Lost Angel (2 page)

‘I’ll b-be there,’ Johnny stuttered, his lip throbbing painfully.

Frankie gave him one last fierce look and then stalked out. Big Pat dropped Dave and followed, slamming the front door so hard that it sent the unopened mail wafting up the hall.

Dave untied his dressing gown and gingerly examined his ribs. The punch had hurt like hell, and he could have sworn he’d heard a crack, so he was surprised to see no obvious signs of damage. He covered himself back up and gave Johnny an accusing look.

‘Hope you’re pleased with yourself, you knob. You nearly got us fucking killed just then.’

‘Don’t blame
me
,’ Johnny gasped, rubbing at his throat. ‘Blame Ruth. She’s the one who—’

‘Shut up!’ Dave gestured frantically towards the door. ‘They might still be out there.’

White as a sheet, Johnny cocked his head to one side and listened for sounds of movement. Hearing nothing after a moment, he eased the quilt off his legs and tiptoed to the window. A couple of minutes later, Frankie and Big Pat emerged from the stairwell and strolled towards the parking lot. Relieved when they climbed into Frankie’s big red Cadillac and drove away, Johnny exhaled loudly and turned back to Dave.

‘Don’t ever do that to me again, man.’

‘
Me
?’ Dave’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What did
I
do?’

‘You let them in,’ Johnny reminded him accusingly. ‘You must have known it’d be trouble when you saw who it was.’

‘Oh, yeah, ’cos they really gave me a chance to look.
You
might be able to sleep through a plane crash, but the sound of my front door getting booted in tends to put me in a bit of a fuckin’ spin – know what I mean?’

Annoyed that Johnny was trying to make out like this was Dave’s fault when he was the one who’d been shagging the man’s daughter rigid for the last six months and got her up the duff, Dave kicked a path through the clothes littering the floor and snatched Johnny’s cigarettes off the bedside table. About to light up, he jumped when he heard a muffled cough from under the bed.

‘Who the fuck’s
that
?’ He lifted the edge of the quilt and peeked in.

A naked girl was lying on top of the rubbish that had piled up under the bed. ‘Room service?’ she quipped, grinning at him.

Already shocked, Dave’s eyes widened further when she wriggled out, and his gaze slid like melting wax from her face to her tits to her pussy.

‘I thought you’d gone!’ Johnny gasped, dreading to think what would have happened if it had been Frankie who’d found her.

‘Nah, I was hiding.’ The girl reached for her T-shirt and tugged it over her head. She pulled her hair free and grimaced at Johnny’s split lip. ‘That looks nasty. You’d best put some ice on it before it splits even more.’

‘Never mind that,’ he snapped. ‘If you had time to hide you must have heard them coming in, so how come you didn’t warn
me
?’

‘I thought it was dibble, and my mum would go mental if I got arrested again, so I didn’t stop to think. Sorry.’ She crawled across the bed and retrieved her knickers from beneath the pillow. ‘Haven’t seen my bra, have you?’

‘Never mind your fucking bra,’ Johnny said angrily. ‘This is your fault, this. If you’d warned me, I’d have had a chance to talk my way out of it.’

The girl gave a derisive snort. ‘After what I just heard, I reckon you deserved everything you got, mate. But while we’re on that tip, how come
you
didn’t warn
me
that you had a girlfriend before you ripped my knickers off last night? I don’t do sloppy seconds. You could have given me a disease, for all I know.’

‘Best get yourself round to the clinic, then, hadn’t you?’ Johnny said nastily, wondering what had possessed him to bring a bitch like her back to the flat in the first place. He must have been even more bladdered than he’d thought last night.

The girl gave him a contemptuous look and pulled on her jeans before snatching her jacket off the floor.

‘I won’t say it was a pleasure, ’cos you were shit,’ she sniped, heading for the door. ‘And I hope the baby doesn’t take after you or it’ll be a right little mong.’

‘Fuck off!’ Furious now, Johnny looked around for something to throw at her.

She stuck up two fingers and sauntered out, her hips swaying sexily.

‘Wow, man, she’s
hot
,’ Dave murmured, leaning back to watch.

‘Go after her if you’re that desperate,’ Johnny snapped.

‘Aw, quit sulking,’ Dave chided, turning back to him when she’d gone. ‘It ain’t her fault you’ve got yourself in Frankie’s bad books. Anyhow, considering what he
could
have done, I reckon you got off pretty lightly.’

‘You what?’ Johnny screwed up his face. ‘Ruth’s pregnant, and she’s pinning it on me. How’s that getting off lightly?’

‘I did warn you,’ Dave reminded him unsympathetically. ‘I told you to steer clear of her from the start.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Mate, I
so
did. There were tons of birds at the club that night, and you could have had your pick of ’em. But, no . . . you had to go and prove what a stud you are by bedding Frankie Hynes’s girl.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not all me,’ Johnny grumbled. ‘She’s like a leech. Frankie doesn’t know the half of it.’

‘Neither do I by the sounds of it,’ Dave drawled. He lit his cigarette and blew out a smoke ring. ‘Never told me you went down to his yard and asked his permission to take her out. What kind of arse-licking bollocks is that?’

Embarrassed to be caught out as a creep, Johnny’s cheeks reddened. ‘Just thought it was the right thing to do. It didn’t mean anything.’

‘You were trying to get in with him through Ruth,’ Dave corrected him knowingly. ‘Don’t try and shit a shitter, matey.’

‘Yeah, well, that was before I realised what she was like.’

‘So why didn’t you finish with her before it got to this?’

‘I’ve
tried
. But it’s like she knows what I’m going to say and goes all emotional on me before I can get it out – crying, and going on about how she’ll kill herself if she ever loses me. And who do you reckon Frankie’d blame if anything happened to her?’

Dave sighed. ‘Well, it’s too late to get rid of her now. Looks like you’re gonna be stuck with her for life.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Johnny frowned. ‘They can’t force me to stay with her.’

‘And you’re gonna tell Frankie that, are you?’ Dave raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re gonna go round there tonight and say sorry, mate, but your Ruth was nowt but a shag, and I don’t want a kid with her?’

‘If that’s what it takes, yeah.’

Johnny turned his back, and Dave watched as he examined his lip in the dressing-table mirror with a self-pitying look on his face. He could talk big now that Frankie and Big Pat had gone, but they both knew he’d bottle it when he went round to the Hyneses’ place later. Just like they both knew that Dave
had
warned him off Ruth. But, as usual, Johnny’s ego had turned him deaf. As soon as he’d realised who her dad was, he’d gone all out to get off with her.

Well, he’d succeeded, but Dave doubted whether he’d bargained for any of this when he’d bagged his prize.

‘What am I going to do?’ Johnny moaned, dropping his head into his hands.

Dave took another drag on his smoke and shrugged.

‘No point asking me, ’cos you never listen to anything I’ve got to say. If you did, you’d have worn a joey when you shagged her – like I told you. And I wouldn’t even mind, but they’re free at the clinic. You’re just too lazy to get your arse round there.’

Johnny mumbled something about being allergic to rubber but, in truth, he just didn’t see why he should have to suffer numb-cock sex when it was the girl’s responsibility to make sure she didn’t get pregnant. None of the others had ever been stupid enough to get caught. If they had, they’d obviously done the sensible thing and dealt with it without bothering him. They certainly hadn’t sent their psycho dads round to tell him about it.

Dave knew he was struggling and felt sorry for him.

‘Look, it’s a bit late for shoulda woulda couldas,’ he said. ‘But if it was me – which it wouldn’t be, ’cos I’m not that stupid – I’d act like a total twat when I went round there.’

‘How’s that supposed to help?’ Johnny frowned up at him.

‘Well,
we
both know you’re a waste of space,’ Dave explained. ‘So all you’ve got to do is convince
Frankie
of that and you’ll be laughing.’

‘Waste of space?’ Johnny’s frown deepened.

‘The way I see it,’ Dave went on, undeterred, ‘Ruth’s way more into you than you are with her, so she’s never going to give up on you if everything stays the same. But if you
change
, it’ll throw her off balance.’

‘How am I supposed to change before seven?’ Johnny asked. ‘Put on a load of weight so she thinks I’m too fat for her? Or how about I grow a beard? Yeah, she hates beards,
that
should do it.’

‘I’m not talking physical changes,’ Dave told him patiently. ‘I’m talking attitude. Mind you, you
could
start with a physical,’ he added, wrinkling his nose. ‘Go round there stinking like this and she’ll boot you right back out.’

‘I don’t stink,’ Johnny protested.

‘Mate, you smell like a badger,’ Dave told him truthfully, picking up on the mingled odours of sweaty socks, unwashed sheets and sex. ‘But that’s good if it stops Ruth from wanting to get too close. And you should turn up late so her folks think you’re unreliable. And call her by the wrong name – that
proper
flips birds out, that.’ He gave Johnny a sly grin. ‘Do it my way, and I guarantee they won’t want you anywhere near her
or
the kid.’

Johnny thought about it. It would be a hell of a risk to act so disrespectfully in Frankie’s house, but even if it earned him the beating of his life wasn’t that better than being tied to Ruth for the next sixteen years or more?

‘All right, I’ll give it a shot,’ he said. Then, taking a surreptitious sniff of his armpit: ‘Do I really stink?’

The look Dave gave him was answer enough.

2

Ruth was in her bedroom when Johnny arrived, but she didn’t hear the bell because of the music blasting up through the floor from the parlour below. Her mum had hit the whisky straight after her dad had gone out this morning, and the more she drank, the louder she played her music. The Slim Whitman album had been on repeat-play for the last few hours, and it was at max volume now, so the house was literally rattling around them.

Ruth had escaped before the booze had had a chance to take control of her mum’s tongue as well as her ears, because she was vicious when she got started, and Ruth always got the brunt of it – whether she deserved it or not. But while she usually didn’t, she couldn’t deny that she’d brought it on herself today. Her dad had been furious, and her mum still was.

But it was Johnny’s reaction she was dreading the most.

He was going to be so pissed off at her for sending her dad round to tell him about the baby. But she’d been too scared to do it herself – terrified that he would tell her to get rid of it, and then finish with her to make sure it didn’t happen again. That was why she’d decided to tell her dad, because she’d known that once he got his head around it he would insist on telling Johnny ‘man to man’, and then Johnny wouldn’t dare turn his back on her.

It was one of the rare occasions when Ruth was glad to have Frankie Hynes for a father, but it hadn’t always been such a blessing. The neighbours had banned their kids from playing with her when she was growing up, scared that she would taint them by association. And the local lads had given her a very wide berth, terrified of what her dad would do if he caught them sniffing around her. That was why she’d fallen so hard for Johnny when he’d approached her at that club. He’d said he didn’t give a toss who her dad was, he liked
her
and wanted to get to know who
she
was. Those words had melted her heart – and it hadn’t hurt that he was the most gorgeous lad she’d ever seen, with beautiful blue eyes, thick chocolate-brown hair, and a cheeky, sexy grin that still, six months down the line now, made her go weak at the knees.

Johnny was the first lad she’d ever gone all the way with, and she’d known as soon as it happened that he’d be her last, so it had almost killed her when her cousin Lisa had come to her a couple of weeks later and told her that he’d been seen with another girl. Ruth had cried her eyes out over that, heartbroken to think that her man would even think about cheating on her. And he
was
her man. She’d given herself to him heart and soul, and no bitch was ever going to steal him away from her.

She hadn’t dared to confront him in case he admitted that it was true, so, instead, she’d convinced herself that Lisa was lying. And that was feasible enough, since it had been obvious from the start that Lisa had wanted Johnny for herself. She’d slept with his best mate, Dave, that night, but Ruth had seen the way she’d looked at Johnny when she thought no one was watching – like she was just dying to get her lips around his
thing
. And then there was all that stuff she’d said about him when they’d been walking back to hers the next morning; calling him a pretty boy, and a poser, and telling Ruth that she was fooling herself if she thought she was ever going to see him again, because boys like him were only after one thing – and now he’d got it he wouldn’t want to know.

Well, Johnny had proved Lisa wrong about that. And now Ruth would prove her wrong about everything else. Whatever Johnny might or might not have done behind her back in the past, now that he knew she was carrying his baby he would put his partying ways behind him and step up to the mark and support her.

But she was still dreading having to face him, and she sighed now as she gazed at her reflection. She was a pretty girl, with thick black hair, Bambi brown eyes, and plump pink lips that would have been described as kissable if they weren’t always pursed in disapproval. But, right now, she looked a mess from all the crying she’d done today. Her eyes were puffy, and her nose was an ugly, shiny red blob.