Joined at the Hip

by Natasha West

  Jamie knew that was as close as they’d get to declarations of love. And now, someone had to do something. And it had to be her.

  ‘That’s that, then. I’m going in to confess to an armed robbery’ Jamie said. ‘Maybe I’ll see you in a few years. Might write to you and ask you to tie a yellow ribbon round an old oak tree. Bye, Molly’ she said and turned to the station.

  ‘Jamie, no!’ Molly cried.

  ‘Oi!’ a voice cried out, coming from down the street. Jamie and Molly turned to see Leo Jenson running toward them, puffing away, jogging as quickly he could toward Jamie. It wasn’t fast. They watched him run for what felt like hours.

  At last, he reached them.

  ‘Thank fuck for tracking apps! I don’t know what you’re doing outside this cop shop, but if it’s anything to do with the warehouse, you and your brother are-’

  Max suddenly appeared. He’d seen his Dad running up the road, straight past the car, headed for Jamie and he thought he’d better intercept. He had planned to say something diplomatic but instead, what came out of his mouth was ‘Dad! This is nothing to do with that. Go home!’

  Leo turned to his son, surprised.

  ‘Who the bloody hell do you think you’re talking to! I’m your Dad and you’ll show me some respect or-’

  ‘Or what? You’ll chuck us out? Great! Now get the fuck out of here, would you! We don’t want you here! We don’t need you here!’ he said and glanced at his sister. She was looking at him in amazement. And it was good amazement. It spurred him on. ‘In fact, we don’t need you at all. Consider this our resignation from the business.’

  Jamie clapped an arm around her brother, bursting with pride. She’d been trying to protect him all this time and it was obvious now that she didn’t need to. If he could stand up to Leo like that, he’d be alright. ‘Yeah. No notice, I’m afraid, Pops, so we’ll understand if you can’t give us a reference.’

  Leo gave a nasty laugh.

  ‘And where do you think you’re gonna go? I’m all you’ve got!’

  ‘No, you’re not. We’ve got each other’ Max said. Jamie nodded at him.

  Leo looked at the pair of them and said ‘Fuck ya then, you ungrateful little shits. I don’t need you either’ and he walked off, trying not to let them see how much they’d hurt him. ‘And don’t come running when you can’t find jobs or a place to live. There’ll be nothing else for you in this world’ he said over his shoulder as he shuffled away.

  They watched him go, feeling a sadness. It was true, he was their Dad and the only one they’d ever had. But that didn’t mean that either of them had to turn into him.

  And Jamie knew where to start with that.

  She turned to her brother and said ‘I’m sorry, bruv. I’m going in to confess to the robbery. Otherwise Molly or Molly’s Mum will go to prison and I can’t have that. Not for something I did.’

  ‘Do you have to?’ he asked, tears springing to his eyes. But he already knew the answer.

  ‘You’ll be OK, Max. I know it. And I won’t be gone forever. I’m sorry but…’

  Molly, who’d been watching the eruption with Leo Jenson and the subsequent moving goodbye between Jamie and Max, was more set on taking the blame than ever.

  ‘Jamie, you can’t! Just let me do it, like I was going to. Max needs you.’

  Jamie turned to Molly. Her mind was made up.

  ‘Molly, stop it. It’s the right thing. Just let me do the right thing for a change?’

  ‘MOLLY KAMINSKI!’ yelled a voice. Everyone turned. It was Vera, marching up the street, a face like thunder.

  ‘Jesus, how does everyone keep finding us?’ Molly exclaimed. ‘Mum, what are you doing here?’ she asked her Mum, as she reached them with considerably more steam than Leo had managed. She looked ready for a fight.

  ‘Thank god, I’m not too late’ she breathed. ‘Molly, I know what you want to do but there’s no point. It’ll only make it worse. I’ll be a liar in any event.’

  ‘No, Mum. I can explain that you were protecting me-’

  ‘She’s not confessing’ Jamie interrupted. ‘I’m confessing. Because I actually did try to rob the shop. Hi, by the way. Jamie’ she said to Vera, by way of an introduction.

  ‘Wait a second, I thought it was fake?’

  ‘No, Mum. It’s complicated but-’

  ‘Thank the heavens we caught up with you’ said a new voice, an older male with a tinkling Irish accent. Everyone turned to see Ronan and Henry racing toward them.

  Molly and Jamie turned to looked at each other, flabbergasted. How were they so bloody findable?

  Ronan dashed up, exclaiming ‘Henry explained about your legal troubles. And I thought I might have a solution so we jumped on my speedboat. And look, you’re exactly where Henry said you’d be!’

  ‘The speedboat was ace, you guys’ Henry said excitably and then tamped his delirium down. It wasn’t the time. ‘Molly, I knew you’d come here to save your Mum. But, here’s the thing. My Grandad’s Knack is wicked powerful. Maybe we could let him sort it out?’

  ‘I’ve never had the chance to do something good with it’ Ronan added. ‘Just give me a quick second to get worked up enough.’

  Molly and Jamie looked at each other, hopefully. Was it possible that Ronan could help?

  ‘And who the hell are you?’ Vera asked.

  Ronan turned to look at Vera, who he liked the look of straight away. She looked like a fierce woman, the type he’d always loved. ‘Well, would you look at that’ he said. ‘I’m worked up already.’

  Henry wrinkled his nose. ‘Grandad, gross.’

  ‘That’s right, Officer. A misunderstanding. You simply got the wrong end of the stick. So you’ll have to close the case, won’t you?’

  Sargent Archie Skipple turned to his young protégée, PC Joey Compton, with a wide, dopey grin.

  ‘That sounds about right to me. Wouldn’t you say, Joey?’

  Joey, equally hypnotised by Ronan’s eyes and voice, smiled back at his boss and said ‘I would, Sir.’

  ‘It’s just a silly misunderstanding’ Archie said.

  ‘That’s right’ Ronan replied.

  ‘We’ll go ahead and shut the case right now.’

  ‘Do you have any superiors who might ask questions about this?’ Ronan asked.

  ‘Now you come to mention it, the Chief Inspector might want to know a few details.’

  ‘Then send him right down to speak to me, there’s a good chap.’

  The Chief Inspector came out of the interview room a few minutes later, wearing the same silly grin as Archie and Joey. He went to fetch his boss, the Superintendent, as well as several members of CID and the press officer in charge of talking to the local paper. They all came out certain that the whole thing had been a ridiculous misunderstanding. They didn’t really know what the nature of the misunderstanding had been precisely, but still, that’s all it was. It seemed hard to refute when the nice Irish man explained it to them. It was a simple mix-up.

  Twenty-Two

  ‘Max! Too many boxes!’ Jamie exclaimed as Max staggered out of the storage room holding three boxes filled with baked bean tins, one on top of one another. ‘If I can’t see your face, that means you can’t see anything either. You’re gonna drop ‘em.’

  ‘Chill, would ya. I handle my shit, you handle yours’ Max said laconically. And then immediately dropped the lot.

  Molly came out of the back of the shop holding tea for Max, to see him scrabbling about, picking up bean tins from the floor. She looked over to Jamie.

  ‘Is he gonna be alright to run the night shift solo?’ she asked cheekily.

  ‘He’s a tit. But he’s well meaning. We’ve just got to work on the tit bit of it, haven’t we?’ she said as Max got the boxes refilled.

  ‘I can handle the place’ Max protested. ‘And Vera agrees. She totally loves me.’

  ‘That’s because you’ll work any shift she asks without moaning.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Alwa
ys been a night owl, anyway’ Max said as Molly handed him a cup of tea.

  The door opened with a bell tinkle and everyone turned to see Henry walk in. Molly noted that he was doing his own take on Max’s lazy slouch. The hero worship was still clearly going strong.

  ‘Dad wanted me to check if you lot are still coming to his barbecue?’

  Jamie and Molly, the day shifters who were just about to leave, nodded.

  ‘Yeah. Wouldn’t miss it. And I’m starving’ Jamie assured him.

  ‘How’s Knack training going?’ Molly asked as she got her coat on.

  ‘Been working on it with Grandad. It’s all about keeping your cool. So now, when I get upset, I just take a deep breath, walk away and scream into my pillow’ he said, pulling out a small cushion from his bag. ‘I had to do it yesterday. Patrick McElroy was so asking for a cursing.’

  Max held his hand up and his new little buddy/protégé high fived it with obvious pleasure.

  ‘Nice one. Actually, Jamie’ he said, turning to his sister ‘Maybe we should get you a cushion?’

  She flipped him off.

  ‘Can’t believe I can’t go to the barbie, man’ Max said. ‘I love a hot dog.’

  Molly took out her new phone, a replacement bought by Jamie. It wasn’t as fancy as its predecessor, but Jamie was on a working wage and trying to get the money together for her own flat. Molly didn’t care. She liked the new phone. She shouldn’t have, it was basic as all get out. But somehow, she did.

  ‘You’re coming. I’ll call Kevin. He owes me one. I always end up covering his arse when he gets one of his bouts of Man-Flu.’

  A whoosh of flame went up and everyone made a noise that was half impressed, half scared. Aiden put the cover over the barbecue quickly, to stem the flames.

  ‘S’alright everyone. I’ve got it under control!’

  ‘Have you heck as like. Let me take the tongs’, Louise said.

  ‘No!’ Aiden argued. ‘I can do it. Leave me be, woman!’

  Louise shook her head and went over to fetch herself a drink.

  Vera, sat on a lawn chair next to Molly and Jamie, watched him fighting with his over stimulated barbecue and said ‘What is it with men and barbecues? It’s like some kind of penis extension to them.’

  Molly was mortified to hear her Mum talk about penises but Jamie was laughing uproariously. Vera’s harsh observations always got her like this. She was lucky she’d managed to get on Vera’s good side after everything that had happened. But she was glad she had. Jamie had been right. Vera was cool.

  After Ronan had walked into the police station and done his thing, there had been a lot of confusion and explanation and demonstration. Molly had decided that she didn’t want to lie to her Mum about everything that had happened. So she told her the whole thing. The robbery, the curse, the trip to reverse it, the whole mad mess.

  But of course, Vera hadn’t bought a word of it. So then Ronan had decided to provide Vera with a little proof, causing himself to hover a few feet above the ground in front of her. Vera hadn’t believed it at first. And then he’d grabbed hold of her and flown into the air with her. She’d screamed like a lunatic as he’d done a loop-de-loop, but she came down a believer.

  At first she’d been in shock, but after some time had passed, she seemed sort of cheered by it. She’d flown. And, just like her daughter, she found that it felt sort of wonderful. Once she’d stopped screaming.

  After she’d accepted the truth, which had happened much quicker than Molly would have thought possible, she turned her attentions to Max and Jamie. They’d held up her daughter and she wanted to give both of them a slap. But Molly explained about their Dad and how Jamie had tried to put her hands up for what she’d done, to save Molly and her Mum from criminal charges.

  And somehow, Jamie and Max’s tale of an upbringing in the criminal classes and their subsequent turnaround had won Vera’s heart. After all, she loved a good underdog tale. She could relate to a desire to better yourself.

  So, after she’d learned that they were now homeless and penniless, she’d offered them a spot in the spare bedroom until they could get their own place, as well as jobs in the shop. Molly had been stunned. Her Mum was a lot kinder than she’d ever given her credit for.

  Of course, it wasn’t all compassion. Vera worked the Jenson siblings like dogs. But they didn’t seem to mind hard work. They were just grateful to not feel frightened of the law coming down on them any second. It was a nice change of pace.

  And then, seeing that Vera wasn’t the harsh harridan that Molly had written her off as, she decided to have the difficult conversation she’d been putting off roughly since puberty.

  ‘Mum’ she’d said, nervously. ‘I want to go to Uni.’

  Vera had been a little taken aback initially. But after a moment to take the news in, she said ‘Then you should go.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Everything that you said to me that night about how unhappy you were… I had a chance to think about it while you were gone. I wanted a good life for you. But it’s not for me to choose what kind of life that is. I wanted you to have the options I didn’t. That’s why we came here. I forgot that. And you should have an education. What kind of Mother would deny her daughter that?’

  Molly and her Mother hugged it out.

  So now she was due to go to the local Uni in September, to study literature. It would be three years of blissful reading, uninterrupted by a tinkling bell. She’d still be doing the odd shift at the shop, of course, but the day times would mostly be Jamie’s dominion now. And after she had her degree, she could decide if she wanted to run the business. She wasn’t making that decision yet. She didn’t have to.

  ‘Well done burger for Vera’, Aiden called out. But before she could get up to fetch it, Ronan raced over to his son.

  ‘I’ll give it to her.’

  Aiden gave his Dad a look.

  ‘You dirty old sod’ he said to Ronan, who gave him a cheeky wink and took Vera the burger. Now that he and his Dad had made up and cried and drank together and fought again and made up again and crammed everything that they’d missed out on for twenty years into the last few months, they were about back up to speed. Aiden was grateful to his son for bringing the old bastard back into his life. And if that meant he had to watch him hit on women at his barbecue, then so be it.

  ‘Here you go, love’ Ronan said to Vera.

  She took the burger, saying ‘Don’t call me love, Ronan’ with a raised eyebrow. But she looked like she was enjoying his attentions.

  Henry watched the interplay and exchanged a look with Molly. This wasn’t really going to happen, was it? Were they going to end up kind of related?

  Max, eating his hot dog with the pleasure of a man who has escaped work unexpectedly, watched his sister pouring ketchup onto Molly’s burger at the table.

  ‘That’s too much!’ Molly said as she slapped her bun shut.

  Jamie shook her head, irritated. ‘That’s a normal portion. Don’t be a drama queen.’

  ‘How are you two getting on, working together every day?’ Max asked. ‘Is it awful? Do you row all the time?’

  ‘All the time’ Molly said.

  ‘Yeah. So much fighting’ Jamie added.

  But even though that was true, it was only half the story. And underneath the table, their feet, rubbing gently against one another, told the other.

  Jamie gave Molly a quick glance, nodding to the filthy shed. She nodded back.

  ‘Aiden?’ Jamie called over to the chef. ‘You know when we hid in your shed that time? I lost an earring. You didn’t find it, did you?’

  ‘No’ Aiden said. ‘If it’s in there, it’s probably gone.’

  ‘Do you mind if I check anyway?’

  ‘Knock yourself out’ he called as he flipped another burger.

  ‘I’ll help’ Molly said.

  Max snorted derisively. He wondered if everyone else could see this flimsy ploy for what it was. But people were
eating. They didn’t much care about two girls walking into a shed to look for an earring.

  In the shed, Molly turned in the small space and said ‘It’s filthy in here. Couldn’t you have waited?’