The man who’s usually described in the papers as an East End bad boy and night club Lothario is on his knees in front of me. He takes the ring from the box and looks at it for a few moments and then brings his eyes to meet mine.
“I’ve tried to think of a million different ways to do this. I’ve tried to think of every flash, fancy way that I could impress you, and then we were sitting at home last Sunday and I watched you with Harry, trying to get him to eat all those veggies you tirelessly steam and mash up for him. I watched as you spooned it into his mouth and then laughed as he spat it out. You had as much on your face as he did on his, and watching all of that made me realise, you don’t do flash or fancy. You’re not fussed about unique or being impressed. After everything we’ve been through, the lives that we’ve already lived. What we have survived to get to this point brought me to the conclusion that all that matters, is you, me and our family. I love you, Kitten. I’ve loved you for a very long time. Whether we’ve been together or apart I’ve loved you, and I know that tradition dictates that I get down on one knee and do this, but you deserve so much more than one knee. So here I am, in front of you now, on both knees, asking you, would you please make me the happiest man alive and do me the honour of becoming my wife?” He reaches up and uses his thumb to brush away a tear from my cheek.
“Yes, Tiger, of course I’ll marry you.”
*
As we head down the lane to our home, I can see Jimmie’s car at the gates. She’s standing at the intercom box holding her phone. We pull up behind her and both get out of the car.
“Your box is all bashed up, G,” she says with a smile. “This box not that box.” She gestures between my legs. “Although, after spending the night in a hotel with Mr TDH and his famous nine-inches, I don’t suppose that box is looking too pretty, either.”
Cam ignores her comments and looks at the mangled mess of wires hanging next to the electronic gates, gives her a kiss and says, “What the fuck has happened here?”
“I was just gonna call Frank to see if he could open the gates from the inside,” Jimmie states.
“Yeah, do that. I’ll make a call and get someone out to look at this. Probably kids, little shits,” Cam says.
Jimmie calls my dad and as I move around her car to get back into mine, I see her. She looks beautiful in an emerald green maxi dress, her auburn hair blowing back from her face in the breeze. Instinctively, I step in front of Jimmie. Tamara’s standing with her legs wide apart and has two hands on a gun, pointed at me. I don’t know at what point Jimmie notices her, but she stops talking on the phone and says very quietly, “Fuck.” Cam is leaning over the wires hanging out of the wall, slightly to the left of me. Out of my peripheral vision, I see him stand and say, “Well the little fuckers—”
When I watched Cam shoot Terry Riley in a pub car park all those years ago, I realised that guns don’t really go bang. They go pop more than bang and all I can think right now is… that gun just went pop. I wonder why people say bang when really they go pop?
And then I hear it again, pop, and I watch as blood and bones and brain fly out the back of Tamara’s head and she falls in an untidy mess on the ground. Harry will ask me about this moment one day, and I will have to tell him. What will I say? I can hear Jimmie on the phone from either behind or beside me. I don’t know exactly which. I don’t want to turn my head. I don’t want to see what’s going on around me, so I just keep looking straight ahead. If I don’t turn my head, I can’t see him. If I can’t see him, then none of this is real.
“Georgia!” Jimmie screams. I ignore her. “Georgia Rae Layton, get the fuck down here and help me.” I don’t want to, because when I look, everything will change. My world will change. Life will change. Everything that’s been good will come to an end.
My life was once black. I managed to get it to a lightish shade of grey on the odd occasion, but it mostly remained black, and then Cam came along; he came back into my life and very slowly he brought back the light blues and then the whites. He’d done that by rebuilding my heart. He’d been patient and loving and kind, and brick by brick, he’d done the best job possible of giving me back my heart. It would never be whole. It would always be a little jagged, and there would always be a piece of it that was irreparable. The part that would forever belong to Sean and our children. But, from the pile of broken bricks and rubble I’d been left with, Cam had done an amazing job of rebuilding my heart and filling it with love, light and hope, and now, now what? If I turn my head to the side and see what it is I think I’m going to see, I know that it will be too much. I’m just not strong enough, so as Jimmie screams and cries, “George, help me, fucking help me. I can’t stop the blood. I need something to stop the blood.” I shake my head.