The Make

‘Where’s Claude?’ she asked, thinking that Suze needed him now, creep or not.

Suze pulled back a bit as Gracie closed the door. ‘Oh,’ she sniffed, ‘he’s gone.’

‘Gone where?’ asked Gracie. She hurriedly turned and put the chain and the bolts on.

Fuck me, and what good’s that gonna do against a chainsaw if they go for petrol and come back again?

‘Gone as in fucked off,’ said Suze, and now she looked angry as well as scared. ‘Half an hour after this happened, he just packed his bags and went. Didn’t even say goodbye.’ Suze’s eyes filled with fresh tears and she flopped down on the bottom stair. ‘I was going to marry that gutless wonder, can you believe that? When this happened, he pissed off upstairs. Left me to it.’

Tosser, thought Gracie. But maybe with a chainsaw about to burst through the door, any one of them would lose their nerve. And she didn’t think Claude, for all his smiles and posturing, had that much nerve to start with.

‘I’m supposed to be going in to see George tonight,’ sobbed Suze. ‘And now this . . . oh God, Gracie, what’s happening to our lives? Why are these people doing all this to us? I’ve never hurt anyone. Neither’s George, I’d bet my life on that. And Harry!’ Suze was sobbing even harder now. ‘My poor Harry. They’ve cut off his beautiful hair. What else might they be doing to him, Gracie? What else? ’

Gracie pulled her mother into her arms and patted her back as she would pat a child’s. Suze cried hard for a minute or two, and Gracie felt like joining in. But there were things to do. They didn’t have the luxury of time right now.

‘Come on through to the kitchen,’ said Gracie as Suze’s tears subsided a little. ‘I’m going to pour us out a drink and you . . . just get some stuff together, Mum.’

Suze looked at her with reddened eyes. ‘Stuff? What . . .?’

‘Do it, Mum. Chuck a few things into an overnight bag, and hurry up.’ Gracie looked back at the ravaged front door. ‘We’re going to get you the fuck out of here.’

Chapter 32

23 December

Gracie suggested that Suze move in with her sister for a while.

Predictably, Suze didn’t like it. ‘Vera won’t want me there. She’ll be rushed off her feet getting ready for Christmas; she’s got all the kids coming.’

‘You’ll have to tell her it’s an emergency,’ said Gracie. ‘Boiler’s bust, it’s Christmas, you’re freezing, no plumbers to be had, Claude’s walked out, it’s Christmas, yada, yada.’

‘Christ,’ said Suze wearily. ‘That’s going to make her day. You know how she is. I love her to bits but she’s so fucking smug and superior. She never got divorced. Her kids go to uni and they’re going to be doctors, solicitors . . . and what are mine? One deals out cards to sad sacks who haven’t got a home to go to, one’s on the dole and the other one runs a gambling den.’

So that’s how she sees me, thought Gracie, feeling hurt.

But Suze phoned Vera and secured a bed for a few days.

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Gracie, and while Suze was packing up a few things she stood there looking at the front door, willing the ones with the chainsaw not to come back before Suze got her act together. One of the neighbours had apparently phoned the police, and had even knocked on the door shortly after Claude’s hasty departure. The police, with their hands full with Christmas revellers no doubt, hadn’t yet shown up, and Gracie wasn’t about to sit around waiting for them.

‘Hurry the fuck up, will you?’ she scolded, as Suze dithered around the place.

‘All right.’

Once Suze was packed, they got a taxi over to the hospital to visit George. He was exactly the same – no change at all. Gracie wondered if there ever would be. She felt impossibly weary now, under siege, endangered by something, she didn’t know what. So George and Harry had been squiring a few women about the town, so what? Surely that couldn’t lead on to this . . . could it?

She stared at George, lying there, out of it. If only he could come round. If only he could speak. But he was so still it was like he was dead already. She thought of the emails, in her bag. Thought of Harry. And wondered – worried – about where he was.

‘He’s not going to pull out of this, is he?’ said Suze, sitting there on the opposite side of George’s bed, looking old and almost shrivelled; not herself at all.

‘Yeah,’ said Gracie firmly. ‘He is.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Suze with a tired, tremulous smile.

They sat there for a full hour, listening to the beeps of the monitors, while the nurse hurried around them, sending them fake cheery smiles. George was going to be all right, he was going to pull through. Wasn’t he?

Gracie doubted it. She really did.

From the hospital they went over to her aunt Vera’s. Vera lived in some style and was justly proud of her faultless, clever family. Gracie could understand that Suze felt bitter when Vera kept – gently, but very firmly – ramming her own family’s perfections down Suze’s throat. But better to be safe and bitter than at home and at risk.

Gracie didn’t go in.

‘You ought to say hello, at least,’ said Suze as they sat in the cab with the engine still running.

Gracie shook her head. ‘No, I’ve got enough to think about without having to field Vera’s questions about what I’m doing here. Don’t tell her anything about what’s happened, Mum. The less anyone knows, the better.’

‘All right,’ Suze relented unhappily.

Gracie looked at her mother. Usually dippy Suze would argue black was white, but now all the fight seemed to have drained out of her.

Suze returned Gracie’s gaze and said: ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

Gracie stared at Suze in surprise. Then she swallowed hard past a sudden lump in her throat and was about to speak when Suze opened the cab door, and was gone. As the taxi pulled away to take her back to George and Harry’s flat, Gracie glanced out of the back window and saw Vera opening the door, embracing Suze. Her mother went inside the house and the door closed behind her. Then Gracie saw the lines of dazzling headlights behind them. Was there anyone following her? I’m watching you, Red.

She was exhausted, confused, overcome. She sat in silence all the way back to the flat, and was grateful when the cab pulled in and she could pay the driver off and let him go. She wanted to be alone, to think. The snow was several centimetres deep now, and it was still falling. A white Christmas. She started walking towards the block, fishing out George and Harry’s keys as she went. She heard a movement behind her and half turned. She felt the stunning impact of the blow to her head, and saw the snow rushing up to meet her. That was all she knew before blackness and silence descended.

Chapter 33

23 December

Gracie came back to consciousness because someone or something was tugging at her legs. She was aware of a dim sense of irritation, a befuddled awareness that she must be in bed and dreaming, but someone was definitely tugging at her legs. And her whole front section was achingly, bitingly cold. While the rest of her felt strangely warm and peaceful.

Very odd.