The Make

Gracie’s mouth had dropped open as Suze spoke. ‘Oh, that’s priceless,’ she said at last.

‘Oh, it’s not priceless,’ said Suze, shaking her head, her eyes bitter as they glared at Gracie. She waved a finger in her face. ‘It’s just typical of you, Gracie Doyle. Seeing your own mother as competition, trying to score points.’

For God’s sake, thought Gracie. With that sorry son of a bitch? Is she serious?

Gracie knew that this ‘competition’ thing was Suze’s hang-up, not hers. While overindulging ‘her boys’, Suze had always seen the rapidly developing Gracie as a threat – not a daughter to be treasured and taken on shopping trips. As competition. And younger competition, at that.

Is that why I grew up cold? Gracie wondered again, thinking of Lorcan’s derisive words about her attachment to material things. And her own mother’s words too, once heard and never forgotten: Gracie, the girl with a calculator where her heart should be.

Maybe they were both right. But she was back here, wasn’t she? She wasn’t cold like they all said she was. She’d come to help. She was determined to help.

‘I want you to leave,’ said Suze, turning back to the table and shaking another fag out of the packet. She stuck the cigarette between her lips and snapped the lighter on, lighting the cigarette and inhaling deeply. Gracie wondered aloud when her mother had started smoking.

‘After the divorce,’ said Suze, seeing Gracie’s stare. She gave a taut smile and folded her arms. ‘I started on the fags then. It broke me, that bloody divorce. I loved your father.’

But you cheated on him. Gracie didn’t say it. No good stoking up the animosity yet another notch.

Suze’s face hardened again. ‘I want you to pack your bags and go, Gracie. I won’t have you coming between me and Claude. He’s a good man, he don’t deserve it. There’s the B & B just down the road – you can stop there if you want. Or there are hotels enough, God knows you can afford it.’

Her mother was taking the word of her lover against that of her daughter.

Why am I surprised? wondered Gracie. Whatever I had to say, she never listened.

‘Well, ain’t you got nothing to say about it?’ prompted Suze irritably.

Gracie stared at her mother’s face. Hostile. Closed off. Wreathed in skeins of smoke.

‘Smoking’s very bad for your health,’ she said, and turned away. ‘I’ll go and get packed.’

Gracie started off up the stairs.

‘Yeah, that’s you, Gracie,’ Suze bellowed after her. ‘Don’t react, will you? Cold as fucking ice and twice as hard, ain’t you?’

Chapter 28

23 December

It was past midnight when Gracie let herself into George and Harry’s flat. She’d tried the B & B her mother had suggested, but it was full of people visiting their relatives for Christmas. She tried a couple of hotels, too, and found a similar story. In the end, she thought – oh rats to it. She still had the key to the flat, she’d just paid the damned rent and all it was doing right now was standing empty. And if Harry did by some chance show up, he’d come back to the flat, wouldn’t he, right?

Right.

She switched on the harsh overhead light, then flung her bag aside and sat down on the open sofa bed among all the mess and disorder. How the hell could anyone live in this shit? She put her head in her hands. She felt dispossessed, exhausted, bewildered and – yes – hurt. She’d been at her mother’s house for barely two days and already she’d been kicked out.

God, she was so tired. In a minute she’d make herself a drink, change the sheets – Jesus, they needed it! – and wash her face, clean her teeth. She kicked off her shoes and put her legs up on the sofa bed, thinking, okay, yeah, in a few minutes I’ll move, I’ll get cleaned up. And she fell instantly asleep.

When she woke up, there was sunlight filtering through the murky windows and beaming straight into her eyes. She’d fallen asleep fully dressed, half under the duvet and half out of it. For a few blissful moments she thought she was at home in Manchester, then it all came back to her. She was at George and Harry’s place, in London.

Shit.

She grabbed her toilet bag and stumbled through to the bathroom, yawning. She took a quick shower, cleaned her teeth, put on a little make-up and brushed out her hair. Then she went back to where she had dumped her suitcase and bag in the lounge, dug out clean underwear, jeans and a black polo-neck sweater, slipped on cosy moccasins and warm socks, and began to feel a little better.

She went into the little kitchen, filled the kettle, and found bread in the freezer to make toast. Then the flat’s landline rang. She went through to the lounge, plonked herself down on the sofa bed, and picked up.

‘Hello,’ she said cautiously.

‘Hi,’ said Lorcan.

‘Oh. Hi.’ She felt instantly tense; instantly hot.

‘I called round at your mother’s; she said you’d left after coming on to her boyfriend.’

‘Did she.’

‘I saw her boyfriend.’

‘Hm.’

‘He came on to you, right?’

Gracie sighed. ‘It’s academic, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She said you’d gone to a B & B, and I checked a couple but you weren’t there. Everywhere’s bombed out pre-Christmas, and then I remembered you’d been at George and Harry’s flat and thought you must still have a key.’

‘Well done, Sherlock.’

‘Shrewd deduction, yes?’

‘Lorcan, what exactly do you want?’ asked Gracie irritably.

‘Oh, I just wondered if there’s anything you’d like to share with me?’

‘Like . . . what?’ She thought about the note with the hair. No filth or you’re all dead. If she told Lorcan, would he insist on the police getting involved? She thought of Harry, out there somewhere, unaccounted for. Someone had hacked off his hair, someone had him; she was afraid for him, the fear sitting in her stomach like a constant, low-lying ache. Was he dead or alive? They had no way of knowing.

‘Well, when I was at the hospital last night, one of the nurses told me and Sandy that George’s brother had been in.’

Gracie clutched hard at the phone. ‘You what?’ Her heart picked up pace as hope surged through her.

‘That’s what she said.’

‘Harry’s been at the hospital? My God, you mean he’s okay? Well, what the fuck’s he playing at? We’re all worried sick about him. He ought to go and see Mum, set her mind at rest. It’s bad enough she’s got all this worry with George, without having to fret about him too.’

‘Yeah, yeah. All correct. But the nurse described him, and you know what was really strange? He didn’t have red hair like yours, Gracie.’

She felt her spirits deflate like a pricked balloon. ‘But who . . . what the hell’s going on here?’

‘I don’t know. But this “brother” is young, slim – and blond. Whoever it is, it isn’t Harry.’