Come Home Kate Read online

  He was young, relatively timid and full of the pseudo motivational quotes that you find littered on the internet. To put it frankly, the most senior member of our team had worked for a mere three years, the staff turnover at I.J. Williams and Sons was exceptionally high. In fact, since I.J. Williams senior died three years ago and his son Ian had taken the reigns, I swore most people came to work here just for the infamous function parties it was known to host for the national clients annually.

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Ian as he waffled on, he was a nice guy even if he had called me out on being late here and there. He just lacked that authority, that aura that donned the respect from those lesser minded individuals that ruled the roost in the office pecking order.

  Sara sniggered under her breath, still amused by her own previous joke. She for one was high on the social hierarchy at I.J. Williams and Sons.

  I laughed quietly not entirely feeling comfortable joining in with the rabble that was ignoring Ian’s prep talk yet also wanting to give her the satisfaction that she so sought.

  We were friends but I knew deep down the use of the word friend needed to be used loosely, not through any fault of her own but more down to the fact I struggled to let alone in anymore. We were work colleagues and yet she was probably the closest person I had in my life right now, so I guess somewhere along the line you could say we’d struck up a friendship of sorts, even if she knew next to nothing about me.

  However fickle the bond was, it was times like this that I realised how little she really knew about me. The Kate she knew and liked was an illusion, a disguise I’d built for myself. Everything about me at work was different from my life before, even down to my newly dyed blonde hair that was masking the real colour underneath.

  I enjoyed her company, her conversations and the countless wacky stories she had to tell, yet she never asked questions. Never wanted to probe into my life more than the odd friendly pry here or there. We never spoke deeply, at least not about anything with meaning. Perhaps that’s what I liked about her, she always had so much going on in her own life that the conversations scarcely had the chance to focus on my own. She relished the listening ear of the Kate I had crafted and the dynamic we had going between us, seemed to suit both parties.

  No one here knew about my past and anyone that had read the old press headlines or seen the news three years ago was seemingly polite enough not to alert me to their knowledge.

  When I’d come to London, I’d come looking for a new start. I’d dyed my hair a subtle tinge of blonde in an attempt to mask my former identity, a desperate attempt to hide from the relentless journalists that had hounded me for an interview. Their endless pestering most likely all for the sake of some pity news article that I refused to give them. ‘Girl mentally damaged after narrow Human Traffic escape.’ I could see the headlines now, heck I’d seen multiple similar ones after we returned home. Josef and I had spent those first few months back home hiding from headlines just like them.

  Returning to England after the events that had happened three years ago, was tough. I could barely bring myself to think back to it all, it was like some horrible dream that I locked away in a box and tried hopelessly to forget about.

  As amazing as it had felt to be home, to be safe, the faces I had known my whole life now looked at me in sympathy. Their eyes were always analysing me, checking whether I was okay, searching for the hurt that I was so desperately trying to bury away.

  They looked at me the way I now felt, damaged and broken. No matter how well my attempts at a new life had been, deep down I knew that when I was alone with my thoughts, there was no escaping the identity of my past. It haunted me more than I’d care to admit.

  For a while Josef and I had held each other together, we’d been the glue that had stopped each other from crumbling apart. We had leapt headfirst into playing happy families, fooling ourselves into believing we could put it all behind us. Strangely it worked, at least for a while. We were blissfully high on the sheer appreciation to simply be alive, we fooled ourselves into truly believing we could tackle anything the world threw at us, together. We could conquer anything as we’d survived. Yet we had been destined to fail from the off, we never took the time to confront our demons, to heal from everything that happened. We were too busy running forward, turning a blind eye to the past and everything we’d left behind us. You can’t bury the past forever.

  I’d hidden a lot from Josef, I’d treated the past like some horrible dream that neither of us should talk about and simply closed up. Become too afraid to admit to him that I wasn’t okay.

  He had come to stay with me after a month after coming back home. He made the big move from Argentina to live with me at my family’s home, uprooted his whole life for me… again, with the guilt welling inside.

  At first, it was pretty blissful, we’d picked up exactly where we left off. The buzz of being home, being safe, it had cushioned us and for a couple of weeks, we’d lived in a bubble of self-gratification. The attraction had still been there, the friendship still very much intact yet we simply couldn’t forget. Or more simply, I couldn’t forget. The memories held me back, reminding me constantly of the nightmare we’d endured.

  Unsurprisingly, looking back on it now, it was inevitable the cracks would begin to show.

  The thought of how it ended with Josef embarrassed me, it filled me with such anger at myself. I wish things could have been different, that I could have dealt with things in a better way but I couldn’t. The memories were like a spreading poison in my body.

  Ever since I’d returned from Brazil I couldn’t forget; I couldn’t erase the image of Damien, of the blood trickling slowly from his gut as he pleaded with me. How I stared into the monster’s eyes and toyed with whether I should save him or kill him.

  Everything flooded back to me at night, the fear I felt when I believed I was about to be raped, the pain of the rope around my hands and the gag in my mouth. The cold nights, the thought of dying in the jungle alone. The part that really messed with my head was sometimes despite the monstrosities I’d been through; I couldn’t help questioning whether I was the monster in all of it.

  I wouldn’t allow Josef close to me, I had set up so many emotional barricades that I’d turned cold and dismissive.

  Intimacy issues soon became too overwhelming, he would touch me and instantly my subconscious would see Damien’s face. I’d flinch, lash out screaming only to see Josef’s broken face cowering away from me. I’d physically attack him, it was awful yet at that moment I wasn’t me. It was as if a wire in my brain had come loose in Brazil, it would throw me into the fight or flight response and I’d physically see Damien’s face in that moment. I hated myself for it and that was the very reason I couldn’t allow Josef to be with me.

  He tried, he tried countlessly to get me to change my mind. He cried, told me ‘he’d change, we could change together.’

  I couldn’t make him see that I was the one with the issues, I was the reason we couldn’t be together and I hated myself for it, hated that I couldn’t bear him to touch me despite the love I felt inside for him. The guilt inside me was still as raw today as it was every day since he left. The love we had found in Brazil, the very love that had saved each other was now toxic. It had destroyed us. I had destroyed us.

  Josef had left over a year ago, returned to Argentina to live on his families’ ranch again. Losing him was the start of a downward spiral I hadn’t anticipated, the hallucinations began all over again. The nightmares became more and more frequent. They were so vivid and horrific that my paranoia had hit an all-time high. Leaving Josef was meant to make things better but unfortunately it had the opposite effect.

  Eventually, my mother took matters into her own hands and marched me straight into the doctor’s office. Unsurprisingly, I was prescribed what was essentially a blocker. A pill that dulled my emotions beyond recognition.

  For weeks I attended counselling, they even toyed with admitting me into a rehab centre for those suffering from post-traumatic stress. That was until I became such an empty vessel that even the counselling was essentially pointless, I had no emotions to share.

  The medication had blocked it all, I felt nothing. No joy, no sadness, no fears, no happiness. I began the fake laughs, the fake smiles, I was fixed…it was all an act of course and one that I couldn’t keep up hence my reasons for fleeing to London and starting this new life. A new life, which unbeknown to my parents involved absolutely no medication.

  The moment I had my freedom back, I took it into my own hands. I had been trying to suppress the remerging dreams with alcohol and regretfully it had worked for the best part.

  After an hour, Ian’s prep talk had gradually begun to chip away at the workforce, their backhanded chit chat had subsided into a steady flow of yawns. With heads in hands and bleary eyes across the room, it was to the delight of the office when Ian finally wrapped things up.

  “Thanks everyone, I think we’ll leave things there today and let’s go put it into action!”

  A grumbling flurry of workers began making their way out the room and back to their desks. Joining the hustle and bustle it was to my surprise that a hand steadied on my shoulder, gently pulling me back from the doorway. Turning to face them, I was met by Ian’s solemn expression.

  “Kate, a minute please?” His voice was a little firmer than I was used to and instantly I felt on the back foot.

  Meeting his eyes hesitantly, I nodded as a rush of nerves took over. One too many times being late. Shit. I wasn’t far past my probation period, I guess it had been wrong of me to assume Ian’s soft-touch warranted a kind of self-assured job security.

  I can’t lose this job.

  “Please take a seat, Kate.” He said, awaiting the last
bout of suits to leave the room. Once the room was empty, he walked to the glass panel wall and pulled down each blind one by one, leaving us in an eerie privacy that brought a lump to my throat. I’m going to be sacked. I felt myself begin to worry, perhaps I had been late one too many times. Getting fired would be the cherry on top today, I could feel bad news brewing in my bones.

  Taking a seat, I watched as he calmly walked over, sitting beside me. His proximity unnervingly close and catching me a little off guard.

  I didn’t dislike Ian, in fact I had a lot of respect for him which mainly stemmed from empathy towards him. However, with the warmth of his thigh against mine it felt a little too intimate for our level of professionalism. If I wasn’t already walking on eggshells I’d have considered getting up and picking another seat just to create a bit more distance.

  He perched one hand on his knee and rested his head in it, considering me tentatively. Okay, this is a little weird. I thought. Situations like this always had me nervous and I caught myself starting to pick at the edges of my nails in habit.

  His hazel brown eyes peered at me through his dark rim glasses, there wasn’t the glint of anger that I anticipated.

  His expression instead one of concern and worry. His brow furrowed as he nervously fidgeted with his glasses and rolled a hand through his sleek mousey hair. It was easy to forget he was the same age as me, becoming the air of a multimillion-pound firm in the city had aged him beyond his years not just in appearance but mannerisms, he was old before his time.

  “Kate. What’s going on?” He finally asked, his voice filled with unexpected kindness.

  So much so that I was a little thrown, I had expected a telling off and stifling for my words I replied whilst shifting my position slightly to get some distance between us.

  “I… I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  I hoped he’d see through the odd lateness to all the hard work I’d put in over the past few months, yet I knew I was playing with fire having only recently passed my probation period. I knew I had been late a handful of times, yet I wasn’t a bad worker. In fact, I’d say given the team he had here I was one of the good ones. I kept my head down and got on with my work, I sure as hell respected him more than most. My mind began creating a million defence reasons should this turn into a debate for my job.

  “It’s fine. Just don’t make it a regular thing, okay?” He had scooted himself closer to me again, I’m sure he meant it well but as his knee brushed mine, I found myself unsure whether to recoil back even more.

  “My door is always open if you need to talk, okay?” His tone soft, as his hand slid nervously onto my knee.

  Okay…shit, how the hell do I react to that?

  The action whilst kind and caring was also a little unsettling.

  “Thank you,” I said, jerking my knee as subtly as I could once his hand had lingered long enough. He flinched, recoiling back having picked up on my reservation loud and clear. Thank God.

  “You head back out...”

  I quickly got to my feet seizing the opportunity to make a quick exit from the awkward situation.

  “And Kate…” I stared at him as he smoothed down his suit shirt and trousers. “I’d like that report by the end of the day, please.”

  His professionalism returned bluntly as he guided me to the door. I could tell that the people side to management was something he struggled with. His nervous shifts in tone made his demeanour quite unbelievable. He was just as uncomfortable with showing authority as it was to be on the receiving end.

  Walking past him, his expensive musty cologne filled my nostrils as I returned to my desk. Thankful I hadn’t just lost my job but absolutely baffled by the strange encounter we’d just shared.

  Sara’s eager eyes searched mine desperately for clues as to what our secretive meeting may have been about. I avoided her stare and sat down at my desk adjacent from hers and begun loading up my computer.

  Frantically typing up yesterday's unfinished report, her glare at me grew stronger by the second until eventually, her eager face peered around my monitor screen.

  “Kate, so what was that all about? You alright?” Sara had a knack for seeming concerned yet the twinkle of curiosity in her eyes was always a sure-fire indicator that her love for office gossip took president over most situations.

  Reluctant to seem rude, I looked up from my keyboard and answered.

  “Oh, he was just asking if I’m okay, why I was late… that kind of thing. I didn’t lose my job so that’s a plus.”

  Sara shrugged it off before turning back to resume her work, meanwhile I set about the impossible task of completing yesterday’s report for Ian.

  As the morning progressed, as hard as I tried I just couldn’t switch my brain off from Josef’s letter last night and not to mention the fact Mum was visiting this evening.

  The possibility of my perfectly fake life crumbling around me was weighing massively on my mind.

  Regardless, I knuckled down and come noon that day I had completed the task assigned of me.

  Dashing through the corridor towards Ian’s office, I clutched the paper wedge of freshly printed figures and knocked on his door.

  After a quick tap, I heard the muffled rumblings of his telephone conversation coming to an end, the scuffs on the carpet creeping closer before he gently pulled the door open.

  “Kate? Come in.” He stepped aside, surprised to see me back so soon. “Take a seat.” his hand outstretched inviting me inside.

  Doing as he instructed, I sat on one of the two chairs facing his desk while he sauntered over to his indented, black leather swivel chair.

  Rocking himself side to side on the chair, he eyes pondered me.

  “So, Kate. What can I help you with?” He questioned.

  “That report. I’m so sorry it's late.” I handed it across the desk to him.

  He let out an endearing rumble of laughter as he placed the report down in front of him.

  “I asked for this by the end of the day, it’s only just midday. I’d say that’s early not late!” His usual poker face softened into a friendly smile.

  Relieved by his reaction I returned his smile and readied myself to leave and get back to the daily grind.

  “Kate! Kate! There’s no need to run away. Look, I think I owe you an apology for earlier.” I settled back down in the chair unsure where this was headed. Was he about to apologise for his soft chastising of my lateness or was this about the hand on my knee?

  “I don’t understand,” I said, feeling a little anxious.

  “This morning, I know I called you out in front of the team for being late. I hope you didn’t take it personally. You’re a good worker, you truly are, a little distracted at times perhaps...”

  I feigned an awkward apologetic smile.

  “…but I think I know where that comes from and I want you to know it’s completely understandable.”

  An air of unease swept across my solemn face as I pondered what on earth he’d just said. What was he trying to imply? I felt my barriers rising at rocket speed as a prickle of apprehension ran up my neck.

  “And where do you think it comes from?” My tone harsher and colder than expected as I retaliated defensively.

  “Kate… As your employer I have a duty of care to my staff, you understand that, right?” He leant in further towards me across the desk, his fingers interlaced as his eyes anxiously met mine. His tone was perhaps more patronising than he meant.

  Deciding to cut to the chase I closed my eyes and exhaled, a heavy sigh escaping my lips.

  “I’m sorry Ian, can we just cut to the chase? What is this all about?”

  He regarded me sincerely as if he realised the ice, he trod grew excruciatingly thinner by the second. I hated just how defensive I had become recently, yet I couldn’t control it. Times like these, when someone questioned my elaborate lie of a life that I’d built around myself, I felt my hackles prickling on my skin in a desperate attempt to warn anyone away from picking it apart. I sensed it before he even said it.