Chapter 64 Charlie
CHARLIE
“So what now?” asks Charlie, looking to Anita, desperate for an answer.
“We have to go to the police,” she says. “We have to tell them what she did to Marcus Harding, and what she might have done to Pete … because if we don’t, someone else is going to get hurt.”
She looks at Charlie, not needing to say who.
He shakes his head, still refusing to believe that they’re talking about Freya, the woman he fell in love with, the woman he slept next to every night, the woman he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with.
“These families deserve to know the truth,” says Anita. “They deserve justice.”
“But what if there’s another way?” says Charlie, his stalwart loyalty getting the better of him.
“My God, you still think you can save her, don’t you?” says Anita, looking at him with pitying eyes.
“While you gave me up as a lost cause years ago,” comes a voice from the doorway to the kitchen.
Charlie’s head spins around to see Freya standing there.
Anita’s eyes narrow. “I tried my very hardest to make you a better person,” she says. “If only to protect the people in your life from being dragged down into your world. But you’re impossible to help, so I have to concentrate my efforts on saving them.”
“You weren’t able to save Pete, were you?” sneers Freya, eyeing up the passport that’s sitting on the bar.
Charlie holds his breath, praying that she’s not about to prove Anita’s theory right.
“What did you do to him?” asks Anita, her voice shaking.
Freya smiles. “The same as I do to anyone who crosses me.”
Anita glances at Charlie, a look of warning flashing in her eyes. “You owe that family closure,” she says. “You need to tell them where he is.”
Freya shrugs her shoulders and Charlie still dares to believe that she’s going to offer an explanation. “He could be anywhere,” she says.
He waits for her to elaborate, hoping that his flicker of optimism isn’t misplaced.
“He could be in Scotland, France, Iceland…,” she says, laughing as if it’s funny. “Or he might even still be in London.”
She looks at them both, fixing them with an unnervingly cold expression. “It all depends on the tide.”