Songbird (11 page)

Straining his neck, he looked from her to Maddy. “Working girls, are you?” He winked.

“If you like,” Ellen enticed him.

Maddy was shocked. “NO!” Tugging at Ellen to come away, she told the cabbie, “We’re not prostitutes! It’s just like she said — we got caught up in a fight, and now we just want to get home.”

He glared at them through the mirror. “You must think I was born yesterday,” he said, and gave a snort. “You’ve only got to look at the state of you to know you’re lying.” Gesturing at Maddy’s torn dress, and Ellen’s tousled hair, he sneered, “Picked up a dodgy punter, did you, girls?”

Maddy touched him on the shoulder. “Please, just look at the watch. It’s worth a lot more than three pounds.”

Something in the timbre of her voice made him examine the watch under the light. He was pleasantly surprised. With a gold and silver plaited strap, it boasted the prettiest diamond in the center of the dial. “Stolen, is it?” He knew enough to realize that the watch was good.

“No way! It’s my own watch.” In a softer voice, Maddy entreated him to look on the back.

He scanned the engraving.
To Maddy. Happy sixteenth birthday from Daddy.

The driver chuckled nastily. “Sugar daddy, was it?”

“If you don’t want it,” Maddy said angrily, “just give it back!”

“Whoa! Whoa! Take it easy.” He began to believe her story. “What’s your name?

“Maddy… Maddy for short.”

“So what’s the inscription on the back?”

Realizing he was testing her, Maddy correctly repeated it.

“Mmm. I still can’t be sure if it’s stolen. I mean, you could have just memorized it.”

“Like I said, it’s my watch, given to me by my father on my sixteenth birthday.” Choked with memories, she could say no more.

“Okay. But if your father gave it to you, why would you want to let it go?”

“Because I pay my debts, that’s why.”

Maddy recalled the very day her father gave her that watch. Less than a year later, he was taken ill and died soon after; the shock of which killed her mother. Being an only child, Maddy had been left to fend for herself.

Unable to afford the rent on their two-bedroomed flat in Kilburn, North London, she had sold the bits of furniture for knockdown prices to a local secondhand shop, and started a series of live-in jobs at West End pubs, clubs and hotels. Her musical career had started very slowly in just these places. She’d be washing up one minute, and performing the next. It had been a long and often lonely journey through life, until she met Alice and fell in love with the monster she had now left behind.

“Get out, the pair of you!” the driver said resignedly.

As they climbed out, so did he. Seeking Maddy’s attention, he handed her the watch. “Here you are, love. I can see this watch means a lot to you.” He had noticed how tearful she was when handing it over. “We’ll forget the fare. You keep the watch, and don’t go offering it to strangers.”

Taken aback when she flung her arms round him and kissed him on the cheek, he simply nodded and hurried back round to the driver’s door. “Silly girls!” He watched the two of them go arm-in-arm down the street. “Let’s hope they learn how to keep out of trouble.”

As he drove past them, he opened his window to offer a few words of advice. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, the pair of you, but you need to keep your guard up. There are some real bad buggers out there!”

Having sowed his seed of wisdom he moved on to his next fare, leaving Maddy and Ellen to head for the end terrace house, where they climbed the steps, waited while Ellen found the spare key in a secret place on a ledge by the front door, and went inside.

“It’s nothing grand,” Ellen apologized, putting on the lights and setting a match to a gas fire in the cozy back room. “It was my Aunt Dora’s house. She wasn’t short of money, so when she moved abroad, she signed the deeds over to me.”

While she flung off her jacket she explained, “I haven’t seen my dad for three years. He and my mum and I had a falling out and somehow none of us ever had the guts to apologize. You know how it is… things get twisted and nasty, and everybody digs their heels in. But I’m past worrying about it. The sad thing is that Mum died of liver cancer a year or so ago, before we’d made it up. But, you know what, Maddy, I didn’t cry. She and I never saw eye to eye, and Dad always took her side, even when he knew she was in the wrong — which was most of the time.”

“Have you any brothers or sisters?”

“A sister, Sally.”

“Is she younger or older than you?”

“She’s twenty-six — four years older and a great deal wiser than me.” Ellen gave a knowing smile. “A bit selfish too, as I recall.”

“In what way?”

“Well, for a start she never let the arguments upset her, the way I did. Instead she always managed to blame everybody else for her own shortcomings. Rather than try and make things better at home, she began making plans to get away from there. Eventually she went to Spain to live with my aunt. Last I heard, the two of them had gone into the hotel business and were doing very nicely, thank you. Mind you, I think she was jealous of me. I went to stage school and had extra music lessons while she had to go out to work in a boring office.” Ellen gave a chuckle. “I daresay I was a spoiled brat, and if I’d been her, I would have hated me too!”

Maddy grinned, but then asked, “Don’t you miss them?” She would have given anything to have her parents back.

Kicking off her shoes, Ellen fell into the big squashy armchair. “Oh, Sally always kept herself to herself, and Aunt Dora never had much to do with me. In fact, I reckon she only signed this place over to me because she felt guilty, seeing as she had already taken Sally under her wing.”

She fell silent as she thought of it all. “I didn’t know Aunt Dora as well as Sally did, so I don’t really miss her. But if I’m honest, I do miss Sally. I reckon her and me could be friends, now that I’ve grown up a bit. No way do I miss my parents though. My mother was a secret drinker, you see, and as for Dad… well, he’d always idolized her. In his eyes, she could do no wrong. He was either too stupid or too besotted to stand up for himself. And now I gather he’s got himself into a similar situation with a new woman. No. I’m well out of it. I’m lucky enough to have the best grandad in the world, though. He’s my mum’s dad, but I wish in a way
he’d
been my father.”

Clambering out of the chair, she gave vent to her curiosity. “What about you, Maddy? Are you still in touch with your family?”

Maddy took a moment to answer; it was still painful to talk about it, especially with a virtual stranger. “My dad got ill when I was seventeen,” she answered softly. “It turned to pneumonia, and he went downhill so fast, it was frightening. He never recovered, and from then on, it was as if Mum had gone with him.”

“In what way?”

Maddy shook her head. “She just never got over it. It was as if her world had come to an end. She gave up her job, hardly ate or slept.”

She remembered it as if it was only yesterday. “Sometimes early in the morning, I would hear her go out of the door, then hours later I’d find her up the churchyard, kneeling on his grave. It was awful, like she was a different person — someone I didn’t know any more.”

Her voice broke. “I tried so hard to help her, stopped going to school and stayed at home to keep her company, but she didn’t want to be helped. She wanted my dad back, nothing else… just my dad.” She paused. “I miss her so much. I miss them both, every day, every minute. It’s like an ache that won’t go away, so if
I
feel like that, how must
she
have felt?”

“Did you talk to her — about your dad, I mean?”

“Time and again I tried, I really did! Sometimes when I heard her sobbing in her bedroom, I’d knock on her door and beg to be let in. But she wouldn’t open the door. In the end, there was nothing anyone could do for her.” She shrugged. “Less than a year later, she followed him. And left me behind.”

“Oh, Maddy… I’m so very sorry.”

Maddy didn’t hear her. She was back there, living it all over again. “The doctors said it was a massive heart attack that killed her, but others said she died of a broken heart. And the more I think about it, the more I believe they were right. It wasn’t her fault — she just couldn’t live without him.”

“Have you any brothers or sisters?”

Maddy wearily shook her head. “My parents married late in life. I was an only child.”

“Are there any aunts and uncles?”

“There’s nobody. For a time I really thought there might be a future and a family with — that man — but I was stupid even to entertain the idea. I should have seen through him a long time ago, but I didn’t, and now I’m carrying his child.” She looked up with soulful eyes. “Oh Ellen, I’ve been such a fool.”

There was a timeless span of silence while Ellen and Maddy reflected on the evening and all its consequences, and possibly came to terms with some of what had happened.

A moment later, without saying a word, Ellen crossed the room, wrapped her arms round Maddy, and held her for what seemed an age.

To Maddy, already grieving for Jack and fearing for her darling Alice, that warm and sincere embrace meant more to her than Ellen could ever realize.

A short time later, Ellen gave Maddy a quick tour of her two-up, two-down home. “This used to be my aunt’s bedroom.” She led Maddy into a surprisingly large room, with deep windows and homely décor. There were seascapes hanging on the walls, and a deep fluffy rug either side of the bed. “You should have seen it before,” Ellen revealed. “It was stuffed with all manner of old relics — and I’m not just talking about my aunt either!” When she laughed, it was a bright, infectious sound that set Maddy off.

“That’s better,” Ellen told her. “A laugh is as good as a tonic. Now — how about a pot of tea and some beans on toast with a poached egg on top, eh? We’ll feel better when we’ve had some grab, and that nipper of yours probably needs feeding!”

Before they went back downstairs, Ellen showed Maddy her huge collection of shoes and clothes hanging in the alcove cupboards. “There’s never enough room up in the wardrobes,” she explained with a grin. “So if you need to move in with me, I’ll have to sort myself out.”

“Thanks, Ellen.” Though they had only just met, Maddy felt as if she had known the other girl all her life. “The thing is, I’m not sure what to do. I can’t go back to the flat, as it belongs to
him
, and the police are bound to be all over the place, they’ll probably be searching it before long.”

Only now did she truly accept the enormity of her own situation. “For all we know, the police could be looking for us right now, wanting to question us. Then there’s
him
— he blames me for what happened, I know he does. He said so, and he’s a vindictive man. I know what he’s capable of, and I can’t put my baby in danger. So you see, I think it might be for the best if I heed Alice’s advice and get away from London altogether, at least until it all blows over. But I can’t —
won’t
— go, until I find out how she is.”

Ellen understood her concerns. “What makes you think Steve Drayton would want to harm you?”

Maddy described what had taken place earlier. “When they were taking him away in handcuffs, he said something to me. I can’t get it out of my mind. It wasn’t just empty words. It was a real threat, which I have to take seriously.”

His words were emblazoned on Maddy’s mind. “He said I should look over my shoulder, because wherever I went, he would find me.” Her flesh crawled as she recalled the demonic look on Drayton’s face. “We both know what he meant by that,” she murmured. “He means to kill me, if he can. I’m what he would call ‘unfinished business.’”

Ellen did her best to comfort her newfound friend. “He can’t hurt you if he’s locked up. And he will be — for a very long time, I reckon.”

Maddy gave a sad smile. “You don’t know him like I do.” Many times she had overheard his conversations on the phone, and because she was so infatuated with him, had chosen not to believe what she was hearing. She knew now what an evil creature he was. “It won’t make any difference if they lock him up and throw away the key, he’ll still get to me,” she assured Ellen. “He’s pally with every lowlife in London. And because he knows their every secret, they owe him favors.”

She let that piece of news sink in before she went on, “So you see, he only has to click his fingers and they’ll do whatever he tells them. One thing I know for sure is that one way or another, he
will
get to me. The word will go out, a contract will be made, and I’ll be as good as dead; and the baby with me.”

Her voice shivered with fear. “The fact that I’m carrying his own flesh and blood will make no difference to a man like Steve Drayton.”

Ellen too, was fearful, not so much for herself but for Maddy and the baby. “I don’t know him like you do,” she agreed, “but from what I’ve seen and heard tonight, I realize that you’re right. One thing though — I don’t believe the police will be looking for us, tonight at least.” She was convinced of that. “I reckon we managed to get clean away. Nobody took any notice of us; the ambulancemen were too intent on treating the injured, and when the police weren’t busy rounding up the mob, they had their hands full, keeping everyone back.”

After a time, they made their way back down to the kitchen, where Ellen cooked them a delicious supper. “I know how concerned you are about your friend Alice,” she told Maddy, pouring out a second cup of tea, “but you can’t go to the hospital — it will be too dangerous. The police are bound to be crawling all over the place.”

“I have to make sure she’s all right.” Maddy was desperately worried.

“I can see how anxious you are, but you can’t risk it. Look, don’t worry,” she urged, “leave it to me. I’ll find a way.” Ellen had an idea, though until she had thought it through, she wasn’t going to mention it.

Maddy’s thoughts now turned to Jack — kind, loyal Jack, who had helped her out time and again and was more of a man than his macho boss could ever be. “I can’t believe Jack was killed,” she said shakily. “It all seems so… unreal.”