her a small box, blushing, turning away as she held out her hand and
accepted what-ever the gift might be.
It was a pink box with gold lettering: Beautiful.
"Said you liked it," he said.
Jazz felt tears threatening, but she held them back. She nodded, unable to speak for a few seconds,
and the sharp re-ality of the box's weight and corners pinned her to the world. "Thanks," she said at last,
and it came out husky and gruff.
Cadge nodded, but he could not keep the smile from his face.
"Really," Jazz said. She looked at the box again and re-membered what these boxes had looked like
on her mum's dressing table, the way she'd always kept the perfume inside instead of disposing with the box
and just keeping the bottle, the way she had liked the fact that however empty the bottle might be, the box
always looked new. "Really, Cadge, thanks."
He nodded, face flushed. "Pleasure," he said. "Now it's time to go. We're not far from Oxford Circus
here. And Harry'll be waiting for us when we go down."
"Harry?"
"Told me he'd meet us. He does that sometimes, espe-cially with someone new."
"Why?"
Cadge shrugged but looked away. "Sometimes Harry likes to talk in private."
He would not be drawn out any more, so Jazz followed Cadge along the bustling streets and into
Oxford Circus Tube station. As the shadows cooled around her, she felt a calm sense of relief closing in
with them.
Chapter Seven
the silent tree
"Do you trust me?"
"Of course I do."
"Good. That's good. But why?"
"Because you're my mother, of course." Jazz didn't like the way her mum's conversation was going
this morning. They'd started out commenting on the architecture of Oxford Street, but now they sat in the
back corner of a cof-fee shop and her mother had embarked on one of her lec-tures. At least Jazz thought
it was likely to turn into a lecture. It had that feel: a difficult question, followed by a few moments of
silence, and soon would come her mother's sad expression and alert eyes as she started to speak of hid-den
dangers, covert groups, and the risks of trying to live a normal life. Life for us can never be normal, she'd
said during one of these discussions a couple of years ago, and Jazz had never forgotten that. Out of all the
advice her mother had given her, it was this statement that stuck most in her mind. Sometimes she hated
her mum for telling her that. Surely such harsh truths were something a girl should find out on her own?
"That's not good enough reason to trust me," her mother said. "Lots of kids trust their parents and are
in-evitably betrayed by them. It's a word bandied around too readily nowadays, like love, and fate, and
hate. But it's a pre-cious thing. Analyze your trust, Jazz. Study it. Does it have rough edges, or is it
thoughtless and complete? Because na-ture abhors sharp edges, so something with them can't be natural."
"You'd never betray me," Jazz said firmly. She was start-ing to feel upset and anxious at the way this
was going. Mum was her bedrock! Her solid pedestal from which she was starting to live life as an
adult!
Her mum smiled. "No, I wouldn't. But if I was someone else, just because I never have betrayed you
doesn't mean I never would."
"You're scaring me, Mum."
One of the coffee-shop staff paused by the next table, cleared away mugs and sandwich wrappers,
and started pol-ishing its surface. The silence was uncomfortable, and the young girl threw them a nervous
glance and hurried away, the table still smeared and dirty.
"Don't be scared," she said. "Be warned. You're the only person you can really, truly trust. You. The
only one. You'll need to be careful, Jazz, as you get older. Make sure you're certain of people's intentions
toward you."
"You mean boys?"
"I mean everyone." Her mother looked suddenly sad then, and Jazz was mortified when she saw
tears in the woman's eyes. "You can never really know someone."
"Mum?"
She shook her head and waved Jazz away, dabbing at her eyes. "I'm fine. I'm fine." But she didn't
look fine. And that brief, intense conversation about trust stayed with Jazz for a long, long time.
****
Harry was waiting for them below the surface, behind the grubby wall and bulky grate at the end of
the station platform. He was alone. He carried two heavy torches, and he gave them to Cadge and Jazz.
He trusted them to light his way.
"A good nick today, Jazz girl?"
Jazz produced the boxes of painkillers, plasters, cough mixture, and antibiotics. She kept the Beautiful
to herself.
"Nice!" Harry said. "Nice, my pets. I don't like the thought of my kids being
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