She leaned into him. She didn’t tell him that she missed him too. She did, just not in the way he wanted her to.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Seven Years Earlier

It was a sunny afternoon in July when Grace first met Michael Carter. He’d just been released from prison, after serving five years of a ten-year sentence for drug supply and money laundering. He’d been in prison with Nathan after they were both lifted as part of the same operation. Michael turned up at the bar one day looking for his dad, Patrick.

‘I haven’t seen him today,’ Grace said. ‘I think he’s taken his new girlfriend off shopping for the day,’ she’d lied. She knew exactly where Patrick was, but the fewer people who knew about his whereabouts, the better.

‘I’ll have a pint then,’ he said.

Ten pints later and Michael could barely stand. He’d just found out that his wife, Cheryl, had been having numerous affairs while he’d been inside. She’d been at it for years, apparently, and had cheated on him with some of his mates too. He was a pitiful sight and Grace felt sorry for him.

‘Look, sunshine,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you a taxi home.’ She and Marcus poured him into a taxi just before closing time and hoped that he remembered where he lived.

The following week, Michael turned up at the pub again with a huge bouquet of flowers – to apologize for being a drunken arsehole, he said. She didn’t tell him that she dealt with much worse on an almost nightly basis.

Michael was trying to keep his head down. He was on licence and didn’t fancy going back to prison any time soon. But he was struggling to find work; after all his particular expertise didn’t lend themselves to the type of jobs that were advertised in the Liverpool Echo. He’d come into the pub with Patrick most evenings, looking completely dejected and sorry for himself. Grace wondered how people like him were supposed to be rehabilitated when no one seemed willing to give them a chance. Patrick had warned her about offering him any work that might jeopardize his licence, so Grace offered him some work at the bar and he accepted gratefully.

One Sunday evening, Grace was waiting for Michael to start his shift so she could go upstairs with Jake and finish his homework. It wasn’t like him to be late. Half an hour after Michael’s shift should have started, Grace heard banging on the back door. She opened it to find him standing there, blood pouring from a cut above his eye.

‘Christ, what’s happened to you?’ she asked him as she helped him inside.

‘I need to get cleaned up, Grace. Can I?’ he pleaded, indicating the stairs to the flat.

‘Of course, wait here for a sec.’