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When Charlie still doesn’t move, Tom snarls at him.
‘Hold her fucking arms, you queer.’
Charlie steals a glance in Luke’s direction. He’s terrified of what’s about to happen, but more terrified of defying Tom. Luke wills him to walk away, to make a joke out of the whole thing. He doesn’t. He kneels above Anna’s head and presses firmly on her wrists.
Luke realises now that she is screaming. The air shatters around him.
Tom clamps one hand over her mouth and uses the other to pull at his flies. Luke tries to get to his feet to help the girl but falls sideways and ends up flapping like a fish in a net.
Tom laughs. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn, Lukey boy.’ He thrusts his hips forward and Anna’s eyes shoot open. He knows he has to do something. Anything. So why doesn’t he move? Why is he still lying on the hard autumn ground? He closes his eyes, disgusted at himself and wishes for tomorrow morning.
Chapter One (#ucf1c22e8-1e04-5f02-9668-6a9fb61ff26b)
The sky outside the office was clear and welcoming. The pale October sun attempted to make its presence felt and Lilly longed to take her lunchtime walk. She’d instituted a daily turn around Harpenden Park after a four-week contested divorce case that had frazzled her mind. She found that the fresh air calmed her, and it stopped her from wolfing more than a sandwich for lunch.
She turned her gaze from the window back to her client and sighed. Mr Maxwell was so absorbed in his story he had failed to notice his solicitor’s evident lack of interest.
‘I simply cannot justify another penny,’ he said. ‘And I cannot see why she should be allowed to sit at home all day while I work my socks off.’
Lilly wondered why a man with such a profound lisp would choose so many words beginning with ‘s’, and pretended not to notice the spittle that was accumulating on his tie.
‘She has three children to care for,’ said Lilly, ‘and they are your children.’
‘We have an au pair for them.’ He fixed Lilly with eyes that bulged like marbles in an otherwise flat face. ‘You have a child, Miss Valentine, yet you seem to manage to work without too much trouble.’
Lilly thought of her ridiculously complicated child-care routine, involving her ex-husband, friends, and anyone prepared to offer a lift to school.
‘What do you think she could do to earn some money?’ Lilly asked.
Mr Maxwell gave a dismissive shrug. ‘She used to be a model.’
Lilly tried to hide her shock. What beautiful woman would go for this unappealing specimen of manhood? Mr Maxwell gave a tree-frog blink. The sort who would be happy to sit on her bony arse all day and count his money was the obvious answer.
‘As galling as it seems, Mr Maxwell, the court has ordered you to pay maintenance to your wife and children,’ said Lilly.
‘Ex-wife.’
Lilly nodded. ‘So you will have to pay.’
Mr Maxwell shuffled his whinging backside out of Lilly’s office, his eyes pulsating.
As he left the building she watched him limp up the road. Lisp, blinking eyes, a limp—maybe she was being too harsh on the poor man. Then a blonde bounced towards him, her plastic breasts fighting to escape. She covered his bald head in tiny kisses and squealed.
Mrs Maxwell Mark Two was waiting in the wings. Some men never learned.
Lilly checked her watch and groaned, realising that her next client was due any minute. She tried to leave a gap between them but divorce cases always overran. These people paid by the hour, so it was their funeral if they blabbed over their allotted appointment, which invariably they did. When it came to splitting up the marital assets, this lot would argue over the contents of the hoover bag.
Lilly missed her care cases. Stroppy teens who might spare you ten minutes between shoplifting in Tesco’s and meeting their mates in the arcade. Sometimes they didn’t turn up at all but left convoluted messages about ASBOs, social workers and pregnancy tests.
God, she missed it.
She pulled a Kit Kat from her bag. Chocolate and no exercise, a double whammy As sugar and hydrogenated fat entered her system, she realised that the only thing keeping her sane was the weekly trip to Hounds Place. At least there she could do some good. Some real good.
‘Might pop over there after this client,’ she mused.
‘Don’t even think about it.’
Lilly turned to the door, where the ever scowling secretary-cum-receptionist, Sheila, had appeared.
‘You don’t even know what I was talking about,’ said Lilly.
Sheila crossed her arms. ‘You want to go running off to the Dogs’ Home.’
‘It’s called Hounds Place,’ said Lilly. ‘As you bloody well know.’
Sheila scooped up some papers fanning the floor and slid them back into their file. ‘Do you keep your house as tidy as this?’
‘Did you just come to annoy me or did you get bored with filing your nails?’
Sheila tried to put the file back in the drawer but the runners were jammed. She pushed and pulled, the metallic groans matching her own.
Lilly sighed. ‘Do you actually want something, Sheila?’
‘The powers-that-be want to take you for a drink after work,’ she said, without turning around.
Lilly put her head in her hands. ‘Bloody marvellous.’
‘Stop whining,’ said Sheila, and thrust her arm into the cabinet. It disappeared like a vet’s arm in a cow. ‘They probably want to thank you for your hard work and good attitude.’
‘In my new role as advisor to the rich, ugly and divorcing I make them shitloads of money. Good attitude is not part of the package.’
Sheila was now virtually inside the cabinet, her shoulders and chest lost in its recesses, her face pushed against the handle.
‘I don’t know why you’re so miserable. You’re making good money, aren’t you?’
It was true. Lilly’s wage had increased by fifty per cent since the firm had reallocated her caseload.
‘The root of all evil,’ she said.
Sheila’s cheek was contorted by the pressure of the metal. ‘You weren’t saying that when you didn’t have any, you just moaned endlessly about the state of your house, how your car was knackered and you couldn’t afford Sam’s school uniform.’
‘But it’s so boring.’
‘Grow up,’ Sheila grunted. ‘It beats the bunch of no-hopers that used to come here thieving the staplers.’
‘Vulnerable kids,’ Lilly sniffed.
‘Junkies, most of them,’ said Sheila. ‘Like that bleeding nutter who drank the bleach.’
‘Kelsey was not on drugs,’ said Lilly. ‘It was her mother who was addicted.’
‘Whatever.’ Sheila shook her head as if the details were unimportant. ‘The point is it nearly bankrupted the office.’
‘We got paid,’ said Lilly.
‘Legal Aid scraps, and you know it,’ said Sheila. ‘And as for those scroungers at the Dogs’ Home, I don’t know why you bother.’
‘Because it stimulates my intellect,’ said Lilly. ‘Something you wouldn’t understand.’
‘I understand that having kids means making sacrifices.’ At last Sheila withdrew her arm, bringing with it a battered book. ‘This was stuck at the back.’ She threw it onto Lilly’s desk. The Art of Positive Thinking.
‘Something to stimulate your intellect.’
Lilly put her head on the desk. ‘Do I really have to go for a drink?’
Sheila’s laugh was nothing short of cruel. ‘Rupinder says it’s a three-line whip.’
It’s been a horrid day. A nightmare. Mr Peters had bawled Luke out for not paying attention in Latin. He’d said he was wasting his talents, and that it was nothing short of criminal. Luke had wanted to tell him how close to the mark he was.
During Information Technology he’d surfed the Net to see how long people got for rape, how old he’d be when he got out of prison. He couldn’t breathe when he saw life was an option. He’d seen a politician on the telly saying the government were cracking down, that ‘life should mean life’. He’d bitten his lip until it bled, terrified he’d burst into tears in front of the whole class.
Worse still, Tom had been acting like nothing was wrong. He’d even boasted in the common room about meeting a ‘right little goer’.
The other boys had laughed at him, said he was talking bollocks.
Tom leaned over the snooker table and potted the black.
‘Ask Lukey boy, he’ll tell you what she was like,’ he said. ‘Gagging for it, wasn’t she?’
Luke smiled weakly, but he could still hear the girl screaming and see her slender wrists being held so tightly that they seemed to turn blue-black. A bit like the sky before a storm.
Now the bell is ringing and Luke can finally escape. Thank God he’s not boarding tonight. He wants to go home, to throw himself onto his Arsenal duvet and let it all out. Maybe he should tell his mum. Maybe she could help. Even if she can’t it would stop the whole thing running through his head like a bad film on a loop.
He sees her car parked by the cricket pitch and bolts towards it. Inside it smells of clean washing.
His mum smiles. ‘Had a nice day, love?’
He can’t answer and squeezes his eyes shut.
‘Is everything all right, love?’ asks his mum.
He stirs his pasta with a limp wrist.
‘Luke?’
Her voice is so very gentle. He feels wrung out like a damp cloth, all the moisture down the sink.
She lifts his chin and looks into his eyes. ‘You would tell me if something was wrong?’
He sees in her familiar face a lifetime of wiped noses and birthday teas. This isn’t a broken window or a bad school report. How can he tell her what he has been part of, what he has done? She can’t make it better. No one can.
He forces some words out. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘You look peaky,’ she says, and presses a cool palm against his forehead. ‘You’re not hot but you’re obviously coming down with something.’
He pushes his bowl away. ‘Yeah. I feel sick.’
Relief plays at the corner of his mother’s mouth. This is her territory.
‘Better lie down, love,’ she says. ‘Will you be all right while I collect your sister?’
The thought of Jessie, a year younger than Luke, fills his mind. What if some boys took her to the park…held her down…
He runs from the room, his hand over his mouth, acid bile running through his fingers.
* * *
His bedroom is spinning and Luke concentrates on a small brown water stain on the ceiling.
‘I’ll be twenty minutes,’ his mum calls from the bottom of the stairs. ‘How about I call at Waitrose for some Lucozade?’
Luke doesn’t answer.
When he hears the front door close he lets the tears spill. He curls into a ball and weeps, snot pooling under his nose, sliding onto his lips, until it becomes clear what he has to do.
He wipes his eyes on the back of his hand and packs a bag.
Lilly had tried, she really had. She’d put on her coat and fully intended to head to the bar where her boss and the other partners were waiting for her. But when it had come to it, Lilly had made a sharp right turn and jumped into her new Mini Cooper. Sheila was right about some things. A car that started first time, every time, was a joy on a par with a night with George Clooney.
As she sped down the A5 she pulled out her phone.
‘Rupes, it’s me. Sorry I couldn’t make it to the pub but I need to collect Sam. He said he’d leave home if he had to go to after-school care again.’
It was true that Sam preferred not to stay late at school with the boarders. He said the common room smelled and tea in the refectory was always the same. ‘I don’t know how they do it, Mum, but whatever day you go it’s always some sort of mince,’ he’d said. ‘They give it different names but it doesn’t fool anyone.’
To say he hated it was perhaps an exaggeration, but extreme times called for extreme measures.
Rupinder said nothing. Lilly could imagine her pursed lips and tried to make light of it. ‘You can give me my bollocking tomorrow and save yourself the price of a pint.’
‘Just get your backside over here.’
Lancasters had changed hands again. Now a franchise of a famous chef who had never stepped out of the West End, it had restyled itself as a gastropub. What this meant in reality was sage-green walls by Farrow & Ball and steaks costing fifteen quid a pop. As usual, it was almost empty.
Rupinder and the others were congregated at the far end of the bar. Lilly heard the pop of a champagne cork and her heart sank. Had she missed something important? Whose birthday was it?
‘What’s the occasion?’ she called, all faux bonhomie.
Rupinder held out a glass of bubbly. ‘Your application for rights of higher audience. You passed.’
