Chapter Thirty One

“I thought you said you were spending the weekend with Ella.”

Jake had made Duncan sit on a chair in the bathroom, while he checked him over and cleaned his cuts and bruises. Sorcha had decided to leave them to it at the point when Jake had ordered Duncan to take his top off, but wasn’t entirely sorry when he practically ordered her to stay. She was fascinated by the way that Jake was examining Duncan, feeling along his cheekbone before methodically swabbing the scratches with surgical spirit. He’d made an icepack for his face out of a bag of frozen peas and a pillow case: the entire performance had something peculiarly rehearsed about it, which made being there feel slightly illicit. Illicit in a good way, she decided, as she watched Duncan’s muscles bulge as he lifted his arms above his head for Jake to check his ribs.

“I lied.”

“But why? You know you don’t need to.”

“Bollocks to that. You and Jeff would of spent the whole week having a go at me if you’d known what I had planned.”

“You didn’t need to tell us anything, you prat.” Jake hunted around in the large mirrored cabinet above the washbasin, before producing a tube of ointment. He checked the date on the end of the tube before passing it to Duncan, “It’s arnica. Put it on anywhere you think you’re likely to be bruised. Just don’t get it in your eyes or it’ll sting like hell.”

Duncan took the tube and frowned at it. Sorcha was tempted to ask if he needed help rubbing it in, but was afraid that he might not understand it was a joke. Jake put the surgical spirit and cotton wool back in the cabinet, before turning back to Duncan.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Duncan looked at him as if he had just taken leave of his senses, before nodding sideways at Sorcha who was perched on the edge of the bath, and telling Jake that he must be out of his tiny fucking mind.

“Grow up, Duncs. She doesn’t bite, and she won’t tell.”

Duncan was much less sure, and glowered first at Sorcha and then at Jake: the bruising on his face made it much less effective than it would normally be.

“I came up here to see a couple of girls. A couple of girls who weren’t Ella, all right? Except the first one went mental on me.”

“They don’t usually just go mental, not unless you do something to make them, you know. Who were they, and what did you do?”

Duncan looked rather stricken, and more than a little ashamed, and spoke more softly.

“I came up to see Natalya. Your Natalya. That’s why I couldn’t tell you what I was fucking doing this weekend, all right? But I stopped off to see someone else I met during the tour, and she just lost it.” He turned so that he could see Jake properly with his left eye, “I’m sorry mate. If it’s any consolation, I’m not going to see her looking like this.”

Jake didn’t know whether to be relieved, or concerned about whatever it was that he was still holding back.

“We haven’t been in touch.” It wasn’t strictly true: he’d ignored a large number of texts and phone messages during the first couple of weeks of the break, but Duncan didn’t need to know that, and Sorcha certainly didn’t. Duncan seemed to cheer up on hearing it, “But if you haven’t seen her I’m guessing she wasn’t the one who laid into you.”

“It was a fan, OK? I went round a fucking fan’s house, and she went mental on me. We’re halfway undressed, and suddenly she starts going on about your bloody Dad. Turns out that she was sleeping with him as well, which was just fucking gross, so I decide to make my excuses. Then she starts saying that she thinks that he was involved in Marty buggering off again, and that we must all know about it because your Dad came with us to Vegas. I told her that she was talking a heap of shit, but she kept on going on about him going to the States just before Marty went to meet a man he’d met in Vegas. I told her that she was a nutcase, and that she needed to get her head sorted. Then she lost it.”

“Where is she now?”

Duncan didn’t even seem that surprised that Sorcha had decided to join in the conversation.

“With the police, probably stirring up a shitload of trouble for everyone.” He let his head droop down onto the ice pack, before starting apologizing to Jake. Sorcha wasn’t quite ready to let to point go.

“But she reckoned that Keith had gone to the States shortly before Marty went missing this time round. Is that plausible?”

Jake was frowning and looking generally care-worn again. Sorcha had stood and gone over to him as she spoke.

“He was away for a few days right at the beginning of the 02 dates. But he said he was up here, sorting out stuff about his house. He’d just moved again, and wanted to make sure that the gas and electric and stuff were all sorted out…”He looked bleakly across at her, and she rubbed his back a couple of times, before pulling away in case he didn’t want her there: he was preoccupied, which made it hard to tell.

“Duncs, mate. Who was she? The fan, do you know her name?”

“Nicola Carpenter.” Duncan looked up at Jake again, “When I met her, she said she went to school with you. Probably bollocks, but it was a bit different from the usual load of shit that they come out with.”

Jake looked as if he would like to laugh, but was afraid of what might happen if he did.

“Christ. She was about six foot tall when she was ten. It’s a miracle you got away alive if she was the one who went for you.”

“You’re not fucking kidding!” Duncan looked distinctly more cheerful now that Jake knew the worst of it, even though his face was slowly becoming more distorted as the bruising developed. “Do you reckon we could go and watch the X Factor; or were you planning on spending the whole of the evening in the bathroom?”