CHAPTER 8

The sunlight reflected off towers of glass and steel, the dazzling shards of light making me blink in the afternoon glare. It was a rare mild day in January, one of those beautiful ones where the skies were a clear blue over London and the sun held the worst of the winter chill at bay.

I raised my hand to shield my eyes as I looked up at the great sparkling monolith where Claire worked, wondering, as I always did whenever I came here, what it must look like inside. I'd always imagined some high-tech state-of-the-art office, regurgitated from a high-budget sci-fi film, where the receptionist was a robot, coffee was beamed directly into your coffee cup and everything had a white, clinical feel like a laboratory.

But I'd never been inside Claire's office. She'd never invited me, always choosing to meet outside in one of the trendy coffee shops or snooty wine bars she liked so much. I had a feeling she thought that my presence would taint her perfect workspace, that if I so much as stepped one foot inside the office, the rot would start to infect the walls, turning clinical white to murky mildew-black within seconds.

I hated Canary Wharf. Hated the sleek, angular lines of the buildings. Hated the businessmen with their designer suits and high-polished shoes. Hated the women with their pencil skirts, expensive bags and collagen lips. I didn't belong here, among the Botox-fixed grins and the bankers. Back at home, I was a face. I was a somebody. I was Casey Brogan, Davey Kelley's girl, grade-A party queen and the girl all the other girls wanted to be. Here, I was just scum. A coke-head. Addict.

Junkie.

I didn't look like these people. I didn't dress like these people and I certainly didn't think like these people. It was like waking up in that high-budget sci-fi film to realise you were the alien, you were the enemy, you were the one that didn't belong.

Checking my watch, I hissed a breath when I saw it was way past one o'clock and simultaneously glanced across to the tables outside Claire's favourite coffee shop to see her already sitting there, back straight in the chair, knees together, thin lips pursed in disapproval. She was always on time. Always punctual like the Mary Poppins of London's financial district.

Practically perfect in every fucking way .

Swallowing back my anxiety, I crossed the square towards her, wishing with every step that I'd worn something a bit smarter and less

street, not necessarily because I wanted to look like a Canary Wharf clone, but because I didn't want to look like that girl that was likely to nick your mobile phone and designer purse. I could already see Claire's gaze taking in my worn Converse, skinny jeans and leather jacket as I flashed an apologetic smile at her, which she returned with a tight, small grin of her own.

'Hi,' I said, leaning over to give her a hug when I reached the table, noting how she seemed to shrink with tension, her delicate bones folding inwards as if dreading my touch. 'Sorry, I'm late. Tube was a bloody nightmare.'

I slipped into the seat opposite, looking around at the busy square.

'I've already ordered,' she said, tersely. 'I don't have much time today. We've got a big project on and I need to get back, you know how it is.'

I didn't and she knew I didn't. I didn't have the faintest clue what Claire's job was like, or what it was like to work in a busy London office for that matter. Put me behind a bar and I could pull a decent enough pint, although I was likely to take a sneaky shot of vodka whenever no one was looking. Put me behind a cash register and I could scan a tin of beans faster than Jason Bourne could draw his gun. Not that I had done either job or any other since I'd met Davey. What was supposed to have been two weeks non-stop partying in Ibiza had turned into two weeks of non-stop sex, which had then extended into a mad, hazy drug-fuelled summer there with him. When we'd finally got our shagged-out bodies onto the plane and returned to London, I'd moved into Davey's house and that had been it. Life made. Fuck work. Fuck jobs. Who needed any of that when you had a hot bloke, banging music and drugs on tap?

Claire would have disagreed with me, of course, and always did, which is why, whenever we met up like this, we never talked about her work and she never told me much about her job and her life, always preferring to keep me at arm's length when it came to her world. Instead, we talked about the dismal failure that was my life. We talked about how I was intent on fucking everything up. How I was becoming more and more like Maggie Brogan every day.

After all, who was more qualified to tell me what a loser I was, than my own big sister?

Or half-sister to be more precise. Cursed with the same mother; Claire blessed with a different father, we'd lived the first eight years of my life together, before her dad had swept in with his big city salary, four-bed detached house in Chiswick and three holidays abroad a year. He'd saved his daughter from a life in a dirty two-bed council flat, a mother who didn't give a shit and all the Hell that came with it.

But he hadn't saved me. No one had.

I hated Claire for it. And loved her. And hated her. An endless circle of sibling adoration and hatred, with a good measure of resentment thrown in, that always had a habit of festering for days after I saw her, because it always brought the old ghosts out to play. Sometimes, as we sat here, sipping coffee, surrounded by the gleaming structures and the nice city folk who clinked their champagne glasses together in a celebration of how fucking amazing they were, I could see those ghosts all too clearly. I could hear their voices. Feel the whisper of their breath in my ear and the touch of their clammy hands on my skin and it was all I could do not to scream.

'Have you eaten?' she said, as the waitress brought two large cups of coffee, smiling at Claire as she did so and her eyes flitting warily to me, as if I was a scavenging pigeon that she should shoo away. 'I can order you a sandwich or something, but I'll have to dash off in a bit and leave you to it, if that's okay?'

'What about your lunch?'

She waved off my question, lifting the cup to take a sip. 'I have some quinoa at the office.'

Quinoa. I wrinkled my nose. Claire never ate anything unless it was trendy. Quinoa. Kale. I swear, she'd have eaten rabbit shit if someone told her it was the new big food trend that was oh-so-super-healthy that just about everyone was eating.

'I'm fine, thanks.'

'Are you sure?' A frown wrinkled her brow. 'When did you last eat?'

Half a slice of toast and two lines of coke just before I left the house, thank you very much.

'Claire, for fuck's sake, we do have food in Hackney, you know? We even have an M&S Foodstore.' I said.

'Very funny,' she scolded, pursing her lips, but her eyes softened as she looked at me. 'You've lost weight.'

By the way, darling, get Davey to buy you a new dress, for fuck's sake. You're getting skinny, that one doesn't fit you properly anymore.

Oscar's words washed over me and brought with them images I didn't want to see. A hand on my thigh. The scarred face. My arm disappearing into endless nothing.

I smiled, that Hollywood smile I always rolled out whenever I needed to banish the demons and I'd been doing that a lot since the incident outside Oscar's club. Smiling. Getting high. Drinking. Doing anything I could to forget. Smiling through the pain and panic and confusion. Smiling, because that's what people did, didn't they?

'Honestly, Claire, stop bloody fussing. I'm fine.'

She stirred her coffee even though she didn't need to, the spoon clattering against the sides of the cup. 'Well, someone has to fuss over you. That bloody boyfriend of yours sure as Hell won't. Who's he screwing this week then?'

I inwardly cursed my stupid big mouth for telling her about Davey and his girls. One weak moment when I'd let the Hollywood smile slip. One stupid weak moment when I'd been coming down from the biggest high, one of those ones that turned sour so quickly that it had hit me like a double-decker bus and sent me plummeting to the ground so hard that I lived in darkness for days afterwards. We'd met, living out one of our Groundhog Day lunch-time meetings, just like this, and, after being relentlessly questioned about what I was on, what I'd taken, why couldn't I see what I was doing to myself, blah blah fucking-blah , I'd blurted it out, just to throw her off the scent and make her think it was all relationship problems and nothing more. She hadn't believed me, of course, and all I achieved was to hammer the final nail into the coffin she wished Davey was in. Since then she loved to bring it up at every available opportunity, as if she thought reminding me of it would change everything.

'Can we not go there again, please?' I snapped. 'I came here to see you, not to talk about Davey.'

'I'm worried about you,' she said, with a tone a school-teacher would have been proud of. 'And if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have these kind of talks.'

I rubbed at my brow, the buzz from my late breakfast wearing off quick, as I felt the impending doom of our conversation dragging me under. It irritated me how she could always bring up Davey's name like he was the root cause of all the shitty things that had happened in my life, when she knew full well that wasn't the case. Being with Davey gave me a release from it. An escape. A blissful injection of pleasure straight to the veins to help me forget.

'You're always worried about me, but you don't need to be. Really, you don't.'

'Then don't give me any reason to worry.' She sighed the same old sigh she made every time we met. 'I just want to see you sort yourself out, that's all.'

No, I thought, you want me to turn up drug-free, Davey-free, ghost-free, just to make yourself feel better about being the one who was given the Golden Ticket.

It was always the same. I dined on coffee and cocaine. Claire dined on quinoa and guilt.

'Look, forget me, just for once. I'm tired of talking about how crappy my life apparently is. How about you? Let's talk about your wonderful, perfect life. You still seeing that bloke? Henry?' I smirked as I sipped at my coffee, hoping she didn't see my hands shake when I lifted the cup to my mouth.

'Hendrik,' she corrected, her eyes not missing a bloody thing as usual.

'Oh yeah, he's Swedish, right?'

'Dutch.'

Fuck.

'Right. Dutch. So, how's things going? Peter getting twitchy about that wedding fund he'd hoped he and Rita could spend on their retirement instead?'

Peter, the hero-father and rich bastard with the big house and three holidays a year, apparently had a generous nest-egg fund squirrelled away for his favourite daughter, all ready for when she met Mr. Right and decided to settle down, get hitched, have two-point-four children and a boring life in a leafy suburb somewhere.

Claire put her cup down abruptly, coffee sloshing over the edge and into the saucer, spilling onto the white table cloth. With a hiss, she grabbed at a paper napkin and began dabbing at it, frowning as she watched the brown liquid seep into the tissue.

'Why do you have to do it, eh?' She leaned forward a little, face pinched tight as she glanced around and lowering her voice as she spoke. God forbid she should cause a scene . 'Why do you have to say spiteful things about dad all the bloody time?'

' Your dad. Not mine,' I shot back snidely.

'Oh, and I'm meant to feel guilty about that, am I?' She threw the napkin down on the table but couldn't help herself and grabbed it again, folding it carefully in front of her and tucking it neatly onto the saucer. 'I'm really bloody trying here, you know? I can't keep doing this.'

I leant back in my chair, unable to stop the smirk from spreading. 'Then, why do you? I mean, if seeing me is too much for your delicate little soul to cope with, why do you bother? Unless of course you like delivering the sermon too much?'

I raised my voice a little, knowing that she hated it, knowing that a few other diners were already shooting looks our way.

'You know, you might want to tell Peter to blow the wedding fund on that retirement pad in the Algarve after all, or on some more surgery for Rita's tîts. I reckon your calling is more like one of those fire and brimstone nuns that used to beat the shit out of mum back home in Dublin when she was a kid. Forget Hendrik or Henry or whatever the fuck Dutch-boy's name is. Forget your hoity-bloody-toity city job. You'd be much better in a convent school where you could serve up a good dose of blame, shame and guilt all day every day to every poor bastard that didn't meet your high standards.'

'For fuck's sake, Casey.'

The mask slipped and I loved it when that happened. There was a wicked satisfaction in watching Mary Poppins reveal she wasn't so practically fucking perfect after all. There was a human in there somewhere, behind the robotic facade, behind the immaculate middle-class costume she wore to pretend that deep down, she wasn't Maggie Brogan's daughter and that she hadn't started out in the same gutter I had lived in my whole life.

I returned her glare with a maddeningly smug grin, proud that I'd pushed her buttons enough to make her lose her cool.

'What's wrong with you? Are you on something now, is that it? You are, aren't you?'

I rolled my eyes. 'Not this again.'

'Yes,' she snapped, slamming her fist down on the table and sending the teaspoon clattering to the ground. A hush fell over the closest diners to us, now all eagerly listening in that way people do when they're pretending they're not listening. 'Yes, this again. This every single bloody time. When are you going to sort your shit out and grow up? I can't keep watching you destroy yourself and I can't keep sitting here and taking all your crap. It's not fair.'

'Fair?' I scoffed. 'Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot you think life should be fair. Life should be all roses and chocolates and afternoon tea and

oh-isn't-everything-so-fucking-wonderful . Poor Claire. I feel so bad for you. I really do. It must be terrible waking up and realising life isn't like one of those trashy romance novels you read. How ever do you cope with it all?'

Red spots of anger had risen on her cheeks, but it was the tears that had sprung to her eyes that pissed me off more. I hated her self-pitying tears. The tears were as fake as her trendy lunches and her middle-class life.

She opened her mouth to say something, and then stopped. I always had to admire her ability to slip the mask back on. Like marble, she sat up straighter in the chair and smoothed the hair back from her face in a way that reminded me of Maggie in her rare sober moments. The bile rose, an acidic throat-punch that I had to swallow down before it reached the surface.

Picking up her bag and reaching inside for her purse, Claire motioned for the waitress to come over and handed her a crisp ten-pound note.

'That should cover it,' she said, brusquely. Standing up, she smoothed out the creases in her skirt and hooked her bag onto her shoulder, before finally, letting her gaze fall upon me.

I saw it then, that look I'd always known would come, that look I'd pushed again and again and again to see.

'I don't want to see you for a while,' she said.

The words slipped so easily from her mouth. Like an exhale of breath. Like a sigh of relief. Like she'd been dying to say them for so long, I could practically see the release it gave her just to say it out loud.

'This is just...' She faltered, her voice trembling, her eyes wandering over my shoulder as if she could see the ghosts too, but I knew it wasn't that. She was just trying to avoid meeting my steady gaze. 'It's too hard,' she whispered. 'Sort yourself out, Casey. Before it's too late.'

I didn't watch her as she walked away, but I felt the cold rush in from the empty space in front of me, as if the sun had suddenly vanished behind the skyscrapers, leaving me in shadow.

'Ma'am, can I get you anything else?'

The waitress was back again, probably hoping that now Claire had gone, she could finally shoo me away.

I shook my head, picking up my bag and clutching it tight against me like it was a life-jacket. It wasn't of course, but the wrap of coke inside the inner pocket was.

'Do you happen to have a bathroom I could use?' I said.

I held my head high as I walked the short distance inside the coffee shop, the ghosts clinging to my back every step of the way. I bore it, letting them hold on with their clammy hands and feeling their hot breath on my neck. Just a few minutes and I'd soon shake them off. Just a few minutes and it would all be okay again. I knew it would. I didn't need Claire. I didn't need her to try and save me.

I could save myself.