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‘Davey!’
He was the last person she had expected to see, and all the pain of the missing three years sounded in her voice.
Davey caught it, and his mouth twisted as he shuffled awkwardly from one foot to another.
‘Hi, Sis! Surprised to see me?’ It was faintly cocky, more than half defiant, as if he was unsure of his welcome.
‘Surprised…’ Lily’s voice was choked and uneven. ‘Oh, Davey!’
Released from the numbing sense of shock into which his appearance had thrown her, she got to her feet and rushed to his side, her arms going out to enclose him in a warm, welcoming hug. She couldn’t help wincing in distress as she felt just how little flesh there was on his tall, delicate frame.
Whatever Davey had been doing, clearly he hadn’t achieved the success he had dreamed of. It was obvious that he hadn’t been eating properly for quite some time.
‘It’s been so long! Where’ve you been? I’ve missed you so much!’
‘Missed you too.’
The reluctance with which Davey submitted to her hug made it plain that he was embarrassed by the display of emotion in front of Hannah. In deference to his feelings, Lily eased up, releasing him even though her own instinct was to hold him tight and never let him go. Hannah was not so sensitive to his feelings.
‘It’s about time you got in touch, young man. Your sister’s been out of her mind with worry. Don’t you think that it would have been thoughtful to let her know where you were once in a while?’
‘I was—busy.’ Davey rubbed the side of one scuffed leather boot against the other. ‘Time just got away from me.’
‘How much time does it take to make a phone call?’
‘Hannah!’ Lily put in hastily. ‘He’s here now. That’s all that matters. Are you staying for a while, Davey?’ She tried to make it sound as casual as possible.
‘If that’s OK.’
Suddenly he looked straight at her, bruised-looking lids narrowing over wide-pupilled brown eyes.
‘I heard you were looking for me. Is there something wrong?’
‘Wrong!’ Even Lily’s reproachful frown couldn’t keep Hannah’s mouth shut. ‘That is a major understatement.’
For the first time a flash of concern showed on Davey’s face as he turned to his sister.
‘What…?’
‘I wasn’t looking for you because something was wrong, Davey,’ Lily said quickly. He looked wary enough already, like a nervous horse on the point of bolting. She couldn’t risk saying something that might drive him to do just that. ‘I was—getting married, and I wanted you at the wedding.’
It hurt so much to say it. Each word was like another slash of a knife into an already lacerated heart.
‘But in the end perhaps it’s just as well you weren’t there, because things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped.’
‘The way you had a right to expect!’ Hannah put in indignantly. ‘If I could get my hands on Ronan Guerin…’
‘Ronan Guerin!’
It was just as Lily had feared. Davey reacted as if he had just been subjected to the most appalling electric shock, his head going back, bruised eyes widening. Lily would have sworn that it was impossible for his skin to lose any more colour, but it had become positively ashen.
‘You tangled with Ronan Guerin?’
‘How do you know about him?’
Lily had to force the words from a painfully dry throat. Ronan’s final declaration that she should ask her brother for the truth swirled inside her head, all the ominous undertones of menacing threat that had darkened it made so much worse by Davey’s panicked reaction. And that ‘tangled with’ sounded disturbingly foreboding.
‘Anyone who’s lived in London for any time knows Guerin. He owns acres of property there, including some of the most glamorous addresses around. They call him the Resurrector, because he has this uncanny knack of finding an ailing business, buying it up cheap, then turning it around and making it a howling success. If he takes an interest in you, you’re made—usually,’ he amended, with a painful adjustment that tightened the knots in Lily’s nerves to screaming pitch.
‘What happened, Davey?’ she forced herself to ask.
‘Guerin’s after me. I…’
Her brother looked across at Hannah, who, Lily was thankful to see, took the unsubtle hint immediately.
‘It’s time I was off. I’ll see you, Lily.’
Lily barely noticed her leave, her attention focused on Davey’s pale face. He had moved to perch on one side of the desk, one leg swinging nervously, and her fearful mood was in no way eased by the way his long, narrow hands were twisted together, clenched until the knuckles showed white.
‘What happened?’
‘I was working in a club as a barman…’
Davey’s eyes wouldn’t meet hers but were fixed on a spot on the carpet several feet in front of him.
‘One night the regular entertainer didn’t turn up, so I stood in for him. It just happened that that was a night when Ronan was in the place and he heard me sing. He talked to me afterwards, said how much he’d enjoyed my performance and asked if I’d ever thought of turning professional. When I said that was my dream, he told me he might be able to help, but first he wanted to make sure he wasn’t wasting his time. I didn’t really expect to hear any more about it, but the next night he turned up again, this time with a business associate—an independent record producer—who talked about offering me a recording contract.’
‘But that’s wonderful!’
The words shrivelled on Lily’s tongue as Davey lifted his head and turned darkly sceptical eyes on her.
‘Think so? That’s what I believed too—at first. I was over the moon.’
He lifted his thin shoulders in a shrug that dismissed those thoughts as foolish and impossibly naïve.
‘It didn’t last.’ The bleak despondency of his words was a deathblow to any hopes that Lily still had left.
‘What went wrong?’ Because obviously something had gone very badly wrong, or Davey would not be here now, in this state, and Ronan would not be somewhere hunting for him, like a hungry tiger deprived of his prey.
‘I screwed up.’ Davey ran a shaky hand through his lank hair and sighed deeply, his eyes sliding away from the concern in hers. ‘Messed up big time. You don’t want to know.’
‘Davey, tell me!’
‘Look, Lill, this wasn’t my first chance at a recording career. When I first went to London I met up with a guy—I’ll spare you the details, but the end result was that I was locked into this bitch of a contract. Basically, I did all the work and he got the profits. It didn’t take me long to realise I’d been taken for a mug, but by then it was too late. They owned me—for the rest of my life, it seemed. I did the only thing I could think of—I ran, broke my contract, left the whole thing. I even changed my name. That’s how I ended up in the barman job.’
His mouth twisted into a wry grin.
‘So I couldn’t take on any other contract, could I? But that was where Guerin really surprised me. He offered to buy me out of the bad contract—at a price.’
Hearing Lily’s exclamation of shock, Davey nodded, his mouth twisting wryly.
‘Yeah, it stunned me too. But this mate of his had made it clear that my career was a sound investment. And that was what Guerin was interested in—the money, not the music. I was another failing business he planned on resurrecting.’
A touch of the old Davey revived as he lifted his head and gave her a small, arrogant smile.
‘He had it on strong authority that I was good, that given a chance I could earn him back every penny he’d invested—and more. But of course he wanted everything signed and legally watertight. And then— Oh, Sis, you can guess what it was like. I had a tiny taste of success—the applause, the audiences…’
‘Surely I would have heard…’
‘Oh, I was hardly Top Twenty material, not yet. I couldn’t rush straight into the recording studio at first. I had to start to earn something of a reputation in the clubs down south. And I was doing that. But I—went off my head a little. More than a little. There were a couple of gigs I messed up, got too drunk to play properly. Another one I didn’t turn up for. Guerin was furious. He’d spent a fortune on me—even bought me the guitar and amps I needed, and a van to transport them in—and I was losing him money. The last straw was when I crashed the van and all the gear went up in flames. I’d told him I’d get it insured, but I hadn’t got round to actually doing anything about it.’
‘Oh, Davey!’
‘I know!’ Her brother grimaced at the reproach in her voice, still refusing to meet her eyes. ‘I know I was a complete idiot. I just lost my grip. But Guerin had me so tied up in all these legal tangles that I ended up in a worse position than ever. So I took the same route as before—I just split—got out. But legally I’m still tied to Guerin, so now he’s after me for breach of contract. And he’s charging interest on what he loaned me at an obscene rate. He knows there’s no way I’ll ever be able to pay, but he’s still after my blood.’
