by Beth Thomas
My thoughts flit around like an anxious butterfly, landing on something then lifting off again straight away. Why am I assuming that he’s going to try not to let anything slip about Ryan Moorfield? Why would he be hiding anything? Why have I got it into my head that it’s all a big secret?
Because Adam hid Ryan’s details in a safe, in the floor, locked by a key that was hidden in a locked drawer.
And then disappeared.
I want to charge around the room, grabbing people and turning them round roughly, before discarding them with a shove when they’re not Ray. But as I peer around the room, clenching and unclenching my fists, I spot Aunt Daphne in deep discussion with Mum and Granny; cousin Keira, with her gargantuan baby Hercules gently rolling around on the floor; Great Uncle Morris with his hands in his lap; Aunt Maureen bringing him a glass of Guinness. Elderly, powdery relatives are moving slowly and gingerly around the room in every direction, and it’s obvious that I can’t charge round furiously seizing people’s shoulders and pushing them away. There would probably be more than one hip incident if I did. And anyway, the place is so sparsely populated, I can see easily that Ray and Julia are definitely not here any more. Unless they’re both in the toilets at the same time, and that would be weird.
I sag back down into my chair, just as Matt returns with our drinks.
‘Well that was an ordeal,’ he says, dropping into the seat opposite me. ‘Someone seems to have been buying drinks for an eight-year-old.’ He glances back towards the bar. ‘He’s up there now, getting a bit antsy, elbowing people out of the way and trying to hit on the barmaid.’ He turns back to me and grins. ‘He called me “pal”. “Don’t push in, pal,” he says, “we’ve all been waiting.” I thought it was going to kick off.’ As he looks at me, I smile back encouragingly. I mustn’t let him see the wasteland of my distress. His smile falters a little. ‘Has something happened?’
I close my eyes. Dammit. ‘I never was any good at hiding things,’ I say to him with a shrug. ‘Unlike …’ I shake my head. ‘No. I’m not starting on that again, it’s getting boring.’ I look up at him, peering at me anxiously, the remains of his beer moustache still glistening on his lip, and feel suddenly very certain and relaxed. I’ve known Matt for so many years, surely I can trust him? I smile sadly. ‘Sorry.’
‘Hey, what are you apologising for?’
‘Ah, you’re so sweet. Thank you.’
He shakes his head. ‘No, no, I mean it literally. What are you apologising for? I’m not being kind, you know. I genuinely don’t know.’ He blows out air as he gazes at me. ‘You’re a mystery to me, Grace Littleton.’
‘Am I?’
‘Oh yes. Always were. I’ve spent years trying to puzzle you out.’ He breaks off and looks away, suddenly awkward. Then looks back at me. ‘You are actually more capable than you think you are, you know.’
I have no idea how to react to that. Proving him instantly wrong. ‘No I’m not. I’m exactly the amount of useless I think I am.’
He leans forward and extends his hands across the table towards me. ‘No you’re not! Jesus, Grace, look at you, coping with what’s just happened to you, not falling apart, not on the floor wailing about how it’s not fair and why me and all that self-pitying crap. You’re incredibly strong, and clever and bright and interesting and amazing …’ He stops talking and gives a little laugh, then leans back and slides his arms back towards himself. ‘Ah …’ Then picks up his drink and takes a sip.
I can’t take my eyes off him, the hunt for Julia and Ray forgotten. There are signals here, waiting to be read, but I’ve never learned how. I can remember little Matt, when we were all much younger, following Ginger and me around, always there in the background, getting on our nerves, omnipresent in eyeliner. I always thought he was just bored or hero-worshipped his big sister or was a bit of a loner or, perversely, thought he needed to be there to watch out for her. Now it seems as if … I’m frowning, trying to understand the past twelve years.
‘Stop frowning,’ he says now, rubbing his face and shifting around in his seat. ‘It’s making me nervous.’
‘Nervous? Why?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Christ, Grace, I’ve pretty much just blurted out …’ He locks eyes with me, then breaks off and turns away.
‘Blurted out?’ I repeat, still frowning, but he shakes his head and gives a tiny half smile.
‘Have you seen your mum and dad doing “The Birdie Song”?’
‘What?’
He jerks his head towards the dance floor. ‘Over there. Hilarious.’
I glance over to the dance floor, completely fail to spot my parents dancing badly, then turn back to Matt. I want him to finish what he was saying. I want him to explain what he meant. I want him to know that I want him to say it. But he’s turned away from me now and is tapping his foot to the music, pint glass in hand.
‘Matt,’ I start, but I don’t get any further.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ a voice says to my right, and I turn towards it. Ginger is standing there, hands on hips, looking above our heads as she scans the room. Just behind her is Fletch, also looking around, although slightly more nervously than Ginger.
‘What?’
She focuses on me, then takes in Matt, turned away from the table and staring at the dance floor. Then, in a heroic obliviousness to the frigid waves of ‘don’t join us’ emanating from me, she pulls out a chair and joins us. ‘Ray and Julia have gone.’
‘I’m not surprised they’ve gone,’ Matt says. ‘I was surprised to see them at all, to be honest, after what’s happened.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Ginger says. ‘I’m bloody glad they’ve gone though.’ She grins at Fletch. ‘We can relax now. Fancy a dance?’
‘No.’
She stands up and boogies round to Fletch’s side of the table. ‘Come on, come and dance with me.’ She grabs his arm and pulls. Eventually he stands up reluctantly, and trails behind her onto the dance floor.
‘I hate dancing.’
‘No you don’t, come on. This is a fab song.’ She’s wrong: it’s ‘That’s Amore’.
Matt and I watch them go, then turn back to each other. The conversation we’ve just been having is right there between us, but like the last cupcake, neither of us wants to reach for it. I’m distracted now, too, thinking about my utter failure to speak to Ray about Ryan Moorfield, my naïve trust in everything everyone ever says to me, and my ridiculous ineptitude at life in general. I give Matt a smile, then focus back on the dance floor. Granny is shimmying in front of a panicked Uncle Martin.
‘Hey,’ Matt says, leaning across towards me, ‘you look so sad suddenly. Something just occurring to you?’
‘No, not really, just feeling useless as usual.’
‘You’re not useless! What the hell are you talking about? Seriously, Grace, how can you think that, after all this has happened?’
I turn away from Granny and focus on Matt’s kind face. He looks so concerned about me and has been such a good friend these past few days. Just the fact that he’s there, with his messy hair and his beer moustache, is making me feel less anxious. It’s almost impossible to think that someone that poised, that self-assured, that together, could ever be attracted to an incapable and ridiculous mess like me, but I feel almost sure I heard it, just now when he said all those wonderful things. His eyes are still on my face, his eyebrows drawn in a bit, his whole body leaning towards me, and I can feel an unfamiliar heat flaring in my belly. I try to smile back but the heat has reached my cheeks now and guaranteed he can see me going red, even in the flash of the strobe lighting. I put my hand up and smooth my hair a bit to try to hide my face.
‘I feel useless,’ I say quietly, ‘because of everything that’s happened. It doesn’t make me fall apart, or wail, or go on about it’s not fair or why me, you’re right. But not because I’m strong and capable. Because of the opposite of that. I’m not moaning about what’s happened to me because I know it’s all my own fault.’
‘No, Matt, it is. It’s all down to my own stupidity. Or naïveté. One or the other, whatever you want to call it. I deserve all this, everything that’s happened, because I walked right into it.’
‘That’s not true …’
‘It is. It really is. I was an idiot and I got taken in. But I know one thing – it’s not going to happen to me again. I won’t let it.’
He draws back a bit when I say this, and looks sad for a moment. ‘I believe it.’
I nod. ‘Hell yeah! I am never, ever going to let myself get drawn in like that again, and simply believe things. Not without tons of proof. From now on, I’m going to need solid, documentary …’ I break off as something occurs to me. I look at Matt, searching his face. He cares about me, he must do, to have been helping me out so much the last few days. Could I confide in him about the safe? Would he be my confidant, or would he insist I tell the police everything about it, and the money, and my hunt for Ryan Moorfield? Would telling him be putting him in an impossible position? Would he have to choose between the girl he cares about, or the force he loves?
I sound like a movie trailer. Mentally I slap my own face. Come on!
‘What is it?’ he asks, leaning further across the table. The fingers of his right hand are millimetres from mine, so close I can feel my hand being drawn towards them, like disorganised particles near a mass. I stare at our hands for a moment, then look up into Matt’s eyes.
‘Matt, we’re friends, aren’t we?’
He draws back a little. ‘OK.’
‘No, I mean … I don’t mean that I’m not …’ I stop. ‘What I’m trying to ask you is … if I tell you something, something pretty big, would you … keep it secret?’
He doesn’t answer straight away. He looks down at his hands on the table, then slides them back towards himself slowly, and leans back in his chair.
‘Grace, I do care about you. You must know that. What you may not know is exactly how much. But … I would be duty-bound to report any … wrongdoing … that may have—’
I put my hands up. ‘God, no! There’s no wrongdoing here. At least, I don’t think there is. Not by me, anyway. I would never ask you to keep anything like that a secret, Matt. That would be awful of me.’
He breathes in deeply and releases it with a smile, coming forward again. ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you were about to confess to …’ He breaks off and looks away. Then flicks his gaze back to me, raising his eyebrows. ‘You know.’
It takes me a moment, but I cotton on in the end. ‘Oh God. You thought I killed Adam.’ My turn to shrink away into my seat. ‘You think I’m involved!’
‘No no no, I don’t, please don’t think that. Honestly, Grace, I mean it.’ He shakes his head. ‘Bum.’
‘Well then why did you … say that? Act like that?’
‘It was what you said, about keeping a secret. I don’t think you did anything, or are even capable of it, but you said you had a big secret … Look at it from my point of view. Your husband disappears without warning; then a week later he flees the country. Who’s to say he and you haven’t done something?’ He puts a hand up to stop me from interrupting immediately. ‘No, hold on, who’s to say he didn’t do something, and you found out about it? Maybe he’s coercing you into something. Maybe he’s blackmailing you …’
I’m suddenly chilled all over. This is it. This is how it happens. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Is that what they think? They think my husband has carried out some kind of, I don’t know, diamond heist? And I’ve helped him escape the country because he found out about some hideous thing in my past, and is threatening to tell people?’
Matt pauses and squints a bit. ‘Well … when you put it like that …’
‘It sounds ridiculous.’
He nods. ‘Yes. It does a bit. But, you know, when there are mysterious circumstances, and one of the main players says she has a big secret …’ He shrugs.
‘That’s unfair.’ I sound like a child, and I can practically hear how pathetic that will sound in a courtroom.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He reaches across the table again and covers my hand. ‘Oh, Gracie, you …’ He breaks off and looks down at our hands a moment. ‘Anyway,’ he goes on, ‘it won’t be a problem because there won’t be any evidence pointing at you.’
I can’t believe he’s holding my hand in public. Or hasn’t snatched his hand back again immediately, recollecting himself after a momentary lapse. I’d tensed instantly as his skin touched mine, waiting for him to realise and retreat, but he didn’t. His hand has stayed right there, on mine, taking care of it and protecting it from everything. Eventually, my hand starts to relax and feel safe there; and so do I.
‘Matt,’ I say quietly, ‘I couldn’t even find out who his friends are, or where he went to school, or who his favourite Bond is. There’s no way I could’ve known if he’d been masterminding a massive criminal act.’
He doesn’t respond. It’s rhetorical anyway. As I think about that, it seems obvious to me, and to anyone else who might give it two seconds’ thought, that I should have known. I’m his wife – was his wife – and I lived with him. I saw him every day. We shared meals and floor space and our clothes went round the washing machine together. I should have noticed that something was amiss. How could I not?
No, no, that’s ridiculous. He was brilliantly secretive. He made an art form out of it. He could have hidden a murder weapon from Sherlock Holmes. He’s probably got that stolen Vermeer painting in some secret lock-up somewhere. I bet Lord Lucan came to him for help all those years ago.
I look back at Matt and find him staring at me intently. He smiles as our eyes meet, and it makes my tummy flip. My entire body is acutely aware of his big, warm hand still on mine.
‘Sorry,’ I say again, although I don’t know why.
‘Still apologising for no reason. Why do you do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh. Well, you’re forgiven.’
I shake my head. ‘Don’t forgive me too quickly. When I work out why I’m sorry, you might regret it.’
‘I won’t. I’m sure of it.’ His voice has gone all low and gravelly and makes my spine vibrate.
‘Good. Well … I opened the safe.’
‘Oh, right. Good.’ He raises his eyebrows. ‘And?’
‘There was a huge stack of cash inside.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Huge? Define huge.’
‘Thirteen thousand huge.’
‘Shoot the hostage!’
It makes me smile. ‘I know.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I kept it.’
‘Ah.’
‘Is that wrong?’
He considers for a moment. ‘That’s a grey area. I’ll think about it. Is there any clue as to where it’s come from?’
‘Nothing. Not that I could see, anyway. Just some paperwork relating to a tenancy agreement, some bank statements and a birth certificate.’
‘A birth certificate? What, Adam’s?’
‘No, someone called Ryan Moorfield.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘I don’t know. I’m guessing he’s related to Ray somehow.’
‘Ray? You mean Adam’s dad?’
‘Yeah, but he’s not Adam’s dad, he’s his step-dad. So he and Julia are Moorfield. Adam was Littleton.’
I pause as it strikes me suddenly how easily I referred to Adam in the past tense. Didn’t even hesitate.
‘You’re getting used to the idea,’ Matt says, sending shivers down my spine.
‘I suppose so.’
We both fall silent for a moment and sip our drinks.
‘What happened to his dad?’ he asks me.
I look at him helplessly. ‘You’re still not getting it, are you?’
‘Getting what?’
‘Adam. Me. Our relationship.’ I lean forward and put my elbows on the table. ‘Matt, I’m telling you that I know literally nothing about him.’
‘No, I know, I do get it, but I only meant was he dead, or did he and Julia get divorced …?’
He trails off as I’m already shaking my head.
He raises his eyebrows. ‘You don’t know?’
‘Nope.’
‘O-o-oh.’ He elongates the vowel sound, as if just realising something. But he isn’t realising at all. ‘Well then, does Ray have any children, or are there other fam …?’ He stops when he sees my expression. Looks down at the table, then back at me. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ray’s former wife?’
I shrug.
‘Adam’s brothers, sisters?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Previous relationships?’
‘Are you kidding?’
He nods slowly, looking pensive. ‘OK. I think I finally get it. Properly now.’
‘Well it’s about time.’
‘Yeah, I know. Slow on the uptake, me. I failed the Uptake exam three times at Police College.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Yeah, I know. I felt really stupid, especially as my tutor had been secretly giving me the answers to help me get through. I just … didn’t realise.’
I grin and a small laugh escapes me.
‘Ah, that’s good to see,’ he says. ‘You have such a great smile, and we haven’t seen much of it these past few days.’
‘I haven’t had many moments that warrant it.’
‘Well I’m very glad this was one of them.’
‘Me too.’
We fall silent again for a few moments and both turn to watch the dancing. I notice that Ginger is dancing on her own now, swaying sensuously with closed eyes, so I glance around for Fletch. It doesn’t take long for me to locate him, cornered a couple of tables away, listening to Granny telling him her relentless story about a rather seedy incident from her past that everyone in the family tries to keep quiet, but which she always recounts immediately to any new face.