Chapter Forty-One #2
What did she mean by that? Like, seriously? When someone says that to you what do they mean?
If anything happens, it’s Lenny.
Lenny, Lenny, Lenny.
If anything happens, it’s Lenny.
I don’t even clock that I’m crying until I glance up and catch myself in the bathroom mirror.
Fuck.
I don’t know what to do.
If there was any moment in my entire life when I needed a step-by-step guide on knowing what to do, it would be now. I need to know. If my sister told me that, she’s expecting me to know what to do, right? Why don’t I know what to do?
I run out of the bedroom, into the hallway, grab my shoes, keys and coat and leave.
I don’t have time to walk or run. I grab the first cab I see and jump in, tell him to take me to Mayfair.
Twenty minutes, he tells me.
That’s not long. In the very, broad, grand scheme of time, twenty minutes is nothing.
I think I black out as we drive through London, the street lights blinding me as we seem to go faster than the speed limit. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe he drives the speed limit but it feels faster because maybe twenty minutes is longer than what it seems?
We stop.
I look out the window and we’re outside Stratton House.
I give him the money, jump out of the car and push through the huge black doors. The bouncers don’t say anything to me. They just let me through.
It’s busy in here tonight—always is—but with my heart racing and my head fuzzy, I barge through the thick throngs of people who come here in hopes of drowning their secrets and sorrow in twenty grand bottles of champagne.
“Ease up, sweetheart, you ain’t allowed down here,” the guy standing in front of the stairs tells me.
I look past him, down the stairs, where the offices and exclusive rooms are.
“Do you know who I am?” I demand, glaring right at him.
I’ve never seen him before but he’s big, beefy—would probably hit me, actually.
He smiles sarcastically. “I don’t care if you’re the bloody pope, you ain’t going down there.”
“Why the fuck would the pope be here in the first place?” I ask him, tilt my head.
“What?”
I cock one of my eyebrows, hands on my hips, ready to push him down the stupid flight of stairs if I have to.
“Let me through or I’ll get you sacked.”
He throws his head back, laughs. “Alright, Princess, wrap it up—go home.”
“It’s ‘Lady’, actually.”
He shakes his head.
“Oi, Pete, let her through, mate,” I hear from behind me.
I turn around, Albie is walking over. “You alright?” He asks me, frowns, puts his arm around my shoulder. “What you doing here?”
‘Pete’ stands to the side, lets me down with Albie. Looks pissed about it. He seems like the type of man who’s never been proved wrong.
When we reach the bottom, Albie doesn’t let me go.
“What are you doing here, Phoebe?”
I shake my head. Can’t tell him. He isn’t the person I came to see. “Nothing.”
“Well, then, why are you here?” He smiles. His eyes pinch at the sides and he looks at me funny.
“Is Ronan in tonight?”
His face doesn’t change. “He’s always in—why?”
“I need to talk to him, Albie.”
“About what?”
I roll my eyes. “None of your business!”
He laughs. “Don’t be giving me attitude, Phoebs, because next time I won’t get Pete to let you down.”
“Next time, I’ll get ‘Pete’ fired.”
“Why are you using quotation marks for his name? That’s his name.”
“Because it’s a stupid fucking name—who in the twenty first century is called ‘Pete’?”
“What?” He mutters, shakes his head.
We stand in front of each other for a good few seconds before he relents and knocks on one of the office doors.
“Come in,” a voice says from behind the door.
Albie looks at me, nods his head towards the door.
“Thank you,” I smile at Albie as he rolls his eyes and walks off, into the room next door.
I go inside and it looks just as you'd expect.
Dark walls, dark wood flooring, bookshelves lining the walls holding useless books and vintage nick-knacks.
Art lines the other side, a glass coffee table placed meticulously in front of a dark leather couch.
But in the middle is a huge, dark mahogany desk, which Ronan Stratton sits behind.
He doesn’t look straight up at me, too busy scrolling on his phone to notice it’s me and not someone who actually works here.
“George, you better not have sent another cunting mime into my office—” he looks up. “Oh.”
“What’s going on with Freddy and Lenny?”
He frowns, those thick dark eyebrows of his caving in. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you knew better than to answer a question with a question.”
He looks confused, a little smile pulling on the corners of his mouth. “What do you want?”
I walk over to his desk, a bit angry. “Are you fucking deaf? I want to know what is going on with my sister.”
He pulls back. “How would I know? She fucked off to America, remember?”
“No,” I shake my head. “She didn’t ‘fuck off’ to America, he forced her to go.”
“No he didn’t,” he shakes his head adamantly but there’s something about it. The way a man so sure of himself looks so unsure. Maybe it’s me, turning up here unannounced or maybe it’s the mention of my sister, but he looks thrown off.
I’m not sure why I came here—to him—for answers.
He was the first person my mind went to when Freddy ended the call.
Ronan knows everything about everyone so why wouldn’t he know anything about my sister?
It’s obvious he loves her—I mean, Jesus, you haven’t seen the way he looks when he talks about her but I have—so why is he so shocked that I’m here.
After a minute of us staring each other down—which can I just say makes me incredibly nervous. His eyes are so dark that they kind of draw you in—he leans his elbows on his desk, glances away from and shakes his head. “I don’t know anything, Phoebe. I’m sorry.”
“Yes you do!” I throw my arms out. “Of course you fucking know something!”
“No, I don’t!” He shouts back, shaking his head. “If I knew something, don’t you think I’d tell you?”
“No, actually, I don’t think you’d tell me,” I shrug. “Because whatever is going on with her and Lenny, she clearly doesn’t want me to know but she rang me earlier and I’m worried, Ronan! I am so fucking scared so can you just tell me whatever it is you know.”
He blows out a breath, slaps the top of his desk and leans over. “I don’t know fucking anything now get out!”
I clench my jaw, stare at him. “Tell me.”
“Fuck. Off.”
He’s seething, frowning in a way that doesn’t make him look confused or worried but angry.
Annoyed, even. I want to grab his shirt, pull him over the desk, lay him down and torture him until he spills whatever it is that he knows.
Because he does know. It’s so fucking clear he does.
But what isn’t clear is why he isn’t telling me.
Why would he not tell me? She’s my sister. I have a right to know.
Who the fuck is Ronan in comparison to me? An old secondary school flame? He’s fucking nobody and yet he has the nerve to keep secrets about my own sister?
“Get out, Phoebe,” he says calmly even though he’s anything but and that, for some reason, screams something at me; I should leave. I need to leave before he does something.
I point at him. “If anything happens to my sister, the blame will lay right on your doorstep.”
He says nothing and I leave.