“That’s really not necessary!”
“Yes, it is. I don’t want anyone eavesdropping, or for more photos of us to end up in the news. This is too important,” he said firmly.
The other guests left Better Days, and Kaycee flipped the sign on the door to “Closed” before returning to the counter to make our drinks. Shortly after, she brought us two cups of tea.
“There you go,” she said with a smile.
I avoided her gaze, uncomfortable that Henry had paid for us to have the café to ourselves. Still, although I found it over the top, I preferred to have this conversation in private too.
“Thank you,” Henry said.
“You’re welcome. I’ll be in the kitchen if you want anything else. Just use the little bell on the counter, and I’ll come straightaway,” said Kaycee, before disappearing through a door.
I took two packets of sugar from the stand on the table and tipped them into my tea. The entire time, I could feel Henry’s inquisitive eyes on me. I felt uneasy. After all, there was a reason I had avoided telling him about my past.
He noticed my hesitation and touched my hand gently. Our fingers intertwined instinctively, and the gesture gave me the strength to speak.
“It’s the anniversary of my mum’s death today.”
“Kate...” He sighed deeply, seeming disappointed that I hadn’t shared the burden with him sooner. His fingers squeezed mine. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. “You have so much on your plate. Things are really kicking off at the hotel, the Pearl Gala is just around the corner, and everyone wants something from you. I didn’t want to make you worry about me on top of all that.”
“I worry about you most when I don’t know what’s going on with you.” The intensity of his gaze was overwhelming—my chest tightened, and I looked away, though I managed a nod. Henry raised our intertwined fingers to his lips and kissed the back of my hand. “Do you want to tell me who that guy was? He seemed to know you.”
I hesitated, resisting my usual urge to dodge the topic, but Henry’s gentle touch and steady gaze melted my resistance. “Randell was my mum’s boyfriend. They met three years ago. Back then, me and my mum were living in a small apartment in Richmond. She was an amazing mum, and gave me everything she had to give, but she suffered from depression. She didn’t have an easy life—her dad beat her when she was a kid, and she ran away from home when she was seventeen. Sometimes, her mental health made it difficult for her to work.”
Henry listened intently.
I took a sip of my tea, but my throat still felt dry and scratchy, as if my body were trying to stop me from continuing. But I went on anyway. “Four years ago, she had a pretty bad depressive episode. She was unemployed, and we were behind on the rent. It really weighed on her. I dropped out of school to support her financially, but that somehow made things worse. She was in a really bad place until she met Randell at a mutual friend’s party. At the beginning, I had no reason to question their relationship. Randell seemed to make my mum happy. She enjoyed his attention, and with the extra money I was earning, things finally seemed to be improving.”
Looking back, I felt so naive. I had truly believed that things were getting better. Now I knew that those few hopeful days had just been the calm before the storm.
“A few weeks later, though, I realised that something wasn’t right,” I continued. “I was working at a cinema back then, and sometimes I stole from the customers. At least, from those who looked like they had a few pounds to spare. I stashed the money away in a drawer in my bedroom when I got home. After a while, though, I noticed that it kept disappearing. At first, I thought I was imagining it. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it.”
Henry raised his eyebrows. “Your mum was stealing from you?”
I nodded. “Right after that, we got another warning notice from our landlord, even though the rent should have been covered. By that point, my mum wasn’t coming home much anymore, and she stayed at Randell’s place most nights. When I asked her about the money, she got angry, screamed at me, and stormed out of the apartment. That should have been a clear warning sign.”
“You just wanted to see the best in her.”
He was right. In my eyes, my mum could do no wrong for a long time. I had looked up to her and admired her strength. Because strength didn’t mean you succeeded at everything—it meant getting back up and carrying on, even when you failed and life knocked you down. My mum had never given up. She’d always fought for us—at least until Randell had stolen her strength.
“After that fight, everything happened so fast,” I went on, ignoring the tightness in my chest that came from knowing how the story ended—an ending I hated. “My money was vanishing. The warning notices kept coming, until eventually we were evicted. We moved in with Randell. I hadn’t had much contactwith him up to that point, and I thought it would be a good thing. Living in his bungalow seemed like a better option than living on the streets. But with the three of us sharing fifty square metres, my mum could no longer hide what was happening to my money. They’d been stealing it and spending it on drugs. Randell had been an addict for a while, and he’d dragged my mum into it. She assured me that they were just harmless pills to help her relax, and I was gullible enough to believe her.”
Henry tensed beside me. I couldn’t quite read the expression that flickered across his face. Worry? Panic? Guilt? Whatever it was, he quickly suppressed it. He seemed to know where the story was heading and took a deep breath, as if bracing himself for what came next.
“But it wasn’t just the drugs that my mum had concealed from me. She’d also hidden the fact that Randell was beating her, just like her dad used to. She hadn’t been spending six days a week with him because she loved him, but because she was ashamed and didn’t want me to see the bruises. It didn’t take long, though, for Randell to show me his true colours. One evening, after I’d come home from my shift at the cinema, he lashed out at me for forgetting to take out the rubbish. He beat me black and blue, until my mum stepped in to stop him.”
“What a pathetic son of a bitch,” Henry growled. His grip tightened around my hand, and his eyes darkened, matching the menace in his voice. His intensity sent a shiver down my spine. “Did that happen often?”
“All the time,” I admitted. “Although it was usually my mum he beat up. She often protected me. I begged her to leave him, but she was dependent on him. He wasn’t just her partner—he was her drug dealer too. She was so terrified of not being able to getthe drugs anymore that she stayed with him, despite everything. At some point, she started taking more hardcore drugs, because it was the only way she could tolerate him. It was a vicious circle. I lost my job at the cinema because I had to take care of her and couldn’t stick to a regular schedule. I threatened to leave so many times if she didn’t get sober, but either she didn’t care, or she knew I was bluffing.” My heart clenched. It hurt to remember. “I kept trying to make her stop. I brought home brochures, showed her statistics. I hid my money and her drugs, but she always sniffed them out, like a bloodhound. Once, I even flushed the drugs down the toilet—and later that night, Randell beat me so badly I thought I was going to die. The hearing in my right ear never fully came back. He damaged something.”
Absent-mindedly, I touched my ear with my free hand. I wasn’t completely deaf on that side, and over time, I’d learned to live with it. But it had been a real disadvantage on the streets. I’d always had to sleep on my right side, so I could listen for danger with my left.
“Even that didn’t open my mum’s eyes. One evening, I came home and she was lying on the sofa, unconscious. I didn’t think much of it—the drugs often knocked her out—and I went to take a shower. It was only later, when I was making myself something to eat, that I realised something was wrong. She hadn’t moved an inch and was completely still. Too still. I called the ambulance right away, but it was too late. She was already dead.”
My voice cracked, and my eyes burnt. I had relived that moment hundreds of times in my nightmares, but saying it out loud made it so much worse. Guilt and shame twisted inside me. As much as I blamed Randell, I blamed myself just as much—maybe even more. Because unlike him, I had truly loved my mum... yet I had still let her die.
