Page 96 of Dublin's Danger Dancer

“What’s a free life worth if I can’t spend it with the woman I love and our baby?”

Tears begin to form around my eyes now. I just to swallow them back but they rush down my cheeks.

“Now you’ve made me cry, you feckin eejjt.”

“Let’s get cakes. You must be hungry. The baby must be hungry.” He says tipping his chin down to my belly.

I don’t say a word as he pulls me towards the cosy, red-faced coffee shop.

As he opens the door, the smell of vegan pancakes flood my senses: buckwheat flour, almonds, and coconut. I look around at all the smiling people forking cakes into their mouths from twinkling forks.

Once we were seated in the window with two hot chocolates and a slice of every cake they offered I say, “How can you forgive me so easily for everything I did to you?”

“Who says I’ve forgiven you?” His eyes lock onto mine.

“So I’m just a vessel for your baby?”

“It’s our baby and you should want to protect him or her as much as I do.”

“You heard what the doctor said, Liam. There is a fifty-fifty chance I’ll make it, and then the baby…” I pause, looking down. Moisture threatening to spill over my lower lids. “The baby might end up like me, an orphan, in care. And that’s not the life I want for any child, especially not my own.”

“What are you talking about? I’d look after the baby.”

“You sell drugs for a living. What type of life is that to give a baby?”

“You know I got off. All the charges have been dropped. My lawyer argued entrapment, so it’s thanks to you.”

“Julia told me. But you said it yourself. This is the life you are born into. How long do you think it will take before the lure of the money brings you back into the fold of drug smuggling?”

“My da left me a huge estate. Real estate all over Dublin, all over Ireland, actually. I am extremely rich, even without the drug smuggling.”

“What about the adrenaline? It’s what you’ve known your whole life.”

“All I wanted my whole life is a family to call my own, one that isn’t shouting and screaming and shooting each other and killing one another and hacking off limbs all in the name of money. Do you know who shot me when I was three years old?”

“No.” I say.

“It was my mum. She was trying to shoot my dad. She missed, and she hit me.”

“She must have felt extremely guilty.”

“She did. That’s what drove her to drink. And that’s why my da had me plant that bomb. Here, take a bite of this cake,” says Liam, forking a piece of red velvet frosted cake and pushing it towards my mouth as if transition from I killed my mum as child, to here, feed my baby some cake was completely natural.

“Here comes the aeroplane,” he says, twirling the cake towards my lips.

I am extremely hungry. I open my mouth and pull the cake from the end of the fork.

“That’s a good girl,” he says.

“I know pregnant women want two things food and…” he looks down at his hands.

“And what’s the other thing?”

“Orgasms,” He says his tongue, nudging the corner of his mouth.

“You know I will not quit my job, don’t you?”

“I didn’t ask you to. Maybe I can even be of help to you. I have a lot of experience.”

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