Diamond Page 9

  Some people, she reflected, described certain relationships as ‘just sex’.

  How odd that ‘just’ seemed, when sex, after all, was such a huge thing. So huge that she quickly moved from satiated to terrified, before Leonardo had time to yawn. What had she done? What had she given of herself? Could she afford it?

  She disengaged from him and sat up, pushing her fingers through her hair.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked. His hand on her thigh felt heavy, almost like a dead weight.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, but she couldn’t look at him. She stared at a damp patch at the top of the wall, where the old paper was peeling. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  She heard Leonardo shift, and felt him prop himself on his elbow.

  ‘No, you aren’t,’ he said quietly. ‘Come here. Look at me.’

  He nudged her back down, strong fingers at her arm. She couldn’t face him and hid her nose in his shoulder. He stroked her hair silently for a while, which made it all worse. It was too lovely, much too addictive. If she started to need human warmth and all that, where would it all end?

  ‘Look at me,’ he said again, more softly still, but there was real intent behind the whispery tone and she knew he wouldn’t put up with much more of her evasion.

  She lifted unwilling eyes to his. She seemed to be accusing him of something, but she wasn’t sure what.

  ‘I’m pretty sure you enjoyed that as much as I did,’ he said, his head on one side. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Yes. God. Yes.’

  ‘So …?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ As ever, it came out unconvincingly.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said. ‘I haven’t known you long, Jen, but I know when you’re not being straight with me. What’s up?’

  ‘Perhaps I enjoyed it too much,’ she said after a pause.

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It means … I’m not in a good place for this kind of thing.’

  ‘You’re not in a good place? Why did you leave LA then? You know what it’s like round here.’

  He misunderstood her deliberately, she realised. He was telling her that he wouldn’t accept any Californian psychobabble.

  He bent his head to hers until their brows touched.

  ‘Listen, sweets,’ he said, and the endearment made her curl her toes with guilty pleasure. ‘You’ve had a rough time. You’ve ditched the selfish bastard you were saddled with. You’ve run away from your life. I get that you’ve got a lot on your plate.’

  ‘Thanks. Good.’

  ‘But I don’t think that’s your problem with me, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, look at me, love. Compared to my fuck-up of a life, yours is the Garden of bastard Eden. But do you see me trying to fob you off with what a “bad place” I’m in?’

  ‘I … Well, people are different, Leo, aren’t they?’

  ‘When everything else in your life sucks, you grab anything that doesn’t with both hands, and hold it close. I like you. You like me. We’ve got something a bit like electricity going on between us. Why push it away? Why?’

  ‘All right, all right. I’ll tell you why. All my life, I’ve made it my business never to bite off more than I can chew. When you swim with the sharks, you have to keep a clear head. I let everyone else around me ruin themselves with drugs and illicit affairs and over-ambitious projects – they crashed and burned and I came up smelling of roses every time. It’s the secret of my success. But now, with you, with what we just did, I feel like I’ve broken my own rule.’

  She looked away.

  ‘Jen,’ he said. The touch of his hand was like a static shock. She thought her hair might be standing on end.

  ‘You were right about the electricity,’ she said haltingly. ‘I feel like I’ve been switched on and now I can’t switch off.’

  ‘You’re scared,’ he said flatly.

  She nodded.

  She was scared. She wanted him to keep touching her, to keep holding her. She wanted him again. She thought she might want him all night.

  And the next night.

  And the next.

  She wanted it too much.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re scared,’ he said. ‘But I know how it feels. I know how it felt when I went into that house to look for Mia and she wasn’t there, but a whole vanload of Feds were. Sorry. Did I use the F word again? Cops, then. I was scared. I did what I’ve never done in my life before, and I ran.’

  ‘You got away from them?’

  ‘Pure luck. The pub was doing a firework display for someone’s birthday do and I’d got a couple of bargain boxes off the back of a lorry for them. Set a couple off in the back kitchen and legged it.’

  ‘So – you went to a house that was raided by the police? Wrong place, wrong time?’

  ‘Well, a bit more to it than that. I was set up. Everyone knew I had Mia’s backpack, and she’d told me to drop it off at that bloke’s address. Hey presto, police raid. Somebody wanted a fall guy. House was full of gear, nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Gear?’

  ‘You name it. Stolen shit, drugs. I didn’t really have time for a good look round but I got the picture. I mean, there’s always been crime around the estate. People with spare rooms full of Xboxes and whatnot. But this was on a way bigger scale than anything I’ve seen before.’

  ‘Who would do that to you?’

  ‘I’ve got my theories. Can’t prove any of them though.’

  ‘That’s so awful. Leo, you must let me help you. See if I can find anything out.’

  He laid her back down and leant over her, playing with her hair.

  ‘You’re sweet, Jen,’ he said. His breath tickled her skin. She wanted to pull him down in a bear hug and snog him to death. ‘But there’s nothing you can do. Except what you’re doing. Hide me here until … I dunno.’ He shut his eyes for a few seconds. ‘Just hide me here. And let me have my wicked way with you.’

  ‘You aren’t wicked,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet, babe,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. But I’m looking forward to showing you.’

  She swallowed, overcome by her horrible tenderness towards him again.

  ‘This is a mess,’ she said.

  ‘And a half,’ he agreed. ‘But we can make it go away. I can make it all go away for you, Jen. I can make you feel all right.’

  Chapter Four

  He had made her feel more than all right, all night.

  Now, in the car, on the way to visit Auntie Jean while the kitchen fitters fitted on, she was feeling the aftereffects.

  Her eyes were scratchy, her head was light, every tug on the gearstick was painful and she was sore. But God, it was worth it. Every twinge and wince brought back a flood of luxurious memory, of some dirty, delicious thing Leonardo had done to her. I’ve been seduced, she thought, and the words made her squirm with pleasure.

  She tried to imagine what Deano would think if he knew she had let some Bledburn estate hood do all those things to her. God, what would the papers say? What a field day they could have.

  Shuddering, she turned off the main arterial road heading eastwards out of town and found herself swiftly in a dense maze of red brick. This was where she had grown up.

  The estate had never been a glamorous place, but it had gone even further to seed since she had walked these streets. Far more abandoned shopping trolleys and mattresses than she remembered, fewer neatly kept front gardens. Curtains and blinds were almost uniformly drawn against the surrounding gloom. People here were under siege, she thought.

  Boozemasters was still popular, though. In the little concrete precinct where it stood, people with dogs and cans of strong cider sat waiting to be moved on by the local PCSOs. If they dared.

  The only cheering feature of the whole place was the kids, everywhere, on scooters, on bikes, on skateboards, in pushchairs, all hell-bent on squeezing some joyful juice out of their grim environment.

  Fair p
lay to them, thought Jenna. I was one of them, once.

  And so was Leonardo.

  He would have been one of the skaters, or perhaps he would have had a BMX bike. He would have hightailed around the streets in a back-to-front baseball cap listening to Blink 182 on his headphones, hand-drawn ‘tattoos’ all the way up his arms, swigging from a bottle of some blue energy drink.

  Exactly the kind of boy she used to wrinkle her nose at.

  Auntie Jean’s house was just as she remembered it. The sloping front garden had a row of gnomes at the top, fronting an array of flowering tubs. The door and window frames were smartly painted, almost in defiance of the drab, splintering versions on either side. Her old house, next door had electricity and water meter boxes on the wall now, their doors hanging off the hinges. An abandoned pink scooter lay on the front lawn and the wheelie bin had fallen on its side, disgorging bursting black plastic bags.

  Another child in her old bedroom.

  The thought made her shiver.

  She parked the car and hurried up the steps to Auntie Jean’s front door. Next door, the front window blind twitched.

  It took a long time for Auntie Jean to make it out to the passage from her kitchen and, by the time she opened up, a small knot of children had gathered by the front wall.

  ‘Is that ’er, like?’

  ‘She don’t look like she does on TV.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s ’er?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s her old house.’

  Auntie Jean came to the rescue, ushering her into her little front room. She still had the same gas fire on the wall, the same wallpaper, the same dark carpet. The flatscreen TV and a fishtank seemed to be the only new features.

  ‘Sit down, love, I’ll get you a cup of tea,’ said Jean, but Jenna didn’t take a place on the plastic-covered chintz sofa.

  ‘Oh, let me do it,’ said Jenna, realising too late that she had made the cardinal mistake of offending a Bledburner’s sense of independence.

  ‘No, no, no. I might be ancient but I can manage a kettle, love. Go on with you.’

  ‘I didn’t mean …’ said Jenna, but Jean flapped a hand and shuffled out to the kitchen, returning minutes later with a tea tray.

  ‘Two for one at the supermarket, these biscuits,’ she remarked, offering a plate of pink wafers. ‘Your favourite, they were, do you remember?’

  Jenna laughed. ‘Jean, I was six.’

  ‘Ah, you never grow out of pink wafers.’

  She took one, mentally crossing that evening’s treat of Greek yogurt with berries off her list. These would cancel them out.

  ‘So, how are you?’ she asked, pouring her milk. ‘Do you get out much these days?’

  ‘Down the club for bingo on a Saturday night. There ain’t much else going off. I don’t like to be out after dark these days.’

  ‘Do you still see your old mates down there? What were they called? Di? And Lynda?’

  ‘Oh yes, they’re still about. Do you remember Sheila Tarbuck, though? She died, couple of years back.’ Jean leant forward. ‘Suicide,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh God, how awful. She had kids, didn’t she? A little bit younger than me?’

  ‘Little girl, Mia, broke her heart.’

  Jenna took a sharp breath and gripped her teacup tight.

  ‘Mia Tarbuck?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Jean looked curious. ‘You wouldn’t have known her. She was still a nipper when you went off to London.’

  ‘No. Sad, though. Does she still live around here? Mia?’

  ‘Here, there and everywhere. Into the drugs, ooh, terrible. What a shame, she’s a lovely girl. Used to be so pretty. Now she’s into all kinds, got a boyfriend on the run from the police.’ Jean lapsed into tutting.

  ‘Sounds like it’s all been going off here. Who’s the boyfriend?’

  Jean pursed her lips.

  ‘Kathy Watson’s boy. Bad blood there, mark my words. She weren’t no good, either.’

  Jenna racked her brains, trying to recall who Kathy Watson might have been.

  ‘Was Kathy Watson the one—?’

  ‘Ooh, you’d know her if you saw her, love. Used to be down the club every night in that silver dress, hardly anything to it. Slow-dancing with all the married men.’

  God, yes, I remember.

  ‘Nobody knows who the lad’s father is. Could be one of any number of fellas. Hardly surprising he turned out the way he did.’

  ‘What’s his name, then?’

  ‘Jason Watson. Bad lot. He was in all the papers. Caught red-handed but got away from the coppers. A few weeks back, it were. A wanted man.’

  ‘Is there a reward?’

  Jean shrugged.

  ‘Nobody’s got the money round here, love. I expect he’s long gone by now, anyway.’

  ‘But the girl, Mia, is still on the estate?’

  ‘I don’t know. I try to keep out of it all.’ Jean sighed. ‘Almost makes me glad I was never able to have kids of me own, seeing what they’ve all come to. Why can’t they look to people like you and Deano instead of all these bloody drug dealers? I don’t know.’

  ‘They’ve no hope,’ Jenna suggested. ‘Nothing to aim for but pipe dreams and cartoon bling.’

  ‘Eh? Cartoon bling? What’s that, then, love?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘This place has lost its heart,’ said Jean. ‘It were so different, once. Do you remember?’

  The rest of the visit was taken up with nostalgia about the thriving social scene of thirty years ago and more, the days before Leonardo – before Jason – was even born.

  Jenna didn’t dare refer back to the subject for fear of being seen to take too deep an interest, but she kept the names deep in her heart, ready to be brought out later. Jason Watson. Mia Tarbuck. Ready for the Google treatment, as soon as she could get on to her phone.

  By the time she left Auntie Jean’s, there was a large-ish mob swelling on the pavement and sitting on the wall.

  ‘Jenna Diamond,’ shouted one child, leading to a general repetition of her name that rang around the street. They massed around her, an unkempt swarm, smelling of bubble gum and dirt.

  ‘Why ain’t you in America no more?’ asked one little girl. ‘’Ave you left Talent Team?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Where’s Deano Diamond?’

  ‘Are you living back here now?’

  She blocked all the questions with an upraised palm and a shake of her head.

  ‘Let me past, please,’ she said. ‘Let me pass and I promise I’ll come and do a talk at your school.’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘Lame!’

  Opinion seemed to be divided here, the girls being keener on this suggestion than the boys in general. Jenna made a slow but steady progress through the jostle, but when she got to her car, the wing mirrors were bent and there was a crack on the windscreen as if a piece of gravel had flown up from the road and hit it.

  ‘Who did this?’ she demanded, but laughter and shrugs were her only reply. A couple of older boys smirked over the handlebars of their bikes. She thought, vividly and suddenly, of Leonardo. He would have been one of them, once.

  ‘You want to watch yourselves,’ she said. ‘Keep out of trouble. Once you’re in, you’re in and it gets harder and harder to stop.’

  ‘What are you, a Fed?’ asked one in disgust.

  She climbed inside the car and turned the key in the ignition. Even then, it was some time before the kids would get out of the way enough for her to drive off.

  Jenna didn’t want to admit it to herself, but she was a bit shaken.

  Don’t be daft. It’s just kids. You were one, once. You aren’t going to let a bunch of snotty kids scare you off the streets where you grew up, are you?

  Back at the house, the kitchen fitters were piling back into their van, ready to leave for the day.

  ‘Are you almost done?’ she asked, bumping into the last at the gate.

  ‘Another day should do it,’ he
said. ‘Got the worktops fitted now – it’s looking good.’

  She went straight up to the attic, where she found a shirtless Leonardo crouching down to brush in the street level detail of his latest work.

  He didn’t turn around, though he must have heard the attic door creak and slap down on the boards. She watched him, his dark hair brushing his bare shoulders, his spare, strong frame, the little gap in his jeans she could put a finger in and tug to tighten them over his abdomen. He was barefoot and the soles of his feet were filthy.

  ‘Evening, Jason,’ she said, once he had put the brush in his jam jar of water.

  He still didn’t turn but she saw his shoulders tense.

  ‘Who’ve you been talking to?’

  ‘My old next-door neighbour. Went round for tea.’

  He stood up and turned, facing her down.

  ‘So, did you find out what you wanted to know?’ he asked tonelessly.

  ‘Only what I already knew. Except your name. I didn’t know that.’

  ‘You didn’t need to know.’

  ‘But, Jason,’ she said, liking the name as she spoke it, thinking it more suitable than the ridiculous Leonardo. ‘Why shouldn’t I know it?’

  ‘I liked being who I am here. I liked having no past and no future, just my art and my woman. Now it’s spoiled.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. How could that have lasted anyway? We have to live in the world.’ She felt a flutter at the pit of her stomach, all the same, at being described as his woman.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ he said, stubborn and grim-faced. ‘What’s the fucking world got to do with us?’

  ‘What,’ she said tentatively, ‘if I were to find Mia? If I were to find out what really happened and who was really responsible for what went on in that house?’

  ‘Oh, no, leave it,’ he said, shaking his head and striding towards her. He caught her arms in his hands and held them to her sides. ‘You can’t get involved, Jen. Don’t go near this.’

  ‘But if you could be vindicated—’

  ‘It won’t happen. All that will happen is that you’ll put yourself at risk. Stay away from those people, Jen. Even Mia. It’s too late for her. It’s not too late for you.’