Marc and Mum rowed a lot, but it never lasted long. Sal would apologise, Marc would grudgingly accept the apology and then one or both of them would celebrate by buying a bottle of gin that they’d do their best to finish. Jenny had got so used to the pattern now that once she heard the first rumblings of argument, she made plans to be out of the house – preferably all night. Nobody needs to hear their mum having embarrassingly loud make-up sex, after all. This time though, the last time, it didn’t follow the same pattern.

Jenny came back from school to find that Sal was hurt. Marc had done more damage than usual. Her face was red and swollen, her left eye pinched shut, and her right eye bloodshot and rheumy. Her arm was sprained too, and three of her fingernails were ripped to the quick. Jenny almost didn’t comment on it. Too many times she’d asked what had happened, and Sal’s brisk, dismissive replies – ‘Oh don’t you worry, I gave as good as I got’; ‘It looks worse than it is’; ‘I just tripped’ – were just too dispiriting to take. But today, because it was that much worse, she said something, and Sal didn’t offer any depressing explanations. She didn’t change the subject when Jenny, hesitatingly, then more forcefully, told her it wasn’t right. He couldn’t do this. Rather, she nodded, her bruised face averted, a cigarette clutched between two scabbed fingers.

This time, Sal asked Jenny to sleep with her in the big bed.

Jenny waited until she had drifted off, and then tried to secure the house as best she could – double-locking both the doors, and piling up chairs against them; filling the sink with dishes that would fall, crash, wake them if Marc tried getting in through the kitchen window.

At no point did she think of calling the police.

But Marc stayed away all night.

The next morning the house was filled with Marc’s sinister absence, and Sal didn’t want to be alone, asked Jenny to stay home from school. ‘Keep me company, will you? We’ll have a nice girly day together, yeah?’ Only one half of her face was able to smile, the other side was too tightly swollen. The mismatch was grotesque.

All day they watched TV and ate biscuits, keeping a fearful eye on the door, jumping when the telephone rang.

Later, she asked Jenny to help wash her hair – her arm was too hurt to do it herself. In the bathroom sink, the shampoo lather was filled with loose hair, and spotted with scabs.

Sal, meeting her eyes in the mirror, water running down her neck, tried to smile. She flexed her bruised arm, stroked her black eye. ‘I look a state, don’t I?’ Jenny silently handed her a towel. Sal took it, shook her head, tried to smile. ‘Not going to win any beauty competitions any time soon, am I?’

‘Mum—’

‘Still, if I put some make-up on—’

‘Mum—’

‘I always feel better once I’ve got my face on-—’

‘Mum? Shut up.’

Once again, their eyes, in the spotted mirror, locked. There was a long pause. ‘Look, it looks a lot worse than it is, Jen. You know me, I bruise like a peach; you only have to touch me and I… and it was all my fault anyway. I kept going on and on at him, and… you know what I’m like. I can be a right nagging bitch—’

‘Mum.’

Sal nodded, turned away from the mirror, kept up the chatter. ‘I know it’s not right, OK? I know, but it does take two to tango and—’

‘Mum. Just shut up now. Shut up, OK?’ Jenny, frowning, had her eyes closed. ‘It’s got to stop, now. It’s getting worse. He’s getting worse.’ She opened her eyes then, hesitated. ‘And it’s getting worse for me too.’ She made sure she was looking directly into Sal’s face as she said this. ‘Mum? He’s—’

‘Don’t know what you’re on about.’ Sal’s eyes were shiny with fearful anger.

‘He touches me, Mum!’ Her voice was loud in the small room. ‘He comes in here when I’m having a shower, and he—’

Sal put up one irritated hand. ‘Just leave it, will you?’

‘He tried to make me touch him too. I’ve tried to tell you before, but—’

Up went the hand again, and Jenny watched Sal’s injured face go through a series of painful expressions: shock; horror; pain; and finally, horribly, jealousy. She looked at her daughter with the hateful envy of a rival. ‘Well, you think a lot of yourself, don’t you?’

‘What? Mum—’

‘Why don’t you lock the bloody door, then? If he’s… whatever you say? Eh? Why’re you just telling me this now if you’re so scared?’ Her voice boiled with fury.

‘He broke the lock. The lock doesn’t work. Mum, you know that—’

‘And why don’t you put a bra on. Tight T-shirt and no bra, what d’you expect to happen? You’re just—’ But then she stopped, opened her eyes, looked at Jenny properly, steadily.

Then she took her hand, and silently led her back into the living room. They sat together on the sofa.

‘I’m going to ask you this once,’ Sal said eventually. ‘Is it true? What you said? Has he been… getting at you?’ Jenny nodded. Sal shuddered. A tear leaked out of her one good eye.

‘He’s been—’ Jenny began.

Sal held up one hand. ‘I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear what he’s been doing.’ She clenched her jaw painfully, nodded at her knees. ‘And, hand on heart, you’ve not… encouraged him? You’re a nice-looking girl, and he’s just a big teenager, really, they all are, men, aren’t they—?’

‘Jesus, Mum!’

Sal closed her eyes, nodded again. ‘All right. All right, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll call Kathleen now. We’ll go and stay with her.’

‘Really?’ Jenny was shocked.

Sal nodded. Her face was tired, defeated. ‘Go and get my phone, will you? And then get that suitcase out from under the bed.’

‘Mum… I-I’m sorry. I mean—’

‘Just get me the phone, love, all right? And start packing. He might come back any time.’

‘If we called the police they’d come, make sure he didn’t stop us—’

‘No. The police make everything worse. No. Kathleen’ll help. We can do this ourselves. Get as much as you can and pack it up. There’s a money belt somewhere; see if you can find that.’

‘But later? Should we tell them about, you know, what he’s been doing to me?’

Sal turned to her very seriously. ‘That’s private. All that stuff, that’s family stuff.’

‘But—’

‘Leave it now, Jen, or you can forget about going to Kathleen’s, all right? I’m getting you out of here, that’s good enough. Anything else that may or may not have happened to you, just try to forget it. OK? What’s past is past.’ She stood up. ‘Chop chop!’

An hour later, they crept out of the back door, quiet, so quiet down the alley, Jenny carrying a holdall and pulling a bulky suitcase on wheels that made a noise like pebbles rolling on a tin roof, loud, too loud on the silent street. Sal’s injured arm curved protectively around a bin bag containing her hairdryer, make-up and underwear.

When they got to the main street they passed The Fox where Marc was at work. They had no choice.

‘Heads down, fast as we can, all right? Right, here we go then.’ And Sal scuttled towards the door, the bin bag beginning to slither from her weak grasp. Together they trotted past the door like loaded mules.

‘Where’re we going after Kathleen’s, Mum?’

‘We’ll sort something; I’ll sort something.’ She gasped. ‘Just keep moving— shit!’ The bin bag slipped, mascara rolled into the gutter and eyeshadow shattered. Sal cried out, knelt painfully down to pick it all up.

‘Mum, just leave it!’ Jenny hissed. ‘Come on, just leave it!’

‘I’m not leaving it!’ Sal said. ‘It’s new!’ And she walked a few paces back towards the pub, following the silvery trail of eyeshadow.

‘Mum!’

Then, with horrible suddenness, Marc was there. A big man, just running to fat around the middle, but still agile, still dangerously strong. Jenny instinctively dodged into a doorway, but Sal froze. Mark pulled her up by one elbow. Jenny watched the resolve start to leak out of her mother, like stale air from an old balloon.

‘What’s this then?’ he asked calmly. ‘Where d’you think you’re off to then?’

Sal began to babble. The laundrette. The new one? The one on Ladysmith by the pool hall? There’s an opening-week offer. Half-price service wash after five. Thought I’d take the sheets.

Marc smiled faintly, plunged his hand into the bin bag, and pulled out a bra.

‘See?’ Sal said. ‘I told you, it’s just… clothes,’ He reached in again, brought out a mascara wand, held it up questioningly.

‘How’d that get in there?’ Sal managed.

Marc dropped it, stepped on it lazily, cracked it like a bug. Then he took the bag out of Sal’s shaking arms and dumped everything out onto the pavement… toothbrushes, a hairdryer, tampons, more underwear with its popped and worn elastic. Finally, her phone dropped with a clunk. He stepped on it, all the while smiling gently. Then he grabbed her bad arm.

She began to cry.

Marc smiled even more gently, took her bad arm, twisted it. Sal was whimpering now, promising to go home, saying it had all been a mistake and please let go of my arm you’re going to break it, no you are, you’re going to break it, don’t break it.

A bus trundled past, a whole top deck of pale moon faces gazed at the man pulling the crying woman by her injured arm, with no curiosity, no surprise. The few people on the street said and did nothing; at best they lingered at a distance, concern on their faces, as if, somehow, concern was action enough. Others just kept their heads down and walked. One man even loitered behind Marc, trying to pass him, before crossing the road and going on his way.

None of this meant anything to anybody.

She’d fallen now. He pulled her up. There was dirty water on her knees where she’d been kneeling on the pavement, and she was chattering again, and Jenny hated the chatter more than anything, because Marc liked that. He liked it when you panicked and begged; she knew that first-hand. He was breathing hard. He always breathed heavily when he was excited, when he was about to win. She knew that too. His left arm, wrapped around Sal, looked loving and intimate, but he dug the dirty nails of his right hand into the soft meat of her upper arm; her bruised face creased in fresh pain as he talked to her, softly, reasonably; it was time to go home. Stop making a fool of yourself now, and it was this – Sal’s inevitable, depressing submission, head bowed like an ox before the axe – that filled Jenny with a rage she’d never felt before. They were going to go back. They were going to go back home, back to the unlocked bathroom door, and the hand in her knickers. Back to the screaming and the tears, but it would be worse now because this time they’d actively rebelled – Marc would make them pay for that. Marc would make them pay, and Sal would make her pay double. The jealous hatred Jenny had seen in her face – as if they were love rivals – told her that.

No.

No.

Jenny let the rage flood into her, let it intoxicate her, and it was a glorious feeling. And she ran at Marc hard as she could, pushing the suitcase in front of her like a battering ram. It slammed into his shins, making him stumble into the road and slip on some rotting leaves in the gutter. Jenny came forward then, watching him struggle on his back like an upturned insect, trying and failing to pull his shirt over his paunch. His hat, that stupid fucking hat he wore to hide his bald spot, had fallen off, and he was groping for that too. Behind her, she could hear Sal whimpering about her make-up.

Look at them both, scrabbling about in the dirt like apes.

They were cunts. Both of them. Scum. And they weren’t going to drag her down with them any more.

Jenny kicked kicked kicked Marc in the head, on the shoulders, missing most of the time, but not stopping until she saw blood. She was shouting, screaming things she didn’t even hear or understand, and then Sal was clawing at her, telling her to stop, stop it or you’ll kill him, stop it!

And now there were other people, pulling her off him, dragging her backwards. A group of men ran to help him, carried him out of the road, you all right mate? You all right mate? And it almost made her laugh. Where were they when he was hurting Sal? Where’d they been then?

That was the turning point. That was when whatever had been left of Child Jenny died. From then on, though she tried to hide it, she hated Sal. Hated her weakness, hated how she’d hidden behind Jenny’s skirts, asking for protection one minute, and abandoning her to abuse the next. From then on, too, she hated Men in general, because they were all hypocritical bastards who clubbed together, protected each other, would happily stand by watching a woman get beaten on the street, and only step in when the tide turned and the man was getting the worst of it.

Jenny grabbed the suitcase from the gutter. One of the men tending to Marc half turned. ‘Stop! Stop her!’

And Jenny and Sal ran, rain in their faces, every step a victory.

Jenny wished she’d found the money belt though… He owed them.