A Daughter's Secret (21 page)

‘I reckon you’re crayfish and rocket.’

‘I’m not, actually. I find crayfish distinctly rubbery.’

‘Oh do you?’ he says in a la-di-da voice. ‘Well, m’lady, if you tell me of a sandwich you find more delectable, I shall go in search of it.’

‘Fine. I’ll meet you by the little park with the swings behind my office. And, Sir Galahad? I’ve only got forty-five minutes.’

I’m a stickler for punctuality, but I’m running a few, unnecessary, minutes late. He’s standing by the entrance, towering above the people streaming past him, a big paper bag swinging from his spidery fingers. He looks up and down the road more anxiously than I would expect, and I find myself almost scuttling towards him. His smile is pleased, open, warm: it pains me to admit it, but I can see why those doe-eyed PAs might fall for his chat.

‘So I took a gamble,’ he says, reaching into the bag as we walk through the gates. He holds out a polite palm, lets me go first. ‘Looks like a vegetable Apocalypse to me, but I’m hoping you’ll approve.’

It’s a spelt-bread sandwich, oozing with avocado, an organic-looking tomato peeking out from the mess. It’s rough-hewn, hacked from a loaf, the kind of thing you’d only find in a hemp-peddling kind of shop. There’s a dark purple juice too, which I’ll have to sip carefully to avoid frightening my afternoon clients with my beetroot moustache.

‘Thank you!’ He looks endearingly relieved, pulling another artisan production out of the bag.

‘I asked for cheese salad – how badly could it go – but this is not what I understand to be cheese. Or indeed salad: it’s vegetation.’

‘I promise we can go to Subway if you feel undernourished.’

He looks at his watch.

‘No time. By my estimation we’ve got thirty-seven minutes.’ I look guiltily round the crowded little park. Not a bench in sight. ‘If I lay my jacket over a metaphorical puddle, we could sit on the grass?’

So that’s what we do. I tuck my feet beneath me, trying to stop my cotton dress from riding up, wishing I was wearing trousers. It’s quite an operation, what with the Apocalyptic sandwich.

‘So what was so urgent?’ I say, taking a cautious nibble. Businesslike is a challenge under these circs.

Patrick’s watching my struggle, amused, but his face shifts with my question like a car sliding into gear. It makes me wish I’d taken a couple more bites first, simply been here.

‘I got a ripper.’

‘What are you talking about? You arrested a serial killer?’

‘RIPA. They’re a big deal. You have to go cap in hand to the Home Secretary.’

‘Go on.’

‘It gives us the ability to listen in on calls. We can’t use what we find as evidence in court, only to help us investigate.’ He looks at me, brown eyes serious, weighing his words. ‘What we’ve picked up on Gemma’s phone gives me serious concern for her welfare.’

Why did I think I would find comfort here? Even the cunningly thoughtful sandwich is a ploy. I feel that familiar coldness spreading all the way into my bones, even with the sun beating down on us.

‘No!’ I say, no time for weighing and considering. ‘Don’t do this! Don’t ask me again! If you want to question her, question her. It’s not my job to manipulate her for you.’

‘Mia . . .’ Patrick puts his hand on my bare arm, but I throw it straight off me, furious. First Annie, now him. I’m sick of people trying to push me around the board like I’m too stupid to see their hand descend. ‘This is serious. We’re fairly sure she’s talking to her dad. He’s still in the country, complete with a pay-as-you-go. They’re talking in code, but it sounds to me like he’s asking her to destroy evidence for him.’

‘Not my problem,’ I say, swivelling myself away from him, trying to prevent his words from detonating inside my head. ‘Above my pay-grade.’

‘Mia . . .’

‘Stop using my name. I’m not a bloody cocker spaniel.’

‘She’s not safe. If I call her in for questioning you know as well as I do she won’t say a word.’ It’s true. Gemma has so many different versions of silence. Tears prickle as I think of her, a tiny, vulnerable piece of flotsam bobbing around in the vast, dark ocean. ‘I might be wrong, I might be reading too much into what I saw between you, but I reckon she wants you to know what she’s going through.’

I think about the iPad, the green bubbles she keeps shoving towards me like a tray of sweets. Could he be right?

‘If she does, it has to come from her.’

‘I’m not the psychologist, but even I know how much that’s not gonna happen. You told me as much. She doesn’t want to betray him.’ He stares at me, willing me to admit he’s right. ‘She’d rather betray herself.’

I wish that wasn’t true. Annie flits across my consciousness, the way she looked when she described how even as a callow teenager, Christopher knew how to take total possession.

‘I’ll tell you if she confides anything relevant. We’ve agreed.’

‘Now’s the time you need to do more than that,’ he says, more an order than a request. ‘What she doesn’t realize is that the only way her darling dad is coming back is in a police van or a body bag. She could help us make sure it’s the former.’

The brutality of it.

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

It’s his turn to look away, exasperation writ large, hands twisted around a clump of his coppery hair as though he’s going to rip it out.

‘I shouldn’t even be telling you all this. If she does get involved in destroying evidence she’ll be in way too deep. If Stephen’s people find out, if she gets something wrong . . . you don’t need me to spell it out.’

I don’t want to hear him. I want to stick to the script.

‘So protect her.’

‘I can’t. Not without your help. I’m taking a real risk trusting you with this. It’s classified information. You can’t be telling your boss. You certainly can’t be telling Annie Vine. I’m telling you what you need to do to protect her.’

I take a sip of the pulpy juice, panic and confusion turning my thoughts to no more than white noise. I breathe in, breathe out.

‘How do you do it, Patrick? I’m starting to think you’re a little bit of a sociopath.’

‘Oh yeah, how’d you work that one out?’

‘How do you amble up here, full of chat about the vegetable Apocalypse, and then, once you’ve softened me up, swivel back round to the threats and insinuations?’

His jaw is rigid.

‘It’s a two-part question, that one. How do I do it? I do it because, if I lived my life permanently submerged in shit, I’d be . . . it wouldn’t be a life. I have to walk on the sunny side of the street whenever there’s a fighting chance. And contrary to what you might think – contrary to what I might think right at this moment – I actually enjoy your company. I had something resembling fun finding your ridiculous rabbit-food sandwich. And secondly, they’re not threats and insinuations. I wish they were. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you: we’re on the same side.’

I watch him, his face flushed, his eyes bright. I almost reach out to touch him, try and quell the tremor I can see running through him like an electric current, but I stop myself.

‘OK.’

‘What, you’ll do it?’

‘I didn’t say that.”

‘OK, I’m not a sociopath?’

‘I don’t think so. I could be wrong.’ I stand up, brushing crumbs from my skirt. He looks vulnerable down there on the grass, limbs tangled up like string.

‘Please Mia. I’m begging you. Just think about it.’

‘Trust me, I won’t be able to stop thinking about it.’

‘I do trust you,’ he says, eyes imploring me to give him some kind of reassurance.

‘OK,’ I say again, not risking anything more complex.

‘I tell you what I’ve been thinking about, other than . . .’ He flings a hand into the enormity of it as he stands up. ‘What’s your flippy coin? What’s your strength that’s your weakness? Cos I think you might’ve nailed mine, much as it kills me.’

We’re standing next to each other now, quite close. I almost wonder if he’ll be able to hear my heart, hammering out a bass line of fear. Words, normally my most beloved friends, seem to be wriggling away from me today.

‘I try to do my best. I’m a perfectionist.’

‘Hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t sound like much of a fault.’ I look away, look back up at him. ‘No, I get it. It’s a joy thief, isn’t it? You can miss the sunny side of the street entirely if you’re too scared you’re gonna trip.’

Right at this moment I wonder if I’d prefer him to be a sociopath. Not the person who somehow seems able to see right the way through me.

February 1995 (sixteen years old)

I get it a bit now. I’m not saying I’m Linda Lovelace, but I’ve learnt how to do the basics – even if that makes it sound a bit like that cookery book for idiots with Delia Smith posing smugly with an egg. It’s nearly Valentine’s Day which means I’ve got almost two months of non-virginhood under my belt.

Valentine’s Day is what’s clinched it. I can’t keep lying to Lysette, pretending I’m some kind of numbed-out nun-inwaiting, when the truth is the absolute opposite. She loves an excuse for a celebration: right now we’re in the sixth-form common room looking through an anthology of love poems, trying to find something for her to send to Johnny Francis from the boys’ college.

‘“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,”’ she says, sounding like a radio announcer from the 1950s. ‘“Thou art more lovely and more temperate . . .”’ I declaim along with her, before we give way to snorting giggles. Johnny’s stubbly and stocky, with meaty hands that he uses to hammer at his drums – lovely and temperate doesn’t really cover it.

‘Mate, you’re on a hiding to nothing,’ I say. ‘You should go for lyrics.’

‘Push it,’ sings Lysette, jumping up to do her best Salt-n-Pepa impression, her denim bum wiggling in my face. That’s it, I’m convulsing now, earning a glare from Roberta Chalmers, who’s sitting on the tatty green sofa on the other side of the room, her nose buried in a history textbook. The sight of her makes me feel guilty. They’ve set up extra classes for us Oxbridge hopefuls: I’ve been turning up, but I know I don’t have the kind of dogged focus I used to have. I still want it, I still care about the French Revolution, but I find it hard to think about anything except Jim. When it’s good I’m lost in fantasy Jim Land, but when there are days between phone calls my imagination goes into a darker kind of overdrive, imagining some skinny minx with designer jeans and tousled blonde hair dragging him into the woods and doing things to him that I haven’t even heard of. The person who would normally douse out my paranoia is Lysette, but obviously that’s not an option. She’s sitting down now, grinning, pink with her exertions. I don’t think I could love her any more than I do. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll be pleased, once she’s got over the shock of the deception. After all, we could be family for real.

‘Come on,’ I say, standing up. ‘We need to go and buy this famous card.’

‘You can only help me pick it if you buy one too. There must be
someone
who meets your exacting standards.’ I busy myself collecting my books. ‘Luke Farmer, you know you want to!’

Luke Farmer has enough acne to be the subject of his own medical trial.

‘Shall I compare thee to a smallpox plague? It’s a deal.’

Jim’s approaching his A levels, whilst I’m still in the land of mocks, so it’s not surprising he can’t come home for Valentine’s Day. I know it’s silly, sentimental nonsense but I’ve never had a boyfriend before, and I want to live the dream. I’m sitting on the stairs talking to him whilst Mum busies herself in the kitchen, pretending not to eavesdrop.

‘Do you want me to send you a dozen red roses?’ he says.

‘No!’ I insist, even though I can’t think of anything nicer. Actually I can. A dusty hardback book of love poems or something he’s made himself, like that leather string he wears.

‘I’ve already got my first card,’ he says, and my heart plummets down a lift shaft. ‘Got a couple actually. You got any yet?’

‘One. But I think it might be from my dad.’ A double lie: even Lorcan’s postcards have petered out now. I can hear the heaviness in Mum’s footfall as she makes our macaroni cheese, her sadness a cloak that she can’t rip off. Part of me wishes she’d talk to me about it, credit me with the maturity to see through her Stepford good cheer, but a cowardly part of me’s relieved she’s letting me off the hook.

‘Loser.’

‘You’re the loser,’ I say, trying not to let paranoia seep its way into my pumping heart. ‘I was thinking, if Mohammed can’t come to the mountain—’

‘Where do you get these weirdo phrases?’

‘My dad says it,’ I tell him, embarrassed. ‘But . . . I could come to you. We could bunk off for the afternoon.’

Jim pauses, the only sound on the line his breath.

‘That’d be wicked, but I’ve got a test paper on Thursday. It’s the one day I can’t do.’

‘OK, don’t worry!’ I say, my Day-Glo words as bright and synthetic as Mum’s have become. ‘I’m still going to tell Lysette this week though.’

I’m testing him, if only he’d notice.

‘Baby – everyone knows secrets are sexy. It’s our sexy, sexy secret.’

‘I can’t do it any more,’ I say simply, refusing to laugh. It feels good to tell the truth – I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it.

I feel sick. I’ve felt sick all week, so much so that I’ve been wondering if I’ve got some gruesome lurgy that’s not yet fully flourished. Or more likely it’s nerves, the not knowing how she’ll take it. Mum too. I feel cruel being so happy when she’s the absolute opposite. I thought about getting her a card, but I’m not six years old: it might seem more patronizing than comforting.

‘What do you think?’ says Lysette, holding out her hand. We’ve been trying out nail varnishes in Debenhams for a good half-hour without any sign of a purchase. It’s not surprising the matronly sales assistant is glaring at us.

‘Not sure pearly pink’s your colour. Blue’s better.’ I’m sweating. It’s like standing on the high diving board. There’s nothing to do but jump. ‘Lys—’

‘Yup. Ooh, why is nail varnish so stinky?’ The sales assistant is looking like she wants to kill us now.

‘I’m seeing Jim.’

‘Where’d you see him? He’s not home until the weekend after next.’