drugs to innocent little white girls.’
Faye took a step back. ‘I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think it is a racist thing with them. And it’s certainly not with me, I’m pretty sure you know that. I take as I find. I’ve got nothing against Victor, I’ve got friends from all walks of life, all different backgrounds.’ I wanted to believe her, wanted her to convince me that it was circumstance, not prejudice, that made them point the finger at him. But Faye’s friends from ‘all walks of life’ were white, relatively affluent families with kids who would probably go to university. Plus, of course, her Slovakian cleaner.
I was flailing about, struggling to stop the rush of resentment pulsing through my brain and find calm, grown-up arguments to show Faye she’d made a mistake.
But before I could get there, she said, ‘I know it’s hard when you’ve invited him into your home. I feel really sorry for you. But you’ve got to look at the facts.’
My throat was tight as I forced the words out past the indignation lodging there. ‘Whose facts? The facts according to Andrea? She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Victor wasn’t even in the car when they were smoking.’
‘He didn’t need to be. He just had to get the drugs for them.’
And there it was, the funnel of oxygen right onto the flames.
‘Faye, the only person who I know for definite has been in possession of drugs, is your daughter. That night she threw up at mine, when you went away with Lee, a packet of weed fell out of her skirt. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear it. The reason she got so sick was because she’d been smoking weed and when I tried to have the conversation with you, you shut me down.’
‘What? Georgia was taking drugs as far back as that weekend?’
‘Yes. You seemed adamant that Georgia would never be involved in any drug taking and I didn’t think you’d believe me, so I decided to drop a few hints and let you find out on your own.’
She paused for a minute, then did what she always did if anyone criticised her daughter. She moved the spotlight onto someone else. ‘I’d be worried if Victor was living in the house with my daughter.’
I made one last attempt to move my anger from rampaging to rational. ‘You’ve got him wrong. I don’t know why you’ve all decided to single him out. He’s a fantastic young man.’ I didn’t dare examine the feelings I had about Patrick’s son being a teenager to be proud of, but his daughter currently not.
A sneer crossed her face. ‘I hope you’ve got a lock on Phoebe’s bedroom door.’
And that was the grenade that transformed the fire into an inferno. That whole judgmental crap when she knew absolutely nothing about what was going on in my life.
I leant right into her face and whisper-shouted into her ear, ‘I don’t think that’s very likely. He’s her bloody brother!’ There was no way I was going to admit that the wrongness and hideousness of that possibility had occasionally disturbed my nights.
Her eyes flung open as I turned on my heel and stormed off to the car, the brief release of, as my mother would say, ‘giving her something to think about’ immediately ceding to a panic so intense, I had a physical sensation of falling.
On the drive home, Phoebe kept trying to get my attention by making provocative statements such as, ‘Victor, they’ve got a band playing tomorrow. Me, you and Georgia could go down there.’
Patrick kept doing imperceptible shakes of the head, as if to say, don’t rise to it. But I couldn’t speak anyway. I’d crossed a loyalty boundary that I wasn’t sure I could ever repair. I gripped the steering wheel, focusing on the road in the dark, wondering if tomorrow morning I’d wake up as a soon-to-be-divorced woman.
Chapter Twenty-One
As soon as I got in, I ran into the loo to text Faye.
Sorry about earlier.
Although it was best to be vague about what I was apologising for. I was overjoyed that I’d wiped the smugness off her face for a moment, but sorry that I’d told her something that could damage my whole family if it came out before we had worked out how to manage it. And even then, we might all end up in smithereens. I went for the humble-pie approach, in the hope it would give me time