Love Story 17

‘Ali come back,’ I hissed. Too late as her big feet connected with metallic bucket making it ring out.

She peered back at me and put a hand over her mouth. Giggling, I think it was nerves. ‘Sorry,’ she said and pulled the metal pail upright. She got flustered balancing the mop head upright, back in the corner, and stuck it horizontal on the floor—something else to trip over—but wedged the bag into the curve of mop bucket.

‘Don’t touch that,’ she warned me as if I was a thief.

‘C’mon,’ I waved an arm towards the door. ‘Somebody will have heard you.’

‘No they willnae,’ she said with renewed confidence. But she snuck her head around the door, before she went inside the kitchen. I followed in at her back, but she pushed my hand away.

She leant on the twin tub. There was enough light from the living room to see each other. I cocked my head and listened to the creaks and groans of the house and for the distant cry of car sirens telling us the police were on the way. We still had time to scarper.

‘Whit room does she keep aw the diamonds in?’ she asked.

I think she imagined it was like a De Boer diamond mine where she’d wander in and fill her pockets and wander back out again, but I’d no time to explain.

‘She keeps her jewellery in her bedroom.’   

‘Whit room’s that?’

‘Forget it.’ I tugged at her arm, but she slapped me across the face. ‘Stop daeing that,’ she warned me. ‘Stop pulling and hitting me. Yer no my fucking Da.’  

The flash across my cheek felt painless, but I pushed her and made her stumble. ‘Let’s go, and don’t be so fucking stupid.’

‘Yer aye calling me stupit.’

‘I’m sorry, you’re no stupid. Far from it. You always seem to get what you want.’

She twisted her body, avoiding something. Her feet clattering against a trolley Mrs Connolly shoved under her sink, making the Dettol bottles jingle and clink. ‘Whit was that?’ she asked.

‘It was you.’

‘Oh, aye, it wiz nothing.’ She squeezed my arm, her voice tearful. ‘Yer the bestest boyfriend in the whole wide world. I don’t know whit me and our wee baby would dae withoot yeh.’

I tiptoed to the living-room. The lobby door was still angled half open.

Ali crept up behind me, dunting into my back, her breath on my neck. ‘Whit is it?’

I whispered, ‘She’s in that room.’ Flicking a finger to show which one.   

She brushed past me and barrelled into the lobby. I followed her slipstream, trying to catch her before it was too late. She leant against the bedroom door and it creaked open. Crouched inside the room, her head turned one way and then another. She reached out a hand to get her bearings, looking for the jewellery boxes, but stumbled over a slipper.

‘Is that you, Tommy?’ Mrs Connolly’s halo of white hair rose from the bed. A ghoul without its teeth in and the face sucked out of her cheeks. One ghost trying to talk to another.

I pulled the jacket lapels over my head, knocked against Ali and grabbed the jewellery box from the top of the chest of drawers. Yanking the second bottom drawer open and tipping it onto the floor and picking up the other valuables she kept hidden beneath her underwear and bras.

Mrs Connolly shrieked something and tried to get up and out of bed. Ali kicked her hard in the face. Knocking her backwards onto the bed. My jacket slipped from my head as I went to cry out her name. But it was too late.

We were outside the house within thinking about it, crouching behind the hedge. Ali had Mrs Connolly’s bag with the cash. I shoved the boxes with jewllery at her and into her chest. ‘Here, take them,’ I cried, unable to meet her eyes. ‘The best thing to dae now is split up.’

‘Yeh not want yer share?’ she asked.

‘No, listen, we need to get our stories right. I’ll say I was wae you and you say you were wae me. That’s our alibi. Water tight. It’s no hard to believe. We’re always the gither.

‘Ur yeh in a huff,’ she asked.

‘Just say we were up the Park. Winching. We didnae see anything. We didnae hear anything. We were at it like two Billy goats in the bushes.’

She started sorting through the jewellery box.

‘For fuck sake, dae that later,’ I said. ‘Just go up the road the now and act as if everything’s all normal…I’ll dae the same…First, I’ve got to phone an ambulance.’

She pulled the bag into her chest and lifted the jewellery boxes. ‘Whit yeh phoning an ambulance for?’ her voice was sharp. ‘That’s jist stupit. Yeh trying to get us caught?’

‘Just get to fuck!’ I replied. ‘Quick-style.’

‘Don’t involve me in it,’ she made a pouch with her coat for her haul. ‘Remember how pregnant I’m ur. I felt the baby moving in my stomach, quickening. We’ve got a psychic link. I don’t want it grown-up withoot a mother’s love.’

I didn’t tell her I’d a psychic link with Wormwood the snake, and was worried I was insane or possessed or both. And he’d warned me this would happen. Instead, I tried to reassure her. ‘I’ll obviously use the payphone down the road. And just tell them to send the ambulance quick. Gie them the address and that’ll be it. I’ll be hame and so will you, before it arrives…They’ll no know nothing.’

‘Yeh sure?’

But she didn’t wait for my answer. Her bulky body creeping around the side of the slabs and onto the grass. Lights pinged on in windows above and below and facing us. No longer in shadow, but she was almost home. I gave her a head start before I crept the other way towards the phone box. Wondering how she’d explain her windfall to her parents. Not that they paid her much attention. I was more worried about what I’d say to my parents. How I’d hide my shame.