Beautiful Beast (Gypsy Heroes #3)(66)

We admit her there and I breathe a sigh of relief. It is air-conditioned and clean and modern. The nurses there immediately take over. I stand at reception and cry from pure release of the fear and tension I had been holding ever since I saw the state Chitra was in.

I tell Chitra that I have to go to London, but I will be back for her.

She hangs on to my arm pitifully. ‘Go, my beloved daughter. I will always love you,’ she says, and both of us burst into tears.



When I tell my mother my plan to join Shane in London, a massive argument errupts. For the first time ever in my life my father takes my side.

‘Just let her go,’ he says.

‘Did you actually see the man she’s going to?’ my mother snaps.

‘No, but I trust Snow,’ my father says quietly.

‘Well, I saw him and he looks like the worst kind of player.’ She turns to me and demands. ‘What is he? Irish?’

‘He’s a gypsy.’

She clasps her hands and shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe it. He’s a gypsy! They’re the worst. They’re just a bunch of thieves. What does he do?’

‘He’s in business.’

‘Business? What business? Stealing manhole covers during the night and selling them for scrap?’

‘Mum, please leave it. Even if he is poor, and he is not, I’m going to him.’

‘He’ll get you pregnant, break your heart, and he’ll leave, and then you’ll come running here with his bastard baby in tow.’ She turns angrily to my father. ‘Is that what you want for her?’

‘I want Snow to be happy,’ my father says stoically.

I look at my father and he quickly winks at me. My eyes widen with surprise. I swiftly look at my mother and thank God she missed the wink.

‘I’m talking to two brick walls here,’ she bursts out. ‘He won’t make her happy. She’s infatuated with his looks and superficial charm. It won’t last.’

‘I don’t believe that it won’t last.’ He turns to look at me. ‘Snow is special. It’s hard to leave her.’

I smile at my father. And he smiles back.

‘Well, don’t turn around and say I didn’t warn you,’ she huffs.

My mother is so furious with me she refuses to come with me to the airport.



Shane had led me to believe that someone holding a placard would be picking me up at Heathrow airport. So it is a great shock to see him standing there with a massive bunch of flowers and an even bigger pink teddy bear. I don’t run into his arms. I stop so suddenly the person behind bangs into me, and I stare at the sight he makes. All at once he is cute, ridiculously edible, and heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

He crooks his finger at me so I rush to him and hug him while he holds the big bear and flowers at the sides of his body.

‘A teddy bear?’ I ask.

‘It’s Layla’s idea,’ he confesses sheepishly.

I laugh. ‘Your sister thought you should buy me a teddy bear?’

‘Yup, I get it.’ He spots a little girl standing nearby and he holds the bear out to her. ‘Want this?’ he asks.


The girl nods big-eyed and immediately takes it.

Her mother says, ‘Oh, that’s so kind of you. Thank you.’

‘No problem,’ he says and turns to me. ‘God, I’ve missed you. I actually can’t wait to get inside you.’

And that is what he does. We get into the car and, halfway to his grandfather’s home, we stop on a small country lane where he rips my panties off and gets inside me … perfection!



His grandfather’s home is a small bungalow with tarmac outside, and chintz curtains, lace covered armchairs, and a patterned carpet inside. His grandmother is a grey woman who has the cowed, beaten eyes of someone who has spent some of her teenage life and her entire adult life with a bully. A woman who lives like a silent ghost, terrified of provoking her husband’s rage, just for the crime of existing.

She is in the kitchen making a famous Romany dish that Shane tells me is called Jimmy Grey. Beefsteak, liver, chicken and pork, onions and swede, shallow fried in animal fat.

As a race, the Romany gypsies are proud people. They eat, sleep, grieve, and celebrate only with their own kind. Jealously guarding themselves from infiltration by non-gypsies, they neither trust nor like the ways of others. Perhaps their mistrust of other races comes from centuries of persecution and hatred they have suffered no matter where they go. As soon as I am brought into her presence, I feel that instant wariness and mistrust.

I am a gorger, a non gypsy.

So I hold back too, and just watch the large personalities around me set about preparing for the death of one of theirs. After introducing me around to a whole bunch of uncles, aunties and cousins, Shane takes me into the bedroom.

Death is already in the room, in the smell and the odd stillness. There are fresh wild flowers in a vase by the bedside, and candles have been lit even though it is in the middle of the afternoon The old man must have been large in his day, for even after more than a year of cancer eating through him he is still a big, strongly built man.

Under his bushy grey eyebrows he has fierce black eyes that alight on me. Shane brings me closer and he stares at me with his black eyes. I want to say something, but I am almost hypnotized by his strange stare. Silently, without having uttered a single word, he turns his face away after about a minute.