Grimacing, Stella forced herself into the room and squatted down beside the mattress. She prised it up off of the wooden frame, her wrist aching at its surprising heaviness, and cast a watchful glance over the cheap, decrepit slats beneath it. No money there. Silently groaning, she put the mattress back down and placed her hands on her knees, chewing her lip as she looked around at the stiff, silent gloom.
Neil didn’t seem particularly intelligent- she’d been certain he’d be stupid enough to leave cash somewhere as obvious as under his bed.
Clearly, she’d underestimated him.
As quietly as possible, she began to ransack the room, searching through cupboards, checking shelves, rummaging through a shallow wardrobe. Stella was confident, but with every passing minute, she could feel her heart start to beat just a little faster and just a little harder inside her chest.
Once she’d turned the bedroom upside down, she slipped out and ventured into the smaller bedroom beside it, which was taken up by two single beds against each wall. She completed the same process, checking beneath the beds, the cupboards, and drawers. Still to no avail.
A tiny buzz vibrated inside her jeans pocket against the side of her thigh.
She froze.
The sound was deafening against the quiet of the caravan.
When she was certain that Neil had not roused from his temporary coma, she crept back into the hall and into the bathroom. It was much lighter in this room, thanks to the uncovered, frosted glass of the window high up above the toilet. The sudden brightness caught her eye, and she felt her pupils trail downwards to the lavatory herself.
Seat up. Shit skid at the side of the bowl. A dribble of yellow piss staining the edge.
Glancing behind her, she hesitantly approached the toilet and gingerly reached out to lift up the clammy plastic lid up off of the water tank.
Jackpot.
Her heart surged with the thrill of discovering the foreign black safe that perched unsuspectingly at the bottom of the small space, its outline clouded by the water. Greedily, she delved a hand into the icy cold pool and withdrew the locked box before replacing the lid. Hurriedly, she rubbed it dry on her jeans.
It was only small. Of course, it could contain anything.
But to Stella, it didn’t really matter either way. Stealing gave her an immense high, and even if the damp, concealed safe only contained a bit of weed and fifty quid, it was better than nothing.
Adrenaline pumping through her veins, she stuffed the safe inside her jacket and turned.
Her heart skipped a beat, and her mouth fell open as she came face to face with Neil, who was glaring at her menacingly, yellowing teeth snarling as if he were a killer bear awoken from hibernation.
“I…” she mustered, but before she could continue, the rough young man hit her hard across the side of the head so that everything immediately turned to pitch black.
For once, Stella’s charm had failed her.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Summer, 1999
It was, Ronnie kept saying, a simple job.
In, and out.
Quick, painless, and easy.
Minimal risks.
Except, of course, underneath the optimistic façade, there was no sugar-coating the reality of the situation.
Ronnie was about to burgle a house, whilst Minnie technically became the accessory to his crime, her entire body rigid and stiff as she sat tight in the dark passenger seat of the car. Beside her, she could almost hear the sound of her boyfriend’s thudding heart as he stared intently through the windshield at the terraced brick house a little further up the road. The dull bricks of the building were illuminated by the moon’s long glow, revealing a cheap, glass-panelled front door that practically oozed the aura of the typical British council estate.
“Right,” Ronnie said, although the normally seductive, deep melt of his voice came out in a squeak of uncertainty. It made Minnie’s stomach lurch with unease.
“Right,” she repeated in a whisper.
“Let’s get it over with,” he nodded grimly, slowly placing his hand on the door of the car, his thick fingers flexing reluctantly.
She chewed on her lip, the taste of dried blood rusting on the tip of her tongue. “How long?”
Ronnie paused and sighed. “Wait twenty minutes, okay? “
Wordlessly, she nodded as he got up and slipped out of the vehicle, leaving her alone in the shadows and blinking aimlessly out at the painfully quiet and desolate street.
A cold chill spilled into the car from somewhere and seemed to rattle her bones as she watched Ronnie’s tall figure hurry across the road and disappear further down the street. Because the place was sandwiched between two other buildings, like a row of traffic-jam teeth, he had to walk all the way around in a circle and scale the fence of the back garden.
Minnie shivered and instinctively clenched her fists. She felt that her palms were cold and clammy; her skin leaking with sweat; the fear twisting her guts tighter and tighter in the pit of her stomach.
What Ronnie was doing was wrong.
Really wrong.
It would make the two of them officially criminals.
Of course, she knew that they already were. She’d stolen thousands of pounds whilst Ronnie was attempting identity fraud, and the two of them were actively running from the police and thereby perverting the so-called course of justice.
“Fuck…” she mumbled to herself, slamming her fist hard onto the edge of her seat. Her pulse popped inside her eardrums, the blood pounding so loudly that she felt her brain go fuzzy.
Maybe they already were criminals, but the crimes they’d committed up until that point were necessary. She was pregnant with Ronnie’s baby, and they were both just kids with no money. If she wanted a decent family for their unborn child, she needed the money, and Ronnie needed the fake
