‘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.’