The Forgotten Child. D. E. White

child in her car? None of it made any sense. Perhaps she was going mad. She tried to remember if she had seen anything out of the ordinary yesterday. But she was sure it had been no different to any other Sunday, right up until they drove down Mill Road.

      Troubled, Holly took herself back to her son and with some difficulty transferred herself from the wheelchair to the armchair next to his bed. Her leg was bruised, with a possible torn ligament, and the wheelchair they had insisted on was only until a scan hopefully gave her the all clear. But the headache was back and she couldn’t sleep. Too many questions whirled in her brain, too many worries danced behind her eyes. She pushed back her long hair away from her face, tied it into a knot, and rubbed her sore eyes.

      Holly’s phone vibrated and she snuck a guilty look at the other patients, before glancing at the illuminated screen. Messages from her friends and Aunt Lydia, but none from her ex-husband. None from her dad either, but that was hardly a shock. Lydia said she’d been round and told him what had happened. Holly knew her aunt had been hoping for a reconciliation between father and daughter for years. Donnie Hughes was slowly drinking himself to death, and hadn’t featured in her life since she’d walked out of the Seaview Estate as an emotion-driven teenager. She smoothed a thumb across the screen, thinking about her dad.

      He’d tried to stop her leaving, even though he had seen what the trial did to her, seen how much she needed to escape the twisted memories and leave everything behind. Her exhausted mind drifted back to her teenage years.

      ‘You can’t just fucking walk away! You’re my daughter, and you’re the only one left who can take care of the business.’ Donnie had been waiting for her after the trial. It had always been ‘Donnie’. Never ‘Dad’. His voice was a pitch lower than it had been in her childhood, and he broke off to cough violently, peering down at her from under a greasy fringe. His face was ruddy, and his eyes bloodshot and hung with violet bags.

      She’d gone into her room and grabbed her bags, already neatly packed and awaiting her final exit. But Holly was still shaking, still high on fear and grief, her mind replaying the judge’s words and her answers over and over, like a crazy recording she could never erase.

       ‘What made you think she was dead?’

       ‘When did you last see your brother?’

      Holly had made it back down the stairs to find her dad leaning firmly against the front door, his mouth set in a scowl.

      ‘Get out of the way, Donnie. You didn’t even bother to come to the trial, and you don’t actually give a shit about anything except your business.’ She reached the door and extended her hand towards the handle. ‘I’ve got news for you. Your business is finished. The Nicholls have won, and all you’ve done is fuck everything up – Mum, me, Jay. You’re a sad, deluded old man.’

      He didn’t move, didn’t speak. The towering giant of her childhood reduced to this shuffling, glowering creature. But as she moved forward, his hand wrapped around her wrist, sweaty fingers pinching the skin.

      Holly pulled away, but he held on, yanking her closer. She turned her face away from the stench of his foul breath. ‘You don’t know shit, girl. You could have been something, taken us back to where we were, and yeah, even taken on the Nicholls brothers. I know what goes on with Nicholls Transport, and the human cargo that gets stashed in the back, the girls they bring down here to work in their brothels. It’s sick, and now you’re running away from all of us. Well, don’t ever fucking come back, you useless bitch!’ He spat right in her face.

      She’d stood frozen in horror, just for a second, before she wiped the glob of spittle away, warm and wet on her cheek. ‘I won’t be coming back,’ she told her father.

      As he raised a hand to hit her, she snapped her wrist away, and sidestepped, already up on the balls of her feet. Years of training had made her moves instinctive. His hand whipped past and he made another futile grab at her shoulder, tearing her shirt.

      Holly moved her body, jabbing with an elbow, bringing herself nearer the door, throwing the man aside with effortless ease. The horror of her dad’s words, his attack, would sink in later. She was trying to leave it all behind, but Holly was a trained fighter, and she accepted that probably wasn’t ever going to change.

      Donnie collapsed, panting against the peeling wall of the hallway, yelled a few breathless obscenities after her, and she cut him off by kicking the door shut.

      The heat of late afternoon had blasted through her jeans and T-shirt, and she could feel sweat beading on her face, but she’d kept on walking.

      ***

      A nurse rattled past with the drugs trolley, jolting Holly out of the past. She glanced quickly at Milo, reassuring herself before purposely keeping her thoughts in the present. Hell, it wasn’t like there was a lack of drama here either. And a whole load of swirling fears.

      Whoever the other boy was, she had still been looking at her phone moments before the crash, and driving at the same time. The guilt and anger at her own stupidity in allowing herself to be distracted by her phone made her breath short now. She was always so careful! The vicious texts danced through her brain. They had only started a couple of weeks ago, and at first she had refused to believe that Tom would be so vindictive. But now, each time they arrived, she tried to make herself pick up the phone and confront him, and each time, so far, she had funked it. She could hardly tell the police her own ex-husband was bullying her by text. It sounded so stupid, and she didn’t trust the police anyway. Well, with her upbringing, why would she?

      She woke to footsteps and the curtains around Milo’s bed being drawn apart. Holly blinked hard, pushing herself upright in the chair, trying to drag herself back to consciousness.

      ‘Mrs Kendal, I’m DI Harper, and this is DC Marriot. If you feel up to it, we just need to ask you a few questions.’ His voice was low, rumbling, and deceptively gentle.

      She got a sick feeling deep in her gut at the sound of his name, at the sight of his long face, with its sharp cheekbones and prominent beak of a nose. This couldn’t be happening. How was he still on the scene? Surely he should have retired, leaving everyone in peace by now? The long, thin nose had a dent and was twisted out of shape.

       ‘And you fuck off, you bloody nosy copper! My wife has been murdered and all you can do is accuse me. Go and find out who did it, because if I get there first, I’ll string them up from that tower block …’

       ‘We are trying, Donnie, we just need to ask a few more questions. Perhaps you should come back down to the station with us?’

      The sickening crunch as her dad broke the police officer’s nose had almost been drowned by his exclamation of pain. It was fair enough, Holly had thought at the time. Bloody Harper had been sniffing around for years, chipping away at her dad’s business interests. Luckily it was only the Nicholls’ dealers that got banged up, and they deserved it.

      Holly studied the familiar police officer now, this tall, gaunt man, with white tufted hair and hollows under his eyes. Fuck. Of all the people to turn up. Detective Inspector Harper. He’d clearly landed a promotion since they last met. He stood a little apart from a serious-looking blonde woman, whose thin lips were currently pursed with apparent disapproval as she glanced down at her phone.

      Feeling Holly’s gaze, she looked up and smiled. It was a cool, professional smile and it didn’t reach her glacial blue eyes. The DI was talking again. ‘We understand your son is doing well? A broken leg and some concussion, I think the doctor said.’

      Holly pulled the regulation blue and white hospital gown tighter around her body, and blinked sleep from her eyes, wishing Lydia would hurry up and get here with her clothes. Her aunt had come straight to the hospital last night when Holly called, but went home around eleven when she had been reassured that her niece and Milo were not in any life-threatening condition.

      ‘He’s still unconscious, but the doctors say he’s going to be fine. I guess he’ll be furious about having his leg in a cast though …’ Why was she babbling