A Darker Shade of Blue

PROMISE

The way it would usually be: Kiley would be in the pub enjoying a quiet drink when someone would walk over to him or intercept him on his way to the bar. ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you that bloke…’ And then it would start and Kiley would nod and grin and hear it all again, some blurred version of it anyway, before signing whatever scrap of paper was within reach and shaking hands. ‘Always wondered what happened to you.’

Jack Kiley at forty. A tall man with a barely discernible limp as he carried his pint of Worthington back to his corner table. The face fuller now, the hair as thick, though touched with grey; the eyes a safer shade of blue. His body softer, but not soft, some fifteen pounds heavier than when he came from nowhere to score that hat-trick in extra time. The FA Cup quarter final, 1989.

‘Hey, aren’t you…?’

Kiley had been a police officer at the time, a detective in the Met, CID. Seven years in. He’d never stopped playing soccer since he was a kid. Turned out for the force, of course he did. And as an amateur, without contract, for a string of semi-pro clubs, Kidderminster Harriers, Canvey Island, Gravesend. When Stevenage Borough in the Conference came in for him, needing cover for an injured striker, an understanding detective superintendent cleared Kiley’s rota for most Saturdays in the season, only for him to spend the best part of each game on the bench, waiting to be thrown on in the dying stages — ‘Go get ’em, Jack. Show ‘em what you can do.’ — Kiley clogging through the churned-up mud in search of an equalising goal.

Each year the Cup threw up its giant killer, a team from the lower reaches riding their luck and ground advantage to harry and chase the top pros with their fancy boots and trophy wives, each earning more in a month than Kiley’s team would graft in a brace of years. And in ’89 it was Stevenage, a home draw against the Villa promising them a place in the last four. One all at the end of the ninety and five minutes into extra time, Kiley, frustrated and cold inside his tracksuit, got the call. ‘Go get ‘em, Jack.’

With his first touch he played the ball straight into the path of the opposing centre half, the second slid beneath his boot and skidded out of touch; his third, a rising shot struck full off the meat of the right boot on the run, swerved high and wide past the goalie’s outstretched hand and Kiley’s side were in the lead, nineteen minutes to go.

Five minutes later Villa drew level, and then, from the midst of a nine-man goal-mouth melee, Kiley toe-poked the ball blindly over the line.

Kiley’s marker, who’d already been trying to kick six shades of shit out of him, clattered against him as they headed back towards the centre circle. ‘Don’t think that makes you fucking clever. ’Cause you’re not, you’re fuckin’ shite!’ And as the ball arced away towards the left wing, unobserved, he elbowed Kiley in the kidneys and left him face down in the dirt.

Which is why Kiley was unmarked, moments later, when the ball came ballooning towards him out of the Villa defence, Kiley thirty yards from goal, open space in front of him and he met it on the half-volley, sweet like driving a passing shot down the line on Centre Court, or pulling a six head-high to the boundary at Lord’s, that rare and perfect combination of technique and relaxation, and he knew, even before the roar of the crowd or the sight of his own players cartwheeling in pleasure, that he had scored.

At the final whistle, with the home crowd chanting his name, his marker sought him out, and with a toothless grin, threw an arm around his shoulder. ‘No hard feelings, eh?’ And when Kiley looked back at him, ‘Swap shirts, then? What d’you say?’

Kiley nodded and waited till the player had lifted his arms above his head. And punched him once, a short right to the ribs that dropped the man, breathless, to his knees.

The referee red-carded him for that, which meant Kiley was ineligible for the semi-final, which they lost seven-one to Liverpool, a necessary corrective to their uppity behaviour. In professional soccer, each giant-killer — so valuable for filling column inches and the turnstiles both — is only allowed so many sacrificial giants.

For Kiley, though, fame lingered on, his hat-trick the stuff of innumerable sports-show repeats, and it was no surprise when someone offered him the chance to turn professional a few months short of his twenty-ninth birthday. The manager of Charlton Athletic had something of a reputation for making silk purses from sow’s ears, turning grit into gold. And Kiley knew it was the only chance he would get. With too few second thoughts, he resigned from the Met.

Most of his first season was spent in the reserves or on the bench: in all he made just three first team starts, scoring once. The following summer he trained hard, determined; played in all three pre-season friendlies, looking sharp; in the first league game he hit a volley from twenty-five yards that slammed against the bar, and narrowly missed with a diving header inside the box. The second game, away, he was stretching for a ball that was never really his when the tackle came in, two-footed, late, and broke his leg. Some legs, young legs, mend. After two operations, rest, light training, lots of physio, Kiley called it a day. The club were more generous than many, the insurance settlement better than he might have hoped. For months he did little or nothing, left books half-read, watched afternoon movies, moped. Considered a civilian job with the Met. Then a former colleague from the force offered him work with the security firm he was running. ‘No uniform, Jack. No bullshit. Just wear a suit, look large and smile.’ For the best part of three years, he was a paid bodyguard to B-list celebrities, obscure overseas royals, sports personalities and their hangers-on.

At Wimbledon, Kiley found himself sharing overpriced strawberries and champagne with Adrian Costain, a sports agent he’d brushed up against a few times in his soccer days, and when Costain rang him a week later with the offer of some private work, he thought, why not?

So here he was, ten years down the line from his twenty-five minutes of fame, a private investigator with an office, a computer, pager, fax and phone; a small but growing clientele, a backlog of successfully resolved, mostly sports-associated cases.

Jack Kiley, whatever happened to him?

Well, now you know.

Kiley was alone in his office, August third. Two rooms above a bookshop in Belsize Park. A bathroom he shared with the financial consultant whose office was on the upper floor.

‘So what d’you think?’ Kate had asked him the first time they’d looked round. ‘Perfect, no?’ Kate having been tipped off by her friend, Lauren, who managed the shop below.

‘Perfect, maybe. But rents in this part of London… There’s no way I could afford it.’

‘Jack!’

‘It’s all I can do to keep up with the payments on the flat.’

‘Then let it go.’

‘What?’

‘The flat, let it go.’

Kiley had stared around. ‘And live here?’

‘No, fool. Move in with me.’

So now Kiley’s name was there in neat lettering, upper and lower case, on the glass of the outer door. The office chair behind the glass-topped desk was angled round, suggesting his secretary had just popped out and would be back. As she might, were she to exist. In her stead, there was Irena, a young Romanian who waited on tables across the street, and two mornings a week did Kiley’s filing for him, a little basic word processing, talked to him of the squares and avenues of Bucharest, excursions to the Black Sea, of storks that nested by the sides of country roads.

In Kiley’s inner sanctum were a smaller desk, oak-faced, an easy chair, a couch on which he sometimes napped, a radio, a TV whose screen he could span with one outstretched hand. There was a plant, jasmine, tiny white flowers amongst a plethora of glossed green leaves; a barely troubled bottle of single malt; a framed print Kate had presented him with when he moved in: two broad bands of cream resting across a field of mottled grey, the lines between hand-drawn and slightly wavering.

‘It’ll grow on you,’ she’d said.

He was still waiting.

The phone chirruped and he lifted it to his ear.

‘Busy, Jack?’ Costain’s voice was two-thirds marketing, one-third market stall.

‘That depends.’

‘Victoria Clarke.’

‘What about her?’

‘Get yourself down to Queen’s. Forty-five minutes to an hour from now, she should be towelling down.’

Kiley was enough of a Londoner to know car owning for a mug’s game. Within three minutes, he’d picked up a cab travelling south down Haverstock Hill and they’d set off on the zigzag course that would shuttle them west, Kiley wondering how many billboards of Victoria Clarke they would pass on the way.

That damp June and July she had been a minor sensation at the Wimbledon Championships, the first British woman to reach the semi-finals since Boadicea, or so it seemed, and ranked currently twenty-three in the world. And she had sprung from nowhere, or somewhere near the Essex end of the Central line at best; a council flat she had shared growing up with her sister, stepdad and mum. And like the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, in the States, she had learned to play on public courts, enjoying none of the privilege that usually attended the luckless Amandas and Betinas of the English tennis world. Nor did it end there. Her face, which freckled slightly in the sun, was beautiful in a Kate Moss kind of a way, her legs slender and long; the quality of the sports photographer’s long lens and of television video ensured that not one salted bead of sweat that languished on her neck then slowly disappeared into the decolletage of the thin cotton tops she liked to wear was spared from public view.

Before the tournament was over, Costain had the contracts signed, the company’s ad campaign agreed. Less than a fortnight later, the first of the advertisements appeared: Clarke crouching on the baseline, racket in hand, lips slightly parted, waiting to receive. In another she is watching the high toss of the ball, back arched, about to serve, white cotton top stretched tight across her breasts. For these and others, the strapline is the same: ‘A Little Honest Sweat!’ Just that and a discreet Union Jack, the deodorant pictured lower right, close by the product’s name.

Unreconstructed feminists protested and sprayed slogans late at night; students tore them down as trophies for their rooms; Kate devoted her column in the Independent to the insistent eroticising of the everyday. One giant billboard near an intersection on the Al north was removed after advice from the Department of Transport.

In the Observer Sport Monthly’s annual list of ‘Britain’s Top 20 Sportswomen’, Victoria Clarke was number seven with a bullet, the only tennis player to appear at all.

‘Forgot your racket,’ the cabbie joked, glancing at Kiley, empty-handed, waiting outside Queen’s Club for his change and his receipt.

Kiley half-grinned and shook his head. ‘Different game.’

Costain was in the bar: tousled hair, rimless glasses, Paul Smith suit and large gin. He bought Kiley a small Scotch and water and they moved to a pair of low leather chairs by the far wall. Good living, Kiley noticed, had brought Costain the beginnings of a belly the loose cut of his suit just failed to disguise.

‘So how is it really?’ Costain asked with a smile.

‘You know.’

‘Still with Kate?’

Kiley nodded.

‘How long’s that now?’ And then, quickly, ‘I know, I know, who’s counting?’

In a week’s time it would be two years since they’d started seeing one another; nine months, almost to the day, since he’d moved into Kate’s house in Highbury Fields. Kate, Kiley knew, had gone out with Costain a few times some few years back; kissing him, she said, was like being force-fed marinated eel.

‘Victoria Clarke,’ Kiley said, ‘what’s the problem? There is a problem, I suppose.’

Costain drank a little more gin. ‘She’s being blackmailed.’

‘Don’t tell me she was a Page Three Girl for the Sun.’

For an answer, Costain took an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit coat and passed it across. Inside, a black-and-white copy of a photograph had been pasted to a single sheet of paper: a young woman in a park, holding a small girl, a toddler, high above her head; in the background, another woman, beside an empty buggy, looks on. The first woman, and the girl, are smiling, more than smiling, laughing; the second woman is not. The quality of the copy was such, it took a keen eye to identify the former as Victoria Clarke. Even then, there was room for doubt.

‘Is this all there is?’ Kiley asked.

‘It arrived this morning, first post. A phone call some forty minutes later, man’s voice, disguised.’ He nodded towards the paper in Kiley’s hand. I imagine the original’s a lot clearer, wouldn’t you?’

‘And the child?’

‘Hers. Victoria’s.’

Kiley looked at the picture again; the relationship between the two women was there, but it wasn’t yet defined. ‘Whoever sent this, what do they want?’

‘A quarter of a million.’

‘For what?’

‘The negative, all originals, copies. We’ve got two days before they sell it to the highest bidder. The tabloids’d go ape shit.’

Kiley tasted his Scotch. ‘Why now?’ he asked.

‘We’re in the middle of renegotiating Victoria’s advertising contract. Very hush-hush. Big, big money involved. If nothing slips out of sync, everything should be finalised by the end of the week.’

‘Then, hush-hush or not, somebody knows.’

‘What?’ Costain said, mouth twisting in a wry grin. ‘You don’t believe in blind luck?’ And, because Victoria Clarke was now walking through the bar towards them, he rose to his feet and smiled a reassuring smile.

She was tall, taller even than Kiley, who knew the stats, had thought, and wore a dark blue warm-up suit, name monogrammed neatly along the sleeve with something close to style. Sports bag slung over one shoulder, hair still damp from the shower and tied back, the only signs of distress were in the hollows of her eyes, the suggestion of a tremor when she shook Kiley’s hand.

‘You want something?’ Costain asked. ‘Mineral water? Juice?’

She shook her head. Standing there devoid of make-up, she almost looked what she was: nineteen.

The envelope lay on the table between two unfinished drinks. ‘I don’t want to talk about this here,’ Victoria said.

‘I thought just-’ Costain began.

‘Not here.’ The voice wasn’t petulant, but firm.

Costain shrugged and, with a glance at Kiley, downed his gin and led the way towards the door.

Costain owned a flat in a mansion block close to the Thames — in fact, he owned several between there and the Cromwell Road — and for the past several months it had been Victoria’s home. Near enough to Queen’s for her to hit every day.

‘You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ she said.

Kiley moved an armful of discarded clothing and a paperback copy of Navratilova’s life story. The room resembled a cross between a Conran window and the left luggage department at Euston station.

Victoria left them to each other’s company and re-emerged some minutes later in a pale cotton top and faded jeans, hair brushed out and a little make-up around the eyes.

Sitting in an easy chair opposite Kiley, she tucked as much of her long legs beneath her as she could. ‘Can you help?’ She had a way of looking directly at you when she spoke.

‘It depends.’

‘On what?’

Kiley shook his head. ‘Timing. Luck. You. The truth.’

Only for an instant did she lower her eyes, fingers of one hand sliding between those of the other then out again. ‘Adrian,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Get me some water, would you? There’s some in the fridge in…’ But Costain had already gone to do her bidding.

‘I had Alicia — Alicia, that’s her name — when I was fifteen. Fifteen years and ten months. The year before I’d been runner-up in the National Under-Sixteens at Hove. I was on the fringes of the county team. I thought if I can get through to the last eight of the Junior Championships this next Wimbledon, I’m on my way. And then there was this lump that wouldn’t go away.’

She paused to judge the effect of what she’d just said.

Costain placed a tumbler of still mineral water in her hand and then retreated back across the room.

‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ Kiley asked.

She looked back at him evenly. ‘I’d already made one bad mistake.’

‘So you asked your sister — that is your sister, isn’t it? In the photo?’ Victoria bobbed her head. ‘You asked your sister to look after her… No, more than that. To say Alicia was hers; bring her up as her own.’

‘Yes.’ In the wide, high-ceilinged room, Victoria’s voice was suddenly very small.

‘And she didn’t mind?’

A shadow passed across Victoria’s eyes. ‘You have to understand. Cathy, that’s my sister, I mean, she’s wonderful, she’s lovely with Alicia, really, but she just isn’t… Well, we’re different, chalk and cheese, she isn’t like me at all, she doesn’t…’ Victoria drank from her glass and went back to balancing it on her knee. ‘All she’s ever wanted was to settle down, have kids, a place of her own. She didn’t want to…’ Victoria sighed. ‘… do anything. She and Trevor, they’d been going steady since she was fifteen; they were saving up to get married anyway. Mum chipped in, help them get started. Trevor, he was bringing in good money by then, Ford’s at Dagenham. Of course, now I can pay towards whatever Alicia needs, I do.’

‘A good percentage of her disposable income,’ Costain interrupted. ‘First-class holiday in Florida last year for the three of them, four weeks.’

‘Cathy and Trevor,’ Kiley said, ‘they haven’t had children of their own?’

Victoria lifted her gaze from Kiley’s face towards the window, where a fly was buzzing haphazardly against the glass. ‘She can’t. I mean, I suppose she could try IVF. But, no, she can’t have children of her own.’

Kiley let the moment settle. ‘And Alicia?’

Victoria’s lower lip slid over the upper and the water glass tipped from hand and knee onto the floor. ‘She thinks I’m her auntie, of course. What else?’

Adrian reached out for her as she ran but she swerved around him and slammed the bedroom door.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

‘I think,’ said Kiley, ‘I need a drink.’

Victoria had been seeing Paul Broughton ever since her fifteenth birthday. Broughton, twenty-three years old, a butcher boy in Leytonstone by day, by night the drummer in a band which might have been the Verve if the Verve hadn’t already existed. A nice East London line on post-Industrial grime and angst. With heavily amplified guitars. After a gig at Walthamstow Assembly Rooms, he and Victoria got careless — either that, or Broughton’s timing was off.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ he said when Victoria told him. ‘What d’you think you’re gonna do? Get rid of it, of course.’

She didn’t waste words on him again. She talked to her mum and her mum, who had some experience in these things, told her not to worry, they’d find a way. Which of them first had the idea about asking Cathy, they could never be sure. Nor how Cathy persuaded Trevor. But there was big sister, half nine to half five in the greetings-card shop and hating every minute. Victoria wore looser clothes, avoided public showers; her sister padded herself out, chucked in her job, practised walking with splayed legs and pain in the lower back. They chose the name together from a book. After the birth — like shelling peas, the midwife said — Victoria held the baby, kissed her close, and handed her across, a smear of blood and mucus on her cheek. Still, sometimes when she woke, she felt a baby’s breath pass warm across her face.

As a Wimbledon junior, she reached the semi-finals before dropping a set, strode out to take the final, as she thought, by right, and went down two and love to the LTA’s new white hope in thirty minutes flat. Costain, who had been monitoring Victoria’s progress, waited till the hurt had eased and offered her a contract, sole representation, which her mother, of course, had to sign on her behalf. Costain’s play: retreat, lie low, for now leave domestic competition alone; he financed winters in Australia, the United States. Wait till they’ve forgotten who you are then hit them smack between the eyes.

So far it had worked.

‘I assume you don’t want to pay?’ Kiley said to Costain. Victoria was still in the bedroom, door locked.

‘Quarter of a million? No, thanks!’

‘But you’d pay something?’

Costain shrugged and pursed his lips; of course he would.

‘Sooner or later, you know it’ll come out.’

‘Of course. I just want to be able to manage it, that’s all. And now… the timing… you can imagine what this company’s going to be saying about their precious image. If they don’t walk away completely, and I think they might, they’ll strip what they’re offering back down to what we’re getting now. Or worse.’

‘You couldn’t live with that?’

‘I don’t want to live with that.’

‘All right, all right. When are they getting in touch again?’

‘Five this evening.’

Kiley looked at his watch. One hour fifteen to go. ‘Try and stall them, buy another twenty-four hours.’

‘They’ll never wear it.’

‘Tell them if they want payment in full, they don’t have any choice.’

‘And if they still say no?’

Kiley rose to his feet. ‘In the event the shit does hit the fan, I assume you’ve damage limitation planned.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you should make sure your plan’s in place.’

‘So what did you think of her?’ Kate asked. ‘Ms Teen Sensation.’

‘I liked her.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

They were lying, half-undressed, across the bed, Kate picking her way through an article by Naomi Klein, seeking something with which to disagree in print. Kiley had been reading one of the Chandlers Kate had bought him for his birthday — give you some idea of how a private eye’s supposed to think — and liking it well enough. Although it was still a book. Before that, they had been making love.

‘You fancied her, that’s what you mean?’

‘No. I liked her.’

‘You didn’t fancy her?’

‘Kate…’

‘What?’ But she was laughing and Kiley grinned back and shook his head and she shifted so that one of her legs rested high across his and he began to stroke her shoulder and her back.

‘You got your extra twenty-four hours,’ Kate said.

‘Apparently.’

‘Is that going to be enough?’

‘If it’s someone close, someone obvious, then, yes. But if it’s somebody outside the loop, there’s no real chance.’

‘And he knows that, Costain?’

Kiley nodded. ‘I’m sure he does.’

‘In which case, why not involve the police?’

‘Because the minute he does, someone inside the force will sell him out to the media before tomorrow’s first edition. You should know that better than me.’

‘Jack,’ she said, smiling, ‘you’ll do what you can.’ And rolled from her side on to her back.

Victoria’s mum, Lesley, was a dead ringer for Christine McVie. The singer from Fleetwood Mac. Remember? Not the skinny young one with the Minnie Mouse voice, but the other one, older, more mature. Dyed blonde hair and lived-in face and a voice that spoke of sex and forty cigarettes a day; the kind of woman you might fancy rotten if you were fifteen, which was what Kiley had been at the time, and you spotted her or someone like her behind the counter in the local chemist or driving past in one of those white vans delivering auto parts, nicotine at her finger ends and oil on her overalls. Rumours. Kiley alone upstairs in his room, listening to the record again and again. Rolling from side to side on the bed, trying to keep his hands to himself.

‘Won’t you come in?’ Lesley Clarke said. She was wearing a leisure suit in pale mauve, gold slippers with a small heel. Dark red fingernails. She didn’t have a cigarette in her hand, but had stubbed it out, Kiley thought, when the doorbell rang; the smell of it warm and acrid on her as he squeezed past into the small lobby and she closed the double-glazed Tudor-style external door and ushered him into the living room with its white leather-look chairs and neat little nest of tables and framed photographs of her granddaughter, Alicia, on the walls.

‘I made coffee.’

‘Great.’

Kiley sat and held out his cup while Lesley poured. Photographs he had expected, but of a triumphant Victoria holding trophies aloft. And there were photos of her, of course, a few, perched around the TV and along the redundant mantelpiece; Cathy, too, Cathy and Trevor on their wedding day. But little Alicia was everywhere and Lesley, following Kiley’s gaze, smiled a smile of satisfaction. ‘Lovely, isn’t she. A sweetheart. A real sweetheart. Bright, too. Like a button.’

Either way, Kiley thought, Victoria or Cathy, Lesley had got what she wanted. Her first grandchild.

‘Vicky bought me this house, did you know that? It’s not a palace, of course, but it suits me fine. Cosy, I suppose that’s what it is. And there’s plenty of room for Alicia when she comes to stay.’ She smiled and leaned back against white vinyl. I always did have a hankering after Buckhurst Hill.’ Unable to resist any longer, she reached for her Benson amp; Hedges, king size. ‘Coffee okay?’

‘Lovely.’ The small lies, the little social ones, Kiley had found came with surprising ease.

They talked about Victoria then, Victoria and her sister, whatever jealousies had grown up between them, festered maybe, been smoothed away. Trevor, was he resentful, did he ever treat Alicia as if she weren’t really his? But Trevor was the perfect dad and as far as money was concerned, since his move to Luton, to Vauxhall, some deal they’d done with the German owners, the unions that is, and Trevor had got himself off the shop floor — well, it wasn’t as if they were actually throwing it around, but, no, cash was something they weren’t short of, Lesley was sure of that.

‘What about Victoria’s father?’ Kiley asked.

Lesley threw back her head and laughed. ‘The bastard, as he’s affectionately known.’

‘Is he still around? Is there any chance he might be involved?’

Lesley shook her head. ‘The bastard, bless him, would’ve had difficulties getting the right stamp on to the envelope, never mind the rest. Fifteen years, the last time I laid eyes on him; working on the oil rigs he’d been, up around Aberdeen. Took a blow to the head from some piece of equipment in a storm and had to be stretchered off. Knocked the last bit of sense out of him. The drink had seen to the rest long since.’ She drew hard on her cigarette. ‘If he’s still alive, which I doubt, it’s in some hostel somewhere.’ And shivered. ‘I just hope the poor bastard isn’t sleeping rough.’

Paul Broughton was working for a record company in Camden, offices near the canal, more or less opposite the Engineer. Olive V-neck top and chocolate flat-front moleskin chinos, close-shaven head and stubbled chin, two silver rings in one ear, a stud, emerald green, at the centre of his bottom lip. A amp; R, developing new talent, that was his thing. Little bands that gigged at the Dublin Castle or the Boston Dome, the Rocket on the Holloway Road. He was listening to a demo tape on headphones when Kiley walked towards him across a few hundred feet of open plan; Broughton’s desk awash with take-away mugs from Caffe Nero, unopened padded envelopes and hopeful flyers.

Kiley waited till Broughton had dispensed with the headphones, then introduced himself and held out his hand.

‘Look,’ Broughton said, ignoring the hand, ‘I told you on the phone-’

‘Tell me again.’

‘I ain’t seen Vicky in fuckin’ years.’

‘How many years?’

‘I dunno. Four, five?’

‘Not since she told you she was carrying your child.’

‘Yeah, I s’pose.’

‘But you’ve been in touch.’

‘Who says?’

‘Once you started seeing her picture in the paper, those ads out on the street. Read about all that money she was bringing in. And for what? It wouldn’t have been difficult to get her number, you used your mobile, gave her a call.’

Broughton glared back at him, defiant. ‘Bollocks!’ And then, ‘So what if I did?’

‘What did she tell you, Paul? The same as before? Get lost.’

‘Look, I ain’t got time for this.’

‘Was that when you thought you’d put the bite on her, a little blackmail? Get something back for treating you like shit?’

Broughton clenched his fists. ‘Fuck off! Fuck off out of here before I have you thrown out. I wouldn’t take money from that stuck-up tart if it was dripping out of her arse. I don’t need it, right?’

‘And you don’t care she had your child against your will, kept her out of your sight?’

Broughton laughed, a sneer ugly across his face. ‘You don’t get it, do you. She was just some cunt I fucked. End of fuckin’ story.’

‘She was barely fifteen years old,’ Kiley said.

‘I know,’ Broughton said, and winked.

Kiley was almost halfway towards the door before he turned around. Broughton was sitting on the edge of his desk, headphones back in place, watching him go. Kiley hit him twice in the face with his fist, hauled him back up on to his knees and hit him once more. Then left. Perhaps it shouldn’t have made him feel a whole lot better, but it did.

They’d bought a nice house on the edge of Dunstable, with views across the Chiltern Hills. They’d done well. Alicia was in the back garden, on a swing. The apple trees were rich in fruit, the roses well into bloom. Cathy stood by the French windows, gazing out. Her expression when Kiley had arrived on the doorstep had told him pretty much all he needed to know.

Trevor was in the garage, tinkering. Tools clipped with precision to the walls, tools that shone with pride of ownership and use. Kiley didn’t rush him, let him take his time. Watched as Trevor tightened this, loosened that.

‘It’s the job, isn’t it?’ Kiley eventually said.

Trevor straightened, surprised.

‘You sold up, left friends, invested in this place. Not just for Cathy and yourself. For her, Alicia. A better place to grow up, country, almost. A big mortgage, but as long as the money’s coming in …’

‘They promised us,’ Trevor said, not looking at Kiley now, staring through the open door towards the trees. ‘The Germans, when we agreed the deal. Jobs for life, that’s what they said. Jobs for sodding life. Now they’re closing down the plant, shifting production to Portugal or Spain. No longer economic, that’s us.’ When he did turn, there were tears in his eyes. ‘They bent us over and fucked us up the arse and all this bastard government did was stand by with the Vaseline.’

Kiley put a hand on his shoulder and Trevor shrugged it off and they stood there for a while, not speaking, then went inside and sat around the kitchen table drinking tea. Alicia sat in Cathy’s lap, playing with her mother’s hair. Her mother: that’s what she was, what she had become.

‘You could have asked,’ Kiley said. ‘Asked Victoria outright, explained.’

‘We’ve tried before,’ Cathy said bitterly. ‘It’s hateful, like pulling teeth.’

Trevor reached across and gave her lower arm a squeeze. ‘Vicky’s not the problem,’ he said, ‘not really. It’s him, the money man.’

‘Costain?’

Trevor nodded.

‘Leave him to me,’ Kiley said. ‘I’ll make sure he understands.’

‘Mum,’ Alicia said. ‘Let’s read a book.’

Trevor walked Kiley down the path towards his hired car, stood with one hand resting on the roof. The sun was just beginning to fade in the sky. ‘I’d go round to their house,’ he said. ‘Evenings, you know, when I was seeing Cathy, and she’d be there. Victoria. I doubt she was much more than fourteen then.’ He sighed and kicked at the ground with his shoe. ‘She could’ve put a ring through my nose and had me crawling after her, all fours around the room.’ Slowly, he drew air down into his lungs. ‘You’re right, it’s nice out here. Quiet.’

The two men shook hands.

‘Thanks,’ Trevor said. ‘I mean it. Thanks a lot.’

Kiley didn’t see Victoria Clarke until the following year, the French Open. He and Kate had travelled Eurostar to Paris for the weekend, stayed in their favourite hotel near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Kate had a French author to interview, a visit to the Musee d’Art Moderne planned; Kiley thought lunch at the brasserie across from Gare du Nord, then a little tennis.

Costain, buoyant after marshalling Victoria’s advertising contract safely through, had struck a favourable deal with Cathy and Trevor: five per cent of Victoria’s gross income to be paid into a trust fund for Alicia, an annual payment of ten thousand pounds towards her everyday needs, this sum to be reviewed; as long as Trevor remained unemployed, the shortfall on the mortgage would be picked up. In exchange, a secrecy agreement was sworn and signed, valid until Alicia reached eighteen.

On court at Roland Garros, rain threatened, the sky a leaden grey. After taking the first set six-two, Victoria was struggling against a hefty left-hander from Belarus. Concentration gone, suddenly she was double-faulting on her serve, over-hitting her two-fisted backhand, muttering to herself along the baseline. Five all and then the set had gone, unravelled, Victoria slump-shouldered and staring at the ground. The first four games of the final set went with serve and Kiley could feel the muscles across his shoulders knot as he willed Victoria to break clear of whatever was clouding her mind, shake free. It wasn’t until she was four-three down that it happened, a skidding return of serve whipped low across the net and some instinct causing her to follow it in, her volley unplayable, an inch inside the line. After that, a baseline smash that tore her opponent’s racket from her hand, a topspin lob judged to perfection; finally, two aces, the first swinging away unplayably, the second hard down the centre line, and she was running to the net, racket raised to acknowledge the applause, a quick smile and touch of hands. On her way back to her chair, she glanced up to where Kiley was sitting in the stands, but if she saw him she gave no sign.

When he arrived back at the hotel, Kate was already there, damp from the shower, leaning back against the pillows with a book. The shutters out on to the balcony were partway open.

‘So?’ Kate said as Kiley shrugged off his coat. ‘How was it?’

‘A struggle.’

‘Poor lamb.’

‘No call to be bitchy.’

Kate poked out her tongue.

Stretched out on the bed beside her, Kiley bent his head. ‘Are you reading that in French?’

‘Why else d’you think I’m moving my lips?’

The skin inside her arm was taut and sweet.