Gorgeous Reads for Christmas (Choc Lit)

by Sue Moorcroft

  Casey glanced behind herself as if considering scooting out after her friend. Then she glared at Darcie and rolled her eyes. ‘If she’s found her smart-arse way here then you probably know most of it.’ She flopped down in an armchair and folded her arms.

  Tears trickled down Lynda’s pale cheeks as she accused Casey of all the lies Darcie had uncovered, Casey shrugging, sneering, studying her nails and not meeting anyone’s eyes. Darcie would’ve liked to escape but Ross’s involvement made it sensible to hang on in case there was anything she needed to know.

  Casey’s defence centred around, ‘I told a few porkies. Better than hanging around while you have a disgusting relationship with your disgusting old-man-friend.’

  Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, Lynda choked, ‘I’m allowed a boyfriend.’

  Then it was Casey who was shouting, ‘And I’m allowed to hate him, right?’

  Tears rolled faster down poor Lynda’s face. ‘What’s he ever done to you?’

  Casey went back to examining her nails. ‘Nothing. I wish he had, I could report him and get him out of our life.’

  ‘You wicked little bitch,’ whispered Lynda. ‘And you haven’t told me who that woman is?’

  That was when Casey looked up, her eyes full of spite. ‘That’s my Zoë,’ she purred. ‘She’s my friend. My very special friend. Geddit?’

  ‘I thought Zoë was a girl from school. And you were holding hands—’

  ‘Loads of people are gay, Mum. Don’t sweat it.’

  Lynda shrank into her chair. ‘At your age? You’re hardly old enough to know … And she’s so much older.’

  Casey looked up at a big black wall clock. ‘Why aren’t you at work, anyway? You’re always at work. That’s all you do, late nights, Sundays. It’s nice I’ve done something to make you stop.’

  Lynda’s pallor had become frightening. ‘I always notice you, Casey. I rang in sick when I heard what Darcie had to say.’

  Casey threw Darcie another filthy look and all but hissed at her.

  Darcie decided she’d had enough. She wasn’t learning anything new and Casey’s twisted young life was making her faintly nauseous.

  ‘I’d better go. It doesn’t seem as if any of this is relevant to Ross.’

  Casey smirked.

  Chapter Twelve

  Telling Ross was hell.

  Bewilderment and hurt warred in his face as Darcie explained; his eyes pleaded for it not to be true. ‘But I used to walk her home – up to Blossom End!’

  Stroking his hand across the kitchen table, heart clenching for his pain, Darcie said, ‘I expect she waited until you’d gone and then made off to her real home. She just seems to have enjoyed living a lie. Her mum says it’s attention seeking.’

  ‘And you say this Zoë friend is a woman? In her thirties?’

  ‘That’s what she looked like.’

  ‘Bitch,’ he breathed. ‘She told me she didn’t like to be touched. Why couldn’t she just tell me that she’s gay?’

  Darcie squeezed his hand. ‘She probably got off on you being attracted to her. It gave her a feeling of power. Certainly, something was pleasing her, judging from her smug expression.’

  Dismay flickered across Ross’s young face before he managed to shutter the expression. And Darcie wished bed bugs and boils on Casey McClare.

  Ross hung around outside the school until he spotted Ben’s bulky figure getting off the bus. ‘Hey.’

  Ben said, ‘Hey,’ but didn’t slow, and Ross had to turn and fall in step beside him.

  ‘Got a big problem.’ Ross lowered his voice. ‘You know those phones and things I’ve been selling for Casey – I think they might be stolen.’

  Ben made a goofy face. ‘Wow, what a shock!’

  Ross had to trot a couple of strides through the school gate so as not to lose him in the early morning crush to get to registration before the second bell. ‘You think they are, then?’

  Ben stopped in the middle of the quad and turned to face Ross squarely. ‘Of course they are! I reckon that phone Casey sold me was my own. She stole it, gave it new buttons from some cheap facia then sold me it back and, like a mug, I fell for it. And then there was that thing with her dad ...’ He shuddered. ‘She’s such bad news.’

  Ben joined the jostle of black sweatshirted shoulders trying to force themselves through the main door of the humanities block.

  Shouldering gamely at his side, at an advantage as one of the tallest, Ross demanded, ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Ross, you acted like you were her pet monkey.’ He jostled harder as the second bell went and Ross slowed, letting him go ahead.

  He didn’t go to registration. He didn’t go to first lesson. Instead, he went to the window at school reception. ‘Can I see Mr Able straight away, please?’ he said to the office lady who had thick glasses and lipstick on her teeth. ‘It’s urgent.’ He took a seat on a blue chair outside the head teacher’s room.

  After a few minutes, the lady from the office, visibly irritated that she’d had to leave her cosy office and walk twenty yards up the carpeted corridor, paused by Ross’s chair. ‘Mr Able says, will you try him again at lunch time? He’s got something on at the moment.’

  Ross sat back in the chair, a low, square thing without arms. ‘It’s urgent.’

  With a cluck, she disappeared again, returning after several minutes, smoothing open the pages of a diary. ‘I’m to make you an appointment for later, Mr Able says.’

  Ross shook his head, looking blankly past her. ‘I’ll wait here.’

  The lady from the office glared. ‘He can’t see you!’

  Ross turned to give her glare for glare. ‘Look, I’m in full school uniform, even the shoes, my tie’s done up, so’s my top button, there’s no writing on my hand, no visible obscenity on the badges on my bag, I’m not chewing gum. I’m not adopting a hostile tone of voice. I’m doing everything right, here. I’ve got something really important to tell Mr Able. He’ll want to know. I swear he will.’

  She eyed him. He eyed her back. She tried, ‘How about you go to your Head of Year?’

  He shook his head and began to ignore her.

  He sat on the blue chair for an hour and twenty-five minutes, staring straight ahead, his bag between his feet, the shoulder strap loosely in his hand. His brain churned. Was Casey in school? How would she be when their paths collided? Maybe she’d just blank him like Amy did when they split up. She might sneer or even come up with excuses for what she’d done. No doubt Unsad Zag was the mastermind behind it all.

  At least he didn’t care any more.

  The crying, the fury that had sent him to his room to punch impotently at his pillows until his arms shook? That was so over.

  Now he was going to do that thing Darcie sometimes talked about. Damage limitation.

  ‘If it’s so urgent you’d better come in, but I’m waiting for someone so be quick!’

  Ross looked up. Mr Able was standing in the doorway of his room, wearing a harassed frown with his highly-polished shoes. As Ross followed him into his office he realised he was now sufficient inches taller than Mr Able to see that his blond hair was thinning fast.

  Once in the office, he cut across the head teacher’s opening plea for clarity and brevity by taking from his backpack a carrier bag, which he emptied gently across the desk.

  Mr Able halted mid-sentence to gaze at the array of mobile phones.

  ‘This is what I need to talk to you about.’ Ross took a huge breath. ‘I think I’ve been tricked into selling these phones by Casey McClare. And I think they might be stolen.’

  And that’s when the office lady with lipsticky teeth knocked and bustled through the door, saying, ‘The police are here, Mr Able. You said to bring them straight in.’

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Heart curling, Ross gazed in horror at Mr Able, and then at the policemen blocking the doorway.

  The leading police constable, tapping his fingers against his body armour as he gazed
at the booty on the desk, raised his eyebrows.

  Ross let his head fall back in frustration. ‘Bastard. She’s dobbed me in before I can dob her.’

  Ross felt as if he’d shifted to an alternate reality, being taken down to the police station and formally arrested. His interview with the police seemed to go on forever and took place in the presence of Darcie, who’d raced to the station as if summoned by the devil, her face paper-white, gazing at Ross as if he’d shed a skin and become someone quite unrecognisable. Also, almost unbelievably, there was someone the policeman called a duty lawyer, Mrs Sharman, who wore a blue suit and carried a black case.

  Ross could see Darcie shaking as she took the seat beside his in a room painted white and kept too cool. Maybe it was the chill that made her shiver. Or maybe it was the fear Ross was sure he must be giving off, like a bad smell. ‘I’m sorry, Darce,’ he said. ‘Casey totally took me in.’

  Darcie managed a tiny frozen smile and took his hand as if he were still five and Mum had asked her to take him to the shop. She tried to think what Mum would have done – Mum who had seemed always to know what to do in every situation. She shook herself. ‘I know.’ She tried to make her smile broader and more reassuring before turning to Mrs Sharman. ‘Ross has never been in trouble in his life.’

  Mrs Sharman nodded. ‘Let’s start with you telling me the story of how you came to be in the police station this morning, Ross.’

  So Ross told everything to Mrs Sharman whilst Darcie tried to keep herself from leaping in with loud demands for the blood of Casey McClare. Then the dark-haired policeman, stolid in his blue uniform, took him over, up, down sideways and over again how he’d been selling stolen phones to school kids. Using Ross’s name every few words, he listened as Ross insisted that he hadn’t known the goods were stolen because he’d asked, and been assured they weren’t. Mrs Sharman emphasised this point, and that he’d been in the act of asking his head teacher for help when the police turned up.

  The policeman looked levelly at him. ‘And where did you think the phones and things came from, Ross?’

  Ross looked levelly back. ‘She said a mate of hers reconditioned stuff. His name’s Colin Jones.’

  ‘And do you know Colin, Ross? Have you met him?’

  ‘No. Casey just brought stuff she said he’d reconditioned.’ He told them about Ben’s phone, that Ben had complained about it this morning, and Ross had come immediately to report to Mr Able.

  It was an endless, ugly session, and Ross had to ask twice to be allowed to go to the toilet.

  Finally, the policeman told Darcie to take Ross home. At home, Darcie rang Mr Able and was told that Ross would not be allowed back into school until further notice. He had to make his own enquiries but this was a serious matter. It was not the kind of thing he’d tolerate occurring in his school.

  The police had just returned to school and taken Casey McClare to the police station.

  Ross was silent, shut in his room. When Darcie looked in on him he was sitting on his bed staring into space with furious concentration. Darcie didn’t see much point in insisting on talking. She’d heard the whole unbelievable thing recounted for the benefit of the lawyer and the police.

  What was she supposed to do? Dealing with Ross being made a stool pigeon wasn’t in the Good Guardian’s Handbook. Not that she had a copy. But she couldn’t possibly return to work as if nothing had happened. Round and round whirled her thoughts as she curled on the sofa, drank coffee and nursed a sinking feeling worthy of the Titanic.

  Ross’s word against Casey’s.

  Casey getting in first with her claim that Ross had been stealing and selling.

  Darcie had a horrible feeling that Casey’s version actually sounded more likely than Ross’s convoluted tale of innocence and gullibility.

  After two cups of coffee she saw they were running low on milk and seized on it as an excuse for brief escape, shouting up the stairs, ‘I’m going to the shop. Back in ten minutes.’ Wriggling into her jacket, she strode off down the street, glad to let the breeze blow through her mind.

  Jake sat in an armchair that seemed to smell faintly of Darcie’s perfume. Ross was sprawled on the sofa, his young face white and haunted. ‘So the little cow’s stitched me up,’ Ross said.

  Jake heard the back door open and close, then Darcie was standing in the doorway, staring across the room at him, looking only slightly less pale and stressed than Ross.

  ‘And I’m excluded from school while the police and Mr Able make enquiries – but at least the cops have hauled her in, too,’ Ross added, with vicious satisfaction.

  Jake made his voice matter of fact. ‘Sounds like Casey was a cat’s paw to this woman, Zoë. Casey had a crush on her and she used that for her own ends.’

  ‘And Casey used me just the same, the bitch.’

  Jake smiled at Darcie. ‘Sorry to barge in. But when you rushed off, leaving your workshop unlocked, everyone was worried that something horrible had happened and you haven’t replied to texts or calls, so I thought I’d better check you out. Stu’s manning the shop.’

  Darcie came in and flopped down onto the sofa beside Ross, a white plastic milk bottle hooked over one finger. ‘Ross has obviously told you why I was called away, so it is pretty horrible. We’ve been stuck down at the cop shop. I turned my phone to silent while Ross gave his statement.’ She fished her phone out of the pocket of her jeans. ‘Oops. I’ve got a load of missed call notifications.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  Suddenly, Darcie’s eyes glittered with tears. She swallowed. ‘You could lock my workshop for me. I won’t be back today.’

  ‘Already done. Auntie Chrissy left me the spare workshop keys, all neatly labelled.’ His smile was faint. ‘Anything else? Or do you just want to be left alone to feel bloody?’

  This time, she just nodded.

  Jake hoisted himself to his feet and clapped Ross on the shoulder. ‘Try and put it down to experience and hope the police can pin it on Casey the Bitch.’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks,’ said Ross, gruffly. Then, to Darcie. ‘I’m going to ring Amy and ask if she’s heard if the police let Casey go.’ And he made for the sanctuary of his own room.

  Jake watched him go. He smiled at Darcie, his heart going out to her. ‘I don’t think I completely appreciated the extent of your responsibility for your brother, till now. It’s huge.’

  She smiled tiredly and got up to see him out. ‘And soooooo much fun. The head teacher gave me a lecture on the phone about backing up the school by grounding Ross for the duration of his exclusion. Which is the kind of thing that’s really difficult to implement when you’re not actually the parent. Then the git seemed to read my mind and started talking about seeking support or even counselling.’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ said Jake, sympathetically. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to feel her sag against him and accept his strength and comfort, to stroke her hair and kiss away the strain from every inch of her face.

  But Darcie stepped back, as if she read his intent in his eyes. ‘That’s what they all say.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Darcie was washing up from a dinner that neither she nor Ross had eaten much of, wishing that Kelly hadn’t picked these few days to be sent on a training jolly on the south coast. The doorbell rang and she opened the front door with suds on her hands to see Jake standing there with a bottle of Bailey’s in one hand and a box of cornflakes in the other.

  Despite her misery, she giggled. ‘You really know how to show a girl a good time.’

  ‘Glad you remembered.’ He stepped into the hall. ‘How’s Ross?’

  ‘Brooding.’

  ‘Can’t blame him. He got the shitty end of the stick.’

  She took him into the kitchen. ‘I don’t think I said it earlier but thank you for locking the workshop and coming to check on me. It’s been such a crappy day. And, whilst I remember …’ She took the forty pounds she owed him from her purse, which was lying on the worktop.
‘Thanks.’ She managed a smile. ‘I haven’t got much appetite for the Cornflakes. But I do have some ice.’

  He pulled out a kitchen chair and folded himself into it. ‘Bring it on.’

  She wiped out two of her mum’s crystal tumblers, remembering, with a pang, how Mum had insisted that all drinks tasted better from crystal or china than plain old glass or pottery, and began to wrestle with an ice tray from the freezer. ‘Somebody ought to invent ice trays that will give up the ice cubes without a fight.’ She tried in vain, to twist the frozen plastic into submission.

  He took the tray from her with a Popeye flexing of his arm. ‘It needs a man.’

  ‘And you’re the closest we’ve got?’ The friendly insult fell naturally from her tongue as if they were still Ross’s age, before there had been anything between them. Before that hot night in Jake’s bed. Before that deadly cold argument the next day. Before the growth of the tension that seemed to have accompanied so many of their conversations since Jake’s return.

  Jake just laughed, turned two ice cubes into each of the tumblers and watching as she slowly poured the liqueur over, like pale chocolate milk.

  They took their drinks through to the sitting room sofa and Jake lifted his glass to her in a toast, eyes narrowed and glittering in the pool of light thrown by the floor lamp.

  And something went boi-oingggggg! in Darcie’s chest. Oh no! She drained her glass, very conscious of Jake doing the same.

  He moved closer, until they were touching. Darcie felt as if a giant was walking past, making the ground shake and her body pulse to its footsteps. Jake’s warm fingers found hers, linked. His mouth was very near and she let herself think happy thoughts about lying on dewy evening grass, his mouth on hers, the air jumping with promise. When she’d ached, and enjoyed aching.

  With a superhuman effort she slipped her fingers free.

  Leaning his elbow on the sofa back and propping his head on his hand, he blew out a sigh. ‘Oh. So we’re just going to carry on pretending there’s nothing between us, are we?’