‘I’m not making anything up!’ She looked at him, indignant. ‘God, why would I want to? One of those awful bastards was my father. A rapist. It’s not something to be proud of, is it? You know what? Josh really disliked your mother. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. We saw it on his face whenever she phoned him. And she used to put little notes in his bag. He hated that. He said it felt like she was clawing at him, manipulating him, saying You’re mine.’

‘Waste of time, as it happens,’ said Connor. Shit, the things she’d told him had left him feeling shaken. Remembering that pig farmer who’d come at him with the axe, it wasn’t hard to imagine the Cleavers slitting a dog’s throat and terrorizing a young woman as she begged for mercy.

‘It’s all true,’ said Suki. ‘I swear it.’

149

149

When Suki left the bar, Connor drained his whisky and departed the hotel, flicking up his coat collar against the deluge. People hurried past him under umbrellas, taxis swooshed past, water streaming into gutters like rivers. He went back to the Porsche, surprised to find it in place and not towed. He shook himself like a dog and then drove over to Henley and Mum’s house. He let himself in with his front door key and walked through to the kitchen, where Shauna was usually to be found.

She was there, sitting at the coffee bar. She looked up when she saw him.

Connor found himself staring at her like she was a stranger.

‘What, were you expecting Aysha?’ he asked.

Shauna said nothing.

Simmering with barely suppressed fury, Connor walked over to where she sat, took the Magnum out of his coat pocket and placed it on the bar in front of her.

‘Were you expecting her to come back here and tell you she’d done it? That she’d blown Claire or Suki’s brains out? Or both?’

Still, Shauna was silent. Her eyes were on the gun.

‘Have you any fucking idea of what that would have done to Aysha? There were witnesses by the dozen. She’d have gone down for certain. Her life would have been totally fucked. She’d have spent years inside. Years. All to give you your bloody revenge.’

He was shouting. Shauna’s eyes raised and she looked at him, unblinking.

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ she said.

‘You’re fucking mental,’ Connor went on, uncaring.

‘I want her gone,’ said Shauna.

‘Yeah, you wanted her gone a long time ago too, didn’t you.’ Connor rested his hands on the worktop and stared at her, this unknown person, his mother. ‘I’ve been hearing about that. You know I have. About the Cleaver brothers and what they did to her. About the dog. All of it.’