A Daughter's Secret (26 page)

‘I know.’ It’s too uncomfortable. I can’t open up this creaking treasure chest of memories with him beside me, then say goodbye. I’ve had too many abrupt exits in life to go wilfully courting another one. I’ve got to get it all out, whilst we’re together.

‘Patrick, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. About the corruption. I can’t stand the idea that the people who should be on your side aren’t on your side.’

He sits bolt upright in bed like a meerkat, and I immediately regret letting the case puncture our fragile, precious bubble.

‘There’s a lot of people snuffling in the trough, chasing the kickbacks. People who think the system screws them and want payback.’ I can feel as much as hear the scorn that soaks his words.

‘Why don’t they get thrown out on their corrupt, sorry arses?’

Patrick shrugs, face like granite.

‘Goes too far up, some of this stuff.’

I stroke his fingers, searching for him.

‘Are you in danger, Patrick? You would tell me if you were?’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ he says, pushing me flat, his hands tangled in my messed-up hair. ‘I’m made of stern stuff. But, Mia? If you can help me, you won’t just be helping me. You know that, don’t you?’

The alarm on my phone shrills out at 6.30, a relentless banshee. It’s downstairs in my handbag, and I stumble off in search of it, rudely awakened in every sense. There’s not one but three messages from Marcus, increasingly demanding.
I’ve landed, baby,
says the first.
You snuggled up in our bed? Call you when I’m past customs.
Typical Marcus: his bad mood’s evaporated so he assumes the world he surveys will reflect his shiny new reality. The next text is at least a bit less cocky: it makes me aware of how rare it is that I challenge him and let him get to a point of contrition. I can hear Patrick starting to stir upstairs, my shame stirring with him. What have I done?
You sulking? Didn’t mean to abandon you, Mia. I’d do anything to be in that bed with you right now. xx.
There’s one final text, probably sent around the time Patrick and I finally, reluctantly, went to sleep.
Not going to ring in case I wake you. I love you, darling. You know that though, don’t you? xx.
I stand there, Patrick’s shirt – the nearest thing I could lay hands on in my empty bedroom – hanging off me. I’m a horrible person: I’ve given myself a cancerous secret I can never tell Marcus, all for a man I can’t be with. I’m winded by another stab of shame as I remember the Stephen Wright conversation. How could I have been so careless with Gemma’s confidences? I love Marcus, I know he loves me.

And here’s Patrick, clad only in his boxer shorts, giving me a sleepy smile from beneath his messy ginger mop. He looks like he’s been assaulted by a tomcat.

‘Well, don’t you look a picture?’ he says, taking in the barely buttoned shirt. The thought of constructing a reply to Marcus, of meeting Judith, of going to that sterile, empty flat – I can’t do this. I can’t do it, and yet I have no choice. I feel like my evil twin stepped into my body, wreaked havoc and stepped straight back out again. It would be a horror movie if it wasn’t my actual life.

‘I’ve really got to get going,’ I say, avoiding eye contact. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t even have a towel to give you.’

‘Mia . . .’ As Patrick steps towards me, my whole body stiffens. He stops, thinking better of it, the light in his eyes dimming. I want to cross to him, wrap myself up in his spidery limbs, never let go, but what good would it do?
I don’t want to get hurt
. That’s what he said. It seems to be my speciality, just like it was Lorcan’s. I summoned Lorcan up, like the genie from the lamp, and look what happened. ‘It’s OK, I was a Boy Scout, I’ll improvise. Do you want to go first?’

‘No,’ I say, gesturing to the bathroom door, eyes sliding away. ‘Feel free.’

We’re both dressed now. I found a few stray things from the chucking-out pile that my cleaner had stuck in the cubby hole under the stairs. I’m unfashionable, but tidy. Patrick, meanwhile, looks a state, his shirt (clearly doubling as a towel) damp and crumpled, his hair refusing to submit to gravity.

‘Are you going straight to work?’ I ask, putting on a swift, efficient coat of lipstick in the mirror by the front door.

‘What, you mean looking like this?’ There’s an edge to his voice. ‘No, I’m gonna have to make a pit stop at home.’

‘That’s miles away.’

‘I know.’

His voice is hard and cold, a boulder rolled straight at me. I deserve it, but it still feels unbearable. I turn to him, pleading.

‘Patrick . . .’

‘Just to warn you, I really might have to call Gemma as a hostile witness.’

‘Don’t do this. Don’t use her to get at me. I don’t mean to be cold, it’s just if I start feeling any of this, I don’t know if I’ll be able to put one foot in front of the other. I’m seeing Judith in an hour, my tenant’s moving in . . .’

‘You’re quite the narcissist, aren’t you?’ he says, eyes narrowing. ‘I was giving everything I had to this case long before you came sashaying into my life.’

Anger whooshes up inside me.

‘Is it because of The Grove, is that why you’re going to call her? Is it because you somehow managed to wheedle that information out of me?’

Pain washes across his face, but then he hardens himself. Or maybe it doesn’t: maybe he’s used that narcissism he’s spotted and played me for a fool.

‘I knew about it anyway.’

‘You didn’t
know
know, you suspected.’

‘We haven’t got Christopher. We’re almost out of time. This was always gonna happen.’

‘How convenient. Convenient and coincidental.’

He looks at me, his eyes softening.

‘Mia, come on. Come back. This is us . . .’

But I’m throwing my files in my bag by now, my mind racing a million miles a second. If I’ve really done this to Gemma – become the person who’s forcing her to get up on the stand and betray the person she loves most in the world – I don’t deserve a shred of mercy. I promised I’d protect her. At least Patrick believes he’s doing what he promised – I’ve got no defence.

‘There is no
us
, Patrick. There’s one sordid almost shag that should never have happened.’ I hate this – the bile’s as much for me as it is for him – but I won’t let him see it. ‘You won. Congratulations.’

‘It wasn’t that way for me. It was never something sordid. I wanted you. In every sense.’

‘Mmm. Not that much.’

He cocks his head, eyes deep dark pools. I don’t want to leave him. I want to barricade the door, lead him back upstairs, forget the world outside exists.

‘You have no idea how much I wanted you,’ he says.

Past tense
. It’s all I hear.

Chapter Fifteen

I stop off at the Australians’ and load up with coffee and croissants, a flimsy and desperate attempt to make nice with Judith. I stare at the booth where I sat with Annie, wishing that the force of my longing could somehow be enough to teleport me back there, give me another chance to listen to the soft knowing inside myself. The rest of that day threatens to unfurl out too, the memory of us sitting on the grass, the way I watched his big hands wrapped around his puny wholewheat sandwich, virtually destroyed by one large mouthful, and secretly loved him for bothering to indulge my whims. Now I don’t know what any of it means, least of all what my part means.

Judith beams at the sight of the steaming coffee, reaches out an eager hand. I wonder if I should just launch in, but she beats me to it, blowing on her coffee as she speaks.

‘Delicious! Mia, I’ve had Annie Vine on the phone twice . . .’

I should’ve come and thrown myself on Judith’s mercy last night. There are so many things I should’ve done differently last night.

‘
Mea culpa
. I’ve fucked this up – I’m not going to pretend I haven’t—’

‘That’s not what the Vines think,’ says Judith. ‘Annie says Gemma cried all night, kept saying how amazing you were, and that she’d pushed you away. She begged me to persuade you to keep seeing her. What actually happened here, Mia?’

I look at Judith, trying to find the words, willing my voice to stay steady.

‘She found out who my father actually was . . . is.’

‘Mia,’ says Judith, laying a wise and crinkled hand, the skin like scrunched-up greaseproof paper, over mine. ‘The perils of practising in the internet age.’

‘It’s my own fault,’ I say, insistent. I won’t duck this. ‘I told her too much. She hasn’t let up since I said what I said.’ Judith regards me, the make-up I’ve painstakingly applied no match for her penetrating gaze. She can sense I’m close to my breaking point. ‘I’ve failed her.’ I think of her angry little face, that vacant triumph. ‘And I’ve failed
you
.’

Judith regards me thoughtfully.

‘It’s a fine line, isn’t it? You could say you’ve failed her, or you could say you’ve gone the extra mile. But where you are right is that you should’ve limited the amount of sessions. And I should’ve insisted on it.’

And then I tell her about Gemma playing the song, how deep it cut, the humiliating way I lost my professional poise. She’s still so calm, a point of stillness in the chaos.

‘She brought your dad right into the room, didn’t she? I’m not surprised you reacted. But, Mia – what does that tell you?’

A sob rises up in me. She doesn’t know the half of it yet. I went through a very holy stage when I started at convent school: I think I loved the sense of order, rules to be obeyed, virtue its own reward. I remember being fascinated by that story of Jonah and the Whale, Jonah swallowed up whole by the might of God’s will. Maybe I thought I could become the whale – become God even – grow so strong and wise with all my qualifications and distinctions that I’d swallow up the past and make it a harmless little digested piece of detritus.

‘I know. I’m still a mess around that stuff.’

‘You definitely need to properly engage with your own therapy. These supervision sessions aren’t enough. And as for Gemma . . .’ She stops to think, dark eyes burning with concentration. ‘I do think a final session, a chance for you both to get some kind of closure, could be the best solution.’

A sick feeling spreads through me at the thought of it. But then I feel into the gap, the void of never seeing Gemma again. It feels even worse, but is that just me trying to atone for something I can never atone for?

I take a deep breath.

‘I think she really might know where Christopher is.’

I tell her about the iPad, the bubbles of messages she waved in my direction, the dark secrets she kept alluding to. It doesn’t sound so compelling when I lay it out.
This is classified
, that’s what Patrick said, quietly forbidding me from telling anyone about the bugged phone. It feels like a string of barbed wire pulled tight around my solar plexus. There’s a different section of truth for each situation, but a section of truth is very different from truth itself.

‘I still think there’s every chance that it’s nothing,’ says Judith. ‘The fantasies of a mixed-up kid, desperate to prove to you her precious dad isn’t the man he’s being painted as. I don’t think it’s anything you need to tell the police about.’ I look down, my face heating. ‘Mia . . .’

‘I talked to Patrick last night,’ I say. ‘I didn’t out and out tell him anything, but I let him lead me into confirming one of his suspicions, and now he says he’s going to call her as a hostile witness.’

‘Last night?’

Something shifts in her face now. Her sympathy is being sucked away, like water swirling down a drain.

‘Yes.’

‘So your reaction to this hugely emotional session was to – let me get this straight. Did you seek him out?’ I give a tiny nod. ‘To expose yourself – expose Gemma – to the lawyer working with the police investigation?’

‘There’s no excuse,’ I say, my voice a disembodied noise inside my head. ‘I know that.’ Will explaining more make it better or worse? ‘He met me for lunch the day before, told me some more information about the investigation – information that made me really worry for her!’ Judith looks at me, gaze cool and flat. ‘He rang me last night, I didn’t ring him.’

‘What are your feelings for this man? What on earth would possess you to do this?’

Here it is: I’ve finally reached the outer limits of my truth-telling zeal.
Sister Mia
, said Jim, all those years ago, disgusted by my piety.

‘I’ve been trying to keep him on side. And I do totally understand his obsession with bringing Stephen Wright down. The man’s a monster. But I know that breaking confidentiality is the worst thing I could’ve done.’

‘Just tell me exactly what was said,’ says Judith, her hands clenched white on the arms of her chair. I give her the edited highlights, resetting that first, extended meeting in Caffè Nero where we tried and failed to have a Frapuccino a few short weeks ago, and cutting out the fact that I said my last angry goodbye to him less than an hour ago. When I’ve finished she sinks back into thought, refusing to lay eyes on me, anger like a heat haze.

‘Your behaviour was extremely unethical – not something I’d ever have expected from you, Mia, and there will be consequences. But you haven’t actually spelled out new information to him, and this is something he could’ve gleaned if he’d chosen to seize your notes.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

She doesn’t even look at me, pauses for what feels like forever.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to suspend you. Not immediately, it’s too disruptive, but, after a week, time for us to warn your regular clients, I’m going to enforce a month. During that time I and the other partners will decide if you still have a job here. The ABA position is out of the question. I’m going to have to share some of this with Annie, and if she chooses to make an official complaint, which she may well do, your position could become significantly worse.’

‘I could lose my licence?’ I say, the enormity really hitting home now. What have I done?

‘I’ll try and couch things in such a way that that doesn’t happen. I do understand that you’ve been having a fullblown personal crisis, but that’s why you have the safety net of supervision!’ Her voice rises. ‘None of us can do this incredibly responsible job properly unless we obey the rules. You know that.’