glance toward
Sophia. Becca’s swift to react. “Do you want to watch Paw Patrol?” She holds out a hand and leads Sophia into the sitting room. A moment later, I hear the familiar theme tune, and Becca comes back into the kitchen. She folds her arms. “That bloke who beat you up was Katya’s boyfriend, wasn’t he?”
I’m so taken aback, I can’t answer.
Becca smirks. “Did you think I didn’t know you were shagging the au pair? One of the mums told me when I picked Sophia up from school, wanted me to know in case you tried something on with me.” There’s a harsh tone in her voice now, as though any respect she was showing me before was just a pretense.
“Tried it on? I wouldn’t—”
She laughs. “You wouldn’t get a chance!”
“Christ.” I rub my face, forgetting the state I’m in. The resultant pain is a welcome distraction from the knowledge that Sophia’s friends’ parents consider me a sexual predator.
“Bit of a cliché, isn’t it?” Becca seems older than seventeen now, and I wonder how she acquired such a jaded attitude toward men. We’re not all that bad, surely? “Old man sleeps with—”
“Old?”
“—Ukrainian au pair.”
“For God’s sake, Becca, I was not having an affair with Katya!”
There’s a sudden silence, broken only by the strains of Ryder and his canine chums. It’s clear from Becca’s expression that she doesn’t believe me.
“How come she took off, then? The way Mina talked about it, she obviously thought it was your fault.” She gets up and pours herself a glass of wine as though it’s her house, as though she’s an adult, not a kid.
“You’re not even old enough—”
“Want one?” She pours a second glass without waiting for my answer. There’s something self-conscious about her swagger, her confidence, as though she’s playing a part. I’m gripped by the thought that all her talk about my trying something on might have been an act too, that she’s been leading up to something. Has Mina put her up to this? Is this some kind of—the idea feels preposterous even as I think it—honey trap?
My skin feels clammy. I take the wine from Becca and sip it, trying to get rid of the chalky aftertaste of painkillers, the blood at the back of my throat. My nose is too swollen to breathe through it.
“I never had an affair with Katya,” I say firmly, or as firmly as I can with my head still swimming. “I never had an affair with anyone. But it was my fault she left.” Becca leans on the counter, her head tilted to one side. “That man—or one like him—threatened Katya. Sophia was there too.” I have a sudden flashback to that awful day, when Katya and Sophia burst into the house, both of them crying so much they could hardly speak.
Daddy! Daddy!
He say he hurt me. He say he hurt Sophia!
“Sophia didn’t pick up on exactly what the man was saying to Katya,” I tell Becca now. “But she saw Katya’s reaction and was scared enough for it to give her nightmares.”
I stare out the window. It’s dark outside, and the shadowy outline of the garden is overlaid with my reflection. It’s snowing harder now, soft dots of white floating past the window.
“I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you tell the police? Why would you let Mina think you were having an affair when you hadn’t done anything wrong?”
“But I had done something wrong.” I stare past my reflection and into the garden. “I owe money. A lot of money.”
The amount goes up every day. The overdraft, the credit cards—the one Mina knows about and the five she doesn’t. The store cards, the car payments, the cash I borrow from people at work because things are a bit tricky since Mina kicked me out.
And the big one. The ten grand from a moneylender whose path I’d crossed at work—for all the wrong reasons. I borrowed it to pay off the worst of the debts, at an interest rate I didn’t care about because it was only short-term, I had a plan, it was all going to be okay…
Only I couldn’t stop.
“I’ve got a gambling problem.”
Three years, and that’s the first time I’ve said it, even in my head. I’ve told myself I need to cut down, that I’ll only do the lottery once a week, only buy one scratch card at a time, not twenty quid’s worth. I’ve stood outside the dog track on the third day running and had second thoughts about