Chapter 12

Back downstairs, we found Winnie talking to Cal’s mother on my phone, they seemed to be getting on well. I picked my phone up from the table, turned it off of speaker and spoke to Aunt Mary for a couple of minutes, reassuring her that Cal and I had settled our differences and that we’d reached an agreement. Then I said goodbye and handed the phone to Cal.

“All right,” I said to Winnie, “how much?”

“How much for what?”

“How much for the videos, all the videos, no copies left. To have Cal free and clear and you out of her life forever.”

Cal looked at me wide-eyed.

“What you’re offering me money?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, “I’m just pulling your leg. I’ve decided to accept your suggestion. Now if you’ll excuse us, Cal and I are going upstairs to bed. Are you all right to get back to the school, or do you need me to call you a taxi?”

“She’s not staying here with you,” she said.

“If you hadn’t noticed it’s Sunday, that’s weekend, she’s mine. That was the arrangement I agreed to.”

“The weekend ends at midnight tonight.”

“No, the weekend ends when I send Cal back to school. Goodnight.”

“Come on you,” I said to Cal, grabbing her hand and dragging her towards the lifts.

“What are we going to do?” Cal asked.

“We’re going to my room, you’re going to spend the night, then tomorrow morning you’re going to ring the school and tell them you’re sick, or your granny died or something.” In the meantime, I was going to make a phone call. I was remembering Sandy’s funeral and my conversation with her grandfather.

Once we were in my room I locked the door behind us and put the security clasp on then led her across and sat her down on the bed.

“Now, what exactly is going on here?” I asked sharply.

Cal had tears on her cheeks.

“I need to get back to school,” she said.

“Not until you tell me everything that’s going on.”

“If I don’t do exactly what she wants, she’ll release the videos on the internet.”

“No, she won’t,” I said, “because she hasn’t got any videos.”

“Of course she has, she told me.”

“Has she ever shown you one?” I asked, “Or even a still from one?”

“No,” she replied.

“Then I’m betting she doesn’t have any. I’ll tell you what, ring her and tell her to go to hell and if she wants to post the videos online she should go ahead and do it.”

“But what if she has got them?”

“When you’ve told her that, let me speak to her.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I’m going to let her know about the real world, outside the little fantasy she’s got going on in her head,” I said, “remind me how old you are, Cal.”

“Seventeen,” she said.

“Then the first thing I’ll remind her of is the penalty likely to be given for publishing pornographic videos of persons under the age of eighteen. I’ll remind her of the fate that awaits sexual offenders in prison, particularly those guilty of sexual offences against under-aged young people and thirdly I’ll remind her of what I, personally, will do to her if any such material featuring you is made available publicly. That’s all.”

“David are you absolutely sure?” she asked.

“Cal, I promise you there’s no harm she can do to you that won’t harm her far more.”

“All right,” she said, “I trust you; I’ll do it.”

She pulled out her phone and dialled the number then put the phone on speaker.

“So you’ve come to your senses have you, bitch?” Winnie spat as she answered, “when will you be back?”

“I want to see some of this video you say you have,” Cal said.

“You’ll see it all right if you don’t get back here.”

“No, the arrangement was I got weekends with David; I’m staying here.”

“Well then, enjoy your fame girlie.”

“Before you do that David would like a word with you.”

“He has nothing to say that I want to hear.”

“Oh, I think you’d be well advised to listen, Winnie,” I interrupted, “if you don’t want to spend a long time in jail.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“No,” I replied, “you see, I’m not a shy seventeen-year-old girl. So, point number one, if you have this video you’re talking about, I want to see at least a part of it. Although, I don’t think you have anything. Point two. In the unlikely event of you actually having something to show, Cal is seventeen years old and it would be a grave criminal offence for you to even possess it, let alone publish it. Point number three. I’m sure Cal has told you that while I was in Canada I had a girlfriend who died. Well, Sandy, that’s what she was called, was half-Greek and her grandfather is a very senior member of an organisation called the Godfathers of the Night. That’s sort of the Greek Mafia. At Sandy’s funeral, he expressed his gratitude to me for making his granddaughter’s last few months incredibly happy. And told me quite categorically, that if there was ever anything and he stressed the anything, that he and his family could do for me, I only had to call him and whatever the problem was it would be taken care of. You’re becoming a problem Winnie; would you like me to ask him to take care of you?”

“What do you mean? Take care of me?”

“Well usually in those circles taking care of a problem means making it go away. So, now you have a choice, you either come back to the hotel and bring these alleged videos with you, or you go away voluntarily. Or I make you go away. Which is it to be?

“You’re threatening me,” she said, “you can’t threaten me, I’m not afraid of you.”

“Then upload your videos,” I replied, “send me the link when you do.”

Then I hung up.

“I have a feeling you’ve heard the last of that,” I told Cal.

“Did you just threaten to have her killed?”

“I don’t know, did I?”

“You said you know someone in the Greek mafia who makes people disappear.”

“No, I didn’t I told her I knew a Greek family head who knows how to make problems go away. You assumed that was what I was meaning. Just like she has.”

“She was supposed to think that wasn’t she?” she asked.

I just shrugged.

“I’m not responsible for the vagaries of her thought processes,” I said, “actually Sandy’s grandfather is a sweet old man who owns a small chain of hotels in Corinth.”

“Not a Don in the Greek Mafia?”

“He could be, I don’t know.”

“Seriously?” she said, “you were bluffing?”

“Cal, like I keep telling you, I’m an actor, it’s what I do.”

She put her arms around my neck and kissed me.

“I love you so much,” she said.

“Maybe you should find a new way of showing it,” I replied.

“I was stupid again wasn’t I?”

“Let’s call it naïve,” I said, “look, Cal, you did nothing wrong getting involved with Winnie, you just fell for her crap.”

“I suppose you’re going to insist on having your wicked way with me,” she said.

“No, now I’m going to take you out to dinner.”

“Ooh, romantic.

“Then I’m going to have my wicked way with you.”

“I do have homework you know,” she said.

“Then you’d better go down to the car and get your things and get on with it.”

“Will you walk down with me,” she said, “and can I use your laptop?”

“Yes,” I said.

“To which question?”

“Both.”

We walked down the stairs to go to the car and took the lift back up, where Cal settled down to start her homework.

An hour later, she closed the book she was working on and looked at me.

“So where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Italian?” I suggested.

“I was thinking that in the shower or leaning over the sink or some such would have been the answer,” she replied, “but Italian will do to start with.”

There are a good number of restaurants in the Deansgate Locks area and most of them are good, the Italian one we chose, Dolce Vita, was one of them. We feasted on Tortelloni and had a glass of wine each, they were obviously one of those places where, so long as you could get away with looking like you were eighteen, you were eighteen. When we finished, Cal decided she wanted pudding, so we ordered Tiramisu and two forks. Not that I had any great hopes of eating much of it. I don’t know where she puts it, but if ever eating becomes an Olympic sport, she’s a certain gold medallist.

I think I managed three forkfuls and, after I’d paid the bill, we walked back to the hotel and took the lift to the top floor. I let us into the room and, as soon as we were behind the closed and locked door, she began shedding her clothes.

That took less than two minutes and she was standing in front of me, naked and beautiful.

I took in the sight for a good two minutes before she spoke softly.

“David, don’t you feel a bit overdressed?”

Well, she was wearing nothing but a radiant smile and I still had my shoes on let alone the rest of my clothes.

“I think you could be right,” I agreed and shed my jacket.

“No,” she said as I dropped it onto the armchair behind me, “let me unwrap my presents.”

My shirt quickly joined my jacket on the chair and then she knelt down and removed first my shoes and then my socks. Her hands went to my belt undid the buckle and then proceeded to loosen my trousers. Once she had them fully open, she hooked her fingers into the waistband of my boxers and pulled them and the trousers together to the floor. I stepped out of them and she looked at me.

“Good, we’re equal now.”

Then she looked down. “Oh good,” she said, “he wants to come out and play.”

I leaned down and kissed her, our tongues exploring each other’s mouth.

“Maybe you got that wrong,” I said, “what if he wants to play and come in.”