by Jessie Keane
‘You did him good.’
‘Yeah,’ said Josh, and the door swung open.
‘Hey!’ objected Benny, then he saw who it was and shut up.
Two men came into the room, both of them Latin-looking, one bulky, one slim and younger. Both were dressed in immaculate dark suits and crisp silk shirts and ties. It was Spiro and his younger brother Nikos, the Constantinou brothers. They were club owners and bare-knuckle promoters who’d been buying Josh drinks, taking a keen interest in him and his team of fighters.
‘Josh, you did good, my friend,’ said the biggest, Spiro, with a grin, coming forward and throwing his arms wide.
‘Thanks,’ said Josh, dragging himself to his feet and getting enfolded in a bear hug despite all the blood and sweat he was covered in.
‘Everyone said you were good but they didn’t say how good. Now we know. You’ll dine with us tonight? Celebrate the win?’
‘Sure,’ said Josh, when all he wanted to do was go back to the hotel and fall into bed.
You had to do this stuff. He knew that. He was a promoter himself so he knew the score. It paid handsomely, but in return for all that loot you had to press the flesh, be entertaining, earn your crust. It wasn’t enough to be a great fighter; there were other hoops to jump through, too. You had to keep influential people sweet or you wouldn’t get a fight anywhere in the States, and the USA was where fighting paid the best because it drew the biggest, richest and most enthusiastic crowds.
‘We have someone lined up for next month,’ said Spiro, patting Josh’s shoulder. ‘A Mexican.’
‘Mexican? They’re all five foot nothing. Never seen a heavyweight Mex.’
‘This one’s a cross. Mexican mother, black dad. Big as they come but he was raised near Cancún and I tell you, they’re hungry, these Mexicans. They keep coming at you. Terrific fighters. They never give up.’
Fucking great, thought Josh. Across the pond, he had a home waiting, a family. A wife. That bitch. He thought of the latest note Shauna had tucked into his bag. I love you, Josh. The notes irritated him to death. They always had. She was trying to control him, mark him out as hers even when he was a thousand miles away. He hated that, and he hated her.
Josh loved his kids but he’d got sick of Shauna soon as he’d heard all that she’d been up to, how she’d scared off Claire with her pet monkeys the Cleavers. That cow. He loathed her unpredictable rages, her soppy love notes, her stupid anniversary fixation and her determination to keep dragging them all ever upwards on the social scale.
It was getting bloody silly, the way she went on. Dinners and galas and charity launches and all that shit. Their marriage had been dead for years, and they both knew it. All he stayed for was the kids. Well, for Connor mostly. He wasn’t even sure Aysha was his. How could he be, knowing Shauna? But he still felt protective of the girl, and guilty over his lack of true affection for her. None of it was Aysha’s fault, after all. All he was waiting for was for Aysha to get settled into a career or a marriage, then he promised himself he was going to shut this thing down for good.
He still dreamed of Claire Milo sometimes, his lost love. He yearned for those times, when life had been so simple and she was there. But all that was so far in the past now that it was just that: a useless dream. That was all it would ever be.
‘Get washed up,’ said Nikos with a grin. ‘We’ll wait outside. And well done, my friend.’
74
Suki grimly stuck it out at the Baton Rouge café with Sweaty Stefan for a little while longer while she tried to digest it all. She pondered on the lie that had been her life, and thought of that bitch who had casually thrown her out with the trash. Then Stefan started in with the chocolates and flowers, and she thought, Am I going to settle for this? Am I really going to sleep with this dickhead and probably marry him and have his kids?
No. She wasn’t.
She was still in shock over what she’d read in Aunt Ginny’s note. Her kindly aunt had written it nicely, tried to soften the blow, but what it amounted to was this: her whole life up to this point had been nothing but bullshit. Her real mother hadn’t been a teacher, her real father hadn’t been a carpenter. Dave and Jo Vance weren’t her parents at all. No – her real mother was up in New York, fancy-free and untroubled by the loathsome kid she couldn’t wait to kick aside.
Suki didn’t tell a soul except Felice that she was going. Fuck Stefan. She made her plans, then one day she locked up the trailer and got on the Greyhound bus and headed north. She was looking to hunt down this cold-hearted bitch called Claire Milo, who had dumped her as a baby on the Sisters of Mercy, and left her to fend alone.
‘Thanks for goin’ Greyhound!’ the driver said as she and the other passengers shuffled off the bus after the long and exhausting journey. Over a thousand miles she’d travelled, passing through Alabama, Virginia, Maryland, and now here she was. New York. The Big Apple!
Already, Suki was missing Felice. But she’d made preparations for this trip, and she was planning to take her time over it. She had a Brooklyn apartment lined up, and a job; everything was in place so that she could settle here and spy out the land, track down that witch who’d abandoned her and give her a piece of her mind. All she had to do was go along to the real estate agent and collect the apartment key. Then she was going to visit that whore, who clearly didn’t have a clue about what it meant to be a real mother.
The apartment was lesson one on New York living. She’d been sent photos of the place, and in the photos it didn’t look too bad. Not a palace, but OK. When she unlocked it, she quickly saw that she’d been duped. Well, she was used to being duped by now, wasn’t she? The apartment was north-facing, so the living room felt cold – it was freezing, this time of year in New York – and was permanently dark. The kitchen had about a year’s worth of grime on every surface, so she had to take a whole day to clean it. The apartment was at the top of the building (she hadn’t even considered this) with a lift that someday soon was due to be fixed according to a couple of the other residents, so she had to climb six flights of stairs when she got home at the end of the day, and she was worn out.
Lesson number two was the Sweaty Stefan situation, which she believed she had escaped. But no. When she started her waitressing job to pay the rent on the apartment while she sussed out her traitorous whore of a mother, she found that this new Sweaty Stefan was called Mike Hodder, and the only difference between Stefan and Mike was the hair colour. Stefan’s had been brown. Mike’s was dyed yellow-blond. Both were greaseballs with wandering hands.
The other waitresses, who were experienced, older, hard-eyed and wary of Mike’s overtures, watched Suki endure the pats, squeeze-pasts and leers for about a week and then one of them, Pammy, a red-haired middle-aged mother of three girls of around Suki’s age, said: ‘What you doin’ here, hun?’
‘What?’ Suki stared at her over the griddle where she was flipping burgers. She wasn’t bad at the job. She worked hard. And as for what she was doing in New York, that was her business, and she was going to attend to that real soon. So what was Pammy saying?
‘Come on. Square peg, round hole, that’s what I’m thinkin’.’
‘Meaning what?’ asked Suki. She felt irritable. It was smoking hot in the kitchen, she was sick of grease and burgers, and Mariah Carey was warbling grace notes out of the radio over the sink. Later, Suki would be up to her armpits in that same sink, washing dishes and cooking utensils. Shit, she hated this job.
Pammy hitched a hip on to the counter, slapped the tea towel over her shoulder and folded her arms. ‘Meaning you’re too pretty for this. You could work anywhere and do any damned thing you wanted.’
Suki stared at Pammy.
‘Burger’s burning,’ said Pammy.
Suki got back to the burgers, flipping, flipping. The smell of greasy meat wafted up over her in a noxious cloud. ‘Like what?’
‘You could be in a top Manhattan eatery, girl. You could apply for host or maître d’ and you’d get it.
But at the very least you could wait tables there and meet a better class of people and not have to put up with Mike’s crap.’
‘You noticed that.’
‘His tongue keeps hitting the floor every time you pass him by,’ smiled Pammy. ‘Little tip? Bend down to pick something up. He’ll take the opportunity to brush up against you from behind. Then up you come, turn and give him an elbow in the nuts. Big apologies, then, “So sorry, boss, I’m so clumsy, did I hurt you?” He’ll get the message.’
75
Aysha Flynn was twenty years old and bored to tears. Right now she had a job in a dental supplies depot, pushing invoices around on a desk and answering the telephone to clients, and she hated it. She hated her life. Living at home with Mum, who was forever ordering her to do this, to stop doing that . . . And then there was Connor, her older brother, who saw her as nothing but a nuisance, she knew he did.
As for Dad, well, he didn’t want anything to do with her. He never had. He was all over Connor like a cheap suit, so what was wrong with her? She knew she’d been a pain in the arse in the past, playing up at school, refusing to study and so flopping at every exam, getting detention, once – famously – yanking one of her teachers’ gym shorts up the flagpole by the front gate. She’d been glad to get out of that pest-hole and into work.
But work was so fucking boring.
She’d asked Connor if she could do anything around the scrapyard, maybe work in the office, but he’d turned her down.
‘No fucking way,’ had been his exact words.
Turned out, the only bright spot in her otherwise grotty life was Joey Minghella.
Joey was so good-looking. His parents were no-hopers, it was true, but was that Joey’s fault? His Italian grandpa and grandma had come over from Naples years back and set up a tidy fleet of ice-cream vans making a profit around the area, but when they went off to the great ice-cream parlour in the sky, Joey’s dad had quickly run the business into the ground. Then he decided he’d rather sit on the dole than work. Since the day the vans went tits-up, Joey’s dad Frank hadn’t done a minute’s graft, and he liked it that way.
But Aysha didn’t care about any of that. She adored Joey. He was gorgeous. Very Italian in his looks. Dark-skinned, black-haired, with deep brown eyes that flashed with humour. She felt her stomach do backflips every time he came into view.
Aysha glanced at the wall clock. It was coming up to five. All afternoon she’d been glancing up at it, willing it to go faster, while she’d been filling out invoices for amalgam and cement and running round the place gathering orders together, ready to be shipped out by van to the local dentists.
‘Right,’ she said, the instant the big hand hit the hour. ‘I’m off.’
She gathered up her bag and coat and almost ran out into the square. Glamour city, this place was. There was a petrol station over the road and a meat market right beside the dental depot, where flayed pigs’ heads hung on metal hooks. Christ, she hated this place. There had to be something out there, something better than this.
Joey was waiting for her on the corner. He smiled at her. It was like the sun coming out, his smile. She loved it.
‘Hi,’ he said, enfolding her in a bear hug.
The other girls were coming out of the depot, looking over at her and Joey. She kissed him passionately on the lips, for their benefit.
‘Wow,’ said Joey, pushing her back a step.
‘Pictures tonight?’ said Aysha, thinking that being with Joey was all that kept her sane. It was a hundred times better than Mum’s smothering brand of mother-love, Connor’s disapproval, Dad’s disappointed silence.
‘Yeah. Oh shit. There’s your brother,’ said Joey, seeing Connor’s Porsche turning into the square.
Joey backed quickly away, looking at the Porsche and wishing he had the dosh for a motor like that. Thanks to Connor fucking Flynn blowing him out, there wasn’t much chance of that now. No need to tell Aysha that Connor had sacked his arse, though. ‘I’ll see you there,’ he said to her. ‘Seven-thirty.’
‘OK,’ said Aysha, and he was gone.
Connor parked the Porsche. Aysha went over, got in. She was taking driving lessons, and hoping to pass her test soon: then Connor could stuff his Porsche up his arse.
‘Hello, Trouble,’ said Connor, frowning. He always called her that. And actually, it suited her. Truculent was the word for Aysha. ‘Did I just see Joey Minghella?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t want you hanging around with that waster,’ said Connor, and started the car. ‘Can we get that straight?’
Aysha looked at him. ‘Why?’
‘Because he’s a pain in the fucking arse. Did some jobs for me, but he won’t be doing any more. Just steer clear, OK?’
Aysha shrugged as if she didn’t care. OK. But in her mind, the dream ran on, reel after reel of it, like one of those fabulous romantic old films. Her and beautiful Joey Minghella, kissing, caressing. And as for Connor telling her to steer clear? Aysha never followed any orders but her own. So Connor? He could go fuck himself.
76
On her day off, Suki went and stood outside the club where her mother had worked before she’d had a daughter and consigned her carelessly to the trash. It hurt Suki and enraged her, to think of anyone doing such a thing. To think that Claire Milo had cared so little for her that she was able to just toss her aside like that.
If I had a daughter, could I do that? she wondered.
No. Of course she couldn’t. A mother was meant to care, wasn’t she?
Suki stood out on the sidewalk and stared up at the sign over the big black double doors of the club. Sylvester’s, the sign said. And there were big posters up showing a lush golden-lit interior, smiling hostesses bearing trays of drinks and wearing cute tight-fitting little outfits.
Her mother had probably been one of those girls, maybe a hooker part-time, who knew? Anyway, she was obviously a whore of some sort because she had given her child away and there was absolutely no excuse for that.
I probably cramped her style, thought Suki.
There was no chance that her mother would still be here, anyway. So many years in between. Suki fell back a step as the doors opened. Two meaty bouncers came out, pushed the doors wide, opening for the lunchtime trade. There was a glassed-in menu up on the wall; businessmen would eat in the club, entertain clients. As she stood there, a couple of wealthy-looking men went into the club and were greeted politely by the doormen. One of the doormen looked at her, no doubt wondering why she was staring, so Suki moved on. But not before she’d seen the sign pasted up above the menu board. Not before she’d glimpsed it and thought: Shit! I could do that. Then I could really see this bitch close up.
Yeah, but what if she was long gone?
Well, there would be nothing wasted; and Suki would be better off, so where was the harm?
The sign said: Hostess Vacancies.
77
To say that Kylie was surprised to get Shauna’s invitation was an understatement. She knew how much Shauna hated her. She reckoned that Shauna would despise anyone who came within ten feet of her baby boy. But maybe the old cow was mellowing. An invitation to afternoon tea at the Flynns’ place must be a sign of something.
When Kylie got there, and Shauna ushered her into the living room and seated her upon the sofa – the same sofa that she’d bounced around on at Shauna’s New Year’s Eve party – Kylie soon found out what this invitation was a sign of.
‘How much to fuck off and leave my son alone?’ asked Shauna, sitting on the matching sofa opposite and looking at her with blank dislike.
‘What?’ Kylie’s mouth actually dropped open.
‘You heard.’ Shauna eyed the girl. Kylie reminded her a little of herself – she was tough, and bold. Shauna didn’t want any woman like that hanging around Connor. If he ever got married – and she really hoped he wouldn’t – then it would have to be to someone of her choosing, a girl who was soft enough to do as she was told by her m
other-in-law.
‘Right.’ Kylie’s mouth closed in a tight line. Then she said: ‘Well, it might cost you dearer than you think.’
‘Oh come on.’ Shauna eyed her sceptically. ‘You’re not about to pronounce your undying love for him, are you? Don’t make me laugh.’
‘No, what I am about to say is that I’m pregnant.’
That gave Shauna a jolt, but she hid it well. ‘And you’re trying to say it’s his? I bet a tramp like you has slept with all sorts.’
Kylie’s mouth tightened even more. ‘Look,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s Connor’s. No one else’s. You really want me to walk away? He’ll never see his damned kid and neither will you, Granny.’
That felt like a slap in the face. Shauna’s stare never wavered.
‘Good,’ she rapped out. ‘He don’t need that sort of distraction in his life, and I don’t need some dirty bastard’s spunk-bubble being passed off as my grandkid.’
‘You fucking—’ started Kylie.
Shauna stood up. ‘Now, you know what? You’ve annoyed me. So I’m not paying. Not a single solitary bean. But listen good to me now, honey, because I won’t be repeating myself. You fuck off. If I ever see your scrawny arse around my boy again, you’ll be sorry.’
Kylie stood up too, gathered up her coat and bag, her colour high with temper. ‘You know what? I feel sorry for him, having a cold, controlling bitch of a mother like you. But you don’t scare me. I’ll do what I bloody well like. You can fuck off.’
Shaking with rage, Shauna picked up the phone and tapped in the number. Bill answered, and he passed her over to Jeb.
‘That job I thought might come up? Well, it has,’ she said, her heart pounding hard.
She gave Jeb the details.
A week later, Kylie was getting into her car after leaving work at the salon when someone knocked her down with a punch to the jaw. While she was laid out on the road, dazed, someone in heavy workmen’s boots kicked Connor’s baby out of her. Then as Kylie lay there, cut, bleeding, her insides cramping with horrible pain, the man standing over her said: ‘Shauna sends her regards.’
