“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I wiggled my fingers. “Love you.”
“Love you too, kid.”
I left the hospital with the strap of my bag on my shoulder and my hands shoved into the pockets of my coat. When I left the building, I yawned and headed in the direction of my car. I was practically dragging my feet along the ground when I heard a voice ahead of me. I looked up to the person who was shoving his phone into his pocket and cursing to himself. The voice was familiar and as I drew closer to the man, I practically felt bile rise up my throat like it always did whenever I was unlucky enough to cross paths with this vile human being. I hoped that he wouldn’t notice me, but I didn’t have such luck.
“Frankie Fulton.” He sneered when he looked up. “What’re you doing here?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, Owen, but I was visiting my mum.”
I moved right on by Owen Day without stopping and I could tell he had turned direction and followed me towards my car without having to look back and check. I could feel his presence, it made me very uncomfortable.
“I’ll be havin’ a word with ya, Frankie.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I told you at Christmas that you’re barred from the diner,” I said to the man whose face I hated as much as his blackened heart. “I’ve nothing to say to you now any more than I did that day. I’m not lifting the ban after how you spoke to me.”
“I don’t care about the bastard diner,” Owen griped. “I heard he’s back.”
I stopped as I reached the boot of the car and turned to face the tall, balding, overweight cruel menace behind me. He had his keys in his hand and on that set of keys was a black pocket knife that I knew had left the long, jagged scar on Risk’s back. Owen had slashed him when he was fifteen for answering back, Risk had told me. I hated him for it.
“He is.” I flexed my fingers. “You know he won’t want to see you though.”
“That wee bastard owes me,” Owen sneered, his Scottish brogue thickening as his anger grew. “He lived under my roof for thirteen years.”
I couldn’t believe his audacity.
“He owes you nothing!” I snapped. “He was a cheap way to earn some extra money for you and Freda and you know it. You made his life miserable, you beat him and—”
“The last time ye accused me of beatin’ that lad, I wasnae happy.”
The memory of him grabbing my forearm hard enough to bruise me was never far from my mind. It was a few years ago and he had started an argument, similar to this one, in the car park of Tesco and it resulted in him hurting my arm.
I swallowed. “I’m not scared of you, Owen.”
“Says the tremblin’ wee lass.”
Damn him, but I was shaking before him. I hated that.
“Owen, it’s late.” I adjusted the strap of my bag. “I’ve had a long day. Please move, I want to go home.”
“Tell him to come and see me,” he stepped forward. “He was always a sap for you. He’ll listen to ye.”
“He was never a sap for me,” I bit back. “And even if he would listen to me, which he wouldn’t, I would never tell him to go and see you because you’re an abusive waste of space who made his life hell!”
I didn’t register Owen moving his arm until his fist connected with my face and sent me sprawling back onto the ground. I couldn’t even scream, I was too shocked to do anything other than lie back on the ground and put my hand over my throbbing face. Owen stood over me and I hated that I cowered beneath him, but I was worried that he was going to hit me again.
“Get . . . Get away from me!”
He took a step back then another.
“Tell that lad t’come and see me,” Owen said, shaking out his hand. “I mean it, Frankie.”
He turned and stormed towards the hospice’s entrance. I had heard one of his friends was dying of cancer and was a patient at the hospice; that was likely to be who he was visiting. It didn’t surprise me that he was heading inside as the staff were getting the patients settled in for the night; he did what he wanted. He always had. I got to my feet and before he changed his mind and decided to come back, I hurriedly got into my car, backed out of my space and drove out of the darkened car park. I didn’t realise that I was crying until I was on the main road.
My face was on fire, it hurt so badly.
I kept touching my cheek and eye to make sure there was no blood to indicate that Owen had cut me. I found nothing, which was a relief, but only just. I could see perfectly okay out of my right eye, but my cheek bone under it felt massively swollen. The throbbing hurt so much worse than I ever thought being punched would. I found myself thinking of Risk, about how he had experienced this pain at Owen’s hand when he was only a kid, and it made me cry harder. I made it home and into my cottage, where I grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, wrapped it in a tea-towel and placed it against my face.