The Black Sheep

  ‘It was all about investigating Carr. Ask Alexandra Spencer at the Record.’

  ‘Oh, I have,’ Smart said with a sneer. ‘I’ve had a long chat with Ms Spencer about you.’

  Great. Harry could just imagine how delighted his news editor had been about that conversation.

  ‘So you know that there was nothing personal in what I did,’ he pressed on. ‘It was an investigation, which speaks against the harass—’

  ‘I can assure you that any investigation I carried out wouldn’t involve conning my way into the affections of the daughter of the man we were looking into.’ Smart curled his top lip.

  ‘Yeah?’ Harry snarled. ‘Tell that to the Pitchford Inquiry. I’m not taking any lectures on undercover work from the bloody Metropolitan Police.’ He stopped. He was in the wrong. There was no point arguing with Smart over it. ‘The truth is I’m really sorry Fran got hurt. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I was going to tell her everything, but . . . but . . .’ A vision of Fran as they made love filtered into his head. He couldn’t bear the thought he’d never be able to see her again. It wasn’t just the sex, either, amazing though that had been. Harry had only felt like this once before, in his last year at uni. He’d fallen in love with a girl who had seemed to love him back, right up until the moment that she dumped him. Heartbroken, Harry had vowed never to allow himself to be that vulnerable again. And yet, somehow, Fran had slipped past his defences, winding herself into the core of his being so emphatically that, as he sat here in this dingy interview room, he knew that getting her to speak to him again was more important than writing a damn story or passing on rumours and scraps of unsubstantiated evidence to the police.

  He pressed his lips together. He would say nothing else.

  Smart left the room, keeping Harry waiting for almost another hour. When he returned, he sat down with a sigh.

  ‘Okay.’ Smart tapped his long fingers on the table, considering Harry carefully. ‘As I understand it from speaking to Mr Carr and his daughter, your evidence against Jayson Carr and his brother Perry amounts to a series of reports which you weaselled your way into finding at Perry Carr’s house and which both brothers have explained. I might add that if they were guilty, bringing you to our attention would not be the cleverest way of avoiding an investigation.’

  Harry kept silent.

  ‘I’m not going to charge you, Mr Elliot,’ DS Smart said with a sigh. ‘But I am going to give you a bit of advice: Jayson Carr is not a good man to piss off so don’t aggravate him any more. Now, get out of here and for God’s sake, do yourself a favour and stay away from the Carrs, especially Francesca.’

  Harry stormed outside where the light was fading and rain drummed onto the pavements. He stomped to his car, feeling drips trickle down the back of his neck. What a frigging disaster.

  He’d lost Fran before he’d even properly got to know her.

  On top of which he had almost certainly screwed up his career: he could just imagine how angry Alexandra Spencer would be with him, especially when he told her there was no story on Jayson Carr. Which, strangely, didn’t bother him half as much as it should have done. Because he didn’t care about the story – even though he was a journalist to his fingertips. There would be other, better stories.

  But there wouldn’t be another Fran.

  He didn’t even care about the ethics of a situation where a guilty man might walk free because Harry stopped trying to expose him.

  All he cared about was Fran.

  Out of the rain and inside his car, Harry switched on the engine and sat, watching the wipers clear the windscreen. He couldn’t stop thinking about her face: first soft and vulnerable as they’d made love last night and then, later, shocked and stricken. Why on earth hadn’t he told her the truth before they slept together, like he’d planned? He had to try and talk to her again, to explain why he’d gone undercover in the first place, how he had wanted . . . started several times in fact . . . to tell her the truth . . . how his feelings for her had developed and deepened. How he hadn’t told the police anything. How he had dropped his story. How he was prepared to destroy every scrap of information he held about PAAUL and her father.

  Would she listen? Would she give him a second chance?

  Harry had a horrible feeling that she would never speak to him again. He let his mind drift once more over the memory of the time they’d spent in bed together: the feel of her skin, the curve of her hip, the dark sexiness deep behind her eyes.

  He had to do something. DS Smart was right that most of Harry’s information had come from internet reports. There were lots of these, far more than the few to which he had led Fran. He’d been researching this story for months, after all. He needed to make Fran see that though his methods had been wrong and hurtful he had genuinely thought that her father was the head of PAAUL, guilty of ordering the death of her husband. Under such circumstances he had, surely, been duty-bound to investigate. More than anything, he needed to convince Fran that he had never intended to cause her pain and that he was sorrier than he could say that he had.

  The rain grew stronger as Harry drove off. By the time he reached home he knew exactly what he needed to do.

  FRAN

  ‘It’s just so humiliating,’ Lucy said in a miserable voice. ‘But we have to remember that Harry needs our prayers. I’m going to ask my prayer group to say a Hail Mary for him and a Novena.’

  ‘Right,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Great.’ It was several hours since the showdown with Harry and I was desperate to get back home to the kids. But Dad and Jacqueline had gone out to a prison rehabilitation charity function and I had promised Dad I would hang on with Lucy until she seemed a bit less depressed.

  DS Smart called to ask for more details about Harry ‘harassing’ me so I left Lucy in the kitchen and slipped outside to speak privately on the patio.

  ‘Mr Elliot isn’t saying much, mostly a load of bullcrap about a story on your father and how very sorry he is you got caught in the crossfire,’ DS Smart said. I heard the rustle of his papers. I shivered, and not just because it was freezing out on the patio and I’d left my coat indoors.

  Clearly, the so-called evidence linking Dad with PAAUL amounted to nothing more than a few internet rumours. But Harry had believed them and had lied to me in order to get more and better proof. To him, the ends had justified the means. Was he really sorry now for conning me?

  Through the kitchen window I could see Lucy fingering her rosary, her long hair falling over her face. I gave the detective an outline of Harry’s lies, leaving out the embarrassing detail that we’d actually slept together, then I rang off and came back into the kitchen.

  ‘Shall I make a cup of tea?’ I asked, hoping to rouse Lucy out of her stupor.

  ‘Sure, thanks.’ Lucy gave me a weak smile. ‘Sorry I’m so down, I just feel devastated that Harry tricked us.’

  ‘Come on, Luce,’ I said, wondering if maybe I needed to deploy a bit of tough love. ‘It was me Harry was trying to trick.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

  I bit back my irritation. I was the victim here. I was the one Harry had duped. And yet here I was, just like Dad, once again falling over backwards to look after poor, fragile, vulnerable Lucy.

  Of course, as soon as I’d thought this I felt guilty.

  Trying to gather myself I wandered across the kitchen to fill the kettle with water. I wanted time to think through everything that had happened and it was impossible with Lucy taking up all the available emotional space.

  It would have helped if I’d understood why Lucy was taking the news about Harry’s duplicity so hard. It surely couldn’t be because she’d fancied him, could it?

  I put on the kettle and fetched two mugs from the cupboard. Mum’s kitchen had been full of mismatched, brightly coloured cups and saucers. Jacqueline’s mugs were all the same tasteful shade of beige.

  I still hadn’t told Lucy about sleeping with Harry. Our failure to communicate about t
his stuff was typical of the emotional distance between us. I didn’t even know if Lucy had ever even had sex – apart, of course, from the older man who made her pregnant when she was fifteen. I couldn’t imagine her getting close to any man; she lived like a nun.

  ‘Will you get the milk?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure.’ But instead of standing up and walking to the fridge, Lucy started working at her rosary again.

  For Pete’s sake. Perhaps it was her lack of experience with men that made her reaction to Harry’s lies so extreme. Or maybe, I thought meanly, she was just attention-seeking. Times like this seemed to push us back into our childhood roles: me the level-headed one, and Lucy the frail innocent. Dad played up to these roles without noticing he did so.

  I fetched the milk myself and set it down by the kettle. My eyes lit on the knife block: French oak with a silver trim. The knives inside it were all brand new, Jacqueline’s purchases. But the knife block itself had been Mum’s, kept on by my stepmother, presumably because it was simple, unusual and extraordinarily expensive. Typical of Mum’s random but often exquisite taste. In that moment I missed her desperately. For a start, she would have known how to deal with Lucy. She always did. While Dad and I had floundered in the face of Lucy’s emotional outbursts, Mum knew exactly what to say and how to say it.

  But it was more than that. Harry had made a fool of me – and I felt like an idiot. Mum would have laughed my blues out of me in that no-nonsense, flamboyant way of hers. And she would have found a way of knitting Lucy and me closer together, rather than leaving me with the stark awareness of just how estranged from my own sister I really was . . . in the heart, where it counts. Because I didn’t understand her. Why did she have to take everything so hard? Be so bloodless and fearful? Was it really because of her abortion all those years ago? Or because of the way it came out, causing such scandal and upset in our family? Or was it just Lucy’s intrinsic nature: too many parts veal calf, not enough vim?

  I made the tea, returned the milk to the fridge and set Lucy’s mug in front of her. The doorbell rang just as I took my first sip.

  ‘Who on earth’s that?’ Lucy looked at me over the rim of her mug.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said, tamping down the irritation that rose in me again.

  Leaving my mug on the counter, I hurried along the hallway. Uncle Perry stood on the doorstep.

  ‘Ah, Francesca,’ he said, not meeting my eyes. His voice was terse. Angry. ‘Been at the club. Your father rang, asked me to come over so you can get back to the kids. Said Lucy’s taking it hard.’ He tutted. ‘Ghastly business. What a shower, this Harry fellow.’

  He still wasn’t looking at me properly.

  Was that because he knew I’d found out he was gay? Or because of the secret porn stash?

  Quite possibly both. Not that I could be bothered to worry about any of that now.

  ‘It’s awful,’ I agreed. ‘Lucy’s still upset though.’

  ‘Right.’ Uncle Perry now sounded resigned as well as cross.

  ‘You’d think her faith would help her through,’ I said, ‘but it doesn’t seem to.’

  Uncle Perry’s head jerked sharply up.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ I frowned, feeling guilty again. ‘She just takes things so hard.’

  ‘You can be a self-righteous little madam, can’t you?’ Uncle Perry snapped.

  What? I stared at him. Perry pushed past me into the hallway.

  ‘If you had ignored what the stupid man was saying in the first place we wouldn’t be in this position,’ he went on, tugging angrily at his scarf, unwinding it from his neck, his face reddening.

  ‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ I said.

  Perry shucked off his long cashmere overcoat, the same sort that Dad wore. ‘You’re such a Martha, Francesca. Always complaining.’ He hung the coat on the stand, folding and tucking his black leather gloves fastidiously in the pocket.

  Was he serious? The bible story of Martha and Mary was familiar to me from my childhood: resentful Martha, running around and working hard, rebuked by a visiting Jesus for criticising her quieter sister who simply sat and listened.

  No way was that me.

  Was it?

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ I insisted.

  ‘Please,’ Perry snorted, turning to face me. I could see nothing but contempt in his eyes. ‘This whole situation is your fault. Your father and I told you Harry was making things up, we warned you to stay away from him. It’s very hypocritical of you to—’

  ‘I’m not the effing hypocrite,’ I snarled.

  Uncle Perry blinked, taken aback. ‘I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean but—’

  ‘You know what I found in your basement,’ I hissed, unable to stop myself. ‘You know who you really are.’

  Perry’s face was now purple, his eyes blazing. ‘I don’t know everything that’s down there,’ he blustered. ‘People have dumped things there over the years.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But probably not in boxes marked “P. Carr. Private”.’

  Silence fell. My uncle and I stared at each other.

  Lucy’s voice floated out from the kitchen, quavering with unhappiness.

  ‘Who is it, Francesca?’

  I snatched up my coat and handbag. No way was I staying here a minute longer. ‘It’s Uncle Perry. I need to get back to the kids.’

  And without giving Perry another glance, I stormed out of the house.

  I stayed angry all the way home but as Saturday wore on my resentment at Perry subsided and I ended up having a lovely afternoon with the children. I got both of them outside to kick a ball around together. Caspian used to do this all the time with them, organising games of soccer, French cricket and dodge ball at the drop of a hat, but I hadn’t played with them outside since the summer.

  Ruby and I made a team together against Rufus who, I noticed, was far gentler with her than he used to be, making allowance for her shorter legs and eager desperation to score. We stayed outside until the wind whipped up and the skies darkened. Once inside, Rufus and Ruby elected to play separately up in their rooms and I sat alone in the living room, a darker mood creeping over me. Outside the streetlights came on but I didn’t get up and put on the lamp. My thoughts turned to Harry again. I felt hurt and stupid for trusting him, but that was only part of it. I’d wanted two things: to stop Harry pursuing his story, and to make myself feel better by punishing him for deceiving me.

  I hadn’t succeeded in either aim. In fact I’d made everything worse. Harry was gone for good. Uncle Perry blamed me. Dad and Jacqueline probably did too. I tried to reason myself out of my funk. But, as I’d learned during my short-lived attempt at therapy, knowing my state of mind was of little help in altering it. Nothing seemed to help . . . not even reminding myself that the kids needed me, that soon I would have to rouse myself and make tea for them, that Rufus and Ruby were still, as they had been since Caspian died, my biggest reasons to get up in the morning.

  Indeed, all I could think was that there would be years not that far in the future which would be worse, when neither of them would be here on a Saturday night and I would be sitting in this living room, alone in the dark with no one to look after and nothing to do and no point to any of it.

  A tear trickled down my cheek. I wiped it angrily away, now furious with myself for being so self-pitying. A soft tap on the front door sounded. I peered through the window; the shutters were still half-open to the darkness outside. A man was on the doorstep.

  Harry.

  I froze. What on earth was he doing here? Another rap, louder this time. Ruby’s feet pattered down the stairs.

  ‘I’ll get it, Mum,’ she sang.

  I jumped up to stop her but before I could call out she had already opened the door.

  ‘Hi.’ Harry’s voice sounded like he was smiling. ‘You must be Ruby.’ I steeled myself, waiting for him to ask if I was in. But instead he said: ‘So, Arsenal, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ruby said shyly.

/>   She must be wearing her Arsenal football shirt. She was a very half-hearted supporter, only paying lip service to her tribe. She’d asked for the shirt for her last birthday. It had surprised me at the time, but Ruby was adamant, even though her interest in football had always been playing it, not watching the professional game.

  ‘Why Arsenal?’ Harry asked.

  ‘It was my dad’s team,’ Ruby said, sounding more confident.

  I stood, listening, now transfixed. What on earth did she mean by that? Caspian had never shown an interest in any sport, not the entire time I’d known him.

  ‘Your dad?’ I could hear in Harry’s voice that he didn’t know whether to refer to Caspian’s death. It was a problem lots of adults had, of course, not wanting to upset the bereaved by mentioning their loss, especially when the bereaved were children.

  ‘I think it was his team, anyway,’ Ruby went on. ‘It’s the nearest Premiership team to where he’s from. Hampstead. I looked it up.’

  My mouth gaped. Had Ruby really made all those connections, all by herself? Tears pricked at my eyes.

  ‘I lost my dad when I was about your age,’ Harry went on.

  ‘How?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘He walked out on me and my mum and my sister. Just vanished one day. But he supported Man City, which is why I support them. Like you with your dad’s team.’

  ‘Man City.’ Ruby considered this for a moment. ‘They’re a good side.’

  ‘They are,’ Harry said. ‘They should be too, all the money they have. Wasn’t like that when I was your age, I can tell you.’ He hesitated. ‘Er, is your mum here?’

  I pulled myself together and hurried out into the hall. As I walked to the door, tight-lipped, Ruby slipped away and back up the stairs.

  ‘Great kid,’ Harry said. God, he looked handsome. His face was pale from the cold, and he had stubble on his chin with a dark wool coat over his grey jumper.

  Anger surged through me. What the hell was he playing at?