The Make

‘Of course it is. You want to go back to Hong Kong . . .’

‘No I bloody don’t,’ said Em. ‘At least, not without you.’

Harry’s mouth fell open. ‘You mean you want me to go out there with you?’

‘Why not?’ Now Em’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. ‘You’ll love it out there, Harry. Why don’t you come?’

He could. He really could. He had dosh from the escort work. Harry thought about it for all of five seconds. Then he nodded.

Emma gave a shriek of excited laughter and threw her arms around his neck. ‘I love you, Harry Doyle,’ she said, and kissed him. What the hell, he thought. Take a chance. Roll the dice. He kissed her back. Somehow, he was going to make this work.

Gracie was standing next to Lorcan. She gave him a stern look.

‘Don’t kiss me at midnight,’ she said firmly. ‘You know I can’t think straight when you do that.’

The countdown began

‘Five!’ everyone yelled.

‘Four!’

‘Three!’

‘Two!’

‘One!’

‘Happy New Year!’

Lorcan kissed Gracie hard and long.

‘This don’t change anything,’ said Gracie when she finally came up for air. She felt like the room was spinning around her. Party poppers were being let off and multicoloured streamers were festooning them. She clutched at Lorcan, steadied herself.

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘We never did get around to the talking, did we? You going to sign those divorce papers?’

‘Guess so,’ said Gracie.

Lorcan gave a slow, sad smile. ‘Then this is it, Gracie. This is goodbye.’

‘Yeah,’ said Gracie, and then everyone launched into ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and she had to fight against the urge – so un-Gracie-like – to break down and cry.

A couple of days after New Year, Gracie kissed Suze and her brothers goodbye with firm promises to speak very soon and never to lose touch again. She drove back to Manchester, parked her car in the secure underground park and went up to her flat. Once, she’d loved it so much, but now it felt cold and alien to her; not like home at all. She put her bag down in the little kitchen area and stood there, thinking.

She took out the divorce papers and looked at them. She’d had them with her all the time she was in London; she could have signed them, could have handed them to Lorcan or posted them straight back to the courts, easy. Yet she hadn’t.

‘Fuck it, what am I doing?’ she asked herself.

Following her heart? Or her head?

She’d always been the calculating one, the clever one. The cold one? Was she really that too? Maybe she was. She sat down at the kitchen table and coldly, calculatingly, she thought it all through.

* * *

Lorcan was in the casino. It was heaving with high-rolling clients – Saudi princes, footballers, Russian oligarchs. He moved among them smoothly, greeting, smiling, exchanging cheery words with the staff and the punters, while inside his chest his heart felt like a lump of lead.

She was gone.

It was over.

He’d gambled, and lost.

Fuck it, he’d thought he was getting somewhere with her. Five years of missing her, and finally he’d had enough. The thing with George had happened and he’d thought: now is the time. He’d decided to force her hand. Not knowing which way she’d jump. And of course, being Gracie, she’d jumped the wrong way. Called his bluff. Now, the courts would finish up what was left of their marriage and it would all be done and dusted.

God, what a waste.

Then he saw her. She was weaving through the punters down the casino boulevard, a stunningly striking six- feet-tall woman with a thick dark-red hank of hair twisted into a plait that hung down over her shoulder. She was wearing her plain black wrap dress, and her cool grey eyes were searching for him . . . and finding him.

He held his breath as she came closer.

She wasn’t smiling.

She came right up to him and now he could see that she was holding some papers in her hand.

The divorce papers.

Oh shit.

‘I had these with me all the time I was down here,’ she said, her eyes locked with his.

Lorcan swallowed hard. ‘Then why didn’t you sign them and give them to me, or post them back to the courts?’ he asked.

‘Oh now, let’s think about that . . .’ And Gracie carefully, deliberately, ripped the papers up into tiny pieces. They fluttered to the casino floor.

Lorcan stared into Gracie’s eyes. ‘Meaning . . .?’ he asked.

‘What do you think?’ asked Gracie in exasperation.

She stepped forward, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. ‘We’ll try, okay? We’ll compromise. We’ll talk. Yes?’

People around them were staring and smiling.

Then Gracie drew back a little. ‘I decided to take a chance,’ she said with a smile. ‘Roll the dice.’

‘Oh, Gracie,’ said Lorcan with a grin, ‘thank fuck for that,’ and kissed her back.

Chapter 81

They decided to reaffirm their wedding vows in a small ceremony at the newly refurbished Savoy in June. George and Alfie were blissfully happy, living together in their little flat, and Suze was cruising the net for a new love. Harry and Em were out in Hong Kong, doing a lot of rooftop sunbathing, but they would be coming back to attend the ceremony. Em’s mother Jackie was going to get an invitation too.

Meanwhile, April was turning into May; all the trees were budding, the sun was shining and there was a biting north-easterly breeze blowing as Lorcan parked the BMW and walked alone into the reception area of the large unit. The weary-looking DI Sanderson, whom he’d encountered back in December of last year, was there waiting for him. They shook hands.

‘Thought you’d want to see this,’ said the detective.

‘Thanks, but I’m not sure I do,’ said Lorcan.

‘Come on.’

Sanderson led the way. Lorcan followed. There were locked gates, entry systems and buzzers. Security guards thinly disguised in white jackets to look like nurses, padding by in white coats and crepe-soled shoes. Finally they came to a room at the end of a long hallway and were met by a bulky dark-haired man wearing a short-sleeved white tunic, like a dentist’s. The male nurse/guard unlocked the door, pushed it open, walked inside. He smiled at the man who was sitting in the chair, gazing out of the securely barred window into the small courtyard garden beyond. There were apple trees out there, blossoming in a froth of pink and white; and camellias, their blooms turned brown by frost.

The man in the chair wore a pale blue dressing gown and pyjamas. He looked up as the three men came in and Lorcan felt his guts shrivel with a tremor of dread. Deano Drax was staring up at him. Lorcan felt every muscle in his body tense. The last time he had seen this man he had been raging, threatening; a huge, blundering force of evil.