Page 30 of London’s Calling, Part 1 (London’s Calling)

Chapter Thirty

Roni

The click of the secret door closing echoes around the room like a boom of thunder.

My shoulders slump and a deep, painful breath exhales from me.

I’ve no idea how we went from enjoying each other, eating and watching TV to…

this. Emptiness, a silence that stretches beyond reality.

The only sound is my breathing and the dull thud of my heart inside my ribcage.

I walk away, not bothering to close and lock the guest bedroom door again. Mickey won’t be back. And that’s a good thing. Right?

Yes, Roni, it is.

But it’s not. Now, I need to figure out how to get what my father wants another way. Thankfully, I have a few contacts who might be able to help me dig around in the murky background of Kurt Rawlins.

In the bedroom, I take in the messy remnants of our afternoon and hurry to strip the sheets and put on clean ones. I spray the entire room in a sickly floral body spray, which I’ve had in the back of my bathroom cabinet forever, the complete opposite of Mickey’s lingering scent.

After showering and dressing in some clean PJs, I grab my laptop and email Haydn. If there’s anyone that can get me what I need, it’s her.

I trawl the internet while I wait for her to reply. Fed up with the usual parade of gossip and highly elaborated garbage I find on Kurt and his business, I do something stupid. Some might say desperate.

I send a phishing email to Kurt Rawlins. Do I believe he’ll be stupid enough to fall for it? No, but it’s worth a shot. No clue whether it will give me anything of interest, but I guess I really am desperate.

Next, I look into Kerr, his business, who he spends time with, other than my father, and his high-profile hotel guests. Almost all of them could easily make up a list of the UK’s most likely criminal millionaires and high society.

When a picture of my mother and father pops up on the screen, I freeze.

Guilt floods me, the kind you slowly drown in.

The kind that keeps the fire of hate burning, one that ensures I’ll stay, do what my father asks of me, even though it might destroy me.

My vision blurs, replaced with the memory of that night.

The song finishes, and in the quiet between tracks, I hear my father’s voice.

He’s angry about something, and he and my mother have been arguing since she came home forty minutes ago.

It’s become a regular occurrence lately, but every time I enter the room or ask what’s going on, neither of them tell me.

They just brush it off like it’s normal.

In some ways it is. My father has always had a temper, but over the last six months, it’s become more and more pronounced.

The next song begins, drowning out their arguing, and I try to ignore their heated exchange.

I focus on the book in front of me, but the words don’t sink in, they simply float through my mind as all my hearing tunes into to my parents.

Leaving the music playing, but turning it down a tad, I pad to my bedroom door, opening it a crack, just wide enough for me to slip out.

With every step that brings me closer, tension rises, cloaking me, and fear tracks a path up my spine as I round the corner at the bottom of the stairs. The only voice I hear now is my father’s, but as I draw closer to where they are in the lounge, whimpers drift between my father’s angry words.

“I always knew you’d spread those legs for anybody and anything. Is she even mine?”

I can’t make out if my mother answers, but then my father’s voice fills the space again.

“You better fucking hope you’re telling the truth. If I find out your lying, I’ll sell her to the highest bidder and make you watch as they defile her.”

I step past the door frame into the room just as my father releases my mother, and she hits the floor. Her hand comes up to caress her throat, red marks marring her skin, her clothes are torn, make-up smudged and black tear-stained cheeks.

“Mum?” I say, my voice trembling with nerves. Their heads snap to me in the doorway, shock and shame cover my mother’s face while my father quietly fumes before turning away from me.

“Veronica, darling, it’s okay. Silly mummy tripped over the rug. I’m fine,” she says as she scrambles to her feet and comes to me, wrapping me in her arms. “We’re fine,” she whispers into my hair as she holds me close.

At the time, I didn’t realise the significance of her words, but now, reflecting on the memory, I know she was reassuring herself as much as she was a scared little girl. Two days later, she was gone. No goodbye, no note, nothing, just gone.

Every trace of her was removed from the house, and it was like she’d never even existed.

When I questioned my father about where she was, he told me she left.

She didn’t love us anymore. No one spoke of her, not even a mention of her name.

The staff ignored all my questions, and anyone that did mention her, vanished along with her. My father wiped her from existence.

I quickly learned not to speak of her, and slowly my memories of her began to fade.

But as I got older, I heard whispers of her, especially anytime the name Rawlins was mentioned.

I knew the name, of course, Kurt and my father had worked together for years before my mother disappeared.

But just like with her, Kurt and Father’s business relationship and friendship ended out of the blue.

The only clue as to why was a conversation I overheard my father having in his office once with Kerr where, for the first time in almost four years, I heard my mother’s name from my father’s lips. None of it was complimentary or pretty.

That was the day I learned of my mother’s affair with Kurt Rawlins and that I was the reason she left. He’d told her to leave and never come back or contact me. And so began my hate toward the Rawlins family and my mother.

For the next four years, my hate for Kurt, any Rawlins, especially Mickey, grew, and my father relished in it.

Feeding me with minor, insignificant details that only cemented what I believed.

Snippets of Rawlins’ betrayal, not only his affair with my mother, but also how he betrayed my father in business too.

Then two years ago, my mother contacted me, well, she tried to, but my father intercepted her attempt.

He was livid, with a rage I’d never seen before.

He hired men to track her down and kill her, claiming he should have done it in the first place.

I was shocked and afraid, after all, she is my mother.

And I was torn between my loyalty to a man, my father, who I always thought was protecting me and was the injured party in all of this and a woman who left me behind because she didn’t know the meaning of the word faithful.

Then I discovered my father was a liar. He’d lied to me about my mother—not about the affair, she did that—but him telling me she left because she didn’t love us, me, anymore was all a fucking lie.

When I confronted him, I begged for him to leave her, let her live her life and not kill her.

That was the first time my father ever laid his hands on me.

It was the catalyst to where we are now.

My begging earned me my first beating and the promise to do whatever he asked of me if I wanted to ensure my mother remained breathing.

In that moment, I still hated what she did to our family, but I understood why she left.

I never believed my father could hurt me.

How wrong I was. Now, mine and my mother’s life depended on me.

If I refused to go through with this, any part of it, tried to walk away, he’d kill my mother. I’d be a fucking fool to think he wouldn’t get rid of me at the same time. And if he didn’t kill me, then my life wouldn’t be any better than it is now.