One day I'll update a bit more frequently. One day. Bit of an interlude in this one, then some pretty major plot developments are coming next chapter. Enjoy.

Oh, and the chapter title on the menu is slightly different solely because it was over the character limit.


24

The disgruntled girlfriend of Joey Boswell

Martina woke the next morning with the dull pain in her back still there, the dull pain in her abdomen still there and the urgent need to get up and rush to the bog.

She slipped out of bed to deal with the third one and then crawled back into bed beside Joey, allowing herself a brief lapse in self-control and pressing a kiss to the corner of his gob before she lay back down.

He stirred when she disturbed him, letting out a tremendous yawn and then snuggling against her, his arm wrapping around her and pulling her to him.

'Feeling better?' Joey murmured into her hair.

'Not yet,' she murmured back. 'Takes about twenty-four hours.'

'What exactly have you got?' he was alert pretty quickly.

'Nothing catching, love. Nothing it's even humanly possible to catch.'

She could tell Joey wasn't satisfied with this answer.

'I'm just worried for you, sweetheart, that's all.'

'I know, love.' She let go of his hand to brush the cowlick of his hair off his face, and then pushed it all back off his neck. It looked bloody daft, half blond and half dark, and far, far too long now, but hopefully soon he'd be satisfied it was long enough that she could make him lop the blond off for good. He was still grumbling about her making him do it every now and again, but she'd pointed out that if she'd had to stop curling her hair and painting her nails for him, he had to follow through with his end of their deal. And the blond hair had to go. The leather trousers were a conversation for another day, but she'd work them in there eventually. God, they were unpleasant – even worse than she'd thought, she'd realised when slipping them off him the other night, noticing to her disgust that they were incredibly sweaty inside.

She played with the long strands of hair at the back of his neck, twisting them around her finger as she reflected on his concern. It was nice for someone to care this much about her wellbeing. She supposed lovers were supposed to (she wasn't going to use the word boyfriend, not at nearly thirty- bloody-three years old, she wasn't a sodding teenager and the idea of using terms like that had always made her cringe). None of them ever had before, even if they pretended to. They were usually more in it for what they could get.

'I just worried,' Joey went on, 'that it was summat I did.'

Martina bit her lip. It was, technically, what with how bloody rough he'd been, but she didn't want him to know that. She could lie to him, of course, tell him it wasn't, and hurt him by doing what Roxy used to do to him, what Shifty used to do to her. She could tell him, and he'd feel extremely guilty.

'Don't panic, love,' she settled for, dodging both options. 'Everything's fine.' She sat up, leaned over her bedside table and had a good swig of the glass of water she'd left there, took another couple of paracetamol and then settled back down.

'I'm gonna sleep for a bit more, all right?'

'Won't the Social Security Lie Detectin' Centre be bothered you're not goin' in?'

'Why should they? We're allowed sick days – so long as they're genuine and we don't take advantage.'

'Fair enough.' She felt a soft pressure against her temple as Joey kissed it. 'Want me to stay with you? Nurse you back to health?'

'Mmm,' she murmured her assent weakly. 'Long as you're quiet.'

She felt a warm pressure against her back as Joey shuffled up behind her. She tended to prefer a bit more space when she slept, keeping faithfully to her side of the bed and expecting her lovers to show the same consideration – but she had to admit, it was nice, when you wanted someone around, to find them all over you. Particularly when it was the person you'd guiltily daydreamed of for longer than you'd care to admit.

'It's not got into your kidneys, has it?' his voice was soft in her ear.

'What?' Martina frowned, sitting up a bit too quickly to be comfortable, and swivelling around to glare at him so fast she felt her neck cramp.

'I thought you didn't know!'

Joey laughed. 'You didn't exactly do a good job hidin' it, did you? I put two and two together. Wasn't hard. Rushing off to the bog every five minutes, back pain, temperature, antibiotics, drinkin' a lot of water... I have got a sister, you know. She did herself a mischief when she first started modellin', standing there for a good six hours a day without goin' in case it ruined her pose. I've seen it all before.'

Martina crossed her arms. 'Then why interrogate me about it?'

'I just wondered if you'd admit to it or not.' Joey reached up and pulled her down against his chest, his hands threading through her hair, twisting and fiddling with it as she'd noticed he liked doing when he was worried about her. 'It's sweet of you to try and protect me, sunshine, but you don't have to. I know it's my fault.'

'Not your fault,' Martina muttered into his shoulder.

'I was pretty rough with you.'

'And did I say I minded?' she demanded, perhaps more sharply than she'd intended.

'No, but…look, I didn't want…'

Fed up with his constant apologising, Martina put a hand over his mouth.

'Are you gonna let me sleep, or aren't yer?'

Joey nodded behind her hand.

'Right. Now, if you open your gob before I am fully awake again, I'll be sellotaping it shut.' She released his mouth, settling down against him, curling against him.

Joey's arms tightened around her, hands softly stroking and kneading her lower back, and Martina went back to sleep, the steady rhythm of his breathing lulling her.


It was a reasonably pleasant day, considering she was still feeling a bit crook. Martina lounged on her sofa half-watching the telly, her head in Joey's lap, chatting to him when she felt like it, dozing or simply wandering among her own thoughts at other times.

Joey was doing his best to live up to the phrase 'nurse her back to health'. He brought her endless cups of tea, 'made' her soup (which entailed him running out for packets of Batchelors Cup-a-soup and adding a bit too much boiling water, though the gesture was still nice), checked her temperature every few minutes (which resulted in her smacking his hand away after getting fed up with feeling it perpetually on her forehead).

'Your strength's come back, hasn't it?' Joey teased as she grabbed his hand with force and dragged it off her face, prompting him to try and arm-wrestle his way back again.

'You've only got yourself to blame for that, Mister Boswell, haven't yer? Replenishing it the way you have been…'

'Who's Mister Boswell? Eh?'

Martina shrieked as Joey tickled her, wrapping her arm around her midriff, and he paused.

'Sorry, sweetheart…doesn't hurt you, does it?'

She could get out of it by saying yes, and she knew Joey would meekly desist, but truth was, she was feeling a lot better, the antibiotics finally kicking in, and Martina was never one to back away from a battle, nor at least do a good fist of winning fairly and squarely.

'Well, no, but…' she'd barely had time to get the rest of her sentence out before he was back on the offensive. Too bloody quick. She hadn't even had time to get her defences together.

'Then it's about time we hashed this out,' Joey was relentless, and Martina spluttered and shoved at him to no avail. 'Okay, little DSS lady? And while I've got you captive, I'm gonna make sure this lesson sticks in your brain. What d'you call me outside of work? What d'you call me? Eh?'

Martina did her best to fight back, grabbing at his hands, shoving at his arms, fixing him with her frostiest stare, though it was a bit difficult to pull it off when she was uncontrollably laughing at the same time.

'Joey, get off!'

'You're learnin'. You're learnin'.' Joey stood down, and Martina took the opportunity to gain the upper hand and thump him in the ribs.

'If you're mine now, I can call you what I like.'

Joey hummed thoughtfully.

'And what else will you do with me, now I'm yours?'

It sent a thrill through her to hear him use those words, even if he was just repeating hers.

'I've got a few things in mind. You'll find out in due course.'

'Oh, yes?' Joey grinned, and it was the loveliest sight in the world. 'Can't wait, sunshine. Can't wait.'

He ruffled her hair, and then stroked it again, far more tenderly.

'C'mere, you.'

Martina half-sat up, and Joey leaned down, kissing her more slowly, more softly than he had the other night, filling her with a strange, fluttering joy.


'You know, I was thinking last night,' Joey was surprised by the burst of clarity that had come to him, but he was itching to share it with Evan, 'about our business. I've worked out what we can do when we give Slicer and Slasher the elbow.'

Ever since he'd got it together with Martina, and finally rid himself of the self-doubt and sexual frustration that had plagued him these last few months, his brain had been going full throttle, channelling creative thinking like it hadn't in years. He'd implemented several new initiatives to make the Place of Nonpoisonous Substances more efficient and more profitable (his Dad had turned up halfway through the day for his shift, looked surprised to see the shop full and clapped him on the back), reorganised his bedroom at home so he had more space to move, rearranged Martina's kitchen cupboards while she was at work…he'd even come up with a few throwaway romantic lines he'd tossed Adrian's way for a poem he was working on. It had only been a week, and he hadn't dared push the physical again owing to what happened the first time, but already his newly-christened relationship with Martina was doing wonders for him, and he couldn't help but think Jack and Adrian had been right.

And because being physically and emotionally satisfied had got his creative juices flowing, he'd actually had some inspiration for his and Evan's business. They'd never got past the theoretical before, tossing a few ideas around over a bevvy in the evenings, interspersed with a lot of wishful thinking about how successful they might be once they finally shook off Yizzel and his mate, and it had seemed for a while like one of those pipe-dream sort of affairs, to be discussed wistfully every now and then without any action being taken.

Now, though, with his head clearer than ever before, Joey had stumbled upon what actually might be a solid idea.

'G'wed,' Evan looked up from an invoice in front of him and reached up to clink glasses. 'Can't be any worse than dealin' with this lot. Call it bloody launderin' – it's more like a three hour soak and scrub before it can come out anywhere near clean.'

Joey shrugged sympathetically. Yizzel and his mate had upped the ante of late, trying to push more money than usual through Joey and Evan's businesses, leaving them scrambling to find plausible ways to account for it. They only had two more weeks before they were out, and their obligations came to an end and they could focus on their own venture – and that time couldn't come quickly enough.

Problem was, Joey couldn't see Yizzel's mate letting go of them without a fight. They'd done a bit too well with their assignment, and he was anticipating some sort of ugly confrontation when they announced they were off, and couldn't be depended on anymore.

He pushed the thought aside for the moment. He'd cross that when he came to it – and if he needed to, he'd get his brothers along to help him, do a bit of the old Boswell mafia act and sort them out.

'What's this idea, then?'

'Well,' Joey squared his shoulders. 'What's the thing we're both best at?'

'Apart from laundering money from thugs with more influence than us, you mean?'

Joey rolled his eyes. 'Well, yeah, apart from that, that goes without sayin'.'

'What, then?'

'Buyin' and selling, that's what. I used to make a good little earner once in a while; you used to flog a good piece back in the day—you've said so yourself. We should play to our strengths – make a business out of that.'

Evan looked less than enthused. 'If you're suggesting goin' about in a van like you said your brother does, pickin' up paintings that turn out to be fakes, forget it. We'll be signing on for the rest of our lives at that rate.'

'Well, we'd need to be a bit more organised than that, wouldn't we?! We'd need our own shop, for a start. We can go prospecting for a few things to start off with, then we can let people come to us.'

'And end up with a back room full of rubbish.'

Joey wasn't giving up so easily.

'We'd sell boss stuff. None of that fake antique shite. We'd be in the market for quality. Look, I know a good picture when I see one – and from the sounds of it, so do you. We know enough of the pitfalls to avoid them.'

'And 'oo'd buy all this, once we'd acquired it?'

'People like us, out to sell it on. Scrapin' their pennies together to survive.'

Evan sat back in his chair, his brain clearly in gear. That was what was great about him, what made him so good to work with – when he was sober, and in a sensible mood, he could hash out an idea, find all its weak spots and work out exactly how to strengthen them.

'We'd need a premises.'

'There's a few places on the high street gone under. We could look into 'em.'

'And we'd need to invest in some things to start off with. We'd need good stock.'

The eldest Boswell was already one step ahead.

'The Enterprise Allowance Scheme! Never fails. We use that to help start us off, and we're home and dry.'

'Someone to do our books.'

'I'm workin' on that one.' Joey still had it in the back of his head that one day, when things were a bit more settled and they'd taken off, he could see his way to convincing Martina to work with them. 'In the meantime, we can hold the fort. We've been managing all right, haven't we?'

'You might be onto something, mate,' Evan mulled it over. 'You might be onto something.'

He took another swig of his Scotch, downing it in one.

'Steady on a bit – Jesus, Evan!' Joey elbowed him. 'I said it before, didn't I – if we do go into business, you're gonna have to be with it.'

'God, you sound like my missus – or me bloody sister! I know what I can handle, all right? And if you can leave off for five minutes about that – we'll start settin' this business up, yeah?'

In spite of his lingering concerns about Evan's drinking, Joey felt his face split into a grin.

He raised his own, still-half-full glass.

'To the future, Evan. To a bright and profitable future, where we'll be walkin' among the stars.'

He hadn't waxed so poetic for a good five years or so. Joey grinned at his own lyricism, revelling in how much he felt like his old self. He was re-finding parts of himself he hadn't realised had gone missing – oh, it's you. Welcome back. And God, it felt good to be this whole.

'What's got you in such a good mood?' Evan snorted. 'Been gettin' some bonking in, have you?'

Joey shook his head, ignoring his colleague's taunt. Everything was falling into place; he was feeling on top of the world, and nothing could bring him down right now.


'Greetings!'

Joey flung Martina's flat door open dramatically, ignoring the fact that she was completely unimpressed by his grand entrance. He was still in a fantastic mood, and after scouting out a few potential premises for his new business, he'd popped downtown and picked up a surprise he'd been planning for her.

'And to what do I owe this unannounced royal visit?' Martina put aside the sewing in her lap, fixing him a glare that wasn't quite up to her usual standard.

'Well, seein' as how I missed the DSS opening hours today, I thought I could come and put in me claim now.'

Martina's glare became less teasing.

'After all,' Joey's cheek knew no bounds, such was his mood today, 'when a man has a DSS lady of his very own waitin' for him after hours, he doesn't need to wait in the queue to –'

'I'd stop if I were you, Joey,' Martina cut him off, raising a warning finger, 'before I succumb to the overwhelming urge to inflict grievous bodily harm on yer. Any jokes about gettin' special Social Security favours from me, and you'll be saying goodbye to bits of your anatomy you'll miss for the rest of your life.'

She stood, coming across the room and standing on her toes, bringing her face as close to his as she could manage given their height difference. It didn't come off quite as intimidating as she'd intended, given she was staring him up rather than down, and given Joey was in a terrific mood and winding her up was only making it better.

He reached down and pinched her cheek, remembering her cross little scowl when he'd tried it that fateful night in the pub when he'd first asked her to lunch with him. He wasn't disappointed; it came out now.

'You're beautiful when you're angry,' he said blithely.

'Any particular reason you've turned up tonight? Or did you just think, oh, Martina's had a rough few days at work – I'll pop round and do her head in.'

Joey gave her shoulders a squeeze.

'Fear not, little DSS lady. Fear not. I have, in fact, come to brighten your day.'

'How, precisely? You've not done a good job of it so far, have you?'

Joey brought his arm out from behind his back, brandishing the paper bag.

'I've got a present for you.'

'Me? A present?'

Her blue eyes were wide in surprise, all annoyance on her face suddenly melting away to make way for delight, and it was quite possibly the loveliest sight Joey had ever seen. She hastened to smother her joy, forcing her face into its usual sarcastic smirk.

'You're not goin' soppy now, are yer?'

'And if I were, I could hardly be blamed, now, could I?'

Joey pulled his gift out of the bag with a flourish.

It had been his intention, ever since that horrible snowman jumper had made an appearance at Christmas, to get her a proper jacket, and it seemed only fitting he do it now, mark the start of their relationship with it. He'd trawled every higher-end shop he could find in search of the right garment for her – warm enough to keep her chills at bay, with a fleecy lining, but trim and fitted and stylish enough to look smart when they headed out.

He'd guessed at her size (using 'the smallest one in the shop' as his overall guide), but Joey had been quite happy with his choice overall. The jacket was trim and elegant, a nice brown suede in a modern cut – with the added bonus of deep pockets she could shove her hands in if they got too cold (the woman owned about fifteen pairs of gloves, but in spite of these, and the iron supplements she took, her hands were still icy half the time).

'Voila.'

Martina did her best to keep her face impassive.

'And what's the meaning of this?'

'Can a man not make a nice gesture to his girl without there being an ulterior motive?' Joey couldn't help a bit of a grin, '…well, apart from puttin' a stop to you wearin' hand-knitted jumpers in public.'

Martina cocked her head to one side, smirking.

'And you thought it was appropriate to spend either your giro or your ill-earned gains on this, knowing your…' she made a nasty-medicine face as the uttered the word, 'girlfriend is just lookin' for an excuse to report yer?

'If you're mine now,' he grinned as he echoed her words from earlier, 'I can buy you what I like. So let's have no more of this reportin' me business – okay?'

Martina's smile was getting harder to hide by the minute.

'Go on. Try it on.'

Martina rolled her eyes, though he could see she was defeated. He held out the jacket encouragingly, and she tut-sighed as she slipped into it, but there was a twinkle in her eyes Joey didn't miss. She was made up with his gift, even if she was trying to pretend otherwise. And it fit perfectly – Joey chalked up a small victory point in his mind.

' 's lovely stuff,' she murmured it so quietly he might have missed it.

'What was that you said?' Joey nudged her, and she pursed her lips.

'I said, I wonder how many cows laid down their lives in the production of this garment.'

'Oh, don't start that again,' Joey put a finger over her lips, shushing her. 'There are much better ways we could employ our time.'

'Oh, yeah? Such as?'

Joey couldn't resist kissing her before he released her.

'Well, for starters, you can make use of that gift, and we can head out and I can take you to the finest dinner my hard-earned pittances can buy.'

'Oh, yeah?'

'And after that,' Joey went on, 'you know what I fancy doin'?'

Martina raised her eyebrows. 'I can hazard a guess.'

Joey knew what she thought he had in mind – and though she wasn't wrong, he was still a bit afraid to push it, given the state she'd ended up in. He was being cautious on that front, holding off until he was sure she was okay – and it just seemed a bit too soon.

There was something else he fancied doing, now she was officially his – perhaps he was drunk on emotion, still riding the highs of the past week, to even be contemplating it, but it seemed unbelievably appealing.

He couldn't believe he was saying this, but it made him smile all the same.

'How about we do that new jigsaw you bought?'