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I shrug. ‘Rory compromises for you all the time. He sits and watches all your awful TV programmes without complaining because he’s nice like that and he wants to cheer you up while you’re stuck with that stookie on your foot.’ I grin. ‘He deserves a medal, that man.’
‘Oh, yes, of course he does.’ Her tone is full of sarcasm. ‘Rory Angel. Angel by name, angel by nature.’ She sighs. ‘The trouble with going out with an angel is he makes me look like a devil by comparison.’
‘You do talk a lot of rubbish,’ I laugh, while privately thinking she might be on to something there...
*****
Later, after Lois has gone out to meet Rory, I creep upstairs– avoiding the creaky floorboard– and listen outside Irene’s door. If I’m going to be lying about the pawned jewellery for Irene, I deserve to know exactly what’s going on with her.
I can hear her sobbing above the sound of the TV, and I hate that she’s in so much pain. I knock softly and go in.
She looks up. ‘Where’s Lois?’ Her face is wet, her eyes red raw and puffy.
‘Don’t worry, she’s gone out.’ I sit down beside her on the bed. ‘Irene, you need to tell me what’s going on. I haven’t told her anything about the blackmail or about you pawning her rings, but I can’t lie about it forever. You have to tell me what’s going on. Who on earth is blackmailing you?’
She looks down and I stare at her bent head, waiting, as the music of a game show starts up on the TV, blasting into the silence.
When Irene finally speaks, her voice is thick with tears. ‘If I tell you, Clara, you have to promise not to say a word to Lois. Because if she ever finds out from anyone else...’ She shakes her head, unable to finish the sentence, her shoulders shaking as she breaks down again in tears.
I reach over and pull her into a hug, and she doesn’t push me away. ‘Okay. I won’t tell Lois,’ I murmur, and I feel her nod as she calms down.
‘Lois thinks her dad was a pilot and I loved him,’ she mumbles against my shoulder. ‘She thinks he thought the world of her and brought her back cute presents from his travels, but that his plane went down and he died when she was just a year old.’
‘But it’s not true?’ I ask, feeling Irene’s tears soaking my neck and thinking of the little teddy bear Lois showed me. The one she keeps in her bedside drawer. The one she believes was the last gift from her dad...
‘No. It was all a lie, Clara.’ She pauses and I rub her back gently, encouragingly. ‘The truth is, my beautiful daughter is the result of a sordid encounter with one of my clients when I was working for an escort agency, and I’ve spent years trying to protect her from the truth. And that’s not even the worst of it.’
Shocked, I pull gently away so that I can see her face. But she’s crying and can’t go on, burying her face in my shoulder again.
‘Oh, Irene,’ I murmur, wishing I could think of the right thing to say.
A door creaks and at first, I think the sound is coming from the TV. But something makes me look around and when I do, my heart lurches in my chest.
Lois is standing in the doorway.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lois is looking at Irene, her face strangely blank.
It’s clear she heard everything.
A surge of empathy rises up inside me. I want to run over and hug my stepsister but I stay where I am, aware that nothing I do or say can make things better. Irene’s revelation has totally blindsided me, but it must be a thousand times more shocking for Lois.
Irene hasn’t noticed she’s there, locked as she is in her own private nightmare.
But when Lois takes a few steps into the room, Irene looks up and her face fills with alarm.
‘So you were a sex worker,’ Lois says calmly. ‘And I was an accident. You had me when you were servicing your clients.’
The silence in the room is electrifying.
‘No!’ bursts out Irene at last, scrambling off the bed towards her daughter. ‘I was never a sex worker, Lois. You have to believe me.’
But Lois holds out her hands and stops her. ‘Stay away from me.’
‘Lois, I wanted to tell you. So many times. But I thought you’d hate me if you knew the truth. I know I’ve been a terrible mother but I... I did what I had to do to protect you.’ Her look of frightened desperation is clutching at my heartstrings, but Lois’s face remains utterly stony. ‘I can see now how wrong it was to lie to you. But I didn’t think I had a choice. I just didn’t want you to despise me. Please talk to me, Lois.Pleaselet me explain.’ Her eyes are full of anguish, pleading with her daughter.
Lois swallows, a tiny chink appearing in her emotional armour. Her hands are clenched together so tightly in front of her, the knuckles are white. ‘You were right,’ she says at last, in a tight little voice.
