by Jade West
“How about the beach?” I said. “Elaine is here on laundry duty for the next few hours so we can all make a break for it.”
The kids didn’t need much encouragement, dropping from their seats and diving in the cases for supplies before I’d even finished speaking. I was glad they were a distraction as Sarah dropped down after them to load them up with warm layers. I was all too aware how our staff was still barely skeletal in this place. Just a part-time housekeeper and nobody but Brett in the kitchen.
You didn’t need the glowing lights of a huge new hotel complex down the road to let you know we were in trouble. This place screamed it loud in its quiet. Without Heath’s money in our account our quest for a perfect coastal life would be in the dirt already, bills too chunky to manage with two of us working the beast of this to the bone, plucking off scraps of flesh with every passing week the vacancies sign hung bold on the front porch.
I called up to Elaine before we left for the front, letting her know to keep an ear out for the reception bell before grabbing a coat of my own. The wind was brisk and breezy, inflating my lungs with a cool breath of life as I braced myself for the descent to the sand.
Brett was already out there, barefoot as he chased the girls down with buckets and spades. They set themselves up on the perfect belt of damp sand, well out of earshot of two sisters gossiping, and Sarah wasted no time as she unrolled her bamboo beach mat and planted her ass on one side of it.
It felt the most natural thing in creation to drop down alongside her and stare at her girls enjoying themselves with a glistening sea backdrop.
“You’d better start talking,” she said. “You’ve been more evasive than I’ve ever known you these past few weeks.”
I couldn’t hold back the smile. “Doug’s not on a course, is he?”
She laughed the laugh I knew so well. “He’s back this evening. It’s a day thing. I just thought it was a good excuse to pay a visit.”
“I’m alright,” I lied, shooting her a look that tried to convince her. “Things are just…”
“Weird as all hell?” she asked as I paused. “Are you pregnant or something?”
That really did make me laugh out loud. “Fuck, sis, I hope not.”
She raised an eyebrow. “But you and Brett–”
“Definitely don’t want kids at the moment,” I finished. “Things are a little up in the air for that kind of pressure.”
My heart did a flip even as I said it, eyes soaking up the way he called the girls so close and helped them with their spades. He was born to be a dad. Much better cut out for it than his dad ever was.
“Please tell me you didn’t get the cash from that dodgy lender in Tenby Brett told Doug about when he was pissed at Christmas.”
I shook my head. “No, nothing like that.”
“Then what?” she asked, and I knew it was now or never.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me,” she insisted. “Did you sell a kidney, or agree to be a surrogate for money? Maybe you won it from some criminal gambling ring, or pimped out Brett for dirty cash.”
She was joking, but I wasn’t as my eyes met hers.
“Not Brett,” I said, and her grin dried up as she clocked my meaning.
“Are you for fudging real?!”
I loved her responsible parent substitutes for curse words, and my amusement eased the tension a little as I nodded.
“The guy I asked you about a few weeks ago, from London. Thomas Heath. He was a guest who rolled on up here and offered us fifty grand for a night with me.”
She started so hard she left the mat, spinning to her side to face me with her mouth open wide. “Holy shit, Grace. You took the money?”
I guessed the shock was too much for curse substitutes this time.
The smile on my face felt weird as I shrugged. “How could I not?”
It took her a full minute of staring dumb before she spoke again. “I can’t believe it. It’s like that dirty film where the guy pays a million dollars for a night with that architect’s wife.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t think it would be us actually doing it one day. Who the hell ever comes along and offers you a stupid sum of money for something like that?”
“Thomas Heath from London, it seems.” Her face was still one of utter shock. “He didn’t splash out a cool million though, unfortunately.”
I laughed at the comparison. “And I don’t look like Demi Moore, unfortunately.”
“What the hell did Brett say? I’m surprised he didn’t knock the asshole’s front teeth out.”
“He almost did,” I admitted. “It was close.”
I knew she was struggling to digest all this, but I carried on regardless, outlining the whole sorry story and the negotiations. What he looked like, what he smelled like, and how he kept that smug smirk on his face for days on end.
I left the finer details of the arrangement itself to a point where she seemed immune to any more shock, picking my moment carefully with my eyebrows braced high.
“He demanded Brett watch,” I revealed. “Behind some crappy red-line sensor like something from a sci-fi movie. It was quite ridiculous.”
“I can’t even…” she started. “I’d have wanted a red-line sensor too if I was him, I’d have expected Brett to snap my neck the moment I went anywhere near you, fifty grand or not.”
I stared over at his easy smile as he shaped out a big curved dragon tail in the sand. He didn’t look like he’d snap anyone’s neck, not right then.
My sister scooted a little closer, leaning in tight like she used to in my bedroom as teens when she had gossip to drag out of me.
“So, what was it like? The other guy, I mean. Was he good?”
I opted for honesty. “Too good. Better than good. So fucking good that Brett’s now got an inferiority complex and I feel like a useless piece of shit.”
I laid out my own crappy performance as well as I could without overloading her with a pile of gross, and she listened with the concentration of a zen master.
“That’s crazy,” she said when I’d finished, and it twanged my heart that she really meant it.
“I couldn’t get him to shoot his load once in nine hours. He got me off about five million times straight,” I reiterated. “I didn’t even know what my name was by the end of it.”
“Lucky cow. I’ve got it good if Doug remembers where my clit is after a long week at the office. I wonder if Thomas Heath would pay me fifty grand for a night having orgasms? Maybe I could pay him instead…”
“Brett thinks he knows us,” I told her. “Fuck knows how.”
She pulled a face as she weighed it up. “Some guy from London with fifty grand to throw at one wild night at the seaside? Doesn’t sound like someone we’ve ever known.”
“Polly Piper,” I said. “Remember I asked you about her? She’s a mutual friend on his social media account.”
“He’s got a profile, has he? How about a profile picture?” she asked, and I rolled my eyes.
It’d taken every ounce of my self-restraint not to revisit his social media account since the moment he’d driven away. In truth, I was scared of Brett seeing my search history and losing his shit all over again.
My fingers were shaking as I keyed Heath’s name into the search bar on my phone. His face pinged up like before, but this time it was several profiles down the page. No mutual friends listed at all.
“Holy living shit,” she said. “He’s gorgeous. Only you would land a hooker deal with a guy from Men’s Monthly.”
“She was here,” I told Sarah, jabbing my thumb at the screen. “Polly Piper, she was right here.”
“Sure you weren’t imagining it?” she quizzed with an eyebrow raised. “He doesn’t look the type to be friends with Polly. She’s been in that bakery since forever.”
But I was sure. Of course I was sure. I’d never been more sure.
“I don’t get it,” I said aloud. “They were friends.�
��
I looked up Polly’s profile instead and her friends were all visible to me. I tapped his name into her contact listings and it came back no matches.
Sarah snatched the handset from my grip with greedy fingers, scrolling through the names on some quest I wasn’t fully aware of.
“Polly didn’t have many friends at school,” she told me. “I was a say hello in the corridor type of pal, that’s all. She was friends with Thomas Browning, that gawky kid from the south end.”
It didn’t ring any bells, not until she clicked her fingers and coughed up another memory.
“His mum was that woman from Alvington Plastics, the slutty one who used to work with Brett’s folks. Tina something. She went on to work at the grimy café in the square.”
My cheeks chilled and it wasn’t from the wind. “Not Tina Hadley? With the bleached blonde hair and pink lipstick?”
She nodded. “Yeah, that one. She fucked Kelly Brigston’s dad in senior year, remember? Nearly got him a divorce.”
I didn’t remember that little saga, most likely after my time there, but I did remember the history with Brett’s dad. Or rather the lack of it. His parents wouldn’t talk about Tina Hadley, wouldn’t even hear her name.
But that was all beside the point, we weren’t talking about Tom Browning and his friendship with Polly Piper, we were talking about a whole other beast of Thomas. A London typhoon of gut-wrenching ego clothed in perfection itself.
“I can’t see how Polly Piper would know Thomas Heath,” I said. “They don’t seem likely friends.”
“You can say that again,” my sister agreed. “I don’t think Polly’s ever been outside the county.”
I forced another shrug and took my phone back from her. “I guess they aren’t now, anyway. Looks like a dead end.”
But I’d forgotten my sister was as into murder mystery shows as I’d been growing up. Her eyes were sparkling with enthusiasm as the smile lit up her face.
“Never a dead end,” she said and raised her index finger to her temple. “Leave it to me. I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
There was no point shaking my head or telling her to keep her mouth shut, it would never work, not now she was on a mission.
“Be careful,” I said and she raised her hands in feigned offence.
“Would I be anything but?”
I didn’t have an answer for that so I didn’t give one and it was just as well.
Amy and Amber were upon us with barely a breath’s worth of footstep warning, jumping around the place and demanding we go check out their awesome dragon.
Their grins were too damned cute to say no.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thomas
I had a meeting on the outskirts of Bristol, which was a perfect excuse to swing by home turf for some self-torture.
I forced myself back into the heart of my previous life every time I was in the vicinity, just for the up close and personal reminder as to why I was so committed to making the hard ass decisions I’d grown used to. Our small-time town was on the outskirts of Gloucestershire, a quaint little place that looked lovely on the drive through, but was hell on earth for a kid like me growing up in it.
Small town, small minds.
I parked up well off the beaten track, behind the old butchers down at the bottom of the High Street. I made sure to keep myself concealed behind the main thoroughfares, well accustomed to blending into the shadows from my experience as a boy. Polly’s bakery was in the centre square, opposite a scabby little coffee shop that brought me out in dirty shivers. I went in there just to experience the disgust afresh.
My mother worked in this place for a while when I was still in primary school, scrabbling to claw her life back to some semblance of financial security after the blow out which cost her everything. Cost us everything.
I wondered where she was these days and if she’d remarried yet again. Sometimes I sent her an anonymous payment to her same old bank account, just to be sure she still had the bones to keep her alive.
Some parts of me at least still passed as vaguely human.
I saw Polly slipping out through the main bakery doors at lunchtime, my heart lurching for just a moment at the prospect she might call in for a mug of the cheap shit stuff they served here. She didn’t.
She looked right, left, then right again at the traffic lights like a good girl, brushing a stray red curl behind her ear as she crossed the street further down with her head down low.
She was thinner, her face more gaunt than I remembered from last checking in on her. Her shoes were flat and entirely practical, her trouser legs baggy on slender thighs.
In another world I’d have loved to run up to her and take her face in my hands, telling her just how much I missed her in the city. Maybe she’d listen and greet me with a smile, or maybe she’d tell me to go fuck myself the way I deserved her to. Either way, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be running up to anyone, not in this lifetime.
The town bus pulled into the stop opposite, the same bright yellow as the one I used when I was a kid. I remembered the smell of it, the walkway so narrow as I stepped on board, praying that there’d be a seat free near the front so that I wouldn’t be near the bullies who always crowded at the back and made me the target of their asshole ridicule.
I imagined many of them were still around these parts, hanging out in the same old pubs with the same old people, rattling off tales about their adolescence like it was a whole barrel of fun. For them I guess it was.
Brett and Grace used to parade through these streets like they owned the place, hand in hand as the other kids looked on with jealous stares. I’d watched them too, only not so obviously. I was much more covert in my malice, my jealousy far more potent and far more justified than any of the other onlookers, pulsing deep through my veins every single day of my childhood worth remembering.
Polly was long out of sight by the time I forced down the rest of my putrid coffee. I slipped out of the building with my head as low as hers had been, cursing this place and its memories with as much venom as ever as I decided to punish that sad little boy inside a little bit harder.
I took a right turn at the memorial cross, pacing fast out of town and down to the churchyard on the outskirts, stepping into the grounds through the wrought iron gates with a feeling of dread pulsing deep.
The flowers were withering in the steel vase in front of the gravestone, no doubt feeling the neglect that a couple of years in the ground brings your rotting body. I lit up a cigar as I faced off those cursed letters, a whole lot more malice springing up in light of recent events.
FOSTER.
“He’s not all that, your precious boy,” I said to the headstone. “His pretty hotel is destined for bankruptcy, I’m sure you’re turning down there at the thought of it. I hope it pains you to know I fucked his sweet little Grace in front of him. She liked it. Loved it, in fact. At least someone worthwhile will finally be able to pass the judgement that I’m better than him in every way that matters. She’ll see it soon enough, if she hasn’t already, don’t you worry. Bankrupt, desolate, unloved. Your boy has it all to look forward to. Let’s see if he picks himself up from the floor even a sliver as well as I did. I’m sure you’ll be smiling down proud when he’s on his knees.” I laughed at the sky. “Except you won’t, will you? You’ll be just as much of a dismissive cunt to him as you were back then to me.”
I knew I was insane for talking to nothing, but it didn’t matter. This was as close as I’d ever get to the utter bastard who’d destroyed my world.
A couple walked by with grief-stricken faces, frowning in disapproval of the bitter smile on my face and the cigar in my fingers.
I flicked the butt onto the bastard’s grave as I finished up and walked away, hating how the defeat still chased me afresh after all this time.
It was when I reached the safety of my car I decided that the end of the Foster’s marriage would finally be the end of my torture.
I on
ly hoped it would come soon, so I’d never have to visit this godforsaken little shit hole ever again.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Grace
We had sandwiches for lunch and an afternoon in the lounge, the doors open onto the patio and cartoons blaring for the girls. It was nice. Peaceful. A good chance to breathe and remember life as it was when we didn’t have this pile of crud festering around our every move.
Brett was more at ease than I’d seen him in months, chattering away with his nieces while I made small talk with Sarah. No matter what the topic was, I knew her brain was churning with my bombshell of a revelation. I’d catch her looking at Brett during every pause in the conversation and wonder just what she was thinking after my crazy beach confession.
She let me know after a fish and chip supper on the terrace, once the girls were finally tucked up in bed and our bar was empty enough of guests that Brett made some considerate excuses about paperwork, leaving us alone at the counter to enjoy a bottle of house white.
“I still can’t imagine it,” she said with a grin. “Brett watching you have sex with another man, I mean. He’s always been so competitive. I can’t believe he didn’t rugby tackle the guy and throw him out through the window.”
She had a point, and it reinforced just how much the financial pressures of this place had deviated us both away from our usual selves.
“I think it was a challenge to his self-restraint,” I assured her as I took a decent swig from my glass.
“No shit. I can’t even fathom it. Was holding onto this place really worth it? For him, I mean, as well as you.”
I met her eyes as she voiced her question, flinching at the implication — the guilt from a long-past decision momentarily overriding my more recent blunders.
“He wanted this place too. He loves it here as much as I do.”
I wish I believed the statement as strongly as I conveyed it, but it was tinged with enough defensiveness that she picked up on it in a heartbeat.
