by Ali Ahearn
Dedication
For Mum.
Gone, and a cloud in our hearts.
Contents
Cover
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
Chapter 1
Joni, Hackney, 1:23 p.m.
Joni Tripton reached for the locket that hung reliably at her neck and crossed herself. Then she sent up a swift and silent prayer to any deities generous enough to ignore the sacrilegious streak that had seen her kicked out of Sister Mary Magdalene’s School for Gifted Teenagers over a decade ago. And almost every institution she’d been dragged, cajoled or stumbled into by accident ever since.
She wasn’t asking for much. Not salvation; she was pretty sure she didn’t deserve it. Not even a miracle to get her out of this pickle.
Just one thing.
Please let the lumpen hulk she’d spied through the peephole buy her bluff.
Please let him believe the tinny barking coming from the record player at her left was a drooling, homicidal Alsatian. Not a lame special effect created by dragging the needle over the barking and howling part of that great Fishbone classic ‘Bonin’ in the Boneyard’. Joni firmly believed there were few problems the right vinyl could not fix.
Unfortunately, this seemed to be one of them. She crossed herself again.
Crouched underneath her grandma’s Queen Anne dining table, Joni stroked its silky–shiny legs and whispered soothing things into Mahatma’s ear. The tiny Persian kitten, recently liberated from a rubbish skip, should have been safely delivered to the animal shelter by now, instead of being a bit player in a hostage drama.
Desmond Tutu, her best friend, required no such comforting. He’d had enough experience of Joni’s chaotic life, and had quickly become the toughest ferret in Hackney. She patted him through the pocket of her cardigan and thanked the Rodent God for his broad shoulders.
As the pounding continued, her thoughts returned to the hulk.
He was probably a stray too, Joni thought. Why else would you become a kneecapper?
The banging stopped for a moment, and she luxuriated in the hope that the would-be kneecapper was gone. But then it began again. The door, recently the proud recipient of a new deadlock, suddenly seemed as insubstantial as fairy floss.
At the thought of the deadlock, and the woman who had bought it, a sharp spike of pain accomplished what Fishbone, Mahatma and the Queen Anne hadn’t. It drowned out the yammering fear that had been beating a kettledrum solo inside Joni since the violent banging had begun (she checked her watch) six minutes ago.
The pain spike ripped through soft skin and tissue, traced a fiery arc around her kidneys, and took up residence somewhere below her stomach, in a hollow space shaped like G.
G. So practical and generous. And now so dead.
It was exactly how Joni felt every time a Tory won high office. A giddy shift in the earth’s axis that made everything not quite right, but that no-one else seemed to notice. The world turned. People lived their lives: babies were born, stocks traded and virgins deflowered. But her grandmother was dead.
And now Joni had no-one, and nothing would ever be the same for her again.
She was an orphan. Well, as good as. The two hopeless cases who had created her in a moment of reprised madness definitely did not count.
A thousand images flickered through Joni’s overheated brain as a bout of thunderous knocking again rocked the apartment and chased her out of the sad, sticky mud in which she was mentally wallowing.
She could feel the lacy threads of the almost-bald carpet through her tights, and see the midday sun making cloud shapes on its brown hide.
Frankie would be disgusted that even facing down a very real threat to life and limb, Joni was incapable of getting it together sufficiently to form a plan more sophisticated than hide and fake dog noises. Even after seven years without her sister, Joni could almost hear Frankie saying in her beautiful alto that success required a little more than just showing up.
But what?
Joni wondered if Frankie had gone today. Probably. Frankie and G had been close, too. They’d had Mondays and Countdown. Joni and G had had Sundays. Big Brother. The eviction show.
G, the game show omnivore, had loved both programs, like she’d loved both girls. G would have known what to do right now.
Joni could remember when G had a stall at Columbia Road, although she’d given it up fifteen years ago. Joni had loved the colour and chaos of the flower market. She would go there with G when her father was on weekend manoeuvres and her mother was crawling back from the latest overnight peace vigil.
One particular spring morning had always stuck in her head.
G had been holding court from an awning that was on four spindly poles and sheltered a riot of bloom. Listening to G’s saucy East-End pitch, Joni almost believed flowers really could cure ‘ailing marriages, grieving hearts and maladies of the spirit’.
Joni wandered through the market, never straying beyond G’s sight-line, as per her instructions, fascinated by the bazaar. When Joni was explaining to a group of other girls that G had placed an enchanted spell on her favourite dolly, Rosie, a tussle had ensued. Joni had dashed back to the omnipotent G, confident in her ability to reattach Rosie’s head to her pretty shoulders.
G, with wild red blooms stuck behind each ear, had carefully ministered to the doll, her pink tongue protruding thoughtfully from a mouth criss-crossed with wrinkles. But even after the surgery, a slight fissure remained on Rosie’s delicate nape.
‘It won’t do, will it?’
Joni shook her head, agreeing with G.
‘Only one thing for it.’ G had swiftly whipped a beautiful red scarf from her neck, and fastened it into a French plait around Rosie’s neck. ‘Perfect,’ she’d clucked, satisfied. Joni had smiled, knowing G really could fix anything.
But not now. As Joni waited for the sick splintering of timber that was sure to be the next step in this farce, she felt like one of the Three Little Pigs, huddling inside a house of twigs as the Big Bad Wolf did his crazy lupine thing outside.
She sighed. She’d never liked hairy men.
Joni stifled the urge to giggle, imagining how she and the two strays looked, huddling together under a piece of furniture that had, no doubt, seen its share of violence and wouldn’t bat an eyelid should they be murdered amid its elegant legs.
She momentarily stopped ministering to the vinyl when a voice outside her door replaced the relentless thudding.
‘Ms Tripton? Ms Tripton?’
She could have sworn, if she had not, albeit briefly, seen the man behind the door, that the voice belonged to some very sexy geography teacher.
Or perhaps a priest.
She’d had some experience with priests. They often had lovely voices.
Even when they were saying their school was really not the right place for you.
‘Ms Tripton. Arh … I think that you are there. I saw your … erhm … visitor leave a couple of moments ago. Really, it’s most urgent that I speak with you.’
Joni was so startled she leaped slightly, bumping the hard, bony ridge at the back of her head against the even harder underside of the Queen Anne.
‘Fuck.’
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br /> Mahatma, who had not uttered a squeak during the (she checked her watch) eight-minute siege, mewed sympathetically, as if sensing the danger had passed and it was now acceptable to offer condolences for banged heads.
‘Ms Tripton, is that you? Could you open the door, please?’
Joni wriggled out from under the glorious table, limped over to the door and checked the peephole, refusing to believe the evidence of her ears telling her the danger had passed.
But her eyes were right.
Maybe six foot two. Suit. Nice suit. And yes, there it was. Joining his head to his shoulders. A neck. Definitely a neck. This was definitely not the hulking thing of stone and bad manners who had first knocked on her door.
As Joni moved her hand towards the latch, she felt a cool gust of sheer adrenalin-fuelled relief fan her overheated cheeks. She didn’t mean to kiss him as soon as she opened the door – like a lot of things that month, it just happened. The fact that, unlike the kneecapper, he looked incapable of harming a hair on her Starburst-jube-green head was a major contributing factor to her reaction.
As horror at her actions coursed through Joni, she pulled away from him, assuring herself it had to have been a post traumatic stress-related reaction.
‘Sorry,’ she breathed, noting his surprise. She’d had no real time to register the clean, stark beauty of the man before she’d crushed her lips against his lovely full ones that tasted like chips with gravy. ‘I’m just so glad it was you.’
‘Er … have we met?’
He seemed genuinely confused as he looked her up and down, taking her in from toe to head: purple stockings, denim miniskirt, black bra top, brown angora cardigan, green hair. His face said: I think I’d remember.
But his mouth was telling a different story.
His lips had the lush, self-satisfied crease only usually achieved by crushed velvet and the recently well kissed. In short, they looked like they’d enjoyed it.
And no amount of have we met was going to help them look any other way.
‘Um …’ Joni considered him earnestly. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Erk, okay. So …’
‘Sorry,’ she stammered. She didn’t normally apologise, so she figured she must be evolving. ‘Um, look, let’s start again. I am Ms Tripton. Joni. Joni Tripton. And you’re …?’
‘Nigel Lathbourne,’ the kissed one recovered smoothly. ‘From Schuster, Schuster, Lathbourne and Lathbourne.’
‘Oh,’ Joni squeaked. Lawyers. Ugh, and I just kissed one. Albeit in a platonic, thank-you-so-much-for-not-kneecapping-me kind of way.
The people Joni owed didn’t normally use lawyers. Until they got banged up.
‘So, which one are you – Lathbourne or Lathbourne?’
‘Neither.’ The kissed one smiled. ‘One is my father. The other is my uncle.’
‘So you’re …?’
‘The shitkicker,’ Lathbourne Junior confirmed.
‘Ah,’ Joni breathed, more comfortable dealing with inferiority.
She began mentally to calculate how she could make it to the back entrance and down the fire stairs before the little arsehole served her the papers. Joni’s crappy track record with people in power had reached a new low since she’d been bequeathed the record shop from Greasy Phil and realised what manner of financial disaster it was in. The management skills she had learned from administering the shelter were no match for the parlous state of the record shop. And she knew so little about running a business for profit.
And while it was wonderful that the kneecapper had left, being kneecapped had only been the most immediate of her problems. She had a shop and a shelter to run, and right now both were barely walking.
‘Great.’ She smiled unconvincingly. ‘How can I help?’
‘It’s about your grandmother,’ Shitkicker began.
Joni didn’t know, as the pain sliced into her side again at the mention of G, what she had expected, but she knew it definitely hadn’t been that. Anything but that.
‘My grandmother?’
Her voice sounded strange even to her own ears, and she was sure she could hear a low, weird buzzing as well.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Tripton,’ Shitkicker Lathbourne, of the beautiful voice, said. ‘Would you like to sit down to discuss it?’
‘Ah, sure,’ Joni agreed. ‘Mind if I get a drink before we do?’
Shitkicker shrugged his square shoulders, and Joni led the way from the tiny alcove to the even smaller kitchen, bumping open the fridge door with her hip so she could use one hand to extract a beer while the other held Mahatma tightly.
‘One for you?’ Joni prided herself on being hospitable. Of course, that didn’t always extend to welcoming kisses but she was trying not to think about that, or about how his lips had been exactly the right combination of hard–soft. She felt a little weak downstairs just remembering.
‘Ah, better not,’ he almost chirped, and she could tell he was thinking about the kiss too.
‘Oh well,’ she clucked, trying to sound more like someone’s cuddly aunt than a kissing terrorist. ‘Guess you’re on the clock.’
He cleared his throat as she filled hers with cold, bitter lager, tilting her head back and guzzling like a woman who’d been wandering in the desert. When the bottle was all but drained, she smiled at him and motioned to the Formica table for two.
‘Okay,’ she allowed. ‘Sit. Let’s hear it, Mr Lathbourne.’
‘Your grandmother left a will,’ he began quickly. ‘You’re named, and you were invited to a reading, today, after the funeral. But you never showed.’
‘What?’ A less experienced drinker would have choked at the news.
But Joni didn’t spill a drop.
Their grandmother had no money. No home. Not even any possessions, bar the flat-screen TV that had taken pride of place in her council flat. And anyone who knew their family, really knew them, would know exactly why Joni hadn’t gone to the funeral.
‘Why would I go to the will thing? What for?’
‘Your grandmother’s instructions were quite explicit,’ Lathbourne Junior continued. ‘And I’m afraid we can’t hold the reading until all parties are present for it.’
Other parties. Oh, God, no. Joni knew it where you know all bad things: high and hard, somewhere between throat and heart. She knew that the other party – the only other party who mattered, anyway – was Frankie.
And there was no way on God’s green earth that she was going anywhere near any will reading, book reading, palm reading or meter reading that involved her sister.
‘Sorry, Lathbourne,’ she dismissed quickly. ‘Can’t make it. Busy.’
He looked shocked, the pretty mouth losing its just-kissed crush, to form a still-rather-attractive ‘o’. His green eyes seem to suddenly fleck, like mint jelly.
‘There are considerable assets at stake,’ he insisted. ‘You must come.’
Joni laughed. ‘Nigel,’ she said, at last using his first name. ‘You don’t understand. This is my grandmother. I knew her. Very, very well.’
That stab of pain again. To squash it, she spoke again quickly.
‘There are no “assets”. It’s a trick. She’s a shark. I mean, was. A loveable grey nurse shark.’
Joni really knew her animals.
‘Joni,’ Shitkicker returned the first-name favour, his minty eyes weighing something up. ‘Look, I can’t tell you much. Ethics. Rules.’
She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. Huh?
‘Lawyer stuff,’ he explained. ‘But it’s not every day I get the kind of welcome I got here today, so I think maybe I owe you something.’
The dizzy echo of the kiss skidded between them again.
‘I can tell you this. There are. Assets, that is. And I hate to bring this up, but if the guy who left here as I was arriving is what I think he is, I think you could maybe use a little help.’
Joni felt her ire rise at the assumption that she was the sort of woman who hung with undesirables. And o
wed bad people money.
Even though she did.
Not that she chose the undesirables, mind you. Or the kneecappers. Trouble just followed her, like the Pied Piper’s rats.
But, regardless, who was this crispy suit to assume she was a loser? He didn’t know her well enough to know that. One kiss did not a clairvoyant make.
Nigel sighed, like a man who knew he had a duty to do, but wasn’t enjoying it anywhere near as much as he had been five minutes previously. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. ‘The reading’s at four p.m.’
Joni looked at it like it was a white feather.
‘Your grandmother really, really wanted this. She wanted you to come, to hear from her. She’s got a proposition for you.’
Joni had always sucked at saying no to G.
Despite the chimes of doom in her head, she reached for the card.
Frances, Kew, 2:31 p.m.
Frances Sutcliffe was cutting the heads off twelve perfectly formed long-stemmed roses when the knocking started again. She ignored it, preferring to pretend she was castrating Edward with every satisfying snip.
Her husband had always had enough balls for several men.
That’s for the condoms.
Snip.
That’s for business trips to Monte Carlo and high stakes poker.
Snip.
That’s for the three-dozen apple strudel twists I spent two hours perfecting for the last tedious dinner party. When my grandmother was dying. And I was practically bleeding to death from the period-that-would-not-end.
Snip!
The knock came again, followed by a rather hesitant but very posh ‘Mrs Sutcliffe?’
She stopped mid-snip. She’d expected to hear ‘Frannie’.
Frannie, stop this.
Frannie, you’re being a child.
Frannie, open the door.
She remembered a time when the name Frannie had seemed so … grown-up. That it had made her feel like a woman. Cherished. Desired. Valued. Someone far removed from Frankie Tripton and her screwed-up family.