Forgive Me

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Susan Lewis 2020

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (petals and scissors)

Susan Lewis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008286880

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008286903

Version: 2020-10-08

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Acknowledgements

Extract

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Susan Lewis

About the Publisher

You know how it goes, some people you like and some you just don’t. I can tell you this much, you’re not going to like me. No one does. I don’t even like myself, especially not after what I did. Not even before it, really.

My name is Archie (you might already know that), I’m nineteen and before all this I lived with my weirdo mother in the kind of house someone like you wouldn’t want to put a foot inside of. She’s not into housework, see, or decorating, or stuff to make the place smell and look good. She doesn’t really get any of that. Everyone laughs at her like she’s mental and doesn’t understand what’s going on. OK, she’s different, but it don’t mean she’s not a good person inside, despite all the stuff that goes on with her. I know she is, and that makes me feel even worse about being ashamed of her sometimes. Trouble is, it’s not easy having a mum like her, and I hate myself for minding – really, really hate myself. I want her to be normal like everyone else so she won’t get poked fun at and have stuff thrown at her when she walks down the street. Kids do that to make her chase them and she nearly always does.

When BJ came to take me away to work for him he beat her up to make her let me go, and I didn’t stop him because I wanted to go.

BJ’s another story, don’t let’s get into him here.

We haven’t ever met, you and me. I don’t know if we ever will, but I’m laying all this out for you because Dan talked me into it. I know you know him, although he doesn’t talk about you much, but we both know you’re the reason he comes to see me. I find him to be a regular bloke who looks a lot like Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, with his black-framed glasses and chiselled features. OK, he’s got Prince Harry hair, but catch one of his smiles and they light him up like a proper movie star, don’t you reckon? He’s a decent type, you can tell by looking at him, with the right sort of manners and a way of listening that makes you talk even when you don’t want to.

He does that to me a lot. If he didn’t, I don’t suppose I’d be writing this, it would never have occurred to me. I guess Dan’s super-powers are of a particular sort.

No one would feel worried about letting him into their front room, the way they would me; and I have to be honest, I’m getting to like the time we spend together. I don’t know anything about him personally like if he’s married or has kids or anything; I’ve never asked and I don’t think he’d tell me if I did.

He’s probably afraid I might send someone to find his family and hurt them.

I wouldn’t, but I don’t blame him for thinking I would.

The first time I met him I didn’t bother speaking to him. To me he was just another tosser wanting to get inside my head. I’m only doing this now because over time I’ve found it’s easier to go along with him than to fight him. He’s got something about him that makes you want to shut him up, not in a rough way, I’ve never felt like smacking him, but in a way that if you do what he’s asking you’re both happy. I could say he has some serious personable shit going on that everyone warms to, even someone like me.

I can hear him in my head telling me to stop writing about him and get back to the point of why I’m doing this.

I can’t see the point myself, because it’s not going to get me anywhere, but now I’m visualizing one of his looks that usually ends up with me thinking he knows more than I do – and frankly that wouldn’t be hard. He’s a smart bloke. Do I wish I was like him? Sure, I’d have to be crazy not to when he seems to have everything going for him. I wonder how rich he is, he gives off the scent of it and I should know, I’ve sniffed enough of it.

So, what can I tell you about me that you’d be interested to know?

I’m not as tall as Dan – he’s about six foot and I’m five ten – and he’s probably twice my age.

What a crack if he turned out to be my long-lost dad.

If he was I wouldn’t have done what I did to you. That’s a fact.

I asked him before I started this letter if I had to spell out what I did.

‘We already know what you did,’ he reminded me.

He’s right, and it was a dumb-ass question. I guess you want to know why I did it?

Well, that’s not something I can tell you without bringing a whole heap of trouble down on us all, and I think you’ve already had enough of that, thanks to me.

So, where do we go from here?

Dan’s advice was to keep writing anything that comes into my head, and he’ll look it over the next time he’s here. He has to do this because of all the swearing and street slang that comes out of me. He says you won’t want to read all that and I can see he’s probably right.

It’s weird, me sitting here thinking about you and how our paths crossed. It shouldn’t have happened, but it’s no good saying that now because it did, and in our different ways we’re both paying the price. It’s a high one for me, I’m coming to terms with that, but for you … I don’t know how you’re going to live with what happened to you.

CHAPTER ONE

Marcus Huxley-Browne looked up from the warning call he’d just received on his mobile phone. His handsome face was taut, pale, showing none of its usual boredom or arrogance – or the self-satisfaction that came from having so much. He’d been born into an established family; he had all the right contacts and was as famed for his City successes as he was for the celebrations he threw when deals came off.

‘They’re coming for me,’ he muttered, the paleness of his skin turning to grey. He wasn’t looking at his wife, maybe he wasn’t even speaking to her.

‘Who?’ she asked, unnerved by the fear in his deep grey eyes.

He stared at her, seeing her past the commotion in his head. ‘You know nothing,’ he instructed her tightly. ‘You’ve seen nothing. You’ve heard nothing. Have you got that?’ His fists clenched, and she wondered if he was going to hit her, blame her, or something worse.

Who was coming?

She knew better than to ask a second time and stepped aside as he headed out of the room, across the hall and into his study.

‘Come here!’ he shouted.

Obediently she hastened after him and stopped on the threshold of the room she was rarely invited into. He was standing behind his desk, a Huxley-Browne heirloom, one of many that cluttered the house with stately gloom. He looked haunted now, agitated – hunted – as if not knowing where to turn or what to do. Had things been different, she might have felt sorry for him.

‘You don’t speak to anyone,’ he told her gruffly.

She nodded. She’d had this instruction before, but usually he didn’t take any chances; he’d whisk her upstairs and lock her in one of the top-floor rooms.

She used to fight it, but she’d learned not to.

She often heard things from up there, but she never saw the comings and goings outside – cars pulling up, people entering or leaving the house – the windows were too high. However, voices carried even if she couldn’t make out who they belonged to, or what was being said.

She knew what kind of people came. They were his set: the all-male network that he and others of his ilk had created at university, in the City, in private clubs, in various capitals, to trade information; or to start rumours; or to import and export insider knowledge. Girls came too, for the after-parties, lots of them, paid well she imagined – and the dealers in mood- or sexual-performance enhancers came too. Shady, sinister characters from an underworld she could barely imagine.

On the nights Marcus didn’t come home she guessed someone else was hosting proceedings at their luxury apartment or town house. She never asked, and he never told her, but she’d come to recognize a descent from the drug-fuelled highs when it was in front of her.

There were other nights – lots of them – when he behaved like a regular family man, sober, a little tired, but happy and feeling generous at the end of a long, productive day. She could easily mistake him then for the man who’d comforted and befriended her after the tragedy of her first husband’s death. She still felt strangely attached to that man and the way he’d spoken so softly to her during that terrible time, and had smiled into her eyes as if he couldn’t believe how fortunate he was to have found her. He’d never been frightening then, just loving, attentive, interested. She’d married him believing he loved her, and feeling certain it was the right thing to do for her – and for her eleven-year-old daughter who’d been devastated by the loss of her father.

Now here they were, or here she was, watching him frantically snatching files from his desk and stuffing them into an old-fashioned attaché case. She hadn’t seen it before.

‘For Christ’s sake, don’t just stand there,’ he raged, ‘get that cabinet away from the wall.’

Quickly she moved to do as she was told, but the cabinet was too heavy.

He shoved her aside and did it himself, grunting, sweating, swearing … Was he crying? Or were those beads of sweat? How much did she care? How afraid was she?

She wasn’t surprised to see the safe behind the cabinet. She’d known it was there, but this was the first time he’d opened it in front of her, pressing the numbers in slowly, deliberately, not wanting to waste time on mistakes.

She couldn’t calculate how much cash was stacked on the five shelves inside, but it surely ran into hundreds of thousands, all neatly bundled until it was chaotically rammed into the case along with the files. Too much to fit in, but he was going to make it happen …

Someone knocked at the front door. Three heavy raps.

‘Shit!’ He turned to the window. Beyond was the back garden, and she wondered if he was about to throw himself out on to the lawn and make a run for it.

With lightning speed he rammed the case into the safe, spun the combination lock and heaved the cabinet back into place.

Their visitor – or visitors – tried the bell.

Police? Drug dealers? Who else would he be so afraid of?

She gasped as he grabbed her by the neck with one hand and pressed her against the wall. ‘Remember, you know nothing,’ he hissed into her face, ‘you’ve seen nothing and you’ve heard nothing.’

She nodded, gasping for breath, clawing at his hand.

He let her go and pointed along the hall to the door. ‘Answer it, but if you even think about betraying me …’ His eyes bored into hers; he didn’t have to tell her that it wouldn’t end well, she already knew.

She started to move, hardly knowing who or what to expect when she opened the door.

‘Stop!’ he seethed under his breath.

She turned around. ‘I don’t know where this is going to end,’ he growled, ‘but just in case you get any ideas about leaving me, you’ll be watched; you won’t get away and if you try, I’ll find you and by then you’ll wish I hadn’t.’

She didn’t doubt him; she never had. She knew what he was capable of, and as he turned to the door she found herself hoping with all her heart and soul that he was about to be taken out, not merely taken away.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Are you sure you’re OK to drive?’

Claudia Winters glanced at her sixteen-year-old daughter, the one who was sounding like the parent right now, and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. ‘Sure,’ she confirmed, and fixing her eyes on the road ahead she pressed down on the accelerator to pull away from the kerb. It was a jerky start, but it was a new car – bought with cash from a South London dealer who’d asked no questions – and at least she didn’t stall the engine.

‘Don’t look back,’ she advised Jasmine.

‘Would it make a difference if I did?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘No! Let’s just go.’

The place they were leaving was a smart red-brick town house in the heart of Kensington, where they’d lived for the past five years. Their departure – escape, to give it the correct term – had been carefully planned during the last few months.They’d removed their most precious belongings in bags and suitcases as if they were just off for long weekends, or perhaps to make generous donations to a charity shop. Where they’d actually been taking their cargo was to Claudia’s mother’s house in Somerset, in order to store it in a weatherproof garage. Yesterday, under her mother’s supervision, everything had been transported from the garage to the place Claudia and Jasmine were travelling to now.

Nauseous with nerves, Claudia drove along the leafy street careful to avoid the parked cars either side of her, aware of a hundred or more windows bearing witness to their departure.

Was anyone actually watching? He’d said someone would be, but they’d never spotted anyone, nor had the private investigator they’d hired to check for them.

There were the neighbours, of course, but it surely wouldn’t occur to any of them that the mother and daughter from number forty-six were about to disappear without trace.

Claudia hoped it would be that way, but a lot could happen between now and the day they finally felt safe. The past could reach for them in any number of ways; traps they hadn’t yet been able to imagine might already be set by their own oversights and unwitting mistakes, or even by fate.

Pushing the dread of it all aside, she drove on past the homes that backed on to the school her daughter had attended since they’d moved here. It was private, expensive and should have been where she’d complete sixth form before going to uni. Now she was set to continue her education at a school close to their new home, using the name she’d chosen for herself – Jasmine – and sporting a totally new look.

Once as dark-haired as her beloved father, Jasmine was now blonde, with a cute pixie cut that had been executed by her mother’s inexpert hand only last night. Jasmine loved it, thank goodness. Up to the age of eleven, she’d been a bright girl with a warm personality, and her dad’s sparkling enthusiasm for life. However, these past years in her stepfather’s home, subjected to his erratic moods and overbearing personality, she’d lost the buoyancy of her spirit and had even withdrawn from friendships and activities that should have been normal for a girl her age. So, she was as ready to escape and start again as her mother was – as relieved to be making this journey as she’d ever been about anything in her young life.

At the end of the road Claudia indicated to turn left and headed towards the Hammersmith flyover. As they passed the shop that used to be hers, Dream Interiors (secretly sold as a going concern over a month ago and soon to be renamed All About Home by the new owners) she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the empty window and it made her feel oddly light-headed. Until yesterday her hair had been fair, shoulder-length and wavy – now it was a rich chestnut colour styled in a messy sort of bob that she actually quite liked. It gave her features more definition, she thought, and seemed to warm her pale complexion. She was nothing like the woman who’d started the shop fifteen years ago, although her eyes were still sky blue and the delicate bone structure that Jasmine’s father, Joel, had captured in so many paintings and sketches remained the same. She’d been tall and curvaceous back then; confident, ambitious and quick to make friends. She was still tall, of course, but so slender now, even gaunt, that it was like watching the ghost of herself passing from the windows of her old life on her way to the new.

She was going to miss her business, and her workers and the clients, but when the time was right she’d start creating the same all over again.

As they circled under the flyover and joined the A4 she was still regularly checking the rear-view mirror, not so much for moving traffic as for anyone who might be following. It wasn’t possible to tell, nor was it possible, surely, for Marcus to have set someone on their tail so soon.

She glanced anxiously at Jasmine, and felt a momentary relief when she received an ironic smile in return.

‘Will you please stop stressing?’ Jasmine scolded with teenage exasperation. ‘You have to let it go, Mum. We’re on our way to a new life and that’s all we should think about. We’re actually pulling it off.’

Claudia followed the traffic and contemplated the truth of those words – we’re pulling it off – although they were hardly ten minutes from what used to be their home, so such optimism was perhaps a little premature. However, everything was going to plan so far. The BMW they were in had been delivered on time late last night; they’d picked up their new phones from a ‘dealer’ a week ago – and most crucially of all, the money from the sale of her business had been successfully transferred from an escrow account into the one she’d opened just after her new passport had come through. Dealing with the bank had been the trickiest part of the operation – did she really look like a money launderer? – but it was done now, thank God, and she’d already managed to draw cash using one of her new cards.

‘So,’ she said, as they finally approached the M4, ‘shall I call you Jas or Jasmine from now on?’

A tilt of a platinum-blonde head, followed by ‘Mm,’ preceded ‘either’s fine. It’s a cool name, don’t you think?’

They’d had this conversation before, several times, so Claudia dutifully said, ‘I do, and it suits you. I wish I’d thought of it when you were born.’

Jasmine glanced over at her mother, her big blue eyes sparkling with mischief. God, she was like her father. ‘Are you OK with Claud?’ she asked cheekily.

Claudia wrinkled her nose. ‘Mum’s better, coming from you.’

Jasmine laughed and pointed to the red light they were approaching too fast.

As they came to a stop, Claudia’s breath caught on another rush of nerves as the reality of their flight descended over her again. To those travelling in the cars around them they must look so ordinary, so unremarkable in their blue estate with nothing on its roof, or sides or anywhere else to alert anyone to what this two-year-old 3 series was actually involved in.

‘How come you’re so relaxed?’ she asked as Jasmine continued downloading apps to her new phone.

Jasmine frowned as she considered the question. ‘Well, I thought one of us ought to be, and as you’re the responsible adult in the car I decided to leave all the negative stuff to you.’

‘So kind.’

They both started as someone blasted a horn behind, urging them on, and at the same instant Jasmine’s new phone rang. Only one person had the number and to their relief they saw it was her.

‘Hey Nana,’ Jasmine sang out as she clicked on, ‘we’re on our way. Hang on, I’m going to put you on speaker so Mum can hear.’

‘Have you left London yet?’ Marcy, her grandmother, asked.

‘We’re just about to join the M4. How’s everything your end?’

‘So far, so good. I’m at the flat and it’s even lovelier than the first time we saw it, probably because the sun’s shining and the shutters are open. Actually, we had some mail delivered this morning. A letter from EDF confirming our new account, and another from the local authority about the council tax.’

‘I’m guessing both were in your name?’ Claudia asked.

‘They were.’

Her mother didn’t have a new identity as such, she’d simply reverted to her maiden name – Kavanagh – which had been a straightforward enough process to arrange, enabling her to rent the flat with references provided by a non-existent ex-employer. Luckily the new landlord hadn’t checked – why would he, when Marcy presented as the world’s most trustworthy individual – so all had gone through quite smoothly.

‘Is our stuff there yet?’ Jasmine wanted to know.

‘It is, and the new furniture is due in about an hour, so the delivery chaps should have been and gone by the time you arrive. I don’t know how we’re going to put it all together, I’m sure, but I suppose we’ll work it out somehow. Oh, and before you ask, yes, I remembered to bring a tool kit.’