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‘Right,’ Rob says, giving me a look that questions how well he knows me. And he’d be right to wonder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
HANNAH – NOW
It’s easy to forget who I am while surrounded by plants. Oxygen-rich air to get high on, thick humidity to soften the worry lines on my face, plus the warmth in the vast hothouse as it seeps deep into my tired bones. But outside the glass walls and roof, reality still lies – the jungle contained within can only stifle my anxiety for as long as I’m in here, stocking up on plants for the C-Tech contract.
I trundle my trolley towards my go-to specimens for an office reception: a Fatsia japonica with its hand-sized waxy leaves, tolerant of fluorescent light and air conditioning, picking out five healthy plants. On a whim, I add half a dozen Sansevierias to my haul, as well as a Ficus benjamina for each of the directors’ offices. It’s as I’m heading for the checkout that my phone pings. My shoulders instinctively draw up around my ears as I read the screen.
Vaughn wants the money. Or Belle.
When things like this aren’t happening to you directly, or it’s in the movies, or a story you’ve heard, it’s easy to say don’t give in, go to the police, or just hand over a backpack stuffed with cut-up bits of newspaper and call the cops. But in real life, when everything you hold dear is at stake, it doesn’t feel so black and white. You look for other ways out, alternative options. Ways to make it all go away. The bargaining part of grief, I suppose. And Iamstill grieving, I realise, for my lost youth. For everything that the money represents.Blood money.
The upshot is, what I’m really doing is burying my head in the sand and pretending it’s all a bad dream. I pray that I’m in the middle of a nightmare and, when I wake up in a puddle of sweat, I’ll be drowning in relief because none of it is real.
I don’t have it, I type out. My finger hovers over the send button.
Then I delete it.
‘We have some Philodendrons new in this morning,’ the plant nursery owner says, coming up behind me, making me jump. I’m on first-name terms with Jan and she always gives me the heads-up about new stock. ‘Perfect for your domestic clients, perhaps?’
‘Thanks, great.’ I head over to where she’s pointing, making my way through the sea of foliage. As I pass the succulents, I’m reminded of my childhood bedroom windowsill in the house where I lived with my mother. I believed I’d rescued the plant from certain death.
‘Hard to kill, these,’ my mother’s man-of-the-moment had said, handing over his gift to her. I remember he’d given her a bottle of no-brand vodka too, which she much preferred. Mother had sneered at the plant, peering over the rim of her broken glasses. Unimpressed, she’d left it beside the kitchen sink, where it sat, unwatered, for several months before it got knocked over and the thorny round stump had dropped to the floor in a shower of gravel.
I’d found it and, cursing its sharp spikes, had scraped up the mess and put it back in its pot as best I could. After that, it lived on my bedroom windowsill, getting watered and turned every single day, while I diligently measured it for signs of growth. It wasn’t long before it swelled and drooped, its shaft discoloured and pale. I didn’t realise it then, but I was killing it with kindness. My need to care for a living thing – a direct result of not being cared for myself – had backfired on me. The very thing I wanted to keep alive was losing its hold the harder I held on.
I look at my phone again, staring at Jack’s message.
Is it the same now, I wonder? By fleeing from danger with Belle when she was a newborn baby, by overprotecting her all her life, by nurturing her and tending to her every need, by believing I did the right thing by running away, has it somehow had the opposite effect?
Like the cactus, I’m now wondering if I’ve loved her too much.
It’s hot in my car and there’s a jungle in my rear-view mirror. As I leave the plant wholesaler, my intention is to head straight back to the office to unload what I’ve bought into our storage area. It’s well lit, with windows on three sides, but space is tight so the plants won’t be there long, with bookings already made to have them settled into their new environments and a care and cleaning plan set up for the clients. Instead, I pull over off the busy road and whip out my phone. I ignore the earlier text from Jack, still unanswered, and google the name of the place that Belle mentioned.
Scarlett’s.
From the few reviews I see, it looks like a dive bar in an unsavoury part of town, likely frequented by married men and stag groups. I plug the address into my satnav and swing my estate car around in the direction I’m told. Several traffic queues later, and a couple of hesitations that I’m doing the right thing, and I’m cruising down a main road on the opposite side of town to where I live, knowing I’m getting close.
Parked up in a thirty-minute zone, I lock up my car and duck down the side street – Nest Lane. It’s not as cute as it sounds – not a bird or thatched cottage in sight. Instead, it’s an alley behind a few shops, with overflowing, industrial-sized dustbins, as well as a few entrances to what look like run-down flats above. Halfway down on the left is an unlit vertical neon sign reading Scarlett’s. It looks grim. And a part of me feels right at home.
The place, which screams seedy lap-dancing joint, appears closed, but a delivery van is parked outside, unloading crates of beer onto the pavement.
‘Anyone inside?’ I ask the driver, a lad in a black T-shirt and jeans. He just nods, but then I spot that the uninviting door to Scarlett’s is open a crack, presumably for the delivery, so I head up the litter-strewn step and push it open. As I go in, I can’t help wondering who Scarlett is. Orwas.
It’s dark inside and smells…familiar. My body picks up on the sensory trigger, making me draw my summer jacket around me. I shiver as the tang of weed and stale alcohol floods my nostrils.
‘Hello?’ I call down the dark corridor. I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking for or, indeed, what I will find. But my daughter has been here for a reason – because ofhim– and I want to know what it is.
I press on down the passageway, lit only by dim, floor-level red lights every few feet. It has an eerie, theatrical feel about it and a black-curtained doorway at the end, as if I’m about to appear on stage.
‘Anyone here?’ I say, pushing through the curtains. Suddenly, lights come on and I find myself in a large space edged with curved, purple-velvet booths, each with a table set centrally. In the middle of the tables there are silver poles fixed to the ceiling, and a closer look reveals them to be smeary and tarnished. On the other side of the room is a bar and a small stage with a runway leading out between tables set out with gold-backed chairs – the type you’d find at a wedding reception.
Then I spot a skinny, weaselly man standing across from me, leaning against the bar.
‘Y’all right,’ he says, coming over.
‘Hi, I’m looking for Jack.’ I stand my ground, unfazed by him, despite his pointed and angry-looking features. He’s shorter than me, and probably weighs less too. The veins on his forearms stick out through faded tattoos and, as he gets closer, I notice an unwashed, sweaty smell. He doesn’t look very old, perhaps late twenties.
