‘Would it?’ I ask. ‘What if she saw Ruth’s interview? Lewis won’t be the only one who worked out she was talking about him. Why wouldn’t she phone us?’
‘Are you trying to say she has phoned?’
‘No, I’m talking hypothetically,’ I insist. ‘But he does have a girlfriend. I saw a picture of her on Facebook. Did you know?’
‘So that’s what this is about,’ he says with a sigh. ‘Yes, I had heard. Lewis told Jay he met her a few months back when he was buying a present for his sick mum.’
Our eyes lock as he presses the point home. ‘Oh, I see. How stupid of me. Lewis can’t possibly be a threat to women any more because he buys presents for his poorly mum.’
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘Then what are you saying?’ I ask. ‘You think we should turn a blind eye because his mum is sick?’
‘Stop it, Jen. I’m on your side,’ he reminds me.
‘I know,’ I say as I slide off Charlie’s knee and slump down onto the mattress so I can stare at the ceiling instead of his face.
‘All this publicity for the helpline has brought back memories that none of us take pleasure in revisiting,’ Charlie continues. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to add to your worries by telling you Lewis was back home. You’re bound to be paranoid for a while.’
‘Paranoid?’ I could laugh. Actually, no, I could cry. I squeeze my eyes shut to stop myself but the urge intensifies as the mattress dips, rocking me slightly as Charlie lies back too. We’re shoulder to shoulder; two friends trying to make sense of the world and the people in it.
If I try really hard, I can imagine it’s Meg lying next to me. She might not have told me everything but we did talk, and I long to go back to those times in her bedroom when I fretted and she fixed.
‘It’s so lovely and quiet here,’ I’d told her once as we lay sideways across her single bed with our feet dangling over the edge. It was the beginning of summer – our last one before Lewis entered our lives – and we were recharging our batteries after our GCSEs. Unfortunately for me, it had been impossible to find peace at home with one sister back from uni and reclaiming the top bunk in our bedroom, another having practically moved her boyfriend in and the third spending the last months of her pregnancy under Mum’s watchful gaze.
‘It’s too quiet,’ Meg replied.
I’d noticed a certain frostiness between Ruth and Geoff when I’d arrived. Ruth was complaining about the amount of time her husband spent on the golf course and his response had been to pick up his golf clubs and storm out.
‘Is everything OK between Auntie Ruth and Uncle Geoff?’
‘It would be if Mum would stop having a go at Dad all the time. Can’t she see what she’s doing?’ Meg said, letting her arm drop across her face to cover her eyes.
‘You think they’ll get divorced?’ I asked with a gasp as I stared at Meg’s downturned mouth and willed it to stop trembling.
‘They’d have to break up the business if they did that, so no, they’ll just carry on making each other miserable.’
‘As well as you?’
Meg pulled her arm away to stare up at the ceiling. ‘Sean’s so lucky, heading off to uni. I can’t wait till it’s my turn,’ she said.
‘I can’t either. It’ll be the two of us against the world,’ I said, offering her a smile.
Meg didn’t take it. ‘Oh, no,’ she said extending her arm behind her so she could tug at the brightly coloured scarves she kept hanging over her bedpost. Draping crimson silk across her face, she added, ‘You need to find your own way, Jennifer Hunter. We will not be going to the same university. You can’t hide behind me for the rest of your life.’
‘But I don’t want to be on my own.’
She silenced me with her gaze. ‘And right now, neither do I. I’m dreading Sean going.’
‘I could come over more often. Mum probably wouldn’t notice if I never came home at all. Dad definitely wouldn’t.’
Meg let the silk fall and pulled herself up onto her elbow, her eyes alight. ‘In that case, why don’t you move in? Mum wouldn’t mind and I can get around Dad easily.’
Her excitement had been infectious but it wasn’t Meg’s parents who had stood in our way. I never did move in.
When I open my eyes, Meg is gone and it’s Charlie who’s lifted himself up to look at me. His eyes look as scratchy as mine feel.
‘Can you at least find out who Lewis’s girlfriend is?’ I ask. ‘Please, Charlie.’
‘And what exactly do you plan on doing with that information? You can’t contact her, Jen. Please. You don’t know what kind of trouble you might cause.’
I twist onto my side so I can look Charlie in the eye. His frown matches my own. ‘Surely Lewis will be too busy caring for his mum to cause us any more trouble,’ I suggest innocently.
‘Keep away from him, Jen.’
Charlie’s tone makes my cheeks warm with guilt. Dismissing the idea that he might be jealous of the attention I’m giving Lewis, I say, ‘I know he’s dangerous. It’s not like I’ve fallen for the sympathy act.’
‘Neither have I.’
Unconvinced, I add, ‘That’s how men like Lewis get away with what they do. They make you believe they’re nice because they seem vulnerable, or misunderstood, or in need of a second, third or fourth chance.’
‘So being nice is a bad thing?’ says the nicest man I know.
‘No, your kind of nice is good,’ I say, my tone softening as I stroke his cheek.
‘Are you sure about that?’ he asks. His eyes narrow and his words have an edge to them that I’m not expecting. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘But not sure enough to marry me.’
I suppress a groan as I roll onto my back again but I don’t break eye contact. ‘It doesn’t mean I love you any less, Charlie. You’re one of the good ones. I’ve never doubted that, not for a minute.’
Charlie turns his face away from me and gets up without a word. Squeezing my eyes shut, tears burn the back of my closed lids as I listen to him padding across the room.
‘I might nip out and pick up the sour cream,’ he says. ‘When I get back, could we just forget about everyone else for at least one night?’
‘Yeah, that would be good,’ I say. I don’t open my eyes until the door clicks shut, and I don’t move off the bed until I hear Charlie leave the apartment.
Wrapping myself in Charlie’s towelling dressing gown, I return to the living room. I stir the chilli before grabbing my phone and slumping down onto the sofa. I have until Charlie comes back to continue my hunt for Lewis.
Am I being paranoid? A little obsessed perhaps, but isn’t that understandable? Lewis hasn’t simply returned to Liverpool, he’s come back into our lives. The solicitor’s letter might have been a knee-jerk reaction to Ruth’s accusations, but what about Ellie’s call? What if Lewis had been listening in, laughing at me? Ruth was promoting the helpline when she attacked him so it makes sense that it should be his target.
Opening my Facebook app, I see that Jay has refused my friend request and, to my utter humiliation, Meathead has unfriended me too. My sigh of frustration catches in my throat as a new thought strikes. I open a browser and tap in a new search.
Lewis McQueen, the personal trainer, appears on the second page of results with a link to his website. Skimming through the information, I can’t see any mention of the hotel where he works, but it would appear that Lewis offers boot camp sessions in the city centre. Judging by the photo on the bookings page, they take place in Chavasse Park, which is on the upper level of the Liverpool One shopping mall, on the opposite side of the Strand to Mann Island. As I scroll down the page, I find a Twitter feed showing comments and conversations from apparently satisfied customers. Most are women.
From what I read, the six-week courses offer high intensity training and provide Lewis with a legitimate excuse to hurl abuse at women, but I’m looking for something that exposes him for the b
ully I know him to be. It doesn’t take long to find tweets about him pushing his victims to their limits but none are genuine complaints. He’s actually found a way of turning his cruelty into a business opportunity.
I’ve scrolled past a comment before I realise its importance. There are a few flirtatious comments about one to one workouts, with other boot camp recruits joining in. One mentions that Lewis has a girlfriend. Another replies that it won’t last – she only wants him for his UK citizenship. There follows an argument about the legal status of EU citizens but I’ve found what I needed from this thread. Ellie is his girlfriend.
I’m vaguely aware that the chilli is burning but I can’t take my eyes from my phone as I go back up through the latest tweets. There’s no further mention of Lewis’s girlfriend but one very recent comment catches my attention. A new recruit is begging Lewis to go easy on her when her course starts on Saturday because she’ll be hungover that morning. I check the date of her tweet and realise she’s talking about this weekend.
It would be foolhardy to go there but it’s not like I have to speak to him. Seeing me should be enough to send a message that I can stand up to him. I can’t believe I’m contemplating doing this. It’s not like me. It’s more like Meg and that thought fires me up.
‘See you there,’ I mutter to myself, then hurry to the kitchen to stir the boiling pot that’s been left for far too long.
7
Ruth
The conference room looks like a war zone, with battle plans scattered across the table. Friday afternoon was not the best time to receive another set of queries from the planning department regarding the Whitespace project, not when we have a meeting with them on Monday morning, so action had to be taken and quickly.
McCoy and Pace’s reputation will be on the line if we don’t secure planning approval but after a quick brainstorming session, I’m quietly confident. Geoff might have a knack for innovation, but whenever we hit a problem with the conceptual boundaries he likes to push, I’m the one who fixes them. And from the look on the faces of the team as they file out of the room, I’ve found a solution they can work with.
‘Geoff looks happier than he did at the beginning of the week,’ Jen says as she gathers up the CAD drawings.
The glass partitioning allows me to look out across the office to where Geoff has pulled up a chair next to one of our senior architects, and he’s pointing at whatever plan she’s opened up on screen. If drinking less is the barometer for my husband’s happiness then, yes, he is happier. I have no other means of measurement. ‘I suppose,’ I reply.
‘Has he mentioned any more about retiring?’ Jen asks quickly as she sees me reach for the door handle.
I pause. ‘Not a word.’
Like me, Geoff has relaxed back into the life we scavenged from the wreckage of Meg’s death but there’s something not quite right between us. This year’s anniversary has caused a ground shift that’s unnerving me, and it’s not difficult to trace the cause. Geoff and I still haven’t sat down and talked about his proposition for our premature retirement; in fact, it’s a subject I’ve been deliberately avoiding, and as a consequence, our conversations at home have stagnated.
Our silences aren’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s always been difficult finding something new to talk about when we spend so much of the working day together. It’s why we maintain our separate interests. Geoff has his golf and he leaves me to the day to day running of the foundation. Ours has never been the perfect marriage but I thought we were settled. I shouldn’t have baited Lewis on TV. I should have known I was asking for trouble.
Jen continues to shuffle papers. She’s been exceptionally quiet in recent days but I suppose it’s natural that the uncertainty Geoff’s plans have cast over our future would shake her too. Returning to my seat, I pull out the chair next to me. When Jen joins me, she fidgets with the papers she’s set down on the table. She doesn’t look up.
‘There will come a time when Geoff and I have to think seriously about retirement but I don’t want that to worry you, Jen. When it does happen, we’re not going to simply abandon you, or the rest of the staff for that matter. There’s no harm planning for the future, and that includes yours,’ I tell her, willing her to lift her gaze. When she does, I add, ‘Are you still serious about becoming a counsellor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you already have your new path to follow, all you have to do is take it.’ When Jen squirms in her seat, I catch hold of a half-remembered conversation that had been lost in the fog that descended as Meg’s anniversary approached. ‘Wasn’t there a part-time foundation course you were looking at? Shouldn’t you have started it by now?’
‘It was only a vague idea and I didn’t think the timing was right this year. We’ve been snowed under with the Whitespace project and the helpline relaunch, and I know you said the foundation could fund me, but there isn’t the budget and you know it. It’s fine, honestly,’ she adds when she sees me raise my eyebrows. ‘I’ll do it next year.’
‘Oh, Jen, you can’t keep putting these things off.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ she says, only for her smile to freeze when I flinch. ‘Sorry, stupid thing to say.’
It’s hard to predict or avoid the comments that stab at my heart without warning. I love Jen dearly, and there have been times when we treated her more like a daughter than a niece, but she isn’t. Meg is my daughter and always will be, and it feels like a betrayal having the kind of conversation with my niece that I can’t have with Meg.
Bringing Jen back into my life was always going to be a blessing and a curse. My sister-in-law, Eve, had distanced herself and her daughters from her brother’s family as if suicide were contagious and for a time, that suited me because Jen’s presence served only to amplify Meg’s absence. But I’d been furious when I heard Jen had turned down her place at university, angrier still when I found out she was working as a cleaner for Charlie’s fledgling company. I had to do something and I still do. I need to make sure Jen reaches her full potential because I know that’s what Meg would be doing if she were here.
But it’s not easy, and there are times like this when it bloody hurts.
I brush off Jen’s comment with a smile. ‘Just promise me you’ll do something about it. If you’ve missed the September intake then find out if there’s one that starts in January. At the very least, apply for next year and send me the bill. If this is your dream, go for it.’
Jen relaxes. ‘It is, and I will.’
‘Good, because I don’t want you stuck here shuffling papers for the rest of your life.’
‘But I love it here and I’ll do anything to keep the helpline going,’ she says with such conviction that it takes me by surprise.
‘You’re already doing more than enough. Geoff pulled up the stats and was surprised at the increase in activity … although I did have to point out that a good few were put-down calls. You didn’t have any on Wednesday night, did you?’
Jen’s lips are pressed tightly together. She shakes her head.
I tilt my head, sensing there’s more to Jen’s unease than I’d first thought. ‘Anything else that’s making you anxious?’
With a tentative shrug, she says, ‘I had a good chat with Gemma. Well, when I say good, she’s still being hounded by Ryan.’
‘We’ll need to watch her carefully. She says she doesn’t want him back again but he’s creeping into her life by stealth.’
‘They always do,’ Jen replies sadly.
Her anxiety creeps into my bones and I resist gnawing on the acrylic nail I stroke across my lip. ‘Is it possible someone’s doing that to us?’
Jen’s eyes widen. ‘Lewis?’ she asks.
‘I can’t help wonder if the put-down calls on Monday were from him. It seems a coincidence for it to happen on the same day we received the solicitor’s letter.’
‘He wants to intimidate us,’ she agrees.
‘He can want all he likes. If I get any nuisance calls on my shift
tonight, I will be polite and professional and I’ll send a note to the others asking that they do the same. We do not quake in fear from dead air at the end of a phone.’
‘No, we don’t.’
The determination in Jen’s voice is a contradiction to the fear in her eyes and I look away before we both lose our nerve. Across the office, Geoff remains absorbed in the designs we’ll need to resubmit to the planners. I can’t imagine him turning his back on his life’s work. He thrives on the glory when our designs are brought to life, but I know my husband: he didn’t mention retirement on a whim. The subject hasn’t been dropped, and one way or another, I will have to follow the advice I gave Jen and consider my own future.
The foundation isn’t the only legacy of Meg’s that I’m struggling to keep alive. She loved her family and there was a time, before Lewis, when Meg would have done anything for me and Geoff. She went to great lengths to keep our marriage together and in spite of the horrific odds of parents breaking up after the loss of a child, we kept going after she’d died. We had to, for our business and the staff, for our sanity, and for Meg most of all.
‘I’ve finally built up the courage to watch Meg’s videos, or at least the earlier ones that remind me of what mattered to us all back then,’ I say. I tip my head towards the window: the red brick and Portland stone striped hotel on the opposite corner of the Strand was once the White Star Line offices. There’s a bride and groom out on the balcony, surrounded by guests. ‘Remember our twentieth wedding anniversary?’
‘I helped Meg organise the party.’
Jen’s smile chases away our fears and reminds me how good it is to have her around to share happier memories. Our lives had been peppered with simple moments that I didn’t appreciate at the time, but I do now as I think back to the day my caring and thoughtful daughter decided to patch up her parents’ failing marriage.
‘How many guests were at your wedding, Mum?’ she’d asked as she came tumbling downstairs with Jen in tow.
I was in the sitting room leafing through a community newsletter that advertised all kinds of night school classes. I’d found it that morning on the kitchen counter and I was fairly certain it hadn’t been Geoff who had turned the corner of the page for ballroom dancing. The summer holidays were drawing to a close, Sean was all set to go to uni and, as Meg kept reminding me, she was old enough to look after herself. Geoff and I needed new challenges.
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