The First Time I Saw Your Face (35 page)

They both heard the kettle whistle.

‘You got the kettle on?’ Mr Armstrong asked, his tone hopeful.

‘No.’ Mack tried to back into the house.

‘All right, all right,’ Mr Armstrong grumbled, ‘I’m going. Don’t understand this though.’ He was looking at the magazine again. ‘Have to ask someone else how this can happen.’ Mack saw him look towards the shop.

Nooooo. Think, think, before Sonia the bloodhound arrives.

He moved closer to Mr Armstrong. That bloody kettle was still whistling. ‘Listen, it’s a long story. Can I trust you?’

Jennifer reached the bottom of the stairs. They were still talking. Slowly, slowly, she moved into the sitting room. That man out there with Mr Armstrong, the one who’d held her in his arms, all those lovely things he’d said to get her on to that stage, his caresses … who was he? She felt sick as she rushed for the kitchen, aware there was a breeze coming from somewhere. The kettle started to whistle. She stopped moving.

What will you do if he comes back in to turn it off?

There was a noise as if the front door was being opened and she held her breath, but he did not appear and she heard the talking resume. She forced herself to go into the kitchen, her heart leaping at the sight of the open door and then she was running along the back lane, the passport clutched in her hand.

‘Of course you can trust me,’ Mr Armstrong said, his eyes suddenly alert.

‘OK then, well … it’s police work. The woman in that magazine is the real Matt Harper. I’ve taken her name. I’m working undercover.’

‘Undercover? Why?’

Mack let his gaze drift to the shop. ‘Illegal immigrants,’ was all he said. It was enough. Mr Armstrong was almost jubilant. ‘I knew it, I knew it,’ he said, ‘I knew he was an illegal.’

‘Shhush, shush,’ Mack looked up at the bedroom window. ‘Not a word, Mr Armstrong, or you’ll blow open the whole case. I have to go now, there’s some … some surveillance to do.’

‘Got you,’ Mr Armstrong said, and he was back down the path in a positively sprightly way.

Mack went inside and rushed through to the kitchen to turn the kettle off. Good job the back door was open or the place would be like a Turkish bath. That was close. He needed to get upstairs now and tell Jen everything, sod the tea. Couldn’t afford any more neighbours
lumbering by. He bit his lip and was amazed that he could laugh. What were the freakin’ odds on Matt Harper being a woman? Or fate dropping the news in Mr Armstrong’s hot little hands? Life was stranger than fiction, sure enough.

He bounded up the stairs, practising again what he was going to say and saw Jennifer was still in the bathroom. He sat on the bed and waited for her, grinning at the memories of what they’d done under that duvet. And on top of it. He was still feeling ill at the thought of what she would do when he told her, but it would come good, he could sense it.

She was taking a long time in that bathroom. ‘Jen,’ he called. No reply. He went and gave the door a tentative push. Empty. He looked in the spare room, not sure if she was messing about, playing some kind of hide-and-seek. He went back to his room and opened the wardrobe. That was when he noticed her socks on his bedroom floor. Only her socks.

He spun around and saw that his jacket wasn’t on the back of the chair any more, but flung behind the door. He rushed to it and picked it up.

No, please, not that, please, not now.

He knew before he put his hand in the pocket that his passport would not be there.

Jennifer was running and stumbling out of the village and as she reached Peter Clarke’s bench, she looked behind her. Climbing on to it, she took her phone from her bag
and tried to ring home, but her fingers were trembling so much it took her a few attempts. She looked behind her again.

It was Brenda who answered. ‘Hello, love,’ she said, ‘it’s all right, we didn’t expect—’

‘Stop talking, Mum,’ she shrieked into the phone, ‘listen, just listen, I need you to go to the computer and look up a name.’ She ignored the way her mother was trying to butt back in. ‘Mack Stone, look it up for me.’

She could hear Bryony in the background and then her mother again.

‘Mack what?’ her mother said, sounding out of breath.

‘Stone, please hurry, Mum.’

‘I’m looking, I’m looking, and Bry’s on her way. What’s happened, love, has he hurt you? Has he—’

‘What, Mum, what have you found?’

Her mother’s voice was panicky. ‘He’s a journalist. Freelance down in Bath, but before that on one of the tabloids.’

Jennifer felt the phone drop from her hand and clatter off the bench and the world tilted around her and she was on the ground on her knees. She slammed the bench with her hands, registering on some level that she was hurting herself, but still doing it. She was shrieking something, and then the thought that he might be coming after her got her back on her feet. She ran for home, all those scenes in bed playing in her head; that time on the beach, the way he always put his hand over hers. None of it real. She had been nothing to him, just a way to get to Cress.

What had she told him, what had she blabbed?

She turned on her ankle and fell, and then she was aware of nothing until Bryony was lifting her under the arms and half-carrying, half-dragging her towards the car.

CHAPTER 34

Mack told the taxi to wait where the track divided and, as he walked towards the farm, saw Ray coming towards him. There was no trace of the usual ambling, relaxed attitude.

When Ray lifted his head it looked as if, since yesterday evening, the muscles under his skin had sagged.

He halted a few feet from Mack.

‘You’re unwelcome here,’ he said in a voice devoid of any emotion. ‘Get gone.’ Mack felt his passport hit him on the arm as Ray threw it. Down it went on the path, and he did not bend to pick it up.

‘Ray, please. I need to know how Jen is. I need to talk to her.’

‘Don’t you …’ Ray said it with such force it made Mack flinch. ‘Don’t you talk about her.’ His hands, down by his sides, were working away at themselves, clenching and unclenching.

‘Please, Ray, I can explain. I know what it looks like—’

‘It looks like what it is.’ Ray laughed bitterly. ‘You used
her. You used all of us. Coming into our lives. Coming into my home. Lying.’

‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

Ray turned his head away, the look of disgust unmistakable and Mack rushed on, the words tumbling out. ‘I mean that’s what it was at the start and, Ray, I’m so, so sorry about that … but it changed, I changed. I fell in love with Jen. I know you won’t believe me. But I was going to tell her the truth, just before she found that passport; I was going to tell her the truth.’

Ray started to walk away.

‘No,’ Mack shouted, running and getting in front of him. He put his hand out to try and make contact, and Ray looked down at it and then up at him from under his brows.

‘Don’t touch me.’

‘I just need to know how she is.’

‘How she is? How do you think she is?’ Ray looked out over the fields, but Mack felt he was seeing some other place. ‘What have you done to us? I thought the worst day of my life was sitting in that hospital knowing that people would look at my lovely Jen and only see that scarring. That her life was going to be so different from what she had planned. But Bren said we had to pull ourselves together, be positive, we could have been putting her in a box.’ Ray shook his head as if dislodging that image. ‘So how do we get her back on her feet now, Mr Stone? She’s just lying there asking why someone would treat her like this. That’s how she bloody is.’

Mack pictured that and could not bear it. ‘Please, Ray, let me go to her, talk to her, explain everything. I really love her. Last night was real. Tell her it wasn’t all about fooling her … I never meant to do this … I mean; I did before I knew her. No, I mean—’

‘You can’t even get your story straight for yourself. You used my daughter to get to Cressida. For money.’

‘No,’ Mack said trying again to reach out and touch Ray, ‘not for money, there was another reason. My mother—’

‘You must have been laughing up your sleeve at us. Thick northerners, so easy to win over. We’re not even real people to you are we, so far from London?’

‘Ray, I had to do this job to get my mother—’

‘Stop lying to me,’ Ray shouted and the ferocity of the words from a man who had always seemed so gentle made Mack dumb. ‘Look me in the bloody eye,’ Ray said, ‘and tell me this wasn’t about making money for somebody who’s already rich. Go on.’

Mack hung his head.

‘What, suddenly lost that famous gift of the gab?’ Ray stooped, picked up Mack’s passport and came and shoved it in his pocket. ‘Callous enough lying to her, but making her believe you were attracted to her? That’s evil. Now get gone. Danny’s away off taking Louise to visit her other granny; he’s no idea what’s happened, but he’ll be back soon. I don’t want him put away for what he might do to you.’

Ray started walking again and Mack knew there was nothing else he could do, not now. He returned to the
taxi, stopping and looking down at the farm before he got in to try and commit the fields and the trees and the river to his memory. On the drive to the airport he imagined Jennifer lying dry-eyed on her bed, believing that all he’d done was use her and that she meant nothing to him, and it seared through him like a burn.

When O’Dowd’s phone rang, he ignored it. Probably angling to see if Mack had heard anything yet. He would get a flight to Bristol and a taxi to Bath and think what to do next. But what was there to do other than confirm Rory Sylvester was Cressida’s lover? He wound down the window, hoping the fresh air would make him feel less queasy.

At the airport he stood in the queue to buy a ticket and suddenly felt an arm come around his neck and pull him backwards.

‘You shit,’ Doug said, hauling him round and then smacking him right across the face, ‘you conniving little shit.’ He no longer looked like a clown – his face flushed with colour, his eyes stormy.

People were looking, moving away hurriedly, and Mack tried to open his mouth to speak, but Doug hit him again. There was blood on his tongue and suddenly a security guard was piling towards them.

‘Break it up, break it up,’ he was shouting, ‘I’m going to …’ He stared at Doug. ‘Hey, is that you? Doug Bythorn?’

Doug stared back. ‘Why, Len, yeah, yeah it is. Long time no see.’ Doug held out a hand for shaking, still
keeping a firm hold on Mack with the other one. ‘How’s it gannin’?’

‘Champion, Doug. You’re doing great too, seen some of your stuff.’ The guard was smiling, but he looked at the gathering crowd and then at Mack. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Tabloid journalist,’ Doug said, giving Mack a shake. ‘I won’t tell you what he’s done to a good friend of mine, lovely lass, but beating’s too good for him.’

The guard tutted. ‘I’m sorry about that, Doug … but I can’t let you fight in here. You’ll have to go outside.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Place up the side of the building, where I go for a sly tab: it’s a CCTV blind spot.’

Mack felt himself being dragged towards the exit, the crowd parting before them. He didn’t struggle; he deserved what was coming.

Doug pushed him up against the wall, his feet scuffing aside the cigarette stubs, and Mack waited for the pain to start.

‘I liked you, I bloody liked you,’ Doug said putting his hands round Mack’s neck, and Mack remembered that night when he’d seen Doug squeezing the life out of the steering wheel.

‘I liked you too,’ he rasped back and felt Doug’s grip tighten.

‘Bloody liar, you were laughing at me, but it’s Jen I’m doing this for.’ Mack couldn’t breathe properly. He had spots in front of his eyes.

‘Kill me, Doug,’ he croaked, ‘you’d be doing me a favour.’

Doug gave him a shake and then, confusingly, his grip started to loosen.

‘You bastard,’ Doug said, removing one hand from Mack’s neck to wipe over his own eyes. ‘I threw you two together all the time. It’s my fault, all my fault.’

‘No Doug, listen—’

Doug removed his other hand from Mack’s neck. ‘I’m not going to touch you any more, you’re dirty, a virus. Get on your plane.’ He gave Mack a final shove and strode away.

Mack got himself back in the queue for the tickets, the security guard shadowing him, and he was nearly at the desk when he felt himself being pulled backwards again.

‘Say your prayers, scumbag,’ Danny shouted.

When he finally made it on to the plane, the stewardess came up the aisle to hand him a paper towel with bits of ice in it. He sat and held it to the cut on his forehead and just let the blood from his nose dribble on to his shirt. He wasn’t sure that one of his ribs wasn’t broken, but he had escaped lightly. If Bryony hadn’t pulled Danny away he was under no illusions about what would have happened. The fury coming off the guy was like another fist.

He leaned forward and got the sick bag out of the pocket in front of him and retched into it. People were staring, and he was in real pain, but he knew it was nothing compared to what Jennifer was feeling. He retched again.

‘Rough stag night?’ the woman next to him asked.

CHAPTER 35

Jen sat on the side of the bath, her legs shaking, and remembered being in Matt’s bathroom before she’d found that passport.

No, not Matt. Mack.

All those lies, all that acting. Those wonderful things he’d said to her. Had he been acting in bed too? She couldn’t think about that.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Jen, are you in there?’ her mother said.

Her mother had been right all along, and she hadn’t wanted to hear it. She was too busy grabbing at that shiny strand of hope he’d dangled in front of her. How could she have thought he would find her attractive? She imagined him laughing on the phone to his friends in … in where, where did he come from?

‘Jen,’ her mother shouted, ‘answer me.’

She looked at the toothbrushes in the mug on the shelf above the sink and at her father’s razor. Creature of habit, Ray, he’d never used the electric one Danny had bought
him. She got up and put her hand on it. Only once before she’d thought about this, a couple of months after coming out of hospital when something had clicked in her mind and she’d realised that how her face looked was permanent.