Josh put the phone down. She was still laughing for joy, and he was grinning like a schoolboy.

114

114

Dad was gone again, and Mum was in a foul mood. All as normal, thought Connor. He dropped Dad at the airport to catch his flight then came back to the family home. Mum was in the kitchen, knocking the fuck out of some steaks with a tenderizing mallet. Aysha was in the sitting room. He opted for the sitting room. Mum’s bad moods were as infectious as rabies, and he didn’t want to get too close.

‘She’s gutted he’s gone away,’ said Aysha, putting her magazine aside when Connor came in.

Thump!

The steak was getting a right battering out there. Connor sat down beside his sister.

‘Maybe she clings on to him too hard, you thought of that?’ said Connor.

‘He can’t seem to get away fast enough, that’s for sure,’ said Aysha. She looked at Connor. ‘D’you think they’re in trouble? Their marriage, I mean?’

‘What makes you say that?’ He’d thought it for years. To him, his parents had always been a mismatch – Shauna so fierce, climbing ever upward on the social scale, and Josh the gentle giant who – it was obvious – yearned for the simpler days of his youth. Josh, it seemed to Connor, had always been true to his roots, even when Mum had been stuffing him into a dinner jacket and hawking him around at society bashes.

‘I dunno. Just a feeling I suppose.’

‘Women’s intuition?’ He smirked, thinking fondly of the times Josh had sat him down as a boy and as a teenager, telling him tales of the old gypsy settlement, the church in the dell, the Cleaver pig farm up the road. Sometimes Josh had used the old Romany words to him, and spoken in the language of Cant. Yeah, Dad was a real genuine Romany rye – a true gypsy gentleman.

‘Don’t knock it. I am a woman.’

Connor nodded. She certainly was. He’d never tell her, but since parting company with Joey Minghella – and losing the baby – his little sister had turned into a hard-faced knockout, she’d developed a style all her own. She usually wore black. Her dark hair was cut into a severe chin-length bob. Scarlet lipstick, black mascara. High heels. No longer a girl, that was for sure. A woman. Every time she was in the office, his mate Benedict nearly had a seizure.

‘What do you think of Benedict?’ he asked her.

‘Who?’ She squinted at him.

‘Benedict. Come on.’

‘Why does he have to be called Benedict?’ asked Aysha. ‘It’s a bit affected, don’t you think? Why not plain Ben?’

Connor shrugged. ‘He likes Benedict. And come to that, it suits him.’