CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

SPENCER POV

“All set?” I ask, and then I see the defeat in Violet's eyes.

She shakes her head, buckling herself into her seat with shaky fingers. Her voice comes out so weak, barely more than a whisper.

“Maggie Connor doesn’t have my things. Not any of them. She left them in the club.”

“In the club?” I pull out my phone. “What was the name of the place? I’ll call them for lost property.”

Her dainty fingers reach out and land on my wrist, so gently. “There’s no point…” she says. “She left them on the table… with some guys… when I was in the bathroom…”

My expression must speak volumes because her eyes widen as she continues. “She was drunk. She doesn’t mean it. Maggie Connor is just…”

“Maggie Connor is a selfish fool,” I say. “And you’re so much better than friends like her, Violet.”

She doesn’t look like she believes me. Her eyes are sad and glassy, her cheeks pale. I put the car in gear, and reversed out onto the street. “We’ll go to yours,” I say. “See what we can do.”

“There may be a window open… upstairs… I may be able to climb through…”

There isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to be letting her shimmy up some drainpipe, but I don’t say that. Not yet.

Her estate leaves a lot to be desired. It’s tired and cramped, with overgrown gardens and battered old cars in the street. Hers is a little white mid-terrace. The garden is neat but barren. The front door has chipped red paint, and as soon as I pull the car onto her driveway it’s clear she won’t need to be looking for an open window. The front door is already open, just enough to see into the dark hallway beyond.

Violet is out of the car in a flash, but I reach her before she makes it across the garden. I grip her elbow, pull her back to my side.

“Wait,” I say, and my voice comes out harsher than I intend it to. “I’ll go first.”

I take a step forward, and as I nudge the door open I hear Violet pained gasp behind me.

The place is a hovel. Nothing but a wasteland of empty beer cans and trash. There are fish and chips scattered all over the floor, a smear of tomato ketchup on the wall.

“Oh my God,” she cries. “What the…”

I step on through to the living room, and it’s in a worse state than the hallway. I find her keys on the cigarette-littered coffee table, and there’s her ID, too. Violet's sweet face stares out from her college card, and there’s everything they needed right there. Her address in plain lettering.

There’s no sign of her phone or her money, of course.,

Violet busies herself around me, picking up empty bottles and cans through sniffles of pain, but it’s a thankless task. The assholes have clearly had a rare old time, no doubt thrilled at the hedonistic destruction of Violet’s home.

She wipes her sniffles on her cardigan sleeve. “You can leave, Spencer. Please leave. This is disgusting. Horrible… You don’t need to be here…”

She clears another chip paper and underneath is a filthy used rubber. It stained the fabric sofa underneath with a grotesque white smear.

I pull out my phone and dial the police, tell Violet exactly what I’m doing, but she shakes her head.

“What can the police do? They had a key! This is all my own fault! I should never have left Maggie Connor with my stuff…”

Her self-recrimination shocks me enough to cancel the call. “This is not your fault, Violet. Some dregs of society did this, some losers with no moral fibre, who exist just to wreck everything around them. They did this. Helped by your very considerate friend.”

“But still, I should’ve known better! I should’ve known!”

“Don’t touch that,” I say as she tries to pick up the rubber in some greasy paper. “Don’t touch anything. Not a single thing, Violet.”

“But I have to…” she says. “I have to clean up!”

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t have to do a thing around this shithole.

“I mean it,” I tell her. “Don’t touch anything.”

She stops moving, gives me a little nod.

“Wait right here.”

She doesn’t follow me as I survey the rest of the house, and I’m glad, because the place is completely destroyed.

The kitchen bore the worst of it, or so it appears until I reach the landing and see Violet’s open bedroom door at the far end.

Her room is plain magnolia with some of the paint chipped away, just like the rest of the place. Her bed is an old wooden thing, just a single, and her carpet is threadbare in places. What you can see of it, anyway.

It pains me to see how they’ve rampaged through her wardrobe, pains me further to find another used rubber in her bedsheets. They’ve taken her makeup and used it to scrawl obscenities over her dressing table mirror. The rest is trampled into the carpet. I pull a sweet white dress from her wastepaper basket, and it’s been shredded, ripped almost clean in two. The rest of her clothes haven’t fared much better, and my breath catches in my throat to see her torn knickers, cast from her chest of drawers and soiled in ways I don’t even want to consider.

I hear her footsteps on the stairs, but I’m too late to stop her. She wails as she sees the carnage.

I grab for her as she launches herself towards the bed, but I’m not quick enough. She doesn’t even see the grimy rubber, she’s too focused on what’s beyond.

And then I see it, too. A tattered bear, stuffing hanging from its dismembered limbs. She wrestles with her bedcovers until she finds its head, and she really does cry then, holding its broken pieces to her chest as she rocks back and forth.

I could kill the fuckers who did this to her.

She flinches when I lay a hand on her shoulder, and her words are broken. Choked.

“It’s Ben,” she sobs. “I’ve had him since I was a baby… I love him…”

“Shh,” I say, and it’s the most natural thing in the world to pull her into my arms. “I’ll fix him, Violet.”

Her delicate arms wrap around my waist, and she buries her face against my shirt. “Why did they do this? Why did they do this to Ben?”

“Because they’re assholes who don’t have anything better to do with their poxy lives.”

Her sniffles are so sad. “I’m… I’m so glad you’re here… thank you…”

And I know this is it. I’m done for.

Her words are muffled against my chest. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Mum… she’s going to be so mad…”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” I say. I take her cheeks and tilt her head up to mine, and her watery eyes are so beautiful. “Let’s go now.”

“Go where?”

“Home,” I say simply. “Home to mine.”

“But I can’t… I have to stay… I have to fix this…”

I brush her tears away with my thumbs.

“You don’t have to fix anything, Violet,” I tell her. “Not anymore.”