‘Frightening you? I should think I am. Don’t forget, I know where they live. Your precious Greg and Jemima,’ Jade spat.
‘Is that some sort of threat?’ Now the fear was burning into anger.
They glared at each other, the air swirling and toxic around them. Maddie took a step forward, closing the distance between them, challenging Jade.
All of a sudden, the anger and bluster seemed to deflate from Jade as quickly as it had flared up. She sunk to the tiles in a heap and began to cry into her hands, her shoulders shuddering dramatically.
‘I just don’t know what to do anymore,’ she said around gasps of air.
Maddie paused, wanting to make sure there were real tears first and that this wasn’t another show of drama, then sunk down next to her. ‘It’ll be ok. We’ll figure it out. Shhhh… shhhh…’ she said as she put her arm around Jade’s quivering shoulders.
‘I can’t lose him, Maddie, I can’t! He’s all I’ve got.’
Maddie let her cry. After a while the sobs melted away and she sat, sniffing, on the kitchen floor. Maddie was about to suggest they get up when Jade started talking again. ‘I never had a good relationship with my own mother,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘She was a single mum, very young. She got pregnant when she was at school and left to have me. But she never really forgave me for ruining her life.’
‘You didn’t ruin her life.’
‘That’s not how she saw it. She used to leave me alone for days when I was little. She’d disappear with her new boyfriends and leave me to fend for myself. Then she’d come back either with a new boyfriend or a new drug habit.’ She rubbed at her eyes like a child. ‘Then one day I came home from school to a letter and a twenty-pound note. She’d gone – and never came back.’
Maddie clasped a hand over her mouth, aghast. ‘She left you?’
‘Yeah, but good riddance to her. I’ve been on my own ever since. And I’ve done alright, you know? But I can’t lose Ben – he’s all I have. He’s my whole world.’
‘That won’t happen. We’ll make sure of it,’ Maddie said in a whisper as Jade began to cry again.
‘You have to help me get rid of him, Maddie, otherwise I have no choice but to run away with Ben.’
*
Maddie swirled the wine in her glass and stared out at the black sky. The clouds were thick and ominous, the night inky and slick behind them. Her mind was just as overcast as she considered what had just happened.
She’d eventually calmed Jade down, got the ugly crying under control, made her a cup of sweet tea and tucked her up on the couch like a poorly child, with the remote control and a grab bag of crisps. If she was acting, she was very good. Her eyes were red and puffy, her nose still sniffly, when Maddie let herself out of the flat and returned to her own.
The episode had unnerved Maddie. Jade’s demeanour had switched in a matter of seconds and Maddie was left wondering which side of Jade was to be believed. It worried her for Ben’s sake – how unpredictable she could be and how fiery her temper. Did she think Jade would ever hurt Ben? Probably not. But Maddie also had to consider her background, the stories she had just told Maddie about her own mother and her all-encompassing desperation to hold onto Ben, to not lose him. Maddie understood that level of desperation all too well. That feeling of clinging onto something with the very edges of your fingernails and the fear as you feel your grip failing.
Where was Ben tonight anyway? She hadn’t seen any sign of him in days. If his dad had been looking after him more, that would explain Jade’s mood swings and emotional outbursts. She was probably missing Ben like mad.
She hoped that was the case anyway.
But if not, if Maddie was even slightly worried about Ben’s safety, then should she take matters into her own hands?
*
Jade blew her nose loudly and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She hadn’t expected to feel as emotional as she had done in the end. The disappointment that Maddie wasn’t going to present her with a fat cheque had made her furious, then panicked, and she hadn’t needed to pretend this time after all, not after she’d had an uncharacteristic premonition that maybe this scheme wouldn’t work out after all. It had seemed a no-brainer when she first met Maddie, but now she wasn’t so sure.
Maddie had more layers to her than Jade had initially expected. For a while, Jade had considered calling the whole thing off because Maddie was clearly a woman on the edge and Jade didn’t need to attract that kind of attention to herself. But then she realised that her very instability could be the hook Jade was looking for.
Hence the sob story about her mother. It hadn’t taken her long to realise that the anger was not helping. It had worked on that stupid bitch Lucy, with her bouncy blonde hair and Bambi eyes, but Maddie was proving a tougher nut to crack – or coerce as it was. Raw, emotional tales of hardship seemed to work better on Maddie.
She liked to have someone to save.
The story Jade had told Maddie was inspired. She wasn’t even sure where it had come from – maybe something she’d seen on telly. Jade’s mother was alive and well and living in Milton Keynes. Jade had seen her last week when she went over to celebrate her sister’s birthday.
Lucy had apparently fled back to Scotland to escape Jade’s fury, but was still sending Jade money every month because she was petrified that Jade would make good on her threat to post on social media the video she had managed to get of Lucy in bed with
