With a sigh I went back to deal with my new visitor.
“Have I come at a bad time?” Victoria asked with a hesitant smile.
“Oh no,” I sighed. “I've just opened my mouth and only succeeded in changing feet. Don't worry about it. Now then, what can I do for—?”
I'd glanced up as I'd spoken and my voice died in my throat as I looked at her.
“Christ, Victoria, what the hell happened to you?”
The left-hand side of her face was one huge contusion, the bruising starting dark purple round her swollen eye and fading out to a sickly yellow at chin and hairline. Steri-strip dressings closed the edges of cuts to her cheekbone and eyebrow. Through the slit of distended lids, the white of the eye itself was speckled with blood. She looked like shit.
Victoria couldn't fail to take in my reaction. She gave a bravado half-smile that made her mouth tremble, suddenly in danger of losing the last thread of her slender self-control.
I put my arm round her shoulder and led her to the chair Joy had so recently vacated. Victoria sank onto it as though her legs wouldn't support her any more, twisting her hands together in her lap.
I perched alongside, keeping my arm round her and digging in the pocket of my jogging pants for a respectable handkerchief to offer. She threw me a brief smile of thanks and we sat in silence for a while as she searched for a logical entrance to her story.
I didn't try and hurry her into it. Whatever had happened to Victoria, although obviously not really fresh, was still close enough to be traumatic. By the way her hands where shaking, she was probably still in shock.
The shock always gets you. It certainly did with me.
The bright lights and the warmth of the Lodge receded, to be replaced with the memory of another time, and another place. It had been dark then, frosty, and cold enough for snow.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay.
I'd been younger then, in some ways more self-assured, in others more vulnerable. We'd been learning some hand-to-hand stuff as part of the course, but my attackers knew exactly the same techniques as I did, and I was outnumbered four to one.
In reality, I didn't really know any more about self-defence than to try and knee my attackers in the groin, or punch them in the stomach. Now I can put my mind to over fifty sensitive areas on the face and neck alone.
I was strong and a bit of a fitness freak back then, but even so it was no match for superior male muscle. Under pressure I've always been able to think fast. So I didn't cower. I fought and kicked out instantly, tried to yell blue murder.
I suppose it was about then that the four of them realised they were going to have to kill me to keep me quiet about what they'd done. The memory that has stayed with me longest is of lying half-insensible on the frigid earth, listening to them discussing in panicked undertones how best to dispose of my body.
The emotional aftershocks had taken a long time to die down. I doubted I'd ever be without the ripples left behind. When I was able to view the events with the clarity of distance, I was just left with the anger of my own helplessness.
I felt a burst of that same anger looking at Victoria's battered face, and knowing that had she come to my classes I probably could have taught her how to avoid the worst of it.
Now, she made a determined effort to get herself together. I smiled encouragingly.
“D'you want to talk about it?” I ventured at last.
She sniffed and nodded. “God, sorry, look at me, falling apart on you,” she muttered, blowing her nose loudly, which started it off bleeding. I made a quick decision that she could keep the handkerchief.
“Who did this to you, Victoria?” I asked gently, although I think I already knew the answer.
She sniffed again, dabbing at the fresh blood. “Angelo,” she admitted, her voice breaking. “We've only been going out for a few months, and at first he was great, but lately . . .” She tailed off, glancing at me, and I realised that the blood from her nose had been caused by the ring she usually wore there being half ripped out through the skin . . .
I was trying so hard not to let Victoria see my distaste at this piece of mutilation that I almost missed what she was saying next.
“He seems to really hate you, Charlie. It scares me.”
“Angelo hates me?” I stared at her blankly. “Why on earth does he hate me?”
“Because you're not afraid of him,” she said, as though stating the obvious. “He expects everybody to be afraid of him – especially women. He likes his women passive – submissive, even. When you'd been to the club for your interview he was dead scathing about you because you wouldn't take Len on. He thought it was because you couldn't do it. Then you took care of that fight last Saturday and now he thinks you were taking the piss out of them both.”
I made no response to that. There didn't seem to be much I could say. Victoria took my silence to be scepticism. She peered at me again. “I think he hates the control you've got,” she went on, hesitantly. “Angelo's driven by his anger, it takes him over. You're different. You get mad, but you use it. You don't let it dominate the way you behave. Angelo doesn't understand that, and it infuriates him.”
“So he takes it out on you?” I demanded.
She shrugged her thin shoulders. Some big man Angelo was, turning his fists onto a girl a third of his size and weight. It made me burn with the sheer injustice of it.
“What do you need from me, Victoria?” If there was anything I could do, I'd do it.
She looked surprised. “I don't need anything from you,” she said. “I just thought I ought to warn you, that's all – about the way Angelo feels.”
“Does he know you're here?”
A furtive flicker crossed her face. “God, no! He'd go mental if he found out,” she said, unable to keep the trace of fear out of her voice entirely.
I turned to her, gripped her arm. “Victoria, get away from him,” I warned. “If he did this to you, get out now, while you still can!”
She slid her gaze away. “I'm OK,” she protested. “He'd had a bit to drink. He didn't know what he was doing and he was really sorry afterwards.” She got to her feet, tried a bigger, braver smile. “He's promised it won't happen again.” I couldn't work out if it was me she was trying to convince, or herself.
I walked with her along the corridor to the hallway, and out into the gloomy evening. The air was biting, enveloping me in its bitter embrace as soon as I left the warmth of the house. I shivered and dug my hands deep into the pockets of my jogging pants. Victoria was only wearing a light denim jacket, but she seemed not to notice the cold.
Her car, a grubby-looking Mini with a different coloured front wing and a reshaped coathanger for an aerial, was parked with two wheels into the bushes, down near the bottom of the drive. A streetlamp outside the gate threw a sodium yellow glow onto it.
For a few moments I watched her walking away towards the Mini, head down as though trudging into rain. She made a diminutive figure, vulnerable, exposed. Despite her assurances, I worried for her.
I shook my head and turned away, intending to go and have a quick brew with Tris and Ailsa before I changed for the ride home. I must have managed about three strides.
Then all hell broke loose.
Seventeen
Victoria didn't so much start screaming, as let out a single high-pitched yowl of terror. It lacerated the night air, and gave me instant goose bumps. I spun round so fast I skidded and nearly tripped over my own feet on the lichen-covered slabs.