The tight set to her mouth softened a fraction. ‘Yeah, well, I sent it back to her after I got paid for my story.’
James looked at her in a combination of frustration and admiration. She was a survivor. She fought her corner and fought hard. She used whatever weapons she had at her disposal. Wit. Charm. Artifice. Seduction. She was wily, as cunning as a vixen and as cute as a kitten, whichever suited her needs best.
But underneath all that he could see something else. Someone else. Someone who didn’t let anyone get too close. Someone who didn’t trust others not to exploit her or harm her. Someone who felt more than she cared to show.
‘You said your mother died. What about your father?’
‘I haven’t seen him since I was eight.’
‘His choice or yours?’
She gave him another cynical look. ‘Her Majesty’s choice.’
‘He’s in prison?’
‘Yep.’
‘For?’
‘For being a jerk.’
James let it go. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it. He was surprised she had told him what she had. He wondered if his mother had got as much out of her. He felt annoyed with himself for not understanding Aiesha better. Was that why his mother had resumed contact? She had understood there was much more to that brooding teenager with the challenging behaviour. His mother had seen the potential inside Aiesha to become a beautiful swan if only she had a chance to shine. She was not used to letting people in. His mother had been patient, spending the last eight years keeping in contact with Aiesha, letting her know there was a safe haven for her if ever she needed it.
‘You don’t have to feel ashamed of where you’ve come from, Aiesha,’ he said. ‘None of that was your choice.’
She pushed her lips out in a what-would-you-know manner. ‘I’m going to have a shower. Talking about my background always makes me feel dirty.’
* * *
Aiesha was still agitated after her shower. She stood staring out of the window at the whitened fields and forest, wondering why she had told James so much. She wasn’t used to talking about her past. She never talked about it. Not to anyone. She’d didn’t want people to think any less of her for being the daughter of a criminal and a heroin addict. She had spent most of her life trying to hide it.
It was hardly something you brought up as small talk at a cocktail party: What does my father do, you ask? He’s a career criminal. Armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Drugs. Breaking and entering. You name it. He’s either done it or has a mate who has.
Aiesha had always been the outsider at school. The one everyone pointed at, whispered about, gossiped about. She had learned early on to mask her feelings, to armour up so no one knew how much those snarky comments hurt. But it had hurt to be the only one not invited to another child’s birthday party. It had hurt to be the last one picked for a team. It had hurt to walk out of the school gate and see all the other mothers or fathers gathered to collect their children while there was no one waiting for her.
Her high-school parent–teacher interviews were the worst. Her mother would make an effort to sober up and drag herself there but Aiesha wished she hadn’t bothered. The pitying looks that came her way from the teachers afterwards only intensified her feelings of being an outcast.
But then one day a couple of weeks before her fifteenth birthday she found Archie.
It was still the best day of her life. She had found him near the tube station close to where she and her mother and the Beast Man lived. They weren’t supposed to have pets in the flat but Aiesha smuggled him in and out under her coat. He was terrier-small but of mixed breeding with a face only a mother could love. She didn’t know how old Archie was or where he had come from, but from the moment he’d come over to her and looked up at her plaintively with those big brown eyes and wagged his tail she was smitten.
Archie would trot along to school with her each day and wait patiently in the alley behind the dry-cleaner’s shop until she returned each afternoon. It was the highlight of her day to see him waiting for her there. His head would come up off his paws and his eyes would brighten and that stumpy little tail would wag so hard Aiesha was sure one day it would fall off. She would give him the scraps she’d saved from her school dinner and then they would walk to the park, where she would pretend she was like all the other dog-owners. Going home to a nice house with a garden, warm and cosy in winter, cool and smelling of flowers in summer. To food, not just on the table but also in the pantry and in the fridge. To a mother who wasn’t stoned or drunk or beaten within an inch of her life. To a father—or stepfather—who wasn’t sending her leering looks through piggy eyes and smacking his thick wet lips at her.