‘It's what Jo told us about you.'
‘Jo?' He paled. ‘You spoke to Jo? When?'
‘Lots of times.'
‘What do you mean?'
Stevie sighed. It was like trying to get an octopus back in a bag. She wouldn't be able to do it. It would be better to let it all out and stop struggling against it.
‘Matthew and Jo got friendly at work,' Stevie began.
‘Aye, I know. You two weren't getting on.'
‘What?'
‘That's what Jo told me. That you two were going through a rough patch.' He didn't see the need to tell her that apparently she was also dirty and lazy and a terrible mother. She would spontaneously combust.
‘Jo said what?' Stevie's mouth dropped so far open, it was in danger of crushing her foot. ‘God, this just gets better and better. We were fine! The reason he befriended her is because you … you … made her unhappy!'
‘In what way?' Now it was Adam's turn to look shocked.
‘She never stopped crying! I felt so sorry for her.'
‘You met her?' He was breathless.
‘She rang for Matthew one day, too scared to go home to you. I told her to come around to the house.'
‘Scared – of me? What on earth for?'
‘She was terrified. Shaking when she got here.'
‘But she never said she met you!'
‘Adam, we became friends, we went shopping together – I made her tea whilst she read to Danny. I even let her see my wedding dress. She was on our guest list!'
‘Friends? She said Matthew loathed you!'
‘She said you took all her money!'
‘She said he'd called off the marriage but you were carrying on with the arrangements regardless!'
‘She said you put her through hell with the names you called her!'
‘She said you used to get drunk and throw things at Matthew!'
‘She said you used to smack her around!'
The words hung in the air like a discordant bell. Of all the lies Adam MacLean was hearing, he found this one hard to stomach most of all. Not after all he had seen as a child, the way his daddy laced into his mammy and he had to stand there and witness it all with his arms around his crying sisters, fearful in case his mammy died but scared to move in case he got hurt too. He never quite lost the guilt of thinking of his own needs, even though he was only a wee boy.
‘Stevie, I've never laid a hand on a woman in my life,' he said. A shock of tears sprang involuntarily to his eyes and he wiped them away, embarrassed. ‘The reason I got together with Jo in the first place was to rescue her from some crazy guy that she was living with. He'd kicked her in the leg and she was limping. I found her crying outside the gym where I worked before this one.'
Stevie gulped. ‘Top of her left thigh?'
‘Aye,' he said.
‘She said you did that.'
‘Me!' He spun around, his voice booming, his bulk filling half the room, but he still didn't look in the least bit harmful. ‘I cannae hit anyone. Look at the size o' me. I'd kill anyone I hit!'
‘So you've not been in Barlinnie?'
‘Barlinnie?' Adam laughed through the tears. ‘Whit the hell for?'
‘GBH.'
‘Grievous Bod … ? Stevie, they wouldnae give me a job at Well Life sweeping flairs if I'd mair than three points on my driving licence! I've never been in a jail in my life. I've no' even hed so much as a parking ticket!' He dropped to the sofa. ‘I can't believe aw this,' he said, rubbing his head with his huge hands, though it brought him no comfort. He had trusted Jo with all the horrors of his early life and she had used it against him. He really had been a fool. Would he ever learn?
Stevie had the overwhelming desire to go to him and touch him, hold him. She knew he had been hurt by her revelations. Never had she seen even the slightest intimation that Adam was the man that Jo had painted him to be, though she knew she had wanted to see him like that, because then she could blame him for what had happened and not her darling Matthew. Eddie had been right all along when he asked, what sort of a possessive psycho was it that let his wife go for away for a week to a health spa. They'd both been had. And Matthew was still being had. Should she tell him? What difference would it make, though? Hadn't Catherine tried to tell her what a bastard Mick Rook was? And had she believed her? No, nor would she have done, not even if Mick had had I am a bastard, stay away stickers plastered indelibly over every part of his anatomy.
‘I'm sorry, Adam, I don't know what to believe any more.'
‘Stevie, I'm no wife-batterer, I can tell you that. Is this true? Is this really what she said, because I don't know what to believe any more either.'
Stevie nodded slowly.
‘Ah well, that explains a few things,' said Adam with weary resignation. ‘I wondered why Matty Boy was wagging his finger at me, telling me no' to hurt you, and no' tae spend all your money.' His brain zapped to thoughts of mutual friends who no longer called, and a fresh wave of hurt engulfed him. ‘I can't believe people think I'm that sort of guy. Catherine and Eddie – they know all this?'
Stevie gave another nod.
He looked cut down, felled like a big tree that wouldn't ever get up again.
‘Well, if you think there is the slightest danger to you and your child from me, maybe it would be better if I just got out of your life totally tomorrow. We'll forget our plan and you get Matthew back your way. I don't think it will be long, for the record.'
‘Okay,' said Stevie with a croaky voice. She didn't want him to go, but she needed space. She needed to get away from thoughts of Adam MacLean's lips on her arm and the feel of her hand inside his. ‘I think that might be for the best.'
Chapter 47
Adam lay on the treatment table and groaned in pain. He had thought a Sunday-morning Kahuna session at the gym might help to ease the tension in his back and neck and shoulders, if not take away the knot in his head. He never expected that the tiny South African masseuse Simone could be capable of such brutality.
‘My God, is it supposed to hurt that much?' he gasped as the points of her elbows pierced his kidneys. He could hardly breathe. She should have had SS embroidered on her tunic, not WL.
‘You have a lot of crunchy bits, Adam,' said Simone. ‘I need to shift 'em'. Boy, you're tense!'
It was the sort of massage Stevie would have liked to perform on him, he thought. One that hurt lots. Then thoughts of Stevie rubbing oil in his back ran on ahead of him, her small hands kneading his muscles, her fingers tripping up and down his spine. Then he would reciprocate and dribble the warm scented oil onto her body and smooth it over her soft curves, his thumbs circling her skin and making her groan. A mutinous body part stirred and he groaned inwardly. Och naw, that wasnae supposed to happen at all! Then he knew why he had said ‘no' when Joanna MacLean had turned up at the gym and asked then pleaded, then begged to come home.
As Stevie was preparing the last meal she would share with Adam MacLean in this beautiful house, she saw Matthew through the window walking back home with an armful of Sunday newspapers. He looked like an old man with the cares of the world on his shoulders. Her heart lurched in his direction, in love or pity or both, she couldn't tell. How was it that she could write about feelings so incisively for her characters, but when it came to her own she was such a mess? Her emotions were like a big ball of wool that had been snagged and ripped and tangled by a very vicious cat.
Danny was colouring at the table. Stevie pulled his Dannyman collar out of his mouth.
‘You'll suck all the dye out of your shirt and end up being blue like an alien, would you like that?'
‘Wow, yeah!' he said, which hadn't been the answer she had expected.
‘I give up. Suck your collar then, Danny, and don't come crying to me when you go blue,' she said impatiently.
She turned her attention to the Yorkshire pudding mix. The flour rose up in a big cumulous cloud as the beaters hit it, blew it up her nose and made her sneeze. Adam, newly arrived in the doorway, hid the little smile that came because he was suddenly catapulted back to the first time he had seen her. It surprised him because he thought it would be a long time until he smiled again. His back was in pain from the Kahuna, his head was in pain from thinking of Jo's treachery. But it was his heart that pained him most of all.
‘Have you seen a big bunch of keys, Stevie? I've put them down somewhere.'