Caught In The Undertone in Chapter 8 : Time to Heal

⚠️ TW : Sexual Abuse ⚠️

So…

Let’s begin at how I wound up back at Ma’s as I am currently living a nightmare. I am living my nightmare; the life I swore blind I would never return to, a town I swore I would never return to, yet here I am.

The sun was out and it was oddly warm. You wouldn’t have thought it was April, I often think this all happened in late May as it was such a sweet day. I had strolled in to the office. That should have been enough to tip me off that shit was going to go down. I’m not a walker, but then I hated getting the bus too. It wasn’t so far but as I crossed the threshold a chill ran through me. There was weird atmosphere; tense, cold and unforgiving. I got to my desk and started setting up but nothing would work. The phones were down, the internet too. Bettina appeared in a cloud of her trademark cigarette smoke and proceeded to huff and puff,
“Kit, there’s no money left” she sighed from her desk. I thought I misheard her at first.
“What? Check petty cash, what are we needing? Coffee again?”
“No Kit, there’s no money left, they cut the phone lines this morning. We can’t pay the bills, or the wages. I’m sorry.”
The room started to spin concurrently to the way my head was spinning, I felt sick. What the fuck?
“What? How? The books say we’re breaking eve…oh my God.” The realisation hit me in one great strike, she’d been falsifying the accounts behind my back.
“I’m really sorry Kit…”
“I asked you if we were going to be letting people go last fucking week, you told me we weren’t, you promised everything was fine. You stupid fucking bitch, do you even realise what you’ve done? Do you realise what you’ve implicated me in?” I don’t realise that I’m screaming at her until her husband pops his head in to check if everything’s ok.
“Kit, I thought…”
“You thought fuck all, you didn’t fucking think, not for one fucking second. Not for one FUCKING SECOND!” I can feel heat within me rise to my eyes, tears are burning my eyes, I refuse to let her see me cry. I grab my stuff and run out the office for the last time.

As I burst through the doors, the sun hits me at the same time as the realisation that I’m unemployed. I start to put one foot in front lf the other, I’ve hit auto-pilot, I’m going through the motion with no idea as to where I’m going. The tears are now streaming down my face and I’m aware of my fathers voice, at somepoint in my march towards the unknown I have rung him, I’m trying to tell him what’s happened but I can’t; I can’t form breaths let alone words and all he can hear is me gasping for breath as my heart shatters because unknown to me at the time, my sub-conscious is completely aware that this is the beginning of the end.

I roll over to a cold pillow, my head is fuzzy, my arm awash with dirty, smudged stamps, giving me half a clue as to where I thought the treasure must have been the night before. Staring at the ceiling I start to remember but did it actually happen, or was it just another Jäger-dream? Slowly the day before rewinds in my mind.

In my emotion fuelled haze I had walked the 5 miles from the office to my front door where I broke down in a heap, sobbing. Big tears, real tears, with each sob a piece of my soul ran down my cheek. I had dared to dream, I had dared to try and acheive, to better myself, and this was what I got for it. All of a sudden there was a screech of tyres, the slamming of a door and I was being scooped from the pavement. Daddy had found me. He carried me inside and sat me down. He tried in vain to calm me down, he needed to be able to understand, to this day he still doesn’t understand what has truly happened. No-one does.
He did what Daddies do, he tried to get me to stop crying, he tried to get me to eat, and he stayed with me until I passed out before putting a blanket over me and leaving me a note asking that I ring him when I woke. I didn’t ring him. Instead I had a bath, I got ready and I went out on the lash. I was back where I started, so I figured that what was needed was a job, and so in every bar, every club I spoke with every publican I knew from back when I had worked in the pubs and clubs in my teenage years.
I check my phone; 18 missed calls, all from Daddy. Various text messages from friends, potential lovers and potential employers. Two job offers. I knew which one I would take instantly. I knew the manager of old, he had tried to poach me several times before. I would start on Friday.

This was a step in the right direction, maybe all was not lost after all.

I worked the bar job for a couple of months, but I couldn’t make ends meet on half the hours and half the pay. My already fractured heart was starting to break.
I had no other choice, living with Daddy wasn’t option, I couldn’t go back to sofa-surfing, I was going to have to call my mother.

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

2005

Summertime.

“Do you even realise what you’ve said?” My mother glared at me, through me.
“Do you even realise what he did?” I retorted. I met her glare with fury. It was finally out. She had found my diary, she had read my diary, and she didn’t like what she had read; OBVIOUSLY it was some long term conspiracy to break up her marriage and not that Husband No.3 is a disgusting little man who likes to sexually molest teenage girls.
“You don’t believe me do you?” I asked her.
There was no reply, I grab my coat and my keys and walk out the door. The flame of my lighter flickers as I light a cigarette. Deeply inhaling the smoke and the knowledge that this was it, I had to get out of that house, and I wouldn’t be returning until he was gone. She had made her choice without being given an ultimatum. He had won, and he was welcome to his winnings. I knew when I was beat, and in that moment it cemented everything I had ever thought about my mother.

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Staring at her name on the tiny screen. I know she’s close to putting him out. If she doesn’t or hasn’t then I’m well and truly fucked.

I tell her everything that’s happened.
She tells me she’ll put him out if I come back.
Is this her trying to make amends? No, it gives her an excuse, a reason, a justification, and most importantly to her, ammuniton. I will forever more be the reason why her third marriage ended, not that she will ever believe what happened to me, what he did to me when I was 15. She’ll never tell people why, but she’ll imply that it was my fault.
Right now I have no other choice but to accept that and put a roof over my head, and you cannot imagine how much I hate myself for having to stoop so low as to do this.

I don’t want to go back, not to her, not to that flat, not to that fucking town, but I literally have no choice and no money.

If the boy wonder hadn’t beaten me to it, I’d have rather died, but he did and so I’m stuck and in that moment the kitchen knife catches my eye, the sun glistening off of the silver handle resting in the wooden block.

I’ll call her when I’m in a better mood, and so it begins again.

Last updated January 14, 2018