Strong Women

by Roberta Kray

  This time, Susan paid closer attention. For the next few minutes she made sure she nodded in all the right places, expressing all the exclamations of amazement and surprise that he was yearning for. Marty Gull was not a modest man – he liked to be praised for his skills and she wisely obliged.

  When he arrived at the climax, where Delaney thought he had shot his daughter dead, Susan jumped back in her seat. Even though she’d known what was going to happen, she was still faintly shocked. He was so graphic in his description, so eager to relay every moment of Delaney’s agony, that the death of Silver felt almost real.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘So he really thought—’

  ‘Chucked up, didn’t he?’ Marty said gleefully. ‘Like a fucking volcano – his guts just exploded; he spewed all over the place.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Which is going to make it so shit easy for tomorrow. He won’t fuck us around after this.’

  Late tomorrow night, Delaney would be given his new instructions. This time – after what had happened in the factory – he wouldn’t dare disobey the order to go alone. It would be Susan’s job to pick up the cash and bring it back to the house. Delaney would then be sent on a wild goose-chase to Kent. While that was in progress, Marty could safely slip away from Honey’s. The money would be split fifty-fifty before they cleared out the cellar, put a blindfolded Silver in the back of the van and drove her a couple of miles down the road. By the time Delaney was told where to find her, Marty Gull would be back at the club and Susan would be on her way to the airport.

  Then it would all be over. Or would it? Susan was starting to wonder. She was starting to wonder about all kinds of things, the most disturbing of which was whether this even qualified as revenge. It was payback of sorts, yes, but the suffering Delaney had endured would soon be coming to an end. Hers would go on for ever.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ she lied. There was, of course, the other small matter of whether she could actually trust Marty. After what had happened to Ritchie Naylor … But it was a bit late to start going down that road. All she could do was to be prepared, to be ready in case he turned against her.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ he said. ‘Come on, spill!’

  Susan stood up, poured herself a glass of water and leaned back against the sink. ‘Why do you hate him so much, Marty? I mean, you know my reasons but I’ve never really understood yours.’

  For a second she thought he was going to fly into one of his tempers. His face grew dark but quickly cleared again. He laughed. ‘It isn’t to do with hate, babe. It’s about loyalty and what’s owed to me. Almost twenty years I’ve worked for him. This is my reward, my pension; a little early, granted, but then who knows when the old bugger’s going to drop off his perch.’

  Susan didn’t believe him. This wasn’t just about money for either of them. Marty’s motives, like her own, were rooted in deeper, darker places. But now wasn’t the time to start digging. Instead, she simply nodded and said: ‘So we’re all set?’

  Marty was staring hard at her. ‘Tell me you’re not getting the last-minute jitters.’

  ‘I don’t do jitters,’ she said scornfully.

  ‘Nervous anxiety then. Call it what you like.’

  Susan sipped at the water before raising her eyes to meet his. ‘I prefer to call it anticipation. Roll on tomorrow; I can’t wait.’

  Chapter Fifty-four

  It was over two hours since Gabe had taken the keys to the white Mondeo and left. Since then, Jo had barely moved from the sofa. She had her bare feet up on the low table and her arms folded across her chest. She didn’t exactly regret what she had told him but was not especially comfortable with it either. Informing a man you barely knew that your husband had kept secrets was hardly the ideal way to preserve one’s pride. What had possessed her to start telling him the details of her private life? But she already knew the answer to that: four strong beers on an almost empty stomach.

  She should have stuck to the coffee when they’d come back to the flat.

  That was the trouble with booze: it not only loosened your tongue, stripping away all your finer layers of judgement, but also made the act of spilling confidences feel like the right thing to do. Jo gave a groan. She lifted her right heel and banged it down against the table. Still, there was some small consolation – it wasn’t as if Gabe Miller’s relationships screamed unadulterated success either. His brief marriage to Susan hadn’t been much to brag about. And what did it matter what he thought of her? It didn’t. It absolutely didn’t.

  With a sigh, Jo shifted forward. She could feel her T-shirt clinging to her back. She stood up and walked across the room. Looking out of the window, she noticed the greyness of the sky; it had clouded over since the afternoon and the air had taken on a thick, sticky quality. A storm was on its way. She flapped a hand in front of her face but the slight warm breeze did nothing to cool her down.

  Tired of stressing out over what she had told Gabe, she turned her mind to what he had told her instead. His plans for tomorrow weren’t exactly sound. They consisted of little more than hanging around outside Honey’s on the off-chance that Delaney might take off at some point in the evening.

  ‘And then?’ she had said.

  ‘I’ll follow him.’

  ‘Won’t he be watching out for that?’

  ‘He might. Which is why I’ll be careful. I’ll keep my distance.’ Gabe had dropped his elbows on to his knees and his chin on to his hands. ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid. If the exchange goes ahead, well and good – I won’t interfere or put Silver’s life in danger – but I just want to be there in case anything goes wrong.’

  ‘And if it does go wrong?’

  ‘I’ll deal with that if and when it happens.’

  The emphasis, she suspected, should have been placed more firmly on the ‘when’ rather than the ‘if’ but she hadn’t said anything. Apart from the usual goodbyes, these were the last words they had exchanged. Jo thought about them while she stretched out her arms. She felt restless and frustrated. As if the approaching storm was seeping into her bones, she couldn’t stay still. She paced from one side of the room to the other, trying to get her thoughts in order. The only thing she ended up knowing for sure was that she could no longer bear to be inside the flat.

  As Jo slammed the door behind her, she still didn’t know where she was going. But it didn’t take her long to figure it out. She had spent too many years with her head buried in the sand – it was time to start searching for the truth.

  She half-walked, half-jogged across the Green. It was Friday, seven-fifteen, and with the grey sky threatening rain, the High Street was quieter than usual. Ruby’s, as it should be, was securely closed and shuttered. She took a moment to look at the window display, to gaze bleakly at Deborah’s artistic display of sapphires, before going in. She locked the door behind her, turned off the alarm, went through to the office and flicked on the light.

  For a moment, as the room was illuminated, she stood very still, held her breath and listened. There was no sound other than the gentle hum of the traffic. Slowly, she relaxed. What was she doing? This was her office and she had every right to be here. She had no need to feel like an intruder, like a burglar who had furtively crept in and was intent on taking what didn’t belong to her. And yet the analogy wasn’t completely off the mark. She was here to search for valuable goods, for whatever her husband might have chosen to hide.

  But where to start? Jo glanced around. Immediately, she dismissed the safe – if there was anything in there, she would have come across it by now. She disregarded the two tall filing cabinets as well; these only contained papers relating to the day-to-day running of the business and she was always in and out of them. No, the most logical place to begin was with the three long shelves of box files.

  First, she took down the file that Deborah had shown her on Wednesday and laid it on the desk. She quickly flicked through the b
ank statements but found nothing, apart from a few old bills, lying underneath. She looked at the statements again; there could be all kinds of clues in the payments Peter had made but that kind of scrutiny would take time and patience. It was a job, she decided, that was better done at home. Going through to the shop, she grabbed a large carrier from under the counter and went back to the office and dropped the whole file into the bag.

  Next, she searched the boxes that had been sitting either side of the space she had created but drew a blank. She scanned the shelves, checking out the scribbled labels but nothing obvious jumped out at her. She tried picking out several files at random but that proved equally unproductive. There was, she knew, only one logical way of doing this: she would have to start from the beginning and work her way methodically through to the end.

  The task was daunting – there must be over fifty files – but she wasn’t going to leave until she’d checked out every single one of them. The irony that she was hunting for information that might only cause her hurt and distress was not lost on her. Was she mad, stupid? Perhaps she was, but she had come too far to stop now.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. Her voice sounded odd in the quietness of the room, unnaturally loud and somehow not quite her own. She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Okay, let’s get on with it.’

  By the time she had spent over an hour ploughing through endless reams of advertising material, promotional fliers, journals, old business forecasts and accounts, Jo had come to two important conclusions: one was that the office needed a damn good clear-out and the other was that if anything important had been here, it had probably already been removed.

  She immediately thought of Jacob. Reaching for the phone, she punched in the first few digits of his number but then recoiled from the idea of talking to him. She quickly slammed down the receiver. There was something intrinsically embarrassing, even shameful, about having to admit what she was doing.

  With a sigh, she stared back at the shelves. She wasn’t finished yet. There were still ten more boxes to go. The next file she pulled out was old, black and tattered and didn’t look any more promising than the others. She opened it to find yet another pile of catalogues relating to auctions that had long since come and gone. God, why wasn’t anything ever thrown out in this place? But as she carelessly pushed them aside, her heart gave a tiny leap. Underneath was a bundle of letters. There were about thirty of them, secured by an elastic band, and a quick look through established that the thin blue airmail envelopes were all addressed to Peter Strong.

  Jo backed across the room and sat down. She dumped the catalogues on the floor. Then she tentatively removed the bundle and laid it on the desk. For a while she sat and stared at it. Her heart was beating faster now. She didn’t even have to open the letters to know who they were from – the elegant slope of Deborah’s handwriting was already familiar to her.

  So, she had been right all along! There had been something between them. The only question remaining now was when the relationship had ended. She flicked through the envelopes again, noting the various addresses of Thailand, India, even China. They had all been sent to Peter while he was abroad which suggested, surely, that these were simply the sentimental reminders of an old affair. It would be easy to slip the top one free of the elastic band, to ease it out and read the contents of the letter inside. And yet somehow Jo couldn’t bring herself to do it, not here, not right now. She would need a large drink in her hand before she could face that particular ordeal.

  Returning to the box, she picked out a slim Kodak wallet. This time she didn’t hesitate before opening it and spreading out the six photographs. Five of them were of Deborah standing alone, a younger-looking version of the woman she knew, with her striking red hair worn loose and almost reaching her waist. But the sixth, and the one her eyes were constantly drawn back to, had Peter in it too. He was standing behind Deborah, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist, and there was something about the intimacy of the pose, about the expression on both of their faces, which made her flinch. What she saw – or believed she saw – was a couple who were passionately in love.

  Jo took a few deep breaths while she continued to gaze down at the picture. What she mustn’t do, she told herself, was overreact. People fell in love – and then out of it again. It happened. She had to keep things in perspective. This was all ancient history. Peter was dead and it was crazy to be jealous over some old girlfriend. So what if Deborah had once been important to him? It was her, Jo, he had chosen to marry. By then Peter had been thirty-eight and it was inevitable that he’d have had a past.

  But somehow that line of argument didn’t have quite the effect she’d hoped for. Jo didn’t feel any better and she instinctively knew why: if it had been anyone but Deborah Hayes …

  She shifted in her chair, crossing her legs and uncrossing them again. There was something fundamentally wrong about the fact he hadn’t even mentioned the relationship. This was a woman he worked with every day, whose love letters – and she had no doubt that they were love letters – he hadn’t just carefully preserved but also gone to the trouble of hiding. She had never enquired about his exes and so, technically, Peter hadn’t actually lied to her but there was, perhaps, an even more invidious form of deceit and that was the sin of omission; by choosing not to tell he had created a barrier that would always be between them.

  Unable to bear looking at the photos any more, Jo shoved them back in the wallet. There was now only one item remaining in the file, a plain brown A4 envelope. Its bland exterior gave no indication of its contents. She picked it up, unpeeled the still slightly sticky edge of the flap and drew out the stapled sheets.

  Laying it down on the desk, she scanned the first few lines. It was clearly some kind of legal document but she screwed up her eyes, confused, as she realised that it was a tenancy agreement. The lease, which Peter had signed and dated three years ago, was for a one-bedroom flat in Fairlea Avenue. But that didn’t make any sense. Three years ago they had both been living in Barley Road. It took a few seconds before the awful truth dawned on her.

  Jo felt her body take on a peculiar and unnerving stillness. She didn’t seem able to move. In the back of her mind, she was faintly aware of the room having grown darker, of a smattering of rain against the window. Her hands were clenched so tightly that her nails were beginning to pierce the soft skin of her palms. She felt clammy, sick. Leaning forward, a low pained moan escaped from her lips. Oh God, what she would do to turn the clock back a few minutes, to have not picked up the envelope, to have never looked inside!

  Bur it was too late for that. What was done could never be undone. The date on the contract danced in front of her eyes. Her husband had rented a flat, a flat she had known nothing about, barely a month after they were married.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  The skies had opened and the rain was coming down hard as she stumbled back across the Green. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Jo was wet through by the time she reached Barley Road. Clutching the dripping carrier bag to her chest and with her head bowed low, she didn’t notice the bright red Toyota parked outside the house.

  The door of the car opened and Carla got out. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I was about to give up on you.’

  Jo turned and stared at her. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even say hello.

  ‘God, you’re drenched,’ Carla said. ‘Where have you been? I tried to call but your phone’s been turned off so I thought I’d just drive over and …’ Her explanation petered out as she realised something was wrong. ‘Are you okay? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Carla shrugged her shoulders and frowned. ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘About her.’

  Again Carla shrugged. ‘I don’t—’

  Jo’s voice was small, strained and bitter. ‘Please don’t pretend you didn’t know. You must have. I mean, it was going on for long enough. Were you all having a good laugh at my expense?’ When Carla still didn’t
show any sign of understanding, she sighed and spelled it out for her. ‘Peter and that woman, Peter and Deborah bloody Hayes.’

  ‘Ah,’ Carla said, comprehension finally springing into her eyes. She seemed relieved as if there was no great crisis at hand. ‘For heaven’s sake, that was all over years ago.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Of course it was. It’s ancient history. You can’t seriously be bothered about her. She’s just an old girlfriend. She wasn’t—’ Carla, catching the look on Jo’s face, abruptly stopped. Her brows shot up. ‘Are you kidding?’

  Jo held the bag closer to her chest. She wasn’t sure if she was still crying or if it was just the rain trickling down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, love,’ Carla said. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t.’ She put an arm around Jo’s shoulder and led her towards the front door. ‘Come on, let’s get out of this rain before we both catch pneumonia.’

  Inside, Jo was gently pushed into the bedroom and ordered to change. A towel was collected from the bathroom and put into her hand. She went though the motions, slowly drying herself before getting changed. When she came back out to the kitchen, dressed in an old pair of joggers and a black T-shirt, her sister-in-law was busy rooting through the cupboards.

  ‘Do you have any brandy?’

  Jo shook her head. ‘There’s some wine in the fridge.’

  ‘That’ll do.’ She took out the bottle and poured a generous glass for Jo and a smaller one for herself. ‘Here,’ she said, putting the two glasses and bottle down on the table.

  As they sat down, Jo was reminded of all those times after Peter had died when the two of them had sat here together. The memory made her want to cry again. It was Carla who had helped her through all those dreadful days, who had listened to her endless ramblings, tried to comfort her, forced her to eat and … well, just about dragged her back into the daylight again. She felt a blush of shame at how she’d spoken to her earlier. ‘I’m really sorry about before. I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.’