He wouldn’t let go and she couldn’t elude him, but both of them heard the footsteps on the stairs, and the opening of the door.
‘What’s …?’
Lawrence let go of Jenna as a squad of police officers burst into the house, truncheons drawn.
‘In here.’ Kayley’s voice was high-pitched and urgent. ‘He’s got Jenna, in here.’
He was surrounded. There was nothing for him to do but to surrender himself into custody.
‘This isn’t over,’ he snarled to Jenna as they led him off.
‘No,’ she shouted after him. ‘I’ll be giving evidence at your trial.’
There were more statements to be taken, heels to be kicked at the police station, photos to be papped, disgusting cups of coffee to be drunk, but eventually the story seemed to be straight, and understood in everyone’s minds, and Jenna was sent back home.
Jason was released the next day.
Jenna’s PR had been on the phone until she had earache from the number of entreaties not to go and meet him from prison, but she ignored them all.
The photographers were lined up along the road on either side of the prison gates. Jenna stayed in her car, parked a few hundred yards away, watching the great grey gates between the high blank red brick walls. There really was something about a prison that struck a unique kind of horror into the heart, she thought. And Jason had not just been observing it from a distance – he had been in there, inside those cold walls with their barred windows.
At least it was only for a couple of days. He had been prepared for a lot longer.
Her hands flew to her handbag, and a strange flame rose from her stomach to her throat as she saw movement at the gate. It was being opened.
She lunged for the door handle and her eyes filled with tears at the first sight of Jason, impossibly small in front of those huge grey spikes, accompanied by a uniformed officer who stood looking after Jason as he pulled his cap down over his face to hide from the press.
He ran the gauntlet of them, and at the end he found Jenna, who had abandoned her resolve to wait in the car until he found her and bounded out on to the tarmac, shouting his name.
‘Jen,’ he cried, spotting her.
The feel of him, his reality, in her arms again, lifted a burden she hadn’t even been fully aware of. She felt light again, and capable of anything. There was nothing that could spoil this, nothing, ever.
‘I love you,’ she said, and he repeated the words back to her before preventing further utterances by sealing her mouth up with a long, extravagant, passionate and very public kiss.
‘Tomorrow’s front page,’ she whispered, breaking apart.
They had somehow staggered, lips still locked, across the forecourt to the car, in a hail of click-click-clicks.
‘Who cares?’ he said. ‘They can print what they like. Perhaps it’s just as well they’re here.’
‘Oh?’
‘Otherwise I might have you right here, up against this car.’
She shivered with the thrill, letting him kiss her again with her back to the car door and his jeans-clad erection grinding into her, before they were interrupted by something other than the relentless photographing.
‘Our Jay! Hello! Remember me?’
He buried his face in Jenna’s neck, breathing a heavy sigh into it, before straightening up and turning to the voice.
‘Mum,’ he said. ‘Have you met Jenna?’
‘We have met,’ she said, eyeing Jenna dubiously. ‘She never said you two were …’
‘He was supposed to be in hiding,’ said Jenna. ‘Or I would have mentioned it. I didn’t want to lie to you.’
‘You could have said he was alive, at least! I was in bits.’