Aiden stared at the big man for a moment, then leant back in his chair, raising his arms and linking his hands behind his head. His lips quivering into a shrewd smile, he replied, “Well, that explains a lot.”
Marcellus’s eyebrows rose for a moment. He didn’t miss the twinkle of amusement in Aiden’s deep blue eyes. “That’s not all,” he announced. Aiden cocked his head to one side, regarding Marcellus thoughtfully. He found it highly amusing how much this troll of a man was being affected by the news he felt obliged to tell him.
“There’s been some talk… well… it seems clear to some, not me, I don’t really give a shit either way, but…”
“Spit it out, Marcellus…”
“There’s been some talk that…” He pulled a face. He’d said he didn’t care, but he couldn’t disguise his disgust. “That you and him… you know…”
Aiden burst into laughter and his reaction seemed to ease the tension in Marcellus’s shoulders. “That’s brilliant! People think I’m a shirtlifter? Really?” He laughed again. “Carl, Carl!” Carl appeared around the kitchen door. “Am I gay?” Carl frowned with bemusement.
“I don’t understand the question, Mr Foster…” he replied.
“Do you think I’m gay?”
“You are married…” His bemusement did not wane.
“I’m very much aware of that, Carl!” Aiden laughed. “Bring the boys back and let’s get this shit offloaded, yeah?”
Carl nodded and immediately the small workforce got back to the job in hand. “So you’re not, then?” Marcellus asked quietly, as if there was some chance that Aiden might admit that he was.
“No, ’course I ain’t!”
Marcellus sighed and fell against the back of his chair. “Thank fuck for that! I don’t think I could have handled that …”
Aiden grinned. “What happened to you not giving a shit either way?”
“Well, I didn’t wanna be rude…”
Aiden laughed again, shaking his head as the big man finally enjoyed a line.
Chapter forty-four
Lily approached a small café in the heart of Hampstead and stepped inside. The building was slim in width, but long. Located to her left was a small, streamlined kitchen, while the rest of the space was filled with small square tables lining one side of the wall, enough to seat two persons per table, all the way to the end. She glanced up to see Grant O’Donoghue sitting at the back of the café. The rest of the café was empty.
“What can I get you, love?” a large-breasted woman with wiry hair asked politely from behind the counter.
“Um… a coffee, please… black,” Lily confirmed distractedly.
“I’ll bring it over.”
Lily nodded and headed down the café. When she approached Grant’s table, he smiled warmly at her. “Lily, love, please sit.”
She smiled shyly back at him, the memory of her latest departure from his house at the forefront of her mind. “Thanks,” she whispered.
Grant quietly watched as she took her seat. She looked nervous and slightly embarrassed. “Lily, please don’t feel uncomfortable around me. I’d like to be your friend, if I can… you can confide in me if you want to,” he announced, then added with a grin, “I am, after all, the outsider.” She sighed, relieved that he had broken the ice so early on, and nodded, placing her small leather handbag on the floor by her feet. She wanted to confide in this man. She had no one else, no one to offload the burden of her life with Aiden onto. “Would you like something to eat? It’s on me.”
“No, thank you.”
Grant surveyed her for a moment, then, as was in his nature, he got straight to the point, “You asked me to meet you today and I’m glad you did. I could tell from our last meeting that you have a bunch of questions you want to ask me about Aiden. My question to you is: why not ask Aiden yourself?” Lily was a little taken aback by his directness, but it didn’t prevent her from seeing the irony in his question. She raised her eyebrows and twisted her lips to express this. Grant cleared his throat. “I know he’s a… difficult man.”
“Difficult being the operative word,” she muttered scathingly, running a delicate hand through her silky hair.
Grant frowned. “If you don’t mind me saying… your derision is somewhat unsettling. Are you and Aiden not getting along?”
Lily gulped and found herself lying. “Yes, we’re fine…”
“But?”
“But… he’s so closed off all the time. He doesn’t like to discuss anything about his past… or his present for that matter…”
“And that’s why you’re so eager to talk to me?” Lily nodded and Grant continued, “You say he’s closed off about his present… in what way do you mean?”
Lily hesitated, uncertain where to go with this. It suddenly dawned on her that she was about to divulge all her deepest reservations about her husband to this stranger; a stranger who claimed to know Aiden very well. Would this all get back to him?
As if Grant had read her mind, he said reassuringly, “I haven’t spoken to Aiden for five years, Lily. As I said, I am an outsider. I’m not likely to run to him now and inform him of your uncertainties.”
Lily took a deep breath and replied, “He doesn’t tell me anything, and anything I ask him, I get a one-word response. It’s so frustrating.”
Grant smiled with understanding. “It’s a Foster trait, I think… or, at least, a Duggie trait. Vivien used to have similar frustrations to you. She’d say getting any information out of Duggie was as likely as getting the Pope to admit he’s Protestant…” He smiled sympathetically, then, serious again, he added, “You say Aiden’s reticent about the present… what is it you need to know that he’s not telling you?”
“I need to know what he’s getting up to,” she whispered, as if just her desire to know more was betraying Aiden somehow.
The wiry-haired waitress bustled over with Lily’s black coffee. She placed it on the table and Lily saw her flush when she peered down at Grant. Grant was unaware, because his eyes were still on her. “Anything else for you, sir?” the woman asked.
“No, thank you, Gail,” Grant replied, glancing up at her briefly before he laid his eyes back on Lily.
Lily’s eyebrows furrowed. “Does everyone call you sir?” she asked curiously when the woman had returned to the front of the café.
Grant smiled wryly, “Not everyone.”
“I think she likes you,” she announced, taking a sip of her coffee, her lips quirking into a smile around the rim of her cup.
Grant’s eyebrows shot up, conveying an expression of sheer horror, and Lily chuckled. It was a lovely sound and Grant was thrilled that this woman was finally at ease. He continued inquisitively, “You were saying you want to know what Aiden is up to?”
Lily took another sip of her coffee, pursing her lips, and replied, “He’s so secretive… but I know there’s something afoot…” She took another sip.
“In what context? Do you think he’s having an affair?”
Lily spluttered. Placing her cup back in its saucer, she answered, “No,” with amusement. She cleared her throat and explained, “I know he loves me, Grant. He’s made that very clear and I believe him. I am curious as to how he earns all his money. I mean, it’s clear that he started off earning from illegal activities. Now he says he has investments that are paying off, but I’m not convinced… how can somebody so young earn so much? We live like grown-ups!”
Grant smiled, enchanted by the sweet little thing before him. “You are grown-ups.”
“Barely, Grant,” she scoffed.
“You’re married; you have a child. I would say that was pretty grown-up. In fact, it’s a bigger step into adulthood than I ever made. No wife, no kids…”
“How come you never married?”
He shrugged. “My career always came first.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
Grant sighed and placed his hand over hers. “Do you?”
Lily frowned in thought a
nd pulled her hand away, curling both of her hands in her lap, her head bowing under the strain of his inquisitive gaze. She sat in silence for a long moment, considering the question that he had expertly reversed back onto her.
Grant waited patiently for Lily to answer him, eager for her to unveil the truth of her suffering. It was strange. He felt a deep sympathy for this young lady along with a deep need to help her. Only one other person had held the key to awakening such fatherly affection within him, and that had been Vivien – first the mother of Aiden and now the wife. This was history repeating itself. His calling was clear once more. He needed to protect this girl from her husband, the same way he had attempted to protect Vivien.
This was father and son, one generation then the next, both similar in nature and both unable to see what they had in front of them: a beautiful wife, unreservedly in love, unconditionally loyal and totally vulnerable.
Lily peered up at Grant and, finally, she replied, “Yes… I have regrets. I regret the day I returned for him. I should have stayed away, got a degree, got a good job… met a good man.”
Grant’s eyes glistened pensively. “Aiden isn’t a good man to you?”
“To me, yes…” she croaked and gulped hard, the secret she was keeping lodged in her constricted throat, prohibiting her from speaking of her husband’s double life. She shook her head, slowly and sadly. She couldn’t do it; she couldn’t tell him what she knew. Grant leant forward in his chair. “Lily, let me help you.”
“I don’t think you can.” She peered up at him through wet lashes but her expression all of a sudden became serious and detached. “I’m sorry for wasting your time once again. But I think I know how to handle this now.” She picked up her bag and made to leave.
Grant bolted to his feet. “I know!” he said.
Lily turned back to him, her face draining of blood, as if she already knew the answer to her following question. “Know about what?”
“What you want to know.”
Lily slowly lowered herself back into her chair. “What do you know?” she whispered, her large blue eyes staring up at him.
“Everything.”
She gulped. “Everything?” Grant nodded and sat down again. In a quieter voice, she asked, “The girls?”
Grant nodded again. “How?” she pressed.
He stared warily at her. “I just do.”
The adrenaline of declaring her secret coursed through Lily’s veins and she began to tremble. This man could be a part of it. She choked, “Are you…?”
“I told you, I haven’t seen Aiden in five years…”
Her eyes burned into Grant’s face. Her disgust was suddenly clear in her expression. “One of them is my friend…” she quaked.
“Lily… I…”
“All those innocent girls, suffering every day, and you know about it and choose to do nothing?” she seethed. Grant remained calm, the antithesis of Lily right now. “Is this because of Aiden… you’d turn a blind eye to his cruelty out of some loyalty to him?”
“Yes,” Grant replied simply.
He closed his eyes. Lily stared at him, utterly dumbfounded. She couldn’t comprehend his thinking at all. She was Aiden’s wife, but she couldn’t stand around and pretend that this wasn’t happening. She couldn’t stand back and allow Aiden to take advantage of young, misguided women – young vulnerable women like Gina! This wasn’t a case of loyalty: this was a case of what was right and what was wrong!
She stood so hastily that she knocked her chair backwards, sending it clattering to the floor. “I know what I have to do,” she announced.
Grant was on his feet in an instant. “Lily, don’t do anything you’ll regret!”
“Regret?” she repeated, then with a glance around the café she lowered her voice to a seething whisper. “Oh, I have plenty of regrets, Mr O’Donoghue, but what I am going to do won’t be one of them!”
She then stormed out of the café, leaving Grant staring after her.
Chapter forty-five
“I’m sorry, darling, we’ve been investigating the whole operation for months now, but we can’t pin anything on Aiden…”
Lily followed her father into the place she called home, on Victoria Park Street. She stayed close to his tail as he strode down the corridor and into the large airy kitchen, where he proceeded to remove his keys and other random objects from his pockets and place them on the tiled breakfast bar. Sergeant Howard Summers was a tall, slender man with mousy hair, a long face and square jaw. He wore thick-rimmed glasses, which he now removed so that he could rub his tired eyes.
“Did you speak to the girls?” Lily nagged. “What about the old woman I told you about? She can describe him down to the colour of his eyebrows, for Christ’s sake!”
Howard sighed. “We’ve been through all of this over and over, Lily. It doesn’t change the fact that whatever they know, none of them are talking… and none of my men saw Aiden near the flats. I’m sorry.”
“This is insane! There must be someone who will confirm his identity?”
“Lily, love, we had the flats under surveillance for three months! No one went in – not Aiden, not anyone we know of – apart from family members. If Aiden is involved in anything, and that’s a big if, we can’t arrest him without any evidence.”
“There’s no if about it, Dad! Gina practically confessed his involvement!”
“Practically is not enough, Lily! As far as my team are concerned, Gina Watson is a hard user of drugs. She admitted to knowing Aiden, yes, but I knew that anyway, and she also told one of my female officers that she was in love with him. For all we know, Gina was telling you a bunch of lies just to get between you and him… she was always a trouble-maker, Lily.”
“No, no, that’s not the case! He beats her. He feeds her those drugs!”
“Can you prove that?” Lily fell silent and stared down at the floor, tears pooling in her eyes. “Lily? You haven’t been round there again, have you? I told you you weren’t to interfere in this investigation!”
“I haven’t been there, alright! I haven’t seen Gina for months because of your poor investigations. I dread to think what kind of state she’s in. If Aiden hasn’t been there, then someone else must have been sneaking in…”
Howard groaned in frustration and stepped up to his daughter, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Lily, I have never been a great lover of the man, but do you honestly think Aiden, your husband, is capable of running a huge sexual exploitation operation right under our noses?”
Lily glared at her father. “Yes… I… do!”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, Lily, don’t be bloody ridiculous! Gina has got you right where she wants you! Let… this… go! The investigation is over!”
Lily shrugged her father’s hands from her. She was just about to divulge the conversation she had had with Mr O’Donoghue right before this had all started, but she bit her tongue once again, like she had had to do many times over the past few months. Apart from keeping Aiden’s secret out of some ridiculous sense of loyalty, Grant seemed a good man. She didn’t want to get him in trouble for withholding information. And even if she did inform her father what Grant knew, Grant would probably deny ever having spoken to her, like the old woman had. It would be her word against his. He knew the waitress in that café, so it wasn’t likely she was going to get a statement of truth from her either.
Howard stared down at his daughter in distress. Lily had completely lost it since informing him of what she thought she knew. She was so wrapped up in her old friend’s stories that she couldn’t see things for what they really were. Not one shred of evidence had come up to give them grounds to arrest Aiden, and the girls denied ever having slept with anyone for money.
“Lily, how about we talk to Aiden about this…”
“No!” Lily screeched. “Dad, if you mention one word to him, I’ll never speak to you or Mum again, I mean it!” Lily was hysterical. “You can’t tell him, you can’t…”
Mrs Summers entered the kitchen to see her daughter sobbing and her husband trying to comfort her. “What’s happened?” she asked, wide-eyed and fretful.
Howard shook his head and mouthed the word ‘later’ to his wife as Lily continued to sob into his chest.
************
When Lily returned home that night, Aiden met her in the hallway. She could hardly get herself inside the door before he accosted her. “Where the hell have you been?”
“At my parents’,” she retorted, frowning at his intrusion.
“I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. Where’s your mobile?”
She replied huffily, “I must have left it in the car…”
She bustled in, dropping her handbag in the corner of the hallway by the phone, then headed to the kitchen. Aiden followed on her tail. He didn’t speak, but she felt the heat of his presence behind her. “The babysitter had to call me and ask me to come home because she needed to leave. Why did you leave Amy with a sitter?” he demanded.
Lily turned to him, her eyebrows furrowing once more. “I needed a break.”
“So you went to see your parents? You don’t like your parents…”
“I do like my parents!” She turned away, but Aiden took her arm. She pulled it from him immediately. His grip held no conviction, but even so, she was taken aback and her expression conveyed this. Aiden recoiled slightly, his natural temper having betrayed him. “What’s it to do with you whether I get a babysitter round or not?” she spat, without thinking.
His eyebrows shot up. “What’s it to do with me?”
He licked dry lips and stepped back. It was a conscious move, because he was beginning to mistrust his temper. He surveyed her, his hands remaining at his side but twitching slightly. It took him a long moment to compose himself, and Lily watched him nervously as he did so. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Something’s up with you… something’s been up for a while…” His manner was suddenly accusing and suspicious. He was glaring at her, his eyes narrowed and glacial.
Human Conditioning Page 34
