The Make (16 page)

‘Look, can we drop this?’ wheezed Gracie.

‘Water?’

Gracie nodded and he poured from the jug.

‘So, dropping it. Fine. What did you find out this morning?’

‘Nothing much.’ Gracie’s eyes were watering. What the hell was he
playing
at? She had to wrench her mind away from what he’d just said, and from the images that had started dancing in her brain as a result of it. ‘Sandy Cole’s a bit of a curiosity, though,’ she managed.

‘Sandy? The girl at the hospital, the one who’s engaged to George?’

‘That’s the one. She sent George a lot of emails, saying what a great time she’d had with him.’

‘Well . . . so what? Obviously they’ve got closer than a client/worker relationship calls for, which happens, and now they’re engaged.’

‘Yeah, only . . .’ Gracie hesitated, thinking. ‘. . . The thing is, Mum didn’t have a clue about their engagement.’

‘Maybe they wanted to keep it secret until they were absolutely sure?’

‘What, George keep a secret? George could blab for England.’

‘He can’t blab now.’

They looked at each other. That much was true. Chillingly so.

‘And maybe he just didn’t get a chance to tell Suze about it before the accident.’

‘I dunno.’

Their starters came – chicken liver pâté and Melba toast. Gracie started eating, thinking that life was exceedingly strange. A week ago, the last thing she expected to be doing on Christmas Eve was eating lunch with her estranged husband. But actually . . . and this was the disturbing thing . . . she realized that being with Lorcan felt okay. She hadn’t expected that.

‘I’m going in to see George tonight, and I hope Sandy’ll be there,’ said Gracie. ‘I’d like to talk to her, find out exactly what the deal is with her and George.’

‘The deal is, they met through the escort work and now they’re engaged and George never got a chance to tell Suze.’

‘I dunno.’

‘Will you stop saying that?’

‘She just doesn’t seem like George’s type, that’s all.’

‘Gracie, you don’t have a clue what George’s type is. You don’t even
know
George now.’

‘Yeah, but I
did
know him,’ retorted Gracie.

‘People change.’

‘Do they? Really?’ She looked at his face intently. Wondered if that was possible. If what had once been unworkable could possibly ever work out any differently. She thought of Harry, little Harry, who had always been such a delight, and now it hit her how much she had missed him –
and
George, come to that. Now George was so ill. And Harry, gentle, handsome Harry, was in trouble up to his neck – that much was obvious.

‘So what is George’s type?’ Lorcan asked her.

Gracie shrugged. ‘I don’t think the George I knew could ever be a one-to-one “great romance” sort of person. Even as a kid he was everybody’s pal and nobody’s best friend. He never had any little girlfriends back then. He had
friends
, male and female. Harry, on the other hand, had proper dates when he was nine, ten years old, hardly out of short trousers. It was hysterical. The girls were practically storming the door to get hold of him. It was a big family joke.’

‘But you haven’t clapped eyes on either of them for nearly fifteen years,’ he pointed out.

‘I know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe George has changed.’

‘Maybe
Sandy
has changed him.’

‘Yeah, and maybe not.’

Lorcan prodded the pâté with his knife. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? Is this crap or what?’

Gracie had to raise a thin smile at that. ‘It’s crap,’ she agreed. And she didn’t have much of an appetite any more, anyway.

Chapter 35

Christmas Eve

‘See? Result,’ said Gracie as she viewed George’s bulging inbox that afternoon.

It was half past three and nearly dark outside. After their mediocre restaurant lunch, she had insisted on coming back to the flat so that she could see if George had mail. Lorcan had insisted he was coming with her, and to be honest she wasn’t sorry about that. The heavy was still outside, sitting in his car. She was protected on all sides, and that was – much against her better judgement – a nice feeling.

‘You know, you’re not supposed to open random emails. Might admit a virus and fuck up the system,’ said Lorcan casually, standing behind her as she sat in front of the screen.

‘So bloody what?’ flung back Gracie, clicking on the first. ‘In the overall scale of things, one fucked-up computer isn’t that important. What
is
important is finding out what’s been going on with George.’

‘Yeah, but if you balls it up you won’t get any more emails coming through, and if you think you’ll get an IT fixer out on Christmas Eve, you got another think coming.’

‘Shut up, Lorcan.’ He was right of course. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

Lorcan sat down on George’s bed. ‘Anything?’ he asked.

‘Messages of sympathy,’ Gracie frowned, deleting those.

‘Most won’t answer at all,’ said Lorcan, lying back on the bed, arms folded behind his head. ‘I told you.’

‘Shut the fuck
up
, Lorcan.’

‘I’ve missed this, all the cheery banter. All your sweet little ways. Telling me to shut the fuck up every five minutes. All that marital bliss bollocks.’

Gracie ignored him and kept opening emails.

So sorry to hear about George,
they said.

Give him my love
, they said, with a smiley face.

Get well soon
, they said, with many kisses.

Then she opened another and it was all in huge capital letters, screaming at her from the screen:

‘Look at this,’ said Gracie excitedly, and Lorcan hauled himself off the bed and peered at the screen.

‘Looks like a result.’

Gracie clicked on ‘Reply’ and typed quickly. Then she pressed ‘Send’
.
She scrolled through the other emails, clicking on and deleting them as she went. Then she went to ‘Old’ and scrolled through those. ‘Sandy sent George a lot of emails.’

‘Well, you’d expect that.’

Gracie opened a few and read them. ‘She’s hellishly keen by the look of these.’

‘You’d expect that too.’

‘Look at this one.
Hope you liked the flowers.
She sent
George
flowers?’

‘Well, why not? Equality.’

‘Yeah, but George? He was never in touch with his feminine side. Hey.’ Gracie smacked her forehead. ‘I think I saw those damned flowers. Roses. They were dead by the time I got here.’

Gracie scrolled through a few more new emails and then exited the programme. She pushed away from the desk and stood up.

‘What now?’ asked Lorcan.

‘We wait, and we hope Jackie Sullivan checks her emails more often than I do.’

Lorcan looked at the bed. He looked at Gracie. ‘What we were discussing over lunch,’ he said, and caught her wrist in his hand. ‘We could—’

‘No, I don’t think we could,’ said Gracie, trying to pull away.

‘
I
think we could,’ said Lorcan, and gave a tug.

Gracie was jerked forward, her knees striking the edge of the bed and throwing her off-balance. She landed half on the bed and half on Lorcan.

‘This is a very bad idea,’ said Gracie as his arms went round her.

He shrugged and held on tighter. ‘Think of it as a farewell bonk,’ he said.

‘How romantic,’ sneered Gracie, feeling more than a bit breathless at this close contact. He was very warm, and it felt sort of
nice
snuggled up against him.

‘You want romantic? I can do that.’ Now his mouth was dangerously close to her own.

‘Wait!’ said Gracie. Lorcan paused. ‘What’s the point of this?’ she demanded. ‘We’ll get together again, and then we’ll just tear each other to bits . . .’

‘We could try not to,’ he suggested, kissing her cheek.

‘We’d fail,’ she sighed.

‘Defeatist.’

‘
Realist
, actually.’

‘We could do a deal. Make it a rule to play nice. To compromise, meet each other halfway. Do you think we could do that?’

‘I dunno. Could
you
?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, and kissed her very lightly on the lips.

Oh God I’m in trouble here
, she thought.

‘Maybe we should talk about it,’ said Gracie, almost mesmerized by the brilliant blue of his eyes.

‘Maybe.’

‘Right.’ With a conscious effort, Gracie hauled herself up and away from him. This time, he let her go. She stood up, smoothed down her clothes. She stared down at him sternly, despite her legs feeling as if they were just about to dissolve with sheer lust. ‘But talk first, sex after, okay?’

‘Okay,’ sighed Lorcan, sitting up.

‘I’ll make us some tea,’ said Gracie, and swept out of the room and down the hall.

* * *

Jackie Sullivan replied three-quarters of an hour later, while Gracie and Lorcan were sitting in the lounge watching
Santa Claus the Movie
on the telly and eating fried egg sandwiches. ‘Could do with some decorations in here,’ said Lorcan. ‘Lights. Maybe a tree.’

‘I hate all that stuff.’

‘I know. You and the Grinch, separated at birth.’

It had always been Lorcan who bought the tree, decorated their apartment over the casino with tasteless swags of tinsel and bunches of mistletoe. Lorcan’s family delighted in Christmas, whereas Gracie’s much smaller clan – her mother and dad in particular – had only ever used the occasion to get pissed and start fighting. She remembered so strongly, even after all this time, sitting on the stairs with George and Harry and listening to the traditional pre-Christmas shrieking row going on downstairs.

Those two should never have been together in the first place
, she thought.

She looked across at Lorcan, slumped there on the sofa, and thought that maybe she’d been repeating patterns of behaviour learned in her youth, in her own marriage. Like her mother and father, she and Lorcan had always fought tooth and nail.

She shuddered. No, they were better apart. They ought to divorce now, wipe the slate clean, start again. She had the papers right here in her bag. She could sign them, hand them to him right now, say take it to the courts, it’s finished. Only . . . she kept thinking about what he’d said. That they could try, they could talk.

‘Whoever invented Christmas needs shagging,’ said Gracie, and phoned the garage to ask when her car was going to be ready. The phone rang and rang. No one picked up.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said loudly.

‘Problem?’

‘I’m calling the garage. No answer.’

Lorcan looked at her wide-eyed. ‘Gracie. Are you completely mad? It’s Christmas Eve. No one is working, and no one gives a shit about your tyres; they’re all headed home to be with their families. Give it a few days, maybe there’ll be someone about.’

Gracie gave up. Hearing the ping of an email arriving in George’s inbox, she hopped to her feet and went through to George’s bedroom to check it out. Gracie’s excitement rose as she saw it was from Jackie. She read the email, and quickly replied, then logged off and went back into the lounge.

‘Anything?’ asked Lorcan, yawning broadly.

‘Maybe,’ said Gracie. ‘Jackie Sullivan and her daughter are calling over at ten. I’m hoping they can shed some light on what’s going on with Harry.’
Please God
, she thought.

She sat down and looked distractedly at the movie for a while.

‘There are mince pies in the fridge,’ she offered after a few minutes.

Lorcan gave her a wide-eyed look. ‘You bought mince pies? Gracie, what next? Stollen? Christmas cake? Turkey and all the trimmings? Chestnuts roasting on an open fire?’

‘I’ll roast
your
chestnuts in a minute.’

‘What
are
you doing for lunch tomorrow, anyway?’

‘Same as always,’ said Gracie. ‘Chicken salad.’

‘That’s my girl.’ He stood up and held out a hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go roll the dice.’

‘Pardon?’ Gracie stared up at him in puzzlement. Was he trying to get her back into bed again? And did she
want
that? Oh, she did. Shameful to admit it, but she did. Sod the talking. She really, really wanted to sleep with Lorcan again, even if it
was
for the very last time.

‘You got a dress with you? Something presentable?’ He looked down at her. ‘You used to have that black wrap dress you took with you when you were travelling on business.’

‘I have it.’ The crepe jersey dress, a great old workhorse of a garment, was in her bag in George’s room.

‘I can’t go out,’ said Gracie. ‘I told you. Jackie Sullivan’s coming.’

‘I know that. We’ll be back in plenty of time. Go put your dress on, Gracie. I’m going to show you my casino.’

George and Harry

DECEMBER

Chapter 36

George was getting very used to the escort biz now. Harry and George had worked their way through a vast array of women since George first had his business brainwave in front of the telly one drink-and-pizza-fuelled evening. George prided himself that they were doing a good job, researching their clients’ interests, studying the etiquette book they’d got from the grunge shop, dressing well, being polite, making the ladies feel good about themselves.

He knew damned well there was
something
going on with Harry and the cougar – he couldn’t think what, she was old enough to be Harry’s mother, after all – but hey, so long as Harry continued to pull his weight with their many other clients, that was entirely Harry’s business.

This evening Harry was with the cougar again, and George was in an Italian restaurant awaiting the arrival of Ms Sandy Cole, who had once again requested his services. She had also requested that they meet here, as usual; she specifically asked not to be collected from her home in Maida Vale, which was good – it saved George the bother of schlepping all the way over there. And also made him think that someone was at home, someone she didn’t want to have to explain him to.

Maybe her parents.

Maybe her husband.

Whatever, it was her business, not his. His business was to charm, to entertain, and, if requested, to bonk. No more, no less. That was the deal.

Sandy arrived right on time. She was a pretty young thing – around twenty-two, he guessed – and skinny, with long ash-blonde hair, intense brown eyes and a closed-off, defeated, almost childish air about her.

‘Hi George,’ she said, coming up to the table. They’d seated him near the bogs tonight, and he’d protested, but the place was packed, there was nowhere else. It wasn’t the sort of place he’d have chosen for a romantic night out, but the choice had been hers so he had to make the best of it.

He stood up. ‘Hi Sandy,’ he asked.

She nodded and they air-kissed and sat down, Sandy beaming happily, George wondering not for the first time what a young, pretty girl like this needed with an escort.

‘What would you like to drink?’ asked George, as the waiter came over with the menus.

‘White wine,’ said Sandy. ‘Please.’

‘Bottle of white,’ said George, and the waiter rushed off.

‘This is a nice place,’ lied George, and started giving her the patter he did so well. Soon she was laughing and chatting to him, relaxing. ‘What do you fancy?’ he asked, opening the menu and perusing the goods on offer.

‘The penne,’ said Sandy.

‘Good choice, I’ll have that too,’ said George, and gave the waiter their order when he came back with the wine.

‘I meant to tell you last time we met,’ said Sandy.

‘Tell me what?’

‘That you’re better looking than your photo on the website,’ said Sandy.

‘Thanks,’ said George, surprised. He wasn’t used to being complimented on his looks. Harry fielded all of those, as a rule.

‘I like photos but they are so one-dimensional,’ said Sandy. She pulled a tiny digital camera out of her bag and placed it on the table. ‘Brought mine tonight, thought we could have one taken together if that’s all right . . .?’

‘Sure it is.’

‘Photos don’t show the life-force, do they? You’ve got a lot of life-force.’

‘Well, there’s a lot of me to
have
a lot of life-force,’ said George with a smile.

‘Don’t put yourself down. You’re gorgeous.’

‘Well, so are you.’

‘Nah, I’m not. I’m a dull little office mouse; nothing exciting ever happens to me.’

‘What did you say your job was?’ asked George, thinking that he was in for a long evening. And he really should have made a note of her job last time they met, even if she had bored him stiff; women loved it when you remembered stuff about them.

‘I’m an administrative assistant in dental supplies.’ She smiled then. ‘Told you I was dull.’

‘So what does an administrative assistant do all day?’

‘I take telephone orders from dentists. Drills. Mouthwash. Bibs. Sterilizers. Been there for five years now.’

Yep, that was dull all right. George looked at her and decided it was time to pile on the old charm. ‘You know what I thought when we first met?’

‘No. What?’

‘That you were too young and pretty to need an escort’s services. That you must have guys queuing at the door.’

‘Ha! I wish.’ She sipped her wine and gave him a little sideways look. ‘But thanks for saying that.’

‘I mean it.’

‘Sure you do.’

Silence fell between them. Dean Martin was giving it some ‘
Amore
’ in the background, and there was the happy buzz of conversation all around them. Waiters were shooting back and forth from kitchen to tables, people were coming and going to the loos; they were right on the flight path here and that was pretty damned annoying. George got his mind off his annoyance and concentrated instead of giving this – yes, all right, she
was
dull – girl another scintillating evening.

‘So tell me some more about yourself,’ he said, leaning forward, giving her the ‘come on, I’m keen’ body language.

‘Oh, there’s nothing much to tell. I’m single. Live at home with my parents. Go to work, come home, you know how it is.’

‘And you just fancied a few nights out?’

‘It’s my birthday,’ she said, and blushed, and buried her nose in her glass again.

Fuck, how sad is that?
thought George.

Their food arrived. The waiter brandished a large pepper mill at them, then hurried off.

‘Well, let’s celebrate that,’ said George with a wink. He lifted his glass and clinked it against hers. ‘Happy birthday, Sandy Cole.’

When Sandy got home, Noel was waiting for her and he was in a bad mood, just as she’d known he would be. He didn’t like her going out. The minute Sandy put her key in the door she was full of apprehension. She went into the shabby little lounge where he was sprawled out on the cheap moquette sofa. Dumped her bag and coat on a chair. The air was thick with the scent of cold pizza, beer and weed. He had a spliff in his mouth and the telly was roaring away. He looked up at her expectantly.

‘Where you been then?’ asked Noel.

Sandy was staring at the telly, acting casual. ‘Molly’s,’ she said. ‘I told you.’

‘It’s late.’

‘We got talking, you know what she’s like.’ Sandy knew that Molly would cover for her; Molly was a good friend. She knew he’d check, because he was bloody paranoid. He’d text Molly and say: Was Sandy with you tonight? And Molly would text back: Sure she was.

But he seemed satisfied. He turned his attention back to the telly, some moronic game show or other. Sandy stifled a sigh and looked at him. He was tall and well built, running to fat around the middle, but that was because he never did a fucking thing from one day to the next. He had thick brown hair, a long thin face, brows that almost joined in the middle, giving him a bad-tempered look at all times. Which sort of summed him up, didn’t it? Because he
was
bad-tempered all the time. And useless. And . . . sometimes, not often . . . he’d shove her, or tell her she couldn’t go out, or he’d check her phone and accuse her of having men in, which was an utter bloody
joke
, because he was always hanging around this place they rented together like a bad smell.

Rented together.
That was
also
a laugh. She paid the rent. He just bought ciggies and beer and a few takeaways when she wasn’t here to cook, because he couldn’t be arsed to do it himself. He had to be the laziest, scruffiest man she had ever met, and she felt that she’d been had, done over, made a fucking fool of, because he hadn’t been like this at first.

Her mum, with her excellent radar for losers, had warned her about him at the start. But back then of course Sandy had thought he was good-looking; she’d been in love with him; she had dreamed of them living together, maybe even getting married, having children.

Now, she was very careful to take her pill, the pills she had to hide away from him because he wanted them to ‘start a family’, when what he
really
meant was that he wanted to keep her tied up indoors with a baby, didn’t want her going down the shops or even outside the frigging
door
. This house, which once had fuelled all her girlish dreams, was now her prison. And he hadn’t bought her a birthday card. Not even a
card.

‘I’m going on up,’ she said, and picked up her coat and bag and went upstairs.

She took a shower, soaping herself, thinking about the evening she’d spent with George, and how wonderful it was to be treated like a lady for a change. They’d eaten a lovely meal, chatted. There hadn’t been any sex . . . but there
could
have been. Feeling so resentful, so hemmed in as she did these days, she wished she
had
booked George for sex too. But it would have made her very late, and she was a bit afraid to go that far. Then she would really be what Noel kept accusing her of, she would really
be
a slapper, and he would have justification then in pushing her around, watching her when she was on the computer, checking her phone, even checking her
body
to make sure she hadn’t been with another man.

Chance would be a fine thing
, she thought as she dried herself and slipped on her robe.

But she’d had the chance, right there, tonight.

It was her birthday, and he hadn’t, the mean bastard, even bought her a card.

Next
time, she was going to make the leap. Go the extra mile. She thought of George, big, charming, smelling sweetly of some woody cologne, smartly dressed, making her laugh out loud. To have a man like that . . . and then she heard Noel laugh at something on the telly downstairs. It was a coarse, ugly sound. She went into the bedroom and crawled between the sheets. He wouldn’t come up for hours – all those spliffs and lying around all day meant he never slept well, and that meant she didn’t either. When he did come upstairs, she’d pretend – as she always did – to be asleep.

She closed her eyes and thought of George. She dreamed of leaving Noel, but she was too afraid of him to do it. His sudden outbursts of temper scared her. So she fantasized of another life, away from this one. Being George’s girl, strolling hand in hand with him down the high street, laughing, chatting. Looking at engagement rings in jeweller’s shop windows. Planning on getting married, setting up house together somewhere nice. Having a little boy who was dark-haired and chunky, like George. She fell asleep, half smiling, thinking about that.