A Very Accidental Love Story (18 page)

So he paused, waited for a bit, saw that she wasn’t going anywhere till she got the answers she was looking for, then finally realised there was nothing for it but to open up to her. What the hell, she seemed to have found out everything else about him from the governor, what had he to lose?

‘I’ll be just fine, thanks for asking,’ he told her, coughing and keeping his voice deliberately low, hoping she’d just drop the subject and move on.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive. As it happens, I’ve a few quid put by, not much but enough to tide me over for a few weeks till I find work.’

‘What do you think you’ll work at?’

He sighed. Because he’d been giving that one a lot of thought lately and the options didn’t exactly appeal.

‘Thought I might hire out a taxi plate,’ he told her, but she didn’t exactly look impressed. But then neither was he, particularly.

‘It’s a gig plenty of the other lads in here do as a kind of stepping-stone when they first get out,’ he went on to explain. ‘You don’t have the expense of running the car, tax or insurance or any of that, the guy who owns the taxi plate looks after all that. So as long as you pay him his cut out of whatever cash you make, he’s happy. Means I can do the odd night shift for some overworked driver who only wants to work more sociable hours during the day.’

‘Oh Jake,’ she said sitting back, deflated. ‘That’s really what you want? To ferry home a load of drunks out of their head on alcopops at four a.m., after all the nightclubs close?’

‘That wouldn’t really particularly bother me at all,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘To be honest, I’d just be glad of the cash and can put up with anything, as long as they don’t puke in the back of the car.’

There was only one disadvantage to the plan and he knew it only too well, though he kept it to himself. If he went back to driving, his old gang would surely find him. Chances were they’d track him down in no time. Nothing could be easier. If they wanted to, they could get to anyone, but a taxi driver was a particularly useful animal to them. They’d get you working like a courier, and before you knew where you were, you were back in trouble, back in court, back inside, back to square one, back where you swore you’d never go back to.

Eloise didn’t actually say as much, but seemed distinctly unimpressed with the plan. It was in the slightly disdainful sniff she gave when he mentioned taxi shift work and in the way she impatiently tapped the tips of her skinny fingers off the metal counter in front of her, when he talked about night shifts and soilage charges. But then, he’d noticed she was good at communicating disapproval without even having to open her mouth. For a split second he wondered what life was like for all the legions of reporters and editors who worked under her. Were they all afraid of her? He’d nearly put money on it.

Jake knew so little about her, but could already guess that in a work situation, her bark was as bad, if not fifty times worse, than her bite. Idly, he found himself sitting back, arms folded, wondering when the last time was someone had used the word ‘no’ in front of Eloise Elliot.

‘But you have a TEFL qualification,’ she reminded him insistently. ‘You got first class honours, you did really well at it! Why are you throwing all that away so you can sit on some taxi rank for hours in the middle of the night? Why not put your qualification to good use? And you’re studying for your English and psychology degree. Surely pursuing these goals would give you a far more promising future then schlepping round night clubs in some borrowed taxi at some ungodly hour in the morning? Course, I know that your future is in your own hands and that it’s none of my business,’ she added, ‘but it seems to me that you’ve got a real chance to make something of yourself here. To really start over, turn a new leaf, not look back.’

At that, he sat forward, starting to listen more intently now. Because without her even realising it, that last sentence had chimed a deep chord. He wondered if Eloise knew that was exactly what he needed to hear at this point in time. Wondered if she knew that the very thought of making a fresh start, of even taking a step up in the world was like music to his ears … Who knew?

All he knew was that he found himself suddenly paying alert attention to what she was saying. She had a way of making everything sound so easy, so achievable. God, he thought, this one was far, far better than any parole officer at encouraging you, guiding you to haul yourself up by the bootstraps and make something out of what was left of your life.

‘You know what you could do Jake?’ she went on, really warming to her theme now, ‘You could apply for a job teaching TEFL courses to overseas students, maybe at one of the language schools that are springing up all over town. After all, education is the one recession-proof business,’ she went on enthusiastically. ‘I’d put money on it that you’d be well able to get work, even part-time.’

So Jake let her chat on, finding himself listening interestedly at first, then intently. Because she just made it all sounds so easy, so doable.

‘You could be a proper TEFL teacher,’ she encouraged him. ‘You could do it, easily, I know you could. I’ll even be a referee on your references for you. We can gloss up your CV,’ she said, like it was already a done deal. ‘I’ll help you, I’d be delighted to. And in your spare time, you could finish your degree. Who knows what wonderful prospects it might lead on to in time? Streets ahead of doing night shifts in a taxi. So come on, what do you say?’

Jake said nothing, but just listening to her filled him with an utterly unfamiliar sensation. Hard to put a name on, but when he analysed it later on back in his cell, he knew exactly what it was. It was hope, plain and simple. No two ways about it, she was offering him a lifeline.

And he’d have been a fool not to grab at it like a sinking man about to be saved.

So this was it then, this was freedom. For the first time in two years, Jake had no one to answer to only himself. And it was – no other word for it – intoxicating
.
Delirious enough to get high on, if he hadn’t sworn off all that years ago. He felt invincible, like William Wallace at the end of the movie
Braveheart
, as played by Mel Gibson with a faceful of Avatar-blue paint all over him, where he just wanted to yell out at the top of his lungs over and over again, that one delicious word …
freedom.

Astonishing the things you missed when you’d been away. Ask any of the lads inside, and they’d all tell a different tale: some missed their wives, girlfriends, kids, others the little things like being able to stroll into a pub on a Sunday afternoon, order a pint, read the paper, maybe watch a match on telly. But for Jake, what he’d missed most was that rare thing, privacy. Never for one second were you left alone inside, even in the showers you were supervised, always being watched. It was a thing he vowed never to take for granted again, not as long as he lived.

And now here he was, Jake Keane, living the life of a respectable man. It was like some kind of strange, surrealist dream come true and in his darker moments – of which there were many – he worried about the tap on his shoulder, the unwanted phone call, or the midnight hammering on his hall door that would land him right back at square one. But he tried his best to tune those thoughts out and instead to focus on the positives. God knows, for once in his life, there were an abundance of them to choose from.

He owed Eloise so much, and Jake was a proud man, unused to either being helped altruistically or being under a compliment. Particularly to someone who’d just brush all his badly articulated expressions of heartfelt thanks aside. But if it was the last thing he ever did, he swore that somehow he’d find a way to pay Eloise back.

For starters, there was this gorgeous flat he now had the run of, for a reasonable rent he could just about afford. It was tiny, admittedly, a one-bedroom apartment just off the main Sandymount Road, in one of those new developments that had shot up like mushrooms during the property boom. Course now half of the apartments in block after block were little more than negative equity millstones round the neck of owners who had taken a punt on them in better times, and now they just lay empty and deserted. Kind of like living in a ghost town, with very few neighbours and even fewer lights dotted round the block whenever it got dark.

But to Jake, it was like crashing out in the penthouse suite of the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Sheer, unimagined luxury. And here, in his own tiny little space, he was finally, finally free.

He could do as he pleased, when he pleased. Go out for long solitary walks down Sandymount Strand any time it suited him, with no one’s permission to ask. No sirens blaring that heralded a fight breaking out in some far-away wing, meaning lockdown for one and all, no lights-out at a time when you could still hear small kids out playing on the still sunlit streets, no handcuffs, no iron security gates to pass through every five metres, no clinking of keys … There was just him and him alone and there were times he thought he was drunk on the sheer high of it.

He felt like a proper adult, with a normal life all ahead of him, something he’d scarcely dreamt of only a few weeks back.

And all he had to do was not f**k it up.

Eloise continued to astonish him with her random acts of kindness, all done in her usual brusque, businesslike manner. He’d actually never expected to see her again. As soon as he’d moved into the flat and given her a month’s rent plus a deposit upfront for her sister, that technically should have heralded the end of all her dealings with him. And yet still she kept coming back. Just for friendly chats, just to see how he was doing. Lately she’d taken to dropping in on him at the oddest times, like very late at night when she’d just have finished up work for the day, or early on weekend mornings, when again, she was only about to start her day’s work.

Initially, she never stayed for more than half an hour at a time, just long enough for her to check what work he’d done on his CVand which language schools he was applying off to. Like a teacher looking for progress reports, he thought. As if she hadn’t done enough for him, she’d even helped him out there too. She’d glossed up his resumé for him and had added on loads of embellishments he’d never even thought of. All the skills that he’d learned in Wheatfield, she’d pounced on, made an asset of.

And so now, under ‘outside interests and hobbies’, he had listed a not-unimpressive array of accomplishments, from carpentry to cooking. She’d even thrown in metalwork. Fleshes it all out a bit, she’d told him, makes you sound more interesting, more three-dimensional. Spoken with all the authority of a woman who’d not only scanned through thousands of CVs in her time, but who could also freely quote – in some cases dating from years back – examples from the ones that had impressed her and horror stories from the ones that arrived on her desk stained with coffee mug rings all around them.

‘Photographic memory?’ he’d asked her at the time, wryly grinning at her from the corner of his mouth.

‘Comes in very handy in my gig, believe me,’ she grinned back and as ever, it astonished him how approximately ten years fell off her face when she allowed herself to crack even the tiniest smile.

Not only that, but she’d encouraged him to open up a library account too, so he could borrow all the English and psychology books he needed to study for his Open University exams, which were only round the corner. She’d even earmarked a couple of language schools in town that she’d heard on the grapevine were stuffed to the gills with students and suggested he apply off to those first. Chances were they could do with having a few substitute teachers on their roster.

Jake gladly took her advice and was astonished to find that in no time at all, his days had become far fuller and busier than he ever could have anticipated. He would get up early each morning, cook a proper breakfast (cooking came easily after a spell inside; everyone was required to spend at least three months of the year working in the prison kitchens and what you’d learned stayed with you), then start into the books, which he loved far more than he could ever hope to put into words.

For hour after hour, he’d sit at the tiny desk in the one-roomed studio flat and pore over his course texts, cup of coffee beside him, feeling like a real, proper student. Feeling so very deeply privileged; as though all the chances he’d never had as a kid, or as a teenager, all the opportunities that he’d missed out on, had by some boomerang of a miracle, come back to him.

As it happened, he was studying
Pygmalion
by one of his favourite writers, George Bernard Shaw, for his English exam. And he found it ironic and funny at the same time, that a guy like him, an ex-con, a criminal with a past who’d been in and out of correctional facilities all his youth, could relate so easily to a character like Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl with a rough background whose main problem in life was that she said ‘cuppa tae’ instead of cup of tea and yelled obscenities at racehorses on Ascot opening day.

And yet in spite of everything, he could all too easily identify with this character. He’d even written a bit about the subject in one of the essays he’d had to hand in to his course tutor. He and Eliza Dolittle both despised where they’d come from and didn’t want to get sucked back. They both wanted more out of life, without being dragged back into the past any more. The past was another country, Jake had learned, one he never, ever intended revisiting.

Enter Eloise Elliot, like a female Henry Higgins in a black power suit and high heels, who was good enough to provide a halfway house for him, all the time encouraging him onwards and upwards. And education, she impressed on him time and again, was the key to the unlocked low door in the wall, the one that led to a better life.

His mam laughed at him when he took two buses on the long trek out to Darndale to see her one Sunday afternoon, as did his nana. ‘You always had notions about yourself,’ she’d said, though he liked to kid himself that he caught a flash of pride in her eyes as she said it. ‘Always too good for the likes of us, always wanting better for yourself. With your fancy books by writers none of us ever heard of by Russian writers that aren’t even alive any more, sure what’s the point in that?’