by Jessie Keane
Josh laughed then and stood up. Claire’s mum, Eva, would be tickled pink; her dad, Pally, probably would be too.
As for Josh, hearing her say yes had made him the happiest he had ever been.
3
There would be a big engagement party in one of the barns soon, and then there would be the wedding. The Pole funfair family were going to be setting all the rides up especially for the event, and everyone was thrilled, anticipating the mighty calliopes roaring out ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ as the painted horses on the roundabouts dipped and spun and the waltzers whizzed around.
An autumn wedding would give them just about time enough to prepare, and they would need every moment. It was so exciting!
Every Romany girl starts planning for her wedding the minute she is past her first Communion, and Claire was no exception to that rule. Communion was a big event in itself, but a wedding was huge. The groom would buy a new van and get it on site at the ready, and after that he would bring home the money any way he could – by fighting, in Josh Flynn’s case – while the woman he married would keep house and raise their kids.
Claire Milo had already been collecting Coalport and Royal Doulton china to adorn the van that she and Josh would share as newlyweds. She couldn’t wait to marry him; if anything she loved him more than ever now. For her, the only fly in the ointment was his love of the boxing ring. That worried her. She couldn’t understand why it meant so much to him when he never seemed to win. Undaunted by his dismal record, he trained endlessly in one of the spare sheds; he had weights set up in there and a punchbag to keep himself fit. He even had a ‘manager’, that rascal Cloudy Grey. Claire avoided seeing Josh fighting. She knew he’d like her to attend the fights, but she couldn’t. The thought made her feel sick. Seeing someone punching him, hurting him? Maybe it would be different if he won a match once in a while, but strong and fit though he was, he never seemed to.
So the plans for the wedding went ahead, and so long as Claire didn’t think about the fighting thing, all seemed fine. Then one day she was round behind the vans. Her grey lurcher, Blue, a cross between a Saluki and a greyhound, was sitting at her feet. Blue was a brave dog, the best; he coursed for hares with Claire’s dad. The catgut on his chest and belly glistened in the sunlight from where he had charged through barbed wire after his quarry and had to be stitched up afterwards. Blue was the best dog in the whole of the southern counties, all the way up to London. Claire cried over each new injury Blue suffered; she’d had him since he was a tiny pup. But her dad wasn’t so softhearted. If the dog got cut, Pally stitched it up himself; soon as Blue was mended, out they went again.
Claire was grooming one of Pally’s piebald horses, pulling the colt’s ears and talking low to him as she worked, when someone grabbed her arm. She whirled around, startled. The horse shied and she steadied him. Blue stood up and growled.
It was Shauna Everett.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Claire. What the fuck did she want?
Blue had his teeth bared, staring at Shauna.
‘You don’t shut that fleabag up, I’ll kick its teeth down its fucking throat,’ said Shauna.
Claire touched Blue’s big head, and he subsided.
‘This right, what they’re all saying?’ asked Shauna, staring intensely at Claire.
Yeah, she might be a slapper, but she was a looker, Claire thought. You had to give her that. Shauna was strong-featured and strong of body. She wasn’t dainty like Claire, and there was no compassion in her eyes. She didn’t like dogs, or horses. But the men always seemed to like her well enough. All except Josh, of course.
‘I dunno. What you been hearing then?’ asked Claire, carrying on with the piebald’s grooming, wishing she’d go away.
‘About you and Josh Flynn. Saying you’re going to be married this autumn.’
‘Well, that’s right,’ said Claire, carrying on brushing, little puffs of dust coming off the piebald’s coat in a cloud. ‘We are.’
‘Christ! You’re joking,’ said Shauna.
Claire stopped brushing. She turned and looked at Shauna’s grimly set face. ‘Why would I be joking?’ she asked.
Shauna’s gaze grew spiteful. ‘Because, stupid, he could do about a thousand times better than you, any day of the week.’
Claire half-smiled at that. ‘Oh, you mean you? Sorry – don’t think he’s interested.’
‘You think that, do you?’ Shauna stepped forward. Blue started that low-level growl at the back of his throat again. ‘I mean it,’ said Shauna.
‘Shut up, Blue,’ said Claire, watching Shauna warily.
She’d had run-ins with Shauna her whole life, all the kids in the camp had. Shauna was the leader, the strong one, and she bullied the rest of them mercilessly. Claire had endured a lifetime of Shauna’s insults and snide remarks. She’d been on the receiving end of a punch or two, and the odd smack upside the head. And she knew Shauna was royally pissed off about her and Josh finally making it legal.
‘Yeah, shut up or I’ll shut you up, you stinking mutt,’ said Shauna to Blue.
Then her dark eyes fixed on Claire. ‘Christ, who’d believe it? Josh Flynn, throwing himself away on the likes of you.’
Claire’s heart was thumping, but she refused to be intimidated, even if Shauna did put the shits up her. Yes, Shauna was jealous. But Claire was the winner here, she had to remind herself of that. Shauna was too forceful, too bold, for Josh’s taste. Claire was the one he wanted.
‘Josh loves me,’ she said. She showed Shauna her left hand, the cheap imitation diamond glittering. Soon, Josh would buy her a better one. He’d promised. And Josh always kept his word.
‘Yeah? Christ knows why,’ Shauna sneered, eyeing the ring. She felt sick, seeing it. So it was true. All right, she might muck around with the Cleavers and a few others, but that meant nothing. What she felt for Josh was real. He should be hers.
Claire glared at Shauna. ‘Look. It’s a fact. So why don’t you go and find your own man, you low-life bitch? Like one of those deadbeat pig-farmer Cleavers you’re always hanging around with. I think that’s more your level. I heard they fuck those pigs – and knowing them, I believe it. How about one of them?’
‘Why you—’ Shauna looked shocked for a second. The little mouse was actually answering back instead of running snivelling to Mama like she always used to do.
Shauna shot out a hand and grabbed a handful of that silky blonde hair, yanking it hard toward her so that Claire stumbled forward with a shriek of pain, half-tripping over Blue.
‘Get off!’ yelled Claire, struggling to break free. The piebald was jumping around in alarm, struggling against its halter, which was tethered to the back of the van.
In a blind rage, Claire swung the currycomb in her hand and it struck Shauna’s jaw. Shauna fell back. Blue started barking. He lunged at Shauna and sank his teeth into her leg, then when she kicked at him he yelped and leapt away.
‘Fucking mongrel hound!’ said Shauna, staggering back with a hand to her scraped jaw.
She stared down at her leg. Blood was starting to seep from the bite, colouring the torn denim to purple. Her eyes when they met Claire’s were vicious.
‘You’re going to be sorry,’ she spat out, panting with temper.
Shauna turned away from Claire. Then she turned back.
‘That crack about finding my own man?’ she rapped out. ‘For your information, I fucking well have, bitch. His name’s Josh Flynn and he’s mine. He just don’t know it yet.’
4
Shauna got back to the family trailer and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her chin was scratched from where Claire had struck her. She bathed it. Then she stripped off her jeans and poured some of Dad’s neat gutrot whisky over the bite that mutt had inflicted on her. It stung like a bitch, but she was so mad, so fucking incensed, that she barely felt it. At least the bleeding had stopped.
Then she put on clean jeans and stalked around the trailer, irritably picking up this and that, fum
ing, unable to believe that dopey cow had summoned the nerve to turn on her like that. She kicked the couch, but really she wanted to kick her, Claire Milo. She wanted to wipe her out, never again to see that pretty-pretty face with those sickeningly soft blue eyes.
Finally, unable to settle, she snatched up the keys to Dad’s pickup and left the trailer. She got in the pickup and drove.
As Shauna pulled up outside the Cleaver place, she thought not for the first time that the untidy bastards ought to do something to make the place look a bit better. Granted, they were only pig farmers, but the betting and other things meant they always had cash on the hip, so why didn’t they tart the place up a bit? It was damned near derelict, the gates hanging from their hinges, the porch leaning at a sharp angle. The farmhouse itself was dark, its roof mossy and missing some tiles, and the wooden cladding on the eaves was crumbling from years of neglect. The house was set close to the northern edge of a pine forest, and even on a day like today, which was bright and sunny, very little light penetrated the gloom around it.
There were several scruffy dirt-caked old trucks parked at the front, and she could hear a big dog barking monotonously inside the house. Looking out over the fields to the front of the place, she could see the pigs churning the ground to mud and hear them grunting – about a hundred in all. This was how the Cleavers made their living: breeding hogs and growing them on before sending them to market. She could smell them, too. Yeah, maybe that bitch Claire was right. The Cleavers were low lifes. But they were useful ones.
Jumping down from the pickup, she paused, looking at the statue of two grinning, rutting pigs perched above the sloping porch of the house. She felt a shudder of distaste go through her. Fucking oiks, these Cleavers. But she was going to do this, whatever it cost. She knew what she wanted, and here was where she’d get it.
‘Hiya, gal,’ said a voice behind her.
Shauna turned. It was Jeb, the youngest Cleaver boy, bull-necked and slope-shouldered. An axe hung casually from his right hand, and he was clutching a bundle of firewood against his chest with his left. He was better-looking than his two elder brothers Ciaran and Rowan, his hair blacker, his eyes nearly black too, with an intensity of expression in them that said Don’t ever mess with me. But she did, all the time.
‘Hi,’ she said, and smiled.
‘Come for some fun?’ he asked, and she nodded.
Fun first, she thought. Then she’d get down to business.
‘So where are they all today?’ asked Shauna as she and Jeb lay naked in bed an hour later. The radio on the dusty bedside table was playing ‘Sugar, Sugar’ by the Archies.
‘Dad’s at market with Rowan. Ciaran’s out the top field,’ said Jeb, rolling over and clasping her tit in a crushing grip. ‘Damn, you’re hotter than hell, girl. You really are.’
Shauna suppressed a wince of pain. She was meant to be enjoying this, but she didn’t. She never had. She’d been ‘doing it’ with Jeb and with Ciaran – less often with Rowan, and a couple of times with their dad, Bill – since she was twelve years old.
She’d worked out early that a romp between the sheets made men blind and biddable. Even at a young age – an illegal age, but who gave a shit about that – she had insisted on a condom. It was also understood that when she put out, favours would be required in return. All she had to say was ‘I need some cash, how about it?’ and she’d be showered in fivers. And when she told the Cleavers, ‘I need to get even with so-and-so, will you see to that for me?’ whoever had crossed her would end up being sorted out down some dark alley.
So the Cleavers were useful. Very useful. They weren’t in the same league as Josh Flynn, of course. Shauna was obsessed with Josh Flynn, dreamed about him day and night. She fantasized that whichever grunting, gasping man was pumping away on top of her – whether it be Jeb, or half-blind Ciaran, or sly grinning Rowan or even their old man Bill, who was easy to tap up for a few fivers – was Josh. That way, she got through it and out the other side. Fun first. Usually their fun, not hers. Then business. And today she had something very specific in mind.
‘I want to talk to you,’ she said.
‘What about?’ He was kneading her tit like he was squeezing dough or something. It hurt. Shauna pulled away, stroked his belly, kissed his chest, which was thickly matted with black hair. All the while, she was thinking, Josh, Josh, you can’t do it, you can’t throw yourself away on her. I won’t let you.
‘That bitch Claire Milo . . .’
‘You never did like her.’ Jeb grinned. ‘Ciaran says it’s pure green-eyed jealousy. That you fancy Josh Flynn for yourself.’
Ciaran’s not as stupid as he looks, she thought.
‘Truth is, she set her fucking dog on me. You believe that? Look.’ Shauna held up one long shapely leg so that he could see the bite mark Blue had left her with.
‘Jeez. That’s nasty.’ Jeb ran his hand up her leg to her thigh. Quickly losing interest in her injury, he went up further and began probing the damp hollow between her legs, his eyes intent on that.
‘You ever thought of shaving your bush?’ he asked, fluffing up the black hair there with his fingers. ‘I could do it for you. Be a right turn-on.’
Shauna felt a stab of arousal at his words. Sometimes, Jeb could really light her fire, and she sort of hated herself for it when he did. Yes, he was an animal, but he was a sexy one.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never thought of that. And this? You seen this?’
She redirected his attention to her face and the graze on her chin.
‘That her too?’
‘Hit me with a currycomb.’
‘What, Claire Milo? Girl’s a mouse. Saint Claire, the lads call her. Good as gold and scared of her own fucking shadow.’
‘I’m telling you, she did it.’
‘You’re after Josh Flynn.’
‘What if I am?’ Shauna propped herself up on one elbow and stared into his eyes. ‘That won’t alter nothing, Jeb. There’ll still be you and me. You know it. Ain’t we always been there for each other?’
‘Yeah.’ Jeb’s eyes narrowed. ‘You been there for Ciaran too. Rowan told me. And you done Rowan. You even done Dad – Rowan told me he saw the pair of you at it out in the yard, Dad with his pants round his ankles. Poor old cunt musta thought it was his fucking birthday.’
Shauna lay back down. Sneaky bloody Rowan. He ought to keep his fat mouth shut.
‘Actually, I think it was your dad’s birthday,’ she said.
Jeb’s head turned and he looked at her. Suddenly, he started laughing. Shauna joined in. Then Jeb grew serious. He clutched at her chin, hurting the scratches there. He stared into her eyes.
‘But I got first dibs on you, right? I got first call. That’s not going to change, OK? Not ever.’ She pulled her chin free of his grip and nodded. ‘All right, you can have Josh fucking Flynn all week and twice on Sundays, but you and me, that’s for keeps, you got that?’
‘That’s not going to change,’ said Shauna. First thing she could, she was going to kick every one of these fucking hillbilly Cleavers to the kerb. She had a plan. A big one. But for now, she needed them. She needed them to do something special, something important.
‘Jeb . . .’ she started, her voice wheedling. ‘Will you do something for me?’
‘Yeah, but first . . .’ he said, pointing down his body to indicate that he was ready for action again.
Shauna sighed and reached for a fresh condom, ripping it open with her teeth. She snapped it on, pushing it down over his erection. Then she climbed aboard, slipping his cock inside her oily wetness and riding him like a bucking bronco, making plenty of noise because he liked that. And she dreamed, dreamed, dreamed . . . of Josh Flynn.
Then, when Jeb was finished, she told him what she wanted done.
5
‘Oh my God! Oh my baby!’ cried Eva, clutching a hankie to her streaming eyes as she stared at the vision standing before her.
They were in the home of the woman
who made nearly all the gypsy wedding outfits in the country; she was known throughout the land as the go-to person for a knockout dress. Claire had been in the changing room with her sister Trace assisting her, struggling into the vast wedding gown that had been a work in progress for months. Now she came out, and her mother was instantly in floods of tears as she stared at her eldest daughter in a dress that was like something out of a fairy tale.
Claire looked like an angel. The dress was a huge beautiful powder puff of a gown, sparkling with five thousand crystals and studded with artificial pearls. It looked wonderful and Claire felt like a queen wearing it. No matter that she could barely stand in it, let alone walk. The finished gown that they’d all slaved over for so long was a triumph. It weighed around five stone and Claire thought she’d have to take it off soon because the corset on the bodice was killing her, and her hips felt bruised and would soon start to bleed. But fuck it, who cared? The dress was fabulous.
‘Mum? What do you think?’ she asked, beaming with pride.
‘You look lovely,’ said Eva. ‘Breathtaking.’
Even Tracey looked pleased, and Trace was a real misery, unlike sunny Claire. The glass was always half-empty to dark-haired and painfully plain Trace, never half-full. It was as if the fates had bestowed all the good looks and warm nature they had to spare on Claire, and forgotten sixteen-year-old Trace’s share.
‘So everything’s nearly ready then,’ said Claire, squeezing her sister’s hand.
Trace was to be Claire’s bridesmaid, one of seven, and Claire had chosen stunning turquoise gowns for her attendants to wear on the big day, and dainty feathered bouquets for them to carry. The wedding was going to be the Romany ‘do’ of the year. The church was booked, the wedding breakfast sorted, the flowers selected, the photographer set straight about which family groups to do on the day; they wanted a huge wedding album, the very best. There would be one of the relatives’ carriages all spruced up and pulled by two dazzling white ponies to get Claire and her dad Pally to the church, and there would be a monster truck kitted out like a disco to get Josh and his best man there on time.