Hold My Hand by Serena Mackesy Read Free Book Online Page B

that she will be alone, starts up a wail. “Mummy! Mummmeeee!”
    “Hush, darling.” She tries to keep the tremble from her voice. Need to stay calm. Need to stay brave for Yasmin. My baby. Don’t let him get my baby. “Shhh. You need to be quiet now, baby.”
    Her voice sounds like a stranger’s, heard underwater. She feels the rush of blood in her ears, feels her tongue struggle to unstick from the roof of her mouth. “I’ll be back,” she assures her. “I promise.”
    “Don’tleaveme Dontleaveme Don’t leave me!”
    I don’t have time. I don’t have time for this. I have to go, don’t you see? I have to go. It’s unbearable. To protect you I have to leave you, oh, baby, don’t you see?
    Crash.
    She reaches for the bedside lamp, remembers the electricity is still out. Well, that’s one strike in our favour. He doesn’t know his way around the way we do, in the dark. It’s two years since he was last inside, and everything’s moved about since then. Won’t be able to see us, straight off. Maybe we can make a run for it.
    Run where? This bloody city.  No-one moves themselves for a scream in the street. The yuppies on the first floor, the same ones, no doubt, that couldn’t be arsed to double-lock the front door when they came in tonight, never registered anything that happened up here while he was still in residence: never called for help, came to investigate. Used to pass her on the stairs and turn their gaze away from the bruises, embarrassed. They’ll shout out of the window about a car alarm, but they'll let a man beat his family half to death on the floorboards above and not raise a bloody finger…
    Come on. Come on , Bridget. You have to go. You have to go and check.
    “Get under the bed,” she tells her daughter. “Come on, quickly. Just hide under the bed and don’t come out till I tell you. Don’t come out for anything. Go on. Quickly.”
    Yasmin moves quickly now, understands that speed is the only defence, that hiding is the only way. Rolls out of bed and slips beneath, wriggles up behind suitcases and storage boxes, curls herself up as small as she can go.
    The hall: pitch black because all the doors are shut. The noise much louder here, crammed down into the tiny space. She can hear him swearing, muttering on the other side of the door. Can see him in her mind’s eye, tendons like hawsers on his neck, formal shirt half-buttoned in the post-drink City-boy fashion, his mouth twisted with venom and rage. Why can’t they see? Why can’t they see what he’s like, these people he works with, the ones who stood as moral references to keep him out of jail?
    Of course they don’t care. He brings in results, after all, negotiates the snake pit with grit and skill, and so what if a guy’s a bit aggressive if that’s what it takes to bring in a bonus?
     She stubs a toe on her travelling bag, barely notices the pain as she creeps toward the door, into the lion's jaws, feeling each inch along the wall. Did I lock it? Did I? Is he just using soft blows right now, so he knows I’ll be right there when he finally goes for force, brings it crashing through onto me?
    She’s there. Can feel him now, face suffused with drink, leaning against the wood and listening for her, sweat from his exertions slicking down his dealer’s quiff. “Fucking fucking fucking,” he mutters, “you’re fucking in there, I know you are.”
    She can’t bear to look through the spyhole, to see his face. Pressed back against the wall, she feels out in the dark for the mortice key, permanently in the lock as protection against picking. Twists it to the right. It turns, takes with a tiny click. Not so tiny he doesn’t hear it.
    “I fucking hear you, you fucking bitch!” he shouts. “Let me in! Come on! Let me into my fucking flat!”
    It’s not your flat. It never was. It’s mine, though thanks to you that won’t go on for much longer.
    And now he’s kicking with full sincerity, throwing his whole body