Connections by Hilary Bailey Page A

Vanessa got any family?” she asked.
    â€œHer mum, Ellen, lives on the Yarborough Estate, but she and Van don’t get on too well – because of something that happened in the past. Vanessa’s mum’s all right but there’s stuff they can’t put behind them. Basically it’s me and Joe. We’ve usually looked out for her – as much as we could.” He groaned. “It’s so frustrating – when everything was going all right. She could have been straight in six months.”
    â€œShe still can.”
    â€œShe’ll lose confidence,” he said. “I’ve seen her do it before. You know – self-esteem. She’s never been loaded with that, Vanessa.”
    Fleur said, “I’m starving. Do you want some fish and chips?”
    They ate from the paper sitting on the grass behind Adelaide House, facing the lighted tower blocks five hundred yards away. The sky above was city dark, the sound of traffic muffled. It was chilly.
    â€œYou’ll have had more glamorous dates,” Dominic remarked. “Do you want the rest of those chips?” She handed them over. “May balls,” he continued dreamily. “The Groucho Club. Tea at the Ritz. Long lunches in expensive Italian places with men in cream suits. Little blobs of spinach on the plate – fifty quid a head. Funny how they lean on spinach in those places.”
    â€œYou seem well up on it.”
    â€œI used to be homeless around the West End,” he said. “You see a lot.”
    â€œWhat? You were living on the street?” she asked.
    â€œYeah – me, Joe and Vanessa. Not always in the street of course. Only when things went bad. Still, I’m no stranger to the doorway, church porch and alley.”
    â€œMy God,” Fleur said. She was appalled to think she was sitting here with one of the people she had thought so alien – wasted figures sitting on the pavement with handwritten notices, menand women wrapped up in sleeping bags in doorways, faceless, anonymous as the dead in body bags.
    â€œIt was a life,” he said. “It had its compensations, along with the rest. But basically it’s punishing and it has the habit of killing you in the end. So – what happened to you to get you here enjoying this picnic?”
    She told him the story of the company, the documentaries, the accounts, her absconding partner.
    â€œSo you and the guy were close?” Dominic asked.
    â€œThat’s right. Part of me still doesn’t believe he won’t turn up with an answer, several answers, and make it all right.”
    â€œIt’s possible,” he said, and crumpling up his fish and chip paper he lobbed it across the grass. Fleur got up and went to get it. As she came back he flashed out his foot and tripped her, then moved to catch her as she fell. Suddenly she was on the ground in the hard arms of this sweaty, fish-and-chip-smelling drop-out. And suddenly she felt happier than she had for months – if not longer.
    Dominic pulled her closer and put his soft mouth on hers. Moments later she said, “I can’t do this.”
    â€œYou are,” he said and neatly turned her over so that he was lying on top of her. Five minutes later they were entwined, staggering up the stairs of Adelaide House. In the bedroom Dominic shared with Joe they fell on his narrow, neatly made bed. Then came the sound of his belt, her shoes, his shoes hitting the floor.
    I must get up, I must get out, was Fleur’s waking thought. It was still dark and she was very comfortable and easy curled against Dominic’s body, but she was worried – worried that she might stay, letting herself in for more of this madness. Then what? Fleur Stockley and this homeless hippie?
    Hippie? Petty crook, drug dealer – and yet he was so sweet, she thought; sweeter, calmer, more passionate than Ben, if she had to tell herself the truth. Ben’s attention was