Hope's Vengeance (13 page)

“Her name’s Dawn. She told me to speak to you about Griffin.” Hope noticed her mother wince at his name, before looking away, her jaw set firm, reducing the double chin alarmingly. “Why the reaction?” Hope was scared, and this was clear in her voice.

Wanda removed her glasses, she rubbed her eyes with the finger and thumb of one hand, teeth gritted, before replacing them and turning to face Hope directly. “You were always the selfish one, Hope Ferris.”

Astounded at the statement, Hope’s correction was instinctive. “Brown.”

“It was always about you, you were so naughty, so demanding, you always wanted to be centre of attention. You still do it now. Three marriages, just so everyone can look at you on your wedding day. I wouldn’t be surprised if you planned the Brazil thing just to get yourself in the papers. Your stupid book, Women and Violence, making money out of those poor women’s suffering. You’re just so selfish.”

Hope’s jaw had dropped, her eyes wide, stunned. She felt like someone had swiped away the past twenty-five years and she was a child again, thigh smarting from the slap. “Mum?”

“He didn’t do anything to you, it was all your devious imagination, just to get yourself some attention.” Wanda gulped her drink down, grabbing the bottle and refilling her glass. Hope quickly snatched the bottle as Wanda set it down, pouring the dregs into her own glass. “He was innocent. He was a good man. And you tried to accuse him of such disgusting things. Honestly, you’ve always been a nasty piece of work. Selfish.” Wanda downed her drink, she stumbled over to the larder, producing a cheap bottle of vodka, before awkwardly settling back at the table.

Hope laid her hand on her mother’s, a little too harshly. “Mum. I need to know. What did I say to you? How old was I? I need to know.”

It was clear where Hope had inherited her angry glare from, yet now she was receiving the blazing fire. But, in contrast with her sessions with Dawn, she wasn’t able to be furious herself, she was too confused. Her brow furrowed as her mother rose from the chair, swaying body hovering above her, threatening, intimidating, and she took a deep breath, ready to shout. “I’ve asked myself time and time again why God took Honesty and not you, because she was special, and you’re a pathetic drama queen. It should have been you, not her.”

Hope’s body was shrinking, her squared shoulders hunching as she became small and timid, apologetic, dark pools of sadness settling in her eyes. “I agree with you, Mum, and I’ve wished it so often.” So gentle, it could have been the breeze.

The gritted teeth made the bellowing guttural. “You see, if Charity had said Griffin had hurt her, I would have believed her, because she wasn’t always away with the fairies like you were. But you, it was just attention grabbing. Always. Always seeking to be the centre, that’s you. That’s you.”

The door clicked open and a concerned Belinda stepped in. “Is everything okay? I could hear you shouting from down the hallway.”

Wanda burst into tears, floods of crocodiles coursing over her cheeks, Belinda rushed to her side and threw her arms around her portly wife. “There, there, love, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Head hung low, frame emaciated and stooping, Hope silently backed from the scene, snatching a knife from the side as she approached the door, desperate not to disturb them should a further verbal battering ensue. The door closed, and with the accompaniment of a massive celebration coming through the walls from the ballroom, Hope climbed the creaking servant’s stairs to reach her designated bedroom.

In the room her children’s breathing comforted her lightly, little Bern, fast asleep, the covers down by his waist, and Olive, tightly wrapped with just the top of her head peeping on the shrouded pillow. Penny was still at the party, determined to play until the early hours. Hope quietly retrieved a bottle of single malt from her suitcase, and she took it into the en-suite bathroom after collecting a used glass from the floor beside Penny’s bed. She poured a hefty measure into the small glass, taking a sip, shuddering at the welcome after effects, and knocked the whisky back in one. She refilled the glass.

After checking the door was bolted, she sat on the linoleum floor and lifted her skirt to expose her thighs. She rolled her tights down, exposing the barely healed scars littering both legs, took the kitchen knife, and sliced deeply into her thigh. Deeper, deeper. The agony was incredible, but the pain inside hurt more, the rejection, the knowledge she was unlovable. Another slash. Three, another, another. The other thigh, one, two three, four. There were no life-threatening wounds, but the blood that oozed from the slashes onto the contrasting pale grey floor took anger, hurt, rejection with it, spilling the angst away from her body, away from her heart, and onto the coldness, ready to be cleared away and forgotten. The bleeding was cathartic. The whisky was good.

Hope was good, she managed not to cry.

Session Eleven

Dawn was surprised that she was looking forward to Hope’s session, amazed that two weeks without feeling her strength felt too long, but when Hope entered the room, the energy was gone, the tiny woman was feeble, weak, hunched and apologetic. “Hope! What on earth has happened?”

Hope slumped into the chair, raising her legs and pulling them in tightly until she was a small ball of defensiveness. “I asked my Mum.”

Dawn glanced at her notes from the previous session, clarifying to herself the question she’d asked Hope to ask. Griffin. Her heart sank, yet strangely jumped with joy. Sinking because she felt such empathy for her client, and leaping because something dramatic had obviously been revealed, and now they should have something solid to work on. “What did she say, Hope? How did it go?”

“She said I’m selfish.” Hope’s hands ran up and down her thighs, and, although the cuts were now six days old, the discomfort still made her wince. Silence echoed in the room, Dawn was unsure whether to prompt or just let Hope arrange her next sentence in private. The clock ticking was rhythmic, like a gentle heartbeat keeping the two women alive in their quiescence. “Dawn, my mother was really nasty to me when I mentioned his name. But I’ve thought through the conversation over and over this past week, and I believe that Griffin did something to me that he shouldn’t have done, that I told Mum, and she covered it up.”

“Hell! Can you remember the conversation, what made you believe that?” Dawn leant forward, eager, wishing there had been a camera to witness the altercation so she see the exchange herself.

“Not word for word, no, I was too shocked by Mum’s reaction. But she said I’d accused him of disgusting things, and that he was a good man, and didn’t deserve to be slated like that. She said I was a naughty child, and I’d made things up in my devious imagination. She said if Charity had said something like that, she would have believed her, but not me.”

Dawn couldn’t stop the reaction in time, she was on her feet and the words were out of her mouth before she could control them. “Fucking hell! That makes me sick. Mothers like that don’t deserve their kids!” Dawn paled, realising she’d stepped out from her role and let the revelation personally affect her, and she took a snatched glimpse at Hope, but her reaction, if any, was indifferent, as if the words hadn’t even registered with her. Dawn sighed, relieved, and sat promptly, her hands underneath her in a subconscious attempt to control them.

“Dawn, you’ve mentioned earlier that you thought I had been sexually abused. Why did you suspect it?”

“Just things, I’m trained to spot things.”

“No, Dawn, don’t cop out on me. I want to know what things, I want to know exactly why, because I need to research this for myself, independent of you. If Griffin did something horrible to me when I was a kid, I want to know what it was. I want to know why.”

Dawn began to flick through her notes, emitting a deep sigh. She couldn’t remember why, it was a gut feeling, and eventually she had to admit as much. “Hope, there wasn’t one particular reason. I guess you being happy to marry Frank again in a loveless marriage, just for security, that smacks of sexual dysfunction. Promiscuity. The cutting, that’s common in abuse victims. Reliance on alcohol…”

“Who said I rely on alcohol? I never said that.” The offhand statement had set her eyes alight, Dawn was amazed at how defensive Hope was suddenly. Why did drinking make her so ashamed?

Another deep sigh to precede the truth. “Hope. I can smell it on your breath. With the exception of the first session and the one where you had an interview with Cosmo afterwards, you have clearly had a lot to drink the night before, maybe even in the morning, I don’t know.”

Hope was genuinely distraught, the worry from her brow was palpable. This was a secret she was desperate to keep hidden away. “But vodka. It’s not supposed to smell. You’re not supposed to be able to smell it. How can you smell it?”

A light tapping on the door, and Dawn gratefully took the coffee laden tray from Gayle, thanking her before sealing their privacy again. She set it on the table, spooning the sugar into her mug on autopilot. “Hope, you just can. But that’s irrelevant. What’s your problem with alcohol? It’s not illegal, so why don’t you want people to know you drink?”

Hope swallowed hard, her eyes registered fear, and her brow was furrowed, her breathing speeding and light. “My second husband, Olive and Bern’s father, Nigel, his name is. When I left him he got nasty. He knew I liked a drink, and he said that he was going to go for custody, using my drinking as the reason. I daren’t let anyone know I drink in case he finds out and takes my babies away. Please don’t make this public, Dawn, I couldn’t live without my kids, I really couldn’t, they hold me together.” Each breath was so shallow it barely hit the lungs, her face was pale, and her hands were trembling, Hope was on the edge of hyperventilation.

In an illegal move for a counsellor, Dawn grabbed both her hands and stroked, caressing moves to deflect the anguish. “Calm down, Hope, it’s confidential in here, I’m not going to say anything to anyone. Come on, deep breaths, slowly, hold it in, that’s good, come on, deep breath, hold it in.”

Hope took control of her breathing, following Dawn’s instruction, her right hand clutching the left arm, fingers digging deeply. “Hope, is your arm sore?”

Hope shook her head, letting out a breath. “Just a touch of heartburn, it’s just the stress. It’ll pass in a minute.”

Concern floated as Dawn stroked Hope’s cold, waxy hands. “Do you get that pain often?” At first she wasn’t sure Hope had heard the question, but then the dismissive shrug confirmed she had. “Hope, you need to see a doctor about that. I mean it. Promise me you will.” Hope nodded, her chest full of air. “I mean it. Make an appointment this afternoon.”

“Okay! Don’t nag me.”

Dawn removed her hands from Hope’s, she settled her long, broad back against the cushioned chair, moulding the softness to fit her body. “You were going to tell me why you believe Griffin assaulted you in some way.”

Hope followed Dawn’s lead and relaxed into her own chair. She laid her forearms palm up on the rests. “It’s clear from what Mum said that I told her Griffin was doing something horrible to me. Dawn, I’m not a liar, I never have been, even though I’ve been accused of it many a time. If I told Mum he was hurting me, then he was hurting me, I would never have said anything like that for attention like she said I did.”

“Okay, so from now on we’ll play it that you were assaulted, probably sexually, by Griffin, and we’ll use that as a starting block. Does that sound okay to you?”

Hope nodded, intrigue and determination replacing the sadness she’d originally brought into the room.

“Tell me, what do you remember about Griffin?”

Her eyes scrunched in recollection. “Not much, to be honest. I remember he wore Jesus creepers, he had hairy toes. I don’t remember his face, just his presence, you know, like when he was there doing the dishes with me, when he said I did the dishes just like he did.”

“Do you know how old you were?”

Contemplation. “About seven, eightish, I was going to the Friendly Club, and he stuck around us for a year or so. He was definitely there at Christmas, because I went carol singing with the church, Mum did too. Little Honesty was in her pram, she was just a tiny baby at the time. I remember we went back to someone different’s house every evening afterwards, had mince pies, drinks, that sort of thing.”

Dawn nodded, sipping her coffee, blowing it, before taking another sip. “We went to a service at the church on Christmas Eve, it was the midnight mass, we had oranges with candles in them, christingles, they were called, and the church was dark. I felt comfortable there, I really enjoyed it, the drama, the uniqueness.”

“But no face. What about your house, what do you remember about the house?”

“It was filthy, and it stank because Mum drank so much and smoked so much. I remember the kitchen clearly, I remember doing the dishes with Griffin. He said I did them just like he did.” The words tailed into a light breath, ghostlike, Hope’s mind had disappeared into a memory.

“That sounds like a significant day, you’ve brought the dishes up a couple of times now. Can you remember what happened after you did the dishes? Where you went? What you did? Was your Mum there? Sisters?”

Hope shook her head. “No. Just doing the dishes, it ends there.” A tone of frustration swamped the resignation. “Dawn, I want to know. How do I get the memory back?”

Dawn glanced at her watch, half an hour had passed. She had some ideas, but wished she still had Pat around to bounce them off before bringing Hope into the scenario. Damn Pat for dying, she’d suggested Hope may have repressed memories, and Dawn had dismissed the idea offhand. “Hope, the first thing I want to say is that if your mind has decided to stop you remembering an event, it’ll be because it’s protecting you from the truth.” She hoped she sounded convincing, because this was uncharted territory in the realms of her counselling career. “You need to ask yourself if you really want to get those memories out, or whether you’d be better off leaving them be.”

Hope picked at her leggings, each tug lifting the worn material into a little cone before it gradually shrunk flat again. She glanced over at Dawn, roaming over the sparkly waistcoat, the black sweater, tight black jeans with knee high, stiletto boots. Her hair bobbed lightly with each breath, golden curls that framed the heavy set, yet attractive face, made up in bright, cheerful colours. “Dawn, you have a good life. You feel good enough about yourself to care about what you wear, about making your face up, about looking after yourself. You have pride, and self respect, and it emanates from you. I want to be like that, but at the moment I feel really dirty. I suspect that some guy has violated me in some way, but I don’t know how. I don’t know if he used his fingers in me, or his dick, or if he just looked. And the worst part is I don’t know if I let him. Maybe even enjoyed it. I just need to know. I need to know that I tried to stop him. I need to know what he did.”