“There’s one back that way,” a red-haired girl with smudged black eye makeup said, getting up off of the tree roots. She gestured back the way the siblings had come. “The duck pond, I mean. I’ll take you if you want,” she smiled at Zach.
She was common-looking. Trampy, Stella thought, like a common hooker offering out blowjobs in exchange for a wrap of coke. Despite the cold weather, all she wore was a cheap, tight-fitting skirt that revealed her skinny, blotchy legs and a grubby-looking hooded top.
“So kind of you,” Zach replied. “What’s your name?”
“Destiny-Lynn.”
“Of course it is,” he chuckled, “well, I’m George, this is my little sister Helen, and my other siblings, Joe and Clara.”
It truly was, in Lloyd’s opinion, an enviable art how Zach could lie so seamlessly. Even he felt compelled to believe the false names that his brother gave.
“And what’s your name, princess?” Zach asked the other girl, another ratty, skinny thing with clearly visible clip-in extensions and dirty, stubby fingers.
“Sambuca,” she replied shyly, obviously taken aback that the handsome teenager had even noticed her.
“Beautiful name,” Zach lied, “would you like to come along with us?”
As he turned, a barely noticeable look passed between Zach and Stella, which only the four siblings would notice. It was just another one of the many signals that the four had developed over the years, a gesture which, in certain situations, indicated the formulation of a plan. There was no way the four could have known that they’d stumble across a group of budding drug dealers; however, Zach could spot them from a mile off, and he was an opportunist.
Stella yawned, fluttering her eyelashes and tossing her luscious curtain of blonde hair over a slender shoulder. “I’m tired of walking,” she pouted at her older brother.
One of the boys smirked and gave her a wink. “You can stay here with us if you want, babe.”
Once again, Zach and Stella exchanged a subtle look. Graciously, she perched down beside the ring leader, crossing one leg over the other- their shapeliness visible in her tight-fitting skinny jeans.
“Oh, thank you. You’re so kind.”
“You’re so fit. It’s my pleasure, babe.”
Stella’s smile stretched out wide, “oh, no. The pleasure is all mine.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Summer, 1999
Finding Ronnie quickly wasn’t difficult.
As predicted, he’d chosen the shadiest B&B out of Minnie’s list of potentials. After a long, confusing, and sometimes downright terrifying trip on the train that consisted of numerous changes, she found him in the doorway of a place named The Mermaid Inn. A terraced building with off-white, peeling plaster and a half-arsed sign that looked like it had been originally put up a century ago.
To make the sight even uglier, and to her immense disgust, Ronnie was smoking.
He’d also let his hair grow out, and dark stubble was growing out around his mouth. Minnie thought that he resembled a werewolf, not like her charming, dashingly handsome future husband at all. In fact, at that moment, as she stood there just a few feet away in the centre of the dark, London back road, watching him puff away on the roll-up, she felt her heart sink.
Was she really doing the right thing? Or would she end up one day, washed up, looking back on this moment with nothing but intense bitterness and regret? Was she making the biggest, most epic mistake of her entire life?
She let herself feel the weight of her backpack.
Too late now.
With a deep breath, she forced her feet to move forwards. Ronnie was staring deeply into space, his icy blue eyes glazed over, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the universe.
“Ronnie,” she said simply, not particularly loudly. The bed and breakfast was on a narrower, back road, so it was not especially loud, but there was still a fair amount of bustle. Drabs of people walking past, laughing, joking; their care-free voices seeming to wash her own away. Instantly, Ronnie snapped his head towards her and instinctively let the cigarette drop from his fingers and land on the grimy cobbles beneath him.
“Minnie,” he said in response.
She glared at him and took another few steps forwards. “That stops now,” she said sharply, nodding in disgust at the cigarette rolling over the stone.
He nodded, his cheeks blushing red as though he were a naughty schoolboy, caught out misbehaving. The expression of guilt quickly faded though, a confused frown appearing on his handsome, if overgrown, face.
“But, Min… what are you doing here? I’m still waiting on the ID stuff.”
Breathing in and out, Minnie looked uncertainly up at the building behind him. “Is there somewhere quiet we can go?”
Apart from being clean and having a small en-suite bathroom, Minnie wasn’t delighted to find that Ronnie’s room at The Mermaid Inn wasn’t much better than the room he had stayed in at Scribbles’ flat. At least, she thought with a grim smile; there wasn’t a scrap of dog waste in sight.
Quietly, Ronnie locked the door, and then the two of them sat at the end of his neatly made single bed. He watched her, his eyes wide with curiosity and worry, but his lips remained closed. His hand rested gently on her knee as he waited for her to talk.
“Cards on the table,” she suddenly blurted out, looking up at him, locking his eyes with hers. “I got more money. I did another bad thing.”
“But, why?” he asked incredulously. “God… why’d you do that, Min?”
Minnie’s face crumpled, and she shook her head. That painful pressure that had been weighing down on her chest since early that morning, when she’d hurried to the station and hadn’t known where to go, was finally expelling itself. Rapidly, tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and dribbled down her face.
Ronnie gripped tightly onto her hand.
“I had to run away,” she said, her
