The Good Kind of Bad

by Rita Brassington

  The Good Kind of Bad

  RITA BRASSINGTON

  Secrets don’t stay secret for long

  For Bryan

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  THE GOOD KIND OF BAD

  By Rita Brassington

  First Kindle Edition © 2015 Rita Brassington

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it was purchased and without the written permission of the author.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold.

  www.ritabrassington.co.uk

  ONE

  ‘Hell, look what I did.’

  After Joe swung the Chevelle’s wheel to the right, I glanced down to see his cigarette eating a pretty brown hole into my silk wedding gown.

  ‘Joe!’ Frantically throwing the butt out of the car window, I grabbed a handful of singed Vera Wang. ‘I’m supposed to treasure this dress forever. Now look at it.’

  ‘Ah, you will treasure it. It just has character now.’ Then Joe pointed to the six lanes of slow-moving vehicles ahead of us on the Kennedy Expressway. ‘I’m sorry, okay? But look at this traffic. Blame these ass-hat Chicago drivers, not me.’ It wasn’t long before another cigarette was retrieved from behind his ear. ‘Come on, let me make it up to you when we get home, huh?’ He reached for the radio dial before smoothing back his mane, today strangely tamed; waxed and parted for the ceremony. ‘Intergalactic’ by The Beastie Boys blasted out as Joe joined in, complete with finger jabs and chin juts. ‘—too sweet to be sour, too nice to be mean . . .’

  I grinned, arching back my head. ‘You’re so romantic.’

  He tapped out the beat on the steering wheel. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get to the romance. That champagne is losing its cork when we get home, wifey.’

  ‘Champagne? I think we only have beer.’

  ‘—Beastie Boys known to let the beat . . . beer o’clock it is. Man, will we get wasted tonight.’

  It’d been thirty minutes since we’d said our vows before the priest at St. Martinus Church, Chicago, three weeks after meeting. Whirlwind didn’t come close, my head spinning like a ceaseless carousel, but I’d gone with it.

  It was my new motto. Say yes, to everything, including drunken wedding proposals from beautiful, subversive men.

  It’d been barely enough time to learn my new husband’s surname, never mind walk down the aisle with him. As for knowing, let alone understanding, the real Joe Petrozzi? One thing I’d learnt during our brief relationship was how economical with the truth he was.

  My salt-of-the-earth Average Joe lived in Armanti Square on Chicago’s South Side. It was hardly the best address in the city ‒ something he’d skilfully kept under wraps until after I’d agreed to hot foot it up the aisle ‒ though it was easy to forgive his secrecy. Joe was the most gorgeous man I’d ever met. He smouldered. He preferred his shirt off to on. Add that to the compliments he lavished on me daily and the wedding was a no-brainer, a done deal. I’d felt this odd thing called happiness. He said I was gorgeous, clever and intelligent: ‘Like, you must’ve gone to one of those good schools.’ Yeah, Oxford University was almost a cliché in itself, but it wasn’t about that. You know, our opposing ends of the spectrum deal.

  I didn’t want to be the reliable, predictable, spoiled daughter of Howard Clarke, businessman extraordinaire, any longer. I was a Petrozzi now, wife to an Italian-American UPS delivery driver who drank Czech beer and ran mystery errands.

  After Joe turned my stomach by suggesting fried chicken for the wedding breakfast, we landed outside his (sorry, our) apartment, a tired and dingy affair on Belvidere and South Evergreen. It was a place last decorated when his Chevrolet Chevelle rolled off the production line in ’75, and, without Joe, it would’ve been as far from home as my imagination allowed.

  Craning my neck to the fourth floor while my silky column gown skimmed the grime below, it felt so unreal, and yet I was trying not to let reality dawn on me.

  Though it was all part of the fun. It was a life where he smoked cigars and I ate nachos in bed until noon, our diet’s main food groups were Jack Daniel’s and Papa John’s and we stayed up so late the sun regularly peeked its way through the paper-thin curtains. It was a life where we laughed. Joe’s unstable on-a-knife-edge existence meant substandard apartments on shoddy streets were par for the course.

  Appointments and to-do lists, chores and obligations . . . they were now surplus to requirement. That was a life I didn’t need anymore.

  There was no schedule, apart from Joe’s call to employment. If we wanted to go out, we didn’t stay in thinking about it. I was flooded with life for the first time in forever, and one I wanted. ’Til death us do part, I was now part of a team: Mr and Mrs Petrozzi doing Chicago.

  Upstairs in what was our honeymoon suite for the next forever, Joe stood in the bathroom with his feet rooted to the floor, summoning me with one long, bended finger. After swaggering forwards in his rented tux, like a cowboy in ill-fitting chaps, he reached out a hand and swept me in close, my cheek tingling from his coarse cheek stubble, like venturing out after winter’s first snow.

  Apart from his head being a smidgen too big (though not in physical size), there was little to fault Joe for. He was a grown version of the fake rebels I’d dated ten years before. His inherited ancestral features had been watered down in the melting pot, though were still proudly presented for my delectation.

  The spattering of tattoos, the tousled black tresses, and not forgetting his penchant for muscle vests . . . any calls for cliché were knowingly accepted. Maybe that was the point; the mystery and charm that oozed from every mispronounced word and monosyllabic sentence he chewed over for an age, like tomorrow would be fine for him. Besides, I was itching to figure him out.

  He was so not my type, the type I’d got out of my system as a naive sixteen-year old, but now he was my husband. It was all very me. I mean, the new me. Reckless me. Preppy guys were so last season. Expensive taste in leather shoes and button-down Oxford collars? I wanted to slum it with a man who shopped at the thrift store, a guy who got so drunk he could barely stand and if it came to it, would lay down his life rather than cower and call the cops. As an added extra, I knew marrying Joe would send my mother’s head into orbit. That was if she ever found out.

  Who proposes to a girl they’ve just met, calling their beauty ‘one they can’t live without’? After flushing my life down the toilet and saddling myself with the burden of Will, of what I’d done, I’d woken on the other side of the Atlantic one bright April morning and acknowledged the stark, honest glory of the real world.

  ‘This place needs . . . what’s it called again?’ Joe enquired, throwing his rented dinner jacket onto t
he bed, stripping to his skin and flexing his triceps in the wall mirror like he’d taken to the stage on Mr Universe; sans baby oil, naturally.

  He knew how to make my heart flutter, I had to give him that. ‘A cleaning lady?’ I quipped back, waiting for him to again saunter over after his macho display. I savoured the moment, posing in my Vera Wang slice of perfection on the off chance I was being papped by Brides Chicago through the small sash window. Needless to say, I was unashamedly ignored as Joe took a rain check on me and pulled on the Rocky T-shirt draping the bedpost.

  Then came the air prod, the self-affirming jolt of his intellect. ‘The feminine touch, that’s it. That’s what this place needs.’

  ‘So you’d be fine with a few ormolu mirrors and colour co-ordinated crockery?’ I teased, my hands hip-bound.

  ‘Ormolu? Oh yeah, his stuff’s great. I know you love that designer name crap, why don’t you get yourself some? Whatever you need to feel at home.’

  ‘About that . . .’ I began but he turned his back to me, his attention now on the top dresser drawer.

  I was still in my wedding gown, still wildly expectant, though flinging paper and correspondence from the drawer was far more engrossing to Joe. I knew what it meant. It was errand-running time, and time for Joe to exit stage right.

  Turning back to me with a face as blank as the walls, he stabbed the piece of paper further into his pocket to disguise what he’d retrieved.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I was aiming for nonchalant, but sounded more like the Spanish Inquisition.

  ‘You don’t mind if I head out for a while, right? I have this thing. It won’t take long, Scout’s honour.’

  ‘You have a thing? On our wedding day?’

  ‘Don’t pull that lip down, baby. Flash me a smile, come on.’ As the fingers waggled on his outstretched hand, a grin spread across his face. ‘I married the most beautiful girl in Chicago and she’s all mine. How’d I get so lucky?’

  ‘Flattery won’t work on me, Joe.’

  ‘Sure it will. You married me, didn’t you?’

  I gave him a look that I hoped screamed suspicion. If it did, his face didn’t acknowledge it. ‘And Scouts? You?’ I asked instead, reaching for his T-shirt and pulling him in for a kiss, though he moved back with a knowing smile.

  He was already heading for the door with the biker jacket over his shoulder when he turned and shouted, ‘I’ll be back soon, so don’t go sneaking out and marrying someone else while I’m gone, all right?’

  True to his macho title, my new husband owned an eclectic line of vintage jackets, boots and anything else adorning the fashion pages of FHM, albeit on a thrift shop budget, though I’d yet to find any evidence of a motorcycle.

  Smiling, I had to remind myself of this laidback life’s rules. I was fine with it, really. So he was already leaving. So we were the only guests at the wedding and he hadn’t brought any rings to the church because he thought they were ‘included in the wedding package’. It’d been funny, really, although Father Richard hadn’t been the slightest bit amused, especially by Joe’s dress shirt sporting the half-tuck. At least the priest hadn’t noticed the opportune appearances of Joe’s whisky flask when his back was turned.

  Watching Joe slam the front door, I slumped down on the bed, still dressed in virginal white. My lake view suite at the Four Seasons had become a one-bedroom sublet on the South Side due to Joe’s will-you-marry-me pick-up line. It’d been a new one on me, but it’d worked. After all, Petrozzi was no longer just his surname, and it all slotted perfectly into my ‘say yes’ plan.

  With the poky apartment now the marital home, I mentally began work on the ‘feminine touch’ shopping list. It included a double mattress minus visible springs, triple locks (due to what-could-have-been gunshots from another apartment on our floor last week) and various lifestyle necessities Joe had neglected to purchase such as an espresso machine, a floor-length mirror and some semblance of a wardrobe.

  I was aching to put a stamp on the pre and post-me life of Joe. Prior to the wedding, my week at Chez Petrozzi had done little to reshape the long-established garçonnière. The fridge still contained a half-eaten jar of mustard and sausages minus much-needed biohazard tape. Sybil, Joe’s Shih Tzu, growled each time I approached her meal mat and the main staple of Joe’s film collection appeared to be porn.

  It was like looking through a kaleidoscope, with its swirling patterns of jewel-like splendour, but they’d begun to blur, to blend and distort. My couture column gown now felt sticky and tight. Hastily shrugging off the straps, my dress fell around me like folds of thick cream.

  When my phone began to ring, I did a little fist pump. I knew he’d have second thoughts about leaving. Locating my phone, I reached to the dressing table while still fiddling with my veil. ‘On your way back yet, hubby?’ I answered, assuming very wrongly it was Joe.

  ‘Hubby? What are you talking about?’

  It was a voice I hadn’t heard in weeks; a voice I didn’t think I’d hear again.

  Feeling like someone had stuck a fist in my gullet, I was standing alone in my underwear, tangled in tulle and speaking to the one person I didn’t want to. ‘I . . . Mother?’

  ‘I suppose I should be glad you’re all right,’ she huffed, probably pulling all manner of faces at my father from across the Chesterfield armchair. The seething contempt for her only daughter hadn’t been lost in the ether then.

  ‘Mother, you’re too kind,’ I huffed, emerging from the tangled veil. ‘And it only took three weeks to call me?’

  ‘It was your father’s idea. He thought it’d give you time to settle down. Goodness knows, maybe even come to your senses.’

  I eye-rolled at Sybil, but she was still snoozing in her basket in the kitchen. ‘I didn’t lose my senses.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve never lost your mind, either. I suppose it’s perfectly normal to run away from your own wedding to Chicago. Remember Will? Your fiancé? The one you left humiliated at the altar?’

  ‘I didn’t run away. I’m not twelve.’ If you’re going to get technical I might have, kind of, run. Okay, so his wasn’t my first wedding day of the season, not my first fiancé, though mine and Joe’s was the only wedding I’d had the courage to go through with. ‘And how do you know where I am?’

  ‘Howie and that computer of his. He tracked your phone. Oh, and we’ve booked you a flight home.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’

  ‘A ticket, back to Heathrow, so you can forget these wild ideas about road-tripping across America. You need to come back home. You need to sort this out.’

  ‘Road-tripping?’

  ‘Margaret said that’s what you’d be doing. She’s more upset than anyone. She thought . . . you do understand what you’ve done, don’t you? It’s not only Will’s heart you’ve broken.’

  There it was, the killer blow. Just in case I hadn’t tortured myself enough, she had a catalogue of insults and put-downs she was aching to try out on me.

  ‘Look, I . . . I can’t. I can’t come home.’ Because I’d married someone else? Yeah, that’d go down a storm.

  ‘Which hotel are you at? The Drake? I’ll arrange a car to pick you up. Pack your stuff. Your flight’s at seven tomorrow evening.’

  My legs became two heavy lumps of meat. Finding myself on the floorboards, wedged beside the dressing table and with the phone beside me, I pulled the veil back over my face and clutched the netting, my delicate armour, close. No one could hurt me now.

  There was a crackle on the line, before her taut voice began echoing out again. ‘Darling? Are you still there? Howie, something’s wrong with this phone. I can’t hear her. Darling? Hello?’

  As it turned out, even a new husband and whirlwind romance couldn’t stop my past clawing at the door. Joe knew nothing of my life back there: of Stable Hill Manor, my only recently ex-fiancé or of my father’s stolen ten million dollars, of which five million was in my name and stashed in a Chicago bank account. And it had to stay that way
.

  TWO

  I listened to Joe’s mumbled voicemail greeting three times before I called Nina. I had to speak to someone; about the impromptu wedding, my mother’s phone call . . . mainly the wedding, though whether Nina would believe I’d married Joe, whether anyone would believe me? Debatable.

  After first arriving in Chicago on the 22nd April (won’t forget that date in a hurry), I’d checked into the Four Seasons on East Delaware Place. Later that evening, while facing my room service deep dish pizza and wondering what the hell I’d done, I dialled Will’s number. 51 times – I just never dared to press call. I then phoned Gregory Pitt at my (soon-to-be pissed off) employer, Faith Advertising, explaining the situation – you know, the I-decided-to-leave-my-fiance-at-the-altar-and-move-halfway-around-the-world one. Even if I had thrown the rest of my life away, I’d worked my ass off to climb the career ladder in London. If I was planning on staying in Chicago, if this was going to be my life, I couldn’t start back on the bottom rung again.

  Gregory had worked at the Chicago branch of Faith before transferring to London, and I begged him for a contact after assuring him there was no need to worry about me. Sure enough, he conjured up a phone number for Nina Durant. Alone and swallowed up with guilt, I called her that night, and she was happy to meet on her way home and ask about a transfer for me. Thankfully we hit it off. Famously. It wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t. Right then, I would’ve clung to any hint of friendship I could.

  Technically, I’d known Nina longer than I’d known Joe, by one day at least. The next evening she invited me for cocktails at the Black Cat Ballroom, telling me about the Advertising Executive position that’d opened up, setting up a meeting with Mr Renaud and assuring me my dual nationality would cut through any red tape. I’d suggested continuing the night, craving a serious alcohol injection despite the numerous cocktails we’d necked, but Nina’s fiancé had wanted her home. After waving her off, I dared myself to go into the next bar I passed. Alone.