Love LockDown (3 page)
This was so not going to happen, over my fucking dead body.
“Not fucking happening babe.” I told him sternly.
“I know you don’t want me near her or the area but I have to see her, the doctors called and said she may only have a few weeks to live, the cancer has finally caught up and has basically latched on everywhere in her body. I have to see her, I have to settle everything and say goodbye baby. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”
I couldn’t breathe; my heart was beating so hard out of my chest I thought I might pass out. Tears started to fill my eyes and I tried my best to hold them back, to stop them falling.
“How could you want to see her after all she’s done to you Dave, she doesn’t deserve your forgiveness?” I ask him totally bewildered as to why he’d want any contact with the witch.
“She’s still my mother; she still gave birth to me. I have to at least let her leave this world knowing I loved her.”
“I understand, I’m just scared. Those people could still be looking for you.” I dreaded the thought of them seeing him and getting hold of him.
“I know Abbi. I’ll be fine. You know me big, strong and tough ‘n’all.” I giggled at him as he tensed his arms like Popeye, trying to act bad ass.
“You silly bastard. Just please be careful baby. I don’t want you to get hurt.” I playfully smack his arse and then leaned in to take his mouth in a heated kiss.
“Don’t you worry I’ll be back baby. Have a good day and stay out of trouble yourself ‘kay? Love you baby.” He tells me and kisses me one last time before leaving the house.
My heart rate is still sky high as horrible images flash my mind of what could happen. I tell myself I’m being silly and over the top trying to calm myself down.
I ponder the whole day, waiting for a text from him, or to see his name flash the screen on my phone. Nothing, zilch, nada.
After cooking my new family and me a lasagne, we sit in the lounge and watch EastEnders, same old drama all the time. I hated soaps.
“Has Dave text you Lisa?” I ask my foster mother. I was seriously worrying, it was half seven and I hadn’t heard from him and he still wasn’t home.
“No Hun. I’m sure he’s fine. Stop worrying.” She reassured me.
As the theme tune to the soap begins a knock at the door alerts us. I run to the door, knowing David he must have forgotten his key.
“You silly bastard remember your bloody ke…” I say as I open the door. David isn’t who I answer the door too.
“Evening Ma’am is Lisa McIntyre there please.” Two policemen frame the doorway to my home. Fear and dread flooding my gut.
“Lise door.” I shout to her before I run down the hallway to my room.
I hear the policemen start to talk to her as I get to my door.
“Mrs McIntyre I’m sorry to tell you, we found the body of David Yates this evening. He was stabbed whilst visiting his mother in Bow.” I hear the female police officer state sympathetically.
Vomit rises in my throat and I run to the bathroom to stop myself from depositing it on the floor.
I stare at the swirling toilet as my sick is flushed away, my heart breaks. The tiny pieces shatter onto the marble floor below my feet, the blood in my veins freezes over and the tears falling from my eyes sting my cheeks.
A knock on the bathroom door alerts me before Lisa walks in, her face bright red, her eyes puffy and swollen. She rushes to me, pulling me in her arms, and sobbing in my hair.
“I’m so sorry Abbi, fuck this is so unfair.” I scream out in pain as my body shakes and begins to close down.
“Why him, why me. Fuck I need him back, I need him Lisa. I can’t cope without him. What am I going to do? Why did he have to go? I said he shouldn’t but he said he’d be fine. He never fucking listens.” I pull away from her turning to the mirror on the wall and punch the thing, shredding my hand in the process.
“Baby girl. I’m sorry this keeps happening to you.” She was more of a parent than my own father had ever been. She bought me my tampons, supplied my first lot of condoms to make sure I avoided an unwanted pregnancy and talked to me when I was down.
I screamed a heart wrenching scream. Anger flooding my body.
“I need to go. Please let me go.” I pull away from Lisa and run to my room. I pack up the most important things to me, including a picture of me, Lisa, Carl and David. I stroke his face in the picture and start crying again. After I’ve stuffed the bits into a holdall I go to David’s room. I sit on his bed and hold his pillow to my face, weeping into the linen.
I pack a few bits from his room to take with me, a few pieces of evidence of the times we spent together the past four months.
And then I leave.
I walk out of the door and I don’t look back.
Chapter One
So here I am, alone, homeless, jobless and begging for scraps on the street. For the past three years it has been this way. A cardboard box my home, a plastic cup my bank with the hope of a giving person to pass me.
My once silky smooth blonde locks piled in a mass of knots upon my head, my pale pink full lips now cracked, chipped and broken. My once beautiful creamy skin, blistered, bruised and destroyed. My old bright blue eyes once happy and full of life with David, now empty and hollow vessels.
My twenty first birthday has come and gone, a day spent like every other. Begging, scrounging and pleading to God to do something to help me.
I hadn’t attended David’s funeral it was too hard. I didn’t want to see the box that was now the place he slept, he belonged in my arms and that’s the way I wanted to remember him, not in a wooden crate six foot under.
It’s January now, and it’s so fucking cold, the wind whips through the streets of London, freezing my sensitive skin. My body has gone past shivering, my fingers and toes are numb, my skin an ice white, my cracked lips aching and stinging as the cold spits at them.
The local homeless shelter opens soon, the hundreds of people hoping to get a room for the night will soon pile in, pushing, shoving and sometimes becoming desperately violent. I collect my few items of worth, drag myself from the floor and trudge the streets, my thin blanket wrapped tightly around my tiny malnourished frame.
I have tried for the past year to get a bed for the night there, and as every other night I make my way to the building and wait outside.
No one is at the doors when I arrive. For the first time in a year I might have a bed for the night. I might have heating and a shower. A sad smile frames my face for the first time since I can remember. The simplicity of a roof over my head, cheering my bitter insides up a little.
After an hour of waiting and mountains of people pushing and budging from behind, the way I expected them too, the doors open.
“Right we only have eighty rooms free. It’s first come first serve I’m afraid.” I look to the sky and thank the lord.
I tell the lady my name and collect a token for food from her. Making my way to the small room allocated to me I place my backside on the lumpy mattress. The amazing, lumpy mattress.
I lay myself down and breath in and out, lavishing the heat around me. I sigh contented with my accommodation for tonight. This was luxurious and safe compared to my usual spots. I was thankful for every second I got to spend here.
An hour later I go to the soup kitchen and collect my free hot meal and drink.
The gruel type mush is heart-warming and delicious. One bowl fills my empty stomach easily. The piss-water cup of tea also a blessing from God. It warms the blood running through my icy veins.
When I get back to my room I collect the towels provided and head to the shower to rinse the year’s supply of grime, grease, semen and other human fluids from my skin.
The scorching shower is astonishing. The pounding water ridding my body of the filth. I use the cheap shampoo and conditioner they provide me with, and wash my knotted hair. The silky length reforming and trailing my back the way it once had.
I scrub my body with the Tesco value body wash and breathe in the clean scent around me. The freshness enveloping me and warming my soul.
Just this moment in time I forget everything else and wallow in the comfort. Tomorrow is another day and will most likely follow as every other day has the last three years, but this moment in time, I will appreciate with everything I can give.
My night’s sleep is amazing; the lumpy bed does wonders for my aching back, the thick duvet keeping me warm.
At seven AM the warden knocks on my door and tells me I have twenty minutes to get out. Claiming my free breakfast and then closing the door behind me I leave the shelter, a real satisfied smile on my face for the first time in three years.
I find a spot at the rear fire exit of a restaurant; I can distantly recall visiting here with my foster parents when celebrating. I place my butt on the step by the back door, the warm air from the underground tube lines blowing up through the metal grate by my feet. The hot air keeps the biting winter chill from giving me hyperthermia, controlling those body wracking shakes for just a while longer.
I spend my day as usual sleeping, begging and trying my damn hardest to get comfortable with the limited amount of space and shelter provided.
When 2.AM rolls around, I can hear people leaving the clubs opposite the restaurant entrance. Their noises echo around me, their drunken shouts and high pitch whining grating on my very last nerve. The bellowing of testosterone fuelled males fighting does nothing but make me feel very wary and a little frightened. I have seen enough violence and destruction in my short twenty-one years that I never want to hear or experience it again.
I feel like decking some of the girls for whining about trivial pathetic things. ‘I broke a nail, or mummy won’t let me have the car I want, daddy only gave me £500 for my birthday’ blah blah blah. I want to throw my fist into something to alleviate the anger I feel towards the selfish people walking past me.
“Hello sweet thing. Want some company?” A grimy looking man crouches in front of me, the stench of cheap whiskey on his breath. His smell automatically sends me into an internal fit of panic, reminding me of the one man I detest most in this world. I can see the yellow tinge to his weathered skin as the single street lamp illuminates his darkened presence. His teeth are a disgusting, gut churning black. I don’t want anyone’s company tonight, let alone an alcoholic, I just want sleep. A few times in the past three years I had had someone stay with me, sharing my spot and giving me someone to talk to, to prevent the madness from manifesting within my head. It was so easy to fall into depression being in this situation. Sitting on your own day in day out, wondering and analysing your life, wondering where you went wrong, what you did to deserve the hurt and isolation you now felt.
“No, it’s okay thanks.” I mutter nervously to him. He must have caught on to my anxious behaviour because he didn’t back away.
“Well that’s a bit shit, coz you aint got a choice you little slut.” His hands reach out and grab my hair fiercely in his fists, pulling some of my newly cleaned locks clean from my scalp.
“Please, just let me go.” I plead him, begging for him to stop. It doesn’t work. He rips at my blanket, pulling it from my tiny freezing body. His hands grasp roughly at my clothes, already so thin and worn that they disintegrate in his hands.
“You’re going to take me like a good little girl and then maybe I might let you go.” I nod trying to avoid anything worse from happening. It’s not like this is first time somebody has taken me without my consent, but this time was different, this time I fear for my life because he isn’t in control. His eyes are black and demonic; some kind of poison has infested itself within him.
Gripping my hair tightly in one hand and my wrists in the other, he drags me further into the alleyway.
He pushes me face first into the wall of the restaurant, my breasts scraping against the rough textured bricks. I hiss between my teeth, my nipples feeling so raw that I think to myself that they must be bleeding a little. The cold air is hitting my naked flesh so violently that I could physically feel the blood in my veins freezing, taking my heart and soul with it.
I hear his belt being undone, the tell-tale noise of the buckle clinking against his trousers. I squeeze my eyes shut as I prepare for what I knew was about to happen, it was inevitable and the best thing I can possibly do right now, is hold my breath, take myself somewhere warm and safe, back to my foster home, back to my family, and wipe away any recognition that once again my body is about to be used and abused.
He penetrates me roughly, his penis rubs against the inside of my vagina so hard I feel a slight tearing. A cry leaves my dry lips, tears flooding from my eyes, burning my torn cheek as they fall.
His hands pin my arms to my sides, restraining me from any movement.
“That’s it you good little whore. I know you like this. You beg for it, sitting there feeling sorry for yourself all day.” Vomit rises in my throat as he begins to slam harder into my dry channel, his penis hitting my cervix harshly. The biting pain sears through my bruising and aching body.
I hear him begin to grunt as his pending release nears.
“Get away from her now.” A deep voice sounds from somewhere in the alley.
The psychopath removes himself from within me and I exhale the frightened breath I had held in relief.
My relief is short lived, because he grabs me and turns me around harshly, my back pinned to his front. One of his arms crosses my chest, using it as a restraint to pin my own bony arms to my sides. His other hand flips open a switchblade I hadn’t even seen and presses it to my throat. As I gulp down the terror that floods my system, my throat moves mere millimetres, pressing my flesh into the blade slightly. I feel the blade nick my skin, the warm trickle of blood escaping and running over my cold skin.
“You come any closer and I’ll slit her fucking throat.” Panic washes over me, I try to control my breathing, small breaths to stop the blade pushing so hard. Every tiny inhalation, another plea to God to do something, to help me, I don’t want to die here, on the grimy floor of an alley behind a restaurant.