Poison

I figured maybe it was for a hiss of we still hate your fucking guts, but it wasn’t.

Her eyes were open wide when they met with mine, a strange expression on her face I couldn’t read.

“You need to speak to Yasmin Boyle,” she said in a whisper. “Believe me, Lucas, you really do need to speak to Yasmin Boyle.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her, because I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t seen Yasmin Boyle in years. She’d been friends with Maya and around at our place at regular intervals, but then as far as I knew it she’d disappeared up to Newcastle.

What the hell would I need to speak with Yasmin Boyle about?

But Nicola didn’t answer me, she just looked me right back in the eyes once she was standing outside the doorway and said it again.

“Trust me,” she said, “just speak with Yasmin Boyle.”

And then she closed the door.Chapter Thirty-SevenAnnaMy parents were so scared as I stepped through their front door. They came rushing straight on through, and their fear only grew ten times stronger as I looked them in the eyes.

The gravity was too huge to hide, and they felt it. They sucked in breath as they felt it.

Nicola and Vicky stepped on in after me, and there was a terrible silence, everything hanging in the air in my parents’ hallway.

Until I burst into tears.

My mum came and held me, and eased me on through to the living room, and she was crying too as she sat me down in the chair and knelt down in front.

“My God, Anna. What happened? What on earth happened last night?”

My dad was as white as a ghost when he joined us, and Vicky and Nicola hovered to the side, and they were crying too.

I wasn’t expecting it. Not when Mum asked me the next question.

“What on earth did he do to you, sweetheart? What on earth did Sebastian do to you?”

I couldn’t remember a time I’d been asked that question. Not since he’d been in my life. It was always what did you do. You do. You do.

But not this time. This time it was all about him.

Finally, it was all about him.

So I told them. I held nothing back and I told them exactly what he’d done to me.

My dad was shaking when I’d finished, pacing the room like a man who wanted to kill. He was struggling to hold in the rage, but he was trying. His face was red, and his brow was heavy, and my mum was devastated along with him, her hand trembling as it gripped mine, her voice trying to be soothing as she told me it was all going to be ok. It was all going to be ok. It was all going to be ok.

And it was all going to be ok.

Now I could see the truth in what Sebastian was truly like, it was all going to be ok.

It was my mum who called the police. It was my dad that directed them inside as they came to the house and sat down in front of me and asked me what happened.

The officers listened, and they took their notes, and they had sympathy in their eyes as they listened to my story.

But that’s what it was. A story. That’s all they could take from it. One person’s opinion which would certainly clash against another’s. And there were no witnesses. No evidence. Nothing but a couple who’d gone home together where one of them was accusing the other of a terrible crime with no proof. Still, I told them it all as honestly as I could do, and they left there with a sympathetic smile and the promise they’d be looking into it as thoroughly as they could.

I went into the station with them, and Mum, Dad, Vicky and Nicola waited in the reception area. I was assigned a dedicated officer who recorded my account and sent me to a medical team to check me over, but I knew it there and then. That same little voice of intuition I should have listened to for so long about Sebastian.

They’d never be able to prosecute a monster like him. He’d be too slick for anyone to convict him of anything with no real evidence.

Mum and Dad tried to get me to stay over in my old bedroom to wrap me up tight for the night when we were done, and part of me wanted that. Part of me wanted to be looked after like a little girl safe at home. But I’d been that little girl wrapped up in cotton wool for far too long, and I’d been without things I needed in my life for far too long, too.

I didn’t want another night without Lucas for as long as I lived.

“We’re right here for you, Anna,” Dad said, and pulled me close before I left with Nicola and Vicky. “You’ll never see Sebastian again, or I swear I’ll kill the vile piece of shit myself.”