Chapter Twenty-Four

I don’t know how I managed it, but I slept. When I woke up to a draught poking at me from between the floorboards, I found I’d been covered with Cal’s shirt and my dress and I was lying spreadeagled and alone on the dusty ground. A shape, which could either have been a small mouse or a huge spider, scuttled into a shadowed corner opposite and I crouched to my feet. There was no sign of Cal, apart from the shirt. Stiff and chilly and blurry with sex, I dressed and went downstairs. Darkness had fallen, silvered by the moon, and I could see the barn door standing open. There was an overspill of green glow on the yard cobbles and the silhouetted figure of someone walking up and down inside. Either Cal was working or ET had phoned home.

‘What’s going on?’ Adjusting my dress for length and coverage, I went in. Cal was pacing the hay-strewn floor, barefoot and shirtless, talking urgently and quietly into his headset, the laptop screen was displaying an entire menu of icons in front of him.

‘It … I’ve been … Hold on a second. Someone just came in.’

‘Who, Willow? You get laid, Sandman?’ Cal’s flick of the button was too late to prevent me hearing the voice from the speaker. His grimace of embarrassment made me laugh.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay. They must know you pretty well.’

‘I really meant, sorry about everything. Earlier. I … it wasn’t how I wanted it to be, that’s all. You deserved better.’

‘Wow, you can do better than that?’

He smiled. ‘There should at least have been a bed. Sex on the floor is a bit …’

‘It was fantastic, Cal. Really, really, amazing.’

Now he laughed. ‘Not bad for a lame geek, eh?’

‘Not bad at all.’ It was still happening. Undiluted by the earlier passion, his eyes had the same fascination for me. I’d supposed so far that it was the mystery, the unfathomability of Cal that I found attractive. Now I knew it was so much more than that. ‘Have you found anything else on Luke’s machine?’

‘You are changing the subject.’

‘Well, we could stand here all night and talk about how fabulously sexy you are, but you’re insufferable enough already, so?’

‘No, let’s stand here all night and talk about how fabulously sexy I am. Honestly, you’ll like it far more as a topic.’

‘Why, what did you find?’

‘Letters and emails, all to women. I’ve only just got started, seems like he’s been shagging all over the country.’ Cal tilted the screen towards me. ‘Oh, yeah, and he’s got a file on you, too.’

‘Show me.’

Cal nudged me aside and typed in a password.

‘Sickgirl? His password for my files is Sickgirl? I didn’t even think he knew.’ I scanned down the page. Luke had my address, my family members’ names and jobs, all kinds of things about what I liked and disliked. I blushed to read some of it, but Cal had already found out for himself. ‘The bastard.’

The other women predated my meeting Luke.

‘I wondered how he managed to shake off the credit card people and repay the loans. Companies like that don’t just forget about you, after all.’ Cal was reading over my shoulder. ‘Looks like he found women to pay them off for him. And it seems he proposed to most of them too. Oh, and before you ask, I’ve copied all these files onto my hard drive.’

‘We have to stop him.’ I didn’t realise I’d spoken aloud. ‘He’s used all these women. Somewhere out there there’s women feeling like I do, and he doesn’t even care. He’s just kept paying off his debts, dumping the women and leaving.’ I met Cal’s eyes. ‘We have to stop him.’

‘How? He’s got away with it so far, and I’m sure most of these women’ – Cal flicked the screen – ‘felt exactly the same when they found that he’d skipped out with their wallets. No one’s managed to bring him down yet.’

‘But they didn’t have proof,’ I said. ‘They didn’t have this.’ I copied Cal and flicked the screen. ‘I bet every one of these women thought they were the only one and felt stupid when they found out they’d been fooled. Or maybe they never did. Maybe he got the cash and then broke up with them, like here. “I need some space, some time to myself, so I’m going to work in Africa. I’ll call you when I get back from the Missionary Hospital.” Yeah right. He can’t even cope with the missionary position, never mind the hospital.’

‘Oh, badmouth him again. It makes me feel good.’

‘Good? In comparison, you’re a bloody saint.’

Cal raised an eyebrow and thrust his pelvis forward in a very unsaintly gesture. Unfortunately he spoiled the effect by having to grab at the wall so as not to fall. ‘Wonder if Patron Saint of Nerds is still vacant?’

‘Not sure, but I think Patron Saint of Cocky Bastards might be available.’ As I looked up at him, he grinned and, if his smiles before had lit up his surroundings, this one illuminated several acres.

‘Can you blame me? I mean, really, Willow, can you? Look at yourself. You’re beautiful, you’re any man’s idea of sexy and you’ve slept with me. I can hardly get my head around it.’

‘Cal. You and I—’ I wasn’t even sure myself how I’d been going to finish that sentence. I just wanted him to stop doing himself down so much.

‘Please, don’t.’ The smile died and the pain crept back, inching onto his face. ‘Don’t say it. Just let me have these dreams. Don’t let real life come into it, not yet.’ One hand reached out, fingers traced down the side of my cheek. ‘Let me pretend,’ he whispered.

A whistling noise made both of us flinch. High-pitched, it couldn’t fail to attract attention and his hand fell away from my face. ‘What is it?’ My voice came out small, uncertain.

‘The guys. Sorry, Willow, I’m on something right now I’ve got to finish. I’ll run you home when I’m done, okay?’ As he spoke he picked up the headset, slid it on. ‘Do you want to take the laptop inside and read through everything?’

What else was there to do?

How many others had there been? The emails and laptop dated back about two years. But from what I remembered of Zakalwe’s research, Luke had vanished off the bad-debt radar several years ago. That meant that all these women, and so far I’d counted nine, were only the tip of the iceberg. Presumably he was keeping their details so that he never found himself backtracking – there must be whole areas of Britain he could never go to again in case someone recognised him. Unless he changed his appearance. I had a momentary hot flush as I realised that Luke might have purposefully made himself over to look like he had when we’d been at university, to draw me in further. Maybe he’d done the same with other women, found out their fantasy crushes and given himself that ‘look’. Easier with me, of course, since he’d been that fantasy …

Things came back to me. Our first date, in the restaurant, when his mobile had rung and he’d refused to answer it, then been called on the restaurant phone. And he’d told me it was James. How would James have known where Luke was? It had been the other woman, the one I’d started to think of as Luke’s real girlfriend, hadn’t it? ‘Dee-Dee’ or whatever the poor woman found herself answering to. He must have spun her some line about entertaining a client, covering himself in case someone saw us and reported back. Was that what he’d always told her? Was that why he’d never worried about us being seen together? No wonder then that he’d taken so long to get around to sex with me, he must have had to make sure he’d got his story straight, given himself plausible reasons to be away for weekends. Then there was the flat. He’d rented it. Never intended to buy. I was sure I’d never been meant to find that out. All that stuff about a friend who made designer furniture. That five grand I’d handed over to ‘buy a handmade bed’. The careful, concealed questions about the progress of Ganda’s invention. The texts from his alleged mother. Now that I knew about Luke, everything began to slot into place. It had all been about the money. Somehow he’d known about the money. All that garbage about fancying me at uni … It had all been about the money.

I was crying again. I thought I’d done all my crying over Luke Fry by now, but it couldn’t be helped. Not only had he lied about his life, but he’d lied about me. How attractive had he found me, really? All the time I’d been building a relationship with him, planning for our future, he’d known we didn’t have one. What a bastard. And now I wasn’t crying for myself, I was crying for all of us, with our ruined dreams and unused wedding dresses, for all the broken promises and shattered hearts, and I knew that I owed it not just to myself, but to all the lonely, deserted women out there, to nail the fucker to the wall.