‘It’s nothing to do with-’
Sharon interrupted, ‘How could you do it? Your own brother, flesh and blood. That gain you a step up the ladder, did it?’
What the fuck? ‘Who told you?’ Rachel said.
‘That doesn’t matter, what matters-’
‘Who told you?’ Rachel shouted. Sharon was not meant to know. She was a virtual stranger, this woman, and Rachel was certainly not ready to share something so personal, so important, with her. And Sharon hadn’t seen Alison, so…
‘Sean,’ Sharon said, ‘he thought I already knew. I should’ve known. My own daughter dobbing in my own son. Grassing up her little brother.’
Rachel’s cheeks were burning, her chest felt tight. Her hand was shaking as she pointed two fingers, ciggie between them, at Sharon. ‘He killed someone,’ Rachel said.
‘He was looking after you, by all accounts,’ she retorted.
‘By taking a life? By making it look like I put him up to it? I’d have been in there with him if Sean hadn’t found I’d an alibi.’ The taxi driver who had taken a very drunken Rachel home while Dominic was kicking seven shades of shit out of her ex-lover Nick Savage.
‘This fellow, he’d tried to have you killed, Sean says, this lawyer bloke.’
‘That doesn’t make it right,’ Rachel said.
‘Grassing on your family’s not right, neither. Not in my book.’
‘It’s got fuck all to do with you.’
‘I’m still your mother,’ Sharon said. ‘When it suits. Not for twenty years, you weren’t. You can’t be meddling like this.’
‘Meddling! You’re a selfish little shit, Rachel, you always were. And this, this really takes the biscuit.’ She threw her tab end down, snatched up her drink and went inside, heels smacking on the flagstones.
Rachel stared, head raised, blinking back tears. She wasn’t supposed to be here, not like this, not with these people. She’d spent years building a life as different as possible. She’d escaped Langley, escaped her family, and made her own way. But they’d all come crawling after her, zombies who wouldn’t stay buried, determined to drag her back to the fold. Her mother, Dominic, Sean, they wouldn’t let her go. Bloodsuckers. She didn’t want to be that Rachel Bailey, their Rachel Bailey. That wasn’t her any more.
It was hard to breathe, as though there was no air. She looked at the sky above. Only clouds there, sickly orange clouds and nothing else.