Page 21 of The Reluctant Billionaire

‘She’s not used to you, Judy,’ Gaz chides. ‘You’ve got to watch that potty mouth of yours. You can’t just go around dropping Aide’s ding-dong into the conversation or being a dirty little cougar. It’s unseemly. Got it?’

‘Then someone should tell him not to strut around the place in tracksuit bottoms with no briefs on,’ Judy argues. ‘It’s not right, letting it all hang out like a boa constrictor.’

‘I cannot with you today, Judith,’ Gaz says, getting to his feet and pretending to pick her up. ‘I just cannot. It’s time for your nap, dear.’

‘Fuck you,’ Judy says.

I get myself upright and pat Sylvie’s hand to thank her. She’s the only normal one around here.

Gaz sits back down. ‘Remember, though, the vaseline thing? And the KY jelly, if we’re on a lube theme?’

I grimace. ‘I really don’t think I want to know.’

‘Oh, don’t worry. They were separate incidents,’ Gaz says. ‘One time, Aide sellotaped a massive tube of KY to our RE teacher’s board eraser, and another time we vaseline-d pretty much every door in the school.’

‘Let me guess,’ I say drily. ‘Before dawn?’

‘Yep. He did his best work in the early hours of the morning. It was definitely his MO—sneak in before dawn and wreak utter havoc.’

‘Remember when he took a single screw out of all the desks in, what was it, Year Nine?’ Judy asks. ‘And then he went to the Head and presented him with a bucket of screws. Zero context. Said “Sir, I’ve found these”. What an impudent little bollox he was. You both were.’

‘Best days of my life,’ Gaz says, stretching.

‘Hang on.’ I lean forward. ‘How come you know so much about these two, Judy?’

‘Well, dear, Gaz is my secret love child,’ she says.

My eyes widen.

‘Only kidding.’ She laughs heartily at her own joke.

‘You fucking wish,’ Gaz says.

‘I really do not. I’ve run this place for years, Lotta. Years and years. Twenty-five, to be precise. And I had the bad luck to have these little turds here every bloody weekday afternoon for a few of those.’

I look between the two of them. ‘Gaz and Aide came here?’

Judy lets out a sigh of fatigue. ‘Did they ever? They were the bane of my life.’

I rub the toe of my trainer against the ancient tarmac and stare at it to hide the fact that I can’t quite look Gaz in the eye right now. I wasn’t sure how he and Aide were connected to this place, because I didn’t like to ask. But I certainly didn’t suspect for a minute that they used to avail of it.

That they may possibly even havedependedon it.

The children I’ve seen this morning and yesterday morning have haunted me. It’s something about that mix of resignation and resilience in their demeanour that hits me right in my stomach whenever I think about it. They’ve accepted their utterly shitty lot, and they get on with it.

They’re kids.

They deal with it.

Butfuck, they shouldn’t have to.

That little ginger-haired duo, the brother and sister, hit me especially hard. They were first through the gates this morning, too, grabbing their breakfast bags and thanking Aide for the pizza he’d had delivered the previous night.

I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast when I was their age, but I do remember Mamma accompanying Gabe and me to school every morning in the back of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes.

I make a mental note to grab Sylvie as soon as this is over and discreetly request that pair’s address. I’ll call my local deli and see if they can’t send over something homemade and microwavable—lasagne, maybe. Or shepherd’s pie.

It’s the very least I can do, and it’s so far from enough it’s not funny.