Angel 61 (bid for freedom)

‘There’s something I’ve no told you,’ said Bruno, gently disentangling himself from her arms and easing away from her embrace.

Adam and Lisa were sitting together in their pram, newly minted after sleep, waving their arms and babbling to each other in their baby language, quite content in their world. They stared at Bruno, brows furrowed, unblinking.

‘They’re looking at me,’ remarked Bruno, smiling. ‘Probably wondering whit I am.’

‘Och, they know who you ur.’ Angel turned to face them, lines of tiredness around her face disappearing and two parallel sets of arms immediately shot out of the pram. Twins demanding to be lifted and waited on. She took a sip of tea and put her mug down on the table, wiggled her shoulders and slim hips before she lifted Lisa, and pivoted, put her into Bruno’s lap.

Lisa wailed at being parted from her mum. She was dressed in a lime-green nylon outfit with little white, cotton, bootees on her feet with elasticated ankle straps embroidered like doilies. Bruno spluttered, but he started laughing. He put his mug onto the table and out of arm’s reach as she threshed to get away from him and put a protective arm around her midriff. Her chubby face pinked with exertion and eyes like platters, a blue-green colour, an identical gaze to her brother’s, brimmed with tears, which ran down her face.

Adam wore baby-blue and he grinned and chuckled, open-mouthed, at being lifted from the pram, drooling on Angel’s shoulder, a less doughy version of his sister.

Lisa wasn’t content until she too was sitting on her mum’s lap, next to her twin.

Bruno leaned across and stroked her forehead, ‘They’re hard work.’

Angel jiggled a knee to keep them amused. ‘Aye, they never stop. If they’re not up at the crack of dawn, they’re up earlier. And you’re always thinking ahead to the next nappy change, the next meal. And this wan,’ she stroked Adam’s arm and kissed the top of the silky, reddish-blonde, mop of hair. ‘He gets everything. He’s always got a runny nose and runs a temperature and I’m constantly running back and forth to the doctors wae him and they’re useless. Useless.’

Bruno nodded sympathetically, picked up his tea, took a sip and put it back on the table. ‘Sounds exhausting. Nae wonder you look so fucking terrible.’

‘Thanks for that,’ snorted Angel. She whipped a grubby paper hanky out of her pocket and swiped at pearls of green snot on Adam’s nose as he jerked his head in the other direction and squealed in frustration. Lisa squawked and flung her body sideways, trying to get away. Angel rolled her onto her back and tickled her tummy and she giggled and tried to roll off the couch and onto the floor.    

Bruno reached across and pulled her onto his lap. She screamed and kicked, but just as suddenly stopped. She picked and tugged at his shirt-button. Narrow-eyed, lost in fascination, she pulled at a stray hair and glanced sideways at his face.

‘Ouch,’ Bruno laughed.

Lisa’s little fingers probed beneath his shirt and searched for lower down chest hairs to pull and torture him.  

‘Ouch, Ouch, Ouch,’ Bruno tickled Lisa to get some respite. ‘You should hire her oot. She’d be much cheaper than a professional waxing and she seems to enjoy her work.’ He kissed her on the side of the cheek and she jerked her head sideways, almost head-butting him. ‘There’s something I never told you.’

Lisa struggled out of his grasp and he lay her down on her back on the leather couch, momentarily, contented looking up at them, the corner of a flower-patterned pillow at her neck and head.

‘Whit?’ Angel snatched a glance at Bruno’s face, dabbed again at Adam’s nose with a hanky, lifted and rolled him into a fluid motion onto the couch beside his sister.

The twin’s arms and legs splashed against each other and their eye met and they rolled towards each other.

Bruno reached inside his jacket pocket of his packet of cigarettes, but eyeing the twins and then looking at Angel, he scratched at the back of his neck instead and sucked in a deep breath before speaking.  ‘Somebody’s being paying Harold Cole to work on your behalf.’

‘You mean, he comes here to perv at me!’ Angel kept her voice low and level, and tickled Adam’s belly and then Lisa’s. ‘Somebody’s paying him good money for that. And I bet he doesn’t come cheap.’

Bruno got on his hand and knees in front of the couch and twinkled his fingers in front of the twin’s face, scooping up and down and in close and far away. They thought his antics hilarious. He talked out of the side of his mouth. ‘Harold is a cheap-skate. He doesn’t like paying for anything and expects everything done for him, but let me put it this way, whatever salary you could make in a month, he’d expect to make double that, and more, in one day. He’s exceptionally good at billing people.’ He huffed and puffed blowing out his cheeks and whistling. The twins watched and listened, open mouthed. ‘I dunno who it could be, but I know one thing, Harold knows all the right people. He’ll get you results. The thing is if I dunno who’s paying, we don’t know how much or how much longer they’ll keep paying. We don’t want to be left high and dry.’

Angel rubbed the twins kicking feet and gave a throaty laugh. ‘As my old ma said, if you don’t expect anything, you’ll ne’er be disappointed.’

Bruno got onto one knee and leaned against the couch, making a sound as he stretched his back. ‘I’m getting too old for this caper.’ He sat on the edge of the couch, within kicking distance of Lisa. ‘You mean you’re no bothered about who it is, paying the dough?’

‘I mean,’ Lisa sucked in a breath. ‘I don’t really know and I don’t really care. It’s actually no too bad in here. And I’m tired, tired, tired.’

‘You mean you don’t want to get oot?’ Bruno swelled with indignation.

‘Fuck off, Bruno,’ she laughed. ‘Course I want oot, but I don’t want Harold Cole working for me.’

‘He’s the best,’ said Bruno.

‘He’s the worst sort,’ Angel shrugged. ‘I cannae really think.’

‘Em,’ Bruno nodded. ‘I’ve got a bit of track record there of not thinking. Attracting the worst sort, but you don’t want to get confused wae…’

Angel cut in, ‘I’m no confused, you ur. I don’t want Harold Cole anywhere near me. Not at any price. It’s people like him that got me in here in the first place. And I don’t want to rely on people like him to get me oot.’

‘OK,’ Bruno, held up a hand in surrender. ‘I take your point.’ He sniggered. ‘I suppose it’s a bit like asking Jimmy Saville to dae your baby-sitting.’

‘Fuck off Bruno,’ she laughed and shook her head. ‘Sometimes I think there’s a want about you.’

He put out a hand to stop Lisa falling onto the floor. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, there definitely is. It’s a great pity, you’re no really my type.’