Leah starting back-pedalling. ‘I dunno, Cassidie has to get—’
Naz threw Leah a sharp look. ‘I was asking Cassidie!’
Cassie cut in quickly, not wanting, for reasons she wasn’t wholly sure about, to leave Leah alone with Naz in her current subdued state. ‘I’ve got time. I don’t have to be back for a while.’ She wanted to prove to Leah that spending time with her was the priority, not returning to her loving, lying parents.
Naz’s face lightened and he flashed a grin. ‘Great. Back to yours then?’
On the short walk back he told anecdotes about people Cassie didn’t know and parties Leah seemed not to have attended. Cassie was aware that Naz was bragging, but he was entertaining and funny. His previous bad temper seemed to have evaporated. When they reached the small parade of shops near Leah’s flat he stopped. ‘What have you got in?’
‘A couple of beers, a bit of voddie left, I think,’ Leah said.
‘You got any Coke?’ She shook her head. ‘Anything to eat?’ Again, that was a ‘No’.
Naz glanced towards the booze shop. Cassie immediately offered to buy the supplies. She extracted a fiver from her purse and held it out to Leah, but it was Naz who intercepted it, with an OTT ‘Thank you’. He paused, Cassie got the message and promptly offered more. Only then did Naz pass one of the notes to Leah. She stood, scratching her wrist, an unreadable look on her face, while Naz put in his order. Cassie looked away. She was fascinated by the dynamic: Leah’s passivity and Naz’s dominance. There was obviously some strain between the two of them. ‘We’ll get the snacks,’ Naz announced, ‘see you back at the flat.’ Then he shocked Cassie by linking arms with her and propelling her along the pavement into the poky little corner shop, leaving Leah behind.
He evidently had a sweet tooth. Cassie bought the crisps and chocolate bars that he selected and they emerged back out onto the street. There was no sign of Leah, but Naz seemed in no mood to linger. As they headed for the flats they passed through the patchwork of sunshine and shadows cast by the surrounding buildings. The switch from light to dark and back again was dizzying. The entrance to the block was open, as usual. As they stood by the lift, Cassie wondered why they hadn’t waited for Leah. She regretted that they hadn’t.
Naz smiled at her. ‘I’m really glad that you and Leah are getting on. You’re good for her. I can tell.’ Cassie didn’t know what to say to that. He ushered her into the empty lift, ‘After you.’
When they got out on the seventh floor, Cassie’s vague apprehension solidified. The building was so brutally unwelcoming. She really didn’t fancy having to hang around on the landing, waiting for Leah, with the dead-eyed doors and the smell of garbage, but to her surprise they didn’t have to. Naz pulled a key out of his back pocket and let them into the flat. That he had a key shocked Cassie. The flat was Leah’s sanctuary, it seemed completely out of character for her to let Naz come and go as he pleased. He threw the snacks and the key-ring onto the table and sat down. Cassie chose to sit opposite, not next to him.
‘She shouldn’t be too long.’ He shrugged off his expensive-looking jacket.
‘No.’
Naz seemed quite at home. ‘Bit different for you, all this, I’m guessing.’
Cassie knew what he was hinting at, but didn’t want to get into it. ‘Sorry?’
‘This.’ He waved his arms around the room, but his gesture included everything that lay beyond: the other blocks of flats, the dirty landing, the tin-can of a lift, the scarred park, the shabby parade of shops, even the grey bulk of Manchester squatting in the distance.
‘A bit.’ She didn’t want to come across as a snob.
‘Ah, come on! More than a bit.’
She decided to stick to the physical geography. ‘I like Manchester. It’s great for shopping.’ Her stupidity echoed round the room.
‘Yeah. Madchester!’ Naz made a mocking gesture. ‘Great place,’ he paused, ‘if you’ve got cash. But Oldham is a bit of a shithole!’ He watched her, waiting to see how she’d react.
Out of loyalty to Leah’s home town, Cassie smiled. ‘It’s okay.’
Naz leant forward, picked up the tortillas and ripped the bag open. He offered her some. She declined. He grabbed a fistful for himself. ‘Yeah, well, I suppose “it’s okay” for some people.’ He meant Leah. He threw some tortillas into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, noisily. ‘She’s not done too bad for herself, I suppose. She’s got her little flat, her little job, a little bit of money coming in, it’s quite an achievement…considering.’
Cassie left the hook of ‘considering’ dangling.
‘She needs to have more confidence in herself, though. Have you noticed how she puts herself down all the time?’
Cassie hadn’t – that wasn’t what Leah did; what Leah did was disappear inside herself, which wasn’t the same thing at all, but Cassie didn’t argue with him. Besides, Naz didn’t seem that interested in her opinion.
He flowed on. ‘She thinks she’s not worth anything? Now that’s not right, is it? Thinking you’re worthless.’ He wiped his greasy fingers on the arm of the chair and Cassie winced. ‘But I suppose that’s what happens, when you’re dragged up. No family, no rules, no respect, even for yourself.’
Cassie felt incredibly uncomfortable talking about Leah with Naz, who, from everything she’d seen, spent his time making absolutely sure that Leah knew her place. He leant back and stretched, spreading his arms and legs wide. His whole posture shouted Look at me and Cassie, despite herself, did just that, fascinated, repelled and unnerved in equal measure. As if reading Cassie’s mind, he twisted and looked at the flat door. ‘Where has that girl got to?’ But the door stayed firmly, silently shut. Naz took another handful of tortillas, not noticing, or perhaps not caring, when some fell on the floor. ‘You fancy one of these beers she claims she’s got in, while we wait?’
Cassie nodded, as much as to break up their conversation as anything else.
He came back with the drinks: a beer for her, a glass of water for himself. She took a couple of swift mouthfuls of the cold lager, reasoning that alcohol might help to ease the awkwardness of the situation. Naz downed half of his water, his eyes studying her as he drank. ‘You don’t look like sisters.’
‘No.’ What else could she say; they didn’t.
‘You’re very pretty.’ Again there was the implication that Leah wasn’t. Cassie made a non-committal noise and wondered where the hell she was. ‘Different dads, obvs.’ Still she said nothing. Naz warmed to his theme. ‘I hate blokes like that. Having kids with lots of different women, it shows a total lack of respect…of responsibility. Mind, they let ’em, don’t they?’
Cassie was thrown by his arrogance, but found herself too intimidated to say anything. He didn’t seem at all bothered by her reticence.
‘You see it all the time round here. Baby daddies! It’s a miracle that Leah’s not gone and got herself banged up, when you stop to think about it. It’s what you’d expect – given her history.’ He spoke as if it had nothing whatsoever to do with him.
Cassie took another swig of her drink and prayed for the sound of Leah’s key rattling in the lock. It didn’t.
Naz flashed her another of his smiles. ‘So,’ he drained his glass, ‘tell me about your mum and dad.’
Chapter 43
TOM HAD been surprised when Erin asked for a lift. Apparently a group of her friends were going out for something to eat, then on to the cinema, and she’d been asked to go along. He was glad she’d been invited, even happier that she’d said yes. He glanced at her sitting next to him, then turned his attention back to the road. A touch of make-up, a pretty top and skinny jeans and a denim jacket – which was a hand-me-down from Cassie – she looked great, but she still looked thirteen, as she should. He could tell that she was nervous by the stiffness of her posture and the lack of conversation, so he stopped quizzing her about who was going and flicked on the radio, leaving her to stare, in peace, out of the window.
; Erin’s tentative steps into young adulthood were faltering, but they were recognisable. Tom hadn’t found being a teenager a breeze, either, there had been too many unspoken rules that he’d been poor at deciphering, so he had every sympathy with Erin’s uncertainty. He indicated and pulled into the filter that led on to the leisure park. Perhaps caution was no bad thing in a child. Inevitably, his thoughts went back to his reckless elder daughter. Who knew where Cassie was this evening? At work, she’d said – they’d had to take her word for that – then round to a friend’s, which was no doubt code for seeing Ryan. That relationship wasn’t dying a death, as he’d hoped; if anything, they seemed to be spending even more time together. His own and Grace’s attempts to get anywhere near Ryan, to size him up, had failed, abjectly. The open invitation for Ryan to call round for a beer sometime when the footie is on had been met with a snort of derision and a closing door. They were losing their grip on Cassie. It was as if their real daughter had been replaced by a stranger, who looked and sounded like the same girl, but whose heart and soul were completely dark to them.
Tom pulled the car into a space in front of the restaurant and switched off the engine. Erin unclipped her seatbelt. ‘Do you want me to come in with you?’
‘Dad!’ Erin leant across the handbrake and pecked him on the cheek.
‘Well, have a good time. Text me if you need a lift home.’
‘Thanks, but Hannah’s dad said he’d drop us back.’ She slammed the door and set off towards the restaurant. Tom watched and waited until she was safely inside, before he set off back home through the early evening traffic.
Chapter 44
NAZ WAS talking about BMWs. It was surprisingly soothing. Cassie sipped her beer and let his enthusiasm for torques and top speeds roll over her. He was obviously quite into his cars. She went to take another sip of her beer, but as she tilted the bottle to her lips, nothing came out.
‘Want another?’ Naz asked.
‘Yeah, that’d be good.’
He went and fetched it. ‘The last one…just for you.’ He popped the cap off the bottle, wiped the rim with his sleeve and passed it to her. She took it and drank another cold mouthful, while Naz wandered over to the window and looked out. It was quiet and peaceful and Cassie realised she wasn’t on edge any more. She felt relaxed, sleepy almost. She felt her eyes closing. She had to make a real effort to open them, but she found that she couldn’t seem to focus on Naz’s blurry outline – the sun behind him was too bright to look at. She rested her head back against the sofa, let his voice wash over her and began to drift.
The next thing she knew, Naz wasn’t across the room from her, he was next to her. His voice close, whispering in her ear. She could smell him. Air, aftershave, something lemony-fresh. ‘You really are very pretty, aren’t you, Cassidie?’ He breathed against her neck. ‘Bet you get told that all the time. Lovely skin.’ He was touching her arm. She let him. ‘So soft.’ Her head felt heavy. For a second she ‘saw’ Ryan’s hurt face.
When Naz touched her again, she didn’t feel anything.
Chapter 45
TOM LET himself back into a house that felt lifeless, because it was. He dumped his wallet and keys and wandered from room to room, unable to settle without the familiar anchor points of his wife and his daughters. Traces of their presence were everywhere: in Cassie’s broken necklace in the bowl on the dresser, in Grace’s hairbrush in the downstairs loo, in the girls’ timetables stuck to the front of the fridge, and in the half-empty jar of Nutella with Erin’s name on it on the kitchen shelf.
Tom retraced his steps through to the hall and fished Cassie’s broken necklace out of the bowl. He had to sieve through the rubble of crap to find the fastener. Craning over the low coffee table in the lounge, he started to tease out the knots. It was fiddly work. The chain was delicate and the fastener had a flattened link. His fingers felt clumsy and huge. For every knot he untangled, he seemed to create a new one, but he persevered, working slowly, patiently. It took him a good twenty-five minutes, and some headache-inducing messing around with Grace’s eyebrow tweezers, but in the end he managed to fix it. He held up his handiwork to admire. The little filigree disc on the end of the chain spun in the fading sunlight, sending patterns around the walls.
Tom was still sitting on the sofa with the necklace in his hand when he heard Grace swing her car onto the drive. He put it down carefully and went into the hallway to welcome her home. ‘Hi. Good day?’
Grace hung up her jacket. ‘Not bad. Busy. Was Erin all right when you dropped her off?’
They wandered through to the kitchen. ‘Yeah. Fine. A bit – you know – but she seemed to be looking forward to it.’
‘Good.’ Grace stretched. ‘Do you mind if we eat later? I could do with a soak.’
Tom felt foolish for wanting his wife to stay with him for a while instead of disappearing upstairs the minute she came in, but he kept his need for company to himself. ‘Yeah, of course.’
As she passed by him on the way to the hall she asked, ‘Have you heard anything from Cassie today?’
‘No,’ Tom said.
‘Me neither.’ She sighed and walked wearily upstairs for her bath.
Grace took her phone with her, hidden in the pocket of her jacket. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want Tom to see it. No, that wasn’t true; she did know. She knew he would get irritated if he caught her texting Cassie, he would see it as ‘pandering’ to her, but Grace couldn’t relax, not knowing for certain where her estranged and enraged daughter was. Letting Cassie go – Grace wasn’t prepared to do it, it felt too much like giving up. She’d heard nothing from Cassie all day, despite numerous texts and messages. It was as if her daughter had dropped off the face of the Earth. Grace set the bath running and tried again. The phone rang and rang. As punishment went, it was a singularly simple but effective one. Cassie’s judgement reverberated in each dial tone. The call went to voicemail – again. As she watched the bath fill, Grace left another awkward, nervous message, though she had little hope that she would get a reply.
As she turned off the tap, she decided to make one last call.
It was unfair, sacrificing one daughter’s peace in order to reassure herself about the safety of another, but it was her only option.
Chapter 46
‘WHAT’VE YOU done?’ Leah kicked the flat door shut behind her and dropped the shopping on the floor, ignoring the crash of the bottles. Cassidie was slumped on the sofa. Naz was kneeling next to her. Cassidie’s T-shirt was pushed up, her plain white bra bright against her skin. Her jeans were unzipped, revealing a triangle of pale-blue cotton. Leah’s stomach contracted.
Naz barely reacted. ‘Chill!’ He looked from Leah back to Cassidie. Then slowly he reached out and trailed his fingers down Cassidie’s body, throat to pubic bone, demonstrating very clearly who was in control.
But a flash of hot, bright anger made Leah brave. ‘I said, what ’ave you done to her?’
Naz stood up, using his height to shrink Leah back down to size. ‘I said, relax. She’ll be fine in a couple of hours, maybe a bit more.’
‘You better not ’ave…’ Leah couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence.
He reached out, towards Leah this time, and grabbed her. ‘Now, now. There’s no need to go all green-eyed. I was just having a sneaky peak. Besides, you know me, I prefer white meat to brown.’
Leah stiffened. He squeezed her breast. There was a crackle of energy about him, which she knew was dangerous. She looked past him, checking on Cassidie. Her breathing was regular and her colour wasn’t too bad, but she was obviously out of it, utterly out of it. Her eyes kept opening, then sliding shut. ‘How much did you give her?’
Naz ignored Leah’s question, but at least he released hold of her. He went back to the sofa, bent down, picked up Cassidie’s handbag and walked over to the table. Leah followed him. He smiled. ‘Half a roofie. Or was it a whole one? You know me, I’m a generous kinda guy, especially when it comes to family. A
nd the lovely Cassidie over there is family, to you at least, isn’t she?’
Leah didn’t respond.
‘Aw, come on, Leah, stop sulking. It was a half. Just a little taster with her beer. She’ll be fine – once she comes round.’ He unceremoniously emptied Cassidie’s bag onto the table, sending her personal stuff skimming across the surface. He stirred the contents with his slim, mean fingers. With a sigh, as if he was weary of the effort, he picked up the purse, extracted the bank cards, then emptied it of cash. He left the coins. ‘Mustn’t be greedy. She’s gonna need her bus fare back to la-la land when she wakes up.’ Leah watched, unable to stop him. ‘Shopping time.’ He smiled, pocketed the cards and the cash and turned to leave; as he did, he planted on kiss on Leah’s rigid neck. ‘I might even get a little something for you. Keep an eye on her, like a good girl.’
Leah finally found her voice. ‘Not her cards, Naz. Please.’
‘Wot?’ His tone was dark.
‘If you take her cards, she’ll know, and that’ll be the end of it.’ Leah was scrabbling for purchase and they both knew it.
He eyed her. ‘Oh, it’s not the end of it, Leah, nowhere near.’ He tucked the cards away in his jacket pocket. ‘Tell her she must ’ave lost ’em, when you were in town. She’s probably dumb enough to believe you, and the roofie ain’t gonna help with her memory.’
Across the other side of the room Cassidie made an odd choking noise; Leah’s attention snapped back to her. Cassidie raised herself up slightly on one elbow and opened her eyes; her pupils were dark and unnaturally dilated. She seemed to be staring straight at them, like a doll in a horror movie. It was deeply unnerving, but Naz was unperturbed. No, it was more than that, he was amused.
‘Ah, bless. Look at her. Two beers and she’s anyone’s. Good job I’m a gentleman, isn’t it?’ He snapped his fingers in Leah’s face. ‘Earth to Leah! She swung her attention back to him. ‘I want her gone by the time I come back.’ He turned as if heading for the door, but instead of leaving, Naz paused and looked back at Cassidie. Leah didn’t like it. He walked over, hunkered down beside her inert body and took hold of her hand. For a bizarre moment Leah thought he was going to kiss it, but it was the ring he was after, not a kiss – Cassidie’s ring from her grandma. He held her hand and started working the ring down her finger, tugging and twisting at it. Leah watched and hated him more than she’d ever done before.
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