Untouchable (23 page)

Some of them have given Amanda several smaller amounts; others what look like larger, one-off payments.

I pause halfway through. Calculate that she had amassed nearly three hundred thousand by last summer alone. I sit back in my seat. I’m sweating, my fingers sticky on the keys.

So easy, when you think about it. So easy, if you’re prepared to cross that line. I find I’m feeling almost sorry for these men, who got so much more than the mind-blowing sex they bargained for.

Taking a deep breath, I carry on. The videos become noticeably sharper, the sound less tinny. Obviously Amanda upgraded her phone, got one with a better camera. God knows, she could afford it.

I force myself to check every file, every single photo and video, in case there’s more to discover. After a while it’s like viewing a series of tedious amateur porn movies. I notice Amanda talks a lot, describing what she’s going to do in graphic detail. Less for titillation, I realize, than to implicate these men even further.

You cunning little minx, I mutter, pondering the psychology behind all this. Surely it wasn’t just about the money? There’s something playful in Amanda’s manner; not quite coquettish, more like she’s toying with them.

Which, of course, she was.

What happened to her, I wonder, as I watch Amanda fellating an MP. What lay beneath the contempt she clearly harboured for these men? Because they’re not all bad, those who visit women like us. They’re bored, they’re lonely, they’re curious – they’re simply human.

They surely don’t deserve this.

I open the second-to-last file. And freeze. My stomach flips as I recognize the face staring back at me.

Harry Arthur Elliott, says the Word file. Fifty years old. Senior partner at Trellum Bailey and Company.

I switch into Google. Trellum, Bailey and Company turns out to be a sizeable private equity firm, specialists in emerging markets. Harry is one of its top dogs, by the look of it. I go back to the photos. His ruddy face beams out at me. I check the stats. Two sons, both at a top private school.

Then I see it. At the bottom of the document is a single figure. £15,000. The largest sum Amanda ever demanded.

And no payment date.

There’s only one video. I click the start arrow. A flinch inside tells me what’s coming. Harry, kneeling behind a girl with mid-length dark hair. His hands clamped around her hips as he eases his way into her anus. Beneath her, another man, his face obscured by the angle of the shot.

Me. Sandwiched between Harry and Rob.

‘You enjoy fucking girls up the arse, don’t you, Harry?’ Amanda’s voice. Mocking, almost derisive. ‘Does it make you feel big and powerful?’

Did she really say that? I don’t remember. I guess I was too busy to notice.

The girl in the image looks up into the lens. Her eyes widen, her face contracting into a frown as she clocks Amanda fiddling with her phone.

I can’t bear to watch any more. I get up and make myself a cup of tea and stand by the kitchen window, waiting for it to cool. It’s getting dark outside, and there’s no one much around. A couple struggling to get a buggy into the boot of a car. At the end of the road, on the other side of the street, a man leaning against the wall of the pub on the corner, smoking. His face is turned in my direction, though it’s too far away to see clearly.

Am I under surveillance? Is that possible? Or just paranoid?

I stare as he drops the cigarette on the ground, grinds it under his shoe and disappears back into the pub.

A draught pushed its way through the gap in the sash window, making me shiver. Would this be enough to go the police, I wonder. I know I promised Kristen I wouldn’t, but surely it’s the most sensible thing to do? I have proof now. They’ll have to take all this seriously.

But what if they don’t? I think, remembering those marks on Kristen’s neck, dark and livid. And even if they did take it all on board, would they be able to protect Kristen? Or me?

I go back to my laptop and force myself to open the last file on the list. Inside are some pictures from the party. Several of me with Edward Hardy. Christ, how did Amanda get those? She must have sneaked into the bedroom when we were screwing. Unless she’d already set up a camera in the room.

I examine the remaining photos. Study their faces. Hardy. Harry’s friend, Rob.

And Alex. He stares back at me, his expression blank yet somehow challenging. I feel a lurch inside. A kind of ache.

I open the accompanying Word document. Hardy’s listed there, with his full ministerial title – Amanda had obviously caught the news reports. I wonder if she were planning to blackmail him too, or decided that was too risky. Robert Mulligan, it says next to the picture of Rob, along with his job title and the name of Harry’s bank.

My eyes drop down to see what Amanda had dug up on Alex. But there’s nothing. Clearly she hadn’t yet worked out who he was.

I switch to the internet, bring up Hotmail and create a new email address. I know strictly I should do it from a different computer, to mask my ISP, but there isn’t time. From this new account I paste in Tony’s address and type ‘The Others’ into the subject line. Below I paste pictures of Harry, Rob and Alex, along with those details I have. I add a note that I’m leaving town for a while, and tell him to contact me via this address.

The second I’ve sent it I delete the message from the email site and shut down my computer, removing the SD card. I hold it between my fingers and stare at it for a few moments. So small, so insignificant.

‘Amanda,’ I mutter out loud, picturing her beguiling smile, that gorgeous mask she wore to the party. Hiding so much more than any of us could ever have guessed.

‘Jesus Christ, Amanda. What the fuck were you thinking?’

34

Wednesday, 1 April

There’s nothing here. I drive along the seafront searching for Ryall Close. Double back at the roundabout where the high street meets the promenade, craning in the darkness to read the road signs.

Stacy said it was just off the main road. Told me I couldn’t bloody miss it.

I glide past a desultory-looking block of flats and several ugly beach chalets masquerading as guest houses, vacancy signs swaying in the wind. Several pebble-dashed bungalows. Even in the dark I can see it’s a far cry from the cheerful little resort I went to with Rachel and Tim. Of all the coastal towns of the southwest, I seem to have landed up in the most desolate.

Pulling up next to the sea wall, I lean my head against the side window and watch the rain slashing across the windscreen. I’ve been driving for five hours solid and have the kind of headache that makes you want to throw up. Why didn’t I hire the car with the satnav? It was only an extra fifty quid for the week. But I was paying in cash and hadn’t reckoned on needing quite so much of it – as it is, I got the smallest model on the forecourt.

I lift my head and scan the horizon. In the distance, on the outskirts of the town, glows a giant luminous Tesco sign. I set off towards it, pulling in at the adjacent garage.

‘Could you point me towards Ryall Close?’

The man behind the counter thinks for a second, then draws me a map on the back of a discarded till receipt.

‘Can’t miss it, love. Just off the main road.’

I detour into the car park and dash into the store to pick up some provisions. Only the basics. Plus an umbrella and a new phone. I choose the cheapest, and pay for everything in cash.

Five minutes later I find the squat little bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac. Cliffview Cottage. Finally.

I’m there again.

In that room, in that flat, on a stained mattress on the floor. It’s chilly. My skin prickles, the film of sweat where my belly touched his cooling now he’s peeled himself away.

He’s standing by the window, bare-chested, jeans slouching low on his hips, looking over the estate and the city beyond. Just standing there, looking out that window, and then he turns and fixes me with those blank blue eyes and he says, ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Grace.’

And I wake. I wake with a cry and a gasp and the sensation that I’m falling, plunging downwards through the bed, through the floor, through the earth beneath. Sweat soaks the T-shirt and knickers I fell asleep in. I’m sticky and clammy and cold all at once.

Things fall apart.

I sit up, straining to take in my surroundings, the half-light of approaching dawn barely visible behind the thin curtains. No sound, except for the ringing in my ears, a high-pitched whine I’ve been spared in London’s ceaseless clamour.

The bed is a double, and I’m tucked between a sheet and the thick cream cotton bedspread. Opposite looms a large wooden wardrobe, a thin strip of mirror down the central panel. On either side of me are two matching bedside tables, their varnish orange with age.

I peer into the mirror. A dark shadow for a reflection. I lie back, struggling to remember where I am.

My friend from the crisis centre Stacy’s holiday home. Devon.

Yesterday’s relief at leaving the city seems to have curdled during the night. My mind hums with anxiety. I feel almost paralysed with dread, dregs of that headache still lingering like an echo in my skull.

Deep in my stomach something churns. I stumble into the bathroom and throw up into the toilet bowl. Nothing much to show for it, but the retching sensation is so violent, so shocking, I’m left weak and shaky even after it subsides. I lean on the basin, trying to ignore the acrid smell of vomit and damp, then run the cold water, scooping several handfuls into my mouth, forcing myself to breathe slowly until the panic recedes.

Michael says hello.

One sentence and here he is, resurrected from my five-year attempt to bury him in the deepest recesses of my mind. My own special purgatory, the penance for my sins.

Michael. He may be locked up, but that man let him loose in my head. Knowing, I’m sure now, the damage he would do.

I dress quickly, shivering, my breath visible in the frosty air of the bedroom, and find the airing cupboard on the landing. I twist the dial on the thermostat, listening for a responding click in the central heating. Nothing. Maybe there’s a switch somewhere. I search around the lagging surrounding the hot-water tank, but find only dust balls and an old pair of swimming trunks. Child-sized.

Outside, the streetlights are still visible against the watery sunrise. I pick up my new phone and text Stacy to let her know I arrived. In the kitchen I find the carrier bag I dumped on the table before collapsing into bed, and confirm I forgot to buy coffee or anything for breakfast. A cursory scan inside the cupboards reveals nothing besides a pack of ageing peppermint tea bags and a jar of instant that looks like it’s been here since Stacy’s aunt died and left the place to her.

I pull on my coat and boots and set off into town. Halfway there I realize that nowhere will be open yet, this not being the city. So I turn left towards the seafront. The rain has stopped, but the streets are still lagooned with puddles. It’s nearly light, the sky above the sea watery and pale, and I can see properly now just what a dreary little place this is. I can’t imagine spending a week here, let alone a summer. Or a life.

But the sea is the sea wherever you are, so I trudge down to where the water laps and teases the shingle. I watch the restless grey waves for a minute or two, then pick my way along the beach, listening to the soothing suck and swish of the tide. It’s hard going, the stones constantly subsiding under my feet, and it takes nearly fifteen minutes to reach the distant point where the headland narrows to a few rocks covered in greeny-black seaweed.

I stop underneath the cliffs, sheer crags of red mud. Not very stable, judging by the landslips slumping towards the tide line, the absence of any vegetation suggesting recent collapse. Some thirty feet up several stunted pine trees are growing precariously close to the edge. I stare at them for a few minutes, wondering if they have any sense of their predicament.

Christ, it’s cold. The wind nips my face and sidles between my neck and my coat and I make a mental note to buy myself a scarf when the shops open. I take my phone out my pocket and check the time.

Six fifty-nine.

I turn and climb the steps to the concrete promenade separating the town from the sea and head back towards civilization. Walk past the little rotunda café, closed up for the winter, boards over the windows and a padlock on the door. Further along, a stretch of empty ground. This must be where they put the beach huts in summer. Stacy mentioned you could rent one in high season, though quite why you’d want to sit in a glorified shed and stare at this desultory little patch of coastline is beyond me.

I pass a block of toilets, a small gravel garden surrounding a large rusty anchor and, at intervals, huge metal gates guarding the various entrances to the promenade.

Sea defences, I realize – the last resort against storms and high tides. God only knows what this place is like in winter.

Up on the high street most of the shop windows are dark. I’m on the verge of giving up and going back to the house when I notice a light on in a small café further up the hill.

The man behind the counter looks up from his newspaper.

‘Are you open?’

‘Just about,’ he smiles, folding his paper. ‘Given you’re so keen. What would you like?’

I scan the menu board above the counter. ‘A cup of tea. And a couple of slices of toast, if it’s possible.’

‘That I can manage.’

He disappears into the little kitchen out the back. I sit at one of the tables by the window, watching a few cars climb the hill towards me and disappear inland. Other than that, the town appears deserted.

Somehow putting this distance between myself and London has brought everything into sharper focus. My mind churns over all that’s happened. Amanda’s death. The blackmail. That man’s hands around my throat, those bruises on Kristen’s neck.

Feeling, in some vital way, that it’s all my fault. That everything I’ve done – or tried to do – has only made the whole situation worse.

What the fuck can I do to put it right?