The Accident (29 page)

‘Who’re you talking to, Dan?’ A heart-shaped face framed by a mass of blonde 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?’

‘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.’

‘Just one thing before I go.’

‘Yeah.’

I could confront him. I could tell him that, unless he tells me the truth about what happened in Greys
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.’

Chapter 25

‘Keisha?’ I prod the letterbox 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 with a thin grey cotton dressing gown hanging from her shoulders. Her hair is wild and frizzy and, make-up free, she looks impossibly young. I let go of the letterbox as she draws near and stand up. The door opens a second later.

‘Sue! What are you doing here?’

‘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 window and reaches for the blinds. For a second I think she’s going to open them – it’s a beautiful day outside – instead she parts two slats with her fingers and peers outside.

‘Did anyone see you, Sue? Come here, I mean.’

‘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 towards the tiny galley kitchen at the other end of the flat.

‘Keisha.’ I go after her. ‘Is everything okay?’

She glances towards the front door then motions for me to step into the kitchen and shut the door behind me. As I turn to pull it to 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!’

A jam jar tumbles from the cupboard, it hits a glass which rolls off the counter and explodes onto the tiled flooring showering Keisha’s bare feet with a thousand tiny shards.

‘Fuck!’ She hops backwards 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 A&E.’

‘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 towards the window and the street outside. ‘It wouldn’t be any trouble. It would only take—’

‘I told you I’m fine.’

‘Keisha, I couldn’t forgive myself I left you here and—’

‘I’m not going to the fucking hospital!’

Neither of us say 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 that.’ She glances at the blinds and slips lower in her seat.

‘Is everything okay?’ I glance towards 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 covers herself, ‘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 …’

‘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 looks down at her hands. There’s 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.

‘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.’

‘Sssh.’ He strokes my hair and lets me cry onto his shoulder. ‘Sssh, sssh, sssh.’

Sobs continue to wrack my body but I’m soothed by the pressure of his hand on my head and the soft sound of his voice in my ear. It reminds me of scooping Charlotte up when she was a toddler and had a nasty fall or bump. I’d press her to me and stroke her hair until her tears dried up.

‘That’s it,’ Brian says as I shift in his arms so I can press a tissue to my nose. ‘We don’t want to upset Charlotte, do we?’

We’re in the hospital. I asked Brian to drive me straight here after I’d visited the care home. I was terrified of leaving Charlotte alone in case she died too.

‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ Brian says as he helps me into the chair next to Charlotte’s bed and presses a box of tissues into my lap. ‘It was too sudden, Mary said.’

She said the same to me. One minute Mum was right as rain, shuffling her way from the dining room to her bedroom with Mary at her side, propping up her elbow, and the next she was a crumpled heap on the floor. ‘She just collapsed,’ Mary said. ‘There were no signs, no warning at all, she just went.’ A doctor was called but, even though he arrived within ten minutes it was too late. She’d already gone.