The Villain’s Daughter (38 page)

‘And now Vita thinks that you’re losing your marbles.’

‘Pretty much.’ She waited a moment and then asked in a small voice, ‘Do you?’

‘No,’ he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder. ‘God, of course not! Don’t ever think that. You’ve been knocking on doors, searching for him all day. Then you have a row about him. I get it. I really do. He was bound to be on your mind.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, relieved. Somehow the fact that one person believed in her sanity was enough.

‘And that’s when you decided to leave?’

Iris pulled a face. ‘Not exactly. Vita got all . . . well, anxious about it. Not that I blame her, it must have seemed pretty nuts my rushing out into the street like that. But by then I’d had enough. I knew I was on the brink of another of
those
conversations and I just couldn’t face it and . . .’

He waited for her to go on. When she didn’t he said, ‘And?’

She took a deep breath. ‘And I then made it ten times worse by accusing Rick of collaborating with the Streets.’

‘Ouch,’ Guy said. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’

Iris groaned. ‘I wish I’d kept my big mouth shut. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me.’

‘Give it time,’ he said softly. ‘Once the dust has had time to settle . . .’

‘You think?’

‘She called me, didn’t she? She can’t hate you that much.’

Iris hoped it was true. She was quiet as Guy took a left, swung into the small car park belonging to Wilder’s and pulled up. He switched off the ignition and the lights but didn’t make any attempt to get out. The snow was falling faster now, obscuring their view out of the windscreen. He seemed lost in thought and it was a while before he turned to look at her again. ‘Is this all my fault?’

‘What do you mean?’ Iris said.

‘If you’d never met me, if we’d never talked, then . . .’

‘Then what?’ she said, suddenly worried that he was regretting ever having come to find her. ‘I’d still be in the same place, still looking for my father whether I’d met you or not.’

‘Would you?’

Iris thought back to that moment in the Hope & Anchor, to those few fateful seconds when Albert Jenks had leaned down and said those words:
Don’t you want to know where your daddy is?
‘Yes,’ she said firmly.

Guy leaned over the wheel and his face twisted. ‘But you don’t know what Terry Street’s really like.’

‘I’ve got a pretty good idea. If his sons are anything to go by . . .’

‘Except he’s smarter than his sons.’

‘He can’t be that smart,’ she said, with more courage than she felt. ‘Bearing in mind where he is.’

‘Clever enough to get away with the murder of my mother.’

Iris remembered the lean grey-haired man with the cold eyes and the scars on his throat. She shivered, wrapping her arms around her chest.

‘You’re not on your own,’ Guy said. ‘Don’t ever think that.’

Their eyes met and some kind of understanding passed between them. He smiled. ‘So, ready to face the world?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’

They got out of the car and walked across the snowy forecourt. When they were almost at the door, Guy reached out and slipped his hand into hers.

By ten o’clock the bar had filled up and there was barely space to move. Iris was sitting at a table near the back, picking distractedly at a plate of tapas whilst turning over the events of the day. Every now and again she delved into her bag, took out her phone and checked to see whether there were any messages. But no one, it appeared, had anything more to say to her.

Guy was making one of his regular circuits of the room, meeting and greeting the customers, making everyone feel welcome. She raised her eyes to follow his progress. It was easy to see why the place was so popular: the bar was friendly, laid-back, but it also had a buzz to it. It was Guy, she thought, who created the atmosphere, his presence like a fizzing current of electricity.

Iris sipped carefully on a glass of wine - after her recent indulgences she was taking it easy - and forced herself to look away. She didn’t want him to catch her staring. On a screen on the far wall, a clip of an old black and white movie was playing. She concentrated on this for a while, peering through the crowd, before turning her attention to the counter. Noah was perched on a high-backed chrome stool with a slender, very beautiful black girl sitting beside him. The one who’d been giving him grief perhaps? Iris could see how she might be high maintenance.

Noah, if not exactly effusive, had been a little friendlier on her arrival than on previous occasions. He’d even managed a smile so she supposed that was progress. She wondered how much he knew about the situation. Had he been told the truth about Guy’s recent absences, about their daily slog around the streets of Kellston, or did he just think she was the latest in what was possibly a long line of conquests? She wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it did. She wanted him to like her, to accept her.

It was another ten minutes before Guy came back and slid into the seat across the table. ‘Are you sure you’re okay down here?’

‘More than okay.’ She could have gone to the flat upstairs, but preferred, for the moment, to be in the company of others. Solitude would only give her time to dwell on what had happened. Not that she could chase it from her mind even if she wanted to, but at least there were distractions in the bar. ‘You’ve got a job to do. Don’t worry about me.’

‘Well, I’m on a break now so you have my undivided attention. ’

Iris was pleased to have him to herself, even if was only for half an hour. ‘So tell me about Noah. You never said how the two of you met.’

Guy glanced over at his friend, looked back at Iris and grinned. ‘It was at that fancy school of ours. We were the two misfits, the ones who were always in trouble. He was the only black kid in the year and I was the only pleb. Those things still mattered back then.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘God, what am I talking about? I’m sure they still do. Neither of us belonged so we were natural allies.’

‘Is that his girlfriend?’ Iris said.

‘Ah, the lovely Serena. She’s a model in case you hadn’t guessed.’

‘She’s very beautiful.’

‘On the outside,’ he said.

Iris heard the note of hostility in his voice. ‘You don’t like her.’

Guy gave a shrug, that familiar closed look coming over his face. Iris was curious now about Serena: was his dislike of her down to the simple fact she was always messing Noah around or was it rooted in a more personal experience? She would have liked to find out, but sensing the bad blood between them quickly changed the subject. ‘So, back to this fancy school of yours - did you actually manage to survive without getting expelled?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘despite my finest efforts. I can only presume that they needed the fees.’ He leaned forward, put his elbows on the table and gave her one of his wry smiles. ‘Or maybe the headmaster was too terrified of my mother to even think about going there.’

Iris lifted her brows. From what she’d heard about Lizzie Street, that might not be too far off the truth. ‘So when did you get this place?’ She knew she was asking a lot of questions, but this was the first time since they’d met that Guy actually seemed prepared to talk about himself. She wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.

‘It came on the market about three years ago. To be honest it was a bit of a dump, but we could see it had potential. Noah’s the one with the nous - he’s got a business degree - and he reckoned we could make it work, but we didn’t have enough cash so . . .’

‘So?’ Iris urged.

‘I knew someone who had.’ He bowed his head for a second as if the memory pained him. ‘I went cap in hand to my mother and begged for a loan. It wasn’t my proudest moment, but there was no bank in the world that was going to touch me.’

Iris, knowing how he felt about Lizzie, could imagine how much that had cost him. ‘But you made a success of it,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter where the money came from. Look at this place, it’s heaving.’

Guy frowned as if all the success in the world couldn’t make up for the way it had been bankrolled. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you truly understood the nature of Terry’s business. We’re talking prostitution, extortion, drugs - and that’s just for starters. Would you really want all that on your conscience?’

‘But you didn’t get the cash from Terry,’ she said. Even as she spoke she knew how disingenuous the argument was. ‘Well, even if it did have dodgy origins, you created something good out of it. You can’t hate yourself for doing that.’

Guy shook his head. ‘You have no idea how vile that man is.’

Iris, aware that she was probably near the top of Terry Street’s list of ‘Things to Do’ when he got out of jail, suppressed a shudder. ‘I’m hardly his number one fan myself.’

‘You don’t know the half of it. Even when I was a kid . . .’ He stopped suddenly, as if he’d said too much. Picking up the bottle of wine, he added a splash to her almost full glass and poured himself a large one. He sighed. ‘Sorry. You don’t want to hear all this. You’ve been through enough already.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘Don’t stop. I want to know about him.’ Even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. Was it better to know what he was capable of or not? Sometimes ignorance
was
bliss.

Guy hesitated. He lifted the glass to his mouth and as if he needed some Dutch courage, drained half the wine in a single gulp. ‘What can I say? After my mother hitched up with Terry I went to live with them for a while. It only lasted for about six months. He couldn’t stand the sight of me and never bothered to pretend otherwise. I was the cuckoo in the nest, the little prissy blond in his tribe of dark-haired boys.’ He took another drink, laughed softly and said, ‘Oh Christ, this is old history. Let’s talk about something else.’

But Iris wanted to hear. And it wasn’t just Terry she was interested in. If she was ever to understand Guy Wilder she needed to know about his past. ‘No, go on.
Please.
’

‘Well, you’ve got some idea of what he’s like. You can probably guess the rest.’

‘I don’t want to guess.’

Guy’s mouth twisted at the corners and Iris almost regretted her persistence. Perhaps it was just too painful for him to talk about. But after a few seconds he took a quick breath and continued. ‘Terry never had much patience. It started with an angry word here or there, but then he started talking with his fists. Everything I did was wrong - the way I ate, the way I ran, even the bloody way I breathed. By the time he’d broken my arm, even my mother had to face the fact that it wasn’t really working out.’

Iris gasped in outrage, a wave of disgust rolling over her. That anyone could deliberately hurt a child was beyond her. Instinctively, she reached out and wrapped her hands around his. ‘Why the hell did she stay with him? Why didn’t she protect you?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess her maternal instincts came a poor second to a lifestyle she’d always dreamed about. If it ever came into her head to leave, it would have been a thought so fleeting that it barely registered.’

Iris stared at him, saddened and amazed. Recalling what he’d told her that first time they’d met at Tobias Grand & Sons, she said, ‘And so she farmed you out to live with your grand-mother. ’

‘There are worse fates,’ he said with artificial brightness. ‘Gran was a feisty old dear, I’ll give her that. No one ever got the better of her. We didn’t make a bad team, the two of us. It wasn’t perfect, but hey, what is? We rubbed along okay.’ He focused on the wall behind her before slowly lowering his eyes to look at her again. He tried a smile that didn’t quite come off. ‘She died when I was twelve and that’s when I was shipped off to school. I was a boarder for the next four years, left when I was sixteen, got a job and . . .’ He lifted his shoulders again. ‘And there you have it. The life and times of the infamous Guy Wilder.’

Iris was about to pursue the missing years - he was in his early thirties now - when Noah appeared by their table. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said, leaning down to address Guy, ‘but Tommy Holland’s just arrived.’

Guy looked at Iris and gave a groan. ‘Sorry. So much for being off duty. Do you mind? He’s a local businessman who brings a lot of clients here. I’d better go over and say hello.’ He gently withdrew his hands from her grasp. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘You go,’ she said, waving him away. ‘Take as long as you like. I’ll be fine.’

Guy stood up and within a few seconds the two of them had been swallowed up by the crowd. Iris sipped on her wine and did some people-watching. Eventually her gaze slid back to the bar where Noah’s girlfriend was also sitting on her own. Serena was one of the most striking women she had ever seen: her dark hair, cropped close to her skull, accentuated her razor-sharp cheekbones and wide almond eyes. She had a long graceful neck, the type that was usually described as swan-like, and her lips were full and sensuous. Iris wondered what it was like to be so perfectly formed, to have one of those faces that could never be forgotten.

Their eyes met and Serena smiled. Iris, embarrassed at having been caught out staring (although she was probably used to it), returned the smile and then glanced down briefly at the table. When she looked up again, Serena was already heading towards her. She was wearing a short red dress that clung to every slender curve of her body. She was a lot taller than Iris had realised, over six foot, although a few inches of that was down to her high heels. Her walk was the model’s walk, a fluid swaying motion that drew attention to her impossibly long legs. As she made her way across the room, the crowd - as if instinctively obeying some fundamental if unspoken law - moved apart to let her through. No pushing or squeezing past for her. No bruised toes or elbows in her ribs. Her beauty gave her rights that were not bestowed on lesser mortals.

When she reached the table she held out a hand. ‘Hi, I’m Serena,’ she said. Her voice was low, slightly husky. ‘Seeing as we’ve both been so rudely abandoned, I thought we could keep each other company.’