Never Tell (34 page)

‘Who is that?’ I said, my heart racing suddenly.

Liam raised a hand back. ‘That’s Charlie. He was at your party.’

‘Yeah, I recognise him. Charlie who?’

‘James knows him. Charlie Higham. He’s a right little toerag. Trust-funded up to the hilt. Got all the girls falling at his feet.’

I stared at the fine-boned face, the dyed blond hair falling just like his elder brother’s had as slowly he kissed the girl who clung so hard to him. I heard a rushing in my ears. I saw the bed in that hotel room, the carnage around it. I felt dizzy and sick. This could be no coincidence. I had to get out of there immediately.

I walked back to Jen’s flat. I needed to clear my head desperately after the heat and noise of the club, after Liam’s words. Nothing made sense: no one was being completely straight with me, not even Liam. I had to get back to see James, to make him tell me the truth.

Just past midnight in central London, the streets were still busy; streets I’d walked alone happily at all hours since moving here after college. I turned into the square where I’d once lived. Quieter here, I slowed my pace. A rattle of a bin, a fox, perhaps. The shadows drew in; it was dingy, not so many streetlights, the small private green in the centre in complete darkness.

I thought I heard a step behind me and turned quickly, but there was no one. Still, Jen’s warm flat seemed appealing now. Another noise; a door slamming somewhere. Someone running.

And then a low mournful whistling; it turned my stomach inside out. I was obviously delusional. Why would he be here now?

I paused. The whistling stopped.

My heart aching, I walked on, quickening my step now. My mind was playing tricks on me. Longing can do terrible things. I thought I saw something and I slowed for a second, and then I hurried past a shadow in a doorway.

Too late. I was pulled into the arch. I could smell sherbet.

‘What do you want?’ I said, but I was shaking. I hated him and myself for it, for my weakness. And yet I was overjoyed too.

And all these weeks I’d prayed I’d see him and all these weeks I’d imagined him so fiercely; imagined him in crowds, on buses, in fields, in my house. I’d projected us into a healthy future where we had been together … but he had never come.

And yet now here he was and I was rigid with something – fear perhaps. I was struck dumb … My mouth couldn’t catch up with my mind to form words. What to say and how to act when all I wanted was to crawl into his arms and find the peace I craved. The peace I’d never really had since adulthood. I stared at him blankly.

‘I came to say goodbye,’ he said quietly.

‘Well, you’ve said it now.’ I pulled my arm free but his grip was too tight. Not for the first time I felt frightened of him, of this man I knew so little of; this man I had awarded my trust so carelessly.

More than my trust.

I swallowed hard. ‘Where’s Kattan, Danny? Where has he gone?’

‘Abroad.’

‘Where?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because.’

‘Because what?’ My voice was rising.

‘Because it’s more than my life’s worth.’

‘What about my life, Danny? What about my children’s?’

‘Why do you want him so badly, Rose?’

‘Because he’s involved with my husband’s arrest. And so are you.’

Danny relit his roll-up. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because James told me so.’

‘And you trust your husband, do you?’ He inhaled, narrowing his eyes against the smoke. ‘The husband who’s banged up. The husband who hits you.’

‘He only hit me once,’ I lied.

‘Oh good. So that makes it all right then?’

‘No, I’m not saying that. The point is, you need to –’ I was blustering ridiculously – ‘you need to hand yourself in.’

‘And what would that achieve?’ Danny actually grinned. ‘I’m sorry for you both, but I don’t much fancy doing time, if you don’t mind.’

‘Don’t laugh at me.’ Tears of frustration filled my eyes.

‘I’m not, Rose, I promise.’ He stopped smiling. He reached a hand towards my face, and I ducked, banging my head against the wall. ‘Don’t cry, baby.’

‘I’m not your baby.’
However much I might want to be. ‘
I am very much not your baby.’

‘Fair enough.’ He sighed. ‘But still, don’t cry.’

‘Why not? I feel like crying, to be honest, Danny. Everything’s turned to shit. My husband’s in gaol for God knows what, my kids have got no father, you screwed me and left me. I can’t believe my own stupidity.’

‘Are you angry with me, then?’ He looked down at me calmly, unblinking. ‘Or yourself?’

‘Both.’ I dashed away the threatening tears. ‘Both. I don’t know what the hell’s happening from one minute to the next.’

‘I went because I had to.’

‘Had to what?’

‘I only left you because I had to.’

I absorbed his words. I felt a grain of hope. ‘Why did you have to?’

‘You’re a married woman, for starters.’ He looked at me blankly. ‘What did you expect?’

I’d never known him to be so loquacious. I stared at him. ‘Is that the truth?’

‘Of course it’s the bloody truth.’

‘You would have stayed—’

‘If I could have done. God, Rose. And I didn’t set James up, I swear. I just arranged the meeting with Kattan’s importer, as James and Kattan requested. That’s all.’ He took a final drag, trying not to burn his fingers. ‘Whatever you might think of me, Rose, I’m not a bad man.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’ He chucked the roll-up in the gutter. It sizzled in the damp.
We are all of us in the gutter
, I thought absently. I wished he wasn’t so near me.

‘Like you care what I think,’ I said quietly.

I wished he was nearer.

‘What do you reckon?’

My mind wheeled furiously. ‘And why hasn’t Kattan been picked up then, if he’s the other end of the deal? Or has he?’

‘Of course he hasn’t,’ Danny said wearily. He pulled his zip up to his chin, the gesture I’d come to recognise as a nervous tic.

‘Why of course?’

‘Because he’s done nothing wrong, doll.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Danny. Does your loyalty know no bounds?’

‘And,’ he lowered his lids, until his eyes were slits, ‘because he has diplomatic immunity.’

‘What?’ I whispered.

‘Surely you knew that, Mrs Rose Miller. You, with all your training and your contacts.’

It started to rain, big heavy raindrops plopping onto the dusty pavement.

I opened my mouth to say something but before I could speak he pulled me towards him, unbalancing me so I fell into him. He kissed me so hard and deep that I forgot about everything for a second, burying his fingers in my hair, holding the back of my head so fiercely, as if he could crush it easily if he tried. And without meaning to, I kissed him back. I didn’t care any more; for a moment I lost myself, my insides liquefying, the smell of him, the smell I’d dreamed of, his skin, his hair beneath my own fingers. I held on to him like he was my salvation.

A police car blared past at the end of a road and as quickly as he had grabbed me, Danny let me go.

‘Rose.’ He looked down intently at me.

‘Yes?’ I mumbled and I knew I was crying properly now, my tears mixed with the driving rain.

‘I’ve got to go.’ He wiped my eye with a gentle thumb. My face was soaking with rain, and tears. He muttered something I couldn’t catch.

‘What?’

‘I can’t – I won’t see you again. I think it’s for the best.’ It felt like a skewer through my heart. I clenched my teeth. ‘I see.’

‘But I won’t forget you, I promise. I’ll think of you, Rose.’

‘Thanks,’ I said shakily. ‘But hopefully I’ll forget you.’ I stepped backwards into the street.

I wouldn’t let myself look back. I got round the next corner; saw Jen’s mansion-block ahead but I didn’t want to go there yet. I wanted to be on my own; I wanted to crawl into a corner and die. The tears coursed down my cheeks. I bent double in the road and I sobbed and sobbed, feeling like someone had just sliced my arteries open. How could it hurt this much? I told myself over and over again it wasn’t just him, it was the whole situation, but it didn’t help.

A young woman on a bicycle stopped to see if I was all right but I held my hands over my face until she went away. I sat there on the pavement, leaning against the railings, and I cried until I could cry no more.

Inside my heart was breaking; and inside I was thinking that I’d known it would do all along; that I deserved no better. And I realised finally how dangerous it had been to let myself fall when I had not been ready; when there was no one there to catch me.

It rained so hard that all the flowers in the pots by the front door were bowed and broken when I stood again.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE TELEGRAPH, JULY 2008

Bright young Tory hope Ash Kattan today joined David Cameron and Baroness Warsi at the Young Muslim Association for a talk on racial harmony. Both are Oxford alumni – although Kattan once publicly criticised the infamous Bullingdon Drinking Club that Mayor Boris Johnson, Cameron and close ally George Osborne were all members of – the pair seem to have ironed out differences now with the announcement that Kattan is standing for a seat in Berkshire. Son of international banker and art dealer Hadi Kattan, Ash is the face of ‘a new and excitingly diverse Britain’, according to the Tory whips
.

‘There’s a girl called Star on your phone.’ Jen pulled a face at the name, extending my mobile towards me. ‘Tea?’

‘Oh God, yes, please.’ My eyes still felt swollen and sore as I pushed myself up off the sofa-bed and took the phone. ‘Hi, Star.’

‘Morning, Rose.’ Her voice was absurdly cheerful. ‘Good night at the club?’

‘Oh.’ I thought about it, my brain fuddled. Next door I could hear the kids discussing Scooby snacks. ‘Well, you know. Different circumstances, it would have been great I’m sure.’

‘We’ll have to have a night out one of these days. When your – when it’s all sorted.’

‘Yes.’ What did she want? I looked at London’s hard water scum floating on my tea. To chat about evenings out? Surely not. ‘Star, I—’

‘Rose,’ her voice dropped suddenly, ‘listen, the reason I’m calling you so early –’ it was 9 a.m., ‘is ‘cos Liam’s still asleep. He told me you want to find out about Angel.’

‘Angel?’ I repeated stupidly.

‘Katya. Angel. Whatever you wanna call her.’

‘Yes of course. Katya.’

‘I can give you an address. She lived with this foreign bird somewhere south of the river. Pole dancer, I think. Bit moody, Lana, but she’s all right. I expect she’ll know a bit more about her. Right pally, they were. Have you got a pen?’

I wrote the address down.

‘Only, Rose,’ Star was whispering now. ‘Can you not tell her, or Liam, who gave you the address?’

‘Why don’t you want him to know?’ I asked slowly.

‘Oh, you know,’ she was still so upbeat, ‘he don’t like me getting involved with the club. You know, business affairs, and that.’ She yawned. ‘Right then. I’m off to bed. Night night.’

‘Last favour, Jen, I swear.’ I wrapped the bobble round the end of Alicia’s plait, and kissed the back of her head. She was so skinny, her little shoulder blades jutted like the stubs of angel-wings from her narrow back.

Jen sighed. ‘It’s not that I mind having them.’ She widened her eyes, subtly indicating the kids. ‘I love it. Not least because it reminds me why I’m not ready to have any of my own.’

‘Jen!’

‘Joking, obviously.’ It wasn’t obvious. ‘But I just wonder – I mean, do you know what you’re doing?’

‘Of course.’ I didn’t. ‘You’re talking to the woman who staked out Arafat for a week until he gave me an interview, remember? This is just – stuff. Trying to help James.’

Trying to help myself too. Needing to know the truth.

‘It’s fine. Really. Just be careful, for God’s sake.’

‘It’s London, Jen, not Gaza. And when I get back,’ I looked at the twins’ blond heads, faces turned up like flowers to the sun of the television screen, where the immortal Scooby Doo ran from the baddies as he had done since my own childhood, ‘we’ll go and get pizza, shall we? My treat.’

Gaza it might not have been, but this part of Brixton was a dive. The road was run-down, bins overflowing, several buildings with smashed windows badly boarded. The house I needed was smart by comparison, the first-floor flat sporting beautiful window-boxes filled with violets and daisies, though the wheel-less pram in the front garden slightly ruined the effect.

I rang the doorbell insistently, but there was no answer. A middle-aged Rasta with an enormous hat and a small mongrel in tow rounded the corner. ‘She never up before midday.’ He winked at me. ‘Fancy a brew while you waiting?’

I looked at him, at his calm face, and I smiled. ‘That’s really kind but I don’t have much time.’ I buzzed again.

A cross voice suddenly floated out of the intercom. ‘Yes?’

‘Lana? I left you a message this morning. Rose Miller, the – er – the club gave me your number.’

There was a pause.

‘Please, Lana. It’s really important.’

A sigh. ‘Hang on.’

The Rasta sucked his teeth. ‘She got a temper, that one.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I hear her shout many a time at them bad men on the corner. You come see me if you get scared.’

The flat was immaculate but homely, kitsch even. The girl had long fair hair scraped back very hard from her bony face. She wore a kimono covered in delicate butterflies, out of which her long thin hands protruded like small spades, too heavy for her wrists. The coffee that was brewing smelled delicious and I realised how hungry I was.

‘Thank you.’ I took the scalding cup. ‘Nice place.’

She yawned widely. ‘What do you want?’

‘So you were friends with Katya?’

‘Katya?’ She looked at me and her tone was accusatory. ‘She died in your house. That is strange, no?’

‘Not really strange. Tragic, I think is probably a better word.’

‘Are you saying my English is not good?’

‘God, no, not at all.’ I was flustered. ‘I just – it was a terrible accident.’