Page 34 of Cruel Shame

“You can talk in front of Margaret,” Billy said.

My gaze flicked to Kendrick, whose eyes were as round as buttons. From where I was standing, this Margaret woman had wormed her way into the household. What the hell was he thinking?

I lowered myself into the seat next to the woman and locked eyes with Mother whose features blanked into a mask of neutrality. It was a terrible thing to wish on another woman, but maybe this competition and the potential loss of the man who kept a roof over her head might make her start thinking of ways to escape.

Billy Hancock stood and carved the microwaved chicken, exposing flesh that was still pink. I winced at the potential food poisoning, wondering how someone with such expensive tastes in decor could allow his housekeeper to turn Marks and Spencer food into shit.

After serving ourselves with vegetables, Kendrick and I made a show of pushing our food around the plate, while the other three ate in silence. Mother picked at her food, her appetite suppressed by the coke and booze.

“Go on, then,” Billy Hancock said through a mouthful of chicken. “What did you have to say?”

I glanced at Margaret, who gave me an encouraging smile, then told them everything I knew, starting from the television interview to Mr. Burgh being held in Glasgow police station. I also told them how Lady Liddell was using the counterfeit paternity test to prove a history of Mr. Burgh abusing teenage girls.

Mother’s lips tightened throughout my story—I couldn’t tell if her anger was directed to Lady Liddell or Mr. Burgh or Margaret, who kept making sympathetic clucking sounds. Billy Hancock lowered his head and snickered, his shoulders twitching up and down.

“I fail to see the amusement in the situation,” Kendrick snapped.

“That bloody bastard got his just deserts.” Billy wiped away a tear of mirth with the back of his hand. “When Abby got into trouble, he didn’t believe a word of what she said. Isn’t that right, Abs?”

Mother lowered her lashes and bobbed her head up and down.

I leaned forward, my brows furrowing. That didn’t sound like Mr. Burgh at all. On Christmas Eve, he caught Orlando and me in a passionate clinch, but he didn’t explode with anger or act like it was my fault. Apart from looking like he wanted to wring Orlando’s neck, he warned me that Orlando was just as lewd as Maxwell. Mr. Burgh wasn’t the sort of person who would throw away his daughter just because she got pregnant.

Was he?

My gaze drifted from Billy Hancock, who had stopped eating to grin, and back to Mother, who still wouldn’t look up from her plate. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but he’s in the biggest trouble of his life and for something that wasn’t even his fault.”

Mother slammed her palms on the table, making her golden knife and fork clank against the expensive plates. Everyone stiffened. Even Billy Hancock stopped snickering and paid attention.

“You would take his side,” she said in a dull voice.

I glanced at Kendrick. He furrowed his brow, mirroring my own confusion. Was this the booze talking or was Mother lashing out because Billy Hancock just seated another woman at the family dining table?

“Of course I would,” I replied in a voice I might use to calm down a dog about to attack. “The other side is Lady Liddell.”

Mother’s nostrils flared, and she pressed her lips so tightly the fine lines around her mouth deepened into ridges. “Maybe he is your father. Have you ever thought about that?”

All the blood drained from my face and gathered in my twitching heart. We’d had this conversation before in the cafeteria of St. Luke’s Hospital. Back then, she said Father Neapolitan had raped her on a school trip.

She had been under the influence of coke at the time and could have been talking gibberish, but all the evidence I’d found matched up with her story. Why the bloody hell was she changing her mind, now?

Bile surged to the back of my throat. She was protecting the Liddells. Throwing poor Mr. Burgh under the bus so I would turn my attention away from that shitty family of snakes.

“I went into your old room, you know,” I said. “There’s a fuck-load of creepy letters from Thomas Neapolitan that back up the story you told me the last time we met. There’s also a picture of a younger version of you looking really cozy with Billy.”

Billy Hancock raised his palms. I ignored him, remembering he’d told me about the childhood bout of mumps that had turned him sterile.

“Why would you lie about something as important as this?” I said. “Mr. Burgh could lose his job and spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Mother stared ahead, her hands balled into fists. She was shutting me out. Shutting me out the same way she did whenever I would tell her about Billy Hancock dangling me over his growling and snapping dogs, whenever I would plead at her to leave this wretched house, and when she kicked me out of the only home I had known for setting Billy up with the police.

I pulled back my chair and rose to my feet. “You know what?” My voice was thick and trembling with emotion. “In the few months I’ve been with Mr. Burgh, he’s been more of a parent to me than you’ve ever been my entire life.”

She didn’t even wince. Of course, she wouldn’t. I meant absolutely nothing to the woman.

Despair hollowed my chest, leaving me breathless and on the verge of sobbing. “I don’t know what the Liddells have over you, but they’re ruining my life. Yesterday, Lady Liddell sent a girl after me with a gun.”

Mother’s head snapped up, and she swept her gaze down my form. Her eyes lingered on the bandages around my arms, but she made no other comment.