‘Just leave it! Leave it, okay? You don’t understand and you never did.’
‘What? Love of your life, was it? That bloody asylum seeker, whatever he was? That waster?’
‘What if he was?’
‘You stupid little cow! You haven’t got the foggiest idea what love is.’
‘Don’t I? That’s all you know.’
‘Love I’m talking about. Not getting down on your hands and knees in the back of some bloke’s car.’
‘Better than fucking your personal trainer three times a night while Dad’s out the fucking country.’
‘You little shit!’
She slapped the flat of her hand fast across her daughter’s face, then swung the hand back, knuckles clenched, against the side of her head.
Sasha cried out.
Karen seized both of Fay Martin’s arms and held them fast.
Blood was already starting to trickle from the corner of Sasha’s mouth.
Tim Costello fished a tissue from his pocket and pressed it into her hand, then set off for where he imagined he’d find the bathroom and fresh supplies.
Time passed. Tempers cooled. Outside, it was three-quarters dark. Sasha had retreated to her room and re- emerged in a skinny-rib jumper and a pair of old jeans, hair still pulled back from her face. A small scab forming at the edge of her mouth.
Fay Martin had poured herself a gin and tonic, which she’d topped up twice already with straight gin. Tempted though she’d been, Karen had said no to joining her, yes to a mug of coffee — instant, I’m afraid — Tim Costello was on to his second glass of tap water.
Sasha’s story slowly emerged.
She had met Petru Andronic early the previous summer, a concert in Victoria Park. Lounging on the grass. Hot Chip. Bombay Bicycle Club. Bands like that. She’d been with her mate Lesley and a few others; Petru had been there with a friend.
‘This friend,’ Karen asked, ‘he had a name?’
‘Ion.’
‘Ion Milescu?’
Sasha nodded. Karen filed it away.
They got on well, her and Petru, really well, Lesley and Ion too. It was a laugh. As the concert was winding down, the boys asked if they could see them again and after a quick conflab the girls said, why not? After that they saw them quite a bit, at least Sasha did, saw Petru that is. Ion kept texting Lesley, making arrangements to see her, then at the last minute crying off; after a few weeks of that she didn’t hear from him at all.
‘But you carried on? Seeing Petru?’
‘Yes.’ A quick glance across at her mum. ‘He was nice. Not like … not like most other boys. Not grabbing you all the time.’
‘Didn’t fancy you much, then, did he?’ her mother said with a sneer.
‘He respected me.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘He loved me.’
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘He was going to marry me.’
‘Over my dead body he was.’ Fay Martin reached for the gin.
‘You didn’t know. You didn’t care. I wore this ring he give me on a chain round my neck and you didn’t even notice.’
‘Your father would have skinned the pair of you alive.’
‘He wouldn’t have had the chance, would he?’
‘He warned you to keep away from him, you know he did.’
‘We was gonna run away.’
‘Run away? Where to? Back to Kosova or wherever he bloody comes from?’
‘Moldova. It was Moldova.’
‘Should have stayed there, shouldn’t he?Then the poor little sod might still be alive.’
Sasha bit her lip and clenched her fists, determined not to cry.
Off in another room, a clock struck six times.
‘Sasha,’ Karen said, ‘I have to ask you. The night that Petru was killed. Your friend Lesley texted you, Petru wanted you to contact him, he was worried, waiting to meet you.’
‘Yes.’ The word like a slow release of breath.
‘But you didn’t?’
A shake of the head.
‘You didn’t text? Call? Anything?’
‘No.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I was frightened.’
‘What of?’
She pushed her feet back and forth along the floor. ‘My dad.’
Sasha tugged at a thread that had worked its way loose from a rip in her jeans.
‘He found out, didn’t he?That I was seeing him again. Petru. He’d told me before, he didn’t want me seeing him, not talking to him or nothing.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I dunno. Just never liked him, right from the first.’
‘He’d met him, then?’
‘Just the once, that’s all. I brought him to meet my mum. I thought she’d like him, and my dad he was here. I didn’t know. I thought he was, I dunno, off somewhere. Wouldn’t’ve brought him otherwise. Soon as he saw Petru he started in on him — what was he doing here, how was he living, where all his money was coming from? — stuff like that. Not that Petru ever had any money, not really.
‘Then when he was leaving, my dad said he didn’t want him round here again. Not ever. Didn’t want me to have anything to do with him. When Petru started to stand up for himself, for us, talk back, I thought my dad was going to hit him. Petru, he wasn’t frightened, but he’s a big man, my dad, he’d’ve hurt him, I know he would. Hurt him bad. That’s what he’s like.’
She snapped the thread free.
‘After he’d gone, he told me I wasn’t to have nothing to do with him again. Said he’d stop me using the computer, Facebook an’ that, take away my mobile phone.’
‘So that’s when you started using Lesley as a go-between?’
‘Yeah. She didn’t mind. Liked it, really.’
‘And this particular evening, the one we’re talking about, that was how you’d arranged to meet him?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Hampstead — why Hampstead? Not exactly round the corner.’
‘That’s why, yeah? No way we’re going to bump into anyone we knew. Anyone who knew me and might tell my dad.’
‘This would have been late, though. It would have been dark.’
‘That was okay. I didn’t care.’
‘How about getting home?’
A quick glance away. ‘I wasn’t. I told my mum I was staying at Lesley’s. A sleepover.’
‘Little liar,’ Fay Martin said quietly.
‘There was this place, stayed open all night. Burgers and stuff. That’s where we’d go, just sit, you know, and talk. What was going to happen, what we were going to do.’
‘Do?’
‘Once we were married.’
