Living on the Knife's Edge Read online

  Living on the Knife's Edge

  by David Rose

  Copyright 2014 David Rose

  Published by

  Two Moons Books

  Smashwords Edition

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and actions have either been invented by the author or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real persons, whether living or dead, or to actual occurrences, is therefore necessarily and entirely coincidental.

  Living on the Knife's Edge

  He woke up to the remains of a storm in the morning. The branches of the trees in the mews were waving like a crowd at a rock concert, the early sun flickering through the window. Adam was lying in bed looking up at the patterns of light and shadow moving on the ceiling, just wondering about how the two of them wound up here, after everything.

  Life, he thought, is so damn unpredictable. One day you're okay, then with no warning it kicks you in the balls and you're on the floor and struggling to even breathe in and out. And then life might pick you up and kiss you. Or it might not.

  Adam Reid is a doctor, but back when this all began he was still a med student. Most of it isn't even his story; he only came in halfway through. But then again, when one becomes a part of a story, perhaps that story also becomes a part of oneself, of the fabric of one's own life.

  Molly was a pretty red-headed thirty-something, with bright slate-blue eyes, a working mother with a young teenage daughter. She should have looked attractive, but she simply looked worn. Her shoulders sagged with a constant weariness, she usually wore whatever came out of her cupboard first, and that was a fuzzy old tracksuit, or jeans and a jumper, as often as not. She never bothered with makeup, except for the bare minimum that she had to have on to leave the house.

  Beth was a skinny blonde fourteen year-old, bright, cheerful, sometimes rebellious and sulky. She spent a lot of her free time listening to her iPod, or on her mobile with her girlfriends. Her pictures from that time just show a cheerful young girl with big grey eyes, looking patiently at the camera. One can practically hear her voice echoing through time, "C'mon Mum - press the button already!" But Beth is no longer with us; not in the same way.

  They lived in Peckham then, on Marlborough Street, which wasn't half as grand as its name. You lived on Marlborough Street, in a council flat, if you couldn't afford anything better and if you were low enough on the priority list for improved housing. Beth was fourteen, and Molly cleaned offices for a living.

  Most mornings, Beth would get up and go and wake Molly, and then go back to bed until she heard Molly in the shower. Then, while Beth showered Molly would pour some juice and put out a bowl of breakfast cereal for Beth, while the TV murmured away to itself in the front room. There was a little set in the kitchen, so she didn't miss much. Every morning, Molly would walk Beth to school. Most mornings, Beth would moan about it and Molly would go on a bit about the danger to young girls in the city. The argument had been going around for so long that both of them simply went through the motions, taking their exchanges for granted. After leaving Beth outside the school gates, Molly would come back home and just crash; she was usually still tired from her perennial night shift. In the afternoon she might get up and do a little housework or laundry, or just have a cup of tea with a friend. After school, when Beth came home, they'd watch the telly for a bit, and then Beth might do some homework, or help Molly with dinner. It was always just Molly and Beth.

  Right after that, Molly would have to go back to work, usually till well after midnight. The slobs in the offices left such a mess that sometimes it took her till into the early morning hours to finish cleaning. The pay wasn't much, but it was better than the dole. On the other hand, there was Bloody Alan.

  Bloody Alan – Molly always called him that, like he had two names – he was the cleaning contractor's supervisor. "What a pain in the arse," was Molly's common complaint. He'd come around and complain about her work standards. Sometimes he carried on for half an hour, which was a half hour more time at work which Molly could have used for sleep at home. It wasn't exactly the high life but at least she and Beth had each other.

  Then Brad started to show up, every so often. He was keen on Molly, and fond enough of Beth, and he nearly always had a little spare cash. It varied; sometimes it was just a little, other days quite a bit. They never asked him how he earned it, and Brad never said. Brad was a broad-shouldered late-thirties working lad with energy and imagination: an East End hustler. He wore his hair cut short and chain-smoked his way through a couple of packs a day, and he talked fast and persuasively. A couple of times a week Brad would knock on the front door and come in for a bit, and he and Molly would go out to the pub or a movie, sometimes to a nightclub to dance. Molly thought how great it was that Beth was old enough not to need a babysitter.

  After a while it was getting to be a regular thing, a little patch of cheer in Molly's life, and Brad was okay in bed. No grand passion, maybe, but a hell of a lot better than a life with nothing but work in it. And Brad could be useful when Beth started acting up. When that sulky little teenage face started giving her lip, Brad would just lean in and say a few words, and Beth would shut up. She didn't argue with Brad.

  Molly was always on night shift, and sometimes she'd get the heebie-jeebies about Beth all alone in their flat. She'd imagine Beth getting conned into letting some stranger into the house, and she'd get cold shivers thinking about what might happen. Or she'd imagine that she'd left the gas on, or that there was a leak. And she'd just have to get out her mobile and call Beth to make sure everything was all right before she could let it go. But sometimes it happened late, like midnight, when Beth was asleep. Then Molly would endure maybe an hour of the night fears, work keeping her hands busy and her back aching and her feet sore, but failing to distract her in the end, and then she'd crack and call Beth anyway. And Beth would be pissed off at her for waking her, and then, when she was a little more awake, she'd realise how Molly had felt and she'd soften and be reassuring and loving, and then Molly would calm down. Until the next time. So, when Brad eventually moved in full time, Molly felt that was good; Beth had someone to look out for her now.

  Brad was an okay guy, mostly easy-going with Molly and even Beth. Just now and then he'd go on the piss; he'd come back from the pub and bang the door, maybe shout something rude at any neighbours peering through their windows. Then, Molly knew, you had to be a bit careful not to set him off. Before she'd got to know him better, she'd given him a bit of cheek once about coming back drunk.

  He'd clipped her one across the face and told her, "Shut up, you cow! I don't need you to tell me when I'm drunk - I know I'm fucking drunk!"

  When Molly glimpsed Beth peeping round the corner of the stairs she'd just stayed in the chair she'd fallen into, out of his way, and kept quiet. Brad had muttered to himself and pulled the tab on the can he'd fetched from the fridge, and settled down to watch the telly.

  "Stop snivelling, I didn't clout you that hard," he'd grumbled at Molly.

  The next morning when Beth knocked on their door, Molly had found Brad in bed next to her, still dressed, except for his shoes. She'd had a bit of a black eye, but nothing too serious, and nothing people didn't see every day of the week in Marlboroug
h Street. She'd got up, seen Beth off to school as usual, and bedded down in the sitting room when she got back. And Brad had woken her about eleven, looking very hangdog and ashamed of himself. He'd even gone down on his knees to apologise to her. So yeah, Brad wasn't perfect but then, who's got the perfect man? He really wasn't that bad. It only happened when he had too much to drink, and that was only now and again. He'd always be so sorry afterwards, and come back with something nice to make up. One time it was even pearls. "They're only cultured," he'd told her apologetically, "but I thought they'd suit you."

  Then that awful night, while Molly was at work, Brad was sitting having a few pints and watching one of his porn movies.

  Beth was sitting at her desk, doing some homework. It was late, and the house was quiet, and Beth heard Brad's steps on the stairs. She looked up and there he was, standing in her doorway and just looking at her. It was when she started to get up that he moved in on her. He was a big, heavy man, she was just a kid. She screamed. She fought. She cried. Didn't stop him.

  See, what Brad didn't know was on that same night Molly was having it out at last with Bloody Alan. Hell, it wasn't like the pay was all that much better than the dole, the crap she'd been taking from him just wasn't worth it. So she told him exactly where to stuff her wages and walked out early.

  So when Molly came through the front door, she heard these noises from upstairs; a bump and thumps and what sounded like a cry from Beth. She ran up the steps, and in Beth's room she found Brad on top of her crying daughter with his trousers around his ankles. Her blood ran first to ice, and then combusted as fury burst through her. She stepped in, hauled back and kicked Brad in the crotch with all her strength, then grabbed hold of him and with the force of her rage half-lifted him and threw him against the wall. Brad curled up with his balls somewhere between his liver and his lungs, and no further interest in Beth. Or, maybe, anyone else, ever.

  Molly reached down to gather Beth into her arms, and somehow carried her to the main bedroom, laying Beth on her own bed. The room still stank of the cigarettes Brad smoked in bed. Molly held Beth and comforted her through her own sobs of mingled sorrow and rage. And as soon as Molly was sure that Beth knew she was safe, and had calmed down a bit, she shut her in and went back after Brad. Then she called 999.

  The local police arrived. You know how it looks, the patrol car with its blue lights reflecting from the wet street, and the one house with an open front door, light shining into the night, and the neighbours all coming out to have a gawk. They called an ambulance for Brad. Beth and Molly had to go down to the station, for one of the worst nights of their lives.

  Molly stared out of the upstairs window at a grey and drizzly morning.

  Oh God, she thought. What had she done? Why hadn't she thought about the danger, Brad being alone with Beth?

  Tears spilled down her cheeks, but she wasn't crying. She had survived the storm that had swept through her in the night, and now only the trailing edge of pain and a bitter self-reproach still drifted like flotsam on the windswept sea of her emotions. She raged inside at life, helplessly. Her heart wept for her darling little girl.

  Yeah, Beth could be a bit of a pain sometimes. But that was less than nothing when it came down to what really mattered to her. Why, oh why, had she let Brad into their lives? This was all her fault, she told herself. She'd wanted something more out of life. She'd been selfish. But now she couldn't - she dare not think of anyone but Beth. There would be no more Brads. Just Molly and Beth.

  Molly went on the dole; she didn't want to be out at night any more. She tried some temp work here and there, but nothing worked out for long. She didn't care – at least she could be with Beth. They had no money, but they could be together.

  The thing was, Beth didn't want to be with Molly. The more Molly clung on to Beth, the more Beth wouldn't come back from school on time. She started cutting classes, and hanging out with the street crowd.

  The front door closed behind Beth, and she headed for the stairs.

  "Beth!" Molly appeared from the kitchen like a valkyrie.

  "Do you know what the time is? Where the hell have you been?"

  Beth sighed, and stopped, still looking wishfully at the stairs she might have been climbing to her room.

  "School finished three hours ago - anything might have happened to you! Anything, and I wouldn't know! Look at me, Beth!"

  Beth obediently turned her head and gazed at her angry mother. The old bag always did the same scene, she thought.

  Molly took Beth by the shoulders. "Beth, lovey, I'm sorry. I shouldn't shout, but I worry about you. You know that. I get frantic. And then when you do get home, I'm so relieved that I shout. I don't mean to."

  She hugged her reluctant daughter, and as she began to weep once more she spoke over Beth's shoulder, "I love you, Beth, you know that. I'm sorry I make such a fuss."

  Beth waited, long-sufferingly.

  Molly pulled back and looked pleadingly at Beth. "You might at least give me a bell on your mobile."

  "Sorry, Mum." There, Beth thought, they were done, as usual.

  Molly let her go to dab at her eyes with a tea-towel.

  "What about a nice cuppa, then?"

  "No thanks, Mum. I had a Coke."

  Molly was busy cleaning Beth's room one afternoon and she opened the bedside drawer, she didn't know why but she just did, and there were a pack of cigs and a cheap lighter lying there. Right then is when Beth came home and trotted up the stairs, and found Molly over the open drawer.

  "Mum! What are you doing in my things?"

  Molly reached in and took out the cigarettes.

  "What's this?" Clearly, a rhetorical question.

  "That's none of your damn business, is what that is!" Beth flared.

  "It is my damn business, I'm your mother," Molly shot back, "and you can mind your language. Why are you smoking?"

  "Who says I can't? You smoke! What's it matter if I do?"

  "You're not old enough." Molly began to say something else, then shook her head and charged onwards, "You're too - it's not good for you. I'm sorry I ever started - hell, Beth, I need to smoke just to cope! You're young, you've got your whole life ahead of you, you don't need to screw up your health by smoking."

  "I had my whole life ahead of me!" Beth snarled. "Until your boyfriend changed that!"

  Molly stopped in mid breath, her face crumpling. In reflex she reached for her daughter, but Beth stepped back into the passageway.

  "Beth, sweetheart, I'm sorry," she wailed.

  Beth looked back in a kind of disgust. "I'm going out again. I'll come back when you've calmed down." And she turned her back and went on down the stairs.

  On another morning Molly had just set Beth's breakfast on the table when her daughter came in. Molly looked up at her and flipped.

  "What the hell are you wearing? Get back upstairs and get dressed!" she told Beth.

  Beth had on a soft red beret set at an angle, an opaque white blouse unbuttoned far enough to show her bra, a very, very short black mini, patterned pantihose and shiny tall black boots. And she'd styled her blonde hair in a fetchingly rumpled tumble.

  "I am dressed, Mum. This is what kids wear these days."

  "Exactly! You're a kid, and that is what prossies wear these days! Get back upstairs and change!"

  "Are you calling me a whore, Mum dear?" Beth was in a cold fury, and Molly was too upset to see it.

  "No, but you need to dress properly."

  "I am dressed properly. How am I indecent?" Beth challenged.

  Molly gasped for words, trying to work out where to start.

  "Never mind breakfast, Mum, I'll just go." She turned away.

  "Beth! Come back here!" Molly was coming around the kitchen table, but Beth didn't stop.

  "No, Mum, I won't." Beth stood in the front doorway and looked back over her shoulder. "And you can call me 'Bet' from now on. That's my 'working' name, you know? Sounds good, don't you think?" The front door slammed,
and the bang echoed up and down the street.

  Beth - Bet! - stalked off, furious and upset, but refusing to cry about it.

  In the house, Molly was left helpless, angry, frustrated and desperately afraid for her daughter.

  Bet? Like a gamble? Like a risk? Molly wondered.

  Beth probably thought it was a smart move, a sign of growing up. 'Beth' was probably too little-girly for a streetwise young woman of fifteen. 'Bet'?

  Molly sat down on a kitchen chair and began to cry in abandoned long, howling sobs that racked her whole body.

  Then Beth - Bet's - exam results came in the post. Molly sat at the kitchen table, her head sagging in her hands. Bet had somehow managed to fail, and was going to be held back a year. Schools didn't do that anymore. What was she going to do? What the hell was she going to do with Bet?

  Sheila arrived in their lives. The dumpy, middle-aged social worker seemed to be always late, always anxious to get to her next appointment. She had a kind face under mousy curls with a fair bit of grey in them, but she usually looked harried. Molly knew that look all too well.

  "Hello, Sheila, come in," Molly greeted her

  "Good afternoon, dear, how are you doing? How's Bet?" Sheila always sounded just a little out of breath.

  "Oh, same old. She's not back yet."

  Sheila's eyes went to the hall clock; it was nearly five.

  "Oh dear, oh dear. Well, I'll give her a few minutes. Shall we sit down, then?"