One Night Stand (37 page)
Authors: Julie Cohen
He’d ordered a digital baby monitor off the Internet; that was probably what was being delivered. Top-of-the-range model, to go with everything else in the sleek nursery.
I thought of the second-hand cot in Reading, the two teddy bears inside it, and swallowed before I opened the door.
June stood there; small, slim and tanned. The two duffel bags she’d had before were transformed into a matching set of luggage.
‘Ellie!’ she cried and hugged me. Then she stood back and surveyed me. ‘My God, Hugh wasn’t kidding. You’re about to pop.’
Out of the thousand questions that could have rushed into my mind and out of my mouth at the moment, the one that chose to pass my lips was, ‘You’ve talked with Hugh?’
‘He told me where you were. Can I come in?’
I stood aside so she could fit past my belly. Aside from the tan, the luggage, and the lack of hangover, she was exactly the same as the last time I’d seen her, right before she’d disappeared. Beautiful. Assured. Sexy. A law unto herself.
And she’d spoken with Hugh more recently than I had.
She flung herself gracefully on to the low leather sofa and looked around. ‘Nice place,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is.’ I sat next to her, though it made me feel even more of a lump than usual. ‘Where have you been?’
June shrugged and produced her pouch of tobacco from her teensy handbag. ‘I went on holiday abroad for a while. I figured I could do with a change.’
‘You must have been able to go somewhere very nice with your fifty thousand pounds.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, you know about that? How?’
‘Your ex-boyfriend broke into my house looking for you and he told me about it while he was threatening me with violence.’
‘Oh, Ellie, I’m sorry.’ She placed her hand on my arm for a moment and then went back to rolling her cigarette. ‘I must have left my address book behind.’
I put my hands over my baby bump again. The mere idea of Jojo harming my baby made my entire being cringe with fear. I was June’s child, and all I got was a ‘sorry’?
‘So how much of the fifty thousand do you have left?’ I asked.
‘Oh, that? It’s been gone for ages. I’ve been working in Nice in a casino.’ June looked around the flat again. ‘You’ve really landed on your feet in this place. Hugh said something about the father being a film star?’
‘A film producer.’
‘Nice. Very nice. Good work.’ She put her cigarette between her lips and rummaged in her handbag for her lighter.
‘June, I’m pregnant and I don’t want you to smoke near me.’
‘Oh!’ She took the cigarette from her lips, taken aback. ‘Of course not. Where can I smoke?’
‘Nowhere.’ I folded my arms across my chest. ‘What did you mean by “good work”?’
She put her unlit cigarette on the coffee table next to my laptop. ‘I mean it was smart of you to pick someone with money to be the father of your child. Why stay in poxy old Reading if you can live in luxury?’
Anger propelled me off the couch faster than I would have thought possible. ‘I don’t believe I wanted to be like you,’ I burst out.
‘You wanted to be like me? Why?’
Her surprise wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting. I paused, but only for a moment. I was too angry to stop.
‘You’re the most selfish human being I know. You never did anything when I was growing up but swan in and out and give Sheila grief. You don’t even know who my father is.’
‘I told you, I don’t have a maternal bone in my body.’ She smiled.
‘It’s not something to brag about, June. Why did you have to tell me you’re my mother?’
‘Oh honey, it just slipped out, it just happened.’
‘Sort of like how
I
just happened?’
I
just happened?’
‘Yes. And that, apparently.’ She gestured at my belly.
‘At least I plan to stick around for this baby. It’s going to know who its father is, and I’m going to care for it and love it.’
June only nodded. ‘Anything else I’ve done wrong you’d like to tell me about?’
‘How about leaving Reading without telling me where you were going?’
‘Come on, Ellie, you’ve lived your whole life without me telling you where I was going. We’re both adults with our own lives.’
‘We are now. Not when I was a kid and you took off.’
June sighed. ‘Yes. I’m a lousy mother. Let’s move on from that, shall we?’
‘Sure. Let’s talk about how I was threatened by your psycho drug-dealing ex-boyfriend.’
‘Ellie. Be reasonable, sweetness. I didn’t tell him to come and threaten you. I never thought he’d—’
‘That’s what I keep telling you, you never think! You just take what you want! You palm off your baby on your parents, you lead your own little glamorous life, if you want to have sex with someone you go right ahead, don’t even think about your own daughter and how Hugh is her best friend and he’s—’
At that, tears flooded my eyes and closed my throat. I turned away from June, to the window, where I stared, unseeing, out at the street.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, doll,’ June said behind me, in a voice so typical of her that I clenched my fists, knowing she hadn’t understood a single word I’d said. ‘I never—’
Someone pounded on the door. Grateful for the distraction from June, I hurried to the door, wiping my eyes on the hem of my maternity top, and unlocked it.
The door flew open, catching me on the shoulder and flinging me several feet backwards. My thigh banged against the marble flower table and I grabbed it to stop myself toppling over as six-foot-three of furious dreadlocked Jojo pushed me aside and strode into the flat.
‘Darling!’ June cried, her voice holding no trace of fear or surprise. She didn’t even get up.
Jojo grabbed her by the front of her filmy dress and hauled her off the couch.
‘Where the hell is my money, you bitch?’ he growled, shaking her like a puppet. I could hear her teeth rattling.
‘Calm down, Jojo,’ she gasped between shakes. My leg burning with pain, I hobbled as fast as I could towards the telephone, on another table across the room.
Before I could reach it I heard a click. ‘Don’t ever think about using the phone,’ Jojo said, and I looked over to see that he’d unflicked a large knife. He was holding it to the side of June’s face. ‘Not if you don’t want your sister to get cut.’
‘I’m her mother, actually,’ June said, her big eyes gazing up at Jojo as if he were offering her a dozen roses.
‘That’s even better,’ said Jojo; ‘it means I can get rid of three generations of your scummy family at once if you don’t tell me where my fucking money is.’
‘It’s gone. I spent it,’ June said.
I could see Jojo’s hands tightening on June and the knife, and I took a step closer.
‘You spent it?’ he growled dangerously.
‘What can I say, I’m a high-maintenance girl, and things are expensive on the Côte d’Azur,’ June said. ‘I’ll tell you what, though, sweetheart, those Frenchmen are incredibly well hung. Quite a welcome change for me after you.’
Jojo hardly let her finish her sentence. He tossed June to the floor. Her head made a sickening thump on the hardwood. He stepped forward and planted his foot in her stomach to pin her down as she lay there, her arms and legs flung wide, too stunned to struggle.
‘Right, bitch, you just earned yourself a new face.’
My leg and shoulder were throbbing, my entire body was swollen and ungainly. I’d never moved so fast in my life. I launched myself forward, pulling back my right arm, dodged under his hand holding the knife, and let Jojo have it in the face.
My fist connected with his nose and I heard a crunch. Then I heard the knife clattering on the floor. I heard Jojo grunt in pain. And I heard two bumps as he fell to his knees.
In a single smooth movement, June brought one of her feet up and kicked the pointy toe of her boot straight into Jojo’s crotch. His red face went white and he fell sideways on to the floor, one hand grabbing his groin, the other clamped around his nose, which was spouting blood on the spotless floor.
‘Nice one, El,’ June said, scrambling to her feet.
‘You too.’ I stepped back and shook my hand, which was aching from the impact. Jojo lay groaning. I picked up the knife from where he’d dropped it. ‘What do we do with him?’
‘Got any gaffer tape?’
‘Maybe under the sink in the kitchen?’
June skittered off in her high heels and I stood, hefting the knife in my hand and watching Jojo writhe. From what I could see, his nose was a mess from being broken twice by two different Connor females.
She returned with a roll of silver tape and knelt beside Jojo, efficiently wrapping it around his ankles. He realised what was happening and tried to struggle, but June sent a well-placed knee into his bollocks again and he doubled over, gasping, as she taped his wrists together.
I was reminded of my heroine, Mel, in
Chained Melody
, and her talent for bondage.
Chained Melody
, and her talent for bondage.
‘God, I really did make my heroines like you,’ I said.
June looked up from her work. ‘I don’t do heroin,’ she said vehemently. ‘I only slept with this scumbag, I didn’t sample any of his wares.’
‘I didn’t—’ I thought that now was perhaps not the time to explain my career to June. ‘I’ll call the police.’
When I finished, June was perched on the couch, gazing down at the trussed and red-faced Jojo, who could do little but writhe and moan.
‘You risked your life to save me,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t let him hurt you.’
‘Even when you were angry with me, when you were telling me how selfish I am. About how I spoiled your life. You could have run away and saved yourself and your baby. Instead you floored him with a right hook.’ She smiled at me. ‘Well done.’
‘Thanks.’ I sat down beside her and contemplated Jojo. ‘You didn’t really spoil my life.’
‘I was a kid, Ellie. You’re older now than I was and you can see things more sensibly but I was thirteen and I was desperately unhappy, dying to get out of that place. I could never breathe.’ She sighed. ‘I am selfish, I suppose. I’ve just always been on my own. I never wanted to settle down or be a good little girl. It never seemed like any fun.’
‘Well, you can do something unselfish when the police come. You’re going to tell them everything you know about Jojo so he gets put away and can’t hurt any of us.’
‘But sweetness, I don’t—’
‘You’re going to do that, June.’ My tone of voice brooked no complaint.
‘All right.’ She prodded him with her pointed toe. ‘He deserves it, I guess.’ She perked up. ‘And the money I took isn’t traceable.’
We sat there for a moment, watching Jojo bleed from his nose, waiting for the police.
‘Was Peter my father?’ I asked her.
She glanced at me. ‘Who?’
‘I found a note to somebody called Peter in your closet in Upper Pepperton, and you talked about me in it.’
An emotion crossed June’s face. I couldn’t tell which one it was, because I had never seen anything like it on her face before.
‘No,’ she said, and then her expression was back to careless, cheerful confidence. ‘I told you, don’t worry about who got me pregnant. I never think about it, and neither should you.’
‘I just want to know who I am.’
‘Believe me, doll, you know who you are.’
Jojo made a noise as if he were about to say something, but June crouched down so that she was face-to-face with him, and said sweetly, ‘If you want some motivation to keep quiet, think about how you’re going to breathe through that broken nose if I decide to gag you.’
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