A mixture of guilt and anger gnawing away at him, Justin keyed in a text to Alicia as he headed towards the shop Chloe had mentioned. As furious as he was, he couldn’t leave her worrying herself sick. She would be beside herself with grief, feeling bereft twofold, as he was. Sorrow weighed like a cold stone inside him as he thought of his innocent baby boy, whose soul they’d laid to rest just a few hours ago. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since then. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything, he typed, and then hesitated, not sure how to sign off, dearly wishing it was possible to turn back the clock to a time where their lives weren’t irretrievably fractured and he would have ended his text with a single X, as always. Not any more. It was all gone, everything they’d ever had together, slipping through his hands as surely as water through his fingers.
Not Sophie.
He couldn’t lose her. Wouldn’t.
Leaving the message as it was, he hit send and quickly selected Sophie’s mobile for the umpteenth time since he’d left home. His heart hitching, he slowed as the call began to ring, his gaze shooting towards a coffee shop ahead of him. Her ringtone: Adele. The tune that rang constantly around the house. It had to be hers. She was there, somewhere.
Shit! He ground to a halt as the phone stopped ringing. She was here. He could sense her. But where? Dragging a hand through his hair, his desperation mounting, he scoured the seated crowd – and his heart almost stopped pumping.
Looking every bit as vulnerable and lonely as he knew she must be feeling, Sophie was sitting on the far side of the coffee shop.
Dammit. He cursed silently as a group of kids scraped their chairs back, simultaneously rising from a table directly in front of him.
His gaze fixed on Sophie, Justin mumbled an apology and squeezed past them, and then faltered as she turned to him with a look of alarm. A feeling of sick trepidation clenched his stomach.
‘Sophie,’ he said, making sure to keep his tone calm.
Time seemed to freeze for one agonising second as she locked eyes with him, and then, as Justin took another tentative step towards her, Sophie shot to her feet, grappling her overnight bag from the back of her chair and almost stumbling over a table as she backed away. Backed away from him.
‘Sophie, wait! Please,’ he called desperately, as she turned away. ‘Sophie!’
‘No!’ Sophie whirled back around, her expression now one of near hatred, which shook Justin to the core. ‘Go away! Leave me alone!’
‘Sophie…’ Bewildered, Justin took another hesitant step. ‘Please. Don’t do this,’ he begged. ‘Come back. We’ll talk, just you and me. We’ll sit down and—’
‘No!’ Sophie dragged her hair from her face and glared furiously at him. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you. Why the hell should I?’
‘Because I’m telling you to!’ Justin snapped, his frustration, coupled with gut-wrenching fear, spilling over. If she took off now, he’d have absolutely no idea where she was. And the way she was feeling… He couldn’t allow that. ‘Come back here now!’
‘Fuck off! You’ve no right! I don’t want to!’ Sophie shouted tearfully. ‘I don’t want to be anywhere near you. Don’t you get it? I just want you to go away and leave me alone!’
Justin felt the ground shift beneath him. He wanted to go to her, hold her, let her scream, kick him, punch him, if that would help. Anything. ‘I’m your father, Sophie,’ he tried, his voice catching. ‘I’ll always—’
‘You’re not!’ Rage now emanated palpably from her. Justin could feel it, like an icicle through his heart. Rage, hate, hurt – all directed right at him. ‘You’re a liar! Both of you! Liars!’
Uncertain what to do; go forward or back off, Justin watched helplessly as two concerned women stepped towards her, one placing an arm around Sophie’s shoulders, drawing her further back, further away from him.
‘He’s not my father. He’s not.’ Gulping back a sob, Sophie addressed the women, and then, seeing Justin step towards her, wrenched herself away from them.
His blood turning to ice in his veins as she turned to flee, Justin moved fast, almost colliding with the women as he raced after her, only to find two security guards blocking his path.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you, mate,’ one of them said, the menacing look in his eyes telling Justin he wasn’t about to let him get past.
‘She’s my daughter,’ he said, holding the man’s gaze, praying he would see the desperation in his eyes.
‘Yeah, and he’s mine,’ the man quipped drolly, nodding towards his sidekick. ‘Back off, mate,’ he warned him. ‘The police are on their way.’
The police? Given how efficient he’d found them so far in finding any link that might lead to who killed his son, Justin might have laughed, had he not felt like crying. ‘She’s upset,’ he attempted to explain, tried hard to hold on to his temper. ‘I need to go to her.’
Fuck this, he thought, as the two men stood their ground, like immovable mountains. Arms folded, feet splayed in a Neanderthal display of aggression, it was clear they weren’t going to let him go anywhere. Determined to get past them any way he had to, Justin’s attempt to push through was cut short by someone grabbing him from behind, seizing his arm and twisting it high up his back.
Christ. ‘Sophie!’ Ignoring the pain ripping through his bicep as his arm was pushed impossibly higher, Justin struggled to stay upright.
‘Sophie!’ He screamed it, his heart splintering as, brought heavily to his knees, he watched his daughter disappear into the crowd.
Twenty-Eight
SOPHIE
Choking back her tears, Sophie kept going. What had she done? She’d wanted to hurt him. She’d wanted to hurt them both as much as she could, but not like this. She should have stopped those security guards. Instead, she’d made them think he was a bloody paedophile.
Oh God, she hadn’t meant to do that. Pausing to catch her breath outside the shopping centre, Sophie squeezed her eyes closed, seeing again the hurt and confusion on Justin’s face. They’d forced him to the floor. Held him down like the worst kind of criminal. And he’d done nothing. He might be ready to walk away from the nightmare his life had become, from the deceit and the lies her mother had fed him – she could hardly blame him for that – but he’d always loved her as a dad should love a daughter. He couldn’t feel that way any more, that was clear to Sophie, but she couldn’t stop loving him as a father so easily. Part of her, the biggest part of her, would always love him, yet there was another part of her that hated him for being naive enough to allow himself to be deceived. It didn’t matter much now though, did it? She would never see him again. She didn’t want to. Hearing him say out loud that he’d lost his daughter, listening to his lies, his invented reasons – work conferences, whatever – to extract himself from her life now Luke was no longer part of his, that would have been too much to bear.
Suppressing a sob, she wiped the back of her hand shakily under her nose and tried to think about what her next move should be. Where she could go. Chloe had obviously told Justin where she was. Realistically, she couldn’t have gone there in any case. Chloe’s mum would have been on the phone in a flash.