Lover, Husband, Father, Monster: Book 3, The Aftermath

Lover, Husband, Father, Monster

The Aftermath

Elsie Johnstone, Graeme Johnstone

Lover, Husband, Father, Monster

The Aftermath

Elsie Johnstone, Graeme Johnstone

Copyright © 2015 Elsie Johnstone, Graeme Johnstone

G. & E. Johnstone

ISBN: 978-0-9925059-7-4

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the authors, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

The publisher and author assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of this material. Any perceived slight of specific people or organizations is unintentional. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein.

CONTENTS

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Lover, Husband, Father, Monster

The Aftermath

Part One

Jennifer

The wretched bikie lay in the middle of the road in the pouring rain, yelling for help, complaining about his legs.

I wanted to yell back, ‘If you can feel them, then they’re fine. Now get off the road and let us get to the airport!’ But that was never going to happen. Not now. Events had been set in train. Police were being summoned, an ambulance siren could be heard further down the motorway, the bikie’s blood was mixing with the rain, a ruby river running into the gutter.

The elderly couple that had sideswiped him were out of their ancient Mercedes hysterically chirping away in an Irish dialect that neither I nor anyone else had ever heard before, all the while making useless up-and-down flapping movements with their arms. I was highly agitated as I visualized our flight to freedom vanishing into the clouds without us on board.

And it is all Stuart’s fault! Had it not been for him interfering and insisting on coming to the airport to say goodbye to Molly we would have bade our farewell at home and arrived in time for a latte before our flight. I know he did it on purpose, just to make me suffer, and I hate him for it.

Now, Kevin has just told me in no uncertain terms that I am not helping the situation and to bite my tongue. That really annoys me, my own brother turning against me.

‘Whose side are you on?’ I snapped. He dismissed my question with a shrug, adjusted the buds attached to his phone and retreated into himself and his music.

The pandemonium on the road outside our car increased. Suddenly, I became aware that Stuart’s door had been opened. I assumed that he was getting out to help. That’s the type of person he is, the sort who likes to take control.

Maybe he would try to calm the dithering couple. Perhaps he would enlist some knowledge gleaned from the first aid lectures of his days in the Boy Scouts. If all else failed then he was sure to take charge by directing the traffic. I had seen it all before, so I sat fuming silently in the front seat praying that this mess would be cleaned up and we would make it in time to catch our flight, or any flight for that matter, and escape Dublin forever.

The son - Stuart Hoare (Junior)

When we were in the front room, and Mam told us all that stuff about leaving us and going to London to live with her boyfriend and Molly, Da got really angry. I was frightened. I have seen him cross plenty of times but he has never been as mad as this. Shaking! Red in the face! Angry!

It was really confusing and scary and my little brother started to cry. I couldn’t do that so I just stared into the fireplace and watched the gas flame. We both felt really bad because it was probably all our fault. I should have tried harder at school and Richie should have at least have tried out for the football team, but he wouldn’t because it was at the same time as his drama class. Da said he was a wuss.

The son - Richie

Mam and Tommy are taking Molly with them and flying off to London to live and we will never see them again. And Da will look after us and take us to school before he goes to work and make us do our homework and Nanna Mary and Grandma Moira are going to do the cooking. Mam says she will come back and visit us a lot, but you can never really trust grown-ups to do what they say.

What I don’t get is that Mammy is the one who is always cuddling us and telling us what good boys we are and how much she loves us, while Da never does anything like that, he just looks angry and yells at us, and now it is Mam who is going away while Da is staying. If she really loves us as much as she says she wouldn’t leave us, would she? It’s just not fair.

Stuart

I was seething. The bitch had totally blindsided me, not only with what she did but also with the sneaky way she went about it, recruiting everybody to take her side, including my own mother. She had isolated me completely and that really hurt.

How could they side with the lover and not the husband? To even consider that the best option for Molly would be to take her away from her own home and her own biological father to live with some stranger?

Jennifer had trashed my love for my own children and made me out to be the baddie, when all I had ever done for the past fifteen years was to devote myself to our family and work hard to give them everything. That lousy long-haired loser from London has already betrayed Jennifer once before and yet she has the nerve to take my little girl away from me to live with him in a foreign country. They set me up a treat.

Now I was stuck in the car with her going on and on in the front seat, blaming me for the traffic accident for God’s sake, blaming me for them being late, blaming me for everything. As if she was blameless herself. It takes two to tango! She hates me and I hate her. Even Kevin, her favourite bother, had told her to shut up but she wouldn’t. Nag! Nag! Nag! Yakkety yak!

I looked at Molly and stroked her hair. She was my beautiful baby and was being snatched away from me. Fury surged, coursing through my veins, a raging river of resentment.

It was hot in the back of Kevin’s new car. I couldn’t stand the sound of Jennifer’s voice. I had to get away from that whining and whinging before it made me vomit. I opened the back door, took Molly with her little dolly from her car seat and stepped out into the fresh air.

We began to play the Drop Molly, the game we often played together.

Jennifer

It was several minutes before I realised that Molly was gone. I turned around to tell her what a good little girl she had been for sitting so quietly, only to discover her seat was empty!

Stuart must have taken her with him when he had got out of the car. ‘He’s done a runner with my baby girl,’ I thought. A shocking notion entered my head. ‘He’s taken her and is going to hide her in a deserted farm-house somewhere so that I can’t have her.’ I had to get out of that car and get my daughter back.

My adrenalin levels soared as I frantically clawed at the door’s unfamiliar fittings. Time stood still. Every nerve in my body tensed as I battled with the new-fangled handles that were embedded, almost flush with the side panel. I finally found the lever and pushed the door open and clambered out, looking desperately around for Stuart and my daughter. Yes, there they were, on the other side of the car, on the far side of the road. Next to the railing overlooking the motorway.

But what was that horrific sound coming from below? The piercing screech of brakes, the sickening thud of metal on metal, the shattering of glass.

With the retching smell of smoking rubber wafting up into my nostrils, I raced to where Stuart was standing. He had his back to me, his hands outstretched as if he was praying to the Holy Spirit. His eyes stared straight ahead, zombie like, his expression hardened and steely.

Molly was not with him.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

I tried to push him aside to find out where she was but he was an immovable stone statue.

I screamed. But no scream emerged, just a weird, rasping sound. Once, twice, thrice! Finally, the sounds came together as one. ‘My little girl! My beautiful little girl! Where is she?’ That was what I was trying to say, but all that came from my throat was one horrible banshee-like noise.

My primitive scream galvanized Kevin into action. He dropped his phone and discarded his earphones as he scrambled out of the car and rushed to where I was standing.

Rain, blood and terror mixed with noise from the motorway below as the nightmare began.

Kevin grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to shake me out of it.

‘Hush Jen! Shhhhh! Jennifer, calm down! What is wrong, Jen? Tell me what is the matter.’

I couldn’t speak. Ignoring Kevin, I turned and pointed at my husband, the marble mad man. Then I began to pound into him with my fists.

‘Where is Molly?’ I screamed. ‘What have you done with Molly?’

He ignored me, standing solid and resolute, unmoved. Then his gaze shifted slowly from an undisclosed point on the horizon to the motorway beneath.

My glance followed his to the scene of carnage below. The southbound traffic had come to a crunching halt, piled up, all skewwhiff. Merciful Lord, Molly was down there somewhere!

I froze and stopped pummelling him as inhuman screams flowed like a river of molten lava from my throat. My heart went cold, my legs buckled under me and I turned and sat down with a thud on the cold wet ground that soaked into my clothes. A surge of warm yellow pee mingled with the rain and slid into the gutter.

Somehow the boys appeared by my side as Stu and Kevin disappeared, leaving us a confused and disoriented little trio sitting together on the asphalt. My sons cuddled into me, frightened and cold.

This horrible, inescapable nightmare had us in its vortex, pulling this way and pushing that way, spinning us in ever increasing circles. There was no escape.

‘Molly,’ I whimpered. ‘Molly.’

Kevin

I had been a reluctant participant in this whole shebang, but Jennifer is my sister after all, and so when she asked me to come over to her house and protect her while she told Stuart that she was leaving him, I thought that if this was the path she had chosen then the least I could do was to support her. It didn’t sit well with me, all the same. I don’t like getting caught up in other people’s domestic situations, but I knew he had been violent towards her in the past, so what could I do?

On the journey to the airport, Jennifer had been niggling poor Stuart all the way, sniping at him from the front seat, blaming him for everything. I even began to feel sorry for the poor beggar. After all, she was getting what she wanted. The least she could do was to be civil. Either that or not say anything at all. So I plugged into my phone and tried to ignore it. But it was her scream that galvanised me into action.

To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve never heard anything like it. It eclipsed the music coming through my earphones, sounding like a wild animal caught with its foot in a trap. I didn’t know what she was saying, it was like another language entirely, but I immediately got out of the car and ran towards her because I instinctively knew that something was horribly wrong.

There was Stuart with his arms outstretched over the side of the bridge, like the high priest at a pagan ritual sacrifice, just standing there motionless. But there was no Molly! Oh my God. Don’t tell me she had gone over the edge! I looked down at the carnage below, as dazed drivers got out of their shattered cars to survey the mess and the traffic began to form into a tailback.

She couldn’t possibly have survived that.

Tom

A few minutes after we came to a halt, I saw Stuart get out of the car with Molly, and not knowing much about children assumed it was for a toilet break. I continued absentmindedly drumming my fingers on the steering wheel to a tune running through my head at the time when, realizing something odd had happened, I opened the car door, told the boys to stay where they were and began walking quickly towards Jennifer.

The boys took no notice of what I said and responded to their mother’s screams as well. They ran so fast that they got there before I did and flung themselves onto the ground next to her. Jen seemed oblivious to everything around her. Richie kept tugging at his mother’s sleeve crying, ‘Mam, what’s wrong? Mammy, what’s the matter?’

The three of them clung together like magnets in the rain and the dirt, repelling the outsider - me.

Kevin arrived at about the same time, took in the horrible scene and reacted instantly. He grabbed Stuart and pushed him forward. ‘Is that Molly down there? Is that our Molly? Come on, we have to go to her. Come on, Stu! Come on!’

He ran ahead and Stuart turned to follow, but spotted me standing on the sidelines. I remember thinking, ‘How in the hell have I got myself into all of this?’ And I recall not getting much time to ponder an answer as Stuart marched up to me and said something like, ‘Enjoy your fucking freedom now.’

I have absolutely no memory of what happened after that.

Stuart

There. That should jolt Little Miss Do What I Want Without Considering Anybody Else back into the real world. That’ll make it clear to her that if I can do something like this to Molly then I am capable of doing anything to her and the lads.

Ha! Won’t be so much fun going off to London with drummer boy now! In war, sometimes one has to make a sacrifice for the common good and it is unfortunate that Molly has to take the hit for the family.

A violent, horrendous scream interrupted my thoughts. It was Jennifer hoeing into me with her fists. ‘Where is my baby? My beautiful little girl! What have you done to my baby?’

‘Your fucking baby? Don’t you mean our baby?’

I grabbed her by both wrists and pushed her back up against the barricade. ‘Remember this! What ever has happened down below, it’s your fault. You did this.’

She looked up and, spat in my face. Oh, how I would have loved to have given her a decent thump across the head, but I felt an urgent clap on my shoulder and turned to see Kevin urging me to go with him.

‘Stu! Stu! Is that Molly down there?’ he was shouting. ‘Is it our Molly? Come on, Stu, we’ve got to go and help! Come on! Oh, Jeezus, I hope she’s all right,’ he prayed. ‘Oh, Mary Mother of God, please make her all right.’

He began to run and tried to pull me with him, but I resisted because I became aware of the two shocked and puzzled faces of my lads.

‘Calm down,’ I said to Kevin. ‘She’ll be okay. She’ll be fine.’ And then to the lads, ‘It’s all right, Junior,’ I whispered. ‘It’s okay. Daddy will sort things out.’ I put my hands out to my sons to offer protection and comfort and assurance, but a shrill voice broke my attention and the link.

‘What have you done? You are the devil himself!’ shrieked the elderly woman from the car that had hit the motorcyclist. She had left her husband to attend to the stricken rider - who I noticed was still moaning - and decided she would enter our family dispute.

‘What have I done?’ I queried, turning on her, my face just a few centimetres from hers. ‘I’ve done nothing! I was playing our game, that’s all I was doing. Playing our game!’

She put her hand to her mouth mumbling, ‘I don’t think it is a game.’ Then, deciding that it was perhaps best to mind her own business, she backed away to sort out her own predicament.

I turned to follow Kevin down to the motorway but not before stopping for just one more moment. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted lover boy hovering around like a lost soul and decided to give him a little lesson in the realities of life. I summoned up my old judo skills, took a deep breath and landed him a beauty, right on the side of the nose. I felt my right hand collapse his lower eye socket.

Well, there’s something. It seems I haven’t lost my touch!

Junior

It had been a crazy trip anyway. We followed Uncle Kevin all over Dublin and Tommy kept swearing under his breath about how fast he was going and what an idiot he was. Kevin took us charging up a little alleyway and Tommy knocked over a rubbish bin. It was funny, but Tommy didn’t think so. He swore.

When we stopped for the accident he banged his fists on the wheel and said, ‘Now what’s the fuckin’ matter? We’ll miss the fuckin’ plane.’

We didn’t really take much notice because we were both playing our games and we don’t like him anyway. I was getting very close to my best score ever when I heard Mammy scream. Tommy told us to stay in the car, but who is he to tell us what to do? We got out and ran to Mam anyway.

Then Da hit Tommy right on the snout and made him bleed and disappeared with Uncle Kevin and Mam was crying and we couldn’t find Molly. They were telling us it was going to be all right. But I knew it wasn’t going to be because Molly was not there anymore and they were all looking worried. Adults think kids are dumb, don’t they?

Stuart

Kevin instinctively made his way back along the overpass to find a spot where he could get down on to the motorway embankment. Having not lost much of his flexibility or fitness from his playing days, he hurdled the fence easily, leapt onto the grassy slope and landed cleanly. But due to both his anxiety and the sheer angle of the earthworks, he plunged almost out of control down through the knee-high ground cover and stringy saplings before reaching the roadway and regaining his balance. I followed suit but was more circumspect, easing myself over the fence and carefully picking my way slowly down toward a scene of utter devastation.

What a sight. A driver obviously distracted by the event had hit the brakes at the crucial moment, deviated from his line, lost control and turned sideways. The car behind would have had no time whatsoever to take evasive action and smashed into him, creating an even bigger target for those following. The combined mass of half a dozen cars or so had careered on under the flyover, finally coming to a halt about seventy or eighty metres further down the road. I could see one was on its side, one was on its roof and several were badly battered, just like those spectacular American raceway accidents you see on the television. Steam and smoke was rising everywhere. Jammed up behind them in three neat rows were several cars that had avoided the major pile-up but had rear-ended each other. The cars near where we stepped onto the road had stopped in the nick of time, some only a few centimetres from each other, and were now forming a stationary tailback of concerned and angry drivers.

We headed down the motorway towards the point of major impact, assuming that that was where Molly was likely to be. God knows, I thought, she must surely be dead. A sickening feeling began to overwhelm me. What have I done? But then we were interrupted by shouts. ‘Over here!’ came a stricken voice. ‘Is she yours? Over here, then!’ and our gaze turned towards the centre of the motorway, directly underneath the edge of the flyover.

There was a group of people, in varying states of panic, agitation and concern, standing in the median strip, the two metre-wide pit formed by metre-high concrete barriers that run the length of the motorway.

‘Stu, Stu, she must have fallen in there!’ shouted Kevin, picking his way through the three lanes of stalled traffic and rushing up to the group.

‘Out of the way! Out of the feckin’ way, we’re family,’ he urged as he hurdled the barrier and landed lightly on his feet in the strip. The crowd obliged, parted and closed in around him as I puffed and panted after him. I heard Kevin’s anguished incantation, ‘Oh, Molly, Molly, oh Jeezus, Molly.’

‘Please, please,’ I said. ‘Let me through. I’m her father.’ I worked my way to the front of the group where a middle-aged woman was on her knees, cradling Molly’s head. I could tell that she was experienced - a nurse, a doctor maybe, something in the medical line - trying to do her best in the situation. She held two fingers to the side of Molly’s neck. ‘There is a pulse, but it is very weak,’ she said. ‘That ambulance had better get here soon.’

Molly was lying on her back, her eyes closed, looking peaceful. Apart from a bruise on her right temple, she was just like the little Molly who had been cuddled up next to me in the car a few moments before. Her tiny chest was moving up and down at a rapid rate.

I edged closer. The lady looked up and said, ‘Can you please keep back, sir? She needs air.’

‘I’m her father,’ I said, affronted that she was trying to deny me access. Repentant, she indicated for me to come closer. ‘Perhaps you could hold her and reassure her? She’ll hear your voice and won’t be so frightened.’

I hesitated, unsure what to do, when a tall, burly chap in a greatcoat standing at the back of the group blurted, ‘How the feck did this happen? How the hell did a little girl end up down here, from way up there?’ He pointed to the flyover bridge, but continued to stare menacingly at me with piercing blue eyes. ‘Hey? So, you’re her father, yes? Then how the feck ..?’

He clenched his fist, but his wife put her arm through his and whispered, ‘Not now, darl, not the right time.’

‘It was our little game,’ I said.

‘Game?’ he said, trying to disentangle himself and approach me. I could see this was not going to end well. Suddenly I got a whiff of tobacco and realized salvation was at hand and I could create a diversion. I hate smoking, knowing what effect it has on me from the few times I tried it as a teenager in a failed endeavour to become part of the in-crowd. But desperate times require desperate measures.

I turned and spotted the smoker, a man in his sixties with a grey beard and a moustache tinged at the edges in yellow. ‘Could I have a cigarette, please?’ I said.

He produced a packet of Mayfairs and offered me one. ‘I thought you’d be a Marlboro man,’ I said, trying to make light of the moment as he struck the match.

The initial blast of nicotine was soothing but after two more puffs, I felt a surge of dizziness and vaguely remember trying to keep my balance before the lights went out.

Richie

In the car ride to the airport Tommy tried to talk to us but he was having trouble keeping up with Uncle Kev. It was funny when we hit the rubbish bin and he didn’t talk at all after that. When we got out of the car, we sat with Mammy in the gutter while Da and Uncle Kevin went to see where Molly was and afterwards a nice lady looked after us and gave us her phone to telephone Nanna Mary and tell her to please come and get us.

Da hit Tommy but I don’t think that Mammy knew that because she didn’t say anything. They took us to an ambulance and because we were so cold that our teeth were chattering a man in a green uniform put some blankets around us. I was glad when Nanna and Daideo came to get us and brought us back to their house.

We had spaghetti bol for tea.

A witness on the flyover - Margery Bourke

The traffic stopped on the flyover because of the motorbike accident four cars in front of me and didn’t look as if it would flow again for a while. So I changed from the driver’s seat, took my knitting into the back seat and began adding to the fabric, eyes wandering, taking in the scene, as it was a simple pattern.

I saw it all. A gentleman in a car about two back from the accident opened the back door and got out, leaned in and unclipped a child whom he took in his arms, kissing the top of her head as he did so. I thought it was sweet so I continued to watch.

He walked with her to the edge. I thought he was going to show her the traffic on the motorway beneath. You know how kids love to watch the cars and trucks disappear under the bridge. He stepped back and held her a little above his head and let her go catching her at the last moment. She giggled