by C. L. Taylor
Steve Torrance glances up from his Blackberry. “How much?”
I say nothing, assuming he’s talking to the driver.
“How much?” he says again, briefly catching my eye before he looks back at his phone.
I grip my bag to my chest. “How much what?”
“To keep quiet.”
“Sorry?”
“Look, Sue.” He leans back in his seat and tucks his mobile into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Let’s not mess about. Your big song and dance act in the club got you noticed, congratulations.” He laughs at his own joke. “So come on, how much is it going to take to stop you going to the papers?”
It takes a couple of seconds for what he’s saying to sink in.
“You think that’s why I did it? I confronted Alex because I wanted paying off?”
“You don’t?”
“No, of course not.” I adjust my seat belt so I can look at him face on. He can’t be much taller than me, but his large gut and lack of neck make him look broad, and there’s a sheen at the top of his bald head. “I’m not that kind of woman. My husband is Brian Jackson, MP for Brighton.”
“Great.” He reaches into his inside pocket, pulls out a handkerchief, and presses it to his brow. “That’s all I fucking need, the bloody government getting involved just because Henri can’t keep it in his pants.”
“So he did have sex with my daughter?” I ask the question as evenly as I can even though my heart is twisting in my chest.
He stops mopping to look at me. “Hang on one fucking second. It sounded to me—and every other twat with ears—that you were accusing my client of having sex with a minor. Are you saying now that he didn’t?”
“I didn’t accuse him of anything. I asked him to talk to me.”
“Stop the car!” He leans forward in his seat and holds up a hand. “Stop the fucking car right now!”
There’s a squeal of brakes, a horn honks, and then the car jerks to a stop. To our left is a park, an enormous iron fence wrapped around it, and to the right there’s a row of B&B-style hotels. The street lamps either side cast accusing pools of light on the beer cans, cigarette ends, and dog poo that litter the pavement. If we’re in Victoria, we’re not in the nice bit.
“Out.” Steve reaches across me and opens my door. “Get out of my car!”
“No.” I pull the door shut.
“What do you fucking mean, no?” His face is inches from mine. I can see the open pores and broken veins around his nose and smell the champagne and curry on his breath.
“I’m not getting out until you tell me what happened.”
“When?”
“When Charlotte and Alex Henri went to the toilets together.”
“You’re asking the wrong man, darling, because I wasn’t there.”
“Then I suggest you find out.”
“I should, should I?” His top lip curls into a sneer. “You’re not going to the press; you’ve already admitted as much.”
“No, but I could go to the police.” The sneer instantly disappears. “My fifteen-year-old daughter is in a coma and I have every reason to believe that what happened with your client may have put her there.”
“Whoa!” He raises his hands, palms out. “Who said anything about a coma?”
“I did, just now.”
“What the fuck?” He catches the driver looking at him and waves a hand for him to start the engine. A few seconds later, we pull away.
Steve leans toward me and lowers his voice. “If you’re accusing my client of harming your daughter, you’d better have bloody good evidence because—”
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I just want to know what happened when they met.”
He sits back in his seat. “I told you, I wasn’t there. I was in New York on business.”
The car turns a corner and there’s a sign for Victoria station. I glance at my watch. Fifteen minutes until the last train leaves.
I look back at Steve. “Can you arrange for me to speak to Alex to ask him what happened?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”
“Actually I do—”
“Here.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out his mobile. He hands it to me. “Put your number in. I’ll speak to Alex. I’ll give you a ring afterward.”
I key in my mobile number even though I have no idea whether I can trust him or not. He makes his living from painting his clients in the most flattering light, so if Alex does reveal something unsavory, he’s unlikely to share it with me. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he rang to say that he’d denied all knowledge of meeting Charlotte. If he even calls at all.
“All good?” He glances at the entry then tucks the mobile back in his jacket.
The car swings around a corner and then slows to a stop.
“Victoria,” the driver says.
Steve leans across the divide between us and holds out a hand. “I’ll be in touch,” he says as I shake it. The tiniest of frowns crosses his brow, then he sits back in his seat and pulls out his Blackberry. I open the car door.
Friday, October 23, 1992
James kept me captive for six weeks, only leaving to visit his mother in the hospital. Before he’d leave he’d disconnect the phone and make sure that every door and window was locked. After a week, Val, my supervisor at Tesco, called, asking to speak to me. I listened from the sofa as James told her I’d moved back to York because Mum’s health had taken a turn for the worse. No one else called.
I realized then that James could kill me any time he wanted and no one would miss me. It became my aim each morning just to make it through the day alive. Not that James touched me again. Well, apart from the time he caught me waving from the spare bedroom window, trying to catch the attention of an old lady hobbling along the street below. He beat me black and blue for that. Instead he ordered me about—telling me to sit here, stand there, get out of his way, cook his food—or else he completely ignored me. He wouldn’t let me read a book, watch a film, or tidy my sewing room. I was only allowed to do household chores or sit silently in the middle of the hallway where he could see me from the sofa in the lounge.
Three weeks after James raped me, I told him I needed to go to the pharmacy. He laughed in my face and said I should have worried about the clap before I slept with Steve.
“No,” I said. “My period’s a week late. I need a pregnancy test.”
I was terrified as I sat on the closed toilet seat, the pot of my urine and the small white stick on the lip of the bath beside me. Two years ago, I would have been over the moon if James had gotten me pregnant, but now I was shaking with fear. I was still clinging desperately to the hope that the memory of my “infidelity” with Steve would fade and James would get bored of having me around and let me go. But not if I was pregnant. If I was carrying his child, he’d keep me prisoner for at least nine months.
“Well?” He burst into the bathroom. I hadn’t shut the door; there was no point.
I held the paddle up to him and said nothing.
“Two blue lines?” He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I’m pregnant.”
I stepped up my attempt to escape the next time he left the house. The first thing I did was rip out the number for an abortion clinic from the Yellow Pages and stash it in the one thing that hadn’t been destroyed when James trashed my sewing room—the secret drawer in my table. I tucked it away with my diary and my savings and then searched the house for a way out, going through every drawer, every tin, every cupboard, and every wardrobe looking for something, anything, to help me. It took five days before I discovered the mink coat stashed at the back of Margaret’s wardrobe. I could barely breathe as my fingers stroked something small, cold, and metallic in one of the pockets. A key. A door key. Sh
e hadn’t been out of the house alone for years, but maybe someone somewhere was smiling down on me and it would fit the front door. I didn’t have a chance to find out, because the front door slammed open as I closed my hands around the key. Panicking, I shut myself in the wardrobe and hid, best I could, behind the mink coat. James’s footsteps reverberated throughout the house as he climbed the stairs.
“Suzy?” he shouted. “Suzy, where are you? I can’t smell dinner cooking. Have you been watching TV all day, you lazy bitch?
“Suzy?” The landing floorboards creaked as he crossed toward the sewing room, then again as he made his way back. “Suzy?”
The footsteps grew louder. He was in the same room as me. I held my breath, sure my thudding heart would give me away. Then “Suzy?” James’s cry was quieter; he’d gone back down the stairs.
I crept silently out of the wardrobe, pushing the key deep into my sock before I left, and hurried down the stairs.
James looked up in surprise as I burst in the living room. “Where the fuck have you been? I looked for you upstairs. You weren’t there.”
“Attic.” I gestured at the dust on my cheek (swiped from the top of one of the shoe boxes in Margaret’s wardrobe). “I remembered your mum saying she’d stored your baby clothes up there and went to have a look.”
“You did what?”
“I’m sorry.” I pressed my hand to my nonexistent bump. “I just wanted to make things nice for the baby. I thought we could turn my sewing, I mean, the spare room into a nursery. I thought it was a nice thing to do.”
“But…” James’s face returned to its normal color and his jaw softened, ever so slightly. “I didn’t see the step ladder. The hatch was shut.”
“I closed it,” I said, my hand still on my belly. “I didn’t want to risk tripping and falling through it. I didn’t want anything to happen to the little one.”
It made me feel sick, talking like that, like we were all going to play happy families and waltz off into our perfect primrose-colored future, but the “baby” was the only Achilles heel James had.
He looked at me for a second, his eyes flicking from my face to my belly and back again. He knew I was lying, but he so desperately wanted to believe.
“Don’t do it again.” He waved a hand for me to leave the room. “What’s in the attic doesn’t concern you. If the baby needs anything, I’ll be the one that provides for it.”
“Okay.” I felt the key press into my ankle, hard and reassuring, as I turned to go. “I’ll go and get tea on then, shall I? It’s turkey stir-fry tonight.”
I left the next day. I watched from the spare room window, the curtains open a millimeter, as James left for work, crossed the road, and stood at the bus stop. Terror ripped through me as he glanced up at the house, but then he looked away again, down the road. Thirty seconds later, he stepped onto the number 13 bus and was gone.
I flew through the house, jamming clothes, toiletries, a nightie, a towel, and food into a bag. I had no idea how long a private abortion would take or how long I’d have to be in the clinic. I didn’t know anyone who’d had an abortion so had no idea what it would cost, never mind entail, but I didn’t want to think too much about the latter. I already hated myself for what I was planning on doing. As for the cost, I just had to hope that £600 would be enough to cover it and get me a cheap flight abroad because, if James ever found out what I’d done, I needed to be as far away as possible.
I was standing in the sewing room, the diary and ad in one hand, a pile of notes in the other, when I heard it—the sound of a fist thumping on glass. I threw my secret spoils at my bag, tossed a paint-stained sheet over it, crept onto the landing, and pressed myself up against the banister. The noise was coming from the front door. Had James come home early? I dropped to my stomach and inched my way across the landing. If I could just get to the top of the stairs, I’d be able to see.
I shuffled forward slowly, freezing each time there was another knock. I was almost there when the metallic clatter of the letter box made me jump. I peered down the stairs. A white card lay on the front mat. A “sorry you were out” card from the gas man.
Thirty seconds later, I was on my feet again, this time with my bag in one hand, the key in the other, and speeding down the stairs.
“Please,” I prayed as the tip of the key jiggled against the lock. “Please fit, please fit, please—”
The door swung open.
I ran down the pathway and along the street and didn’t look back once. Not when I sensed the evil white eyes of the batik wall hanging burning into the back of my head as I fled. Not as the front door slammed shut in protest at my escape. And not when the vague memory of a yellow piece of paper fluttering to the floor of my sewing room as I tossed my diary at my bag flashed across my mind and then disappeared.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
“Good night?” Brian peers at me through bleary eyes as the alarm clock beep-beep-beeps 6:00 a.m. on the table beside him.
“Lovely, thank you.”
He yawns and stretches his arms above his head. “What time did you get in?”
I consider lying but have no idea what time he fell asleep so can’t pretend I slipped in next to him. “It was after two.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t drinking, were you? I don’t think you’re allowed to take alcohol with the pills you’re on.”
“Of course not. There was a lovely late-night coffee shop just around the corner from the theater, so Jane and I had a catch up. We just lost track of time, that’s all.”
Brian shifts in the bed to get a better look at me. My stomach churns and I look away, praying he won’t cross-examine me.
“Just as long as you had a good night, darling.” I feel his lips on my cheeks and then a blast of cold air as he throws back the duvet and sits up. The mattress squeaks as he stands, a floorboard creaks as he crosses the room, and then there is silence.
I pull his pillow to my chest and hug it tightly. I’m getting closer to discovering what happened to Charlotte, but I’m so very tired. I want to roll over, to sleep for a million years and wake up when this is all over, but I can’t. I can’t do anything as the coma robs Charlotte of her health, her mental faculties, and possibly her life.
But what can I do but wait? The path ran as far as Steve Torrance, and there’s nothing I can do until he calls.
I throw back the duvet and sit up.
Yes, there is.
***
“Sue?” Danny peers out at me from behind the front door. His face is crumpled and sleep-lined, his eyes bleary and unfocused. “It’s eight o’clock on a Sunday morning.”
“I know.”
I don’t want to be here either. I want to be in the hospital with my daughter—and I will be once we’ve spoken—but I have to find out what he’s hiding first.
“How did you get my address?” He runs a hand through his tousled blond hair, and his white toweling dressing gown slips open.
“I rang Oli.” He wasn’t delighted to be woken up early either.
“Right.” Danny yawns and glances back into the apartment. “So what can I do you for, Sue?”
“I’d like to come in, if I may.”
“Um...” He pulls his dressing gown closed. “It’s not really convenient right now.”
“Keisha in, is she? It’s okay. I can say what I need to say in front of her.”
Danny shifts from one foot to the other. “She’s not here.”
“Oh.” I look past him into the flat. There’s a pair of vertiginous black high heels scattered across the hallway. Danny turns to see what I’m looking at.
“It’s not what…” He shakes his head. “What’s so important anyway?”
“You lied,” I say, “about going to Grey’s nightclub with Charlotte and Ella. I know you were there.”
“Sue, I swear”—he holds out his palms like an innocent man surrendering—“I wasn’t there. There are a lot of malicious people in Brighton, and if someone’s been spreading rumors that—”
“Danny.”
“Yes?”
He looks me straight in the eye, waiting to hear what I have to say next. He’s smiling, his eyebrows raised cordially, his thumbs hooked into his dressing gown pockets. Like James, he’s a consummate professional when it comes to lying. I wonder what he’s told the woman lying in his bed—that his relationship with Keisha is over, that they’re just casual, that they have an open relationship? And what of Keisha? What lies has he told her so she doesn’t suspect that he’s sleeping around?
“No one told me anything, Danny. The police accessed the CCTV footage that Grey’s has of that night. I saw you enter the club.”
“The police…” He searches my face, but I maintain my composure. Two can play at this game.
“Just tell me what happened, Danny.”
He steps back into the hall. “You’d better come in.”
***
Fifteen minutes later and I’m back on the doorstep, this time saying good-bye.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Danny says again. “Ella overheard me and Keish talking about going to Grey’s, and she and Charlotte turned up on the same train as us on Saturday night. I tried telling them to go back to Brighton but Ella said—”
“That she’d report you for letting underage girls drink in Breeze.” He’s already told me this. Several times.
“Exactly.” He crosses his arms, tucking his hands under his armpits.
“But why Grey’s? Why follow you there?”
“Because it’s glamorous?” He shrugs. “Because you see pics of celebs falling out of it in all the papers? Because Ella’s got a crush on me?”
“A crush?”
“Yeah, Charlotte told Keisha about it. I think that was part of the reason they all fell out—because Ella overheard me talking to a mate about going to Grey’s and she got the impression that Keisha wasn’t coming and thought that if she turned up in a minuscule dress and a load of makeup”—he smirks—“that she could seduce me.”
