FOUR
It was early on Sunday morning. Angie was in the bathroom staring through specks of water on the mirror’s surface at her tired blue eyes as they assessed her reflection. It was as though it belonged to someone else, someone who looked vaguely like her; a kind of clone living another life over there in an alternative world.
Angie through the looking glass.
Maybe, in that elusive back-to-front place, things were actually as they should be, continuing unassumingly, happily, along the path she’d been on since she and Steve had moved to Kesterly fourteen years ago. OK, she’d understood that the odd curve ball could be lobbed in from out of the blue now and again, meaning tears had to be dried and hurdles overcome. Sometimes, Liam was picked on at school, and three miscarriages had followed Grace’s birth, making a total of seven altogether. In spite of the challenges they’d loved being parents right from the start; holding Liam in their arms knowing he belonged to them, that he was them, had made them feel as though they’d found the right way in the world. They were meant to create a family full of love and laughter, understanding and adventure, and for the most part that was how it had been. Now their youngest, Zac, was soon to be seven, making six years between each of the children, though somehow it had never seemed to matter – until one day they’d realized that it did.
The first time Liam had been brought home by the police he was only eleven – eleven. His PE teacher had found a stash of drugs in his school bag and instead of contacting them he’d reported it. It was all a big mistake, of course, Liam didn’t even know what drugs were, much less how to get hold of them – or so they’d believed at the time. It was only later that they’d discovered how wrong they were, how life had already started slow-rolling the worst curve ball of all.
In the weeks and months that followed, the problems increased in ways they’d never have imagined possible for their sweet-natured little boy who’d always been desperate to be noticed, to feel he belonged, to impress those he considered friends. They seemed to lose all connection with him as he was sucked deeper and deeper into the worst kind of crowd. He all but stopped going to school, and began spending his days hanging around street corners and municipal parks with kids from the notorious Temple Fields estate, thinking he was as cool and smart as them when he was anything but. They used him, abused him, had fun at his expense and he never saw them as anything but heroes. When he was expelled from school he wore his disgrace like a badge of honour and reviled his parents for trying to punish him. He began disappearing for days on end, and after the first few occasions the police simply told them that he’d come back when he was ready. His known involvement with the Satan Squad, as the biggest gang on the estate had ingloriously named itself, made him of far less interest to the overstretched authorities than any normal child of his age would be.
No one had ever told his parents about the county line gangs that infiltrated small communities, priming local gangs to prey on vulnerable children and turning them into couriers or addicts, or both. They’d had no idea until it was already too late just how cruelly Liam was being exploited, manipulated and brainwashed by forces so evil that neither Angie nor Steve knew how to combat them. Even the police seemed to struggle. By the time he was fourteen they’d lost all contact with the sweet, innocent boy he’d been. He behaved as though he despised them.
Steve became gaunt with worry, so stressed and fearful that it began affecting his health. Each time the police knocked at the door they expected the worst, that Liam had been stabbed, or he’d overdosed, he was in prison or he’d killed someone. Usually the police came because he was thought to be a witness to a crime, but they never found him at home.
It was the day Steve spotted five-year-old Zac with an old syringe, making to jab it into his arm, that he’d finally lost it.
Angie hadn’t been at home; if she had maybe she could have stopped him. As it was she’d been at the end of the phone when he’d said, ‘I’ve had enough, Ange. He’s no longer a son of mine.’
‘Don’t say that, Steve. Just tell me what’s happened. Where is he?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find him and when I do …’
‘Steve,’ she cried in a panic. ‘‘Don’t go! Please … Oh God, no, please don’t …’
‘I can’t take any more, Angie. I swear … If you’d seen what I just have …’
‘Whatever it is …’
‘Our five-year-old son had a syringe in his hand.’
She’d all but choked on the horror. ‘Oh my God. Oh Steve …’
‘I’ve got to go,’ he told her. ‘I need to find Liam, and when I do I’m turning him in to the police along with every other one of those lowlife bastards …’
‘No! No!’ but the line had already gone dead.
She’d arrived home fifteen minutes later to find the house with its front door wide open, and no sign of Steve or his van. She tried telling herself that he wouldn’t actually go to that terrible estate, that he’d turn off and stop somewhere to calm down. But he wasn’t answering his phone and a sickening, terrifying intuition was taking hold of her.
It was around five in the evening when a female detective came to tell her what had happened on the estate. Angie would never forget the earth-shattering moment when her world had spun out of control. They’d beaten Steve to death. With iron bars, clubs, chains and heavy boots they’d laid into him with so much savagery that they hadn’t been able to stop, this was how a lawyer later described it in court.
Five of the attackers were arrested and charged the same day; Liam had also been taken in, but Angie received a call twenty-four hours later to tell her he’d been released on police bail.
‘Where is he now?’ she asked the officer who’d rung to let her know, her throat raw and tight with grief, her head gripped in a throbbing vice. Grace sat with her, holding her hand, dabbing away their tears, while Emma took charge of Zac and her own two boys. Angie felt almost as horrified by the thought of Liam coming home as she did by the fact that Steve never would.
It turned out no one knew where Liam had gone. He didn’t show up that day, or the next. Apparently he’d been present during the attack on his father. He’d told the police that he’d tried to stop it, and realizing he wasn’t the entire full shilling, as one insensitive officer had described him, they’d held back on charges for the time being.
He came home eventually, three days after his release, so foul-smelling and spaced out that he could barely speak. Angie didn’t even let him in the door.
‘Get out!’ she’d yelled into his stupefied face. ‘Get out of this house and don’t ever come back. You’re dead to me, do you hear that? Dead, dead, dead.’
What she hadn’t spared a thought for that day, or many days after, was what it must have been like for Liam to watch his father die in such a horrific attack. How had he felt when he’d realized he had no power to stop it, for she didn’t want to believe he’d been a part of it. No! No matter what else he was capable of, he surely to God didn’t have it in him to murder the father he’d once loved so much. Afterwards, he just hadn’t been able to cope with what had happened, and then his mother had lost her mind and told him he was dead to her.
During the months following Steve’s funeral, Angie had thought so much about Hari, their dear friend and landlord who she knew would have done anything to help her had he not lost
