Fearless

by Jessie Keane

  Now and then she wondered just when the rot had set in between her and Josh; and she always came up with the same answer: the night she shot Ciaran and Rowan Cleaver dead. After that, a void had opened up and she couldn’t bridge it. The lack of sex between her and her husband crucified her. When they were first together, Josh hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her. But she still loved Josh to bits. Nothing could change that. And if protecting his kids – and him – meant jumping Jeb Cleaver’s stinking bones forever and a day, then she would continue to do it.

  ‘Place looks a picture,’ said Connor, coming downstairs and into the sitting room.

  Connor was wearing tight jeans and a black leather bomber jacket over a plain white shirt. He flopped on to the sofa. Shauna smiled proudly at her beautiful adult son and felt a little cheerier. Connor himself was a real sight for sore eyes. He was big, nearly six and a half feet tall. He shared his father’s athletic stature and rugged good looks. His hair was thick, tinted blond from the summer’s sun, and his eyes were a clear, sharp grey – so like Josh’s – that seemed to see everything. His face had strength but also sensuality, and he had a calm, commanding presence.

  No wonder all the girls fall at his feet, Shauna thought, and her smile dimmed a little. Damned girls with their fluttering eyelashes and their wheedling ways. Ever since he was sixteen, Connor had been dating some, dumping others. She’d never approved of a single one of them. Especially not his latest, an uppity little cow of a hairdresser called Kylie Patten. He’d brought Kylie home a couple of times and Shauna had given her the cold shoulder. He’d brought a couple of others too, before this one, and she’d seen them off, of course. Skanky little bitches. But this one – Kylie, Christ what a sickening name – seemed to be hanging around longer than the ones before, and that concerned her.

  Connor had brought in the Christmas tree this morning, having hauled it home from a nearby nursery. He and some of his mates with a van from the large and ever-expanding scrap and auto yard he ran had fetched it indoors, wedged it carefully into a bucket, given it a drink. Connor had even bought new decorations, expensive ones, showy ones, which Shauna loved. Give the girls something to talk about when they came over for lunch.

  Shauna was completely settled into this gorgi way of life now; it was as if she had never known anything else, never lived in a muddy campsite or been from traveller stock at all. Her Everett ancestors had lived in the Irish Free State and they had roamed the lanes in horse-drawn painted trailers, repairing pots and pans, sharpening knives and selling woven wicker baskets. But none of that was for her. This was her life, the life of a lady who lunched, a society hostess. The past was done and she wanted to forget all that.

  Now she was able to fully live the way she had always craved. She was still a member of the tennis club, she played golf with Tanya and Chloe. And if they ever talked about her behind her back as that jumped-up gyppo Shauna Flynn who was no better than she ought to be, then she’d yet to hear about it. Frankly, even if they did, she didn’t give a fuck. Tolerating those two snobby bitches and sucking up to them over the years had been a small price to pay for moving in the social circles she wanted to. Tolerating the ongoing visits from Jeb Cleaver was another thing she just had to soak up. And she did. Josh didn’t have a clue about that, and she was very careful to keep Jeb away whenever Connor or Aysha might be about.

  Aysha.

  It upset Shauna that Josh had never taken to Aysha the way he had to Connor. She didn’t know why and she felt sorry for Aysh, who was moody and awkward whenever Josh was near, radiating general disapproval in the poor girl’s direction. So Aysha had become a mum’s girl, Shauna’s creature, and Shauna knew just how to push Aysha’s buttons, pulling her in for cuddles and saying, ‘Who loves you, Aysh? Who’d do anything for you?’

  Shauna smiled indulgently at Connor. Unlike his problematic sister, he’d been a good-natured baby, then a lovely kid. Now he was a stunningly handsome man with a strong look of his father about him. Connor was her prince, the pride and joy of her life. He’d set up the auto and scrapyard business with his mate Benedict, and it was a thriving legitimate business, a limited company.

  Of course, a fair amount of ducking and diving also went on with him. When you’d had little in the way of real education – and Connor had never been a big one for school – the only way to earn really big was to be that much smarter and sharper than anyone else. And Connor was sharp. More so than Josh had ever been. Far too sharp to ever step into the ring himself, even though he did have the build for it. She didn’t ask questions when he fetched home lavish items or bought himself a black Porsche to zip around the lanes in. It was always cash on the nail, a practice learned in the cradle. He was her boy and in her eyes he could do no wrong.

  ‘Christmas lunch will be at two o’clock on the day,’ she told him. ‘As usual.’

  ‘I know. You’ve told me,’ he said, but he was smiling. He hauled himself back to his feet. ‘Got some stuff to sort out. Benedict’s going off his head over this millennium bug business. Thinks on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve every computer system we’ve got is going to crash. So I’ll see you later. Oh.’ He stopped and turned back to her. ‘OK if I bring Kylie on Christmas Day? Her folks are away.’

  Shauna felt her face stiffen. No, it fucking isn’t. Then she got her smile back in place. ‘Sure. OK.’

  As Connor left the room, Shauna’s smile vanished. Christmas was strictly a family time. There should be her, Josh, Connor and Aysha at the meal, and she wasn’t getting outside caterers in like Tanya and Chloe would. Catch either of those two cooking a roast – they might break a nail! Shauna liked to cook the meal herself, because that was the only way it was done absolutely right. She would do turkey and all the trimmings. The Guinness-soaked home-made Christmas pudding was already prepared – it had been ready since October, along with the Christmas cake – and it was stuffed with silver coins to bring luck.

  Not that they needed luck, not now. Josh was earning a huge wedge from the promo work and the fight game, and Connor was earning well too. Aysha just flitted from job to job, but maybe one day she’d settle.

  Through the big picture window she watched her son climbing into his car. Shauna waved and Connor waved back. Well, that was Christmas fucking ruined. She didn’t want that little cow Kylie there, it would spoil the day. Kylie had been over to the house a couple of times already, whispering in Connor’s ear, giggling, clinging on to him. She got on Shauna’s tits. Just get shot of her, and they could all get back to normal, her family and her; that was all she needed, all she had ever needed. Just the family, at home here, together.

  Shauna grew thoughtful. Jeb was still around, always loitering in the shadows – and if Josh didn’t want her, then Jeb certainly did. She thought of Ciaran and Rowan, and what had happened on that long-ago night; and she could never forget Jeb’s threat to Josh, and Connor and Aysha. He’d repeated it often enough.

  And since Jeb was still about . . . well, maybe she’d make use of him again, get him to sort out a little something for her.

  She went on about her day, plumping cushions and rearranging the pine cones on the mantelpiece. But Shauna didn’t know that there were other things happening, far away, that would soon tear her world apart.

  69

  Baton Rouge, Louisiana

  ‘Hey, you! Trailer trash!’ yelled Stefan over the noise of Ricky Martin belting out ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’.

  Suki Vance turned. Bastard always called her that, and it stung. That or white trash. Either way, the name-calling hurt. She watched him now, clicking his fingers at her like she was a trained dog, that big grin on his face because he knew she felt that insult deep in her soul. And he loved it. Fat slimy SOB with his hair pulled back in a trendy ponytail and his greasy face wreathed in false smiles as he greeted the customers.

  Swallowing the urge to throw a bottle at his head, Suki gave him a questioning look.

  ‘Do you think you could move i
t? Only, diner’s open in an hour, and the speed you go, the customers are going to be in here and we’re not going to be ready to serve them, and if we’re not, then I’m going to peel your arse like a grape.’

  It was too hot to move fast. But Suki dipped her head and picked up speed, polishing tables, setting the centre pieces and the napkin dispensers straight. A faint hot breeze blew through from the open front door. The back one was kicked wide open and held in place with a stone, and the through-draught was heaven.

  Suki’s workmate Felice moved past, polishing, straightening, sending her a brief Jesus, that fucker look of sympathy. Felice reckoned that Stefan’s cheerful persecution of Suki was his heavy-handed notion of flirtation, and that Suki had just better watch herself out the back in the storeroom or he’d pounce.

  ‘If he pounces, that boy’s gonna get my boot in his balls,’ Suki told her. She might look all soft and fairy-dust blonde, she might shimmy around the place looking dangerously sexy in her lemon-yellow uniform and frilly white apron, but she was no pushover.

  ‘Jeez, you think he’s got some?’ Felice laughed. Felice was all that kept her sane working in this shit hole. Felice was black and beautiful, and her default setting was happy.

  Head down, do the work, then go home, thought Suki. It was her mantra. It got her through every day and right to the end of the week when sweaty Stefan put a brown envelope in her hand (and yeah, he tried for contact at that point, quite often, but she was fast on her feet and she always eluded him). Then she could catch the crowded bus back to the trailer park, get a wash down and change out of the hated lemon-yellow uniform, and fill Aunt Ginny in on her day.

  Suki couldn’t recall a time when she hadn’t been dirt-poor, someone people looked down on. She couldn’t even remember her mom and dad because they had died in a car crash when she was barely three years old.

  Aunt Ginny had told Suki that she had been sitting on her mother’s lap in the front seat, with her father driving, when an ancient Chevy swerved over the central reservation – its elderly driver had come from Jackson and fallen asleep at the wheel en route to visiting his daughter down in Beaumont on her birthday. The Chevy smashed into their car. The old man died instantly, and so did Suki’s parents.

  By some miracle, Suki herself had been thrown clear of the wreckage, and was found by a young interstate policeman, bawling her head off at the side of the road among the pink-wrapped and bloodstained birthday presents. Not a scratch on her. Lucky? Well, maybe. According to Aunt Ginny, Dad was Dave Vance, a carpenter, scratching around for jobs half the time, and Mom Josephine had been a high-school teacher who had become a full-time mother to her baby daughter. Her one, her only child.

  Aunt Ginny had been a teacher too, bright just like her younger sister, but poor health had ravaged her career and her looks so she remained nothing more than a spinster living in a downtown trailer park, having little to do with the world. And then the accident – heartbreaking, devastating – and along came Suki, who would have been put up for adoption and passed through children’s homes and taken for fostering, maybe adoption.

  At that point, so her aunt told Suki – she had recounted this story to Suki so many times over the years that Suki felt she knew it by heart – Aunt Ginny had rallied herself, put on her best suit and scrubbed rouge on to her cheeks. She met with the social workers at the town hall and said no, there was no way her dead sister’s child was going to live anywhere but with her. She was the child’s godmother, after all. She was all the family the poor child had left.

  So here Suki was. Trailer trash, just like Stefan said. She couldn’t even remember the car crash in which she’d lost her parents. Ginny had told her about it when she was old enough to take it. And Suki guessed that it had been so traumatic that her three-year-old brain had simply stashed it somewhere under the heading too bad to think about. But still – she felt the loss of her parents all the time, like there was a gap in her life she ached to fill, and never could.

  Now it was evening, the day’s work over, and Suki and her aunt sat on the stoop watching the sun go down and contemplating life. They were putting off the hour when it would be bedtime because the nights were hot in the trailer but you didn’t leave your windows open, because people would come in the night and take what little you had. There were good people on the park, some who could even be called friends, but there were others too, who would rob and rape and think nothing of it. So, overnight, you sweated and stayed safe.

  ‘Good day, hun?’ asked Aunt Ginny, sipping at her beer.

  Suki thought her aunt looked thinner than ever in the evening’s light, her skin waxy. There was a high spot of colour on each sunken cheek, but it didn’t look healthy or good; it looked like the flush of fever.

  ‘Got a few good tips,’ said Suki. She had never mentioned Sweaty Stefan to her aunt, and she never would. Ginny would be worried, and she couldn’t have that.

  ‘Well save ’em up, gal, and you and me, we’ll do the world cruise.’

  ‘Will we stop in Barbados?’ asked Suki. This was an old much-loved game of theirs, speculating over where the non-existent cruise of their dreams was going to take them. Suki knew she would never go anywhere; Aunt Ginny was growing frail and she couldn’t leave her. She couldn’t take her along, either, supposing she ever got together enough money to do a trip, which was doubtful. Aunt Ginny used to be tough, but she was growing less so day by day. No, travelling was just a dream, something to cheer the pair of them when they’d had a hard time of it. That was all.

  ‘Barbados you say? Hell no. I hear Antigua’s the place these days.’

  ‘Then we’ll go there.’

  ‘I’d like to see England. They got a queen and everything. Palaces and stuff.’

  ‘We’ll do that too. In between cruises. In between sitting at the captain’s table and eating with fancy cutlery. No more jambalaya on the bayou for us.’

  ‘We’ll flick peas at him.’

  ‘They clap you in irons for things like that. Like in the pirate movies.’

  ‘Then maybe not.’ They were quiet, watching the sun sinking on the horizon, among floating bands of apricot and gold. ‘England,’ said Aunt Ginny quietly. She let out a sigh. ‘Wouldn’t that be something?’

  ‘It would,’ agreed Suki, with a lump in her throat. Aunt Ginny was the best of the best, she deserved good fortune. Without her stern and practical old spinster aunt, what would have become of her? Suki really didn’t know. It frightened her to think of it.

  ‘Listen,’ said Aunt Ginny, rummaging in her dress pocket. She pulled out an envelope and handed it to Suki. ‘You take this.’

  ‘What is it?’ Suki stared at it. Her name was printed on the envelope in Aunt Ginny’s meticulously neat hand: SUKI.

  Aunt Ginny was shaking her head, making it’s nothing gestures with her hands. ‘Open it when I’m gone,’ said Aunt Ginny.

  Suki felt her innards gripped by fear. She knew Aunt Ginny was failing, and so did Aunt Ginny. Suki thought her aunt must be so scared, and her eyes filled with tears at that.

  ‘Now don’t you go making a fuss,’ said Aunt Ginny in a scolding voice. ‘We don’t want tears, none of that. You stay strong, girl. You’re twenty-three years old with everything ahead of you. Be grateful for that.’

  ‘You’ll outlive me,’ said Suki, feeling choked with emotion. They both knew it was a lie.

  ‘Happen I will,’ said Aunt Ginny. ‘But if I don’t, you open that letter and read it, OK?’

  Suki nodded. She was too upset to trust herself to speak. She’d already lost her mom and dad, and the thought of losing Aunt Ginny too terrified her. She put the envelope in her dress pocket and tried to forget about it.

  More than anything, Suki wished she had the money to treat Aunt Ginny to something as luxurious as a world cruise. Maybe one of these days a miracle would happen and she would. Who knew?

  But it was not to be. Aunt Ginny’s chest finally gave out and she died six weeks later. She never saw
England after all.

  70

  ‘You been on those bloody things again,’ said Connor when he met up with Joey Minghella at the Blind Beggar in the New Year.

  ‘What you talkin’ about?’ asked Joey, squinting at Connor as they stood together at the bar getting the round in.

  Connor gave his employee an old-fashioned look. ‘The bloody ecstasy, you twonk. Busy weekend?’

  ‘Went clubbing, yeah,’ said Joey.

  Connor shook his head. Joey Minghella might appear grown up, but his head was still somewhere up his arse. A dazzlingly good-looking eighteen, Joey had been doing drops for Connor, but now Connor was planning on dropping him.

  He didn’t like Joey, who had begged him for some work until he caved. Joey was a waster from a family of them; the kid was going nowhere. And the E was a problem. Joey was dancing every weekend and by Tuesday – it was Tuesday now – he was ready to bite your head off and spit down the neck end, the hangovers were so bad.

  Having been raised by a man who made his living from being fit and treating his body well, Connor despised anyone soft enough to prop themselves up with dope.

  Joey winked at the barmaid as she pulled their pints. ‘Proper star, aintcha?’ he said to her. ‘You done that before, I reckon.’

  The girl smiled.

  Joey’s brown eyes were dancing around in his head like pinballs. His dark curly hair was stuck up in all directions where he kept dragging his hands through it. He’d be up all night at this rate, Connor thought, shooting up again and doing something fucking daft as usual. And tomorrow he wouldn’t even remember what.