‘Well, don’t turn around and say I didn’t warn you,’ she huffs.
My mother is so furious with me she refuses to come with me to the airport.
Shane had led me to believe that someone holding a placard would be picking me up at Heathrow airport. So it is a great shock to see him standing there with a massive bunch of flowers and an even bigger pink teddy bear. I don’t run into his arms. I stop so suddenly the person behind bangs into me, and I stare at the sight he makes. All at once he is cute, ridiculously edible, and heart-stoppingly gorgeous.
He crooks his finger at me so I rush to him and hug him while he holds the big bear and flowers at the sides of his body.
‘A teddy bear?’ I ask.
‘It’s Layla’s idea,’ he confesses sheepishly.
I laugh. ‘Your sister thought you should buy me a teddy bear?’
‘Yup, I get it.’ He spots a little girl standing nearby and he holds the bear out to her. ‘Want this?’ he asks.
The girl nods big-eyed and immediately takes it.
Her mother says, ‘Oh, that’s so kind of you. Thank you.’
‘No problem,’ he says and turns to me. ‘God, I’ve missed you. I actually can’t wait to get inside you.’
And that is what he does. We get into the car and, halfway to his grandfather’s home, we stop on a small country lane where he rips my panties off and gets inside me … perfection!
His grandfather’s home is a small bungalow with tarmac outside, and chintz curtains, lace covered armchairs, and a patterned carpet inside. His grandmother is a grey woman who has the cowed, beaten eyes of someone who has spent some of her teenage life and her entire adult life with a bully. A woman who lives like a silent ghost, terrified of provoking her husband’s rage, just for the crime of existing.
She is in the kitchen making a famous Romany dish that Shane tells me is called Jimmy Grey. Beefsteak, liver, chicken and pork, onions and swede, shallow fried in animal fat.
As a race, the Romany gypsies are proud people. They eat, sleep, grieve, and celebrate only with their own kind. Jealously guarding themselves from infiltration by non-gypsies, they neither trust nor like the ways of others. Perhaps their mistrust of other races comes from centuries of persecution and hatred they have suffered no matter where they go. As soon as I am brought into her presence, I feel that instant wariness and mistrust.
I am a gorger, a non gypsy.
So I hold back too, and just watch the large personalities around me set about preparing for the death of one of theirs. After introducing me around to a whole bunch of uncles, aunties and cousins, Shane takes me into the bedroom.
Death is already in the room, in the smell and the odd stillness. There are fresh wild flowers in a vase by the bedside, and candles have been lit even though it is in the middle of the afternoon The old man must have been large in his day, for even after more than a year of cancer eating through him he is still a big, strongly built man.
Under his bushy grey eyebrows he has fierce black eyes that alight on me. Shane brings me closer and he stares at me with his black eyes. I want to say something, but I am almost hypnotized by his strange stare. Silently, without having uttered a single word, he turns his face away after about a minute.
‘Come on,’ Shane whispers in my ear and we exit the room.
I exhale the breath I was holding. ‘That was weird,’ I say.
‘Yeah, who knows what is going through his head? Come on. I want you to meet my mother.’
Shane’s mother is outside drying clothes on a washing line.
‘Ma,’ Shane calls, and she turns and looks at us. There are clothes pegs in her mouth. She takes them out and holds them in her hand as we walk up to her.
‘Hello, Snow,’ she says, her eyes sliding over me. She is not overly friendly, but she is different from her mother and father. She has kindness in her eyes, and a deep love for her family.
‘Hello, Mrs. Eden. I’m sorry about your father,’ I say.
‘Don’t be sorry, my dear. It’ll be good for my mother. She’ll finally be free.’
‘If he was such a horrible man in life, why did your mother rush her whole family here?’ I ask Shane curiously.
‘Gypsies are superstitious people. The belief is that people can come back from the dead to wreak revenge on the living. So when someone is dying, their families, friends, acquaintances and even enemies come to them to ask for forgiveness and settle any strife, for fear of the mulo, a type of undead.
That afternoon Mickey passes away. The funeral is a massive affair. More than a thousand people travel from all over Britain to come to the old man’s funeral. He was a great boxer in his time and was highly regarded.