Deviant (6 page)

Fortunately, given his turn, Bren was also a talker. After the second round of drinks, Abigail sank back into the cushions and let him go. First came the tales of how his mother had gone to Canada to travel and fallen in love. A love refugee! His parents were both police officers, “but you’d never guess,” he said. His father had been a “highly respected and very creative homicide detective, helping solve some of the most notorious cases in the country.” (He said this part with a hint of mockery.) His mother worked in domestic violence and rape. They took early retirement and were now travelling the world
in a Winnebago. “Well, California. Next stop, Europe,” Bren slurred. “They’re obsessed with conspiracy theories. If you ever meet them, don’t ask about 9/11.”

Bren loved Scotland, everything about it, especially the Tunnock’s Tea Cakes. He came back as often as he could to stay with the rellies in Partickhill. He’d recently moved from Toronto to LA to make it in the movie business. “Not acting, before you ask. Hair and makeup!” So far, all he’d managed was a partnership in a salon. But he wouldn’t give up, oh no.

He fell asleep mid-story.

Prebiotics sounds interesting
, Abigail thought once he was snoring. Her father was the managing director of a prebiotics company. Managing director! He must be into science. Like father, like daughter. He must be rich. Have power. Wear suits. Tell hundreds of people what to do. Live in a mansion with a pool. Have more than one car. Buy his kid and wife expensive presents. Talk about prebiotics on the phone to the very people who are helping him make the world better with prebiotics. It was Abigail’s new favorite word. She decided to nudge her neighbor.

“Do you know what prebiotics is?”

“Huh?” Bren yawned and scrunched his eyebrows, rubbing his chin. “Yeah, I know that … Prebiotics, I’ve heard of it.”

Abigail suppressed a smile. She wanted to stop him there. Bren obviously found it rude and impossible to admit that he didn’t have a clue. Must be the Glaswegian genes. Ask someone from Glasgow to direct you to the railway station and they’ll send you anywhere rather than shrugging nowhere.

“I think it’s like …” Bren continued. “You know how you have the Neanderthal period, right? And the post-Neanderthal period and then there’s the pre-Neanderthal period?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well this is the same, I think. Except it’s the period before the biotic one.”

Abigail laughed. “That’s ridiculous!”

“I’m ridiculous? Who cares? Get interesting, girl!” He closed his eyes and nestled into his pillow again, a playful grin on his lips.

“I’ll try.”

She grinned, too. She
would
see him again. In her new life, whatever that was, she’d have a friend waiting in Los Angeles.

S
HE WOKE WHEN THE
seatbelt sign came on. They were descending. The local time was 7:35
A.M
. Panicked, Abigail rubbed her eyes and gaped out the window. It didn’t look much different than Glasgow from up there. At least there were no clouds.

She was even more nervous waiting in line behind Bren to go through Immigration.

“Relax,” Bren told her. “Stay cool. Don’t worry so much! Or at least, don’t let on.”

A few questions later, Bren’s passport was stamped. “You got my card?” he asked before heading to baggage claim.

“I have, yeah.” She fished it out of her pocket and held it up.

“Call me.”

“I will.”

“I’ll sort that hair!”

His glassy gaze met with hers. He didn’t blink. He held on. Abigail swallowed and smiled back. He didn’t care about her hair. He knew too much about the rest of her.

A
T THE PASSPORT BOOTH
, Abigail tried her best to look like normal, everyday thirty-two-year-old Romanian Alina Beklea. Underneath, she felt the same way she’d felt since Nieve died: powerless. She thought she’d made it. She thought the Glasgow airport was the one to worry about. She’d relaxed on the plane, gotten tipsy, blurted everything out to some guy she didn’t even know, not realizing that she still might not make it to her new life.

The passport official was looking at the photograph.

Then he was looking at her.

She recognized the look. It was one of disdain. He thought she was scum. If there wasn’t a problem, he wouldn’t look at her like this. There was obviously a problem.

He looked at her, at the photograph, at her—again and again.

“You don’t like Kate Middleton?” he asked with a nod to the
STUFF THE MONARCHY
shirt.

“Oh, well … I don’t know her.” Abigail faked a Romanian accent. “I just visited UK for a while.”

“You have no visa.”

“No, I didn’t realize …” She lost the ability to breathe.
Visa
? The woman at the American Airlines desk hadn’t checked or asked. “Can I get one?”

The glare he offered in return indicated that this was the dumbest question she could have possibly asked.

He called over a colleague. Both stared at the passport. Then they both gave her the same look of disdain.

“Come with us, please, Miss Beklea.”

I
N THE INTERVIEW ROOM
, face-to-face with another sour man in a blue immigration uniform, Abigail went over the options in her head. She could run for it. The door was open. Outside the room was an empty corridor, equally as claustrophobic and fluorescent. If she ran to the left, she would reach the passport booth, where she’d come from. If she ran to the right, who knows where she’d end up? Scanning the room she was in and what she could see of the corridor, she noticed cameras. They were all over the ceilings. No: running was out.

She could cry. Girls in the hostel always cried when they wanted something. Abigail tried to muster a girly tear. No luck.

She could lie. Stick with the Alina story. Ask about getting a visa. Hell, beg. Or …

Bribe? But, no. Lies always caught up with you. And she doubted any amount of cash would convince the airport security authorities to let her through. Besides, she only had £1,570 of her £25,000 left. The other £25K was her sister’s. She would never touch it.

Abigail clenched her jaw, angry with herself. She wasn’t an impatient person. She shouldn’t have rushed out of the country without thinking about the consequences. She should have found her father’s address, contacted him, and explained her
passport situation. She should have waited. There was no other option but to come clean to this dickhead.

“My father is Grahame Johnstone,” she began. “I—”

“We’ll be sending you straight back,” he interrupted with no trace of sympathy. “Until we arrange it, wait here.”

U
NBELIEVABLE
. S
O CLOSE
. A new life, just outside this room! A few yards away. And US Customs was sending her back to Glasgow. But she knew the reason. It wasn’t because she was a liar. It was because she hadn’t been meticulous enough. She hadn’t fully established that new routine; she hadn’t gone fully into that cold robot mode necessary to bluff her way past immigration officials at an international airport. She
could
have. A little more careful planning, a little more preparation. Instead, she’d allowed herself to get all excited and distracted. She’d helped Camelia escape. She’d gone to her mother’s funeral. She’d gotten drunk on a plane with a gay guy. How stupid she had been to imagine a happy, sunny new place!

You are stupid, Abigail. You are stupid, stupid, stupid
.

Maybe she should just go to the Solid Bar and do what Billy wanted her to do. Maybe the numbness of heroin would be better than the steady rain of disappointment …

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting in the cold plastic chair in the interview room, head in her knees—maybe an hour—when a different man burst through the door.

He was tall, straight-backed, suited, shoes so shiny they hurt her eyes. He oozed significance. “So you’re Grahame Johnstone’s daughter?” he barked.

“Yes?”

“Get up. Follow me.” The voice was presidential, the kind you know you have to stop and listen to, then obey.

Abigail picked up her backpack and followed. She couldn’t concentrate on anything but her feet—one foot ahead of the other—just behind those shiny black shoes. They passed through a doorway.

The man stopped. “Here she is,” he said. His tone suddenly softened.

After Abigail dared to look up, she found herself in another office, very similar to the one she’d just left. Or perhaps it was the same one. Could be. Same size, same table, same three chairs. The only difference was that there were no immigration officials, only a middle-aged man in a golfing get-up.

“Hello, Abigail.” The golfer held out his hand. “I’m your father.”

While her father wasn’t dead, the reunion didn’t feel very different from when she’d met her dead mother. Grahame Johnstone seemed eager to make physical contact with the handshake. But Abigail couldn’t move.

“I’m sorry, Abigail.” His arm fell aside. “This is a bit awkward.”

Tiny relief: he hadn’t presumed to call her Abi. But if he had, she wouldn’t have challenged him. This man was her father. Her
father
. The word was as terrifying and nonsensical as
visa
. Nieve had told her more than once:
“Just think of your father as a sperm donor.”
There had been times when she’d fantasized about a dad, mostly that first year when Jason McVeigh still thought adoption might be a possibility. The few times she’d indulged herself since, she’d imagined a rugged Irish movie star like Liam Neeson: the kind of man who saves the world against all odds, but saves his daughter first—as his daughter is much, much more important to him than the world.

The man in front of her was not Liam Neeson. He was
stern, sensible, reliable: the kind of guy who plays the second husband in a romantic comedy, the boring one for whom the feisty wife leaves the flawed-but-lovable first husband. Abigail scrutinized his features. He did look familiar, something about his eyes. So strange, like seeing a famous person in the street and assuming you know them. She didn’t know him, but he was … he was … 
my God
. His eyes were the same color and shape as hers. And his lips went lopsided when he smiled, down to the left, just like hers did.

“Look at you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not so sure how to handle this. The last thing I want to do is freak you out.”

Freak me out?
She started to melt. “About the passport …” Abigail realized she needed to explain herself. “I didn’t have one of my own, see. Had to buy one. I should have waited to do it officially, but I was in a rush—”

“It’s okay. They’re not sending you back. You’re not in trouble.”

Her gaze narrowed. “I’m not?”

“I pulled some strings,” he said.

“Pulled some strings?” she repeated.

“Don’t worry about it.”

At last, Abigail felt relief. Blessed relief. She wouldn’t be going back to Glasgow. But then she found herself wondering how the hell a person, no matter how powerful, could get a virtual stranger past International Customs.
He is a clever man
, her mother had written. Thinking about it now, it didn’t read like a compliment. Clever might equal cunning. Clever might
equal sinister: a gangster or corrupt politician. It might equal anything. And it was very clear that her mother didn’t want her father knowing about either the letter or the money. But she did mention he was kind, and to accept his kindness …

“Do you have any other luggage?” he asked.

“No, this is it.” She nervously patted the backpack on her shoulders.

He flashed another lopsided smile. “Well then, let’s get out of here, okay?”

T
HE WALK TO THE
car only took ten minutes. Neither she nor her father spoke. She was a fast walker, Abigail. Not a stroller. Her legs took her places—usually not very nice places before now—but she’d always thought of them as pure transport. She was slow compared to her father, who walked at breakneck speed. She practically had to run to keep up with him.

His car was a grey Audi convertible, roof down. Backpack in the backseat, they drove out of the airport and made their way onto the freeway.

Okay. She could breathe. This wasn’t a dream. She’d done it. She’d escaped.

The sun was shining on her face! The loud wind was rushing through her hair!

She closed her eyes and breathed in LA.
Hmm
, it smelled … like car fumes.

Her lashes fluttered open. Yes, she was still nervous about the man at the wheel, this Grahame Johnstone father of hers who pulled strings and drove soft-tops. His beige golf trousers
and short-sleeved white shirt certainly fit the corrupt politician idea. How old was he? Around forty? Had all his hair, a kind of flat brown that looked artificial. Was it a wig? Did he dye it? Maybe it was acceptable for a man to dye his hair in LA. In Glasgow, you’d be shot. His glasses had a label on the side. She couldn’t make out what it said, but she could tell they were expensive. And they made him look clever. That word again:
clever
. Most of all, he seemed too straight for Sophie Thom. Even in death, she had some kind of edge.