The Puppet Master Read online

  When Adam was younger, he used to try and become close with his father, he thought it was what his mother would have wanted. But nothing that he attempted had worked. He tried to find things in common that they could talk about, but his dad lost all interest in the world when his mum left it. More importantly, he lost any desire for his relationship with his son. Adam remembered when he had found a stash of car magazines in the corner of his parent’s room. Excitement ran through him as he realised this could be the thing to get his dad to talk to him. He had spent ages reading up on cars, the makes and models, and how the mechanics worked. He recalled vividly how he waited until his father was at his most calm, after his first drink of the evening, and he went in and tried to have a conversation about what his father’s favourite car was. Adam gave his pre-prepared speech on what his favourite car was and anxiously waited for his father’s reply. The silence dragged on, his father was staring into the can of beer he’d just opened. “Dad, are you listening?” At his question, his dad blinked hard and turned to look at Adam.

  “Will you shut up yapping in my ear? Don’t you get it? It should have been you!” He threw the can of beer and it hit Adam on the head. It didn’t really hurt but the shock took his breath away. The beer sloshed over him. His father got up and grabbed his keys off the hook by the door. He didn’t even look back when he said he was going to the pub. That was the last time that he tried to connect with his dad. The look in his eyes when he said those cutting words made his stomach turn to ice. Though he didn’t say it explicitly, there was no doubt that he meant that Adam should have died instead of his mum. From that day on Adam felt a staggering guilt that he knew he’d take to the grave. He did everything he could to try and make it up to his father. To try and make amends for the fact that he was alive and his mother wasn’t. Now he understood why his father didn’t want him. He vowed to try and make life as easy as he could for his dad. So many times he had hated himself for being alive when his mother was dead. But now he knew his own father shared that feeling, shame consumed him and it resolved him to being the perfect son to his dad.

  As a result the thought of leaving him to move away caused that conscience to flare. Would his mum approve of him moving away, or would she want him to stay? He picked up the University of Worcester brochure and flicked through the pages, the campus was only fifteen minutes away so he would not have to move out. He’d been to it before when he was at school for different things and it looked like a good campus. It was always getting renovated and the new Hive building meant the library facilities would be good. But in his heart, it wasn’t as exciting as moving to a campus he had never been to before. To explore a new place, somewhere he didn’t know. But even his uncle didn’t think that he should move away.

  On his last visit, Adam had mentioned his conflict, desperate for the ready advice he knew his uncle would have. Deep down, Adam was hoping that his uncle would soothe his fears of leaving his dad and tell him to go wherever he wanted.

  “I’ve been looking at different universities and there are some great journalism courses, I really like the sound of the one in Manchester, but I don’t know if I should leave Dad. Is it fair to abandon him? I need your help, what do you think I should do?” His uncle finished taking his turn on the chess board. It was their new favourite game and they played on the sparkling glass set that his uncle had just given him as a surprise present. His brow was creased as he thought, and Adam wasn’t sure if it was his question or the game his uncle was considering. Eventually, he looked up and spoke.

  “You know I always give you my honest opinion. I only want the best for you, son, so if you want my advice, I think you are better off staying where you are. If you stay here, you know what the university is like, you know what to expect and best of all we can still see each other. If you go to a different university somewhere else, I might not get to see you as much. You’ll be too busy with all your flatmates and socialising. If you stay here, you’ll save money as you can live at home and I will be able to pop over here knowing where you’ll be. That’s if you still want to see me.”

  “But if I went to Manchester, I’d be closer to you; I even looked at Preston University, which is even closer. I’d get to see you loads if I moved there because I wouldn’t be four hours away.”

  “Son, I’m an old man. I’m not up to traipsing over to a university campus. There wouldn’t be a spare room for me at your accommodation and I just wouldn’t feel comfortable. I may be being selfish but your family is here. Look, I didn’t want to tell you this, but me and Sylvia have been looking at places to move to down here. To be closer to you. She knows how much I wish I could see you more and so she’s agreed to have a look. So if you move away, she wouldn’t let me move to be near you.”

  Adam quickly assured his uncle that he would stay where he was. For a moment, he felt suspicious; his uncle had never mentioned this before. But he dismissed it because if he couldn’t trust or rely on his uncle, then he would have no one. Besides, his uncle only wanted the best for him. His advice, company and support since his mother’s death proved it.

  With these thoughts in mind, Adam realised that he stood to gain much more by staying where he was than if he left. If he moved away, he’d be even more alone than he was now. But more importantly, he needed to put his family first. His dad had taken the loss of his wife hard, that wasn’t his fault. And his uncle was dead set against Adam moving away so he needed to take that into account. His uncle had been there for Adam when no one else was; Adam needed to make sure he demonstrated his appreciation for that. It was his turn to do something for his uncle, to show his loyalty and respect. Apart from the one for Worcester, he threw all the brochures in the bin. He had made his decision.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  2010

  Billie

  Billie sat on the windowsill of her bedroom. She was exhausted with living a double life. One where Eric tormented her and basically did whatever he pleased to her and then she had to go home, and the other where she had to go to school and pretend that everything was fine. She looked at the pink walls that were covered with Green Day posters.

  She’d had had to tell Carl that she could no longer be his girlfriend because she didn’t love him anymore. He took it surprisingly well. Apparently he wasn’t as okay with just kissing like he promised. He didn’t try and persuade her otherwise but instead began dating Nicola, one of the ‘plastic fantastic’ girls that she knew from the start he should be with, who he said ‘wasn’t frigid’. Before he’d said that, she hadn’t wanted to end it. Even though she had known all along that Carl would never stay with her because lately he had been pushing her into being intimate but each time that he tried to put his hand up her shirt she had been unable to hold back her tears. But while she was officially his girlfriend she could pretend that she would be able to have a future. That everything that Eric said was a lie. His daily references on how she was ugly and that no one could ever love her were so awful to hear, but having Carl in her life made it bearable.

  She almost didn’t do it, but then she looked at the bandage around her fingers and thought back to the previous night when Eric had followed her into his garage, where she was going to get a can of Pepsi. He slammed the door shut and locked it and all she could think was ‘what now?’ She didn’t have the strength to put up a fight. She almost considered just taking her clothes off so he would hurry up but then if she did that it would encourage him to do more. Sometimes she got off lightly with just a bit of touching and kissing. She looked up at him and then immediately moved backwards until she hit the caravan that had residence in the garage. His eyes were smouldering with anger. She was sure she had been careful and not done anything that could anger him.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he demanded as he walked towards her. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out that you are still with that dickhead?” When she did answer and merely hung her head, while cursing her own stupidity, he continued.

 
; “I saw the two of you… fondling.” He spat at her. “Don’t I give you enough of that? Am I not doing enough for you?” He grabbed her by her hair and began to move her back towards the locked door. “You are mine,” he breathed into her ear. He slightly opened the garage door. He released her hair and put his hand tight over her mouth and with the other hand, he shoved her fingers into the gap under the hinge on the door that was the side entrance to the garage. When she didn’t move her fingers from where he left it – she knew better than that – he slammed the garage door shut and a cracking sound was audible accompanying the bang of the door latch against the frame. Pain erupted in her fingers and she almost fell to the floor, but his hand on her mouth, silencing her screams, held her up. He promised he would do it to the other hand or possibly to her sister’s hand unless she swore to break it off with Carl.

  They went back into the house, Billie pitifully holding her fingers to her chest. All the fight within left with each throb of pain she felt. Her gran looked up from her tapestry when they walked in; she looked at Billie and just sighed.

  “What have you done this time?” She was referring to the previous month when Billie had decided to try once again to stand up to Eric and not let him do what he wanted. They had been alone in the house and she was ‘invited’ over by Eric under the guise of needing her help setting up his new video camera. She had set it up for him and he had decided he wanted to film her. He said that she should get used to stripping in front of men because that was all she was good for. She just couldn’t do it. It was bad enough having to submit to whatever sexual need he had but to have it recorded on camera was just too much. She would not do it. She refused and Eric had walked over to her and smashed the camera into her face. She fell back with the force of it. It was at that moment that they heard her gran coming into the house from the back door. Eric threw the broken camera onto Billie and then knelt down, cooing, “Don’t worry, you’ll be okay, it was only a silly camera, sweetheart.” He was stroking her face as her gran had come into the room. Eric explained how Billie had been running around with the camera and had tripped over, hitting her face and the camera into the edge of the display cabinet in the corner of the room. She watched him lie effortlessly. If she hadn’t been there, she would have believed him too. So she knew, this time, there was no point trying to cause trouble and say that Eric had hurt her fingers because she was not as good a liar as Eric. She just told her grandma that she wanted to go home.

  All the way home she was terrified that her mother would work out what had happened. She didn’t know if Eric’s lie about him trapping her fingers in a door by accident was going to work. Although a tiny part of her hoped that she worked it out. She needn’t have worried. Her mother didn’t even undo the bandage Eric had given her.

  Billie knew that she was protecting her sister and stopping her family from breaking apart and most of the time she could bare it but she really loved Carl. He was the only solace that she had but when she broke up with him, she had no illusion or way of pretending that she had a normal life. One which she could use to try and drown out the memories and experiences she had with Eric. Despite her anger and disgust, deep down, she missed Eric. Not this new Eric, but the one he had been when she first met him. He was different now, no longer supporting her and making her feel special. Instead, he was using every tool in his belt to make sure she submitted to whatever he wanted. He was obsessed with her, and controlling her seemed to be his life’s work. He certainly spent enough time at it.

  Their house was at the end of a terrace and on the other side, there were lots of fields. She could see them from her bedroom and she knew that Eric could see her bedroom from those fields. He had a perfect vantage point from a cluster of trees at the edge of one of the fields. She hadn’t even noticed until he had told her that he loved seeing her sitting on her windowsill looking deep in thought and that next time she should wear some of the lingerie that he had bought her. He was everywhere she went apart from school and it was slowly dragging her down. He was an omnipotent presence in her life that she knew wasn’t going to leave her alone. But she had to live life as if nothing was happening. She knew what would happen to her sister if she didn’t. Eric reminded her that she would ruin her mother’s life if she were to talk about what Eric did. He taunted her saying that her mum probably knew and just let it go on because she also knew that Billie would never amount to anything more than being a hooker.

  The only way that Billie was going to escape was through her exams. Her AS levels were just around the corner and then it would only be one more year until she could leave and never come back. She worried that she was leaving her sister unprotected but her mum was insistent that she go to university so Eric didn’t really have a choice. He couldn’t blame her, could he? She was protecting her sister as much as she could for the moment, he didn’t have the same sort of relationship with Holly because Billie made sure that Holly never spent time alone with Eric. So it would be hard for him to get close to her. She was also their mother’s favourite so that would protect her too. Billie prayed it would. She pushed it to the back of her mind. Instead, she thought about the university that she wanted to go to. She wanted to run away now but she was a coward. She needed to do the best she possibly could so that she could escape from Windermere to Hereford College of Arts to study photography.

  The next week, Billie walked into her room still cradling her hand but she stopped at the doorway as she knew at once that something was wrong. Her eyes jumped immediately to her desk. It was empty apart from one solitary piece of paper. A feeling of foreboding swept through her as she crossed her room over to the desk. ‘Try and leave me now’ it said. She dashed around her room trying to find the stack of books, the revision that was plastered on her wall and the neat pile of revision cards that were on her bedside table. She frantically searched everywhere, checking under the bed, her wardrobe, starting what she knew was a futile search. If she could find something he left behind, then maybe this feeling of hopelessness would recede and she would not feel like going to her window and jumping out head first. After turning everything upside down, including her bed, it was obvious he was too smart to leave anything behind, she leant against her bed, brought her knees up and rested her head on them.

  This was all her fault. She had snapped and lost her temper with him the day before. He had put something in her drink, she was sure of it. He liked her to go over after school every day, he said that the school uniform – even on someone as ugly as her – really turned him on. So, one minute she was sitting on the sofa watching TV with him and the next she was in his bedroom and naked. Her sore breasts were the only clue she had as to why she was there. She should have expected something as it was a Thursday, the day her gran always worked late. She shuddered and forced away thoughts of what he could have done. When she had found her clothes and went downstairs, he had winked at her and asked if she had slept well. She was normally so numb after anything he did to her. This had been going on for as long as she could remember and she knew that there was nothing she could do to stop it, that she had let herself fall for his grandfatherly charm. Even her sister had seen through him, she never wanted anything to do with him. That day she was just so fed up with feeling out of control and her temper, which was typically non-existent, reared its head, like a bear coming out of hibernation, long enough for her to shout at him.

  “You think you are so clever, don’t you? Drugging me? But you’ve actually done me a favour, now I don’t have to remember you’re disgusting old wrinkly body anywhere near mine! Anyway, don’t get used to it. Your days are numbered doing this to me. After my exams next week, I only have one year left and then I will be going to the furthest university from here and you will never see me again. I’ve suffered this for seven years, what is one more?”

  Her anger spent, she raced out of the house and back home before he could execute any retribution. She knew she would pay for that, but what could he do that he hadn’t already don
e to her? Well, she knew now, this is what he could do. How she was going to explain this at school, she didn’t know. She thought about telling the truth, just to spite him. But she knew that no one would believe her. He had thought this out too well. He had planned for every eventuality and this brazen intrusion demonstrated that. That was when her fear of him became all consuming. She was never going to get away from him. This was how the rest of her life was going to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  2010

  Adam

  Adam’s uncle had decided that they needed to be more selfless with their time. He said that his home life was perfect, everything was exactly how he wanted it and so he wanted to give back. They had begun to volunteer at the local homeless shelter.

  For the first couple of times, they had helped to prepare lunch. It was actually good fun, they bantered back and forth while peeling vegetables and washing the pots. It was nice and Adam felt his heart swell with happiness at the simple pleasure of spending time with his uncle. The happiness was tempered by his familiar disappointment that Eric wasn’t his father. This weekend they had been asked to actually mentor some of the visitors to the centre. Adam was standing at the entrance too nervous about it, but his uncle was revelling in the opportunity. He was sat with two scruffy looking girls who were laughing and joking with him when only an hour ago they had slinked in, pale and nervous. His uncle had an effortless charm, it was something Adam envied. He had tried so copy his uncle’s cool attitude at school, his relationship with Sophie had petered out, much to his uncle’s disappointment. Adam just couldn’t see her appeal. His uncle believed that he needed a girl he could shape to be who he wanted but when he spent time with Sophie, he just got bored. She was too nervous to speak to him and he lacked his uncle’s easy manner to make her feel less awkward. He had persevered with these uneasy encounters at his uncle’s behest but after a while it became simpler to tell his uncle the truth. It was hard knowing that he was going against his uncle’s advice but it just didn’t feel right. Luckily, after a couple of weekends of tense silence, their relationship went back to normal.