Jessie Keane - Jail Bird

‘How long do you give it?’ hissed Freddy.

His mate shrugged. ‘Six months? Maybe nine if she drops a sprog quick.’

Saz and Richard went out into the sunshine, the guests piling out behind them, throwing confetti. Saz was giggling and picking bits of multicoloured paper out of her hair when she saw the figure standing nearby, very still, just watching.

The woman standing there had Saz’s own face, but it was calmer, sterner, older but no less beautiful. She was shabbily dressed in a creased and rumpled cream linen suit that fitted where it touched. It looked as though it had been made for someone a foot taller than her, and it hung around her like a shroud. She was perched on high white stiletto heels that had sunk into the grass and were now muddy from the soft earth. Her blonde hair was scraped back into a careless ponytail. She wore no make-up.

Saz froze. The woman smiled slightly. Saz went sheet-white.

Richard was looking at her, wondering what had happened.

She’d gone from laughing to dead-faced and looking on the verge of fainting away, all in the space of seconds.

‘Saz? What’s up, sweetheart?’

‘Oh my God, ’ mumbled Saz, clutching at her throat, looking like she might actually throw up.

‘What…?’ Oli had come forward, wondering what sort of drama-queen act her big sis was putting on now, Jase trailing behind her. Si and Maeve came out, chattering and smiling, and then abruptly the chattering and smiling ceased, and the only sound was the bells ringing, and even that sound was no longer cheerful and joyous. Now the bells sounded like death knells: ominous, threatening.

‘Jesus, it’s her, ’ hissed a woman in the crowd.

The whole party stood stock-still and looked at the woman standing there, her eyes full of desperate love, her face naked with longing as she looked at the beautiful bride, the stunning bridesmaid.

Lily felt tears start in her eyes as she looked at them. Her girls! Her lovely girls!

Oh God – they were so grown up! But she knew them; she still knew them. And they knew her, she could see it in their eyes. But…they didn’t look happy to see her. It hurt so bad, to see the horror and the…yes, the disgust on those beloved faces. But she was going to get over that. She would have to do hard work, win them over, make it all right again. They thought – they had been duped into believing that she had killed their father. Somehow, she was going to have to show them that it wasn’t true. That she was still their mother, that she loved them.

Tentatively, she started forward. She could see Si King and his wife Maeve standing a little behind Saz, and Freddy was there, staring at her with hatred in his eyes. Well of course he hated her, he thought she’d done it, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t. Somehow she was going to show them all, prove it to them.

Somehow.

She walked forward, her heart thudding in her chest like a bass drum. Her hands were clammy. Becks’s high heels were too big for her and the pointed heels kept sticking in the ground, so she staggered slightly, but she kept that faint smile on her face, determined to reassure her girls, not to frighten them. No, she would never do that, but she had to make them see that she was still their mum, she still loved them.

Saz shrank back as Lily approached.

Abruptly the bells stopped pealing and the silence was shocking. Lily stopped walking and stood there, two paces away from her daughters, her eyes going from one to the other, a tear slipping down her face as she looked at them with an expression of hope and wonderment.

‘My beautiful girls,’ she said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

Saz moved suddenly, startling everybody. With a shriek, she hit Lily with the huge and exquisite bouquet she was carrying. Cream roses flew, pulled loose by the impact. Lily fell back, raising an arm to shield herself, her expression almost comical with hurt and bewilderment. Saz hit her again, and again. Trying to protect herself, Lily saw Oli make a half-gesture towards Saz, maybe to get her to stop, maybe to help her beat her own mother, Lily didn’t know. She staggered back, hobbling, one heel catching in the turf. Ignominiously, she fell, pitching backwards onto the ground, all the wind knocked out of her.

‘Murderess!’ yelled Saz as Richard tried to hold her back.

‘Jesus, Saz, stop it,’ he said, his face a mixture of embarrassment at his new wife’s behaviour, and disbelief that she should have the brass neck to show up on a day like this.

‘I won’t stop it! She killed him! She killed my dad!’ Now Saz was sobbing, struggling, still trying to reach Lily, still trying to inflict damage.

Trembling, Lily knelt up on the muddy turf. Her hands were dirty; there was a smear of mud on Becks’s linen dress. She got to her feet and found that one of the heels on the white shoes had snapped. She hobbled lopsidedly, a pathetic figure before a huge crowd of hate-filled onlookers.

Lily swallowed and swiped at her eyes, leaving a trail of mud on her cheek. She could take hatred from the others, but from her own girls? From Oli? From Saz? But that was what was written clearly on their faces. They hated her.

Now her eyes were searching the crowds, seeing the expressions that were a mixture of horror and obscene delight. Some of these bitches would be dining out for a month on this day. No doubt about that. She saw Maeve there, not far behind Saz, looking oddly triumphant, and there was Freddy, looking at her as though he would like to slit her open right now. Looking at her as if she was a marked woman, living on borrowed time. Which she was. She knew she was, but she didn’t much care. Doing stir got you like that. You just got through it. Somehow, she had. And now all she cared about was proving to her girls that she was not their father’s killer. Anything else, she didn’t give a toss.

Then she realized that she could no longer see Si in the crowds. Anxiety was suddenly gnawing at Lily’s innards. Lily had always thought Si was like one of those big spiders you see sometimes on your bedroom wall – so long as you could see where he was, you felt okay. Worried, but okay. But when Si slipped out of sight, you had to wonder now what the hell’s he up to? Si was all secrets and schemes. Freddy would be dangerous if he had half a brain, but at least he’d always come straight out with it. Si was the true danger.

She shouldn’t have come here. Becks had been right. She was aware of how shabby she looked, wearing ill-fitting borrowed clothes and shoes. She knew she’d been so long inside that she’d forgotten how to present herself to the world, how to behave. She knew she’d made a wrong move. She knew she’d have to pay for it, too.

She stood there, tears streaming down her cheeks, flinching from the look on Saz’s face, all twisted up with hatred, and her eyes came to rest on Nick O’Rourke’s face in the crowd – Leo’s best man, his best friend, his business partner. Dark hair, nearly black eyes with a hard, unforgiving expression in them. Tall and broad-shouldered and wearing a morning suit like he’d been born to it. He stared back at her, and very gently shook his head.

For God’s sake, his eyes said. What the fuck are you doing?

Lily bowed her head, defeated. She didn’t know what she was doing. That was a fact. Her own daughter had just assaulted her; she was cringing inside with hurt and horror. Saz hated her. She glanced up, looked at Oli. Against her dark hair, Oli’s face was blanched white. Her eyes were resting on her mother, but not with warmth. She was staring at Lily as she would at a deranged stranger, likely at any moment to freak out and inflict damage.