UNLEASHED
PETER LAWS
Look, Mam … it’s me!
This book is dedicated to you, with loving thanks for the life and work that has become mine, only because of you.
‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’
Ephesians 6:12
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PART ONE: APOPHENIA
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PART TWO: THERE ARE SUCH THINGS
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
PART THREE: EFFLUVIA
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BY PETER LAWS
COPYRIGHT
PART ONEAPOPHENIA
PROLOGUE
The rabbit crawls out of its grave again.
Soil and stone crumbling in its paws.
Twitching, sniffing, seeing light.
Sees more than you ever could.
Rabbit moves from grass to road.
Looking up, and hearing rain.
Mud and wet things on its fur.
Sliding through the waving wood.
People see and hide their smiles.
Some try hard to scratch its belly.
Stays away the best it can.
Makes its way from stone to sand.
Past the grass, and through the trunks.
Rabbit hears her giggling. Whispers weave, ears prick up.
Rabbit sniffs the air for blood.
Through the tree it settles, staring.
Swinging, swinging she looks out.
She can’t see the shadow smiling.
Meant to crawl … it’s learnt to walk.
Even though the night’s way off,
Rabbit waits, and likes the sound.
That she makes upon the ground.
Hind legs slowing, turning round.
Pretty.
CHAPTER ONE
Jo Finch sat in her old primary school, chewing her nails, surrounded by twenty-one other parents. Each of them was painfully folded into a midget school chair with their legs forced under impossibly low desks. The other parents looked sharp and important. Many had taken time off work for this, so a lot wore suits. Jo noticed a lot of the women wore knee-length leather boots that had really decent stitching. They were absolutely not from Primark, put it that way. While Jo, on the other hand, sat there glowing in the brightest yellow fleece that ever fell from the sun. With matching leggings too.
God.
She felt like a naked Homer Simpson. A walking buttercup, lighting up chins. Her boss at the Merry Poppins Cleaning Company may well have been one of her best mates, but Kassy West was never the type to confuse friendship with favours. She’d given Jo exactly ninety minutes off work for this school tour. There had been no time to change.
It occurred to her that perhaps she didn’t need a tour of this school anyway, since she knew every inch of it. Each turn of the corridor, each crack in the concrete playground. A couple of decades ago she was the little pigtailed firework running around here, in cheap clothes even then. But while the shape of the place hadn’t changed, the vibe of it really had. Even the big green radiators were gone. The ones that looked like they’d fallen from an Industrial Revolution steam train. They’d been replaced by some sleek-looking white boxes with a constant red light, blinking on the corner. Good luck melting Crayola on them, Jo thought. Then she shivered. Come September next year her daughter Seren would be five, which meant the government had their legal claim on her each weekday. She’d be all by herself in this familiar, unfamiliar place.
The only thing that looked the same colour as the old days was the floor. She rubbed the tip of her trainers against it. Yeah, the hexagonal wood was the same. The light caught the historic scratches and scrapes. Maybe there were even a few scuffs from her own little buckled shoes when she sat in this exact part of the classroom, back in 1993. It should have felt like a million years ago. Only it didn’t. It didn’t at all.
Something throbbed in her gut so she pressed her hand against the yellow.
Her boyfriend Lee sat next to her, smelling of engine oil. She winked at him but he didn’t wink back. He was too busy scrolling through his phone, checking to see if the job lot of premium golf tees he’d invested in were selling. They’d met on Tinder three months ago, where he’d described himself as ‘an entrepreneur trapped in a mechanic’s body’. As he thumbed through the listing, he had his usual business face on. The panicky bite of the lip, his skin white enough to vomit. The constant sniffing. Turns out it takes aeons to shift ten thousand of those tees, even if they were made of top-grade African Blackwood from Senegal.
She glanced at the huge windows which were covered in crepe paper pumpkins and black cats cut from card. She looked through the skinny legs of a badly scissored witch and gazed across the school field. The roof of the preschool was just about visible over the hedges. Seren was in there right now. Four and a half and already living her own life, for one morning a week. Doing stuff Jo couldn’t see – which felt great and horrible, all at the same time. Mostly horrible, though. Her hands were probably covered in orange and black paint; her shoes would be filling with sand. Prepping her princess outfit for Halloween, maybe. She’d be doing what kids ought to be doing, playing with stuff, because Seren loved to play. Jo looked back at the walls of the classroom. Unlike the windows, they had hardly any pictures up at all. They’d stuck maths problems up instead. One of them said 24 minus 16.
24 minus 16? Sheesh.
Even she had to work that out on her fingers. She felt that flutter again. Seren could barely count how many feet were stuck on the end of her legs, which brought a quick little
