by Zoe Sharp
That much at least was true. The secret of a believable lie was to stick as closely as possible to reality. There was less opportunity to stumble.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay. The names went round and round again. I shut them out.
“There was a court martial,” I went on, “but it went against me. They said I’d provoked them, made it out to be my fault. I tried to get hold of you, to speak up for me as one of my instructors, nothing more than that, but you never returned any of my calls. So,” I shrugged my shoulders, “I was out.”
“I never got any messages. They kept me moving around a lot, out of regular contact. I never knew you’d called me.” He shook his head, then looked up at me intensely. “And you let it rest there?” he demanded. “After what they did to you?”
For a moment my breath stopped, fearing he’d tumbled to it. Then I saw his eyes shift to my throat, understanding dawning, laced with compassion. I knew I should have told him he was jumping to the wrong conclusions about that, but I was too much of a coward.
“No, I didn’t. I wish I had.” The kettle boiled and clicked off, giving me the chance to turn away, fuss with pouring boiling water into the mugs, stirring them. “I went for a civil action against them. That was when it all came out about us. I don’t know who told them, but it certainly wasn’t me.”
“You never told anyone?” he demanded. “What about those two other girls on the course? What were their names? Woolley and Lewis. You all seemed to get on OK. You’re sure you never had any heart-to-heart girlie chats with them?”
I shook my head, not insulted by the question. “We were never that close, so yes, I’m sure,” I said.
In fact, Woolley, Lewis and I had never really liked each other. We knew we were in the minority, as women training for the job we hoped to do, and that we had to stick together. But, at the same time the three of us were in direct competition with each other. I knew without undue conceit that I’d been a better soldier. They knew it too, and they hadn’t liked me for it.
Woolley in particular had been struggling to keep up. She was supposed to speak up in my favour at the trial, but her carefully neutral testimony about my general behaviour had a damning effect. Afterwards, she’d left the courtroom without talking to me, unable even to meet my eyes.
I learned later that although Lewis failed to complete the course, Woolley passed it and went on to active service. In my more bitter moments I wondered if that was her reward for sinking me.
“However it came out about us,” I said, “I lost the case because of it. I went from model soldier to—” I broke off, aware of how close I’d come to letting too much slip. “Well, I’m sure you can guess.”
“That’s why you disappeared, changed your name?”
I nodded. In the army I’d been Foxcroft. In an effort to escape the hounding of the press afterwards, I’d shortened it to Fox. It had seemed like a good way to disappear, and it had worked.
“I did try to find you, you know, but I kept coming up empty. When I realised it was you the other night I’ve had my people working round the clock to find out where you were. I couldn’t believe it when they told me about this place. I never dreamed you’d ended up so close to home.”
I gave him a rueful smile. “If I’d known how close to your home it was, I probably would have gone somewhere else,” I admitted, holding his coffee out to him.
He stepped forwards, eyes fired. I froze while he peeled the mug out of my nerveless fingers and plonked it back on the worktop, grabbing hold of my upper arms. “I didn’t betray you, Charlie,” he said fiercely. “You have to believe that.”
“I-I do,” I said unsteadily, mildly surprised to discover that it was the truth. “I didn’t, for a long time, but I do now. They screwed us both over, didn’t they Sean? Madeleine told me they did their damnedest to get you killed afterwards.”
“Yeah, well,” he relaxed his fingers, took a breath, “it wasn’t the easiest of times, but I survived.” He picked up his coffee mug with a steady hand, took a sip and regarded me over the rim. “It seems we both have that knack.”
Seventeen
I lurched awake the next morning from a night’s sleep fractured by dreams of anger and betrayal, pain and death. I sat up abruptly on a raft of tangled bedclothes, and shivered at the rapid cooling effect of the sweat on my goosebumped skin.
It was a long time since I’d been hit by the nightmares, to the point where I even thought they’d gone away completely. I should have known my luck wasn’t that good.
They always followed the same pattern. I went through the rape again and again, unable to change a word of the dialogue, or a moment of the action. This time around events took place in a public arena, and they’d sold tickets. My parents were in the front row, eating popcorn and cracking jokes with my commanding officer. Woolley and Lewis were chatting together a couple of rows further back.
I could no longer clearly remember the faces of the four men who’d attacked me. They’d faded into that area of the subconscious that hides trauma from your waking mind. I had a hazy knowledge that Morton was short and wiry, and Clay had been built like a Challenger tank, but beyond that, they all blurred into one.
This time, though, there had been an unpleasant variation to the dream. This time, the quartet all had the same, familiar face.
Sean’s face.
I swung my legs over the side of the soft mattress, and stayed there for a while, gripping the edge, head bent, trying to catch my breath. When my heartbeat had slowed to something approaching a normal level, I looked up slowly, and found myself staring into my own haunted face in the mirror on Pauline’s wardrobe door.
I looked terrible. My eyes were sunk into shadowed sockets, my hair lank, and my skin had the waxy tinge of long-term sickness. I tried a smile, but somewhere along the line my nerves fumbled the message and it warped into a grimace.
Somehow, it all came back down to Sean Meyer. Much as I hated to admit it, my mother was right. I just couldn’t afford to get involved with him again.
I might believe Sean now, that he’d been just as much a victim in the whole mess as I had, but there was too much pain and too much bitterness surrounding both of us to try and recapture a happier time. The very fact that I’d been so convinced he was capable of such a gross act of betrayal had destroyed whatever fragile bond of trust had been growing between us.
What we’d had was dead and buried. I’d done my grieving. It was time to finally lay the ghosts, and move on.
Downstairs, I gave Friday his food and left him shovelling his bowl round the kitchen floor. I made a coffee and stood for a while, cradling the mug and staring out into the back garden without seeing much of it at all.
The dream still disturbed me. I recognised the need for closure, and that I wasn’t going to get it until some lingering questions had been answered.
On impulse, I went back through to the living room, and picked up the telephone, dialling a number I’d known off by heart since I was a child.
A man’s voice answered, calm, cool. My father.
“Hello,” I said, warily. “I was hoping to speak to my mother. Is she there?”
There was the slightest pause. “I’m afraid she’s not here at the moment,” he said, but somewhere beyond him, I swear I heard a door closing. “Can I help you at all?”
I took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me that Sean Meyer had tried to contact me after – after I left the army?”
“Ah,” my father said, almost on a sigh. “So, you know about that.” He didn’t even have the grace to sound embarrassed.
“Yes, I know about that,” I snapped. “Tell me, were you ever planning to tell me? Or were you just hoping I’d never find out?”
“Find out what exactly, Charlotte?” For the first time he let the irritation creep into his detached tone. “Find out what excuses Meyer had managed to dream up for what he did?”
“They weren’t excuses,” I argued. “He didn’t know.
They posted him.” I was sure of my ground now, but I didn’t like the defensive note in my voice, even so.
“If you’re happy to believe that then, of course, that’s your choice,” he said, indifferent. “Your mother and I discussed it at the time, and we decided that it was better that you didn’t know. It was too late to affect the outcome of the case, and it would only have served to distress you further.”
I felt temper rise in my throat like bile. “You decided,” I said bitterly. “What right did you have to make that sort of choice for me?” Didn’t you realise the effect it would have?
“We had every right, Charlotte,” he said, in the same tone he would have used to rebuke one of his junior doctors for some badly handled diagnosis. “You were under our protection, and in no fit state to make your own decisions. You would rather have known everything that was being said about you? That we’d reported every phone call, showed you every lie the papers printed? You wouldn’t have thanked us for it. Then or now.”
I tripped up a little over the word “lie”. It was the first time he’d let his neutrality slip and actually seemed to come down on my side. My God, he might be human after all.
I’ve no doubts at all that my father was an excellent surgeon, his obvious success notwithstanding. He had that arrogance, that total belief that he was doing the right thing, making the right decision. You listened to him and you knew that the hand holding the scalpel would not slip at the vital moment.
“We shielded you as much as we could,” he went on now, almost coldly. “If you will take some advice, Charlotte, you won’t go raking it over again now. It won’t do anyone any good to open up old wounds again. Least of all yourself.”
“Somebody betrayed us,” I said, stubborn. “Even if I was prepared to let it go, don’t think for a moment that Sean is.” And I put the phone down without giving either of us the chance to say goodbye.
***
Getting out of Lavender Gardens that morning proved difficult. A gang of kids had set light to a stolen Citroën BX, which was blocking one of the main roads out of the estate.
The fire brigade were already on the scene by the time I arrived, running out hoses to deal with the wreckage. On the far side of the burning barricade, a young crowd had gathered. The firemen looked nervous as they worked, as though they weren’t sure if the real danger came from the flames, or the mob.
I saw a flash of blond hair among the dark heads of the crowd, and recognised Jav. He clocked the Suzuki and went very still, but from that distance I couldn’t read the expression on his face.
I had a nasty feeling that, if I’d been closer, I would have seen triumph there.
***
I called in on Clare at the Defender again on my way to the gym. By the time I got to work, Attila was already in, and the place was buzzing, so I didn’t have much chance to mull over the information she’d given me until later that afternoon.
Things went completely dead after lunch, as they usually did. Attila and I were taking advantage of the total lack of clientele to shift some of the benches around when Madeleine walked through the door, immaculately dressed as always.
“Hi, Charlie,” she said guardedly, but treated my boss to a sunny smile that had him preening his muscles. I introduced her as a friend of Sean’s, and left it at that. If Sean wanted Attila to know the real score he could tell the man himself.
Attila came over all good manners and suggested coffee, which Madeleine accepted with enough enthusiasm to send him scuttling for the kettle in the office.
When he’d gone Madeleine looked about her with undisguised curiosity. “So, this is where you work,” she said. I couldn’t tell from her voice if she was impressed or horrified. Like I said, Attila didn’t go much for frills. I looked round, but what had, before, seemed businesslike and uncluttered, now looked spartan and shabby.
I shrugged, and finished moving a pile of loose weights across to the bench’s new position. When I straightened up, I found Madeleine was watching me closely. “I understand you teach self defence,” she said.
“I used to,” I said shortly. “I don’t any more.”
“Why not?”
For a few moments I considered the question. “I was injured last winter,” I said at last. It sounded so innocuous, like I’d fallen down a set of steps, or come off the bike. “Attila offered me this job while I was recuperating, and I never got back into it.”
She nodded, seeming to accept that watered-down explanation. “I’ve done a few courses myself,” she said now. “Tell me, what do you recommend for defences against someone with a knife?”
I looked up sharply, wondering if she thought she was being clever, but her face was without particular guile. My eyes slid past her to one of the mirrors on the wall behind her head, checking my reflection to see if the scar was on view above the collar of my polo shirt. It wasn’t.
I checked Madeleine’s face again. “What do I recommend?” I said, keeping my voice level with an effort. “That you run away. As fast as you possibly can. And you keep running.”
She frowned, and looked about to ask some more, but Attila returned at that moment with three cups of coffee bunched around a single fist, and the moment was lost. I was never so glad of the interruption.
“Excuse me a moment,” I muttered, and escaped to the ladies’. Once I was there I closed the door and leaned back against it, with my eyes shut.
Madeleine didn’t know what had happened, I told myself. She couldn’t do. I was just being paranoid. Over-sensitive. Wasn’t I?
I opened my eyes, stepped up to the mirror, and stretched the collar of my shirt to one side. The scar wasn’t old enough to have faded much. They’d warned me that it would always be visible, and they’d offered further surgery as an alternative, but with only dubious chances of success. In the end, I’d decided to leave it well alone.
After all, it was a sharp reminder to me that I should follow my own teachings more closely. That I should run instead of standing to fight. Next time I was faced with a lunatic wielding a knife, maybe I’d do just that.
Next time.
Someone tripped down my spine wearing icy boots. I shivered, took a deep breath like a submerging swimmer, and straightened my collar again. A normal-looking girl stared back out of the mirror, giving no hint to what lay beneath the surface. I turned away before I was tempted to try and look much deeper, and walked back into the gym.
Madeleine glanced up at me as I moved back across the floor, but before she could say much the door went again to herald Sean’s arrival.
He flashed a quick grin in Madeleine’s direction, then turned his attention on my boss. “Hi, Attila,” he said. “Can I steal your lovely assistant away from her work for a little while?”
“For sure,” Attila said. He stood up with a ripple of muscle under his T-shirt, and looked from one of us to the other as if reassessing the relationship between the three of us. “But first you can help me move another of these benches, yes?”
Sean rolled his eyes, but pitched in without any real complaint, taking off his jacket and pushing up the sleeves of his vee-necked shirt. He didn’t have Attila’s sheer bulk, but he didn’t seem to find the weight a problem, either.
Looking back with an even mind, it had been that economy of movement, that air of total competence, which had all been part and parcel of Sean’s attraction. I don’t think I’d ever seen him fumble.
When they’d finished he moved over to Madeleine, touched her shoulder in a way I might once have found intimate. Now it simply seemed one of friendship, concern.
For her part, Madeleine reached up to kiss him, but Sean stopped her.
“It’s OK, Madeleine,” he said, and his tone was wry. “You don’t have to put on a show in front of Charlie. She knows the score.”
For a moment the other girl allowed herself a scowl of pure wounded feminine pride, then the full import of his words dug in, and her eyes widened.
“You told her?” The disbel
ief was plain. “But, I thought—”
Sean shrugged it aside. “She had a gun to my head,” he said, without the barest flicker of a smile in my direction. “What can I say?”
Both Attila and Madeleine stared at him, hoping for some indication that he was joking. After a couple of seconds Madeleine gave up waiting, and started digging in her shoulder bag. I wondered what exactly he’d told her about our confrontation in the flat.
“I’ve been running a background check on Nasir Gadatra, as you asked,” she said, businesslike, retrieving a spiral-bound shorthand notebook and flipping it open. “He certainly had an interesting past. At one time there was a whole string of arrests for vandalism, burglary, stealing from cars, even assault. O’Bryan had to bail him out on numerous occasions. It seems that when his father died he went right off at the deep end. It was only when it looked seriously like he was going to get put away that he got his act together.”
She checked her notes again. “For the last few years he’s kept his nose clean, and there hasn’t been a sniff of trouble. He got the job working as a trainee electrician for Mr Ali and did his qualifications at night school. He paid his way towards the rent on his mother’s house, like a good boy. He was a member of a local snooker club, and he had a standing order to a gym as well. Sorry, Attila, not this one.” She shot a quick smile to the German and came out with a name I’d only vaguely heard of.
Attila grunted. “I know it. A poseurs’ place,” he said, dismissive. “No decent equipment. No decent staff.”
Madeleine grinned at him, but before he could add anything further, the phone on the counter started ringing. Attila went to answer it.
When he’d gone we sat down on the benches, Sean hunched forwards with his elbows on his knees, fingers linked. He nodded to Madeleine to continue.
“The only real oddity I could find is that although he paid his motorbike insurance in instalments, he did it in cash,” she went on. “He used to go into a local broker every month with the money.”
