‘Get out,’ I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
As if released by an invisible spring, all three of them scrambled for the door and a moment later they were gone.
I am a madman, lock me away. What had I almost just done? God, am I really that unstable? It was simply that he had made me so angry, hurting Casey like that. He was a threat to her so I wanted to get rid of him. But killing him was the first way I had thought to do so and that appalled me.
I think if I’d been by myself I would have run up to my apartment, locked all the doors, turned the lights off and just rocked back and forth for hours with my arms wrapped over my head, alone in the dark. But Casey was there and she needed me, so, with a great effort, I pulled myself together. Stifling the familiar nausea, I wiped the blood off my hands, brushed the hair out of my eyes and walked over to her where she was still sobbing in the corner by the stairs. She screamed when I touched her and lashed out at me instinctively, hardly seeming to know who I was.
‘Hey!’ I cried. ‘Casey, it’s me. It’s Gabriel. It’s okay, they’ve gone. They’ve all gone. They won’t be coming back.’
I wasn’t expecting her to turn and cling to me as she did, crying into my shirt, her body trembling against mine. I was taken aback for a moment but I recovered quickly and put my arms around her, speaking to her softly while the hysteria died down. She hadn’t been badly hurt, although there would be a black eye later. But she had been frightened, of course, for herself and the easily hurt baby she carried. As I held her I instantly began to feel calmer about what had just happened. Casey had been in danger and I had protected her and that was all there was to it. None of those boys had been seriously hurt and, who knew, perhaps they would think twice about attacking anyone else in the future. Perhaps they would stay at home and do their schoolwork instead. Perhaps their lives would be better for what I had done!
The aura around Casey was golden today and, as I held her, it expanded to encompass both of us. I gazed in amazement at it, over the top of Casey’s head, wondering how she could be unaware of such beauty. When she had calmed down at last, I picked up her bag from where the muggers had dropped it and took her back upstairs to her apartment. She had stopped crying but she was still shaking and when I asked if she’d like me to stay with her for a while, she accepted at once.
Casey still looked deathly white so I made her sit down at the small kitchen table. I boiled the kettle and made tea for her. I gave her a frozen bag of vegetables to press to her already swelling eye. I looked after her. She belonged to me and I was going to keep her safe. I put a mug of tea before her and sat down at the other side of the table.
‘Why didn’t you just give them the bag?’ I asked quietly. ‘Why didn’t you just give it to them?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I panicked. I just panicked. Our rent was in there.’
I sighed. ‘Look, Casey, if anything like that ever happens to you again, just give them what they want and then run away as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter if you’re handing over your whole life savings; just give them what they want. It’s not worth your life.’
Casey nodded. ‘I know… It’s just that nothing like that’s ever happened to me before. My parents have a lot of money. We always lived in a nice area…’ she trailed off.
‘If I give you the money you would get in wages, will you stay here in your apartment at night?’ I asked suddenly.
She winced at the suggestion. ‘Gabriel, I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I can’t take money from you.’
‘The money doesn’t matter to me,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m very well off, trust me, I won’t miss it. Look, you can’t just think about yourself now, you have to think about your baby too. Please let me help you. I really don’t want anything in return.’
She hesitated for a moment, biting her lip. Then she nodded silently, tears welling in her eyes again, and told me the truth about how her parents had disowned her after finding out she was pregnant, and how she had panicked and fled to the city, taking her younger brother with her.
‘We had all these screaming arguments,’ she said miserably. ‘I’ll never be able to forget some of the things they said to me. My dad called me a liar and a… a filthy slut. I mean, I’ve never even kissed a boy, not properly, not on the mouth… unless you count what just happened downstairs. I did kiss Harry on the cheek once — you know, the boyfriend I had when I was fourteen — does that count? Does it? I couldn’t even look at my Dad in the end because he didn’t even try to disguise the disgust he felt for me, and I just couldn’t bear to see that expression on his face when he looked at me.
‘They said that me and my boyfriend had to learn some responsibility. They said he would have to support me even though I kept telling them there was no boyfriend. I had nowhere to go so I went to my grandparents and asked if I could stay with them, but they said they couldn’t have me in the house. It wasn’t their place to go against my parents’ wishes, they said. Do you know what it feels like to get to the point where you can’t ask for help any more because you know that if you get told “no” one more time by one more person you’ll lose it?
‘That’s why I wanted Toby with me. He never blamed me and he was the only one who believed me. I never had sex with anyone but even if I had, would it really be so bad that they should all turn on me like that? I can’t think of anything awful enough Toby could do that would make me stop loving him. And what does it matter to my parents if he lives with me? They were never around anyway! I was afraid that they might take him away and I’d never see him again. So I took him with me when I left. We stayed in a shelter for a while before we moved here.. but I can’t look after him. I have no money — my parents have cut me off from the accounts I had before, so I can’t use my credit cards any more. It’s just that I didn’t want to be completely on my own, with no family at all. Can you understand that?’
Ah, yes, I could understand that far better than she knew.
‘You’re not going to turn me in, are you?’ she asked, glancing up at me.
I shook my head. ‘I just want to help you, that’s all. I would never do anything you didn’t want me to, I promise. You don’t have to be scared to ask me for help.’
Casey smiled at me and I saw a mixture of doubt and hope in her face.
‘Where did you learn to fight like that anyway?’ she asked.
I hesitated, hoping she hadn’t seen me almost cut that boy’s throat. Should I tell her the truth? Could I risk undoing the trust I’d manage to build up between us?
‘You have skeletons in your closet too, don’t you?’ she asked, smiling softy. ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’
And I had to tell her then because the way she’d said it and the kind smile she’d given me made me feel like a bastard for not trusting her enough in the first place when she had openheartedly trusted me with her secrets. And to my surprise and pleasure, she did not denounce me for a raving madman after I’d finished. She didn’t shrink from me in uncertainty and fear.
‘I’m sorry I lied to you… I just didn’t want you to think I was crazy or something.’
‘Yes, I understand why you did it.’
‘Do you believe me, then? You don’t think I’m making all this up?’
‘A few days ago I told you that there was no father to my child,’ she said wryly. ‘The idea that you might be suffering from amnesia is not hard for me to believe, even if you don’t trust my story.’
I hesitated, feeling guilty.
‘It’s okay. I know how it sounds,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Foolishly get yourself in trouble and then claim a Virgin Mary… But, Gabriel, in this day and age, why on earth would I say such a thing if it wasn’t true? When I know that people will denounce me for a slut and a whore as soon as I start claiming to be a pregnant virgin? I’m not stupid, although people often seem to think otherwise because of the dyed hair and the piercings and the tattoos. But for God’s sake, if I was going to lie about it, I would have said I’d been raped. People would have believed that and pitied me then instead of scorning me and looking at me with disgust. I wish I’d told my parents I was raped now. Then I’d still be at home, with everyone I love fussing over me. I would never have had to realise how little they cared about me. I would have just gone on thinking they were the people I’d always believed them to be.’