There was a set of keys on the mantelpiece. Nick picked them up and they jingled.
That sound.
One of the older cons had told her she would feel like this. ‘Just the sound of a set of keys jingling is gonna make you jump out of your skin for the rest of your life. You heard how men used to come back after World War One, shell-shocked from the Somme? Anyone so much as popped a cork near them, or a car backfired. They just dived for cover. And that’ll be you, Lily girl. Every time you hear a set of keys.’
Nick tossed the keys into her lap. Lily flinched.
‘There’s a safe flat across town. The boys’ll take you back to Becks’s place to get your things, then take you on over there. All right?’
‘What you doing this for? Guilty conscience?’ asked Lily.
‘What?’
‘Did you…you didn’t have anything to do with Leo’s death, did you?’ she stumbled out.
Nick looked surprised. Then he laughed. ‘That’s a good act, Lily. And that’s a really good line to take, particularly with Si and Freddy King after your blood. So let’s get this right – you were an innocent, banged up by mistake? It was a miscarriage of justice? Someone else did it? Me, maybe? Oh Lily. That’s a bloody good one.’
Lily stood up. She’d been frightened, abused, accosted by her own kin and now the bastard was laughing at her.
‘It’s not funny,’ she snapped.
His laughter stopped suddenly. He moved forward and stood facing her. Suddenly she felt very small.
‘Oh, too right it ain’t. It’s far from that.’ He was staring at her face. ‘Twelve years in stir and you’re still fucking beautiful. How’d you manage that Lily King? So beautiful. And so bloody deadly, too.’
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Lily through gritted teeth.
‘Yeah, that’s a good one. I’d stick with that if I were you.’
Now Lily was getting mad. She lashed out, wanting to wipe that smirk off his face. He caught her wrist, held her there.
‘Now don’t start that with me,’ he advised. ‘If you hit me, I swear to you, I’ll hit back, and you know what? I can hit a lot harder than you. So don’t do it.’
Lily was silent, fuming, her eyes glinting with temper. He was hurting her wrist, but she wouldn’t say so. She’d die first.
‘I didn’t do it,’ she said again. ‘And I’m going to prove it’s the truth.’
‘Ha! Lily, you did it. I knew you. You were a shy, quiet girl and all I can think is that Leo pushed you too far, pushed you beyond reason, and you finally snapped.’
‘You think I killed your best friend? Truly? Then you ought to hate me for that.’
‘Yeah.’ Nick was staring at her thoughtfully. ‘You’re right. I should.’
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Lily didn’t struggle: she was too stunned to do that. She kept very still and tried not to respond. She couldn’t afford to let him see even a tiny bit of softness or pliability in her; she had to stay tough, stay in control. But – hell – it was difficult. It had been a long, dry time in prison. And if Nick was helping her – God knew why, she’d try to figure it out, if she could – then maybe she’d be wise to exploit any weakness for her he might still have.
He pulled back, and stood there looking at her from inches away. ‘You know what I’d like to do now?’ he said.
Lily gulped. Her lips were throbbing, and other parts were too. She shook her head.
‘I’d like to take you upstairs,’ he said, then his mouth tilted up in a cynical smile. ‘And I would – if it wasn’t for fear that I might wake up with what’s left of my brains splattered all over the room.’
‘You bastard,’ said Lily. ‘I told you…’
‘Yeah, that you didn’t do it.’ There was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. He let go of her wrist, pushed her firmly back, away from him.
Lily told herself she was glad about that. Keep strong, she told herself. Keep focused. It was hard though. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said. ‘I’ll prove it.’
‘Look, Lily, don’t show me anything and don’t try to prove anything to me, I’m not biting, okay? Just keep out of trouble, or I promise I am going to give you such a seeing-to one of these days.’
Promises, promises, thought Lily. Then she clamped down on the thought, clamped down on the feeling. Her blood was fizzing from that unexpected kiss, but she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to get mixed up with anyone. Getting involved with hot, dodgy men had got her into this mess. She wasn’t going to go there, not any more. Even if Nick wasn’t Leo, Leo of the dazzling charm and the secret stable of tarts, he was still a bad ’un and he was best avoided.
‘Now,’ he went on, crossing to the inner door. One of the bruisers, the one who had told her to shut up on the joyride over here, was standing there. Nick turned back to Lily. ‘Keep out of Si’s way. And if you see Freddy coming, for the love of God leg it fast in the opposite direction. Okay?’
Lily nodded slowly, although she knew that she was planning to do only one of those things.
‘Nige’ll drive you,’ said Nick, looking expectantly at her. ‘A thank you would be nice,’ he said.
‘Fuck you,’ said Lily, and the last thing she heard as she and Nige headed out of the house was Nick bloody O’Rourke laughing his bollocks off at her. Again.
14
It was her first day in Holloway. She thought she would choke with terror at the sensation of being hemmed-in, shut away. A prison officer at reception checked and logged her belongings, then allowed her to buy two phone cards with her own private cash.
‘Should be just one,’ said the officer. ‘But as you’re new in, two, okay?’
Then she was strip-searched for the first time, adding indignity to fear, and locked in a room with six other prisoners. Three of them were heroin users, one of which had turned on her violent boyfriend, nearly braining him with a candlestick, and she joked that his head was so hard it had broken the bloody thing, and she was sorry about that because the candlestick had been a gift from her mother.
One of the others was an intimidatingly tall, twenty-stone Jamaican woman with dreadlocks and a bass-baritone voice, called Mercy. She’d been done for importing cocaine and spoke in a fast patois that Lily at first struggled to comprehend. After a while, she developed an ear for it, and could talk to Mercy and understand her fully. Mercy had three kids at home in Jamaica, and had taken the coke with her on her first-ever trip to England because she had been told that if she didn’t, her eleven-year-old son would be killed.
‘Do you know if he’s safe now?’ Lily had asked her later on.
‘He’s in hiding with his grandma,’ said Mercy, and Lily thought then that her own life had been a picnic compared to this poor woman’s. After that, they each had a rudimentary health check and then Lily was pronounced ‘processed’ and was put on D3, the intake wing, in a four-bed dormitory.
Like boarding school, she thought.
‘It true you killed your old man?’ asked one of the heroin junkies in the dorm. The girl had told Lily she’d decided not to sign on to the methadone programme because she said they were all loony-tunes in the hospital wing: she’d tried it before and she wasn’t trying it again. She’d rather go cold turkey.
Lily didn’t answer. She was blank-faced with shock at finding herself here, inside.
The heroin girl took her silence as an admission of guilt. They’d all read about the case in the papers; many of them had been the victims of violent husbands, boyfriends, pimps, and Lily had turned the tables. Struck a blow for the sisterhood.
‘Hey girl – respect,’ said her cellmate with a grin.
