Diamond (6 page)

‘Mustn’t grumble,’ she said. ‘Mind, I’m not getting any younger and me arthritis has taken a turn. Got a new hip just last year.’

‘Oh dear, I hope it’s a good one.’

‘Marvellous what they can do these days. Made of rubber, it is.’

‘Mum’s fine. And Dad. Enjoying the Spanish sunshine all year round.’ She raised her voice a little; Auntie Jean (her long-time next-door neighbour, not her real aunt) struck her as a trifle hard of hearing. ‘Are you still at Shelley Road?’

‘I am. Got new windows and doors put in last month. The council are doing up the whole estate. Well, it’s that or knock it down, isn’t it? Ooh, the state of it now, love. You’d shake your head. You must come round for a cup of tea.’

‘Yes, I will. And you’ll have to come and visit me in my new house, once I’ve got it done up.’

‘Where’s that then? That new development out of town? Proper nice, those houses are. I’ve seen inside ’em. Our Michaela’s husband did the electrics.’

‘No, not there. Harville Hall.’

There was a silence.

‘Say, what, dear? I’m a bit deaf, these days.’

Jenna said it more clearly, conscious of curious nudges and murmurs of recognition going on around her.

‘What on earth are you living there for? You aren’t one of them, are you?’

‘I bought it.’

Auntie Jean shook her head. ‘I don’t know what the world’s come to sometimes. Well, don’t forget that cuppa. I must get on.’

And with that she moved away as fast as her arthritic knees could take her.

Jean’s husband had left her, when he couldn’t find work after the pit shut. He went to Manchester, looking for something, anything. He didn’t find work, but he did find another woman. Jenna remembered endless cups of very sweet tea in the back kitchen, Jean sobbing all over her mother then putting on lippy and going up the Mecca for bingo.

She hadn’t told her parents about buying Harville Hall because at the back of her mind she knew that it made her, in some obscure fashion, a traitor. As for lunching with Lawrence of that ilk, it would be considered completely beyond the pale.

What was she thinking?

She went to the counter, so lost in thought that she had to be told twice how much she owed. The checkout operator clearly recognised her, but didn’t say anything, to her relief.

Back at the Hall, Leonardo was still in the bath. She could hear the splosh of water and him singing, rather well, an old Robbie Williams number. Good old Robbie, she thought. Perhaps she should look him up?

She put the bags of clothes down and knocked on the door.

‘I’ve been shopping,’ she said. ‘There are some new clothes for you in the hall, if you want to change.’

Silence followed, then the thumping plunge of a substantially sized man standing up in the bath.

‘What the fuck are you buying me clothes for?’ he said.

‘That tracksuit was hurting my eyes,’ she replied primly. ‘Up to you. But they’re there if you want them. I’ll be downstairs. I’ve got a bottle of wine if you fancy a glass.’

She ran downstairs before he could object to anything else. She knew the local men were prickly buggers when you tried to offer them anything they might construe as charity. It seemed Leonardo had inherited that tendency. But how the hell was he going to buy anything for himself? He would just have to wear it. Literally.

She poured herself a glass of Merlot and she was sitting on the broad windowsill, sipping it and looking out into the weedy front garden, when Leonardo came into the room.

She almost double-took.

Jesus, he scrubbed up well. He scrubbed up a lot more than well.

His hair shone like polished conkers, matching his melting eyes. She wanted to go over and bury her nose in it, knowing it would smell divinely of her expensive shampoo. But that wasn’t all she wanted to do. His face, now clean and shaved, seemed to actually
shine
. It was pale but as full-lipped and high-cheekboned as some exotic, angelic creature painted by a Renaissance master. He reminded her of a portrait she’d seen by Pietro Perugino – an older version of that melancholy-eyed young man.

But he was taller, and broader, and undoubtedly fully developed, and she found herself transfixed by his forearms, sinewy and powerful – one of them sporting an amateurish tattoo that she couldn’t quite make out from this distance.

The clothes fitted well, having that tell-tale recently unfolded look such new garments always did. He had not put any socks on, though, and stood in the doorway barefoot, gripping the top of the splintering frame so that she could see his long, surprisingly delicate fingers
splayed across the peeled paintwork. His nails still bore little crescents of black deep down – paint, she supposed.

His stance was almost aggressively masculine, and she had to remember to breathe before saying, ‘Help yourself to wine.’

‘I’ll do, then, will I?’ he said, staying put for another moment.

She thought that he was displaying himself to her, but then she dismissed it. He was young and unearthly beautiful. What would he want with her?

‘The clothes fit well,’ was all she could come up with.

‘Yeah. Not sure they’re my style but …’

‘What is your style?’

She smiled and he walked over to where the wine bottle stood on the floor with an empty glass beside it.

‘Ghetto,’ he said shortly, picking up the bottle. ‘Not so fabulous.’

I don’t know about that
.

‘I’m not sure if I like wine,’ he said, sniffing at the bottle neck. ‘Never had it before.’

‘Never? Seriously?’

‘Nope. I’m a superstrength lager man, myself. As long as it’s on special.’ He poured himself a glass. ‘Gets you the most pissed for the cheapest price,’ he elaborated, with a combative look in her direction.

He was trying to tell her who he was, she realised. He was giving her a get-out clause.
I am who I am. Take it or leave it
.

‘Wine is nice. I don’t usually indulge, but I can call this a housewarming, I suppose. Try it. Go on.’

‘Why don’t you?’ he asked, filling his glass to the brim.
‘Don’t you like drinking?’ He had to sip a bit off the top to prevent spilling it.

‘I like it. I just try not to like it too much.’

She came over and sat on the mattress, hoping he would do the same.

He did.

‘Oh yeah, you’re into all that Hollywood shit, I suppose?’ he said. ‘Stupid diets and all that. Mountains of speed so you’re never hungry.’

‘I don’t take drugs,’ she said, primly. ‘You see a lot of what they can do in my line.’

‘My line too. Funny, that.’ He sounded angry, but he mellowed a little in continuing. ‘I’m with you, mind. Can’t be arsed with ’em. They’ve got half the lads round here walking about like zombies. We don’t need zombies round here. We’re fucked enough as it is.’

He looked sad and haunted, more like the renaissance picture than ever.

‘So, do you like it?’ she asked, nodding at the wine glass.

‘What? Oh. Yeah, it’s all right. Reminds me of Purple Rain Mad Dog.’

‘God, it’s years since I tasted that!’ Jenna laughed. ‘Takes me back to my teenage days, sitting on the wall outside Boozemasters.’

‘You used to do that, too? Half the lads from school still do. Fucking wasters.’

‘It was the place to be. God knows why. A crappy old concrete shopping precinct that howled with wind in the winter and baked in the summer. We thought we were it, sitting there with our cider and cigs and a big old boombox playing The Prodigy.’

Leonardo laughed, genuinely rather than sarcastically for the first time, and the sound warmed Jenna all over.

‘Seriously, you? I can’t see it.’

‘Why not? Am I so old and past it?’

‘Not at all,’ he said, and there was something in the way he said it that made Jenna look away so he couldn’t see the heat rising to her cheeks.

‘It was twenty years ago,’ she said. ‘A lot of water under that bridge since then.’

‘I just meant that – you know – you’re a TV personality and all that. You’ve got stylists and PAs and whatnot. But you used to pose around the shops just like the girls I were at school with. None of them went to Hollywood. A few in Holloway, though.’

‘What about Mia?’ She was looking at the bad tattoo on his forearm. ‘Where did she go?’

He turned his arm inward, shielding the ink from her eyes.

She wished she hadn’t said it. He was tense now, and defensive.

‘If I knew that,’ he said, his voice jagged, ‘I wouldn’t be here now.’

He downed the glass in one and started coughing.

‘Fuck, it’s stronger than you think, isn’t it?’

She waited for him to catch a breath, then changed the subject.

‘Someone must have taught you to paint.’

‘I told you. I dropped out of GCSE Art. I taught myself. Bit of spray-can work at the youth club, some stuff I was made to do after I got into trouble with the law. There’s a mural at one of the old people’s homes that I did. Got in the local rag for that. But they had to mention I was doing it as community service.’

‘What sort of trouble were you in?’

‘Stupid stuff. Angry stupid. Getting into fights and whatnot. I’ve calmed down a lot now. Was thinking of going to night school, doing an arts foundation course. Oh well. Mind if I have another?’

‘Help yourself. What sort of trouble are you in now?’

‘I was fitted up. Walked into a house, bang, police raid, I’m found with drugs worth fifty thousand pounds in my backpack.’

‘What?’

‘It wasn’t even my backpack.’

‘Whose was it?’

‘Mia’s.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I got away, just legged it before they could cuff me. No way am I doing time for some other bastard.’

‘If you didn’t do it, can’t you go to the police and tell them?’

‘No way, they’ll bang me up before I can say what’s what. I’ve got form. That’s why I was set up. I’m easy. I’ve got a guilty face as far as everyone round here’s concerned. No questions asked.’

‘But if you didn’t—’

‘Jenna,’ he said, loudly and emphatically, and her name on his lips blew all her words out of her brain. ‘I was caught with the stuff. That’s what they call evidence. I’ve got a bad record and no fixed abode. I can say I wasn’t there and I didn’t know anything about it till my face turns blue. They’ll still have me for it.’

‘What about Mia?’ she whispered.

‘She didn’t know any more than I did. She was looking after the backpack for a friend. Asked me to take it back to
this bloke’s flat while she went to the shops because it was too heavy to lug around.’

‘Seems to me that Mia holds the key to all this. But you say she’s gone missing?’

‘I don’t know where she is and I wouldn’t have her dragged into it if I did. It’s not her fault. Best we can all do is lie low and wait for the truth to come out.’

‘If it ever does.’

‘Someone stood to make a lot of money there, and they’ll want to collect. With any luck they’ll come out of the woodwork, make a mistake, get caught.’

‘I want to look into it. It seems wrong that you’re stuck in hiding while the real culprits are at large.’

‘Jen, I really wouldn’t. There are people in Bledburn now … Well, it’s not like it were when you lived here, that’s all. You don’t want to know these people.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything risky. But I might ask a few questions, you know, discreetly.’

‘You can’t mention me. You can’t draw attention. I’m not fuckin’ joking.’

‘All right.’ He was shaking a little, and it made her want to touch him, soothe him. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll leave it. For now.’

‘Look, thanks, all right,’ he said, turning haunted eyes to her.

‘It’s OK,’ she said.

‘No, I really owe you, big time. Anyone else would have had the police in by now.’

‘Well, I don’t need the extra publicity. And besides, I believe you when you say you were set up. I believe you because I want to believe you, because it would hurt me to see your stunning talent taken away from the world and shut in prison.’

‘Well, I do owe you, and I’ll work on your house, do whatever you want, until it’s paid off.’

‘Whatever I want, eh?’ Jenna topped up his glass, feeling that the wine was going to her head much too quickly. Why had she said that? It sounded as if she was propositioning him in a terribly sleazy way.

He didn’t seem to take offence, though – in fact, he played along.

‘Hmm, whatever you want,’ he repeated. ‘And I think you’re a demanding woman.’

This was far too close to blatant flirtation for safety, and yet she couldn’t stop herself.

‘I’m not demanding,’ she said. ‘But I do have very high standards.’

‘I don’t get what I’m doing here then,’ he said, but he held her eyes and she felt pinned down by him, the space between them thick with attraction.

If she wasn’t careful she was going to …

‘Mia is your girlfriend, then?’ she said. Phew. Disaster averted.

He bit that pouty lower lip of his.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But we were going through a rocky patch. We were this close to calling it a day. She changed a lot over this past year. Keeping secrets from me. Going out all night and saying she’d passed out on a mate’s couch. But I know she didn’t.’

‘Are you sure she wasn’t involved with this drug thing?’

‘She wouldn’t stoop that low. I know her, Jen, she wouldn’t.’

He looked down at his hands for a moment, and Jenna watched his expression travel through stages from dark to light until he met her eye with a cheeky glint and said,
‘Anyway, as the smooth bastards in the flicks always say, enough about me. Let’s talk about you.’

Jenna was still processing the fact that he’d called her
Jen
, something nobody had done in a long time. For years now it had been Jenna or Ms Diamond or Ma’am. Deano’s pet name for her had been Dyno, short for Dynamo Diamond. It had pleased him – Deano and Dyno: the dream team. But lately it had been Jenna. Or ‘you hard-faced bitch’.

‘There’s nothing to say about me,’ she said nervously. ‘It’s all in the tabloids anyway.’

‘I don’t read that shit. And how can you say that? Fuck me. You and Deano Diamond are the only interesting people to come out of Bledburn, ever. You were held up to us at school as examples – the reasons why we should work hard and get our exams.’