Joni, Hackney, 1:23 p.m.
Joni Tripton reached for the locket that hung reliably at her neck and crossed herself. Then she sent up a swift and silent prayer to any deities generous enough to ignore the sacrilegious streak that had seen her kicked out of Sister Mary Magdalene’s School for Gifted Teenagers over a decade ago. And almost every institution she’d been dragged, cajoled or stumbled into by accident ever since.
She wasn’t asking for much. Not salvation; she was pretty sure she didn’t deserve it. Not even a miracle to get her out of this pickle.
Just one thing.
Please let the lumpen hulk she’d spied through the peephole buy her bluff.
Please let him believe the tinny barking coming from the record player at her left was a drooling, homicidal Alsatian. Not a lame special effect created by dragging the needle over the barking and howling part of that great Fishbone classic ‘Bonin’ in the Boneyard’. Joni firmly believed there were few problems the right vinyl could not fix.
Unfortunately, this seemed to be one of them. She crossed herself again.
Crouched underneath her grandma’s Queen Anne dining table, Joni stroked its silky–shiny legs and whispered soothing things into Mahatma’s ear. The tiny Persian kitten, recently liberated from a rubbish skip, should have been safely delivered to the animal shelter by now, instead of being a bit player in a hostage drama.
Desmond Tutu, her best friend, required no such comforting. He’d had enough experience of Joni’s chaotic life, and had quickly become the toughest ferret in Hackney. She patted him through the pocket of her cardigan and thanked the Rodent God for his broad shoulders.
As the pounding continued, her thoughts returned to the hulk.
He was probably a stray too, Joni thought. Why else would you become a kneecapper?
The banging stopped for a moment, and she luxuriated in the hope that the would-be kneecapper was gone. But then it began again. The door, recently the proud recipient of a new deadlock, suddenly seemed as insubstantial as fairy floss.
At the thought of the deadlock, and the woman who had bought it, a sharp spike of pain accomplished what Fishbone, Mahatma and the Queen Anne hadn’t. It drowned out the yammering fear that had been beating a kettledrum solo inside Joni since the violent banging had begun (she checked her watch) six minutes ago.
The pain spike ripped through soft skin and tissue, traced a fiery arc around her kidneys, and took up residence somewhere below her stomach, in a hollow space shaped like G.
G. So practical and generous. And now so dead.
It was exactly how Joni felt every time a Tory won high office. A giddy shift in the earth’s axis that made everything not quite right, but that no-one else seemed to notice. The world turned. People lived their lives: babies were born, stocks traded and virgins deflowered. But her grandmother was dead.
And now Joni had no-one, and nothing would ever be the same for her again.
She was an orphan. Well, as good as. The two hopeless cases who had created her in a moment of reprised madness definitely did not count.
A thousand images flickered through Joni’s overheated brain as a bout of thunderous knocking again rocked the apartment and chased her out of the sad, sticky mud in which she was mentally wallowing.
She could feel the lacy threads of the almost-bald carpet through her tights, and see the midday sun making cloud shapes on its brown hide.
Frankie would be disgusted that even facing down a very real threat to life and limb, Joni was incapable of getting it together sufficiently to form a plan more sophisticated than hide and fake dog noises. Even after seven years without her sister, Joni could almost hear Frankie saying in her beautiful alto that success required a little more than just showing up.
But what?
Joni wondered if Frankie had gone today. Probably. Frankie and G had been close, too. They’d had Mondays and Countdown. Joni and G had had Sundays. Big Brother. The eviction show.
G, the game show omnivore, had loved both programs, like she’d loved both girls. G would have known what to do right now.
Joni could remember when G had a stall at Columbia Road, although she’d given it up fifteen years ago. Joni had loved the colour and chaos of the flower market. She would go there with G when her father was on weekend manoeuvres and her mother was crawling back from the latest overnight peace vigil.
One particular spring morning had always stuck in her head.
G had been holding court from an awning that was on four spindly poles and sheltered a riot of bloom. Listening to G’s saucy East-End pitch, Joni almost believed flowers really could cure ‘ailing marriages, grieving hearts and maladies of the spirit’.
Joni wandered through the market, never straying beyond G’s sight-line, as per her instructions, fascinated by the bazaar. When Joni was explaining to a group of other girls that G had placed an enchanted spell on her favourite dolly, Rosie, a tussle had ensued. Joni had dashed back to the omnipotent G, confident in her ability to reattach Rosie’s head to her pretty shoulders.
G, with wild red blooms stuck behind each ear, had carefully ministered to the doll, her pink tongue protruding thoughtfully from a mouth criss-crossed with wrinkles. But even after the surgery, a slight fissure remained on Rosie’s delicate nape.
‘It won’t do, will it?’
Joni shook her head, agreeing with G.
‘Only one thing for it.’ G had swiftly whipped a beautiful red scarf from her neck, and fastened it into a French plait around Rosie’s neck. ‘Perfect,’ she’d clucked, satisfied. Joni had smiled, knowing G really could fix anything.
But not now. As Joni waited for the sick splintering of timber that was sure to be the next step in this farce, she felt like one of the Three Little Pigs, huddling inside a house of twigs as the Big Bad Wolf did his crazy lupine thing outside.
She sighed. She’d never liked hairy men.
Joni stifled the urge to giggle, imagining how she and the two strays looked, huddling together under a piece of furniture that had, no doubt, seen its share of violence and wouldn’t bat an eyelid should they be murdered amid its elegant legs.
She momentarily stopped ministering to the vinyl when a voice outside her door replaced the relentless thudding.
‘Ms Tripton? Ms Tripton?’
She could have sworn, if she had not, albeit briefly, seen the man behind the door, that the voice belonged to some very sexy geography teacher.
Or perhaps a priest.
She’d had some experience with priests. They often had lovely voices.
Even when they were saying their school was really not the right place for you.
‘Ms Tripton. Arh … I think that you are there. I saw your … erhm … visitor leave a couple of moments ago. Really, it’s most urgent that I speak with you.’
Joni was so startled she leaped slightly, bumping the hard, bony ridge at the back of her head against the even harder underside of the Queen Anne.
‘Fuck.’
Mahatma, who had not uttered a squeak during the (she checked her watch) eight-minute siege, mewed sympathetically, as if sensing the danger had passed and it was now acceptable to offer condolences for banged heads.
‘Ms Tripton, is that you? Could you open the door, please?’
Joni wriggled out from under the glorious table, limped over to the door and checked the peephole, refusing to believe the evidence of her ears telling her the danger had passed.
But her eyes were right.
Maybe six foot two. Suit. Nice suit. And yes, there it was. Joining his head to his shoulders. A neck. Definitely a neck. This was definitely not the hulking thing of stone and bad manners who had first knocked on her door.
As Joni moved her hand towards the latch, she felt a cool gust of sheer adrenalin-fuelled relief fan her overheated cheeks. She didn’t mean to kiss him as soon as she opened the door – like a lot of things that month, it just happened. The fact that, unlike the kneecapper, he looked incapable of harming a hair on her Starburst-jube-green head was a major contributing factor to her reaction.
As horror at her actions coursed through Joni, she pulled away from him, assuring herself it had to have been a post traumatic stress-related reaction.
‘Sorry,’ she breathed, noting his surprise. She’d had no real time to register the clean, stark beauty of the man before she’d crushed her lips against his lovely full ones that tasted like chips with gravy. ‘I’m just so glad it was you.’
‘Er … have we met?’
He seemed genuinely confused as he looked her up and down, taking her in from toe to head: purple stockings, denim miniskirt, black bra top, brown angora cardigan, green hair. His face said: I think I’d remember.
But his mouth was telling a different story.
His lips had the lush, self-satisfied crease only usually achieved by crushed velvet and the recently well kissed. In short, they looked like they’d enjoyed it.
And no amount of have we met was going to help them look any other way.
‘Um …’ Joni considered him earnestly. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Erk, okay. So …’
‘Sorry,’ she stammered. She didn’t normally apologise, so she figured she must be evolving. ‘Um, look, let’s start again. I am Ms Tripton. Joni. Joni Tripton. And you’re …?’
‘Nigel Lathbourne,’ the kissed one recovered smoothly. ‘From Schuster, Schuster, Lathbourne and Lathbourne.’
‘Oh,’ Joni squeaked. Lawyers. Ugh, and I just kissed one. Albeit in a platonic, thank-you-so-much-for-not-kneecapping-me kind of way.
The people Joni owed didn’t normally use lawyers. Until they got banged up.
‘So, which one are you – Lathbourne or Lathbourne?’
‘Neither.’ The kissed one smiled. ‘One is my father. The other is my uncle.’
‘So you’re …?’
‘The shitkicker,’ Lathbourne Junior confirmed.
‘Ah,’ Joni breathed, more comfortable dealing with inferiority.
She began mentally to calculate how she could make it to the back entrance and down the fire stairs before the little arsehole served her the papers. Joni’s crappy track record with people in power had reached a new low since she’d been bequeathed the record shop from Greasy Phil and realised what manner of financial disaster it was in. The management skills she had learned from administering the shelter were no match for the parlous state of the record shop. And she knew so little about running a business for profit.
And while it was wonderful that the kneecapper had left, being kneecapped had only been the most immediate of her problems. She had a shop and a shelter to run, and right now both were barely walking.
‘Great.’ She smiled unconvincingly. ‘How can I help?’
‘It’s about your grandmother,’ Shitkicker began.
Joni didn’t know, as the pain sliced into her side again at the mention of G, what she had expected, but she knew it definitely hadn’t been that. Anything but that.
‘My grandmother?’
Her voice sounded strange even to her own ears, and she was sure she could hear a low, weird buzzing as well.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Tripton,’ Shitkicker Lathbourne, of the beautiful voice, said. ‘Would you like to sit down to discuss it?’
‘Ah, sure,’ Joni agreed. ‘Mind if I get a drink before we do?’
Shitkicker shrugged his square shoulders, and Joni led the way from the tiny alcove to the even smaller kitchen, bumping open the fridge door with her hip so she could use one hand to extract a beer while the other held Mahatma tightly.
‘One for you?’ Joni prided herself on being hospitable. Of course, that didn’t always extend to welcoming kisses but she was trying not to think about that, or about how his lips had been exactly the right combination of hard–soft. She felt a little weak downstairs just remembering.
‘Ah, better not,’ he almost chirped, and she could tell he was thinking about the kiss too.
‘Oh well,’ she clucked, trying to sound more like someone’s cuddly aunt than a kissing terrorist. ‘Guess you’re on the clock.’
He cleared his throat as she filled hers with cold, bitter lager, tilting her head back and guzzling like a woman who’d been wandering in the desert. When the bottle was all but drained, she smiled at him and motioned to the Formica table for two.
‘Okay,’ she allowed. ‘Sit. Let’s hear it, Mr Lathbourne.’
‘Your grandmother left a will,’ he began quickly. ‘You’re named, and you were invited to a reading, today, after the funeral. But you never showed.’
‘What?’ A less experienced drinker would have choked at the news.
But Joni didn’t spill a drop.
Their grandmother had no money. No home. Not even any possessions, bar the flat-screen TV that had taken pride of place in her council flat. And anyone who knew their family, really knew them, would know exactly why Joni hadn’t gone to the funeral.
‘Why would I go to the will thing? What for?’
‘Your grandmother’s instructions were quite explicit,’ Lathbourne Junior continued. ‘And I’m afraid we can’t hold the reading until all parties are present for it.’
Other parties. Oh, God, no. Joni knew it where you know all bad things: high and hard, somewhere between throat and heart. She knew that the other party – the only other party who mattered, anyway – was Frankie.
And there was no way on God’s green earth that she was going anywhere near any will reading, book reading, palm reading or meter reading that involved her sister.
‘Sorry, Lathbourne,’ she dismissed quickly. ‘Can’t make it. Busy.’
He looked shocked, the pretty mouth losing its just-kissed crush, to form a still-rather-attractive ‘o’. His green eyes seem to suddenly fleck, like mint jelly.
‘There are considerable assets at stake,’ he insisted. ‘You must come.’
Joni laughed. ‘Nigel,’ she said, at last using his first name. ‘You don’t understand. This is my grandmother. I knew her. Very, very well.’
That stab of pain again. To squash it, she spoke again quickly.
‘There are no “assets”. It’s a trick. She’s a shark. I mean, was. A loveable grey nurse shark.’
Joni really knew her animals.
‘Joni,’ Shitkicker returned the first-name favour, his minty eyes weighing something up. ‘Look, I can’t tell you much. Ethics. Rules.’
She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. Huh?
‘Lawyer stuff,’ he explained. ‘But it’s not every day I get the kind of welcome I got here today, so I think maybe I owe you something.’
The dizzy echo of the kiss skidded between them again.
‘I can tell you this. There are. Assets, that is. And I hate to bring this up, but if the guy who left here as I was arriving is what I think he is, I think you could maybe use a little help.’
Joni felt her ire rise at the assumption that she was the sort of woman who hung with undesirables. And owed bad people money.
Even though she did.
Not that she chose the undesirables, mind you. Or the kneecappers. Trouble just followed her, like the Pied Piper’s rats.
But, regardless, who was this crispy suit to assume she was a loser? He didn’t know her well enough to know that. One kiss did not a clairvoyant make.
Nigel sighed, like a man who knew he had a duty to do, but wasn’t enjoying it anywhere near as much as he had been five minutes previously. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. ‘The reading’s at four p.m.’
Joni looked at it like it was a white feather.
‘Your grandmother really, really wanted this. She wanted you to come, to hear from her. She’s got a proposition for you.’
Joni had always sucked at saying no to G.
Despite the chimes of doom in her head, she reached for the card.
Frances, Kew, 2:31 p.m.
Frances Sutcliffe was cutting the heads off twelve perfectly formed long-stemmed roses when the knocking started again. She ignored it, preferring to pretend she was castrating Edward with every satisfying snip.
Her husband had always had enough balls for several men.
That’s for the condoms.
Snip.
That’s for business trips to Monte Carlo and high stakes poker.
Snip.
That’s for the three-dozen apple strudel twists I spent two hours perfecting for the last tedious dinner party. When my grandmother was dying. And I was practically bleeding to death from the period-that-would-not-end.
Snip!
The knock came again, followed by a rather hesitant but very posh ‘Mrs Sutcliffe?’
She stopped mid-snip. She’d expected to hear ‘Frannie’.
Frannie, stop this.
Frannie, you’re being a child.
Frannie, open the door.
She remembered a time when the name Frannie had seemed so … grown-up. That it had made her feel like a woman. Cherished. Desired. Valued. Someone far removed from Frankie Tripton and her screwed-up family.
Edward had whispered it in her ear the first time they’d made love. On their third date.
‘Frannie,’ he’d whispered. ‘My Frannie.’
And, in that instant, she’d become exactly that. His Frannie. No-one had ever looked at her with such focus, such intensity. She’d been utterly lost. Used only to inattention, his constant interest, his spoiling of her, had been a revelation. Shopping for lingerie in Kensington, dining at the Ritz, surprise mini-breaks.
The easy way he’d said, I love you, Frannie. And apparently meant it.
She’d fallen hard and fast.
Her mother had been unimpressed. ‘But, darling, he’s so …’
‘So what?’ she’d demanded.
‘Regular.’
Frances had been too astonished to laugh. Her mother had said ‘Regular’ like it was an affliction. She had nodded and said, ‘Yes. Precisely.’
Most normal mothers boasted about their daughters dating lawyers or doctors. Not hers. Frances’s man would have had to have turned up in a blue police box to impress Lizzie Tripton. It wasn’t her mother’s fault. A third-generation suffragette with a teenage crush on Jon Pertwee was always bound to be a little unconventional.
Her father had been noncommittal. Joni had been … well, she’d been Joni. Things hadn’t been going well for her and she’d been too self-absorbed to care.
And G? Frances suspected her grandmother hadn’t much liked Edward either. But she’d understood what he represented to her granddaughter. She’d simply looked him up and down and said, ‘Lovely.’
G had always been in her corner.
A shaft of pain, and another knock, dragged her back from the past and Frances snipped the last flawless bud with extra viciousness. The shearing noise settled into her marrow and nestled there like a child snuggling into its mother’s bosom.
That was for Frannie.
She checked her reflection in the hideous oval mirror Edward had bought at Sotheby’s. Vestiges of Frankie Tripton, stirred up by her grief, lurked behind her expertly kohled eyes.
The insecurities. The desperate craving to be loved.
Out of habit, Frances’s hand crept to her neck. Even after all these years, it surprised her to find the string of pearls there, instead of the simple silver locket.
She caressed their luminescent perfection, as familiar as her own fingerprints.
Another trinket they couldn’t afford.
She felt a rage build and, with one vicious yank, she was free of them. She didn’t allow herself the satisfaction of watching them bounce and scatter on the parquetry floor. But their pinging and clattering played like Puccini in her head.
A beautiful symphony.
She’d had orgasms that hadn’t felt this good. Or, at least, she used to.
She glanced back in the mirror. Frankie had gone. Her poised Frannie reflection looked back at her. Like a Madonna in greyscale. The sleek blonde bob that had cost three hundred pounds at Marcia’s on Kew, the porcelain complexion, the perfectly arched brows.
But today, not even her Chanel eyeliner could hide the crazy in her eyes.
The knocking persisted, and Frances took a moment before walking calmly to the door and pulling it open.
‘Mrs Sutcliffe?’
A man in a three-piece suit, and with a mouth that looked like it had been carved by Michelangelo, stared at her. He held himself awkwardly, like he was expecting her to lunge suddenly. He looked too young for the old-fashioned suit. Like a boy playing at being grown-up. All he needed was a bowler hat and an umbrella, and he could have been George Banks from Mary Poppins.
He checked his watch in the same irritating way as Edward did, and Frances fleetingly considered running the scissors straight into the crisp whiteness of his business shirt, just above the V of his Savile Row waistcoat.
He was obviously one of Edward’s minions. And, mouth or no mouth, she hated him on sight.
‘Mrs Frances Sutcliffe?’
Or maybe she didn’t.
Hearing Frances roll off his tongue pulled her out of her murderous fantasy and momentarily relieved her of her desire to scream a very bad F word.
Frances Sutcliffe did not use the F word.
And she supposed, whoever this pompous boy–man was, it was hardly his fault that the spineless Edward had sent him as his emissary.
From her doorstep she could just see the graceful iron curves of Palm House peeking above Kew’s barren treetops, elegant even in their wintry nakedness, and she remembered who she was.
‘Yes. I am she.’
The man on the doorstep eyed the scissors for a moment before plunging into speech. ‘My name is Nigel Lathbourne. I’m from Schuster, Schuster, Lathbourne and Lathbourne.’
Frances fought the urge to laugh. Who could say that with a straight face? She suddenly understood Joni’s Tourette’s-like habit of giggling at inappropriate times. But, as always, it hurt to think of her sister. And today she was hurting enough.
She concentrated instead on his very beautiful mouth and wondered how it would feel brushing against her nape.
‘I dare you to say that three times. Really fast.’
Nigel Lathbourne blanched and took a small step back as he graced her with an awkward smile. Her bleak mood ratcheted up another notch. God, what was she doing? Flirting with strangers on her doorstep?
Frances Sutcliffe did not flirt, any more than she indulged in F words.
None of the schools her father had enrolled her in had offered Flirting 101 and, even if they had, she would no doubt have failed miserably. Her sister, on the other hand, would have passed with flying colours.
Joni had O levels in flirting.
Except Frances had been doing it more and more lately. Flirting, that is. Or attempting to, anyway. And not just with men with beautiful mouths. Any man was fodder for her fantasies.
The balding, potbellied taxi driver from three days ago was a classic example. He’d called her luv and she’d sat in the back of his cab squirming as her hormones dreamed up a graphic scene of hastily parted clothes and urgent fumblings.
And, just this morning, the barely legal teenager with work-roughened hands who had delivered Edward’s peace offering had received the treatment. The barely legal things she’d fantasised about doing to him were still making her blush while simultaneously igniting a fire in her kickers. Hell, Prince Philip had even looked good when she’d seen him on last night’s news.
She’d told herself it was just a phase. A direct result of marrying the only man she’d ever slept with. Sexual curiosity colliding with the natural peaking of her sex drive.
She was almost thirty, after all.
Lord alone knew how she’d got to this age with only one lover to her name. She would have thought growing up with a mother who was the original free-love hippy would have rubbed off. But then, she’d always been a daddy’s girl.
And when Daddy was a six-foot-four military policeman, getting a date wasn’t easy. Getting laid had been nigh on impossible. Most boys brave enough to date her usually became a squeaking mess when her father answered the door. Attempting anything more than getting to first base had been completely beyond them after her father’s bone-crushing handshake.
Joni, who had never sought their father’s approval for anything, hadn’t felt similarly constrained. Joni had had enough sex for both of them.
Nigel Lathbourne cleared his throat and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels. The action drew her gaze downward. He was tall, with – she glanced at his feet – very large shoes.
‘Mrs Sutcliffe?’
His barely concealed impatience dragged her back from thoughts stuck well and truly south of his fascinating mouth.
‘My law firm represents your grandmother,’ he continued.
Frances felt as if Nigel had prodded the fresh bruise inside her that was still all purple and black and mushy, and she reached for her neck, finding nothing at all now. She felt a momentary surge of panic and tamped it down.
He spoke again. ‘The funeral was this morning.’
Frances swallowed hard against the coal-like lump in her throat. She nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘The will reading was scheduled immediately afterwards but had to be postponed, as you and Ms Tripton, the two main beneficiaries of the estate, did not attend.’
Joni hadn’t gone? Frances felt another jab to the bruised spongy tenderness. She’d have bet Edward’s hideous collection of modern art that her sister would have been there.
In fact, that was why she’d stayed away.
She’d known, through G, who’d had an incessant compulsion to keep Frances up-to-date on Joni and her life, that her little sister was also a regular visitor to the tiny council flat. For the Big Brother eviction nights. As Joni had been evicted more times than a professional squatter, Frances had always been struck by that particular irony.
After seven years of avoidance, her grandmother’s funeral was not the place that Frances wanted to face her sister again. Since the … incident … all contact had been severed.
And Joni had been damn lucky that had been all that was severed.
Aware that Nigel Lathbourne was waiting for a reply, she grappled with her off-kilter cognitive processes.
‘“Estate” sounds a little grand.’
Frances had always felt like she was walking through an episode of The Bill the times she’d ventured into the council estate her grandmother had called home. She’d half expected to hear Reg Hollis call out, ‘Oi, you’re nicked!’ whenever she’d walked to the more-often-than-not-broken-down elevator.
The only thing of any value G had was her beloved flat-screen television.
‘She came into some money last year. From an ex-lover, I believe.’
Money? Frances felt a leap in her pulse that was due purely to self-interest.
Then self-loathing took over. Her grandmother was dead. G, the one stable adult influence she and Joni had growing up. The only person in Frances’s family who loved her enough to sit with her regularly through episodes of what Joni had once described as the most depressing game show on earth.
Yes, she knew that Countdown made watching paint dry seem positively zippy. She knew it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But it had been hers. And G’s. And this was just one of the many reasons she loved her. One of the many things she’d miss. No amount of money could make up for that kind of loss.
Besides, G would have had to have slept with Richard Branson to dig Frances out of the financial black hole she was in. And Maggie Tripton had never been keen on bearded men.
‘The reading’s been rescheduled for four p.m. In our offices.’ Nigel Lathbourne reached into his fob pocket and handed her a card.
Their hands brushed as she took it. The pads of his fingers were soft, unlike those of barely legal florist boy, and she wondered fleetingly how they’d feel stroking down her belly.
‘It’s imperative that you come.’
Frances blinked, his words slicing through her fantasy. Imperative? Or what? She’d be thrown in the Tower? Put on the rack? Beheaded?
As if Nigel/George knew he’d erred, he softened his next words. ‘Please. Your grandmother was most insistent that both you and Joni, er … Ms Tripton be there.’
His slip yanked her out of the strange disconnectedness infecting her brain. Her grey eyes bored into the green of his.
He’d been to Joni’s first.
‘Well.’ Nigel cleared his throat. ‘I must be off. I’ll see you at four, Mrs Sutcliffe.’
She barely had time to register his words before Nigel Lathbourne gave a little bow, turned on his heel and all but ran down her garden path to a waiting taxi. She blinked. She didn’t usually inspire quick getaways – but Joni certainly did.
Frances stayed at the open doorway for a long while, trying to process the information. Joni. God, please, no. Anyone but Joni.
Joni, who had betrayed her so deeply. As only a sister could. There was so much between them – too much for one small room to contain, surely?
She felt the nerve in her left eyelid jump and her vision doubled.
Bloody hell, they weren’t even in the same room yet and Joni was already making her twitch.