58. Nat

The women's shelter is in an unassuming building down a side street. From the outside, it looks like any other old apartment building. The walls are covered in graffiti and the lower-level windows have bars across them.

This isn't a great neighborhood. It's rundown and deprived, despite the mayor's promises to funnel more money into revitalization schemes that create jobs and better housing.

I'm not sure where the money has gone, but it sure as shit isn't evident around here.

James hefts his camera bag and scans the area nervously. "If my car gets stolen, I'm blaming you," he mutters.

"Unlikely, your car is a pile of shit," I point out. He bristles but doesn't disagree.

Just as I'm about to bang on the heavy, steel-plated door again, a camera fixed to the wall a couple of feet above swivels in our direction. Wow. The security is something else here.

I guess it makes sense given some of the women living here have probably escaped abusive relationships. A shiver runs down my spine at the thought of how close I came to being one of them.

If Max hadn't…

The door opens and a tall woman with gray hair scraped back into a bun smiles at me. She's dressed in a loose-fitting cotton dress and her hands are smeared with yellow paint.

"Come in! You must be Natalya. Grace warned me to expect you. I'm in the middle of decorating one of the bedrooms, but I'll give you a guided tour. My name's Jenny, by the way."

She holds out her hand and I quickly shake it, hoping the yellow paint is dry.

"Is Grace not here?" I assumed that's who I'd be meeting with, so to be told she's out is a surprise. We walk inside and the door clicks shut behind us. Jenny engages the various locks before turning back to me.

"Sorry, no. She went to pick up a woman who called the emergency line. Last minute thing."

"Oh, right." I offer a small smile. While Grace is aware of why I'm here, I'm sure she's briefed Jenny too. At least I hope so or this visit will be a tad awkward.

"Come. Let me show you what we have here."

James and I follow Jenny like little sheep. The shelter is far more spacious inside than it appears from the outside. There's a massive kitchen and dining area with stainless steel counters, huge catering appliances, and a mix of tables and bench seats.

Several women are busy preparing food while a few younger kids sit at the tables drawing and playing games. None of them look at James or me. It's as if we don't exist.

We pass a room with a television and gaming console that's in use and go outside into an inner courtyard. The walls are covered in greenery and splashes of color, a mix of painted murals and actual plants. There are plastic chairs, stone benches, jute rugs on the floor with colorful cushions, and bright sail clothes that provide shelter from the sun.

"Wow!" My jaw drops in surprise. "It's lovely out here. Like a mini oasis." In the far corner, I spot some raised beds with neat rows of greenery.

"Vegetables?" James asks, pointing his camera and taking a few shots.

"Yes, we like to encourage the women to have a go at growing vegetables. It's a useful skill as well as being therapeutic."

Once we"re back inside, Jenny leads us upstairs. "The bedrooms and bathrooms are up here. We're very full so most people have to share a room." At the far end of the corridor, there's another communal room with mismatched sofas and floor cushions. A tall bookcase lines one wall and there's a table with an old desktop computer and a monitor.

"There are controls on what the residents can access online," Jenny says when she sees me looking at the computer. "Social media is blocked."

"Why?" It seems a bit draconian to stop the women from accessing social media."

"Because some of them have men who won't stop trying to contact them. We find it's more helpful to cut them off from the people who want to hurt them. It's for their own good, and also why we take phones and other devices from them when they enter the shelter."

"And if they want to get in touch with family and friends?"

"They can write a letter or postcard."

"Do you monitor written correspondence too?"

"It's not a prison, so no." Jenny smiles, but some of her previous warmth has vanished.

Somehow, I'm not convinced.

James takes a few more photos, obviously inspired by the late afternoon light shining through the tall, somewhat grubby, windows.

We finish the tour back in the kitchen-dining room, which is now a lot busier as more women get involved with the food preparation.

"I'm afraid not many would agree to talk to you, but Beata is willing, and also Lena."

"Thank you." I try smiling at her but the longer I'm here, the more something feels off about her. I can't pinpoint what, exactly, but it's as if the face she shows is just a mask. "I have some questions for you too, if that's OK?"

"Sure. Let me introduce you to Lena and Beata, and then we can talk. Ask them to find me when you're done."

We head back outside and I take a seat at a table in the shade. Lena and Beata join me a few minutes later.

Their story is what I expected. Both of them were in abusive relationships. Lena was raised by a drug-addicted mother and fell in with her partner at 16. She's now 21 and managed to get away two months ago.

"The shelter saved me," she says. I note how her nails are chewed down to the quick and she has visible track marks on her skinny arms. She sees me looking and pulls her sleeve down. "I'm clean now." There's a defensive edge to the statement and I smile reassuringly.

"I'm not judging you, either of you." James has moved back to take some shots of the garden so I lean forward. "I was in a bad relationship. I'm lucky someone helped me."

"My boyfriend tried to pimp me out," Beata admits in a low voice. She looks away. "He was a real asshole. I managed to run away before he handed me over to the man he'd sold me off to for the price of a packet of pills."

Jesus. Rick was bad but not that bad.

Beata flicks her blond hair over her shoulder and looks sideways at James. She's a pretty girl. Around my age. I can see she's checking James out but he's oblivious, too busy messing with the settings on his camera. The guy's such a nerd at times.

"Fuckboy," I murmur behind my hand, gesturing discreetly at James.

Beata snorts with laughter and James looks up with a frown, obviously wondering if we're talking about him. Which we are, but he doesn't need to know that.

"What are your plans once you leave here?" I ask them both.

Lena perks up. "Grace says she'll find us jobs away from here, somewhere we won't be found. She said I can go back to school if I like. There are grants I can apply for." She beams with excitement. "I want to study childcare."

Beata nods. "Yeah, I'm happy to leave this place. The city, I mean, not the shelter," she clarifies. "Everyone's been amazing here. We even got a visit from the mayor the other day!"

My skin breaks out in goosebumps. "Oh really?"

"He chatted to a few of us, asked us how we were finding the shelter, and whether we were happy here."

Beata beams but Lena looks less happy.

"I thought he was a bit creepy," she admits. "He reminded me of my mom's boyfriend. All smiles on the surface and something nasty underneath."

Lena's assessment of the mayor is spot on. He is a creep. Worse than a creep if I'm correct in my suspicions. It worries me that the mayor has been here. While his foundation is funding the shelter, it's surprising that he's found the time in his busy schedule for a visit. Especially if it's not part of a PR exercise.

"He was OK with me," Beata says dismissively. "He liked my hair, he said." She twirls a few pale strands around her fingers and half-smiles dreamily. "Suggested I could be a model."

Lena rolls her eyes, making it clear she thinks the mayor is full of shit, but says nothing else about his visit.

I move on to topics about the shelter and how it's run. Lena and Beata have nothing but positive things to say about it. Once I wrap up my questions, I check the girls are happy to have their photos taken. They are so I leave James doing his thing and wander back inside.

None of the women in the kitchen pay me any attention so I sit at a bench and make some notes. The interviews are recorded on my phone but I like to make notes while things are fresh in my mind.

I hear giggles from outside just as Jenny appears, wiping her hands on a cloth. No doubt James is in full-on flirtation mode, but I trust him to keep it professional.

"I have a few minutes if you have some questions?" Jenny says. I was hoping for more than a few minutes, but OK. I nod and follow her into her office.

We're just getting started when her phone rings. She frowns as she looks at the screen but from where I'm sitting, I can't see who the caller is.

"Please excuse me a minute." Without waiting for a reply, she walks out of the office, pulling the door closed in her wake.

Her voice is too low to hear much but I manage to catch a few words.

"Perfect…yes…will do…nothing…no…OK." The door opens again and she sits back down. I manage to get a few questions in about how the place operates and then her phone rings a second time.

"Look, I'm really sorry," she grimaces when she looks at the caller ID. I'm going to have to cut this short." I nod as she answers the call, not bothering to step out this time. "Jenny, speaking, how can I help?"

The conversation evolves into something to do with funding and I take my leave. James is waiting for me in the dining area, looking a bit uncomfortable. Several of the women are throwing him suspicious glances.

"We done?" he asks, clearly ready to leave.

"Yeah." I head toward the front door and a tall, hard-faced woman with closely cropped gray hair follows.

"Got to lock up behind you," she explains.

I huff out a breath when we end up back on the street. It's been a strange visit. Not at all what I was expecting.

"Did you get some decent shots?" James nods.

"Yeah, the girls were very photogenic." He smirks, and I frown.

"I hope you didn't try anything on with them?"

"Oh course not!" After throwing me an irritated look, he starts walking toward the car, which is parked on the opposite side of the street, outside an abandoned warehouse. "What the fuck do you take me for, eh?" he huffs crossly while I stop to check my messages.

One minute James's car is there, and the next there's a massive explosion.

A wave of intense heat hits me in the face and I'm blown backwards. My body slams into a wall and everything goes dark.