Strangers (43 page)

But what if she couldn’t come back?
What if she was dead?
The thought stuck in his throat, a malignant lump that stopped him eating.
He rang the police, but they thought he was crazy.
The cop Charlie spoke to said if it was a quarrel, she’d come back.
Charlie wanted to believe that.
Ethan’s detectives found nothing, but still looked.
Lucy, Dan and Rachel were as worried as Charlie.
He gave them his number, asking them to ring if they saw her.
Charlie didn’t know what else he could do.

Then grief, anger and fear combined, swirling him in a whirlwind of misery.
He locked himself away in his music room, writing at a feverish pace, crying until there were no tears left.
He convinced himself she was dead, that she’d killed herself.
He’d told her that he’d fuck up her life and he had.

* * * * *

Ethan was worried.
He knew
24/7
planned to run a story on Charlie and that it would be bad, but he had no idea how bad.
His sources weren’t giving him any clues.
A tiny part of Ethan wondered if Charlie had done something to Kate, maybe killed her, but the sensible part of him realized that if
24/7
knew that, then Charlie would be in police custody.
Ethan had told Charlie the detectives had traced Kate to Brighton and she wasn’t coming back.
He’d thought that would calm him down, but it hadn’t.
Ethan had to get Jake to physically prevent Charlie driving to the south coast.

He considered warning Charlie that trouble was coming, but in the end decided not to.
Ethan worried about his young cash cow.
Since Kate vanished, Charlie had deteriorated to the brink of meltdown.
Bad press could push him over the edge.
Ethan decided on a different strategy, using Jody.
She’d been ecstatic when Charlie’s latest love interest disappeared, but Ethan had been able to persuade her not to climb straight into Charlie’s bed, but be an attentive and sympathetic listener.
She could pick up the pieces on Sunday after the newspaper had done its worst.
Ethan only hoped there would be pieces to pick up.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Charlie stopped halfway down the stairs when he saw the Sunday paper lying on his hall floor.
He didn’t have a paper delivered, so he knew someone had pushed it through his letter box, probably a member of the press and probably because there was something about him in it.
Or maybe about Kate.
His feet felt wedged in wet sand.
The effort required to walk the few steps to the door made his knees shake.

The headline was
STORM BREAKS
.
A large picture of him dominated the front page.
He looked drunk and stoned.
He was neither.
It was sadness and despair in his eyes.

Charlie sat on the stairs.
As he read the double-page spread inside the paper, his already disintegrating world dissolved.
Everything around him lost focus and color.
Only the printed words remained clear.
The article had everything—truth, lies and surprises.
How he’d taken advantage of an underage girl, committed statutory rape, given her cocaine and left her unconscious.
How he’d given his brother drugs and handed him keys to a powerful car knowing he was drunk.
How after the crash, Charlie left his brother to die, although he somehow managed to rescue the attractive female passenger.
How Charlie seduced Jennifer Ward, slept with her sister and her mother, and walked out on all of them.
Apparently, so had Malcolm Ward.
Divorce pending.
Jennifer had suffered a nervous breakdown, taken an overdose and was in a psychiatric hospital.

Charlie groaned.
He didn’t want to read any more, but couldn’t stop.
The newspaper described how he’d deserted the mother who’d brought him up to seek out the one who’d given birth to him.
He’d promised his birth mother the world, promised to be a brother to his half sisters and never contacted them again.
The paper crumpled in his grasp.
The suicide attempt was in there.
How he’d tried to drown himself, but had even fucked that up.
The implication being it was a pity he’d failed.
Charlie began to think that too.
Kate had talked to the press.
No one else knew about the suicide.
She’d done this.

The pain of her betrayal was so overwhelming, he thought his heart had burst open.
Charlie lay on the stairs and howled in anguish.

* * * * *

“Of course Kate did this,” Ethan snapped.
“Who else could it be?”

Charlie slumped on his couch, his head in his hands.

“I don’t know who to be most angry with—her for selling you out or you for not confiding in me.
You’re supposed to tell me everything.
You don’t take a shit without letting me know.” Ethan paced round the room, his brain flying through the options.

“Why would she do this?” Charlie groaned.
“I don’t understand.”

“It’s obvious.
Revenge.
She’s been lying to herself all these years about what happened with her mother.
You made her confront the truth and she’s doing the same to you, albeit more publicly.
Christ, she’ll have made a fucking fortune from this.
We could have made a fortune from this, well, some of it, if you’d told me.”

“Do you think I’m proud of it?” Charlie shouted.
“My life’s a fucking mess.”

“But suicide?” Ethan asked, more gently this time.

Charlie didn’t say anything.
His gaze dropped to the floor.

“Why didn’t you tell me things were that bad?” Ethan sat beside him and patted his knee like he was a puppy.
A puppy would be less trouble.

“You’d just dumped me.”

“Right,” Ethan said, his eyes flicking around.
“Well, the suicide thing’s not as bad as the rest.
At least you’ll get the sympathy vote from that.”

Charlie turned his bloodshot eyes on Ethan.
“That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ve got to ring Mum.
Christ, what’s she going to think when she reads this?”

Charlie looked about to throw up.

“She’s your mother.
She’ll cope.”

The phone rang twice and then stopped.
Ethan knew Jake had picked it up in the kitchen.

“Has Kate been in touch with you?” Ethan asked.

Charlie threw the newspaper on the floor.
“Yeah, I think she has.”

There was a knock on the door.
Jake popped his head around and caught Ethan’s eye.

“Jody Morton’s outside.”

“I don’t want to see anyone,” Charlie said.

“I need to speak to her,” Ethan lied.
“Let her in.”

He put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder to keep him on the couch.
Jody Morton was going to open doors for Ethan.
Where she walked, others would follow.

Jody swept in, rushed over and threw her arms around Charlie.

“My God, Charlie, you poor thing.”

Tears rolled down her face.
Ethan caught her wink as she pressed her head against Charlie’s.
Ethan bit back his smile.
What a fantastic actress.

* * * * *

Kate had fled from Charlie’s house to a refuge for battered women with two twenty-pound notes in her pocket, a birthday present from a friend of Charlie’s.
She’d been given the address a year ago by a nurse after one of her “accidents”.
Dex had been waiting outside the cubicle, so Kate didn’t take the piece of paper, but she’d memorized the address.
One night, when Dex had frightened her more than usual, she’d gone to the refuge, but not inside.
She’d looked at the door, knowing safety was steps away and then returned to the arms of her abuser.
And he’d showered her with love as she knew he would, until the next time he hit her.

This time Kate had walked straight up to the faded red front door and knocked.
The state she’d been in when she arrived, wide-eyed and almost catatonic, it was easy to let them think someone had hit her.
She knew she wouldn’t be turned away.
The women who ran the center gave her a bed and offered food, though Kate was incapable of sleeping or eating.
They wouldn’t let her stay in bed all day, which was what she wanted, but she remained indoors, never leaving the house while she tried to figure out what to do.

Charlie had known she didn’t want to speak to her father.
He had no right to interfere.
But because he had, she’d been forced to confront a terrible possibility—that she’d killed her mother.
Kate found it hard to move past that.
It lodged in her brain—a massive dam, everything piling behind.
At her father’s trial, Kate had told the judge what she’d seen and afterwards a lady had said that her daddy wasn’t coming to take her home.
And Kate’s path divided.

In the end, when the jury found him guilty, Kate believed he was guilty too.
They said her daddy had been sent to prison for killing her mummy, and she wouldn’t be able to see him anymore.
And Kate had closed down and retreated to a safe place inside her head.
When she came out, she knew she would be alone forever.

Her father never admitted his guilt and because of that, he’d stayed longer in prison.
Was it her fault?
What if she’d been wrong?
Kate spent her days in the hostel curled up in a chair trying to think herself back to that night.
But after so many years of trying to forget, she could no longer distinguish between what she wanted to be true and what
was
true.

When she walked into the kitchen at the refuge on Sunday morning and saw a sea of hostile faces, Kate thought they’d somehow found out she was a fraud.
One of the women tossed her a newspaper.

“I thought I recognized you when you came in here, but no one believed me.
Dumped you did he?
Getting your own back?”

Kate looked at the headline.
STORM BREAKS
, and something broke inside her too.

“Going to make a donation with the thousands you’ve got from that?” a voice called as Kate walked out, still clutching the paper in her hand.

She sat on the bus, reading the articles over and over, her fingers smudged with ink.
There was scant mention of her which somehow made it worse.
She could have written this.
There was little in it she didn’t know.
Charlie might think she was getting even because of what happened with her father.
Kate read it again, her heart beating faster.
Ethan didn’t like her.
He’d be only too happy for her to take the blame.

Kate choked on the words of the two reporters.
One of them was Simon Baxter, Richard’s friend, which made Kate wonder, for a moment, if Richard could be behind this.
One problem with that.
Even if she could explain how most of the facts could have been wormed out of people, no one knew Charlie tried to kill himself.
No one, except her and Charlie.
And Charlie’s father.
Maybe his mother.

Once he’d read the paper, Charlie would think she’d betrayed him, that she’d sold him out to the press.
It was the one thing he’d never be able to forgive and Kate couldn’t bear to think of him hating her.
But she could never tell him that one of his parents must have betrayed him.
Their relationship was too fragile.
All Kate could do, was to find Charlie and tell him it wasn’t her.

A crowd of photographers stood outside Charlie’s house, cameras with huge black lenses slung round their necks like monstrous medallions.
As she drew nearer, someone saw her and they turned and rushed at her.
Kate made herself keep going, pushing through them.

“Kate.”

“Over here.”

“Give us a smile.”

A smile?
Kate had forgotten how.
They jostled her, but she remained silent, lips pressed together, intent on speaking only to Charlie.
She hadn’t considered what she might do if he wasn’t there.

A well-dressed stocky guy in his forties with gray hair pulled back in a ponytail opened the door.
Kate didn’t recognize him.
She managed to find her voice from somewhere and gave him her name.

“Wait.” He shut the door.

The men behind called to her again.

“Kate?”

“Turn around.”

“Kate?
Go on, give us a smile.”

“What do you want to see him about?”

“Talk to us, Kate.”

She pressed herself against the door, wanting to shimmer through the glossy blue wood to the other side.
She almost fell as it opened.
Kate followed the ponytailed guy through to the lounge, her heart beating so hard in her chest, she expected to see it burst out of her ribs and leap into Charlie’s hands.
It was where it belonged.

Charlie stood alone in the living room, his creased linen shirt half-tucked into his chinos.
When Kate saw him, she felt a pull so strong, she stumbled.
She wanted to rush up and wrap her arms around him, but the fierce look in his eyes held her back.

“What do you want?” His voice sounded cold and quiet.

“I wanted to see you, make sure you were all right,” Kate said.

“Of course I’m not fucking all right.”

“It wasn’t me, Charlie,” she whispered.

“We were the only two who knew.
I sure as fuck didn’t say anything, so that leaves you.”

Kate could hear her pulse drumming in her head, feel it echoing through her body.
Her knees shook under her jeans.

“I didn’t tell,” she said.

Charlie took a step toward her and then stopped.

“Why don’t you just admit it?” he said.
“For Christ’s sake, Kate, do the decent thing and admit it.
It was a shitty way to get your own back, because I fucked up with your father, but at least tell me the truth now.”

“It wasn’t me,” Kate said.
“I didn’t tell.” The room was ablaze.
Everything on fire.
Her lungs burning.
She couldn’t breathe.
Every part of her said run, but she made herself stay.

“Then who the fuck was it?
You must have told someone.
Who?” Charlie’s eyes were granite, shutting her out.
He stood with his arms folded across his chest.
A perfect statue.

The only person she’d told was his father and she couldn’t tell Charlie that.
He’d been hurt too much for him to know his family had done this.

“I didn’t betray you,” Kate said.

“I know you’re fucking lying.
You told somebody or went to the press yourself.
How much did they pay you?”

Kate didn’t think she’d ever felt so ill.
She trembled on the point of collapse.
Charlie was incapable of seeing the truth.
She’d thought he loved her, but he didn’t.
If he had, he didn’t now.
All he’d ever wanted from her was loyalty and trust, and he thought she’d let him down like everyone else.