‘We wanted somewhere small and intimate for the boys’ first gig,’ gushed Ffion when she saw Emily at the door.
‘She means they were afraid they wouldn't sell out Wembley, more like,’ said Emily, heading for the bar and a drink.
‘They are truly dire, aren't they?’ said Katie as they watched the boys mime and gyrate their way through a series of increasingly banal and same-sounding songs – if the word 'songs’ could actually be applied to the turgid drivel they were coming out with.
‘That they are,’ said Emily. ‘But I don't expect your average ten-year-old will care.’
‘I don't much, either,’ said Katie. ‘I have to confess, although it was a complete nightmare sorting out my life to get out, I am really enjoying the sense of freedom.’
‘Good, that was the idea,’ said Emily, scanning the room despite herself to see if there was anyone she knew. Her eye caught sight of someone who looked vaguely familiar. Then it came to her. Her face had been splashed all over the tabloids with Twinkle-toes Tony. She was sitting looking very sorry for herself in the corner. As Emily was still drawing a blank with Ffion, maybe it was worth pumping this girl for information instead. ‘Katie, sorry to be rude, but will you excuse me for a minute?’ she asked, and made her way over to the table.
‘Hi,’ she said, sitting down next to the blonde. ‘I love your necklace.’
The girl looked at her through bloodshot eyes. ‘Oh, this,’ she
said. ‘It's just bling that my boyfriend gave me – my ex-boyfriend now – the rotten sod's gone back to his ex.’ She hiccoughed.‘More fool him,’ said Emily.
‘He was famous too,’ said the blonde. ‘And I was going to be famous. But then he had to go back to her.’
‘Oh, what a shame,’ said Emily. ‘How could he when he had you?’
‘Exac'ly,’ said Tony's ex, not apparently appreciating irony. ‘And I have all my own teeth. Not like
her
. Silly cow. I'm much prettier than she is.’‘What happened to Jasmine's teeth?’ Emily asked, her heart thumping.
‘One of them fell out and had to be replaced,’ said the blonde. ‘And, thanks to me, the story got in the papers.’
‘Oh, I thought it was thanks to her dentist,’ said Emily, trying not to give away her excitement.
For a moment the girl looked suspicious.
‘Do I know you?’ she said.
‘No, I don't think so,’ said Emily.
‘I only did it for him, you know,’ continued the blonde.
‘Did what?’ asked Emily, unable to believe how close she was finally getting to something concrete.
Jasmine's would-be rival looked at Emily again, the suspicion returning to her face.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Gotta go.’
She tottered in the direction of the loos. Emily waited a few minutes, but the blonde girl didn't return. Damn. Just when it looked like she was about to spill the beans. Still, now Emily knew that Tony and his ex had been involved in the leak. Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to find something to clear Mark's name.
Chapter Thirty-two‘You came.’ Rob was really pleased to see Katie. For a couple of weeks she'd been promising him that she would come back to dancing classes, and now here she was.
‘Cinderella has finally made it to the ball,’ said Katie, giving him a mock bow.
She looked lovely in a simple white top and gypsy skirt. He was pleased to see she'd even bought herself some proper dancing shoes – that must mean she was intending to keep coming. The stress of the past few months had sped up the weight loss that had started some months previously, and the tragedy had given her a slightly vulnerable air. She was a woman still partially on the edge, and it gave her a kind of steely beauty that had been missing before. Rob badly wanted to say something complimentary, but he didn't want it to be misinterpreted, so he just said, ‘Well, Cinders, it's nice to see you here again.’
It being the autumn half-term, the class wasn't too well-attended, so Isabella, tonight looking almost like a fairy princess in her floaty pink dress and gold sandals, spent a lot more time with each couple than she did normally. When she got to Rob and Katie she beamed broadly.
‘So nice to see you two dancing together again,’ she said. ‘You were made to dance together.’
Katie blushed, which made Rob grateful that he had kept his
mouth shut. He wanted her very badly, but she was still too vulnerable and he knew he should stay away.‘There is a competition coming soon,’ continued Isabella. ‘I think it is time you entered, no?’
Rob looked at Katie. ‘How about it?’ he said. ‘I'm game if you are.’
‘What do we have to do?’ Katie asked, looking a little dubious. ‘I'm sure we'd be flattened by proper dancers.’
Isabella explained that there were different categories and that she and Mark could enter the beginners’ section.
‘You have a good chance of success,’ Isabella predicted. ‘Your bodies, they move together naturally. Like I said, you two are made for each other.’
Now it was Rob's turn to blush.
‘Katie, it's okay,’ he said. ‘We don't have to if you don't want to.’
‘No,’ she replied suddenly. ‘I'll do it, if only for the chance of seeing you in ruffles and tight trousers.’
‘I am
not
wearing ruffles,’ said Rob.‘Go on, you know you want to,’ teased Katie. ‘A blue open-topped ruffled shirt showing off your chest hair would really suit you. I shall have to call you Gethin from now on.’
‘Okay, I'll wear that if you wear one of those dresses with tassles that show off your cleavage and leave nothing to the imagination,’ Rob shot back.
Katie grinned at him. ‘Okay,’ she said devilishly. ‘It's a deal.’
‘Great,’ said Rob, and led her into a waltz with a sudden lightening of heart. Katie might well be a long way off being his, but dancing with her every week was better than nothing. Much, much better.
‘So you're going to enter a dancing competition?’ Mark roared with laughter as he sat in the Hookers with Rob. ‘Does that mean you get to wear a silly costume?’
Rob looked a bit huffy.
‘That's just what Katie said,’ he complained.
‘Well, do you?’
‘I said I would if she wore a skimpy number,’ said Rob.
‘Thanks, mate,’ said Mark, practically crying into his pint. ‘you've given me the best laugh I've had in months. I needed that.’
‘Stress levels no better then?’ said Rob.
Mark had been wound up for weeks now. Although Fleet Street's finest had found other fish to fry, the court case was still preying on his mind.
‘No,’ sighed Mark. ‘I don't think I'll be able to relax till it's all over, and that could take months, apparently. My lawyer reckons we won't get a court date till after Christmas. I just want it all to go away.’
‘What about that other thing?’
‘The preliminary hearing at the General Dental Council?’ Mark asked. ‘That's booked for a couple of weeks before Christmas. I can't believe that Jasmine's so bloody malicious that she put in a complaint about professional misconduct. Well, I can, actually. If she hadn't, all that stuff in the papers would have blown over. As it is, the best-case scenario is I get my knuckles rapped; the worst case, according to James, is I get struck off.’
‘Do you think that's likely?’ Rob asked.
‘I have no idea,’ said Mark gloomily. ‘Given how crap the rest of my life seems like now, I'm inclined to think it's inevitable. Maybe I should retrain as a plumber.’
‘And you still haven't heard from Emily?’
‘Not a dickie bird,’ said Mark. He had half-hoped their meeting in the summer would have led to her renouncing her career and throwing herself into his welcome arms. He felt he could face all of this with her at his side. ‘But if she contacts me, she loses her job. While if she's successful at her job, I may lose mine.’
‘You never know,’ said Rob, ‘things might work out somehow.’
‘I can't see how,’ said Mark glumly.
‘Remember what I always say: expect the unexpected,’ said Rob. ‘Sometimes miracles do happen.’
‘Is Daddy gay?’
Katie nearly choked into her cornflakes. George was sitting looking at her inquisitively from the other side of the breakfast table.
‘What makes you say that?’ Jeez. How did he even know what being gay meant? The things they learned in the playground these days.
‘Jordan Allwick told me,’ said George. ‘When we went to the park last week. He said that's why Daddy left. He said
everyone
knows.’George's face was inscrutable as he said this. Katie wondered what was going on in his head. It was so hard to tell.
‘What did you say?’ she asked, probing, thinking,
Someone give me a bloody hand here, how do I deal with this?‘I told him that he was lying.’
‘Oh,’ said Katie.
‘But he said he wasn't, he'd overheard his mum talking about it.’
I bet he has, thought Katie grimly. However hard you tried to keep something secret in Thurfield, you didn't have a hope once Mandy sodding Allwick found out. Though quite how she'd found this out was beyond even Katie.
George continued, ‘So I hit him.’
‘Oh,’ said Katie again, not knowing whether to hug him for standing up for his dad, tell him off for unsuitably violent behaviour (even if she totally agreed with it), or cry because any minute now she was going to have to break his ten-year-old heart.
‘Did you think that was the right thing to do?’ Katie stalled, scrabbling through her brain to remember what exactly it was that
How to Tell Your Children Their Dad is Gay
had said about situations like this. She had an uncomfortable feeling they were
rather keen on parents being open about the situation. A naturally private person, Katie would much rather clam up and fudge the issue. But she thought briefly to how her mother had behaved about her father's infidelities, and realised it was no good doing that. Look what a mess Katie was in now as a result of her mother's well-intentioned secrecy.‘No,’ said George. ‘But Daddy isn't gay. Is he?’
The hopeful look on his face smote Katie's heart. She wished beyond all measure that Charlie was with her so they could do this together, as they had sat down and broached the separation together. But he wasn't. As usual, she was here to face the tough stuff on her own.
‘George, do you actually know what being gay means?’ Katie asked.
‘Of course I do,’ said George in scornful tones. ‘It's man love man, isn't it?’
‘Well, that's sort of it,’ said Katie. ‘But there's a little bit more to it than that.’
George's face fell. A penny had clearly just dropped very heavily.
‘Daddy is gay, isn't he?’ he said. He looked shell-shocked and tears glistened in his bright blue eyes. Mummy's little soldier. What a bloody thing to have to tell him.
‘Yes, he is,’ said Katie. ‘But it doesn't have to change anything. Daddy still loves you and always will. And Aidan and Molly. Whatever happens, he's your dad, and that matters more than anything else.’
‘My dad's gay?’ George repeated again in tones of horror. ‘Jordan's going to kill me.’
He slammed his bowl of Coco Pops down on the table and ran off upstairs.
Katie put her head in her hands.
Emily felt furtive. She was quite entitled to be in Andrew's office looking through all the material for the Symonds case, which
was starting next week, but the fact that she was actively looking for something,
anything
, to help Mark meant she felt like a character in
Spooks
. Any minute now, MI5 was going to stroll in, in the shape of Maniac Mel, and demand what the hell she was up to.It was late and the office was slowly emptying – this being Friday night, most of her colleagues had better things to do. Normally, she would have too, but this was too important.
In the weeks since she'd last seen Mark, Emily had come to an important decision. Money wasn't everything. And for too long her guilt about letting down her dad and abandoning her family had made her far too accommodating about the financial mess her mum kept getting herself in. She was going to have to ring her up and explain the situation and see if she could defer a couple of months of payments on the loan. And maybe it was about time she got her mum to face up to the fact that spending loads of money on scratch cards wasn't going to bring Dad back either.
Then she was going to do what she should have done years ago. Namely, get out of the world she had found herself trapped in and go to work for a company with integrity, and do what she'd always planned before she'd got so sidetracked and bedazzled. Emily had been looking online and had found a couple of companies which dealt specifically with litigation cases involving victims who, like her dad, had suffered as a result of malpractice.
Reading some of the cases, Emily had felt more enthused and invigorated than she'd ever done in the seven years she'd been working here. It seemed she could make a difference after all.
But first things first. She had to help Mark. Maybe then they could start afresh. Some things, she realised, were worth losing your job for. She'd been stupid and blind to think otherwise.
After an hour of frantically riffling through every document she could find, Emily was on the verge of giving up. There was
nothing that would help. If there was some way of proving Mark's innocence, she wouldn't find it here.‘What are you doing?’
Emily nearly jumped out of her skin. Mel was standing in the doorway.
‘Just mugging up on the Symonds case,’ Emily said. ‘Want to make sure there are no nasty surprises.’
Mel looked suspicious.
‘And are there?’
‘No, nothing at all. Nada. Zilch,’ said Emily. ‘Andrew has done a great job. So I'll just put this file away …’
‘Good,’ said Mel. She made as if to leave and then said, ‘I hope we can rely on you.’
‘Yes, of course,’ gushed Emily, resisting the urge to throw a stapler at her boss. ‘Little Miss Reliable, that's me.’
‘See you on Monday then,’ said Mel.
Emily packed her things up and made her way slowly to the door. She'd found nothing. Achieved nothing. She had been no help to Mark at all.
‘Psst!’ John grabbed her arm as she left the building.
‘Not now, John,’ she said. ‘I'm not in the mood for games.’
‘This isn't a game,’ he said. ‘If you want to help your dentist friend, I'd be inclined to pay a visit to Graham Harker. And I haven't said that, and you haven't seen me.’
John touched the tip of his nose, winked at her and was gone.
Graham Harker? The name was familiar.
Now where had she heard it before?