The Annie Carter Series Books 1–4. Jessie Keane

family involved in the lucrative drugs trade? He’d talked about it to Orla in front of Kieron and, although Redmond had said no, Kieron knew that Pat chafed under his brother’s rule. They all knew that Pat wanted to be boss after Tory got himself killed. Maybe Pat had done some independent work and stirred up a hornet’s nest. Maybe this wasn’t the Carters at all. Maybe Pat had started getting interested in dealing and had stepped on someone’s toes.

      Maybe, maybe, maybe. Kieron stared at the wreckage of the Galway, Tory’s favourite of their two clubs, named for their Irish homeland. All gone now. As usual he found that he had to cut dead all thoughts of his family business. He had never been a part of it. They were involved in dangerous games. It was a nightmare to him, and that was why he had stayed away so long, travelling the world, forgetting where the wherewithal that allowed him to do so had come from. From crime. From gambling dens and prossies and casinos and dodgy deals and intimidation. He’d shied away from it. Enjoyed the privileges it bought, yes, but turned his head away from the facts of his family’s livelihood.

      Now it was staring him in the face. At least they were honest about it all; whereas he was just a fucking hypocrite. He was glad Mum and Dad were back in the old country and didn’t have to see this.

      His exhibition was starting tonight in Toby Taylor’s Jermyn Street gallery. Toby was a crime junkie. He nearly had an orgasm just talking to the Delaneys. He got high on the danger of it, tried to dress like Redmond, treated Orla like a queen. When Kieron Delaney asked about an exhibition, he’d turned him down flat. Fuck it, Toby said, he had Hockney lined up, he was having talks with Lucian Freud, he’d exhibited Warhol just last year, he was hot. Who needed a fucking no-hope novice? But then Kieron had given in and told Toby he was one of the Delaneys. He’d uttered the magic word. Toby was all over him now like hives.

      Kieron had been at the gallery all weekend, working on getting the positions of the canvases just right and checking that the lighting did them justice. The nude of Annie was smack in the centre of the thing, visible the instant the punters walked through the door, raised up above all the other works, stairs ascending to either side of it. He’d sweated hard over the exhibition, had gone to bed in a state of high excitement and happy exhaustion.

      Now this. A reminder.

      What was it Annie had said? That the gallery-owners wouldn’t say no to him, because he was a Delaney. She was right, and he knew it. It soured his achievement more than a little, to know people so feared his family. So did he have this exhibition because he was a great artist – or because Toby Taylor didn’t want his gallery to burn to the ground one night, or to find himself lacking a pair of kneecaps?

      He knew the answer to that. All too well.

      ‘I’m going home,’ he said, turning away sick at heart.

      Maybe he should stay and comfort Orla, but he knew from years of experience that she and Redmond were a pair, entirely co-dependent. As for Pat, big stupid bully that he was, banging on walls and snorting with rage, what a joke. Kieron didn’t even recognize Pat as his brother any more. He didn’t miss Tory. Tory had been a bastard. The worst kind of bastard. He wished Mum and Dad could be here. Ah, but they were old now, too old to stomach all this shit. Better for them to be where they were. The game was changing. The game was getting too dangerous.

       25

      ‘Oh Christ, not you again. I’ve been wondering when you’d show up to gloat.’

      What a welcome. Annie stood on the doorstep and wished she was somewhere, anywhere, else.

      She looked at her mother through the fug that was seeping out of the half-open front door. God, what a pesthole this whole place was. Funny how when she’d been living around here she’d never noticed the litter in the streets or the dog mess on the pavements, or how scraped and battered Connie’s front door was, or how Connie never cleaned her front step or got the window sills painted, or how the new nets Connie had splashed out on for Ruthie’s wedding were now coffee-coloured and caked rigid with dirt.

      ‘I haven’t shown up to gloat, Mum,’ said Annie flatly. ‘I’ve shown up to see Ruthie.’

      Or at least this had been her intention when she’d got up and dressed this morning. Her stomach had been churning with nerves ever since. It had been so long since she’d seen her sister. She’d had that brief glimpse at Eddie’s funeral, but that hadn’t helped; Ruthie had been as changed and as remote as a total stranger.

      ‘She don’t want to see you. I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to ask.’

      Annie held on to her temper. When she looked at Connie she felt a sort of sad contempt. Connie was as scruffy as this shit-tip of a rented house. God knows how she kept up the payments. Annie didn’t even want to think about that. Maybe Ruthie pitched in to help? Annie didn’t suppose Connie was up to working any more. Her mother was more to be pitied than hated.

      ‘Why don’t we let her decide that?’ said Annie. ‘Is she in?’

      ‘Yes, she’s in,’ said Ruthie, stepping into the doorway beside Connie.

      Annie looked at her sister and was suddenly struck dumb. No, this wasn’t the Ruthie she had known all her young life. This was a cool, sophisticated woman with pain-filled eyes. Pain that she had caused. Annie swallowed and licked her dry lips.

      ‘Hello, Ruthie,’ she said.

      ‘Hello Annie. Well, aren’t you coming in?’

      ‘You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to,’ said Connie, looking at Annie with open dislike.

      ‘What good would that do?’ asked Ruthie. ‘Let her in, for God’s sake, Mum.’

      They went through to the kitchen. There were plates piled high in the sink and on the draining board. The lino was scuffed and sticky underfoot. The stove looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a month. Annie sat down at the kitchen table, looking carefully at the chair before she did so. Ruthie sat too, and smiled grimly as she saw Annie’s mouth thin with disgust at their surroundings. Jesus, thought Annie, she lived in a flipping knocking shop but she would never stomach this sort of mess around her! Surely, even if Connie was too drunk or bone-idle to clear up, Ruthie could shift herself and do it?

      But this wasn’t the Ruthie of old. She had to keep reminding herself of that. This Ruthie didn’t do housework. This Ruthie had sleekly dressed hair and polished nails. This Ruthie wore a smart two-piece suit not dissimilar to the one Annie wore. Fuck it, they looked like two flamingos perched on a muck-heap in here! The thought was amusing, but Annie didn’t share it. Ruthie wouldn’t see the joke. Ruthie’s face – so much thinner than it used to be – was set in grim lines. She didn’t look like she’d laughed in a long, long time. And that’s my fault, thought Annie. She felt shrivelled inside with the guilt of it.

      ‘Don’t think you’re getting a fucking cup of tea,’ snorted Connie, hovering threateningly over Annie, scattering venom and fag ash and drink fumes. ‘What did you think I’d do, roll out the bloody red carpet for a cheap little whore like you?’

      ‘Mum,’ said Ruthie loudly.

      ‘Well, she’s got a fucking nerve, showing up here. Hasn’t she done enough damage?’

      ‘Just give us a few minutes, will you Mum?’ asked Ruthie coolly.

      Connie withdrew, leaving the kitchen door open into the hallway. Ruthie got up and shut it. She sat back down and looked at Annie.

      ‘So,’ she said. ‘What is it you’ve come for, Annie?’

      ‘I’ve come to see how you are.’

      Ruthie looked at her blankly. ‘You’ve come to see how I am,’ she echoed. Then she laughed. ‘I’ll tell you how I am, shall I Annie? I’m surviving. That’s all.’

      ‘Ruthie,