Jail Bird

‘And come on. Be honest now. Please.’ Oli looked down at the table, started shredding a napkin. ‘He was trying to hurt you, wasn’t he? Uncle Si?’

Lily blew out her cheeks, not sure how to answer.

Oli sat back. ‘You still do that. I remember that.’ She mimicked what Lily had done. ‘You always did that…when you were trying not to answer a question. Like, oh,’ and now Oli was smiling a little, ‘like, Mummy, where do babies come from?’

‘Yeah, do you know the answer to that one yet?’ Lily quipped. She was touched that Oli remembered her little foibles. She remembered Oli’s, too–they were forever branded on her brain. Like the strawberry birthmark on Oli’s upper right arm, and the vertical frown-lines between Oli’s dark brows, very much in evidence now, signalling her determination to get an answer on this subject.

‘Answer the frigging question, Mum. This is all fun, and it feels really strange but sort of nice doing this with you, just girly things like shopping and stuff–and you haven’t explained yet about the cash, and don’t think I’ve forgotten that–but it’s just a smokescreen, ain’t that the truth? So come on. Tell me. Was he…?’

Their waiter was back with two Americanos and cupcakes.

‘What is that all about?’ wondered Lily aloud. ‘A thousand types of coffee, when all a person wants is strong and black…’

‘Mum.’

Lily looked at her. ‘Okay. Yeah. Si believes I did it. And he thinks twelve years of my life ain’t enough to pay for the loss of your father. Straight enough for you?’

Oli stared at her. ‘I’ll speak to him,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Lily.

‘Yeah, I will. And I’ll say that if anything happens to you, I’ll know it wasn’t an accident and…I’ll go to the police.’

Lily sipped her coffee, troubled. She didn’t want Oli going head to head with Si and that nutter Freddy. And no daughter of hers was going to turn into a grass if she had anything to do with it.

‘Look, Oli—’

‘No you look. I lost Dad. And now…now I’ve just got you back. I can’t lose you too.’

Suddenly Oli’s eyes were full of tears.

‘Hey,’ said Lily, reaching out, patting Oli’s hand. ‘Hey, it’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen to me.’

‘No?’ Oli swiped angrily at her eyes. ‘Fuck me, Mum, how can you say that? You’ve been banged up in prison for twelve years and you tell me it was all for nothing. That the person who killed Daddy is still out here, still walking the streets, free as a bird. Maybe I’m stupid to believe what you say, but I do. I don’t think you killed him, and if that’s so, then Uncle Si has no right, no right at all, to start threatening you.’

Lily was silent. She picked at her cupcake. Then she said: ‘Do you think we should get the security codes and the locks and everything changed at The Fort?’

Lily could see that Oli was thinking again about the scene she had interrupted by the swimming pool. Lily there, shivering in the freezing-cold pool, and Si with the pole, keeping her in there.

‘Yeah,’ she said finally. ‘I think we should.’

‘What about Saz? What will she make of it?’

‘Saz ain’t here,’ said Oli, tilting her chin up. Saz was her big sis, the boss of their little tribe–Lily knew it would take guts for Oli to stand against her.

‘Well, okay. We’ll get that organized, yeah?’

‘Yeah. Okay. Sunstyle Securities come and test it and maintain it. I’ll phone them, they’ll do it.’

‘Good.’

‘And now the money,’ said Oli, and that frown-line was still there as she reached for a lavender-iced cupcake and removed a sugared violet from its centre. ‘How can you have all this money?’

‘Ah yeah…about that.’ And Lily told her about Leo’s emergency stash behind the wall in the master suite, and that she had…well, accessed it.

‘Accessed it how?’

‘With a pickaxe. So we’re going to need a builder as well as the security guys.’

‘You did that when you were supposed to be ill with a migraine,’ said Oli accusingly.

‘I lied about the migraine. Sorry, Oli. But I didn’t know how far I could trust you. I just had to get into the house and get that money, and then I could start to rebuild my life, start to find…’

‘Find what?’ Oli was diving into the cupcake but now she stopped and stared at her mother’s face.

‘Find some peace of mind,’ finished Lily, when she had almost blurted: Find out who murdered Leo. She didn’t want Oli getting involved in this crusade of hers. She wanted Oli safe, and once they started down this road she knew damned well that safety could no longer be guaranteed.

Oli was staring at her. Lily had the uncomfortable feeling that she was not quite believing what her mother was telling her any more.

‘You know what?’ said Oli. ‘You’re devious.’

‘Oli…’ She was going to say, no, no Oli, I’m not, please believe me, baby, but sometimes life throws shit at you and you need to duck and dive to miss it.

‘Yeah, you are.’ Oli was sitting back, nodding thoughtfully, staring at her mother. ‘You’ve changed. You were never devious before. You were just…you were just my sweet quiet mum, until they took you away. I asked for you, you know.’

‘Oli–oh sweetheart.’ Lily felt as though her heart was breaking into a thousand tiny pieces when she looked at Oli’s lovely face and saw the pain there.

‘Yeah, I did. I asked to see you. I didn’t understand, but they told me you’d done a bad thing, a terrible thing to Dad and we’d lost him, and now you had to pay for it. I didn’t understand. How would a six-year-old kid understand all that shit? And I couldn’t remember…it was just awful, I couldn’t remember what happened when Dad died. I still can’t. But I cried for you night after night, Mum. Every night, I cried. And for him too, for Dad. But neither of you ever came back.’

She was quiet a moment, looking down at her half-eaten cupcake. Lily said nothing. There was bugger-all she could say: all the damage had already been done and all she could hope for now was that she’d be allowed to make up for the crap Oli had been forced to endure in the past.

Oli’s eyes flicked up and she stared at Lily. ‘Uncle Si and Aunt Maeve told me and Saz that you didn’t want to see us.’

Bastards, thought Lily, the news cutting her like a knife, even though it failed to surprise her.

She thought of those impassioned phone calls she had made on the girls’ birthdays, at Easter, at Christmas; always hopeful, always trying, but hope dying by slow degrees as the barriers sprang up, as Si said again and again: No Lily, you can’t speak to them, why would they want to talk to the bitch who’d done their father? Fuck off and die, why don’t you? Si could have got the house number changed, but he hadn’t. Lily guessed that he enjoyed turning her down, making her suffer. Change the number and he’d have to find other ways to get his jollies.

Lily found she had to clear her throat and blink hard before she asked the next question.

‘Did…did Saz ask for me too?’

Oli slumped forward, pushing the remains of the cupcake and the cooling coffee aside. She leaned on her elbows, pushed her hands deep into her wild curling mop of dark hair, and looked at her mother.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Saz never asked.’

‘Oh.’ That hurt a lot.

‘It changed her,’ said Oli sadly. ‘It changed her, big-time.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Just…oh, she’s a bit wild sometimes. A bit out of it.’ Oli gave Lily a wan half-smile. ‘I think she’s scared herself a couple of times and that’s why she’s married Richard. He’s so straight, so flipping boring really, but a really nice man. He’s a sort of anchor for her.’

Lily straightened, perturbed by what Oli was telling her, but knowing she had to put it to one side. She tried not to think about Saz’s anguish, or Oli’s, not now. It wouldn’t help. She had to keep strong, keep focused. She picked up her coffee cup and drained it. ‘You know what I need?’ she said.