Page 28 of Wounded Beast (Gypsy Heroes)

‘Miss Savage?’

‘You’re Brian?’

He smiles and nods. ‘Where can I take you?’

I give him my address and he takes me home in a beautiful dark blue Bentley. As I get out of the back seat, the parking attendant who admired Dom’s Maserati passes me.

‘Does this one belong to the same guy?’ he asks.

‘Mmm,’ I say, and, smiling like a cat who got the cream, run into my building.

My flat seems poor and cramped after his luxurious apartment. I quickly eat a bowl of cereal then take the Tube to my parents’ home. My mother looks at me strangely.

‘Are you all right, dear?’

‘Yeah, why?’

‘You just seem a bit pink. As if you’re coming down with something.’

I cough. ‘I’m fine, Mum.’

‘Come through. I’ll make us a cuppa.’

We have tea together, and I try my best to pay attention to my mother’s chatter, but it’s very hard going, and after a while I tell her I have to go meet Anna.

Anna and I meet in Starbucks. She peers at me closely. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asks.

‘Nothing’s wrong with me,’ I say with a sigh.

‘You look like you’re catching the flu or something,’ she insists.

‘OK. I slept with a man.’

‘What the fuck?’ she screams, so loudly the people at the next table give us a disapproving stare.

‘Speak up, won’t you? I don’t think the people in the next street heard you,’ I whisper fiercely.

‘Tell me everything,’ she orders, and takes a massive bite of her egg sandwich.

‘There’s not much to tell. He’s just a guy. It’s just a sex thing.’

‘When do you do a sex thing?’ she asks with her mouth full.

I grin at her. ‘When he looks like a Greek god.’

‘Who is this guy?’

‘Someone we’re meant to be investigating.’

Her mouth drops open and I see partially chewed egg and bread and something green. She swallow

s hurriedly and says, ‘Jesus, Ella. Is this like the invasion of the body snatchers? You’re sleeping with a tax dodger? You HATE tax cheats.’

I bite my lip. ‘I don’t know, Anna, I’m so confused. Everything I believed in for so long now seems like a badly thought out illusion. I can’t explain it. All I know is I just have to be with him. He has something that pulls me to him.’

‘Wow!’

‘I know. Can you believe it? Me saying something like that?’