‘My God, you are MASSIVE,’ says Bryony admiringly, lugging one of those giant zipped bags favoured by the dispossessed across the threshold of Manon’s front door. ‘Like a great galleon of womanhood. I want to worship you.’
‘Fuck off,’ says Manon, closing the door after her, a coffee in one hand and her slippers on.
‘Baby clothes,’ says Bri, breathless, nodding at the bag. ‘Nought to three months. There’s about ten more where that came from.’
‘I don’t want them now, I’m not due till April.’
‘No, I know, but by March you’ll develop an overpowering urge to fold small vests and that bag is full of small vests. I’m telling you, it’s primeval or primordial – whatever the word is. What I mean is, it’s what mammals do: they turn around on the spot and burrow into straw. The human equivalent is folding small vests and becoming laundry obsessed.’
‘I still don’t want it.’
Bryony looks at her in a way that is too much, puts an arm around her. ‘Don’t want what?’ she asks, kindly. ‘My baby vests, or the baby?’
Manon’s eyes fill with tears. ‘I don’t want it, Bri. I just want Fly. And Mark Talbot if I’m honest, but that’s a whole other story. I’ve been so stupid and selfish. I haven’t protected Fly. He’s got cuts up his arms and he won’t let me see him. All these horrible lies,’ she gasps, ‘they’re building around him. What the fuck am I doing having a baby? All I want is Fly. I just want Fly out of there and safe and reading his books in his bedroom.’
‘I know,’ Bri says. ‘I know you want Fly. Look, there’s still time. Sounds like you and Mark are building a case and you can get him out. And I can carry on risking my entire career by feeding you case-file documents.’
‘Harriet’s suspicious about how I got Conley’s cell confession, by the way,’ Manon says, over Bri’s shoulder. She smells Bryony’s skin – warm sweetness, like caramel or bread, the absence of anything artificial such as perfume. ‘I told her I got it from Fly.’
‘I’ll say the same then. Look, like you say, you’re not due till April and Fly will be out by then and things will be back to normal. Anyway, more urgently, I need to hear about how you’ve thrown yourself at your defence solicitor. Was it unbecoming?’
‘Very. Come through, I’ll make you a coffee.’
‘Excellent,’ says Bri, rubbing her palms together.
While the coffee machine bubbles and churns, and Bryony hangs her handbag on the back of a chair, Manon says, ‘I’m so worried about Fly.’ Bryony is silent, leaving the space for her to carry on, while Manon gets the milk. One of the many things Manon loves about Bri is the way she listens. ‘I still don’t know what the visit to London was about – him skipping school and going to Momtaz. I don’t even know if it was just one time, or more than one.’
‘Might be nothing,’ says Bryony. ‘Might be nostalgia.’
‘Nostalgia can be very dangerous,’ says Manon. ‘And hanging out with that lowlife Paddy Driscoe? I mean, what’s all that about?’
‘He’s a dealer, isn’t he? Is Fly experimenting with drugs? I don’t mean in a hairy scary way. I mean, you don’t need to go off the deep end about it.’
Manon is shaking her head. ‘Fly’s actually quite moralistic about drugs. Got that from Taylor, his brother. I think their mother was so out of it, they developed a hatred of anything that makes you lose control. He’s the same about booze. Weirdly, I’m more confident about him not doing drugs than I am about whether he stabbed Jon-Oliver.’
Manon places a cup of coffee in front of Bryony, then says, ‘Thank you. For the baby clothes, for the documents, for everything.’
‘Pleasure.’
‘He won’t let me see him in Arlidge House. He’s taken me off his authorised visitor list.’
‘He sounds very hurt,’ says Bri.
After she has spilled the beans on making out on the sofa with Mark, Bri says, ‘Oh it’d be wonderful for you to be settled with someone!’
‘Knew you’d say that,’ Manon says.
‘What’s wrong with wanting you to find someone?’
‘Nothing, it’s just … it won’t go anywhere. I can’t see it being the happy ever after. I can’t see anyone taking on me and my motley collection of children and I don’t want – well, I don’t want to hope for it really.’
‘Why ever not?’
Manon has got up and is opening kitchen cupboards. ‘I haven’t got any biscuits – trying not to buy them. Ryvita?’
‘Christ, no thanks.’
‘I’ve bolstered myself to do this alone. I have to have my backbone in to manage it, I can’t just collapse in a heap the minute a man walks through the door.’
‘Could he get struck off? Mark, I mean. Does it go against some kind of defence solicitors’ code to cop off with the client’s mother?’
‘Dunno. We haven’t talked about that. We haven’t talked about anything actually. He wanted to tell me his “situation” but I said I didn’t want to hear it. And I think my situation is fairly visible.’
‘Oh, don’t push him away, Manon,’ Bri says with feeling. ‘I mean, you might as well see where it goes.’
Davy
He’s unable to turn his head; woke this morning with a crick so tight and excruciating that even throwing his head back to take down the Panadol was nigh-on impossible. It’s as if a band is looped between his right ear and his right shoulder blade, preventing any range of movement. They are twenty-five days in. He knows this without consulting a calendar, as if the sand in every investigation’s hourglass has become a part of his body clock and it’s down to its final grains. At twenty-eight days, CCTV film usually gets wiped, a watershed of sorts. If there is evidence they haven’t gathered yet because they’ve gone down the wrong road, there are only a few days left to get it.
He turns his stiffened upper body at the sounds of unlocking – bolt after bolt getting nearer on the inmate side of this visiting room, which smells of cleaning products overlaid with institutional food. A vat of shepherd’s pie in a metal tray, perhaps. The smell is hospital-like, wipe-down; loveless.
The door opens and a boy walks in but he is barely recognisable. He has been so badly beaten that his left eye slants downwards, inflated and closed. There is a cut to his lower lip. His hands are cuffed in front of him.
Davy’s heart is knocking. ‘Fly,’ he says, standing up.
Fly has sat in the chair in front of him, on the other side of the table, in a leaned-back position, legs spread, a 12-year-old’s attempt at saying, ‘Fuck you.’
‘That looks nasty,’ says Davy. ‘What happened?’
Fly shrugs.
‘Guess there’s no point asking if they’re treating you all right in here.’
Again, no response.
‘I brought you chewing gum, a selection of flavours – look, there’s Tropical Burst. I’ve tried that. It’s good. Thought you might be fed up of getting books.’
Fly doesn’t reply but he shifts his body subtly in what might be a slight receptiveness.
‘Your mum sends her love,’ Davy says.
‘She’s not my mum.’
‘Manon, then. She’d really like to visit you.’