Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (40 page)

He could tell she wanted to hit him again. She
had
been rubbish at it, but he liked the fumble. He liked the inquisitive hand. Contrary to popular myth, they hadn’t shagged every night. They only did it three times. It took them that long to get it right.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. ‘Who you were?’

‘Why do you think, Charlie? Because every time I tell a guy my grandfather blew up a supermarket, I never get a second date.’

She sat down on his bed and watched Eddie touching all Charlie’s stuff, as if they both had every right to be there. Eddie held up a pair of headphones.

‘So I don’t have to hear anything else that will turn my stomach,’ he said before putting them on.

Charlie sat on his bed beside Violette.

‘Did you kiss that girl?’ she asked.

‘Fucking angry at you. Meant nothing.’

‘Meant everything.’

He looked at Eddie, now grooving in the corner. ‘Like he means everything?’

‘You’re jealous of a thirteen-year-old?’

Yeah, he was.

‘I would’ve looked after you,’ he said, a lot more fiercely than he intended. ‘If you’d asked me to, I would’ve run with you.’

She had that closed look that he recognised. The one that said she wasn’t going to let anyone in. Except Eddie Conlon, who she had sat with all day long on the bus. Never Charlie. Charlie was just for night-time flirting and sex. During the day, he sat at the back of the bus and watched them with their heads together, talking nonstop. He wanted that with Violette.

‘He’s my brother,’ she said quietly. ‘And if you ever tell anyone that, I’ll do something to hurt you really bad, Charlie.’

Now he was confused.

‘My mum had him in prison,’ she said, and gave him a mumbled family history. She wasn’t facing him and he thought maybe she was crying.

‘We’re tired,’ she said eventually. ‘We need to sleep. Are your parents around?’

‘They don’t come in here unless there’s a pretty good reason.’

Like an arrest. Or the principal telling them he wasn’t returning to school because cheating wasn’t part of its tradition.

‘You people should lock your back doors,’ she said. ‘Lots of weirdos around.’

‘Violette,’ he said. He wanted to see her face. ‘Turn around. Please.’

When she did he saw the angry tears in her eyes and they made them look like liquid black gold. The last time they had sex they came together. She’d been embarrassed after that and he remembered the way she hid her head in the crook of his throat. It was as if when they were rubbish at sex they had a better handle on their non-existent relationship.

‘Fionn said you’re heading north,’ he said. ‘So why are you here?’

‘I can’t believe you punched Kennington and Gorman for me,’ she said, pressing her brow to his. It gave Charlie hope. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘I can’t believe he wore a Chelsea hoodie to do it,’ Eddie muttered. Charlie hadn’t noticed him remove the headphones.

‘It was good thinking,’ Charlie said. ‘I got to smash them one and put Chelsea fans in the bad books at the same time.’

‘I had to wear an
Arsenal
beanie the other day,’ Eddie said.

‘You’d have to kill me before I’d wear an Arsenal beanie.’

They all slept in Charlie’s bed that night. When he heard Eddie’s snore he tried to kiss her, but she pointed to her brother and shook her head. She did let him hold her hand, and they whispered all night.

‘Do you want to know why I’m going to be a doctor?’ she asked in the early hours of morning, her voice drowsy.

‘No. Why?’

‘So I can save twenty-three people. And make things right.’

‘I can’t believe you hid them in our house!’ his mother is saying now, still staring around his room.

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Look at this room! Just look at it,’ his mother repeats as if no one has heard her bellow. Sometimes the Reverend Crombie forgets she isn’t standing at the pulpit of a half-empty church. ‘I’ve never seen it so clean!’

Charlie is irritated that she’s worked it out so quickly. ‘Violette made me clean it,’ he mutters.

‘Oh please. Don’t make me have to like this girl.’

Bee’s father is standing there staring at him, as if that will make him reveal what he knows. And in a strange way, Charlie wants to. Because every morning when he listens to the news he expects to hear that Violette and Eddie have got themselves killed. Like that time they found the body in the Channel. Charlie had been glued to his computer all day, waiting for news.

Once they’re downstairs, Bee’s father tells Charlie to follow him out to his car.

‘Where is she?’ he asks once they are on the street.

‘Don’t know. She’s not big on sharing her plans.’

‘I think you’re keeping something from me, Charlie.’

‘I don’t care what you think, Bish.’

‘One day Violette will forgive you for telling me where she is,’ Bee’s father says. ‘But she’ll never forgive herself if she puts Eddie’s life in danger.’ He gets into the car and shuts the door, and Charlie knocks at the window.

‘I got a call from one of the journalists who was at the courthouse. Sarah Griffith. Griffin. She contacted me through the rectory.’

‘What did she want?’

‘Most of the others want to talk about Violette. This one says she’s going public about Eddie. Wanted to know if I had anything to say.’

‘Did you have anything to say?’ And Charlie can tell that Bee’s father knows exactly who Eddie is.

‘Yeah, I told her to go fuck herself.’

Charlie walks back inside to where his mum and dad are watching
Britain’s Got Talent.
‘You know the worst thing about the cheating, Charlie?’ his mum asks as he’s about to go back up to his room.

He doesn’t want to talk about the cheating thing. It always brings tears to his father’s eyes.

‘It’s that it makes me forget sometimes how decent you are deep down.’

He shakes his head. ‘Some people are born decent. I have it thrust upon me.’

‘They thrust you with decency?’ his father asks.

‘With a dual-edged blade, good man.’

Charlie catches a glimpse of a smile on his father’s face. It’s the sort of game they used to play.

‘I can’t understand how we turned into the sort of people who don’t know that refugees are hiding in their attic,’ his mother says.

‘They’re not refugees, Mum. They’re from Australia and Tonbridge.’

He knows it wouldn’t kill him to stay there in the living room with them, but all he can think of is people finding out who Eddie is. And how then the kid will never have a chance of winning
Britain’s Got Talent
.

It feels good to be back in a suit. Work clothes make Layla feel competent, unlike the tracksuit she’s been wearing while watching repeats of
Made in Chelsea
and feeling sorry for herself. Today is going to be a big gamble, but she’s determined.

‘I’m Layla Bayat,’ she tells the guard at the inquiry desk on Monday morning. ‘My name should be down there to see Noor LeBrac. I’m her new representation.’

That gets a reaction.

‘What happened to last week’s new representation?’ the woman asks.

Layla’s not prepared to be the inferior in this exchange.

‘Is my name there or not?’

The last time she saw Noor was the day the family were arrested, when they still believed that Louis was an innocent victim of the bombing. Noor was frantic. Etienne was flying back from Australia and she was trying to keep everyone focused. Uncle Joseph was visiting from Manchester and had calmly reassured them. But Jimmy was inconsolable. No one ever imagined the nightmare of Louis Sarraf being the main suspect.

Today she’ll be facing a harder version of Noor, but when she’s taken into the room it’s still so recognisably the woman Layla had always looked up to alongside Jocelyn.

Noor kisses Layla’s left cheek, right cheek, then left again, and they sit down in silence. Layla thinks she’ll just go straight into talking about an appeal. But then she doesn’t.

‘I never came to see you.’

Noor seems to be processing and after a moment she nods. ‘True. But you were the only one there for Jimmy when he got out of jail. And you used to drive your mother to the hospice to look after mine. I think the Bayat women have done enough for my family.’

‘We could have done more.’

‘Is this about Etienne’s death?’ Noor asks. ‘Violette said you’re looking into it.’

‘Not yet,’ she says. ‘Because we start with you, Noor. If we can get you into a courtroom and win an appeal then everything else falls into place. Etienne’s death. Jimmy’s and your uncle’s citizenship. We start with you and blow the rest out of the water.’

She ignores Noor’s headshaking. ‘Yes,’ she says firmly. ‘Most decent people are upset about the way Violette has been treated. I hear it on the streets, in my neighbourhood. That means they’re talking about Brackenham. They’re talking about you.’

She removes a file from her briefcase and places it in front of Noor. ‘From a blog created by two of the mothers whose daughters were badly injured by the Calais bomb.’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ Noor says, picking it up.

‘A piece went online this morning written by Chief Inspector Pain-in-the-Arse Ortley. He ends it by saying he believes Louis Sarraf acted on his own. He said the same thing to me.’

She hears the intake of Noor’s breath.

‘Katherine Barrett-Parker and Sadia Bagchi have as big an online readership at the moment as some of the tabloids,’ Layla says. ‘The comments in response to Ortley are polarising. For every person who thinks he should shut his mouth in respect for the dead, there’s another who supports him.’

‘Every attempt at an appeal ends the same way, Layla. It runs out of steam, it never makes it to court. It’s always the wrong timing —’

‘I’m not going to run out of steam and I’m not going to give up on this, Noor. I grew up living in everyone’s shadow. Jocelyn’s. Yours. Jimmy’s. And ever since the bombing I’ve been living in its shadow. What if I’m selfish and I’m doing this for me too?’

‘If you take this on you’ll be begging to get back into that shadow. And if you lose you’re going to spend the rest of your life doing conveyancing for your extended family, and everyone on the block.’

Noor isn’t telling her anything she doesn’t know herself.

‘You can’t do this without a barrister and no one will touch it,’ she says.

But Layla would rather spend the rest of her life doing conveyancing than go back to selling her soul on the tenth floor for Silvey and Grayson. ‘Leave the barrister to me,’ she says.

Outside she rings Ortley, but it goes straight to voicemail. Layla decides to put her niece to work. She suspects Gigi and Bee Ortley text each other obsessively about their common denominator, Violette, despite the fact that they don’t consider themselves friends.

Can you ask your frenemy what hospital her mum’s in?

Next stop, William Harvey in Ashford. Rachel Ballyntine smiles questioningly when Layla walks into her private room She’s nursing a baby with a thatch of red hair much like its mother’s.

‘Hi Rachel. My name’s Layla Bayat. I’m Noor LeBrac’s solicitor. I know this probably isn’t the best timing but I’m wondering if we can talk about her case.’

Rachel is staring at her. The baby in her arms doesn’t seem to like the change in its mother’s mood. Badgering a woman while she’s breastfeeding her newborn is a bit on the low side, but Layla can’t back down now.

‘I’ve just had a C-section and I haven’t slept for two days,’ Rachel says coldly. ‘Can you please leave?’

Layla places the chocolates on the bedside table with her business card. At the door she stops and turns. ‘Did you know they forced her to confess during labour? She was giving birth to Eddie. They gave her forty-eight hours with him. Noor didn’t let go of him that entire time because she knew she’d never see him again.’

The baby is crying now and Rachel tries her best to comfort it. There are tears in her eyes. Angry ones. Full of sorrow.

‘Oh Layla,’ she says. ‘You don’t play fair.’

When Bish pulled up on the Rue Delacroix on Monday morning Sarraf was standing on the pavement looking annoyed.