LITMIR.BIZ

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had to do that every time.

      First, though – first and foremost – more coffee. I grabbed my dressing gown from the back of the door and slipped it on, looking forward to a half-hour of quiet contemplation before the day got properly under way.

      When I entered the kitchen, however, I was not a little shocked to find Keeley standing in the kitchen, with her back to me, looking out of the front window, in much the same way as I’d been doing in the bedroom above.

      ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise you were already up.’

      ‘I wasn’t.’ She grimaced ruefully. ‘Well, correction, I was, but I stayed in my bedroom. Thought I’d better keep out of Mike’s way.’

      Her candour made me smile. She smiled too. ‘Is he really, really, really cross?’

      ‘No, he’s only really, really cross. Well, really, really cross bordering on just really cross. Manageable cross, at any rate, provided you toe the line. How about you? I thought you’d lie in till at least noon. Catch up on some of the sleep you’ve been missing.’

      ‘I was wide awake at five,’ she said. ‘I went to bed so early, didn’t I? And then I couldn’t get back to sleep …’ She paused and then grimaced again. ‘Christ, I’m going to get hell from Danny, aren’t I? Is he coming round?’

      ‘Yes, he is. And yes, I suspect you are. But not till after lunch, so the condemned woman can at least eat a hearty breakfast. Hungry?’

      ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Thirsty though. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

      ‘Do bears live in the woods?’ I said, as I held out my empty mug.

      Keeley grinned. ‘Mrs Higgins – my old social worker – she always used to say that. Except she never said exactly that. She said S-H-I-T.’

      I smiled at her. ‘Clearly doesn’t have the same rule book as ours, then.’

      ‘Er, you could say that,’ Keeley agreed. ‘She was way cool. So nice.’

      ‘And I’m not?’ I pulled a face of consternation.

      She managed a giggle. ‘You’re all right,’ she said. But she was still looking pensive about the here and the now.

      ‘Anyway, yes to the coffee,’ I rattled on. ‘And then we’ll sit down and you can tell me all about what happened. A problem shared and all that … Is that a deal?’

      It seemed it was. With a bit of sleep under her belt, Keeley was clearly in the mood to talk now, and, with Tyler still in bed and unlikely to make an appearance any time soon, talk she did.

      And for the most part she was dry-eyed and emotionless, describing how she’d accidentally on purpose set her cap at the hapless Jamie, apparently a friend of a friend on her fake Facebook set-up – she made no bones about that whatsoever. And I was happy to skip that part as I’d seen enough of the messages to know all the details already. And this was a girl who did phone sex with strangers for money. There was nothing new or shocking for me to learn here.

      It was only when she got to the part about him offering to send her money that her composure started to slip – her fingers plucking at imaginary fluff on the sleeves of her dressing gown, and her expression and tone softening.

      ‘It was like I’d forgotten it wasn’t actually me by then. You know, the version I’d made up. Does that sound really weird?’

      ‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘You’d constructed a different you and he’d responded to her, hadn’t he?’

      ‘He loved me,’ she said simply. ‘I’m not just saying that, honest. He really did. He said I made him laugh. He made me laugh …’

      ‘And that’s important.’

      ‘And it wasn’t just some silly childish thing, it really wasn’t. He got me.’ That term again. ‘I mean I know you think I’m mad and that it wasn’t even the real me. But it was. It was still me and he was just, like, so in tune with me. People just don’t get it that you can really know someone just from speaking to them online and phoning each other and stuff, but –’

      This was news. ‘You chatted on the phone to Jamie?’

      Now she looked shocked. ‘Yes, of course, I did. Loads. Well, not, like, for hours at a time, or anything. He was on a pay-as-you-go contract and he sometimes ran out of credit.’

      ‘Yet he had the money to send you to get a train to visit him?’

      I saw a flash of what looked like irritation cross her features. She would defend him to the last and perhaps that was to be admired. Well, if he was the innocent he seemed, anyway.

      ‘It’s not like that,’ she said. ‘He’s just not organised about stuff.’

      In for a penny … ‘The policeman said Jamie had some mild learning difficulties,’ I chanced. ‘When you say he isn’t organised, is that what you mean?’

      A sharp glance came my way. ‘He’s not simple. Not in the way they mean,’ she huffed. ‘He’s just got some problems, that’s all. His horrible bloody flatmate, for one.’

      Who wasn’t in fact a flat ‘mate’ but the tenant named on the lease of a flat in which he’d kindly agreed to sub-let (presumably illegally) a bedroom. And who’d been away on a mini-break – hence the timing of the tryst – and who had returned on the Monday, understandably horrified to find that Jamie had a sixteen-year-old girl sleeping over. And sleeping with him? I thought about asking but thought better of it. How much difference would that make to where we were now? No. That could wait, I decided.

      Whatever had or hadn’t happened, it had been the flatmate who’d precipitated the move to the park. After a night in a down-at-heel (and presumably undiscriminating) B and B Keeley had persuaded him to find for them, there was nothing in the pot for a bed for another night, so they’d spent it in one of the shelters in the local park. They’d returned to the flat the next day, once the flatmate had gone to work, but at the time they were approached and questioned by the police, later that day, they were still contemplating what to do next. Jamie’s next benefit money was not due till Thursday.

      Love’s young dream it was not.

      I wondered what kind of magazines Keeley read online. Inside this cynical, embittered teen was, I suspected, a die-hard romantic. The fact that after all that she was still sticking so rigidly to the construct she’d created, rather than the grim reality of his being thirty-five and out of work, and of no fixed abode, said so much.

      But perhaps it was me who had the learning difficulty here, because what she said next made me see it all so differently.

      ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, though more in sorrow than in anger. ‘I didn’t care about that. He wasn’t any different from how I imagined him. Yes, he was older, but other than that – honestly, Casey, you’d get it if you saw him – he was just a nice bloke. A kind bloke. Just so different from all the shit blokes I’ve known in my life.’ She sniffed. ‘And trust me, I’ve known fucking loads. And I’m sorry for swearing. I can’t help it.’

      We’d been sitting opposite each other, but now I stood up, and dragged my chair round, so I could sit close beside her and put my arm around her shoulders, thinking even as I did so that her use of the past tense in describing him was a definite positive. One which I intended to capitalise on, too.

      ‘Love, I believe you,’ I said. ‘I’ve been your age too, you know. And in my past life I worked with lots of people like Jamie, and I don’t doubt he’s all the things you say he is. And if it’s any consolation, he’s not going to be in any trouble. They told me that for definite. But, you know, love is a big word to be using. It’s a big word because it’s a big, powerful thing. Which is not to minimise what you’ve told me about your feelings for each other, just to say that true love isn’t about

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