Free Nameless by Jessie Keane Page B

Alicia.
    His eyes were playing with hers. ‘For whatever you want, sweetness. Up there in my room. Some music, maybe . . . ?’
    Ted would be asleep. The kids were with Mum. She could say – if anyone asked – that she’d been reorganizing the stock or something, couldn’t she?
    ‘I loved your music,’ she said.
    ‘Then come with me,’ he said, his voice like honey.
    Alicia hesitated. ‘Someone might see. I’m a married woman . . .’
    ‘I’ll go first. You follow.’ And he turned and went back across the quiet street.
    Alicia stood there looking after him, her heart in her throat, her pulses racing.
    She was only going over there to listen to music, wasn’t she?
    No. She knew that wasn’t it. Not at all.
    She shouldn’t do this. But she looked left and right. There was no one she knew about, not right now. She quickly crossed the street and went through the door he’d left open, closing it softly behind her.
    She was standing in a dingy hallway. He was at the top of the stairs, gesturing her to follow. She hurried up, afraid that at any moment his landlord was going to appear and ask what the hell was going on.
    By the time she reached the top of the stairs she was laughing and breathless at her own daring. He led the way along the landing, unlocked a door, slipped inside. She followed, and he locked it behind them. They fell against the door, both laughing now, and suddenly he was kissing her, and the laughter stopped.
    ‘Oh,my sweetness, my Alicia,’he murmured against her mouth. ‘You’re so beautiful.’
    She thought that he was, too. She put her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth back to hers, thinking of Ted, of her mum with the kids, of her grinding, lonely life with nothing to look forward to but middle age, old age, death.
    But here was life. Here was Leroy,so strange to her,so wonderful, bursting with life.
    This was a gift from the gods, it had to be.
    Now they were tearing at each other’s clothes, giggling like children, pulling at fastenings, popping buttons, and finally they fell naked, laughing, onto the crumby little bed in the corner of this horrible room.
    ‘So beautiful,’ he said, marvelling as the daylight from the grimy window fell on her skin.
    Alicia squirmed and tried to hide her body. She had huge purple stretch marks on her stomach from having the kids. Her breasts had drooped from feeding them.
    ‘Oh God, don’t look at me,’ she said, embarrassed.
    ‘You’re perfect,’ said Leroy in those velvety tones.
    ‘No – you are.’ She gazed at him. He looked like an African carving,so smooth and muscular,his skin as fine as dark polished leather. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said fretfully.
    But it was thrilling, arousing; she’d never felt so alive. When he caressed her, when he pushed inside her, she knew – at last! – the meaning of total bliss.
    Leroy had to cover her mouth with his hand to stifle her cries; his own were muffled against the silky white curve of her shoulder.
    ‘This is wrong,’ said Alicia afterwards, when they lay quietly together. But she no longer cared about her stretch marks or her saggy breasts: he thought she was beautiful, and so she was.
    ‘How can it be?’ he asked, and kissed her again.

21
     
    Joe and Charlie realized that they were going to have to hit the mail van in a way that was more subtle than they would have liked. They would have to hijack the whole thing, take it off somewhere quiet.
    They started checking timings, rehearsing the robbery repeatedly. On little-used country roads they worked out exactly what they would do, time after time; and on the third rehearsal, to their absolute shock, a copper cycled past and asked what they were doing.
    But Charlie was quick thinking. While the others, Joe included, stood there dumbfounded, he said cheerily: ‘We’re going to be shooting a film here soon for the war effort. We’ve got to make sure it’s all perfect for the next take.’
    To the group’s