I saw that the larger man was indeed Keith. But I was also able to identify the third person. There, holding a fish aloft, his forearm tattoos brazen in the sunshine, was Tommy.
I looked back to where he stood now, in front of me. He offered a tentative smile. He seemed hopeful. Like he had just presented me with a surprise gift.
What was going on?
I heard the bathroom door handle push down. Someone had been in there the whole time. Keith? I felt a stab of fear. Had they brought me here to hurt me?
But then the door opened and the person in the bathroom stepped forward.
Wearing jeans and a hooded top, he looked from me to Tommy, his eyes wide.
‘Tommy, please can I come out now?’ he asked in a small voice.
I felt my knees go.
The boy.
Chapter Fifty-Two
I looked from the boy to Tommy, unable to process what was happening.
Tommy ruffled the boy’s hair and pointed at me.
‘You remember Heidi?’
The boy nodded.
I watched as he padded over to the far corner of the bedroom, grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.
‘What is he doing here?’ I pointed at the photograph. ‘Why are you in that picture?’
‘Shush,’ said Tommy, scooping me away from the door and putting his hand over my mouth.
I struggled to get free but his grip was too strong. Pulling my head back into his shoulders, he marched me into the bedroom.
‘If I take my hand away do you promise to remain calm?’ he asked. His tone was gentle, benevolent almost.
I nodded as best I could, his hold making it difficult to move my head even slightly. A few seconds later and he released me.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked between gulps of air. ‘What the fuck …’
‘Come, now,’ he said, pushing me onto the sofa. ‘We’ve done this dance long enough. Time to stop pretending.’
He sat down, put his arm around my shoulders and crushed me towards him. I tried to wriggle away, but he had me held firm. He leant in and kissed my ear and neck. His breath had a whisky tang. I looked at the boy. Absorbed in a cartoon, he seemed unaware of the drama going on behind him.
‘I asked you here because I thought it was time for us both to come clean. About him.’ He nodded at the boy. ‘And about us.’ He ran his hand up and down my leg.
Us? What was going on?
‘That first day, I knew you were there to snoop.’ His hand came to a stop at my knee. ‘We should have run.’ He lazed his finger back, along my inner thigh and zigzagged it up towards my knickers. ‘But I had this feeling. About you,’ he paused and looked me in the eye, his finger touching my crotch. ‘And later, about you and me.’ Panic leached its way into my lungs. ‘Turns out I was right.’
I looked at the boy, mortified this was happening in front of him. Thankfully, he hadn’t seen. Sitting cross-legged in front of the television, all his attention was focused on a brightly coloured superhero.
‘You’d been knocked over in the street. You were hurt and yet all you were worried about was that someone might call an ambulance. That was the first thing to give me pause. You didn’t want anyone to know you were there. Why? It didn’t make sense. I decided to take a gamble. When we got through the first twenty-four hours without incident, I knew. You hadn’t raised the alarm and you were never going to. You didn’t want him found.’
‘What?’ My fear temporarily replaced with pique, I turned to face him. ‘Jason took one look and said it wasn’t him,’ I explained. ‘No one would listen.’
My outburst surprised him. I remembered he was oblivious to the first time I’d laid eyes on the child, the day I’d insisted Jason come to look.
‘Then there was other stuff. Like say you appearing on my doorstep.’ He mimed the way my jersey dress had slipped from my shoulders. ‘That night at the fireworks I took a big risk letting you go off with Mikey. I needed to know we could trust you.’ He beamed with pride. ‘You brought him back.’
He presumed I knew all about his and Keith’s secret. Not only that, he believed I condoned it. But if that was the case, then why had he asked me here today, to this hotel? I ran through events in my head, and then it hit me. I had tried