Mistakes We Make (29 page)

Ricky looked smaller by daylight. The face she’d last seen distorted and ugly was showing distinct signs of nervousness. His thin shoulders were hunched and he seemed to be fascinated by a spot on the carpet.

‘Hello, Ricky,’ Caitlyn said quietly.

He shifted his gaze reluctantly and looked at her, then away again quickly. He cleared his throat. He clasped his hands together and started wringing them, then thrust them deep into the pockets of his jeans. He’d cleaned himself up for this visit. His hair, usually toneless and dull, looked recently washed, and his T-shirt was wrinkle free. He was wearing black leather shoes, not trainers. They even looked polished.

‘Came to say I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘I didn’t hear you. What did you say?’

‘I said I was fuckin’ sorry!’ He spat the words out like sour sweeties, but when he looked at her, he flushed. ‘I didnae mean it, Caitlyn. It was all just words, you know, all that stuff I said. Just joshin’. I never thought you’d fancy the likes of me. You’re sharp. You’ve always been clever. Me, I’m a waster, like my pa.’

Caitlyn almost felt sorry for him.

‘I was drunk, ken? Too much o’ the old—’ He made a swigging gesture, lifting an imaginary bottle to his lips. ‘An’ the lads were cheering me on, ken? I didnae mean it—’

‘No.’ Caitlyn’s voice trembled with suppressed fury. ‘But you would have done it all the same, wouldn’t you, if it hadn’t been for Wallace and Ailsa.’

‘No, I—’ he flushed again. ‘Maybe. Like I said, I was fu’. Blootered. Rat-arsed.’

‘It’s not an excuse for rape, Ricky.’

‘Naw. Sheesh, Caitlyn, gie’s a break. I said I was sorry, an’ I am, honest.’

She wanted him to go. ‘OK. Thanks for coming to tell me.’

He turned, obviously relieved.

‘Ricky?’

‘What? You’re no’ going tae tell the polis, are ye?’

‘You could make something of your life. You’re not so stupid as you make out. Get a grip, get a job, do something useful.’

He shuffled his feet. The carpet held his attention completely.

‘Aye,’ he said at length. ‘Mebbe yer right.’

––––––––

N
othing on television or in the cinema, Molly decided, could prepare you for the stark reality of prison. She went in through the doors as uncertain sunlight faltered and died, and the rain began. She felt one single drip as she locked the car. It splashed on her arm and she studied it, unsettled. Another arrived on her hand even as she looked. By the time she had crossed the carpark and reached the formidable building, the splashes had turned to a torrent and the mood of determined cheerfulness with which she had left Billy’s house had washed with it into the gutters and drains.

She steeled herself for the meeting she had longed for so keenly. Now that Logan was here, she found that the relief she had felt at his reappearance had changed into something altogether more complicated.

‘You must hate me,’ Logan said before she had a chance to catch her breath. ‘I hate myself.’

Molly clutched the edge of the table as if its hardness could steady her, appraising her brother with a newly critical gaze, because he was no longer her hero. It was difficult not to be shocked by the way he looked. It wasn’t the absence of expensive tailoring – he seemed clean and comfortable. The change in him came from inside. There was a restlessness and uncertainty that was new in him. He was still handsome, though the high cheekbones that had always defined his face seemed more prominent than ever. She no longer noticed the long eyelashes she had always admired, because the eyes they framed appeared so troubled. He had lost weight. The unremarkable sweatshirt and jogging pants – so far removed from his usual style – hung loosely on his frame. His fingers, which had always been elegant, looked as fragile as twigs as he tapped them restlessly on the table between them.

She said, a little uncertainly, ‘I’m not here to judge you. That’s the job of the court.’

‘Believe me, there is no sterner judge than me.’

She’d lain awake half the night, planning everything she wanted to say. About how he’d let Billy down and destroyed his family. About the clients whose money he had stolen and spent for his own enjoyment. About the way in which he had brought down Blair King and caused the loss of livelihood of dozens more families. About the way he’d nearly destroyed her chance of a career, because if there hadn’t been enough left over from the sale of the house, she would not have been able to buy her way into Fletcher Keir Mason. The list had formed in her head in the hours before dawn and was there still.

It was a sizeable list of victims by any standards. She couldn’t begin to imagine what had prompted his behaviour, but all the sentences she had formed in her mind deserted her as she looked at him. She’d thought she would be furious, but she only felt saddened. He looked broken.

She reached across the table. He yielded his hand without resistance, but it felt limp and lifeless.

‘I don’t understand, Logan. Why? Why did you do it? You earned a good salary.’

If he’d shrugged, the anger might have flooded in, but he didn’t.

‘There was never enough.’

‘Tell me who started the deception – you or Agnes?’

‘Agnes had been fiddling the books for years, but she was so clever at it that no-one had spotted it. I did though. And once I knew—’

‘You did what?’ Comprehension came in a flash. ‘Logan! Don’t tell me! Instead of revealing her fraud, you persuaded her to become a party to yours. Je-sus.’

‘The day I realised, I was in a tight spot. I needed to find cash quickly for the boys’ school fees. I had an idea – but I couldn’t do it without her help.’

My brother, thought Molly. My brother has done this. She could find no words.

‘I forged a false new client, set up a bank loan on his behalf, and suddenly there I was with a hundred thousand in a false account. It was that easy. Agnes helped move the money around. She got a big cut. And the more clients I invented, the easier it became.’

‘You must have known it couldn’t go on.’

‘There was always that fear, but there was a wild excitement as well. I was on a weird high. And as time went on and everything kept going well, a kind of madness seemed to get into me. I began to feel invulnerable.’

He made a sudden gesture with his arm, startling her. She sat back abruptly.

‘Didn’t you ever think about what it would do to the firm?’ Now the anger was coming. Molly could feel it bubbling to the surface and feared that it might become uncontrollable. She sat on her hands and forced herself to control her tone. ‘You put the livelihood of dozens of people at risk.’

‘I didn’t think about that then. I have since.’

Logan sank his head onto his hands and looked beaten. She softened. ‘Why did you run away, Logan? Why put us through all that frantic worry?’

She thought he wasn’t going to answer. Silences, she was learning, marked another change in the brother she’d known. Eventually he said robotically, ‘When Adam called ... I was going to go into the office and face him ... I opened the drawer for my car keys—’

‘And?’ she prompted as another silence began to drag out.

‘I remembered I’d hidden a couple of false passports under a pile of stationery.’

‘Oh God.’

‘I know. It was stupid. But at the time, it was surprisingly easy. I drove all night. I was on a ferry to France before anyone realised I’d gone, and I kept going for months by operating a couple of the false accounts.’

For the first time, he lifted his head and met her gaze squarely. ‘I knew it was going to end badly, of course. But that wasn’t what made me give myself up to the Blairs.’

‘Don’t tell me it was your conscience,’ Molly snapped with a sudden return of wrath, ‘because I’m not sure I could believe that.’

She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Logan shrank away from her and she sighed.

‘Oh, forget it. Just tell me. You still had money, so why did you decide you’d had enough?’

‘I was lonely.’

‘Lonely?’ She started to laugh. ‘Well, that’s the last thing I had imagined.’

‘What did you imagine, Moll?’

She shrugged. ‘God knows. Dad and I spent for ever wondering about you – if you were safe and well, if you’d been murdered by some gang you owed money to, if you might be in South America enjoying endless cocktails in Rio.’

‘I didn’t think about what you must be feeling. I was too busy being sorry for myself. This whole thing has been about selfishness. Believe me, I’ve spent hours picking apart everything I’ve done, and there’s no credit in any of it.’

She laid her hands on the table and spread her fingers. She still wore Adam’s wedding ring on her left hand. It had never even occurred to her to take it off.

‘So. You were saying you were lonely.’

‘I spent months living more or less on my wits. There was little pleasure in it, I promise you. It’s no life.’

Molly opened her mouth.

‘Don’t lecture me. You can believe it or not, but I missed Adrienne. I missed Dad. You too. But most of all, I missed the boys. Nursing a bottle of local vino plonko night after night in some tawdry local hostelry was no fun. You think about a lot of things, like what life’s really for. It sounds trite, but believe me, that period I was on the run was probably the first time in my life I’d ever thought about stuff like that. And it didn’t take me long to realise that without my family, none of the rest mattered at all. I was scared. Scared about what Adrienne would say, about what my boys would think of me and about Dad’s opinion. But unless I came back, I’d never know.’

His smile was gone almost before it was there.

‘It was sheer luck that I found myself near James Blair’s place and remembered you raving about it.’

Molly knew the story by heart; she’d been over it a dozen times with Billy. How James and Rosemary had walked down to Bar Tosca one evening, as they often did, and been greeted by an agitated Gianni.

‘There is a man,’ he’d told them, ‘says he knows you. I do not think this is possible. He is very – how do you say it? – 
ubriaco
.’

‘Drunk?’

‘
Si
.’

It was a polite word for the state Logan had been in. He’d been almost too drunk to stand, his hair had been long and unkempt and he’d been sorely in need of a shower. Somehow, they had managed to get him home and into bed. To their credit, Molly thought, they had refrained from calling the police until the morning. Instead, they got him cleaned and fed, and were given some kind of rambling explanation of everything that had happened.

She said, her heart expanding painfully in her chest, ‘Thank God you did.’

Again there was a flash of a smile, before it was gone and the restlessness was back.

‘What can I do to help?’

‘Just be there for my boys. It’s going to be some time before I can be.’

When she left the prison, the rain had stopped and the air smelt fresh and damp. The sun was sinking lower on the horizon, but there was warmth on her skin. She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the skies, inhaling deeply. It had never occurred to her before what freedom meant.

Molly had picked up a hire car at the airport and driven straight to the prison. When she arrived at her father’s house, it was Adrienne who answered the door.

‘Oh! Hi!’ she said, kissing her sister-in-law on both cheeks. ‘I didn’t realise you were going to be here.’

Adrienne was looking good. She was as neat as she’d always been, her hair well cut, her nails perfect. Molly would expect nothing less, because good grooming was second nature to Adrienne. But there was no sign of expensive designer clothes. She was wearing skinny jeans and a fuchsia pink sweater Molly recognised as from a high-street store.

‘I finished a day earlier than expected. I’m really glad, because I haven’t seen you for ages. Come on in. Billy’s out at the park with the boys; he’ll be back soon.’

Being invited into your own childhood home was the first of many strange moments. The second was the sudden realisation that with Adrienne at home, there would be no room for her.

‘Been to see Logan?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you think?’

‘About?’

‘How did he seem to you?’

Molly eyed Adrienne cautiously. They had never been close and she was uncertain how to handle the question, so she parried it with another.

‘What’s your impression?’

Adrienne’s face crumpled. It was the first time Molly had ever seen her display any kind of weakness. She caught Adrienne’s arm.

‘Sit down. Here.’ She guided her to the sofa and put an arm across her shoulder. ‘You’ll get through this. We all will.’

Adrienne took out a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I know. Thank you.’ She smiled shakily. ‘I try not to let the boys see me like this. I try to be positive all the time, but it’s hard.’

‘I bet.’

‘Your dad’s fantastic. I couldn’t have survived without him.’

Molly’s earlier moment of resentment at Adrienne’s presence in her home evaporated. ‘He loves having you here. It’s given him purpose.’

‘I know.’ Again there was a wry smile. ‘Thank heavens something positive has come out of this sorry mess. And if I’m honest, I’m loving working again too. Now that I look back on all those years I swanned around doing nothing, I can see they were pretty hollow. Being forced to fend for my boys has brought meaning to my life too.’

How odd, Molly thought, that they should all turn full circle. Lives that had been empty were filled with new meaning, but her life, which had once seemed so satisfactory ... What did what she was doing signify?

While Adrienne made coffee, she called Lexie, realising that she should have arranged to see her as soon as she’d known she was coming. She’d been too busy.

There was no answer at The Gables. She tried her mobile. It was switched off. Perhaps she was painting. Keira might be with her grandmother. Maybe Lexie and Patrick were travelling.

It occurred to Molly that she knew almost nothing about Lexie’s life these days. Once she would have known her friend’s every thought and feeling. The day the baby had been born ...