chandeliers and its shining surfaces.
‘Then, name me a price!’ Gloria’s fist had had a life of its own, thumping the granite worktop. She had gazed at it, alarmed at the pain that had ricocheted up her arm. Refocused on her business partner. ‘I bet Paddy’s selling his blasted enterprises. I bet he’s not giving his life’s work up, as though the O’Brien empire had never existed. Eh? Am I right?’
Sheila had blushed. Colour finally creeping into those pasty, duplicitous cheeks.
‘Oh, so I am right. He gets to sell. But let me guess. He ordered you to just walk away from the lot, because anything we’ve done as women counts for nothing. Is that it? Have I hit the nail on the head?’
Sitting on that hard pew in the church next to old Winnie, Gloria remembered with dyspeptic discomfort how she had left the O’Briens’ Bramshott mansion, feeling like a member of the domestic staff who had been summarily dismissed after being caught stealing the silverware. Exacerbated by the knowledge that she had, in fact, started out as Sheila’s cleaner, all those years ago.
‘Just a white woman’s rubbing rag,’ she muttered under her breath as the pastor was otherwise engaged in speaking in tongues. Mindful that the pride and wrath and envy she was currently entertaining would not be doing her any favours in her journey along the path to righteousness.
As the service ended, Gloria braced herself to pass the woeful news on to her employees. The Nigerian women, colourful in their traditional batik print wrapper dresses and head scarves, came towards her, smiling. Greeting her with warmth, clasping her hand and sharing embraces as though she had always been some revered elder in their inner circle. And there were the young girls from Benin City. Dressed in their modest best. Waving to their beloved Auntie Gloria. In a way, these were her children, whom she had led from the heart of darkness into the arms of a loving and forgiving Lord. Only right, then, that one day, she and the pastor should be together, instead of that ugly, fat wife of his, Kitty.
Gloria knew that her strong point was her faith. She had faith that Kitty, who smelled of three-day-old chicken and who looked like a side of beef in Primark knitwear, would one day be history. She had faith that she would be able to break the bad news to her employees and safely lay the blame at Sheila’s pedicured, lazy, white-woman’s feet.
‘Sisters,’ she said, ushering her flock towards the vestibule of the Good Life Baptist Church, making sure the pastor got a good look at her legs and her shining, relaxed hair beneath her best fascinator, bought in the John Lewis sale. ‘Let’s go for coffee. We need to talk.’
Being brave, like she had always been brave, winking surreptitiously at the pastor while Kitty Fried Chicken was shaking hands with an elder, Gloria led the group towards the harsh daylight streaming in through the ecclesiastical arched door. They piled out into the bustle of Parson’s Croft high street, thronging with satisfied church-goers, shoppers on a mission for bargains and gaggles of over-excited Muslim girls wearing hijabs and pretty sequinned salwar kameez, squealing with laughter into each other’s mobile phones.
At first, she did not notice the tall, dark figure standing outside Clyde’s Caribbean Takeout. A figure, wearing a burnt orange padded gilet, a long-sleeved T-shirt and those jeans that they all wore with zips and too many pockets and silly logos. Trainers on his feet. No. There was no reason why she would have paid any attention whatsoever to this man, who looked like every other self-styled gangsta fool under the age of maybe thirty in Parson’s Croft. On his head, he wore a branded baseball cap. Stylish, sporty sunglasses with mirrored lenses hid his eyes. But ambling along towards the café, surrounded by her beloved Nigerian sisters whom she would let down gently, it barely registered with her that this was a familiar man, overly dressed as though to conceal his identity. There was something about the line of his nose and the almost delicate point of his chin. His build. His body language. The way he stepped off the stoop of Clyde’s with hands in pockets – hands that were empty of the delicious Caribbean offerings sold inside. The way he started to keep pace with her, though the wide pavement was four or five people deep. Kept shooting her glances from behind those creepy sunglasses. Now, Gloria had started to take note of this man, though he lurked in her peripheral vision.
She sped up. ‘Come on, ladies. Cake beckons! My treat.’
Protected by the laughter and the sheer number of bodies that surrounded her; there must have been twenty of her cleaners, bustling along that road. Maybe it was a coincidence and she was just on edge.
But no. The man was still there. He took his hands out of his pockets. Extended a hand towards her. Opened his mouth to say something.
Gloria stopped short. Held her handbag to her chest defensively, ready to clobber the scumbag with it if needs be before he had a chance to snatch it.
‘Get away from me!’ she yelled.
Before her companions realised that an attack was afoot, the man pulled the sunglasses from his face to reveal soulless, sinner’s eyes she would recognise anywhere. Her own eyes.
‘It’s me, Mum,’ he said, reaching for her. Brushing her fingers with his.
She snatched her hand away as though it had been burned and took a step back. Trod heavily on somebody’s foot, though she could not tear her gaze from her son’s anguished face to see who she had injured and offer apology. She was filled with a mixture of dread and fear and that old, familiar poison – hope.
‘Leviticus Bell. You treacherous, criminal toe-rag. What in the Lord’s name do you want?’
‘Don’t open your mouth,’ Paddy told Frank. ‘Let me do all the talking.’
On the back seat of the XJ, in semi-darkness that was lit only by the street-lamps flashing by, Paddy saw his brother nod. Cock his head to the side, as if letting the simple words soak in.
‘Alright, Pad. No worries, man.’
Paddy patted Frank’s knee, though even that felt like over-exertion since the heart attack. Frustrated, he was still very much King of the Alphas in his head, but now, his body had finally betrayed him. Katrina had been right. He was pushing his luck. Age and a hard, fast lifestyle had finally caught up with him, and boy, was he feeling mortal now. Vulnerable too, since he had been sent home from the hospital with nothing more than some poxy meds and a flea in his ear regarding his abysmal diet. Left to his own devices, the care of the medical staff now felt too far beyond easy reach.
As Conky steered the gliding car from the opulent, leafy suburbs of Bramshott down the M56 towards Manchester, tension started to mount inside him, stiffening his limbs and the set of his jaw with ice. The pressure of the impending meet bore down on his shoulders; he felt he might simply disappear down the back of the leather seat.
‘I haven’t seen those bastards, Tariq and Jonny since 2005,’ he said to the back of Conky’s head. Met his gaze through the rear view mirror – a rare occurrence, since Conky only took those ridiculous Roy Orbison glasses off to drive, revealing his bulging eyes in all their frightening amphibian glory. The arsehole’s hair-piece was showing through the comb-over. He resolved to say nothing. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Aye,’
