“Oh babe, what did he do?” Justin said, not expecting an answer.
“Oh, you know…” she said, sitting down again. The way she moved reminded Justin of a woman that had recently given birth and was being exceptionally careful about her tender areas.
“Used me as a punch-bag… among other things.” She lifted her hands to her face and though her body-language said she was trying to fight it, she began to cry.
Deep, shuddering sobs that almost tore Justin’s heart out just to hear them emanated from her scrawny little body.
Robin sat beside her and put his arm over her shoulders. She flinched away but he pulled her close to him.
At last, she allowed him to wrap his other arm around her and she gave in to her grief.
He pulled her bald head to him and sat stroking the stubble, making a soothing scraping sound.
Robin looked at Justin and mouthed the word, ‘Rape’. Justin nodded and his fists clenched.
Robin rocked Ash in his embrace until she fell asleep and he laid her back onto the sofa and covered her with the blanket.
Ash lay facing the room and Justin could finally take a good look at her face.
A bruise looked like it would become a ‘duck-egg’ - as his dad would have called it – a great, swollen lump on her forehead, just to one side with a slender cut across the centre of the bump.
The black eyes that had almost healed from the previous beating had been ‘re-done’ and her nose looked swollen, perhaps broken.
One cut under her eye appeared to have been made by a knuckle but the matching cut on her other cheek was sliced by a blade, if Justin’s experience was anything to go by.
A cut lip, swollen and bruised where she’d been punched and the force had pushed her lip into her teeth had scabbed up but because of the position, would most likely re-open time and time again before it healed.
Her neck had purple marks across it, and Rob pointed them out. Justin nodded as Robin whispered, “Strangled?”
Robin didn’t move any of Ash’s clothing for fear of disturbing her, but he did notice the bruising coming out on the back of her head too. It looked as though she’d been struck on the back of her head with probably enough force to knock her either senseless or out completely.
Robin mimed the injury to Justin as he looked over the back of the sofa at more wounds and bruises.
With every injury Robin reported or pointed out, Justin grew angrier.
By the time Ash woke up he had worked himself into a fury and was on the verge of ignoring her instruction to save his favours and was going to call in some pretty big ones.
Ash sighed and rolled over, forgetting her injuries for a moment. She winced and sucked air in through her teeth as the reminders hit home and she pulled up her knees to her stomach.
“Ash?” Justin said.
She glanced over to him but said nothing.
“Ash, I need to see your stomach.”
She shook her head and closed her eyes.
“Seriously, Ashleigh, I really do need to see it. Lie flat on your back and just lift your jumper. I only need to see from the waistband of your jeans to where your ribs start.”
She looked over to him, saw the sincerity on his face and complied.
Ash lay on her back, shuffled her jumper up, under the hollow of her back and then lifted the jumper up a little, so Justin could examine her from his chair.
The waistband of her jeans had a gap big enough to almost fit in another Ash, her ribs stood out, pronounced and not in the slightest bit covered with any fat – ‘puppy’ or otherwise. The skin looked grey and mottled, it couldn’t be dirt, she’d had two baths since she got in.
It was Robin’s turn to suck air in through his teeth. Ash closed her eyes but couldn’t prevent teardrops leaking between them.
Justin sighed with what sounded like relief and Ash looked at him.
“You don’t appear to have internal bleeding. Your stomach would look swollen, like you were pregnant if you had blood in there. I can see what the bastard did… For fuck’s sake! There’s a full boot-print there!”
Robin came around the sofa to see from Justin’s angle. Just out of Ash’s sight because of the bundled-up jumper, a boot-print impression on the soft flesh of her belly was just starting to turn blue as the bruise began to come out.
“Just one?” Ash said. “Christ, it felt like at least five!”
“In the medicine cabinet upstairs, there’s some Echinacea, go fetch it, Rob,” Justin said.
Robin nodded and made to go upstairs.
Ash said, “Nah, I’ve got it. I found it this morning.” She pulled the cardboard box from her pocket and showed it to Justin, rattling it to show it had the Echinacea in there. “I thought it couldn’t hurt.”
“Do you wanna talk…?” Robin said.
Ash shook her head, ‘no’.
Justin shook his head to tell him to stop asking that question.
“It’ll only make you angrier and we can’t have any fuck-ups because you got mad and wanted to kill someone,” Ash said.
She moved about on the sofa, trying to get comfortable, then she spoke again.
“Let’s get this dealt-with and out of the way. Then we can talk about who did what and when and as soon as that bastard Mike is in prison and Nigel is back at home with his dad, Justin can call in those favours and get Mike sorted out somewhere where no one will suspect us because there are so many other suspects in there that want his head on a spike.”