Grace

 

I greeted my sister with open arms and a screeching heart as her car pulled into the car park, needing the sibling companionship right then like I needed air. I hugged her tight enough as she stepped out of the driver’s seat that she made a joke of it, patting my back like I’d lost my mind as her girls ran on to Brett and told him how many sandcastles they were going to build.

“Are you alright, sis?” she asked, pulling away with a smile like mine and quizzing me with eyes that knew all too well how to read my secrets.

I hoped she wouldn’t manage it this time.

“I’m alright,” I told Sarah and she raised an eyebrow.

“We need some sisterly one on one time, I think,” she said. “And maybe a nice chilled bottle of white.”

I laughed, nodding like a lunatic as I slung an arm around her shoulder and grabbed one of her overnight cases with the other. “Wine and time sound divine.”

Brett had already set the girls up with lemonades and neon straws when we dropped the cases in the bar and took a seat on stools right next to them. Their happy chatter was a blissful relief, exactly the tension reliever we needed. I could see it beaming in Brett’s eyes just as bright as I felt it in mine.

Family. There was nothing like it.

We could do well to remember that when the spikes started prickling from the shadows.

Sarah was just a bit younger than me, an accident of our parents by all accounts, but the best possible one. Her hair hung in waves like mine, her eyes a bit darker but twinkling with the same little glint of life mine did when I was on form.

I knew she’d have a million questions I’d avoided by phone. Questions about our hotel neighbour dilemma and how the hell we got our hands on enough cash to pay her back in one lump sum.

I’d been contemplating how much to tell her, but as she took a sip of her own lemonade through a neon straw to match the girls, I knew it was a redundant line of thought.

She’d know everything by the time she left in the morning, maybe bar the grosser details of the filth our deviant guest had put me through.

“How’s Doug?” Brett asked as he grabbed himself a bottled water from the fridge. “Off on some techy course somewhere?”

Sarah nodded. “Tech and male bonding, I think. All the guys from his office have gone.”

I liked Doug, we both did. He was stable and kind and everything you’d ever want in a brother-in-law with two young kids and a mortgage to take care of.

“Dad said he’d come next time and build a sand dragon,” Amy chirped up from two stools along.

“Oh yeah?” Brett asked. “Well in that case maybe we’ll have to build a sand dragon in the meantime, set a high bar for your dad’s sand sculpting skills to live up to. He likes a challenge.”

I laughed at the girls’ frantic nodding, falling in love with my husband all over again in that one beautiful heartbeat.

We weren’t dead. Not even close. He was still everything to me, just as I knew I was everything to him when he smiled right back at me.

This was just… a rough day at sea. Maybe a rough few weeks of it. The clouds would clear and the water would calm and we’d be right back on deck enjoying the sunshine, we just needed to believe it.

I did believe it, with all my heart. It was just sometimes the grey of the storm seemed too threatening to pass by and leave us unscathed.

Sarah must have caught the look passing between us, letting out a happy sigh as she shook her head.

“You guys. Always so in love. Just wait til you’ve got kids to steal all your time from the lovey dovey stuff.”

“Ewww,” the girls groaned, whispering how gross lovey dovey stuff was.

They were growing up, too fast. Eight and six on their last birthdays, proper little girls now, even though they fancied themselves more like teens.

Being around them transported me back to a forgotten world of our own, kids living life in a small town like it was the whole universe and we were orbiting planets colliding in school-yard chaos. Always so much school-yard chaos.

Polly Piper came to my mind in a flash. I couldn’t ask Sarah about her, not with Brett and the girls in earshot, so I choked it back for later, focusing instead on the cool-uncle grin my husband had always been a natural with.

“How about the beach?” I said. “Elaine is here on laundry duty for the next few hours so we can all make a break for it.”

The kids didn’t need much encouragement, dropping from their seats and diving in the cases for supplies before I’d even finished speaking. I was glad they were a distraction as Sarah dropped down after them to load them up with warm layers. I was all too aware how our staff was still barely skeletal in this place. Just a part-time housekeeper and nobody but Brett in the kitchen.

You didn’t need the glowing lights of a huge new hotel complex down the road to let you know we were in trouble. This place screamed it loud in its quiet. Without Heath’s money in our account our quest for a perfect coastal life would be in the dirt already, bills too chunky to manage with two of us working the beast of this to the bone, plucking off scraps of flesh with every passing week the vacancies sign hung bold on the front porch.

I called up to Elaine before we left for the front, letting her know to keep an ear out for the reception bell before grabbing a coat of my own. The wind was brisk and breezy, inflating my lungs with a cool breath of life as I braced myself for the descent to the sand.

Brett was already out there, barefoot as he chased the girls down with buckets and spades. They set themselves up on the perfect belt of damp sand, well out of earshot of two sisters gossiping, and Sarah wasted no time as she unrolled her bamboo beach mat and planted her ass on one side of it.

It felt the most natural thing in creation to drop down alongside her and stare at her girls enjoying themselves with a glistening sea backdrop.

“You’d better start talking,” she said. “You’ve been more evasive than I’ve ever known you these past few weeks.”

I couldn’t hold back the smile. “Doug’s not on a course, is he?”

She laughed the laugh I knew so well. “He’s back this evening. It’s a day thing. I just thought it was a good excuse to pay a visit.”

“I’m alright,” I lied, shooting her a look that tried to convince her. “Things are just…”

“Weird as all hell?” she asked as I paused. “Are you pregnant or something?”

That really did make me laugh out loud. “Fuck, sis, I hope not.”

She raised an eyebrow. “But you and Brett–”

“Definitely don’t want kids at the moment,” I finished. “Things are a little up in the air for that kind of pressure.”

My heart did a flip even as I said it, eyes soaking up the way he called the girls so close and helped them with their spades. He was born to be a dad. Much better cut out for it than his dad ever was.

“Please tell me you didn’t get the cash from that dodgy lender in Tenby Brett told Doug about when he was pissed at Christmas.”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that.”

“Then what?” she asked, and I knew it was now or never.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” she insisted. “Did you sell a kidney, or agree to be a surrogate for money? Maybe you won it from some criminal gambling ring, or pimped out Brett for dirty cash.”

She was joking, but I wasn’t as my eyes met hers.

“Not Brett,” I said, and her grin dried up as she clocked my meaning.

“Are you for fudging real?!”

I loved her responsible parent substitutes for curse words, and my amusement eased the tension a little as I nodded.

“The guy I asked you about a few weeks ago, from London. Thomas Heath. He was a guest who rolled on up here and offered us fifty grand for a night with me.”

She started so hard she left the mat, spinning to her side to face me with her mouth open wide. “Holy shit, Grace. You took the money?”

I guessed the shock was too much for curse substitutes this time.

The smile on my face felt weird as I shrugged. “How could I not?”

It took her a full minute of staring dumb before she spoke again. “I can’t believe it. It’s like that dirty film where the guy pays a million dollars for a night with that architect’s wife.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t think it would be us actually doing it one day. Who the hell ever comes along and offers you a stupid sum of money for something like that?”

“Thomas Heath from London, it seems.” Her face was still one of utter shock. “He didn’t splash out a cool million though, unfortunately.”

I laughed at the comparison. “And I don’t look like Demi Moore, unfortunately.”

“What the hell did Brett say? I’m surprised he didn’t knock the asshole’s front teeth out.”

“He almost did,” I admitted. “It was close.”

I knew she was struggling to digest all this, but I carried on regardless, outlining the whole sorry story and the negotiations. What he looked like, what he smelled like, and how he kept that smug smirk on his face for days on end.

I left the finer details of the arrangement itself to a point where she seemed immune to any more shock, picking my moment carefully with my eyebrows braced high.

“He demanded Brett watch,” I revealed. “Behind some crappy red-line sensor like something from a sci-fi movie. It was quite ridiculous.”

“I can’t even…” she started. “I’d have wanted a red-line sensor too if I was him, I’d have expected Brett to snap my neck the moment I went anywhere near you, fifty grand or not.”

I stared over at his easy smile as he shaped out a big curved dragon tail in the sand. He didn’t look like he’d snap anyone’s neck, not right then.

My sister scooted a little closer, leaning in tight like she used to in my bedroom as teens when she had gossip to drag out of me.

“So, what was it like? The other guy, I mean. Was he good?”

I opted for honesty. “Too good. Better than good. So fucking good that Brett’s now got an inferiority complex and I feel like a useless piece of shit.”

I laid out my own crappy performance as well as I could without overloading her with a pile of gross, and she listened with the concentration of a zen master.

“That’s crazy,” she said when I’d finished, and it twanged my heart that she really meant it.

“I couldn’t get him to shoot his load once in nine hours. He got me off about five million times straight,” I reiterated. “I didn’t even know what my name was by the end of it.”

“Lucky cow. I’ve got it good if Doug remembers where my clit is after a long week at the office. I wonder if Thomas Heath would pay me fifty grand for a night having orgasms? Maybe I could pay him instead…”

“Brett thinks he knows us,” I told her. “Fuck knows how.”

She pulled a face as she weighed it up. “Some guy from London with fifty grand to throw at one wild night at the seaside? Doesn’t sound like someone we’ve ever known.”

“Polly Piper,” I said. “Remember I asked you about her? She’s a mutual friend on his social media account.”

“He’s got a profile, has he? How about a profile picture?” she asked, and I rolled my eyes.

It’d taken every ounce of my self-restraint not to revisit his social media account since the moment he’d driven away. In truth, I was scared of Brett seeing my search history and losing his shit all over again.

My fingers were shaking as I keyed Heath’s name into the search bar on my phone. His face pinged up like before, but this time it was several profiles down the page. No mutual friends listed at all.

“Holy living shit,” she said. “He’s gorgeous. Only you would land a hooker deal with a guy from Men’s Monthly.”

“She was here,” I told Sarah, jabbing my thumb at the screen. “Polly Piper, she was right here.”

“Sure you weren’t imagining it?” she quizzed with an eyebrow raised. “He doesn’t look the type to be friends with Polly. She’s been in that bakery since forever.”

But I was sure. Of course I was sure. I’d never been more sure.

“I don’t get it,” I said aloud. “They were friends.”

I looked up Polly’s profile instead and her friends were all visible to me. I tapped his name into her contact listings and it came back no matches.

Sarah snatched the handset from my grip with greedy fingers, scrolling through the names on some quest I wasn’t fully aware of.

“Polly didn’t have many friends at school,” she told me. “I was a say hello in the corridor type of pal, that’s all. She was friends with Thomas Browning, that gawky kid from the south end.”

It didn’t ring any bells, not until she clicked her fingers and coughed up another memory.

“His mum was that woman from Alvington Plastics, the slutty one who used to work with Brett’s folks. Tina something. She went on to work at the grimy café in the square.”

My cheeks chilled and it wasn’t from the wind. “Not Tina Hadley? With the bleached blonde hair and pink lipstick?”

She nodded. “Yeah, that one. She fucked Kelly Brigston’s dad in senior year, remember? Nearly got him a divorce.”

I didn’t remember that little saga, most likely after my time there, but I did remember the history with Brett’s dad. Or rather the lack of it. His parents wouldn’t talk about Tina Hadley, wouldn’t even hear her name.

But that was all beside the point, we weren’t talking about Tom Browning and his friendship with Polly Piper, we were talking about a whole other beast of Thomas. A London typhoon of gut-wrenching ego clothed in perfection itself.

“I can’t see how Polly Piper would know Thomas Heath,” I said. “They don’t seem likely friends.”

“You can say that again,” my sister agreed. “I don’t think Polly’s ever been outside the county.”

I forced another shrug and took my phone back from her. “I guess they aren’t now, anyway. Looks like a dead end.”

But I’d forgotten my sister was as into murder mystery shows as I’d been growing up. Her eyes were sparkling with enthusiasm as the smile lit up her face.

“Never a dead end,” she said and raised her index finger to her temple. “Leave it to me. I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

There was no point shaking my head or telling her to keep her mouth shut, it would never work, not now she was on a mission.

“Be careful,” I said and she raised her hands in feigned offence.

“Would I be anything but?”

I didn’t have an answer for that so I didn’t give one and it was just as well.

Amy and Amber were upon us with barely a breath’s worth of footstep warning, jumping around the place and demanding we go check out their awesome dragon.

Their grins were too damned cute to say no.