The Heights: A dark story of obsession and revenge. Juliet Bell
‘Who is it?’
‘S’Mick.’
His mother came into the hallway. She looked angry, but then, she looked angry most of the time these days. ‘Your father has something to tell you. I’m going to my Ladies’ Group.’
Mick shrugged. His mother was for ever going to her groups at the church. There was a cookery group, and a group for wives, and another group where some old women taught the young women how to do darning and rubbish stuff like that. Half the time, when she said she was going to the church, Mick saw her nip off in the opposite direction anyway.
His dad was sitting in the back room. They never sat in the front room. Mum said that was for Best. Best wasn’t something that happened very often. Dad was wearing his weekday suit. He had one suit for Sunday and one for during the week and a scrappy old one for working round the house. Mick would see the other miners walking along the road in jeans and tracksuit bottoms. They didn’t know how to present themselves. That’s what his dad reckoned anyway. His dad was a cut above.
‘I need you to make some space in your room.’
‘What? Why?’
‘We’ve got someone staying with us.’
‘Not in my room.’
‘Well, he’s a young boy so he can’t really go in with Cathy.’
‘How long for?’
His dad stood up. ‘For as long as needs be. I’ll bring the foldout bed down from the loft. Go clear some space.’
Mick’s chest tightened and his fingers closed into a fist. It was crap – there was no way he was going to share his room with some kid. ‘Why’s he here anyway?’
‘He needed somewhere to stay.’
Mick shook his head. ‘You can’t just bring a kid home. There’s social services and that. Like when Keely Baldwin’s mum went off and it was just her and them babies in the house. Social services took them all away in the end.’
His dad’s face grew dark. ‘This is different. The boy’s staying here. Now go and clear some space.’ He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t make a fist, but Mick’s legs turned and carried him towards the stairs as surely as if he’d been whacked on the arse.
There were two faces watching him from the landing. Cathy, sitting at the top of the stairs, like always, and this new kid sitting next to her. ‘What the hell?’
The boy had a thatch of thick black hair, above dark skin, and dark eyes, but that wasn’t what Mick first noticed. The first thing he saw was the bright-red shine on his lips and the glittery blue rings around his eyes.
Cathy shrugged. ‘We were practising doing make-up.’
‘He looks like a freak.’
Cathy stuck out her chin. ‘Well, I like it.’
He looked at the boy, but the boy was staring at Cathy, eyes wide. The look on the brat’s face said it all. Cathy had him wrapped around her little finger. Like the old man. In their father’s eyes, Cathy was his little princess. She could do no wrong, while Mick couldn’t do anything right. And now his dad had brought this brat home. Not that Mick cared.
He stalked past them up the stairs, jabbing the boy in the ribs with the toe of his boot as he did. The kid started, but didn’t make a sound. Mick wondered if the brat would cry if he knocked him down the stairs. Maybe one day he’d find out.
March, 1978
Ellen Dean didn’t have time for this. She still had a pile of case notes to write up from yesterday as well as all today’s home visits. She could do without an extra trip to the Heights estate being dropped on her as well. Her boss, Elizabeth – always Elizabeth, never Liz or Lizzie – had handed her a scrap of paper with the address on with some glee. Ellen had no idea why she had to do this today. The kid had only arrived yesterday. Cases like this usually waited a week or two before anyone got around to doing something about them. What did it matter? But oh no! Queen Elizabeth said today, so today it had to be.
Every social worker in the county knew about Collier’s Heights. It was a rite of passage for the new starters and a source of many a well-told war story for the old hands. A lot of their work was up there. The name said it all. The estate had been built for the miners when the pit was new. Back in the day, it might have been a close-knit and happy community, but things had changed. Now it was the roughest end of a rough town. Ellen had only been in this job three weeks, and she’d already been to the Heights twice, tagging along behind Elizabeth, who had taken great delight in sending her junior up there today – all alone for the first time. What Elizabeth didn’t know – what nobody knew – was that Ellen had grown up on an estate not all that different to the Heights. Hard work and a bursary to pay her rent at university had been her escape route. Social work hadn’t been her choice, but it was the only scholarship available, and now it had led her back to the same sort of place she had left behind. This time, however, she was on the other side of the fence, and determined to help other kids the way she had been helped.
She turned her car into Moor Lane, right at the top of the hill to which the Heights clung, and drove slowly along the street, peering for numbers on the rows of identical, weatherworn, redbrick terraces. She was very aware of the groups of lads at the corners, eyeing the car. Here and there she caught a twitch of a curtain or a slam of a door that had stood ajar in welcome a second before. She hadn’t expected any different. She’d grown up doing the same thing.
She pulled up outside number 37 Moor Lane, and picked up the buff-coloured folder from the passenger seat. The Earnshaws. Ray, Shirley and two kids. A boy and a girl. She mouthed the names to herself as she waited for someone to come to the door. She’d learnt that on her first day, when she’d completely forgotten the name of the mother she was coming to see, and the woman had called her a stuck-up bitch and accused her of not giving a shit about anyone. The Earnshaws. Ray and Shirley and… She flipped the folder open. Mick and Cathy. Mick’s entry in the file was longer. Truancy, shoplifting and the odd run-in with the police. Nothing unusual there for a fourteen-year-old kid from an estate like the Heights. The door swung open.
The man was older than she expected. Half the parents she’d met so far were about her own age, if not younger. This man was more her parents’ generation. Smartly dressed, or as smartly dressed as money allowed around here, with a shirt and tie under his faded pullover and hair combed over a slight bald patch. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Ellen Dean.’
The man didn’t respond.
‘From social services?’ She heard the hint of a question in her tone, and hated it. ‘About…’ She stopped. What was the boy’s name? ‘About the young boy.’
‘Heathcliff.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d best come in.’
His wife was waiting in the back room and offered tea, which Ellen didn’t accept. Mrs Earnshaw tutted at that as she tucked her cotton skirt tightly around her legs and sat down, back straight and stiff, at the wooden table.
‘Shall we go into the front room?’ Mr Earnshaw shuffled slightly from foot to foot. ‘It’s nicer in there.’
Mrs Earnshaw shook her head. ‘I’ve not aired it. This’ll do.’
‘This is fine.’ Ellen took a hard wooden seat at one side of the table and waited for Mr Earnshaw to sit opposite her. She arranged her face into what she hoped was a friendly smile rather than a grimace, and wondered if the Earnshaws could hear her heart pounding.
‘So it’s about Heathcliff?’ Her voice was louder than she intended.
‘What about him?’ Mr Earnshaw’s expression was closed.
‘Well,