Alice & Jean by Lily Hammond

Author:Lily Hammond [Hammond, Lily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapphica Books
Published: 2016-10-19T02:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

‘Where are we going?’ Alice asked, looking out the window of Big Jim’s car, alarmed. ‘This isn’t the right way.’

Jim Dempsey had his window down, elbow cocked casually outside, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He looked at her, smiling.

‘Thought while I had the pleasure of your company, we’d go have ourselves a nice drink, maybe a meal.’

Alice shook her head. ‘I need to go home and get dinner on. The children have to be fed.’

‘Wasn’t that exactly what I was suggesting?’ His smile turned to a grin. ‘Isn’t that right, kids?’ he said over the back of the seats. ‘I ain’t going to sling you out of the car on the side of the road! What’s your mother thinking?’ He looked slyly back at Alice. ‘We’ll have us all something to eat.’ Back to the children again. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Jack? I could tell you some of the adventures your pa and I had. That’d be neat, huh?’ All the time, his eyes didn’t leave Alice’s face.

‘Yes, sir,’ Jack said from the back seat. ‘That’d be real neat.’

Big Jim reached over and touched Alice’s cheek. ‘What you looking daggers at me for, sweetheart? Your boy deserves to know more about his daddy.’ He was speaking in a low voice so only she could hear him over the car engine. ‘Hell, both your kids deserve a man in their lives. They been too long without one. Especially Jack. A lad needs a father-figure.’ He looked complacently out the windscreen. ‘And that’s not even getting started on the little girl, who looks less and less like Terry the older she gets. If she ever did to begin with.’

‘No,’ Alice whispered.

‘No, what, Alice? No, you don’t want what’s best for your children?’

‘I already give them what’s best for them,’ she hissed, uncomfortable, outraged, and more than a little afraid. ‘Don’t go telling me what’s best for my own children.’

He pulled in beside the local hotel. Leaned over the seat and opened Jack’s door. ‘Hop out, Jack,’ he said. ‘Take your sister and wait on the footpath a minute for us, will you?’

Alice was looking wildly around. ‘We can’t go here!’

‘Of course we can,’ Big Jim said, scooting the two children out of the vehicle. ‘They have a dining room here, perfectly respectable.’

‘For guests,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘I often eat here. They know me.’ He stared into the distance. ‘I don’t much like to cook.’ Turning to look at Alice, his eyes were flat, glassy, cold blue wells.

She didn’t want to look at him. She wanted to get out of the car, gather up the children, and go home. When she got home, she wanted to go into her kitchen where everything would be normal, calm, and she would give the children a glass of milk and a sandwich each, maybe even another slice of cake, and then she would decide what to cook for supper, because Jean was coming around, they’d organised to have supper together, all four

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