Written in the Scars (The Estate Series Book 4) (9 page)

‘So, Derek, am I allowed to say “just the usual?” to you now that this is your fifth visit to see me?’ she asked as he took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the door.

‘Well, you are my favourite,’ he replied with a grin.

Keera found herself blushing, dipping her eyes as she patted the couch. ‘What are you waiting for? Strip off and jump aboard.’

She turned away as he removed his T-shirt. When he was lying face down, she grabbed a small plastic bottle, then poured oil into the palm of her hand and set to work.

‘So, how have you been since I last saw you?’ she asked as her hands moved up and down his back.

‘Not too bad, thanks.’

‘Work good?’

‘I suppose.’

‘What’s your best night then? Friday? Saturday?’

‘I don’t work at weekends, so it’s Friday for me.’

‘How come?’ Keera pummelled at the skin around his spine next, delighted when she heard a moan.

‘I don’t need the money – nor the hassle. I finish around midnight, too - saves catching the drunks. They give me the most abuse.’

Keera laughed to herself. This job wasn’t much different than being a hairdresser. She asked the questions and the men answered, often telling her more in return. She was a confidante, in many respects.

Men were always trusting her with their secrets. She kept them to herself, too – unlike Tracy Tanner, who told the rest of the women anything juicy so they could all laugh about it. Keera didn’t like that, even though she often found herself joining in with the laughter. Tracy had a way of telling stories that cracked everyone up.

‘What brings you here, Keera?’ Derek asked. ‘I mean, you seem too nice to work in a place like this.’

‘I’ll have you know all the girls here are nice, Mr Paige,’ she admonished.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean … Sorry, that was rude.’

‘I know what you mean. It’s the first job that I came across when I got home. We hadn’t long been back from San Antonio – me and my friend, Marley, that is. We were supposed to be staying there for the summer but it all went wrong within the first month, so we came back.’

‘Is Marley a good friend of yours?’

‘Yes. I’ve known her since junior school. We left high school with a few exams between us, so with only the crappy jobs to look forward to – if we were even lucky enough to find jobs in the first instance – we wanted to have a bit of fun.’

‘I don’t blame you. Living around here is hardly thrilling.’

‘Tell me about it. We were so desperate to get away that we decided to go and work abroad.’

‘As holiday reps?’

‘No.’ Keera shook her head, although he couldn’t see her. ‘I could never do that. All that being at everyone’s beck and call all the time – that wouldn’t be much fun either, even if we could chill in the sun on our days off. We got jobs working in a bar. Serving drinks, waiting on tables, you know. Boring stuff but we had a laugh. For the first time in our lives, we felt free. But then it all went wrong.’

‘Oh?’

Keera shuddered at the memory, still so clear in her mind. She didn’t like to revisit it so her words came tumbling out. ‘We’d been living in a tiny apartment near the bar. Early one morning, the owner let himself in. He accused Marley of ripping him off and stealing his money. He was in such a drunken rage that before we could stop him, he dragged Marley into the bedroom and wedged a chair under the door handle so that I couldn’t get in.’

‘You don’t have to tell me—’

‘I screamed until help arrived,’ Keera continued, ‘but by then Marley had been beaten badly. The only thing that stopped the bastard from raping her was that he was too pissed to get it up.’

‘Was he arrested?’ Derek turned his face so that he could see hers but she gently pushed his shoulders down and continued to massage his back.

‘The police took him away,’ she told him. ‘We weren’t sure what happened to him because we flew home a few days later. But I hope he got what he deserved.’

Keera sighed. She didn’t blame Marley for wanting to go home. In actual fact it had creeped her out just as much and she was glad when Marley had suggested it. She didn’t want to live in fear of being attacked next and she certainly wouldn’t have stayed there on her own.

 ‘Even coming back here was better than staying there,’ she continued. ‘Marley’s parents live in Manchester now, so we can’t see each other much at the moment. Still, we text and call each other – and we chat over Skype.’

Keera missed Marley as much as Ibiza: the camaraderie in the bar, dozing in the shade of an umbrella on the beach while they caught up with their sleep after working until three a.m. every night, chilling out with a group of friends they’d made who worked the bars too, always around for happy hour before starting over in the bar, the music blasting out enough to make their ears ring. If it weren’t for what happened, she would go back tomorrow.

‘Don’t you have any other friends? I’m sure a young girl such as yourself must have lots of them.’

‘Yes. There’s a group of us who meet in the local pub, but it’s not the same without Marley. I feel like I’ve lost my shadow.’

‘And now you’re working here!’ Derek’s tone was singsong.

‘Don’t say it like that!’ Keera slapped him playfully on his shoulder. ‘A friend told me there were jobs going. And before you say it, I’m not naïve. I know what some of the girls get up to but I have my limits.’

‘And so you should.’

Keera stopped for a moment. She couldn’t believe how much she had opened up to Derek. She wasn’t usually that forward. He obviously had a comforting affect on her. She wouldn’t talk to any old client!

‘Blimey,’ Keera grinned. ‘I thought I was supposed to listen to your problems, not the other way around.’

‘I like that you find me so easy to talk to.’ Derek smiled as he sat up. He stretched his arms to the ceiling before stepping off the bed.

Even long after Derek had gone, Keera couldn’t stop thinking of their conversation. She could get off the estate if she wanted to but she hadn’t got the qualifications needed to get anything more than a menial job.

Keera knew she wasn’t like a lot of the women who lived on the estate though, always scrounging off the social or getting by on knock-off stuff from the bloke they were shacked up with at the time. She’d wanted to earn her keep since she’d left school. It was one thing her mum had instilled in her after her dad had left. The need to provide for herself, to never rely on anyone else.

When Derek had asked her what she fancied doing, she couldn’t answer, because she hadn’t got a clue. And that had upset her. She didn’t want to be one of the people who went through life without a purpose, like her mum. Life was too short to be running around after everyone the way she did.

And, unlike her brother, Keera wanted to work to pay her way. She wanted money in her pocket, a decent flat, nice clothes, and good holidays.

She wanted a future, something to look forward to – but she wasn’t going to get that around here, now was she?

Chapter Twelve

Megan was pleased to see that Sam was still on her rounds when she went into work the next morning. He’d been moved to number seventeen, one of the more recently refurbished wards. It still had that sense of newness about it and was a pleasant place to be, rather than having the old feel of ward twelve.

Most things were fresh and shiny, as if not used before. There were only a few scuffmarks on the painted cream walls, the curtains decorated with retro patterns, flashes of yellow, coral and beige. Megan often wondered if the nicer surroundings helped people to get better; if the older wards prolonged illnesses by leaving their patients in a state of despair.

She gave Sam a friendly wave.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, as she dragged over the cleaning trolley.

‘All the better for seeing your pretty face.’

‘You’re a relation to Mary Marshall, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, she’s my nan. Do you know her?’

Megan nodded. ‘I work at Poplar Court in the afternoons. She’s a resident there, isn’t she? She hasn’t been there long.’

‘God, you’re a nosy one.’ Sam’s tone was jokey, so Megan smiled.

‘I know your mum, too,’ she admitted.

‘Lucky you. Do you still live on the estate then?’

 Startled by his bluntness, she decided to be nonchalant. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘If I told you, I’d have to shoot you.’

‘Really?’ She raised her eyebrows.

‘I live in Benedict Road.’

Megan knew it was near to where she lived in Rosamund Street. ‘That’s on the ‘hell, isn’t it?’

‘Just about.’

‘Ouch – I live on the mitch.’ She said it without thinking, then cursed inwardly for giving personal information out when she didn’t know him very well.

Sam laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I should have realised.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if you didn’t live on the Mitchell estate, you’d be a nurse rather than a cleaner.’

Megan pouted. ‘I don’t think that’s fair, and it isn’t true, either.’

‘You don’t want to be a nurse?’

Megan shook her head. ‘I’d hate to work with all that blood and sick and poo.’ She wrinkled up her nose. ‘Not me, no sirree.’

‘Isn’t that what you clean up anyway?’

‘Sometimes but not often.’ She began to mop again. ‘Only if anything happens when I’m on my rounds. Other than that, someone else gets to do it. I have set rounds, you see.’

‘Well, in that case … Oh, fuck.’

Megan looked up to see a policeman walking towards them. As he stopped at Sam’s bed, she moved away to give them a bit of privacy.

Sam swore under his breath.

‘Mr Harvey.’ PC Andy Shenton nodded in greeting as he stopped in front of him. ‘Mind if I pull up a chair and have a word?’

‘Yes, I do mind. I’m waiting to see the doctor and you’re only going to give me grief – like every other time I see you.’ Sam went to fold his arms, then realised with the bandages on that he couldn’t.

‘Likewise,’ said Andy. ‘How’s the hand?’

‘Hurts like fuck.’

Andy pulled a chair from a stack of three and sat down next to the bed. ‘I suppose you know what I’m here for?’

Sam said nothing.

‘Do you want to tell me what you were doing on private property?’

‘We weren’t – I mean, I wasn’t.’

‘So you were on your own when the accident happened?’ Andy raised his eyebrows.

‘Yeah, I was.’

‘Oh, come off it, Harvey.’ Andy folded his arms next. ‘Do you really think I’d believe you attacked yourself with a chainsaw? You were with Scott Johnstone, weren’t you?’

Sam frowned. How the hell had he got that information so quickly?

‘I checked the hospital CCTV to see who brought you in. Nice of him to abandon you on the car park, though.’

‘That says nothing,’ said Sam. ‘I could have gone home and then Scott brought me here when he saw the state I was in.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I’m not admitting to anything.’

‘We have a witness who said—’

‘Okay, okay.’ Sam sighed. ‘We were clearing land.’

‘To plan a getaway?’

‘What?’

‘Let’s face it, if things had gone better than they had, you might have been going home that night with a van full of … let me take a guess, electrical goods to sell on? That would be quite some tidy profit.’

Sam shifted on the bed. He’d better be careful what he said, there was too much of a notion there already.

‘Are you arresting me?’ he wanted to know.

‘Just routine questions for now,’ Andy smiled.

‘We were just helping a mate to clear his land.’

Andy got out his notepad, smiling at a nurse as she walked past the bottom of the bed. ‘This mate of yours, was he there?’

‘No.’

‘So he didn’t actually know you were clearing it?’

‘Of course he did. We were helping him—’

Andy threw that day’s copy of the local newspaper down beside him on the bed. ‘While you were in here, it looks like your fellow criminals decided to do the haul without you.’

Sam snatched up the newspaper and read the heading on the page it was turned to.

Robbery of electrical goods.

The sneaky bastards. They had only gone and done the job even though he was in hospital.

‘Still, like you said, it had nothing to do with you.’ Andy stood up. ‘Wouldn’t be like you, profiting from anything like that.’

Sam couldn’t look at him. His features were stuck in a glare.

Andy made his way to the end of the bed. ‘I’m off to catch up with Johnstone now, see what he knows about things. I’ve missed him while he was inside. ‘Course, if you hadn’t had your accident, I might never have found out who was cutting back the trees.’