Page 9 of The Reluctant Billionaire (Love in London #5)

Lotta

‘ A nd I said’—Gaz stretches out his arms theatrically—‘gimme the fucking fiver, mate.’

He collapses with the utter hilarity of his punchline, and the rest of us follow.

I have no clue what he’s talking about half the time, but we’ve been falling about laughing for the past hour.

This guy cracks me up. It’s his delivery.

The stories he’s telling about his and Aide’s juvenile delinquency are pretty funny in their own right, but the way he tells them is priceless.

‘Tell her about the time you and Aide pulled the plastic fork stunt at school,’ Judy urges him.

I gape. ‘You were at school together?’

‘Course we were,’ Gaz says. ‘All the way from Year Seven. He was a lot cleverer than me, but he always managed to get us into trouble.’

Judy shakes her head mournfully. ‘He was a troublesome little twat at school, he was. Mark my words. I’m glad he managed to pull his head out of his arse and do so well for himself.’

I don’t miss the warning shake of the head Sylvie gives her, though I have no idea what she’s talking about.

And, while it’s not obvious that Aide has done particularly well for himself, I’ve seen enough this morning not to judge.

I know the gap between rich and poor in London is a travesty, but this morning really brought it home to me just how poor poor can mean.

So if these guys see Aide as a success story, then maybe he is. He’s here, showing up every day to support his community, isn’t he? That’s got to count for a lot.

Anyway, I’m more interested in what Judy said before that.

‘Troublesome little twat, you say? Tell me more.’

Gaz points at me. ‘You, my friend, are going to need a cuppa for this. Boy, has Uncle Gaz got some stories for you.’

‘Let’s make it espresso,’ I suggest. No way am I drinking more of that pencil sharpenings shit.

When Gaz, Judy and Sylvia have sorted themselves out with cups of tea and I’ve produced the perfect coffee—thank you, Nespresso—we take a seat outside in the play area.

We’ve earned a break, and I could do with some fresh air.

It’s gorgeous out now. I sit back in my shitty plastic chair and stretch luxuriously. My arms are stiff from the sanding.

Gaz dips a hobnob so far into his tea, and for so many seconds, that I’m positive it’ll disintegrate and drop to the bottom of the mug, never to be seen again.

But nope. He fishes it out, soggy but intact, and pops the entire thing in his mouth. Judy snorts.

‘Right,’ he says when he’s swallowed it. He rubs his hands together. ‘How naughty do you want to go? Cos we were very naughty.’

‘You mentioned plastic forks?’ I say with trepidation.

‘That was a good one,’ Gaz says, a nostalgic grin on his face. ‘The thing you’ve gotta know about our Aide is that he is a sneaky. Little. Fucker. Came up with the most amazing concepts. He was the big picture guy. I was the executor.’ He points his thumbs at his chest.

‘Otherwise known as Aide’s gimp,’ Judy says, nodding sagely as she brandishes her hobnob.

‘Now, now, Judy. That’s not very nice,’ Gaz chides. ‘I was his henchman.’

‘And you usually got the rap,’ she retorts.

He inclines his head. ‘Harsh but fair. Anyway, our devious little Aide liked to play mind games with the teachers.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Boredom,’ Gaz and Judy say together.

Gaz shrugs. ‘Right. He was too smart for his own good, he was. The teachers didn’t know how to keep him busy.

So he used that magic brain of his for all sorts of nefarious purposes.

Anyway, the forks. Aide rounded up a whole gang of us for that one—must have been five or six of us.

We got up stupidly early in the summer term and stuck plastic forks into the grass all over the games pitch.

‘They used it for everything, but it would have been a cricket and athletics pitch that term. We got two thousand forks from Poundland, and we stuck all of them into the grass, prongs down, all over the pitch. Mr Hell, that’s the PE teacher, went fucking ballistic.

His name was Mr Hail, but we called him Mr Hell because he was such a sadistic twat. ’

‘Oh my God,’ I gasp. This is brilliant. ‘And Aide did this? He seems so serious.’

‘He’s seriously twisted,’ Gaz clarifies.

‘He’s an evil genius. He’d stew over this stuff for hours and hours.

You have no idea. Honestly, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of him.

This one time’—he stops to guffaw and slap his knee—‘Oh my God , this one time, the girls’ school across the road put a stop to any socials between us and them because apparently some of the girls complained to the teachers that the boys were a bad influence on them.

‘So Aide made this banner. It was, like, eight feet long. And he hung it across their entrance.’ He’s doubled over, laughing so hard that I can’t help laughing too, even though I have no idea where this story is going.

‘It said.’ He laughs silently, his fist to his mouth.

All I can hear is his wheezing. Judy’s watching him with the most affection I’ve seen her show anyone. Sylvie and I exchange an amused glance.

‘Sorry.’ Gaz straightens up and uses his hand to fan his face dramatically. ‘I will prevail. It said VIRGIN MEGASTORE in massive capital letters. It was fucking. Brilliant. Honestly, I’m glad that guy finally put his brain to good use.’

I can feel my mouth hanging open. ‘Virgin Megastore? Oh my God. They must have been livid.’

‘Fucking ironic, if you ask me,’ Judy says, crossing her arms. ‘Those St Bernadette’s girls were little sluts, every last one of them. Still are.’

I dip my head to my espresso cup so she can’t see how hard I’m trying not to laugh. These two are the ultimate comedic double act. They should be on stage. I’d definitely buy tickets.

Gaz tuts. ‘Judith, Judith. We’ve talked about this. The year is 2023. You cannot slut-shame women in this day and age. It’s called embracing your sexuality .’

‘Sexuality, my arse,’ Judy says, nonplussed. ‘I’m sure some of them are on the game.’

’As long as they’re their own boss, that’s called entrepreneurship,’ Gaz tells her. ‘You have a lot to learn, my sweetling. Stick with me and Lotta here, and we’ll set you straight.’

‘Call me your sweetling again and I’ll break your arm,’ Judy says. She pushes her glasses up her nose and smiles sweetly at him.

Bloody hell.

I’m totally out of my depth with this lot.

But back to Aide, who’s becoming more of an enigma every second. I can’t believe this shit.

‘So when did someone put the stick up Aide’s arse?’ I wonder out loud.

Sylvie sniggers.

Judy shoots me daggers.

‘He settled down in Upper Sixth,’ Gaz muses. ‘I think A Levels finally kept that brain of his busy. And he got a girlfriend—Mary. Fucking hell, she was hot.’ He shakes out his hand. ‘She kept him distracted, if you know what I mean.’

I have no explanation or justification for the tremor of jealousy that courses through me and makes me shudder.

Mary . Ugh. She sounds wholesome as fuck.

‘Was she from that girl’s school?’ I ask neutrally.

‘Yeah. But she definitely didn’t belong in the Virgin Megastore by the time he finished with her, dirty bastard.’ Gaz rubs his hands together in glee. ‘Fuck, he’s always got the hottest girls. Total stunners. Still does. Lucky bastard. If he wasn’t my best mate, I’d hate his guts.’

‘He’s a looker,’ Judy observes. ‘And he has a huge ding-dong, if I’m not mistaken. I think it’s the girls who are the lucky ones.’

I’m so shocked that I go to inhale and instead manage to choke on some air, resulting in a massive coughing fit. Sylvie gets up to rub my back.

‘You okay, love?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I wheeze. I sound like I’m dying.

I feel like I’m dying.

I cannot believe what just came out of Judy’s mouth.

‘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 have depended on 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.

But fuck , 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.