The Betrayed (24 page)

‘Well, we’ll see?’ said Johnny, breaking a smile. ‘See you later.’

As Johnny walked on, he heard the con ask, ‘Oi, John. Can I get her autograph?’

‘You’d be fucking lucky,’ Johnny replied, not breaking his step.

The following morning, as the train made its way towards Maidstone, Rosie looked out at the Kent countryside. It was pouring down with rain and the sky was a mass of threatening, thick grey clouds. It looked as miserable as she felt.

She so desperately wanted to share the burden of guilt, to tell Johnny exactly what had happened… but she knew what he was like. If he found out – what with him in prison, unable to do anything about it – he would go insane. No, Rosie decided, telling Johnny what had happened to their daughter was completely out of the question.

The prison is directly opposite Maidstone West rail station so, when Rosie arrived, she was faced with the tall, oppressive walls that dominated the skyline. Walking over to the entrance, Rosie buried all of her feelings of anger and guilt and switched her focus firmly on the imminent visit. She couldn’t let on that anything was wrong.

As Rosie went through the laborious security checks, she noticed that the prison officers were being unusually helpful and polite. She didn’t know if this was down to her new-found fame, or whether it was that Johnny had the officers in his pocket, but it was certainly not something that she remembered ever happening before.

She took a seat at the designated table in the visitors’ hall and quickly checked her appearance in a small compact mirror. Although she felt like crap, she didn’t look too bad, she decided – her tired eyes were hidden behind a pair of large Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses.

Johnny finally arrived and, without a word, wrapped his muscular arms around her small frame in a strong embrace. Rosie stifled a sob.

‘Now, now,’ he said, still holding on tight. ‘What’s all this?’

Feeling the eyes of the other visitors on her, Rosie broke away, but not before kissing Johnny gently on the lips. They took their seats, and Johnny reached over and grabbed her hands.

‘It’s good to see you, Johnny,’ she said.

‘You too,’ he said. After a moment’s silence he asked the question that she knew was coming: ‘What’s going on, Rose? Why the sudden change?’

Rosie didn’t reply – she just looked down at her lap. Johnny reached over and, with slow and deliberate movements, removed her sunglasses, folded in the arms, and placed them down on the table. Her eyes were red and puffy, surrounded by deep, dark circles. The pain was blatantly obvious. Johnny sat back in his chair.

‘So, you gonna tell me, then?’

‘Just a minute,’ Rosie mumbled, getting up. He throat was dry… she could barely talk. She walked over to the canteen hatch and returned with two cups of tea.

‘So you need a cuppa first? Fair enough, ‘he said. ‘Well, now you’ve got tea, tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I’m okay, Johnny… really.’

‘Do you want a divorce? Is that it?’ he said. ‘Because if you do…’

Rosie put down the plastic cup, took a deep breath, and held it. ‘No. No, Johnny. I don’t want a divorce. It’s not that.’ She proceeded to splutter through a range of lame excuses – that she was tired, she didn’t want to be an actress anymore, she had been ill, that she missed him.

Although it might not have been one of her strongest performances, Johnny was no good with what he called ‘all that lovey-dovey stuff’, and was not the kind of person who felt comfortable talking about his feelings. Things to Johnny were either black or they were white. So, after a listening to ten minutes of Rosie going on about why she was feeling down, he decided to back off. Whether he believed her or whether he just chose not to pry, Rosie didn’t know. But what was important was that his questions had ended. Still, for the remainder of the visit he didn’t let go of her hand.

Ruby only briefly came up in the conversation. ‘So how’s our little girl?’ Johnny had asked.

‘Oh, she’s good… you know,’ Rosie said.

‘It was nice to see her again, face-to-face. She was acting up a bit, y’know.’

‘Well, she’s almost a teenager now. That’s what happens,’ said Rosie, suddenly feeling a flash of self-loathing as she remembered that that was the same excuse that Andrew had given when Ruby started behaving strangely.

‘I suppose so, ‘Johnny said. ‘School okay?

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Good.’

‘Oh, I forgot to ask,’ Rosie said, steering the conversation away from their daughter’s state of mind. ‘She wanted me to ask you something.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘She wants a dog. A puppy.’

Johnny sneered. ‘I don’t know. They’re a bit of an ‘andful.’

‘It might be good for her,’ said Rosie. Thinking about it, she couldn’t help but feel that a puppy might actually help Rube take her mind off what had happened to her.

‘I suppose it would keep Hate-’em-all away from the house, if nothing else.’

Rosie laughed. She hadn’t laughed for a long time. Looking at Johnny’s face, she remembered what they had been like, at the beginning… before the drugs and the fights. He was a good man, in his heart. Not bad looking, either. Rosie caught herself imagining a reconciliation, with them living together again after his release, as a family, back in their little house on Hewitt Way.

Careful, Rosie
, she said to herself. She had been so serious about Andrew and, even though their relationship was now in tatters, she was aware that she was, in a very strange way, still ‘on the rebound’. She’d tried so hard in the past to get away from Johnny – did she really want to just fall back into his arms, get sucked back into his world?

At that moment Rosie felt very alone. Her attempt at fitting in to the so-called ‘respectable’ world had ended in disaster… and Johnny’s world – although familiar – was a violent, unpleasant place to live. She was beginning to regret calling Eddie and getting him involved. Sure, Andrew deserved all that was coming to him, but she didn’t really believe in handing the responsibility of the punishment over to Eddie. By calling him, she had handed control over to him… and that was a frightening thought.

The buzzer went, snapping Rosie out of her thoughts and signalling the end of their time together. They said their goodbyes and Rosie watched as Johnny walked back to the security gates. She turned, and headed for the exit.

‘Rose!’ Johnny’s voice echoed from the other end of the visiting hall.

‘What?’

‘Tell Ruby I said yes, ’he said. ‘She can have that puppy. Tell her Daddy said it’s okay.’

twenty-eight

A
Starbucks coffee shop was hardly Eddie or Hate-’em-all’s natural habitat, so Rosie was surprised when she received a call telling her to meet them there. They were already there, sipping huge mugs of coffee and devouring pastries, when Rosie arrived. She was surprised to find the café almost empty. She checked her watch. Although they were in those ‘dead’ hours – when the shoppers had gone home and anyone out for a night on the town had yet to hit town – Rosie suspected that the sight of these two gorillas sitting in the window might have deterred many potential customers. Eddie was talking on his mobile phone and, on seeing Rosie, waved her over. Hate-’em-all fetched her a latte and a lemon bun, and they all moved to a larger table in the corner, where Eddie opened his laptop.

Andrew was due back from Thailand in two days’ time, and Eddie wanted to know every last detail about his return – the time his flight landed at Heathrow, the make, model and registration of his car, everything. Eddie was meticulous in everything he did – that was just the way he liked to do business.

‘When did you last speak to him?’ Eddie asked.

‘Yesterday, after I left Maidstone.’

‘And?’

‘He said that he missed me.’

‘Sick
bastard
,’ muttered Hate-’em-all.

‘I said I was going to meet him in town for a special dinner when he got back… for his birthday.’ In fact, it had been very difficult speaking to Andrew, still pretending that she loved him. Rosie knew she had to be cool, she had to box clever.

‘He won’t go home first, then? Before he drives out to Epping?’

‘His flight lands just after four in the afternoon. I said we’d meet in town at six-thirty. So even if doesn’t go to Epping, he might nip into the office first, but he won’t have time to go home.’

‘He’d better not,’ said Eddie, ‘if he goes back home, and realises you’ve fucked off, he’ll smell a rat.’

‘I don’t know, there are a lot of “ifs”,’ said Rosie. ‘Maybe we should forget it… call the police.’

‘He’ll come, trust me,’ said Harry, opening up a webpage on the laptop. ‘He’s been sending messages every five minutes, he has. Listen to this… “Cool, see you at seven. I ride my bike over. Can’t wait to see you”. Then he says –’

A young couple sat down at the table next to them and, in perfect union, Eddie and Hate-’em-all slowly turned their heads. They couple glanced over, the young man uttered a hurried ‘sorry’, and they made their way to sit elsewhere.

‘Go on then,’ said Eddie, after the couple had moved.

‘Well, he checked that the parents wouldn’t be in, that’s all. I said they were in Corfu.’

‘Right,’ said Eddie, after finishing the last dregs of his coffee, ‘let’s go.’ He stood up, and Hate-’em-all put away the laptop.

‘So what happens now? I don’t have to be there, do I?’

‘That’s up to you. But I do need you to identify his car. I’ll pick you up at Hewitt Way on Sunday, one-thirty.’ He leant over Rosie, and added, ‘Make sure you’re there.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Sunday afternoon, and the baggage reclaim at the arrival lounge at Heathrow was crowded with holidaymakers, businessmen, backpackers and other travellers, all huddled around the slow-moving carousels. Andrew Brook-Fields spotted his black, hard-shell suitcase approaching, and heaved it onto his trolley. He looked at his watch – 4.27. He hurried down the green, ‘Nothing to Declare’ channel, and past the lines of chauffeurs and families waiting in the arrivals hall beyond.

Before heading out to the car park, he felt inside his jacket pocket and removed a small piece of paper. Opening it, he smiled – he still had the address, safe and sound. Not that he needed to write it down. He had memorised it.

As he strolled over to the car he took out his mobile phone, switched it on, and tapped in a text message. Seconds after sending it, a sound made him stop dead. He could have sworn that he’d heard a familiar beeping sound. He looked around the cold, still floor of the multi-storey… there was nobody in the vicinity.

When Rosie’s phone had alerted her about the incoming text, she had instinctively shrunk back down into her seat. She had been waiting in the car park for over half-an-hour with Eddie, and that didn’t include the 45 minutes that they had spent driving around, looking for Andrew’s black Range Rover. Eddie had borrowed an old car from a ‘business associate’, deciding that his Merc was rather conspicuous, and had been furious that it didn’t have a CD player for his ‘Greatest Arias’ compilation album.

‘What?’ Eddie whispered, watching Andrew unlock the door and climb inside his car. ‘What did he say?’

Rosie read the message: ‘Flight diverted – stuck in bloody Poland for few hours! Won’t make dinner – so sorry. Make it up to you when I get home x.’
God
, Rosie thought,
those lies come easy
.

‘He’s going for it,’ she said.

Andrew started his engine and began to ease out of the parking space.

‘Right,’ said Eddie, ‘Get out. I’ll call you later. You can even come along, if you like.’

‘You know I’m not going to do that, don’t you?’

Rosie eased open the door and, keeping her head down, ducked into the doorway of the car park’s stairwell. She watched as Andrew’s car drove round towards the ramp to the floor below and, once it had turned the corner, Eddie started the engine.

Keeping a two-car distance, Eddie followed the Range Rover out of the airport and onto the motorway. He picked up his mobile, called Hate-’em-all, and said, ‘We’re leaving now’, and hung up.

Johnny had been true to his word and, no sooner had Rosie arrived back from the visit, than there was a delivery, by hand, of £2,000 in cash for Ruby’s puppy. The next morning, accompanied by Aunt Madge and Stevie, they had gone to a specialist pet shop near Brixton, where Ruby had chosen a ten-week-old, blue merle, teacup Chihuahua… an adorable little animal with an apple-shaped head and a short, wide nose. She might have been ‘a bit Paris Hilton’ for Aunt Madge, but for Ruby it was love at first sight. She named her ‘Sugar’.

Ruby went to stay a few more nights at Aunt Madge’s, ‘so Sugar and Dibble can make friends’, and the two of them filled their days with doggie-talk. As Andrew’s return grew nearer, Rosie had a lot on her mind… but not so much that she didn’t notice that Ruby seemed to be slowly recovering. They never spoke about Andrew, not even mentioning his name.

Rosie always called on her Aunt Madge whenever there was a crisis in her life – and she’d had her fair share – so, after leaving Eddie at Heathrow, she got the express train back to London and went straight to Britley House.