Rachel Eos (runrachelrun) wrote in darker_london, @ 2020-02-16 23:05:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | carly malec, harley dumire, leon macarthur, rachel eos, serenity dawson |
Nothing you do can slow the rising tides (Rachel, Harley, Imogene, Carly, Leon)
Rachel scrolled through the pictures Danny had sent her of his new home, the way he'd decorated his bedroom, the cakes in the kitchen, the backyard, the cat, Deirdre making a ridiculous face at the camera, barely dressed even though it was the dead of winter. Alex was in the background of a couple of them, and Rachel stopped scrolling for a few moments to look at her. She couldn't tell if Alex looked more relaxed than before, couldn't tell what her feelings were about living in this new place just from two pictures. But god, Rachel wanted to know.
Zoe had told Rachel all about what they'd done; going to Alex's house to strip it of her stuff, make a clean break from her awful mother. Zoe hadn't hidden how proud she was of Alex, as if there was any pride to be had in a family's final death throes.
Rachel hadn't said that aloud to Zoe, of course. She didn't think Zoe would take it well.
She knew that Zoe was telling her this because she wanted to encourage Rachel to do the same thing. As if her situation was anything at all like Alex's.
It wasn't. They weren't a thing alike. There was one, glaringly obvious, massive difference that Zoe couldn't see, or was too stubborn to admit to seeing; Alex's mother had never wanted her.
Alex had told her a bit of the story when they'd gone out together, how her mother got pregnant with her after the surgeon screwed up tying her tubes, how Alex's life started in a legal battle.
Harley had always wanted Rachel. She'd always been his favourite, the youngest, the only girl. (Rachel didn't like thinking about it because her brothers were dead and it made her crazy with sadness to think her dad hadn't loved them enough when they were alive. And if she thought about it more the hurt and the anger and the injustice would pile up and drown her too.)
But she told herself it didn't matter now, now she and Harley were the only ones left. It only mattered that he loved her way more than Alex's mum had ever loved Alex. Their situations were incomparable. Rachel didn't want the last of her family to shatter like Alex clearly did.
Zoe couldn't understand why Rachel would want to hold on. Of course she couldn't. Her own family had sold her. Harley had done everything in his power to keep her.
There was one aspect, though, of staying with her father that terrified her; that Danny would leave her behind.
And as Danny moved out from his mother's house - and kept his relationship with his mother intact - Rachel felt like time was running out. It didn't feel like a crazy fear, it felt perfectly rational. Surely, Danny needed to be with someone he wasn't constantly taking care of.
After Danny had first announced he was going to move out, Rachel had spun into a panic that this really was his first step toward growing out of her. The depression haze that followed only made her powerlessness more pronounced, but then she'd talked to the journalist, given her a new hope. She'd gone out drinking with Alex, made her punch her fist into a wall. For better or worse, she'd changed things, on a night when she'd been feeling like her ability to affect anything was totally dead. And then Imogene had been so angry and so hurt that she'd told the journalist anything at all, so disappointed, and Imogene and Harley said they would fix it. Like always. Taking the power to fix anything out of her hands.
She'd spiraled for a couple of days after that, too. Overwhelmed by her inability to change anything. Overwhelmed by being constantly at the mercy of her own life, never able to charge forward and take control of it, not like Danny.
It could have gotten worse, the depression could have taken her much deeper than it did. But eventually Rachel started thinking about the things she'd done, in the past. Little bits of power she'd reclaimed. Singing to Cai in the car. Being at Danny's side in the hospital. The simple fact that every time she dyed her hair she looked less like her dark haired mother and more like herself.
Her life had put her up against unbelievable odds... but she wasn't entirely powerless.
And after a good deal of thinking, she started to work out a plan.
She knew she needed to make things right, to make Imogene happy. At first she was afraid to admit this even to herself... but perhaps the reason why she wanted Imogene's happiness so much was that if Harley and Imogene could be happy together, really, truly happy, then she could slip out and away from them, and be with Danny.
If Harley was happy, truly happy, with Imogene, maybe he wouldn't hold so tightly onto her. Maybe they could live apart, and still be family. Maybe there was a way to keep her new, precious relationship with her stepmother intact as well. Rachel didn't want to lose her; she'd lost enough family.
As days passed, the utter despair she'd first felt when Danny talked about moving out was giving way to a distant hope. Perhaps she could, after all, one day leave. Maybe she could find something useful to do with her life, something that matched the usefulness of Danny so she wouldn't be left behind. Maybe...
But if she was going to reach for that tall tower she had to start with the foundations, and that meant making sure that Harley and Imogene were both too happy with each other to leave. What was the saying, about change starting at home? That's what she needed to do, that's where her energy needed to go.
She knew Harley was working a lot of overtime, that he was called in for last minute shifts on what were supposed to be days off and that he never said no to them. She also knew that he'd bought another woman into the flat because Rachel had seen way too much of it. Harley had still never spoken about it and Rachel never asked, and wouldn't ask how many of his overtime shifts he was actually spending fucking around. She had no intention of confronting Harley about it at all because it would end in denial and anger and the risk of Imogene finding out was too high.
She could figure out who he was sleeping with herself, though. Sleuth it out like Zoe would.
Actually, Rachel wasn't planning to sleuth very hard. She was planning to steal his phone and break up with the woman over text. And once they were over, she'd suggest they all go away together, and Harley would fall back in love with Imogene and Imogene would forgive Rachel for talking to the journalist and things might actually turn out okay.
And while she waited for the opportunity, she worked on making everything else between them easier. This meant getting rid of any of the sources of tension between them. She, of course, was the biggest one, so she put more effort into staying quiet and agreeable and biddable. She got up at the same time as Imogene and took over making Harley's breakfast, she left the table early after every meal to get the dishes going. She taught herself how to cook interesting things, forcing herself to focus on instructional videos, ending up in tears more often than not when things just wouldn't go right, but the pride she felt when she did manage to cobble together something edible, and even attractive, was worth the frustrated tears.
Imogene was meticulously clean and Rachel used her standards as a guide and scrubbed at every bit of dirt in the kitchen, cleaned the windows and the walls, went through area by area and washed things she'd never thought of washing before, like cushion covers. Dug soft black mould out of the windowsills, cleaned flyspots from the ceiling. She spent a lot of time in the laundry, waiting for loads to wash then dry so that Imogene wouldn't have to, because the laundry basement of the complex always made Imogene grumpy. Mopped and scrubbed the kitchen floor. Cleaned the oven, nearly chocked on the smell of oven cleaner, then had to do the floor again because brown oven water had splashed all over it.
Harley didn't say anything about it, but then Harley had always said he never saw the mess in the first place. Imogene noticed, though. Nodded, smiled. They started meditating together again and after that Rachel got a whole lot calmer and a whole lot more determined; this would work. She was going to save this family. It was going to work.
Although she talked to Danny online every day, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him anything about her plan. Nor Zoe or Cai. There was a quiet, hopeful knot of excitement in her and she was terrified that sharing it would be like shining a torch into the shadows, as if her whole plan would vanish in the light of someone else’s observation. Especially Zoe, who was so much better at plans. If she told Zoe what she was planning and Zoe pointed out just the one flaw Rachel feared the whole thing would fall apart.
Logically she knew that plans worked better if you had other people around to critique the problems and brainstorm solutions but also... what if Zoe told her it would never work?
What if Danny got too excited that it would work?
She didn't want to think about how she'd deal with these questions so she thought, instead: who knew her family better than she did?
So she never said. And the days passed. And Rachel spent a long time watching, waiting for her chance.
One afternoon, Harley left his phone on the bench while he went to the toilet. Rachel hovered above it, her heart beating in her throat, her mind screaming at her to take the phone and run, urging her so loudly she almost did, even though she knew it would be awful. Harley knew where he'd put his phone and knew she was the only other person in the house and knew she'd stolen from him before and this wouldn't work. She closed her eyes against the urge - she'd been waiting, thinking of nothing else for days and letting this opportunity go (even as terrible an opportunity as it was) felt like she was dooming herself to stay here forever.
But she put the kettle on and made him a cup of coffee and let the chance go and waited for her next one.
The second chance came a couple of days later when Harley was in the shower, the door to his room hanging open. His phone was charging, plugged in on his side of the bed. She'd have more time - Harley had long showers - but he'd still know that she was the one who had taken it. Still... she couldn't stop herself from creeping in, and unlocking his phone using the pattern she'd watched him do so many times. Quickly, she opened his messages, hoping to find one from the girl, and delete it before he had a chance to read it. Maybe if she could do that, and find more ways to keep doing that, he'd think his other woman was losing interest.
But Rachel couldn't find her. None of the conversations on his phone hinted at anything like affairs. She scrolled back and back, her stomach getting sicker, the fear rising in her as she started to think that she had made the whole thing up, maybe there was no other woman, maybe she'd been seeing things. Did she have real proof, other than the time she'd literally walked in on them - maybe that whole affair had only ever happened in her mind?
And then she heard the shower stop, and she almost threw up. She set the phone back down exactly as she'd picked it up and hurried, on her tip toes, out of the room, throwing herself into bed where she took a long time to stop shaking.
It took another couple of days for Rachel to convince herself that she had actually seen her father having sex with the other woman. That he really was leaving for work more often than he was actually going to work. That it was not her vivid imagination or her paranoid little brain ganging up on her to make her believe the worst of him.
He was cheating, he was, she just hadn't had time to search his phone properly. She'd only looked at his texts. There were so many other messaging things he could be using to talk to her instead. She wasn't crazy, he was just clever.
So she waited, again. And waited.
And grew steadily more impatient, till the chance came that she finally took, when Harley arrived home that evening drunk and self satisfied, claiming he'd been at after work drinks.
He threw his jacket over the back of the couch and it slipped down into a leathery wet pile on the floor, but Imogene wasn't there to tell him to pick it up and Rachel wasn't about to, besides, he was off into the bathroom the next minute anyway, pulling off his shirt. Rachel had to wonder - was he showering straight away because he'd just been with her or was it innocently because it was pouring down outside, and he was soaked through and cold.
Either way, the way he moved and the grin on his face and the boozy smell of him - he was drunk, and drunk people lost their phones all the time. Rachel waited till she heard the shower and dived for his jacket, groping through the pockets and pulling out his phone with a rush of success. She had it!
Quickly she rearranged the jacket exactly as it had fallen - not that he'd even looked at it fall, not that he'd ever know - and took it into her room and closed the room.
Rachel’s nerves fizzed as she curled her fingers around the phone, wasting no time in zig zagging her finger across the screen in the pattern she’d watched him do so many times.
The phone buzzed angrily in her hand, and her eyes widened a little in alarm. Slower, she tried again, taking more care to get it exactly right, but the phone buzzed in denial exactly the same way.
Had he changed it since this morning? Did he know she was watching him? Was he watching her now? Rachel shot her eyes around the room but she was still alone. She stared at the phone in her hand, as if staring could make it give up its secrets and – it worked.
There was a small, hairline crack in the screen protector of her father’s phone, coming in from the top right corner. There was no such crack on this phone. Two phones. Of course he had two identical phones. Rachel felt stupid for not considering this earlier – she should have! After all, she’d had two phones through her last year of school, so she could still talk to her friends when Harley confiscated her main phone. But shit, now what? Rachel had no way into this phone. She tried another pattern, Harley’s one, mirrored, and the phone buzzed back, as irritated as before.
There had to be some way into it. Rachel pulled out her own phone and googledhow to unlock a locked phone and read through pages of forums, and opened new tabs to explain the technical bits she didn’t understand, and didn’t notice anything wrong till a dawning sense of warning pricked at her skin and she raised her hand to see Imogene watching her, standing in her doorway. Panic hit and she bit back the urge to demand when did you get home as if Imogene was the one in the wrong, when really it was her own fault - she'd been the one who recently greased all the squeaky hinges in the house because they'd been bothering Imogene.
Idiot idiot idiot idiot.
“What are you doing, Rachel?” Rachel unfroze, and smiled– hey, good to see you – and said “Just fiddling with my new phone.”
It was the only thing she could think of to say – if she’d tried to hide Harley’s phone it would have been too obvious, Imogene had already seen her.
Imogene did not look like she believed her.
“Where did you get that?”
“Zoe bought it online, it was delivered this morning. I think it was like a one day special or something?”
“Let me see?”
Rachel really, really did not want to, but still, extended her arm and held out the phone. Trying to pass off the lie seemed the safest course of action.
“It’s the same as your father’s,” Imogene commented, raising an eyebrow at her.
“Yeah, weird,” Rachel shrugged with one shoulder, still smiling.
Imogene looked down at her for a moment, before passing the phone back. “Unlock it?” she asked.
She knows Rachel thought, her stomach freezing. “I’m still working that out,” Rachel said. “New phones, right?”
“Mm,” said Imogene, and Rachel went shitshitshit. “Maybe your father can help, he’ll know this phone. Harley?” she called, and all of Rachel’s stomach relocated into her throat. “Zoe bought Rachel a new phone, come and see it.”
"In a minute," Harley shouted through the bathroom door.
"Now, Harley."
"Fuck's sake," Harley said, loud enough to make his displeasure known. Imogene crossed her arms and looked at Rachel as she waited for Harley to join them.
Harley stomped into the room, shower wet and already frowning. "Fucking hell, can't a man have a minute to himself around here," he grumbled, but his face changed entirely when he saw the phone Rachel was holding. “Give me that,” he said, immediately striding over to snatch it out of her hand. He hit the button on the side and his lock screen illuminated, proving it was his, proving she’d fucking stolen it and fuckinglied. “You little thief,” he growled at her. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“Your phone is charging in our bedroom,” Imogene said, turning her body so she stood between them, facing them both.
“No it’s not,” Harley said, holding up his phone like she was an idiot.
“Your phone,” Imogene repeated, “is charging in our bedroom. Whose phone is in your hand, Harley?”
“What? Oh –yeah. This phone’s for work.”
“Is it,” Imogene said, another cool statement. “Unlock it for me.”
“Nah, fuckoff,” Harley said, pushing the phone into his pocket. “It’s just work shit.”
“All your work messages still come through your other phone." She had a way of phrasing things, Imogene did. Statements that were not exactly questions, statements that demanded a response. It was something in her eyes, the sharpness of her stare.
“This one’s new.”
“It’s exactly the same.”
“So? Jesus, woman, what’s your fucking problem?" He met eyes with Rachel and rolled his, as if he'd forgotten Rachel was the one he was angry at as he looked for an ally to help him belittle his wife. When Rachel offered nothing of the kind - she was still frozen, trying to assess the fastest way out of this situation, he glared at her too.
“Unlock it for me,” Imogene said, again. Rachel felt herself inching back, away from the relentless look in her eyes and the growing anger in Harley’s. This was going to end badly. She opened her mouth to say something to fix it – but Imogene moved before she could, grabbing Harley’s wrist in an iron tight grip and removing the phone from his pocket.
To a background soundtrack of increasingly loud swearing they struggled, the fight spilling backwards out of Rachel's room, as Imogene manhandled his fingers open and pressed his thumb print against the screen. The phone opened, and Imogene pulled herself away from him so she could read the phone.
Harley lunged toward her to grab it back, but Imogene straightened her arm so quickly the heel of her hand hit him in the chest and shoved him backwards. He stumbled back toward the kitchen bench, and though he didn’t fall, he didn’t lunge again, in shock from the sudden strength of her. His chest ached like she'd hit him with a baseball bat.
For a moment, everything was still. Rachel, in her doorway, kept her eyes firmly on Harley, on the way his breath made his whole body bigger - then smaller. Each time with each breath it seemed like he grew, or the danger grew, and Imogene was just standing there, her thumb slowly scrolling up through his messages.
Harley snapped so suddenly that Rachel screamed, and bolted for the front door as Harley grabbed the glass pasta dish from the bench and hurled it straight at Imogene. It hit her in her shoulder, and smashed as it hit the ground, their untouched dinner exploding over the freshly scrubbed linoleum. Harley roared something and swept the entire drying rack of the bench, dishes crashed at Imogene's feet, cutlery clattering across the floor with the pasta leaving red tomato trails like streaks of fresh blood. Rachel ducked behind the couch to hide, the sound of his anger narrowing her vision to a single point and narrowing her options into running or hiding, and she was terrified that if she tried to run he'd catch her and drag her back in by her hair.
Harley lurched toward Imogene over the dishes he'd broken, but before could reach her and do the same to her face, Imogene reached out and grabbed him, and once again, everything went still.
The wave of calm Imogene threw at him stopped him short, and for a moment there was nothing but confusion on his face before it was replaced with a gentle smile, his eyes half closed. Rachel watched in shock from behind the couch as Imogene walked him backwards and sat him down at the little table, and Harley sighed into it like he was sinking into an armchair at the end of a very long day.
"That's better," Imogene said, her voice a little unsteady. She did not sit down. Harley did not move except to close his eyes and lean luxuriously back. Rachel looked at them then cast her eyes toward the door... she could run. Whatever Imogene had done to Harley terrified her, even though it had stopped Harley being terrifying. Some angel thing, she thought, but did not know what to do with this thought.
She didn't run, though. She stayed exactly where she was and tried to become invisible.
Imogene’s rage was a clear, precise creature. Her manicured nails curled around Harley’s phone, but not so tight that her muscles even clenched. Just enough to hold the phone steady as she zoomed in, using the fingers of her opposite hand, on the picture of the young woman on Harley’s screen.
The pictures. The videos. The intimate messages of longing.
Slowly, Imogene scrolled up through the conversation – and it had been a conversation with her husband. The images were not one sided, nor were the words. Crude, cheap words for a crude, cheap whore.
For their crude, cheap marriage.
She'd known Harley was weak. Duplicitous. Unfaithful. Manipulative. That was the whole point of him. When they were together, she made him better; that was the point of her. Better diet, better manners, better job, better house. She'd saved him from poverty and he was supposed to be grateful. She'd saved him from a crazy daughter and he was supposed to be grateful.
But despite all of it he was still fucking this tramp.
"Imogene?" Rachel's voice turned her head. The girl was slowly emerging from behind the couch, a look on her face of determination and fear. "Please don't hate him."
"You knew about this?" Imogene turned the phone screen toward her, an image of the girl with her hand raking through her thick dark hair, her teeth gently biting her lip.
Rachel faltered. Imogene's questions to Harley had not been real questions, and though this was phrased like one, it wasn't a question either. Imogene knew that Rachel knew. "I was trying to stop it, I swear," Rachel said. "He doesn't understand what he's risking."
Her heart was pounding in her throat. She'd thought the only way to save her family from what Harley had done was to stay silent about it, but now that Imogene knew it just made Rachel look complicit, and that thought horrified her, that she would bear Harley's sins. That Imogene's hurt would be taken out of them both.
"You said nothing to me," Imogene said, and Rachel's face crumbled in regret.
"I'm sorry - I didn't know what to do - I was trying to help-" Imogene shook her head sharply and Rachel shut up. Last time she'd tried to help she'd just made everything worse, too. "What are you going to do?" Rachel whispered. "Are you going to leave us?"
Leave? Thought Imogene. Walk away, without retribution? Imogene respected herself too much to ever do something as simple as walk away. She had been hurt, and justice must be done.
Rachel was begging: "Please, please don't, please stay, he's sorry, he didn't mean it, he made a mistake but you're the best thing to ever happen to him and I'll talk to him, I'll make him see, he didn't know what he was doing, please, Imogene, please don't leave us, please, please," she clutched at her sleeve and Imogene looked down at her, her features dark with anger. Rachel felt herself wither. She should have talked to her father before this, should have told him to break it off with the girl, should have reminded him what he was risking, that he loved Imogene, that they needed her. Why hadn't she done something?! And now Imogene was going to leave them and Rachel didn't know how they'd survive.
"Rachel," said Imogene clearly. "I am going to take your father for a drive so we can talk. You are to stay here and calm down. Do you understand?"
"Will you come back?"
"If you do what I say. Wipe your tears from your face," Imogene said, and Rachel did, frantically. "Calm down," said Imogene, and Rachel tried to do that too, with a deep breath, trying to flatten out her features, drop her shoulders. She could be calm, prove to Imogene that she could be good, so that Imogene wouldn't leave. "Clean this place up while we're out." Those was Imogene's parting words, as she turned around, took Harley by the hand, and led him out of the door.
He followed, like a sleepwalker, a dumb smile on his face. Rachel waited till they were well out of earshot before she kicked the couch, screamed, and burst into shaking tears.
Imogene took Harley down to the car, told him to sit still and be quiet as she kept her focus on sending wave after wave of weaponised calm. Indigo had been strong enough to break out of this, but Imogene had been practicing on Rachel since then, and besides, Harley was much weaker than her daughter.
So weak and he'd still managed to do so much damage. Imogene's dignity was in ruins.
She turned the engine on so warm air would start filling the car, and turned her eyes back to the phone. She tapped one of the images, brought up the details, scrolled down to location, and entered the address into her own phone. A bar. She tried the next: another bar.
The third image had been sent from an address in Highgate. So had the sixth and seventh and tenth.
Not just any address in Highgate.
Imogene's cousin's house in Highgate.
This felt like Razvan spitting on the shattered remains of her dignity. Was he behind this? Some cruel family tactic to ruin her marriage and her life? Razvan had seemed too removed from old family drama to do something like that but Imogene realised now how much of a lie that was. You could never escape being a Dumitra.
Imogene's hands shook, incandescent with rage, as she started to drive. She was going to rip Razvan apart. Rip this girl apart. Rip Harley apart.
So the front door of the Dumitra mansion never even stood a chance.