“With a dual-edged blade, good man.”
Charlie catches a glimpse of a smile on his father’s face. It’s the sort of game they used to play.
“I can’t understand how we turned into the sort of people who don’t know that refugees are hiding in their attic,” his mother says.
“They’re not refugees, mum. They’re from Australia and Tonbridge.”
He knows it wouldn’t kill him to stay there in the living room with them, but all he can think of is people finding out who Eddie is. And how the kid will never have a chance of winning Britain’s Got Talent.
46
It feels good to be back in a suit. Work clothes make Layla feel competent, compared with the tracksuit she wears watching repeats of Made in Chelsea while feeling sorry for herself. Today is going to be a big gamble, but she’s determined.
“I’m Layla Bayat,” she tells the guard at the inquiry desk on Monday morning. “My name should be down there to see Noor LeBrac. I’m her new representation.”
That piece of news certainly gets a reaction.
“What happened to last week’s new representation?” the woman asks.
Layla’s not prepared to be the inferior in this exchange.
“Is my name there or not?”
The last time she saw Noor was the day the family were arrested, when they still believed that Louis was an innocent victim of the bombing. Noor was frantic. Etienne was flying back from Australia and she was trying to keep everyone focused. Their uncle Joseph was visiting from Manchester, and he calmly reassured them all. But Jimmy was inconsolable. No one ever imagined the nightmare of Louis Sarraf’s being the main suspect.
Today she’ll be facing a harder version of Noor, but when she’s taken into the room it’s still so recognizably the woman Layla always looked up to alongside Jocelyn.
Noor kisses Layla’s left cheek, right cheek, then left again and they sit down in silence. Layla thinks she’ll just go straight into talking about an appeal. But then she doesn’t.
“I never came to see you.”
Noor seems to be processing and after a moment she nods. “True. But you were the only one there for Jimmy when he got out of jail. And you used to drive your mother to the hospice to look after mine. I think the Bayat women have done enough for my family.”
“We could have done more.”
“Is this about Etienne’s death?” Noor asks. “Violette said you’re looking into it.”
“Not yet,” she says. “Because we start with you, Noor. If we can get you into a courtroom and win an appeal then everything else falls into place. Etienne’s death. Jimmy and your uncle’s citizenship. We start with you and blow the rest out of the water.”
Layla ignores Noor’s headshaking. “Yes,” Layla says firmly. “Most decent people are upset about the way Violette has been treated. I hear it on the streets, in my neighborhood. That means they’re talking about Brackenham. They’re talking about you.”
She removes a file from her briefcase and places it in front of Noor. “From a blog created by two of the mothers whose daughters were badly injured by the Calais bomb.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Noor says, picking it up.
“A piece went online this morning written by Chief Inspector Pain-in-the-Arse Ortley. He ends it by saying he believes Louis Sarraf acted on his own. He said the same thing to me.”
She hears the intake of Noor’s breath.
“Katherine Barrett-Parker and Sadia Bagchi have as big an online readership at the moment as some of the tabloids,” Layla tells her. “The comments in response to what Ortley says are polarizing. For every person who thinks he should shut his mouth in respect for the dead, there’s another who supports him.”
“Every attempt at an appeal ends the same way, Layla. It runs out of steam, it never makes it to court. It’s always the wrong timing…”
“I’m not going to run out of steam and I’m not going to give up on this, Noor,” Layla says. “I grew up living in everyone’s shadow. Jocelyn’s. Yours. Jimmy’s. And ever since the bombing I’ve been living in its shadow. What if I’m selfish and I’m doing this for me too?”
“If you take this on you’ll be begging to get back into that shadow. And if you lose you’re going to spend the rest of your life doing conveyancing for your extended family, and everyone on the block.”
Noor isn’t telling her anything she doesn’t know herself.
“You can’t do this without a barrister, and no one will touch it,” she says.
But Layla would rather spend the rest of her life doing conveyancing than sell her soul on the tenth floor for Silvey and Grayson. “Leave the barrister to me,” she says.
Outside she rings Ortley, but it goes straight to voice mail. Layla decides to put her niece to work. She suspects that Gigi and Bee Ortley text each other obsessively about their common denominator, Violette, despite the fact that they don’t consider themselves friends.