Sweet Revenge

portray. Phoebe was all too human.
    Abdu had wanted a son. She had given him a daughter. He had wanted her to become a child of Allah, but she was and would always be a product of her own upbringing.
    She didn’t want to think of it, of him, of her life, or the pain. She needed to escape for a little while. She would take only one more pill, she told herself, just to help her get through the rest of the day.

Chapter Three
    By the time he was ready to turn thirteen, Philip Chamberlain was a very accomplished thief. At the age of ten, he had graduated from picking the plump pockets of well-to-do businessmen on the way to their banks and brokers and solicitors, or nipping wallets from careless tourists bumping along in Trafalgar Square. He was a second-story man, though any looking at him would see only a handsome, neat, somewhat thin boy.
    He had clever hands, shrewd eyes, and the instincts of a born cat burglar. With cunning and guile and ready fists he’d avoided being sucked into any of the street gangs that roamed London during the waning days of the sixties. Nor did he feel the urge to pass out flowers and wear love beads. Fourteen-year-old Philip was neither Mod nor Rocker. He worked for himself now and saw no reason to wear a badge of allegiance. He was a thief, not a bully, and had nothing but contempt for delinquents who terrorized old women and stole their market money. He was a businessman, and looked with amusement on those of his generation who talked of communal living or tuned second-hand guitars while their heads were stuffed with dreams of grandeur.
    He had plans for himself, big plans.
    At the center of them was his mother. He intended to put his hand-to-mouth existence behind him and dreamed of a big house in the country, an expensive car, elegant clothes, and parties. Over the past year he’d begun to fantasize about equally elegant women. But for now, the only woman in his life was Mary Chamberlain, the woman who had borne him, raised him single-handedly. More than anything, he wanted to give her the best life had to offer, to replace the glittery paste jewelry shewore with the real thing, to take her out of the tiny flat on the edge of what was rapidly becoming fashionable Chelsea.
    It was cold in London. The wind whipped wet snow into Philip’s face as he jogged toward Faraday’s Cinema, where Mary worked. He dressed well. A street-corner cop rarely looked twice at a tidy boy with a clean collar. In any case, he detested mended pants and frayed cuffs. Ambitious, self-sufficient, and always with an eye to the future, Philip had found a way to have what he wanted.
    He’d been born poor and fatherless. At fourteen, he wasn’t mature enough to think of this as an advantage, as grit that strengthened backbones. He resented poverty—but he resented even more than he’d ever been able to express the man who had passed in and out of his mother’s life and fathered him. As far as he was concerned, Mary had deserved better. And so, by God, had he. At an early age he’d begun to use his clever fingers, and his wits, to see that they both got better.
    He had a pearl and diamond bracelet in his pocket, along with matching ear clips. He’d been a bit disappointed after examining them with his hand loupe. The diamonds weren’t of the first water, and the biggest of them was less than half a carat. Still, the pearls had a nice sheen and he thought his fence on Broad Street would give him a fair price. Philip was every bit as good at negotiating as he was at lifting locks. He knew exactly how much he wanted for the baubles in his pocket. Enough for him to buy his mother a new coat with a fur collar for Christmas, and still have a chunk to set aside in what he called his future fund.
    There was a snaking line outside the ticket booth at Faraday’s. The marquee touted the holiday special as Walt Disney’s
Cinderella
, so there were plenty of whiny, overexcited children and their exhausted nannies and mothers. Philip smiled as he went through the doors. He’d wager his mother had seen the movie a dozen times already. Nothing made her day more than a happy-ever-after.
    “Mum.” He slipped in the back of the booth to kiss her cheek. It was hardly warmer in the glass box than it was out in the wind. Philip thought of the red wool coat he’d seen in the window at Harrods. His mum would look smashing in red.
    “Phil.” As always, pleasure lit Mary’s eyes when she looked at him. Such a handsome boy