She drops me back home. Mum’s out, the car is gone, but Martha’s there. She hears my key and she’s waiting for me. I dodge past her and make for the stairs. I need to shower and change.
‘Alan called,’ she yells after me. ‘Wondering where you were.’
I stop halfway up the stairs. ‘What did you tell him?’
‘Said I had no idea.’
‘Thanks, Martha. Thanks a lot. What did he say to that?’
‘Said if you weren’t there by this afternoon, you needn’t bother turning up at all.’
‘I better get down there. Square it with him.’
It’s getting on for three o’clock. I run back down the stairs, my mind already reaching for excuses.
‘You missed a good party,’ she says as I make for the door. ‘Lee was there.’
‘I really don’t have time for that right now.’
She ignores me and carries on with what she intended to say.
‘She wanted to know if you’d finished with Caro yet.’
‘None of hers. Or yours. Now, if you’ll excuse me? Because of you I’ve got a job to save.’
‘She said something else. That guy. The one she saw, coming out of Caro’s? It wasn’t you. Definitely. Know why?’
‘No, Martha. I don’t know why.’
I turn to face her. She has the look of a matador about to deliver the estocada.
‘Because that guy walks with a limp.’
I grab my bike and take the side roads and back alleys. The quickest way to Rob’s. When I get there, the curtains are drawn. I ring the bell but there is no reply. I hammer on the door. No response. Maybe he’s out – or more likely back from the pub and sleeping it off. Either way, I’m here to have it out with him. If he’s not in, I’ll wait. Stuff Alan and his job. It’s nearly the end of the summer, anyway. I’m not leaving until I get an answer.
I look around for the key that Grandpa used to keep under the brick, third geranium from the left. The plants have withered and died, crisp leaves on hollow brown twigs, but the key is still there.
I let myself in. The hall is quiet and dark. I shout out, but there is no reply. I’m coming back down the hall when I sense rather than hear a movement upstairs. It’s as though someone is up there, on the landing, hovering, waiting for me to go. I stop. There’s definitely someone there.
‘Rob?’ I call. ‘You there?’
Nothing. Just silence but the sense that someone is there is even stronger now. It doesn’t have to be Rob. I feel the beginnings of fear creeping through my gut. Maybe it’s a break-in. Someone up there and I’ve disturbed him. There’s all kinds of stuff here. Not just Rob’s stuff but Grandpa’s medals. And his guns. I think about legging it out of there but I find myself gripping the banister and mounting the stairs.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Rob is standing at the top of the stairs in a pair of grey jersey trunks. The scarring livid on his leg. His arms folded, biceps bulging under his tattoos. He keeps in shape, doing weights, and it shows. His torso gleams with sweat like it’s oiled, his stomach muscles ribbed and distinct beneath the powerful chest.
‘I came over to ask you something. Then I thought there was someone upstairs . . .’
‘Well there is. Me. As you can see. How did you get in?’
‘I used the spare key from the garden. Grandpa used to keep one there.’
‘Did he?’ Rob frowns, like he knew that but had forgotten. His arms tighten across his chest. ‘Well, I don’t want every fucker in here all times of the night and day so you can just leave it on the table and go.’
‘No. There’s something I want to know.’
‘Not now, Jimbo.’
He looks behind him. He’s not alone. There’s someone up there with him. That accounts for why he didn’t answer, why he’s upstairs in the middle of the day, why he’s only wearing a pair of trunks, the sheen of sweat across his body.
‘Yes. Now.’
I go to mount the stairs, determined to see who he’s got up there. He comes down to meet me, barring my way.
‘I said, not now!’
He takes me by one arm and turns me, forcing me back down the stairs. He frogmarches me to the front door, yanks it open, and suddenly I’m outside. The door slams and I hear the chain lock thrown across.
I step back and look up at the house, helpless. The curtains are open a bit now and he’s standing at the window watching me. I can see a shape, an outline, the shadow of a girl. She comes up behind him and puts her arms around his waist. I can’t see her face but silver flashes in the sun. She’s wearing bracelets, lots of them. They slither down her arm as she reaches up to embrace him.
It could be another girl with bracelets, lots of girls wear bracelets, but I know it isn’t. This is what’s been in my head, but I didn’t want to believe. A little, tiny bit of me was expecting a reprieve. It’s like being in a car that is going to crash. Part of you is watching, seeing what is about to happen, but your brain can’t accept, won’t accept that this is it. I have that sick feeling deep inside me. This is bad. The kind of feeling you get when you lose something irreplaceable. You know that it has gone but still you look and look for it, revisiting the same places, not accepting that it is lost for ever.
I don’t feel angry; I’m in a place beyond that. The betrayal is so deep, so complete, that I just feel empty, as though my insides have been hollowed out of me. I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid when I’d run down the street crying because of something he’d done to me, some hurt or rejection, teased me beyond endurance. I don’t cry now. I bite down hard on my lip until I taste blood in my mouth and just walk away, leaving my bike in the road, back wheel ticking. I don’t look back. I know that nobody will be there.