Driftnet (19 page)

‘What d’you
mean?’ She sat up.

‘I know where
that curtain comes from, Chrissy. I know where it comes from. I
can’t tell you yet.’

‘You’re going
to go to the police?’

He shook his
head. ‘I don’t need to. All I need to do is shop them. I’m going to
see that newspaper man, Connelly. He’ll listen.’

Chrissy was
overwhelmed with terror. All she could think about was the next
time they came for him. To shut him up for good.

‘Wheesht
Chrissy. They won’t know it’s me.’

Chrissy knew
that was ridiculous. They would be after him. But he was thinking
like the kid she’d once known, full of himself and his latest
fantasy about how life was OK.

‘Chrissy?’ he
said.

‘Mmm.’

‘There’s
something you have to know.’ He lifted her face. ‘The doctor says I
can’t have normal sex until I’ve healed up,’ he told her.

‘Neil!’

‘But he didn’t
say anything about abnormal sex.’

Chapter
28

The street was
a sedate curve of tenements and two-storey houses. The small
gardens at the front were neat and colourful and the view from the
windows would be good. Tall trees and a park beyond.

It was a nice
place to grow up in.

Number ten was
half-way along, a main door flat, the front windows hung with
flower boxes in full bloom. Rhona walked by on the other side, then
walked back again, on the same side. When she reached the blue door
she stopped and looked at the name above the doorbell, her heart
racing. She just wanted to know. If they were there she would go
away, she told herself, go away and wait for him to contact
her.

The name wasn’t
Hope.

The woman who
answered her ring was in her early fifties, with springy grey hair
and glasses. She seemed unperturbed at finding a stranger on her
doorstep and quite anxious to help. Rhona suspected she liked
dealing in information of any kind, giving and receiving it.

‘Sorry dear,’
she was saying. ‘They left here four years ago and moved to
England.’

‘Do you happen
to know where in England?’

There had been
no forwarding address.

‘I’m not much
help, dear.

‘Sorry I can’t
be much help dear. Except, I do remember it was a big place they
went to, with a University. Mr Hope was a lecturer in Geology, I
think. He got a new job down there. Manchester, or Birmingham
perhaps?’ She shook her head. ‘Rather them than me. They say
Glasgow’s violent, but we know better don’t we?’

Rhona didn’t
answer that one.

Rhona walked
back to her car. It was no good being disappointed, she told
herself, she shouldn’t have come anyway.

She climbed in
and switched on the radio. As she turned the ignition, she decided
she would go back to work. Try and forget all about it.
Concentrate. Decide what she was going to do about Sean.

As she turned
into the main thoroughfare she spotted the local Primary school,
its gates wide open. A sign was up on the railings giving details
of the Polling Station hours. The playground was thronged with
adults instead of children. Rhona suddenly remembered this was
polling day. She slowed down and stopped, knowing he would be
there.

He was on the
steps, hand held out, a smile on his face. Edward Stewart,
distinguished lawyer and happy family man, doing his bit to revive
Tory fortunes in Scotland and looking, Rhona thought, every bit the
next MP for this area.

She started up
the engine and drove away. She had kept her side of the bargain.
Let him have his seat in Parliament, she thought. With any luck it
would mean he would be out of Glasgow most of the time and she
would never have to see him.

The traffic was
busy on the road back into town and Rhona cursed herself for having
brought the car at all. It was hard enough to keep her mind on the
traffic with all this fighting for her attention. Rhona was
rewarded with an angry horn blast. She turned off onto the next
side street and looked for somewhere she could get a coffee. In
half and hour, the traffic would have dwindled and she might get
back in one piece. She stopped at the first café and bought a large
cappuccino.

Preoccupation
wasn’t the only problem. She had had little to no sleep the
previous night. At three o’clock in the morning, she’d finally
given up tossing and turning and switched on the light. If she was
going to be tortured by thoughts of Liam, she might just as well
have them with the light on. So she let herself think. And the more
she thought, the more she wanted to see her son. She had lost years
of his life, she didn’t want to lose any more. Around four o’clock
in the morning, she made up her mind. She would go to the address
on the printout, check if the Hopes were still living there. She
had never imagined they wouldn’t be.

Rhona looked
up, startled out of her thoughts by the waitress, who was asking if
she wanted a refill. She nodded and pushed over her cup.

‘You were miles
away,’ the waitress said.

‘I was thinking
about my son,’ Rhona let herself say.

‘Giving you
bother, is he?’

‘No. Not
really.’

‘Lucky you. I
could see our Michael far enough. Still. You only get a loan of
them, don’t you? That’s what my mum says.’

Rhona nodded.
It’s the sort of thing her own mum would have said. She suddenly
and achingly wished her mother was alive. Both of them still alive.
Wished she had told them. Wished. Wished.

For months
after her father died, she had imagined driving home, where he
would be waiting for her as always. He would hug her and tell her
how glad he was to see her. Silly. But it helped. Kept her
going.

Her dad told
her she was adopted when she was twelve years old.

They had been
at the cinema. It was a Saturday in winter and very cold and they
had had a chippy on the way home. A treat. Her gloves smelt of
vinegar because she had eaten half the chips with them on, until
her dad said not to.

The news didn’t
bother her at the time. She wasn’t even sure what ‘adopted’ meant,
not until she was thirteen and her friend Louise told her all about
sex and how babies were made. Even then, she didn’t want to know
who her real ‘mum and dad’ were. It didn’t really matter.

Her mum had
finally volunteered the information one day, while they chopped
vegetables for the soup together at the kitchen table. Just in case
she wanted to know, and couldn’t ask.

‘Your mum was
my cousin Lily,’ she explained. ‘She was a traveller.’

It sounded
romantic.

‘She’s
travelled all round the world.’

Her mum went on
grating the carrots as she talked.

‘She brought
back this nice boyfriend once. He wanted to marry her, but she
always said no.’

‘Why?’

It was the only
question Rhona ever asked about her real mother.

‘Our Lily was
her own woman. “Give a man a bit of paper and he’ll think he’s
bought you.” That’s what she used to say.’

She stroked the
grated carrot into the soup pot.‘His name was Robert,’ she
continued. ‘Robert Curtis. He was tall, blonde and very handsome.’
She looked fondly at Rhona’s curly blonde hair. ‘They went off to
Venice together and he got food poisoning and died. It was a real
tragedy. Lily came back. But she only stayed long enough to have
you, and then she went. Couldn’t stand the weather here. It was the
greyness, she said.’

She stopped and
looked at Rhona.

‘She would
never have managed you, you know, not in those foreign places.’

She scraped the
leek into the pot. It seemed to Rhona that her life was being
stirred round and round with that big wooden spoon.

‘So, you came
to us, and a lucky wean you’ve been too.’ She touched the top of
Rhona’s head with a damp hand. ‘Then Lily died somewhere in
Istanbul and they buried her there. I wanted to try and bring her
home but your dad said, no, Lily never thought of Glasgow as home
anyway.’

Later on that
night, her mum had pulled out the big black tin of family photos
and showed Rhona her real mum and dad. They were standing on a
quay.

‘We went to
Millport for the day,’ her mum said with a smile. ‘Our Lily could
never stay in Glasgow when the sun shone.’

Rhona looked
out of the window at the bright street busy with shoppers. Women
with children in prams and by the hand. She wondered again why she
hadn’t told her parents about the baby. They would have been kind,
helped her look after the baby so that she could finish her
studies. It was just that her life had been so tied up with Edward.
And Edward didn’t want to be a father. Not then, anyway.

Rhona finished
her coffee and went to pay.

Her waitress
was on the till.

‘Don’t you
worry about him,’ she told Rhona. ‘If you put the hours in, they
turn out alright in the end.’

Rhona thanked
her and left.

She realised
she had unconsciously taken the route to Police HQ when she found
herself behind Gartnethill. She swore and hit the wheel, then
resigned herself to the prospect of a round trip back to the lab.
She ignored Garnethill’s mesh of one way streets and headed for
Hanover Street. Suddenly she was on George Square and hesitated
long enough to miss the right turn into St Vincent Street. God, she
was going round in circles literally. Then she spotted the
magnificent pillars of the Gallery of Modern Art. She could get to
St Vincent Street that way. A bus stopped suddenly in front of her.
She hit the brakes.

A teenager
jumped off and stood hesitantly. A group of goths were sprawled on
the Gallery steps in the sunshine, but this boy wasn’t dressed like
them. He was scanning the entrance, looking for someone but whoever
he was looking for wasn’t there. His disappointment showed in the
sudden droop of his shoulders.

It was then
that she saw the man. He had been behind a pillar. He called out
and the boy’s face lit up.

The man didn’t
come any nearer. It didn’t matter, because Rhona already knew who
he was.

Chapter
29

Fiona gave
Edward a look that would have cut bread.

‘Why didn’t you
keep him here?’ she hissed. ‘It doesn’t look good for the
photograph.’

‘I couldn’t
help it.’ Edward was at a loss. ‘He just sneaked out without
telling me.’

Edward could
tell by his wife’s face that it was not a good idea to pursue the
matter. Amy’s mother getting ill was damned inconvenient. The
caterers had turned up, thank God, but Amy was the one to get the
kids organised.

However,
nothing was going to spoil this moment for him. Not even Jonathan’s
absence. He would only have put on one of those faces and ruined
the photograph anyway. He would get round the problem by giving the
press a family photo of their own to use, Edward told Fiona.

‘Well,’ he
finished triumphantly, ‘What do you think? Damn fine majority. Up a
thousand on Labour’s.’

‘Sir James will
be delighted.’

‘Sir James is
delighted,’ he told her. ‘He’s been in touch. He’d love to be with
us tonight, but he’s flying to Paris in the morning. Sends his good
wishes to you.’

Edward squeezed
Fiona’s arm affectionately. ‘I’d better go and mingle,’ he
said.

The sitting
room was full. Edward was well aware that he had not been
everyone’s favourite nominee and that there would be plenty to sort
out once the celebrations had died down, but for the moment he
accepted all the congratulations at face value. He walked about
shaking hands, making a joke here, an interested enquiry there.
Altogether, quite satisfying.

The French
windows were wide open and people were spilling out into the warm
evening. Edward wandered out too. The warm sun made him feel even
more contented. It had taken two long hard years to get here, but
it had all been worth it.

He glanced over
at Fiona. This kind of life was made for her. She was the perfect
MP’s wife. Discreet and supportive, and sexy enough to make him a
source of envy among his fellow MPs. You only had to look at the
other wives to see how lucky he was. Edward glanced around to
confirm his view.

He wasn’t too
upset that she didn’t want to be in London all the time. They had
agreed against uprooting the children. Even so Edward couldn’t
imagine why Fiona would prefer to be in Glasgow during the week,
but the arrangement could prove mutually convenient. He for one,
would be glad to get away from the daily round of family life,
especially the constant friction with Jonathan. The thought of the
bachelor life in London was most attractive. He wouldn’t have to
worry about the state of the garden either. Even with a part-time
gardener, Fiona still gave him grief about it.

Sir James had
offered the use of his London flat for a few weeks until he found
his own. Damn nice of him really, thought Edward. All mod cons plus
housekeeper and no teenagers in sight, sound or smell. Perfect.

Edward’s mind
came back to the present. He looked over at the drinks table. Morag
was there again, guzzling. Why wasn’t Fiona keeping an eye on the
girl, he asked himself.

He threw Morag
a pointed look, but she either ignored it or didn’t see it. Edward
was on his way over to tell her off when the boyfriend appeared by
her side. He said something to her and Morag gazed up at him in
adoration. Edward was impressed. Nothing he said to Morag elicited
anything like such a response. And Edward had thought he was a
waste of space. But he obviously had something to recommend him. To
Morag at least.

It was nearly
one o’clock when the guests started to leave. He and Fiona stood at
the door and shook hands with everyone. Edward could see that Fiona
was tired. But she wanted to end the evening properly. Show their
supporters that she was made of the right stuff. At last, the house
was empty.