SAVAGE LOVE

Chapter 10

“You can leave the smart mouth behind.”

“But then our twelve weeks will be so boring.”

I turned around to leave his office, not sure if I had the upper hand or not. Michael Douglas put me all out of sorts whenever I went toe-to-toe with him. Truth be told, I quite enjoyed it actually, but I wasn’t ever going to admit that to anyone. Especially him.

Twenty-One years ago…

“Why do I have to take her everywhere I go? She’s so annoying.”

Franklyn was always whining about his little sister, Bianca. But I didn’t get it. To me, she was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

“You’re lucky you’ve got a sister. I’ve got no one,” I replied, hoping he’d wake up and realize he was lucky to have someone else relying on him. No one even cared I existed most of the time. Well, that was until I came here, to the Green’s. Then I went from a total nobody to somebody. I was Bianca’s favorite somebody.

Looking down at the little two-year-old holding my hand, I felt a burning sensation in my chest. I felt more protective over her than her own brother. What was up with that?

Her chubby knees were covered in bruises, and she wore pink dungarees which were already caked in mud. Her blonde ringlets were tied up with a yellow ribbon, but stray curls had escaped and framed her pretty little face. She was bobbing her head from side to side and singing nursery rhymes, totally ignorant to Franklyn’s utter disdain for her.

The adults called her a Tomboy, but she wasn’t, really. She loved listening to me read fairy stories to her, and acting them out with her teddies. Me? It was my favorite thing to do, to sit and watch her. She mesmerized me; or at least that’s what I’d heard the adults say about it all. She was curious about everything and always so full of life. Being around her made me feel good about myself, which was something I usually struggled with. Franklyn was one of my best friends, but it was Bianca I really looked forward to seeing when we visited here.

We were at the bottom of their garden, heading to the place Franklyn called his den. It was a wooded area with a small stream and tons of cool hiding places. Franklyn and his Dad had built a treehouse, and there were stepping stones over the stream close by, that we used to hop onto whenever we pretended that the stream was molten lava. Having Bianca with us today was slowing us down, and we wouldn’t be able to play some of the more deadly games we liked to play, but our parents trusted us to take care of her. I’d never want to let them down, or her.

“I figured you’d be coming here today, so I’ve put some snacks and bottles of coke in the treehouse. We can have a feast and read some of my new comics.”

Franklyn obviously hadn’t factored Bianca into our day’s play.

“How’s Bianca supposed to climb the ladder with her little legs?” I looked down at her, as she glanced back up at me. Her doe eyes shone with innocence as she listened to us.

“Me no like it treehouse,” she said in her sing-song voice, pointing up to the trees we were walking through. “Me no like it. Scary.”

“You’re too little to climb the ladder, Bianca. We won’t go up there today.” I squeezed her tiny hand to reassure her, but Franklyn was having none of it.

“She can play at the bottom of the tree. She’s not spoiling my fun today.”

I shrugged, not feeling a shred of confidence in his plan. The ground would be safer for her, but was it really safe to leave a two-year-old unsupervised in the woods? As if he was reading my mind, Franklyn continued.

“She’ll be fine. It’s not like I haven’t left her there before. She just finds her own games to play. She’s not a baby anymore.”

But she was a baby, she was to me anyway. She needed help getting a drink and she couldn’t reach the snack drawer in the kitchen. Her bedroom had a guard fitted at the door so she couldn’t wander out in the night. When the adults were around, one of them always shadowed her, making sure she didn’t touch anything harmful or hurt herself. So why, when she was in our care, were we leaving her on her own?

I didn’t want to argue anymore, though. I guessed Franklyn would just call me out on it; accuse me of being a wimp and a spoilsport. So I bit my tongue and went along with his plan. It was a decision that’d haunt me for weeks and months to come.

“You. Stay here.” Franklyn pointed at the ground as Bianca pushed out her bottom lip and started to tear up. “We have boys’ stuff to do up there. It’s a boys’ only treehouse, do you understand? No girls, Bianca, okay? You’re a girl, aren’t you?”

Bianca nodded her cute curly head and sucked in her cheeks, giving us both a show of her independent side. She had a wicked, adventurous side to her, but when it came to her big brother Franklyn, she always did as she was told.

“No following us up there, okay? We’re too busy to be messing about with babies like you. I’ll throw you some cookies and a drink down, but you stay out of our way, got it?”

“Uh huh,” she sniffed out, and sat herself down at the bottom of the tree, running her hands through the leaves that surrounded her, and ignoring us as she looked over to the little stream.

“And no paddling either. Mum grounded me for a week after you ruined that summer dress with the ladybirds on it. Sit there and stay out of trouble.”

“Okay, Fanklyn.” She still struggled to pronounce the ‘r’ in his name, like she struggled with the ‘s’ in mine. I thought it was cute. Franklyn thought it was beyond annoying.

“My name’s Franklyn, you dummy. Now shut up and let us get on with our stuff.”

Twenty minutes into our game of battleships, and I was starting to get nervous. I couldn’t concentrate. It was eerily quiet outside. Shouldn’t she be singing or saying something? Bianca was always chattering away.

“Is your sister okay?”

“She’s quiet, make the most of it. Most days she’s whining like a freak.”

I sank one of Franklyn’s battleships, and was doing a victory dance in my seat as we heard the snap and thud sound from outside. No cries, just thump and thud.

Franklyn ran to the open door of the treehouse and threw himself down the ladder faster than I’d ever seen him move. When I got to the top of the ladder, I saw why. Bianca must’ve tried to climb up to get to us, but her little legs weren’t big enough or strong enough and she must’ve slipped. She was lying lifeless, like a rag doll on the woodland floor. There were leaves tangled in her hair and an open, gaping wound on her forehead that was dribbling red blood into her bright yellow hair. Her left arm was twisted at a peculiar angle, and a jagged, dirt-encrusted piece of old glass was sticking out just below her elbow.

“What… oh my god… what do we do?”

Franklyn was panicking, circling his sister and grabbing chunks of his hair in despair.

“We have to pick her up, Frank. Get her back to the house. She’s hurt.”

I jumped down the last rung of the ladder and knelt down next to her.

“Is she… dead?” Franklyn was crying now, and rocking on the spot like a lunatic.

“No, she’s not dead. She’s still breathing.”

I pulled her into my arms and stood up. She weighed about as much as a feather, and her little head lolled to the side to rest on my chest. I didn’t know if picking her up was the right thing to do after a fall like that, but all I did know was that I had to get her to safety. Seeing her lying there, injured as she was, had done something awful to my insides. I was hurting really bad, and the thought that something serious was wrong with her made me want to throw up.

“Don’t tell them we left her. If my mum and dad find out she was on her own they’ll ground me forever.”

Franklyn was sprinting behind me as I ran with Bianca in my arms, panting with a mixture of exertion and his desperation to avoid getting into trouble.

“What else are we supposed to say? She’s got a cut on her head and her arm looks weird. They won’t believe us if we tell them she just fell over. We need to tell the truth.”

I didn’t care if I got into trouble for this, I truly believed we both deserved to be punished. Bianca was hurt because of us. We’d been selfish. The adults needed to know that. I felt so ashamed.

I sprinted out of the woods and into their back garden, with Bianca cradled like the baby she was in my arms. Her mum saw us first and let out a blood-curdling scream. My dad and Franklyn’s ran faster than his mum though, and when they reached us on the grass, Franklyn’s dad took Bianca out of my arms and scowled at me, as if I’d attacked his little girl myself.

“What the hell happened? Speak boys, NOW!”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Green. Bianca tried to follow us into the treehouse, but she slipped on the ladder and fell. She hit her head. I’m so sorry.”

I looked over to Franklyn, to see him glowering across at me with daggers in his eyes.

“Jesus Christ, are you really that stupid?” Mr. Green looked ready to kill us.

“She’s only just turned two. Can’t we trust you to look after her?” He turned his hateful stare onto Franklyn, but Mrs. Green cut him off.

“Enough, Dave. We can deal with this later. We need to get Bianca to the hospital.”

We trudged our way back up to the house, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of us. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my dad. I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in his eyes. We’d messed up big time today, and we’d found out the hard way that one bad decision can have devastating, lifelong effects. Franklyn’s parents had already gotten into their car to make the frantic journey to the hospital. We were left to wallow in our own guilt and worry.

Present Day

“Thanks for today, Ezra.”

I threw my bag onto the table and looked up to find my big brother, Franklyn, sitting on our sofa. He looked like a zombified hot mess.

“What the f**k, Franklyn? What’re you doing here?”

He shuffled about in his seat uncomfortably and avoided my gaze.

“I took over babysitting duties. That d**k, Ezra, was more than happy to f**k off. What the hell did you call him for, Bi? I’d have come round. You know you can call me anytime, sis.”

I had to admit, I didn’t know why I’d called Ezra either. The guy was a flake and a sleaze. I knew he’d probably only come round to try it on with me, but my brain had been frazzled by the lack of sleep and the events of the previous night. So, in my defence, my judgement had been severely compromised.