Jail Bird

‘She tried to get the security company to change it all back,’ said Oli accusingly, her eyes resting on her sullen-faced sister.

They were sitting in the kitchen when Lily got back from Nick’s. Lily came in through the back door and experienced a strong sense of deja vu. Here were her two girls, replaying a scene from their youth. Saz trying to seize control, and Oli complaining to their mother about it. Same old, same old.

She felt weary and confused. The drive-by attempt, her angry parting from Nick, had left her drained. She looked at Oli. Looked at Saz.

‘I’m going up for a bath,’ she said, and walked through the kitchen, away from them both.

‘Hey!’ Saz had followed her out into the hall.

Lily walked on, heading for the stairs. She couldn’t face another showdown with Saz, not now.

‘Hey!’ Saz caught her arm, spun her around.

Lily looked at her daughter. Registered the intense hatred on her face, saw her own features in that face that was so twisted with anger. Felt sad, and tired.

‘Where’s Richard?’ asked Lily.

‘What?’ Saz frowned, wrong-footed.

‘Your husband. Richard.’

‘Out. Golf.’

That boy’s no fool, thought Lily. Saz in a bad mood was not something anyone would want to encounter close up. Again, she felt a pang of pity for Richard. It would take a very strong man to stand up to Saz – or a very weak one to accommodate her.

‘And I don’t see what the hell that’s got to do with anything,’ said Saz, recovering her angry stance.

Lily looked down at Saz’s hand, still gripping her forearm with bruising force.

‘You can let me go now,’ said Lily mildly. ‘You want to talk? Okay, let’s talk.’

‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ snapped Saz.

Over her shoulder, Lily saw Oli come out and stand in the kitchen doorway, watching them anxiously. She’d foreseen problems and, sure enough, here they were, staring them all in the face.

‘You just want to shout the odds,’ said Lily.

‘No! Not even that! I just want you to get the fuck out of our home,’ bellowed Saz, releasing her arm with a furious flick of disdain.

‘Saz phoned up the security company and asked them to come back and reprogramme everything,’ said Oli from the doorway. ‘Just like you said she would. Only she didn’t have the new passwords or anything, so they wouldn’t do it.’

‘Why don’t you shut up, you little snitch,’ said Saz angrily to Oli. Oli went pale. Lily could see how much she hated being at odds with her sister.

Saz turned back to Lily. ‘I want you out of here.’

Lily stared hard at Saz’s face, pinched up, ugly and suffused with rage. She knew Saz. Knew that change rattled her. Knew that once she took up a stance on an issue, she’d stick to it regardless of any evidence that she could be mistaken. But for fuck’s sake – she was this girl’s mother.

‘Why are you so sure I did it?’ Lily asked her. ‘Why do you want to believe the worst of me?’

Saz was silent, fuming.

‘What is it, Saz?’ asked Lily quietly. ‘Is it that you’ve hated me for twelve years, and if it’s true that I didn’t kill your dad, you’ve been proved wrong and you’ve hated me for nothing? Is that it? What, are you going to lose face if you change your mind?’

‘You killed him,’ sneered Saz, nodding her head for emphasis.

Lily turned away, finding it too painful even to look at her daughter right now.

‘Yeah, you go right on believing that,’ she sighed, and went on up the stairs.

‘You killed him!’ yelled Saz after her.

The bath helped. Luxury again. She’d always been a girl with a taste for that, and it had made prison all the harder. She soaked for a long, lazy time in lavender-scented bubbles, relishing the hot water, the time she could spend just wallowing, just day-dreaming…and, despite herself, thinking of Nick.

She was trying so hard not to think of Nick, but there he was in her mind, intruding, his eyes boring into her own, first fierce and then gentle…and there was a faint echo of his scent still on her body, a welcome soreness that the warm water eased. Her breasts were tender from the pressure of his lips and teeth. There were finger-shaped bruises forming on her thighs. She felt…good; physically satisfied in a way that she had never been with Leo.

But she had parted with Nick on bad terms. He didn’t want her to contact Julia. But she knew she must, even though it was the last thing she really wanted to do. Every fresh discovery about Leo was making her feel more debilitated, more ground down. Still, she wanted to know, ached to know, who had let her stew inside for all those years. And when she found out who that someone was, she was going to make them suffer, too.

After an hour or so she got out of the bath, dressed, applied make-up, combed her hair and looked at herself in the mirror and thought, I could be dead right now.

Someone had tried to kill her. Her gut feeling was that she had been the target, not Nick. She was pretty sure Freddy or Si King were behind it too. Or…she paused, staring at her reflection with a frown. Maybe she had other enemies too. Maybe people had been talking and someone knew she was looking around for answers. Maybe someone thought she was getting too close.

She shuddered, because when she thought of enemies, it was Saz’s face she saw in her brain, twisted with hatred for her own mother. Saz believed Lily had killed Leo, and refused to be swayed from that opinion.

But I’m her mother. We were close once.

Hopefully soon Saz would begin to see that Lily was not the monster she believed her to be. And Lily had to go on with what she’d started. She picked up the phone and dialled out.

It rang and rang. No answer.

She dialled again.

Come on. Pick up.

‘Hello?’ said a female voice, just as Lily was about to put the phone down.

Lily jumped, startled. The woman’s voice on the other end was loud, aggressive.

‘Who’s that?’ demanded the voice. ‘Come on, who is it?’

‘Julia? Is that you?’ asked Lily.

‘Who’s that? What do you want?’

Now Lily could hear the edge of fear in the voice. Not aggression; fear. ‘It’s Lily. Lily King. I’m…I’m out, Julia. And I’d like to talk to you.’

There was dead silence from the other end. In the background, there was a rhythmic noise, like a distant motor.

‘Julia?’ prompted Lily. ‘You there?’

‘Yeah. I’m here. I’m not talking to you,’ she said, and put the phone down.

Lily dialled again, but Julia didn’t pick up.

She put the phone aside. Then she snatched it up again and phoned Becks.

‘Jesus! Lily! I wondered where you’d got to,’ said Becks, sounding breezy but with an undercurrent of awkwardness. Lily knew Becks must feel really bad about having to turn her out. But she wasn’t going to hold a grudge over that.

‘I’m still here,’ said Lily.

‘Where’s here?’ said Becks, giving a half-laugh. ‘Joe said he heard you were staying at The Fort? I said you couldn’t be.’

‘Well I am.’

‘But Si…and Maeve…’ said Becks falteringly.

‘The girls are here with me. Oli. And Saz.’