The Whiskerly Sisters (25 page)

Izza spent three days with the group. In that brief period, she learned a lot about life, about herself and about survival. Darren and his gang were not the evil thugs she had supposed. True, they were thieves, they did drugs and they looked menacing, but they had hearts of gold and meant her no harm. They eked out their existence on a mixture of casual work, benefits and charity. Some of them were lazy and some hard working, but all of them had issues with what they saw as the fascist, capitalistic society in which they found themselves. Their camp was a reflection of their individual decisions to opt out of the system that they felt had failed them.

Despite appearances to the contrary, they were actually on the side of the good guys, defenders of the poor and downtrodden, grubby knights in shabby armour and were happy to support whoever seemed in distress. They had no problem sharing what little they had with the poor little rich kid, who had suddenly rocked up in their world and, if she needed a listening ear, she would get that too. If not, no dramas.

Over the next couple of days, Izza watched, listened and learned. She learned fast. Of the dozen or so young men and young women living rough amongst the hedgerows, she heard not one word of complaint. Oh yes, they had strong opinions on current affairs, politics in particular, but they did not moan about their individual circumstances. Instead they were, in the main, cheerful, resourceful and communal. They didn’t give a toss about tidiness and yet kept themselves and their campsite reasonably clean. They had some kind of unspoken agreement with the local Police, who regularly moved them on without rancour and they lived from hand to mouth, moving around the fringes of the town and its surrounding villages like gypsies without caravans. They had little faith in the system and wanted as little truck as possible with, what they considered to be, the interfering morons from Social Services. They worked where they could, accepted charity and openly admitted to scrounging or stealing for the rest. As a group, they were down-to-earth, practical, realistic, tolerant and unswervingly loyal.

Each of them had a story to tell and none of those tales involved the good fairies, generous genies or heroic tales of daring-do. On the contrary, all of their accounts involved some form of abuse or misery, pain or abandonment. Darren, unquestioned leader of the gang, was the childhood victim of a brutal father and a drunken mother. He became caretaker of his family from the age of seven, was poorly educated and yet as bright as a button. Despite having endured several broken limbs and severe beatings from his dad, the intolerable job of cleaning up after his incoherent, vomiting mother and trying to find food for his younger siblings, he showed no anger towards the world and he refused to act like a victim. He was outgoing, personable, kind and yet tough. He came across as uncompromising and was no-one’s fool. Given a different set of circumstances, he might have been climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, he lived the life of an itinerant and, as leader, he led from the front, expecting no one else to do what he himself would not do.

His girlfriend, Sophie, was a victim of child sex abuse. No one in the family had believed her story or, if they did, they had chosen to turn a blind eye. In desperation, she had run away from home at age thirteen, got in with a bad lot and had turned to prostitution to feed her emerging drug addiction. If it hadn’t been for Darren, God knows where she would’ve ended up. She was a kind, motherly soul and had bathed Izza’s feet on her first night in camp, applying ointment and sticking plasters to the worst areas. She asked no questions, spoke from the heart and refused to be cowed by her earlier circumstances.

For Izza, watching from the outside, these youngsters were a revelation. Her former ideas of social deprivation, hoodie menace, bad manners and thugism were swept away on a tide of friendliness, warmth and acceptance. They listened closely to her woeful tale, but couldn’t quite get what they were supposed to be sympathising with. They simply couldn’t understand her problem. To them, the situation was clear cut. Here she was, pathetic little rich kid, the world at her feet, clean home, hot food, comfy bed and half decent parents yet she chose to be put down, abused and spat on by a needy, desperate retard of a boyfriend, who she allowed to steal from her, cheat on her and diss her. They shook their heads in disbelief and asked her, over and over, why she kept going back to him but, somehow, every time she tried to answer the question, she found she had no words. As she looked into their troubled, puzzled faces, realisation shot through her. Finally, the rubber hammer of sense hit home, the fog lifted from her eyes and she saw, really saw, for the first time, and with startling clarity, what had been staring everyone else in the face.

Nothing anybody had ever said to her before had made a different yet these kids, poorly educated, badly dressed, childhood trauma victims had been able to make her see that she had a choice. She didn’t need to be a victim; she was choosing to be a victim. The message went home and, in that moment, Izza finally began to grow up.

When she felt ready, Izza informed them of her decision to return home. There were no hugs or kisses, nothing sentimental. Darren and Sophie simply walked with her to the edge of her estate, wished her luck and left without a backward glance. The only thing they asked of her was that she never disclose anything about the group or talk about what she had seen. They asked her to respect their circumstances as they had respected hers.

Izza was only too delighted to agree and so, no matter what the provocation, she never breathed a word about her ‘time out’ as she began to call it. However, she made sure to keep in touch with Darren and, occasionally, whenever she could afford it, she placed some money under a marked stone along the path over which they had carried her. No one thanked her. No one needed to.

A shadow fell across her, interrupting her reverie. She glanced up. Smiling down at her, adoration etched across his face, was Callum. She’d met him a few months previously at a village hall meeting where he had been working as caretaker to pay his college fees. It had been love at first sight for Callum; love had taken a little longer for Izza, but it was blooming now. They were planning on moving in together when he had finished his studies and could afford the rent. In the meantime, they spent as much time as they could together; work and study permitting.

Jax and her first husband, Martyn, were delighted for her. After watching their daughter suffer, and suffering greatly themselves, for too many years at the hands of the awful Tony, they were more than happy to welcome normal, ordinary Callum into their lives. Of course, he had his faults. He often missed the point, he was untidy and he picked his teeth, but he didn’t tell lies, throw punches or steal. Moreover, he worshipped Izza with every ounce of his being and was not afraid to let it show. His intentions towards her were clear and Martyn and Jax were in no doubt that he would look after her future.

As for Tony, his situation seemed to be in something of a meltdown. He had lost his job, his savings, possibly even his home and had recently been arrested by the Police. As Callum sat down beside Izza, she reached into her tote bag and silently handed him a letter.

She waited calmly while he read it.

I
t started innocently enough with a pair of tights, carelessly draped over the dressing table chair in his mother’s bedroom. Ali had insisted on yet another game of hide and seek so Sly was pretending to search the house from the top to bottom to find his elusive brother. Sly always made a huge thing out of not being able to find him. He would search everywhere, calling out all the time to Ali to let him know exactly where he was looking. This made his brother giggle and so give himself away; not that Sly needed much help. He had a fairly good idea where he would probably be hiding since Ali rarely deviated from his top five hidey holes. Sometimes, their mother would join in and hide her youngest son somewhere different. It made the game more interesting for Sly.

“Not under the rug in the living room,” he would yell. “Not behind the curtains either. I wonder if he has squeezed himself into the desk drawer… mmmm, where can he be? Where can my little monster be? Doesn’t matter, I’m going to find you and when I do…” and here he would pause to listen for any tell-tale rustles or scrapes that told Sly where not to look just yet.

“Okay, so are you in the bathroom, hiding in the shower?” he would call out, scrambling upstairs to yank back the shower curtain. “Nope, not there. Hey, clever clogs, give me a clue.” Another pause while Sly pretended to scratch his head and Ali tried desperately not to make a sound.

“Playing hard to get today, are you? Best I put my thinking cap on… got it, you must be in the fridge,” and he would run back down the stairs into the kitchen to check, making the bottles of milk rattle against the metal barriers that held them in place.

“I know where you ah-are,” he would sing out. “Under mum’s bed,” and off he would run again in the direction of the stairs, pretending not to notice the muffled sounds of giggling coming from the hall cupboard.

Sly never hid from Alistair. Ali was just not very good at the hunting side of their game. For a start, he never really looked anywhere. He would simply wander round each room of the house as if he expected to find his brother out in the open. He never thought to look behind the sofa or in the cupboard. Worse, he tended to get very frustrated when he couldn’t find Sly almost immediately. Without saying anything, both boys had agreed that Ali always hid and Sly always sought.

On this particular occasion, Sly had run upstairs to look once again under his mother’s bed where Ali was not hiding and, as he paused to think where to look next, he had let his hand rest on the back of the dressing table chair, thus discovering the tights. Sly had always had a love of fabric, but something about the silky softness of this particular material under his hands made him draw in his breath. He looked down at them and allowed his fingers to brush across their filmy surface. He had seen tights before of course; in the washing basket, over the clothes drier or on the line but, this time, it felt like the first time. Tentatively, he picked them up and ran his hand up and down their whole length, luxuriating in their feel. It made him shiver. He put his hand inside one of the legs and drew it up his arm. It felt wonderful.

At that moment, an indignant Ali cried out in his husky, sibilant tone, “Are you looking for me or not Thylvethst. I’m behind the thofa.” Startled, Sly sprang into action once again and shouted back, equally indignantly, “Who locked me in the wardrobe? Was it you Ali? It had better not have been you, you little monster or you know what’s going to happen. I’m coming to find yooooooooooouuuuu,” and he threw himself back into the game, but not before, for some reason he was scarcely aware of himself, he jammed the tights deep into his trouser pocket. He had never taken anything without permission before and he couldn’t for the life of him understand why he did it now; he just knew he needed to; that it was important.

The game of hide and seek always ended the same way. Sly would swoop down on Ali, throw him down onto the floor, bend over him and tickle him relentlessly until the pair could barely see for tears of laughter. Ali always begged his brother to stop, but both of them knew he didn’t really want him to. Sometimes, Sly would go too far and Ali, whose chest was never strong, would start to struggle with his breathing. At this point, their mother would come in from the back room where she had been sewing to stop the game, scolding her oldest son and rushing to her baby boy to see if he was okay. Feeling his forehead, she would make him sit down and breathe slowly. Sly would be sent to fetch his medicine.

Ali was a robust looking little boy, slightly overweight, but with bags of energy. He didn’t get sick very often, but his condition caused him a whole range of minor health problems that worried the life out of his mother and were the reason she tended to be over-protective of him. Ali understood her concern, but it also irritated him. He wanted to be out and about with the other boys in the street, who never treated him as though he were any different from the rest of them and always let him join, albeit clumsily, in their street games. All too often his mother frustrated him by keeping him indoors with his books and his jigsaw puzzles because she felt it was too hot or too cold or too wet for him to be outside. Thank god for Sly then, who could always charm his mother into letting Ali get a breath of fresh air on the promise that he would be there to look out for him and make sure he didn’t catch sunstroke or pneumonia or fall in the pond.

That evening, after he had read his brother to sleep, knowing that his parents were downstairs watching the television, Sly stole up to his room and lay on his bed. From out of his pocket, he extracted his silky-soft, stolen goods and began to stroke them. As he did so, he felt his mind go blank and surrendered to the gauzy feel of the almost transparent material between his fingers. He almost drifted off to sleep but then, to his enormous surprise, he felt himself becoming sexually aroused.