Jail Bird

buggers on there. The sprinklers would have drowned the lot of us.

The party organizer, a posh twenty-year-old girl with a clipboard and fixed smile, came up to Lily.

‘Ten minutes, then we cut the cake, Mrs King, yah? I’ll start getting everyone into the marquee.’

‘Fine.’ Just time to nip to the loo, check her make-up.

Lily went indoors, attended to her ablutions, and was coming back outside when suddenly Si was there, blocking her way.

Lily made as if to step around him.

Si blocked her path again.

She looked into his eyes. What the fuck now? she wondered.

‘Hi, Lily’. He was staring at her face. ‘Happy birthday’.

Lily gulped. Si always had and always would make her nervous. ‘Thanks,’ she said. He didn’t move aside. He was still blocking her exit like a brick wall.

‘I wanted to tell you that it’s been sorted. As promised.’

‘You mean…’

‘I mean Maeve.’ He paused for a beat. He was telling her he’d disposed of his wife and he looked as calm as a millpond. Lily felt a shudder run through her. ‘But there was something I thought you should know about. Something odd.’

‘Oh? What?’ She didn’t want to know. Whatever it was, she just didn’t.

‘It troubled me, this thing. Do you know what that’s like, when something keeps niggling away at you?’

Lily nodded. What the hell’s he on about?

‘She said…Maeve admitted she was there on the night Leo got done.’

‘I know that. She did it.’

But Si was shaking his head. ‘She told me she followed the girls in, through the breach in the wall.’

Lily was frowning now. ‘Saz was there. She saw Maeve standing over Leo with the gun in her hands. She thought Maeve was me.’ But he’d said girls. Plural. ‘She’s not saying Oli was there too?’

Si looked tired all of a sudden. He sighed. ‘It’s true Maeve came on to Leo and he turned her down. It’s true she was attacking Leo’s women. But–Lily–I have to tell you this. With her dying breath she kept saying it. Both the girls were there. She followed them in. And it was Saz that fired the gun. Maybe she meant to just threaten him with it and it went off, I don’t know. The girls knew what Leo had been up to with the women, they knew you were upset.’ Si was staring at Lily. ‘Maeve saw it happen. She swore. She got the girls back out. And then you came home early, and you got fitted up for it, and she thought, better you than the girls.’

Lily was standing there, open-mouthed with shock. ‘But…she told me she’d done it,’ she managed to get out.

‘She wanted to hurt you. She hated you. She wanted Leo dead after he mocked her. And when you think about it, everything worked out just fine for Maeve. She had your life. She had your girls. All right, she didn’t have Leo. But what she did have was revenge.’

‘No…’ said Lily.

‘Why would anyone lie with their dying breath?’ Si asked her, shaking his head. ‘That’s what bugs me. I don’t think they would. So…I had to tell you.’

‘But Saz…Saz was furious with me, as if she really believed I’d killed Leo.’

‘I thought about that,’ said Si. ‘Jesus, it’s all I’ve been thinking about for months. Oli must have witnessed the killing, and after that I think she just blanked it out…’

Oli had told Lily that she couldn’t remember anything about what had happened around that time. Lily felt her guts lurch as she thought of that. Everything Si was saying…oh God, it made sense. She didn’t want it to, but it did.

‘Her mind just shut down; she couldn’t accept what had happened,’ Si was going on. ‘Maybe for a while she actually did believe that you’d killed Leo. And Saz…well, who the fuck knows. Did she pull that trigger deliberately, or did the gun go off by accident?’

‘But Si, she would have loaded the damned thing,’ said Lily.

‘Lily,’ said Si, his gaze flat as he stared at her. ‘We’re talking a nine-year-old kid here, playing up to her little sister. She may have loaded it, played the whole charade out to the full, with no real intention of firing it. Who the fuck knows?’

Lily was shaking her head. ‘Maeve could have fired it, wiped her prints off afterwards.’

Si was silent for a moment. ‘Her dying breath, Lily. She swore it was Saz. Saz with her special little gloves on. No prints to remove. Think about it. The poor kid must have been eaten up with guilt after that. She’d killed her dad. Caused you to do twelve years inside. When she saw you again, it must have crucified her, brought it all back. Don’t you think?’

‘Mrs King!’ The party organizer was pushing past Si’s bulk in the doorway. She looked at Lily, standing there pale with shock, and gave her a bright-eyed, efficient smile. ‘There you are. Come on, Mrs King. Time to cut the cake.’

Si and Lily exchanged a long look. Si stepped aside. After one faltering moment, Lily hurried past.

Si caught her arm, halting her progress. Lily’s head turned and she stared into his eyes. ‘What are you going to do? About what I told you?’

Their gazes locked.

Lily took a long, quivering breath. Then she straightened and pasted a smile on her face.

‘What did you tell me, Si?’ she asked him with a slight, puzzled frown. ‘I can’t seem to remember.’

Si looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded and freed her arm. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It was nothing. Nothing at all.’

Lily hurried on into the marquee. Everyone was clustering inside now. She looked around.

Si was there, edging in at the back of the crowd. So was Freddy. And there were her girls, Saz and Oli, Saz laughing at something Richard had just said to her, Oli cradling baby Leo.

Baby Leo.

Leo would have been chuffed to nuts if he could see his grandson and know that Oli had not hesitated for a second over a name choice. Baby Leo was already very visibly a King, with a mop of dark hair, black eyebrows and long girly black lashes. And, of course, navy blue eyes.

‘Don’t all babies have dark blue eyes?’ Oli–exhausted but serenely happy–had asked Lily when she first held her grandson after the birth.

‘Do they? I don’t know. God, he’s beautiful though. Isn’t he?’

Jase’s child.

Lily looked across at Oli and the baby now, held tight in his mother’s arms, and put thoughts of Jase to one side. And everything that Si had just told her? She was going to forget it. Right now. She took a deep, calming breath. Tonight, she wanted everything to be perfect; let the dead rest in peace, let the living have their fun.

Nick strolled over, smiling. He put an arm around her shoulders. Leaned in. Kissed her.

‘Mrs King,’ said the organizer, as a hush fell over the watching crowds. ‘Would you like to say a few words?’And the woman was off again, urging the waiters to top up everyone’s glasses with champagne for the toast.

‘Oh, I don’t think…’ Lily glanced at Nick. He nodded. Go on.

‘Well,’ said Lily. She raised her voice, looked around at all the faces. Many of them were the same faces she had confronted at Saz’s wedding. But their expressions were different now. Si had put the word out. Lily was in the clear over Leo. All was forgiven. She was being watched with smiles, with anticipation–not with hatred.

She saw Becks, all in pink–her favourite colour, standing in the crowd, beaming from ear to ear, with Joe. Adrienne was there, but what the fuck, what was the use of bearing grudges? And Matt–dull old dependable Matt, the company accountant–was at her side. Hairy Mary was there with her East End hard boy.

Everyone who was anyone was there.

And she was the star of the evening. Lily King. No longer the jail bird. Accepted again. Back in business.

She took a breath and said: ‘Hi, everyone.’

Then she thought again of what Si had told her. She swallowed, hesitated. Pushed it once again to the back