Page 10

I drag myself back to the present, forcing myself to smile at Mum.

“I could only get two years residency in Spain, on a student visa. After that, I stayed in the country illegally for a while, which is kind of easy to do there. But I can’t go back now, or at least, not for a while.

And I don’t think it’s fair to be godmother to a baby I can’t see. ”

I take a large mouthful of wine. Then another.

I’m not going to lie. The fact that I’m not there, holding Darya’s hand through labor, is killing me. I also know that if I ever picked her baby up, I’d never be able to leave.

“But you wanted to stay.” Mum’s eyes on me are uncomfortably sharp. “You wanted to be godmother to your friend’s baby?”

I nod. “Yes,” I say quietly. “I wanted that very much.”

“So you’ll go back, then? When the... visa issue is resolved?”

If only it were that simple .

“I don’t think so.” I force a bright smile onto my face. “And anyway, I had to come home sometime, I guess.”

A short silence follows, which Mum finally breaks. “I always wanted to travel.”

I glance at her in surprise. “I never knew that.”

“No.” She stares out over the paddocks. “You wouldn’t. It wasn’t really the way I was raised, you know, to go traveling. Farmers don’t tend to take long holidays.”

She gives me a wry smile, which I return. That much I remember from my childhood.

“Your dad always said you’d come back. I wasn’t so sure, though. I know I... said some things, the last time we spoke.”

“Oh, no!” I put my hand over hers. “It wasn’t your fault, Mum.

I was young—and bloody stupid, if I’m honest. I just wanted to get out of here.

I didn’t care how or to where. But your advice was solid.

You were right to tell me to save some money, even if you were wrong about what I should study.

I just didn’t want to hear advice from anyone, especially not—”

Oops. I bite my lip. Did it again.

“Especially not me.” She nods. “Who’d never been anywhere or done anything.” She glances at me. “I understand that, Abby. I do. I just don’t understand why...” She takes a rather large gulp of wine.

Guilt washes over me.

“Why I didn’t ever contact you after that horrible postcard I sent from Thailand?” My voice is slightly rough.

Mum nods, not looking at me.

“I—there are some things I can’t tell you, Mum.”

She flinches as if I’ve actually struck her.

Fuck. This isn’t how I wanted this to go at all.

“I guess I made some mistakes,” I say hurriedly.

“And once I made them, I wasn’t too sure how to come back.

Then time went on, and I started to think that maybe it was too late to even try.

I don’t know.” I give a small shrug. “I wish I’d done things differently.

But I was dumb, like I said. And I had a really, really shitty boyfriend.

I know that’s no excuse,” I say, relieved when she gives a small laugh.

“But he was awful, and for a long time, I wasn’t thinking for myself at all. ”

Mum gives me a curious glance. “What was his name? Where did you meet him?”

Gah. This is where things get tricky.

“His name was Nicholas.” It’s not a lie, not exactly.

Except for the fact that in France, where he came from, they spell it Nicolas, and everyone, including me, knew him as Nico.

“We met at a full moon party,” I say. “On an island called Ko Pha Ngan in Thailand.”

“A full moon party!” She sits back in her chair, shaking her head in wonder. “How exotic.”

Oh, you have no idea, Suze. I partied for three days straight, all of them sponsored by Nico and Lucky, the island’s friendly drug suppliers.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “It felt like that at the time.”

“Why did you leave, if you liked it so much?”

I lift a shoulder, avoiding her eyes, searching for an answer that isn’t entirely a lie. “Nico was going to South America, and I’d always wanted to see it.”

Nico, smiling at me on a sunset-drenched beach. “Come with me, Abby. I’ve got a contact in South America I can deal for.”

“What about Lucky? Is she coming too?”

“Lucky’s gone, Abs. She crossed Jacey, our supplier here. They say she actually saw him. Nobody ever sees his face and lives...”

I swallow more wine, suppressing a shudder and the cold creep of old fear down my spine. Even the memory makes my stomach turn.

Mum sighs. “How liberating that must have felt. To just get on a plane and go where the wind takes you.”

“I was definitely happy to get on that plane, yes.” I stare studiously into the distance and try not to gulp my wine .

“What about in South America?” Her eyes are wide, so credulous it breaks my heart. “Were you working there?”

Money spread all over the bed.

Lines of cocaine on the side table.

Nico pouring me champagne. “My supplier is Rodrigo Cardenas. His father heads up a cartel. Rodrigo wants to set up his own operation, and I can be part of it... I’m making more money dealing here on the marina than I ever would have back in Thailand.”

“Nicholas was.” I’m proud of how steady my voice sounds. “He spoke Spanish, and he earned good money, so I painted, mainly.”

Or pretended to.

In between the endless partying.

Mum gives me a searching look. “It must have been good between the two you for a while then. At least at the start.”

“I guess it was, yes.” I try not to sound cynical. “At the start.”

“You owe the cartel how much money?” Staring in disbelief at Nico across a small restaurant table. “And you want to do what ?”

“It’s one shipment, Abby.” Nico, pupils dilated from the increasing amounts of cocaine he’s been ingesting. “All we have to do is steal it from Rodrigo Cardenas and deliver it to Jacey. He’ll give us enough cash to take care of my debt.”

“Steal from the cartel?” Fear crawling down my spine. “Are you crazy? And Jacey is a psycho, Nico. You said it yourself. Even the triads are terrified of him. You know what happened to Lucky after she saw his face...”

My mother’s eyes rest on me with unsettling scrutiny. “How long were you and Nicholas together?”

“Almost two years.”

Two years of being a blind fool who still believed that deep down all men were good, just like my daddy.

God, I was a fucking idiot .

I twist the wineglass compulsively, memories tumbling through my mind in a sea of shame and regret.

“You want to cheat them both?” I stare at Nico like I’m seeing him for the first time. “Run away in a stolen yacht, loaded with the cartel’s cocaine and a bag of the psycho kingpin’s money? Are you fucking crazy? Do you even know how to sail a yacht?”

Nico, sullen and angry, facing me across the hostel room. “You said it yourself: Jacey will kill us as soon as we deliver tonight. And if we stay here, the cartel will. This is our chance. The shipment is sitting in the yacht. We can be offshore before Jacey or the cartel work out what we’ve done.”

I inhale sharply, trying to push the memory away, and turn to find Mum staring at me with a little too much understanding.

“So it was good at the start,” she says quietly. “But later... not so much?”

“No.” I swallow a large mouthful of wine, studiously avoiding my mother’s eyes. “Later, not so much.”

I can feel her scrutiny like tiny thorns on my skin. Her silence is almost worse than her condemnation.

Although, if Mum knew just how bad it really became, she wouldn’t bother condemning me.

She’d just turn away in disgust.

“What did you do, Abby?” Nico slamming me into the wall of our Bogotá hostel, his eyes bloodshot and crazy. “Where’s the yacht?” His fist, crashing into my face hard enough to split my lip. “Where’s my money?”

“Gone.” Staring straight back at him, adrenaline and anger coursing through me. “Like I will be as soon as you let me go. I won’t be part of this, Nico.”

I shiver despite the fierce heat of the late afternoon.

“Relationships can be hard when you’re young.” Mum gives me a sympathetic look. “Sometimes you don’t see who a person really is until you’re under pressure. ”

I give a choked laugh. “I guess that’s true.”

“It’s her fault!” Nico sniveling, blood dripping from his lip as he faces Rodrigo Cardenas in our hostel. “It was Abby who stole the yacht!”

Rodrigo’s face close to mine, his cigar pressing against my flesh, his insidious voice in my ear. “Talk. Or I’ll let my men fuck you until you do.”

Then a commotion downstairs, the rat cunning on Rodrigo’s face as he backs out the door with his men: “I’ll be back, puta. This isn’t over.”

I stare out over the paddocks, my knuckles white around the stem of my wineglass.

“And then?” Mum bends over to pat one of the dogs, for all as if we’re just making polite conversation. “How did you and Nico break up?”

A single shot.

Nico’s blood spreading across the floor of the hostel room.

I drain my glass in a long swallow, still avoiding her eyes. “We wanted different things, I guess.”

Cold eyes, seen through a crack in the closet doors. Eyes that scour the room, looking for me.

A second bullet, this one splintering the closet door right next to my face.

Then the sirens downstairs. A flash of annoyance in the dead eyes.

“If you are alive, I will find you, Abby. And then I will kill you.”

I swallow hard on the old terror. Jacey’s chilling promise has lived inside me like a curse from the day he uttered it. Six years later, I can recall the cold certainty of his warning as if it were yesterday.

“You didn’t think to come home then?”

Oh, I thought about it, alright. I thought about it when the police burst into my hostel room and pulled me out of the closet where I was hiding.

I thought about it when they threw me into prison without a trial.

And then I thought about it every day for the two years I spent eating decomposing food in La Buen fucking Pastor.

“I guess I just wasn’t ready.” I give her a weak smile.

Change the fucking subject, Abby. Fast.

“It was really Darya who changed my mind about coming home,” I say. “I was her bridesmaid a few months ago.”