Page 236 of The Black Trilogy

I answered for her. “She had a coming together with a guy who wanted more than she was willing to give.”

Jimmy’s eyes and voice went hard. “Did you fix it?”

“Of course.”

“Proud of you, sweetheart.”

I did an introduction. “Tia, this is Jimmy. I lived with him when I was a teenager.”

“Pleased to meet you, Tia.”

“And you, Jimmy.”

“Are you ready to start? Emerson here said you wanted to learn the basics of self-defence.”

“I’m ready.”

Jimmy and Tia headed for the mats, where Jimmy started by teaching her about the easiest parts of the body to inflict pain—something I firmly believed every girl should know. Mack and I went over to the bags to train. We’d spent an hour on punches and kicks when Jimmy ambled across.

“You gonna spar before you go?” he asked me.

“Sure, if there’s someone for me to go up against.” It had been a while since I’d fought in the gym, although I’d had the odd bit of practice on the street.

“Darnell could do with a bout,” he said, pointing at a black kid who looked to be around twenty, pounding away on a heavy bag.

I skipped over to my old room, which was where I still kept my boxing headgear, shoes, and the gloves I liked to fight in. Time to play.

Darnell made a reasonable opponent. He had a couple of amateur bouts under his belt, of which he’d won one and lost one. He was strong, but he needed to be faster. We went a few rounds, with Jimmy and I both giving him pointers. After me, Mack hopped up into the ring and did some pad work with Darnell while I headed off in search of Tia.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Jimmy’s taught me how to do an uppercut. Look!” She walloped the bag in front of her, grinning. “I just imagine it’s Theo’s head and I can hit really hard.”

“That’s great. Now try leading with your shoulder to get more power behind your punches.”

“Like this?” She had another go.

“Yeah. You want to come back later in the week?”

“Can I? I’d love to. I’m going to see if Luke’ll let me do more classes when I get home. I won’t tell him I came here, of course,” she added hastily.

Jimmy winked at me as Tia went back to swinging at the bag. She had a long way to go, but she was enjoying herself, that was the main thing. All in all, it was a good session for the four of us.

CHAPTER 32

I DROPPED MACK and Tia back at Albany House to set up Tia’s school projects. In his typical efficient manner, Bradley had organised the necessary equipment while we were at the gym. Then I carried on to the office, where my diary was full with meetings until late afternoon. The cloudy sky matched my mood as I headed in for a fun-filled day of paperwork.

When Black was alive, he’d taken on his share of the admin, but at the moment, I had to carry part of the extra load until we trained someone to help. Probably several people, as no one person would be able to do everything he had. More than anything, I wished I could avoid meetings altogether because they bored the stuffing out of me. At least I had “proper” work to do this evening.

But before I headed out again, I stopped off at home to find Tia had been busy.

“How’s the project going?”

“Really well. I’ve done most of the experiments; I just need to write it up. Mack’s awesome.”

“She’s pretty good at all that stuff, huh?”

“Yep, and she makes it fun. We’re going to JJ’s again tomorrow morning. Can you come with us?”

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