Free One Plus One: A Novel by Jojo Moyes

to get better by then. Or, probably, anytime soon after that.
    —
    “He all right?” said Liam, as she walked slowly back out to the car. The adrenaline had leached out of her, and Jess’s shoulders slumped with exhaustion. She opened the rear door to fetch her jacket and bag, and his eyes, in the rearview mirror, took it all in.
    “He’ll live.”
    “Little bastards. I was just talking to your neighbor. Someone ought to do something.” He adjusted his mirror. “I’d teach them a lesson myself if I didn’t have to watch out for my license. Boredom, that’s what it is. They don’t know what else to do with themselves but pick on someone. Make sure you got all your stuff, Jess.”
    She had to half climb into the car to reach her coat. And as she did, she felt something under her feet. Semisolid, cylindrical. She moved her foot, reached down into the footwell, and came up with a fat roll of banknotes. She stared at it in the half dark, then at what had fallen down beside it. A laminated identity card, the kind you would use at an office. Both must have fallen out of Mr. Nicholls’s pocket when he was slumped on the backseat. Before she could think about it she stuffed them into her bag.
    “Here,” she said, reaching into her purse, but Liam raised a hand.
    “No. I’ve got it. You’ve enough on your plate.” He gave her a wink. “Give one of us a ring when you want picking up. On the house. Dan’s cleared it.”
    “But—”
    “No buts. Out you get now, Jess. Make sure that boy of yours is okay. I’ll see you at the pub.”
    She felt almost tearful with gratitude. She stood there, one hand raised, as he circled the car park and shouted out of the driver’s window: “You should tell him, though, if he’d just try to look a bit more normal, he might not get his head bashed in so often.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
Jess
    S he dozed through the small hours on the plastic hospital chair, waking occasionally from discomfort and the sound of distant tragedies in the ward beyond the curtain. She watched the newly stitched Nicky as he finally slept, wondering how she was supposed to protect him. She wondered what was going on in his head. She wondered, with a clench of her stomach that no longer seemed to go away, what was coming next. A nurse popped her head around the curtain at seven and said she’d made her some tea and toast. This small act of kindness caused her to fight back embarrassed tears. The consultant stopped by shortly after eight, and said Nicky would probably spend another night while they checked that there was no internal bleeding. There was a shadow they hadn’t quite got to the bottom of on the X-ray and they wanted to be sure. The best thing Jess could do would be to go home and get some rest. Nathalie rang to say she’d taken Tanzie to school with her kids and that everything was fine.
    Everything was fine.
    She got off the bus two stops before her house, walked round to Leanne Fisher’s, knocked on her door and told her, with as much politeness as she could muster, that if Jason came anywhere near Nicky again she would have the police on him. Whereupon Leanne Fisher spat at her and said if Jess didn’t fuck right off she’d put a brick through her effing window. There was a burst of laughter from within the house as Jess walked away.
    It was pretty much the response she’d expected.
    She let herself into her empty home. She paid the water bill with what would have been the rent money. She paid the electric with hercleaning money. She showered and changed and did her lunchtime shift at the pub, so lost in thought that Stewart Pringle rested his hand on her arse for a full ten seconds before she noticed. She poured his half pint of Best Bitter slowly over his shoes.
    “What did you do that for?” Des yelled when Stewart complained.
    “If you’re so okay with it, you stand there and let him rest his hand on your arse,” she said, and went back to cleaning the glasses.
    “She has a