A Daughter's Secret (4 page)

‘Hello. Are you Mia Cosgrove?’

I turn to him. His large brown eyes should be soft, but they aren’t, not the way they’re tracking me.

‘I am. I don’t believe you’ve made an appointment.’

I hate the haughtiness I can hear in my voice, like it’s the 1940s and he’s addressed me improperly, but then I notice how he’s sizing me up, his sterile smile on a time delay.

‘I don’t need one. I’m acting for the police.’

I try to control my face, avoid a wave of shock jumbling my features.

‘What’s it concerning?’ As if I didn’t know.

‘Gemma Vine.’

‘There’s really nothing I can help you with, but if you’d like to follow me.’

‘Oh, I think you might be underestimating yourself.’ His words are aimed at my retreating back, and I ball my fingers up, crunching down my anger.

In my room he makes for the sofa, and sits up straight, large hands dangling between his suited knees, bog-standard black office shoes planted firmly on my rug.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ambush you,’ he says, his apology failing to soak the dry, paper-thin words with any meaning. ‘I’m Patrick O’Leary.’ Irish, but not. A plastic paddy, second generation. His voice is neutral, professional, but the odd London vowel creeps in unawares. ‘I’m a lawyer with the SFO, overseeing the Stephen Wright case. Are you aware of the details?’

‘I’ve read the headlines. I’m aware it’s a large-scale trial, and that his accountant’s disappeared, but I don’t know much more than that.’

‘Seems unlikely, considering you’re seeing our friend Christopher Vine’s daughter.’

‘Yes, and my job is to provide her with emotional support. I don’t want to have my judgement clouded by spurious press stories.’

‘You’re a therapist. People confide in you. You realize she was the last person to see him before he disappeared?’

‘I do.’

‘So you understand how vital her input could be to our finding him?’

‘Have you ever had therapy?’ He snorts, then tries to turn it into a cough. I know I should calm down, haughty was way better than this, but it’s beyond me. ‘I’ll take that as a no. The most important thing is that the client trusts the therapist. Even if I knew anything – which I don’t – it would be a complete betrayal. Don’t you think she’s been through enough?’

‘How about all those pensioners who’ve lost their life savings? Do you think maybe they’ve been through enough? I’m sure they’d love to come to your fancy office and pay you a small fortune to cry about it, but guess what, they can’t afford it. Or how about the women he’s trafficked? I’m sure they’d be really grateful if you handed them a Kleenex.’

‘Where do you get off being this hostile?’

I feel colour flooding my cheeks, my breath suddenly twisting up high and tight in my chest. I hate everything that’s coming out of his mouth, not least the implication that what I do is nothing more than an expensive aspirin, a temporary treatment that masks the pain. He leans back, opening large hands up into a more believable kind of apology, but it just makes it worse. I’m scorched with humiliation, the humiliation of him seeing how much he’s riled me.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come tramping into your place of work in my size twelves, I should have made an appointment, but I’m like you.’ I narrow my eyes, waiting for the follow-up. ‘I’m one of the good guys,’ he says, smiling self-deprecatingly. ‘I want to help. Stephen’s victims are desperate: if it turns out there’s a way you can help them, I’m sure you’d want to take it.’

I stand up, put out a hand.

‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr O’Leary, but my next patient is due any minute. I’m afraid you’re wasting your time as well as mine. I’ve only had one session with Gemma, nothing of which revealed any information about her dad’s whereabouts.’

He gets to his feet, his body taut and rigid.

‘I can take a hint. But just so you know, if we end up needing more information from you, we can use formal channels to obtain it. The authorities are in no mood to let men like Christopher Vine, who give vicious criminals a fake respectability, get away with it. I’m asking myself how come they’ve got the cash to splash sending their daughter here, when their assets are frozen.’

‘I do know my legal responsibilities. If she told me something I thought was vital to your investigation I’d pass it on, but that’s not going to happen. I’m trying to provide some comfort for a traumatized child: if she brings in any bank statements for the Cayman Islands I promise you’ll be the first to know.’

‘You do that, Miss Cosgrove,’ he says, yanking a card out of his wallet. I snatch it from him. ‘This isn’t going away.’

‘I’ll put you on speed dial. And it’s Ms.’ I hate that word, it sounds like a speech impediment. I hold the door open before I can make any more of a fool of myself. He moves towards it, but then he turns back, his face flooded with anger.

‘Trust me, you’ve no idea what you’re dealing with, getting involved with the Vines. I wouldn’t lose that card if I were you. Something tells me you’re going to end up needing me more than I need you.’

I hold his gaze a second too long, my eyes betraying me.
He’s going to hate you when I tell him
. I push it all away. I’m there to support her, nothing more. She’s a child who needs a safe haven, far away from all the power play.

The open door reveals my next client, patiently waiting. I smile at her, then try to smile at Patrick, regain some control over the situation. He barely registers it. He scissors his way across reception on his lanky legs, Brendan widening his eyes at me.

‘Hilary,’ I say, above a thumping heart. Annie flashes across my mind. Her expensive suntan, her designer shades. ‘So sorry to keep you waiting. Would you like to come through?’

I went in search of Judith as soon as my last appointment had ended. I felt like I’d used up my panic chips: I wanted to seem like I was the kind of cast-iron professional who could be trusted with a case involving a criminal trial without breaking a sweat.

‘What do
you
want to do, Mia?’ she’d asked, searching my face with her blackberry eyes. ‘I know how worried you were this morning that she might know more than she’s let on. If the responsibility feels too much, you should step down. There’s no shame in that.’

Too much
.
Step down
. Neither of those were phrases I liked. They felt like a cattle prod applied to my overachieving backside.

‘I want to help her.’ Patrick’s smug face floated into my mind, the infuriating way he’d set up camp on the moral high ground. I thought of his passing shot, his warning about the Vines, but then I remembered Gemma’s pale smudge of a face, her sliced-into flesh. There was something small and fragile about her underneath it all. She’d found something she needed in me: who was he to snatch that away from her? The truth was, he wouldn’t just be taking it away from her; the idea of us failing to meet again made me feel strangely deflated. ‘I want to give her a refuge.’

Judith considered me, then nodded.

‘OK, you sound clear, but if I think there’s any danger to you, either emotionally or professionally, I will step in. That’s my job, as your supervisor.’

I thanked her, grateful to feel a little bit mothered in the midst of it all, then went to call Annie.

‘Just goes to show how desperate they’re getting,’ she said, defiant. It rattled me, the ‘they’, made me question myself, but I pushed the feeling away, told myself not to be so grandiose about my role. I wasn’t throwing my lot in with a bunch of criminals, I was supporting Gemma.

‘You don’t have to decide now. You can cancel in the morning if you want to. No charge.’

‘Thanks, but I know what’s best for my little girl. We’re coming back. We’ll be there tomorrow, on the dot this time.’

‘If you’re sure. I just wanted you to understand my legal obligation.’

‘Do you have kids?’ she demanded. I wished I didn’t hate that question as much as I do.

‘No,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound too clipped, too brittle.

‘But you were a teenager.’ She laughed, without warmth. ‘She just wants to bitch to someone who isn’t her mum. The only thing Chris would have talked to her about when he dropped her off was whether or not she’d done her French homework. And knowing my darling daughter she’d have lied her head off.’

‘Fine, as long as you’re . . .’ I was going to say happy, but luckily it got stuck in my throat.

‘Honestly, Mia, from the way she’s acting at home, with her brothers, you could be a godsend—’

I cut across her.

‘I don’t want to dismiss what you’re saying but, if she’s coming back, it’s best I talk to
her
about how she’s acting.’

‘Yeah, thanks, I’ve got the drill. See you then,’ she said, ending the call before I could respond.

I sat there for a moment. The last twenty-four hours had been like arriving at an unfamiliar house in the dead of night, dark shapes looming and bumping against you, sofas like sea monsters until you flood the space with light.

Marcus is holding court when I arrive. I slip into my seat next to him, and, still in mid-flow, he grabs my hand under the table, squeezing hard enough for me to feel my bones. I wrap my fingers tightly around his, the angst of the day abating as he pours me a glass of white wine with his other hand.

The restaurant is a typical Marcus find: an incredibly chichi new Chinese, tucked away underground somewhere deep in Belgravia. The colours are soft and muted, the lighting dusky and atmospheric. Impeccably dressed waiting staff glide around in a perfectly choreographed dance: I spy our waiter looking positively devastated at having missed the moment I needed a drink poured. I sink into the banquette and take a proper gulp of it. Marcus’s eyes track me: I’m not, ordinarily, a gulper of wine – I can tell he’s enjoying it. His daughter Juliet smiles at me across the table, and I swiftly rest my glass, smiling back. She’s twenty-nine, newly engaged, her adoring fiancé Robert, a terribly proper Army officer, surgically attached to her. There’s no sign of Christian, Marcus’s son: I try to pretend to myself it’s not a relief. I let the conversation wash over me, my mind elsewhere.

‘You can’t just throw up a building. “Throw up” is the word. If you end up covering London, which is the most beautiful city in the world, bar none—’

‘Er, Rome, Dad?’ says Juliet, laughing. ‘Paris?’

I watch how she reaches out to him, exasperation and admiration perfectly balanced. When she questions him or challenges him, it’s only ever a gentle joust: his authority is absolute. She’s grown up without any financial worries thanks to Marcus’s entrepreneurship. He started out as an architect, then moved into developing his own properties, buying low and selling high when it was still possible to pick up a bargain. What I love about him is that he’s still an artist, despite all that commercial success. He’s like a physician with buildings, the way he can look at them and instinctively know what will bring them back to full health. Sometimes I’ll watch him sketching something out, utterly consumed by what he’s doing, and it gives me the shivers.

‘You obviously haven’t been to St Paul’s recently. Of course we need affordable housing, but it can’t be any old shit. That’s my point.’

It’s all so hypothetical for them, no more than a rousing debate. My eyes flick guiltily around the room. Mum would hate it here, with its £7 bottles of water and insistence that you leave a tip in a silver salver if you want a pee. I suddenly long to see her, our weekend meeting too far away, even though for both of us the anticipation is often sweeter than the reality. I take another slug of my wine. It’s honeyed and expensive, a waterfall cascading down my throat.

‘But there should be proper council housing,’ I say, my voice sounding a little too loud and forthright to my own ears. ‘They should never have sold it all off. People need a safety net.’

‘You’re right,’ Marcus says. ‘In France, people rent all their lives, no problem. The government stops landlords bleeding them dry.’

I’m being unfair; he does think about things properly. I couldn’t bear him if he was just a horrible old moneybags Tory, but he isn’t. He still teaches architecture, and his business sponsors a broke architecture student every year.

‘How’s your house hunting going?’ asks Robert, and my eyes flick quickly to Juliet, catching the splash of pain that she quickly conceals. Marcus and Lila’s divorce – bitter and expensive – is only two years old. I suspect it’s the hardest thing that’s ever befallen her.

Marcus misses it, perhaps because he wants to. He’s looking at me, wobbling his head mockingly, his eyes dancing. I grin back, despite myself.

‘She’s like Goldilocks,’ he says, hands waving girlishly. ’Too big, too small, too noisy, too quiet.’

Juliet’s playing with her napkin now, eyes sliding away. My laughter slides away too. I feel for her, I really do. Intermittently we get on well – we meet for a hurried coffee or discuss going to a film – but it’s a spluttering, second-hand car of a relationship, never quite making it onto the road. A tableful of sharing platters arrives, providing a welcome distraction.

‘You need a top-up,’ says Marcus, still oblivious.

He turned round one day and simply said that he’d fallen out of love with Lila, that he thought they’d both lost that loving feeling, truth be told, and that life was too short for them to stay together. There’s a lovely innocence about him – the bit that dreams and creates – and he thought that perhaps she’d be relieved it was out in the open. Surprise, surprise she wasn’t.

My friend Zoe fixed us up a few months later at a dinner party: in my more paranoid moments I wonder if his kids think that the window of time is no more than PR bullshit and I was always waiting in the wings.

‘How come we’re not finding you a place?’ asks Juliet, her voice tight. She works for the firm now, Daddy’s right-hand woman. She’s bright, a Cambridge graduate who could work anywhere, but chooses to stay close to home.

‘Cue the explosion,’ says a laughing Marcus, covering his ears.

‘No explosion! I want it to be . . .’ I pause, suddenly snatched away by the past. I think about some of the limpets who clung to my father, the elaborate pantomime of pretending to care about me. The last thing she wants is a visceral sense of us. ‘I want it to be somewhere that’s mine too.’