by T. J. Lebbon
Andy lowered the towel and stared at her. He made no effort to cover himself. He wiped slowly from chest to waist, then dropped the towel at his feet. His eyes lingered on her breasts, drifted lower, then up again to her face. Once they locked eyes he didn’t look away.
‘He’s in the bath,’ he said. A statement, an explanation. An invitation.
It might have been only seconds, but it felt like minutes. Emma broke their gaze and looked down at him. She hadn’t seen another naked man in the flesh in almost two decades. He was bigger than Dom—
Of course he is, she thought.
—and obviously enjoying her scrutiny. Her imagination was untethered, senses seeing and feeling and tasting things she only ever did with Dom.
If she’d covered herself up, things might have been different.
Andy took a step towards her, and without thinking Emma followed suit, so close now that she could smell him, feel the heat radiating from his scrubbed red skin.
He held her hip and pulled her closer. She felt him prod against her stomach and she reached down, brushing her hand against him. Andy drew in a sharp breath, and she was delighted at the effect she had on him.
He leaned close, inhaling her scent, his lips only touching her skin when he started biting, so gently, beneath her left ear.
Emma’s knees weakened, her eyes closed, and she leaned against him. It was as if he knew her so well, and this moment was simply a confirmation of everything that had already happened in both of their imaginations.
He chuckled softly.
He knew exactly what she liked.
Emma’s eyes snapped open and she stepped back, pushing against his chest so that he didn’t follow. Dom must have told him I like being bitten there. She knew that when men got together they talked about sex, but the idea of Dom talking to his friend about their love life enraged her. Andy’s smile only made it worse.
‘Emma,’ he said, taking another step closer.
She was furious at Dom, but then Emma realised where she was, what she had done. Her anger flailed, then dissipated as quickly as it had arisen. She wanted to shout, cry, come.
Instead, she covered herself and turned around. ‘Whoops,’ she said. She grabbed the clothes she’d shed and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her, never once looking back at Andy. She hurried past the bathroom, hearing Dom humming to himself, the splash of bathwater. She still needed to wash. But she couldn’t face him right then.
I need to speak to Andy, make it right, she thought. Guilt simmered hot and horrid. But she could not face him again, not alone. She could not bear to see his smile, knowing that he knew the effect he’d had upon her.
She washed in the kitchen and wore sooty clothes for the rest of the afternoon.
Neither of them ever mentioned that moment. To be fair to Andy, he never even offered her a knowing smile or a loaded comment. He could have made things so much more awkward between them, and over time she’d dulled the memory into a simple case of a foolish, private error. A one-time slip, that was really nothing more than a brief contact.
Only occasionally did her imagination untether itself again to consider what might have been.
She had been guarded ever since. Knowing that a man like him would fuck his friend’s wife while his friend was in the next room … that made him no friend at all.
‘I guess I don’t like Andy either,’ she said.
‘So what do we do?’ Daisy asked. ‘If we can’t call the police about these people, what do we do?’
‘We get to Mandy’s,’ Emma said. ‘Then I’m going to find out exactly what’s going on.’
Chapter Thirteen
Bluebells
‘I know the gang,’ Andy said. ‘I used to be a member.’
They’d been driving in silence for several minutes, and he’d chosen this moment – while Dom was paused at a junction, negotiating busy traffic – to drop this bombshell.
Dom was stunned silent. Someone flashed and waved him on, but he sat staring through the windscreen, unable to react.
‘Dom, they’re letting you go.’
‘You? In a gang?’ He still couldn’t look at his friend beside him. The car flashed again, tooted, and Dom pulled out, raising a hand in thanks without even thinking about it.
‘I know it’s probably a lot to take in.’
‘No,’ Dom said. ‘Not a surprise at all.’ He said it sarcastically, but he felt the revelation instantly drive a thick wedge between them. The suspicion that he’d had all through their friendship that he didn’t truly know Andy became concrete, hitting hard as if falling from a height. His friend had turned into a stranger in the space of a minute. ‘Fucking prick.’
‘Sorry, mate.’
‘So tell me.’ Dom waved his hand beyond the car, as if everyone and everything out there was out to get them. ‘Explain all this.’
‘I left them years ago. Long story. Then I heard whispers about their upcoming hit on the post office. I have … scores to settle with them, and I thought stealing the cash without them knowing who’d done it seemed a good way of doing that. But the information I received wasn’t precise; I should have known that, should have seen it. I thought they were doing it next week.’
Dom blinked quickly as if to clear dust from his eyes. He was driving on autopilot, functioning in the same way, seeing only Emma’s and Daisy’s hurt, frightened expressions.
‘All your fault,’ he muttered.
‘Mate, I made a mistake and—’
Dom had held up one hand, and Andy fell silent. His immediate reaction was to stop the car and smash Andy in the face. But he was not a man of violence, and had not punched anyone since he was thirteen years old.
Instead, he continued driving.
‘So where are we going?’ Andy asked.
‘To get the money. To give it back to them.’
Andy didn’t argue. They left the village in simmering silence, Dom absorbing what he had been told and trying to make these new facts fit in with current events and knowledge. It left more holes and mysteries than solutions. But it also joined dots that he had previously been unable to connect. Dots about Andy, the history he never talked about, and how such a garrulous type had so few friends.
He’d make him pay. When all this was over, he’d never let him forget.
‘Fucking prick!’
‘Yeah. So you said.’
It was almost six in the evening, still unbearably hot, roads busy with people driving home from work to their normal homes and contented families. Dom felt jealous of every one of them.
As he turned off the main road and headed up the winding lane towards the pillbox, he glanced in his mirror at the cars passing behind him. Mothers and fathers, sometimes with kids in the back, they all had concerns he didn’t know about. Perhaps some of them were deep worries – What is that lump in my left breast? Is she really sleeping with Steve? I wonder how long Dad has left? But he doubted any of them equated to his. The sense of dread combined with an intense feeling of unfairness, even though he’d believed that he’d entered into this of his own free will.
But he really hadn’t.
‘You steered it all from the start,’ he said. ‘Took us out that way on the bikes, parked across the square from the post office. Planted the seed.’
‘Yes,’ Andy said. ‘First time we did that route four months ago, I’d just heard that they’d scoped the place. There was a good chance nothing would come of it, I knew that. But there was a small chance something would.’
‘And it was that long ago you thought about you and me robbing it before them?’
‘No, I didn’t know what I might do. Just leave them alone, maybe. Or perhaps leave an anonymous tip with the police, get them caught.’
‘So why didn’t you do that?’
‘I know them too well. I was afraid if they were cornered, people might get hurt.’
Dom coughed a laugh, hard and false. ‘Oh, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?’
‘Instead of five minutes before them.’
Andy nodded.
They drove up the hillside, passing beneath the shade of overhanging trees. The road surface became pocked and uneven, and Dom slowed as they approached the pillbox. He glanced in his mirrors frequently, just to make sure no other vehicle was behind them. They seemed to be alone.
Parking just off the road, he turned off the engine and slammed the door as he got out. Hard.
‘You stay with the car,’ Andy said. ‘I’ll get the bag.’
‘Yeah, right. Good plan, fuck-face!’ Dom leaned against his side of the car, back turned to Andy. He glanced up and down the road. If anyone came he’d hold his phone to his ear, pretend he’d stopped to make a phone call. Maybe he’d even try to smile.
He heard Andy open the boot and root around for the shovel they’d used the day before. He looked across the road into the woods that continued up the hillside and over the brow, networked with rarely trodden paths and alive with memories. He and Emma had walked in there during their first year living in the town, sitting on a fallen tree with shoulder and legs touching, talking about their future. They were already engaged then, and later that month it emerged that Daisy was already a part of them. Dom frequently thought back to that long afternoon. It had become one of those perfect moments in life that are barely recognised when they’re actually happening, but which later take on an almost mystical sheen.
The woodland seemed like a strange place now. It felt unwelcoming, as if it knew him and had excluded him.
‘Were you like them?’ Dom asked. He didn’t turn around, because he didn’t want to look at Andy. But he did want answers.
‘For a while,’ Andy said. ‘But never … no one ever died. Not until the end of my time with them. That’s why I left.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I could see the way things were going. Someone new joined, and he was bad news. Steering things closer towards violence. That was never what we were about, not in the beginning, and it certainly wasn’t me. I didn’t want any part of that, so I left.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘Not simple at all. I quit with seventy grand in the bank, when it should have been half a million. I was given a choice – go with that, or stay and make more. They screwed me out of—’
‘Good,’ Dom said. He turned and looked across the car roof at Andy. Heat haze shimmered from the metal, making his friend’s face fluid. ‘I’m glad they screwed you out of your dirty criminal money. How many people’s lives did you ruin? How many did you terrify?’
Andy’s face hardened for a moment, then he looked down at his feet, shaking his head.
‘They’ve killed an old lady and a young girl,’ Dom said. ‘We caused that.’ He felt a heavy pressure behind his face, and a deep, cold dread in his heart. However hard he tried, he was unable to deny the conviction that their actions had resulted in those murders. It was sickening.
‘You don’t need to remind me.’
‘They’ve killed my dog. Threatened my wife and daughter.’
‘I know.’
‘Can you contact them?’
‘Haven’t tried in years.’
‘But you knew they were planning on doing that post office.’
‘I learned how to keep track of them online, follow their web access, track some of their texting. It was more to protect myself than anything else. To hide, and make sure they hadn’t found me. But I won’t need to contact them. They obviously saw us. Maybe you weren’t thorough enough muddying up your number plates, they’d get everything from that – your name, where you live, phone numbers. They’ll be in touch soon enough, then I’ll give the cash back to them. After that they’ll piss off, and so will I.’
He looked at Dom as if expecting some comment, perhaps even a plea to stay. But Dom only nodded.
Andy climbed the gate and waded through ferns, approaching the pill box at the edge of the field. He pushed through the brambles, unconcerned when they snagged his clothing and skin. Soon he was inside and out of sight, and Dom was glad.
He closed his eyes and breathed in the hot evening air. He felt like such a fool. Andy had used him, probably from the moment they’d met, and he’d seen nothing but a confident, slightly lonely man seeking only friendship.
His eyes snapped open. ‘Were we ever friends?’ he called out.
‘Dom,’ Andy said, voice muffled from inside the old, smothered building. ‘Of course. You’re the best part of my new life, mate. I never meant for you to meet my old life.’
‘Which is why you lied about it all this time.’
‘I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you.’
Dom did not reply. Andy was right. He’d kept himself something of an enigma, though one with a friendly face and who was always good company.
He heard the sound of Andy scraping at the soil inside the pillbox. He almost asked more about the money, but he didn’t really want to know. All the pints Andy had bought him, the bottles of wine when he joined him and Emma for dinner, the meals, the coffee shop breaks when they were out biking, he just did not want to think about how they were bought with stolen cash.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Dom said quietly. A bird in the nearby hedge seemed to take offence, chirping and flying away. He couldn’t kid himself. Now that he knew some of the truth, he needed more. He might have been steered and coerced, but he had still put that Hulk mask on of his own volition.
‘Maybe I’m as bad as you,’ he said, not intending Andy to hear. Andy was just pushing his way from the pillbox, face scratched, hands muddied, shoving the money bag before him.
‘You’re a good bloke. You don’t deserve any of this.’
‘Don’t try to sound like you’re sorry.’
‘I am.’
‘Bullshit!’
Dom’s phone rang. He jumped. Andy’s eyes went wide.
Dom glanced at the screen and saw Emma’s picture, and for a terrible, unreal, panic-filled moment he imagined that they had her, tied up and sweating and terrified, and that they were calling to demand the money as a ransom. It was ridiculous, but then so was this turn his life had taken.
He answered. ‘Em?’
‘Dom, where are you?’
He sighed in relief, and Andy’s shoulders seemed to slump as well. He was as frightened for Emma and Daisy as Dom was.
‘I’m with Andy, we’re going to—’
‘That bastard,’ Emma said.
‘Em, are you and Daisy okay?’
‘Yes, just dandy. Why shouldn’t we be? We’ve rocked up at Mandy’s unannounced, she’s gone out with that arsehole boyfriend of hers, we can’t go home in case South Wales’s worst crime gang come looking, and then I get a call from a mad old bitch threatening us. So yes, we’re fine. What haven’t you told me, Dom? What’s going on?’
‘What mad old bitch?’ Dom asked. Andy froze where he was climbing over the field gate, like a rabbit in headlights. He knows, Dom thought. Maybe I’ll just ask him.
‘I had an unlisted call on my mobile. When I answered, a woman asked if I was Emma. I thought it was someone trying to sell something to begin with. She sounded like anyone’s grandmother, sweet and polite. Then she asked for what she was owed. Just like that. “I want what I’m owed.” I waited for a bit, then … I couldn’t just say nothing. I told her it was only a bump, it was an accident, and that we’d pay for the damage willingly.’
Andy was still astride the gate, staring at Dom expectantly. Dom put the phone on loudspeaker and touched his finger to his lips.
‘What did she say to that?’ he asked his wife. He wished he could reach through the phone to touch her, comfort her, but he doubted she’d welcome that.
‘She laughed,’ Emma said. ‘Then she said, “Tell your stupid husband and his friend, if we don�
��t get what we’re owed, we’ll let Lip do his stuff”.’
Andy hadn’t changed position on the gate. It was as if he was waiting for something else.
‘I felt like I was a kid being talked to. I didn’t know anything and she knew everything, and I couldn’t even reply. There was nothing for me to say.’
‘She say anything else?’ Dom asked.
‘She left me a number. Read it out twice, slowly, so I had time to write it down.’ She read it out. Sitting astride the gate, Andy tapped it into his phone. ‘After that she just hung up. What haven’t you told me, Dom? What are you and Andy doing? And if you mention a bumped Ferrari, I’ll … I’ll fucking divorce you. Don’t treat me like an idiot.’
‘I know you’re not that, babe,’ he said, and he felt so wretched. He switched the loudspeaker off and pressed the phone back to his ear, turning his back on Andy, the car, the pill box and the bag of money. He looked across at the woodland rising up the slope before him and wished he could be there with Emma again, the two of them alone in love and planning a safe, happy future.
‘Is it the post office in Upper Mill?’ she asked.
He wasn’t surprised. His wife was far from stupid. But he was not ready for such an admission, and everything that would come with it. He didn’t have the time, but neither did he have the emotional resilience to enter into that conversation just now. Later, perhaps. When he knew that it was over and they were all safe.
‘It’s nothing that bad,’ he said, not really a denial. ‘It’ll all be over this evening, and we’ll be back to Mandy’s in a couple of hours.’
‘Not “we”. I don’t want Andy here. That woman knows him, I could tell.’
He listened to her breathing, faster and heavier than usual, loaded with fear. He felt intensely ashamed. But somewhere beneath the shame and fear there was a spark of excitement, and a sense that at least he had tried. The gang had made their demands, and soon they would be met. After that he could return to his family a changed man. It was how he handled that change that would define his future self.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Just me. And a Chinese.’
‘You’d better not do anything to hurt my family,’ she said, voice flat and without intonation. The sense that she was excluding him from the comment was threat enough.