She felt her eyes grow larger as the tears tried to gather; she wouldn’t allow them to pool. She wouldn’t allow her voice to shake. ‘. . . Not by walking out. He had killed himself in his cell three months earlier. He was broken by the fact that everyone was so ready to believe the worst. He must be corrupt! He must be guilty . . .’ She took a tremulous breath. ‘My mother died sixteen months later of a stroke. The strain was too much for her to bear.’ Her voice faded into silence. She couldn’t say any more. There was nothing else to say anyway.

He stared at her, unspoken words passing behind his eyes, unable to find a form.

‘So, there it is,’ she swallowed, her voice halved. ‘That’s why I do this. I make sure that people who’ve been victimized are heard.’

They stared at one another in solemn silence.

‘Now I’ve answered your question, you answer mine . . . What happened between you and Cory that made you block his line?’

She watched him, seeing the words coming, building . . . Unspoken still, but she could actually feel the weight of them inside him. It was like a wave hitting the reef and surging up – an almighty, unstoppable power about to be released and spilled—

He stood up suddenly, breaking the trance. ‘I’m not telling you, Clover. And I never will.’

She jumped up too. ‘But we had a deal!’ Her voice shook with disbelief.

‘Yes. I asked why I should trust you – and now I know for sure that I can’t.’

‘How can you say that?’ she cried, the tears pooling in her eyes at last as she forgot to keep them wide. ‘I just told you something . . . something I never tell anyone! Johnny and Matty don’t even know!’ She had laid herself on the line. She’d revealed her past to secure her future – shown him they were both orphans. That they’d both driven into careers that salved their pasts. That they weren’t as different from one another as they’d like to believe. He looked down at her. ‘And I’m sorry you went through all that . . . I mean it, I’m sorry. I get now what your motivation is.’ She could see the sadness in his eyes again, that fleeting melancholy that flashed unbidden from him sometimes. In the pool, in the M+M bar . . .

‘So then what’s the problem?’ she demanded, grabbing his forearm, a feeble attempt to stop him from leaving. She could see the emptiness inside him as he saw her desperation.

‘The problem, Clover, is that you’ve just told me you want to be the champion of the underdog.’ Without even looking, he took her hand and easily prised it off his forearm. ‘And we both know that’s not what I am.’

Chapter Twenty-Two