Dirty Game

‘I want to forget I ever knew you, you cheating whore. And I will.’

‘Ruthie,’ said Annie desperately, ‘it’s over with me and Max. You’ve got to believe that.’

‘Oh, I think I do. He told me the same thing, you see,’ said Ruthie. ‘So maybe between you there might be a hint of the truth in there. He’s taken the Surrey house off the market. It’s a bit bloody inconvenient, to be honest. I’ve packed up so much, now I’ve got to get it all out of the boxes again. But never mind. Max says I can redecorate the place, chuck the damned boxes away if I want, start all over again.’

‘That’s good,’ said Annie cautiously.

‘Yes, it is. He’s taken Miss Arnott back too. We’re thinking about a second honeymoon. Max wants to try again.’

Annie felt sick. To her horror she felt her eyes fill with tears. Oh sure, it was over. But if all this was true, if this wasn’t just Ruthie trying to hurt her the only way she knew how, then it was hurtful. She couldn’t help how she felt, even though she wished she could.

‘He told me he talked to you at that Kieron Delaney’s art exhibition,’ went on Ruthie. ‘He said you agreed between you that it was over.’

Which they had, Annie supposed. All true. But her heart felt like a lump of lead in her chest. She wondered if this was Max’s way of getting his revenge. He knew that sooner or later she’d hear about this from someone if not from Ruthie herself. And he knew it would hurt her.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she forced herself to say.

‘So the way’s clear for me and Max to make a go of our marriage,’ said Ruthie. ‘So I have to say thank you, Annie. Thanks to you for finally giving up trying to steal my husband. It’s taken you long enough.’

‘I know that what I did was unforgivable,’ said Annie.

‘That’s right. It was,’ said Ruthie, and put the phone down.

Annie put the phone back on the cradle. Well, what had she expected? A tearful reunion, Ruthie coming over for coffee and cakes?

Oh yeah, that was sure to happen, she thought.

She looked around her, at her beautiful empty apartment. She was alone and feeling the ache. She missed the cosy chats around the kitchen table with the Limehouse girls. She missed Celia. She missed Max. She missed Ruthie more than anything. Then she jumped as the phone rang. She snatched it up. It was Ruthie, phoning back, had to be.

But it wasn’t. It was Kieron.

‘What do you want, Kieron?’ she asked him wearily.

‘I just wanted to see how you are,’ he said.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Oh. You sound … I don’t know. Upset.’

‘Just a bad day.’ One of many.

‘Only you went off with Max Carter at my exhibition, and I haven’t seen or heard from you since. It’s been some time, I’ve been worried.’

‘Nothing to worry about. He just drove me home.’

‘Oh.’ Kieron gave a laugh. ‘I was a bit put out, I’ll admit. After all, you were my guest. It isn’t quite the done thing, leaving with another man, is it?’

Fuck it, now he was chiding her for her behaviour. Stung from Ruthie giving her an ear-bashing, she had no inclination to sit there and listen to Kieron giving her another one.

‘I’m not a fucking trophy, Kieron,’ said Annie. ‘I went with Max because you were heading for trouble with him and you were too bloody stupid to even see it.’

‘Ah, catch yourself on,’ said Kieron breezily. ‘I can handle the likes of him.’

‘Don’t be fucking funny, Kieron,’ exploded Annie. ‘He’d bloody-well eat you and spit out the bits. Now don’t be a fucking idiot. Stay away. We can’t see each other any more, and that’s an end to it.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I mean. Listen to what I’m saying. I don’t want to see you again. Fuck off.’

She slammed the phone down.

It rang again.

She picked it up.

‘Annie, listen,’ said Kieron.

‘For God’s sake,’ Annie roared, and crashed the phone back down.

It rang again and this time she let it ring.

So much for making bloody decisions. Ruthie was nowhere even close to forgiving her, and Kieron didn’t seem to be taking the hint. She left the phone ringing, and went to take a bath to calm herself down.

49

Billy knew everyone thought he was dim, but actually he knew a lot. He sat in the snug of The Grapes sipping on a pint of lemonade, his briefcase on his lap, his notebook on the beer-stained table. It was lunchtime and the pub was quiet. Eric was behind the bar polishing glasses. Someone had put Des O’Connor on the jukebox.

Oh yes, Billy knew lots.

Like, for instance, he knew Pat Delaney had died four months ago in the Limehouse massage parlour. He’d seen Gary and Steve there, two of Max’s boys, doing a clean-up job and then carting the body out to the car and driving off.

You didn’t have to paint Billy no pictures, even if everyone did think he was thick as two short planks coated in pig shit. Ever since that night he’d been hearing around town about how Pat Delaney hadn’t been seen since. Easy to put two and two together and come up with four. Easy, even for him.

He knew about all that had been going on with Max and his beautiful Annie, too. Billy frowned and took a long pull at his drink. He was in a quandary here. He was fiercely loyal to Max, but on the subject of Annie Bailey, Billy found his loyalty tested to the limit.

He hadn’t liked her doing dirty things in the Limehouse place. He knew what they did there, his mum had told him often enough about what these sorts of women got up to, what Celia Bailey was, and how doing such things with these women would affect a man. He’d go blind, or catch something that would make his knob rot and drop off.

It was one of his most vivid memories, his mum bathing him when he was a boy, her rough meaty hand grabbing hold of his todger and her saying: ‘Do dirty things with dirty girls and this will drop right off, son. And you wouldn’t want that, now would you?’

But what about the dirty things Mum did with his many ‘uncles’? He’d wanted to say that, but he was frightened of his mum’s temper. She had a terrible temper. It was best to just nod, agree, keep quiet. Billy was good at keeping quiet.

Billy had been relieved when Annie had moved out of Limehouse, but his relief had been short-lived. She had moved into that posh place with Max. That was awful. From doing bad things with bad men, she had progressed to doing bad things with Max. That was even worse.

Then that had come to an end, and now she was at it again.

Doing bad things.

Bad, bad things.

Now she was in Upper Brook Street, a posh place filled with toffs, and he had seen those toffs, people who should have known better, people who had a position in society and ought to have known how to behave, how to set an example to others, he had seen them going in and out of the building, seen the girls too, fantastically beautiful girls, going in and out, laughing and joking and tossing back their lustrous manes of hair.

They didn’t look like tarts – or at least not the sort of tarts he was used to seeing around Bow and Limehouse; they were a bit raddled, a bit tired. These were luminous, glowing, but somehow still tarty. They were