Page 36 of The Flowers of Bay C
Her face falls.
‘But…’
‘Tosser,’ Jake hisses under his breath, and Kat nods, her face tight with anger.
Jodie says nothing more. She eats her slice slowly, bravely, blinking back tears, her mouth quivering with tiny I’m-okay-really smiles. ‘This is delicious. Thanks, babe.’
‘You shouldn’t have any more dinner tonight,’ Kane says. ‘Remember what we said?’
Jake explodes through a mouthful of veggie supreme. ‘What right have you got to tell her what she can eat?’
Kane lumbers off the bed, squares up to Jake, all tattooed muscle and shaven aggression. ‘Pardon?’
Jake shrugs. ‘You heard me.’
It’s not like Kane can start a fight with a fifteen-year-old boy in a hospital ward, after all.
Jodie’s shoulders are tight with tension. ‘It’s okay, Jake. He’s right. I was on a diet, and… and he’s just trying to help me.’
‘But you’re ill,’ Jake says, his brow creasing up in baffled sadness. ‘You need to get strong. And have a treat too, being stuck in here all day.’ He sweeps his arm in a large arc around him.
‘It’s okay,’ she says softly.
All I can think about is Marcus, and how he convinced me that he was only doing these things for my good, too, and how I believed him for so long. How I was his project, his trophy to show off when he succeeded in reforming me.
Except he didn’t, really.
‘Kane will do anything for me,’ Jodie says, taking hold of Kane’s hand and leaning forward to kiss him.
‘Anything,’ he says.
???
‘Thank you,’ Violet says later to Jodie, ‘for the pizza I mean. It was a welcome change from the pigswill they call food around here.’
I’m amazed at Violet actually saying thank you to something. Maybe that’s Jodie’s effect on her, of the cumulation of hours they must have spent together with their cigarettes, out in the coldtogether. Violet saying thank you is like a light being switched on somewhere in a place full of too much gloom. Jodie grins at her. Kane has left, and she is back to her effervescent self without his shadow hanging over her and pressing her down. ‘No worries,’ she says.
‘My grandson likes that pizza stuff. Oh, I mean my granddaughter, I suppose. He’s one of those transvestites now.’
Jake buries his head in his hands. ‘You mean transgender.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Violet says, her mouth a tight line of uncomprehending disapproval. ‘I never know what these kids are doing nowadays. Never know if I have to call him a boy or a girl.’
‘Probably kindest to call her what she asks,’ Kat says.
Jodie stares. ‘Bit woke for a vicar, aren’t you?’
‘No one says woke anymore,’ Jake says.
Jodie screws up her nose at him. ‘Careful, or I’ll yeet this Coke at you.’
‘Yeet,’ he scoffs.
I wonder what it is about Jodie. She has made my son smile more than he has in months.
‘Where does she live?’ Kat says to Violet. ‘Your granddaughter, I mean.’
Violet sniffs. ‘Oh. Well, they’re all over in London, see. Moved away from here as soon as he could, my son, got married to some bimbo he met in a bar. Doesn’t deign to visit his mother very much, even when she’s in hospital.’
