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‘Tell me about your father.’
Aishe and Benedict were in her bed. Benedict wasn’t usually around on Sundays for the simple reason that Gulliver usually was. But Gulliver’s band was giving a concert in six weeks, and Sunday afternoon was now their agreed time for rehearsals.
Aishe would have preferred their usual routine of vocal sex and then lying around in silent a post-sexual torpor, but she knew that if intimacy were to be plausibly feigned, she’d have to make that move. She had an inkling that people demonstrated interest in others by asking questions. So she’d asked one.
‘My father?’
Benedict sounded convinced that he’d heard wrong. Fair enough, thought Aishe. Up until now, small talk had been notable by its absence. Usually, the only words spoken were by her, and were ‘There!’, ‘Faster!’ and ‘Now!’
She’d never had the patience to let men find their own way in lovemaking. Take charge from the start was her motto. If they couldn’t work it out, why should she suffer? But she had to concede that the orders she barked at Benedict were mostly for show. He was the one in charge. The only other man to have flipped that balance of power in the sack was—
‘I’ll tell you about my father if you tell me about Frank.’
Aishe sat bolt upright. ‘No way.’
Benedict laughed. ‘It’s like touching a match to a fuse. Every time. Boom!’
He reached out a finger and idly stroked the underside of her breast, causing Aishe to seethe with desire as well as rage at his audacity.
‘Is he such a sore point with you because you were fond of him?’ Benedict went on. ‘Because I can assure you it’s not that way with my father.’
Damnit! Aishe was finding the struggle almost beyond her. For so many years, she’d relied on the twin protective strategies of full-frontal attack and a defensive cast-iron shell. If the attack did not deter the invaders, the shell would keep them at bay. No one in. No one out. Except Gulliver who, the minute he was placed bloody and squalling in her arms, blasted the shell to smithereens.
But to keep Gulliver close, she had to also keep Benedict close, and that meant a change to her modus operandi. A big change.
That said, old habits took time to die.
‘You first,’ she said.
Benedict raised an eyebrow. But he said, ‘All right.’
He placed his palms on the bed and pulled himself up to sit beside her. Then he blew out a breath. ‘Well. Where to begin?’
‘Is he a psycho?’ suggested Aishe helpfully. ‘Or just an arsehole?’
Benedict laughed. ‘He is who he is,’ he replied. ‘But he’s not who I will ever be.’ Seeing Aishe found this answer to be in all ways deficient, he went on. ‘My father is a criminal.’
Aishe gave a sceptical snort. ‘What did he do? Embezzle the country club funds?’
‘Not exactly,’ Benedict replied. ‘He started by robbing the mail train from Aberdeen, and then moved on to drugs, guns and extortion.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘You can Google him if you like. His name’s Reginald Hardy. He was born in Liverpool to a dockworker and his wife. My grandparents. I never knew them. Both died before I was born. The family moved to Glasgow to get work on the Clyde when my father was ten. He got into petty crime pretty much immediately, dropped out of school at fourteen, and at seventeen robbed the mail train. On his own.’
‘Bullshit.’ But Aishe sounded less convinced.
Benedict gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Google him.’
‘Right.’ Aishe slid out of bed. ‘I will.’
‘I’ll wait here,’ Benedict told her. ‘None of it’s news to me.’
Fifteen minutes later, Aishe slid back into bed.
‘There’s a picture of you with him,’ she said. ‘At your school prizegiving.’
‘I know.’
‘How come he hasn’t spent more time in jail? A year for tax evasion’s hardly a deterrent.’
‘Because he’s cunning and evil. Everything you read online is fact but none of it’s ever been proven. Lack of evidence, and witnesses. He was superb at getting rid of both. And by the time I was born, he had enough legitimate money to not have to live in the shadows all the time.’
‘How could it be legitimate?’ said Aishe.
‘Sanitised through sound investments,’ Benedict replied. ‘A little bit of dirty money goes in, but the returns are all clean. And those returns go into more investments.’
‘Investments such as—?’
‘Property, mainly.’
‘Oh.’ Aishe was quiet for a moment. ‘I have a cousin who’s a property investor.’
‘Is he also a cunning, evil criminal?’
‘Not that I’m aware. But then, we’ve sort of lost touch . . .’
She turned and scrutinised Benedict’s face. ‘You look like your father. Only about a third of the size.’
‘I know. One of God’s better jokes.’
Aishe was quiet for a moment more. Then she frowned. ‘Why is he chasing you? You’re twenty-nine, not fifteen.’
The lopsided smile returned. ‘Because he would sooner die than lose.’
‘Explain.’
‘Promise to tell me about Frank?’
Aishe gave a quick nod. Benedict settled back against the head of the bed, obviously deciding how best to begin.
‘My father has never lost at anything in his life. Over the years, people challenged him, certainly. But none of them stayed alive long.’
‘You know this for a fact?’
‘A small boy can slip into many places unnoticed,’ he said, ‘and even when they knew I was there, they knew I was his son.’
‘His heir,’ murmured Aishe.
Benedict met her eye. ‘Exactly.’
‘But Daddy’s footsteps weren’t attractive.’
‘If I’d been another kind of person, then perhaps. But I liked music, and books, and school. I loved school. I excelled. It’s probably what saved me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘At school, I was a winner. And I made my father a winner. Through me, he won victories in areas he could never have hoped to conquer — academic and, in particular, social. He sent me to boarding school from the age of ten. I was soon speaking like this, and making friends with the sons of aristocrats.’
Aishe snorted. ‘Bet they still thought your dad was common as muck!’
‘Of course,’ said Benedict. ‘But he had money and he liked to spend it. We had a huge house with all kinds of toys and temptations. You know most English aristocrats are stony broke, so they were more than happy to accept my father’s hospitality. And you must understand that my father is also highly charismatic. After a while, I think most of our guests forgot that they were supposed to look down on him.’
Aishe thought of her own upbringing. The Hernes weren’t dirt poor, but there was little money to spare. Every child knew that if they wanted something beyond the basics, then they’d have to work for it. And they did, thought Aishe. They were taught to be entirely self-reliant. But at the same time, they always had the family to come back to. They knew that was where they’d always be safe. Well, when her dad was alive, anyway.
‘Were you unhappy growing up?’ she said.
The question seemed to surprise Benedict. ‘I was an only child. My mother was — is — a decent enough person, and I think my father was genuinely fond of her. He certainly treated her well. But he also made sure she put him first. She always had to put him before me. Which meant most of the time I was left to my own devices. I didn’t mind that. I preferred it. It alleviated the constant pressure of being my father’s son.’
‘What do you mean pressure? Pressure to grow up like him?’
Benedict offered a wry smile. ‘You can imagine I wasn’t exactly all he had hoped for. When I was little, I was everything he despised — bookish, timid, puny. In fact, there was a moment—’ He paused and slid her a look. ‘You’ll think I’m overreacting, but there was a moment when I truly believe he had decided that I had to go.’
‘What? Oh, get real!’
‘I told you!’ said Benedict. ‘I was ten — the same age as he was when he went into crime. He came up to my bedroom. I was reading. He pushed a finger against the cover of the book to see the title. It was The Last Battle, the final Narnia book. “Who wins?” he asked me. I could hardly say, “Some children and a whole bunch of magical creatures”, so I replied, “The good guys.” He nodded, which relieved me no end. But then he said, “Come with me.”
‘There were some woods near the house. They weren’t particularly attractive, all dank and twisted. He led me in there. As we walked, I could hear what I thought was whimpering. It got louder, and when we reached a patchy sort of clearing, I could see that in the middle, hunched on the ground, there was a mongrel dog.’
Aishe drew in a sharp breath. ‘If this is ends badly for the dog, I don’t want to hear it.’
Benedict gave her a pained look. ‘What if it ended badly for me?’
‘You’re right here,’ she pointed out. ‘Breathing. Intact. Though that may be at risk if you did something to that poor dog.’
‘It was caught in an ancient gin trap,’ Benedict continued after a pointed pause. ‘It was in a very bad way. I’ll spare you the details but it had tried to bite its way free. My father said, “The trap can’t be opened. It’s too old, too rusted. So what would you do?” I had learned to be cautious, so I asked, “What are my choices?” He drew a handgun from his jacket pocket and said, “Here’s one.”’
‘That would have been humane if you’d done it right,’ said Aishe.
‘I was ten!’ Benedict protested. ‘I’d never even held a gun, let alone fired one! The chances of me killing it first shot were, to say the least, slim.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I saw that the gin trap wasn’t that firmly anchored, and I thought for one crazy moment that I’d be able to pull it out of the ground, and carry it and the dog out of the woods. But the dog was maddened by pain. As soon as I took a step near, it lunged and snarled at me. I turned back and saw my father smiling, offering me the gun. So what I did was this: I took to my heels and ran.’
Aishe winced. ‘Ouch.’
‘Yes, in retrospect not the smartest of decisions. But I couldn’t save that dog, and I couldn’t kill it. What else could I do?’
‘What happened to the dog?’
‘You really do care more about that damn dog than about me, don’t you?’ said Benedict.
‘Dogs need protecting more than people do!’
‘So if I said my father decided at that moment that he could do without me as a son, you’d still be more concerned about the dog?’
‘Why would he decide something that absurdly extreme?’ said Aishe.
‘Because I was a loser! I’d failed him! I couldn’t be trusted!’
‘You were a kid!’
‘The next day, I found a gun in my room,’ said Benedict. ‘In plain sight. On my bookshelf.’
‘So?’
‘I took it as clear signal that he intended me to use it.’
‘You were ten,’ Aishe pointed out. ‘Ten-year-olds live in fantasyland. When Gulliver was ten, he believed World Wrestling bouts were a hundred per cent real.’
‘Fine.’ Benedict folded his arms. ‘Think what you want. But you don’t know my father. You don’t know what he was like.’
‘He sounds like a bad bastard,’ said Aishe. ‘But I truly cannot believe he wanted you dead. You were his only son for Christ’s sake.’
‘Well, he didn’t for long,’ said Benedict grumpily. ‘Because the following month, I scored the highest mark ever in the entrance examination for public school. And from then on, I was the star of the school.’
‘You were a winner again.’
‘Yes.’
‘But it didn’t last?’
‘In my final year, I was accepted into Oxford. My father was ecstatic. That was the pinnacle of every kind of achievement in his eyes. I packed my suitcase and got on the train. I got off at Oxford station and got straight back on another train to London. Then I got on a budget flight to Frankfurt. And I’ve not been back to England once. In almost ten years.’
‘He’s been chasing you for that long?’ Aishe frowned. ‘How do you know?’
‘He’s not all that subtle about it.’
‘And if he did catch you? What then?’
Benedict gave her look that was half defiant, half embarrassed.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Aishe. ‘Seriously? He’d put a gun to your head?’
When Benedict didn’t reply, she snorted, ‘You’re delusional. I’ll say it again: no father wants to kill his only son. It’s absurd!’
‘Not if winning is everything.’
‘He wins by bumping you off? Some victory!’
‘I’ve never claimed any of this was rational,’ said Benedict. ‘But you believe what you like.’
His tone was cool. Aishe realised that she’d pushed him too far.
‘Have you heard from him since you’ve been here?’ she said.
Benedict hesitated. ‘Not yet.’
‘Well, then. Maybe he’s finally given up.’
‘Maybe.’
They shared a moment of silence.
‘He shot it,’ said Benedict. ‘The dog. I heard the shot as I was running away.’
‘It was the humane thing to do,’ said Aishe.
‘Perhaps. But I can’t be sure he shot it in the head.’
Benedict shifted onto his side. ‘Now it’s your turn.’ He dropped a kiss on Aishe’s collarbone. ‘Time to tell me about Frank.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ Aishe yanked the sheet right up to her neck. ‘I married him. He died. End of story.’
‘You loved him.’
Aishe found the words sticking in her throat. But she had no choice; she’d promised.
‘Yes. I did.’
‘Why?’ Benedict frowned. ‘What did he have that every other man in your life has lacked?’
His expression seemed sincere but all Aishe could hear in his words was disdain. Benedict was judging – judging her for being so strange as to love a huge, middle-aged chicken-outlet owner. Belittling her decision and her feelings. Belittling what she and Frank’d had together, and what they should have, damn it all, had forever.
She knew this was her vulnerability at work. She knew that any time she thought about Frank, it brought up grief and longing of such intensity, it terrified her that she’d never feel happy again. She knew that she was under extreme emotional pressure and that speaking out now would not be wise. But Benedict had made her feel judged and threatened, and she could not let that slide.
‘I think it’s simple,’ she said to him. ‘The big difference is that every other lover I’ve had, including you, were boys. Whereas Frank — now he was a man.’