Fearless

by Jessie Keane

  She looked back at him.

  She was alive. Big eyes. Sexy mouth. She was OK.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said, his breath coming out in a whoosh of relief. He turned back to Aysha, whose hand was now reaching inside the bag. He grabbed her arm.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Aysha, through clenched teeth. Her face was set, determined.

  ‘Don’t what?’ he said. ‘Don’t stop you doing something that’s going to ruin your entire fucking life? Give me that.’

  Connor turned his body into hers so that they were shielded from view. He grabbed the gun from the depths of the bag and tucked it inside his coat.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Suki, standing up.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Connor firmly, turning toward her. He glanced at Aysha. ‘Go on home, Aysh. I’ll sort this out.’

  ‘She was apologizing for her mother,’ said Aysha, trembling, her face a mask of disgust as she looked at the American woman. ‘Saying she understood how upset I was. Then trying to justify it. Saying how unhappy Dad had been, married to Mum.’

  ‘Go home,’ repeated Connor.

  ‘Mum wanted me to do it,’ said Aysha, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  ‘I know that, Aysh. She asked me first. Now fuck off home and don’t be a div. She’s just using you. That’s all she ever does. And it ain’t worth it.’

  Aysha gave Suki one last look and walked away. In the distance, Mad Dog was watching. Connor gave him a nod, and he walked off.

  Suki was staring at Connor.

  ‘What was that about?’ she asked. She was very pale. ‘Was she . . . was she going to do something? She kept looking in the bag. And she seemed hyped.’

  Yeah, he thought. She was going to kill you. And incidentally, she was going to fuck up her whole life too.

  ‘It was nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’ She was staring at his face. Not believing a word of it, he could see that. She stood up, edged away from him. ‘I’d better get back to the hotel.’

  148

  Connor watched her go. She walked fast, glancing back a time or two. She was cutting across the park, past the fly-fisherman, past an elderly couple walking a fat Pekingese dog.

  He followed more slowly, calming down after the stress and exertion. Fucking Mum, what was she thinking? But he knew the answer to that; she wasn’t thinking at all. She was in revenge mode, and when Shauna got like that, any damned thing could happen.

  Connor hadn’t actually decided to go into the hotel, but having followed Suki back to the High Street, he went in, past the smiling top-hatted and red-coated doorman. He found her sitting in the reception area beside the big plate-glass windows that looked out on to the busy streets where black cabs, motorbikes and open-topped tour buses whizzed past night and day. It was starting to rain again.

  She looked up when he came in, and visibly flinched. He walked over, looked down at her. She looked pitiful, small and vulnerable. He sat down opposite. They eyed each other silently.

  ‘Are you here to finish what your sister started?’ she asked unsteadily, when the silence had stretched on for too long. ‘Why are you following me?’

  I’m fucked if I know.

  The gun was right there, in his pocket.

  Then Connor said: ‘You’re shaking.’

  Suki gulped down a breath. ‘That’s because you’re scary.’

  Finally Connor said ‘Fuck it,’ and stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ She stared up at him in alarm. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I said come on. We’re going to the bar. I don’t know about you, but after all that, I need a bloody drink.’

  ‘How did she meet up with him?’ asked Connor as they sat in a corner of the hotel bar fifteen minutes later. ‘I know they were together years ago, but in New York? How did that happen?’

  ‘You don’t want to know, do you? Not really.’

  She’d slipped off her coat. Connor was drinking Johnnie Walker on ice, she was sipping a Bloody Mary. Suki thought that this was surreal, sitting here with Josh’s son. Her nerves were still jangling from her meeting with Aysha. She knew Aysha had been trying to work herself up to something, something bad. She just didn’t know what. And now she was here, with Connor. He was even more frightening than his sister.

  ‘If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t ask,’ said Connor.

  ‘It must be horrible for you. A shock. I do understand that.’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  Suki took a swallow of her drink. Then she said: ‘He was friends with the Constantinou brothers. They’re club owners, boxing promoters and regular clients at Sylvester’s, the nightclub Mom owns, the one I worked in. I don’t think I’ll go back to that. Maybe Mom won’t either.’

  ‘Now you’ve got all that cash to spend?’

  ‘Mom didn’t ask for that, or expect it. She didn’t want that.’ Suki gazed at him. ‘I think she wanted to come back not only to honour Josh’s wishes but maybe to confront old demons. To look your mother in the eye in the solicitor’s office and say, Fuck you.’

  ‘She’ll take the cash though.’

  ‘I know how disgusting all this must seem to you.’

  Connor took a gulp of the whisky. ‘What sort of nightclub?’ he asked.

  ‘What, you think we’re strippers, parading around stage wearing a G-string and a smile? I told you: Mom is the owner, and I serve drinks at tables. Nothing too shocking.’

  ‘You said you only met up with her recently.’ Connor’s interest was piqued. ‘How come?’

  Suki explained about her life in the trailer park with Aunt Ginny and the shocking letter she’d read after Aunt Ginny’s death, revealing the fact that Dave and Jo Vance hadn’t been her real parents at all.

  ‘It took such balls for Mom to come back here, you know. She’s still scared of your mother, but she faced her down and I’m proud of her for that. I told you they killed her pet dog Blue, right in front of her? Slit the dog’s throat, then threw his body into a tomb.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Yeah, but did I mention that they did it while your mother stood by and watched? She said the same thing would happen to Mom and her whole family if she didn’t leave town. And then Jeb and Ciaran Cleaver took it in turns to rape her, right there in the goddamned church! They tossed the dog’s body into the grave of a woman called Polly James – she’s buried just in front of the altar.’

  ‘Are you making this up?’ asked Connor, although he didn’t think she was.

  He had a sickening feeling that she was telling the absolute truth. His mother! All right, she was a bitch. He knew that. Interfering in his love life, warning off his girlfriends, controlling Aysha to the point where she’d been about to commit murder, dominating Dad and making his life one long caged misery. But orchestrating a rape? Overseeing the slaying of someone’s pet dog?

  ‘I’m not making anything up!’ She looked at him, indignant. ‘God, why would I want to? One of those awful bastards was my father. A rapist. It’s not something to be proud of, is it? You know what? Josh really disliked your mother. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. We saw it on his face whenever she phoned him. And she used to put little notes in his bag. He hated that. He said it felt like she was clawing at him, manipulating him, saying You’re mine.’

  ‘Waste of time, as it happens,’ said Connor. Shit, the things she’d told him had left him feeling shaken. Remembering that pig farmer who’d come at him with the axe, it wasn’t hard to imagine the Cleavers slitting a dog’s throat and terrorizing a young woman as she begged for mercy.

  ‘It’s all true,’ said Suki. ‘I swear it.’

  149

  When Suki left the bar, Connor drained his whisky and departed the hotel, flicking up his coat collar against the deluge. People hurried past him under umbrellas, taxis swooshed past, water streaming into gutters like rivers. He went back to the Porsche, surprised to find it in place and not towed. He shook himself like a dog and then drov
e over to Henley and Mum’s house. He let himself in with his front door key and walked through to the kitchen, where Shauna was usually to be found.

  She was there, sitting at the coffee bar. She looked up when she saw him.

  Connor found himself staring at her like she was a stranger.

  ‘What, were you expecting Aysha?’ he asked.

  Shauna said nothing.

  Simmering with barely suppressed fury, Connor walked over to where she sat, took the Magnum out of his coat pocket and placed it on the bar in front of her.

  ‘Were you expecting her to come back here and tell you she’d done it? That she’d blown Claire or Suki’s brains out? Or both?’

  Still, Shauna was silent. Her eyes were on the gun.

  ‘Have you any fucking idea of what that would have done to Aysha? There were witnesses by the dozen. She’d have gone down for certain. Her life would have been totally fucked. She’d have spent years inside. Years. All to give you your bloody revenge.’

  He was shouting. Shauna’s eyes raised and she looked at him, unblinking.

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ she said.

  ‘You’re fucking mental,’ Connor went on, uncaring.

  ‘I want her gone,’ said Shauna.

  ‘Yeah, you wanted her gone a long time ago too, didn’t you.’ Connor rested his hands on the worktop and stared at her, this unknown person, his mother. ‘I’ve been hearing about that. You know I have. About the Cleaver brothers and what they did to her. About the dog. All of it.’

  Shauna’s face grew still. ‘I told you. I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, you do. You wanted her gone and they helped you. Claire vanished, didn’t she, on the night you and my dad got together. She ran for her life. But those bastards had already done the damage, and she was pregnant.’

  Shauna’s eyes were like daggers. ‘Yes, she ran off. Nothing to do with me though. She broke up with Josh and just cleared out. That’s all.’ She got to her feet, stalked to one end of the kitchen, then turned and came back to the coffee bar.

  He could see she was lying. It was true, what Suki had told him. All of it.

  ‘Fuck it, you know what I think?’ said Connor. ‘I think that Dad should never have been with you at all. He should have been with Claire Milo, but you derailed his entire life, didn’t you. If he’d been with Claire, if he’d been happy, then he wouldn’t have fucked off to America to book fights, he would have stayed here.’

  ‘You what?’ roared Shauna. ‘You little shit,’ she said, and came across the kitchen, eyes mad with rage. She snatched up the Magnum and pointed it straight at his chest.

  150

  ‘Don’t be bloody silly,’ said Connor, staring down the large black barrel of the gun.

  His mother was actually pointing the Magnum at him. She’d really lost it this time.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Calm down and give me the gun, Mum. This is stupid.’

  For a moment she glared at him and he thought, Shit, she’s going to do it. She’s actually going to shoot me.

  Slowly Shauna’s hand went down. She placed the gun back on the counter between them. Then she slumped down on the bar stool. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘Look, I need some time alone, OK? Just go, will you. Fuck off, Connor,’ she said. She sounded exhausted.

  ‘Mum . . .’

  ‘Leave me alone. Josh betrayed me and you know what? Now both of my kids have too. Just go.’

  Connor went.

  Shauna sat there afterwards, shaking with fear and anger as she watched the rain dribble down the kitchen windows, listened to it hitting the roof of the house. She wondered what was happening to her life, the life she had always been in such control of but which was now hurtling into chaos. She would never have hurt Connor. Not really. What had she been thinking, turning the gun on him? And oh Christ, what he’d said before, about Jeb coming after him with an axe. What the fuck?

  Josh was gone.

  Josh hadn’t loved her.

  A shriek of pain escaped from her lips as she thought it. First, last and always for her, it had been Josh. He had been the centre of her world. Oh, she had formed ‘friendships’ – not friendships at all really, but ways to advance herself in the circles she wanted to be moving in. Her old neighbour Chloe, who still lived at the house y the river, was a ‘friend’, she supposed. Actually, Shauna couldn’t stand the snobby, alcoholic cow. But she was useful for down the tennis club and on the golf course and at the charitable events Shauna relished; Chloe had been Shauna’s stepping-stone into that world.

  But had Shauna really been accepted there? She didn’t think so. She thought they still laughed at her behind her back. Well, fuck them. She laughed at them, too, with their ‘mwah, mwah’ kisses and their ‘dahlings’; false as fuck, they were.

  Ah, she didn’t have much of a knack for friendship anyway. Never had, really. Her family, Josh and the kids – they were her world. Anything outside didn’t count.

  But Josh was dead.

  And the kids? The one time she needed their help, begged for it, they’d disappointed her.

  Feeling fidgety, Shauna slipped the Magnum into a drawer and wondered what to do. She was going mad here, alone in this house. She snatched up her car keys. She might go out for a drive, she decided. Fuck the rain. Her life was over, the way she saw it, but she was still breathing. She might pop over to Chloe’s, pass some time, get out of here because the walls seemed to be closing in on her and things were coming to light that should have stayed buried forever. And it had all started when that bitch Claire had come back with that fucking daughter of hers.

  That was all her life was coming down to, now: passing time, trying not to lose her grip on sanity. She felt shaky, like everything was falling apart.

  Somehow, she would press on with her life. There were accounts that needed settling, and since no one else was going to help, she’d have to sort it all out herself. For a start, Claire Milo and her fucking offspring were going to have to go, she thought, taking the gun out of the drawer and tucking it into her handbag. And then there was Jeb Cleaver. He was going to have to pay for threatening Connor, trying to hurt him.

  But in the meantime she was going to take Connor’s advice and calm down, get control of herself. Let them all think it was business as usual. She’d arranged to meet Chloe to discuss the seating plan for the Heart Foundation dinner on Friday, so that’s what she’d do: get on with things, be on the outside the smiling society hostess she was born to be – even though inside she felt as if she was cracking apart like a clay riverbed in the baking summer heat.

  151

  Shauna got into her car and was backing out of the gates when someone rapped hard on her window. She saw Jeb Cleaver standing there, that bastard. She pulled on the handbrake, ready for this fucker right now, and was about to let down the window and give him the hairdryer treatment when he yanked her door open, leaned in, unclipped her seat belt and dragged her out of the car.

  ‘You arsehole!’ she spat. ‘Get the fuck off me, you shit.’

  ‘Is that any way to speak to the bloke that’s helped you so much?’ said Jeb, shaking her like a dog would a rat. ‘Don’t try coming the posh bird with me, Shauna – I know you, remember? I know all your dirty secrets. Have you forgotten the time I helped you with that bitch neighbour of yours, held her under the water while she struggled? And all those other favours you wanted doing, people you wanted sorted.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I’ve been hearing some things about you. You son of a bitch, you came at my boy with a fucking axe in your hand.’ Shauna glanced back at the car. The engine was still running. Her bag was there on the passenger seat. The gun was inside it. If she could only reach it . . . but she couldn’t. He held her in a grip hard as iron. Jeb was dangerous, she was realizing that now; she’d had a tiger by the tail for so long, she’d stopped being aware of it.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t like that?’ He was grinnin
g at her now. ‘Listen, you upset me. Hurt me bad. So this is me getting even, OK? You’re a real keen mother, right? You drool over those kids so much it’s sickening to see. And trust me, I seen it. You organize their love lives – telling me to sort out that hairdresser girl who got a bit too friendly with your boy Connor. You told me to see to it she didn’t make you a grandmother – and I did. Now, you don’t want to know me. Want to push me aside. Well, I got news for you, Shauna Flynn – I ain’t going to let that happen.’

  ‘You come near my kids again and I’ll kill you,’ hissed Shauna, right in his face.

  ‘Yeah, fine words,’ he laughed, and shoved her away from him. ‘I’ll see you around, Shauna. Love to the kiddies! Or maybe I’ll see them first!’

  And he turned away and was gone while she was still standing there shivering with shock on the pavement.

  152

  To her dismay, Shauna found she felt too unsteady to continue her journey after her confrontation with Jeb. Gingerly she inched the car back on to the drive, parked up, and switched off the engine. She grabbed her bag and tottered indoors, going into the kitchen and swigging back a glass of water at the sink. Then the doorbell rang.

  Fuck!

  She’d forgotten to close the gates when she’d driven back up and now Jeb had come for another go at her. Well by Christ she’d teach that bastard a lesson he’d never forget. Threaten her kids, would he? She yanked the Magnum out of her bag, weaved her way back into the hall and opened the front door.

  It wasn’t Jeb.

  Claire Milo was standing there.

  ‘Hello, Shauna,’ said Claire.

  Shauna stared at her like she was a ghost. Then she stepped backwards, holding the gun behind her back. Claire came past her into the hall, and Shauna shoved the door closed. She couldn’t believe it. The gutless little wonder had come here.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ said Shauna, following Claire into the kitchen.

  Claire turned, and saw the gun in Shauna’s hand. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t plead or cry. Shauna wished that she would. She’d enjoy that.