She didn’t get any further. The words blurred as the tears came again. Suki sat there, shoulders slumped, the note in her hand. With a sigh she staggered to her feet, feeling weak as an old woman, letting the note fall on to the bed. She went into the kitchenette and opened the door to the pantry, then she dragged the Mickey Mouse tin down from the shelf. She put it on the sink and prised the lid open. Inside, there was a stash of dollar bills. Quite a few of them. She took the tin into the bedroom, slumped down again, and turned it out and counted the notes.

There were five hundred-dollar bills in there.

And now . . . what would she do with that?

She looked out of the smeary trailer window. More trailers just like her aunt’s were lined up out there. Trucks and flatbeds and ancient boats and other junk were piled up all around them. A mile or so up the way from here, there were grand old plantation houses surrounded by oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. Big-paddled riverboats were going up and down the Mississippi, taking people to other places. And beyond that . . . who knew?

Suki looked at the cash. Then she took out Aunt Ginny’s note again and braced herself, dried her tears. There were more lines of writing, and this time Suki read them. When she’d done that, she just sat there and stared at the words. Then, shocked beyond belief, she read them again.

72

72

‘Your mother fucking well hates me,’ said Kylie one night after a marathon sex session in bed.

Connor grinned and lay back, hands behind his head, glowing with satisfaction.

‘Don’t take it personal. She hates all my girlfriends,’ he said. It was a fact. Shauna was his mum, and all respect to her for that, but he knew what a cow she could be to anyone outside her precious ‘family unit’.

‘How many have there been?’ asked Kylie, snuggling in against his chest.

‘Five or six,’ said Connor, thinking maybe forty. His girls never hung around for long. Shauna saw to that, and if he wasn’t serious about a girl anyway – and he never had been – it didn’t bother him. But maybe with Kylie things were hotting up a bit too much. And this ‘engagement’ thing . . .

‘You did that just to get up her nose, right? The engagement announcement on New Year’s Eve,’ he said.

‘Worked, didn’t it?’ Kylie smirked. ‘Face like fury on her after that. Hey, we could get engaged, couldn’t we.’ She lifted her head, looked into his eyes. ‘What d’you think?’

‘Sure,’ said Connor, thinking, No way. But then, it was just a ring. Nothing serious. It would keep her happy and when Kylie was happy, she put out like crazy. So why not?