Jail Bird

75

Bobby ‘Bubba’ King had been a player, just like his son Leo. He had played…

‘With my mother,’ said Nick as they sat in the sitting room.

Lily looked at him. She twined her fingers into his. He squeezed her hand. ‘I had Jack check the birth records,’ she said. ‘Your dad’s name wasn’t on it.’

‘Can’t actually blame him for that,’ sighed Nick. ‘When he found out Bubba King had been poaching on his territory, he kicked off and divorced Mum. Took off for the States when I was about a year old. Never saw him or heard from him again. Leo’s dad stepped in, looked after Mum and me. She didn’t marry again and I was an only child. She died when I was twelve.’

‘I knew that, but Jesus, I can’t get over this. You’re their half-brother. Si and Freddy and Leo.’

‘Yeah, but Si and Freddy don’t know that. Bubba was closest to Leo, and Leo was the only one he told.’

‘When did he tell Leo?’

‘When Mum died.’

By the age of fourteen, Lily knew that Nick and Leo had been a team, standing together on the streets, into all sorts. By seventeen, they had been driving around in hot cars and pushing the boundaries in all sorts of ways, working their way up in crim circles, two good-looking boys who attracted girls without any effort at all. Nick had attracted Lily…but when Leo stepped in, Nick had stepped back. Because you don’t touch kin or anything that belongs to them.

‘I always wondered why you didn’t fight harder for me,’ said Lily.

Nick turned his head and looked at her with those dark, dark eyes. Nothing like Leo’s. Thank God. But maybe if they had been, she’d have wised up that much sooner.

‘What, go up against Leo?’ Nick sighed. ‘I was angry with him, sure I was. Furious. But I was even angrier with you. He was the only blood I had. My mother was dead, I had no grandparents. Bubba always helped me financially, but that was about all. Si and Freddy were kept in ignorance, because I suppose Leo and Bubba knew that there were enough contenders for the King crown as it was, and Si and Freddy might prove a threat to me if they thought I was closer than they’d previously believed me to be.’

‘You and Leo were like…blood brothers.’

Now Nick grinned. ‘We were blood brothers.’

He showed her a white, inch-long scar on his inner wrist.

Lily gasped. ‘Leo had one exactly the same,’ she said, fingering the whitened skin there.

‘That’s right, he did. After Bubba told us, we did it. Cut our hands and joined the blood together, swore to be brothers forever.’

The boys will look after you.

‘And then you met me…’

‘Yeah. And then Leo stormed in, and you let him storm in, so I stepped back.’

She had been so quiet, so obliging, then. Hurt by Nick’s sudden apparent withdrawal, she had allowed herself to be charmed by Leo.

‘I was just a dumb girl, Nick. I was snowballed by Leo. I wanted you to step in, and all you did was fucking well step back.’

‘Now this is bloody ironic, wouldn’t you say?’ His eyes were dancing with mirth now as he stared at her. ‘We both wanted the other to show more resistance to Leo. And we both folded.’

Lily sat back wearily, half laughing, half sad. ‘He certainly was a force to be reckoned with.’

‘Yeah. That he was.’

They were silent.

Then Nick said: ‘I was so fucking miserable when I let you go. So I thought, hey, who cares? I’ll date beautiful girls. All cats are grey in the dark. When that didn’t make me any happier I thought, what the hell? – and I married Julia.’

‘The playboy Nick,’ said Lily. She remembered how it had hurt her, seeing him with all those different, glamorous companions. And then when he had married Julia, although she would have denied it, she’d felt low for weeks. ‘Poor Julia. Second best even though she was so gorgeous. And being so gorgeous, and so vain…she went and upset Maeve.’

Nick was staring at her, drinking in her face.

‘What?’ asked Lily.

‘I thought I knew you. Gentle, quiet Lily. I thought…if she’d done that, this awful thing, then she’s been provoked beyond all reason. Then it came out at the trial that he’d been hitting you…’

‘He didn’t,’ said Lily quickly. ‘That was something the brief cooked up to lessen the sentence.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t know that. And I wondered what else he might have done to you, because I knew Leo. I knew his appetites. So I thought you must have been forced to it. So when it all came to a head, I was torn in two. I loved Leo. I loved you. And Leo had always said, look after Lily if anything ever happens to me. He’d give me one of those big bear hugs of his and he’d say that, time and again: always look after Lily. So…I looked after you. Kept you safe inside. Si did try to get to you in there, but I put things in place.’

Lily remembered the rumours she’d heard in stir – that someone was out to get her. Yeah – Si was out to get her.

But not any more.

‘Ah, what the hell? It’s all water under the bridge,’ he said, and leaned over and kissed her.

‘Yeah,’ said Lily, and put her arms around his neck and pulled him in close.

All that wasted time, she thought.

But no. It hadn’t been wasted. She had her girls. And she had grown a backbone in prison; it had toughened her up, made her strong.

‘You’ve caused me a hell of a lot of anxiety,’ said Nick against her mouth.

‘You broke my heart,’ said Lily.

‘You broke mine.’

‘Oh come on–do you actually have one?’ Lily scoffed with a smile.

Nick pulled open his shirt and put Lily’s hand in there, over his heart. His chest was hot, the skin there like silk over steel. ‘Feel that? It’s beating, yes?’

‘Then it’s not broken.’

‘Just a hairline crack, maybe,’ said Nick, his eyes playing with hers.

Lily sighed happily. ‘I love you, Nick O’Rourke. I always have and I think I probably always will.’

‘You think?’ His lips hovered over hers now.

She didn’t need to ask if he loved her too. Hadn’t he proved that, a thousand times over? Guarding her in prison, and outside too. And stepping back when he thought she was in love with Leo.

She had been overwhelmed by Leo. But this was love, faithful and enduring love. The type every woman craved, deep down.

‘I love you too, Lily King. And I think…you know what I think?’

Lily shook her head.

‘I think it’s way past your bedtime.’

Epilogue

The party for Lily King’s fortieth birthday was held in the grounds of The Fort the following April. The Fort sale was agreed. The recession had delayed the sale and whacked twenty-five grand off the asking price of two million, but there was still going to be plenty left for Lily and the girls.

There was a huge marquee, a guest list of villains and wives a mile long, fairy lights strung up in all the trees. Kylie was giving ‘I Just Can’t Get You Outta My Head’ her all from the huge sound system the DJ had set up beside the outdoor pool. Saz was dancing with Richard, Oli was rocking her new baby son in her arms, and Lily was looking at her birthday cake’s single lit candle and thinking: Thank Christ they didn’t try to get forty of the