The Accident (28 page)

‘Suzy?’ he shouted. ‘Suzy, where are you? I can’t smell dinner cooking. Have you been watching TV all day, you lazy bitch?’

‘Suzy?’ The landing floorboards creaked as he crossed towards the sewing room, then again as he made his way back. ‘Suzy?’

The footsteps grew louder. He was in the same room as me. I held my breath, sure my thudding heart would give me away then, ‘Suzy?’ James’s cry was quieter, he’d gone back down the stairs.

I crept silently out of the wardrobe, pushing the key deep into my sock before I left, and hurried down the stairs.

James looked up in surprise as I burst into the living room. ‘Where the fuck have you been? I looked for you upstairs. You weren’t there.’

‘Attic.’ I gestured at the dust on my cheek (swiped from the top of one of the shoeboxes in Margaret’s wardrobe). ‘I remembered your mum saying she’d stored your baby clothes up there and went to have a look.’

‘You did what?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I pressed my hand to my non-existent bump. ‘I just wanted to make things nice for the baby. I thought we could turn my sewing, I mean, the spare room, into a nursery. I thought it was a nice thing to do.’

‘But …’ James’s face returned to its normal colour and his jaw softened, ever so slightly. ‘I didn’t see the step ladder. The hatch was shut.’

‘I closed it,’ I said, my hand still on my belly. ‘I didn’t want to risk tripping and falling through it. I didn’t want anything to happen to the little one.’

It made me feel sick, talking like that, like we were all going to play happy families and waltz off into our perfect primrose-coloured future but the ‘baby’ was the only Achilles heel James had.

He looked at me for a second, his eyes flicking from my face to my belly and back again. He knew I was lying but he so desperately wanted to believe.

‘Don’t do it again.’ He waved a hand for me to leave the room. ‘What’s in the attic doesn’t concern you. If the baby needs anything I’ll be the one that provides for it.’

‘Okay.’ I felt the key press into my ankle, hard and reassuring as I turned to go, ‘I’ll go and get tea on then, shall I? It’s turkey stir-fry tonight.’

I left the next day. I watched from the spare room window, the curtains open a millimetre, as James left for work, crossed the road and stood at the bus stop. Terror ripped through me as he glanced up at the house but then he looked away again, down the road. Thirty seconds later he stepped onto the number 13 bus and was gone.

I flew through the house, jamming clothes, toiletries, a nightie, a towel and food into a bag. I had no idea how long a private abortion would take or how long I’d have to be in the clinic. I didn’t know anyone who’d had an abortion so had no idea what it would cost, never mind entail but I didn’t want to think too much about the latter. I already hated myself for what I was planning on doing. As for the cost, I just had to hope that £600 would be enough to cover it and get me a cheap flight abroad because, if James ever found out what I’d done, I needed to be as far away as possible.

I was standing in the sewing room, the diary and advert in one hand, a pile of notes in the other when I heard it – the sound of a fist thumping on glass. I threw my secret spoils at my bag, tossed a paint-stained sheet over it, crept onto the landing and pressed myself up against the banister. The noise was coming from the front door. Had James come home early? I dropped to my stomach and inched my way across the landing. If I could just get to the top of the stairs I’d be able to see.

I shuffled forwards slowly, freezing each time there was another knock. I was almost there when the metallic clatter of the letter box made me jump. I peered down the stairs. A white card lay on the front mat. A ‘sorry you were out’ card from the gas man.

Thirty seconds later I was on my feet again, this time with my bag in one hand, the key in the other, and speeding down the stairs.

‘Please,’ I prayed as the tip of the key jiggled against the lock. ‘Please fit, please fit, please—’

The door swung open.

I ran down the pathway and along the street and didn’t look back. Not as the evil white eyes of the batik wall hanging were burning into the back of my head. Not as an upstairs window slammed shut in protest at my escape. And not when the vague memory of a yellow piece of paper fluttering to the floor of my sewing room as I tossed my diary at my bag flashed across my mind and then disappeared.

Chapter 24

‘Good night?’ Brian peers at me through bleary eyes as the alarm clock beep-beep-beeps 6 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 tablets you’re on.’

‘Of course not. There was a lovely late-night coffee shop just around the corner from the theatre 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 unfocussed. ‘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 blonde hair and his white towelling 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.’ 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 Greys 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 rumours that—’

‘Danny.’

‘Yes?’

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 Greys have 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 goodbye.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Danny says again. ‘Ella overheard me and Keish talking about going to Greys 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 Greys? 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 heard me talking to a mate about going to Greys
and she got the impression that Keisha wasn’t coming and thought that if she turned up in a miniscule dress and a load of slap,’ he smirks, ‘that she could pull 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 their 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 paedo 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.

He’s right. I hate to admit it but he is. Where
did
I think Charlotte was on a Saturday night?

I know exactly what I thought – that she was staying in London in an over-priced 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 backwards, grasping at the air but there’s nothing to hold onto, nothing to steady myself with. ‘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 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 Greys
I’ll slap a lawsuit on you faster than Red Rum ended up in a dog food factory.’

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 photofit? 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 alright, Sue?’ Danny asks.