Angel refastened her bikini top and sat up and looked at him. ‘I know you do,’ she said.

Lenny swiped a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with my head. From the minute I saw you, that was what I wanted. I’ve never had that happen to me before. Not that sudden. Or,’ he laughed hoarsely, ‘that violent.’

Angel looked down at the tiles on the terrace. ‘You know what I’ve been through . . .’ she started.

‘Yeah. I know that. I heard you last night. You were screaming in your sleep. I wanted to come in, but I didn’t want you to think . . . well. Anyway. I’m mad as hell about it and I am so glad that bastard is dead.’

She’d been having nightmares ever since what happened with Donny. Bad ones, in which the scissors didn’t finish him off and he just kept coming at her, throttling her with his hands while his bloody face loomed over her, grinning.

‘Lenny, I’m . . . so mixed up. My head’s all over the place.’

Lenny reached out and took her hand in both of his. His eyes were full of sympathy. ‘It’s OK. Whenever you’re ready is fine with me.’

‘What if I never am?’ asked Angel, her face troubled.

‘Then that’s OK,’ said Lenny, thinking that he was going to go stark bollock crazy if that was the case. He’d never felt like this about a woman before. Never. He had to have her, sooner or later, or he was going to go mad.

Angel looked up, stared him straight in the eye. ‘What did they do with him? With . . . the body?’

Lenny shook his head. ‘I don’t know and I don’t even care. All that’s the past. It has nothing to do with you and me, not any more.’

111

When Frank got the call to go to the governor’s office he had to stop himself from dancing all the way there whilst passing all his boys out on the landings.

‘Good luck, Frank.’

‘All right Frank? Well done.’

He was patted and his hand was shaken. He smiled like the kindly ruler he was, climbed the stairs, knocked on the office door with the warder at his side. A faint cry from inside, and then he was in, standing there, waiting for the good news. At last!

The governor lifted his bald head from a paper he was just signing, took off his glasses and smiled.

‘Frank,’ he said.

‘Mr Oatley,’ replied Frank, politely.

‘The parole board have concluded that you are still not fully suitable for release and that your sentence should run to its full term.’

Frank felt like he’d been knocked on his arse. He gasped in a breath. Couldn’t take it in. Those fuckers.

‘But why?’ he managed to get out. ‘I’ve been a model prisoner, ain’t that so? I’ve done everything they asked of me. Everything and more.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the governor stiffly. ‘The matter’s not open for discussion.’