The Home for Broken Hearts (41 page)

Matt pushed the plunger through the coffee, watching the dark liquid swirl and surge through the filter. “I don’t reckon she’d say yes,” he said. “I don’t reckon she’d think it would be a very good idea. I mean, like you say, I’m not exactly boyfriend material.”

“You could write her a poem,” Charlie suggested. “Show her you’re sensitive and romantic.”

Matt snorted a derisory laugh. “I don’t know, I’ve been writing bollocks for so long now that I’m not sure I could.”

“Tell you what,” Charlie said. “You write her a poem and I’ll write Emily a poem and we can read each other’s and see if they are bad or not, and if they aren’t too bad we’ll give them to them on the same day and ask them out. Like a pact.”

“A suicide pact?” Matt joked, but he saw that Charlie was deadly serious and he remembered what it was like to be Charlie’s age for a moment, when anything was possible and the future was a place waiting to be filled with dreams come true. “You know what,” Matt said, holding out his hand, “let’s do it.”

Charlie spat in his palm, took Matt’s hand, and shook it.

“Deal,” he said.

“Cool,” Matt replied. “But the spitting was a bit over the top, mate.”

“Hannah?” Ellen knelt beside the bed so that her face was level with her sister’s. “Hannah? Wake up, sis. You need to eat.”

Hannah stirred, mumbling something unintelligible, moaning as she rolled over, turning her back on Ellen, reminding her of the days when it had been her job to drag her teenage sister out of bed and cajole her into going to school.

“Hans, Hannah—wake up, come on now.” Gingerly, Ellen shook Hannah’s bruised shoulder, scared of hurting her again.

Slowly, stiffly, Hannah rolled onto her back and opened her eyes, although only one was able to open completely. She turned her head and looked at her sister. “Ellen?” she whispered through dry, cracked lips. “Are you here?”

“Yes,” Ellen said awkwardly. She had no idea how to reconcile her feelings, the fury and anger that she still felt every time she looked at Hannah because of what she had done to her and the pity and horror at what her sister had been through. She felt like she needed to be two people, or have two sisters, to be able to slip through a hole in time and exist in two parallel universes simultaneously. She had no idea how to handle this. There was no choice but to take it second by second. “Charlie came round this morning, we had a bit of a disagreement and he came round here. I wasn’t sure what you would say to him.”

Ellen thought Hannah might have frowned, but her features were immobilized by swelling. “You thought I’d tell him about me and Nick?”

Ellen felt stung, just as if Hannah had slapped her in the face. She hadn’t been making it up, then; Ellen hadn’t imagined it. It really was true.

“You didn’t really tell me before, exactly what happened between you and Nick,” Ellen said steadily. “And I need to know before I drive myself mad. Was it a one-off thing? Were you drunk? Where did it happen?”

With some difficulty, Hannah turned to look at Ellen. “It wasn’t a one-off thing… it was a relationship. We were together for about a year.”

Ellen pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle the wave of nausea that swept over her. She nodded, gesturing that Hannah should go on.

“You know that I never really liked Nick, not when I first met him. I thought he was pompous and overbearing and that
he was changing you. I always thought you were so cool, so together, and then Nick came along and… you weren’t my big sis anymore, you were his wife. Your whole life was about being his wife. You never seemed to understand how much I looked up to you, wanted to be like you. I was so jealous of you, but the more I tried to be like you, the less you liked me.”

“You were jealous of me?” Ellen asked, disbelieving. “You hated me ever having anything that was mine, you always tried to take it, always—even… even my husband.”

“Ellen, that’s not true!” Hannah sobbed. “Look, I know I like the limelight, making everyone look at me, me, me—but only because I don’t have what you have. I don’t have your… presence. I’m all smoke and mirrors, hollow inside. You… you are everything I’ve always wanted to be, but that isn’t why Nick and I… that just happened. I wasn’t looking for it, he came to me.”

Ellen didn’t say anything; she couldn’t.

“We were at a family thing, a Christmas thing, and I’d been feeling a bit down. You know, another New Year’s coming up and still no Mr. Right. I was in Mum and Dad’s kitchen, knocking back the Baileys, and he came in. He asked me what was up. I can’t remember what I said, something rude probably, telling him where to go, and he just leaned over and kissed me. Not a massive snog or anything, just a kiss on the lips, and he said that no woman like me should be alone on New Year’s Eve. That’s when it started, when I started to see him, when I started to fall for him.”

Hannah paused and reached for a glass of stale water by her bed; her voice was paper dry.

“I tried to stay away from him, I swear. I suddenly got it. I suddenly got how much you loved him, and why he saw me. He saw the good in me, and I knew that’s why you loved him so much. And I never, never wanted to… but then one night he just turned up at the flat. It was dark and raining and he just arrived. He stood there on the doorstep in the rain, just looking at me, and then we… we kissed. He said he’d tried to
stay away, too, he’d tried but he couldn’t. He said he needed me. It started then and I… I loved him, Ellen, I loved him and he loved me, too. We were going to tell you. We were going to face up to it all and be together, until… The last year, it’s been hell because I’ve had to grieve for him in secret, knowing how I’ve betrayed you. Torn between wanting to be near you, with you and Charlie, and running away so that you two would never find out what I’ve done.”

“But if Nick hadn’t died, if you two had run off together, Charlie would have found out then. You can’t have cared about that.”

Ellen watched for a second as Hannah struggled to sit up and then she hooked her arms under Hannah’s and helped her rise, plumping pillows behind her to support her back.

“I did. I thought about it all the time and so did Nick. We worried and worried about it. Nick never wanted to hurt Charlie or you. If it had been up to him he would have left it as it was. Living at home with you, coming round to me two or three times a week. If I loved you, I should have been able to live with that. But I’m not like you, Ellen. I’m not the sort of person who can live on the sidelines. I wanted to be everything to him, so I forced his hand. I gave him an ultimatum. I told him he had to choose, either me or you. Just before he died he promised me that it was going to be me, that he just wanted to wait a few more weeks and then we’d be together. We decided we’d talk to you together and then he’d talk to Charlie. I made him promise that he’d look after you, financially. That you’d be able to keep the house and he’d make sure you were comfortable.”

“How big of you,” Ellen said coolly.

Hannah burst into painful-sounding coughs, clasping her ribs with each spasm. “I know what it sounds like,” she said. “I know that I sound like a heartless bitch, but, Ellen, nobody ever loved me the way he did. No one ever looked at me the way he did. He made me feel so special, so beautiful.”

“Yes, he was good at that,” Ellen said bitterly. Hannah had recited almost word for word what she had told Allegra about her husband only a few days earlier.

“I know you loved him,” Hannah went on. “And I know he loved you, too, once. But people change and grow apart.”

“I know that he changed me,” Ellen said. “I know that he stopped me in my tracks at a point in my life when I could have been anything or anyone and he made me into his wife. He would have changed you, too, Hannah, in the end.”

“Well, perhaps I needed changing. I mean, look at my life without him. Look at what happens to me when I’m left alone.”

Ellen straightened and stood up. “This, this is not your fault. This has nothing to do with Nick.”

Hannah nodded, silent for a moment. “What do we do now? Is this the last time I see you and Charlie?”

Ellen looked at her sister. “Charlie can’t ever know about this. Whatever Nick was, he was a good father and Charlie adored him. We can never let him have a reason to think differently about his father.”

“And what about you?” Hannah asked.

“I loved Nick, I loved being his wife, and if I hadn’t found out about you, then I suppose I always would have. You’ve taken that away from me, Hannah. I can never get that back.”

Hannah turned her face away. “I know. I never meant to tell you, I wouldn’t have if—”

“But I’m glad I know,” Ellen interrupted. “I think I needed to see the life I had with Nick the way it actually was, not the way I thought it was. I don’t think he was a bad man, I think he was just a man who wanted it all, and all his way, and I let him get away with that. Maybe you wouldn’t have, but then again, maybe you would. There’s no way of knowing now. Either way, at least now I can go forward again, knowing that the best part of my life isn’t over. That it’s yet to come… and one day, so can you.”

Hannah turned back to look Ellen in the eye.

“Can you ever forgive me, Ellen? Will it ever be like it used to be between us again? When we were girls, you used to hold my hand ’til I went to sleep. Do you remember that time you wanted those shiny patent leather shoes in that shop in town? You were fifteen and I was about six? Mum said no, you couldn’t have them, and you were gutted. Do you remember that I saved up my pocket money for a month and then asked Mum to buy them for you with my money? She thought I was so cute that she bought them for you and let me keep the pocket money. I’ve always wanted you to be happy, Ellie. And I know you won’t believe me but I love you so much. And now you hate me.”

Ellen shook her head, thinking of those shoes that she had treasured so much, and how she had let Hannah play in them, parading up and down the hall in them, making Ellen laugh until the tears streamed down her face. It was a happy memory, but one that Ellen found painful to recall.

“I love you, Hannah,” she said quietly. “That’s all I can tell you right now. And I won’t let you deal with this on your own.”

As Hannah began to sob, Ellen put her arms around her and pulled her into her embrace.

“I keep trying not to… not to think about it, but every time I close my eyes, it comes back in flashbacks, a little bit more each time, and… Ellen, what if I’ve caught something, what if I’m pregnant? I’m so scared.”

Ellen held her sister for a long time, rocking her back and forth, letting her tears soak through her clothes. Then after a while she gently pushed Hannah away a little so that she could look her in the eye.

“Hannah, we have to face this. We have to get you the help you need, get you emergency contraception and tested and… Hannah, you were beaten and raped,” she said with deliberate blunt force. “You can’t think that it doesn’t matter, or that you deserved what’s happened to you, because of Nick—because it
does matter and you didn’t deserve it. You need to go to hospital and get properly checked out, get proper care, and you need to report it to the police. Because if they’ve done it once, they’ll do it again. You are the only person who might be able to stop that happening. I know it will be horrible and hard but I think you need to do this for your own sake, and I promise you I will be there every step of the way. Because I love you and I can’t stand that this has happened to you and you think that it’s just something you’ll get over, like a bad cold or…”

“Someone dying?” Hannah said, a tear rolling down her damaged cheek.

“Will you go to hospital?” Ellen asked. After a moment, Hannah nodded once.

“Right now, we’re going to get some coffee into you and some food, and then we’re going to casualty to get you checked over and we’re going to report this to the police. We have to, Hannah, there is no other choice.”

“But there’s no evidence,” Hannah said. “I got changed, I had a bath.”

Ellen thought of the bundle of clothes that remained unwashed at her house.

“There is evidence.”

“They’ll think I deserved it, that I’m a drunk and a slut.” Hannah sobbed with such feeling that Ellen almost reached out and touched her. Instead, she sat on the bed, softening her voice.

“Maybe, maybe that’s the way you think, too. But whatever happened, Hannah, you don’t deserve to feel that way. Maybe it is impossible to catch the people who did this to you, but if you don’t do something, tell someone, get some help, then you will always feel that way. And I don’t want that for you.”

“Saint Ellen,” Hannah whispered, a tiny smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.

“No,” Ellen said. “Just Ellen, just me again. For the first time in a long time, I’m just being me.”

Well, it certainly is different,” Allegra said thoughtfully once Ellen had stopped reading the ending that she herself had written for
The Sword Erect.
“It’s not at all the sort of ending that my readers will be expecting.…”

“I know,” Ellen said. “And of course I only did it for fun, but after we got back from the hospital, it had been such a difficult day, my mind was racing and I couldn’t make my heart slow down. I needed to take my mind off of everything that had happened, because I could feel the panic there in the corner, just waiting for me to fixate on something and fall apart.”

Ellen thought of the journey that she and Hannah had made to St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington a couple of days before. Charlie and Matt had wanted to come, too, and Ellen had wanted them to come, but she also wanted to protect Charlie from finding out anything more, at least for now. She had persuaded Matt to take Charlie home, but only after he had installed Ellen and her sister in a black taxi.

“Remember, you are in the safest place in the world,” he had whispered in Ellen’s ear as he secured her seat belt. Ellen had clutched the bright yellow handlebar as the cab pulled away, struggling to control her breathing, but as she looked at her sister, who had faced real and not imagined monsters, she forced herself to be calm, reaching out and covering the clenched hand that Hannah rested on the seat with her own.
Calming Hannah’s nerves calmed her own in turn, and as long as she didn’t stop for one second to think about herself, she could just about cope.