‘Yes, well. Rosie can sleep on the way so – ’
‘When areyougoing to sleep?’
Libby huffed and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I’m fine. It doesn’t – ’
‘You’ve been up since six. You shouldn’t be working at this hour, it’s – ’
‘Go to your room, Rosie,’ Libby said, cutting Jamie off. ‘Get Alan packed, okay?’ Rosie wriggled down her mother and started toward her room, but before she made it there she stopped and turned to face Jamie. One hand went to her hip, which she cocked to the side and the other pointed in his direction.
‘Doggie. Boat,’ she said, punctuating each word with another point of her finger. Jamie pressed his lips together again and nodded solemnly.
‘Yes,’ he told her. She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before nodding, spinning on her heel and flouncing through the bedroom door. Rosie gave good flounce. Jamie watched her go with an amused expression, but sobered when he turned to Libby.
‘Listen, I appreciate all you’ve done for us. I really,reallyappreciate it. But I’ve been looking after Rosie and myself for a long time. I know what I’m doing, I – ’
‘Is that why you fell asleep in teaching, even in theatre?’
‘Listen, I was working night shifts before we started the rotation, and then Rosie was sick. I didn’t get more than a few hours’ sleep in the week before our induction. She never gets sick … it … it was an exception.’
‘You’ll make yourself ill like this. Where do you work anyway? Why do you have to go to Central London to do it?’
‘I work in a bar. I mix cocktails; it’s a skill. Pays really well but has to be at night. And in the daytime I teach dance and gymnastics to some … women. Um … a sort of class I’ve set up.’ The practiced lies spilled out with ease. Apart from Kira, nobody in her life knew how she earned her money.
‘You teach dance?’
‘And gymnastics. I was a national champion when I was a teenager.’ That much at least was a true, if now irrelevant, fact.
‘And at night youmixcocktails?’ One of his eyebrows crept up his forehead. Libby got the impression he wasn’t buying that particular lie and she was beginning to hate that damn eyebrow which went perfectly with his superior bloody attitude.
With a sudden movement he threw something in her direction. Libby was never very good at catching. She fumbled the object and it fell to the floor. When she looked down she saw it was his wallet. ‘What … ?’ she started, as she bent down to retrieve the square of brown leather.
‘You’re lying,’ he told her. ‘Why are you lying?’
Libby gritted her teeth and shoved his wallet at him. ‘You can leave now.’
He crossed his arms over his broad chest and planted his feet wide; weirdly, his stubborn pose reminded her of Rosie at her most difficult.
‘I’m driving you to your parents.’ She stared at his pose and the tension in his jaw and sighed, recognizing that there was no point arguing with a two hundred pound, over six-foot tall man with a stubborn streak a mile wide.
‘Arrogant Nerf Herder,’ she muttered as she turned and moved to the bedroom, unaware that it was more flounce than walk, and nearly identical to her daughter’s exit moments ago.
*****
Nerf Herder?
Jamie uncrossed his arms and watched the beautiful woman follow the beautiful child out of the room. Then he smiled.
Chapter 9
World famous
Jamie smiled down at his pint glass. The loud noise of the pub and the banter around him faded into the background as he pictured Rosie’s earnest little face when she ran back to him before going into her grandparents’ tiny terraced house in Elephant and Castle. She’d told him to hold his hand out, and had deposited a woodlouse into his open palm, grinning at him like she had just given him a rare diamond.
‘That’s Arthur,’ she’d told him. ‘He wants to meet Beauty. I’ll come and get him when I come over, okay?’ Jamie had swallowed and managed a weak smile (he hated creepy-crawlies). Rosie patted him on the cheek and flounced off after her mother. He’d had to endure Arthur crawling around inside his closed fist until he could make it back to the car and deposit him in an empty water bottle. The memory still made him shudder.
‘Drink! Drink! Drink!’ the loud chanting around him broke through his mental fug and he looked up from his pint. The whole table was pointing at him. He shrugged and downed his beer, not bothering to ask why – he knew that would be pointless.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Pav shouted in his ear. The stupid bastard lost all ability to regulate volume after a couple of drinks. ‘You’re always king of Thumb Master – weaselling your way out of drinking any way you can.’
