Buried

12 August 2019

Jack laid a fresh bunch of flowers on Dolly’s grave. The card, written in Jack’s handwriting, read, ‘Love from Angela x.’ He then poured two glasses of whisky from his hip flask and placed one glass on top of the small stone wedge of the grave next to Dolly. Jack downed his whisky.

‘Here’s to your first grandkid, Dad.’

Back at the car, Maggie leant against the bonnet, waiting. As Jack got close with the second glass of whisky in his hand, she grabbed his wrist and inhaled the deep peaty vapours. She closed her eyes and imagined the taste.

‘Four months and counting,’ she sighed.

Jack moved his hand across her stomach and leant in to kiss her cold mouth.

‘Let’s get you home before you freeze,’ Jack whispered, his lips still on hers. ‘I’ll finish painting the nursery and you order the takeaway. Mum likes chow mein.’

‘A live-in babysitter! Heaven!’

The decision to move from a flat to a house with an annexe for Penny wasn’t hard after Jack’s surprise announcement that he’d won £250,000 on an impulsive, one-off lottery ticket. Maggie was pleased to be moving somewhere they could finally call home, but of course she didn’t believe Jack’s story about where the money had come from for a second, and when the time was right, she would make him tell her the truth. She liked her new husband with his new-found sense of his place in the world, but she wasn’t about to let lies become part of their relationship.

Jack Warr was no longer lost. He finally knew where he came from. With the best of Harry and the best of Charlie flowing through his veins — nature and nurture — he was now a man who effortlessly straddled two worlds: crime and punishment.

For most people, those worlds would be polar opposites, but Jack knew better — they complemented each other, like light and shade. And Jack knew he had to live in both in order to finally be the man he was always destined to be.