Page 6 of Caught By the Kingpin
Marco Brent won’t come for me. No one ever has. So I breathe deeply, tell myself escape to Scotland will be enough, and fall asleep into a sea of pale blue.
* * *
A visit to the supermarket is a red-letter day. Even before I started saving up, I loved going to the supermarket. I get to look at things and fantasise about buying whatever I want. And no one follows me around. So far as my father is concerned, shopping is a menial task that I do and he merely has to check the receipt for anything illicit.
Like, you know. Clothes. Chocolate bars. He grumbles every time he sees period stuff on the bill, like I’m inconsiderate to bleed every month.
I suggested four years ago when I’d just turned sixteen, that if he didn’t want the expense of keeping me around he should allow me to leave. His mouth made an ugly line. He said that if I was more costly than useful, he’d take me up on that offer and I’d leave in bin bags.
On balance I prefer all my limbs attached and in old pyjamas. I think that suits me better.
Hence the need for this convoluted plan and careful use of supermarket trips.
Today, it’s a bit different. I think I’m sensing a ghost? A nice one that accompanies me to the supermarket?
I have this weird tingle over my neck and scalp, and I keep almost seeing someone out of the corner of my eye. But when I look, they’re gone.
Probably I’m just so starved of positive interactions that my mind is playing tricks.
I indulge in browsing the paperbacks. I limit my imaginary purchases to three, and dither over the third book. They’re historical romances. Two are my favourite authors, a dead cert, but should I have the one with a duke who’s a spy, or a marriage of convenience with a rake? I read the blurbs and check the prices and the relative length and focus as though I’m actually going to purchase any of them.
I’m not.
In the end I go for the duke spy. Powerful and dangerous book boyfriends, who can resist, right? I hold the three books in my hands and imagine taking them home, putting them on my bed, and reading them until they’re tattered and dog-eared. I sniff the spines for that paper smell. Then I put all the books back into their correct place on the shelf, for someone else to read.
It’s only when I’m unpacking the shopping that I find the duke book.
It’s tucked between two bags of sugar. And much as I try to think of how it could have happened accidentally, they’re all just as implausible as a poltergeist.
It was a ghost. My ghost.
* * *
I won’t be able to take much with me, so the next week I look at the jewellery in the store-within-a-store. Again, just to dream.
There’s a locked cabinet with expensive rings and necklaces. I stare through the glass and imagine the weight of the metal on my finger, or over my clavicle.
I press my nose up to the cool glass and admire the way the diamond sparkles on the big engagement ring, holding my hand out and trying to see what it would look like on me.
Two more supermarket trips and I’ll have enough money saved.
There’s increased tension at home. Westminster are making bleak threats about what they’ll do if they aren’t paid soon. From that I assume Marco hasn’t fallen for my father’s scheme, and although I ought to be nervous about my family’s finances, I’m only relieved Marco won’t lose out.
I find the ring in a bag of cherries I don’t remember buying.
Exactly the one I’d been looking at. The most expensive ring in the display.
Not a ghost, but a man.
A thief? For me?
I’m heated all over that someone cares enough to give me this ring, because it’s no accident. And though I’ve never seen him, I know the feel of this man’s attention and it is the most consideration I’ve had in years.
Subtle too, not putting me in danger from my father. It’s like I’ve been given invisible armour. Someone values me, albeit anonymously.
I secret the ring into the right cuff of my hoody, but I can’t resist bringing it out and looking at it every night. I slip it onto my fourth finger and imagine a duke gave me it because he wants to marry me.
A duke with pale blue eyes, salt and pepper hair, and a scar down the side of his face.
