Sally called Steve at nine thirty, and within twenty minutes his car headlights came in through the kitchen window and travelled up the wall. On the table in front of her was a pile of papers: mortgage statements, the utilities bills, her wage slips and the estimates for the work that needed doing on the house. She’d been poring over them for the last hour, struggling to see where she could eke out an extra four thousand pounds. Now she gathered them up hurriedly and shoved them behind some books before he appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in mid-length chino shorts, sandals and a faded T-shirt with a little rain sprinkled on the shoulders. He was unshaven and looked tired.
‘Hey,’ he whispered, closing the door. ‘You all right, beautiful?’
Sally beckoned him in. ‘It’s OK – she’s asleep. She’s like the dead when she goes.’
He came in, throwing his keys on to the table. ‘So? What’s going on?’
She went to the fridge and got out the bottle of wine they’d opened the night before. ‘Sorry – but I think I need a drink.’ She poured one for him, one for herself, put them on the table and sat, looking into the wine, her shoulders drooping.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. I just wanted a friendly face.’
‘It’s more than that.’
She took a gulp of the wine.
‘Come on. What’s on your mind?’
‘I’m sorry – I just – it’s been a bad day. With Millie, with work.’ She shook her head despairingly. How could this keep happening? How could she go on being so stupid? All the time. All the time. It just wasn’t getting any better. ‘The house is falling down around my ears, Steve. The downpipe at the back has fallen off and there’s damp everywhere. The thatch is rotting, there are rats in the ceiling and they’ve eaten through the plasterboard. I found squirrel droppings in the utility room on Monday. It’d cost me ten thousand pounds to put it all back – and me? Idiot me? I don’t even know if I’m going to pay my council tax this month. And then … then today …’
‘Today?’
She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him seriously. ‘Can you keep a secret?’
‘Funny – no one’s ever asked me to do that before.’
She gave a watery smile. ‘Seriously. It’s about Millie. I’ve promised her not to say anything, but I can’t help it. It’s all so bizarre – I can’t keep it a secret. I’ve got to talk about it.’
He pulled up a chair and sat. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘She … needed some money. She knew she couldn’t come to me, so she went to someone she shouldn’t have. Someone who wants the money back. And he’s not the sort of person I know how to deal with – he’s a drug-dealer.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘I know. I’m just so dense.’ She knocked her knuckles against her forehead, wishing she could wake up the dumb, sleepy mass in there. ‘I just never get it. I didn’t see any of this coming, just like I didn’t see the divorce coming, and now my only chance of making a decent living is to work for a criminal, and he’s rude and you say he’s dangerous, but I haven’t got any choice because my daughter still thinks she can live like all her rich friends do and will make any stupid decisions because of it and now I’m—’
‘Hey hey hey.’ Steve reached across and caught her hand in his. ‘Hey. Take it slowly. We can work it out. I mean— Do you want me to speak to this character? Do you know how to get in touch with him?’
‘You can’t. If you do, Millie will find out. I’ve promised her not to say a word. Anyway – God knows what he’ll do to her if he thinks he’s not getting the money. I’ve thought about it. The only way is for me to pay back what she’s borrowed.’
‘Then I’ll lend you the money. The divorce wasn’t kind on me, you know that, but I can find the money. It’s not a problem.’
She bit her lip and raised her eyes to his. In his open face, his straightforward smile, she saw a sweet and welcoming slope. A slope that she could step on to with ease. Fall on to and be carried along. It would be comfortable: the fear would go away. But it would lead her nowhere. Eventually she’d come back to the same numbness she’d reached with Julian.
‘No,’ she said, with an effort. ‘No. Thank you, but no. I’ve got to work this out on my own. David will pay me an extra four hundred and eighty a month so it’ll take a while, but I’ll do it. And I borrowed a DIY book from the library – maybe I can fix some of the house myself. There are some tools in the garage that the last owners left and I can borrow some more from Isabelle.’
‘OK.’ He smiled. ‘And what you can’t get from her I’ll lend you. Whatever you need.’
She smiled back weakly. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
Steve rose and went to the fridge for the wine bottle, but she couldn’t draw the line that easily. She sat, her head on one side, turning her glass round and round on the table, watching the wet rings cross and recross.
‘Steve?’ she said, when he sat down again.
‘What?’
‘You know this morning, what you were saying about David Goldrab?’
His face darkened. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with a knuckle. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I remember.’
‘What did you mean when you said it was just fluke he hadn’t been banged up years ago? If he had been put in prison, what would it have been for?’
‘Oh, Sally. Are you sure you want to know all this?’
‘Yes. I’ve got my first day at his tomorrow and, honestly, I’m nervous. I can’t go on any more with my head in the clouds, always missing the plain bloody obvious, always being the last to know anything. Please …’
Steve shook his head. ‘OK. Well, chiefly Goldrab’s a pornographer.’
‘A pornographer? What does that mean? He sells magazines?’
‘Mostly videos. Downloads on the Internet.’
‘A pornographer? Are you sure?’
‘I’m afraid so. A hundred per cent sure.’
She was surprised to find she wasn’t more shocked. ‘Gosh – all day I’ve been thinking you meant he was a real criminal.’
Steve gave a dry laugh. ‘He is a real criminal, a real, live criminal. One of the richest pornographers in the country – and that’s saying something because we’re one of the few nations in the world that doesn’t have a thriving porn production industry. He makes his living from persuading young women – not even women some of them, girls, more like – to do things they’ll regret for ever. Before the Internet took off he spent a long time in Kosovo making illegal porn that he smuggled into the country. And I mean nasty stuff – animals, bondage. You name it. People have suffered, I can guarantee that. I’m not going to get all Mr Morals on you, for God’s sake – I’m a red-blooded man and and I’m not saying I haven’t watched a bit of porn in my time – but, trust me, a lot of the women he’s used didn’t have a choice in the matter. They didn’t have the freedom. Especially the ones in the Balkans.’
Sally sat in silence, digesting this. She could see the reality and all the subtle equations that came out of it – if she was working for someone like that, it kind of made her equal to him, complicit, even. But after all her consideration she knew she wouldn’t back out. She needed the money. ‘I suppose that makes me pretty desperate, if I’m working for him.’
Steve reached over and pushed her hair behind her ear. ‘Sweetheart, we’re all desperate. We all have to do things we’re not proud of. That’s just the way the world goes round.’
Chapter 22
It was raining so Zoë took the Mondeo. She parked near the locked gates to Sydney Gardens and prised her way through the bushes. The park was officially closed, but unofficially it was open to business. Everywhere she looked she saw young men loitering, standing casually, hands in pockets, or leaning against trees. One or two were actually sitting on the ground, lounging as if it was midday in August and not a rainy night. As she passed most of them melted away into the bushes.