Watching Over You (6 page)

Once Charley had heard Ella’s front door open and close, she went back to her flat, praying that the episode had been a one-off.

Chapter Six

Charley awoke the following morning, rolled over onto her side, and gazed out of the window. The weather outside did look as promised; although there was an autumnal chill settling in, she could see fragments of blue sky through bright white clouds.

A few minutes later, she sat up and stretched, looking around her new bedroom. She liked the pale walls and the wooden floor but she would get a rug to add a dash of colour. Something to match the large green flowers on the bedding she had bought. She’d have a look this morning; she needed to go shopping today, having run down the food in her cupboards because of the move.

At half past ten, she was getting into her car to head off when she spotted Ella walking along the avenue coming back towards the house. She waved to catch her attention.

‘Morning.’ Ella came over to her. ‘How was your first night? Did you sleep well?’

‘I did, thanks. How about you? You were a little tipsy last night. How’s your head this morning?’

Ella frowned.

Charley raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who can drink until they drop and then don’t have a hangover the next day?’

Ella shook her head. ‘Nope, you’ve lost me.’

‘Last night. You couldn’t find your key and I let you in and you fell on top of me.’

‘I didn’t go out last night.’

‘You did! Can’t you remember?’

Ella shook her head again. ‘You must have been dreaming.’

‘No, I –’

Something made Charley pause. It was strange that Ella would deny what had happened; she hadn’t been dreaming. Maybe Ella was embarrassed. Charley could recall a few times when she’d been drunk and didn’t want to remember what a fool she’d made of herself.

She smiled, giving her the benefit of the doubt. ‘I’m off to the supermarket – do you need anything?’

‘No, thanks, I’m good.’

‘Right, then. I’ll see you later.’

Ella let herself into the house and pulled the key from the lock. She turned back in time to see Charley driving off. What had she been referring to? She hadn’t gone out last night. Why would she make things up like that?

But as she let herself into her flat, she noticed a pair of black heels thrown across the floor in the hallway, and a purple skirt scrunched up on the floor as if she’d stepped out of it. Slowly things started coming back to her.

Darren, was that his name? Had she met him in Hanley? She must have been somewhere; there was mud on her shoes.

She sighed loudly. Christ, she’d had another blackout, hadn’t she? She tried to remember, but she couldn’t recall getting home or what time she’d left the bar – had she been to Rendezvous again?

But then she frowned: it was one thing to want excitement, a bit of need in her life, but if she wasn’t careful she was going to get hurt – or worse, if anything could be any worse than what she had already faced.

She nibbled on her bottom lip as she bent to scoop up the skirt from the floor. It wouldn’t hurt for Charley to assume she had been wrong. It might stand her in good stead if she blacked out again.

Or if she wanted to use it to her advantage sometime.

Charley spent the rest of the weekend sorting out the flat and was grateful for a break when Monday morning arrived. She was at her workplace in the city centre by quarter to nine, sifting through a pile of handwritten messages on the top of her desk. Situated in Stafford Street, which housed the Intu Potteries shopping centre at the far end of it, the base for Striking Back
was upstairs above a furniture shop. Today, she could see a little blue sky again;
the warm
weather seemed determined to stick around.

She sat down at her desk, set in a bank of three – two support workers and an assistant who split the heavy workload amongst themselves. Their corner of the open-plan office was fairly quiet at the moment, Charley being the only one of their team who had arrived. She switched on her computer and caught up with what she’d missed over her two days off. Deep into it, she didn’t notice someone walking towards her minutes later.

‘Morning, Charley. How did it go?’

Charley looked up to see Aaron Campbell standing in front of her. Holding two plastic cups of coffee, he popped one down on her desk before perching on the end of it.

She smiled at him. ‘It went okay, thanks.’

‘No mishaps, broken mirrors, missing ornaments?’

‘Nothing whatsoever. It all went really well. How was your weekend?’

‘The usual. Football, beer, and ex-wife blues.’

Charley had known Aaron since she’d started to work at
Striking
Back. Recently divorced and in his late thirties, he stood a few inches taller than her at five foot ten, with sharp brown eyes and dark hair, greying at its roots. He didn’t look lived in like a lot of men his age, keeping his medium frame fit and healthy by running several times a week. Clean-shaven, he always smelt of something delicious. What was it today? She sniffed discreetly – som
ething b
y Hugo Boss, she reckoned.

Aaron worked on the floor above, and if it wasn’t for him bringing her a coffee every now and then, Charley might never see him from one week to the next. Like the majority of the workers in the block, he spent a large amount of his time away from the office, meeting clients, attending court cases, dealing with complaints.

Striking Back had been set up four years ago, shortly after a local woman, Davina Gregory, had been murdered by her
partner
.
Before that, Davina had suffered years of domestic violence.
One particular day, the violence escalated and, in front of their
three-year-o
ld daughter, her partner had beaten her severely and then fatally stabbed her before heading off to the garage to gas himself with carbon monoxide. The little girl had been in the house with her dead mum for two hours before someone found them all.

Even though the death had been traumatic to deal with,
Davina’s
mum had campaigned to raise funds to set up something to remember her by. Working closely with the local authority, she’d successfully gained lottery funding and formed the organisation, so a few more local companies had added their sponsorship.
Charley
had been a social worker in the city for five years when she’d seen the advertisement for senior support workers, so, wanting to specialise in helping victims of domestic abuse, she’d taken a chance and applied for a three-year secondment. They were still together as a team due to the project’s success, and every month Charley prayed that, even though funding was being cut drastically by the local authority each year, Striking Back would survive. T
he organisation
was small but it did an enormous job. It would be a crime for it
not
to continue – literally.

‘Here’s to new beginnings.’ Aaron raised his cup in a toast.

Charley copied. ‘New beginnings.’

‘So when do I get to see it, then?’ Aaron leaned closer. ‘You know, just you and me and a bottle or three.’

‘Ooh, let me see.’ Charley pretended to ponder on the question before she leaned in closer too. ‘Never.’

‘Wow, you really know how to hit a guy where it hurts.’ Aaron clutched his chest and feigned pain. ‘Straight to the heart.’

Charley laughed. Despite his continuous banter to get her to go out with him, his humour and constant reassurance that she was attractive was always good to hear. She pushed him gently off her desk.

‘Haven’t you got work to do?’

More people started to arrive and a few moments later, a woman in her early fifties came bustling in. She sat down at the desk to Charley’s right with a big sigh.

‘Christ on a bike, I’ve had a manic weekend. Ruth has come home again: says she’s leaving the idle bastard for good this time, just like she said the last time. Michael has come down with some kind of virus. More like a bad hangover, if you ask me. Then the dog threw up all over a pile of ironing I’d sweated over and,’ she batted a hand in front of her face, ‘if these bloody hot flushes don’t calm down soon, I’m sure I’ll combust. My face is more or less as red as my hair!’

‘Morning, Lynne,’ Charley greeted, not at all fazed by her friend’s outburst. Lynne was one of the best mothers she knew, with two children she’d raised single-handedly since their father had been sent to prison for her attempted murder. Although her roots were greying where the red dye needed re-touching, she wore her hair long to hide the damage caused to her face. A few years before they’d started to work together, Lynne had nearly lost the sight in her right eye because of an assault with a hammer, but luckily there had been no permanent damage to her brain. Her kids had been her lifeline after it happened, taking care of her while she got through the trauma. Now Lynne gave back to the community; Charley admired her so much for her strength.

‘How did the move go?’ Lynne wanted to know, once she had caught her breath and switched on her computer. ‘Tickety-boo,
I hope
?’

‘It went…okay. It was weird to be on my own there, you know?’

Lynne nodded at her. ‘I can imagine.’

‘I’ll be fine though. It’s another first done and dusted, I suppose. And I’m a firm believer that a part of him will be with me forever.’

Lynne scoffed. ‘You don’t believe in that old crap that they stay with you when they pass? That they are always in the ether?’

‘God, I hope not.’ Charley laughed. ‘I have far too many bad habits for that. I used to drive Dan mad with some of the things I did.’

‘Exactly.’ Lynne picked up her mug. ‘And some things are better done alone, anyway. I, for one, wouldn’t want anyone seeing me doing everything!’ She winked and stood up. ‘Fancy a proper cup of coffee?’

Across the road, Ella flicked through a rail of clothes in Bo
n March
e.
Feigning interest, she checked for sizes of a particular white jumper, all the time looking through the window behind and across the road to the doorway she’d seen Charley go into. Through a small window upstairs, she could just about make out the top of someone’s head. It couldn’t be Charley, as the hair she could see was a vivid shade of red. It must be that other woman she’d seen bustling in a few minutes ago.

Ella hadn’t any intentions of following Charley to work but, after a restless night of insomnia, on impulse she’d grabbed her keys. She’d jumped in her car and sped down Warwick Avenue once Charley was out of sight.

Keeping close, she’d managed to work out where Charley was heading and stay a few cars behind her. Once arriving in Hanley, Ella parked up quickly on St John Street’s multi-storey and followed close behind Charley as she made her way into the town. It hadn’t been easy keeping up without being seen, especially once on foot.

Stoke-on-Trent was a city that couldn’t make its mind up where its centre was. There was an on-going battle with some of its residents to keep most amenities near to Stoke, one of six towns that made up the city. The majority of its residents were fiercely supportive of their hometown, but with broken promises and regeneration plans that never materialised, some areas had been left to run down.