And then she realized how much she was fooling herself. This Uncle hidden down an alley wouldn't be on his own, and soon they'd close in and — "Fuck's sake, girl, in here!"
Jazz looked into the shadows and saw the unmistakable outline of Stevie Sharpe. As she saw him, he stepped forward and grabbed her arm, guiding her into the alley and walking quickly away without saying anything. She assumed she had to follow.
They passed a pile of refuse with split bags spewing rotting food and alive with flies. Jazz held her breath and waved the flies away, but Stevie seemed unperturbed.
"What's this about?" she asked.
Stevie stopped and turned, looked over Jazz's shoulder, and then stared at her. His expression barely changed as he gave her a frank, shameless appraisal. He examined her face, her shoulders, arms, chest, down her body and legs, then back up again very, very slowly. It felt as though it went on forever. Her tingle of anticipation changed to one of dis-comfort, but then he spoke at last. She even thought she saw the ghost of a smile.
"Did good today," he said. He looked down at her pock-ets and she tapped them, assuring him she had what they had come for. "Did good." Then he gave her a casual wave, turned, and ran along the alley.
"Wait! "Jazz called.
"See you back home!" he shouted over his shoulder, and she was sure she heard a laugh as he disappeared around a corner.
Jazz hurried back onto the street, more ruffled than she had been since first emerging into the sunlight a couple of hours before. She was sure her expression would give her away — Hi, I'm a thief and I'm on the run, but not just from peo-ple I've thieved from —and she walked faster, head down as though to deflect attention.
What had that been about? There'd been no reason for Stevie to hold back and see her. Even the muttered Did good today was something that could have come much later, deep beneath the city. There had only been that look, examining her, perusing her, and, much as she liked Stevie, she still felt unsettled.
She turned a corner and a police siren suddenly blasted through the air. She gasped and almost stumbled back as the white car sped by, curious tourists staring after it, seasoned Londoners using the brief distraction to move that much faster toward their destination.
I'm getting way too damn twitchy now, she thought. The boxes and bottle in her pockets felt heavier than ever, beg-ging to attract attention even though they could not be seen. She was at least a mile from the chemist and there was no chance she'd be caught, but the sky was suddenly way too wide, the buildings too tall, and the people too likely to stop, turn to her, and say, It's her, there she is, take her!
She did not want to think about who would respond to such a call.
"Jazz?" Cadge said.
She jumped a little, then sighed. Jazz grabbed his shoul-der and pulled him close, enjoying the contact as they hugged.
"Hey," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "Bit spooked," she said.
"You were late, so I started walking down this way." He pulled away and looked into her eyes, but he did not spook her like Stevie. She could only find benevolence in Cadge. "I was getting worried."
I should mention Stevie, Jazz thought. There's no reason not to, is there? But she simply shrugged and looked around, glancing up at the clear blue sky.
"Got you this." He handed her a small box, blushing, turning away as she held out her hand and accepted what-ever the gift might be.
It was a pink box with gold lettering: Beautiful.
"Said you liked it," he said.
Jazz felt tears threatening, but she held them back. She nodded, unable to speak for a few seconds, and the sharp re-ality of the box's weight and corners pinned her to the world. "Thanks," she said at last, and it came out husky and gruff.
Cadge nodded, but he could not keep the smile from his face.
"Really," Jazz said. She looked at the box again and re-membered what these boxes had looked like on her mum's dressing table, the way she'd always kept the perfume inside instead of disposing with the box and just keeping the bottle, the way she had liked the fact that however empty the bottle might be, the box always looked new. "Really, Cadge, thanks."
He nodded, face flushed. "Pleasure," he said. "Now it's time to go. We're not far from Oxford Circus here. And Harry'll be waiting for us when we go down."
"Harry?"
"Told me he'd meet us. He does that sometimes, espe-cially with someone new."
"Why?"
Cadge shrugged but looked away. "Sometimes Harry likes to talk in private."
He would not be drawn out any more, so Jazz followed Cadge along the bustling streets and into Oxford Circus Tube station. As the shadows cooled around her, she felt a calm sense of relief closing in with them.
Chapter Seven
the silent tree
"Do you trust me?"
"Of course I do."
"Good. That's good. But why?"
"Because you're my mother, of course." Jazz didn't like the way her mum's conversation was going this morning. They'd started out commenting on the architecture of Oxford Street, but now they sat in the back corner of a cof-fee shop and her mother had embarked on one of her lec-tures. At least Jazz thought it was likely to turn into a lecture. It had that feel: a difficult question, followed by a few moments of silence, and soon would come her mother's sad expression and alert eyes as she started to speak of hid-den dangers, covert groups, and the risks of trying to live a normal life. Life for us can never be normal, she'd said during one of these discussions a couple of years ago, and Jazz had never forgotten that. Out of all the advice her mother had given her, it was this statement that stuck most in her mind. Sometimes she hated her mum for telling her that. Surely such harsh truths were something a girl should find out on her own?
"That's not good enough reason to trust me," her mother said. "Lots of kids trust their parents and are in-evitably betrayed by them. It's a word bandied around too readily nowadays, like love, and fate, and hate. But it's a pre-cious thing. Analyze your trust, Jazz. Study it. Does it have rough edges, or is it thoughtless and complete? Because na-ture abhors sharp edges, so something with them can't be natural."
"You'd never betray me," Jazz said firmly. She was start-ing to feel upset and anxious at the way this was going. Mum was her bedrock! Her solid pedestal from which she was starting to live life as an adult!
Her mum smiled. "No, I wouldn't. But if I was someone else, just because I never have betrayed you doesn't mean I never would."
"You're scaring me, Mum."
One of the coffee-shop staff paused by the next table, cleared away mugs and sandwich wrappers, and started pol-ishing its surface. The silence was uncomfortable, and the young girl threw them a nervous glance and hurried away, the table still smeared and dirty.
"Don't be scared," she said. "Be warned. You're the only person you can really, truly trust. You. The only one. You'll need to be careful, Jazz, as you get older. Make sure you're certain of people's intentions toward you."
"You mean boys?"
"I mean everyone." Her mother looked suddenly sad then, and Jazz was mortified when she saw tears in the woman's eyes. "You can never really know someone."
"Mum?"
She shook her head and waved Jazz away, dabbing at her eyes. "I'm fine. I'm fine." But she didn't look fine. And that brief, intense conversation about trust stayed with Jazz for a long, long time.
****