Jail Bird

suppose, just living there, soaking up the atmosphere, you know. I just want to…have fun. You know.’

And meet bad men, thought Lily. Men like Jase.

‘And where does Jase fit into these plans?’ she asked.

Oli shrugged. ‘Maybe he’ll come too,’ she said, and turned away to pick up the cafetiere and two mugs.

And maybe he won’t, thought Lily. The boys had their own rules, they did what they damned well pleased—and that wouldn’t include following a girlfriend abroad if she chose to go. Girls were ten a penny to men like these anyway—Reba Stuart had made that clear to her. Bad boys exuded testosterone; they attracted female attention without even trying. The girls were forever buzzing around them, like wasps round jam. And why buy a book when you can join a library?

Jesus, I’m bitter, thought Lily as Oli pushed a full mug towards her.

‘Tell me about Jase,’ said Lily.

‘What’s to tell?’ Oli shrugged. ‘He’s Head of Security at the club.’

‘Kings,’ said Lily thoughtfully. ‘That’s still going then.’ Kings club had been started way back by Leo, Si and Freddy. Leo hadn’t lived to see the place get properly established, and she was slightly surprised to find it was still in existence, without Leo’s dynamic drive powering it along.

‘Yeah, it’s great,’ said Oli enthusiastically.

‘He worked there long?’

‘What is this? An inquisition?’

‘Nah, just curious,’ said Lily lightly, and snagged one of the security guys as he passed by. ‘Is this going to take long?’ she asked.

‘About an hour, that’s all,’ he said.

She nodded and he hurried on. ‘Oli,’ she said, taking a sip of the coffee. It was hot, strong, pungent. Delicious. You never got decent coffee in the nick. ‘About Jase.’

‘What about him?’ Oli asked warily.

‘I hope…I just want to say I hope you’re being careful.’

‘What?’

‘Careful, Oli. As in not ending up with a fat belly.’

‘Oh God.’ Oli let out a little laugh and her eyes slipped away from Lily’s. ‘This is embarrassing.’

‘It’d be even more embarrassing to find yourself knocked up at your age,’ said Lily. ‘Embarrassing and bloody inconvenient. I know. I’ve been there.’

Oli’s eyes swivelled back to her mother’s face. ‘What, you’re saying Saz was an inconvenience?’

‘I’m saying you don’t want to limit your choices in life, Oli. You’re lucky, you have plenty. Don’t just throw them away when you could take a few sensible precautions to prevent that situation arising.’

Lily spoke from the heart. She knew what finding yourself up the duff at a young age was like. If she hadn’t been pregnant pre-wedding with Leo’s baby, she herself would still have had those magical things called options. She could admit to herself now that she had always known in her heart of hearts that Leo was a bit of a shit. And if she was really, brutally honest with herself—which in those young, innocent days she’d mostly managed not to be—she’d already known that he was unlikely to be faithful. But there had been the baby, the pressure from her shocked and ashamed old-school parents, her fear of being alone, a single parent…so, no options. No options at all.

‘Yep, very embarrassed now,’ quipped Oli, but she was, she really was, Lily could see her cheeks had turned pink.

‘You on the pill then?’ This issue had been troubling Lily for a couple of days and she wasn’t going to mince her words now.

‘Mum…’

‘Are you?’

‘No I’m not.’ Now Oli’s cheeks were flaming. ‘I had bad periods when I was younger. Tried the pill for that, but it just made me sick so I stopped taking it.’

‘But you are sleeping with him?’ Lily just knew that Jase was not the type to act the monk. He’d want sex with Oli, and seeing the two of them together had already convinced her that their relationship was physical.

‘I’m not having this conversation,’ said Oli, getting up from the table and taking her mug over to the sink, where she emptied the contents angrily.

‘Because, Oli, there’s a certain point past which a man just can’t stop, you do know that?’

‘I’m out of here,’ trilled Oli, heading for the door. ‘I’ll buzz to get back in, okay?’

‘Get him to use a condom!’ shouted Lily after her.

The door slammed behind Oli. A different security bloke wandered through, looking a question at Lily. Oli’s car started up outside.

‘Kids,’ she said.

‘Tell me about it. We’re nearly all done here.’

‘Good.’ She hated strangers wandering about. Didn’t know them. Could be anyone. Could be working for Si. Or Freddy. Now she was getting paranoid. And jumpy. When the phone on the wall beside the sink rang, she nearly fell off her stool. With her heart hammering, she went over and agitatedly snatched it up.

‘Hello?’ she snapped.

‘Mrs…King?’ asked a hesitant female voice, rough-edged and cracked with age. There were birds chirping in the background.

‘Who wants her?’

‘I’m Mrs Blunt, Alice’s mum.’

‘Oh yeah. Thanks for calling.’

‘You wanted to talk about my girl Alice.’

‘Yeah.’ Lily thought quickly. ‘Can we meet up?’

‘I don’t get about much,’ said Mrs Blunt querulously. ‘And…your name’s King, have I got that right? You’re not…you’re no relation to Leo King, are you?’

‘None at all,’ Lily lied. ‘I’m just an old friend of Alice’s, that all.’

‘Well…I suppose it’ll be all right then…’

‘I’ll come to you, okay? I won’t take up much of your time,’ said Lily. ‘Just give me your address, I’ll come over.’

Mrs Blunt gave her the address, on a council estate in Stepney.

‘Give me an hour, okay? I’ll be there.’

She tried Becks’s number before she left, but Becks wasn’t answering.

Mrs Blunt was so old she looked fossilized. She was skinny and bent double, and wavered uncertainly on a stick, peering myopically at Lily when her son let her in, before collapsing back into her chair. A dandelion fuzz of white hair stood out around her wobbling little head and her mouth was tooth-free.

There was a tray on a small table beside the chair, with a half-eaten crustless sandwich and a cup of tea on it. On the other side of the chair was a large metal cage, containing four budgies; they were making a lot of noise and scattering feathers in all directions.

The son was a bulky, crew-cut redhead in t-shirt, stretchy tracksuit bottoms and cheap trainers. He looked like he’d swallowed a lot of Big Macs, and probably the odd small sofa too. His expression and his manner were surly.

‘She gets these things into her head,’ he said as soon as Lily showed up on the front step. ‘Won’t let them go. She wanted to see you because you were a friend of Alice’s, but let me make it plain—I didn’t want you coming here. It only upsets her, talking about all that.’

As welcomes went, it wasn’t much. The trip out hadn’t exactly been great either. When the security guys had left, giving her three new sets of keys and a raft of bewildering instructions on how to set the new alarms, she had booked a taxi. The driver had talked all the way over, in a language she neither knew nor understood, then the jerk had massively overcharged her, and Lily had looked out at the rainy day and thought, Is this worth the effort? The driver was still out there, parked up at the rubbish-strewn pavement; the bill for all this was going to be astronomical, and no doubt he was going to want to chat all the way home, too.

Now the son was acting up.