“Where did you get it, Dean?”
“Brighton.”
“Where did you get it?”
“So someone nicked it and sold it on to the shop in Brighton. How was I to know?”
Sheena just goes on gazing at him and he feels like something’s about to burst inside.
“She lost the ring on Thursday. Which is when you gave it to me. I’m not stupid. I can add up.”
“Well, fucking add up, then. What do I care?”
He looks round the room, and the thing inside is going to burst. His eyes are hot, his palms are sticky. He wants to hurt someone. His eyes fall on the toy fort.
“Fucking stupid kid’s toy,” he says.
He picks it up off the table and throws it down hard on the floor. The guard tower snaps off. Plastic soldiers scatter over the carpet. He stamps on the fort, crushing it. Stamps again and again. Sheena just watches.
The fort breaks easily, it’s only cheap matchboard. Soon it’s nothing but a mess of fragments. He stops stamping on it, stands staring down at the wreckage, breathing hard. The thing inside still hasn’t burst.
“You done?” says Sheena.
“Now you listen to me,” says Sheena. “My boy’s in hospital because he was stupid, and he’s not going to be walking for three months. That’s enough stupid for me, all right? I don’t need it from you. Now tell me where you got the ring.”
Dean throws himself down onto the couch, and lies there face down.
“Nicked it,” he says to the cushions.
“You nicked it.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a bloody fool, Dean Keeley. What else did you take?”
“Nothing.”
“What other jobs have you done that I don’t know about?”
“Nothing.”
“Just the one house? Just the ring?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a bloody fool, Dean Keeley. You don’t go nicking stuff, you hear me? And if you do, you don’t give it to me so I can wear it and the woman who lost it sees it on my hand.”
Dean groans into the cushion.
“What’s that?” says Sheena.
“My fucking luck,” says Dean.
“Right,” says Sheena. “You’re right about that. You got lucky, you did. Your stroke of luck was it was her daughter’s car Chipper hit, so she’s sorry for me. Otherwise you’d be answering questions down the station, wouldn’t you? So you can thank your stars you caught a bit of luck, you can.”
Dean groans again.
“Now you clear up this mess on the floor.”
She removes herself to the kitchen.
Left alone, Dean can no longer hold down the feeling. He gives a great gulping sob and starts to cry, the tears stinging his eyes, the sobs wrenching his chest. He wants to howl, so he pushes one fist into his mouth to block the sound. Then, still sobbing, his nose now running, he gets off the couch onto his knees on the floor, and starts picking up the pieces of the smashed fort.
When his hands are full he looks round blinking for somewhere to dump the debris. There’s a wastepaper basket by the TV but it’s too small. So he gets up and goes out through the conservatory to the garden and makes a pile on the pavers outside. He has a notion that he’ll burn it later.
Back and forth he goes, clearing every last little stick. Sheena likes a job done properly. He picks up the plastic soldiers too, throws them onto the pile. Then he finds Brad, some distance away from the others.
Brad wouldn’t have broken down like this. Brad would’ve given a shrug and said, “Win some, lose some.” This is what Brad does when a mission ends: he checks the damage, he cleans up any wounds, he rests. And then he moves on. He doesn’t look back. Never look back.
Dean pushes the plastic soldier into his jeans pocket and goes out through the conservatory door, closing it softly behind him. He jumps the fence at the bottom of the garden and walks away fast down the road. Past the allotments, up the narrow path into the trees. Some kids on bikes messing about on the earth bank. He pays no attention, walks on. Past the gleam of low water in the ditch and out into the meadow, to the five-barred gate, to the kissing gate. Here he sinks down onto the grass and lowers his head, and sobs like a baby.
Never cried this way when Dad belted me. Never cried this way when I got sent down.
He pulls the plastic soldier out of his pocket and stands it up, facing him.
“Can’t do it, mate,” he says. “Can’t do it on my own.”
Someone is coming. He looks up. It’s Sheena.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
“Me too,” says Sheena. “I’m sorry too.”
“It’s okay. I’ll go.”
“Go? Where have you got to go to?”
“Don’t know,” says Dean. “Not your problem.”
His mouth feels as if it’s full of glue and the words come out with difficulty.
“I don’t want you to go. I want you to stop behaving like a bloody fool.”
“Did it for you,” he says, very low. But she hears him.
“You think that makes it all right?”
But he can hear it in her voice. It does make it all right. There’s that old tenderness come back. A rush of sweet relief flows through him. If Sheena will stick by me, nothing else matters.
“Did it so we could be married,” he says.
“That doesn’t make stealing right, babe.”
“You weren’t supposed to know.”
“You know what, Deanie? I didn’t mind one bit giving that ring back. It felt like that was the only reason Chipper didn’t die. They told me at the hospital he was lucky to be alive. So she got her ring back, and I got my boy back.”
“Talk about luck.”
“It’s not luck, babe. It’s meant. These things don’t go the way they do for no reason. Now come here. Give me a cuddle.”
He gets up and goes into her soft white arms and presses her close, smelling her sweet warm smell.
“Least you didn’t nick the sunset,” she says.
That makes him smile.
“Now wipe your nose. We’re going out.”
“We’re going to the hospital to see how Chipper’s coming along. But we’re stopping at the shops on the way.”
They drive out in Dean’s van and park in the Priory car park. Sheena leads Dean over Cliffe Bridge past the Big Issue seller and his dog to Argos on the far side.
“What do we want in Argos?” he says.
“You know what we want,” says Sheena.
She opens the catalog at the jewelry section and finds the pages of rings. Dean is silent, watching her as she searches the plastic-coated pages. His heart is too full for words.
Sheena pulls over an order form and picks up one of the stubby pens, made specially short so no one will want to steal them.
“This is what we need,” she says. “This is perfect.”
It’s a nine-carat-gold ruby-and-diamond heart ring. It costs £49.99. Not real ruby and diamond, of course. They call it “created ruby and diamond.”
“Created just for us,” says Sheena.
There’s a bundle of plastic rings by the counter you use for sizing your finger. Then you wait your turn in the queue to order. Then you wait for the item to be brought up from the stockroom. Throughout this process Dean says nothing. He assumed their engagement ended when the stolen ring was given back to its true owner. Now here comes another ring.
He can’t believe Sheena’s generosity. She hasn’t said she forgives him but here she is buying another ring.
It comes in a little hinged plastic box. They take it out of the shop into the sunlight. The street is crowded with Saturday shoppers. They find a bench on the bridge by the Big Issue seller and sit down side by side. Sheena gives Dean the box, and he takes out the ring.
“You haven’t changed your mind?”
“No,” she says.
“Do I go down on my knee again?”
“No. You’ve done that bit.”
“Here it is, then.”
“Here it is, then?” She laughs as she repeats his words back at him. “Is that the best you can do?”
“It isn’t as good as the other one,” says Dean, “and I haven’t even paid for it, but my love’s the same. More, even.”
“That’s better.”
She puts the ring on her ring finger. Then they kiss.
“All right for some,” says the Big Issue seller. “All I’ve got is a bloody dog.”