Kitabı oxu: «Groomed: Part 3 of 3: Danger lies closer than you think»

Chapter 17

It was a short night in the end because Keeley was exhausted. Far too exhausted to sit in the kitchen and pour her heart out. She just needed the oblivion of sleep. So I helped her upstairs, switched the lamp on and pulled the covers back, and with a tearful ‘I’m so sorry for everything’ between sobs, she gave me a last hug and collapsed on the bed. Might have slept in it fully clothed. Probably did.

Which left me, with the correct complement of children under our roof, to enjoy an episode of The X Factor that Tyler had recorded for me and which I’d yet to catch up with, and then the gift of an uninterrupted (not to mention astonishing) eight hours of sleep. The first thing I knew Mike was shaking me awake, my coffee cooling, him about to leave for work.

I’d rubbed my eyes and sat up and reached for my coffee anyway. He perched on the edge of the bed.

‘What’s the plan, then?’ he said. ‘Do we have one?’

I was glad to hear the ‘we’. Apart from my telling Mike about Keeley’s desolate admission, we’d purposely refrained from doing our usual debrief the previous night. Better wait, we decided, till we had a fuller picture, and some idea of what direction things were going to go now. And I don’t think either of us wanted to open up a debate about whether we even wanted to be a part of that process.

I thought back to what little she had said the previous evening. Of the compelling nature of the way she’d described her assessment of her own worth. The visceral extent of her self-loathing. But being Keeley’s apologist wasn’t going to help me with Mike. She would have to win his heart back herself. If, indeed, that was what was going to happen. It may well be that she wasn’t destined to be with us much longer anyway – not the way she continued to kick against the traces. Perhaps being contained in the bosom of a normal happy family was actually making it all worse.

But I had to keep faith with her if that was what she wanted right now. ‘Still Plan A,’ I said. ‘That’s the one I’m keen to stick to, if you think you can bear it.’

He looked thoughtful. ‘Till the next crisis.’

‘I imagine that’s how it’ll go, yes.’

He leaned down to plant a kiss on my head. ‘Okay, you’re the boss. But look, love, I know you think you had some big breakthrough last night, but don’t let that completely cloud your judgement. I mean, it might be a turning point, but then again, it might not. Past experience has shown that’s she’s perfectly capable of manipulating things to suit herself. We both know that. So just be aware of it, okay?’

I didn’t mind getting a lecture because I knew Mike was right. I was pathologically just like a terrier down a rabbit hole. Once I’d wormed my way right to the heart of an emotional warren, I locked on and wouldn’t let go. But I felt sure I knew the difference between melodrama for purposes of cool manipulation and the anguished outpouring of a soul. ‘I know, love,’ I said, ‘and I will be aware. But it’s something. Let’s just see how today goes.’

I threw the duvet back, and went to the window to watch Mike leave. He was right. Past experience should obviously make me wary. Keeley had yet to show us one single example of her actually meaning anything she’d said. Still, if I were to do my job properly, I had to give her every opportunity to do that, and if I was committed to keeping her I had to do that every time.

First, though – first and foremost – more coffee. I grabbed my dressing gown from the back of the door and slipped it on, looking forward to a half-hour of quiet contemplation before the day got properly under way.

When I entered the kitchen, however, I was not a little shocked to find Keeley standing in the kitchen, with her back to me, looking out of the front window, in much the same way as I’d been doing in the bedroom above.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise you were already up.’

‘I wasn’t.’ She grimaced ruefully. ‘Well, correction, I was, but I stayed in my bedroom. Thought I’d better keep out of Mike’s way.’

Her candour made me smile. She smiled too. ‘Is he really, really, really cross?’

‘No, he’s only really, really cross. Well, really, really cross bordering on just really cross. Manageable cross, at any rate, provided you toe the line. How about you? I thought you’d lie in till at least noon. Catch up on some of the sleep you’ve been missing.’

‘I was wide awake at five,’ she said. ‘I went to bed so early, didn’t I? And then I couldn’t get back to sleep …’ She paused and then grimaced again. ‘Christ, I’m going to get hell from Danny, aren’t I? Is he coming round?’

‘Yes, he is. And yes, I suspect you are. But not till after lunch, so the condemned woman can at least eat a hearty breakfast. Hungry?’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Thirsty though. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

‘Do bears live in the woods?’ I said, as I held out my empty mug.

Keeley grinned. ‘Mrs Higgins – my old social worker – she always used to say that. Except she never said exactly that. She said S-H-I-T.’

I smiled at her. ‘Clearly doesn’t have the same rule book as ours, then.’

‘Er, you could say that,’ Keeley agreed. ‘She was way cool. So nice.’

‘And I’m not?’ I pulled a face of consternation.

She managed a giggle. ‘You’re all right,’ she said. But she was still looking pensive about the here and the now.

‘Anyway, yes to the coffee,’ I rattled on. ‘And then we’ll sit down and you can tell me all about what happened. A problem shared and all that … Is that a deal?’

It seemed it was. With a bit of sleep under her belt, Keeley was clearly in the mood to talk now, and, with Tyler still in bed and unlikely to make an appearance any time soon, talk she did.

And for the most part she was dry-eyed and emotionless, describing how she’d accidentally on purpose set her cap at the hapless Jamie, apparently a friend of a friend on her fake Facebook set-up – she made no bones about that whatsoever. And I was happy to skip that part as I’d seen enough of the messages to know all the details already. And this was a girl who did phone sex with strangers for money. There was nothing new or shocking for me to learn here.

It was only when she got to the part about him offering to send her money that her composure started to slip – her fingers plucking at imaginary fluff on the sleeves of her dressing gown, and her expression and tone softening.

‘It was like I’d forgotten it wasn’t actually me by then. You know, the version I’d made up. Does that sound really weird?’

‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘You’d constructed a different you and he’d responded to her, hadn’t he?’

‘He loved me,’ she said simply. ‘I’m not just saying that, honest. He really did. He said I made him laugh. He made me laugh …’

‘And that’s important.’

‘And it wasn’t just some silly childish thing, it really wasn’t. He got me.’ That term again. ‘I mean I know you think I’m mad and that it wasn’t even the real me. But it was. It was still me and he was just, like, so in tune with me. People just don’t get it that you can really know someone just from speaking to them online and phoning each other and stuff, but –’

This was news. ‘You chatted on the phone to Jamie?’

Now she looked shocked. ‘Yes, of course, I did. Loads. Well, not, like, for hours at a time, or anything. He was on a pay-as-you-go contract and he sometimes ran out of credit.’

‘Yet he had the money to send you to get a train to visit him?’

I saw a flash of what looked like irritation cross her features. She would defend him to the last and perhaps that was to be admired. Well, if he was the innocent he seemed, anyway.

‘It’s not like that,’ she said. ‘He’s just not organised about stuff.’

In for a penny … ‘The policeman said Jamie had some mild learning difficulties,’ I chanced. ‘When you say he isn’t organised, is that what you mean?’