Playing Dead. Jessie Keane

what you’ve got to do, son,’ said Rick, his eyes wild with enthusiasm, ‘is protect yourself. Get a store like I have. Because if you’ve got anything worth having, people will resent it and try to snatch it away from you. Friends, colleagues – even loved ones. You can’t trust a living soul. You understand?’

      Frances nodded. Sure he did. He understood his dad was cuckoo; he understood that all right. He understood that he was always delighted to get back to school, away from the crazy old coot. He understood that he preferred to huddle in his freezing-cold bedroom listening to Elvis Presley crooning ‘It’s Now Or Never’ on his Dansette, rather than spend time with him.

      Jesus, he so missed his mother. There was no way he could tell Rick that he was getting these feelings for boys and not girls. Maybe his mum would have understood, maybe not. All Frances knew was that he had to keep his particular sexual leanings to himself. He’d read Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and knew Wilde had been put in the slammer for consorting with men; and if any of his friends knew or even suspected he was homosexual, he knew they wouldn’t be his friends for much longer.

      Now it was a dreary Saturday morning, raining hard, and Frances was dreading the weekend to come, closeted here in the backside of fucking nowhere with his dad when he would rather have been somewhere – anywhere – else.

      But he couldn’t escape. Dad had said he had something to show him, something exciting, and Frances had thought, yeah, big news, another fucking handgun.

      But it wasn’t a handgun this time.

      Maybe a sword then?

      No. His dad’s eyes were dancing with merriment as he made Frances guess, over and over, as they trudged out to the workshop. Frances saw that his dad had hung a horseshoe over the door. Rick saw his son looking at it.

      ‘For luck,’ he told him with a grin. ‘Go on then. Keep guessing.’

      ‘A Buffalo Sharps?’ hazarded Frances. His dad had enthused about the rifle; it could pick off a target a quarter of a mile away.

      ‘No. I said. Not a gun.’

      ‘What then?’ asked Frances, slightly intrigued despite himself.

      His dad was going to give him a demonstration of something he’d picked up during the war, he told him. Something really exciting.

      ‘Come on then. What?’

      Frances was smiling so hard his jaw was aching. And his dad said he was a bad actor? He thought he was good. After all, he acted as if he could stand the loopy old goat. And he couldn’t.

      Frances had already decided that once he left school he was off, back to America. He was half-American after all; he loved it there. But his dad’s dire warnings about the toughness of Hollywood had penetrated, and his mum had been desolate and lonely there, he knew she had; so he’d decided he was heading for New York, and Broadway. Just as soon as he could.

      ‘So come on,’ he said to his dad. ‘Give. What is it?’ Like he cared.

      Dad winked. ‘Explosives,’ he said, and showed him a box full of . . .

       Oh shit. Were those live grenades?

      Yes. They were.

      It was then that Frances really knew his dad had flipped.

      But it wasn’t going to happen to him. No way. He was sane.

      Chapter 13

      1971

      Cara stood alone in the hall while Nico and the others filed back into the study. The door closed behind them, and it was like a door slamming shut on Cara’s damaged heart. She felt diminished, dismissed out of hand. She went outside onto the drive, feeling thwarted, furious, bitter; she walked until she found herself outside the multiple garage block.

      That idiot Fredo was there in his shirtsleeves, polishing the bonnet of the limo in the hot midday sun. It was a huge, heavy, armour-plated car, bulletproof and grenade-proof. Her father’s car. Sometimes – not often – Fredo drove Constantine; but more often it was Nico who took the wheel when the Don was in the car. Still, Frederico was as proud of this large heap of black metal as a mother with a new baby, cleaning it – and the other cars in which he ferried various members of the family around – constantly.

      He didn’t see her standing there, but Cara watched him, and slowly she began to formulate a plan. She walked over and tapped him on the shoulder.

      ‘Oh!’ He whirled round, startled.

      Cara smiled. ‘Sorry, did I surprise you?’ She came in closer, close enough for him to smell her perfume. She saw his eyes dip to the deep V neckline of her white cotton shirt. ‘I think I left my purse in the other car. Is it in the garage?’ she asked, walking that way.

      Frederico followed her, frowning; he was thinking that she was beautiful and that he adored her. He found his eyes resting on the enticing swell of her buttocks beneath her tight-fitting cream-coloured pencil skirt. Ah, if only . . . but she was married; she was the Don’s daughter; she had no feelings for him. It could never be. And he had cleaned the car two or three times since her trip to Central Park; if the purse had been there, he would have found it.

      ‘I don’t think it’s there,’ he said as they passed from the hot glare of the sun outside into the cool, dark shadows of the garage.

      ‘Oh, maybe I’ve just put it somewhere,’ she shrugged, then looked at him intensely. ‘Fredo,’ she said, using the baby-name that everyone used for him, the name she had never used, not once. ‘I’ve got to talk to you about something,’ she told him.

      ‘Oh?’ Now Fredo was confused. Cara never wanted to talk to him; she barely grunted a civil word to him in passing.

      ‘Yes, something important. Can you close the doors? Lock them?’

      ‘What is this . . .?’ He was frowning.

      ‘Please, Fredo.’

      ‘All right,’ he said, and turned away and went to the doors. He locked them and turned back.

      His mouth dropped open.

      Cara was standing there wearing only her skirt and high-heeled shoes. She had removed her blouse and her bra and was clutching both garments in her hands in front of her tits. He could see the soft upper swell of her skin there, paler skin, not tanned. Fredo’s eyes bulged in his head.

      ‘Wha . . .?’ he started to say.

      ‘Do you want to see them, Fredo?’ she asked him.

      ‘I . . .’ Fredo was lost for words. He’d adored her for so long, and now she was here, flaunting herself in front of him. It was like a miracle. He felt so unbearably aroused that he was afraid he was about to come in his pants.

      ‘I’ll show you, if you want,’ said Cara.

      If he wanted? There was nothing on God’s earth that he wanted more.

      ‘Only you have to say please. And . . . you have to promise to help me with something, something special.’

      Fredo gawped at her. ‘I would do anything for you,’ he said at last. ‘You know that.’

      ‘You promise?’ Suddenly Cara’s eyes were sharp as they rested on his.

      ‘Of course I promise.’

      Cara seemed to relax then. ‘Say please.’

      ‘Please,’ said Fredo unsteadily.

      Cara gave a small, secret smile and tossed her shirt and bra onto the grubby garage floor, while keeping one arm across her chest to conceal her treasures.

      ‘Please,’ said Fredo, a little more desperately.

      ‘You give your word,’ said Cara sternly.

      ‘I swear.’

      ‘Then