Prologue
Fifteen years ago
It hadn’t stopped raining all day, and the incessant tuneless tapping of the rain against the window only amplified Stephanie’s misery. She lay heavily on the bed, all too aware of the way her hip and shoulder dug into the solid mattress. Overhead, a single sixty-watt lightbulb burned brightly. It always burned.
Wide, dry eyes stared straight ahead towards the corner of the room. Given the option, darkness was her preference; at least then she would be spared the brown, threadbare carpet and pale-blue painted walls that sported strands of dirty cobwebs, and the yellowed gloss skirting, chipped with age. In the darkness she pictured a different reality and created a more pleasing picture of despair in which to exist.
The room had no toilet, no washbasin and no window, the latter now boarded up and covered by a metal grille fitted flush to the wooden window frame. The only clue to the time of day was a small chink of light in the bottom left-hand corner where the board was split, allowing only the faintest trace of light to enter. But it was enough; it had to be.
She’d no memory of how it started, of what triggered Sergio’s initial rage, no lead-up to that first volcanic outburst signalling a deterioration in the relationship; only the memory of being dragged by her hair to the small first-floor bedroom and thrown so hard through the doorway that she collided with the mantelpiece on the opposite wall and was knocked out. The gritty taste of dirt and blood greeted consciousness, as did the burning, biting pain at her temple that escalated as she staggered across the room and hammered on the locked bedroom door. Eventually the pain overtook her baser instincts and she collapsed onto the floor, surrounded by an encroaching fog and the sound of rushing water in her ears.
For the first two days she used the corner of the room as a toilet because nobody came when she pounded on the door. On the third day, somebody left a cracked mixing bowl with her food and she wept for the small mercy. The slow shutdown of her body after weeks of scraps and barely enough liquid to keep her organs functioning was a horrifying physical feeling of weakness, of being drained of life and dignity as she noticed her flesh gradually shrink away from her bones, until in the end, the impetus to eat simply slipped away.
Every day she lay for hours, listening to the sounds of the house. Sometimes it was still and quiet, a deceptive peacefulness all too often broken by the slow, measured footsteps passing outside the door, but mostly it was full of noise. Short, sharp bursts of laughter, and anger; always anger and mostly his. The visits were what scared her the most. Sometimes she woke to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand cupping the now angular bone of her cheek, his thumb gently stroking away the filth from her skin, wiping away the tears that always came. Other times consciousness came from a solid slap, sometimes followed by a beating so brutal that the strength to drag herself back to the bed was something found only in her dreams.
Time passed slowly in that cramped little room, stretching out in a continuous stream of distant sounds without context or meaning, every second dragging its feet as if unwilling to give up its place in the universe to the next. She didn’t know how long she had been there; it could have been weeks or months, she just didn’t know, and in the end, simply didn’t care. Banging on the door and trying to force her way out of the room had also come to nothing, because the last time her sobbing cries echoed along the hallway, Nate held a gun to her head and told her to get back against the wall if she wanted to stay alive. He was keen and edgy with an eagerness about him that smacked of wanting to please at all costs, yet until that moment, the true depths of his depravity were never clear. She simply didn’t understand how he could be so wholly complicit in what was happening to her and not lift a finger to stop it.
That night, her last in that godawful stinking room, she knew instinctively something was wrong. Everything about the house felt different; even the air had an odd vibration. There was so much more activity than normal, with doors slamming and unfamiliar voices trading insults in overheated conversations. They were scared, she could sense it; they were really scared. Sergio wasn’t there. She knew what he sounded like, what his presence felt like; she recognised his footsteps. He hadn’t come back that evening, and now everybody was panicking and shouting at each other.
From somewhere below her came the distant sound of shattering crockery and muffled voices calling with urgency. Somebody shouted about needing a hospital, and shortly afterwards the peace of the night was broken by a flurry of car doors slamming and the liquid purr of a powerful engine. Peace ensued briefly, the hiatus triggering in her an overwhelming fatigue too powerful to fight, and so she gave in to the bliss of the silence and the comforts which lived only in her imagination.
She woke a few hours later to an unusually darkened room and the shape of a food tray placed just inside the doorway, silhouetted by the strip of bright white light from the corridor outside. She lay foetal-like, staring at it for what felt like hours, eyes open and unblinking in the shadows as her dry tongue moved over cracked lips, as her body mustered the energy to move. Easing herself off the bed she sank slowly to the floor, crawling towards the tray as would a toddler.
She pulled the tray towards her, backing into the darkness, her spine finding the hard comfort of the metal bed frame. The thin strip of light at the bottom of the door didn’t reach very far into the room, but that wasn’t a problem; she preferred the darkness anyway. Her fingers pulled at the cotton tea towel covering the tray and moved it to one side, the tips of her fingers tracing the outline of the shadowed food and feeling the familiar roughness of overcooked meat. A low moan escaped her lips.
From the room below came a burst of sound, a muffled yelling with the looped staccato rhythm of repetition. She heard the deep explosion of what sounded like doors slamming into walls, the floor beneath her vibrating from the heavy footfalls of men running along the corridor, shouting to each other as they went. She heard a sharp crack, and the shouting and vibrations grew louder as the force of multiple feet pounded the back staircase and emerged onto the upstairs landing.
She listened with terror as a man shouted instructions for somebody to start searching the rooms to ‘make sure none of the fuckers are hiding’. It was as if somebody was slowly turning up the volume, cranking it up to its maximum setting and waiting for the song to end, waiting for the ear-splitting silence and the dull hiss of static. Only, the silence came far quicker than she imagined, and when it did it was absolute. Consuming.
It came as the song ended with a furore of vocals and noise and the deafening drumbeat of gunfire, two shots announcing the finale. She sat paralysed on the floor, her mind engulfed by a thousand different scenarios running at high speed, and in that moment she slid the tray under her bed and pushed herself in behind it. She didn’t have to wait long for the door to open. Within minutes it exploded inwards in a single, sharp burst and a lone pair of black combat boots moved into view in the brightly lit doorway.
‘Nobody in here,’ somebody shouted.
‘Wait … wait,’ another voice urged as a second pair of boots came into view.
She listened to the soft, low whispers from above and watched as both pairs of feet moved slowly into the room and towards the bed. She waited, anxious and terrified as they moved to opposite sides, their black leather toes pointing towards her. They moved closer, the outline of fingers curling around the underside of the bed frame signalling their intent, and in a sudden flurry of noise and movement the bed raised effortlessly away.
‘Shhhh … shhhh …’ Second Boots urged as he gathered her towards him. ‘You’re safe, you’re safe. Shhhh … you’re safe.’
Terror consumed her as she took in the two men dressed entirely in black, their faces hidden from view by balaclavas. It was only then she realised how much she was struggling and kicking, screaming, crying, gulping for air as her throat burned with the acrid taste of bile. Arms tightened around her as Second Boots tried to stand, tried to stop her flailing, but her legs kicked out instinctively and connected with the body of First Boots.
‘Aargh, fuck!’ He doubled over.
She instinctively raised her feet again to bring the full force of her weight down on the front of his leg, hoping to kick it out from under him, only her aim was off and her foot connected with his kneecap. He cried out.
‘Hey, we’re not going to hurt you, believe me. Shhhh … shhhh …’ Second Boots soothed. ‘Please. Listen to me, we’re not. We need to get you to a hospital. We need to make sure you’re okay.’
Stephanie pushed against the arms clamped tightly around her, as Second Boots slid his hand up over her shoulder and pulled her head into the nape of his neck. She felt them sinking towards the floor again, his grip persisting as his covered face pressed against her head, his fingers rhythmically stroking her hair. She sensed him recoil, a soft, throaty sound escaping as he breathed, and in a moment of absolute clarity she realised just how truly fetid she must smell. There was nothing to do except comply, concede to the rhythmic calm as he rocked gently back and forth. Tension ebbed from her muscles and her breathing evened out, the companionable fear and loneliness of the preceding months relinquishing their place to the deeper relief of tears, which fell silently onto the arm of a stranger.
The walk to the ambulance felt like an eternity, every face in the house, every eye, turning to watch her as she was carried past, their faces a blur of light-streaked darkness glimpsed through swollen eyes. She didn’t care about them, didn’t care who they were or why they were there. All she cared about in that moment was the feeling of the fresh, damp night air against her cheek, the longed-for sense of relief and freedom, and the comfort of the warm, sweet scent of oranges, earthy wood and jasmine as she buried her face into the crook of Second Boots’ neck and allowed the tears to come.
The following twelve months were a dark and miserable existence in every sense, the rain relentless on the day she finally left Leeds. It had turned the streets into a murky river of water that ran between the cars and around the feet of anybody brave or stupid enough to venture out. She had no choice but to go out into it, to get wet as she ran down the steps of her building and into the taxi that took her to the airport, and from there to a new life and a new start. She looked out of the window the entire journey, transfixed by the grey and bleak landscape as it slipped by, feeling every inch of it, every cold, miserable, wet inch of it, leaching into her, making her shiver and long for so much more.
The pain of giving birth had been matched only by that of having to give up her baby, each day since seeming like a torturous new technique developed by life to punish her for somebody else’s sins. The woman from the adoption service took her perfect son not long after the birth, only allowing her a few moments to say a bleary-eyed goodbye to the fragrant blue bundle of fuzzy hair cradled so very gently in her arms; the bundle with a crescent-shaped maroon birthmark on his right hand, displayed to the world like the entrance stamp to some expensive nightclub. To keep him with her would have been like ordering her own hit, and she was under no illusion that Sergio could find her if the mood took him. His was, after all, a surprisingly small world.
There was no way of knowing whether he would bother to track her down, but of one thing she was certain. If she was spotted and she was alone, she would probably be safe. If, however, she was spotted with a child? Well, he had always been a whizz with numbers; he would work it out, then find her and ask in an unfriendly manner why she had taken his child from him. Giving up her son was the only way to ensure his safety and her own, but more importantly, it was the only way of giving him a fighting chance at a decent life away from the violent world his father had worked so hard to create.
The money was almost gone, and the inevitable could not be ignored any longer. There was nowhere she particularly wanted to go, and the thought of staying anywhere within a five-hundred-mile radius of Sergio filled her with dread. So she sat in the small airport café people-watching as she waited for the Nice check-in desk to open, a finger gently stroking the Polaroid photograph of her son, a baby just minutes old – the first photo of him, her only photo of him; the photo the midwife had tucked into her hand as she lay motionless beneath white sheets, tears sliding silently down pale cheeks, soaking into the rough cotton pillowcase beneath her head. It was a photo she was never meant to have.
That day was the only time she had seen him, the day she had traded her life as Stephanie Fai Bradshaw and all her problems for an altogether more attractive and problem-free version of herself. It was a version she hoped with all her heart could start again without ever having to look back in fear and panic, but she knew the realities of life were often more cruel than kind – and the reality in that moment was that every day lived in freedom could only ever be considered borrowed time.