by Keane Jessie
Terry knew that Charlie had decided, when the money had really started to roll in, that he needed space and country air. Charlie and Nula had scouted out a huge grand house with a pool. Him and Nula would live in the main house, which was practically a mansion, Terry and Jill in the much older – but still very grand – gatehouse down at the end of the drive. Jill didn’t like old buildings and protested about the idea, but she didn’t have a leg to stand on. Charlie wanted this, and he wanted Terry right there as his wingman, just like always; so the deal was done.
Since boyhood, that was the way it had always been with them. Charlie forging ahead, Terry following on. But now Terry was full of doubt. The world Charlie was plunging headlong into was darker and more dangerous than anything they’d ever been involved in before. Charlie was self-confident as always, but how much of that confidence was misplaced? Terry thought that Charlie was getting drunk on his own power. Terry missed the old manor. Life had been simple then. Now, Charlie had bought up a cover company, a failing furnishings manufacturer with several factory sites and offices. He’d got it for a song. Then he introduced Terry to a group of shady accountants, bent solicitors, oily bankers – people who’d shake your hand and rob your wallet, all at the same time.
Over dinner at the Dorchester the group explained how Charlie’s increasingly complex business finances could be managed, running one entirely legitimate front business – Stone Furnishings Ltd – alongside ‘the product’. They made it sound simple, like everyone did it. With port authorities in Charlie’s pay, the suits were going to set up a ‘special purpose vehicle’ in one of the low-intervention jurisdictions.
‘Like Switzerland?’ asked Charlie.
‘Like the Caymans,’ said one of the suits. ‘The SPV lends money through the Bahamas and Panama in a series of transactions that are impossible to trace until the cash comes into your account, but of course your name doesn’t appear on the shares register.’
‘Once the money’s rolling in,’ said another, ‘you start to donate to charity, right? I mean, hugely. Makes you look squeaky-clean. Then who knows? One day you get the gong.’
Charlie stared. ‘The what?’
‘The gong. The knighthood. You’ll be Sir Charlie Stone. And lovely Nula’ll be Lady Stone. How’d she like that?’
So this was their life now. They dealt with a network of iffy accountants, questionable fund managers and clever lawyers, all of them with expensive habits to feed – women, drugs, gambling. And Terry was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, with a wife he loved to distraction and a mate he’d had all his life, closer than a brother, but who seemed to be heading in a direction that could spell disaster for the lot of them.
Finally Charlie snapped when Terry kept moaning on about it all.
‘Look,’ he said to Terry, ‘maybe it’s best we have a parting of the ways, what about that?’
‘No,’ said Terry, shocked that Charlie would even think it. ‘I don’t want that. It’s just . . .’
‘You don’t want it? Good. Then pipe down, all right? All this is doing my fucking head in.’
Terry was silent. Brooding.
‘And you don’t like the taxing business?’ Charlie went on. ‘All right then. We’ll stop it dead. Stick with the importing. How’d that suit?’
‘Yeah. Fine,’ said Terry, and felt a bit happier.
But not much.
24
Nula was made up with her new house. She had a whale of a time decorating the place – not that she ever lifted a finger herself, of course. There were kitchen designers and architects and painters and decorators and plumbers all swarming around for months on end, refurbing the place to her exact specifications.
Nula no longer saw her drab parents or her overbearing brother, and in a way that suited her. She’d never been close to her dad and brother, but she did miss Mum. However, she realized that her poorly raised but very sweet mother was a bad fit for this progressive new life of hers. Painful as it was, she was going to have to cut the cord, slice through the ties binding her to that unsatisfactory past, so that she could fully enjoy the new. Yes, they’d all three come to her and Charlie’s wedding – Nula had invited them because it would have looked odd if she hadn’t – but there the association had ended.
These days Nula was in a different league. She’d found her Mr Right, or Mr Almost Right, anyway. Charlie was a bombastic noisy bastard, and he was plain exasperating most of the time, but he sure knew how to treat a girl.
Now it was party time! Nula became the go-to hostess for all the crims and their ladies. Terry and Jill, down there in the gatehouse at the bottom of the drive, never came to these shindigs.
Nula loved the fact that Jill’s place was so old compared to hers. They even had bats up in the loft of the gatehouse, which caused Nula no end of amusement. Jill might have the prize in the shape of Terry, but she didn’t have the grand house to live in, only a bat-infested ruin. Oh, Terry had summoned the decorators to pretty the place up, and he’d complained to the council about the vermin, but the council weren’t interested.
‘Up in the loft it stinks to high heaven. Like ammonia, you know?’ Terry told Charlie. ‘The droppings.’
‘Clear ’em out then,’ said Charlie.
‘I been told they’re pipistrelles.’
‘Fuck that. They’re vermin,’ said Charlie. ‘Just get rid.’
But Terry didn’t. Actually, he didn’t mind the bats like Jill did. He liked to stand out in the garden at night, watching them ducking and diving against the starlit sky.
Meanwhile, up at Charlie’s it was party central, and the parties were every bit as wild as Jill and Terry suspected they would be. Keys in the dish? It was such a laugh. And spin the bottle. Charlie told Terry that they had two-way mirrored walls in several of the rooms, so people could stand behind it and watch the gymnastics going on. It was fun. You never knew who you were going to wind up with, but it was agreed between Charlie and his wife that condoms would always be used at these events.
‘I don’t want some cheap tart showing up at the door claiming to be carrying your kid,’ said Nula.
‘And I don’t want you up the duff to another man,’ said Charlie.
‘You’d think Terry and Jill would enjoy this,’ said Nula, feeling an edge of irritation at what he’d said. Christ, this had all been Charlie’s idea anyway. She only took part because he wanted her to.
‘What, the parties?’
‘Yeah. It might spice things up a bit for them. Put some sparkle back in the bedroom.’ Despite all her best intentions, Nula was picturing herself having sex with Terry. She felt herself grow damp at the thought of it.
‘Nah,’ said Charlie. ‘Terry’s not the type for it. And neither’s Jill. She’s a lady, that one.’
Nula felt a deeper stab of annoyance at that. So Jill was a lady, was she? And what did that make her?
Not that it mattered. She calmed herself, looked around at all that she had, with Jill down at the bottom of the drive playing poor relation. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. Nula was content.
Money wasn’t a problem for Charlie, so now they had this party-central house, swish motors in the four-car garage, a brand-new set of double-D tits that she showed off in plunging empire-line gowns whenever they had a party – oh, and they had lots of those – and now she’d been to the doc and he’d confirmed that she was pregnant. When she broke the news to Charlie, he was so pleased he nearly cried.
‘You little beauty!’ he burst out, picking her up and twirling her round.
Nula had to laugh. His child-like enthusiasm was infectious.
‘We’ll need to get the nursery done up ready,’ she told him as he set her back down on her feet.
‘No problem, baby doll. You hum it, I’ll play it. Get the designers in. Whatever you want, no expense spared.’
Nula nearly purred with satisfaction. No longer was she Nula the loser, shunned at school with the other wannabees, a dull ugly
girl from a dull ugly background. Now – at last – she was sought after. Tradespeople kowtowed to her, wanting her money. All Charlie’s mob and their wives and girlfriends stepped around her very, very carefully, because she was Charlie’s, and if you upset Charlie, you were going to be in the shit.
She understood that Charlie was in a dangerous game. But Charlie was smart; he had a strong sense of self-preservation. And of course Terry was always there, watching over him.
Nula had to sigh over that. Yeah, Terry was always there. Having Terry hovering in the background was like having a beautiful red fox fur or a huge box of Belgian chocolates right where you could see it, but always out of reach. She’d fallen in love or lust or some damned thing with Terry on that long-ago night when he’d – out of pity – asked her to dance. Now she had Charlie. Charlie was the bigger prize, she knew that, but . . . she still had that yen for Terry.
Maybe she could make him have a yen for her?
Unlikely. Terry wasn’t a player, and Jill was in the way. There was Charlie to consider, too, and Charlie wasn’t a man you wanted to upset, not ever. She knew his pride would be hurt if she managed to get Terry into bed. He’d lose it. Kill Terry, possibly kill her, too. She’d sounded Jill out, asking her if she ‘partook’, but Jill had just looked at her with blank dislike. The silly cow hadn’t even understood what Nula meant. Now Nula supposed all their fun evenings were going to have to be stopped, anyway. It was a relief, to be honest. She’d only ever done the parties to please Charlie. No way could she, pregnant with Charlie’s child, get up to those sort of tricks any more.
Yeah, Charlie was OK and she loved being Mrs Charlie Stone. He was over the moon at the baby news. But irritatingly she still had that itch for Terry.
Much as she wanted it to, it never seemed to go away.
25
It was a total bloody bore, being pregnant. Nula didn’t like it. She was massively sick for the first three months, then feeling sore and bloated and just plain damned ugly for the remainder. It reminded her of how she had been, back in the day – the little fat bird. Her mood was foul and Charlie took to staying out much more than he usually did, scarpering into town on business or down to the gatehouse to sit in the saintly Jill’s kitchen – Nula had lumbered her huge ungainly form down the drive and found him in there, twice, chattering away to Jill. That had seriously annoyed her.
Why couldn’t he talk to her? She was his wife. All right, she was having a rough time with the baby, but for fuck’s sake! He was the one who’d made her pregnant, all her discomfort was down to him, didn’t he see that?
They had a monumental row about the kitchen gatehouse visits. It was hard on Nula, seeing Jill so pretty, so appealing. Jill’s trouble-free pregnancy was way behind her and now she had a beautiful golden-haired little girl called Belle in the crib in the nursery under the gatehouse eaves.
‘If you don’t like me going down there, doll – and it’s stupid, old girl, I’m telling you, there’s nothing in it – then I won’t do it. OK?’ he’d said.
‘OK,’ agreed Nula, but when she was being driven back to the manor later one night, much later than expected because the car had been held up in traffic, she saw Charlie through the gatehouse window, in the kitchen with Jill. And where was Terry? Oh yes. He was out in Turkey, conducting some business or other on Charlie’s behalf.
They weren’t having their ‘parties’ now, and she and Charlie weren’t having sex much any more.
He was too scared for the baby.
‘My boy’s in there,’ he kept saying, patting her bump. ‘Last thing he wants is my old man poking him.’
Charlie had always been very sexual. She was weary of that, truth be told; life with Charlie was stressful. She was always having to jump through hoops, trying to monitor his moods, and she was never sure how high those hoops would be – or if they were ringed with fire. Once, he’d encouraged her to take part in the parties – well they were orgies – but really? She knew that deep down he hadn’t actually liked the fact that she’d joined in. Nula fretted over where Charlie might be getting his jollies these days. Where was his outlet for all that now? Maybe he had a mistress, tucked away out of sight. How would she know? She fretted, right up until the moment when her waters burst, and then she had much bigger and more important things to worry about.
After the hideous pregnancy came the marathon session of the birth. She struggled and sweated and screamed for hours, and where the fuck was Charlie? Well out of the way. He had a habit of doing that whenever she needed him, sloping off and vanishing ‘on business’. The fucker.
Of course the midwife kept telling her it was all fine, baby’s heartbeat was fine, everything was just fucking dandy, so why the fuck didn’t the kid come out? Suddenly, she wanted her mum. But she’d shunned her, ignored her for so long, that she knew that wasn’t going to happen.
After eight hours, the baby’s heartbeat was faltering. Then came the alarming news, as yet another midwife came and prodded at Nula, that the baby had twisted, it was breech, it was in trouble.
By that time, Nula was almost too weak to scream any more. Everything hurt. She was drenched in sweat. When they finally called on someone who knew what the fuck they were talking about and she was wheeled down to the operating theatre to have the baby delivered by caesarean, she was so grateful that she didn’t even care if she died in the attempt. The mask came down over her face, and she was gone.
Nula awoke to a thin wail. For a moment, she thought it was her, still shrieking and crying and telling those idiots that something was wrong.
But no. She was back on the ward, and a new nurse, smiling, was placing the baby in her arms.
‘You’ve got a little girl,’ she said.
Nula looked down at the kid, who was squirming lightly. The baby blinked and yawned. Nula touched a hand to the baby’s cheek, and one of the little starfish hands grabbed onto her finger and held it. A wave of true love hit Nula then, and she felt emotional tears slide down her face.
‘What are you going to call her?’ asked the nurse.
‘Millicent,’ said Nula. It was the name she and Charlie had agreed on. ‘Milly,’ she amended.
Nula looked around. There were five other mothers in this small maternity ward. At every other bed but hers, there were flowers, big handsome bouquets of roses and lilies. And there were men standing or sitting by each bed – the fathers, all proud and smiling. And where the fuck was Charlie?
Away somewhere. On business. Nula sank back onto the pillows, weak and worn out.
She had a daughter.
But . . . she knew Charlie would be put out. She knew how much he’d wanted a son.
Next time, she would have a boy and he would be happy.
It would all work out.
Then her consultant called round at ten the following morning and reeled off lots of medical terms that she didn’t even understand.
‘Meaning what?’ she said when he’d droned on for what felt like hours.
‘Nula – this is it, for you. You’re not suited to childbirth and it would be too dangerous for you to go through it again,’ he said.
More kids? A son to delight her husband?
No.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Not any more.
26
When Charlie finally came home and Nula broke the news about no more kids to him, he seemed to take it well. Although he petted his daughter and cooed at her, Nula could sense his disappointment. But more and more he piled his time into the business. Charlie was busy spreading his net wider. Leaving Nula at home with little Milly and with Terry in place to watch over them, Charlie took off again. Ketama this time, high in the Rif mountains of Morocco, to shake hands with a fresh supplier. He didn’t listen to Terry’s objections about him needing his wingman alongside him.
‘You got family too,’ Charlie told him, slapping him on the back before he left for the airport. ‘So you know. You watch things here. You watch Nula and t
he kid, I don’t trust no one else to do that. Beezer’s going to come with me on this trip.’
Terry said: ‘I’m sorry as fuck about Nula not being able to have any more, mate.’ He was thinking that Beezer would be as much use as a chocolate teapot if things got lairy. Poor idiot didn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground.
Charlie shrugged. Only Terry could have mentioned personal matters to him and not got a bunch of fives for his trouble. ‘These things happen. It would have been so much better if it’d been a boy. How can a bloody girl take over in the business we’re in? But what the hell. It is what it is.’
‘I’ll keep a tight eye on things here,’ Terry promised him.
‘Stay up at the house, will you? Nula gets nervous at night. It’s a big place.’
‘Sure. If you want,’ said Terry. He didn’t think Jill was going to be too delighted with this plan, and he wasn’t either, but if that was how Charlie wanted it, then that’s how it would be.
Charlie didn’t like Morocco, but this was good business, he sussed that straight away. Cannabis crops supported more than a million families up in the mountains. They called it kif and it was their saviour in a land far too harsh for growing olives or wheat.
‘Two thousand tonnes of good kif brings the country two billion a year on the black market,’ Saddam, his contact, told him.
Charlie was stunned by the sheer scale of it. Everywhere you looked, as far as the eye could see, were cannabis plantations. He haggled with Saddam over a good price, and wrangled over the difficulties of exporting their product while at lunch in a five-star Tangiers hotel.
Saddam said transport would be no problem. ‘We can stash the kif in the lorries coming out of some of our friendly warehouses.’
‘Ain’t that risky?’
‘Look,’ said Saddam with a broad, gold-toothed grin. ‘It is safe, my friend, I promise you. We load the trucks with perishables. Fresh flowers. Oranges. Lemons. Then they are sealed shut with Transport Internationale Routiere bonds so they get through Customs checkpoints easily.’