John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

‘Then, hush-hush or not, somebody knows.’

‘What?’ Costain said, mouth twisting in a wry grin. ‘You don’t believe in blind luck?’ And, because Victoria Clarke was now walking through the bar towards them, he rose to his feet and smiled a reassuring smile.

She was tall, taller even than Kiley, who knew the stats, had thought, and wore a dark blue warm-up suit, name monogrammed neatly along the sleeve with something close to style. Sports bag slung over one shoulder, hair still damp from the shower and tied back, the only signs of distress were in the hollows of her eyes, the suggestion of a tremor when she shook Kiley’s hand.

‘You want something?’ Costain asked. ‘Mineral water? Juice?’

She shook her head. Standing there devoid of make-up, she almost looked what she was: nineteen.

The envelope lay on the table between two unfinished drinks. ‘I don’t want to talk about this here,’ Victoria said.

‘I thought just-’ Costain began.

‘Not here.’ The voice wasn’t petulant, but firm.

Costain shrugged and, with a glance at Kiley, downed his gin and led the way towards the door.

Costain owned a flat in a mansion block close to the Thames — in fact, he owned several between there and the Cromwell Road — and for the past several months it had been Victoria’s home. Near enough to Queen’s for her to hit every day.

‘You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ she said.

Kiley moved an armful of discarded clothing and a paperback copy of Navratilova’s life story. The room resembled a cross between a Conran window and the left luggage department at Euston station.

Victoria left them to each other’s company and re-emerged some minutes later in a pale cotton top and faded jeans, hair brushed out and a little make-up around the eyes.

Sitting in an easy chair opposite Kiley, she tucked as much of her long legs beneath her as she could. ‘Can you help?’ She had a way of looking directly at you when she spoke.

‘It depends.’

‘On what?’

Kiley shook his head. ‘Timing. Luck. You. The truth.’

Only for an instant did she lower her eyes, fingers of one hand sliding between those of the other then out again. ‘Adrian,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Get me some water, would you? There’s some in the fridge in…’ But Costain had already gone to do her bidding.

‘I had Alicia — Alicia, that’s her name — when I was fifteen. Fifteen years and ten months. The year before I’d been runner-up in the National Under-Sixteens at Hove. I was on the fringes of the county team. I thought if I can get through to the last eight of the Junior Championships this next Wimbledon, I’m on my way. And then there was this lump that wouldn’t go away.’

She paused to judge the effect of what she’d just said.

Costain placed a tumbler of still mineral water in her hand and then retreated back across the room.

‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ Kiley asked.

She looked back at him evenly. ‘I’d already made one bad mistake.’

‘So you asked your sister — that is your sister, isn’t it? In the photo?’ Victoria bobbed her head. ‘You asked your sister to look after her… No, more than that. To say Alicia was hers; bring her up as her own.’

‘Yes.’ In the wide, high-ceilinged room, Victoria’s voice was suddenly very small.

‘And she didn’t mind?’

A shadow passed across Victoria’s eyes. ‘You have to understand. Cathy, that’s my sister, I mean, she’s wonderful, she’s lovely with Alicia, really, but she just isn’t… Well, we’re different, chalk and cheese, she isn’t like me at all, she doesn’t…’ Victoria drank from her glass and went back to balancing it on her knee. ‘All she’s ever wanted was to settle down, have kids, a place of her own. She didn’t want to…’ Victoria sighed. ‘… do anything. She and Trevor, they’d been going steady since she was fifteen; they were saving up to get married anyway. Mum chipped in, help them get started. Trevor, he was bringing in good money by then, Ford’s at Dagenham. Of course, now I can pay towards whatever Alicia needs, I do.’

‘A good percentage of her disposable income,’ Costain interrupted. ‘First-class holiday in Florida last year for the three of them, four weeks.’

‘Cathy and Trevor,’ Kiley said, ‘they haven’t had children of their own?’

Victoria lifted her gaze from Kiley’s face towards the window, where a fly was buzzing haphazardly against the glass. ‘She can’t. I mean, I suppose she could try IVF. But, no, she can’t have children of her own.’

Kiley let the moment settle. ‘And Alicia?’

Victoria’s lower lip slid over the upper and the water glass tipped from hand and knee onto the floor. ‘She thinks I’m her auntie, of course. What else?’

Adrian reached out for her as she ran but she swerved around him and slammed the bedroom door.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

‘I think,’ said Kiley, ‘I need a drink.’

Victoria had been seeing Paul Broughton ever since her fifteenth birthday. Broughton, twenty-three years old, a butcher boy in Leytonstone by day, by night the drummer in a band which might have been the Verve if the Verve hadn’t already existed. A nice East London line on post-Industrial grime and angst. With heavily amplified guitars. After a gig at Walthamstow Assembly Rooms, he and Victoria got careless — either that, or Broughton’s timing was off.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ he said when Victoria told him. ‘What d’you think you’re gonna do? Get rid of it, of course.’

She didn’t waste words on him again. She talked to her mum and her mum, who had some experience in these things, told her not to worry, they’d find a way. Which of them first had the idea about asking Cathy, they could never be sure. Nor how Cathy persuaded Trevor. But there was big sister, half nine to half five in the greetings-card shop and hating every minute. Victoria wore looser clothes, avoided public showers; her sister padded herself out, chucked in her job, practised walking with splayed legs and pain in the lower back. They chose the name together from a book. After the birth — like shelling peas, the midwife said — Victoria held the baby, kissed her close, and handed her across, a smear of blood and mucus on her cheek. Still, sometimes when she woke, she felt a baby’s breath pass warm across her face.

As a Wimbledon junior, she reached the semi-finals before dropping a set, strode out to take the final, as she thought, by right, and went down two and love to the LTA’s new white hope in thirty minutes flat. Costain, who had been monitoring Victoria’s progress, waited till the hurt had eased and offered her a contract, sole representation, which her mother, of course, had to sign on her behalf. Costain’s play: retreat, lie low, for now leave domestic competition alone; he financed winters in Australia, the United States. Wait till they’ve forgotten who you are then hit them smack between the eyes.

So far it had worked.

‘I assume you don’t want to pay?’ Kiley said to Costain. Victoria was still in the bedroom, door locked.

‘Quarter of a million? No, thanks!’

‘But you’d pay something?’

Costain shrugged and pursed his lips; of course he would.

‘Sooner or later, you know it’ll come out.’

‘Of course. I just want to be able to manage it, that’s all. And now… the timing… you can imagine what this company’s going to be saying about their precious image. If they don’t walk away completely, and I think they might, they’ll strip what they’re offering back down to what we’re getting now. Or worse.’

‘You couldn’t live with that?’

‘I don’t want to live with that.’