by Jessie Keane
Claire felt like she would never sleep again.
On the strength of that thousand-quid win in the ring, Shauna encouraged Josh to splash out on a three-star hotel instead of a B & B. She looked around the place with interested eyes. It was OK, she thought. Passable. But the windows were painted shut and it was stifling hot overnight.
Still, Shauna was determined to make the best of this. It was a blow, Josh’s determination to shove off to Ireland in search of Claire Milo – fat chance he had of finding her! – but he was a man, and she was used to manipulating men. Already they were distancing themselves from the campsite, and all she had to do was keep going, keep him occupied, and one of these days he was going to forget he had ever known the Milo bitch. She was coming to realize that getting rid of Claire was only half the battle; the other half was getting her out of Josh’s head.
He was a great man, she thought, perfect for her: quiet, intelligent, strong as a bull ox and a stayer – a natural introvert who would bounce off her extrovert nature and not clash with it. All she had to do was convince him of what a winning team they would make. There was a deep well of sensuality, as yet untapped, in Josh, and she was going to exploit that to the full.
After they’d checked in and eaten, Shauna took a bath and came out into the bedroom swathed in a small towel. Aware of Josh’s eyes on her as he lounged on the bed, she went over to the dressing table and let down her dark hair, brushing it out with long languorous movements. Then she stood up.
‘God, it’s hot in here,’ she said, turning to the bed, letting the towel fall to the floor. She smiled at Josh. ‘You like me like this, don’t you, Josh? Naked?’
Josh said nothing. His eyes were fixed to her body.
‘Let’s get these clothes off you,’ she said, coming over to the bed, starting to unbutton his shirt. Then her hands went to his belt, to his fly, to his underpants, and she stopped. ‘Oh, what have we here then?’ she asked, smiling into his eyes, fondling his erect cock, her full dark-nippled breasts swinging inches from his face.
Josh felt ashamed of his arousal, like he was betraying Claire. Shit, he was betraying her. But . . . God, Shauna was so hot. She was a real eyeful. And he felt so low over this business with Claire, so fucking ashamed. Despite all his bumps and bruises, despite his pain over all that had happened back at the camp, he responded to Shauna. Soon they were sweating like pigs and Shauna was bouncing up and down on his prick, moaning with pleasure.
When she at last climbed off him and phoned down to ask for a fan, they told her they didn’t have any.
‘Then move your arse and get a maintenance man up here first thing in the morning,’ she snarled at the girl on the end of the line. ‘Get these windows opened.’
‘Don’t fucking bother them, Shaun,’ said Josh. All he wanted was peace, what was she shouting the odds for? ‘I’ll stick a key in there and do it myself in the morning, but I’m knackered now. Let me sleep, for God’s sake.’
Shauna had never in her life before stayed in anything so good as a three-star hotel, but she quickly concluded that it wasn’t anything to write home about. All decent gypsy women kept their homes immaculate – her drunken old bint of a mother being the exception to the rule – and this place was far from that. She would tell Josh to book them into a four-star establishment next time. That would have to be better than this. She settled down, pulling a sheet up over to cover them both, and Josh started to snore.
Things weren’t so bad, she thought. She smiled, feeling quite happy. She had Josh by her side, even if he was – for now – still stewing over what could have happened to Claire Milo. But Josh would accept the situation in time. And they could earn handsomely. What more could anyone ask for?
Then he whispered something that sounded like ‘Claire’.
Damn it!
Who was she kidding? This Milo business was far from over. Yes, he was screwing her heartily, and indulging her with this hotel instead of a B & B. But he was still going to leave her without a backward glance and set off for Ireland in search of that bitch among the Milo relations over there in Moyross.
Somehow she had to get that fucking woman out of his brain once and for all.
24
Josh felt wound up, sick at heart and full of shame. But he met Linus Pole the next day down at the gym in the local town as agreed, even though he found it hard to focus on anything but Claire. He had to find her. Had to make everything right again between them. Being with Shauna only made him more aware of how much he missed Claire’s quiet, calming presence.
There were kids sparring in the rings and Josh – despite his turmoil – thought it looked a nice set-up, better than anything he had ever experienced. Very civilized, with head guards and boxing gloves. A man was sitting in the corner watching the fighters and their coaches with Linus. The man had swept-back grey hair and narrowed eyes. He looked about fifty and his skin had the grey-brown tinge of a smoker who fired up one cigarette off the back of another.
‘This is my mate, John Finlay,’ said Linus when Josh joined them. They shook hands, and again Josh focused on the nicotine-stained skin and bitten fingernails. John was a man under stress. Josh knew that feeling. ‘John, this is Josh.’
‘Quite the fighter, I hear,’ said John, his eyes moving over Josh’s lithe bulk.
‘I do a bit,’ said Josh, thinking only that tomorrow he would be on that ferry to Ireland, and with any luck, Claire would be there and they would be reunited. She was the love of his life. He adored her, and longed to have her back. This time, he wouldn’t be such a fool. Whatever she wanted of him, she would have.
He felt deeply guilty over his involvement with Shauna. But Christ, he was a man and she fucked like a rabid stoat, that girl. Paraded around naked in front of him until he felt so hard for her he wanted to throw her on the floor and do it to her right then and there. She drained him dry. She leapt on him like a she-bear every opportunity. Devoured him. And he couldn’t resist her. He ought to, he knew that. But he was so miserable, so wretched, that he couldn’t.
‘John’s had a spot of trouble,’ said Linus.
‘Bought a pub,’ said John. ‘A free house too, not tied to a particular brewery. Thought it would be a damned good investment. But it’s a fucking nut house and I can see now why the last lot sold up and scooted.’
‘What, getting trouble then?’ asked Josh, not really interested.
John and Linus exchanged a look. Linus nodded.
‘I dunno if it’s something you’d want to do,’ said John. ‘But Mr Pole here thinks it might be of interest to you. Truth is, the place is bedlam, night after night. Stabbings. Even a couple of shootings. I can’t go on like this. Way I see it, I either do something drastic or get out. I’ll make a loss, but what the fuck.’
‘How much?’ asked Josh. All right, he was broken over Claire, but in the meantime life went on. He had to earn. Hotels were expensive.
‘To straighten things out in a month?’
‘Should be long enough,’ said Josh.
John named a sum. Josh kept his face blank to hide his surprise at the size of it. He thought briefly of Cloudy, lining his own back pocket while keeping Josh on basic. As his own manager, he was already doing better than he could ever have hoped for. Providing he didn’t get himself killed in the process, of course. Then again, if he couldn’t find Claire, who cared if he did.
‘I’ll be in Ireland for a bit,’ he said.
‘When you get back then. As soon as you can,’ said John.
‘All right. It’s a deal.’
25
When Claire arrived in Moyross council estate and found her way to the part where piebald ponies and donkeys were tethered on the grass out front, she knew she was in the right place. She remembered the exact house number from visits with her parents when she was small. Her Milo cousins lived here. They were going to be startled to see her, she knew that, but she was going to tell them nothing of what had happened to her. She couldn’t speak of it, a
nyway. Couldn’t bear to. All she was going to say was that she had come travelling.
They would welcome her, she knew it. They saw little of each other, the Irish branch of the Milos and the English, but they were family, the door was always open. She didn’t want to put Mum, Dad or Trace at risk, so she would tell them she’d had a ruck with her folks and so please not to tell them she was here. They would respect that.
Before she turned up cold on their doorstep though, she supposed she ought to buy them a gift or two. She walked over to a row of shops and found an off-licence where she bought a bottle of brandy. In a sweet shop she bought sherbet lemons and flying saucers for any little ones, and for the lady of the house she bought a large box of milk chocolates.
Then she braced herself, somehow fixed a smile on her face, and started to walk back to the house, one of an identical row of pebble-dashed houses all squashed in together, side by side. She was about to cross the road when a taxi pulled up outside the house of her Milo cousins. She paused. In her mind flashed an image of Ciaran and Jeb Cleaver. They’d followed her. It was them.
Terror gripped her and she stopped dead in her tracks, her legs starting to shake. Then she turned and, trembling, struggling to breathe, she walked unsteadily to where she could take shelter among the other houses. She stopped there, her small suitcase and her shop purchases still in her hands, and peered around the corner.
It wasn’t the Cleavers.
It was Josh.
Claire stood there, quivering, feeling sickness rising in her again. Tears starting to dribble down her face as she stared at him, so beloved, so familiar. Her Josh. His hair disordered by the gusting wind, his face solemn. But . . . she couldn’t approach him. She couldn’t let him know she was here. She was filthy, soiled now. Used and discarded by those monsters. And Shauna had said to stay away. If she didn’t, if she so much as spoke to him, what else might happen to her? They might come at her again. Hurt her. Abuse her. Her whole body shuddered with terror at the thought. They’d already killed Blue. They could kill her, too. And Mum. Dad. Trace. They were all three still there at the campsite, unaware. Sitting ducks. She couldn’t put them in danger. They might even hurt Josh – against the three of them, and their old man, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
No.
As Josh got out and the taxi drove away, as he walked up to the front door, she thought that Mum and Dad must have given him this address in the hope that she would be here. And – so nearly – she would have been. But by going to the shops first she’d missed him by inches.
Thank God.
Ireland wasn’t far enough. He’d tracked her down in days. She couldn’t let that happen again, she had to go further. She started walking, faster and faster, away from Josh, away from Delmege Park. She had to get out of here. Before long, she was running and she only slowed down when she got to a small shopping centre.
Trying to calm herself, tormented by the sight of Josh there, looking so anxious and unhappy, she gazed in shop windows, hardly seeing a thing until she came across a travel agent. There was a picture of a vast city in the window, buildings forming canyons between the streets. She stared at the picture for a long time. Then she pushed the door open and went inside.
26
Josh had built his hopes up and now they were dashed again. Claire wasn’t with the cousins in Moyross. Devastated, he realized he didn’t know where else to look. He just didn’t have a single clue. He went back to England, to Shauna at the hotel.
‘Well?’ she asked him the minute he got to their room.
Josh shook his head, put down his overnight bag. ‘I’m going to get a bath,’ he said, and went into the bathroom and shut the door and turned on the taps.
Minutes later, he lowered himself into the warm water and closed his eyes, thinking, That’s it, then. She’s gone. I can’t find her. He’d blown it. It was finished now. Over and done. He’d lost the only woman he would ever love, the only one who understood him, who knew him better than anyone else ever had.
Then Shauna came into the bathroom wearing her silky purple dressing gown. He looked up at her and felt a jolt of irritation. Christ, was there no rest from her? She followed him everywhere. What was he even doing here, with her?
‘No luck then?’ she asked.
‘No luck,’ he said.
‘Ah, never mind,’ she said, and slipped the robe off. Nothing underneath it. Of course not. She knew exactly how to turn him on, and it disgusted him how easily she did it. Sometimes he felt he hated her for it. Other times – like now – he hated himself.
‘Scootch up then,’ she said, and stepped into the bath with him, lowering herself into the water so that her nude breasts bobbed invitingly on the surface. ‘This is nice,’ she said, leaning back in the water, her toes finding his penis and kneading it gently. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, feeling himself harden.
‘We’ve got a good thing going, you and me,’ said Shauna, her dark eyes intent on his face.
‘Have we?’
‘Yeah, we have. I’m just the sort of woman you need, Josh. Serious. I’ll take you far. That’s a promise.’
‘Huh,’ said Josh, half-smiling at that. He looked down at his cock, which was now rearing out of the water, hard as iron, demanding attention.
‘Oh, look,’ said Shauna. ‘He likes it.’
Shauna knelt up in the bath and leaned forward, catching his penis between her tits and moving silkily back and forth. Josh moaned.
‘You think Claire would ever have done this for you?’ asked Shauna, her voice purringly seductive now as her cool flesh massaged him.
Josh didn’t answer. No, he didn’t think so. Claire was shy, reserved. Shauna had an openly sexual attitude and big fabulous tits. He thought Claire’s were much smaller. He’d touched them, of course, but he’d never seen her naked, much as he’d wanted to. That was special, something they had been saving for after the marriage ceremony. Something that now would never happen. Tomorrow he was going to have to go and see Pally and Eva, tell them the bad news that he hadn’t found her in Ireland. He let out a long, deep sigh and submitted to Shauna’s expertise.
What could he do?
He couldn’t find her, his true love.
But by Christ, he thought as Shauna slipped his cock into her warm, wet mouth, Shauna Everett was a fucking fantastic lay.
27
Claire stayed on at a quiet B & B near Moyross and applied for her visa. Then, when it came through, she used up some of the money to book herself a flight. Within days she was on a plane, packed with families, all of them happy and chatting and off on holidays. She sat alone, cut off from the rest of humanity, feeling herself to be so filthy, so disgusting, so used.
The flight was long and tedious, cramped and awful. But as it went on, a sense of calm came over her. She was going where they wouldn’t reach her. Not the Cleavers, not Shauna Everett. She was saying goodbye to all that, starting afresh. She thought then of the country lanes, wide skies and open fields of her home and shuddered with pain and longing.
But this was for the best. She would be safe, and so would her family. Somehow she had to try to forget all that she’d been through, which was easier said than done when every time she closed her eyes she relived Blue’s horrible death and the events that followed. She turned her face to the window and shed quiet heartbroken tears as she thought of the anguish she must surely be bringing on her folks. And Josh. Most of all, she cried over Josh and their lost future together.
When the pilot announced over the tannoy that they were preparing to land at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, she fastened her seat belt and braced herself.
Her new life would begin here, now.
She had to be strong, and start again.
For her, there was no other way.
28
When Josh eventually turned up at John Finlay’s pub, he got a surprise. He’d expected a rat-hole of a place, but it was actually not a bad-looking gaff
. Nicely done out, hanging baskets all over the front of it and the paintwork neat and clean; clearly, this place had cost John a pretty penny. Outside, on the far edge of the car park, there was a line of lavishly customized Harley-Davidson motorbikes. Josh went over and admired the machines. Then he headed inside and the atmosphere was thick with trouble. Josh could smell it the moment he stepped through the door.
The bar staff looked jumpy, and there was a long-haired group of bikers in denim cut-offs and leathers decorated with either skulls and crossbones or patches on the back identifying where they were from and which club or ‘chapter’ they belonged to. One of them had two Nazi-like SS lightning bolts below the words ‘Filthy Few’. Having come across bikers in the past, Josh knew that this meant the man wearing it had committed murder on behalf of his ‘chapter’.
The bikers were making a lot of noise. Black Sabbath were screaming ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ on the juke. Get a few skinheads in here, Josh thought, and things would really kick off.
‘Pint, please,’ said Josh to the scared-looking blonde girl at the bar. She had a look, just a faint look, of Claire when she dipped her head and pulled the pint. It clenched at his heart to see it.
Jesus, Claire, where are you? What happened?
He’d been back to the site again several times after telling Pally and Eva that he hadn’t found Claire in Moyross. Every time he found himself hoping against hope that there would be good news; but the Milos told him that Claire had not come home. The grief and pain of it all ate at him, chewed his innards.
Claire was gone from his life. And gone or not, she’d made her feelings plain to him. Now he had Shauna, who was sticking to him like glue. And what a live wire she was turning out to be, fucking him senseless night and day.