Chapter Thirty Two #2
The house was small, modest. Tidy beyond an inch of its life.
A place for everything and everything safely in it.
There hadn’t been a pair of shoes in view until we all walked in.
Now there was a line of thick-soled boots in the small hallway at the front door, and a stack of hoodies and jumpers piled on the end of the banister.
“Sophie, pet. Give me a hand with these?” Mamma Dot called from the kitchen at the back of the lounge. “Put those sausage rolls on a plate for me, lass,” she instructed, pointing to a stack of white plates at the end of the counter when I stepped in behind the woman commandeering the oven.
The kitchen smelled like a restaurant. Onions, garlic, hot sausage meat, black pepper, the sweetness of pastry. She’d cooked up a feast in the middle of a storm, and my stomach already growled angrily.
I placed the plate on the kitchen table, gently moving back Suzy’s sewing machine and the material she had been working on. Blue and white, a tiny arm stuck out at one angle, and I swallowed hard, a fresh wave of emotion washing over me.
“They know what they are having,” I whispered to myself.
“Aye, pet. Just the other day, at the last scan, he finally let them see him. Just before all this happened. At least he got to find out he was having a son.”
A hot tear fell down my cheek, fresh and angry, tracing the same path as the ones still stuck to my skin with salt. I’d never felt pain like I had today. Even when my mother went into the care home, when she started to forget who I was. It didn’t feel like this. This was almost too much to bear.
“Sophie?” Mamma Dot broke the thoughts escalating in my brain. “Have you heard from Reap, yet?”
“No. He’s not checked in at all.”
She muttered something I couldn’t hear and then stared at the clock. I followed her gaze. 3.30am and here we were in a kitchen cooking a buffet for the bikers that just kept coming. Prospects had arrived now, and some others that Mamma Dot said were from a brand-new prospect chapter.
“Indie! Fury! Get in here,” Mamma Dot called with more authority than the president and vice president put together.
“Mam?” Fury answered, scooping his long dark hair up onto his head like he was already expecting to be given a job.
“You heard from Reap?”
The men looked at each other.
“I’ll send some prospects to find him and bring him back here,” Indie answered, flashing me a reassuring smile as Mamma Dot handed me a plate piled high with pizza slices.
“He’ll not be far, pet. But he should be here with all of us.” She patted my shoulder reassuringly as I turned toward the table.
Something inside me didn’t feel reassured. It felt tight, anxious, building.
“Lads, grub’s up!” she bellowed suddenly.
The men answered from the lounge, voices raised slightly, a gruff rumble and as they formed a queue for the kitchen table.
“Yes!” someone exclaimed from the crowd. “Chicken curry.”
“Emmie,” Mamma Dot called, “Take some up for Suzy.”
“She’s asleep.”
“I promise you she won’t be. And she needs to eat for that little boy of theirs. You too, Sophie. Don’t let these men get in your way. Boys,” she shouted over the heavy drone of voices. “Let Reap’s woman get in.”
I opened my mouth to object. To tell her I really didn’t feel like eating, but the sea of leather cuts at the table parted, arms beckoning me towards them, a paper plate pushed into my hand. When I escaped the crush of bodies, Mamma Dot was watching me approvingly.
“Are you not getting anything?” I asked.
“I’ve eaten as I’ve cooked. Grief needs food, even when people don’t want to eat.”
I stared at her for a moment, at the sadness tucked away behind those eyes, at the way she watched protectively over the men in front of her. She’d seen more grief than one person should ever have to cope with, I realised then, because all this was well rehearsed and executed to perfection.
“Paper plates,” she said suddenly, her attention snapping back to me and from wherever her memories had just taken her. “Much easier to clean up after. And these clumsy boys just end up breaking decent ones.”
“What? No where?” Indie’s voice came from the corner of the kitchen. “You checked the clubhouse? His house?” A pause again. “Rang him? Fuck. Right, just get back here then.” Indie looked up from his phone, his eyes finding me. “Can’t find Reap. Not in his usual places.”
“Fuck,” Fury wiped his hands down his hoodie, leaving a trail of crumbs, and Mamma Dot rolled her eyes. “We can’t have him out there alone.”
“I know where he’ll be.” My voice sounded small and weak amongst these men, yet all conversations stopped.
“I’ll send someone.” Indie nodded.
“No. Let me go. I’ll bring him back.”
“Ok. Chaos. Carnage. Drive the doctor.”
“No. I need to go alone.”
Indie shook his head. “Doc, it’s the dead of night and a rival motorcycle club has already killed another of our guys. You aren’t going alone.”
I glanced at Mamma Dot, and she shook her head.
“Ok. You can drive me there. But I’ll approach him without you guys. You can sit in the car and watch. But you aren’t doing that bit with me.”
Indie watched me, and for a while I didn’t know whether he was going to agree, and then he nodded and the room shifted into action.