‘Right.’ She was staring at his face. Not believing a word of it, he could see that. She stood up, edged away from him. ‘I’d better get back to the hotel.’

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148

Connor watched her go. She walked fast, glancing back a time or two. She was cutting across the park, past the fly-fisherman, past an elderly couple walking a fat Pekingese dog.

He followed more slowly, calming down after the stress and exertion. Fucking Mum, what was she thinking? But he knew the answer to that; she wasn’t thinking at all. She was in revenge mode, and when Shauna got like that, any damned thing could happen.

Connor hadn’t actually decided to go into the hotel, but having followed Suki back to the High Street, he went in, past the smiling top-hatted and red-coated doorman. He found her sitting in the reception area beside the big plate-glass windows that looked out on to the busy streets where black cabs, motorbikes and open-topped tour buses whizzed past night and day. It was starting to rain again.

She looked up when he came in, and visibly flinched. He walked over, looked down at her. She looked pitiful, small and vulnerable. He sat down opposite. They eyed each other silently.

‘Are you here to finish what your sister started?’ she asked unsteadily, when the silence had stretched on for too long. ‘Why are you following me?’

I’m fucked if I know.

The gun was right there, in his pocket.

Then Connor said: ‘You’re shaking.’

Suki gulped down a breath. ‘That’s because you’re scary.’

Finally Connor said ‘Fuck it,’ and stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said.

‘What?’ She stared up at him in alarm. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I said come on. We’re going to the bar. I don’t know about you, but after all that, I need a bloody drink.’

‘How did she meet up with him?’ asked Connor as they sat in a corner of the hotel bar fifteen minutes later. ‘I know they were together years ago, but in New York? How did that happen?’

‘You don’t want to know, do you? Not really.’

She’d slipped off her coat. Connor was drinking Johnnie Walker on ice, she was sipping a Bloody Mary. Suki thought that this was surreal, sitting here with Josh’s son. Her nerves were still jangling from her meeting with Aysha. She knew Aysha had been trying to work herself up to something, something bad. She just didn’t know what. And now she was here, with Connor. He was even more frightening than his sister.

‘If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t ask,’ said Connor.

‘It must be horrible for you. A shock. I do understand that.’

‘Answer the question.’