Matilda Wren (2 page)

The whole place seemed to be mocking her; jeering at her flaws. The tiny gold and silver mosaic tiles that covered the entire bathroom walls gave an air of superiority over her.

She didn’t belong here.

Rachel looked at James. He looked just as scared and apprehensive as she did. He was only a year older than her and was at the beginning of a three year apprenticeship four hundred miles away. This was not something he had expected to have to deal with on his first break home and in the midst of a comedown too.

James was what Rachel called a ‘pretty boy’. He had the model appearance about him and a wardrobe to match; his chiselled features and brooding scowl were the epitome of every teenage girl’s desire. All but hers it would seem.

The soulful blue eyes and sandy blonde hair that was chopped and spiked gave away the young skateboarder he had not fully let go of; the underdog kid, from the right side of the tracks that had crossed over to the bad and popular.

Caught between being charming and a nerd, a hermit and confident but more happy playing the role of an introvert; an observer who likes to watch people and try to figure out who they really are, as opposed to who they think they are.

The subdued, calm presence he characterised made him seem meagre and feeble, obscuring the hostility and antagonism that built up inside of him daily.

They had only been together for a short while, about nine months and the last three of those nine months, he had been in Liverpool, living away from home for the first time.

This was not where he wanted to be and he too was secretly praying. Numerous thoughts were running through his head.

How could this have happened? Rachel was on the pill.

Her mood swings were volatile, which was a side effect of this particular contraception, so James knew she had been taking it. Whether or not she had been taking it properly was a different matter of course.

There were bound to have been times she had forgotten to take it, but would the occasional lapse result in a baby?

Surely not?
Couples have to try for months to have a baby after coming off the pill, sometimes years. His brother and his girlfriend had been trying for a couple of years and still nothing had happened, so why was he now sitting in the bathroom with his future being determined by a thin blue line?Rachel herself was thinking other thoughts. She knew she had not exactly been taking the pill correctly. She knew that it was probably more than just an occasional lapse and adding the narcotic use into the mix, the pill was no doubt completely ineffective. These thoughts, of course, she was going to keep to herself.

Having recently been sacked from her job because she constantly turned up late or was completely useless due to self inflicted sickness and moving out of yet another foster home because her foster mum was more worried about the effect her behaviour was having on the younger children than the fact she was a frequent drug user, meant that she did not have an exactly stable life. She never had.

The damp bedsit in Shenfield that reeked of stale fish and chips and vinegar, which social services had dumped her in, was probably the size of James entire bathroom.

Although she was eighteen, she was still a subject of a care order which meant that, until a judge said otherwise, social services were responsible for her well being.

She had been signing on the dole once a week since she lost her job. This enabled her to receive £80 once a fortnight, as well as what she received from being attached to the care order and if she was completely honest, this way of life suited her down to the ground.

As long as she could afford her daily fix of weed, nothing else concerned her. She would quite happily go without necessities such as food, electric and heating; so long as she could smoke a joint, she could face the world, or so she thought.

She would frequently turn up at her grandparent’s house for a hot meal and a shower, so the necessities that most people could not live without were not as important to Rachel.

The very fact that she was over two weeks late with her period had not concerned her. This was not out of the ordinary. She did not eat properly, participated in drug use and did not take the pill correctly, so her periods were often messed up. It had always arrived at some point.

James had bought the pregnancy kit. He insisted that they find out one way or another. He had wanted to do it before they had gone raving three days previously but Rachel refused point blank; she would not even entertain the idea. That would have meant it could interfere with her going out, getting completely off her head and dancing the night away.

If it were not for James insisting, Rachel probably would have left it for several more days, even weeks before finding out. So here they were, intently staring at the white stick with two little windows in the middle, waiting to see which one would decide their fate. Sure enough a hundred and eighty seconds later a watery, pale blue, horizontal line appeared in the pregnant window. Rachel felt her world crumble down around her.

The panic started in the pit of her stomach. It begun with a dull ache and very quickly rose to her heart. She felt like she could not breathe. Something was pressing down heavily on her chest and everything suddenly intensified.

She could hear her heart beat. It was so loud that she began to think James’ parents, who were sitting downstairs watching television, would be able to hear it. Her eyes did not move away from the stick.

That awful white stick that was the bearer of such terrible, terrible news. She threw it onto the floor in front of her. Leaping off the toilet and pulling her knickers back up haphazardly, she walked into the bedroom.

Compared to the rest of the house, his bedroom was actually quite small. The walls and ceiling were a brilliant white which gave the room a false sense of it being bigger than it really was. To the right of the doorway a fitted wardrobe extended along the side of the wall, where his clothes hung neatly in coordinating colours, starched and ironed; seamed nylons perfectly straight.

The whole room was obsessively neat and organised, matching the rest of the house. James’ mum was a cleaning freak who polished and vacuumed the entire house every day. It was only her and James’ dad there now; how they could possibly make the house that dirty Rachel did not understand.

She felt cramped and confined. The clinical and unemotional decor of the room suddenly felt alien to her and the translucent emptiness that resided in the rest of the house was forcing its way in. A Chelsea Football Club rug, which lay in the small space available between the wardrobes and his bed, was the only thing that gave a hint that the room did indeed belong to a nineteen year old lad.

Rachel held onto the desk in front of her for support. She thought that her legs were going to give way on her. Then the tears came; huge salty tears that ran down her face.

James followed her into the room. He hesitated behind her, wanting to put his arms around her and hold her but scared of her reaction if he did. Sometimes, she looked at him like she really hated him; it wasn’t just looks either.

There would be the snide comments, the put downs, the emotional blackmail and then just to confuse and baffle him she would switch to loving and clingy. This would be the time she wanted sex constantly.

It was never affectionate tender sex; it would be frenzied possessed sex that
she
was in complete control of. She totally wore him out both physically and mentally. Sometimes he felt like she was punishing him for something.

Her mood swings could be so volatile that he never knew where he was with her. She had been his first everything.

First love, first proper kiss, first sexual experience, and the girl he lost his virginity to. To
her,
he was nothing but the rebound guy. He knew that, he knew it as soon as she befriended him.

Essex was a pond but Brentwood was a puddle. He also knew he was playing with fire just by being with her, considering who the guy was that he was replacing, but he couldn’t resist her. She was slightly dangerous and unhinged.

She was too alluring, even when she rebuked him for not being what she really wanted But the resentment of being made to feel guilty for having a good life, a decent childhood and parents that made sure every opportunity was open to him, fed the hostility and antagonism he was already harbouring. Turning away from her he slumped down onto his bed.

The sobs were violent and painful. They caught in her throat. The reaction took her completely by surprise. The result took her completely by surprise. The decision she made in the next twenty seconds took her completely by surprise.

Rachel truly believed James did not want the baby. That actually did not bother her at all. He was never going to be the love of her life. He was the ‘time being’ guy; the one that just happened to be there, when she had walked away from Sean.

James was supposed to make her forget him. He hadn’t.

But a baby just might be what she needed to get over him.

A baby was time consuming and life changing. It would occupy her mind and her heart and she very desperately needed that.

It had only been a short while since she had ended things with Sean. She knew it would take time to make her heart stop missing him. James had been a distraction but he wasn’t the cure. It had been fun over the last year but there hadn’t been a day when Sean hadn’t entered her head.

James had not stopped that, the drugs had not stopped that and her life had to change. She had to sort herself out.

She looked over at James; he wore a face of sheer terror.

His head was in his hands. She realised that she felt no empathy for him. In fact she didn’t really care about him at all. Rachel wiped her face with her hands.

He hadn’t come to her when she was sobbing. He just sat on the end of his bed. He was a weak person and this annoyed her more than anything.

He had no backbone. No spirit about him. He was just sitting there, saying nothing. She felt a sudden urge to punch him straight in the face. She suppressed this of course, making a conscious effort to relax.

Instead, she got her coat and scarf that were hanging on the bedroom door. She put them on and turned to face him once more.

“It’s ok, I’ll sort it.”

“What does that mean?” He sounded so pathetic and pitiable.

The urge to slap him rose again. She felt guilty and lifeless at the same time. The sigh was louder and implied more impatience than she had intended.

“I mean I will deal with it. You don’t need to do anything James. I don’t need you. I can sort this out myself.” Closing her eyes she tried to regain some lenience and forbearance towards the boy sitting on the bed.

It wasn’t really his fault that he had not lived up to her expectations; that he had not managed to accomplish the unaccomplishable. She knew he had tried but he was never going to succeed. James was never going to be
him
for her.

“What are you going to do? I… I don’t…” He looked disorientated; his voice low and bewildered.

Chewing her bottom lip, she smiled at him sadly. He was quite good looking; even in his dishevelled state. She briefly thought about the utter shame of it all. If James was someone else she secretly would be over the moon. But he wasn’t and she needed to stop pretending he could be.

“I am going to get rid James. I am eighteen. I don’t need or want any of this.”

James half nodded and watched her walk out. He heard the front door close a few seconds later. Then he cried. He knew she was letting him go. He had served a purpose and now it was over; or more accurately, he hadn’t served the purpose.

Rachel walked along James’ road. It was more of a lane than a road and coordinated adeptly with the house she had just walked out of. On one side, it was lined with big detached properties all sporting long or wide driveways, double garages and a couple of brand spanking new Range Rovers.

The other side of the lane gave view to a far reaching lowland landscape. Fields that stretched out further than the eye could see. The tessellated parallelograms separated by hedgerow and trees.

Making her way slowly down the neat cared-for lane, towards the busy A414 that it led out onto and the petrol station that was situated on the junction to call a taxi, it dawned on her that she would probably never walk this path again.

She had no intentions of ever having to see James Porter or his parents once more, if ever. The calmness she felt stunned her. She had experienced such a range of emotions in the space of about an hour. In that hour she had also made a decision that was going to affect the rest of her life; all because she couldn’t get over a boy.

James went back to Liverpool believing that Rachel had an abortion and expecting to never see her again. For Rachel, the consequences of her decision to keep her baby would come much sooner and in a way she could never have imagined. She had no idea that by trying to protect her heart, her actions and decisions would result in what was to come.

Chapter 2

February 2001

The old dilapidated warehouse had a distinctive odour of rats and rusty nails. It filled the room as soon as you stepped in, its barrenness held an eerie feeling of despair.