Stranger at Home

1970

Part 1: Peter

1970

When I came home from my usual Sunday morning walk with the Yorkshire Terrier my wife Mary and I owned at the time, the last thing I expected to see was Jessie Preston stood in my front doorway with her arms held out, gushing with blood, screaming in terror. She turned to face me, and all I could see was confusion on that young face of hers. Her nose had been bleeding – there was blood drying above her upper lip, and her left eye was bruised. I could see that a bruise like that would turn out nasty in a few hours' time, but for now, I was concerned about getting the girl some help.

"Peter!" Mary cried, "get some towels from the kitchen while I get her sat down!"

It was a good thing my wife was there that morning to help our troubled next-door neighbour, because if Jessie wandered in the house while I was in on my own, I wouldn't have known what to do. I ran into the kitchen, careful to avoid the droplets of blood that had spilled onto our wooden floor, a floor that we had recently bought with money that we could barely scrape together between the two of us. Even the dog was distressed – who could blame him? Jessie was crying and trying to talk through her bleeding mouth, but only muffled sounds came out. I wondered if she had lost any of her teeth in the assault that she had obviously sustained. If so, her mouth was going to be sore for a long time.

While I was in the kitchen, rooting around for the towel which Mary had demanded of me, I tried to work out what had happened to the girl in her mid-twenties. She was married, and her husband Harry had always seemed like a good man in the years I had known him. He was jovial, and always seemed to lighten the atmosphere whenever he appeared, and I always considered him to be the type to have a positive outlook on life and the world around him. He would never do this to Jessie – would he? No, I told myself. He loved her too much, and they had two young children in the house. Harry would never dream of beating the woman he loved so much. What I thought more likely was that Jessie had gone to the shop down the road that morning, and had been mugged, or even worse. Byker was, and still is, a rough place, and this wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing happened to a woman out on her own, even if it was in the middle of the morning. As soon as that thought had entered my mind, another one, more disturbing, followed: where were her children in all of this? Harry was presumably at work that day (he worked in an office somewhere down the town and had done since he had returned from National Service at the age of eighteen, about twelve years before). What I had neglected to remember was that it was a Sunday, and that shop did not open on a Sunday, but my thoughts were so rushed at the time, I completely forgot. I started to panic and grabbed two tea towels that Mary had left lying around in the kitchen and ran into the living room.

Jessie was no calmer, despite Mary's desperate attempts to gain control over the situation, and if Mary could not calm her down, nobody could. Mary had a way with people, but her way did not work with Jessie. It was then when I realised how awful the attack must have been for her. Someone had done a horrific thing to this poor girl, and I wanted to kick the shit out of the person who did it.

"Please, Jessie", Mary said, holding her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. "Tell us what happened to you, lass".

Jessie was still breathing rapidly, but she calmed down slightly about twenty seconds later. "Me and Harry had a fight", she managed to say.

"The bastard", I muttered. My estimations of Harry diminished in an instant. I clenched my fists, and Jessie turned in my direction.

"No, Peter!" she cried, holding her hand to her mouth to stop the bleeding. "It wasn't like that! Don't do anything!"