Blue - Chapter 29 - Then

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They've put me in a bedsit in Portobello Market, accessed via fire exit steps from an alleyway that smells of piss. Inside fares no better; two rooms tarnished in grease and bedbugs. The grease I can live with, but the itching of tiny raised spots is driving me insane. I lie on the bare blood-pocked mattress, curtains drawn.

The last time I saw my family cottage in Amersham I was packing for Oxford. I'd hefted more than a dozen items off hangers. A loose fabric mountain of t-shirts and jeans swamped my unmade bed. Next door plumped pillows and a taught bedspread covered my parent's bed. I opened their wardrobe and held up a pair of Dad's beige chinos. They grazed my ankles. Reaching to the top shelf of my mother's wardrobe, behind chintz shoe boxes and old photo albums, I grabbed the old red sewing box.

The phone vibrated in my pocket.

'Wait,' I told Jade, smiling into the receiver as I balanced it on my shoulder. Inside the sewing box were the tweezers. 'I'm getting domesticated here, just unpicking the hem on my Dad's trousers for the opening ceremony. Then I'll leave.'

She told me to finish it later and hurry. Ever impatient.
I slung them onto the dressing table chair — a big old armchair that smelt as musty as the attic — for Mum to hang. She'd sort the shelves out later too. I threw the knitting box up top and was leaving when it wobbled off the shelf and gashed the side of my temple.
Damn box.

Dragging the armchair over the old carpet, I jumped up, and pushed it back, dividing a few ratty hats and a pile of creased leather bags. My loan acceptance had cleared. I was now a fully fledged member of the indebted student body. Five thousand pounds a term ought to see me through the next six years unless they motioned in Parliament to raise the fees again. Now my mother could sleep easy from subsidising my education. Meantime, I'd treat her to a few new hats.

The knitting box slid to the back, the floppy handbags crumpled back into place, and a hard object caught against the small bones in my wrist. It was a sharp pain from something inside a leather knapsack. I cursed and jumped off the stool.

And then came the pause. The decision. Curiosity flooded my mind. And it probably ruined the rest of my life. I don't know why I cared what I'd just caught my wrist on inside a leather knapsack. A hard object that jarred my wrist isn't interesting. Why did I care what my mother stashed with her swag and her loom on the top shelf of her wardrobe? I straightened, stepped up, and slid the zip of a nondescript dark brown, battered leather knapsack to find the sharp object that had jarred my wrist.

It was a purse, I told myself. Or an umbrella. What do women cart around over their shoulders? A lot of useless rubbish that's what. But not this. I wanted to drop it, but I drew it in closer. I wanted to forget I found it, but it felt sealed to the pads of my fingers.

Why had my mother hidden a gun in her wardrobe?

My hand clenches into a fist again as the memories resurface. Soured memories, like curdled milk. Why did I open the bag?

I want to go home, only now the cottage my family shared in Amersham belongs to the hospice caring for my mother. And so I sleep, dreaming of life before: boat trips on Lake Windermere, cave climbing in Pembrokeshire, bonfires in the country forest near our house, fishing in the stream. Memories including my father, when no anger brewed between us, when lies were not just unspoken but unthought. When I wake, the threadbare patterned curtains throw images over the bed making me jump. They remind me of Jade's face on the Heath with the wind blowing the lilac heather up around us.

The images bleed into that of my mother, pulling at the bag my father tightened around her neck, and I scream out. Every day it's the same.

The next night, as promised, I return to the boxing club.

Mikey is there again. He's orchestrating a fight between two older men, bobbing between them. Are they forced to be here? Or do they seek the adrenalin-fuelled testosterone buzz I'd experienced the other day?

'I've put a kit out for you kid,' Mikey shouts, without looking. My jogging pants aren't enough for Mikey.

At the back, sectioned off by dented metal lockers, there's a neon yellow string vest and black satin boxing shorts suspended from a hangar with a note punctured through the top of the wire where it clings on to a vent in a locker door.

'He who seeks redemption, must first understand pain.'

Dumb ass lawyer.

I should expect unsubtle and incomprehensible quotes. This is a treasure hunt to find one's sanity. I change, flex my limbs and go out to the ring where Mikey sets the two older guys on me. Today's lesson is deflection. And revenge.

Half way through, the guy who was present the first time I'd entered Mikey's boxing-ring-come-anger-management class enters. His stride is a swagger and his pace is slow and controlled. He wipes his nose on the sleeve of his florescent orange jumper with scrawled graffiti across it and jumps into the ring. My space. 

'Ah Terrence, wondering when you were going to show,' Mikey says, grinning. 'Meet the newbie - this is David Azure, but you can call him Blue. And this here is our reigning champ. Plays a dirty game when he's in the ring so don't provoke him.'

Terrence mock-punches me in the shoulder with surprising strength. 'Mate,' he says, dipping his chin. I stare at Mikey, my eyes channelling a million unspoken words. I don't want to spar with the reigning champion of anything. With his scrawny face and garish top, this guy looks like a liability. A fact which is proven when he sucker punches me to the ground.


Thanks for reading. Have you guessed who Terrence is yet? To find out what happens, follow me, or save Sever to your favourite books. Next update coming soon.

Please like, vote, follow and/or comment on this chapter. I've already made so many changes thanks to awesome feedback for you lovely people, so every opinion counts. Here's a recap of the characters and the actors I'd envisage playing them:

CAST LIST

Jade Lively - Lilly Collins (the protagonist)

Belinda - Lindsay Lohan (fellow kidnappee)

Cara - Kat Graham (Other pregnant girl whose name you will soon find out)

Blue - Liam Hemsworth (the protagonist / anti-hero and Jade's ex-boyfriend)

Mikey Drosner - Jack Black (Blue's lawyer)

Detective Pike - Viola Davis (Blue's prosecutor)

Dr Pam Jenkins - Emma Stone (the doctor working with Blue at Freedom)

Eddie Maylord - friend and advisor to the Prime Minister

Terrence Ridley - Mackenzie Crook (one of the pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean)

Adrian Lively - Alex Pettyfer (Jade's husband)

Marcus Lively - William Fichtner aka Alex from Prison Break (Adrian's father)

Prime Minister Christopher Seaford - Gary Oldman

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