The Guilty Couple(43)
Where are you? What’s happened?
Five minutes pass without a reply, then ten. Dominic shifts in his seat. This isn’t like her, she’s never been late before and certainly not when money is involved. He swipes a hand over his damp forehead and takes a swig from his water bottle. Do not panic, he tells himself. There’ll have been a crime – a murder or a drugs bust – and she’ll text me in a few hours once things have calmed down. But there’s no reasoning with anxiety and the other voice in his head drowns out all logical thought. Dani’s not here because she’s been arrested and they’re coming for me next. He grips the steering wheel and starts the engine. Run, screams the voice in his head. Run and hide. Get the hell out of here before they find you.
He starts the engine and puts the car into first gear. He’s shaking so much that when he presses the accelerator, the car lurches forward and then stalls. At the end of the car park the Mercedes has turned around and it’s heading back towards him.
‘Fuck!’ Dom shouts into the darkness, fumbling with the ignition as the Mercedes draws closer. ‘Fuck!’
Chapter 29
DANI
There’s no reply to Dani’s ‘Hello?’ as she lets herself into her mother’s house.
‘Mum?’ She walks down the hall, hoping to god that Brenda hasn’t gone out in search of Casey. It’s nearly midnight and anyone out on the streets on a Saturday night will either be drunk, high or up to no good, none of which she wants her fifty-eight-year-old mother to encounter.
But Brenda hasn’t left the house. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands and Radio Two burbling softly in the background. She looks up sharply as Dani walks into the room and plucks the earphones from her ears. Her mobile is on the table in front of her.
‘I was looking through Casey’s social media.’
‘Why?’ Dani picks up the kettle and weighs it in her hand to check there’s enough water inside then sets it back down and flicks the switch.
‘Trying to find out where she’s gone.’
Dani laughs, a tired, dry little sound that makes her mother tut.
‘She’ll be at her dealer’s house.’ She pulls out a chair and drops into it. ‘Or with some of her skag-head mates, smoking her way through your nine hundred quid.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Brenda’s mouth pinches into a tight circle. ‘She’s not a … she’s not one of those.’
‘She stole all the money in your account to buy drugs. I’d say that pretty much fits the description. How did she know your PIN number anyway?’
‘I took her shopping, a couple of weeks ago. I thought some new clothes might cheer her up. She must have looked over my shoulder when I was at the cashpoint.’
Of course she looked. Casey’s not interested in fashion or looking nice – not anymore. It’s a minor miracle if she takes a shower. The only reason she’d have agreed to go shopping with Brenda would be to return the clothes later and pocket the cash. There was a time when Casey wouldn’t have dreamed of peeking at their mother’s PIN number, when she’d have been the one taking Brenda out for a treat and not the other way round. In the five years she’d been clean she’d retaken the GCSEs that she’d failed and completed several beauty therapy courses at college. As soon as she was qualified she began applying for jobs and was offered a junior position at a local salon. Hair or beauty was something she’d always wanted to do. As a child she spent hours plaiting and styling the hair of a doll that was cropped at the shoulders. It would creep Dani out, the way it stared at her from across their bedroom. Casey found that funny so she’d randomly move the doll around the house like some kind of decapitated elf on the shelf, making Dani jump whenever she walked into the toilet or the kitchen or the hall. From the age of about twelve Casey became fixated by the idea of going to beauty college but four years later, when it came to taking her GCSEs, Brenda confided in Dani that she was worried Casey was going to fail them. She was unmotivated and disruptive in class – playing up to get attention and laughs. She’d go out with her friends in the evening and come home drunk and smelling of weed. Sure enough, she failed to get the grades required for college, leaving school with just two GCSEs, neither of them Maths or English.
No amount of cajoling and encouragement from Dani or Brenda could convince her to retake her exams. All her friends were at college or starting apprenticeships or jobs. What kind of loser had to retake her GCSEs? Instead she got a job at a fast-food outlet. It was supposed to be a stop-gap, a way of bringing in a bit of money while she decided what to do next. Whenever she wasn’t working she was out, socialising. She met the boyfriend who introduced her to hard drugs at a party. He was twenty-three to her eighteen and she idolised him in the way only teenaged girls can. She stayed out late and ignored Brenda’s texts asking where she was and what time she’d be home. Sometimes she’d go out after work and vanish for forty-eight hours. When she did eventually return home she’d swerve Brenda’s questions and stomp up the stairs saying she was tired and needed to go to bed.
Dani searched her room. She found heroin paraphernalia hidden under the mattress and a small quantity of the drug tucked into a pair of socks. When confronted about it Casey claimed she’d been ‘looking after it for a friend’. She continued to lie and deny that she had a problem, saying she didn’t need to go to rehab because she could stop whenever she wanted. Dani and Brenda thought otherwise.