‘Half of everything? I'll give you half!' he had roared, when she finally confessed that all those late nights hadn't been down to ‘finishing a project' after all. He'd started to divide their furniture all right. He'd got as far as slicing two dining-room chairs down the middle then realized he was scaring himself more than he was Diane.
‘No!' said Stevie, horrified but sympathetic.
‘Yes. I regret my outburst now. Only because she ran off with my wee cat, though – och he was great, I loved him a load. She took him and then she gave him away, can you believe? She just didnae want me to have him. Diane was so cold, and then along came Jo with her "vulnerability" and her soft words, just when I needed them most.' As he was telling this to Stevie, Adam realized just how much of a gift Jo had when it came to manipulating men. She had played to his insecurities; that initial warmth she had used to reel him in had chilled by a few degrees every day to keep him interested, to keep him on the begging end of her attention. ‘The rest, as they say, is history.'
‘Crap at picking partners, aren't we?' said Stevie. ‘I once went out with a policeman who was knocking off grannies behind my back.'
‘I can beat that. My first proper girlfriend said she wouldn't sleep with me unless I covered my hair up with a shower cap.'
‘I can understand that, though.'
‘Och, you cheeky wee … '
He leapt on her playfully and she shrieked with laughter, and suddenly the words and sounds dropped away because there was no more need for them, and his hands were cradling her face, and his lips started an achingly slow descent to hers as if he was scared she would push him away, but she didn't. Her heart was pumping some weird chemical around her system that was making her drunk with smiley feelings. The air around them was still as if it too was holding its breath. Adam's lips brushed Stevie's teasingly and she thought she was going to explode if they didn't come into land, like now.
Then someone knocked on the bloody door, and kept knocking.
Chapter 51
‘Matthew, whatever's the matter?' asked Stevie, forced to answer the door before he bashed it down. He looked terrible: bleached and distressed, and his hair was stuck up like Ken Dodd's.
‘Can I have a quiet word, Stevie?' He looked past Stevie to Adam, who melted into the background, leaving them to it.
‘What is it?'
‘Can you come across the road, please?'
Stevie looked horrified at him. ‘Over there? No, I can't. Why?'
‘Jo and I are finished.'
‘What?' Stevie's head started swimming with shock.
She looked behind her. Adam wasn't there, but she knew he must have heard what Matthew had just said. She wanted to go and find him, and see what that piece of information had done to him. Then again she didn't. Jo was free. It was obvious what it would mean to him.
‘Please, Stevie!'
Despite the frustration in her heart and her body, she couldn't say no. She couldn't have deserted anyone in that state. Except Jo, maybe. She could make an exception in her case.
She slipped on her shoes, took another look behind her and followed Matthew across the road.
‘I don't want to go in there,' she said, as he opened up the door.
‘Please. There's no way she'll be coming here again,' he said, and disappeared inside. Cautiously, she went in behind him, feeling a prickle at the back of her neck as if Adam was watching her.
It felt odd to be in the house. It was as if she had never lived there, but remembered it from old photos. It was horribly untidy and there was a film of dust everywhere that gave the room a dull, dead appearance. She half-expected to see Miss Haversham covered in cobwebs sitting in the wing chair with a big spidery wedding cake.
‘Stevie, I'm sorry, I just don't have anywhere else to turn.' He was walking up and down in front of her, overdosed with nervous energy.
‘Matthew, sit down, please. Start from the beginning.'
‘I don't know where the beginning of this mess is. I've been sacked. Jo's left me. I came home today and all her stuff had gone. I don't know what to do.'
Stevie gulped. Jo had left him. Would she try to come back to Adam then? Would she walk straight back into that soft, forgiving part of his heart that was forever reserved for her? Stevie felt panicky and wanted to go back to the cottage. She stood up to go, but then Matthew started to make strange groaning noises and she knew she couldn't leave him.
‘Why have you been sacked, Matthew?'
‘For harassing Jo. Yes, don't look at me like that. I know what you're going to say.'
‘I don't understand.'
‘I think Jo has been spreading stories at work that I've been hitting her.'
‘You hitting her?' Anyone who knew Matthew wouldn't believe that, surely. Then again, people judged on hearsay – wasn't she herself testament to that?
‘It gets worse. I'm also, apparently, a sexual predator.'
‘Why would she say things like that?'
‘I think she got the idea that I had more money than I actually have.' He looked shifty at that point. ‘When she found out I was broke, things changed. She started … Oh God! That's why!'
Matthew slapped his forehead as the realization of what all that rough sex was about hit him like a bullet to the brain. The bruises! That was why she wanted him to bite her. How thick was he not to have seen it?
‘What, Matthew?'
‘She started asking me for … ' What a knob I am!
‘For what?'
Matthew blanched. This really wasn't the sort of thing Stevie should hear. But he was desperate, and to get the right sort of help, he needed to tell her everything. Just as if she was a sort of heart bank manager in the mould of Robert.
‘Rough sex. She wanted me to hurt her.'
Stevie shifted a little uncomfortably. It felt weird, listening to details of his intimacies with someone else. She couldn't tell if it hurt; her feelings were too mixed-up to pick out any pure emotions.
‘And did you?'
‘No, of course not! Although … '
‘What?' she encouraged eventually, after no details were forthcoming.
‘I gave her a love bite, here' – he indicated the place on his own chest – ‘it looked pretty nasty. But it wasn't a real bite. And we both got a few bruises from banging into walls and falling off the bed and things. I'm not into that pain stuff, as you know.'
‘But why tell all those lies? Why didn't she just leave you?' asked Stevie, steering the conversation away from the history of their own sex-life.
‘I don't know.'
Unless she had a new lover. Wasn't that what she had done to Adam? Invent cuts and bruises to get the new sucker onside? thought Stevie, in full-on Miss Marple mode.
‘What are you thinking?' said Matthew. He was half-talking, half-hiccuping like Danny did when he was upset.
‘Have you tried ringing her?'
‘She's not answering.'
‘No, she wouldn't,' Stevie said, sourly.
‘I've just secured my house against my job. I'll lose everything.'
‘Why have you done that?'
Matthew sighed and prepared to sacrifice a big chunk of pride.
‘I've got no money, Stevie. No, actually, I've got minus no money. I'm up to my neck in debt.'
And so you took Jo on holiday. With my son's holiday money, Stevie thought, but she didn't say it aloud. However much he might have deserved it, she couldn't kick Matt when he was down. And he was about as down as you could get, by the look of things.
‘Please stay with me for a bit longer,' he said, as she looked eagerly across the road and saw a light switch off. ‘Just ten minutes. Stevie, I've been so stupid. I'm not even sure she was telling the truth about Adam now. Maybe he didn't hit her or do all those things she said he did.'
‘I'm quite positive she lied,' said Stevie. ‘He's a good man.'
‘Can I make you a coffee?' he said, noticing the wistfulness in her voice and therefore changing the subject. He did not want to know how good Adam MacLean was, because Matthew didn't feel like a very good man himself.
‘Just a quick one then,' said Stevie, who didn't want one, but couldn't bear to see someone so lost. Matthew had a long sleepless lonely night in front of him; ten more minutes in his company wouldn't kill her.
‘You can help me, Stevie. I hate to ask but you are the only one who could.'
‘In what way?' she asked cautiously, in case he wanted her to be some intermediary between him and Bitchface.