Free Good Bait by John Harvey

didn’t text? Call? Anything?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Why was that?’
    â€˜I was frightened.’
    â€˜What of?’
    She pushed her feet back and forth along the floor. ‘My dad.’
    Sasha tugged at a thread that had worked its way loose from a rip in her jeans.
    â€˜He found out, didn’t he?That I was seeing him again. Petru. He’d told me before, he didn’t want me seeing him, not talking to him or nothing.’
    â€˜Why was that?’
    â€˜I dunno. Just never liked him, right from the first.’
    â€˜He’d met him, then?’
    â€˜Just the once, that’s all. I brought him to meet my mum. I thought she’d like him, and my dad he was here. I didn’t know. I thought he was, I dunno, off somewhere. Wouldn’t’ve brought him otherwise. Soon as he saw Petru he started in on him – what was he doing here, how was he living, where all his money was coming from? – stuff like that. Not that Petru ever had any money, not really.
    â€˜Then when he was leaving, my dad said he didn’t want him round here again. Not ever. Didn’t want me to have anything to do with him. When Petru started to stand up for himself, for us, talk back, I thought my dad was going to hit him. Petru, he wasn’t frightened, but he’s a big man, my dad, he’d’ve hurt him, I know he would. Hurt him bad. That’s what he’s like.’
    She snapped the thread free.
    â€˜After he’d gone, he told me I wasn’t to have nothing to do with him again. Said he’d stop me using the computer, Facebook an’ that, take away my mobile phone.’
    â€˜So that’s when you started using Lesley as a go-between?’
    â€˜Yeah. She didn’t mind. Liked it, really.’
    â€˜And this particular evening, the one we’re talking about, that was how you’d arranged to meet him?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜But Hampstead – why Hampstead? Not exactly round the corner.’
    â€˜That’s why, yeah? No way we’re going to bump into anyone we knew. Anyone who knew me and might tell my dad.’
    â€˜This would have been late, though. It would have been dark.’
    â€˜That was okay. I didn’t care.’
    â€˜How about getting home?’
    A quick glance away. ‘I wasn’t. I told my mum I was staying at Lesley’s. A sleepover.’
    â€˜Little liar,’ Fay Martin said quietly.
    â€˜There was this place, stayed open all night. Burgers and stuff. That’s where we’d go, just sit, you know, and talk. What was going to happen, what we were going to do.’
    â€˜Do?’
    â€˜Once we were married.’
    â€˜Holy Jesus!’ Fay Martin rolled her eyes up towards the heavens.
    â€˜Sasha,’ Tim Costello leaned forward, ‘you said your dad found out you were going to see Petru that evening – how did that happen?’
    â€˜Mum was out and he was here. They’d …’ She looked towards her mother, then away. ‘I think they’d had a row. Mum’d stormed out.’
    â€˜I walked,’ Fay Martin said, flatly.
    â€˜Anyway, he was here and he asked me, you know, where was I going and I said, like, Lesley’s, and soon as I said it I could tell he didn’t believe me. Made me call her. Didn’t stand up to him more’n a couple of minutes, did she? Told him. After that it all come out. Everything. How I’d been going behind his back. Where we was goin’ to meet that evening, everything. I thought he was gonna go crazy, but he never. He’d warned me, that’s what he said. Warned both of us. Told me to go to my room and locked me in. He’d already took my phone. That’s an end to it, he said. Then I heard him leavin’.’
    Tears were rolling slowly down Sasha’s cheeks.
    â€˜You know where he went?’
    A shake of the head, shoulders down.
    â€˜Sasha?’
    â€˜No.’
    An