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“He did what?” Vanessa stares at her, aghast.
“He wanted to know where Rachel had taken Archie.” Once, she might have said the slag and her spawn, but it’s been a long time since she’s felt anything for Jai other than loathing (and maybe a tiny fragment of fear that she’ll never give him the satisfaction of showing, but the nightmare is still lingering in the shadows of her mind, even though she's awake and Vanessa's hand is on her shoulder).
Charity turns away from her girlfriend’s stare, looking at the ceiling instead. The glow in the dark stars (left over from Johnny’s room) are dull and lifeless above her. It would remind her of the streets, only she’s in a bed and she’s warm. And it’s Vanessa laying beside her rather than a stranger old enough to be her grandfather. It’s so different from how it was then, but she isn’t.
Vanessa’s suddenly an empty space and there’s cold air touching her skin. She’s storming towards their bedroom door, swinging it open.
“What are you doing?” Charity sits up fast enough to make the room spin, but when she tries to scramble after her girlfriend, her legs get caught in the sheets.
When she makes it down the stairs, Vanessa is halfway into her yellow mac, her bobble hat already on her head.
“What are you doing?” she repeats, more urgently.
“I don’t know, but Jai’s not going to come out of it in one piece.” It shouldn’t sound threatening coming from someone three inches shorter than her (and wearing a bobble hat) but Charity’s long since learned that Vanessa can be fiercer than she is when something really winds her up.
It takes her a moment to unstick her feet from the floor and Vanessa’s struggling with the lock when Charity grabs her wrist (gently) and tries to tug her away. “Come on, babe, he’s not worth it.”
Vanessa doesn’t turn around, she doesn’t even pause in trying to break out of her own front door. “But you are.”
It’s enough to make her stop- for long enough for Vanessa to wrench the door open and dash out of it. Her own family: Cain, Zak, Lisa- they had never even called the police because Sam had been a part of it. Not even when she turned all the lights on in the house and refused to have the doors shut.
But Vanessa is halfway across the road so Charity darts out after her without bothering to get her own coat. There’s not time when her girlfriend is a tiny blonde rocket woman.
“Ness, wait-” Something sharp jams into the soul of her foot and she hisses, swears, but hobbles after her, barely feeling the icy snowflakes that touch her bare skin.
“What the hell are you gonna do?” she demands when she catches up enough for Vanessa to hear. “Knock on the door and say ‘sorry to disturb you, but please may I speak to Jai? I want to kick his head in’?”
“I’ll decide when I get there.”
But she won’t, she isn’t going to get there because Charity tugs on the sleeve of her mac and pulls her around so they’re face to face. “Think about this, yeah?”
“I am thinking about it, Charity and it makes me want to rip his head off! How can he just get away with it?”
Because they always did. Because no one ever cared enough and she was just a hooker from the streets.
“You know his family will just chuck you out before you can even land a punch. And what if you do? Do you think they’re all gonna just sit and watch? They’ll have the police on the doorstep before you know it.”
“Good. I can tell them that he almost killed you.” She tries to wrench her arm free but Charity holds on tighter, the material scrunching in her fist.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?” Vanessa demands.
Charity hesitates. She can’t tell her about Sam, not without redirecting the one woman man hunt to her family’s front door. “It was a long time ago. He’ll just deny it, won’t he?”
Vanessa glares at her like she’s Jai’s personal defence council, but the fire in her eyes is beginning to dim, just slightly. Enough so Charity can loosen her grip on the mac. “Okay?”
“No Charity, it’s not okay. Nothing about what you’ve told me is okay.”
She means the meals scrounged from men with 5 o’clock shadows that scraped against her chin, the newspapers that kept her hands from freezing to the bone and left her with imprints of other people’s tragedies on her skin, the sixteenth birthday she spent curled on a dirty mattress in a squat because some bloke had hit her so hard she couldn’t stand up.
“I know, babe. But if you end up a cell then I’m gonna have to have pancakes without faces drawn on for breakfast and then where will we all be?”
A smile tugs at the corners of Vanessa’s mouth. Charity takes the moment to lean forwards and kiss her lightly on the lips, but when she pulls away Vanessa holds on, her hands running up Charity’s bare arms. She stops and pulls back, a new horror written on her face. “You’ll catch your death!”
It is pretty cold. Charity likes to sleep in a t-shirt and nothing else- she likes the feel of the duvet against her skin, but now that’s feeling like the worst idea she’s had in her life. Snow touches her bare limbs, ice so cold against the soles of her feet that it hurts. But it means Vanessa is steering them back towards the cottage and away from the Sharmas’.
She keeps her arms around her and takes a blanket from the sofa as soon as the door is shut behind them and throws it over Charity’s shoulders.
“You know I can think of something else that might warm me up,” she quips, but her teeth are chattering and the words clink in her mouth.
Vanessa just rolls her eyes. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about Jai,” she warns.
Charity pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders, thinking it would be a lot more comfortable if Vanessa were under it too. “Yeah well you can put rabbit droppings in his morning coffee or something. He picks it up from the cafe at 8."