Blood Ties (15 page)

“Who are they?” the Sarge asked me quietly, looking over at the Bycrafts.

“That’s the Bycraft family, the town outlaws. Anytime there’s a crime in town, think of them first and foremost,” I informed him, unsmiling.

“Isn’t that your boyfriend with them?”

“Yes, he’s a Bycraft. The only decent one in the whole bunch. Maybe one of the only few decent Bycrafts ever.”

“That must make your relationship interesting,” he commented neutrally.

I gave a short, bitter laugh. “You can say that again.”

“With that golden colouring they all have, they look like a pride of lions,” he said thoughtfully. I glanced up at him with an admiring smile.

“That’s very good, Sarge. I like that. You’ve put your finger right on it. They’re as lazy as lions too, but just as dangerous when they strike.”

The Bycrafts jeered the two of us when they noticed us staring at them.

“Who’s your new boyfriend, piglet?” yelled out Tracey Bycraft, Jake’s cousin. She had a baby on her hip, a cigarette in her other hand and a toddler clutching her leg, crying. She was only eighteen and heavily pregnant with her third kid. But she didn’t let an inconvenience such as that interfere with her drinking, smoking or her career as a shoplifter. “He’s kinda cute. I’d let him pork me.”

“He’d be the only man in town who hasn’t, Tracey Bycraft,” I yelled back at her as I stalked up to Des’ house. They all heckled me then and I slyly gave them the finger as I pretended to scratch my nose. Jake didn’t join in the heckling of course, but he didn’t try to stop it either. That was the relationship we had – he would never get in the way of his family’s God-given right to harass me.

“Piglet?” queried the Sarge, catching up to me.

“That’s what they call me. Adorable, isn’t it?” I said sarcastically. “The Bycrafts and I have a love-hate relationship. I hate them, they hate me and we all love to hate each other.” I glanced at him. “A word of advice, Sarge. Do
not
be tempted by a Bycraft woman. They are beautiful and wild, but they are witches. And fertile. You only have to look at them and they get knocked up. You don’t want one of them to sink her talons into you. You’ll be paying child support for the rest of your life.”

“Advice noted, thanks.”

“And it wouldn’t go down well with the townsfolk for you to be involved with a Bycraft either. They are a one-family crime wave and plenty of people in this town have suffered because of them, including my family. There’re a lot of folk in town who don’t like the fact that Jake is my boyfriend and they’re not shy about telling me.”

“Anyone else I should avoid? Not that I’m looking for anyone.”

“Stay away from Foxy Dubois too.”

“Foxy?”

“Her real name is Barbara White. She took Foxy as her stage name. She used to be a stripper in Big Town . . . Oh sorry, she prefers the term ‘exotic dancer’. She’ll have her eye on you in no time.”

“She’s the one your former sergeant, er, ‘investigated’ frequently?”

I laughed. “Oh yeah. Des ‘investigated’ her at least once a week.”

Speaking of the devil, we noticed Des standing on the veranda, barking orders to the removalists from Big Town who were beavering away, loading furniture into the truck that had been backed up to the stairs. We pushed our way through the crowd that had gathered to watch and dodged the brawny removal men as we ran up the stairs.

“How’s it going, Des?” I asked. Mr Sparkles waddled over to me, carnal intent clear in his eyes. “Don’t even think about it, Sparkles,” I warned him in a mean voice. He barked at me with irritation and changed direction, heading towards the Sarge instead. “Sparkles! I’ll sell you off to be turned into cat food,” I threatened and he gave me a surly look before retreating back to a corner of the veranda, glaring at us resentfully.

“The move’s going well, Tessie love. Nearly finished. The guys came early in the morning and you can see that they’re hard workers.” He looked up at the Sarge and had to keep looking a long way as Des was somewhat shorter than me. “The house will be ready for you late this afternoon, mate. Maureen and her helpers are cleaning it as each room is emptied.”

“Those Bycrafts giving you any grief?” I asked him.

“Caught one of them young buggers trying to steal one of Maureen’s Jesus figurines from out the truck the second my back was turned. Can you believe it? Gave him a right kick up the bum.”

“Who was it?”

“Chad or Timmy or Mikey? I don’t know. They all look the bloody same to me. Why the fuck would he want a Jesus figurine?”

“I think they just do it for the thrill half the time,” I replied, looking back over at lounging Bycrafts. I sadly noted Jake happily sharing a laugh with his oldest brother, the revolting Red, puffing on a cigarette even though he normally didn’t smoke, relaxed and comfortable in the middle of that nest of vipers. He became a different person when he was with his family, and not one that I liked too much.

I would never have gone out with him if I’d met him again in the company of his family or on his own, but he had approached me with his two best mates – who weren’t bad blokes – at a nightclub a few weeks after I returned to Little Town from the city. I had been in Big Town for a hen’s party for one of the female cops there and we’d all gone out to the nightclub afterwards. The three of them came up to me, made themselves known again and begged me to remember them, which of course I did. I hadn’t been away from town
that
long. And as if I’d ever forget a Bycraft.

They invited themselves to join me and my friends and offered to buy me a drink. I refused the offer, always careful to buy my own drinks when I went out, wary of drink-spiking. Had Jake accosted me on his own at the nightclub that night, I probably would have stabbed him with my knife. But in the company of his two mates who I didn’t mind, I found him far less threatening. In fact, his affectionate bantering with them, funny asides and friendly, appealing charm helped me see a side of him that I would never have otherwise been close enough to him to notice. So instead of telling them to shove off like I should have, I chatted to them for the rest of the evening, enjoying their gentle teasing of me and obvious and competitive attempts at flirting.

Where his mates were happy to flirt with any of the girls in my group, Jake didn’t bother to hide his clear interest in me nor his genuine disappointment when I refused, several times, to dance with him. Quite a few of my girlfriends were trying to catch his eye, but all of his attention that evening was on me. When I went to the bathroom or up to the bar for another drink, his eyes followed me all the way there and all the way back. When I returned from one trek to the bar, he had swapped places with his friend and was now sitting right next to me, the sulky look on his friend’s face telling me that it hadn’t been a voluntary move.

That type of intense attention from a Bycraft should have switched my senses to red alert, but rather than seeming creepy and threatening, I found it somehow endearing instead. Perhaps it was the sincerity I sensed from him that made the difference. And then again, perhaps it was just the alcohol I’d drunk or the fact that I hadn’t had any sex for over a year that did the trick.

Jake and I hadn’t seen each other for more than ten years, not since he left high school after tenth grade and moved first to Big Town and then to the city. He had only moved back to Little Town to take a job at the prison about six months before I moved back home myself. I’d forgotten how good-looking he was and how beautiful his amber eyes were. His devastatingly gorgeous smile and easy-going charisma weakened my defences and managed to overcome my natural abhorrence of all things Bycraft.

By the end of that evening, after I’d had a few drinks and egged on by my girlfriends who’d been trying to find me a boyfriend since I’d returned, I agreed to let him visit me back home in town the following day. His touching gratitude at that small indulgence made me feel like a princess. He’d grabbed my hand and squeezed it, smiling at me happily when I left the nightclub with my girlfriends to catch a taxi back to their place where I was crashing for the night. We’d giggled about him the whole way home.

Sober, I’d regretted my offer the next day though, because a Bycraft had only ever set foot in the Fuller family home once before, with catastrophic results. I was terrified about what Dad would say to me and had worried about it all the drive back to Little Town. I was right to be anxious because Dad went completely ballistic when I told him about the invitation I’d given. He did something that he’d never done before in my entire life – he yelled at me angrily until I cried. I would have rung Jake up right then and withdrawn my invitation, feeling worse than terrible about upsetting Dad so much, but I’d stubbornly refused to take his phone number the evening before or to give him mine.

So Jake came over to our house that afternoon, nervously clutching a glorious bouquet of flowers, which I thought was sweetly old-fashioned. He was polite and respectful towards us both, tactfully overlooking my red eyes and subdued manner. But he couldn’t fail to notice Dad’s undisguised and silent hostility towards him nor the shotgun that Dad had leant up against his wheelchair that he kept his hand on the entire time that Jake was there.

Surprisingly not discouraged by that unpromising first visit to the Fuller residence, Jake continued to pursue me courteously but relentlessly afterwards. I kept pushing him away, and not nicely most of the time I’ll admit, unable to understand why he was so keen on me when he had never even noticed me at school and could surely have his pick of women. And when I was a Fuller and he was a Bycraft.

“Teresa Fuller, don’t you ever look in a mirror?” he’d responded once with impatience as we sat together on my lounge one afternoon. He had his arm stretched out behind me on the back of the lounge, but didn’t quite dare to put it around my shoulders as he knew that I’d only immediately shrug it off. “You’ve grown to be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I fell in love the second I laid eyes on you again at that nightclub so
of course
I’m interested in you. So are all the other single men in town and probably most of the married ones as well.” He paused to stroke my hair, which I let him do because I really enjoyed that particular caress and the gentleness of his fingers.

“Babe,” he continued with fond exasperation, “you don’t seem to realise that you’re an incredibly stunning woman. Don’t you notice men staring at you all the time? Because I do.”
Bullshit alert
, I told myself cynically. I
had
noticed men staring me all the time, but that was because I was a whacko with a knife. I wanted to roll my eyes, but his lovely eyes had mine trapped in stillness. He stopped talking long enough to lean towards me in an attempt to kiss me. I dodged his lips as usual and his shoulders slumped in frustration as usual. “And I
did
notice you at school, but you were always Denny’s girl.”

“I bloody well was not!” I insisted hotly, jumping up suddenly and stalking away a few paces. I turned back. “Don’t you dare say that! He made my life miserable.”

“Sorry Tessie. I meant that he was obsessed with you – still is obsessed with you. He wouldn’t have taken it well for me to show any interest in you. He’s . . .” he hesitated for a moment, glancing up at me uncertainly. “He’s not quite right in the head, our Denny.”

Duh!
I thought.

“You were such a pretty little thing at school, so serious and with those big gray eyes,” he went on, smiling at the memory. “I really admired how you handled Denny being a dick all the time. You were always so cool and calm, so dignified, even that day you beat the shit out of him. You didn’t even speak to him once during the whole fight. God, you whooped his arse without even breaking a sweat!” He laughed to himself. “We all thought you were a stuck-up bitch though. You wouldn’t give a Bycraft the time of day.”

I still wouldn’t
, I thought.

“You drove Denny crazy by ignoring him, poor bugger. We kept telling him to forget about you, find some other girl, but he refused. He just wasn’t interested in anyone but you. I couldn’t understand it at the time but now I do, because I’m not interested in anyone any more either,” he said sincerely, reaching out to gently clasp my hand, blasting me again with those beautiful eyes. I felt myself weaken, but I ushered him to the front door then, just as I always did.

No matter how much I told Jake to get lost and that he only was wasting his time, he continued to ring and visit me for months. One day I realised that I hadn’t seen him or heard from him for nearly a week and I felt an aching emptiness in my heart that shocked me. I knew then that I genuinely missed him and his gentle teasing. I wanted, even needed, to see him again. So for the first time I rang him, my hand shaking as I punched in his number.
What if he hung up on me or laughed at me
, I thought with terror. I’d had a devastating experience in my previous relationship that had shattered my self-confidence with men, not that I’d ever had that much to begin with.

But when I heard how overjoyed and grateful Jake was that I had rung, well, that was that and we started going out, despite strongly expressed opposition from Dad. We kept our relationship very quiet for the first few months, knowing that reaction to the news was likely to be intensely negative. We spent that time getting to know each other better, emotionally and physically. When we were comfortable in the depth of our feelings for each other and certain that our relationship was strong and stable, we made our first public appearance as a couple at the annual primary school fete, arms around each other’s waists.