“Good night?” Brian peers at me through bleary eyes as the alarm clock beep-beep-beeps 6:00 a.m. on the table beside him.
“Lovely, thank you.”
He yawns and stretches his arms above his head. “What time did you get in?”
I consider lying but have no idea what time he fell asleep so can’t pretend I slipped in next to him. “It was after two.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t drinking, were you? I don’t think you’re allowed to take alcohol with the pills you’re on.”
“Of course not. There was a lovely late-night coffee shop just around the corner from the theater, so Jane and I had a catch up. We just lost track of time, that’s all.”
Brian shifts in the bed to get a better look at me. My stomach churns and I look away, praying he won’t cross-examine me.
“Just as long as you had a good night, darling.” I feel his lips on my cheeks and then a blast of cold air as he throws back the duvet and sits up. The mattress squeaks as he stands, a floorboard creaks as he crosses the room, and then there is silence.
I pull his pillow to my chest and hug it tightly. I’m getting closer to discovering what happened to Charlotte, but I’m so very tired. I want to roll over, to sleep for a million years and wake up when this is all over, but I can’t. I can’t do anything as the coma robs Charlotte of her health, her mental faculties, and possibly her life.
But what can I do but wait? The path ran as far as Steve Torrance, and there’s nothing I can do until he calls.
I throw back the duvet and sit up.
Yes, there is.
***
“Sue?” Danny peers out at me from behind the front door. His face is crumpled and sleep-lined, his eyes bleary and unfocused. “It’s eight o’clock on a Sunday morning.”
“I know.”
I don’t want to be here either. I want to be in the hospital with my daughter—and I will be once we’ve spoken—but I have to find out what he’s hiding first.
“How did you get my address?” He runs a hand through his tousled blond hair, and his white toweling dressing gown slips open.
“I rang Oli.” He wasn’t delighted to be woken up early either.
“Right.” Danny yawns and glances back into the apartment. “So what can I do you for, Sue?”
“I’d like to come in, if I may.”
“Um...” He pulls his dressing gown closed. “It’s not really convenient right now.”
“Keisha in, is she? It’s okay. I can say what I need to say in front of her.”
Danny shifts from one foot to the other. “She’s not here.”
“Oh.” I look past him into the flat. There’s a pair of vertiginous black high heels scattered across the hallway. Danny turns to see what I’m looking at.
“It’s not what…” He shakes his head. “What’s so important anyway?”
“You lied,” I say, “about going to Grey’s nightclub with Charlotte and Ella. I know you were there.”
“Sue, I swear”—he holds out his palms like an innocent man surrendering—“I wasn’t there. There are a lot of malicious people in Brighton, and if someone’s been spreading rumors that—”
“Danny.”
“Yes?”
He looks me straight in the eye, waiting to hear what I have to say next. He’s smiling, his eyebrows raised cordially, his thumbs hooked into his dressing gown pockets. Like James, he’s a consummate professional when it comes to lying. I wonder what he’s told the woman lying in his bed—that his relationship with Keisha is over, that they’re just casual, that they have an open relationship? And what of Keisha? What lies has he told her so she doesn’t suspect that he’s sleeping around?
“No one told me anything, Danny. The police accessed the CCTV footage that Grey’s has of that night. I saw you enter the club.”
“The police…” He searches my face, but I maintain my composure. Two can play at this game.
“Just tell me what happened, Danny.”
He steps back into the hall. “You’d better come in.”
***
Fifteen minutes later and I’m back on the doorstep, this time saying good-bye.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Danny says again. “Ella overheard me and Keish talking about going to Grey’s, and she and Charlotte turned up on the same train as us on Saturday night. I tried telling them to go back to Brighton but Ella said—”
“That she’d report you for letting underage girls drink in Breeze.” He’s already told me this. Several times.
“Exactly.” He crosses his arms, tucking his hands under his armpits.
“But why Grey’s? Why follow you there?”
“Because it’s glamorous?” He shrugs. “Because you see pics of celebs falling out of it in all the papers? Because Ella’s got a crush on me?”
“A crush?”
“Yeah, Charlotte told Keisha about it. I think that was part of the reason they all fell out—because Ella overheard me talking to a mate about going to Grey’s and she got the impression that Keisha wasn’t coming and thought that if she turned up in a minuscule dress and a load of makeup”—he smirks—“that she could seduce me.”
I look again at the pair of high heels in the hallway. How old is the woman in his bed? “And did you?”
“Shag Ella? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You let her into your club.”
“Look, Sue.” He holds his hands wide. “I let the girls into Breeze because of Charlotte. She’s my best mate’s little sister and she’s as good as family.”
“So you’d encourage your sister to drink if she was underage, would you?”
“No, of course not—” He becomes very still, very composed. It’s as though a shutter falls over his face. “You can blame me all you want for what happened to Charlotte, but she’s not my kid. Where did you think she was when she was out until two or three in the morning? Playing hopscotch? What kind of mum doesn’t know where her daughter is at that time of night?”
I reel as though slapped.
“Sorry, but I won’t have you paint me as some kind of pervert just because I let my mate’s little sister and her best friend into my club.”
I can’t speak. I’m too stunned by his previous remark to reply.
Where did I think Charlotte was on a Saturday night? I know exactly what I thought—that she was staying in London in an overpriced YMCA hostel with her classmates and several of her teachers from school.
“Did you meet him?” I ask. “Did you meet Alex Henri?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t go into the VIP enclosure. I didn’t stay that long. Charlotte, Keisha, and Ella all got pissed and then had an argument. Keisha was swaying all over the place and slurring her words, accusing me of secretly fancying Ella, saying I’d invited her along so we could have a threesome. Which was bollocks, I should add.” He shrugs. “So I left.”
“You left all three of them in the club?”
“Yeah. Keisha’s not a kid, and I figured if the other two were old enough to get a train to London, they were old enough to get one back. Like I said, I didn’t invite them along.”
“But they were only fifteen, in a club with men twice their age.”
“Do I look like a fucking child-minder?”
“Danny, I hardly think—” I’m interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. “Hang on a second.”
I fish my mobile out of my handbag. I don’t recognize the number.
“Hello, Sue Jackson speaking.”
“Hello, Sue. It’s Steve. Steve Torrance.” For a split second, I have no idea who I’m speaking to, then I remember.
“How are you?”
“So I spoke to Al…” I gird myself, waiting for the inevitable denial.
“He says he did go into the loos with your girl, but nothing happened. The plan was for her to give him a blow job, but she got stage fright. Burst into tears and said she couldn’t go through with it. Told Alex some fella was blackmailing her. Got into a right state, he said. He didn’t know what to do, so he left her there, in the ladies’, and went back to his mates. After that, he didn’t see her again.”
“She…” I step backward, grasping at the air, but there’s nothing to hold onto, nothing to steady myself. “She was being blackmailed?”
“That’s what he said.” He sighs. “Look, darlin’, I don’t know how well you and your daughter get on, but if she was my kid, I wouldn’t let her hang out with pimps and prostitutes, not if she doesn’t want to be taken for a whore herself.”
“A prostitute?” I fight to steady my voice. Danny is staring at me, his eyes wide with curiosity, but I don’t care. I feel like I’m having an out of body experience, like this isn’t really happening, like I’m in a play speaking someone else’s words. “My daughter was mistaken for a prostitute by Alex Henri?”
“No one’s saying anything about Alex using prostitutes, you hear me? No money was exchanged between Charlotte and Al, and if you try and sell a story to the papers that he tried to bed a hooker in the bogs of Grey’s, I’ll slap a lawsuit on you.”
Danny frowns and crosses his arms over his chest.
“What did they look like?” I ask. “These…people…she was with?”
“How should I know?” Steve yawns loudly down the phone. “What do you want? A fucking mug shot? Al just said something about a guy and a fit black girl.”
“Did he mention either of their names?”
“Pinky and Perky. I’ve got no fucking idea. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. Look, love.” His voice takes on a new steely tone. “This is all very lovely, having a nice little chat with you, but I’m a busy man. We made an agreement and I’ve kept my end of the bargain. The question is, are you?”
“What?”
“Going to the police? Not that you’ve got a leg to stand on, because as my client said, he didn’t lay a finger on your daughter.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
The phone goes dead.
“You all right, Sue?” Danny asks.
“Who’re you talking to, Dan?” A heart-shaped face framed by a mass of blond curls pokes around a door halfway down the corridor. “Come back to bed. I’m getting cold!” Her eyes meet mine. “Oh shit, is that your mum? God, how embarrassing.”
“It’s not what you think—” Danny starts as she disappears back into the bedroom, but I hold up a warning hand.
“I don’t care who you’re sleeping with, Danny.”
“Cool.” He reaches around me and opens the front door.
“Just one thing before you go.”
“Yeah.”
I could confront him. I could tell him that, unless he tells me the truth about what happened in Grey’s that night, I’m going to tell the police that he’s a pimp, but there’s a quicker way to find out what I need to know.
“I’d like your girlfriend’s address, please.”