I carried on my routine mulling over the words that Charlie had shared with me. I knew that some fucking days I didn’t deserve his undying support, but I also knew it was swings and roundabouts, as some days he didn’t fucking deserve mine either. You could say we evened each other out nicely.

The sweat that had turned cold on my body as we had talked, began to warm up once more as I began to punch at the heavy leather bag in front of me. The one-two routine I knew so well helped to take away the ineffective feelings that Charlie had left behind him in his wake. I hit the bag hard, feeling the connection deep down inside me. After thirty minutes or so the sweat on my face started to fly away from my skin with every punch. Droplets flew everywhere, and as they had also started to run into my eyes I calmed down the relentless rhythm I had forced myself to achieve. I loved the numbness that came from binding my hands in the ropes that I used to train with. I wished I could manage to give my brain the same fucking respite.

I ran through our conversation again.

‘How fucking could you, gobshite?’

Charlie slammed the door behind him and I looked up ready to lay into him. The glass rattled in his wake as he showed me the depth of his anger. The hurt on his face showed me what had him pissed and I readied myself to receive his wrath. I had been waiting for this since the moment I had phoned her to ask for help. He had found out that Katy had been here and left again, and I knew he was about to tear me a new one.

I let out a deep sigh and closed and opened my eyes slowly, while I waited for more from him, but nothing came.

‘Sorry, man… I have no excuse, other than the fact that Lily needed her.’

‘I can’t believe she was fucking here and not once when I phoned to see how Lily was, did you let me know! No wonder you… you, fucking piece of shit, kept putting me off from coming around.’ He was pointing his finger at me with every word he spoke.

I watched as he stepped closer and closer towards me. But I could see the hurt in his eyes superseded the rage on his face. Eventually, he stopped walking right in front of me and grabbed a hold of my face with one hand, digging his fingers into my skin. My nostrils flared as I glared back at him. I would allow him this, this one fucking thing. I knew I deserved much more, but it wasn’t in me to just lie down and take it. He pulled my face away from his grasp in a sudden movement causing my head to turn sideways. I clenched my fists tightly together, but made sure my arms never left my sides. I watched as he turned and parked his arse on the old wooden chair sitting in the corner of my new gym. His elbows found his legs and he leant forward. Staring at me, he rocked slightly as he controlled his anger.

‘What a fucking pair we are,’ I offered.

He nodded his head in agreement.

‘You can say that again, fucker… You spoken to Lily, yet? I mean I saw her in your arms, but have you spoken to her… with words and everything?’

‘Sort of, a couple of times… She started to push away from me last time, just before you walked in. I obviously touched a nerve. But her pushing me away… it cut so fucking deep. She shut down on me the moment I mentioned her staying here and not going back. I know she loves me… but whoever Harry is, she loves him too. I saw it in her eyes… I can almost fucking cope with…’ As a heated rage flared up suddenly inside of me, I swung around violently and smashed my bare fist into the nearby punch bag. It swung away with the force of the punch, as it returned I caught it and banged my forehead against it. ‘Nah, that’s fucking crap, I can’t cope with it. She’s MINE, she ain’t meant to be with no one else.’ I looked towards him again with concern and nodded at him. ‘What did she say to you?’

He shrugged at me and answered. ‘I showed her your house and we talked about how fucking romantic you are, gobshite. I ended up carrying her back to the kitchen and got her some food… she’s still weak, isn’t she?’ I nodded my answer, feeling my jealousy rise inside me. I couldn’t even bear the thought of her in Charlie’s arms. ‘She wanted to go over the night we found her and she also asked how long she was here for.’

‘Fuck.’ I made my way over to a table where I knew I would find the vice I was looking for. I quickly placed the cigarette into my mouth, lit up and dragged on it quickly until it was gone. ‘You told her?’ I asked between the few puffs.

‘Yeah.’ He shrugged his shoulders at me.

‘She also asked me what you knew about Harry.’

I finished the cigarette and extinguished it by pinching the end with my thumb and forefinger, relishing the burn I felt on the tips. I dropped it to the floor. ‘How did ya answer that?’ I placed my now twitching hands, with my fingers linked together, on the top of my head and blew out a deep breath.

‘I told her the truth, about how she had called for him when she was first here and then when we chatted further, she told me she had seen Katy…’ He stared at me again, trying to get his feelings over to me. He needn’t have bothered, I knew and had always known he would be pissed at me. ‘She also told me how her father had played you both, until she ended up with the Vasiles.’ Charlie opened his arms out wide to me in question, just waiting for me to acknowledge that I knew.

I nodded back and sighed.

‘And did she tell you about what Ioan Antonescu did to her?’ I watched him lean back in the chair and cross his arms over his chest. He nodded. ‘I can’t believe it was my fucking fault that caused all this shit. My need for violence, the release, my stupid idiotic choice, steered the way to her living with sick, depraved fucking scum. It’s beyond my fucking comprehension.’ I could see the anger in his face, my family was like his own to him and he’d proven to me before he would do anything to help me protect them. But Lily had been outside of our protection. She had already been harmed. But, it wouldn’t happen again, never again would a woman I loved be violated. I was prepared to do anything to stop that happening.

He was still talking, but I heard nothing. I was left trapped in my own head, until his words once again began to penetrate through my red mist.

‘You know, gobshite. I’ve always thought this talking thing, ya know communicating and shit, was overrated. But now? We both need to talk to our women and fucking fast, before we lose any hope of them ever opening up and giving us all the facts.’

‘When Katy gets back… you’ll be the first to know. I promise…’

‘You’re all good… I know when she’ll be back.’ I looked at him in question. ‘She’ll be here tomorrow… after our chat, Lily put two and two together and came up with the fact that Katy and I are married, she called her using your mobile. She asked her to bring a few things she needed, as soon as she could.’

‘God help you… she ain’t gonna like the fact she’s been tricked into coming here. You know that, right?’ He nodded his head at me. ‘In the meantime, what am I gonna do about a woman who doesn’t want me near her?’

‘Fuck off… I don’t think it’s quite that bad, gobshite. I saw her in your arms and until the last few seconds, she was more than fucking happy to be there. You said it yourself, she changed when you mentioned about her not going back.’

I thought back to how soft and pliable she felt in my arms. ‘Yeah, maybe… Thanks for the fucking words of wisdom. How do I get her to trust me again? I need her to give me more information. John needs more to work on… hell, I need more to work with.’

He rubbed his hand briskly over the top of his crew cut. The sound of the short bristles connecting with his skin filled the empty void in the room. ‘Welcome to my fucking world… if I knew the answer to that, my wife wouldn’t have left me to live in some fucking nurse’s accommodation. Would she?’

I forced a small smile to my mouth.

Adrenalin was now coursing through my system. I moved away from the bag and unwrapped my hands. As soon as the ropes fell away from my skin, I jumped up and gripped onto the chinning bar to the side of me. I turned my grip around on the bar and began to pull myself up, shouting as I counted out loud, until I completed my rep of ten chins. I repeated the reps over and over. My bi-ceps began to ache, my breathing became erratic with the exertion and my lungs began to burn. I wished I could fucking bottle the sensation. My mind had emptied and wanting to keep it that way, I started yet another rep of ten.

Eventually, exhausted I dropped down from the bar. I lay spread out on the floor, looking through the glass roof to the clouds that drifted across the greying sky. A few drops of rain had started to fall. I watched as they collected into rivulets and ran over the glass, together they cleaned away the grime. Reaching out to the side of me I picked up the towel to dry the sweat from my body. As I patted the white towel to my face, it broke my view, but every time I removed it, my eyes came back to the rain and the way it purified the unsullied glass.

The truth needed to be faced.

I knew what needed to be done.

We needed to cleanse all the filth from our lives. Together, we needed to clean away the fucking grime.