Bad Girl

by Roberta Kray

  ‘She must have been scared,’ Frank said, looking down at them.

  As Helen studied the thick, crisp notepaper with its bold printed warnings, something niggled in the back of her mind. She frowned, but whatever was there was too elusive, too vague for her to grab hold of.

  ‘What is it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. I don’t know. I just… It doesn’t matter.’ She glanced up. ‘Anyway, I’ve made a decision. I’m going to go away, leave London, start again somewhere new.’

  ‘Go away, or run away?’ There was a sharp edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before.

  ‘Either. Both. Why not? It worked for my mother.’

  ‘How do you know? You’ve got no idea what her life’s been like.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ She found herself wondering if her mum had married again, if there were other children. Somewhere out there she could have half-brothers and sisters she had never met.

  ‘You’ve got family here. Don’t turn your back on them, Mouse. Moira loves you. You’re like a daughter to her. And Tommy—’

  ‘Tommy’s never stopped lying to me from the first day we met.’

  Frank leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘So what would you have done if you’d been in his shoes?’

  ‘Told me,’ she said. ‘Told me that it was all a lie, that she wasn’t really dead.’

  ‘Even if that might have put her in danger?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have told anyone else.’

  Frank considered her answer for a moment. ‘Maybe he thought that the truth would cause you even more pain, that it was better to have a clean break. Or maybe he just didn’t think at all. Perhaps he did what he had to do and then simply tried to muddle through the consequences.’ He drank some coffee and put the mug back down on the table. ‘Don’t turn your back on him, Mouse. He’s not in the best of places himself. He’s been banged up for the past seven years, his daughters are hundreds of miles away and he’s lost everything he ever worked for.’

  While Frank talked, Helen played with the notes, idly running her fingers across the smooth white paper. And it was then, suddenly, that it came to her. The breath caught in the back of her throat, and she felt a jolt run through her body as she finally made the connection. Surely it couldn’t be… it wasn’t possible. Well, there was only one way to find out. She jumped up and ran out of the kitchen.

  Her sudden departure took Frank by surprise. ‘Mouse?’ he called after her. ‘Are you okay?’

  Thirty seconds later, she came back with the old A to Z in her hand, sat down again and flipped it open.

  Frank watched her, bemused. ‘What is it? What are you doing?’

  Helen flicked through the pages until she found the list of directions that her grandfather had written. She gazed at it for a while, and then slid it out and passed it over to Frank. ‘Look at this.’

  He read through the route, raised his eyes and gave a shrug. ‘I don’t get it. Kew Gardens? What am I—’

  ‘Not the writing,’ she said hurriedly. ‘The paper. Look at the paper.’ She pushed across one of the threatening notes. ‘Does it look the same to you? Does it feel the same?’

  Frank rubbed the paper between his fingers. ‘Well, yeah, it could be. But isn’t this stuff kind of common? It’s just standard writing paper, isn’t it?’

  Helen shook her head. ‘No, it’s not your Basildon Bond or anything like that.’ She took back the sheet that had come from the A to Z. ‘See, it’s thicker. Gran used to buy it from a shop in Chingford. She liked nice notepaper. She had a thing about it.’ Her thoughts were racing now, spinning around and tumbling down on each other. ‘I mean, it’s not so rare that someone else couldn’t have used it, but…’ She shook her head again. ‘What are the chances?’

  ‘You think your grandmother sent these threats?’

  Helen raised a hand to her face and bit down on the knuckle. Had her middle-class, God-fearing, moralising grandmother really been capable of such a thing? ‘I’m not sure.’ She bent and studied the sheets of paper. The threats had been boldly printed, and she couldn’t swear that it either was or wasn’t her gran’s handwriting.

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  Helen, unable to sit still, quickly stood up again. She went over to the sink and then back to the table. ‘She wouldn’t. I mean, not ordinarily. But when she got ill… I don’t know. She changed. She wasn’t herself. Maybe something snapped inside her. She couldn’t forgive Mum for getting pregnant, for trapping her son. They were always rowing about it. I suppose this could have been a way of getting back at her.’

  ‘Well, she certainly did that.’

  Helen held on to the back of the chair as the full force of this new possibility washed over her. ‘It was because of the threats that Mum presumed she was the intended victim, not Anna. She reckoned Eddie Chapelle was out to get her. But if he didn’t send them, then…’

  Frank finished the line of thought for her. ‘Then one of his thugs simply followed Anna Farrell to the flat – or even posed as a punter – and got rid of the one person who could have been a real risk to Chapelle when his trial came round.’

  ‘But according to Tommy, Mum reckoned that Anna was sound, that she’d never grass up Chapelle.’

  Frank gave a weary sigh. ‘Yeah, but men like Eddie Chapelle don’t leave things to chance. They like to make sure the odds are stacked in their favour.’

  ‘And what about the car that followed her?’

  ‘If there was one. The driver might have slowed down for any number of reasons, but she was so jumpy she presumed it was to do with the threats.’

  Helen sank back down into the chair and rubbed hard at her eyes. She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. If this was true, then… Pain squeezed at her heart as she thought of everything that had happened as a consequence. There was a short silence, broken only by the thin, trembling hum of the fridge. After a while, she lowered her hands and looked over at Frank. ‘It was all for nothing. She wasn’t in any real danger. She could have called the cops, answered their questions, carried on with her life. She could still have been here now.’

  ‘You don’t know that for sure.’

  The past flickered through Helen’s mind like a reel of old film. She imagined her mother sitting in Connolly’s, lifting her eyes to see Alan Beck for the first time – that fateful moment that had changed everything. She saw the cherry blossom trees in Camberley Road, her grandmother’s scowl as the copper waited by the garden gate, the coffin in the church, the fair-haired man who said he was her uncle. Then there was fire, the flames that had devoured Anna Farrell and almost destroyed the Fox. A scattering of ashes. A stone lion in Kellston cemetery. Frank Meyer sitting on the grass, talking to her, persuading her to go back home. There was Tommy’s smile, Joe Quinn with his angry, lashing tongue, Moira’s kindness. She saw herself leaving the cinema one night, her head full of love and betrayal, lies and deceit. Jay Gatsby lying dead in a swimming pool.

  ‘Mouse?’

  Helen barely heard him. The reel had moved on to a cold night in Soho, to a man with a wedding ring who she knew she couldn’t trust. She felt the frozen ice against her back, the pain as he beat her, the force of his hate. She had almost died that night, but somehow, miraculously, she had been given a second chance.

  ‘Mouse?’

  Helen started, and blinked. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Will you tell him? Will you tell Tommy about the notes?’

  She frowned, thinking of what it would mean to break such news to him. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

  Helen smiled faintly, understanding where he was going. To keep a secret in the hope of protecting someone else was a risky business. If she told him, he would have to live with the knowledge that he had made a terrible mistake. If she didn’t… well, that made her as guilty as him when it came to withholding the truth.

  ‘It’s your choice,’ he said. ‘I’ll stick by whatever
you decide.’

  She glanced down at the floor before slowly raising her gaze again. ‘Do you think she’s still out there somewhere?’

  ‘You could always look for her.’

  ‘And what if she doesn’t want to be found?’

  Frank paused for a second. ‘I’d want you to look for me if I ever went missing.’

  Helen felt her heart skip a beat. It was the nearest he had ever got to expressing any real feelings for her. ‘Would you?’

  Frank held her gaze for a few seconds, and then said, ‘Okay, I’ll make you a deal. Stay here tonight, sleep on it, and if you still want to leave tomorrow, I won’t say another word. In fact, if you want me to drive you to the station…’

  Helen lifted her eyebrows. She tried to keep her voice light, but she could still hear the tremor in it. ‘What is it with you and your deals?’

  ‘What can I say? I’m a creature of habit.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to have changed by tomorrow.’

  ‘Not tomorrow or the day after. Maybe not next month or next year, but eventually…’

  ‘It’ll all get better?’

  ‘It might,’ he said. ‘Stick around and see what happens. Running away never solved anything. Take it from someone who knows.’

  Helen waited. She wanted him to say that he didn’t want her to go, to ask her to stay, but perhaps that was hoping for too much. Frank Meyer wasn’t the type of man who put his cards on the table. Their eyes locked for a second and something passed between them. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but she felt a surge of strength, of hope. She could take a chance, or she could walk away. The decision was hers. But deep down inside, she knew that she’d already made the choice. She sat back, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Even bad girls did the right thing sometimes.