‘What do you mean?’
‘She told me that she’d met this rich old gay bloke in Breeze who thought she looked like his dead niece and wanted to buy her stuff. I thought it was creepy.’ He rubs a hand over his stubble. ‘But then Charlotte said Mike could probably get me stuff too and my guitar was knackered so …’ he tails off.
‘He bought you a new guitar?’
‘Yeah.’ His eyes dart to the guitar case propped up on the wall beside him. I’m no muso but even I know that Les Paul guitars aren’t cheap. ‘I told her not to ask him to get me one but she thought it would be funny. If he had the cash he should be able to spend it however he wanted, she said and besides …’ He picks up a bar mat, pulls off the paper advertisement and rolls it into a ball. ‘… buying us, buying her stuff seemed to make him happy so why not?’
A shiver runs down my back at the thought of my daughter being so Machiavellian. I thought I’d brought her up better than that. I’m not sure how much more I want to hear.
‘So how did the two of you end up having sex at his house?’
‘Mike suggested it when Charlotte got drunk one night. She’d been shooting off, telling him how crap it is being a teenager these days because, if you want to lose your virginity, you have to do it on the school fields or in someone’s car. That’s when he suggested we use his flat.’ He lowers his eyes. ‘He said he was going away for the weekend, to see some mates in London and that he’d put clean sheets on his bed and food in the fridge and we could treat the flat like it was ours for two days.’
I can see why two teenagers would have jumped at that offer.
‘So you took him up on the offer?’
He doesn’t look up. ‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing.’ He pushes back his chair, rests a hand on his guitar case. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Mike didn’t turn up while you were there? Nothing bad happened? Nothing out of the ordinary?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head, his cheeks colouring slightly. ‘It was cool.’
He’s halfway out of his seat and I realise I’m about to lose him. How long did I expect my daughter’s ex-boyfriend to talk to me about sex for? Even Ella, across the table from me, is staring at the cocktail menu like it’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever read.
‘Then why would Mike blackmail Charlotte?’
‘What?’ He looks down at me, his forehead creased.
‘Keisha told me Mike was blackmailing Charlotte about something. Do you know what?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head, his expression incredulous. ‘She never said anything about …’ He looks at Ella. ‘Did you know about this?’
She raises her eyes from the menu. ‘Nope.’
‘She didn’t give you any clue?’ I look from one to the other. ‘Nothing at all?’
Two blank expressions meet my question.
‘So if I were to tell you that she wrote “keeping this secret is killing me” in her diary you wouldn’t know what she was talking about?’
They look shocked but shake their heads.
‘Liam,’ I stand up too, ‘one more thing before you go back to your band.’
He shrugs. ‘Sure. What?’
‘Show me where Mike lives.’
Chapter 29
Liam and I are alone in the car. Ella received a phone call from her mum while we were leaving the pub asking where the hell her fags were so I dropped her home. I wasn’t just returning her home because her mum was suspicious, I wanted her safe and, now we’re outside number 117 Highgate Road, I need to make sure Liam is too.
‘This is definitely the house?’ I ask.
‘Yeah.’ He nods at me from the passenger seat. ‘I’d know it anywhere.’
‘Thank you, Liam.’ I look in the rear-view mirror and flick the indicator, ‘I’ll take you back to The Gladstone now.’
‘Nah.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m staying here. If you’re going to confront that mincing fucker I’m coming too. I’ll punch his fucking lights out.’
That’s a lot of bravado for a seventeen-year-old but it doesn’t raise a smile. Liam has no idea how much danger he’d be in if he so much as looked at James the wrong way.
‘No, you won’t.’ I pull out into the road, ignoring his protestations, ‘we don’t want two people in the hospital.’
Liam laughs, flattered I’d think him capable of hospitalizing a grown man. I don’t bother to correct him.
Fifteen minutes later and I’m back outside the flat. It looks innocuous enough – marine-blue front door, brass knocker, bay windows with curtains ever so slightly open – but I’m having a hard time opening the car door. My brain is urging me on, telling me to get out, knock on the door and confront the man who’s been terrorizing my nightmares for the last twenty years, but my body is holding fast, refusing to move. I look down at my right hand, at the diamond band Brian bought me during a ‘make up’ holiday in Rhodes after the affair. I refused to wear it – his guilt gift – for a long, long time and then suddenly it was our fifteen-year anniversary and the affair was a distant memory and the ring felt like a symbol of positivity, of a fresh start, so I started wearing it. I try and will the hand to move from the steering wheel to the door handle.
The hand refuses to move.
I look back at the house.