tipple?’
Rhona laughed. ‘It doesn’t mean that I like their music the best. I don’t mind it but there’s other stuff I prefer. Like the Stones. They’re … I don’t know, wilder.’
‘Oh, you like wild things?’ Gary gave her a sideways look. ‘I might have known it. I could have predicted that from the first moment I saw you.’
‘Cheeky.’
‘True, though.’ He tapped his beer glass against hers. ‘To wild times.’
She tossed her hair, now it was free of the coat collar. She’d put on new earrings and they swung around her neck. ‘Wild times,’ she echoed.
Gary took a gulp and sighed. ‘That’s better. Sorry to keep you waiting like that, I really mean it. I kept thinking you wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t have blamed you, a cold night like this, being stuck there on your own, and you hardly know me.’
‘Got to know you quite well on Sunday though, didn’t I?’ Rhona said, with a little smile at the memory. If she had her way that would be just the start. She’d been very restrained, not jumping into bed with him at his first suggestion. Didn’t hurt to make them wait a little bit, but it had taken all her willpower to say no.
‘You did,’ he breathed, waving away the smoke from her cigarette that was drifting between them. ‘We could do that again. How about coming back to my place after the bar? We can be as wild as you like.’
Rhona sighed wistfully. ‘I’d love to, Gary, I really would. But I’ve got work tomorrow morning and my boss has got it in for me at the moment – don’t know why, he’s a mean old sod. I can’t get away with being one minute late. So I’ll need to get back to Peckham.’ She paused. ‘And as I live with Mum and Dad I don’t think I can sneak you in. That wouldn’t be right.’
‘Pity.’ Gary took another gulp of beer. ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble …’
‘No, I can do that well enough on my own,’ Rhona assured him.
‘I bet you can.’
‘So not tonight.’ She gazed at him and her eyes sparkled. ‘Maybe another time.’
‘Soon?’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, looking down in an attempt at modesty.
‘I know what I’ll put on,’ Gary said suddenly. ‘Marianne Faithfull. I bet you like her. And it’s because it’s just come to me who you look like. You’re a dead ringer for Marianne Faithfull.’
‘Me?’ Rhona hadn’t heard that one before, but she could hardly object. The sexy, sultry young singer was high in the charts and was drop-dead gorgeous. For a moment she suspected Gary was spinning her a line but then she told herself to relax. She’d just been given a huge compliment by a very attractive man. She gripped the table top. ‘Yes, go on, see if they’ve got her new single.’ She watched him as he sauntered across the floor towards the jukebox, and a thrill went through her. He was special. She’d never met anyone quite like him, and she was a bit scared, knowing that no man had ever affected her in exactly this way before. ‘To wild times,’ she said quietly to herself.
Mavis proudly put away the last of the crockery from the evening meal in her kitchen, pleased with the way she’d organised everything now it was all unpacked. The smart cupboard doors were a pale green, which she’d picked out when Pete gave her the choice. She thought it would remind her of parks and gardens. Now she could look into their own garden from her kitchen window on the first floor and imagine how it would be in summer, with tubs of flowers and vegetables. She sighed contentedly.
‘So you’re settled in?’ asked Tommy, who was sitting at the kitchen table, his elbows on the grass-green Formica surface. ‘It feels like home now?’
‘It does. The children love it, and Grace has stopped worrying about monsters,’ Mavis said with a note of relief. Of course she should have expected that Grace, having complained solidly about sharing with her brother for two years, would then kick up a fuss when she finally had a room of her own. But it had only lasted a couple of nights.
‘It’s a big improvement on Harwood Street, or Wandsworth for that matter,’ said Tommy. ‘You’ll never want to come over to my flat again.’
Mavis laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. We won’t see less of each other now I’m in here, will we? It’s no further away from your place than the old house.’
‘No, only teasing. Anyway, now that the babysitters are right downstairs, if anything, this set-up means we can see more of each other. Or I bet you could get Rhona over. Grace would love that, she can play with those false eyelashes.’
‘Of course,’ said Mavis, but her mind was wandering to what had happened at the weekend. ‘You’ll never guess what,’ she began. ‘The other day, Saturday it must have been, I was down Choumert Street market and I thought I saw a face from the past.’ She grimaced. ‘Larry Barnet, but surely it couldn’t have been him?’
‘Larry?’ Tommy kept his face expressionless. He didn’t want to give anything away about the incident in his office. Had Larry seen her too? Had he sought him out deliberately to wind him up, rather than just walking past the yard and recognising him? ‘You sure?’
‘Well, not totally, but it did look like him, though he had less hair and was bigger than I remember,’ Mavis said nervously. ‘I really hope he hasn’t moved to this area. You know he made my life a total misery for a while and I know you were part of it, but he was the ringleader.’
Tommy rubbed his chin and looked away from her. It sounded like Larry all right. Should he tell her what had happened? No, she’d be more worried than ever and he could tell she was getting herself all worked up. That wasn’t fair, not when she’d been so happy earlier in the evening.
‘Forget about it,’ he advised her. ‘Larry Barnet’s been gone from South London for years and good riddance to him and his family, bunch of criminals that they are. You don’t want to be thinking about him. He’s in the past, love. Why would he show himself round here? He never had anything to do with Peckham. It must have been someone else. Like you said, you could have made a mistake. People change a lot in, what is it? Ten or twelve years?’
‘Yes, I know.’ Mavis bit her lip.
‘Come here,’ Tommy said, opening his arms to her. She went across to him and sat on his lap, resting her head against his. ‘Forget about it,’ said Tommy, stroking her back. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about on that score. I love you and won’t let anything happen to you.’ His face set in determination. ‘I will never, ever let anyone hurt you ever again. Trust me. Nobody is ever going to harm you. I’ll see to that.’
‘You sure you don’t mind me tagging along?’ asked Penny, battling along the street against the driving wind that Saturday evening. ‘Oh, this is ruining my hair. I don’t know why I bothered. You got any hairspray on you?’
‘No.’ Rhona wasn’t managing much better. ‘Let’s go to the ladies as soon as we get inside and we can fix ourselves up all over again. I can’t have Gary seeing me like this.’
She gave a sigh of relief as they finally approached the door of the Talisman club. This time it was easier to make out the layout in the dim lighting and they both pushed their way across to the ladies, only to find that everyone else had had the same idea. The small room was full of young women bemoaning the state of their appearance and jostling for a view in the steamed-up mirror. Rhona and Penny ended up doing each other’s make-up and hair in a corner, but eventually they were satisfied that the damage had been repaired and that they were ready to do battle on the dance floor.
Gary was waiting by the bar and Penny