that her getting involved would just cause Tyler to feel awkward about the whole situation, so she had reluctantly done as she was asked, and had left the situation well alone, but as the nights went on she was finding it harder to just ignore him.

“Forget it, Louise. Let’s just get some shut eye, yeah? I’m knackered,” Reagan said. There was nothing he could do for Tyler. Not tonight, anyway. It had been a long day, and Louise had worn him out when they had finally got into bed. Feeling the warmth of the cosy duvet around him, and the heat of Louise’s soft skin next to him, Reagan closed his eyes, hoping that Louise would drop the conversation as he was desperate to get a few more hours of kip in before the morning.

Louise laid in the darkness for what seemed like ages, thinking about Tyler. She knew what it was like to be homesick. She had been just fourteen when she had been taken into care. She had had no one to talk to about how sad she had been or the loneliness she had felt. 

Even now, Louise couldn’t believe the way that things had turned out. It still pained her that her mum had chosen her boyfriend, Greg, over her daughter, her own flesh and blood. When Louise had finally managed to pluck up the courage to confide in her mother about her boyfriend’s wandering hands whenever her mother wasn’t looking, her mother’s reaction had been the last thing Louise had anticipated. Greg was as slimy as they came, and Louise could never work out what her mum saw in him; it was fear of being on her own, she guessed. Greg leered at Louise at every chance he got, and the leers had quickly turned to gropes. At first he had been so subtle that she had thought that the times he had brushed up or pressed against her in the kitchen were accidents: but it kept on happening, and he stopped being so discreet. The more he realised that she was too timid to do anything about it, the worse it became. Rubbing her legs, groping her breasts… it was just a sick game to him; he enjoyed tormenting her. Greg had gone mad when Louise’s mum told him of Louise’s accusations. Louise had watched him brainwash her mum in front of her, as he went beyond denying the allegations and somehow managed to persuade her naive mum that Louise was a liar; he should have won an Oscar for his acting skill. He had been so convincing and the rage he displayed once he got started with his rant about how jealous she was and how she was obviously trying to wreck their relationship, meant that Louise hadn’t stood a chance. “If you believe that screwed up little cow over me, then I’m off,” he had warned her mum, looking disgusted at the allegations. On seeing his angry reaction, and knowing that his threat was genuine, backing down, Louise’s mum had done the very last thing that Louise would ever have expected: she had chosen to believe him over her own daughter. Louise remembered the fucked-up conversation with her mum that followed. The words stung her even now. She had sat Louise down and told her that Greg was a good man and even if what Louise had told her was true, she couldn’t blame him, he was only human after all: her daughter had a figure to die for and it probably didn’t help that Louise often walked about the place in skimpy little bed shorts either. What man could resist the odd glance if she would walk about the place flaunting her body in his face? But as for touching her, there was no way: Greg wouldn’t do that. “You can’t go around making shit like this up, Louise love; you could cause a lot of trouble making up this kind of lie.” As her mum had looked at her in disappointment, Greg had stood behind her, grinning at her triumphantly like the cat that had got the cream. Louise had never felt so frustrated in her life. There had been no consoling her after that, she had no-one to talk to, no-one that she could trust and she had quickly started to take her rage out on everyone and anyone that she then came into contact with. Unable to bear Greg’s despicable advances and the way he laughed in her face any longer, Louise spent as much time as she could away from her home just so that she could avoid him. Seeing as nobody seemed to give two shits about her, she started bunking off school and hanging out with her mates and when that didn’t ease the hurt of her mum’s disloyalty, she started heavily smoking and drinking, anything that would help her block out the pain. Finally, her cries for attention were answered; her mum could no longer cope with her troublesome daughter and she had been taken into care. By then, Louise no longer gave a shit; she didn’t mind where she lived, as long as it was far away from her mum and Greg. 

Louise listened to Reagan breathe deeply beside her, he had seemingly fallen back to sleep almost immediately, unlike herself: insomnia often kept her awake late into the night. Wide awake, she tossed and turned, sick of being alone with thoughts of her mother and Greg. She could still hear the muffled sounds of Tyler’s weeping, and she was debating what to do about it; weighing up her choices, she decided that surely checking whether the poor kid was alright couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as ignoring him, she couldn’t just leave him to deal with his misery all by himself.

Pulling back the duvet cover, she snuck out of the big double bed and left her boyfriend gently snoring in the land of nod. She pulled Reagan’s large robe around her, grateful for its warmth as she glanced back over to the occupied bed, double-checking that Reagan hadn’t stirred. He wouldn’t be happy with her ‘interfering’. As quietly as she could manage, she closed the bedroom door behind her so as not to wake him.