by PJ Adams
“Mr Bailey.” I recognized Davydov’s cultured, almost accentless, voice instantly. “I hope you are enjoying your retirement.”
Could I never leave that life behind? I no longer lived with the daily certainty that one day they would come for me, but now that returned – not a fear, but a sense of weight, the weight of that past life that would never leave me alone, and all that went with it.
“Davydov?”
“Your friend, Detective Inspector Glover, he tells me you are looking for Ms Petrauskė.”
“I am.”
“In which case, perhaps you would allow me to share some advice?”
He paused, waiting for me to ask him to go on.
I didn’t need advice. I just needed...
“Do,” I said. “What advice?”
“A very wise person once told me that you should never underestimate the importance of those around you, of family. You should pay heed to that advice, Mr Bailey.”
“Freddie? Are you telling me Freddie knows where she is?”
“She came to this country to find him. She is unlikely to have given up on him so soon.”
“But... I don’t know where Freddie is, either. Believe me, I’ve looked.”
“Freddie Petrauskas came to work for my organization when you and your brothers moved away,” said Davydov. “When things became complicated recently, it was felt he might benefit from some time away from the spotlight. I know where Freddie is, Mr Bailey. Would you like me to put you in touch?”
§
I found her.
I went to Manchester, where Freddie was helping the Russians set up a new operation. Laid myself out before him.
“What makes you think she wants you to find her, Mr Bailey?” he asked me.
I shrugged.
“Nothing,” I told him. “Nothing at all. All I know is I need to find her. I’m not going to cause problems. I just want to see her. Can you give me that, Freddie?”
She’d moved to a small town just a few miles along the coast from where I’d been living for most of the year. She hadn’t gone far, had done just enough to make it hard for her to be traced, even as she hid in full view.
Almost as if she was waiting and hoping she might be found.
Almost...
22
It was a picture postcard kind of town. A typical English seaside town that probably hadn’t changed much since about 1958.
A small pier extended from the raised promenade, a lifeboat station at the far end, amusement arcades and cafes along its length, a small theater nestling where it joined the land. Along the town’s wide promenade were more shops selling t-shirts and plastic spades and buckets, sweets and sunglasses, snacks and drinks. A couple of fish and chip shops sat either side of a tall, narrow pub called the Nelson.
This was where Maggie worked. I spotted her at the bar as soon as I walked in, a snapshot of her. In my memory, golden light angles in from a window, picking her out like a spotlight. In reality, I know – because I know that place well, now – the interior of the Nelson is dark, with no shafts of sunlight, golden or otherwise.
Her.
Straw-blonde hair pulled hard back into a ponytail, black t-shirt and apron, a face that naturally set itself into a slightly wary, reserved expression and then transformed at a comment or a catching of the eye, lighting up as if that imagined shaft of sunlight had struck.
That expression falling flat again, wary, when after a second or two her gaze lighted on the newcomer hesitating in the doorway.
She said something, turned away.
For a few seconds I thought she had gone, then she emerged, threading her way through the scattering of customers, pulling a long padded coat around herself.
Head down, she walked past me.
I followed out onto the promenade to where she stood, hands on the cold metal railing, looking out to sea.
“You’re not easy to find.” Stupid words. There were so many better things I could have said. I’d had long enough to rehearse this encounter in my head.
“You left me.” I think, perhaps, she had rehearsed this moment, too, in the few weeks that had passed. Chosen these words, this challenge: You left me.
She turned, leaning back against the railings, arms wrapped around herself. Looked at me, and those pale gray eyes with a hint of the sky’s blue were like daggers going through me.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You left me.”
“I wanted you to get out alive. It was the best way to–”
“You left me...”
That was the moment, the third repetition, the words tapering away to a sigh, when her shoulders were supposed to slump and she was supposed to move into my arms.
Instead, she straightened, turned to face the sea again, and I finally understood that finding her here was no resolution.
This was not the ending I’d hoped for.
I’d only just found her again, but that could simply be the moment when I lose her for good.
“I’ll only ever walk away from you one more time,” I said, not sure where my words were heading.
I paused, swallowed, forced myself to breathe.
She was watching me over her shoulder, waiting for me to go on.
“And that’s if you tell me to now. Tell me to go, that I’ve spent the last month looking for you in vain, and I’ll do as you ask.”
I’d never felt so sick. So damned scared.
Aim a gun between my eyes any time. Hold a knife to my throat.
Anything but that brief instant that drew itself out and I was suspended over the most terrifying abyss of loss.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said, soft words breaking the tension, twisting it.
Those gray eyes fixed on me. “Who are you, Owen Bailey? Are you the Owen I learned to know, the man I worked with seamlessly, even when we weren’t in the same house? The man who played me Chopin because he thought I was Polish? Or are you the ruthless, evil man who used to run half of London?”
“Only half?” That earned a fraction of a smile, a glimmer.
I straightened then. Waited until she met my look again. Held my hand out until, after a brief hesitation, she took it. A formal greeting, an echo of our first encounter when she had turned up at the door of my Norfolk home.
Her hand was delicate in mine. I squeezed, shook, released her. Said, “I’m Owen Bailey. I used to be a bastard but I hope you’ll find I’m not now. And I really hope you’ll get to know me.”
That fraction of a smile again.
That glimmer, which was all I could ever have hoped for.
§
I’d never had to do this before.
Never had to try.
And it had never mattered so much.
Trying to win her, wooing her when there was the ever-present fear that I might put a foot wrong and blow it.
I’d never experienced that kind of risk, those stakes. Never felt the fear that only a woman like Maggie could inspire – not fear of her, but fear of losing her, of never winning her in the first place.
I’d never been so self-conscious. So aware of how every word, every response, might portray me, because I wanted to be the right me. The one she had learned to know, the one who had played her Chopin because I couldn’t tell she was Lithuanian and not Polish. Not the ruthless bastard I had been in a previous life, the one who had been capable of walking out of that seedy club and leaving her behind, at the mercy of Viktor Salko and his mob.
Eventually, I realized how stupid that was. That it could never be an act, a choice of presentation. Realizing that, ultimately, I could only let Maggie get to know the real me and leave her to decide whether that was the right one.
And that was more scary than anything.
§
That lunchtime, outside the Nelson, we didn’t have long. Just enough time to say what needed to be said.
“I am on a break,” she said, far too soon. “I said I would be five m
inutes. I have to go.”
Watching her cross the promenade and disappear inside that tall, narrow pub, and wondering if that was just an excuse, that she might simply have wanted to get away from me.
And understanding that this was a fear I would live with forever. A fear I would never wish to be without – the fear that I might do something wrong, that I might inadvertently hurt her, that I might lose her – because how could it ever not matter as much as it did right then?
§
That evening we ate fish and chips at a Formica table in one of the places by the Nelson.
We sat at a window, where we could see the lights along the pier and the people passing by.
Maggie told me of her childhood in a place called Kaunas. Of the mother who had taught her to cook and to rewire a house, and the drunken lout of a father who had taught her and Freddie to survive.
I told her what it was like to be held with your hands flat on a wooden table and have one of your father’s rivals threaten to smash your piano-playing fingers with a lump-hammer. There was a point to my story, and it wasn’t to shock or impress.
“You and me, Maggie: we’ve both survived this far. We both know how bad things can get, what’s at stake if things don’t work out. When you understand that, you learn to... to appreciate what matters.”
Brief eye contact, then one of us looked away, I don’t know who was first.
Maybe me. Me when I realized that I was neither the bastard who’d run the East End nor the gentle pianist who knew the difference between a skylark and a meadow pipit.
I was something in between, and I hoped desperately that was what she might want.
§
I was a proper gent that night.
Not a calculated thing. Not a plan.
But... we talked for ages. Then out in the crisp night air of autumn turning to winter we walked the length of the promenade and then back again, still talking.
When we stopped by a street that headed up from the seafront where she told me she had a room, we stood awkwardly facing each other.
I’d already kissed this woman hard, all that time ago. I’d picked her up with her legs wrapped around my waist, swept the plates and cutlery clear with one arm and lowered her onto my kitchen table. I’d woken with the taste of her in my mouth. Lain in the warm hollow she’d left.
But now...
I leaned in, hesitated, my lips a fraction from hers, and then pressed, softly.
The touch of her lips on mine was like a piano piece, long-neglected but then played again without having to think or read the music. The muscle-memory of her touch. The most natural thing in the world.
I drew away, took a step back, asked if she was sure she was okay to get back to her room and she assured me it was not far.
I watched her take a step backward of her own, turn, then pause, glance back, and give that glimmer of a smile that filled me with all the hope in the world.
I don’t do it. I don’t fall. I don’t do that head-over-heels bullshit. I just don’t.
But God she had me then, with that smile.
Had me completely.
§
I saw her again the next week.
This time, a calculated thing. Give it a few days. Learn to breathe again.
No pressure. No rushing things.
Trying desperately not to make a wrong move.
Dinner at a forgettable Italian place. Talking long after we had become the last diners there and the staff were making it clear they had better places to be.
Out into the night air – a definite shift to winter now, that lazy Norfolk wind cutting right through us as we stood on the pier, arms around each other.
“Can we do this again? Can I come back and take you out again?”
We fit into each other’s embrace so well.
“No,” she said, and I stared. “No, don’t come back. Don’t leave.”
Her room was small, the bed a three-quarter-sized one, because the room was not big enough for a double.
She’d led me up the narrow staircase, her fingers laced into mine as if she might let go at any moment.
I stopped in the doorway.
What do you do when something you value so much actually starts to come true?
You hesitate. I defy you not to at least pause as you make that realization.
You recognize the fear, the knowledge of how empty life will be if you ever lose this moment.
And then you remember the moral of that clumsy little anecdote I’d shared with Maggie: that you must appreciate what matters.
And you step forward, push the door shut behind you.
You see the look on her face, realize that she, too, is hesitating, maybe reflecting on similar thoughts. At least understanding the significance of this, the movement beyond talking for hours and kissing with delicate restraint to...
Your hand to her jaw.
The press of her face against that hand, that slight return of pressure.
Her hair against your fingertips.
That single step you take towards her so that you come to stand, still not quite touching apart from your hand and her jaw, but so close, so very close...
The first press of lips, that muscle-memory of the first tender kiss all those weeks before, that lifetime before.
Your fingers snaking through the hair at the side of her head as your other hand comes up and you cup her face, holding and guiding her as your mouth presses harder, hungry for her, after weeks of abstinence from her.
Lips hard against each other, your tongue pressing, entering her mouth as it opens.
Soft, wet heat.
And finally, her arms around you, pulling you to her, and one of your own hands sliding down the curve of ribcage, waist, hip, slipping round to the small of her back and pulling her hard against you.
Feeling how she molds against you, how you fit so well.
Both arms around her now, lifting her.
Her legs wrapping around your waist, that skirt riding up. A flashback to that night at the cottage, to the moment when you held her like this, took her weight on one arm so your free one could sweep the table clear.
But this time... the soft yielding of a mattress.
The urgent fumble of hands.
Yours on her legs, sliding up, hooking into flimsy fabric and pulling clear.
Hers at your waist, your belt and buttons, tugging at your clothing until your manhood hangs clear, erect between the two of you, her hands folding themselves around that solid shaft and pulling you towards her, down, until hard meets soft, a shared wetness, a parting...
A pause, holding yourself there, not quite in her yet. An echo of that moment minutes before when you had paused in the doorway of this room and not quite known, not quite believed.
Yet this time you do.
You know.
You believe.
You arch your back a fraction, feel her opening up.
You watch her eyes widen. Her lips part.
Watch her suck her lower lip in between her teeth as you keep pressing, keep sliding slowly into her.
Watch her grind her head back into the bedding.
Keep pressing. Keep sliding until you are all the way in, your balls squashed against her, your pubic bone hard on her clit.
Push harder and feel every tiny movement, every tiny muscle response, and then she is holding you, clinging to you, keeping you there as the moment builds and then her entire body heaves against you and you feel the flutter of muscles deep inside her, around you, and she cries out.
And you know.
You believe.
This. Her.
Your greatest fear: that you might ever lose this, lose her.
A fear you want to live with for the rest of your life.
CODA
We sat outside.
A little stone terrace above the beach. Metal chairs and tables with supports for canopies that were folded away today, not needed.
The sea was flat, benign.
Down below someone walked a dog across the rocks.
We sat, the four of us.
Me, Maggie.
The youngster: dark, cropped hair, and muscles like they might go out of fashion.
The middle one: slimmer, wiry even, hair longer than last time I’d seen him, and those dark eyes fixed on me, watchful.
Me, Maggie and my two brothers, Lee and Dean.
Maggie and I had taken the slow route, driving down through France. Stop-offs in Nantes, Bordeaux, Barcelona. All the way down to this little terrace to the rear of Dean’s place, the New Duchess.
We’d timed it just right.
Just then, a door swung, and two more figures appeared. Three.
The fiery dark-haired beauty Lee had introduced as Imelda. At her side, her blonde hair cropped short now, the nose stud and most of the ear-rings gone, Jess – Jess the catalyst, the one who had made the first move, made those calls to tell me news, and then calls when there was no news to share.
And in her arms: barely a week old. Baby Stella, the first of the next generation.
Jess brought the kid over, leaned down and deposited her in my arms, and I knew I’d done it, completed the transition from ruthless, hard-nosed bastard to soppy git.
And I quite liked it.
§
Later, just me and Dean, still out on that terrace as the sun was going down over the town behind us.
“I spoke to Reuben Glover last week,” I said. “He’s still on at me. Still trying to persuade me to go back to London. Says I should bring you boys back, too, and it’d be like the old days. I said I’d mention it.”
Dean remained silent. Just then, I thought he might never find a way to accommodate me in his life again, that this whole thing might just be a way of pleasing Jess, and nothing to do with us, with him and me and what had broken between us.
Finally, he said, “You want that? You think it could work? The Bailey Boys ride again?”
I smiled, shaking my head immediately. “Not in a million years,” I said.
“Don’t think you could cut it?”
“No. That’s all gone. I’ve dipped my toe back in. Didn’t like it. I made some bad calls last year.”
Bad calls like betraying my own brothers and choosing to walk away and leave Maggie a captive. At the time they’d seemed the right things to do, the percentage things to do, but...
