[alli55]

Ten days last summer


Monday 14th August 2017


I was at Lottie’s, playing with her hamster. Again! By which I don’t mean that we were playing with her hamster again, but that I was at Lottie’s again!

Since I’d got back from our holiday, I’d spent most of my waking hours at Lottie’s. Avoiding Holly.

Despite his assertions to the contrary, Dad hadn’t got to the bottom of it, and the tension between me and my twin was still festering away.

It was all my fault! I felt terribly guilty about what I’d done, and even more guilty that Holly had seen what she’d seen. I was desperately unhappy, but I knew there was no way things could go back to how they’d been before. How it was now was awful, but how it might be in the future scared me so much I couldn’t bring myself to face it.

So I took refuge at Lottie’s. I’d explained to her that I’d done something really stupid that had massively upset Holly. She’d listened sympathetically, as best friends do, and offered to help in any way she could. Simply providing me a bolthole to escape to was more help than she could possibly imagine.

My phone pinged. Instinctively I grabbed it and took a look. It was a text from Caitlin! My heart missed several beats as I read the message.

‘Did you mean what you put in your texts?’

Without thinking I immediately replied: ‘yes of course I did’.

Just to emphasise the point I sent another text: ‘every word’.

A ping told me she’d replied. It was a simple one-word reply: ‘thanks’.

I stayed at Lottie’s all day. After putting the hamster to bed, we spent the morning just chilling together. Lottie’s mum and dad both worked, so we had the house to ourselves. We made some lunch, and sat out in the garden. Late in the afternoon, we decided to go out.

Just over a mile away is Lodge Lake, which is a sort of park place based around a lake, surprisingly enough! It’s got a Trim Trail, which Lottie and I like to use. So that’s where we went.

It’s a really nice place, and as you walk around the lake, there are different pieces of equipment to help you do a range of simple exercises to boost your all-round fitness. I think, really, you’re supposed to jog round, but we just walk! But we do like doing the different exercises!

We’d just done the Ladder Climb, when my phone pinged.

It was Holly. What did she want?

I was in my room when the doorbell went.

“My room”. The very fact that I was calling it that showed how bad things were between me and Freya. It had always been “our room”, yet now it was “my room”. My own stubbornness and stupidity had stopped me from making the first move, when we first got back from holiday. Since then, it seemed, it was becoming increasingly difficult to speak to her, because she was always at Lottie’s; and the longer it went on, the worse I felt about not talking, but the harder it was to have that conversation. So, she’d moved out of our room and into the spare room. Stupidly, I’d let her. I wished I hadn’t! But, then, there were lots of things I wished I had or hadn’t done and had or hadn’t said!

I was the only one home. The littlies were out with Jenny somewhere and Dad was at work. I made my way down the stairs and across to the front door. I opened it and stood open-mouthed at the sight that greeted me.

Caitlin.

With a large travel bag on the doorstep beside her.

“Oh!” she said, clearly disappointed to see me at the door. “I was looking for Freya.”

“She’s out!” I told her. “At Lottie’s I expect!” Not that that meant anything to Caitlin, of course.

“Oh!” she said, again, appearing unsure what to do next.

“Why don’t you ring her? You’ve got her number, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Er, yeah,” she said. Suddenly she seemed to become more sure of herself. “It was a stupid idea,” she said, more to herself than to me, “forget it!” She picked up her bag and walked back down the path.

I watched as she turned left and headed down the road. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew Freya would want to know about it. I grabbed my phone and texted her.

‘Caitlin’s just been here. Thought you’d want to know.’

I most certainly did want to know!

‘Is she still there?’ I texted back.

‘No she went when she found you weren’t here.’

‘Did you see where she went?’

‘Towards the Portway. I think she might be going to the station.’

If she was, there was a strong possibility that I could catch her before she got there. But I would run the risk that she was going somewhere else and I wouldn’t see her. I had to take that chance!

I sent one final text: ‘OK, thanks’. Then I set off, running in the direction of where I thought Caitlin would be. Lottie ran after me.

We ran through the small roads on the housing estate, across the cycle bridge and onto the road where I was hoping I’d be able to see her. I looked up and down it. There was no sign of her. Bum! Since I didn’t know exactly how long before Holly texted me she’d left, I decided I had to go in the direction of the station. Hopefully I could catch her there.

My legs were aching, I was breathing hard, and I had stitch. But I wouldn’t stop; I couldn’t stop! Lottie was the same. We rounded the next corner, and I spotted my target ahead of me.

“Caitlin!” I called at the top of my voice.

No response. I kept running.

“Caitlin! Wait!” I shouted again.

This time she stopped and turned. She saw me and dropped her bag on the floor.

As I reached her, I stopped and bent double, gasping for breath. Lottie flopped onto the pavement, holding her stomach. After a few moments, I lifted my head, looked at Caitlin, and smiled.

“I did it!” she told me. “I did it, Freya, like you told me to!”

I still couldn’t speak, so I just nodded and smiled even more widely.

“I got out!” she explained. “You said I had to get out of that situation, and I have!”

“Oh, fantastic!” I panted. “Good for you!”

Lottie had sat up and was watching the two of us.

“Only I’ve got nowhere to go!” Caitlin said.

My breathing was becoming easier now, enabling me to actually string a sentence together.

“What about your mum?” I asked.

“I can’t,” she told me. “She’s in prison.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” I said, automatically.

“But I read your texts again,” Caitlin began, “and when you said this morning that you meant every word, I made up my mind.”

I began to put two and two together. In her roundabout way, she was asking if she could stay with us.

“Only when Holly answered the door, I realised it was a stupid idea,” she continued.

“No, it’s not,” I interrupted, “it’s not a stupid idea at all!”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, not in the least bit sure at all, “positive! Come on!”

I picked up her bag and began walking in the direction of my house. Caitlin followed and took her bag from me, and Lottie picked herself up and joined us.

How was I going to do this? My mind was racing as we walked along. Obviously, I was going to have to talk to Dad; and Jenny, but Dad first! I decided to phone him. Hopefully I’d catch him before he left work. I selected his mobile from my contacts and pressed call.

It rang a few times before I heard him say, “Freya!”

“Hi, Dad,” I said cheerily, “have you got a minute?”

“I’ve always got time for you, sweetie,” he replied, “you know that.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice becoming serious “only there’s something really important I need to talk to you about.”

“Ah, finally!” he said.

Oh God, no, he thinks I’m going to tell him about me and Holly! I was about to correct him, when I decided against it. This way at least he’d be guaranteed to want to talk!

“Not at home, though!” I told him.

“Okay, where?”

“How soon will you finish work?” I asked.

“I can leave now, if I need to,” he replied.

“Okay, come and find me on the rec,” I told him, “I’ll wait for you there. Bye!”

I ended the call and we headed for the rec.

Jenny and the littlies had returned, and I was playing Snap with Zack and Gracie, when I heard my phone ping. We finished that game, and Gracie collected the cards and threw them into the air. Then she set about picking them up, one at a time. That was her way of shuffling!

I took the chance to check my phone. There was a text from Freya.

‘Let me know when Dad gets home, please.’

My phone pinged again as I was about to type ‘okay’. It was Freya again.

‘It might be best if you ask him if you can come with him.’

That sounded very mysterious, but most likely it had something to do with Caitlin’s appearance earlier.

Twenty minutes later, I heard Dad’s car pull up. Gracie ran to the door to greet him, as usual. He picked her up and whirled her round, like he always does, then plonked her down on the sofa. After taking his jacket off and hanging it up, he went into the kitchen to talk to Jenny.

“I’ll see you in a bit!” he said when he emerged a few minutes later.

I intercepted him on his way to the door.

“Can I come with you?” I asked.

He looked puzzled.

“Freya told me to ask you,” I said.

“In that case,” he replied, “you’d better come!”

I didn’t know where we were going, but it was soon apparent that we were heading to the rec.

While we waited for my dad, I introduced Lottie and Caitlin properly. Caitlin wanted to know how things were between me and Holly, and Lottie told her how bad the situation had become.

“You have to sort it,” Caitlin said, “you two had such a good relationship; you can’t let that one thing ruin it!”

“That’s exactly what I keep telling her!” Lottie exclaimed.

Their mutual concern and care for me was the perfect icebreaker, and before long Caitlin and Lottie were on their way to becoming firm friends.

As we walked, I sent Freya a text. ‘We’re on our way’, I told her. I didn’t know what she was planning, but I wanted to give her every chance of making it work.

As soon as I’d got Holly’s text, I gave Lottie her instructions and left the two of them talking, as I walked over to the entrance to the rec. From there, Dad wouldn’t see Caitlin until I wanted him to. Fortunately, Holly had given me enough warning, and I got there shortly before she and Dad arrived.

Freya was waiting at the gate to the rec. All the time that she and Dad talked, I noticed that she avoided making eye contact with me.

“So, Freya,” Dad began, “what have you got to tell me?”

“Do you remember, on holiday, that last night, when Caitlin brought me back from the hang-out?” she asked him.

“I’m hardly likely to forget that!” he replied.

“No, I s’pose not,” she acknowledged. Continuing, she said, “Well, that was Caitlin, like I said, and well, basically, when I went to say goodbye to her on the morning we came home, well, I saw something, you know, something bad, and, well …”

Dad took hold of Freya’s hands, bent down slightly and looked her in the eye.

“Freya,” he said gently, “take your time, just tell me, slowly, what did you see?”

“I saw a man, I think it was her Dad, and now I know it was her Dad because she told me,” the words were just tumbling out of her mouth, “I saw him hitting her, like hitting her really hard, across her back, like really hard.”

“Okay, then what happened?” Dad asked.

“Then I knew I had to do something, but I didn’t know what, and, like, everything I tried didn’t work, and I knew I’d be told off if I was late, and so I couldn’t do anything and it was too late and we were going home, and I knew I’d been useless and I failed her and I wanted to help but I couldn’t and …”

It was fairly incoherent, but Dad was getting the gist of it.

“Go on, but try and slow down a bit. Let my tired old brain keep up, eh?” he said, trying to relax her a bit with some humour.

She smiled. “Sorry!” she said. “So on the way home I got a text from her, and basically I told her I wanted to help her…”

“Mm-hmm.”

“… and that she needed to get away from the situation so she wasn’t getting hit anymore, …”

“Mm-hmm.”

“… and, then, well, you’re probably not going to like this, but, then …” she was getting slower now, and was clearly very nervous about continuing.

“Go on, Freya,” Dad gently urged, “I’m listening.”

“Well, then, I said she needed to find somewhere safe to stay …”

“Mm-hmm.”

“… and I texted her our address.”

“Did you!” Dad said, without any emotion.

I’d worked that much out already, otherwise how else had Caitlin just turned up at our door?!

“And then today,” I began again.

Dad stopped me. “I think I can guess the rest,” he told me. “Where is she?”

I looked at him. Dad was really, really clever sometimes!

“Lottie!” I called to my best friend. “You can come now!”

Lottie and Caitlin appeared and walked towards us. Caitlin seemed really scared, and kept her head down, looking at her feet.

Dad waited until they had reached us, then he turned and spoke to Caitlin, with that wonderful kindness that he has in his voice when he wants.

“Well, Caitlin, I understand you need somewhere to stay for a while.”

Caitlin looked up at him but gave no answer, either verbally or physically.

He smiled and put an arm on her shoulder, fortunately not her bruised shoulder.

“We’d be happy to put you up for as long as you need. You can have the guest room for now,” he told her, as a broad smile broke across her face. “But there’s one condition:” he added, “your Dad must be told that you’re safe; if you don’t want to do it, then I will, but someone has to! Is that okay?”

I’d never seen Caitlin smile properly before. But she did then. Her smile filled her face at the same time as tears streamed down it.

“Yes, yes,” she said, “thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!”

She didn’t stop thanking us all the way back to our house!

Freya had been right all along! Caitlin wasn’t weird, even if her behaviour had been strange. She’d just been hiding a dark secret and dealing with it in the only way she knew. It had taken someone with Freya’s sensitivity to rescue her. But that was Freya! Kind-hearted Freya! The friendliest person I knew! The Freya I loved!

Not the naked Freya that wouldn’t vacate my mind! I wanted so badly to get rid of that Freya! But I couldn’t! No matter how hard I tried, naked having-sex Freya wouldn’t go away!

And now, of course, she’d got another distraction to stop her from talking to me!