‘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.