Page 195 of The Black Trilogy

And in effect, he was offering me the world.

But I couldn’t do it.

Not because I didn’t want to. If he’d offered me the universe, my answer would still have been the same. Why? Because the little lie I’d told a couple of years ago came back to bite me.

I swallowed back a curse and stared at my hands, knuckles turning white as they gripped each other in my lap.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

“I know it would be a massive upheaval, but I’d do whatever it took to make it work. Is it the money? Do you want more money?”

“No, it’s not that. I just can’t.”

“Tell me why. If you’re at all interested, I’ll find a way to fix whatever the problem is.”

“I’m fifteen years old. Can you fix that?” Adding a couple of years to my age didn’t matter in London. But if I needed to travel? My birth certificate, the one I’d liberated from my mother and kept folded up under my mattress, clearly stated my real birthday, and I’d need it to get a passport.

“Fifteen?”

He stared at me, eyes wide. I’d managed to shock him, and I couldn’t imagine that happened often.

“You’re kidding. Right?” he asked, a note of hope creeping into his voice.

I shook my head and stared blankly at the table.

He swore under his breath. “And I’ve just given you a bottle of wine.”

“Can you take me home now? And please, please don’t tell Jimmy. He thinks my birthday’s the fifteenth of May rather than December, and two years earlier than it is. I’d lose both my jobs for sure, and I really need them.”

Black ran his hands through his hair, once, twice, three times, tugging so hard I thought he’d pull it out by the roots.

“So we’re on the tenth of December now, which makes you nearly sixteen?”

I nodded.

“Do you have any family or friends, anyone who knows how old you really are?”

“No family, only Jimmy and Jackie. I haven’t seen my mother since I was ten, and I don’t ever want to. The foster care people don’t know where I am either. I’ve been out of the system since I was twelve.”

“I can’t believe I’m even considering this, but doing what you did at fifteen… I can only imagine what you’d be capable of at eighteen. If it wasn’t for the age thing, would you want to come with me?”

Would I? That was the question. If someone told me yesterday I’d be offered the chance to try things that I’d only ever seen on TV, and not just that, be paid six figures to do it, I’d only have asked one question: “How much crack have you been smoking?”

But here I was, and that possibility was sitting at the table in front of me.

“I’d have to sleep on it. I mean, all my plans, my future—everything would change.” The impact of the decision wasn’t lost on me, drunk or not. One word, and life as I knew it would be over. “And I’d need to speak to Jimmy and Jackie. I can’t leave them in the lurch, not when they’ve been so good to me.”

“But you’re not saying no?”

“I’m not saying no.”

Black let out the breath he’d been holding and his smile flickered back, just for a second. “Thank goodness for that.” His voice dropped, almost to a whisper. “I want you with me, perhaps more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”

I realised at that moment, sitting in a little Italian restaurant in some back street in London, that I’d quite like to be with him too.

That evening, I went home with Black again. He offered to take me back to JJ’s, but if I was going to end up living with him for six months, it seemed like a good idea to check I could still stand the sight of him after one night. Besides, he had better food.

Ruth turned out to be a plump, cheerful woman in her late forties, who was bustling around the kitchen when I went downstairs in the morning. Today, I was wearing a more appropriately sized tracksuit, which Black had handed me in a paper carrier bag last night.

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