Broken: Part 2 of 3: A traumatised girl. Her troubled brother. Their shocking secret.. Rosie Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ I said later, when Jamie was in the shower.

      ‘Huh?’

      I dipped my head towards the door. ‘You know. All that talk about the band. I’d rather he concentrated on his exams at the moment.’

      Des scratched his wavy hair. ‘I thought he was doing okay at school.’

      ‘At the moment he is. But he won’t if he spends all his time trying to revive The Bad Natives.’

      He fixed me with an appraising, half-amused look. ‘There are worse ways to make a living, you know. The Natives never went hungry. And we were never short of groupies either.’

      I raised my eyebrows. ‘Hmmph!’

      ‘Oh, come on, sweetheart,’ he said, laughing. ‘You can’t let go of your sense of humour or you’ll never stay the course.’

      I pulled a face. He was right, again, but I wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet. He reached for my hand and laced his fingers through mine. I gave him a reluctant smile.

      At that moment Mungo’s ears flapped back. When the door opened, expecting to see Jamie, I snatched my hand away. Jamie and Emily’s amused glances whenever I mentioned Des weren’t lost on me. However much they liked him, I was quite certain that the merest whiff of any canoodling between us would have been a bit disturbing for them. Instead of Jamie though, Archie stood in the doorway, his expression grim. ‘What is it, Archie?’ I said, springing to my feet. I was surprised to find that my pulse was racing, though I wasn’t sure why.

      Archie glared at Des, his jaw tightened as if his teeth were grinding together. His arms hung poker straight at his sides, his thin hands clenched into tight fists. I cleared my throat. ‘Archie, this is Des.’ I paused. ‘A friend of mine.’

      ‘Hi, mate,’ Des said softly, a cheery though slightly puzzled smile on his face. Archie blinked and stared. There was a look of fear in his eyes, as if Des’s presence was somehow a threat.

      I cleared my throat. ‘Archie’s a whizz at Rummy, Des. Do you fancy joining us for a game?’

      ‘Fantastic,’ Des said with a smile. Archie continued to stare at him wordlessly, his eyes finally straying to the bottle of wine and glasses on the coffee table. Something about the angle of his shoulders made the hairs on the back of my forearms stand on end. Mungo began to bark.

      ‘What’s wrong, Arch,’ I said gently. ‘Has something upset you?’

      He turned his eyes on me, his lips twisted in disgust. ‘You slag,’ he said slowly. His words were cool and measured but his cheeks were crimson. ‘You horrible, dirty slag.’ Taken aback, all I could do was stare at him. Wisely, Des stayed where he was, his face angled away.

      ‘Archie,’ I said, at a loss as to where all this had sprung from. I glanced at Des. He raised one eyebrow and then looked away again. ‘What’s this about, honey?’

      Archie’s chest began to heave. Without warning he kicked out at Mungo, catching his soft underbelly. Mungo yelped in pain and hid behind my leg. ‘Archie!’ I shouted, crouching down and wrapping my arms around the trembling pup. Archie glared at me then turned on his heel and disappeared.

      ‘You sure you donnae want me to stay?’ Des said quietly in the hall a minute or so later. ‘Just as back-up if you need it.’

      ‘I’ll be fine, really,’ I whispered. ‘Outbursts are my bread and butter. It’s the phoniness I find hard to cope with.’

      ‘If you’re sure.’ He touched the pad of his thumb to my cheek. ‘Text me if you need a wee hand and I’ll come straight back.’

      I rested my forehead against his, patted his hand. ‘Thanks, Des.’

      When he left I leaned back against the front door and glanced up at the banisters, my legs trembling. There was no sound coming from upstairs but, despite the confidence I had expressed to Des, for a second I regretted asking him to leave. I took a breath, trying to compose myself. I knew that any sign of stress on my part would only escalate Archie’s own.

      Sometimes being a foster carer is a bit like being a detective. Archie was suffering, but the reasons for his distress were, for now, closed off from me. I had sensed that something was wrong when I first met him, and now it was becoming clearer that Archie’s inner world was broken. I pushed myself away from the door and rolled my shoulders back. No matter how distressing a place it might be, I had a feeling that if I wanted to understand him, I was going to have to join him there.

       Chapter Twelve

      I found him sitting on his pillow, his legs dangling over the ladder of his bunk. After a soft tap on the open door, I walked into the room and stood a few feet from his bunk. ‘Archie?’ I ventured carefully, turning his name into a question.

      Archie kept his head hung low, though he kicked out with his bare foot, warning me to stay away. ‘Do you want to talk about what’s upsetting you, Archie?’ I said, working hard against my racing pulse to keep my voice low.

      ‘No!’ he snarled. ‘Leave me alone!’

      I waited, listening to the even tone of Bobbi’s breathing. It seemed strange that she was able to sleep through such loud disturbances when she woke so often through the night. I wondered whether selective deafness was another protective mechanism at work, one that had allowed her to sleep through some of the chaos of home. ‘I can hear how upset you are. I want to help you if I can.’

      He leapt from the bunk and landed a foot from me. I stood my ground, returning his furious glare with a neutral one. ‘You’re nothing but a dirty slag,’ he breathed, a nasty twisting sneer on his face. ‘I don’t even want to look at you.’

      I gave him a long, steady look. His words were not those of a nine-year-old from a loving or even barely functional home. ‘I’m guessing that you’ve heard and seen some difficult things in the past, Archie, but those sort of names don’t belong here, in this house.’

      He leaned forward until his face was only a few inches from mine. ‘I could cut you up in your sleep, you know,’ he blasted, louder now. ‘I could take a knife and slit your throat.’

      My chest fluttered. It was so hard to reconcile the furious boy in front of me with the one who had chatted so easily in the kitchen as he’d helped me wash the dishes just a couple of hours ago. I was so knocked off balance that I just stood there, staring at him in disbelief. Over his shoulder I could see that Bobbi was beginning to stir. From the bathroom came the tell-tale groan in the pipes as the water was turned off. I felt my pulse racing again. Jamie would be out of the shower soon. I didn’t want him to get involved.

      ‘We’ll talk in the morning,’ I said calmly, though my heart was beating fast. I turned and walked across the room.

      ‘You ugly, stinking slag!’ Archie shouted. I could sense him following, his shadow looming up behind me. ‘I don’t want to stay with you. Tell Danny I wanna go somewhere else. You make me sick.’

      ‘What’s going on?’ came Jamie’s voice from the hall.

      My chest tightened. ‘Nothing, Jamie, СКАЧАТЬ