Never Tell (32 page)

I realised slowly he was looking aghast.

‘I wouldn’t ask … ‘ My voice trailed off into a trickle. ‘Only I’m starting to feel a bit desperate.’

‘It’s a bit complicated.’ His voice seemed harsh. ‘We keep our money very separate, James and I.’

I looked at him in surprise.

‘Really?’ It made no sense to me. But how could I challenge him? ‘I’m sorry. I guess I – I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘Rose, it’s just – it’s complicated.’

‘Really? Complicated like when you took the kids from my mum’s?’ I held his eye; he flushed unattractively. ‘Just tell me the truth, Liam. I’m so tired of all the bloody lies.’

‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I took them to scare James. I’m sorry, Rose.’ He saw my furious face and held up a hand. ‘Look, I know it was shit, and I should have thought harder about you. But I was fucked off with him, so fucked off with him, and I was panicking. I couldn’t get through any other way.’

‘To scare him?’ I was confused. ‘Why?’

Star appeared at the top of the stairs dressed in an electric-blue thong and little else, her brown-tipped bosoms too big and pendulous for her tiny frame, a gold crucifix dangling between them like a third eye. I averted my gaze.

‘All right, Rose?’ She seemed uncomfortable too, although not about her blatant nudity. ‘I’m sorry about … you know.’

‘Thank you,’ I said to her feet. ‘And how are you?’

‘OK.’ She shrugged and yawned like a small cat. ‘Bit tired. I’d love to chat, but I’m gonna be late. I’m going for a bath.’

I thought of something. ‘Star?’

‘Yeah?’ The girl turned, her bosoms swinging softly.

‘Did you – did you see Katya’s parents? The other day. Are they all right? Do you know when the funeral is? I’d like to send something.’

‘Her parents?’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘No. Why would I have seen them?’

‘Go and put the bath on, love,’ Liam interrupted quickly. ‘I’ll bring you a cuppa up in a sec.’

‘’K.’ She wandered off, tiny buttocks tight like halved peanuts.

‘Liam, what … ?’ I shook my head in confusion. ‘You said Star was going to let them know, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ He busied himself with tea leaves. ‘God, I never know what you do with all of this. Star insists on the bloody green stuff but it’s so foul.’

Through the open window a girl’s laughter floated in from the street below, a carefree kind of laugh. I felt a stab of jealousy.

‘Liam! For God’s sake!’

‘Star didn’t know Katya,’ he said flatly. ‘I just – I was trying to make you feel better.’

‘About what?’

‘About a girl dying in your front room.’

‘But I thought she was Star’s friend?’

‘Nope. That’s just what James wanted you to think.’

‘I can’t – sorry, but this isn’t going in right.’ I stood, then sat again heavily. ‘So who the hell was she then?’

Liam looked at me very directly for the first time since I had arrived. ‘You’re going to find out anyway, I guess.’ He submerged the leaves in boiling water.

‘Find out what?’

‘She was—’ He stopped.

‘Go on, please, Liam.’

‘She was one of James’s girls.’

‘One of his—’

‘One of his girls. That’s right.’

‘You mean, like a girlfriend?’ I was surprised at how calm I felt.

‘No, I don’t mean like a girlfriend. I mean, like a—’

We stared at each other; this man whom I had been friends with since James and I met up again; since before my marriage. Something else in my life I knew nothing of. My life was apparently a house of cards that couldn’t withstand the pressure of the gentlest breeze, let alone the gale that was now blowing.

‘You mean – like a – an escort?’

‘If you like.’

‘An escort like a – a whore?’ I whispered.

‘Yes, Rose. I’m really sorry, lovey. I mean, like a whore.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

After leaving Liam’s flat, I got the tube to Pentonville Prison. I felt anxious and strung out, thoroughly overwrought.

All this time I had longed for the city, but here and now, amidst the fumes and grime, the drab grey uniformity of the architecture, the boarded-up shops and smelly kebab houses, I found myself craving fresh air and space, just to be. Ruefully I shook my head. Why is the grass always greener?

At the entrance to Old Street tube I passed a girl on a mobile phone, speaking a language I couldn’t place – Polish, possibly. She looked tired and cross, her long hair tied back, a waif-like body, slanted eyes, smoking furiously, jabbering into her phone.

‘You will be sorry,’ she said suddenly in English to the person on the phone, and something in her face made me pause. I imagined Katya twisting through the air; I heard the—

I closed my eyes and hurried down into London’s bowels.

On the tube I studied the women in my carriage: ordinary women reading papers, fiddling with iPods, napping, eyes shut against the world. How did they make their living? Did they spend their days cleaning, filing, striking million-dollar deals or selling their own bodies? How did we ever know what lay beneath someone else’s surface, unless they wanted to share it? Suddenly I felt overwhelmed by life, by the fact that everything I’d counted on was being dragged slowly and relentlessly from beneath my feet.

The prison was deceptively white and grand from the street, but the air inside was filled with a lacklustre kind of dread. The visitors’ hall was a large soulless place full of hollow-eyed men – but somehow their female visitors seemed sadder, like they’d given up hope. Blank-faced or tearful, accompanied by curly-headed toddlers sucking thumbs or plastic dummies, and babes-in-arms thankfully oblivious to Daddy’s new home, they were world-weary beyond their often youthful years; the older women apparently exhausted by their lives.

James was seated already, unshaven and black-eyed, wearing a yellow tabard, and Diesel jeans that were baggier than a week ago. We hugged briefly above the wooden divide that separated us, presumably so I couldn’t pass anything beneath the table.

‘Did you bring me something?’ he whispered hoarsely. For the first time since I’d known him I could feel his ribs.

‘What kind of something?’ I sat, feeling like an innocent, as nervous as if we were on a first date, only without the nice bits to look forward to. I’d visited a few prisoners during my reporting years, but this was entirely different.

‘Fags? Money? Dope?’

I looked at him stupidly. ‘Am I allowed—’

‘Of course you’re not allowed. But next time, bring me some dope, OK? A lump of hash, yeah? Stick it in the fag packet. No one will check, apparently. And some money, yeah?’

‘OK,’ I said quietly. ‘If it helps.’

‘Nothing helps.’ To my horror, his eyes began to fill. ‘Fuck, Rose. I’m not sure I can do this.’

‘Of course you can. You’re tough as old boots,’ I soothed, taking his hand. But he didn’t look very tough. I eyed his shaven-headed neighbour, a large overweight man who sported a missing front tooth and a serpent tattoo that slithered up his windpipe.

‘It won’t be for long. You’ll be out soon, I’m sure. You’ve got to hang in there, OK?’

‘I don’t understand why the fuck they won’t bail me now. This crap about “fleeing”.’

Nor did I, that was the problem. Ruth Jones, James’s solicitor, said it was because the CPS thought there was a substantial risk James might ‘flee the jurisdiction’. Why, I wasn’t sure; no one would tell me.

I squeezed his hand. ‘They seem to think you might do a runner. I don’t know why. But we’ll keep trying. I spoke to Ruth earlier. She’s pulling out all the stops, I promise.’

A blond-haired toddler was crying in the play area as an older child snatched his action figure. The mother hushed him quickly.

‘Will you bring the kids in? Please, Rosie. I need to see them.’ James stared at me with beseeching brown eyes. ‘They’ll make me better.’

‘I can’t, James,’ I said quietly. ‘Not yet. Let’s see what happens, shall we?’

He pulled his hand away. ‘I need to explain to them I’m not bad,’ he muttered. He’d been biting his nails again, a habit he’d kicked long ago.

‘Don’t be so silly, J. They don’t think that, and they don’t even know where you are. I just don’t think—They’re so little, James, they wouldn’t understand. I don’t think we need to tell them.’

Yet
. The unspoken word whirled heavily between us, like a spinning plate on a stick.

I clasped my hands on my lap. I took a deep breath. ‘I need to ask you something, James.’

The couple next to us started kissing hungrily, the burly man holding the girl’s dark ponytail and twisting it round his hand. There were scratches and nicks all over his bald head. From the end of our row, the warder spotted them.

‘What?’ James muttered, biting his thumb-nail. His knee tapped incessantly, nervously, against the divide beneath the table.

‘The trapeze artist, Katya …’

‘What about her?’

‘Who was she?’

‘Just someone I hired for the party. She worked in the Paris Revolver, then in London, on the trapeze. She was good.’ He tore into the skin around his nail. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ he muttered.

‘I thought you said she was a friend of Star’s?’

‘Did I?’ He met my eye. It was a direct challenge.

‘But she wasn’t, was she?’

‘I dunno.’

‘James,’ I felt the first flickers of anger, ‘that’s not good enough. We talked about this before. All this not remembering. I don’t believe it. You’ve got to be straight with me.’

‘I
am
being straight.’

I grabbed his hand. ‘You are not. You’re lying through your bloody teeth. After everything we’ve been through, I do know when you’re lying.’

He tried to pull his hand away, looked at his lap.

‘James, it’s not fair. Think of the kids. Think of what this is doing to them. The better idea I have of what’s going on, the better chance I have of helping you. Surely you can see that?’

He looked at me venomously. ‘How the fuck can you help? Can you get me out of here? No. Can you make it go away? No. So how are you going to make it better, eh, Mummy Rose?’

I swallowed hard. I pinched the skin on my hands. It hurt but I hardly felt the pain.

As quickly as James lost his temper, he saw the error of his wrath. ‘Sorry, sorry.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment. It’s like I’m in one of my bloody nightmares and I just can’t wake up.’

‘Well, start by telling me the truth. Who—’

‘Five minutes for all visitors,’ the Tannoy announced flatly.

The guard pulled our neighbour back from his girlfriend. ‘You know the rules, Rigger,’ he said.

‘Yeah, all right, geezer.’ The man winked at me and stretched leisurely. ‘You can’t blame a man for trying.’ I saw he had LOVE and HATE tattooed on his plump inner arms.

‘Bastard,’ the girl said, just loud enough for the warder to hear, tossing her hair over her shoulder. The warder squared his shoulders, choosing to ignore her.

‘James, tell me.’ I looked back at my husband. ‘Who was Katya?’

James gazed at me and in that moment I felt the years drop away and I saw the boy I had met at university, that hopeful lively boy with a sense of fun, a graffitied guitar slung over his back, and I fought down a sudden urge to rail against our situation. I saw the emotions fighting across his face. There was so much I obviously didn’t know about my husband, so much I hadn’t looked for or he had kept hidden; and I saw that he looked young and vulnerable and almost like he used to. Like I could put my trust in him again.

‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ he whispered, and his voice cracked.

‘So … ?’ I held my breath.

‘So – so she was my girlfriend. Well, not girlfriend.’ This time he reached for my hand, but I moved too fast for him. I couldn’t bear his touch right now. ‘Lover, I suppose.’

‘How romantic.’ It was too late for recriminations. I took a deep breath. ‘Liam says she was a whore.’

‘He did, did he?’ James sat back. His face closed up again. ‘Well, he would. He was jealous.’

I looked dispassionately down on James, as if I was out of my body. How bizarre our life had become: my husband and I sitting in prison, discussing whether his business partner was jealous of the girl James had apparently been sleeping with.

‘Why jealous?’ Liam might not be the next Brad Pitt – ‘Liams are always mingers’ was the joke between us when we’d met first – but he had no trouble whatsoever attracting women.

James shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Rose, but she was gorgeous. You saw that. Any bloke would …’ He caught my eye and trailed off. It only affirmed everything I’d guessed James felt about my exhausted body since I’d had the kids. I stayed at home, he cavorted with young dancers and the like. I looked back at James, who seemed utterly bashful. ‘Well, you know.’

And yet – Danny had made me feel beautiful. I pushed the memories away. I thought back to Katya. I hadn’t taken much notice of her, to be honest. I had been caught up in my own well of misery, busy with the arrangements. She’d turned up the night before the party and I stayed hidden in my room after James had hit me, with ice on my swelling eye, praying it would go down by tomorrow.

The next day she and Star had gone shopping in Oxford, then they’d played with the children for an hour whilst I ran around tweaking things. I remembered her painted face as she flew through the air, the thick black eye make-up, lashes like spider’s legs, silver glitter on her cheeks. I remembered the oxygen mask clamped over her white face whilst she lay dying. But I couldn’t recall much else.

‘Time’s up. Come on, Miller. Say your goodbyes.’ The lanky officer stared at me.

‘But, James, why would he say that?’ I leaned forward urgently. ‘He meant she was a proper whore. Like a prostitute. I know he did.’

‘Shut up, Rose,’ James hissed, standing now. ‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. He was just jealous because he wanted her and she preferred me. And I’m sorry, Rose, I’m sorry that I slept with her. It was only once or twice.’

‘Oh. Well, that’s all right then,’ I said flatly. For who was I to judge now?

‘Come on, Rose. You haven’t seemed bothered for years.’ I opened my mouth in incredulity, but nothing came out. ‘Don’t deny it, Rose.’