by Aline Riva
"Where, Jack? Into the sunset? You think it's as easy as that? I can sort your ID I can get you a motor and I can get your cash. That's it. You'll be on the run. You're a suspect!"
Jack stayed calm despite all he said.
"No, I'll be fine. It's over. I got the money, I’ll have a new ID and that’s all sorted, isn't it? I can see how it easy it is, you're just getting nervous, Matt. You always did. That's why I said you never should have got involved in robbery. It's not your scene."
Matt gave a sigh of frustration.
"You're not listening. I just want the best for you, Jack. I know you never should have gone down in the first place, not when Drake got off like that. He tried to rip me off too. But I tracked him down. It was me who fired the house."
As he spoke I felt a jolt of shock - Matt was a murderer?
"Well its not like he didn’t deserve it," Jack replied, "But that was a bit over the top."
"That’s rich coming from a man who goes on a robbery rampage based on an assumption!"
They looked at each other and for a moment I wondered if this was going to turn into a fight, but the bond between them was too strong for that. It was Matt who backed down and I wasn't slightly surprised - I knew Jack well by now and he was not the kind of man to back down from anything or anyone.
"Alright." Matt agreed, "You stay here. You reckon they're not looking for you, and yes, no ones been here looking yet so I have to assume you're right. Stay here till it’s all sorted. And I hope you are right, or I'll suffer and so will she," he said, indicating to me.
Jack glanced at me.
"We've got no worries, Sal," he told me," Matt's just a bit anxious."
Matt gave a sigh.
"Yeah, maybe. I hope so. I'll just have to trust you, won't I?"
Matt did come to trust that Jack was right. The days passed and as the time went by Jack's wound healed rapidly and he found it increasingly frustrating to be stuck upstairs all the time. Then he found out there was a further delay because of the new ID and that meant we would be stuck at the pub even longer.
While Jack was pacing like a caged tiger I was finding it all quite easy to deal with, I knew we would be on our way soon and I was starting to think of a future with him, the kind of future I was longing for that would soon become a reality. Every morning I woke beside him and ran my hand down his body, woke him with gentle kisses and dreamed of our life together and how things would be. And I knew we would be happy, once we were away from this place and in a new life I knew exactly what I was going to say to him when we stood together in our new home for the first time with his arms around me.
Except that day never came.
We were due to leave on the Monday morning.
But late on Friday night, everything changed. Matt had locked up the pub, it was the same every weekend nothing but noise from downstairs and then as the last of the drinkers made their way off into the night, a silence would slide down about the place and with it came the night and sleep and then waking in the arms of the man I loved. But not on this night and never again.
I was wrapped in Jack's arms, running my hands over his body and thinking how well those scars had healed, we were lying in the darkness and my head was on his shoulder and I heard a door close down the hall as Matt went to off to bed.
Then glaring lights blazed from outside and the sound of a helicopter hovered somewhere above. I sat up with a jolt, Jack jumped out of bed and grabbed his jeans, put them on and then grabbed his gun. I reached out to pull the curtain aside but Jack pulled me back.
"They'll shoot you!"
The shock hit me all at once and I started to cry. I grabbed for the gun and he pushed me away. He had that look in his eyes like the day he walked into the bank.
"Armed police!" A voice yelled, "Drop your weapons and surrender!"
The bedroom door flung open and Jack raised his gun, realising at the last minute he was looking at Matt, whose eyes were wide with terror.
"We're fucking caught!" he sobbed.
Jack checked his weapon.
"I'm not going back inside!"
I grabbed hold of him.
"No, Jack...they’ll shoot you! I can't live with that, I can't...I love you. I need you to live!"
Downstairs, there was a repeated crashing at the door as the police began to break it down.
"I love you." I repeated.
He looked into my eyes.
"I love you too," he told me.
Then he prised himself away from my grasp and tipped the bullets from the gun. Then he dropped the gun on to the bed, looked back at me once and in that moment I wanted to say so much, to tell him so much, but it was too late.
He glanced at Matt.
"I've been here a week, you know nothing. And Sally’s your bird if anyone asks, okay? Look after her for me."
Matt nodded, still looking as if he were too shocked to take it all in.
Then the downstairs door caved in and amidst shouts of Armed Police, Jack raised his hands to clearly show he was unarmed, and walked down the stairs to meet them.
Chapter 10
It was Matt who held me back, he held me so hard my wrists were bruised for a week, all I wanted to do was be with Jack no matter what happened next - but they nicked him, they banged him up. The police couldn't prove the jewellers but they did charge him with the bank job. Matt convinced them that I was his girlfriend. Jack swore he hardly knew me. It cut me to the bone to think he had to deny knowing me and every night I sobbed alone in bed as I ran my hand over the place where my lover used to sleep.
Matt looked after me just like he promised. Jack wouldn't let me come and see him in prison because he didn't want me implicated in any way, and the only way I could make him happy and show him I loved him was to do as he asked. He said I had to stay calm and look after myself that was why I wasn't allowed to go to the court, either. All the things I wanted to say to him I still got to say but through Matt, who gave him all my messages. It turned out that Jack had been right when he had said to Matt that no one would have come looking at the pub - they would never had come looking there at all - it had been Jack's fault that they did. He knew to stay in the pub and keep out of sight after the bank job, but one afternoon while I was asleep, he had gone out, gone over the road and bought cigarettes. The woman in the shop had just seen a news report about unsolved local crimes - and recognised him from CCTV footage. So there you go, smoking IS bad for you. Jack got sent down for the bank job. This time he didn't get ten years, he got twenty five.
And all that kept me going was knowing he was alive and he loved me and I loved him, even though I couldn't see him. I missed him every single day and days passed into months and months became years. After the first eighteen months he told me I could start writing to him and I did, I lived for his letters, I sent him photos and it was the next best thing to holding him in my arms again. I wrote him poems, too. On his birthday I sent him these words:
There are things in my heart
Things I can’t say
And you seem so far away
I miss you all the time
I wish that you was close
It’s just the thought that aches the most
Of you not being here,
It’s because I want to hold you so much
I want to kiss you and feel your touch.
I want to run my hands down you
Cover you with a thousand kisses and then
Tell you I think you’re a prince among men.
I fell for you the day we met
You looked in my eyes and I felt this rush
But it was the real thing it wasn’t a crush.
There isn’t a man on this earth as wonderful as you,
You are a real prince through and through.
I have always loved you and shall do forever;
I wish, I wish we could be together.
I wrote to him all the time, and he wrote to me. And I coped with living like that, even though
I knew nothing would be better than being with Jack again, no matter how long it took. Matt was so helpful, even though I had to endure witnessing his many arguments with his new girlfriend Tracey, they often fell out and yelled cunt at one another like the word was a ping pong ball, but they were so alike that eventually they got married.
By now, five years had passed by....
Then one day we all got in the car and we went for a little drive. It was a summer’s day and the warmth reminded me of the summer I met Jack. I still wore the bracelet he gave me, I had never taken it off. Time can blur a lot of things but not the things that matter, not the things that live inside the heart. I still loved him as much as I had the day I met him, more so, even though we were apart. This world can be a cold and lonely place and sometimes just a thought or a memory, of a moment or a kiss, can bring so much warmth and comfort - and those memories were the ones I clung to every day.
We pulled into a country lane and Matt stopped the car. Then I got out. I looked around, just in the distance was The Swan, I could see the trees where Jack had managed to hide the car before he passed out after the shooting. Last time I had come down this lane it had been dark, and I'd thought I was losing him.
But I didn't.
That's because life never turns out the way you expect it to...
I was standing by the roadside looking out across the field, but my thoughts were far away, with four armed men I would never meet yet felt so grateful to. It was Matt who sorted it, using a large chunk of money and some very useful contacts. Jack was getting transferred to another prison. But that van would never get there. And I was standing there, waiting, hoping nothing had gone wrong. It was Jack's only chance to ever break out...
Matt got out of the car and joined me.
"He's late."
"These things take time," Matt replied.
I blinked back tears.
"If this goes wrong I have to be without him for ever, for years, there's so much I want to say, I just want to hold him and never let go."
Matt smiled.
"You'd better go and do it, then."
And he glanced behind me.
A small car with tinted windows had pulled up.
The door opened and Jack got out. The car drove off and I just stood there, looking at him, realising this was the moment I had waited so long for and now it was happening, he was out, he really was free.
He took me in his arms and hugged me, then we kissed and it seemed to last forever as I held on to him.
"It's alright," he told me, "Nothing went wrong. Apart from a bruise on my wrist, it was hard to get the cuffs off. I could have been here twenty minutes ago but I wanted to clean myself up first and get changed - I managed it in the car. Do I look okay?"
"You haven't changed a bit...I love you so much."
"I love you too, sweetheart."
He took my hand and we walked back towards Matt's car. Then he made me a promise.
"I'm never getting in trouble again. You know I promised you that before and I swear this time I mean it," he told me.
Our eyes met.
"Yes I know you do," I said.
We got in the back of the car.
Tracey looked around and said Hello and Matt wiped away tears and said, "It's good to have you back, Bro."
As we drove off, Jack put his arm around me.
"I can't believe it's over at last," he said, "When I was waiting for that ambush I was thinking of everything I could lose if it went wrong, I just wanted to be here, with you."
He leaned back and took a deep breath.
"Fuck me, what a day!"
"Language, Jack!" I said sharply.
And then he realised why I'd said it, as a little hand tugged at his sleeve and said, "Hello, Daddy."
I smiled. Jack had got in that car so fast he hadn’t seen our son sitting in the back.
"I know I said we'd pick him on the way to the airport, but I thought I'd surprise you instead. This is Jack Junior."
Jack looked at the little boy sitting beside him.
"You look so much older than your pictures!" he exclaimed, "Mummy's given me so many pictures of you..."
As we started to drive away, I watched the two of them having a conversation for the first time. They just clicked together, as if they had never been apart. That was what I'd wanted to say on the day the police raided the pub, I'd wanted to tell him that I was pregnant. But once he found out, it helped him get through the trial and the sentencing and Matt had promised him, I will get you out. And it had taken five years, but we had done it.
"Mummy says we're going on holiday?”
"Yes we are, for a very long time.” Jack replied.
"Are you a bank robber?" our son asked him.
Jack glanced at me, laughed and then said, "No son. Not any more."And he looked back at me again, right into my eyes.
"Not any more," he repeated, "I promise."
And I knew that he meant it.
His hand closed over mine and he didn't let go, he just sat there holding my hand and talking to our son, all the way to the airport.
As we drove on, the sun was sinking in an amber sky and it was streaked with pink, and it occurred to me that there had been a time when Matt had said that me and Jack would never be able to go off into the sunset - yet here we were, and that’s just what we did.
So that's my account of what really happened - I wrote it down and I keep the pages locked, so that one day, my version of everything will be read again, because I wanted to keep it and remember everything as it happened. And this is how the story ends, because sometimes, even in a world as bad as this one, even when everything goes wrong, at the end of the day, there’s always love and love can last forever...and this IS how it finishes. We got what we wanted, what everyone wants - we got a happy ending.
The End.