Hush Hush. Mel Sherratt
Mummy, but Daddy had his hands around Mummy’s throat. Mummy was going red in the face.
‘Mummy!’ she screamed.
They both turned towards her, the room dropping into silence except for the sound of heavy breathing.
‘Get back to bed.’ Daddy pointed at her.
‘You’re hurting Mummy!’
‘If you don’t move by the time I count to three, it will be my hands around your neck.’
‘Go back to bed, darling,’ Mummy said. Her voice didn’t sound like Mummy. It was all croaky and had a shake in it.
She shook her head.
Daddy got to his feet slowly. She froze as he clenched his fist and came towards the door. Then he slammed it shut in her face.
She ran back to her room. Because she knew what would happen next. Her plan hadn’t worked. Grabbing her teddy bear, she crept into the wardrobe. She covered her ears with her hands to block out the sound of Mummy’s screams. On and on they went.
‘Don’t hurt my mummy,’ she sobbed.
She hated it inside the wardrobe. It was dark and things dangled over her and scared her. But it felt safer than being in bed.
And then it went quiet. She squeezed the teddy to her chest. She could hear Mummy crying too.
‘Don’t hurt her, George, please,’ she begged. ‘She’s only six.’
‘Get her in here.’
‘No, let her be.’
There were bangs, as if someone had fallen. She heard Mummy groan. And then the bedroom door opened.
‘I’ll break every bone in your body if you don’t come out from where you’re hiding.’
Daddy’s voice was so loud and scary. She held her breath, trying not to let him know where she was.
The wardrobe door was flung open. Daddy stood there. He had taken off his belt and wrapped it around his hand. She could see the buckle hanging down.
‘Please don’t hurt me, Daddy,’ she cried.
He reached inside the wardrobe, grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her to her feet.
‘Come here, you little bitch.’
After dropping her team off at Steele’s Gym, Grace headed for the north of the city. It was an address she hoped she’d never have to revisit and just the thought of it was enough to make her want to drive to the M6, the city’s nearest motorway, and go anywhere instead.
Moreover, she wondered if maybe after her chat with the DCI she shouldn’t be going to this address alone, but ultimately this wasn’t Steele’s Gym, and that was the only place she’d been explicitly warned about.
Brown Edge was a small village built on one of the south-westerly spurs of the Pennine Chain and looked particularly colourful now that autumn was creeping up on them. After she had passed fields and farms to get to the address in Woodhouse Lane, she pulled in at the side of the road and took a deep breath. Hardman House had been her childhood home. It wasn’t a happy place. Even after this length of time away, there would still be ghosts of the past around, and in, every corner.
She got out of the car and walked up the driveway. Her footsteps were heavy, her heart beating as loud as a soldier’s on a quick-march. The house was a pre-war detached with a double frontage and large bay windows. Years ago, her mum had told her that George had inherited it from his parents and hadn’t spent any money on it so it had deteriorated, along with their marriage. The building itself was exactly as she remembered it, bar replacement windows and doors and a lick of paint here and there. The concrete on the driveway was old and breaking up, revealing pebble lakes that she walked around.
All at once, she remembered the places she used to hide: behind the bin store, the outhouse that led out to the garden, the attic with its winding staircase that George found hard to negotiate when he’d had a drink, the cupboard under the stairs – until he’d put a lock on it and used it to keep her in.
And the place where her nightmares had started.
She knocked briskly on the front door and took out her warrant card. A woman who appeared to be in her late fifties answered it. Her face was made-up as if it had been professionally done, her clothes immaculate. She pushed long tendrils of dark hair, flecks of grey apparent, behind her ears. She looked well, no clear signs of age interfering with her health. Her eyes reminded Grace of Jade, but her colouring was like Eddie and Leon’s.
She almost bounced forward a step on heels as Grace held up her warrant card.
‘Mrs Kathleen Steele? I’m DS Allendale and—’
‘I know who you are,’ the woman interrupted, smiling brightly. ‘Come on through.’
Trying not to show surprise at Kathleen’s over-friendly manner, Grace stepped inside the hallway, flinching as the door was closed behind her. It had always seemed dingy in her memories, but now it was light and airy. The wooden panels were still on the bottom half of the wall but the colour above them was a bright baby blue rather than the oppressive red she could remember.
She looked up to see the large opaque window above the stairs had been replaced with coloured glass, the image of a sunflower as bright as the sun coming through it. Yet even though the decor had most likely been changed several times since the night Grace and her mum had left, no one could erase the memories of those torturous years from within its walls.
If she stepped into the kitchen, which was the doorway at the far end of the hall, she would see George Steele holding her mother by her hair, a hand raised up ready to slap her. If she went into the dining room, she would see her mother flat out on the floor after he had hit her too hard and knocked her out. If she went upstairs to the family bathroom, she would see her curled up in a ball after he had assaulted her.
As she followed Kathleen Steele into the living room, a memory washed over her so vividly that fear gripped her insides and her stomach tightened. Blood rushed to her head and she had to sit down on the settee before her legs gave way.
‘Are you all right?’ Kathleen questioned. ‘You’ve gone deathly pale. Would you like a drink?’
Grace could only nod, thankful for a few moments to regain her composure while she was alone. An image had come to her mind. George Steele coming at her with a knife. She’d had no recollection of it until then, but the memory was of her mum stepping in front of her to shield her. Was that where the scar on Martha’s forearm had come from? Would George have killed her if her mum hadn’t been there?
Kathleen came back into the room with a glass of water. Grace took it from her gratefully.
‘I’m sorry to sit down uninvited,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘Oh, please don’t apologise. I hope you’re feeling better soon. At least your colour is returning. You gave me a fright.’
Grace sipped at the water for a moment before putting it down on the coffee table. ‘I wanted to ask you a few questions about Steele’s Gym.’
‘What would you like to know?’
‘Just a few routine things, so that I can understand how it’s run.’
Kathleen smiled. ‘You mean that neither Eddie nor Leon are being of any use to you?’