Jail Bird

place?’

Oli looked wide-eyed and smiling at her mother. ‘A VHS recorder? Mum, that’s really old shit. Seriously, that’s so over. It’s all flat screens and Blu-Ray now.’

‘Right,’ Lily sighed.

‘But I think there’s a load of old stuff, video recorders and cameras, things like that, in the study somewhere.’

‘Oh.’ Maybe she was in luck after all. ‘So what are your plans today, Oli?’

‘Nothing much. Just hanging out with the girls.’

‘Well, have fun.’

And then Oli was gone. Lily sat there and thought over all that had happened since she got out of prison. She really felt she was making progress with Oli, and that was nothing short of a miracle. She was still pissed off with Nick. She didn’t understand him at all, but then she never had. Sometimes she had the feeling that he was on her side, then he started laying down the law and her back went up. Shit, if he knew what she was really up to, he’d be even more put out. Because he knew her of old. He knew that once she started chewing on a thing, she wouldn’t let up until it either squeaked or died. But maybe…and this was an uncomfortable thought…maybe he was just trying to throw her off the scent. Maybe Nick had an idea what had really happened to Leo. Hell, maybe Nick was the one she should be looking into more closely. Who the fuck knew?

A sweet memory drifted into her brain: her and Nick dancing at a youth club do, just smooching head to head, so close, so cosy–but then Leo had cut in; Leo always cut in. Maybe Leo had cut in in other ways, too–screwed Nick on a deal. Nick might be a pretty straight shooter, but she had always known that greed was good in Leo’s eyes. Wave a fat wedge of cash under his nose and he might have been persuaded to do the dirty on anyone. Not Lily. Not the girls. Not Si or Freddy. They were family. But anyone else? Even Nick? She couldn’t swear that Leo would have always trod the line the way he should.

The house was silent around her, waiting. No ghosts here, though, only memories. Not just bad memories, either. Leo might have been a cheating heel, and–all right–there hadn’t been much love lost between them; but he had cared for his family and treated them well, on the whole.

She went out into the hall and into Leo’s study. Looked around. There was a TV in the corner and an oldish computer on the desk. There were still big storage cabinets built into the far wall and she went to those. Leo’s love life might have been a mess, but in business and where cash was concerned, she knew he wouldn’t overlook the tiniest detail. She started throwing open doors, pulling out old encyclopedias and books and folders, none of which looked as though they’d been touched in years.

No good.

She went to the next set of cupboards beneath an impressively bulging bookcase (Leo had never read a book in his entire life) and she looked in there too.

Nothing.

Another set of cupboards, old golfing trophies in here, Leo had loved his golf. She dragged some of the silverware out onto the floor, tossed out some dusty old back-issues of Pro Golfer and found a VHS recorder sitting there with a Scart cable wound up on top of it.

‘Oh yes,’ she muttered, and pulled it out and went over to the TV in the corner and started fiddling with the connections. When she thought she had it right, she went up and fetched the tape and came back down again and switched on both TV and player. Then she started playing with the remotes. There was Sky on the thing; it was linked in to satellite. Everything had changed so much since she’d been put in the slammer.

She sat there and fiddled with the damned thing until she felt like shrieking and hurling all the remotes right across the room. Then she got it. Keyed in the aerial connection, bypassing the satellite dish. Pressed ‘play’ on the video, and it was playing.

First just white noise, a snowy screen.

But then the white noise stopped.

The screen cleared.

Suddenly, Leo King was in the room.

‘Hiya Lily girl,’ he said.

Lily’s legs turned to water. She flailed backwards and sat down hard on the captain’s chair at the desk.

‘Holy fuck,’ she moaned, feeling all the blood drain out of her face with the shock of it.

Leo was there, on the tape. Leo wearing a red open-necked Lacoste polo shirt, and she could see the thick gold chain around his brawny brown neck. His hair was cropped short, the way he always liked to wear it, his eyes were clear dark blue, brilliant against his tanned skin. It was the Leo she’d known, lived with, given children to, alive and well and sitting in–yes, he was sitting in the very same chair she was sitting in now, with the cabinets lined up behind him.

‘Oh Jesus,’ mumbled Lily, feeling the room spin around her, wondering if she was going to throw up or faint or both.

‘Well, Lily girl, if you’re playing this tape, I’m dead.’

She didn’t throw up. But the room went black, and then she was gone.

She came round with her face scrunched down into the Berber rug. It was scratchy and it was hurting her. She pulled her head off the rug, wondering what the hell happened, where she was, was she still inside?

But she could hear Leo’s voice–loud, booming, just like always. She must be going mad. Then she remembered the tape. She took a gulping breath and prised herself up from the floor, flopped back up onto the chair and looked at the screen again. Leo was still there but he had stopped speaking. She pressed the pause button with a shaking hand and sat there, looking at the frozen, flickering image of her dead husband. Tears slid down her face unheeded. All right, he’d been a bastard. But he was her bastard. And now he was gone forever.

Taking a gulping, teary breath she rewound the tape. Pressed ‘play’.

‘…if you’re playing this tape, I’m dead. Also, you’ve got hold of the emergency stash and the gun. That’s good. Take care of the girls, Lily.’

Take care of the girls. Not knowing that she wouldn’t be given a chance to do that. Not knowing that she’d be fitted up with his murder.

‘Oh, Leo,’ she groaned sadly.

‘The boys’ll look after you,’ he went on.

Christ, if only you knew, thought Lily. She put a hand over her mouth. Felt like she was going to hurl.

The phone was ringing. She glanced at it, then back at the screen. It kept ringing. She stopped the tape, switched off the TV. Snatched up the phone from the desk. Had to swallow several times just to get a word out. ‘Hello?’

‘You know Alice Blunt freaked out when you showed her that photo of Leo?’ said Jack Rackland’s light cockney voice.

Lily sighed, her mind still focused on Leo, looking so vital and alive when now he was dead, just bones lying in a cold grave. She rubbed at her eyes, pushed back her hair, tried to think straight. ‘Yeah,’ she said. She didn’t think she’d ever forget that little episode with Alice.

‘Well this one shouldn’t do too much freaking–she’s a tough nut. I’m free this evening, we can give her a visit.’

‘And what was this one’s name? Reba, was it?’ This one. One of many women that her husband had been shagging while she’d been raising his kids, tending his home.

‘That’s it, Reba Stuart.’

Lily stood there feeling sad and so alone. She wished Leo was here right now, if only because he was familiar to her, a fixed point of reference. Right now she had no one to turn to. And another four women to find after this: women who thought nothing of sleeping with someone else’s husband, who maybe thought nothing of