Blood Ties (18 page)

His vision slewed and the entire restaurant distorted as if it was underwater, every inch of skin on his body rupturing with a cold sweat. A demolition ball had smashed through his life and he wasn’t sure if there would be a way to rebuild. He stared at the wall opposite, his breathing tight and painful.

Robert desperately wanted to call Louisa.

Louisa cancelled her meeting in Birmingham, but only because it was Robert. Anyone else would have taken their place in her diary.

He was waiting at Euston Station, holding a half-drunk cup of coffee and looking as if he hadn’t washed or slept for two days. If it wasn’t for the designer sunglasses and Mercedes keys he was clutching, he would have looked like just another homeless person.

Louisa’s long stride scissored her between impatient passengers and she was soon standing beside Robert.

Their conversation the previous afternoon, when Robert had called her from the blustery Promenade in Brighton, had been short but intense enough for Louisa to know that this was more than Robert speculating about his wife’s honesty. This was history repeating itself.

Without begging or divulging any need other than business, he had coldly requested that they meet. He’d said that he wanted to hire her professionally.

‘So,’ she said in her usual crisp, uncomplicated voice. ‘Here we are.’

There was a pause, a shutting out of the station’s mid-morning noise, each of them noticing their hearts kick into the same rhythm before a brief embrace. Robert could hardly bear the brush of her thick hair on his cheek. She was wearing it loose today, the russet waves spilling on her shoulders. She smelled of raspberries.

‘Here we are.’ Robert laughed and looked away, turning on his heel and wiping his palm over his stubble. He knew he was a sight, even more so in Louisa’s fresh light. ‘My car’s downstairs. Shall we go?’

They both knew it was pointless talking about it until they were somewhere quiet, a place where their voices could cut cleanly through the summer humidity without either of them having to say pardon or frown or cup their ear. Robert only wanted to go through this once. Even the hooded interior of the Mercedes provided a less than suitable environment. Louisa moved a chiffon scarf from the passenger seat as she got in.

‘Erin’s?’

Robert nodded, half expecting her to smell it as if it was a leading clue in the investigation he was hoping she would agree to take on. How to present it to her so that she didn’t jump to conclusions, assume things were heading the same way as with Jenna, he didn’t know.

‘I wasn’t sure if you’d even answer my call.’ They both slipped on their sunglasses as Robert accelerated onto the street.

‘I nearly didn’t.’ She briefly touched his hand as it rested on the gearstick.

 

The wine bar was cool and dark, barely open, all the tables and chairs perfectly positioned. They didn’t want to eat, for which the waitress seemed thankful, and they sat on a leather settee at the rear of the premises. An air-conditioning unit buzzed overhead. They drank chilled house white.

‘I know what you’re thinking but you’re wrong.’ Robert put his glass on the marble-topped table and leaned his forearms on his knees. Louisa sat next to him, her pencil-slim legs crossed. Her cropped linen trousers rose up to expose her smooth knees.

‘You have to admit, Rob, that you’re an unusually suspicious person.’

‘And wasn’t I right about Jenna?’

‘That message on her phone proved nothing.’ Louisa sighed but it was lost in the hum of the air conditioning. Sucked up and recycled.

‘It proved she was meeting a man without my knowledge or—’

‘Does Erin know that you’re here with me?’

‘Of course not.’

Louisa shrugged, her palms wide and upturned. She reached for her wine. ‘Then she has as much reason to accuse you of having an affair with me as you had with Jenna.’

‘The difference is that we’re
not
having an affair, are we?’ He paused as their hearts realigned. Another early customer passed by on the way to the toilets. ‘Anyway, I don’t see what that’s got to do with me hiring you for a job. Are you willing to work for me or not?’ Robert took a long sip of his wine, chilling his lips, his thoughts.

‘Just like old times, eh?’ Louisa laughed. ‘Except I have a niggling feeling that it’s not documents that need serving or a missing person you want tracing.’

Robert hadn’t yet told her what Baxter King had said. Just that it was urgent, that he needed her. That they had to meet.

‘In a way, I do want you to locate a missing person. Someone I once knew. Thought I knew,’ he added. ‘I’m having trouble getting Ruby’s birth certificate—’

‘Yes, I know that, Rob. You already told me. I regularly use an agency that can run a nationwide search for Ruby’s details on pretty limited information. I expect you’ve just been in touch with the wrong register office or something silly. Next problem?’

‘It’s Erin.’ He sighed heavily. ‘She’s not being honest with me. The thing is, Ruby’s new school have called several times and sent notes home about returning Ruby’s enrolment papers. Erin’s done absolutely nothing about it.’

‘You said yourself that she was never keen for Ruby to go to the new school.’

‘Oh, but she was.’ Robert laughed incredulously. ‘It was Erin who sent off for the prospectus and made the appointment with the headmistress in the first place. It was only when the final, more official side of things needed wrapping up that she cooled right off. And even mentioning the school trip to Vienna is—’

‘Like banging your head against a brick wall.’

Robert noticed Louisa’s wedding ring, a plain gold band, glinting in the yellow lamplight. He nodded. ‘Exactly.’

‘The poor woman’s probably so wrapped up in running her business, not to mention her daughter’s troubles, that she’s simply overlooked what you call “the official side of things”.’

‘That’s why I got Tanya to sort out the passport for the trip. She fell at the first hurdle. No birth certificate.’

‘Rob, if I get this certificate for you, will it help? Will you let go?’ Louisa put a hand on his shoulder.

‘This time yesterday, I would have said yes, that getting the certificate would make me believe that over the years, Erin had lost her copy, been too busy to get another – even that she was an overprotective parent and that’s why she won’t let Ruby go to Vienna. I could have handled that.’ Robert reached for his wine glass. Louisa’s hand fell from his shoulder and he felt a cool patch where her warmth had been. ‘But now, in light of what I found out yesterday, I’m not sure about anything.’

Louisa flagged the waitress and they soon had a whole bottle of chilled wine sitting on the table. ‘You’d better tell me everything then,’ she sighed, trying not to sound as though she had heard it all before. She opened her leather folder, slid a silver pen from its holder and positioned her hand to write.

‘No judgement? No interruptions?’

Louisa nodded, her mass of hair falling forward. She tucked it behind her ears and unconsciously slipped the pen between her lips.

‘As I told you, I drove to Brighton yesterday. I’d gone to find a man named Baxter King because over the last few years he’s been communicating with Erin by letter and email. I found this out when I was looking in Erin’s office for Ruby’s birth certificate, in case she had an old copy that she’d forgotten about. In fact, it was Ruby herself who showed me where her mother kept such papers although I didn’t find much except an expired passport of Erin’s and these letters from Baxter King.

‘They showed him to be the proprietor of a flower shop in Brighton, King’s Flowers, and so I went to see him. The letters were quite suggestive in places. King expressed his deep love for Erin and how he missed her and that she should prepare the bed for when he comes to stay.’

‘Oh, Rob,’ Louisa whispered but he didn’t hear.

‘Anyway, it turns out that King’s clearly not involved with Erin romantically.’ Robert’s tone lifted and small laughter lines formed beside his tired eyes. ‘He’s gay.’

‘You see, there’s always an explanation for—’

‘You’ve not heard the good bit yet. Erin actually lived with King and his partner – who apparently died in a fire – for a number of years and before that she lived in London. King caught her stealing his flowers, learned her sorry story, took pity on her and tucked her and Ruby under his arm. They were one, albeit unusual, happy family.’

‘And?’ Louisa said, having only jotted down a couple of notes so far. Robert finished his second glass of wine and poured another.

‘And,’ he continued, ‘it turns out that before her career in flower-stealing, Erin earned a living by opening her legs.’

He swiftly downed the third glass of wine and leaned back in the deep leather settee, draping his arms wide over the cushions. He levered an ankle onto his knee and stared sideways at Louisa, waiting for her reaction, waiting for her to tell him he was mistaken or paranoid or making something out of nothing.

Her words didn’t come. She sat stiffly, silver pen hovering over the paper, the tune of the air-conditioning unit and the chatter of more customers taking away the need for words. Finally, Robert added, ‘My wife was a prostitute, Louisa. A hooker. A whore. A call girl.’

Robert watched as her expression toggled through various forms of shock, although none of them seemed appropriate. Already, having unloaded the heavy information, Robert’s breathing became easier and his thoughts stirred in the sump of his mind. Sharing this news with Louisa, he hoped, was a safeguard against it all happening again.

‘Whoa,’ she finally said. ‘That’s a pretty serious allegation to make about your wife. Do you think it’s true?’ Louisa reached for her wine.

Robert shrugged. ‘If I say yes, you’ll tell me I’m being paranoid. If I say no, which is probably what any sane person would do if they wanted to preserve their marriage, then I’m going to wonder forever what else she’s hiding.’

‘She mightn’t be hiding anything.’

‘See? I knew you’d say that.’ Robert pushed his fingers through his already messed hair. Dark and unruly, without styling, it made him appear like a rock star ten years past his prime.

‘OK, let’s say Erin was a prostitute, that she did earn her living that way. As a single mother struggling to bring up a young child, she probably didn’t have a choice.’

Suddenly, Robert wished he had met Erin a decade before, even before Ruby had been born. Then he would have had a chance of saving her and being Ruby’s real father. ‘So you’re saying that all young mothers should turn to prostitution to support their kids?’

‘Of course not, Rob, but in this case, maybe that’s what happened. She was obviously desperate. And by the sound of it, she was desperate enough to eventually break away from such a life when she went to live in Brighton and took up stealing instead.’

Robert pulled a face that implied he considered that scenario possible but it quickly transformed into one that looked as if he had slammed his finger in the car door. ‘What about Ruby?’ he asked, as if Louisa had all the answers. ‘Do you think she knows what her mother did for a living?’

Louisa shook her head impatiently and fished her ringing phone from her bag. She glanced at the caller ID, sighed and then switched off the phone without answering. Robert liked it that she considered him more important than whoever was calling. ‘Who knows? It depends on how old the kid was at the time.’

‘King said Ruby was young, only three, I think, when Erin came to Brighton. She wouldn’t have understood exactly but she would have picked up feelings, vibes. God, she was probably in the house while it went on.’ Then Robert went pale as the realisation struck him, pretty much at the same time as Louisa thought of it too. It was she who voiced their shared suspicion.

‘Don’t think like that, Rob. It’s hardly Ruby’s fault, is it? She’s your daughter now, and her father, whoever he was, probably doesn’t even know he has a daughter.’

‘Yup, he paid his fifty quid, got what he wanted and delivered Ruby deep inside Erin.’ Robert let out a pained moan that caused several customers to look over. He leaned forward, head between his knees, feeling sick. How could he ever look at his stepdaughter again without seeing her as the by-product of some long-forgotten, easy transaction? How could he ever touch his wife again without wondering how many men had gone there before? He stood and started towards the gents. ‘I need your help, Louisa, to get to the bottom of this without trashing another marriage. I want to hire you full-time, professionally, until this mess is sorted out.’

As he strode to the toilet, leaving Louisa pondering his demand, he wondered how committed she would actually be to helping him save his marriage. He also considered: was hiring Louisa, knowing her do-whatever-it-takes work ethic as he did, any more moral than Erin selling her body? He believed it was.

When he returned, Louisa said, ‘I’ll need a place to stay, a car, access to the internet, five hundred pounds up front plus another thousand to cover the job I’ll have to cancel.’ She removed her dark-rimmed glasses, uncovering her unnaturally green eyes so that Robert had no option but to agree.