Shafted (38 page)

Chuckling softly, Sam said, ‘Don’t think you were paying too much attention to anyone, that night. Too busy throwing yourself on Larry’s car.’

‘God, did you see me?’ she murmured sheepishly. ‘I made a right fool of myself, didn’t I?’

‘Not at all,’ he lied, waving her into her flat ahead of him when she opened the door. ‘Wasn’t sure it was you at first, to tell you the truth. Then it clicked, and I thought, hmmm . . . wonder what that was all about. Hope you’re going to tell me all about it?’

‘Yeah, ’course,’Tania said. Then, blushing when she took him into the living room, she said, ‘Sorry about the mess and the smell. It’s damp, but the council are dead lax about coming out to fix stuff.’

Telling her that he’d close his eyes and breathe through his mouth, Sam looked around and nodded approvingly. ‘Cool flat. Is it all yours, or do you share?’

‘It’s mine,’ Tania told him, thinking that he was nothing like any of the other adults who’d come in here since she’d moved in and who had all looked down their noses. Like her dad – whose fault it was that she was here in the first place, because he’d kicked her out just for
borrowing
some money out of her mum’s savings jar. He’d only been here once, and had refused to sit down or touch anything; just stood there looking around with a disgusted sneer on his ugly face. And the cheeky-bitch social worker who’d helped her to get the flat, and then thought she had a licence to come round every week to check that she was keeping it tidy.

‘Love a tea, if you’re brewing?’ Sam said, sitting down on her couch as if he’d been there a thousand times before. ‘Unless you fancy something stronger?’

‘Oh, sorry, I haven’t got anything,’ Tania admitted, blushing as she added, ‘I haven’t even got any tea bags, to tell you the truth. The social’s been kind of messing me about with my money.’

‘Lucky I brought this, then,’ Sam said, bringing a half-bottle of white rum out of his pocket. ‘Not that I make a habit of carrying booze around, you understand, but I was supposed to be going to a mate’s to watch the footie when I got the call to say you were looking for me.’

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise you had things to do,’ Tania said, hoping that he wasn’t going to leave in a hurry.

‘Hey, the footie can wait,’ he reassured her, twisting the cap off the bottle. Looking up at her then, he grinned and said, ‘Come on, girl – what you waiting for? Get some glasses.’

Running into the kitchen to fetch two glasses and the bottle of flat cola, Tania said, ‘This’ll have to do, I’m afraid.’

Telling her that owt was better than nowt, Sam poured two large shots of rum, topped them up with cola, and handed one to her. Then, reaching into his pocket for his cigarettes, switching his Dictaphone on in the process, he offered one to her. Settling back in his seat when they’d both lit up, he said, ‘So, you and Larry, eh? What’s that all about, then?’

Relaxing, because he sounded genuinely interested – and in the way a friend would be, not a reporter – Tania said, ‘Long story.’

‘Hey, just how I like them,’ Sam said. ‘Can’t beat a good girly gossip. Not that I’m girly, or anything,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘But when you grow up with five sisters, it’s kind of cool to get roped in for the opposing opinion.’

‘Five sisters?’Tania repeated, shaking her head. ‘Wow! That must have been horrible. I’ve only got one, and she’s a bitch.’

‘Cindy?’ Sam said, nodding understandingly as he added, ‘I kind of got the impression she was like Little Miss Perfect when I spoke to your mum and dad that time. Bit of a daddy’s girl, is she?’

‘You can say that again,’ Tania spat, taking a large swig of her drink. ‘Couldn’t do any wrong, her. But
me
 . . . I couldn’t do any right.’

‘Larry Logan obviously doesn’t agree,’ Sam reminded her smoothly. ‘I mean, if there is a you and him, you’ve got to be doing something right, haven’t you?’

Smiling coyly as she took another sip of her drink, Tania nodded. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. But that was then, and I haven’t really seen him since I turned eighteen.’

‘Then? As in two years ago when you said you
weren’t
seeing him?’ Sam probed, his eyes twinkling as if he was totally on her side as he added, ‘I always
knew
he had a thing for you.’

‘Did you?’ Tania gushed, delighted that he’d seen it for himself and wasn’t going to tell her that she was imagining things – like everyone always did when she tried to tell them about herself and Larry.

‘’Course, man,’ Sam drawled, really latching onto her vibe. ‘Everyone else was like, nah . . . he’s too old for her; he wouldn’t look twice at her. But, me . . . I was just like, you know what, she’s a good-looking girl, why the hell
wouldn’t
he be interested?’Taking a drink himself now, he gestured for her to do the same, intent on loosening her tongue. ‘Anyway, go on . . . tell me all about it.’

‘Well, we kind of had an agreement not to see each other again till I was eighteen,’Tania admitted. ‘And then he was going to take me out for dinner.’

‘Wow,’ Sam murmured admiringly. ‘That must have been fantastic. So where did he take you? Bet it was somewhere really expensive.’

‘Well, yeah, it probably would have been,’Tania said. She sighed as she went on to admit, ‘But it hasn’t happened yet, ’cos I moved out of my dad’s, so he wouldn’t have known where to find me.’

‘Dad not too hot on him?’ Sam ventured, guessing that Logan hadn’t even bothered to go looking for her or she’d have heard, just like she’d heard that
Sam
had been round there.

‘No, but
he
just wants me to be miserable for the rest of my life,’ Tania said, swallowing the last of her drink.

Refilling her glass before she had a chance to put it down, Sam said, ‘Did he know about you and Larry, then?’

‘God, no!’Tania snorted.‘He’s the reason I lied about it in the first place, ’cos he would have battered me if he’d found out that I stayed at Larry’s flat that night.’

‘For real?’ Sam gave her another admiring grin. ‘You really stayed at his place?’Then,‘Nah, you’re having me on now. You stayed in your mate’s garage.’

‘That’s what I
told
everyone,’ Tania confided, biting her lip, already feeling the effects of the strong alcohol. ‘But I didn’t really. I was at Larry’s all night.’

‘What’s his place like?’ Sam asked, watching her closely for signs of hesitation: she would have to take time to think about this before she spoke if she was lying.

‘Oh, it’s gorgeous,’ Tania said wistfully – and truthfully; remembering it all too clearly, having mentally relived that night and morning many times over the last two years. ‘Everything’s just really fantastic,’ she said now, kicking her shoes off and drawing her legs up onto the couch. ‘Like, he’s got this massive bed, with a TV built into the wall opposite. And his windows go right down to the floor, with no nets or anything, so you can see all the tops of the buildings when you’re lying there. And his kitchen’s
amazing
. Everything’s built-in, and it’s all kind of dark red and black. You’d just
die
if you saw it. And the shower’s incredible. It’s got this huge nozzle in the ceiling, and there’s no curtain, or glass doors, or anything.’

Sure that she was telling the truth, because she’d never have described it in so much detail if she were lying, Sam said, ‘So, what happened?’

Giggling shyly, thinking that he was asking for details about the sex, Tania said, ‘I can’t tell you
that
! It’s private.’

‘Aw, go on,’ Sam urged. ‘I won’t tell anyone. Was he, like, a once-a-night man, or a keep-it-upall-nighter?’

Laughing, Tania slapped out at him, saying, ‘You’re terrible!’

‘And you’re gorgeous,’ Sam replied, winking at her. ‘No wonder Logan’s gone on you. Bet he couldn’t keep his hands off you.’

Biting her lip, Tania wondered whether she ought to tell the truth at this point. But Sam was so sure that Larry must have been crazy about her, and
she
was sure that he
would
have been if he’d been conscious. Anyway, if she admitted that nothing had actually happened, he’d think she was lying about everything else.

‘
Well . . .
’ she said after a moment, glancing up at Sam through her lashes. ‘He was very romantic.’

‘One way of putting it,’ Sam laughed. ‘And was that your first time?’

‘God, no,’ Tania snorted, thinking that he was asking if she’d been a virgin before Larry.

‘
Really?
’ Sam said, thinking that she was talking about having been with Larry before that night. ‘So, when was your first time?’

‘God,
months
before that,’ Tania said. She grimaced as she added, ‘But don’t tell my dad, or he’ll kill me.’

Giving her a sly smile now, Sam said, ‘You’re not telling me you were only fifteen, you naughty girl?’

Nodding, Tania giggled.‘But you’ve got to swear you won’t tell anyone, ’cos that bit’s a secret.’

‘Hey, we’re just mates having a chat,’ Sam drawled, shifting a little closer to make sure that the Dictaphone picked up every word. ‘And if you can’t trust a mate, who
can
you trust?’

17

‘You’ve got to be fucking joking,’ Larry gasped, staring at the headline on the paper that Georgie had woken him up to show him.

‘You’d better read it,’ Georgie told him. ‘It’s not good.’

LOGAN MADE GIRL LIE!
the headline said. It was followed by:

Almost two years to the day since we exposed love-rat Larry Logan for turning his lustful attentions to girls young enough to be his daughter – a claim he strenuously denied – we can now reveal the truth behind the lies he coerced his young victim into telling in order to cover his tracks
.

Contrary to what she said at the time – as dictated to her by Loathsome Logan, we now know that Tania Baxter
DID
spend the night with Logan at his luxury apartment that night.
DID
have sex with him. And
DID
think that he would honour his word when he promised to resume their relationship on her eighteenth birthday – providing she took the blame and allowed him to rebuild his tarnished reputation with a cloak of innocence acquired at her expense.

And, worse, we can also reveal that the night our reporter caught them was
NOT
the first time they had been together. In fact, the tawdry affair began some months before the fateful night when Tania appeared on Logan’s then game show
Star Struck
and walked away with the jackpot. And she was just
FIFTEEN YEARS OLD
at that time, making Logan both a liar
and
a paedophile!

The phone started to ring just then. Seeing from the look of horror on Larry’s face that he was in no fit state to talk to anyone as he carried on reading the story, which went on to tell the woeful tale of a young girl abandoned by her older lover, rejected by her own family and forced to live in squalor, Georgie answered it.

It was Craig Woodburn, wanting to know if they were watching the news.

‘No, why?’ Georgie asked, already turning in circles, looking for the remote for the kitchen TV. Finding it, she switched it on, and said, ‘Oh, good Lord,
no
,’ when she saw what was happening on the screen.

Alerted by his agent’s grim tone, Larry looked up from the paper. Following Georgie’s gaze, his jaw clenched when he saw a blonde girl whom he wouldn’t have recognised in a million years if her name hadn’t been splashed along the bottom of the screen being interviewed at her own front door by an ITN news crew.

‘Is it true you’re claiming to have been in a relationship with Larry Logan since you were fifteen years old?’ the presenter was saying, shoving a microphone into her face.

Looking shocked and confused, Tania shook her head, murmuring, ‘No, I was sixteen.’

‘Sixteen at the time you were caught,’ the presenter persisted. ‘But you were quoted in the
Herald
today as having admitted that it started some months earlier.’

‘It’s in the paper already?’Tania gasped, casting a nervous glance at the camera.

Confirming that it was, the presenter said, ‘And in it you claim you
were
having a relationship with Larry Logan two years ago, when you actually made a statement at
that
time denying it.’

‘Well, yeah, but I only lied ’cos I didn’t want to get in trouble with my dad.’

‘Not to keep Larry Logan out of trouble because you knew it would come out that he’d slept with you when you were still a minor?’

‘I
wasn’t
! I was sixteen, and me and Larry really liked each other, but the papers made it sound dirty, so I lied to make them shut up about it.’

‘And Larry Logan asked you to do that?’

‘Yeah, but not because he’d done anything wrong. We just knew that people would try to make trouble, so we agreed to wait until I was eighteen before we started seeing each other properly.’

‘So, you
are
seeing each other again?’

Frowning, sure that the presenter was trying to trip her up, Tania said, ‘No, but only because the people at the studio won’t pass my messages on.’

‘And you don’t think it’s possible that they’re just trying to protect him from what could be perceived as an over-imaginative fan who’d do anything to get near her idol?’ the presenter asked smoothly.

‘I’m not a
fan
,’ Tania spat, the anger flaring in her eyes. ‘Fans don’t sleep in stars’ beds, do they?

But
I
did, so get lost!’ Stepping back into her flat then, she slammed the door shut.

Turning to camera, the presenter raised a knowing eyebrow and said, ‘Whatever the truth of this continuing mystery, this reporter, for one, will be reserving judgement until we’ve had a response from the man himself. Until then, I guess it’s a case of lock up your daughters.’ Pausing now, he adopted a serious expression, and said, ‘James Reed, reporting from Hulme, for
ITN News
.’