‘Don’t joke about McKenna. He’s no laughing matter. I can’t think what he wants to see us about. Everything’s been sweet for so long.’
‘Yeah.’ Emma thought about this. Sweetness. The easy life. Why couldn’t it always be that way?
In a police station in London, Poppy Livesey sat on a moulded orange plastic chair drinking tea from a machine.
The man beside her put his hand on her thigh.
‘You’re doing the right thing,’ he said, but he said ‘ze right sing’, because he found the ‘th’ sound difficult to pronounce.
‘You never said anything would happen,’ she said woodenly. ‘You said it was research.’
‘These people aren’t good people. I only got involved for your sake, Poppy. I wanted you away from them. You aren’t made for that life.’
‘How do you know what I’m made for? You’ve used me, that’s all. I was a means to an end. And it was a good job. Good money.’
‘Dirty money.’
‘Easy money. Men like to spank me; I like to be spanked. Where’s the harm in that?’
‘It’s a front for other things, Poppy.’ He said her name oddly, the stress on the second syllable. For some reason, that melted her.
‘You think I didn’t know that? It’s none of my business. I feel bad for Allyson and the girls.’
‘Allyson is a pimp, nothing more. She keeps very bad company.’
‘She’s been good to me.’
‘I can be good to you.’
She turned and stared at Bruno.
‘You’ve sold me out.’
‘But for love.’
‘Love?’
She put down the tea before it spilled and stalked out on to the concourse in front of the police station, needing air, even if was black, exhaust-fumed, central London air.
How could that stupid man claim to love her, after one dodgy hook-up during which he’d used her as a snout? She should slap his stupid, attractive French face.
But somehow she couldn’t. The L word had deactivated her slapping hand.
If he loved her perhaps he’d take her to Paris.
If he loved her perhaps he’d marry her.
If he loved her perhaps she might love him back one day.
But was that good enough? Perhaps. It wasn’t as if she had that much to keep her here. Horrible family, horrible past and she’d already dropped out of her university course. Now she was going to lose her job into the bargain, and then her flat and then …
She turned and walked back to where a disconsolate Bruno slumped in his chair, looking as if he could use three days of solid sleep.
‘I’ve got nothing in my life,’ she said to him. ‘So if you want to love me, then I suppose it’s OK.’
He put out his hand and she took it.
She sat beside him and he held her while they waited for something for happen.