The Guilty Couple(27)

‘No one will help me, not even you.’ She bursts into loud angry tears. Between the sobs I hear the words that send a shiver down my spine: ‘I’d rather be dead.’

‘Grace! Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. I’m doing everything I can so that you can live with me again and when that happens we’ll change your school. We can even move out of London if you want.’

‘When?’ The question is so plaintive, so loaded with desperation, it breaks my heart. I can’t bear to tell her that she might not be able to live with me until she’s sixteen and can decide for herself who she wants to live with. ‘When, Mum? When?’

‘I don’t know, Grace, but I’m doing everything I can to make it happen. I promise you. You’ve got to be strong.’

‘Oh for god’s sake. The neighbour’s cat has got in again. Petal! Go home!’

I hear a soft flumping noise, like the phone hitting the carpet, and the sound of footsteps grows fainter as, presumably, Grace runs after the cat. Without my daughter’s voice in my ear I hear snatches of Dominic’s conversation again. I turn up the volume on my handset.

‘She was in the house today … Olivia was. Who else do you think I’m talking about?’

Who’s he talking to? His lawyer? The police? Dani?

When I wasn’t rereading Jack’s email last night I was staring out of the window of Ayesha’s place, waiting for the police to turn up. We’d outrun Dani but it wouldn’t be hard for her to find out where I lived. I opened a bottle of wine and drank it as I paced around the small flat. It was a stupid idea, breaking into my old house. I’d risked everything and gained nothing. How long would I get for breaking and entering while I was on probation? Two years? Three? Grace would be almost an adult by the time I got out.

Only the police never showed up and when I woke up this morning, a Joker’s smile stained around my lips in red wine, I cried with relief. But the fear’s back now. Maybe Dani’s telling him what she saw. By the time I leave work there could be a squad car outside.

‘No,’ Dom raises his voice. ‘I’m not going to the police … I haven’t got any evidence but I know she was here … Stuff was out of place in the office.’

He’s lying. We were careful not to disturb anything.

‘I don’t know what they were looking for …’ He’s irritated now. I can hear it in his voice. ‘No, she can’t know about that.’

His shoes click on the tiles in the hall. He’s pacing back and forth.

‘Look, it’s in a safe place … No, I’m not telling you where.’

More pacing. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

‘Jesus Christ! It’s in a safe at work. All right?’ There’s a pause then. ‘You can’t have it. We’ve already had this discussion.’

He continues to pace.

‘Oh for god’s sake. How many times do I have to tell you? I haven’t got anything on you. I just want it where I can keep an eye on it. Now will you chill the fuck out?’

‘Olivia?’ The door to the stairwell swings open with a bang, flooding the top steps with light. My supervisor Noreen, a weighty woman from Northern Ireland, faces me with her hands on her hips. ‘No phone calls at work. Turn it off.’

‘I’m sorry. It was an emergency. My daughter rang me because—’

‘Put the phone away and go back to work.’

‘But I haven’t said goodbye. My daughter will think that I’ve hung up on her.’

Noreen takes several steps towards me and I frantically jab at my phone, ending the call as the door closes and the stairwell is plunged into darkness again.

‘You’ve a verbal warning,’ she says. ‘Step out of line again and it’s a written one. If this was my company I wouldn’t employ people like you.’

‘What do you mean … people like me?’

I hear her footsteps on the tiled floor and the squeak of the door as she pulls it open. ‘Just get back to work.’

The minibus that shuttles us between offices crawls through the dark streets of London and the sense of injustice that’s been building since Noreen referred to ‘people like you’ has become unbearable. Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of my life? Am I going to be talked down to, berated and patronised forever? Am I going to struggle to get – and keep – jobs? To find a home for me and my daughter? Am I going to spend the rest of my life paying for a crime I didn’t commit? Grace needs me. I have to get her away from Dominic as soon as I can and it’s people like Noreen who’ll make that harder than it has to be.

We turn left onto Tooley Street and a building I recognise looms out of the gloom and lights up the sky. Just the sight of it makes me feel sick. It’s The Radcliffe Building where Dominic works as a chartered surveyor. A broadsheet newspaper takes up three of the floors of the sixteen-storey building and a publishing house uses two. I can’t remember which companies use the other floors but on the fifth floor, behind one of the brightly lit windows, is Dom’s office, and inside that is his safe.

‘Excuse me.’ I lean across the aisle and wave at a woman with short dark hair in the same cleaning company polo shirt as me. I think her name’s Jo.

She looks up from her phone, startled. ‘Yes?’