Sophia's Dilemma Read online

  “No. No hospital and no cops.”

  Edgar shrugged. “Fine. We’ve got some strong pain killers in the bathroom cupboard.” The older man left the room and Sophia heard his socks padding down the hall carpet towards the family bathroom.

  Dane stayed still, staring through the window towards the Hakarimata Ranges in the far distance and pressing the cold pack to his bruises through the shirt. His face was a grimace of pain. The hiss of silence assailed Sophia’s ears painfully. She couldn’t stand it. Getting up slowly, she walked across to Dane, hesitating slightly before facing him and pressing herself into his chest. She heard his lips part with a small ‘tut’ sound as his ribs compressed, but he put one arm firmly around her and caressed her hair with a shaking hand. “I’m sorry for how I behaved,” Sophia whispered. She put both arms around his waist, feeling the cold pack through his shirt as she pushed her nose into his armpit, needing to hide from everything. The leering face of Dane’s stepdad seemed to occupy her inner vision and his vicious manhandling left emotional welts on her soul, as well as the physical marks. “I was so scared,” she breathed into the fabric of his shirt and Dane shifted his arm to pull her closer, grunting from the movement.

  “I know,” he whispered. “Believe me, I know.”

  Sophia wanted to talk about the nastiness in Dane’s mother’s eyes as she demanded cash in return for safe passage out of the house. But she couldn’t, not to the woman’s son. “I was so stupid,” she sniffed. “I should have left it to you to sort out. And I should never have pushed you away when all you tried to do was help. I despair of myself. I’m a crap daughter and a rubbish girlfriend. How can you ever forgive me?” Sophia felt her tears soak into Dane’s shirt, her heart feeling leaden and guilty.

  “Let’s put it behind us, hey?” Dane stroked her hair one-handed, kissing the top of her forehead. “It’s ok, Soph. Of course, I forgive you.”

  His generosity made the girl feel even guiltier and by the time Edgar returned from turning out the contents of the bathroom cupboard onto the floor, Sophia was inconsolable. She looked hot and bothered, her hair wet from her sweaty, unattractive crying and her dark ponytail had worked itself loose from its bobble.

  “Enough now. Leave the boy alone,” Edgar snapped at her, still cross as he sent the tablets skittering over the work surface by accident. Searching for another glass, his hand closed around the whisky bottle and he poured Dane a huge slug into his tumbler and pressed it into the boy’s fingers. “Let him go for a minute.” Edgar peeled Sophia off her boyfriend while Dane drained the glass with the tablets and visibly cringed, shaking his head as the fire burned all the way down to his stomach. It made him want to retch and his fingers clenched so hard around the glass, Edgar reached out to take it from him. He laughed. “It burns I know. But it will cauterise anything amiss inside for sure. And dull the pain. Works for me anyway!”

  Dane smirked and put his free hand over the cut on his lip, the alcohol searing the wound and making it sting. The potion worked quickly, numbing the areas it touched and the young man bent double and laid his forearms on the work surface as his head sagged further. Sophia watched in fear, the residual guilt over leaving Dane in the hallway rising to the surface again and overwhelming her.

  “I was going back for him,” she sniffed into her father’s sweatshirt. “I knew he wouldn’t want the cops and I couldn’t get you, so I ran back to get him.”

  “Well if you weren’t there in the first place, you wouldn’t have needed to.” Edgar let go of his daughter to help Dane over to the sofa, where he slumped into a curled position over the gap between the cushions. It looked dreadfully uncomfortable. Increasingly worried, Sophia knelt down next to him and rubbed her hand over his bent spine, frightened by the pain radiating from his face. “We should call the cops now though,” she suggested, looking up at her father in search of justice. “In case they come after him.”

  To her chagrin, Edgar laughed openly at her, drowning out Dane’s groan. “Oh, what a good idea, Soph,” he said sarcastically. “Let’s call the cops and tell them you entered a home in order to take something which didn’t belong to you and were forcibly detained by the occupants. Then your boyfriend also broke in and assaulted the male of the house, who turned on him in self-defence and beat him up. For goodness sake, Soph, haven’t you lived long enough with a defence lawyer to know how it works? A couple of hours later doesn’t make the story change.”

  Sophia looked contrite at the mention of her mother and Edgar wandered off to his bedroom at the other end of the house, leaving them on their own. Dane shut his eyes, waiting for the pain to subside and Sophia stayed on her knees next to him, feeling the familiar tingling and ache as the blood drained out of them. She laid her face against his thigh and dripped sorry tears onto him, feeling the beat of his pulse through the soft skin of her cheek.

  Waking up with the side of her nose pressed against the rough fabric of Dane’s jeans, Sophia was aware of a dreadful throbbing in her knees. She had tipped forwards so her face was mashed against his thigh and her legs were asleep underneath her. It was excruciating. She gasped as she tipped onto her side and the pooled blood began to pump reluctantly. The numbness was quickly replaced by the awful tingling and then came the agonising ache. Sophia’s brain was confused about whether they were her legs or not and she sincerely wished they weren’t as they regained feeling.

  Voices came from outside in the hallway and as Sophia rubbed at her legs, she heard her father raise his voice in anger. Footsteps, followed by the hall door slamming and then the voices came closer, echoing down the hallway. “You can’t do this!” Edgar was shouting.

  “Oh no, not Mum,” Sophia hissed and held her breath. The door into the family room opened with a crash and Sophia was astounded to see three burly policemen and an equally solid policewoman enter the space. Edgar was right behind them and pushed through their dense bodies towards his daughter. Sophia’s eyes were wide and questioning and her father shrugged and shook his head as he crouched down next to her. “It’s ok, love. It’s all gonna be ok.”

  The cops looked at each other before one of them unhooked the handcuffs from his belt and the others braced themselves. Edgar raised his hand to stop their progress and leaned over Dane, trying to shake him awake. “Dane, mate, these guys need a word with you.” He pointed at the cop with the clanking handcuffs. “He’s just a kid. Play nice!”

  The teenager groaned as he surfaced from the foggy slumber of constant pain, moving onto his back and crying out. Edgar pushed Dane’s hair back from his forehead, finding it damp and sweaty. He shook his head at the cops. “This isn’t good. I think he needs to go to the emergency room.” He told the woman police officer to flick the light switch next to her and the room bloomed into instant brightness. Sophia shielded her eyes and stared at her boyfriend who was prone on the sofa, a sickly grey colour. Edgar couldn’t seem to rouse him and when he carefully pulled his shirt up to retrieve the ice pack, the bruising across his chest and stomach was livid and purple. One of the cops swore loudly and spoke into a small radio on the front of his vest, summoning an ambulance.

  The feeling came into Sophia’s legs enough for her to kneel up next to Dane and stroke his hair back from his forehead. She kissed his hot, stubbly cheek and whispered, “I’m sorry,” into his ear, hoping he could hear and understand her. “I will never think I know better than you again.”

  Edgar raised his eyebrows and tried to suppress the unkind thought which ran unbidden through his brain. Sophia was determined and relentless, just like his wife. The day either of them allowed their men to know better, would be the day Hell froze over and hosted the winter Olympics. He sighed and thought fleetingly of his beautiful wife, choosing to ignore a different man’s advice now, instead of his. The cop put the handcuffs back onto his belt. Unless the teenager was a particularly gifted actor, he seriously wasn’t going anywhere.

  The ambulance was swift and the two paramedics efficient and gentle. Dane was
transferred from the sofa to a stretcher with very little fuss. “I know it hurts, mate,” one of them soothed as Dane let out a yelp of pain. “We’ll get you sorted out soon.”

  The other paramedic fired a series of questions at Edgar who cringed, colour rising into his dark cheeks. He was forced to admit he gave the sixteen-year-old some prescription drugs belonging to someone else and a decent slug of whiskey, looking extremely guilty and apologetic. “I didn’t know he was that bad. I was just trying to help.”

  Sophia took the opportunity to glare at her father and give him a sanctimonious smile, feeling ashamed as she capitalised on Dane’s injuries. She held her boyfriend’s limp fingers until moved out of the way while a line was inserted into a vein on top of his hand. The bruises on his face and torso were examined and explained away loosely. Edgar pointed out the wound on the back of the boy’s head. “He said he was hit with something sharp and heavy. I’m not very good at first aid. I’m a car salesman...”

  “Any slurring of speech or unsteadiness on his feet?” The paramedic glanced up and waited for Edgar to answer.

  “Yes. Damn! I wanted to take him to the hospital but he wouldn’t go. Geez, I’m sorry.” Edgar shook his head and ran his hands through his hair.

  Edgar was allowed to travel in the ambulance with Dane, volunteering himself as a temporary next-of-kin for the boy, who fell just weeks inside the protective youth offenders’ legislation, but Sophia was forced to remain at the house with the woman officer and one of the men. One cop went in the ambulance to the hospital and the other drove the cop car to meet him there.

  As the blue and red strobe lights of the emergency vehicles took off down the main road, Sophia dissolved into tears, surprised when the female officer came up behind her and put her arm round her shoulders. “Come on, love. Sit down.” She guided the girl to sit on the sofa Dane had just vacated and Sophia felt the warmth from his body still radiating off the cushions. She stroked it with the palm of her hand, feeling traumatised.

  “Is there anyone we can get to sit with you?” the officer asked gently and Sophia shook her head. There was no one. How sad.

  “Why did you come?” Sophia asked suddenly, wondering why the police unexpectedly turned up at her home. The officers looked at one another fleetingly and Sophia caught the look passing between them. It made her panic. “What is it? Did Dane’s mum call you? We didn’t break and enter. She opened the door to me and then...”

  The male officer handed Sophia a hot drink of tea, more sugary than she liked. Her ponytail flopped forward and he saw the garish nail marks on the back of her neck. He indicated something to the woman with a jerk of his head and she moved, leaning back for a moment to view the spectacle for herself. “You’re not in trouble,” she crooned, soothing and lulling Sophia with the tone of her voice. “We just need to know what happened earlier today.”

  The other police officer leaned on the countertop over by the fridge, jotting something down in his notebook as Sophia thought about what she should and shouldn’t say. Her mother was a defence lawyer and a very successful one. On the day she mysteriously walked out of her husband and children’s lives, she also quit her job, going into partnership with the new man in her life. Edgar rang her old office countless times anonymously without success over the two-month period, hearing only, “I’m sorry, Sir, she’s not here.” On one inspired afternoon a few weeks ago, he admitted he was her husband and got her new phone number.

  His wife of twenty-two years had returned to her maiden name of Simpson and hadn’t expected her estranged husband to be on the other end of the line. Sally Armitage was one of the best defence lawyers in town and would undoubtedly advise her daughter to say nothing right then. Sophia felt the sting of vulnerability and grew silent, afraid she might say something unhelpful for Dane. It unnerved her how the police just turned up at her house. Certainly Edgar hadn’t wanted to let them in - that much was evident from his raised voice on the stairs, but Sophia had seen the handcuffs come out of their holster, clearly intended for Dane.

  “I think I would like someone actually,” she said, causing the policewoman to raise her eyebrows and look at the man. “Please can you get my Uncle Bob?”

  The cops were obliging and kind, allowing Sophia to find the family address book and show the male cop the number to dial. He called it into the control room and they radioed him back in his earpiece a few minutes later. They were much less kind and obliging when the cop turned and informed the room in general that Uncle Bob was on his way. “He said he’d be a few minutes.”

  In fact, the atmosphere turned positively frosty, despite the balmy evening air. Robert Robertson, or Uncle Bob to Sophia and her brother, was a tall and imposing man of around fifty years old. He arrived wearing jean-shorts and sandals and a tee-shirt from Promise Keeper’s which announced, ‘I love my wife,’ much to the amusement of the male cop who opened the door to him. “Nice tee,” he smirked and Uncle Bob smiled jovially back.

  “Well, she’s a good woman,” he responded, offering up the familiar smile which wiped the smug expression clean off the cop’s face. Usually, Robert Robertson dressed in an expensively dark three piece suit and matching tie, complete with fob watch and chain. He would remove the fob from his waistcoat pocket and look at it with disdain in the courtroom, usually as he ripped and shredded the credibility of some unlucky police officer giving evidence for the prosecution. It was a sign of feigned boredom and accompanied by that particular smile, caused them to stammer and stutter and destroy their own testimony. In the courtroom, Robert Roberts was feared, but in the fading light of a March evening, he looked positively cuddly.

  He ran up the front steps two at a time, maximising his perfect right to be there and blew down the hallway like a flaming backdraught, seizing his slender goddaughter in two very strong, tanned arms. Sophia seemed to sink into him, enjoying the cossetting and protection she knew he would offer. Despite his reputation as a bear in the courtroom, privately he did sympathy extremely well. “I’d like to see my client alone, thank you.” His smile was impeccably polite.

  The cops were unhappy, maintaining Sophia was neither under arrest nor wanted for questioning. They just required her to fill in some blanks about the incident in Fairview earlier that day and make a witness statement. Uncle Bob smiled nicely. And refused. Then he led Sophia gently by the arm into the living room near Edgar’s bedroom and shut the door behind them.

  “Firstly,” he said in a low voice, “it’s a dreadful shame about your mother. It took me and Ellen by complete surprise and we’re both very sorry about what she’s done.” He smiled benevolently at the girl in front of him, seeing how beautiful she had become in her teens and sadly, how like her treacherous mother she looked nowadays with her dark hair and eyes, framed by the pale English skin tones. “I’ve known Edgar and Sally since they first came to Hamilton and I gave Sal her first break as a graduate lawyer. She’s worked for me for twenty years on and off, in between having you and Matt. I honestly thought we were friends.”

  “I don’t think it was personal,” Sophia offered, rubbing her eyes with trembling fingers. “She dumped us all, not just you.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. I had no idea your father kept ringing the office, or that he reported the confounded woman missing to the police. I wrongly assumed you all knew and were just licking your wounds...” his voice trailed off, not wanting to admit how the whole of the Waikato law scene were agog with gossip about it. “I should have got in touch. I’ve been a rotten friend.” Sal had not attended a trial since, but Bob was aware the day was looming.

  “Now,” he said, sitting next to Sophia and keeping his tone soft so the eavesdropping policeman outside the door couldn’t hear him. “What can I do for you, my dear? How can I be of assistance?”

  “I can pay you,” Sophia said softly, “I’ve got money in my bank.”

  Bob waved the notion away loftily and in some mock horror, before encouraging the girl to tell him everything that happened, b
eginning at the conversation regarding the scholarship. When Sophia was finished with her retelling, she looked exhausted and Bob slumped back in his seat on the tasteful cream leather sofa. He chewed on his lip and then picked up the girl’s hand, removing it from her lap where it twisted the plaid school skirt until it became a damp, crumpled mess of blue and yellow stripes.

  “I made some calls on the way here and pulled in some favours. It seems your young man’s stepfather was murdered earlier this evening. A description of you two was given to police as well as Mr McArdle’s registration number. The officers have been searching for him ever since. They just struck lucky with the vehicle parked on your driveway. That’s how they’ve ended up here.”

  Sophia clapped her hand over her mouth in shock and took a huge breath inwards. It was far too big to handle and locked her chest up completely, making her panic as she could breathe in, but not out. Uncle Bob put his hand over her mouth and instructed her quietly to breathe through her nose slowly, in and out, in and out. In the absence of a paper bag, it was all he could think of. He was aware of the ticking clock and growing impatience of the two officers outside the room. “Focus, Sophia,” he insisted, pulling her back to reality. “Did this young man kill his stepfather?”

  “No!” she stressed in a forced whisper. “He did hit him, but only so I could get away. Then he came after me. He said his stepdad and the other man laid into him. They beat him to a pulp. A dead man couldn’t have done that, could he?” Sophia took another deep breath, her chest feeling clearer, but the image of Dane comatose on the stretcher caught her up and she barely suppressed a sob. “He’s gone to the hospital. Dad couldn’t wake him up, Uncle Bob. He’s so sick. He didn’t deserve any of this. It’s just not fair! It’s all my fault and Dad hates me.”