by Rae Shaw
She had packed her bags on her eighteenth birthday, any hope of studying archaeology shattered by the lack of money. She refused to cry when she had tottered up the costs of going to university, instead she had hatched a different plan – raise the money herself. Announcing to Deidre that she was leaving home to find work in London as a secretary or administrator or something, Ellen had braced herself for the anticipated tirade of disappointment. Instead, Deidre had spoken with icy precision from behind a veil of cigarette smoke.
‘Selfish. Idiotic. Girl.’
Ellen hadn’t minded the idiot. With a good batch of exam results, she wasn’t stupid. However, the selfish had riled to the point of fury. Leave her, the little voice in her head screamed. Let Deidre dedicate her life to proving her husband's innocence, something that had consumed her since Ellen’s twelfth birthday.
How's London, sweetie? Freddie had written the day after she had arrived.
Great. Liberating. I've a little bedsit in a sea of bedsits. I've met this guy called Nicky. He's living above me and moved in at the same time. He's lovely.
Lovely?
She had ignored the hint of jealousy.
Don't fret. He's gay.
It had been a couple of hours before he sent a reply.
Be careful, sweetie. People aren't always what they seem.
She had agreed. She knew exactly what he meant.
Freddie steadfastly remained her pillar, her secret daddy. If anyone else asked what she meant by seeking advice, she referred to her professional counsellor, Mr Z. He was so much better than social workers at teasing out her problems, so much more interested in her life than her own mother.
Freddie was the best.
She gulped down her diet coke. Freddie wanted to know everything about her abrupt meeting, what she and Mark talked about, how it felt to have her brother back in her life. He was such a curious bloke.
She typed furiously.
Forensic accountant?
Ellen explained as briefly as possible what Mark had told her. It wasn’t the best explanation, but Freddie was quick as well as curious.
Like a copper, but for a company?
Yes. He works for Haynes Financials. It's on his business card.
She flipped the card over to examine the corporate logo.
She waited. Minutes ticked. She switched on the television and channel hopped. It happened sometimes. Freddie had other clients and she shouldn't monopolise his time every evening. She was one of many girls he helped. Boys, too, he frequently pointed out. She knew, given how secretive he was about his work, that they had been abused. At least her father wasn't like that. He wasn't that kind of nasty man. Bill Clewer orchestrated things but had never got his hands dirty. Until that one day of extreme violence.
Good for him.
His brevity signalled the end. He was too busy now to message her.
I'm meeting him for dinner.
Have a good time.
She sent him a barrage of silly emojis. It was how she ended all of their conversations, lampooning their relationship in a series of codified affections. Freddie wasn't really her dad, just a bloke who cared.
4
Julianna
Julianna strolled into Mark's office, having announced her arrival with a rattle of the door handle. He rose to greet her, offering a firm handshake, then a chair at the table.
Mark had an affable face, which delivered a genial, if brief smile. His skin was slightly swarthy, as if he had inherited some distant gene from a hot country, like Spain or Southern France, which had lost a little of its dominance under the weak English sun. He had chocolate hair to match the olive skin and cappuccino eyes that were dusted with speckles of light. When he opened his mouth and spoke, he was pure Mancunian. It didn't ruin his image. The northern accent added a little twist of surprise. She wondered what he would make of her nutmeg skin tone and ironed straight hair. Her ethnicity went further west than Cornwall, to her grandfather in Trinidad.
Given he was a businessman, and not royalty, Jackson liked to vet newcomers to an unnecessary extent. However, she had learnt nothing about Mark from her privileged position of being on Haynes’ security team. Mark's file was innocuous, almost sanitised, which seemed odd, because he clearly knew Hettie Haynes: the evidence was hanging on the wall of his office.
‘Thanks for dropping by. I hope you can clear this one up quickly for us.’ Mark opened his dossier. For the next half an hour they formulated a plan to capture the offending employee.
‘Let’s catch the idiot in the act.’ She smirked, pleased that the case was more than a little background check. She would book the long lens out of the store cupboard and buy some gum to chew – something not permitted when driving.
Julianna flipped shut her notepad and scanned the room, before returning once again to the painting. It couldn’t be ignored.
‘Your predecessor left quickly. Ill-health, unfortunately for him. You’re new to the company?’ she asked, tentatively, watching to see if Mark resisted the line of interrogation.
‘Not quite. I worked as an accountant at Daneswan, a subsidiary of this firm. This internal post came up and I grabbed the opportunity to transfer.’ A cordial response and encouraging. She edged further, determined to fill in the blanks.
‘And promotion, no doubt.’ She wished she had tried asking awkward questions with Alex. Her mistake was giving him the benefit of the doubt whenever he arrived home late from work. She had bought his excuses like a naïve teenager instead of an intelligence officer. Any one of her mentors would have been disappointed with her infatuation with a gallant man with no backbone. Alex had laughed in her face when he confessed to adultery. He had basked in his achievement, while denigrating his and Julianna's love life with puerile jibes.
Bastard.
She had to get over him.
‘Yes. My office floor space seems to have quadrupled in size,’ Mark said sardonically, waving his hands at the less than spacious room; his smile broadened. He had an eye-catching grin and it held her attention, which she supposed was his intention. A well-packaged man with good dress sense. Something to applaud; she had a penchant for smart uniforms, which must run in her family – Alex was dashing in a tux. Mark assumed a confident manner, but perhaps a little wary, too; he twirled his pen between fidgeting fingers. There had to be more to Mark than charm. She would wait. In her opinion, people eventually showed their true colours after a couple of meetings. Except Alex. He might as well have studied drama at Oxford rather than law. And Jackson, too. Damn them both.
She walked over to the two pictures hanging side by side on the wall. One was of a bloody hand clutching a thorny rose and the other a paler watercolour showing a sapling with variegated ivy strangling its boughs and branches. The swirly signature of the artist was in the bottom corner.
‘One of Mrs Haynes’.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘You bought it from her gallery?’
There was an awkward pause. ‘Er. No. A gift. It’s called ‘The Bower”.’ He blushed and squirmed in his seat. He obviously hadn’t expected anyone to look that closely.
Julianna was the kind of inquisitive so-and-so that did look. Details were everything, and not to be missed. Like a delicate painting, the brush strokes revealed the nature of the artist as much as the composition.
‘A bower is also a lady’s apartment. A stark contrast to the other picture. She wouldn’t like that one.’ She gestured at the gory rose picture.
Mark stood next to her, scratching his chin. ‘Why not?’
‘Oh. Blood, you know. She has a phobia about blood.’ Julianna turned in time to see his eyes widen. ‘Shit, you didn’t know. I thought, having a gift, you knew her well. Don’t mention I said that, will you?’ The lie worked well; his mouth twitched nervously, weighing her up, no doubt.
‘No, of course not. I’m more of a friend of Mr Haynes,’ he said, slowly, a marked emphasis on “mister”.
Another one of Jackson Haynes’s friends. She hated the o
ld boys’ network. There must be some secret cadre with a connection to Oxford; Alex had been at Christchurch.
Mark had only recently arrived in London, initially working at a different, smaller office, then suddenly he had been transferred to headquarters. The gift of the painting must have happened prior to his move. Where had Hettie met him? She was a talented artist who’d studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Before her marriage to Jackson, she fulfilled commissions for famous clients. She didn’t just give her artwork away to anyone and Mark probably couldn’t afford to buy one of her pictures.
As for Mrs Haynes, Julianna listened into the quiet conversations held in the back of the car and, as expected, offered no counsel. Hettie wasn’t always comfortable with the lack of privacy; she would attempt to codify her remarks and her eyes would flutter back and forth, occasionally glancing at the rear-view mirror to check whether Julianna was paying any attention to her phone calls. Julianna maintained her professionalism under duress – if only she could speak up and ask Hettie outright about Mark.
She tapped her finger on the folder Mark had handed her. ‘Well, I best follow this up.’ The meeting ended with another brisk handshake. ‘Good to meet you, Mark.’
She hesitated at the door for one last inspection of the painting and her new colleague – his fawn cheeks tinged with a hint of shame. Far from advertising his connection to Hettie Haynes, he had played it down, claiming Jackson was his friend, not Hettie. The lady’s bower, the secret apartment, was the clue to why a new employee had that painting hanging in his office. Chris had given her Mark’s personnel record a week ago. That bugged her too. Maybe it was so Jackson could use Julianna to keep an eye on his wife’s admirer. Cheeky of him, but probably in character.
From now on, she would pay more attention to Mark Clewer. She bristled with delight – somehow, she had created a mission of her own. What the remit was, she would devise during the project.
5
Mark
The unique ringtone again. Hearing it gave him a few seconds to stopper a groan. He let it ring long enough to wrap a towel around his waist and dig out the phone from his trouser pocket. Shaking his head, he sprinkled the bathmat with water. He could ignore her, but she was as stubborn as a limpet on a wave-battered rock.
‘Mark. I tried to ring you yesterday evening.’
‘Mum. I'm fine. The new job is going good and—’
‘When are you going to visit? I haven’t seen you in months. You’re overdue to visit. Not just me, but Dad too. He’s been asking about you.’
He wrote to his father regularly, read the replies, but that was it. The distant father and son relationship didn't extend to phone calls or visits.
‘Have they moved him again?’ He wiped the condensation off the mirror. There were dark shadows under his eyes and a fine dusting of bristles on his chin. The late night session in the pub had stretched on into the small hours.
‘No. It depresses him so much when he gets moved at short notice.’ At one point they shipped him to the North East and Deidre had jacked in one of her jobs to free up time to visit him.
‘I’ll try to come one weekend.’ Mark switched to speaker phone and dried himself. He had no plans to travel north in the coming weeks.
‘Good.’ Her voice lifted out of the doldrums. ‘Have you found a new solicitor? You said you’d find another to launch a fresh appeal.’
Mark pressed his lips together. She had fired the last one for incompetence.
‘Mark?’ She echoed against the tiles. ‘You're in London now. There have to be good lawyers in London.’
There were good lawyers in Manchester. ‘We can't afford them, Mum.’ We, no, that should be you, Mum. He tossed the towel aside and went into the bedroom.
‘Eight years. Eight bleedin’ years. They won't even consider paroling him.’
That was how long he had maintained his plea of innocence. A guilty man would have quit by now, surely? His mother repeated this mantra to every solicitor she hired.
‘You know he won’t get parole while he continues to maintain his innocence. You know that. No acceptance of guilt, no parole. We need fresh evidence to launch a new appeal.’ He picked a shirt out of the wardrobe. A script wasn’t necessary when explaining things to Deidre; a recorded message would do just as easily.
‘What about that witness?’
Witness! The elusive witness. Put a sock in it, Mum.
He never told people at work about his father. Guilt or innocence didn’t matter; the man was in prison. London provided plenty of lawyers, but Mark didn't know where to begin to find the right one. Given Deidre’s interfering ways, it would have to be somebody with thick skin who could dig through conflicting evidence in the hope of finding something countless others had missed. They would also have to charge peanuts.
‘Mum, don’t cry. I’ll sort something out.’ Mark flopped onto the bed. He listened without paying any attention. The familiar sensations plagued him: blood turned to ice; muscles, rigid; dry eyes fixed on that spot on the ceiling; bottled anger corked. He hated telling necessary lies. They blossomed and grew and hid the reality he feared to face. The story of his father might not be complete and there were plenty of pieces missing, but joining up the dots wouldn't mend his relationship with Deidre.
Ellen had cried off, left him alone to deal with lawyers and the mountain of paperwork. He dearly wanted the situation resolved. More especially, he wanted to end the farcical pretence of supporting his parasitic mother. Ellen owed him.
6
Ellen
Ellen cast her eye about his apartment: open plan, spacious and minimalist. ‘You’ve not been here long?’
‘Two months.’ Mark dropped the door keys on the kitchen worktop. ‘Does it show?’
‘To be honest some men, especially those living alone, don’t go for much about the place. Others are downright untidy. I know you’re not the untidy type, but this sparse?’ His old bedroom in Manchester was now a storage room filled with boxes and boxes of Bill Clewer's things. Deidre refused to throw them out.
‘I like objects to have a purpose. I don’t need superfluous stuff, like ornaments. I might buy a few more pieces of furniture.’
In other words, he was constantly on the move. Sunlight burst through the corner window and fanned out. He drew the blinds down. There was an L-shaped settee, a matching armchair, which faced the wall-mounted television that appeared to be his sole form of entertainment, and six chairs around a dining table, which seemed a little excessive for one man. The dazzling kitchen units were too white, and clean. Both of them had learnt self-sufficiency at a young age.
She kicked off her heels. ‘Under floor heating?’
‘Yep.’
‘Very nice. Cosy.’ She wriggled her toes.
He opened a cupboard door in the kitchen and pulled out pans. She stretched out on the sofa and left him to it.
The soup tasted a tad salty but was otherwise good. The crusty bread was still fresh. ‘Nice,’ she said between slurps.
‘So, you've not contacted Mum—’
‘No.’ She had anticipated Deidre. The challenge was derailing Mark’s insensitive probing while giving him the opportunity to befriend her. ‘Don't want to go there.’
‘She's struggling—’
‘Don't care.’ She left the spoon in the bowl. ‘Look, Mark, it's lovely catching up with you. But Mum is off the agenda. And Dad. I want to get to know you.’ She locked onto his gaze and figured he would cave if she held it long enough.
His mild frown evaporated quickly. ‘What's there to know? I'm an accountant. I'm boring. I watch football on Saturdays.’
Ellen picked up her spoon. ‘I can't believe how old you look—’
‘Cheers.’
‘I mean, come on, you were a teenager when you left home. Now, you're this man.’ A man who had lost the chubby cheekbones of adolescence and replaced them with slightly gaunt ones. If he ate soup every day, it might explain the weight loss. He had
the olive skin of their maternal grandparents who had emigrated from Southern France when hippies wore flared dungarees. For some reason, her skin tone was less pronounced, a paler facsimile. Sepia suited Mark.
A few cubes of carrot bobbed on the surface. She tasted chicken. It wasn't his fault; she hadn’t mentioned the vegetarianism. When she had arrived in London she started cutting out meat. Dieting was a popular fad, something to chat about over lunch with the girls in the office, and she picked vegetarian because it was easier than some of the other ones – low carb, high protein, this and that – the choice had nothing to do with ethics.
‘Something wrong?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. Just we're a bit like strangers, aren't we? I feel like I'm going on a date with my own brother.’
‘I suppose. I always remember you as this sad girl who hid in her room.’
A painfully accurate description. ‘Had my reasons.’
‘Yes. You did.’ Mark reached over and took her hand. He squeezed it. ‘Sorry. That's all I want to say. Okay? I ignored you. I ignored everyone. I just wanted to get out.’
She slid her hand under the table. ‘We both did. I had to wait longer.’ She shrugged, dismissively. Six years. Her own private prison sentence. ‘And now we're both in London.’
He leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me about your work.’
Neutral territory and a wise option. She moaned, she couldn't help it. He offered advice, good advice, which surprised her. Why had she assumed he wasn't knowledgeable about dealing with people. He had his own team, he explained.
He fetched cheese from the fridge. She helped herself to thick slices and smeared butter over the crackers.
Mark fidgeted in his seat, toying with his crackers.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘You've banned me from talking about them.’
‘When I'm ready. That's what I'm saying. I'm not ready. Don't let's spoil this evening with them.’ She flicked a breadcrumb at his face. ‘Cheer up.’