The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [147]
‘Otherwise what?’ he demanded without taking his gaze off her.
She wasn’t going to be frightened by Nick, Myra told herself staunchly. If anyone was going to be afraid then it was him.
‘Diane’s already been asking me questions about what happened on Saturday. If you want me to keep on lying for you, Nick, then you are going to have to marry me. After all, it’s the only way you can be sure I won’t say anything, isn’t it? It’s against the law for a wife to testify against her husband.’
Myra was still smiling when Nick closed his hand round her throat and started to squeeze it.
‘You stupid broad,’ he snarled savagely, ignoring her attempts to claw his hand away. ‘Do you really think I’d let you do that? And as for me marrying you,’ he turned his head to one side and spat out his gum, releasing his hold on her throat just enough for her to be able to breath properly. ‘There ain’t no way I could marry you, sugar. You see, I’ve already got a wife. Yeah, and she knows her place and how to keep her mouth shut when she’s told, which is a hell of a lot more than you do.’
Nick was married! Myra didn’t want to believe it but she could see that he was telling the truth. The bitterness of her disappointment boiled up inside her like raw acid eating into her pride and her self-control.
‘So I guess that leaves only one way for me to shut you up now, doesn’t it, sweetness?’
Nick’s voice had become as softly caressing as the fingers he was stroking down her bare throat, but Myra wasn’t deceived. She started to shiver violently with sick fear, trying to push him away, but he was far too strong for her.
‘It’s no good,’ he told her silkily. ‘I ain’t letting go.’
‘If you hurt me then that will get you into even more trouble,’ Myra warned him desperately.
Nick laughed. ‘No way! I’ll be out of the country before they find you, sugar. It’s all arranged. In fact, Carlo is waiting for me a couple of streets away right now.’
Myra looked at him, only now realising the significance of his being in civvies, and then remembering the man he had been with when she had walked into the bar, and the package she had seen exchanging hands.
‘No, Nick, please,’ she begged him. She could hear the sound of people leaving the bar and she prayed that they would look up the alleyway and see them.
‘You’ll be just another dame who got too friendly with the wrong guy,’ he told her, smiling. ‘A good dame gone bad who gets what she deserves…’
He was squeezing her neck so tightly that she couldn’t breath. She tried desperately to claw at his hands but he kept on squeezing, and then suddenly he banged her head back against the wall so hard that the last of her breath escaped from her lungs in a tiny sigh like a punctured tyre. He let her go, watching as she slid down the wall, leaving a thin smear of sticky blood behind her as she did so, before he turned and walked away.
* * *
‘Well, it isn’t exactly the Ritz.’
Diane looked at Lee across the small room with its sloping eaves.
Down below them was the taproom of the pub and the conversation from it drifted upwards through the floorboards in a muted hum of male voices. Just off the bedroom was an even smaller room containing a wash basin, whilst the lavatory was along the corridor and down a flight of stairs. The bed itself looked comfortable enough, though: high, and so wide it almost filled the room, its patchwork quilt faded and soft to the touch.
‘We’ve got everything we need here,’ she answered him quietly, and was rewarded with a fierce glow of passion illuminating his gaze at her.
‘A room, a bed and thou,’ he misquoted ruefully. ‘Have you any idea just how special you are, Di?’
‘I’m no more special than any other girl,’ she denied.
He shook his head. ‘You do not begin to know just how different you are. For a start, you haven’t complained yet about the room not having a closet, or a bathroom, you haven’t told me that you need to go visit a beauty parlour before you can do anything else, nor have you suggested that it would have been