‘Who did this? A client? Your pimp?’
‘I told you,’ she looks up angrily. ‘I’m not on the game anymore. I love Danny and I’d die if he found out. If he left me I don’t know what I’d do. I’m nothing without him.’
She sounds like me twenty years ago.
‘I’m sorry, Keisha.’ She flinches as I gently touch her arm. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you but someone’s hurt you and they need to be stopped before they do it again. Have you been to the police?’
She shakes her head.
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Just the thought of stepping into a police station makes me feel sick but she needs my support, even if I can only make it as far as the entrance.
‘No.’
‘But you’ll go? Alone if you have to?’
‘No. I can’t go to the police.’
‘Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She attempts to stand up, groaning as her injured foot touches the carpet. I try to help her but she waves me away and I trail behind as she hobbles into the kitchen and opens the fridge.
‘Wine?’
When I shake my head she pulls out a bottle, unscrews the lid, swallows down a couple of large mouthfuls and then grabs an oversized glass from the rack beside the sink.
‘I don’t want you to get involved, Sue,’ she says as she empties the bottle into the glass. ‘I’ve already told you too much.’
‘You haven’t told me anything.’
‘Best we leave it that way.’
‘Keisha,’ I say as we return to the living room and she lowers herself into the armchair and hooks her leg over the armrest, ‘if you’re not on the game why would someone tell me that you were in Greys nightclub with your pimp?’
She looks at me for a couple of seconds as though deciding what to say.
‘Who told you I was a prostitute?’ she says finally.
‘Steve Torrance. Alex Henri’s agent.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘That makes sense.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve known a few footballers.’
‘Known?’
‘Fucked.’ She looks me straight in the eye. ‘For money. When I was a whore and lived in London.’
I don’t know what to say. Despite her feisty tone she looks uncomfortable and I’m still no closer to understanding what happened to Charlotte. I don’t want to hurt Keisha more than she’s already suffering but I can’t walk out of here without uncovering the truth.
‘I don’t understand,’ I shake my head. ‘Danny told me he left the club before you and Charlotte met Alex Henri which suggests he didn’t go into the VIP section.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So who did Steve Torrance think was your pimp?’
Keisha glances towards the window again.
‘What is it? You don’t know or you can’t tell me?’
She says nothing.
I look at her, taking in the beautiful almond shape of her eyes, her full sensuous mouth and slim lithe body and I wonder what terrible trauma forced her to sell herself to make a living. She’s so stunning she could be a model or a television presenter and yet she values herself so little she’d let anyone with money have her body and a man who doesn’t really love her steal her heart. I could tell her a hundred times over that she’s worth more but I know she’d never believe me.
‘Have you ever been blackmailed, Sue?’ She speaks no louder than a whisper.
I shake my head. ‘Is that what’s happening to you? Someone who knows you used to be a prostitute is threatening to tell people? Threatening to tell Danny.’
She nods and a single tear rolls down her cheek.
‘What did they make you do, Keisha?’
She shakes her head.
‘Was it sexual?’
She nods minutely.
I inch forward so I’m sitting on the very edge of the sofa. ‘Was he a client?’
She nods again.
‘What’s his name?’
I stare at her lips as she mouths a word.
‘Mike.’
‘Mike what? Do you know his surname?’
‘No.’
‘What did he want in return for keeping your secret, Keisha?’
‘I can’t tell you.’ She covers her face with her hands and starts to cry.
‘Charlotte,’ I say, and it’s as though someone has poured ice into my veins. ‘Did it have something to do with Charlotte?’
Keisha howls in anguish.
‘Tell me.’ I grab her hands and gently pull them away from her face. ‘Tell me what you did. Tell me what he made you do.’
‘No.’ She slaps my hands away and clamps them back to her face. ‘No, no, no, no, no. I can’t. I can’t.’
‘Keisha, please.’ She knows. She knows what happened to Charlotte.
‘I can’t.’ I can barely make out her words between sobs. ‘He’ll kill me. He said if I breathed a word to anyone he’d hunt me down and—’
She’s interrupted by the sound of my phone ringing. I snatch it out of my bag ready to end the call without even answering it but it’s Mum’s care home.
‘Hello?’ I put a hand on Keisha’s shoulder – partly to reassure her, partly to let her know I’m not about to drop the subject. ‘Sue Jackson speaking.’
‘Hello Sue,’ says the voice on the other end of the line. ‘This is Mary. It’s about your mother. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’
Chapter 26
‘I should have been there.’ I dissolve into tears, my face buried in the crook of Brian’s neck. It’s the third time this morning I’ve broken down and it’s only 9 a.m. ‘I should have been the one to hold her hand, not a stranger.’
Brian wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. ‘It wasn’t a stranger,’ he says softly. ‘It was Mary. She looked after her for a very long time.’
‘But I’m her daughter.’ I barely recognize the sound of my own voice it’s so thin and wretched. ‘And I wasn’t there for her when she needed me most.’