Behind Closed Doors (10 page)

But he was in charge of the kiss, and therefore it ended. ‘Get back to work, Louisa. I’ll see you soon.’

Tease
, she thought.

Jason came back half an hour later. He knocked on the door of the main office, pretending that he didn’t know the door code, even though it hadn’t changed since the job they’d worked on in this room last year.

Lou had been head-down replying to all the admin emails that had stacked up. Leave requests. Case review. Taskings requiring her authorisation.

When she crossed the main office her first thought was
That
time went by fast
, and then, when she opened the door, that thought was gone. Not for the first time she was struck by how good-looking he was: the dark hair, the strong jawline, his green eyes. She’d learned to control this, the way she looked at him, not giving anything away. She had to lift her chin, challenging.

It only took a second for this. Then she realised he had a carrier bag that smelled of hot food. Takeaway.

He held it up. ‘I brought you a picnic.’

‘Oh, my God, I love you.’

She let him in and he followed her back to her little office, and she was glad her back was to him so he couldn’t see her cheeks burning. If Sam had brought her food, or Ali, or anyone else on the team, she would have used those exact words – but in this context it had a whole new layer of meaning that was dramatically awkward.

They hadn’t used the L word, properly and not jokingly like just now. Not yet.

It had been close a couple of times. A few weeks ago, a rare weekend together, most of Sunday spent in bed with activities that ranged from hard, intense fucking to gentle, tender kisses, from sleep, to sandwiches and a bottle of wine, to long moments face-to-face, just looking. And she’d wanted to say it, longed to say it. But he had to say it first.

He was so relaxed about everything, so easy. It seemed as if the relationship for him was entirely without an agenda. He would not push it forward, would not demand more time with her, suggest moving in, complain about her untidiness, pressure her to meet her family, nothing like that; when she’d commented on this – positively, as if it was refreshing that he gave her so much space – he had moved his shoulders in a lazy shrug and said, ‘Hey, I’m just grateful.’

‘I am so hungry you would not believe,’ she said, unpacking polystyrene containers. A chicken kebab, judging by the smell and the bits of shredded lettuce hanging out of the side once she’d unwrapped the paper parcel.

‘I would totally believe. What did you eat today?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Stuff.’ She had a mouthful of it already – chicken and lettuce and pitta and, yes, oh, brilliant, he’d remembered: chilli sauce. Lots of it.

The chicken kebab said lots of things. It said,
I am taking care of you
. It said,
I am going to make you eat healthily
– she knew that, of all the food choices available to Jason Mercer at this time of the evening in the town centre, a chicken kebab was the most balanced meal. She would have chosen Indian, or at a push Chinese, or as a third option a great big fuck-off pizza with extra garlic bread. And she could eat all those things and not put on any weight because she was wired all the time, running from one job to the next, so it wasn’t her weight that was concerning him but his desire to make sure all the food groups were represented and that she had something with vegetables in it, even if it was just a bit of shredded iceberg lettuce. The only possible alternative to a chicken kebab, for Jason, would have been for him to drive all the way home and cook her something.

Jason was a big guy – built like a hockey player, of course, whatever that meant. He was like a wall, without the sleekness of a body-builder’s muscle-definition. Just strong and solid. And you didn’t get to be as fit and healthy as he was without eating decent food.

He ate his own kebab watching her, and then from the pocket of his hoodie he brought forth two bottles of water. She wanted a can of Coke to wash it all down and was tempted to run to the vending machine to satisfy the urge for caffeine and sugar, but didn’t want to incur his disapproval.

‘So,’ he said, between mouthfuls, ‘are you done?’

‘I’m never done, you know that. As I said, I’ve got to go out again in a minute.’

He rolled his eyes. His phone beeped and he pulled it from the back pocket of his jeans, before unlocking the screen and looking at the message. He laughed, thumbed a short reply. ‘Mike says hi.’

‘Oh. Say hi back.’

‘It would be good to get the two of you together more. He’s all right, really, you know?’

‘I’m sure he is. It’s not that I have anything against him; it’s more that you two get together and you suddenly turn twice as Canadian as you were five minutes before.’

He laughed at this. ‘What do you mean? I
am
Canadian; how can I get more Canadian?’

‘You want to know? The volume gets cranked up, your accent and the idiom gets so strong that I don’t have a clue what you’re both talking about, but the likelihood is that you’re talking about your childhood or some food that we don’t have over here, or hockey which I still don’t understand, so… I don’t know. I just think you’re both having such a great time I might as well not be there.’

‘Well, I enjoy being with you and with him, too. I’ll be more careful that I don’t leave you out.’

‘I’m a big girl. I’m not getting all precious about it.’

Lou had finished her kebab and was bundling up the wrapper.

‘So who are you meeting?’ he asked.

‘Caro Sumner from SB. We’re going to talk to a witness.’

‘And after? You coming over?’

‘It might be really late,’ she said. ‘Best not.’

What she had said must have come across wrong because he stood up abruptly, packing the empty polystyrene and paper into the striped carrier bag. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night?’

She drew a blank for a moment.

‘Hockey?’

‘Oh, right! Yes, of course. I’ll do my best.’ He had an important hockey game, and, back when things had been reasonably quiet, she’d promised to go.

‘Well, you know, only if you’ve got the time to spare.’

‘Jason, you know I can’t promise. But if I can be there, I will,’ she repeated. She wanted to point out that he was being too sensitive, that he should know she had other priorities. Other men she’d had relationships with would play this game – get all pissed off on her for no good reason, go off in a sulk. It was hockey, not as though he was collecting a Nobel Prize or something – he wouldn’t even notice if she was there or not. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t have support. Lou remembered the first time she’d gone to a cup match, waiting afterwards in the foyer of the rink outside the players’ changing rooms along with a crowd of teenage girls, all wearing Jaguars jerseys, loud and overexcited. When Jason and his teammate Travis had come out they were all over him – asking questions, getting their shirts signed, taking selfies. At the time she’d thought it was hilarious. Later on she’d worked out that she must have looked like one of the girls’ mums, standing by the door waiting for all the adulation to finish.

‘Thanks for dinner,’ she said feebly.

‘No problem.’

Without thinking, Lou said, ‘Will you come to my cousin’s wedding with me?’

That stopped him. He paused for a moment, then sat back down. ‘You serious?’

Lou had that feeling of having accidentally opened a massive can of worms. ‘Of course. It’s on the twenty-third, just in the evening. You’ve probably got hockey.’

‘Nope. Not that weekend.’

‘Great,’ Lou said. ‘I’d like to apologise in advance for anything my mother might say to you.’

He looked at her, studying her face. Lou was trying her best to look excited.

‘I’m sure they’re not as bad as all that,’ he said.

‘Tell me again after the twenty-third,’ Lou replied.

Jason smiled and nodded. There was something going on behind those eyes, something Lou couldn’t quite make out. He certainly didn’t look especially happy.
This is a big deal for me
, she wanted to say.

‘Okay, then, sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you. At least it might mean I get to spend a bit of time with you, right?’

Ouch.
That was it, then? He was getting needy?

He came round the desk and kissed her, despite the kebab breath. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night.’

Tempted as she was to carry on working, she was tired and vaguely pissed off, and now she was going to have to go and meet Scarlett Rainsford for the very first time.

Somehow, Yelena had managed to fall asleep. Scarlett watched her, stared at the bumps of her spine showing through the thin, pale skin of her back. If there had been a blanket she would have pulled it over her, despite the stifling heat. There was something about the sight of her bare back, her top ridden up, that made Scarlett want to cover it.

She’d cried, again, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake the other girl, snuffling into her sleeve which was filthy with grime and dried blood. She wished she could sleep too, but the heat and the sunlight and the drilling headache made it impossible. The water was all gone. She had already drained every drop from the bottles that were scattered around the room.
Thirsty, so thirsty.
Try not to think about it.

Eventually she collected all the bottles and moved them into the corner of the room, behind the bucket, which was now stinking badly. There. Now she wouldn’t have to look at them.

Yelena stirred, moving over on to her back, one hand thrown casually over her head. Scarlett looked at her and her eyes opened. Almost immediately her face crumpled and she put both hands over her eyes.

‘It’s okay,’ Scarlett said, although it was clearly far from okay. Nothing was okay, never would be again.

They were in a minibus this time, not the van that had brought Scarlett here; driving back through the winding roads and then, eventually, on to some sort of motorway where the engine whined at the demands that were being placed upon it. The interior of the vehicle was heaped with boxes, suitcases, holdalls, all over the seats at the front. Where they were, at the back, some of the seats had been removed to make a space on the floor. The two windows in the back doors of the minibus were painted over, allowing for a dull light to filter through to their space at the back, but not giving them any way to see out or attract attention from other drivers. In this disorientating space they were sitting facing each other, with their backs against the sides of the bus.

Yelena and Scarlett had been moved quickly, unexpectedly, before they’d had time to prepare or, worse, make use of the bucket.

Right now the bucket was one of the things Scarlett was thinking about a lot. More so because when they’d clambered into the back of the bus there had been another six-pack of water bottles already in there. They had drunk two each, somehow avoiding any spillages as the minibus jolted and swerved, and now they were staring at the remaining two bottles as though they were some sort of talisman.

Once again, the room had become the place she had begun to feel was her space – being taken from it by force had made her feel panicky. Now, her heart had stopped thumping and she was almost relaxed, soothed, by the rhythm of the wheels on the road underneath them.

Yelena was sitting wide-eyed. They’d hardly spoken, even though they had spent the whole afternoon together. Scarlett had so much to say – they should have been plotting escape, planning who was going to leap on the back of the first guy who opened the door and who was going to kick him in the balls. Instead, they were wary of each other. Despite her initial kindness – if that was what you could call it – Scarlett still didn’t feel any sort of warmth from the girl. She didn’t know what nationality she was, either. Eastern European was her best guess, but she could have been way off there too. And she was older, clearly, than Scarlett. She wanted to feel that Yelena would protect her, would stand up for her because she was still just a kid and vulnerable, but she didn’t feel that. She felt as though Yelena would rip her head off if she thought it would do her any good.

She’s not the enemy
, Scarlett thought.
She’s all I’ve got. And I’m all she’s got, too
.

Scarlett longed to stand up and stretch out. She needed the toilet, badly. It had been a mistake to drink those bottles of water so quickly, but she hadn’t been able to help herself – so thirsty, so desperate for a drink. She had only used the bucket in the room once, in all the time she was in there – and her urine had been dark and malodorous, telling her all she needed to know about how dehydrated she was. And the next stage after that, she knew having suffered many times before, was a bladder infection, and quite probably, if it wasn’t addressed with antibiotics, a kidney infection too.

At least this time nobody could accuse her of inflicting it on herself.

That one time, stressed with schoolwork and Dad and home life and worrying about Juliette and how she didn’t seem to talk any more, she’d just forgotten to drink enough and before she knew it she was in agony every time she had to pee. And the inevitable visit to the doctor with her mother, and the shame of it – discussing it over the kitchen table with
him
, in front of Juliette too.

‘She’s doing it for attention, of course; she always does things like this.’

‘This isn’t about you, Clive. She hasn’t deliberately timed it to coincide with your work project.’

‘Every time –
every
time something big is going on at work, Scarlett has to come down with some illness. And this one’s because she’s not drinking enough water? It’s drama, pure and simple. All about the drama.’

She’d sat at the kitchen table between them with tears rolling down her cheeks, not making a sound, not commenting even though she wanted to tell them both where to stick it, and even though she kept her silence this too became a focus for them.