Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [92]
‘Oh, hi,’ she beamed.
‘Victoria?’
She exhaled in relief. ‘Yes.’
‘Why are you walking around on your own?’
‘I’ve just had a row with a boyfriend, and I don’t want to go home, so I was walking to the Doubletree to spend the night there. To be honest, I was getting a bit spooked out here in the dark. I’m so glad it’s you.’ She knew she’d never been this friendly before, but suddenly hoped it sounded genuine. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘I just needed to get out for some fresh air. Is he still hanging around your flat?’
Victoria lit another cigarette. ‘Waiting outside.’
‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’
‘It’s a casual thing.’
‘Still not ready for anything more serious?’
‘Something like that.’
‘But it’s been several months since . . .’ The sentence died and they both gave it a moment’s silence to be laid to rest. ‘Do you want me to go back with you?’
Victoria puffed out a thin stream of smoke as she reflected on that. Then she sighed and tried to sound weary. ‘I can’t face him right now.’
She made a few half-hearted steps in the direction of the hotel. ‘He scares me,’ she moaned.
‘Scares you? How? He’s only sitting outside your flat. He can’t do anything from there.’
Victoria lowered her voice, like she was confiding a secret.
‘He’s really angry with me. He’s convinced I’m coming back tonight and he’s waiting for me.’
‘But you’re leaving him to rot there just to teach him a lesson?’
‘That was the idea,’ she said, ‘but I’ve gone off it now.’
‘Well, I think you should. I’ll help you.’
Victoria shrugged. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘You have your mobile, don’t you?’
Victoria reached in her bag, pulled out her phone and unlocked the keypad.
‘But he’ll know it’s my phone.’
‘Yes, but he won’t know the text is from me, and I know how to make him squirm. Remember it’s because of him that you’re stuck out here, cold and vulnerable.’
Victoria nodded. ‘OK.’
‘So it’s a good idea?’
Victoria shrugged, then nodded again. ‘Why not?’
‘Text this . . .’ The words were recited slowly to give her enough time to spell them properly. “‘You’ll be sorry in the morning and . . .”’
Victoria prodded the keypad with both thumbs. ‘And what?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Send?’
‘Yes.’
She pressed the send button and watched until the message icon had flown from the screen. ‘Do I send him the next bit later?’
‘Why not?’
‘And how’s that going to work?’
Her companion sighed and stared skywards, and Victoria looked up too. The moon was a cold yellow, and the small clouds were racing by fast enough to give the impression that the chimney tops themselves were moving. A few yards further down Trinity Street, a building stood on the corner of Trinity Lane, with carvings protruding from both sides of the roofline. They appeared to be ships’ figureheads, sticking out about two feet under the guttering, and gave the impression of tugging the main structure in two different directions at once.
‘Why will that message scare him?’ she persisted.
Her companion sighed, exhaling breath in a deep hiss of theatrical exasperation, then looking down again, gaze dropping in a straight line, like it had fallen from the roof. ‘When I first found out you were seeing our father I felt a bit uncomfortable, but I didn’t begrudge him some company. After all, we all know what it’s like to be lonely. You weren’t what I expected, at first, but you deserve our thanks for sticking with him right until the end. In fact, I thought it showed a kind and generous side to your nature.’
They began walking again, slowly this time, but within yards they’d stopped once more. Victoria shifted her weight from foot to foot, feeling the cold more accutely, and the conversation had slid into more difficult territory. It was uncomfortable to stand still, but neither was it the right time to walk away. ‘I wanted to be with him,’ she said.
‘I’m surprised he didn’t leave you something, a token of his thanks perhaps.’
‘I didn’t expect anything.’
‘Oh, come on. If he’d lived, you would have