Before I Wake (21 page)

“Good night?” Brian peers at me through bleary eyes as the alarm clock beep-beep-beeps 6:00 a.m. on the table beside him.

“Lovely, thank you.”

He yawns and stretches his arms above his head. “What time did you get in?”

I consider lying but have no idea what time he fell asleep so can’t pretend I slipped in next to him. “It was after two.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t drinking, were you? I don’t think you’re allowed to take alcohol with the pills you’re on.”

“Of course not. There was a lovely late-night coffee shop just around the corner from the theater, so Jane and I had a catch up. We just lost track of time, that’s all.”

Brian shifts in the bed to get a better look at me. My stomach churns and I look away, praying he won’t cross-examine me.

“Just as long as you had a good night, darling.” I feel his lips on my cheeks and then a blast of cold air as he throws back the duvet and sits up. The mattress squeaks as he stands, a floorboard creaks as he crosses the room, and then there is silence.

I pull his pillow to my chest and hug it tightly. I’m getting closer to discovering what happened to Charlotte, but I’m so very tired. I want to roll over, to sleep for a million years and wake up when this is all over, but I can’t. I can’t do anything as the coma robs Charlotte of her health, her mental faculties, and possibly her life.

But what can I do but wait? The path ran as far as Steve Torrance, and there’s nothing I can do until he calls.

I throw back the duvet and sit up.

Yes, there is.

***

“Sue?” Danny peers out at me from behind the front door. His face is crumpled and sleep-lined, his eyes bleary and unfocused. “It’s eight o’clock on a Sunday morning.”

“I know.”

I don’t want to be here either. I want to be in the hospital with my daughter—and I will be once we’ve spoken—but I have to find out what he’s hiding first.

“How did you get my address?” He runs a hand through his tousled blond hair, and his white toweling dressing gown slips open.

“I rang Oli.” He wasn’t delighted to be woken up early either.

“Right.” Danny yawns and glances back into the apartment. “So what can I do you for, Sue?”

“I’d like to come in, if I may.”

“Um...” He pulls his dressing gown closed. “It’s not really convenient right now.”

“Keisha in, is she? It’s okay. I can say what I need to say in front of her.”

Danny shifts from one foot to the other. “She’s not here.”

“Oh.” I look past him into the flat. There’s a pair of vertiginous black high heels scattered across the hallway. Danny turns to see what I’m looking at.

“It’s not what…” He shakes his head. “What’s so important anyway?”

“You lied,” I say, “about going to Grey’s nightclub with Charlotte and Ella. I know you were there.”

“Sue, I swear”—he holds out his palms like an innocent man surrendering—“I wasn’t there. There are a lot of malicious people in Brighton, and if someone’s been spreading rumors that—”

“Danny.”

“Yes?”

He looks me straight in the eye, waiting to hear what I have to say next. He’s smiling, his eyebrows raised cordially, his thumbs hooked into his dressing gown pockets. Like James, he’s a consummate professional when it comes to lying. I wonder what he’s told the woman lying in his bed—that his relationship with Keisha is over, that they’re just casual, that they have an open relationship? And what of Keisha? What lies has he told her so she doesn’t suspect that he’s sleeping around?

“No one told me anything, Danny. The police accessed the CCTV footage that Grey’s has of that night. I saw you enter the club.”

“The police…” He searches my face, but I maintain my composure. Two can play at this game.

“Just tell me what happened, Danny.”

He steps back into the hall. “You’d better come in.”

***

Fifteen minutes later and I’m back on the doorstep, this time saying good-bye.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Danny says again. “Ella overheard me and Keish talking about going to Grey’s, and she and Charlotte turned up on the same train as us on Saturday night. I tried telling them to go back to Brighton but Ella said—”

“That she’d report you for letting underage girls drink in Breeze.” He’s already told me this. Several times.

“Exactly.” He crosses his arms, tucking his hands under his armpits.

“But why Grey’s? Why follow you there?”

“Because it’s glamorous?” He shrugs. “Because you see pics of celebs falling out of it in all the papers? Because Ella’s got a crush on me?”

“A crush?”

“Yeah, Charlotte told Keisha about it. I think that was part of the reason they all fell out—because Ella overheard me talking to a mate about going to Grey’s and she got the impression that Keisha wasn’t coming and thought that if she turned up in a minuscule dress and a load of makeup”—he smirks—“that she could seduce me.”

I look again at the pair of high heels in the hallway. How old is the woman in his bed? “And did you?”

“Shag Ella? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“You let her into your club.”

“Look, Sue.” He holds his hands wide. “I let the girls into Breeze because of Charlotte. She’s my best mate’s little sister and she’s as good as family.”

“So you’d encourage your sister to drink if she was underage, would you?”

“No, of course not—” He becomes very still, very composed. It’s as though a shutter falls over his face. “You can blame me all you want for what happened to Charlotte, but she’s not my kid. Where did you think she was when she was out until two or three in the morning? Playing hopscotch? What kind of mum doesn’t know where her daughter is at that time of night?”

I reel as though slapped.

“Sorry, but I won’t have you paint me as some kind of pervert just because I let my mate’s little sister and her best friend into my club.”

I can’t speak. I’m too stunned by his previous remark to reply.

Where
did
I think Charlotte was on a Saturday night? I know exactly what I thought—that she was staying in London in an overpriced YMCA hostel with her classmates and several of her teachers from school.

“Did you meet him?” I ask. “Did you meet Alex Henri?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t go into the VIP enclosure. I didn’t stay that long. Charlotte, Keisha, and Ella all got pissed and then had an argument. Keisha was swaying all over the place and slurring her words, accusing me of secretly fancying Ella, saying I’d invited her along so we could have a threesome. Which was bollocks, I should add.” He shrugs. “So I left.”

“You left all three of them in the club?”

“Yeah. Keisha’s not a kid, and I figured if the other two were old enough to get a train to London, they were old enough to get one back. Like I said, I didn’t invite them along.”

“But they were only fifteen, in a club with men twice their age.”

“Do I look like a fucking child-minder?”

“Danny, I hardly think—” I’m interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. “Hang on a second.”

I fish my mobile out of my handbag. I don’t recognize the number.

“Hello, Sue Jackson speaking.”

“Hello, Sue. It’s Steve. Steve Torrance.” For a split second, I have no idea who I’m speaking to, then I remember.

“How are you?”

“So I spoke to Al…” I gird myself, waiting for the inevitable denial.

“He says he did go into the loos with your girl, but nothing happened. The plan was for her to give him a blow job, but she got stage fright. Burst into tears and said she couldn’t go through with it. Told Alex some fella was blackmailing her. Got into a right state, he said. He didn’t know what to do, so he left her there, in the ladies’, and went back to his mates. After that, he didn’t see her again.”

“She…” I step backward, grasping at the air, but there’s nothing to hold onto, nothing to steady myself. “She was being blackmailed?”

“That’s what he said.” He sighs. “Look, darlin’, I don’t know how well you and your daughter get on, but if she was my kid, I wouldn’t let her hang out with pimps and prostitutes, not if she doesn’t want to be taken for a whore herself.”

“A prostitute?” I fight to steady my voice. Danny is staring at me, his eyes wide with curiosity, but I don’t care. I feel like I’m having an out of body experience, like this isn’t really happening, like I’m in a play speaking someone else’s words. “My daughter was mistaken for a prostitute by Alex Henri?”

“No one’s saying anything about Alex using prostitutes, you hear me? No money was exchanged between Charlotte and Al, and if you try and sell a story to the papers that he tried to bed a hooker in the bogs of Grey’s, I’ll slap a lawsuit on you.”

Danny frowns and crosses his arms over his chest.

“What did they look like?” I ask. “These…people…she was with?”

“How should I know?” Steve yawns loudly down the phone. “What do you want? A fucking mug shot? Al just said something about a guy and a fit black girl.”

“Did he mention either of their names?”

“Pinky and Perky. I’ve got no fucking idea. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. Look, love.” His voice takes on a new steely tone. “This is all very lovely, having a nice little chat with you, but I’m a busy man. We made an agreement and I’ve kept my end of the bargain. The question is, are you?”

“What?”

“Going to the police? Not that you’ve got a leg to stand on, because as my client said, he didn’t lay a finger on your daughter.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not.”

The phone goes dead.

“You all right, Sue?” Danny asks.

“Who’re you talking to, Dan?” A heart-shaped face framed by a mass of blond curls pokes around a door halfway down the corridor. “Come back to bed. I’m getting cold!” Her eyes meet mine. “Oh shit, is that your mum? God, how embarrassing.”

“It’s not what you think—” Danny starts as she disappears back into the bedroom, but I hold up a warning hand.

“I don’t care who you’re sleeping with, Danny.”

“Cool.” He reaches around me and opens the front door.

“Just one thing before you go.”

“Yeah.”

I could confront him. I could tell him that, unless he tells me the truth about what happened in Grey’s that night, I’m going to tell the police that he’s a pimp, but there’s a quicker way to find out what I need to know.

“I’d like your girlfriend’s address, please.”

“Keisha?” I prod the letter box with my fingers and force it open. “Keisha, are you in there?”

A shadow crosses the wall at the far end of the seafront basement flat, and a seagull squawks overhead.

“Keisha, it’s Sue Jackson, Charlotte’s mum. I really need to talk to you.”

The shadow grows longer.

“Keisha?”

I hear a floorboard squeak, then, “Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

A foot appears from the shadows, the toes painted pink, a silver chain shining around the ankle, then the rest of Keisha appears. She’s wearing a short pink nightdress with a Disney cartoon on the front and a thin gray cotton dressing gown hanging from her shoulders. Her hair is wild and frizzy, and makeup-free, she looks impossibly young. I let go of the letter box as she draws near and stand up. The door opens a second later.

“Sue! What are you doing?”

“Danny gave me your address. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Oh.” She looks delighted and worried at the same time. “That’s very kind of you. Come in.”

I follow her into the living room, and when she tells me to sit down, I sink into a black leather armchair. Keisha crosses the room to the bay window and reaches for the blinds. For a second, I think she’s going to open them—it’s a beautiful day outside—but instead she parts two slats with her fingers and peers outside.

“Did anyone see you, Sue? Come here, I mean.”

I shake my head. “Not that I noticed. Why?”

“No matter.”

She lets go of the blinds, jumping as the slats clack back together, and rubs her hands over her arms. She looks cold but her basement flat is boiling. I’ve already removed my coat and cardigan.

“Would you like a cup of tea, Sue?”

“No, thank you, I just—” But she’s already gone, padding along the carpet toward the tiny galley kitchen at the other end of the flat.

“Keisha.” I go after her. “Is everything okay?”

She glances toward the front door, then motions for me to step into the kitchen and shut the door behind me. As I turn to pull it closed, I hear the swish of curtains being pulled and the room dims.

“Keisha, what is it?” She moves from the curtains to the counter and reaches for the kettle. She fills it and turns it on, then reaches into a cupboard and starts rummaging around.

“Where’s the damned tea? Ester better not have used up the last of it.”

I stand silently by the door as she moves jars, cans, and packets from one side of the cupboard to the other then begins lining them up on the counter.

“It’s okay,” I say as her movements become more frenzied. “I don’t need a tea. Coffee would be fine.”

“Fuck!”

Three things happen at once. A jam jar tumbles from the cupboard, Keisha swears, and the jar hits a glass, which rolls off the counter and explodes onto the tiled flooring, showering her bare feet with a thousand tiny shards.

“Fuck!” She hops backward, but there’s nowhere to escape in such a small kitchen, and a large piece of glass sinks into her heel.

“Have you got a first-aid box?” I ask as she stares in horror at the blood pooling around her foot.

She shakes her head.

“Clean tea towel?”

She points at a drawer to the right of the sink.

“Antiseptic cream?”

“There might be some in the bathroom cabinet.”

Fifteen minutes later and we’re back in the living room. Keisha is in the armchair, her injured foot dressed as best I could in a clean
Coronation
Street
tea towel and raised on a couple of stacked Amazon boxes I found in the backyard.

“I appreciate your help, Sue,” she says as I perch beside her, “but I’m not going to the emergency room.”

“But it’s a deep cut.” I think of the pool of blood I mopped up in the kitchen and the deep laceration in the sole of her left foot. “You might need stitches. It’s stopped bleeding, but the second you put your foot down and your circulation returns, you could be in all kinds of trouble.”

“I already am.”

“Sorry?”

She glances away. “Nothing.”

“I’ve got my car.” I gesture toward the window and the street outside. “It wouldn’t be any trouble. I would only take—”

“I told you I’m fine.”

“Keisha, I couldn’t forgive myself if I left you here and—”

“I’m not going to the fucking hospital!”

Neither of us says anything for a couple of minutes. I twist my hands in my lap and stare around the living room—at the ugly gas fire, the vase of wilting roses above it, the mountain of DVDs stacked up by the television next to a framed photo of a woman I don’t recognize standing in front of Buckingham Palace. Is that her flatmate?

“I’m sorry, Sue.” Keisha raises her face to look at me. “You didn’t deserve me to swear at you.” She glances at the blinds and slips the tiniest bit lower in her seat.

“Is everything okay?” I glance toward the window too but see nothing. “You seem a bit jumpy today.”

“Do I?” She laughs. “I’m just a bit clumsy, that’s all. You ask Danny. I’m forever dropping and breaking things. It’s a surprise I didn’t brain myself sooner. Anyway”—she pushes her hair back from her face—“how are you, Sue?”

“I’m okay.” I reach for my cardigan and pull it into my lap. Without a cup of tea to hang onto, I need something to do with my hands. “Keisha, why would someone accuse you of being a prostitute?”

I expect her to gasp in protestation. Instead she reaches for a cigarette and lights it. She inhales deeply, but her hands don’t stop shaking.

“Does he know?” Her voice is so quiet I can barely hear her.

“Who?”

“Danny.” She looks at me, her eyes wide and beautiful and brimming with tears. “Have you told him?”

“Danny?” I shake my head. “I…I don’t understand. I thought he was your pimp.”

“My pimp. You’re kidding me, right?” She gives a little laugh. “Danny thinks I’m an angel. That’s what he calls me—his precious, perfect angel. Can you imagine what he’d call me if he knew what I do”—she pulls a face—“what I
did
.”

“Did?”

“I gave it all up when I met him. I don’t want to work behind the bar in the club, but it’s the only way I can pay my rent ever since…” She tails off and shakes her head.

“Ever since what?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” I look at the cigarette quivering between her fingers. “What happened? Why were you so scared to answer the door just now? And why were you so jumpy outside the club the other night?”

She glances toward the window again, then looks at her hands. I notice the bruising around her wrists. She catches me looking.

“It wasn’t Danny, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I stand up from the sofa and crouch down beside her. The bruises on her wrists are purple, perfectly-shaped fingerprints. Whoever attacked her had a strong grip.

“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.

“You don’t want 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 Grey’s 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 toward 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.”

I glance around the room, looking for answers, but none appear. “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 and I jump out of my seat.

“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.” My arms are prickled with goose bumps. 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.”