‘Messing?’ Still Conor wasn’t laughing. ‘Thought you knew me better than that.’
Tony glanced up cautiously and almost recoiled at the hardness of Conor’s eyes boring into him. He knew instantly that his friend had changed. Prison would do that to you, he supposed. Not that he’d ever been inside himself. He’d cleaned up his act after Conor had been convicted. Now that he was out, he’d have to be wary once again, and watch his back.
‘You’re my friend, Conor. Course I know you.’ He put down the half-eaten crust. ‘What are you going to do with yourself?’
He held his breath as Conor wiped his hands on the white lace tablecloth. For God’s sake! It was the good one. The cloth his gran had brought home for his mother from Spain, like a million years ago. And now Mam, Dad and Gran were all pushing up daisies. So it shouldn’t matter. But it did.
Sniffing loudly, Conor said, ‘I have plans. But first you have to tell me why you were putting your mucky paws all over my workshop.’
‘What workshop?’
‘My shed. In my garden.’
‘It’s your mother’s garden.’
The hand grabbed the collar of Tony’s T-shirt before he could defend himself. He was dragged across the table, clutching at the Spanish heirloom as butter, bread and knife hit the floor.
‘Tony, don’t act like a dimwit with me. What were you doing in my workshop?’
‘I … I …’
‘What?’
‘C-can’t b-breathe.’
As Conor let go and pushed him away, Tony tried to come up with a decent excuse, but nothing was anywhere near as good as the truth, and he definitely couldn’t tell him that.
Swallowing loudly, he ran his hand over his throbbing throat and coughed. ‘I was bored, so I asked your mother if I could do some work in your shed … your workshop. She said she didn’t mind. Just asked me to put something in the microwave for her and take out the bins and stuff.’
‘What work?’
‘You know, trying to make things, the way you used to do. But I’m useless at it. I was only fiddling around.’
‘Well there are some tools missing.’
‘I took nothing.’
‘You didn’t lock the place.’
Digging his greasy hand into his jeans, Tony said, ‘Sorry. I must have left in a hurry.’
‘Nothing in this world could make you hurry.’
He felt his flabby cheeks flush, and put a self-conscious hand on his protruding belly, trying unsuccessfully to hold it in. Smiling weakly, he changed the subject in an attempt to mollify his friend. ‘I’m glad you’re back, Conor.’
Conor was already out in the hallway. ‘I’m not one bit glad to be back.’
‘See you later then? Maybe?’
But Tony was talking to the slammed door.
*
You know when someone wrongs you and you feel like an arrow has speared through your very soul? Let me tell you, that feeling is a lot worse when the wrong comes from a person you loved. What gives them the right to break you up into little pieces and feed your flesh and blood to rabid dogs?
That’s what happened to me. I was deeply wronged. I don’t think the person who hurt me actually realised the enormity of their crime, their deception, but I knew it. Because I am one of those people who makes a list of the wrongs committed against me. I then file that list away until the opportunity arises to present it and seek my price. When the time is right.
And the time is right now.
Four
The Parker family sat around their new table, in their new kitchen, in their new house. Lottie was determined that this was to be a fresh start to family life. She promised herself that she was going to be a better mother. Fingers crossed. But sitting down with her children was proving to be strained and uncomfortable. Maybe she had let things get out of hand. Or maybe they had all just become too used to living with their gran. She wasn’t sure what to do.
Sean was sitting with a sullen look pasted on his face. Chloe pushed her food around the plate with her fork, while Katie shovelled mashed potatoes into one-year-old Louis’ mouth. This should be a happy time, Lottie thought, but there was still something missing. She glanced up at the wall, devoid of paintings and photographs. The framed wedding photo, faded to sepia, that had always hung in the kitchen had perished in the fire, along with most of the other physical reminders of her dead husband. Boyd was right. She had to move on. But how was she to fill the void in her heart? Boyd had tried, but invariably she’d spurned him. Was that why there was still a corner of emptiness lodged there?
‘Mam? I asked you a question.’ Chloe pushed her plate to the centre of the table.
‘Sorry. I was miles away.’ Lottie shook her reminiscences out of her head and concentrated on her daughter.
‘As usual.’ Chloe kicked back her chair and stood.
‘What did you say?’
‘Oh, whatever.’
‘Chloe! I’m listening now.’
‘Can you babysit Louis for Katie at the weekend. We want to go to out.’
‘Where is out?’
‘Jomo’s. Please.’
‘The nightclub?’
‘Yeah.’ Chloe rolled her eyes as if her mother were a dinosaur.
‘You’re not old enough.’ Lottie wasn’t in the mood for a row. This was their first night in their new home. They should be happy. Shouldn’t they? But she knew that while the four walls surrounding them might be different, inside they all remained the same.
Chloe stood in the doorway, her fingers turning white. ‘Why do you continue to treat me like I’m twelve? I’ll be eighteen next month. Life is too short to worry about what age you have to be to get into a nightclub. Come on. Let me live.’
‘You have school. Exams. Study. You’re too young.’
‘You didn’t answer the question though,’ Katie piped up.
Damn, she’d forgotten the question. ‘What was it again?’
‘Can you babysit?’
Lottie glanced over at Louis and winked at him. Immediately the baby opened his mouth in a smile full of mashed potatoes. She sighed. ‘Let me see how work is set and I’ll let you know.’
‘They get to go everywhere,’ Sean said sulkily. ‘And I’m stuck here with you and a baby. Such a gross life.’
‘Sean?’ Lottie was speaking to air as her son left the kitchen.
‘Don’t mind him,’ Chloe said. ‘Teenage problems.’
‘And what are you? You’re still a teenager too.’
‘But I’m mature.’ Chloe straightened her back and followed her brother.
Katie dabbed at Louis’ mouth with a wet wipe and handed him over to Lottie. ‘Can you change him, Mam? I’ll go and talk to Sean.’
Alone with her grandson, Lottie eyed the mess on the table and the counter full of saucepans and dishes. She suddenly missed living at her mother’s. She’d never thought she’d feel that emotion. Not after everything that had happened in the last year.
‘What are we going to do with the lot of them?’ she asked Louis.
She was rewarded with a burp and a dirty nappy.
Five
At twenty-five years old, Louise Gill felt she had been through her life twice. At times, she even felt like she was two people living in alternate states of mind. Her mother worried that she might be schizophrenic, but Louise had refused all medication. She didn’t want to live in a fugue state. She had to study, and she wanted to be normal.
She checked the notifications on her phone for possibly the tenth time since she’d woken up. Nothing of interest on Instagram and no new Snapchats. She hadn’t many friends, so that was normal. Putting the phone to one side, she pulled her laptop onto her knee.
The coffee shop she was sitting in had recently opened in an old bank building, and she loved the anteroom situated in what had once been a fireproof vault. The door was six inches thick, but these days it was perpetually open, having been cemented at an angle to the floor. Louise didn’t ex
perience claustrophobia like some of her friends, who refused to join her in the dimly lit cavern. In here, she felt safe. Away from the world.
Her thesis was tough and she had to submit it in mid December. Criminal psychology was her favourite subject, and writing about miscarriages of justice had awakened memories deep within her psyche.
She had been right, hadn’t she? About seeing him running frantically that night. What age had she been? Fourteen. She was confident in the testimony she had given. Wasn’t she?
Catching sight of her reflection on the screen, she realised her laptop had slipped into sleep mode. Just like her brain. Her eyes were hollow and dark-rimmed. The nightmares had returned. He had been released from jail. He was back in her town. Walking among people on the street. He could be in here now for all she knew. Her eyes flared wide. She couldn’t see their colour in the reflective screen, but they were dark brown, like her long hair, which she had never dyed. Her skin was sallow, with a sprinkling of freckles on her nose.
She had to concentrate. No point in going back to that disturbing time. Or was there? Recently the nightmares waking her at three in the morning had left her wrapped in soaking sheets with a raging fever. Her subconscious was telling her she had made a mistake all those years ago. Her conscious self told her she hadn’t. Which was correct?
A shadow dimmed the light in the doorway and she looked up. Her mouth formed a perfect O and pearls of perspiration dribbled down her spine. He was there, accusation flaring in his eyes as he stared at her. Then in an instant he was gone, and she shook her head. Had she imagined it? Had it been a vision from her subconscious mind? Her hands clutched the laptop tightly. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t talk.
She realised she’d been holding her breath. As she exhaled, her eyes filled and tears began to leak down her cheeks.
Louise Gill didn’t know what was real any more. She had to talk to Cristina.
Unwrapping herself from her lover’s arms, Louise went to search the refrigerator for something to drink. She felt safer with Cristina than anywhere else. The fact that her best friend was now her partner, was her secret. The two of them had debated long into the summer nights, often resulting in heated arguments, about ‘coming out’ to her parents. Louise was no longer the fourteen-year-old who had idolised the only man in her life. The man who had let her down so badly that she’d talked herself into believing that that was why she was attracted to a woman. Or maybe it was just that she loved Cristina more than anyone since she’d been fourteen years old. In any case, whatever the reason, she didn’t want to tell her father.
‘Why are you so on edge?’ Cristina’s voice followed her into the kitchen.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ A can of Coke would have to do. Too early to drink the white wine that nestled in the door, condensation running down the bottle.
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
Louise turned to see Cristina leaning naked against the door frame, smoke curling from the cigarette in her long-fingered hand. She looked like an exotic actress who had stepped from a 1930s movie set. Her black hair lay like a snake over one shoulder and her eyes were dark and inviting, displaying her Asian heritage. At four foot eleven, she was six inches smaller than Louise, but today she appeared taller.
‘I don’t know who you mean,’ Louise said, biting the inside of her lip.
A smile lit up Cristina’s face. ‘See. I was right. You are thinking of him.’
‘I don’t want to talk about Conor Dowling.’
Cristina’s hand caressed Louise’s arm. ‘Whether you do or not, I think you have to. Otherwise, sweetheart, it is going to eat you up inside.’
‘Leave it for now, okay?’ Louise took a drink of the Coke. ‘Maybe later.’
Cristina moved away, back into the bedroom. But her voice carried loud and clear to Louise’s ears. ‘You can’t keep everything for later. First of all you have to face up to Dowling, and then you need to tell your father about us. That arsehole needs to know the truth.’
Six
Wind feathered up along Amy Whyte’s bare legs as she pulled hard on her cigarette before dropping it to the floor and grinding it out with the heel of her silver-glittered sandal. A drift of cold air swirled around her shoulders and she felt the first smattering of rain. Oh no! Her false tan would run down her legs. She wanted to go home. Now.
Looking around for Penny, she saw her laughing with a group of lads under the Perspex roof of the smoking shelter. How was she going to get her to leave? It was gone one o’clock and the nightclub was in full swing, but Amy was tired. Getting too old, she thought as she scanned the crowd of teenagers. It was supposed to be strictly over twenty-ones, but that rule was never adhered to.
She approached her friend. ‘Penny, are you coming?’
‘No, it’s just the way she’s standing,’ one of the men joked.
Typical of Ducky Reilly. He always had to be the smart one. Amy’s lips trembled with the cold and she couldn’t find a suitable reply in her vodka-soaked brain. Maybe she shouldn’t have had that last drink. Too late now, she told herself, and wished she had a warmer jacket.
‘Let’s have one more,’ Penny Brogan said, smiling coyly at Ducky while wrapping her blonde hair around her hand, her little finger sticking up in what looked to Amy like a sexual gesture. Penny should know better, even if she was drunk.
‘Yeah, one for the road, as my auld fella says. Or a little blow?’
Amy wasn’t sure who had said this, but she wasn’t hanging around to find out. She shook her head and balled her hands in frustration. ‘I’ve to work tomorrow, so I’m heading off.’ Working on Sunday was a bitch.
‘Don’t be a spoilsport.’
She felt her arm being clutched by someone who dragged her into the middle of the crowd lounging under the canopy. Cigarette smoke clogged the air. She was sure the last vodka had yet to reach her stomach, and it was likely to rise up her gullet if she didn’t get out quickly.
Arms snaked around her shoulders, huddling her into a group, as a phone appeared and someone took a photo. Shit, now she’d feature in a Snapchat or Instagram story. Bad enough trying to hide a hangover without the world seeing the evidence of how she’d come by it.
Wriggling out from the centipede of limbs, she squeezed through the pulsing bodies and headed back towards the club. ‘Text me when you get home.’
‘Yes, Mammy,’ Penny laughed, and the crowd around her shouted, ‘Night night, Mammy!’
Immature imbeciles, Amy thought as she barrelled through sweating torsos towards the chair where she’d been sitting earlier. Her jacket was nowhere. Now she’d have to walk home in the rain bare-shouldered, and would probably catch a cold. Hoisting her sparkly red top up as far as it would go, she dragged her skirt down to her knees. It was the best she could do.
Outside the nightclub, she looked up and down the narrow lane hoping to see a taxi. The taxi rank was on Main Street and she estimated she’d be drowned by the time she reached it, and anyway, she didn’t want to waste a tenner. No, she’d walk. Get some air in her lungs before she reached home. Might keep the hangover at bay.
Deciding to take the shortcut down by the railway, she turned left. At twenty-five, she was long past phoning her father to collect her, and past fearing being attacked. There were plenty of drunk and high teenagers who stumbled through the town nightly, and not one of them had been harmed. Not that she’d heard about anyway. She straightened her shoulders in her resolve and continued to walk. Quickly.
The street narrowed into an alley between a row of apartment buildings, and Amy saw a moth shimmering under a lamp outside a door. She stopped and stared as the large-winged, furry-bodied insect flapped against the light, trapped by its inability to see a way out. She felt a trickle of fear nestle in the nape of her neck, and a shiver skittered down her spine.
Turning around, she picked up speed and headed towards Petit Lane car park. It was even quicker to scoot down that way, under the ra
ilway bridge. The thump of music from the club permeated the night, and she wondered how anyone in the apartments she’d just passed could sleep at night. Then again, maybe they were used to it.
She heard the windshield wipers, swishing away the rain that was now becoming more persistent, before she heard the car. Standing to one side, she paused and waited for it to pass her. Instead, it stopped and someone got out. She moved to skirt around the back of the vehicle, but a hand caught her arm and pulled her backwards.
‘Hey, let go!’ she yelled.
‘Just a minute.’ The voice was low and hoarse. Like someone with a sore throat trying not to strain it. ‘I want a word with you.’
‘I’ll scream if you don’t take your hand off me.’
Amy thought her own voice sounded like that of someone else. Someone who was not terrified like she was. The car park light was behind the person and she couldn’t make out the features beneath their hooded coat. She felt like the moth she’d just seen flapping against the brightness. Sirens screeched in the distance; the music continued to boom from Jomo’s and she felt the night darkening with each passing second.
The grip tightened on her arm and she wriggled, trying to free herself. She fell off the high heel of one sandal, and with the strap caught around her ankle, she stumbled. An arm shot around her waist, and as she opened her mouth to scream, a hand clamped tightly over it. She thought she felt something prick the skin behind her ear.
The hoarse voice was behind her. ‘If you keep still for a moment, I will explain.’
Amy tried to scream, but the hand was stifling her cries. She was trapped. Her words were lost and her ankle pulsed with pain. As she was pulled tighter, she felt her assailant’s body against her spine. The smell of fresh mint mingled with the rain, and lips brushed close to her ear. She struggled to hear what was being said as the sirens blared louder and the music thumped relentlessly through the rain.
Final Betrayal Page 2