by J. P. Carter
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demands to know.
Bruno ignores him and turns to Alice, who’s cowering next to Sophie.
‘There’s no need to be afraid, little girl,’ he says. ‘I’ve just dropped by to say hi to your mum. I take it she is your mum.’
James puts the glasses he’s been holding down on the table and strides across the room towards Bruno.
Sophie doesn’t want Alice to bear witness to whatever is going to happen next so she quickly ushers her through the door next to the bar that leads to the flat.
‘Go upstairs and wait in your bedroom,’ she tells her.
‘But I don’t want to,’ Alice wails.
‘I’m not asking you, Alice. I’m telling you. Now go.’
She closes the door behind her and spins round just as James is squaring up to Bruno, who stands about four inches taller than him.
‘I asked you a question,’ James is saying. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’
Bruno remains calm and the smirk reverts to a smile.
‘I heard Sophie was living here so I decided to pay her a visit to tell her that I’m a free man at last,’ he says. ‘It’s only fair that she knows, bearing in mind that she’s still my wife.’
It takes James a couple of seconds to find his voice.
‘You’ve either made a big mistake, mate, or else you’re trying to wind me up. Sophie isn’t married and we’ve been together for almost seven years.’
‘Well, there’s a coincidence. It was seven years ago that I went to prison.’ Bruno points a finger at Sophie. ‘And all because that woman wanted to get rid of me so that she could do a runner.’
James swings round towards Sophie, his face contorted by alarm and confusion.
‘Tell him it’s not true, for Christ’s sake.’
But she can’t speak, and as she stands there she feels an ache swell in her chest.
‘It took my family a long time to track her down,’ Bruno says. ‘They had to call in a lot of favours from their police contacts. When they told me she was living here and playing happy families it made me wonder if she’d told you about her past.’
Sophie suddenly snaps out of herself and rushes forward, shaking her head.
‘What is it you want?’ she screams at him. ‘You have no right to come here.’
James puts an arm out to stop her closing in on Bruno and she grabs hold of it.
Bruno’s grin widens. ‘I’m not breaking any laws. But seeing as I’m clearly not welcome I’ll be off. You’ll be seeing me again, though. I have every intention of keeping the promise I made to you seven years ago. And I’ve decided not to get it over with quickly. I want it to be a long, slow process because it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past seven years. And a word of advice. If you try to involve the police then your man and your little girl will be put at risk.’
With that, he turns around and walks slowly out of the bar.
As Sophie watches him, her knees start to shake and bile rushes into her throat. Suddenly she can’t breathe, and it feels as though the air is being sucked out of the room.
After a few seconds she shifts her gaze from the door and looks at James, who is clearly struggling to make sense of what just happened.
‘I’ve got two questions for you,’ he says after a beat. ‘Was that man telling the truth? And is he a serious threat to all of us?’
She knows the game is up and that it’s time to tell the truth.
‘The answer is yes to both questions. We are still married and he is extremely dangerous. He went to prison for stabbing a man.’ She clears her throat and adds, ‘Now I’ve got a question for you, James. Do you think you can find it in your heart to forgive me?’
As he stares at her, his eyes grow sad. When he speaks it’s as though there’s gravel in his throat.
‘That all depends on why you’ve lied to me all this time.’
Before Sophie can tell James her story they have to politely ask the two elderly customers to leave so that they can close the bar.
Then they spend a while reassuring Alice that everything is all right. She’s upset and tearful, but they manage to convince her that the man who followed them into the bar is a drunk and they won’t see him again.
They tell her to stay in her bedroom while they talk about their plans to move to a new home in Alicante, something she’s already been made aware of and fully accepts.
James then listens to Sophie’s story in silence. She tells him about the verbal and physical abuse she suffered while she was with Bruno, and why she decided to seize the opportunity to free herself from his clutches by refusing to give him an alibi.
And then she explains why she didn’t seek a divorce after he went to prison.
‘He threatened to kill my mother if I did,’ she tells him. ‘And he warned me that if I got into another relationship or remarried then other people close to me would be murdered.’
‘But your mother died of a heart attack a year ago. We went back for the funeral.’
‘That’s right. But I like to think she lived as long as she did because I took his threat seriously.’
She then explains how she chose to reclaim her maiden name of Cameron and make a new life for herself in another part of Spain, a country she had grown to love.
Much to her surprise and relief, James does not criticise or condemn her for keeping her past a secret. Instead he sympathises with her plight, and it makes her realise why she loves him so much.
For hours that night they discuss what they should do. James is reluctant to inform the police because he thinks it unlikely that Bruno will be locked up again and even if he is, he could get others to do his dirty work.
They both agree that if they stay put they won’t be safe, but a move up the coast to Alicante no longer seems so appealing.
‘It’s not far enough away,’ James says. ‘That nutter would still pose a serious threat to us. For Alice’s sake we need to put more distance between us and him.’
It’s James who proposes in the early hours of the following morning that they should move back to England.
‘It won’t take us long to pack,’ he says. ‘We just take what we need and tell the landlord he can have everything else. He wants us out anyway so it won’t be a problem.’
‘But what will we do when we get there?’ Sophie asks him.
‘Let me worry about that. We’ve got enough cash in the bank to get us started. As soon as we’re there we can open a new account and transfer it. We’ll start over and make sure that sick bastard is never able to find us.’
They don’t sleep at all that night and spend the next day packing and making arrangements for the move. James also makes calls to people he knows in the UK who can provide him with some fake documents. She hears him telling a man named Paul that he wants a birth certificate for a child and a driving licence for himself. But Paul says he’s retired and so James has to ring someone else.
Sophie is confused and so James explains that they need the paperwork to settle down quickly back in England. He also tells her that the birth certificate he’s asking for will have her name on it as Alice’s mother.
‘I’m having the original certificate doctored,’ he says. ‘That way it’ll still be registered but it’s highly unlikely that anyone will ever go to the trouble of checking the original names. It’ll allow you to take custody of her if anything ever happens to me. You can use it to get her in a school for one thing. Is that OK with you?’
‘Of course it is,’ she says.
‘And hopefully it will only be short term because now your secret is out we can try to find a way to sort your psycho husband out so that he no longer poses a threat to your family and friends. Then we can get married at last.’
They decide not to fly so that they don’t leave a trail for Bruno to follow. Instead, they plan to drive up through France, dump the car at or near one of the ports, and then cross the Channel.
He tells the lan
dlord they have to leave in a hurry but doesn’t tell him why or where they’re going.
They both spend time explaining to Alice that they’ve changed their minds about moving to Alicante and are going on a long adventure to England instead. She’s excited about the idea because she’s only ever been to England once, and that was when they went to Sophie’s mother’s funeral. For that trip James had had to get her passport updated so they didn’t have that to worry about.
The bar stays closed all day and the doors and windows remain locked in case Bruno turns up again. But he doesn’t, and when they set off they’re convinced that they aren’t being followed.
Sophie was determined not to let Alice see what a state she had got herself into. But it wasn’t easy pretending that nothing was wrong.
Her heart was in overdrive and her mind was struggling to shut out more painful memories. Plus, she couldn’t shed the cloak of despair that had wrapped itself tightly around her.
She kept expecting Bruno to step out in front of her from a doorway, and it got to the point where she wished that Lisa hadn’t told her that she believed Michael Taylor had stolen her phone while they were at the pub wake.
It was wild speculation on her friend’s part to suggest that he might have used it to locate Sophie so that he could tell his pal Bruno. But even so it added to the weight of unease that was bearing down on Sophie’s shoulders.
She put on a brave face when she picked Alice up from her friend’s terraced house just off the High Street. Alice was so full of it on the walk home that she didn’t notice that Sophie wasn’t really listening because she was too busy looking around to see if they were being followed.
‘Ruth’s dad took us to that place that does all the coloured ice-creams,’ Alice said. ‘Then we went to the park because they had a fair on.’
‘So you had a good time,’ Sophie said.
‘I did. Ruth is one of my best friends. She said I can sleep over there next week. Would that be all right?’
‘Of course it will. I like Ruth too. She’s a nice girl.’
‘Did you know that her mum is pregnant again? Ruth says that she wants it to be a boy so that she can have a baby brother.’
‘No, I wasn’t aware of that,’ Sophie said. ‘Her mum didn’t mention it, and she doesn’t look pregnant.’
‘That’s because she only found out on Friday and she’s not fat yet.’
Sophie felt that familiar sting of jealousy. If only she herself had been able to have children. It was so unfair. Still, she couldn’t allow herself to be too downhearted because at least she had Alice.
Sophie took Alice into a newsagents on the High Street and treated her to some sweets and a couple of magazines.
When they arrived at the flat, Sophie told her they were going to share a pizza for their tea. While she took it out of the freezer, Alice went into the living room to switch on the television.
For Sophie it was times like this that made life worth living. Just the two of them together. Finding comfort in each other’s company. Not needing anyone else. This flat had been their home for three years and they both enjoyed living here. It was a good size, in a great location and, most importantly, it was affordable.
The last thing Sophie wanted to do was move away and have to look for a new home, a new job, a new school for Alice. But she’d be forced to do so if Bruno had succeeded in tracing her, or Anna Tate got wind of their whereabouts as a result of all the exposure her story had received.
The threats were coming from two different directions, and although they seemed entirely credible, there was a good chance they’d recede if she held her nerve and stayed put.
But why take that chance when there was nothing to hold her here in Shoreditch except a reluctance to start all over again somewhere else?
She had already answered in her mind the question of whether she should call Anna Tate up voluntarily and end the woman’s suffering. She simply couldn’t do it. She loved Alice too much to let her go, and it wouldn’t be fair on the child to expose her to such a horrible truth. It would shatter every memory she had of her father and force her to accept that a woman she believed had died years ago would become the dominant force in her life.
Sophie reasoned with herself that it would be different if Alice remembered her real mother, but of course she didn’t because her father abducted her at the age of two.
Having put the pizza in the oven, Sophie poured herself a glass of wine and a fizzy drink for Alice and walked into the living room. The TV was on but Alice wasn’t paying attention to it because she was already absorbed in a game on her tablet. It was just as well because it was tuned to a news bulletin and they were reporting on the fact that a Member of Parliament had been arrested in connection with the murder of a young woman whose body was dumped on a common in South West London.
Sophie sat down and put Alice’s drink on the table next to her, then took a sip of wine. She was about to check her phone for new messages and emails when the news reporter’s voice snared her attention.
‘This was the moment when Nathan Wolf, the MP for Central Somerset, was arrested and escorted from his Kensington home by Detective Chief Inspector Anna Tate, who is leading the investigation into the murder of model Holly Blake,’ he said.
Sophie felt her stomach clench into a hard ball as she watched the woman she had just been thinking about emerge from the front door of the two-storey house clutching the arm of a man in a suit. She looked surprisingly composed as they were both jostled by a crowd of reporters and camera operators. Within seconds Tate managed to hustle him into a car that sped away from the scene followed by several other cars.
Sophie’s interest was aroused, and she would have viewed the rest of the report if Alice hadn’t looked up and said, ‘Do we have to watch the news? You promised me I could watch the Harry Potter film and it’s about to start.’
Sophie was actually glad of the interruption. She didn’t like the thought of Alice seeing her real mother on the TV even though she had no idea who she was.
After switching to the channel that was about to show the Harry Potter film, Sophie sat back, drank some more wine and returned her attention to her phone. She hadn’t had any text messages, which came as no surprise, but she had received an email with an attachment in the last hour. She opened the email and what she read caused the air to drain from her lungs.
She didn’t bother to open the attachment because there was no need. Instead, she closed her eyes and listened to the sound of her heart pounding as a dark sense of foreboding crept over her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Anna got home just after eight. Her eyes were heavy with tiredness and her mind felt like it was being overloaded. She needed a stiff drink, something to eat and a hot bath, and not necessarily in that order.
She’d called ahead to let Tom know that she was on her way, and he managed to get there before her, having spent most of the day at his own flat. He was used to nipping between both homes, and he never made a secret of the fact that it annoyed the hell out of him. It was one of the reasons he was so keen to move in with her.
Sooner or later she would let him, of course. But first she would have to accept that it was time to give up the degree of independence that she valued so much. After all, Tom was a ray of sunshine in her life and she was lucky to have him.
‘I take it you’ve had a tough day,’ he said, as he handed her a vodka and tonic in a glass half-filled with ice cubes. ‘I saw you on the news arresting that MP. I assume you’ve found out that he did kill the girl.’
She told him they’d found Holly’s driving licence in Wolf’s pocket and it appeared to be stained with blood. She shouldn’t have revealed the information, of course, but as always she trusted Tom to keep it to himself.
‘We’ll get to formally question him in the morning,’ she said. ‘And by then it’s possible we’ll have unearthed more incriminating evidence against him.’
She then told him about Ross Moore.
‘Just before I left the office we were informed that Holly’s ex-boyfriend had tried to top himself,’ she said. ‘He apparently went home after we had him in for an interview and overdosed on pills and booze. The only reason he isn’t dead is because a neighbour called at his flat to ask him if he had heard about Holly’s murder. When he failed to answer the door the woman looked through the window and saw him lying on the floor. He was alive but unconscious and the paramedics took him to the Royal London Hospital.’
‘So does that suggest to you that he’s your murderer?’
Anna shrugged. ‘Possibly. Could be he tried to end it because he couldn’t live with the guilt, or because he knew we would eventually collar him for it.’
Tom offered to make the dinner while she had a bath.
‘I brought a couple of frozen cottage pies with me,’ he said. ‘Would that be OK?’
‘Perfect.’
She gave him a kiss and went upstairs where she ran the bath and stripped off her clothes.
Every muscle in her body was tense, her shoulders rigid, so it felt like heaven when she finally slid beneath the water. She closed her eyes and breathed in the heady aroma of lavender bath essence.
It’s time to relax, she told herself. But that was easier said than done.
Forcing herself not to think about the case opened a door in her mind through which rushed a couple of poignant memories. She recalled the first time she put Chloe in this very bath. Her daughter splashed, giggled, peed and cried when Anna lifted her out and handed her to Matthew for him to dry her.
Then it was Chloe’s second birthday and Anna’s mum arrived with a giant Peppa Pig that was to become a permanent fixture in Chloe’s cot. It was now in one of the boxes in the loft, along with the rest of Chloe’s toys and clothes. Two years of memories and memorabilia, neatly packed away in the hope that one day she would be able to show her daughter that she’d kept them.
But by now Chloe would have built up a decade’s worth of memories of her own, and Anna wouldn’t be in any of them. Her father would be, and so would the unidentified woman who had been living with Matthew and Chloe in the rented house in Southampton.