63
‘Ruthie’s gone up to stay in Mum’s place in London,’ said Max as he brought their drinks out into the garden.
Annie was sitting under the shade of the big willow tree in the Surrey garden. Summer was at its height, the lawn was bleached yellow and the air was hazy. Birds sang. Bees hummed. Max put the drinks on the table and sat down with her.
‘I know,’ she said, thinking that he would always call the house in London ‘Mum’s place’. Queenie had reigned supreme there, and in the annexe here. In a way, she still did. ‘She told me.’
‘Are you two all right now?’ Max was watching her acutely.
Annie shrugged. ‘As all right as we’re going to be.’
‘I was worried,’ said Max. ‘When she started looking after you.’
Annie laughed. ‘What, you thought she was going to do me in?’
‘It crossed my mind.’
Annie shook her head. ‘That’s not Ruthie. You must know her by now. She’s been spitting mad about all this, but she’s good right through to the bone. She couldn’t squash a fly, much less hurt me.’
‘She had every right to be spitting mad,’ said Max.
‘I know.’
‘I was mad at you myself when you did it, told her about us. It was only ever meant to be sex between us. I thought you understood that. But now I see you were too young to understand anything except getting back at your sister.’ He sat back and sighed. ‘Truth is, I felt bad about it. Really bad. I was the one who should have known better.’
‘But Max – I chased you.’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘You did.’
Annie looked away, down the garden.
‘I think you know it wasn’t ever “just sex” for me.’
‘I’ve come to know it. Slowly.’
‘I’ve always been in love with you,’ said Annie.
‘I know.’
Annie looked round at him. ‘Fuck it, Max. You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to say “I love you too”.’
‘It goes without saying,’ teased Max.
‘Men,’ sniffed Annie. ‘It doesn’t ever go without saying. Women need to hear it.’
‘Okay then.’ Max looked her dead in the eye. ‘I love you, Annie Bailey. Even if you are a fucking lunatic. You stopped a bullet for me, and I’d stop one for you.’
Annie stared at him. ‘I’m going to jail, Max,’ she said. ‘You know they postponed the trial because of me being hospitalized; well now they’ve re-scheduled.’
His face clouded. God, how she loved his face. So strong, almost brutal, but saved by a masculine beauty that she would never tire of.
‘Maybe it won’t be for long,’ he said. ‘I’m looking into things.’
Annie shook her head, ignoring his platitudes. ‘The date’s set for the trial. Six weeks’ time. Taking a bullet’s not going to stop them sending me down.’
‘Then we’ll make the most of those six weeks,’ said Max, and he took her hand and kissed it.
64
Max sorted her out with a proper, hotshot brief for the trial. Mr Jerry Peters, her defending counsel, was an expensively-suited tall man with a florid complexion and too much fluffy ginger hair. He told her that she was almost certainly going down, but there were mitigating circumstances and they were going to make full use of them to lessen the sentence.
‘Aren’t you supposed to promise me you’ll get me off?’ Annie asked as she and Max sat in Jerry’s plush office in the Law Courts.
‘I don’t deal in lies with my clients, Miss Bailey,’ said Jerry smoothly.
‘And what are these “mitigating circumstances”?’ she asked.
‘A disturbed childhood. Your father left when you were nine …’
‘Eleven.’
‘Eleven.’ He made a note. ‘Your mother drank. You and your sister had to fend for yourselves. Little wonder that you ended up out of your depth.’
Which wasn’t exactly how it had happened, but she supposed he did have a point. She’d always had to make her own way in the world, with no support. Her entrepreneurial spirit had always been there, lying dormant. If she hadn’t seduced her sister’s bridegroom on the night before the wedding, she wouldn’t have been flung out of Connie’s house and been forced to retreat to her Aunt Celia’s. Once there, it had only been a matter of time before her business skills kicked in and she landed herself up to her neck in the shit.
‘And?’
‘
‘And?’
‘And you were doing a service to these poor unfortunate women. Without your protection, they would have been walking the streets, at the mercy of men who would exploit them.’
Annie had to suppress a smile. Hard to imagine Mira or Jenny or Thelma on the streets. In luxury apartments being kept by wealthy admirers, perhaps. On the streets? Never in a month of Sundays.
‘Well, you’ve convinced me,’ said Annie as Max sat silent beside her. ‘Anything else?’
‘There’s been a lot of Press interest in this. They’ll dig around and try to find more juicy morsels to titillate the readers. Is there anything else I should know, bearing that in mind? We don’t want any nasty surprises.’
‘I ran a parlour in Limehouse when my aunt took off unexpectedly. I carried on, kept it going for her.’
Jerry stared at her face, then nodded and made more notes.
‘How many girls?’
‘Three. And one boy.’
‘But your aunt told you it was a massage parlour, not anything else? Not, for instance, a brothel?’
‘I was never under any illusion about what went on there.’
‘You must have been, surely?’ He prompted her with his eyes.
Annie took the hint. ‘When my mother kicked me out due to a family disagreement, I went to stay with Celia. At first, I didn’t fully realize what went on there… but after a while, I did. And when Celia vanished, I took over the running of the place.’
‘So it was an established business. You carried on running it as a favour to your aunt. You were almost running a public service, isn’t that true?’
‘I suppose so. Celia had lots of older clients. She gave them discounts. She was very sympathetic to their needs.’
‘
Jerry had warned her about the Press but he hadn’t warned her enough. Outside the court when the trial began it was a madhouse. Flashes went off in her face, questions were shouted. Max was there with her, though, and a line of Max’s boys established a way through for her up the courthouse steps and into the building, elbowing
