West-End Boys (Naïve Mistakes) (9 page)

Kayla shook her head,
slowly
. "He didn't know. There was one guy Brad didn't run. American dude. He was the only guy Conall spoke to directly. When he told Brad it was getting too hot, he mentioned the American dude. But that he was calling all of them off. Although he also said you were one of the reasons he was doing it. So maybe I got my facts mixed up. Dunno."

It felt like my head was suddenly surrounded in ice.

"Am—American?"

"Yeah. Leo, you OK?"

My brain buzzed. "Um..." I frowned. "Maybe. When did Conall call it all off?"

She shrugged. "I think it was around that Switzerland trip. A little after."

I called Conall immediately. His phone was off.

American. Maybe I was overreacting. It didn't mean that's what he was doing there now. Did it? And what had been too dangerous? And why hadn't Brad been in touch with the American PI? Why did Conall run him alone? Did it have something to do with Raphael?

"Fuck," I said, not even realizing I was talking out loud.

"Leora, what is it?"

"What if this guy has something to do with Raphael, Kay? This American PI Conall was talking about." Millions of thoughts slammed against me. The main thought was that Conall was lying to me, 'for my own good.'
Fuck!
What if he was visiting this PI there? What if he was going looking for Raphael himself?

I thought of the guy they'd found floating in the river.

I texted Conall.

Leora: Call me AS SOON AS YOU LAND! Please. I'm worried about you.

My fingers grazed my forehead absently. And then I told Kayla everything I was thinking.

"Hell, if I was in your shoes," she said, "I'd be downright hijacking this train and turning it back out of fear for him!"

"Thanks. You sure know how to make a girl feel better."

My eyes stared at the open country flying by outside. I wanted to talk to Kayla about her wedding, I really wanted to. But all I heard were the train tracks. And the dissonant clangs of terrified screams in my head.

-1-

Dani picked us up at the train station. We may as well have been carrying pompoms the excitement was so loud. She'd put on a few pounds. "Troy likes me big," she said.

I didn't want to know...

The elation, however, made me realize what had been happening in the train. I'd had a panic attack. Plain and simple. Dr. Gehrig had told me that they could hit unexpectedly. I, for the life of me, could never figure out what triggered them. Probably just the threat of it, the unknownness of something.

He'd also told me the best thing for me to do was to look around and re-establish where I was, maybe even touch a few things like a chair, a table, anything in the immediate environment. But, to do that, I'd have to know I was in the middle of a panic-attack. In the train, I'd had no idea. You can't stop yourself from drowning if you don't know you're surrounded by water.

The three of us went to a place that sold only cake-slices and overpriced teas. Dani had stopped hanging out at the Starbucks "because they don't sell enough cake."

Right, so that explained the extra pounds.

The place was quaint and I wanted to sit outside until Dani said that our cakes would probably get eaten by scavenging seagulls and that she saw some kid having his taken straight out of his hands only two days ago. So we sat at the window, inside. Ninety percent of the clientele looked over seventy. I sank a little into my chair after remembering what we'd spoken about the last time we'd been together drinking coffee: Kayla telling Dani about my oral sex history...

Dani, unlike Alex, had never entered—what would you call it?—our 'inner circle.' After my ordeal, she'd come back to Seaford after visiting me at the hospital and then we'd lost touch. Completely. On the other hand, I was still in touch with Alex even though she was in another country.

I liked Dani, liked her a lot. My life had simply changed such that there was very little bonding us together.

Kayla and I filled her in on our lives, college, Kayla and Brad ("Oh my fuck, love, that is sooooo incredible!"), that I was going to stay with Conall and thanks for holding my job as a waitress but I'm actually not going to need it anymore and she'd known that anyway so it was no problem. She filled us in on a wide array of sexual positions she'd tried with our ex Manager Troy and Kayla went into excruciating detail on whether you should suck, bob, or lick.

I mostly just kept my face covered and hoped the geriatric club was also hard of hearing.

Three hours and many red faces later, we parted ways.

Kayla and I walked a few streets and caught some sun. Unlike London, Seaford actually had some. It was really warm and I felt my skin and muscles relaxing. When we made it to my street I saw the low wall that Dorian Brant and I had sat on all those months back. The one edging the beach. The one where I'd let him touch me.

I found myself nervously looking around for him, making sure I didn't run into him. What a mistake that had been. Low point.

Kayla and I said hi to my landlady. She thanked me for keeping up the rent and soon we had my very few possessions in a suitcase and sat outside on the sidewalk wondering what to do.

"As much as I like the sun, it's a little different being here than I'd expected," I said to Kayla.

"No shit. It's like our life is in London. I mean, taken root there." She scratched the shaved side of her head. "You booked a hotel, right?"

I nodded.

"Six days?"

I nodded again.

"All paid?"

I shook my head. "Paid the first night, said I'd pay the rest later."

"Can still cancel?"

Nod.

"If we leave now we'll make it just before dark."

I looked over at the wall, heard the ocean. Felt it pulling me out to sea with it. I breathed in the salty air one more time. It was nice here. But it wasn't home. It had been once, yes. But not anymore. I could see that now. "Let's go."

-2-

I took the initiative and called Alex from the train, invited her to spend the night at our place. Sorry, not 'our' place, Conall's place. Although I'd started referring to it as 'our' place and 'my' place in my mind many times already. Because it felt like it.

Alex was ecstatic but I caught the quiver of loss in her voice. "I'm here with Trey now," she said. "At the airport."

"Well, we'll be home in like three hours or something."

All counted, it was seven P.M. when the three of us were finally together in Conall's lounge. We'd decided to have a girls' night of getting drunk and talking about our woes and loves lost and found. I didn't get drunk. I just can't handle booze, but I got 'happy.'

We'd forced Kayla to stay in the main house with us tonight even though Brad was home in the cottage "because it's a
girls' night
out!"

She acquiesced.

Alex started, wine in hand. "Actually, it wasn't bad. Pedro was a deity in the bedroom. The man has so much freaking stamina." She poured Kayla and me another drink as she spoke. "And, I confess, it was nice to get laid again. It was a blast. It was bloody brilliant actually."

"Hear, hear!" cried Kayla, raising her glass and almost spilling her drink.

My glass was paused mid-air. "Yes, I know the question, Leora. Why leave? Well, it was good for me. To be with someone, to feel that comfort, those nights by the fire. But there was no...how should I say?...
connection
. It just wasn't what I wanted. I...I want to be here. I want to move on with my life. Not fucking run away from it! If I'd stayed in Zermatt it would be a lie, living like a fake Heidi in the mountains. Your problems don't run away. And you're the one piece of baggage you can never get rid of. Pedro and I parted as friends. He's cool. I think there was no real spark for him either. We'll keep in touch, or not. Who knows. But now I'm back. Ready to take the bull of life by the horns!"

"Hear, hear!" Kayla shouted again.

"I'm gonna do those lessons with Trey. Are they any good?"

I nodded. Kayla tried to explain but she was slurring too much by now
and only succeeded in falling back against the couch and closing her eyes. I took the glass from her hand and she was snoring before I even had it on the table!

I told Alex how it had raised my confidence, how I'd stopped having panic attacks. Well, almost. I told her about today's one. Asked her if she knew anything about what Conall might be up to because she'd seemed to know plenty about him in the past when I hadn't...

But she didn't this time. And it's true that she only knew things about him from the times before she'd been kidnapped herself. This was something new. Conall had started these investigations only after she'd been taken.

"When does he land?" she asked.

"In about an hour."

"I'm sure he'll tell you what's going on."

"I hope so. Anyway..." I shook my head of it. "So, you know what you're gonna do for work?"

"Oh, sure. I figured I'd do personal training again. It's the only thing I know. A guy I knew at the fitness club I used to work at gave me a break. He told me I can start as soon as I'm ready."

"You ever gonna see Pedro again?"

She shook her head, wiped her eyes once. "No. I think it's best to leave that one. He's sweet. Just not what I need. I don't know. I need a darker soul, I think. I've seen too much shit to believe in fairy tales. Pedro was a great fairy tale. He even lives up in an idyllic mountain. I'm too old for that shit. Maybe even too scarred. I need someone I can share a glass of wine with and bare my soul to. I mean, I actually
need
that now."

You need someone like Conall
, I thought. But that was definitely not the right thing to say.

"Actually..." She looked away. Her lip tugged up once.

"What?"

She looked back at me. "What's the deal with Trey?"

My eyes widened. But... Hey, that was actually a perfect match now that I looked at it! "Um, I, um... Actually, we don't know."

"He took me for drinks after he picked me up."

"He did?"

She nodded.

"And?"

"We spoke."

"Did he actually tell you anything? The guy is such an enigma."

"He was an only child, orphaned young, was in the military a few years, hated it. Grew up poor. Works for the government, but can't say much about it. And he and Conall are like brothers."

"Single?"

"Very."

"Hell, Alex, go for it!"

"We're seeing each other for drinks again after training tomorrow."

I smiled, and we toasted to good friendships, and to better boyfriends.

I sat back, looked at the watch on my phone. Fifty more minutes, then passport control. The walls started to look wavy, the room began contracting.

This time I caught it before it grabbed hold of me. "Would you walk with me out in the garden a little?" I asked Alex.

She saw my short breaths, my trembling hand, smiled. "Of course."

She stood, extended her hand to me. When I grabbed it, I felt immediately safer. Friends, sisters. This was home. Home is where your friends are. Where your loved ones are.

She took me outside, and we walked through the dark garden. Minutes later, I could breathe again.

We all snuggled up in Conall's bed at the end of the night. We sprawled on and over each other like little girls at a slumber party. Kayla got up and puked a few times in the middle of the night. Alex was better at holding her liquor and slept the whole night through.

Conall texted eventually. Then he called. But I didn't have the strength to ask him what I'd wanted to earlier. My eyes were burning with exhaustion and my mind was frayed from the tension it had felt all day. I'd only just settled down now. I didn't want it to flare up again.

So I just told him that I'd had a panic attack, but that I was fine now. I told him to have a safe trip and to text me every day. I told him I loved him.

He said he loved me too. Then he clicked the phone off.

The phone looked so dead and quiet when he was no longer on the line.

My breathing quickened. I put my hand to my chest, felt my heart race like a thoroughbred. Touched the wall, felt its roughness. Looked at the carpet, the ceiling. Breathed.

I'm here
, I told myself.
I'm here
.

I went back to bed, saw my two sisters lying on top of it.

A smile crept up my face.

I'm here. I'm home.

-1-

I couldn't imagine spending the next seven months doing nothing at home, and my meager savings I'd put together in the UK were fast diminishing. Of course, I had money from back home. My mom's money. And that was the problem. I'd failed at making it on my own. I'd failed at becoming self-sufficient. I still wanted to achieve that for myself.

Then again, not everyone gets abducted and damn-near raped in the first few months of moving out of home so I did cut myself some slack.

But it was time to get a job.
Any
job. I didn't care if they paid me a buck an hour—or a
quid
, as they say here—but I wanted to feel like I owned some sense of pride.

I've always looked up to my dad. Looked up to how he pulled himself up from the bottoms of poverty to a millionaire by the time he hit his thirties. Maybe it was a sub-conscious desire to be like him, to be my father's daughter. Maybe that's why I couldn't give up on this idea of having to prove myself to, well,
myself
.

Kayla bought a copy of
The Guardian
and that led to a dead-end when we looked at the jobs section. Then we went online and only found a bunch of sites that wanted your name, number, email, profile photo, confirmation you wanted to receive their newsletter, confirmation you wanted to receive their
other
newsletter, confirmation they could share your profile information with every recruiting agency this side of the Greenwich Meridian as well as with their advertising partners and, finally, confirmation you understood you would never be able to delete your account forever and ever so long as you shall live—and a little longer than that.

So I skipped that option as well.

There was a restaurant down in the village, a ten minute walk from Conall's place. I decided to take a risk and Kayla and I took a stroll down the speed-bump-infested back road that led to Conall's house, to the restaurant. Crawley Inn, it was called.

Next to it was a fruit and veg store (
ALL FRESH PRODUCE DAILY
) and across the road was a butcher and a
The Co-Operative Food
store, which is basically a grocery store with only moderately overpriced frozen pizzas, and gossip magazines within arm's reach of those same pizzas. There was also a quaint breakfast place I'd never been to next to it and Kayla and I agreed to try it out sometime.

We walked into Crawley Inn and saw that, as the name suggested, they also had rooms, but no one really stayed there. As I said: Restaurant. The place looked a lot more chic inside than I'd expected. Outside it had the same mock-Tudor style as Conall's place, but inside there were fancy chairs and fancy lights and all that extra cutlery typical of an expensive restaurant. A short and round guy with gray hair and a receding hairline came out from the back and immediately smiled when he saw us.

"Ah, if it's not the lovely lady from up the road." He omitted all the T's when he spoke. He extended his hand. "Conall's lady, 'ey?"

I smiled, unsure of what to say. "Um, I... Um."

"And you must be the lovely Kayla? Pleasure to meet you. Conall is a great man in this community. Table for two?"

Kay shook his hand and he almost had us ushered over to a table when I stopped and remembered— "Um, actually, Mr...."

"Richardson. You can just call me Phil."

"Mr. Richardson. Actually, I was just looking...wondering if..."

He cocked his head, no doubt utterly confused as to why we weren't sitting down for a meal.

"She needs a job!" Kayla said.

Phil Richardson, who looked like he'd enjoyed many a plate of his restaurant's food, paused a second. "Why...well..."

"I'm sorry, Mr.—" I began.

But he jumped in before I could finish. "But of course! Well, we were considering hiring a second waitress but hadn't quite decided yet. Well, decision made! Got experience?"

I could feel my cheeks blush. "Um, only serving at a bar."

He thought a second. "Perfect! Then that's where we start you. The bar. You'll need a uniform."

He gave me the number of the place that did their uniforms and told me I could start tonight if I wanted to.

"Sure you wouldn't like something to eat?" he asked at the end, smiling and exultant for some arcane reason.

Kayla and I both shook our heads. The paper with the uniform-people number hung from my fingertips like a bullet-holed shingle in a Wild West movie...

I was so confused. Kayla had a grin so long she looked like The Joker.

Phil Richardson thanked us again for coming by, said he was so excited about seeing me tonight and was I
absolutely certain
I didn't want lunch or brunch or whatever he could serve us. We assured him again, no, we didn't want to eat. "Food's on the house, in addition to salary and tips," he said as we left.

It felt like I'd been thrown out of a spinning door with the wind flying behind us when we got outside.

"Why do I believe that was not what your typical job interview should be like?" I asked Kayla, uniform-people number still in my hand.

"Because it wasn't."

I frowned, looked at her, an idea forming in my head that I didn't want to accept. "Conall?"

She raised an eyebrow, nodded. "Mr. Phil Richardson here probably can't wait to tell the local community that he's been so kind as to offer
the
Conall Williams's 'lady' a job. He might fill the place up with guests who'll pay just to look at you. I wonder who else knows our names here."

I scowled.

"It
is
Britain, Leo. Gossip is like fucking oxygen to these people. You're probably the new Princess Diana of Crawley Down."

I made a raspberry sound, looked left—then realized I should be looking right—to cross the street.

I put the telephone number in my pocket and we went over to that breakfast-place that was actually more of a pie-place but the chalk-sign for
WARM AND WONDERFUL BREAKFASTS
was the most prominent thing outside their store so it would forever be 'the breakfast place' in my mind from that day on. And, yes, the lady there knew our names. We shared a massive corned beef pie—don't even ask me what the calorie-count on that thing was—then ordered Indian Food from
Mr. Masala
next door to be delivered later that day for dinner. I don't have to tell you that the actual Mr. Masala called us "the lovely Kayla and Leora" when we walked in, do I? I remembered that I'd probably have dinner at the Crawley Inn and so Kayla's meal was at least sorted for tonight.

Later I got my uniform fitted (thank God they didn't know who I was) and at three P.M. I was all waitressed up in black and white and ready to go. I looked myself in the bedroom mirror a few times and pretended I was somebody's maid.

Conall called.

"I'm not sure if it counts as me making it on my own when I can get a job just by telling people your name," I said.

"Well, hello to you too. Care to explain?"

"Crawley Inn. So, how many people know who Kayla and I are around here?"

No answer for a few seconds. "Um, I might've shown your picture around a bit after you got abducted."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that..."

"Well,
and
I...(
crackle noise crackle
)."

"Huh? You're breaking up. Say again?"

"Reward...people...when you were...(
pause
) (
pause
) Leora?"

Damn it!
"I can't hear you."

"...Skype?"

"No, I can't Skype now. I need to go to work."

"...Leo...Skype?"

The phone died. "They can spy on you from the moon but can't get international phone calls right," I muttered at my phone, as if it could talk back.

I called him again. It just didn't feel right not ending things off properly with a goodbye or an I Love You. It's like I felt the universe would jinx something if we didn't part correctly.

I sat on the bed and dialed his number again. All I got were long beeps. Tried it again. Still dead. Looked at my phone. Tried one more time. Mailbox.

"Damn it." I put the phone in my front pouch (yip, uniform had one of those) and walked to work.

-2-

The clientele of Crawley Inn
was, on average, a fair amount older than that of
Jolly Roger
, where I used to work at in Seaford. And they certainly dressed better. There wasn't a pair of denims in the entire place. Mr. Richardson kept me at the bar serving draughts all night. Good safe position. I was more than a little embarrassed when he introduced me to everyone as "Master Williams's Lady," to which I'd add, "Leora."

It felt a little dumb trying to prove I was 'making it on my own' when I clearly wasn't. And, yet, it also felt unbelievably heartwarming to be somebody's 'lady' and to be it so thoroughly that, in people's minds, the two of you would never again be separated. Like thinking of one would automatically pop up the image of the other.

And
that
I did like. I liked it so much that, by the end of the night, I didn't even bother telling them my name unless they asked. Of course, being England, polite and all, everyone did ask. So it worked out OK.

Conall and I spoke little as the days rolled by. The connection was always terrible and the time difference made it almost impossible to talk when both of us were awake and weren't either in meetings (Conall) or serving beer (me).

The serving beer, however, had graduated itself the following night to serving wine, then, a few nights later, tagging along with "a more experienced waiter" to go over the specials as people arrived. "A few more weeks and you'll be taking orders!" said Mr. Richardson with a jubilant smile on his ruddy face.

Now
that's
climbing up the ladder. And damned if I wasn't proud of it. Heck, I even got a tip or two from some old dude after pouring him "the best darned draught beer I've ever had, young miss!"

It was coming together for me. So what if Conall had 'helped' get me this job? It was
mine
now. Mine to keep or lose. And that's when I realized that, although it might be
possible
to live alone, if you have the choice it's always easier to choose to live your life with someone else. I saw that 'making it on your own' actually meant 'making it with friends.'

Because isn't the act of making friends something you do on your own first? So, no matter what you do, you
did
make it on your own. Because you're the one who found the friends who helped you.

OK, I admit, it was a little
shoowah-wow-awesome
philosophical. But the point is I was feeling better, and I was grateful for all the help I got from anyone to get me to that point.

I'd never been happier. Life looked so good, so perfect. I realized I was richer than ever: Four quid in tips and a billion in love-coins.

The road up to Conall's estate was always pitch-black at night. He lived in a nook where the stars were so bright you wondered who'd been so dumb as to invent harshly lit cities where they were too shy to show themselves. There were only three or four other houses on the long road to his place, each with lawns the size of football fields and, so, too far off the main road to reflect any of their internal light onto the street. Tonight the road glistened with reflected moonlight off its black tar.

As I made it onto the first speed bump, I felt an unease at not having spoken properly to Conall in over a week. He'd texted me and sent me corny photos of him snoring on a desk and we'd emailed a lot in the first few days. But then all I'd gotten were texts and bad-reception phone calls. We hadn't spoken, hadn't actually conversed and heard or said the words 'I love you' and I was starting to feel the lack of them. How warm and comforting those words were. Warmer than any wood-burning fire in any cozy lounge anywhere.

I pulled my phone out and texted him.

Leora: I'll stay up tonight. I don't care if it's four A.M. But I need to hear your voice.

The text I got in return, from Conall's phone, was so far from what I'd expected that my legs buckled when I read it and I hit the cold ground with my knees.

Conall: Leora, Trey here. Go home and STAY THERE. Conall with me. Safe, but hurt. I'm on my way.