Faces by Martina Cole Read Free Book Online Page A

people were capable of when under pressure. Walter’s fist shot out and connected with Danny’s face, sending the boy flying backwards. As Danny hit the brown-tiled floor he saw his mother fly out from the bedroom with a small axe that she had raised above her head and, before he could stop her, she had brought it down, with all her might, onto the smaller man on her doorstep. Danny saw him drop like a stone, and then he saw his mother wrench the axe from the man’s chest and aim it at Wilfred’s head. It connected with his shoulder and his scream was heard all over the estate.
    ‘You fecking touch my kids and I’ll fecking destroy the pair of you.’ She was hacking at the two men now, and they were both bleeding profusely from their wounds. As she hit them, and screamed her anger into their faces, Danny pulled himself to his feet, grabbed his mother around the waist, and pushed her into the kitchen. Seeing the kettle, and hearing the two men coming into the flat, their shock now giving way to anger, Danny picked the kettle up and slung the contents into both their faces. Their screams were loud and long, but his mother’s shrieking seemed to drown them out.
    As Danny looked at them, the scalded skin on their faces, the open wounds from his mother’s attack, he wondered if he had wandered into a nightmare. His father had a lot to answer for and, when he finally showed up, Danny would make sure he knew exactly what he had caused.
    He shoved the two men out of the flat. As he grabbed hold of Wilfred his hand took off a layer of skin and he knew that had to hurt like fuck. Then he slammed the front door and, leaning against it, he waited until he could breathe properly once more and the urge to vomit had passed. Then he went to his mother; she was still in the kitchen, clutching the axe in her arms as if holding a baby.
    ‘What have we done, son?’ She was shaking her head, and he noticed just how tiny she actually was.
    The noise outside had died down, and he assumed the Murrays had taken themselves off to the local hospital for treatment.
    He could hear his sister Annie crying, and after he had pushed a wardrobe against the front door, he calmed his mother down and hugged his sister to sleep. Then, taking the bloodied axe from his mother, he sat on the floor and waited for the next instalment of the drama that was suddenly his life. Jonjo came and sat beside him, the fear in his eyes almost tangible and Danny knew that if his father was to come home now, when he had finished with him, the Murrays’ wounds would look like they had been on a day trip with the WI. Six hundred lousy quid. Their lives had been destroyed over a poxy six large, and the man who had caused all this upset was, as always, nowhere to be seen. He had been left alone to protect his family while his father was on the trot, and he was terrified that he wasn’t strong enough to do the job. His mother was white-faced with fear and shock, and he knew that she would never get over the day’s events and, in all honesty, neither would he. His fourteenth birthday was only five days away and he wondered if he would live long enough to see it.
     
    The Murrays’ reception at the Cadogans’ spread like wildfire. Louie Stein shook his head in sadness and made a point of being seen going to the boy’s flat on a regular basis. He knew that his presence would be duly noted and passed onto the people involved. He had a certain kudos inasmuch as he was good friends with a lot of the Faces around and about. In fact he made a point of telling everyone he spoke to about the young man who worked for him having to take on the Murrays to protect his little sister and brother. The mother, he laughed, was a Face in her own right. Angelica the Axe Woman, as he called her, was soon part of urban legend. But the Murrays would eventually want some kind of revenge; that was only human nature. That they had not called in the police was not remarked on. After all, if they