Hope's Vengeance (5 page)

Dawn’s eyes widened, her jaw set tight, teeth rigidly clenched in jealousy. Her own band had been recording for over five years, demo’s sent to anybody who would listen, sessions at any pub that would pay them, and she knew that a three album deal nowadays for a newcomer was unheard of. Unable to say a word in case envy lined the edges, she fixed an affable grin, willing it to reach her eyes.

Hope’s face fell a little at the lack of enthusiasm to her news, she was still smiling, but the light in her eyes had dulled minimally. She elaborated, desperate to impress. “It’s virtually unheard of nowadays, a three album deal for a newcomer.”

“I know.” The words dripped with resentment, Dawn knew she was being unprofessional, and it scared her that a client could make her behave so badly. As she mentally chastised herself, empathy slapped the jealousy back, the tenseness in her shoulders fell and her steely jaw relaxed. “I know, Hope, and that’s wonderful news, I’m really pleased for her, and for you. How old is she again?” The friendliness had returned.

“Sixteen.” Hope’s eyes twinkled and danced once more, her hands gesturing freely. “Her band’s called Vivity, well, it’s not really a band, it’s just her and this boy called Tony. He plays keyboards, and he records somehow through the computer…”

“Soundcards.” The bitterness surfaced again, Dawn scorned bands that weren’t ‘real’ musicians, but she was also aware that bringing her personal life into this scenario was wrong. She needed to discuss this with Pat, her boss was a great leveller when she came across a problem.

“That’s it, yes. Soundcards. The band’s been going a couple of years, and in the summer they send a demo to EMI, a talent scout saw them play at a school gig, and that was it!”

Dawn couldn’t help remembering that when Hope had first mentioned Honesty’s death, she’d asked Dawn if she could stop talking about it because it was upsetting her. Yet now she was animated about Happiness’s ‘lucky break’, and, even though it was hurtful to Dawn, she could talk about it for as long as she needed. The urge to get up and leave swamped her.

Hope was oblivious to Dawn’s torment, she continued animatedly. “They signed in London last Wednesday, they’re rushing out the new single in time for Christmas. The bigwigs are giving them full publicity, aiming for a Christmas number one.”

La la la la la laaaaaaaaa. The child in her wanted to stick her fingers in her ears and shout loudly.

“I’m so pleased for her, Dawn, she’s worked so hard for this, she always wanted to be a singer, and she’s got a beautiful voice.”

Laaaa laaaaa, de daaaa daaaaaa. Restrain yourself Dawn! What are you doing? Be professional! Too late. “Does it not scare you at all, after what happened to Little Honesty?”

Silence.

Dawn mentally slapped herself hard around the face, knowing the bitchy remark deserved it in reality too. Full of remorse, she watched the twinkle leave her client’s eyes, the bright smile jump away, the life-filled shoulders sag, eventually to the complete, distraught body slump. She wanted to explain, to admit her vicious jealousy, justify herself. “I mean… Hope! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Dawn’s eyes scanned the figure in front her, trying to catch some blue from underneath the sad, heavy lids, make contact somehow, and the silence whipped her, beating guilt into her with every blow. Hope had looked so alive, so confident, so healthy, glowing, and a few malicious words had deflated her, her body now tiny, frail, and grey.

Hope’s head hung, her defensive arms clutching her knees in tightly, and her body was still, a statue of pain, the chest not appearing to rise and fall. The edges of her lips were pushed unnaturally low, a caricature of a child’s miserable drawing scribbled messily on paper. The silence hung in the air, the breeze from the window rattling paperwork, but dodging around Hope’s form to preserve her lifelessness.

Inside her mind, words raced through Dawn’s head, desperate to find a way to backtrack, to bring Hope alive again, but every idea she devised was drowned out with her own scream of ‘guilty’ at herself. She wanted to speak, but the words wouldn’t form, and she dropped her head in shame, surveying every speck on the carpet rather than establish eye contact. After an apparent lifetime, Dawn became aware of an odd, burning sensation, smouldering into the top of her head, singeing her skin, heating her brain. She glanced up swiftly, and the pure, venomous anger that flamed through the cold blueness if Hope’s eyes seared her own. She had to look away, the intensity was too fierce to sustain.

“Yes.” It was a growl, it was guttural. “Of course it scares me. Every single day of my life.”

Suddenly, Dawn wanted to cry, the anger directed into her soul frightened her. She’d been beating herself up, whipping out the guilt, and now Hope was grasping the crop with a single, intimidating glare. She was terrified.

“Imagine it, Dawn, put yourself in my shoes.” Each word was calculated, impacted to register like a rubber stamp on Dawn’s memory. “Happiness sounds just like Honesty, if you close your eyes you’d think Honesty had never died. Every time she opens her mouth and that beautiful noise tumbles out, it jerks my heart because it reminds me how much I miss my angel. And then I feel guilty, because I should be proud of her, not wishing she’d shut the fuck up.”

“Hope, you’re wrong…”

Fire. The vicious flash from the eyes stung Dawn into silence. “I love my sister. Very much. But not enough. Because I have this veil, you see.” Hope had risen to her feet, her usual fragility replaced by a mountainous power, she was grand, she was masterful, and she ruled this room. “This veil. It’s dark, it’s a blanket. It lies over me, between me and the world, between me and my sisters, between me and everybody. It folds into every part of me, leaving no gaps, and it protects me from pain.” Clutching at her chest, Hope was reiterating the description physically. “It stops people…” Now the blueness had caught Dawn’s eyes, but this time it was impossible to break the connection. “… hurting me!”

A swish of material, a slam, and the atmosphere in the room thinned immediately. Dawn remained, now the statue, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

The Boss

The room was messy, not untidy, not unclean, just haphazard. Powder pale lemon walls, uneven notice boards littered with un-read, yellowing scraps, the tatty corners turned and smudged with greasy fingerprints. Comfortable, worn armchairs lay scattered unsymmetrically on the industrial carpet, with several small tables dotted around. Beside the window an out-of-place range of mottled grey kitchen cupboards housed a kettle, some crockery, and a small sink.

Pat took the steaming coffees from the side, and glided towards her protégé, setting them down on the scuffed teak coffee table, carefully to avoid spillage. Despite her vast size she had an elegance about her, a way of moving from A to B without unsettling the air. Her hefty form slipped gracefully into the chair. “My dear, you slipped up! We may be counsellors, but we’re human too, and I know how hard you and the boys have worked to get a record contract.”

Dawn shook her head, unsure of how she could possibly iterate the way she felt accurately. “No.” Slow, deliberate. Unsure. Pat’s chubby fingers patted her hand, and Dawn’s skin felt as though it was being brushed with silk. “No.”

“Come on, dear, we all have bad days, accept this as one of yours, and move on.”

Dawn shook her head, there were words in her head but she couldn’t arrange them the right way. “No.”

Pat sighed, steeling herself to state the inevitable. “Have you considered passing this client to one of your colleagues?”

“No!” The speedy response shocked Dawn, especially as she had, in fact, considered waving Hope away like a bad smell. Frequently. But something had happened in that room today, Dawn was clueless to it, but she was also compelled. She needed to know Hope’s story. She needed to see Hope.

Unable to hear the unspoken words, Pat took the response literally. “Well, dear, perhaps that might be something you should…”

“You don’t get it. Pat, when I said that today, when I callously threw the dead sister in, I did it to hurt her. It wasn’t for me, it wasn’t the jealousy, it wasn’t about me. It was about hurting her.”

Pat’s plump arm flowed to the coffee cup and drifted it back to her lips, the fleshy redness taking a sip.

Dawn sighed guiltily, confused about the revelation. “She’s the strongest person I have ever known, Pat. She’s tiny, like a little mouse, tiny, sweet, vulnerable, timid. But she’s strong.”

A light sweep of the arm and the empty cup was on the table.

“When she’s not defensive, her anger, her sadness, her bitterness, it’s massive. She terrifies me, but somehow I like her. I respect her. But she scares me. And there’s something about Hope that makes you want to crush her.”

“To hurt her?”

“To hurt her.”

Again, Pat let out a long sigh. “I think you should pass her over, dear. As a counsellor it’s imperative that you don’t let the client in, because as soon as you do, you stop being impartial. You’re one of the best counsellors I’ve ever trained, and I don’t want you to ruin your reputation, especially with such a high profile client.”

Dawn’s sigh met with Pat’s, and they hung together in the stagnant air. “I hear what you’re saying. Pat, let me have another session with her, if I feel she’s getting to me again, I’ll bite the bullet and pass her on. Is that fair?”

“I guess so, but don’t mess things for yourself, dear, just be careful.” Pat’s oversized body wisped from the chair, and was gone.

In the quiet clutter of the homely room, Dawn debated and contemplated, and by the time she had finished the coffee, she knew that she couldn’t let Hope go, and it didn’t matter how badly she behaved, how unprofessional she was, or how much Hope wheedled and churned inside her, she had to be the one who heard the story.

Session Five

Dawn sat in the chair, she nervously checked her watch, uneasy that Hope was late. Clients who personally paid for counselling rarely missed the beginning of a session, and it crossed Dawn’s mind more than once that Hope had decided to quit after the disastrous previous week. She fidgeted her fingers, crossing and uncrossing her legs, before taking the pad and penning a doodle. Pen pressing firmly, the maze unfolded on the page, bigger, thicker, wider, more paths surrounding the tiny centre, hemming it away, hiding it, she was in the centre, she was surrounded by deep lines, blocking, trapping… Stop! Dawn ripped the page away, scrunching it angrily before slamming it into the bin.

Laying the pad down, the indented scores of the maze catching in the pale sunlight, Dawn wandered to the door, leaning her head towards the receptionist. Gayle noticed, and shook her head, before returning to her filing. “Damn!” She pushed the door to, and began a slow march, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards, before stopping at the window to scan the road, left to right. There she was. Dawn’s heart jumped in her chest.

She rushed back to her seat, desperate to reclaim some composure before her Nemesis began the onslaught. Dawn’s candyfloss tipped fingers scraped through the golden curls, neatening the waywardness, shaping the mayhem. She forced her shoulders firm, her back straight, and crossed her booted ankles, the new leather creaking as it settled. But the forced control was belied by her fidgeting fingers, picking at gems, at sequins, at threads on the waistcoat.

A waft of fresh, wintry air burst into the room, quickly engulfed by the pre-existing warmth, and Hope was tugging her winter clothes off, gloves, hat, scarf, coat, her nose reddened from cold. “I’m really sorry I’m late, I’ve just come from the James Paget and the traffic was bloody awful.”

Dawn leaned forward, concern furrowing her brow. “Why have you been to the hospital, everything okay, I hope?”

The scarlet of her nose was already dissipating, gradually reducing to pink as the heat sunk into her skin. She rubbed her hands together, her manner brusque, in contrast to the previous victim or bully stances Dawn had witnessed before. “Good and bad, really. My sister and her daughter are both there, for different things.”

“Oh, Hope, how awful, what’s wrong.” The empathy was genuine.

Hope’s power was impressive today, her aura was glistening, the presence godlike. She leaned forward, purposeful, and her words were direct and unanswerable. “Dawn, you and I both know that you fucked up last week, but forget it with the false overkill. I don’t like shallow.”

Dawn recoiled mentally. Two sentences, two slapped cheeks. Her heart was pounding, it was imperative she gained control of the conversation again. With the greatest effort, she kept her breathing regular, her expression confident, and smiled, ensuring it reached the eyes. “Last week I asked an acceptable question at, what I can now see, an inappropriate time, but I have no reason to believe that I deserve that accusation.” Hope’s chuckling was testing, her inner strength continued bravely. “If you do feel that I was in the wrong, I can give you the name and number of my supervisor and you can speak with her.”

Grinning, Hope slid a mobile from her pocket and tossed it into the air, catching it easily. “No need, already done it. Pat agreed that you’d fucked up, and she apologised profusely on your behalf. So you don’t need to.” She winked and replaced the phone. “My eldest sister, Charity, she’s just had a miscarriage. She’s pretty upset because she’d made it past the twelve week mark, so she’d relaxed a bit.”

Dawn had miraculously retained her composure. “I’m guessing it’s not her first, then. How old is she?”

“Thirty six, and no, she’s had five.”

“Ouch.”

“Ouch. First was straight after Honesty died, it was the shock, I reckon, not that they were close, Charity isn’t that close to any of us.”

“You mentioned her daughter was in hospital too.”

“Leukaemia, bless her, she’s only three.”

Dawn nodded. Now that the conversation had softened, she could see a whole new facet opening up before her. Business Hope. Organised Hope. Not the little, scruffy, unloved child. Not the aggressive, anger fuelled harridan. Not the smart, pre-interview superstar. But a busy, orderly, organised do-it-all, be-there-for, say-the-right-things family member.