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“But the police said…”
Annie squeezes my hand.
“He definitely didn’t. The detective was way off beam. My dad hanged himself.”
“But... how can you be so sure?”
“Claire, my dad was a man of many layers and plenty of problems. He was really ill, I get that. But he had a mean streak too. That wasn’t his illness, it was part of him. A raging, violent temper that the drink brought out. The tattoo I’m getting done on this trip, it’s to cover this. See?”
She lifts her loose t-shirt for me to see. There’s no mistaking the deep scraped out indentation across her shoulder blade.
“Shit, Annie!”
“Belt buckle. It caught me when he was whipping me.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“About my dad?”
She shook her head.
“It was complicated.”
I get the impression that she’s not said much to anyone about this before, apart from Jac who’s designed the tattoo that’s going to cover it.
She pulls her t-shirt back down and I catch them looking at each other in the rearview mirror.
“I sometimes wonder how different things would’ve been if I’d’ve gone with him.”
I utter the words half to myself as I stare out of the window at the motorway traffic in the opposite lane. I squash the unwanted feelings of desire that well up deep inside of me when I think about him.
“Never look back,” Annie advises wisely, offering me a bottle of water.
???
“Jase, mate!”
Jac warmly embraces his old army buddy as Annie and I stand behind him on the doorstep of his South London flat.
“This is Annie.”
It seems odd meeting Sion’s friends.
Jason is tall, dark-haired and like Jac and Sion, he has an air of calm authority about him that puts me immediately at ease.
“And this is Claire.”
Jason kisses me on the cheek and I can feel his eyes lingering on my neck as he moves away.
“You’re off travelling, I hear?”
“Yes.”
I try to keep my voice upbeat but seeing people’s reaction pains me more than the cut did.
“I’m on the Eurostar to Paris the day after next. This is my first time in London, so while these two lovebirds are gettin’ inked up, I’m gonna make the most of it and be a total tourist.”
“Wanna guide?”
“Alright,” I answer a little surprised. “That’ll be cool.”
After a few drinks in Jason’s local pub, we’ve gone back to his flat with a mountain of Chinese takeaway food.
Annie sighs and pushes her bowl away.
“This is my guilty pleasure. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve eaten way too much of this.”
I don’t disagree.
“Certainly beats airline grub,” Jason agrees, helping himself to another prawn cracker.
I take one too.
“Must be so glamorous, though. Flying everywhere. Seeing new places.”
“I see a lot of airports. And airport hotels… Sure, I do get to go to exotic places, but it’s not much fun on your own.”
“Well, if you ever fly in near where I am, give us a shout.”
I colour up.
“Oh God! That sounded awful. I don’t mean that in a booty call kinda way. I meant as travel buddies.”
“Bet you get plenty of booty call offers from women when you put that airline pilot uniform on,” Jac teases.
Thankfully, Jason laughs it off.
“It’s okay, Claire. You’re not my type anyway.”
He gives me a knowing look and I smirk back at him.
Jac doesn’t seem to have worked it out, and Jason hasn’t told him.
Much later, Annie and I turn in and leave the boys to catch up over a bottle of duty-free whisky that Jason has produced.
But, I can hear every word from the bedroom through the thin plasterboard wall, and I can’t help but listen to what they’re saying.
“So, what d’ya think?” I can hear Jac say.
“The girls? They’re great.”
“No. I meant about Sion? Did ya know the truth about him?”
Jason is silent.
All evening, Sion’s absence has felt like a presence in their company as they’ve skirted around what happened. It’s only now that they’re alone that they begin to talk freely.
“Only me in the dark, then?”
I can hear the tinge of hurt in Jac’s voice.
Unable to stop myself, I edge out of bed and open the door.
“He told me too, the night before he went into witness protection. About his work undercover.”
They turn around and stare at me standing in the doorway.
“Come and join us,” Jac urges. “Wanna dram?”
Dressed in my pyjamas, I shuffle up next to Jac on the sofa.
Between us, Jason and I patch together what we know. In turn, Jac sits there quietly, listening, taking it all in.
Jac bends his head and clinks the ice of his whisky.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He wanted a safe place. A bolt hole, where no one would suspect him. That’s why you were out of the loop. He only told me the bare minimum too. Said it was safer that way.”
“He was right about that,” I add, unconsciously touching my neck. “He only came clean with me because he wanted me to go away with him.”
“But you stayed?”
“I did.”
I take a sip of the peaty whisky.
“I didn’t believe him.”
Jac stares at me intently.
“Claire? Why? If Sion said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it. He would never lie to you.”
“You so sure? After everything you’ve heard tonight?”
Jason pours us more whisky.
“So you think Sion strung Glyn up and killed him?” Jac mutters, “Never mind the practicalities of that, what was his motive? Why did he do it? Or d’you agree with the detective and think that me and Annie hired Sion to kill her parents so we could inherit the farm?”
“No! ‘Course not,” I backtrack, horrified. “You’d never do that. Oh, God! Is that what the detective said?”
I can feel my eyes burn and I swallow the hard lump that’s forming in my throat.
“But he did do bad shit for a living. He’s killed people.”
Jac looks away. There’s no denying what Sion has done.
“He was undercover, Claire. He was following orders like we all did as soldiers.”
I breathe heavily. There’s nothing more to say. I’m fully aware of the mistake I’ve made.
???
The next
day Jason takes me literally everywhere across London. We ride the hop-on-and-off double-decker tourist bus past Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park. It’s hot and the gentle breeze blowing onto us as we sit up top in the fresh air is welcomingly refreshing.
Jason’s been great company, and I knew straight away that we’d get on.
“What was going on last night?” I ask as we go over the bridge towards Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. “You’ve not told Jac you’re gay?”
Jason shrugs.
“Jac’s never asked. With him farming and me flying, I’ve not seen him in ages.”
“And Sion?”
He’s quiet for a bit.
“You gotta remember, Claire, we were in this macho culture.”
“Yeah, but there must have been others?”
“Oh God, aye. But we kept it… discreet. Things are changing, but it’s never easy to come out, especially in that kinda environment.”
We carry on with our tour, making our way over to The Shard where we see all of London stretching out below us from the viewing deck on the seventy-second floor.
“St Paul’s looks so tiny.”
I’ve brought my camera along to take some photos but the wind blows my hair across my face and it’s too difficult to get a good shot.
“Don’t be ashamed of it,” Jason says out of the blue.
I lean up against the glass barrier, embarrassed.
“I’m not, it’s windy, that’s all.”
“Think of the scar as a battle wound, Claire.”
I try to brush my hair back to cover my neck.
“How did you meet Sion and Jac? ‘Cos you were in the RAF, right?”
“Yeah. Helicopter pilot. I flew them out of the sticky messes they’d gotten themselves into. Unless Sion had other ideas, that was.”
“What d’ya mean?”
He tells me about an operation where Jason flew them into a village and under heavy gunfire, Sion sprinted across a courtyard and rescued an interpreter.
“Sounds like Sion’s pretty fearless?”
“Yeah. He was an amazing soldier. He saved that man’s life that day. Claire, I know Sion as well as I know myself, and I’m certain that he’d never kill a civilian in cold blood.”
