Jail Bird. Jessie Keane

wall. Turned, her eyes widening.

      Here it comes for you, bitch, thought Winston.

      She liked revenge? Well, so did he.

      Revenge was sweet.

       1

      1996

      

       LEO

      Leo King could never resist blondes. Ash, golden, strawberry, Nordic – he loved them all. Hell, he had even married one. Of course he loved his old lady, Lily. Of course he did. She was the mother of his children, he loved the bones of those two girls of his and he loved Lily too, but sometimes…well, he guessed it was a weakness, but sometimes he just got the urge to stick it in something new.

      Like he was doing now. And it was being appreciated, too.

      ‘Oh, honey,’ the blonde he was humping doggy-fashion in the hotel bed was crouching on all fours, moaning and gasping, clutching the French headboard with long, elegantly manicured nails.

      She’s going to scratch the damned thing, thought Leo.

      Which was okay, fuck it. But if this had been at home, in his own bed – and sometimes, oh yes, sometimes he did that, and he felt bad about it but he did it anyway – then scratching the furniture was a no-no. Because he’d felt just lately that Lily wasn’t entirely in the dark about his little extracurricular bits of bedroom activity. Marks on the headboard would blow the whole thing wide open, and he didn’t want that.

      What Leo wanted was to carry on having his cake and eating it – this delectable little bit of fluff right here, who had been the first but who most certainly was not the last.

      ‘Oh Leo sweetheart,’ Adrienne screamed as he pumped away.

      Actually she was a bit theatrical about sex, this one. Not like Lily, who was a real slow, sensual burn. He loved Lily, but this…ah, it was the thrill of the chase, the cornering of the quarry, the proof that he still had it, in spades.

      Of course women never understood that.

      They never appreciated that extramarital sex was simply fun, something a guy would do if he could, with whoever – the whoever scarcely mattered; it was just the doing of it that was the good bit.

      Forbidden fruit, he thought. That’s what it was. Forbidden, and therefore twice as desirable.

      But now she was moving, he was slipping out. Fuck it, he’d just been getting into his stride there. She turned on the bed, great breasts, high and firm and brown-nippled, slim waist, brown pubic hair, so not a natural blonde, but who gave a fuck? She lay down on her back and clasped him with her wide-open thighs, smiling up at him dreamily.

      ‘Let’s do it this way for a change,’ she panted.

      That annoyed him. He liked doggy-style the best. He’d thought about why over the years and had concluded that he liked it best that way because the woman in the bed could be anyone, anyone at all, you didn’t have to see her face, you didn’t have to tell her you loved her (that came later, or earlier if she was proving resistant to all his other best lines), or have it rammed home to you that it wasn’t Lily: doggy-style, you could be shagging anyone or anything, you could be putting it in a hole in the fence. It was simple, and it was – nearly – guiltless.

      Okay, he was nearly there anyway. He pushed back into her warm wetness and she pulled him in close, skin to skin. She was a fabulous lay and so he was willing to forgive the interruption – this time.

      ‘Jesus!’ she was yelling in his ear now. ‘Oh God – Leo!’

      And now she was applying those nails that had marked the headboard to his back.

      ‘Ow!’ he complained as she ripped the talons down his flesh. ‘Jesus, take it easy…’

      Marking him was completely out of order. She knew that. She knew the rules. No love bites, no tooth marks, no scratching. No evidence for Lily to find and start to complain over. Although Lily was a good girl, never really nagged. Lily wasn’t an in-your-face sort of woman. She was quiet. Restrained.

      A doormat? sprang into his brain.

      No, not that. Was she?

      Anyway, here was this stupid bitch Adrienne, breaking the rules, flouting them in his face, but oh Jesus, that felt so good, she was a fantastic lay; she was just the best.

      ‘Arghhhh!’ shouted Leo as he came.

      He collapsed onto her, gasping.

      ‘Jesus, you’re heavy,’ she complained mildly.

      Leo was a big bull of a man, dark haired and dark skinned and tipping the scales at eighteen stone. Considerately, he heaved himself off her and collapsed onto the bed.

      ‘That was good,’ said Leo, eyes closed, a broad smile on his chops.

      ‘Yeah,’ she said, and cuddled up to him, smoothing her hand over his chest hair.

      Knowing what was required of him – this was what they all required, after sex, he’d found – he dropped a kiss onto her cheek and gazed deep into her eyes. ‘Love you, babes,’ he murmured.

      ‘Love you too,’ Adrienne whispered, her eyes intense as they stared back into his.

      He groped around for something else to say. She was waiting for something. He came up with: ‘You’re something special.’

      ‘Hmm.’ Adrienne knew she was special. She’d been his mistress for over ten years now, even since before he’d wed Lily. But now…well, what she had begun to suspect had been proved to be the case. Jack Rackland had done a thorough job and dug up a whole heap of dirt. She knew that Leo had been keeping secrets from her. From Lily, too. But then – Lily was no concern of hers.

      She cuddled in against his chest. Her face grew serious. ‘Do you really think that I’m special?’

      ‘Sure you are.’ Leo stifled a yawn. It always knocked him out, chilled him like nothing else, having sex.

      ‘I think you’re special too,’ she whispered, her fingernails circling on his chest, her eyes fixed upon the little whorls she was forming in his dark chest hair. And I’m sick of sharing you, she added silently.

      ‘Thanks, babes.’ Leo’s eyes were fluttering closed.

      ‘That’s why I’ve decided,’ she said.

      Leo heaved a contented sigh. ‘Decided?’

      ‘I’m going to tell Matt. Then you can leave Lily, and we can be together.’

       2

      1996

      

       LILY

      Usually Lily King loved a little me-time, a little girly pampering, but on this particular Monday to Friday break she realized that she wasn’t in the mood to be relaxed and soothed at her favourite spa with her mates; she had too much on her mind.

      She hadn’t wanted to let the girls down, but by Wednesday she was pacing the grounds of the super-deluxe spa like a caged animal, and by Thursday she could see that it was hopeless. She couldn’t just lay about any longer, fulminating over what the hell Leo had been up to, without a thought for good old Lily; dependable, quiet, stupid Lily.

      Even a worm turns eventually, she thought, hurling her stuff back into her Louis Vuitton suitcase.

      You could