Fearless

by Jessie Keane

  Then he walked away.

  78

  Aysha was mad about Joey Minghella. Every time she saw him she wanted to either throw up with nerves or grin like a Cheshire cat. Sneaking around with Joey was the best fun ever. Sometimes, when Connor didn’t collect her from work, Joey walked her home, and they took detours along the way so that they could kiss. They kissed so much that her lips were sore.

  ‘What’s happening then, Aysh?’ Mum would ask now and again, keen eyes fixed on her daughter’s face.

  ‘Nothing much,’ she’d shrug, fizzing with excitement because tomorrow she would see Joey again. She was so happy she couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

  Shauna knew that look. She’d been like that herself, with Josh, in the early days. ‘Is Aysha seeing anyone?’ she asked Connor one day when they were alone.

  ‘I saw her talking to Joey Minghella once,’ said Connor. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘That boy!’ Shauna’s lip curled in disgust. ‘I don’t like that family. Bunch of deadlegs.’

  ‘I told her.’

  ‘And she said . . . ?’

  ‘She said sure, she’d steer clear. But you know Aysha.’

  Shauna did. Aysha went her own way and bollocks to everyone else. ‘Keep an eye on her,’ said Shauna.

  ‘Always do,’ said Connor, sighing. His mother was forever running everyone’s lives for them, and it was fucking tedious.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ said Shauna, seeing his expression. ‘I’ve a right to know what my own daughter’s up to.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure,’ said Connor. ‘I’ll keep a watch on her, OK?’

  Shauna couldn’t believe how fast the years had passed. Her son was getting little alley-cats pregnant and her daughter Aysha was a full-grown woman, and now Shauna was well into her middle years. She was noticing the odd wrinkle or two, the stray grey hairs in her once magnificent dark mane that she got coloured out at an expensive salon. It was an adjustment, and she supposed women who were blissfully happy in their marriages handled it pretty much OK. But when you suspected your husband was happiest when he was away from you – and he was away a lot, mostly in the States – then it got difficult. You began to see a long tunnel stretching ahead, with old age and death at the end of it, and what was there to sustain you?

  Your kids, that was all. Shauna had a lot invested in them. She adored them. And that was sad, too, because knowing that proved that she had nothing else. She thought that this was the situation: Josh was happy enough to go on with it all because he had kids off her.

  But this was her life now. It would have to be enough. And there was always Jeb, lurking in the background. If she craved sex, she could turn to him – and shamefully, she often did. She was never going to be free of him; after everything that had happened, they were linked and could never be separated. He’d seen to Kylie and she had paid him, in cash and in kind. That was what her life amounted to now.

  79

  Suki was still spying out the land. She’d walked past the club many times among the hustle and bustle of New Yorkers on the sidewalks. She found that she rather liked New York, the yellow cabs thronging the streets, the noise, the sheer liveliness of the place. After the trailer park, it felt like heaven. Like things were happening, all around her, for the first time ever.

  She must have hovered outside Sylvester’s a dozen times before she summoned the nerve to actually walk through the black doors and speak to one of the big muscle-bound men there.

  ‘You know the advertisement? The one on the wall?’ she asked one of them, who was smiling at her.

  ‘Ah sure do,’ he said, aping her accent. ‘Where you from, honey chile?’

  ‘Baton Rouge,’ she said.

  ‘Phewee! That accent’s to die for. You sound warm as molasses, baby doll. You really do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Suki. ‘Um. The job? I’d like to apply, if I can.’

  Now his colleague came over. He was smiling too. Suki had that effect on men, in general. She was used to them staring and acting the fool around her. Look at Stefan. Look at Mike.

  ‘Come on up to the office, I’ll see if the boss is home to visitors today.’

  Suki went in, gazing around at the club. It looked elegant and expensive, and there were girls up at the bar chatting and laughing, all of them squeezed into tight costumes in various colours. A brunette in scarlet. An ash-blonde in cool primrose-yellow. An ebony-skinned stunner in bright Caribbean lime-green. They looked gorgeous.

  She followed the doorman upstairs and at the top he knocked at one of two closed doors, and opened it. ‘Hey, Donna? Got a lady here wants to apply, if you’ll see her?’

  Donna, thought Suki. Not Claire. If Claire had once been one of the girls downstairs, she’d have been out of the job long since. Only the young and glamorous could hack that. Or maybe she hadn’t been one of the girls at all. Maybe she’d been a cleaner. Or worked in the kitchens. Or behind the bar. Suki itched to ask either the man or the middle-aged woman behind the desk if Claire Milo was still here. If she wasn’t, no matter. Suki would just go right on searching until she found her.

  ‘I’m open for business,’ smiled the woman, and the man ushered Suki inside. ‘Come in, do. Sit down.’

  Suki sat. She looked at the woman. She was mid-forties, with an air of efficiency, and she wore a bright-red jacket that clashed with her big mop of dyed auburn hair. Not a looker; mouth too big, eyes too small. But she had a real friendly aura about her.

  ‘You done hostess work before?’ she asked Suki, pulling out forms from drawers and selecting a pen from a pink pottery tub of them on her desk.

  ‘Waitressing, mostly,’ said Suki.

  ‘Nothing wrong in that,’ said Donna, getting to her feet. ‘Here. Fill this in, we’ll see how we go, OK?’

  Donna left the room, closing the door after her. Suki looked at the form and sighed. What was she doing? Did she seriously want this job? No, she didn’t. But she wanted to be here, she wanted to soak up the atmosphere of the place; to feel it. It was like walking in her treacherous mother’s footsteps. So she picked up the pen and started writing.

  When Donna came back ten minutes later, Suki had finished filling in the application form.

  ‘Oh, that’s fine,’ said Donna, going around her desk. She didn’t sit down, but reached out a hand, indicating that this little meeting was at an end. ‘Thank you for coming by. I’ll take a look, and then I’ll be in touch, OK?’

  Suki nodded. What if she didn’t get the job? She’d have no excuse to come back here again.

  ‘Do you know a woman called Milo? Claire Milo?’ she blurted out, coming to her feet.

  Donna looked at her sharply and Suki quickly went on: ‘She’s a friend of my mom’s, and Mom thought she worked here once, a long time ago, at this club. She wanted me to give Claire her regards, that’s all.’

  Donna nodded. ‘Claire Milo don’t work here,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! She doesn’t? Mom must be mistaken.’ Suki felt her heart sink. Of course Claire Milo wasn’t here any more. It had been lunacy to think she would be.

  ‘No, your mom’s right in a way, Claire is here, but she don’t work here, not as such.’

  Suki was flustered. What the fuck? She couldn’t understand what Donna was saying to her.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, feeling like an idiot, a bright blush creeping up over her cheeks.

  But Donna only smiled. ‘I mean that Claire Milo owns Sylvester’s. She don’t work in it.’

  80

  Aysha didn’t know how to tell Joey the news. Over a year now, they’d been dating, mostly in secret. There’d been quite a lot of heavy petting. Then he’d started asking for oral, which frankly made Aysha want to puke. She felt guilty about that, and he sulked.

  So a couple of times they had actually done The Deed. It felt very strange, and the first time had been painful, but Joey had said, panting and pushing at her, wasn’t this great? So she agreed it was, although she c
ouldn’t see how, and she wished he’d wear a condom because she was worried that she’d fall for a baby – and what a shit storm that would cause. Dad hated her anyway – it seemed like he had been mean to her just about forever, so cold and dismissive – and that would put the tin lid on it.

  But Joey said wearing a condom was like scratching your toes with your fucking boots on, so she hadn’t insisted. And then it happened a second time and although it was less painful, again he didn’t wear a condom.

  ‘Well, if you won’t suck me off, the least you can do is throw me a fuck,’ he told her when she finally summoned the nerve to tell him she hated doing oral and detested getting a gobful of cum. It was horrible.

  So she had thrown him a fuck. She was terrified that if she didn’t, some other girl would, so she did it. Twice. And now she had something to tell him and she didn’t know how, so she just blurted it out.

  ‘I think I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  Joey was without a job, although he said he was looking, but she didn’t really believe that any more. She’d passed her driving test but still didn’t have a car. She’d swapped the dental depot for a job in a travel agency. Trouble was, she hated every second of it. But she was earning, contributing to the family pot. She liked that feeling, and maybe she could even prove to Dad she wasn’t a complete waste of space.

  ‘You’re fucking what?’ said Joey.

  ‘Pregnant,’ said Aysha, her heart beating hard in her chest.

  He was looking angry, like she was the one in the wrong. This was going to start big trouble with her family, she knew that, and what she needed from him was reassurance; she needed him to tell her it was all going to be OK.

  ‘What the fuck?’ He’d stopped in his tracks and was pulling his hands through his dark curls and staring at her like she was crazy. ‘How the hell . . . ?’

  God, is he really going to say that? Aysha wondered. Is he really going to ask how it happened, when it’s bloody obvious?

  ‘We had sex, you didn’t wear a condom, and now I think I’m pregnant,’ said Aysha.

  ‘Christ!’ He turned around, walked away, walked back. Stared at her face. ‘You think?’

  ‘I’m getting a test kit today.’

  Aysha hadn’t seen the red flag flying for two months now. Soon, she was going to have to tell her mother, and that was going to be hard. Even harder? Her father. He was going to be mad as hell and even more disappointed in her than he normally seemed to be. She was the one who was going to have to face the music on this, and here was Joey, acting like a twat, like it was all about him.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Joey, and kicked a tin can across the road in fury. ‘Then bloody do the test, will you? Hurry up, this is fucking killing me.’

  Aysha went to the chemist. Hoping against hope, she did the test. It was positive.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joey,’ she said when she told him later in the day that it was confirmed. Then wondered why the fuck she was apologizing, because he was responsible for this, not her. She felt tears fill her eyes.

  ‘No, hey . . .’ He was patting her shoulder, alarmed by the onset of tears. ‘This is my fault. I should have taken better care of you, I see that.’

  This would be one in the eye for fucking Connor Flynn, thought Joey.

  In fact – now he’d had the chance to cool down a little, to just take it all in – he thought that this could all work out just fine.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Aysha.

  ‘Simple,’ said Joey with the dazzling grin that always melted her heart. ‘We’ll get married.’

  81

  The job fell into Suki’s lap. She was amazed – she’d seen the calibre of women working at Sylvester’s – and she felt at once triumphant and anxious as she stared at the letter of acceptance that came not a week after she’d gone to the club.

  For days she’d chewed over what Donna had told her, about Claire owning the joint. Maybe Claire came from a wealthy family, and the business was in their blood. Maybe she’d got pregnant outside wedlock and her well-to-do folks had been appalled and prompted her to give the baby away. Suki wondered what she would do, in the same situation. But really she already knew the answer to that. She would keep her baby, if it took her last breath to do so. No way would she ever abandon her child, like Claire had done to her.

  Or maybe Claire was a hard-faced career woman. She ran the club, after all. Maybe that was it. She’d got herself pregnant and that had been inconvenient, not part of her plan, so she’d jettisoned her daughter like so much flotsam.

  Christ, who knows?

  Suki was wearing herself out playing guessing games, and in the end she just had to shut down. When she actually met the bitch, when she confronted her, then she would get her answers.

  She’d thought that once she started work at the club, she’d be sure to see the owner. She was disappointed to find it was Donna who met her, showed her around, introduced her to the other girls and handed her the soft pink velvet costume she would be shoe-horned into every day. Donna taught her the moves the girls performed as they ferried drinks between the bar and the clients, helped her perfect the ‘dip’ until she had it just right. No mention was made of Claire Milo and Suki didn’t enquire; it would look too weird if she mentioned her again. But she did ask one of the other girls – Vicky, a chatty and glamorous brunette who always wore a scarlet costume – if Claire lived over the shop.

  ‘She does,’ said Vicky. ‘She’s got an apartment on the second floor.’

  Then one evening Suki was crossing the club floor. It was a busy night, the place was heaving and there was a three-piece band playing bluesy numbers. A woman came in – middle-aged, blonde, and went over to the bar. Suki was there, giving the barman an order. Donna was standing talking to the barman, and when the woman tapped her on the shoulder she turned quickly, then gave a grin and hugged her.

  ‘Claire! You had a good trip?’

  ‘It was a nightmare! Too much traffic, and when I got there they started trying to up the price.’

  ‘You didn’t let them, though?’

  ‘Hey, do you know me? Have we been introduced?’ Claire laughed. Suki stood frozen, shocked. She was standing two feet away from her mother. And . . . the woman sounded English, not American. ‘Good to be back. See you in a bit,’ she said, and went off up the stairs.

  Suki took the order from the barman and delivered it to the far table, chatting to the clients, smiling, doing her job, while all the time she was thinking, My God, my God! That was her.

  She didn’t see Claire Milo again that night, or the next day. Suki felt like her whole being was electrified with awareness; Claire Milo was here, in this building. That bitch was here. She waited all day, and then the evening shift was due to start and she took her chance and crept up the stairs. Donna’s office door was ajar, and she could see Donna in there, her head bent over papers, making notes. She crept past. Then past another closed door. And on up the stairs. At the top of the flight was another door.

  Christ, I can’t do this . . .

  She steeled herself and knocked on the door. She gulped, nervous. Her palms were damp. Her heart was beating madly. No one answered, so she turned and started off down the stairs again. Then she heard the door open. Suki stopped, glanced back over her shoulder.

  Oh shit!

  ‘Hello! Can I help you?’ asked Claire.

  Suki took a breath and started back up. At the top, she came face to face with the woman who’d given birth to her. She stared at her. Claire Milo was shorter than her, and dainty of build. She had an air of energy and purpose about her. She was wearing a peacock-blue satin dressing gown. Her hair was cut in a shoulder-length bob and expertly coloured a subtle pale blonde. Her face . . . she had a kind face. Big almond-shaped periwinkle-blue eyes that twinkled with warmth. That was a surprise. She was smiling now, looking expectantly at Suki, not having a damned clue who she was.

  ‘Taken a wrong turn?’ asked Claire. ‘If you’re looking
for Donna, her office is down there on the left.’

  ‘I’m not looking for Donna,’ Suki managed to get out. ‘I’m looking for you.’

  ‘Me? You’re new, aren’t you? What can I do for you?’ Claire was half-smiling, half-frowning.

  ‘You can tell me why you threw me away,’ said Suki.

  Claire’s smile froze on her face.

  Suki felt it all blow up in her head then, erupting like lava. ‘Don’t you get it yet? Can’t you see the similarity?’

  Claire was staring at her as if she was mad.

  ‘What sort of mother does that to her child?’ demanded Suki. ‘Tell me, you bitch. Because I would really like to know.’

  Claire’s eyes widened. Then her mouth clamped shut – and she slammed the door closed in Suki’s face.

  82

  ‘You’re what?’ asked Shauna.

  ‘Pregnant,’ said Aysha.

  They were in Shauna’s beautifully appointed and recently refurbished kitchen that looked out over the long driveway to the gates and the road beyond. As Aysha said it, Shauna sat down on one of the button-backed cream leather bar stools, all the wind knocked out of her.

  Damn.

  Of all the possible futures she had envisaged for her only daughter, getting banged up and dropping that waster Joey Minghella’s kid was the one she had feared the most. She’d tried to get her daughter mingling with a better class of people. She’d imagined Aysha marrying a lawyer maybe. A doctor. Even a surgeon. That would be one in the eye for the girls at the tennis club. But this?

  ‘Is it Joey’s?’ she asked, numb with shock. She wished Josh was here. But Josh was still over in the States, making money. Bloody Josh. But maybe it wasn’t Joey’s.