Betrayal. There’s nothing quite like it. Everything that feels safe suddenly crumbles like a sand castle. You look at people differently. Even the ones you love. Especially the ones you love. And this thing gnaws at you like a voice in your head, saying over and over, ‘Don’t. Trust. Anyone.’
I’ve never hated someone as much as I hated him. I still hate him, I think. He broke my heart until it was impossible to piece it back together again.
Surprisingly, this time the front door is firmly fastened. Shepherd shut it properly behind him.
I hate that it makes me feel safe. And yet, I feel like I’ve been buried in some kind of underground tomb with no hope of escape.
I want to disappear. I close my eyes and wait.
2
ME
I needed you.
I craved you.
I lived for you.
You were my everything.
Until I destroyed you.
I STAND IN THE DEAD centre of Greystone. It’s decayed and dying, underneath the darkening sun. This place never changes, fast or slowly. Twenty years makes no odds.
The cold air bites. It hasn’t rained for days and days and days. It’s the driest for December in living and dead memory. So dry that the crows are flying with their tongues hanging out of their heads. It all spells trouble.
I see Bishop Clark opening the doors of his bar. I remember him from way back, when I used to loiter around, making hell with the gang. He was The Old Bill. Now hitting his sixties, he’s retired and owns a pub. Seems to be the only decent place to quench a man’s thirst in this dead town. Just hope it carries more than piss-water cheap beer and watered-down spirits.
‘With looks like yours,’ Bishop says, ‘fellas gonna think you’re either a poet or a twat, with that long black hair and the leather jacket and the walk on you, like yours doesn’t smell.’
He looks at me suspiciously, his dark eyes saying: Why’s he back in town?
Month back, a ghost from the past paid me a visit at the nightclub I own. Mr Reynolds was the home manager in Greystone Children’s Home. Where I grew up. Where I was the wicked orphan boy.
Greystone was dead to me. Full of ghosts. Secrets unburied. I left this coffin half a decade ago. Now I live in The Valley, a city thirty miles out from my hometown. And that arsehole Reynolds brought it back to life like a sucker punch to the head. He had something to give me.
The letter.
I smile at Bishop, up through my hair that’s grown past my ears and then some. I have the stubble of days on my chin. I’ve been hard-pressed in recent weeks. I’ll get my hair cut tomorrow. Prefer it short.
‘Is that so?’ I say. ‘And what’d you think of me?’
‘I’ve decided you’re most definitely a twat.’
Bishop crosses his arms and sniffs. I produce a half pack of cigarettes from my jacket pocket and Bishop takes one. We stand smoking awhile, Bishop with his eyes narrowed against the sun, me with a shadow of a smile.
‘Well, the last thing I need is you coming on to me,’ I say. I increase my smile to show teeth. My smile could charm the hardest bastard of humankind.
He mutters something. Rats in his cellar.
‘Rats are there?’ I say.
‘As big as sheep.’
I take a drag and then puff. ‘Do you know on the map there’s nothing at all around Greystone?’
‘It’s the arse end of beyond.’
I look thoughtful. ‘Do you know? I think it is.’
‘You look like a man with a chip on his shoulder,’ Bishop says, putting out his smoke.
I haven’t slept in weeks. Weeks without sleep, and everything becomes warped.
I just want sleep. I want drugs. I want little pills of happiness to knock the hell out of me and end this waking misery for a few hours.
Thing is, if you don’t get sleep, you start looking like the Walking Dead. I was born pale, with dark wine lips and the darkest of eyes, but now I look even more dead. Christ, I’m starting to scare kids down the street.
‘Seems so,’ I say.
‘Lady or the law?’
My face twitches as I curb a smile. When I’m around, girls fall over themselves. It’s there in the curve of my smile and the spark in my dark eyes. It’s in the way I move, owning every inch of myself. I’m a self-made billionaire, six-foot four, strong, handy even. I’ve got the kind of face that will stay young. But, even so, none of them get my cock hard.
Except . . . one girl.
The way Amy smelled this morning in the foyer of my new property, shifted me into some scary gear. She smelled of lemon drops and something flowery. All I could think of was how badly I wanted to take her. Do it over and over until I couldn’t get hard.
‘Looking for a drink?’ Bishop asks, dragging me out of my stupor.
‘You open? I could do time for a pint.’ I take my smoke out of my mouth and flick it away.
‘Could be. Don’t suppose you’re a dab hand at fixing cars, eh?’
‘Car problems?’
‘Rosie, my car,’ he says, flicks a thumb in the direction of his blue estate, ‘has her own notions of when to stop and start. She’s rusting bad.’
He starts the engine. It turns over then dies.
‘Open the bonnet, Bishop.’
I work my magic, fix a spark plug that’s misfiring. Bishop lowers himself back into the seat and starts the engine. Perfect. He gives it a rev to make sure.
He gets out. ‘She didn’t even sound like that when I bought her new. What’re you, some sort of magician?’
I
