The Accident (31 page)

‘Tell me what you know,’ I say softly.

‘Neither of us liked Mike the first time Keisha introduced him to us,’ she says. ‘He was old and overly friendly and there was something really sly about his eyes.’

I nod for her to continue.

‘But, after Keisha went off to find Danny, Mike offered to buy us some drinks. We thought he was on the pull, dirty old git, so figured we’d get the most expensive cocktails we could out of him before we did a runner. I had a …’ she dismisses the thought with a wave of her hand, ‘doesn’t matter what we had but while we were drinking them Mike started telling us how he was new to Brighton. He said he’d moved here from London to make a fresh start after splitting up with his boyfriend and losing his niece Martha to cancer. He said he really loved her, said she was like a daughter to him and that Charlotte reminded him of her. I thought that was a bit creepy but Charlotte thought it was sweet.’

That’s my daughter, always thinking the best of people.

‘So,’ Ella licks her lips then pops another cigarette into her mouth, ‘once we’d finished the cocktails I gave Charlotte a look like “let’s get out of here” but she ignored me and kept on talking to Mike. He bought us some more drinks and they kept talking – about his niece and his job as a photographer – which Charlotte thought was way cool – for ages. I thought we were going to spend the rest of the night chatting to his Royal Gayness,’ she shoots me a look. ‘Sorry, but he wasn’t bothered about talking to me, just her. Anyway, I only managed to drag her away when ‘Love it When You Lie’ came on and we went for a dance.’

‘Did you see him again?’

She shakes her head. ‘Not that night, no. But he was there the next time we went. Keisha wasn’t there that time and he just strolled up and said hello.’

‘So Charlotte and Mike became friends?’

‘Yeah.’ She shrugs. ‘That’s part of the reason why we fell out, the fact that she was getting all these new friends and hanging around premiership footballers in Greys and I felt like I wasn’t good enough for her anymore, like she was really up herself. I called her on it but she said she was just living her life and that it was cool to have a gay friend and that Mike was funny and gave her good advice on clothes and stuff.’

‘Clothes?’ A sick feeling rises from my stomach as I imagine my daughter in a changing room, parading around half naked in front of a man she barely knows. ‘What do you mean he gave her advice on clothes?’

‘He took her shopping.’ Ella pulls a face. ‘I know, I was totally jealous, I’m not even going to lie. He must have spent hundreds of pounds on her and got her all designer stuff – the proper labels and everything, not reject stuff from TK Maxx. It wasn’t just clothes either – he got her sunglasses, CDs, DVDs, loads of shit. Said it made him happy, like he was still buying stuff for Martha.’

Ella’s face is animated as she continues to describe, in minute detail, everything ‘Mike’ bought for my daughter. I recognize some of the descriptions – I saw them in Charlotte’s room and bought her explanation that they were fakes from a market stall at a car boot or love tokens from Liam – others I’ve never seen. The story is plausible enough, a recently bereaved single gay man in a city where he knows no one spots the doppelganger of his dead niece and showers her with presents in return for her company and yet, why do I feel like the temperature just dropped twenty degrees?

‘What does Mike look like, Ella?’

She shrugs. ‘Old.’

‘How old? As old as me?’

Ella screws up her eyes and scrutinizes me. ‘Probably, yeah.’

‘What else?’

‘He was just a bloke, an old bloke with grey in his hair, like any old bloke you see in the street.’

‘Think … please, it’s important. How tall was he? Was he fat or thin? What kind of clothes did he wear? He did wear any jewellery? What were his shoes like? Did he have a moustache, beard, glasses?’

‘Like I said,’ she twists in her seat and gazes across the park at a bunch of teenagers swinging back and forward on the children’s swings, ‘he just looked normal, apart from being really tall.’ She looks back at me. ‘He was probably about the same height as my dad.’

So he was about six foot four. ‘What else?’

‘He always looked smart – dark trousers and a shirt, that sort of thing. I never saw him in jeans. I don’t remember what shoes he wore.’ She glances back at the teenagers. ‘He had a watch, I think.’

‘And his build?’

She sighs. ‘Medium. He wasn’t fat and he wasn’t thin. And he didn’t wear glasses or have a moustache or beard,’ she adds before I can ask. ‘Oh yeah …’ she puts her feet up on the bench and hugs her knees. ‘His eyes were a really odd colour, kind of grey-ish and he had quite a big nose and a strange accent. Birmingham? Liverpool? I’m rubbish with accents but he definitely wasn’t from round here. That okay?’ She looks back at me but I can’t meet her gaze. I can’t tear my eyes away from the teenagers at the other end of the park. She’s just described James, twenty years after I last set eyes on him.

‘Sue?’ Out of my peripheral vision I can see Ella unclasping her legs. ‘You okay? You look weird.’

I was wrong about the school teacher Jamie Evans, but I’m not wrong about this. I can feel it in my bones, the marrow-deep certainty that, somewhere in Brighton and Hove, my ex-boyfriend is watching and laughing, proud of his newest role – bereaved gay man – delighted that he managed to wheedle his way into my daughter’s life right under my nose.

‘Did he ever touch her?’ I snap round to look at Ella. ‘Did he hurt Charlotte in any way?’

‘Why would he? I just told you, he bought her loads of stuff. He treated her like a princess.’

‘What was he blackmailing her about?’

‘Blackmailing her?’ She shakes her head. ‘Charlotte never said anything about that. Mike acted like he worshipped the ground she walked on – little miss “My dead niece”.’

‘Have you got his number? Or his address?’

‘No. Liam will though.’

‘Liam?’

‘Yeah,’ she looks at the surprised expression on my face and laughs, ‘Charlotte wasn’t going to have sex on her own in Mike’s flat, was she?’

Chapter 28

‘Sue?’ I can hear the concern in Brian’s voice. ‘Where on earth are you? You’ve been gone for hours.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I turn off the engine. All the curtains are open in Liam’s house but there’s no movement beyond any of the windows. ‘I got caught up at the funeral home.’

‘Really?’ The change in the tone of his voice is immediate. ‘Is that why they rang up to offer their condolences and ask when we’d like to come in?’

‘I …’ My brain scrabbles for a way out. ‘I haven’t been there yet.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I went for a walk along the beach instead. To clear my head.’

‘For three hours?’

‘Yes, three hours.’ There’s something about his tone that irritates me. ‘My mother just died for God’s sake, Brian! Is there a time limit on grief? Was there a motion passed in Parliament that you didn’t tell me about?’

It’s unfair but lashing out is easier than lying, even when it’s not deserved. And I’m so close to finding out what happened to Charlotte.

Brian says nothing for a very long time and I’m just about to take the phone from my ear to check whether he’s ended the call when—

‘Tell me where you are and I’ll come and collect you.’

He may as well have offered me the other cheek.

‘There’s no need. Really. I brought the car.’

‘Then I’ll join you. We’ll get a coffee. Have a talk.’

There’s a cough to my left and I remember that I’m not alone. Ella is tapping away at her phone like her life depends on it but I can tell by the hunch of her shoulders and the fact her body’s angled away from me that she finds this whole situation hideously awkward. And who can blame her? I asked her to come along to convince Liam to tell me the truth, not to bear witness to my marital problems.

‘I don’t want any company, Brian,’ I say and then I realize that’s exactly why he’s checking up on me. He’s not trying to control me, he’s worried. My mother has just died, he thinks I’m suffering from depressive anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder and I’m insisting he leave me alone. He probably thinks I’m about to do a Sylvia Plath and walk into the sea.

‘I’m sorry,’ I soften my voice. ‘I know you’re just trying to look after me but this is something I need to get through on my own and—’

‘But—’

‘Not forever, just today. I just need to get through today on my own. I’ll be back by this evening. Please, Brian. Please trust me.’

‘Of course I trust you, Sue. I just don’t want you to—’

‘I’m not going to do anything silly,’ I say, even though I know there’s every chance I might do the opposite, depending on what Liam has to say. But I don’t feel silly. I feel like I’m regaining control of my life, twenty years too late. ‘Please Brian, I need to do this.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I understand. Just … please don’t stay out too late. Don’t make me worry unnecessarily.’

My heart twists in my chest. He is a good man. Despite everything he’s a good man and I’m lucky to have him in my life.

‘I love you, Brian.’

Ella squirms in her seat but I don’t care.

‘I love you too, Sue. Take care of yourself, okay and I’ll see you later.’

I end the call but I don’t immediately turn to Ella. Instead I stare out of the windscreen, at the thin blue line of sea on the horizon and I say a small prayer. Not to God, the Universe or anyone in particular but I ask for strength, courage and protection for my family. I ask for a twenty-year nightmare to be over.

‘Can I put the radio on,’ Ella asks, reaching towards the CD player, ‘if you’re just going to sit there and be weird. I can’t stand it when it’s quiet.’

I smile. ‘No need. We’re going to go and see Liam now and I hope you’ll do the talking.’

If Liam’s older sister was surprised to see his girlfriend’s mum and ex-best friend standing on the doorstep, she didn’t let on. Instead she pointed in the direction of Lewes Road and told us that he and Last Fight, his band, were rehearsing. She didn’t know what time they’d finish but suggested we wait in The Gladstone, the pub round the corner, where they always headed afterwards.

‘You didn’t have to get me a Diet Coke,’ Ella grumbles as we take a seat at one of the wooden tables in the back of the pub. ‘I’ve got ID you know.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Should you be telling me that?’

She grins and it strikes me how different she is from the first time we talked after Charlotte’s accident. The brittleness, the anger, the hurt – all gone. She’s like a little girl again, like the darling playmate Charlotte would bring home to bake cakes and decorate with fairy wings and sprinkles.

‘There he is!’ She points across the room.

Liam, surrounded by dark haired, similarly dressed young men, saunters across the pub, a guitar bag slung over his shoulder. He does a double take when he spots us.

‘Liam!’ I raise a hand and wave him over.

He nods then turns to his bandmates, says something I can’t make out and splits off from the pack.

‘Mrs Jackson.’ He looks at Ella and frowns questioningly. ‘Ella.’

‘She knows,’ she leans back in her chair and widens her eyes, ‘about you and Charlotte having sex at Mike’s house.’

‘What?’ He pales.

‘But she’s not angry,’ she adds quickly, pulling out the chair beside her. ‘She wants to know more about Mike. She thinks you might know something that could help Charlotte wake up.’

Liam glances at his bandmates, laughing and drinking, crowded around a table on the other side of the room.

‘Please.’ I force a smile. ‘I’m not angry. I promise. I just need to ask you a few questions.’

‘Okay.’ He reaches a tentative hand towards the chair next to me. ‘I can’t stay long, we’ve got band stuff to talk about.’

‘It was Charlotte’s idea,’ he says before I have chance to draw breath. ‘She was the one who pushed for us to have sex. I wanted to wait until she was sixteen and legal.’

I don’t believe that for one second but what Oli told us about the hotel room suggests that Charlotte was as keen as Liam, if not more.

‘Was she the one who suggested that you have sex in Mike’s house?’

‘No.’ He eyes our drinks. ‘Well, not straight away.’

‘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?’