‘Don’t wor-’
‘Don’t worry? Precious – the girl he beat up at the club – she died today, Dad. She died. And now he’s got Mum.’
‘We’ll get her back,’ said Max.
‘We will,’ said Alberto, taking Layla’s arm. She flinched away from him. Max looked at them both. He had never seen Layla react like that with Alberto before.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she snapped.
Max gave a nod to Tony to follow with Junior, and he hustled Molly into the drawing room. Alberto and Layla followed.
‘Go and check Paul’s OK,’ Max flung back at Bri.
Bri hurried to obey.
‘Precious told me…’ Before she died. Layla took a breath and started again.
This day had been horrendous, exhausting. She couldn’t remember ever having a worse one. It was agony and joy and terrible disappointment, all churning together. Her head hurt. And her heart ached too – both for the loss of Precious and at the painful discovery of how little she really meant to the man she loved.
Do you know how many women throw themselves at me in the space of a year? he’d asked her. Like she was just one in a long line of easy lays. Nothing special. To be used, and discarded.
Now she couldn’t get her mind off the image of her mother, her mum, being held by that bastard Malone. She couldn’t stop thinking about the things a man like that, a man who would happily beat a woman to the point of death, could do to her mother.
‘Take your time,’ said Alberto. ‘Just breathe steadily.’
She thought of Precious and her heart-brain exercise, and wanted to weep all over again.
‘Precious told me that he beat her up to send a message to us, to the Carters,’ she said. ‘And now he’s got Mum…’
Max was standing by the mantelpiece, Alberto alongside him. Shooting Junior a venomous look that should have killed him on the spot, Max growled, ‘If he hurts her, you will pay the price.’
‘Look, all I did was little things, I told you. He just paid me.’
‘If you wanted or needed money, why didn’t you talk to Annie? She’d have given it to you like a shot.’
‘Oh yeah,’ sneered Junior. ‘Lady Bountiful, the great Annie Carter.’
‘You little shit.’
And you won’t touch me,’ said Junior with sullen resentment. ‘’Cos if you did, she’d throw a fit.’
Max was across the room in a second, yanking Junior to his feet by his shirtfront. ‘Yeah? Well, she’s not here. I am. And you, boy, are starting to get on my fucking nerves.’
‘Where would he take her?’ asked Alberto of no one in particular.
Max glanced at Alberto, then shoved the quivering Junior back down on to the sofa.
‘Who knows,’ said Max. ‘Not Partyland. The place on the marshes? Would he go back there?’