The Make

other’s clothes off during frantic making-up sessions. And in the end it had all come to nothing. Nothing at all.

‘So I came here today to tell him to fuck off,’ Lorcan went on, glaring at her. ‘The whole Doyle family’s a nightmare, so I thought, sod it, I’m firing George’s arse. And then I started thinking, why not make the whole thing neat and tidy? It’s been five years since we last communicated, and that was just you shouting down the phone at me that you’d had enough and our marriage was over. I’m cutting ties with your brother, and I guess it seems like a good time to cut ties with you, too.’

Gracie shut her mouth like a clamp. Then she opened it again, and said: ‘George is in hospital.’

‘He’s . . . you what?’

‘In hospital. In intensive care.’

Lorcan paused for a beat, staring at her face. ‘What happened?’

‘Someone did him over. Mum found him unconscious outside her place.’

‘What’s the damage?’

‘What, you mean you care?’

‘Hey, don’t start getting all antsy with me,’ said Lorcan sharply. ‘I like George. I always have. All the staff like him, too. What I don’t like is him taking the piss.’

Gracie sipped her tea. She knew he had a point; George had always been a lovable rascal, pushing his luck in every possible direction. Now, it looked like maybe he’d pushed his luck too far.

‘Which hospital?’ asked Lorcan.

Gracie told him.

‘You have any idea what happened?’ he asked.

‘How would I? The first I knew of any of this was when the police pitched up at work and broke the news.’

‘I didn’t think you had anything to do with your family down here.’

‘I didn’t. But Christ, Lorcan. I’m not made of wood.’

Lorcan looked at her. ‘Really?’

She wasn’t going to rise to it. She gritted her teeth, forcing herself not to. She was cool, controlled Gracie Doyle, wasn’t she? She held on to that. Lorcan was fiery, passionate, im patient, given to grand gestures and not afraid of angry scenes. He came from a huge extended family in Donegal, a family who hugged and kissed and enveloped each other in a comforting blanket of warmth. Consequently he was expansive, confident, chatty and charming. Her upbringing had been completely different; she’d realized early on that her mother wished she’d been a boy, not a girl, and she had retreated into wary coldness to protect herself from further hurt.

‘Lorcan – this is George we’re talking about.’ Gracie blinked hard, feeling that choking edge of tears. ‘They’re saying it could go either way. We were there last night, and his heart stopped. They got him stabilized, but . . .’ She shrugged.

‘As bad as that?’

‘Yeah.’ Gracie took another sip at her tea. It was too hot, almost scalding her lips, but she barely noticed. She wasn’t going to cry in front of Lorcan Connolly, and she was having to concentrate hard to stop herself from doing that.

‘So why come here, to the flat? Thought you’d be staying at your mother’s.’ He turned away to stare out of the dirty window at the busy main road.

Gracie looked at his broad back and almost, almost poured it all out then. The fire at the casino. Harry missing. The bags of hair. Those horrible notes. Instead she said: ‘It’s okay, Lorcan. I can manage perfectly well. I don’t want your help or anything. I’m used to managing alone, I’ve had a lot of practice.’

Lorcan turned, and instead of the sharp retort she expected he said: ‘Your car’s not a silver Merc, is it?’

‘What?’

‘Sports job?’

‘Yeah. It is.’ Gracie quickly joined him at the window.

‘Only I think someone’s down there doing something to it . . .’

They got down the stairs, out the front door and raced over to the Merc. They looked up and down the road, but there was no one about. Whoever had done it had gone. Moving around her lovely car, Gracie stooped and gawped in horror at the damage. All four tyres had been slashed through and the beautiful sleek Mercedes was lying there in the gutter like a diva with her legs cut off.

‘Oh shit,’ she wailed out loud.

I’m watching you, Red.

Gracie looked up and down the road again. Someone was watching her; that much was obvious. The very idea gave her the creeps. And her car, her beautiful car . . .

Lorcan was stooping down too, looking at the tyres and then up at Gracie. He frowned.

‘What?’ she snapped.

‘Someone doesn’t like you,’ he said.

‘Talk about stating the bleeding obvious.’

Lorcan was staring at her face, his expression thoughtful. He walked around to the front of the car. ‘Is this to do with George?’ he asked her.

Gracie sighed and said nothing. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t trust herself around him. She could manage alone, hadn’t she just told him that? And she could. She would lock up the flat, take the tube back to Suze’s place, arrange for a garage to collect the Mercedes, then think about what she would do next.

‘Gracie?’ prompted Lorcan when she didn’t speak.

‘I don’t know, okay?’ she said angrily.

He was staring at the windscreen. ‘Come and look at this.’

All Gracie wanted to do was get away from him. Impatiently she joined him at the front of the car and looked where he was looking. Her mouth dropped open.

YORE DEAD

Someone had sprayed the message on to her windscreen with black paint.

‘Well,’ said Lorcan after a beat. ‘They can’t spell, but even so it’s not exactly a message of friendly intent, is it?’

Gracie could only stare, feeling sick and afraid.

Whoever had tormented her with fire and bags of hair in Manchester now knew she was here, in London. She felt, amid the fear, a spasm of anger. The bunch of long-estranged fuck-ups she called family had royally pissed off someone – so badly that this ‘someone’ had deemed it appropriate to travel north and inflict harm on her there before following her south and wrecking her car.

Lorcan got out a key. There was a chirp and a flash of tail-lights from the black BMW across the road. He looked at Gracie, frowning. ‘Drop you somewhere?’ he offered.

‘No thanks,’ said Gracie, and walked away from him, back into the flat to lock up.

Chapter 22

22 December

When Gracie got back to her mum’s place, there was a slight, pale-skinned girl with long, glossy, ash-blonde hair sitting at the kitchen table with Suze, drinking tea. Both looked up as Gracie came in but neither smiled.

‘Hi,’ said Gracie, sore of foot and heavy of heart. She’d phoned the garage to get her precious, beautiful car towed and the tyres replaced, and they ‘couldn’t say’ how long all this was going to take; they would phone her to let her know when she could collect it.

‘But I need my car,’ she’d protested.

‘Lady,’ said the mechanic at the end of the phone, ‘have a heart, will you? We’re up to our arses here, and it’s Christmas. Lighten up.’

Then she’d schlepped from George and Harry’s flat over to where Cuthill, the private landlord, lived. Paid the