71

 

 

            I was sat on my bed, killing time by making a mix tape for Lucy.  It was one of my favourite things to do.  I had tapes spread out all over my duvet.  A notepad and pen, and a list of songs to tick off.  It took me ages to decide on the first track of side one, but in the end I had gone for The Stone Roses Breaking Into Heaven.  I mean, you can’t go wrong with a start like that can you?  The second song had come to me in a shot; The Only One I Know by The Charlatans, and then continuing in a similar vein, the third song was Girl From Mars by Ash.  It got trickier after that, and I was chewing on the end of my biro, scrutinising lyrics, trying to decide what it was I wanted to tell her.  I wanted to put some Bob Dylan on there for her, but I couldn’t decide which one.  That was annoying me no end.  I was really into The Bends, but I wondered if it would be too depressing for her?  Billy for instance, sneered every time I mentioned Radiohead. Kill yourself music, he called it.  I tapped my biro against my knee, and reached out to press stop on the stereo, and then paused again, not wanting to.  I had to admit, the lyrics were spot on, and that was what I liked; yeah the melody, and the voice, and the guitars and the drums or whatever, they all made a good song great, or a great song genius, but I liked plenty of run of the mill songs if they had amazing lyrics, if they reached out to me somehow, if they meant something.  Limb by limb, and tooth by tooth, the haunting drone of Thom Yorkes voice spoke to me as my finger hovered between the stop button and the rewind.  Tearing up inside of me, every day and every hour, just wish that I was….bulletproof. I mean….fuck. 

            In the end I went for it.  I mean, if I was trying to tell her something, then I should be honest right?  I knew she’d get it.  I knew Lucy.  I knew she would lie on her stomach on her bed in her big bright room, and listen to the tape with her chin resting on her folded arms, and I knew she would have the little card next to her, so she could look and see what song and artist it was each time a new song began.  And I knew she would think about each song, and she would listen to them properly, and she would pay attention, and she would ask me about them later.  After that I went for Neil Youngs Only Love Can Break Your Heart.  Kind of on the soppy side, but hey.  I was feeling soppy in bucketloads lately.  I had shitloads of soppy going on, and I fucking loved it.

            It was the day before my sixteenth birthday.  My room was bare and empty; all my belongings either already at the bed-sit, or packed up neatly in bags and boxes around me.  I hadn’t had to worry about it too much in the end, had I?  Not with mum and Howard buying their fancy house on Cedar View.  The entire house was being packed up.  I set up Slide Away to record for Lucy and stared at the bags and the boxes, in hope and in fear.  Everything is going to plan, I told myself, when the fingers of fear awoke to scrabble around inside my belly.  Nearly there now.  I sat on the bed with my hands dangling loosely between my knees, while the stereo transferred music from one tape to the other.  The door was slightly open and my mother poked her head around the door. “What you doing?” she asked me, hanging onto the door. I yawned and shrugged.

            “Making Lucy a tape.”

            At once her face lit up with a genuine smile and she stepped inside, just a little bit. “Oh that is so sweet!  Good boy.  I knew she’d be good for you. I’m just going to pick the keys up for the new house.  Would you mind staying here and doing a bit more packing for me?” I shook my head at her.  I had no intention of moving yet anyway. There was still another side of meaningful music to create for Lucy.  “Thanks,” she breathed in relief. “I’ll go over to the new house for a bit so I won’t be back for a while. You’ll be okay?”

            I just nodded at her.  I didn’t have much to say to her.  She was confusing the hell out of me lately, to tell you the truth.  There had been nothing between us since Howard came along, I mean, nothing but anger and disappointment.  I didn’t really even look at her as my mother anymore; more like someone I used to know, someone I passed on the stairs or the landing, someone who was little more than a ghost to me.  I’d had too many other things to worry about, like trying to stay alive, to pay her much attention.  But lately it seemed like she had changed.  There was something different about her, something I could not really put my finger on, or articulate.  She didn’t say or do anything differently.  Of course, she was over the moon about me and Lucy, which was amusing, to say the least.  But it wasn’t anything to do with that; the change in her.  It was something else.  It was something in her eyes when she looked at me.  Some kind of unspoken fear, mixed with a steeliness I had forgotten she owned.  That’s the only way I can explain it.  Sometimes she looked at me for too long, and although she did not speak, it was like she was trying to tell me something with her eyes.  What, I had no fucking idea, and I had too much to think about to care.

            I looked at her then and wondered if now was the time to tell her I was not coming with them to their stupid new house.  I chickened out though.  Telling her, was not an option.  Leaving her a note was what I was going to do.  She looked at me a little too long, her nostrils working and her smile fading in and out, before she sighed softly, turned and left.  I swallowed, and faced the room again.  One more night, and that was it.  I shivered a little as the enormity of it all spun through me yet again.  One more night in this place, one more night and I would be gone.  Anthony and Michael had already taken whatever they needed or wanted from their childhood home, over to the bedsit in Belfield Park.  They were spending tonight in the house, and then in the morning, I would take my stuff and creep out of the house before anyone woke up.  The taxi would be waiting.  It was all planned.  It was all set.  It was going to happen. 

            I tugged the note I had written from my pocket and read it through once more.  I planned on leaving it inside her favourite coffee cup.  I knew that at some point, she would reach for her cup, and come across the note, and hopefully by then, I would be long gone.

            Dear mum, I am not coming to the new house with you, I am leaving home now that I am sixteen as I think this is best for everyone.  I know you don’t believe me, but I’ve tried to tell you the truth about Lee, and I can’t live with him anymore.  He makes my life a misery in ways you could not even imagine, and if I stay any longer I am going to kill him or kill myself.  You can believe what you want, but I am leaving home, and I can’t tell you where I am going because I don’t want him to find me. I will call you when I am settled and let you know I am ok. Your son, Danny.

            I had written and rewritten it about ten times, and each new version ended up shorter and sharper than the last.  There was so much I wanted to say to her, and yet at the same time, it seemed pointless to even try.  I found myself thinking again about how weird she had been lately.  Tearful sometimes, yet with enormous smiles tugging at her lips when she saw me.  And she kept trying to touch me all the time too, as if she needed to believe I was really there.  She kept ruffling my hair, or hugging me around the shoulders. Sometimes I looked at her and wondered about her life.  I knew as little about hers, as she did about mine.  She seemed jumpy around her husband lately, stiff and tense.  Did she have her own fears that I knew nothing about?  The move still seemed to excite her though, and I didn’t understand why.  Did she really think that things would be different in a new house?  Did she think things would change?  I put the note back in my pocket and pushed it roughly from my mind.  Too late now, I told myself, too late to go there.  I was going.  Time to look forward, Anthony kept telling me.  And he was right about that.

            Slide Away finished, so I pressed pause on Lucy’s tape and consulted my list again.  Hmm.  It was tricky.   I quite fancied sticking a bit of Massive Attack on there for her.  I’d got into them through Chaos, and through Anthony.  Anthony was way more into the dance stuff.  Primal Scream, Massive Attack, Leftfield.  As always, I remained open to everything.  Some of that stuff sounded amazing on the dance floor at Chaos.  Really got everyone moving.  I went for Safe From Harm, and looked back at my list for the next choice.  Just thinking about Lucy made me smile constantly.  Lucy, my girlfriend. Ha! The word made me blush and shiver, and want to throw myself back on the bed and roll around a bit like a kid at Christmas.  We’d been pretty inseparable since that day at Michaels.  In return for the mix tapes I made her, she wrote me love letters telling me how much she liked them.  On the very first tape I’d put The Stone Roses Ten Storey Love Song as the first song on side one, and I’d known she’d love it.  She handed me a note with all the lyrics carefully written out on one side, and she’d drawn a red heart around one paragraph to highlight it; when your heart is black and broken, and you need a helping hand, when you’re so much in love you don’t know just how much you can stand, when your questions go unanswered, and the silence is killing you, take my hand, baby I’m your man, I got love big enough for two. She was spot on.  It was perfect.  Beautiful. “That will always be our song, for me,” she told me shyly.

            I kept every note and letter she wrote for me.  I kept them inside my old notebook, my old journal and to me they were like buried treasure’ precious, sacred things I could dig out and gaze on whenever I felt alone, or afraid.  They were proof that she cared about me.  That I was worth caring about. 

            I’d told her everything.  In slow, and painful detail, I filled her in on nearly everything.  I watched the colour drain from her face, and at one point she couldn’t stop the tears, and just gave into them, just sat there and sobbed.  We had lain on my bed, side by side, taking turns to stop and listen in wide-eyed fear every time we thought we heard a noise downstairs.  I told her the latest information about Jack, and she had propped herself up on elbow to stare down at me with her moist, brown eyes.  Her fingers entwined tightly with mine.  “Thank god for Anthony,” she had breathed out when I had finally finished retelling the entire nightmare from start to finish.  She was shaking her head slowly, her forehead all creased up with thought, her lips pursed and blowing out air as she shook her head.  “If he hadn’t got Jaime to dig around…” she broke off, finishing the thought off inside her own head.  She curled back into me then, lifting the edge of my t-shirt to place her hands on the last colours Howard had stamped on me.  “I don’t know how your mother can live with herself,” she murmured, before pushing her hair back behind her ears and lowering her lips down to my skin.  I felt her kissing me, slowly, gently, as the sobs hitched up in the back of her throat, and I closed my eyes and wanted to drift away with it. And as she kissed the bruises it felt like she was kissing them away, cancelling them out. 

            Tell the police, she had urged me at first.  I’d had to tell her, all the frightening things that Anthony and Michael had endured lately, all the eyes watching, all the threats.  “Jack was in the police,” I reminded her. “And Heaton is pals with Howard. It’s not worth it.  We can’t risk it.  We just have to go.  We just have to get away, leave, stay away, and then it will be over” It was a mantra I was repeating to myself on a daily basis.  I hoped if I repeated it enough, it would begin to feel possible. 

            Lucy was appalled with my mother.  I sensed she feared Howard and all the things I had told her, but she felt something even uglier for my mother.  Mum didn’t seem to notice the dark and disgusted looks Lucy gave her, when she was clapping her hands and exclaiming joyously what a couple of lovebirds we were.  Oh young love, she kept saying, scuttling up and down the stairs with cups of tea for us.  She seemed pleased with me, I thought, as if getting a girlfriend was all I had needed all along, as if I’d be alright now.  She didn’t notice Howard glowering and darkening in the background, of course, but I did.  And more than that, I sensed a dangerous change in him.  He was losing his grip more and more as the weeks slid by, and I feared it greatly.  I’d had enough time to think about it to come to the conclusion that what motivated him most was control and power.  He sought the gratification from both, in everything he did.  He had power and control over everybody at the club, over Jack and over Jaime, over his wife, and until tomorrow, over me too.  Who knew what dangers trembled under the surface of a man like that?  Who knew what losing any amount of control would do to him?  He kept telling me, over and over, whenever he got the chance; I know you’re up to something, I can see it all over your face, I know it, I can feel it.  More often than not, his breath smelled faintly of booze.  This alarmed me even more.  In all the time I had known him, he had barely touched the stuff, and I had never seen him drunk.  I didn’t dare think about what alcohol could add to a temper like that.  He was so often to be heard, screaming irrational abuse down the phone at people who had pissed him off, and all the time, his sharp piggy eyes followed my every move, and I could feel his breath, bearing down on my neck.

            He took petty shots at me whenever he could.  He didn’t get many chances, so it was childish stuff, like flicking the back of my head or giving my ear a sudden vicious tug.  I had no choice but to endure it in silence, and bide my time.  I longed to lash out, I dreamt about returning the pain and the fear, but with escape so close around the corner, I would have been a fool to wreck it now.  He sneered endlessly about my union with Lucy.  “She must need fucking glasses!” he would hiss at me.  “Nice girl like that going out with a piece of shit like you!  I ought to call her dad up and let him know about your dirty little habits! Does he even know you’re together?  Bet he doesn’t!  I better give him a call and warn him eh? We’ll practically be neighbours soon.” I refused to take the bait.  I said nothing.  But I didn’t stop Lucy from sliding her arms around me in the kitchen, while his face distorted with rage at the table.  When she had gone, he would sidle up behind me, breathing his vile air into my ear. “You fucked her yet?  You fucked her yet, eh?  Have you?”  Jabbing me in the back.  I closed my eyes.  Envisioned sharp knives.  “Bet you don’t even know how!”  Just fuck off and die, you disgusting excuse for a human, I wanted to say to him, but I didn’t.  I said nothing. 

            I jolted out of my daydreams then, hearing a noise downstairs.  It was like something had clattered to the floor in the kitchen.  It was probably nothing, but my heart leapt into full panic mode all the same, battering violently against my chest.  I was starting to think I had gained a genuine sixth sense about when things were about to kick off.  I was rarely wrong.  My body was determined to protect itself by letting me know when something was up. The fingers of fear would jerk and spasm into life in the pit of my stomach, and the muscles would cramp and claw around them.  They reached out, spreading their fear, and they would kick start a physical chain reaction throughout the rest of my body; jangling through my nerves, putting everything on high alert. A second noise in the kitchen pulled me up onto my feet.  I reached out and pressed pause on the stereo, halting Lucy’s tape.  It had sounded like the back door closing.  I crept towards my open door and peered out.  I stopped and waited and listened.  Then I called out; “Mum?” There was no answer.  Nothing.  My breathing quickened and I tried to tell myself to calm down, that it was probably just some of the boxes falling over in the kitchen.  They were stacked up everywhere, full of pots and pans and cutlery.  I inched forward, taking pains not to step on any of the boards that creaked.  Still nothing but silence.

            I took some deep breaths and convinced myself that it was just boxes spilling over.  I replayed the sound I had heard in my mind; a cardboard box sagging out of place and chucking spoons and knives and forks all over the kitchen floor.  I nodded to myself, but I needed to check for peace of mind, so I trotted briskly down the stairs and found that the kitchen door was slightly open.  I gave it a push and it screamed on its hinges.  When it swung back, I could see nothing but stacked boxes and empty surfaces.  My shoulders relaxed, I stepped through the door and nearly squealed in fright when the slug like form of Jack Freeman appeared from behind the other side of the door.  “Shit!” I cried out, instead, my skin prickling, my heart racing.  He stepped forward very casually, dressed in his usual dark overcoat and a suspicious brown suit.  He used one tatty shoe to kick a chair out of his way.  He was trying to light a roll up, but his lighter was low on fuel. His heavily wrinkled brow seemed to sag loosely over his eyes as he shook it out, tried to flick the flame, and then shook it again. He was swaying slightly, from side to side, and the smell that emanated from him was of the unwashed and the drunk.  Finally, as I stared on in horror, he got his roll up lit and stuffed the lighter into the breast pocket of his overcoat, as his filmy eyes peered at me. 

            “Get out,” I told him right away, before he could get any closer. “I don’t want you here, get out!”

            He laughed at me, and his face was a shabby mess of wrinkles and folds of flesh that could not fight gravity.  His big round shoulders shook with his apparent amusement. “Ahh that’s not very friendly boy!” he chuckled. “Just came to say hello, didn’t I? Ain’t seen you in so long, I thought you might be needing something, eh?”

            I shook my head fiercely.  I wondered why I was not more afraid, knowing what I knew about him, but when I looked him up and down in his filthy coat, I saw a man at his lowest ebb, a man just days away from sinking down into his own sick and piss and staying there for good.  “No,” I told him firmly. “I don’t need anything. I don’t want anything thanks.  You have to go Jack.”

            He frowned, and then took an unsteady, lurching step towards me, before banging into another chair and reaching out to touch the wall to steady himself.  “Ahh that’s not friendly is it?” he moaned, looking genuinely upset. “After all the times I was so friendly to you!  You’re telling me to get out?  All those times I let you come to my flat and help yourself?  I thought we were friends Danny!  We’re friends, aren’t we?”

            “No,” I told him, still shaking my head, my back now pressed painfully into the sideboard behind me.  “We were never friends Jack, you know that.  You just took advantage of me, because Howard told you to.  Yeah, that was really friendly of you alright, getting kids into drugs when they’re having a crap time!  You must sleep really well at night.”

            Jack sucked at his roll up and shrugged at me.  “I sleep fine,” he told me, one shaggy grey eyebrow shooting up on its own.  “Don’t worry about that mate.”

            “I’m not your mate,” I said, through gritted teeth.  “I never was!  You could’ve killed me with all that shit!”  I could feel the anger rising up, the longer I stared at him, the more I thought about the way it had been between us.  I’d never questioned it, had I? I just wanted the good stuff, I just wanted oblivion. 

            “Didn’t have to force you!” he snarled back at me then, his face clouding over, and his eyes widening to reveal their bloodshot rage.  He pointed a shaking finger at me. “No one forced you Danny, did they eh? You fucking lapped it up!”

            “Because of him,” I hissed at him in disgust.  “Because I didn’t know what else to do, because I was trying to escape him, and I didn’t give a shit about anything!  But it’s different now Jack, alright?  I’m not doing any of it anymore, so you can just go.  Just leave.”  He chuckled again, and took a long drag on his rolled cigarette, his rubbery lips closing around it so tightly I thought he would inhale it if he wasn’t careful.  “You two have been in it together from the start,” I said then, and I nodded when he looked intrigued. “Oh yeah, I know it.  I’ve worked it all out.  He gets you doing all his dirty work doesn’t he?  He’s got you where he wants you.  That’s what he does with everyone.  He has to be in control.  He has to have all the power.  He has something pretty big on you, doesn’t he?”

            Jack released a huge bellow of a laugh and patted at his chest with one pudgy hand. “Yeah!” he agreed. “You could say that!”

            “Yeah well,” I said, glancing quickly down the hallway to where I could see the phone on the table.  “You’re both as sick as each other.  I don’t wanna know.  Just get out Jack, I mean it.  Before I call the cops on you.”

            Jack shuffled forward another step. “But I am the cops,” he said brightly, smiling enough to reveal his grey, mottled teeth. “Didn’t you know that Danny?”

            “You used to be,” I said. “Till you got chucked out.” I watched the curiosity swirling in his eyes, so I nodded at him triumphantly. “Oh yeah, I know all about that Jack.  I know why you got thrown out.  I know what you did.  That’s why I stopped coming to your shithole flat!”

            He frowned, lifted a chubby nicotine stained finger and scratched at his head with it.  “Oh,” he said. “Is that right? Who’s been talking then, eh?  What do you reckon you know?”

            “Doesn’t matter,” I told him, nodding at the back door. “Just get out.  Just go.”

            He looked at the door and then he looked back at me.  His head thrust forward suddenly and his crumpled face grinned at me fiendishly. “Oh yeah?” he said playfully. “You gonna’ make me then, are ya’?  You fancy your chances eh?”  I didn’t answer.  He threw his half smoked roll up to the floor and lifted his hands, curling them as he beckoned to me.  A dripping smile hung on his jowls.  “Come on then,” he said then softly, and my skin crawled with every word. “Come on then big boy, show me what you got.  I been waiting a long time to find out what you got.”

            I took a sliding step towards the hallway.  I wondered if my knife was still in back pocket.  Anthony had given me yet another one just recently.  Just in case. My breath seemed frozen in my throat, my heart felt like it had stuck, and needed a blow to get it going again. “Just get out!” I said again.  “You’re disgusting.  Get the hell out of here!”

            It would have been nice if he had taken my advice and trudged his gloomy way out of there.  But I suppose he had his orders.  He stared at me for a moment, his plump lips hanging away from his teeth, saliva trailing from one side to the other, his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth.  His shoulders lifted slowly, hunching up around his neck and he suddenly seemed controlled and menacing in a way he had never appeared before, with his fists up, and his head low.  I swallowed.  “Come on then,” the words fell softly from his wet lips, as he stepped towards me again.  I swallowed. “What you waiting for? Come on then, eh? You wanna’ go rough or gentle?”

            I shook my head. “Fuck off!” I threw myself towards the door, and he came at me then, spittle flying from his grimacing lips.  I reached for the kitchen door, to get through it, but he kicked it out of my grip and the two of us collided against it.  His hot rough hands encircled my wrists and I bucked and struggled and for a moment or two we did this strange jerky little dance around the kitchen, as I lurched and thrashed my body towards the back door instead.  I thought I was getting away from him, I thought his sweaty hands were slipping on my wrists, but then I felt the edge of the table slamming into my spine, and the pain crashed sharply through my body, all the way up to my neck, and he had hold of my t-shirt then, bunching it up in his hands, and he was shaking me back and forth, as his big reddening face roared all his pent up rage down onto me.    

            “You little shit!  You fucking little shit!” he was screaming, floods of saliva spraying from his lips, and he started to shake me forwards and back again, ramming me into the table, all the time with his screaming face pressed down into mine. “You’re gonna’ get it now!”

            I fought with the floor for a grip on the lino, my trainers slipping and sliding. I kicked out at his shins and his legs, but the man was solid, like a bear, and then I was being lifted away from the table, and I was flying towards the wall, which smashed into the back of my head.  I went down, clutching at my head, fighting unconsciousness as it swam in and out.  My head felt full of fuzzy warmth, my eyes wanted to close.  I looked up at Jack as he stood over me, panting breathlessly. I held up one hand.  “Don’t do this!” I said. “You don’t have to do what he tells you to do Jack!…Tell him to fuck off!  Tell the police Jack, you can help us, we can get rid of him together, we can get him locked up!”  They were desperate words and a waste of my time. 

            He stared back down at me, his greasy grey flecked hair hanging limply over one eye. He was breathing very fast, his nostrils stretched wide open, his lips curled back and his chest rising up and down dramatically.  “Too late for that,” he grunted and started to unbuckle his belt.  I put my hand to my back pocket and searched for my knife.  I had to lift my backside to reach it properly, and seeing me rise, he lashed out with his foot, striking me in the ribs and sending me back down to the floor again.  I felt my fingertips brush the end of the knife handle and I held on, closing my eyes briefly against the pain. 

            “You could turn him in,” I started speaking really fast, buying time, while my fingers scrabbled with the knife. “Think about it Jack!  You could fuck him right up!  Get your own back!  You won’t be under his thumb anymore Jack! You’d be free!  We all would be!”

            He kicked me again, and I pressed my head into my arm on the floor, and kept my hand in my back pocket, sliding my knees under me and finally gripping it and dragging it out.  I held it in my hand and looked up at him through my hair. “I’m warning you Jack,” I told him and he just laughed.  He either didn’t see the knife in my hand, or he didn’t take me seriously.  He was too busy unzipping his flies, so I gave it to him. I tightened my hand around the handle, and plunged it into one of his feet.  It was the nearest thing to me.  He threw back his head and screeched in pain, just as his unzipped trousers slipped from his grasp and fell down to his ankles.  I put both hands around the knife, got onto my knees and wrenched it back out of his foot, sending a vivid spray of red across the kitchen lino.  He threw his head back again, his hands flailing up to his whitened face, as he howled in agony.  I moved back, away from him, holding the knife so tightly in my hands that it hurt.  His blood dripped down the blade and onto my hands, greasing them against the handle, and I kept it pointed at him, and I kept my eyes on him, and slowly, slowly, I pressed my back into the wall and eased myself up it.  His head lolled forward.  His eyes looked pale and deranged with pain and shock and he gawped down in slack jawed horror at the blood pumping from his foot. 

            “Look what you done!” he gasped, pointing.  “Look what you done!”

            I waved the knife at him. “Do you want any more?” I asked him. “I’ll give you some more you sick son-of-a-bitch you ever come near me again!  I’ll fucking kill you!  Both of you!”  I held the knife still, pointed at his white washed and pinched up face.  “Get out, get the fuck out of here now, you fat sack of shit, or I’ll stab you again!  I’ll cut your fucking dick off!”

            Jack lowered his head and moaned into his shaking hands.  Then he dropped one pudgy, quivering hand down towards his trousers, and he clutched for them, and yanked them back up his old mans legs.  “You don’t know what you’re doing…” he muttered, taking a step towards the door.  A huge red puddle remained on the floor where he had stood. “You’re gonna’ regret this…you don’t know what you’re doin’…you shouldn’t mess with him….You don’t know what he’s capable of!”

            Oh that was funny.  That was so fucking funny I could have laughed my fucking head off!  My head was black with rage.  I felt sickened and on fire. “I fucking know!” I screamed back at him, keeping the knife up, suddenly flooded by the desire to lash out at him again with it.  God, I wanted to.  I wanted to see it slash through his grotty overcoat.  I wanted to see his face twist up in pain and disbelief, I wanted Howard to come stumbling blindly through the door, right into my fucking knife.  “I’ll kill him!” I said then. “Tell him!  Go and tell him right now!  Crawl back to your master little piggy!  Go on!  Tell him I stabbed you and I’ll stab him too! Tell him I mean it!  I’ll never be his errand boy, not like you, I will never be like you!”

            Jack sighed in pained misery and shuffled his bloody way towards the door.  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said again, shaking his head at me. “You silly little boy…”

            “Get out! Just get out!  You disgusting fuck!”

            “Alright, alright, I’m going, I’m going,” With his shoulders sagging in defeat, Jack opened the back door and whimpered in pain as he lifted his stabbed foot.  Fresh blood spilled with every movement he made.  His lips were pulled back in pain.  He lifted the bloody foot out first, onto the doorstep, and the rest of his shapeless form followed, and he went, and he said nothing else, and I watched, not even breathing, until he was gone.  And then I sprang forward and slammed the door on him. I spun around.  I was breathing incredibly fast now.  I was close to total panic.  My mind wanted to call time and shut down on me for a while.  My body was reacting suddenly and violently, shaking as I ran to the sink and held the blade under the running water.  I washed my hands frantically, rubbing and scratching at my skin until all his blood was gone from me.  I wanted to be sick.  My stomach lurched and heaved inside of me.  I grimaced in revolt as his blood circled around and around in the sink, and then I turned around and gazed dumbly down at the floor.  It was covered in blood, and grotesque red footsteps.  I didn’t know what to do.  My brain suddenly filled with mush.

70

 

            Panic was not a feeling I was familiar, or comfortable with.  I didn’t think I had felt it since I was a child, hiding behind the sofa when I knew my father was after me.  But I could feel it stirring now, oh yes, all the time, niggling and needling at me.  I felt it the night I called Jack to say I would be over soon to collect Danny. “What you talkin’ bout?” he had slurred back at me, his voice thick with drowsy inebriation. “He ain’t here!”  I felt it again when I stuck my head around the door of the record shop, just as the fat whale that owned it was cashing up his paltry takings.  He gave me a withering look of contempt that made me want to ram my fist into his nose.  “If you’re looking for Danny, I sent him home,” he told me before I could even open my mouth.  He folded over the top of a money bag and slapped it down onto the counter with a metallic bang. “He’s sick, not well, so I sent him back home.”  I nodded and left, but it was wrong, it was all wrong.  The way he said it; on cue, as if he had been drilled.  The way he repeated what he had already said; he’s sick, not well, so I sent him home.  Like Jack’s confusion, it struck a warning bell in my mind.  It sent a shiver of panic coursing through my body.

            And now the feeling was growing.  And more than that, it was following me about, clinging to me petulantly.  I couldn’t shake it off.  I was starting to forget how my stomach normally felt, without this strange and unwelcome feeling inside of it.  I was slumped behind the desk in my office, a whiskey in one hand, and my head in the other.  I had drunk too much, but there it was.  There it was again.  That feeling.  A hammering in my chest, a coldness to my skin, a sweat that seeped out across my forehead.  The feeling that I was about to be found out.  That there was nowhere left to hide, because my father would turn the sofa right over with one kick to get me out from under it.  The feeling that I ought to be looking for a better hiding place, or be working out ways to cover my tracks.  I took a deep breath before draining my glass and reaching for the bottle to refill it again.  There was no denying it; the voice in my head chided smugly, and there was no hiding from it.  The feeling of something slipping slowly through my fingers, like an expensive wine glass that never really feels your grip before it slithers from your grasp and then shatters in slow motion into a million diamonds on the floor. 

            I lifted the glass of whiskey up to my face and peered into it, as the brown liquid sloshed one way, and then the other.  You’ll never find the answers at the bottom of a bottle, my dad was always fond of saying.  He liked to say a lot of things, my dad.  Got that boy in line yet? He was fond of that one too.  Want me to come down and show you how?  He always chuckled after that one.  Is he still taking the piss out of you, or what?  I studied the liquid in the glass, and realised that it was not answers I was looking for, so my dad could fuck off actually.  I was looking for a bit of peace.  I was looking for a way to make that queasy feeling in my belly go away.  I was wallowing, but it was all okay, because I was alone, and the office door was locked.  I was wallowing in self-pity, and in the other thing.  The other thing was lying under it all.   

            The other thing was a vile, merciless and burning anger that roared within the very core of me. It had been building for a while now, ever since those kids stopped going to Jacks.  That had been the start of it.  I had been struggling to control it, before it could control me. I had been trying to put it out even, but nothing worked.  Drink just inflamed it, and not drinking just prolonged the agony of it.  Fucking my wife did not even touch it.  Fucking my wife left me feeling unspent, unsatisfied and close to crawling up the walls with frustration.  Getting hold of that kid and smashing his body until there was nothing left but dust and bones might just do it.  But I couldn’t do that.  I couldn’t lose control.

            I told myself this on a daily basis.  Kay was watching me.  She had returned from her mothers’ funeral, thin and pale, her lips pressed together and her body stiffening when I laid my hands on her.  I didn’t understand.  Shock, I presumed.  Shock, and grief.  I talked to her about the new house, to take her mind off things.  I told her how we were simply days away from moving in now, and she better start planning her colour schemes and styles.  I told her how excited I was, how it would be a brand new, fresh start for all of us. I told her how well Danny and I had got on during her absence.  I told her how I longed for the day he might accidentally call me dad.  What tormented me even further, was the distasteful knowing I had, that there was an element of truth within the lies I fed to her.  But that boy was mocking me at every turn, at every opportunity.  Playing me for a fool.  Taking the piss and laughing at me, just like my old man said he was.  Plotting and planning something behind my back.  I just knew it.  I could feel it. 

            I took my chances to warn him when they came to me.  It was like a drug, and I was not entirely sure when making that boys life a misery had started to turn into some kind of addiction.  It was a riddle to me, the way I longed to kick and punch him, yet at the same time, would have felt my heart brim over if he had called me dad and meant it.  I pondered it now.  I wallowed in it, I swam in it, all the murky dingy depths of it.  Maybe violence was an addiction, like any other, I mused carelessly, sloshing the whiskey down my throat and pouring another measure.  Maybe that was it.  It called to a weakness inside of you, just as booze and drugs did to other people.  It harnessed that weakness and convinced you of your strengths instead.  And then it had you where it wanted you, and it turned and twisted inside of you, and became a constant urge that was impossible to satisfy.  I wondered if that was what drove people to murder.  That relentless urge to harm and maim, like an itch you could not scratch.  The desire to control and own.  When the opportunity to inflict damage arose, the adrenaline was on fire inside of me.  And then afterwards, the wonderful magnificent calm would wash over me, and I would feel clean, and cleansed, and fresh and new.  I could think clearly, and breathe steadily.  I sometimes felt like thanking him.  There was no other way to satisfy it.  I thought about that boy and I longed to hurt him.  I wanted to see his face all screwed up in pain.  I wanted to hear the gasps and the grunts and the begging, and I wondered if my own father had felt like that about me?  He had certainly never shown me much mercy, I remembered that.

            I supposed it was possible, that he had felt the same, but then, it was different too, wasn’t it?  Because Danny was not my kid, he was not my son.  We were not blood.  Not related.  That made it different, so it wasn’t really my fault, was it?  My father had loved me.  He still loved me.  I’d never doubted that, even when on the receiving end of his thickest belt.  I’d seen it in his eyes.  He was doing it for me.  He was trying to set me on the right path, and I had always known this, and worked with it, not against it.  I had tried endlessly to please the man, to make him proud of me, and I truly felt that I had nearly achieved it.  I had always put one hundred and ten per cent into everything, and look, now the rewards were rolling in!  The new house, the cars, the club, the beautiful adoring wife.  It was just that fucking boy.  Just the boy putting on an act, pretending to be in line when I knew he fucking wasn’t, not really, not underneath where it mattered.  The boy hated me, the boy had no respect for me, and this knowledge caused me pain somewhere deep and primal.  It made me want to lash out.  Because even when he was hurting, and afraid, that boy still looked at me with loathing in his eyes.  It tortured me to realise that I had still not won.  That I did not have everything the way I wanted.

            I had to do something.  Something.

            Sometimes I would stop and wonder, would it be any different if I were Danny’s real dad?  Sometimes I would discover myself locked in a dreamlike state, paused on the stairs, with my eyes fixed on the childhood portraits Kay kept hung on the wall there.  Pictures of them as babies, and as small children.  There was one picture in particular that dragged my eyes towards it every time I passed.  He looked about three years old, and chubby faced, in blue dungarees, and with a shock of hair so blonde it looked almost white.  Sometimes I stopped and looked into his shining blue eyes and felt this vicious tugging at my heart, and I didn’t know why.  I didn’t know what it was.  I would lie awake at night.  I simultaneously craved to inflict pain, to make myself understood for once, but then at the same time I would lie there and wonder about useless, pointless things; like would things have been different if I had met Kay when Danny was the boy in that picture?  A child of that age would not have railed against me from the beginning, would he?  A child of that age would have welcomed me, a steady father figure. He would have run to me.  He would have accepted me, and he would have called me daddy within time.  A child like that would have done what he was told.  He would have been a good boy.

            Useless thinking like that now, I told myself angrily.  I had come along too late for that boy, that was the thing, that was the problem.  The damage had already been done. Years and years of people letting him do whatever he liked, letting him walk around like a scruffy little tramp, smoking and drinking and skipping school.  Everyone knew exactly how he was going to turn out now.  No qualifications, no hope, no future. He’d be a drain on the system, and on Kay and me forever, if I didn’t do something about it soon.  He was still a defiant little fuck up even if his mother refused to see it.  Even if she was all over him like a fucking rash since she got back from Cornwall, and found he had a girlfriend.  It made my stomach curl up, for fucks sake.  A girlfriend, well whoopy doo!  A girlfriend, and that makes everything alright all of a sudden? 

            Kay was another thing that worried me.  Her attitude, and her demeanour since she returned added to my increasing paranoia.  She seemed different, and I couldn’t exactly pinpoint how, or why, and that made me feel like everything was slipping through my hands, without me even really knowing it.  It was a giddy, head spinning feeling, and I hated it.  Was she planning something too?  I thought back to the evening Danny had come through the door with that girl in tow.  Stupid stuck up girl fancying herself a bad boy for a while, that’s all it was, anyone could see that!  And bloody Kay, fussing and fawning over the two of them. 

            I’d sneered in the background, treading a fine line between manners and hostility.  It was Kay’s excited gushing that really got to me.  Showing a sudden interest in the precious son she knew nothing about!  Laughable.  Made me want to puke.  Putting her arm around him, while her eyes glistened with tears, what was all that about?  Telling him that she wanted things to change between them, that she hadn’t been there for him, but now she was?  “Mum died not knowing that I loved her,” she’d told his stiff and unresponsive face.  “She died with bad blood between us, and there’s nothing I can do to change that now.  I’ll regret that till the day I die, but I’m not going to let that happen with us.”  It was all ‘us’ all of a sudden, wasn’t it?  I felt shelved and sidelined.  What was I good for then eh?  Making the money and paying the bills evidently.  I was just the idiot who paid the mortgage.  The dumb fucker who slaved his arse off every night so she could have new hairdos and fancy nails.  Why was she so interested in him now?  It dug a fiery pit of resentment in my belly. Where had she been when Danny really needed her eh?  When he was coming down on Jacks shitty sofa, sweating and vomiting, and then doing the exact same thing to himself again the next fucking day?  She hadn’t even fucking noticed had she?

            I drained another whiskey and curled my lip up.  Something was definitely going on.  With all of them.  Danny was doing his utmost to avoid me; that was one sign.  He was avoiding me at all costs, and when he was home, he hid behind his mother, and his fucking eyes, his fucking eyes said it all, didn’t they?  Ha ha, fuck you, they said!  You can’t catch me now, you can’t catch me now…Avoiding Jack.  That was something else.  He’d loved going there, so what had changed?  Why wasn’t he going there anymore to get high and listen to music?  Where was he going instead, and why?  I had liked him being there.  I had liked knowing where he was, like Jack himself, in the palm of my hand and going nowhere.  Now I felt like I had lost knowledge, and with that, control.  Knowledge was power and without it, you were blind.

            Jaime Lawler was a hard man to find these days too.  What was that about?  That was another sign, wasn’t it?  When I found him, he denied everything.  He had no idea why Danny wasn’t scoring anymore.  Maybe he got clean, or got bored eh?  Happen sometimes.  Some kids are smarter than others, that was it.  I knew different.  I knew it couldn’t possibly be that simple, because I had the unnerving sense of something unfolding all around me, something in motion, something just below our radars.  I hated this.  I loathed the feeling of losing control to a bunch of doped up fucked up kids. 

            I snatched up the list I had placed next to the phone and glared at it in anger.  It was a list of people I was meant to call.  Removal firms, now that the sale had gone through.  The letting agency to let them know when they could start sending prospective tenants around to the house.  The list went on.  Shit loads to do.  Instead of making the calls, I had opened the bottle instead.  And now, here I was.  Fuck it.  I had not been this drunk in years.  I needed to sleep it off before I drove home, that was for sure.  I didn’t normally believe in getting smashed.  It was losing control, wasn’t it? Oh well then, fuck it, I thought, I’ve lost it then, and so what?  Fuck it.

            I picked up the phone and dialled a number.  “Yeah?” came the stumbling, drooping reply from the other end.  I felt my last dregs of patience dripping steadily away.

            “Jack?”

            “Yeah, what?”  Jack sounded angry, I thought, hostile and aggrieved, like I had done something to him personally. Maybe he was losing control too, I thought.  Maybe he was missing his boys.  I ran a spiteful tongue slowly across my lips. 

            “I’m fucking shit of this shit,” I told him. “Something is going on, and we both know it.  You want to do something for me?  Something you’ll enjoy?”

            “What?” he shouted back at me aggressively. 

            “Go round to my place.  Kay will be out.  That little runt will be there alone.  Teach him a lesson.  Did you hear me?  I want you to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.”

            There was just silence, for a long time, on the other end.  I could his raspy breathing in my ear as he absorbed the information.  Then; “But you said…”

            “Forget what I said.  I’ve run out of options.  They’re up to something, I know they are, all of them, and it’s me and you in the firing line Jack, if we don’t put a stop to it one way or another.  Do you understand that?  If they’re onto us, if they’ve got their heads together, all those little shits, it’s me and you that will be fucked Jack.  We’ll lose everything!”

            “But Lee…you don’t know what you’re saying.  You don’t know…”  His voice had dropped to nothing more than a whisper, husky with lust and wonder. 

            “I know what I’m fucking saying Jack.  Just do it.  Have your kicks.  Do whatever the fuck you want and I can guarantee he won’t talk.  Just teach him a lesson, do you understand?  Teach him a lesson so bad, that by the time I get home tonight he’ll be begging me to let him be my good boy again and come and live in my nice, new house.  Do you get it Jack?  Do you?”

            “I get it.  I understand.”

            “Good.”  I slammed the phone down.  I tossed another shot of whiskey down my throat and savoured the reckless swirl of adrenaline that was pumping through me again.  I dialled a second number, and Kay answered it on the third ring.  She sounded breathless with excitement. 

            “Honey?”

            “Yeah, it’s me baby, what’s up?”

            “I was just about to call you!” she gushed.  “The keys for the house are in the office!  We can go and get them right now if we want to!”

            “Oh wow,” I replied, trying hard to keep the extent of my intoxication out of my voice.  “That’s amazing news baby!  You better go and get them then!”

            She squealed in excitement and I pictured her jumping up and down next to the phone.  She had been strange and distant lately, but that didn’t stop her eyes widening every time the big house on Cedar View was mentioned, oh no.  “Oh thank you!  This is so exciting!  Danny’s here, I’ll get him to go with me.”

            “Oh no, don’t do that,” I said quickly. “You go on your own baby, tell him to get on with the packing.  I don’t want you lugging heavy stuff around, do I?”

            “Oh okay,” she agreed easily. “Well I’ll leave him to it, and shoot on over there and fetch the keys. I’ll call you again later shall I?”

            “You do that baby.  I love you.  You enjoy it.  Go and take a look at that view again hey?”

            When she had gone I lowered the phone slowly back down into the cradle, and picked up my glass.  I didn’t know if I ought to feel proud, or sickened with my work.  But it had done the trick, I can tell you that.  I was calm again.  Calm, and in control, with just a couple of phone calls.  A couple of strings pulled. 

69

 

 

            He broke my fucking headphones!  Fuck!  Fuck him!  I just had to take it.  I just had to get on my knees and clean the stupid fridge, with broken headphones dangling around my stupid, dirty neck.  I could feel it.  I could feel his imprint on my skin, I could feel the coating of dirt he had given me, and I longed to scrape it away, I longed to tear at it with my nails.  Instead I cleaned the fridge, and then I cleaned the oven, while he sat at the table, drinking his tea, smoking his cigarettes and gloating.  I bristled, and shivered, and I had to find somewhere to put the anger, I had to push it down, contain it somehow.  It was black and ugly and trembling to life within me. 

            When he said I could go to the shop, I took the money and ran.  I did not feel my body start to shake until I had rounded the end house, and pressed my back into the wall there.  Then it came like an explosion; nerves rattling to jittery life throughout my limbs, and as I looked up at the Andersons house I couldn’t help laughing at myself, picturing how I must look, all red faced, and shaking like a leaf.  I lifted a shuddering hand to my neck and brushed away the dirt I could still feel there, the dirt from his fucking boot.  I laughed out loud, because I had to. I felt like just curling up into a small ball and crying my eyes out, but what good would that do me?  I laughed at how insane and ridiculous it all was, but I was also laughing in fear, and the fear was escalating along with the physical reaction, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it vibrating in my eardrums.  I fumbled clumsily for the cigarette in my back pocket, found it and promptly dropped it.  I picked it up with useless shaking fingers and tried to light it.  It suddenly seemed imperative, life and death even, that I light the cigarette and smoke it.  Finally, I cupped my hands around my mouth long enough to get it lit, and pulled away from the wall. I made the best show I could of walking, no, marching across to Michaels house. I put my heart and soul into it, if you can believe that.  Threw my shoulders back, held my head high and as I walked I smoked, and as I smoked I felt better, and a kind of vicious, energising anger railed violently through me.  One day, I thought, I am going to get that son-of-a-bitch, I am going to make him pay, I am going to make him sorry.

            “You’ll have to go without me,” I told Michael when he answered the door to me. “He’s onto me. Won’t even let me go to work and back on my own.”

            I watched his face fill with dismay. “No!” he argued, kicking at the door. I shrugged and started to turn away from him.

            “Can’t risk it.”

            “We’ll meet you at the record shop,” he called after me urgently.  “The fat man will cover for you if he checks!”

            I looked back at him, smiling as the relief washed over me. “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

             I had a plan then.  A filthy little conniving plan.  I got the things he was too lazy to get himself from the shop and carried them dutifully home for him.  I found him settled in front of the TV, a cigarette on the go and the phone pressed to his ear.  He lowered it to his chest when he saw me lingering in the doorway with the shopping bags. “Talking to your mum,” he told me, flashing a friendly smile which at best just confused me, the way he could change like that.  “Just dump those in the kitchen.”

            I took a breath and braved the question; “Can I go to record shop? He’s expecting me.”

            Howard made a face and checked his watch. “Okay then,” he agreed. “I’ll pick you up from there later.”

            Another breath. “I can go to Jacks right after if you like. You know, see how he is.”

            He nodded. “Alright then, I’ll get you from there when I’ve finished at the club then.”

He put the phone back to his ear and I legged it. Dumped the shopping on the kitchen table, flew out of the door and ran.  It felt like I had air beneath my feet, lifting me up as I tore around the corner back to Michaels.  It felt like I would be able to fly, if I stretched my arms out far enough.  The man had two personalities, I mused, as I went. There was the psychotic side, the side that gave me nightmares, the side that had me constantly believing I was about to die, and then there was that side, the almost normal one. I would never understand it.  The way he could be standing on my neck and threatening to kill me one moment, and then smiling casually as if nothing had ever happened the next. 

            Michael and Anthony slipped silently out of the house after I knocked.  I told them my plan, and we caught the bus into town, and hopped off outside of The Record Shop.  I ducked my head around the door, and saw Terry in his usual place, in his usual position; head lowered into the pages of a magazine, while a mug of tea steamed on the counter.  He looked up when he saw me. “You’re not due in,” he said.

            “I know, can you do me a massive favour Terry?”

            He looked instantly unimpressed.  “Depends what it is.”

            “If my step-dad comes in here looking for me, can you tell him you sent me home with a bad stomach ache?  I was like green and sweating and everything!”

            He rolled his eyes at me and picked up his tea. “Go on then.”

            “Thanks Terry!  You’re a legend!”

 

            Michael, Anthony and I spent the next few hours trailing around the dingy back streets of Belfield Park’s least desirable quarters.  We viewed bed-sits that turned our stomachs and put us off getting any lunch; each one more dirty, dark and depressing than the last.  The final one on the list was situated at the very top of a four storey, red and white Victorian building.  It jutted out from the corner of a road, almost opposite the lane that led down to Chaos.  I couldn’t stop smiling at this point, and Michael and Anthony smiled too, knowing why.  I had to keep turning my head just to catch a glimpse of my Friday night heaven.  The man from the letting agency was about Anthony’s age, and dressed in a smart dark blue suit. He held a clipboard under one arm, and smiled at us constantly.  He unlocked the large metal door at the front of the building and gestured for us to go in first.

            We swapped amused looks with each other as we began to climb the stairs.  The walls were dank, grey and peeling, covered in ancient spray painted graffiti.  The acrid stench of fresh urine offended our nostrils.  At the top of the stairs, we came onto a small landing, where we stood upon a threadbare red carpet and gazed at a large, red wooden door.  The paint was flaking and patchy, and the glass window gone, boarded up with MDF.  The young man used his key to open the door and ushered us through.  “It’s very spacious inside,” he gushed excitedly, as if about to show us a magnificent space with sea views.  “It has one of the largest living spaces,” he added, and as I walked in, I could see he was right.  The main room was about three times the size of the other places we had looked at, and there were large sash windows going all the way around.  The ceilings were very high, and the walls had been recently painted with white emulsion. 

            I went up to one of the windows and pressed against it, feeling instantly how thin it was.  I chuckled to myself as I gazed down on the rabbit warren of alleys and streets below us.  It would feel like living at the top of the world, I thought, and I liked that.  Like we would be living among the clouds, up and away from all the shit.  I could even see part of Chaos, poking around the corner, its dark eyes closed, its drumbeat silenced.  I held a hand to the cold glass and willed it to wake up, to wake up and shine…

            I turned around to see the agency man attempting to show Anthony how easily the double bed pulled down from the wall, and nearly crashing it into both their heads in the process. He blushed, grimaced and lowered it to the floor, giving the sagging mattress an encouraging pat with his hand. He then stepped around it, pulled back the beige beaded curtain and demonstrated the tiny kitchen.  “Compact,” he quipped brightly.  “But meets all your needs.  Oven and grill.  Fridge with ice box.  Storage.”

            Anthony stepped briskly to the door on the right side of the bed. “This must be the loo then?” he asked, pulling the door open.  Michael and I both laughed when he hastily slammed it again. “Compact,” he said. “Meets all our needs.”

            “You mean we can shit in it?” I laughed.

            “The shower was just replaced,” the man from the agency piped up, offering us his brightest, most engaging smile. He looked to Anthony who had crossed his arms over his chest. “So, what do you think?”

            Anthony looked at us, and all three of us nodded and grinned in unison.  Anthony strode towards the agency man, offering him a hand to shake. “We can give you the deposit today,” he said.

 

            We caught the bus back to Redchurch, our spirits high, and a celebratory drink in mind.  I sat next to the window on the way back, and I could not stop smiling, because I could feel that hope had crept back in to hold my hand again.  I could feel her there beside me, as we hopped off the bus and stole around the back way to their house, and I wondered if hope was really a dangerous thing, as it seemed so transient, so fragile.  One moment it was there, and the next it was gone again.  But with the deposit down, and the paperwork underway, there seemed genuine cause to breathe another sigh of relief.  “I’m going to call Lucy later,” I announced, when the three of us had been settled in the back garden for a few minutes, with beers in hand.  Michael just laughed out loud and clapped his hands.

            “About fucking time!” he bellowed at me as I blushed.

            “You’ll be lucky if she gives you the time of day,” Anthony told me with a lazy grin. 

            “I’m gonna’ tell her everything,” I went on, almost gritting my teeth as I talked, and staring down at the grass, as it pieced and pulled together inside my mind. “All of it.  And I’m going to say sorry to her.  And then, I’m going to kiss her.”  I nodded, and looked up at them, as they exploded into laughter.

            “You dozy cunt!” yelled Anthony, shaking his head. Michael shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand.

            “Well I better tell you mate, it was one of the things she complained about to me when I had that chat with her in the café!”

            “Was it?”

            “Yep, she was really pissed off mate. Said you never once tried to kiss her and you only think of her as a friend!”

            “You moron,” Anthony groaned at me, while I grimaced in shame.  He was lounging in a rickety deck chair, stripped down to just his jeans.  Michael and I were sat on the doorstep, grinning in unison.  “Well that’s it now Danny my son,” he said to me. “You’ve said it, we’ve both heard it, now you have to bloodywell do it!”

            I shook my head and laughed. “No not yet!  I need another drink first. I need the courage!”

            One beer later, and they watched me, their cheeks puffed out with restrained laughter, as I got up and disappeared into the house to make the call.  It was quick.  Done and dusted, and when I returned I could feel my cheeks burning with warmth, and my smile was starting to make my cheeks ache.  “She said yes,” I told their expectant, wide-eyed faces. “She’s coming over!”

            Anthony was on his feet, and spreading coals out onto the rusty old barbeque he had dragged out of the shed earlier.  He beamed at me. “You jammy bastard!” I nodded in agreement.  I sat back down on the step, just as the back gate creaked on its hinges, and Billy and Jake appeared in the alley way, their hands wrapped around the handlebars of their bikes, their faces twitchy, and unsure. “Alright boys?” Anthony called out to them, waving a set of tongs. “Looks like we got ourselves a little party here!”

            I watched as Billy rolled his eyes in relief, sighed and dumped his bike inside the gate.  He headed straight for the bucket of cold water Anthony had filled with cheap bottles of beer.            “Thank god you called us!” he breathed out, helping himself to a beer and passing another one back to Jake, who was hanging back slightly, his hands in his pockets and his expression wary.  “We were going out of our minds with boredom!”

            “Well that’s your own fucking fault!” Michael retorted without sympathy. “You know where we are!”

            “So what’s going on?” Billy asked, flopping down onto the grass with his short legs stuck out in front of him. “What’s the occasion? Why you three looking so pleased with yourselves?”

            I took out a cigarette and lit it up.  I had a fluttery light feeling inside my belly; nerves and excitement and fear.  I felt light headed with it.  I watched them all from the step, feeling myself drift back from them slightly, to the outside.  I was uncertain of what to say, and how to say it.  I tried to remember the last time I had spoken properly to either Billy or Jake, and I could not come up with anything.  Even on the rare nights they had shown up at Chaos, I had been too out of my mind, too high on everything to really acknowledge them.  In fact, I had avoided Jake like the plague, because his sombre eyes made me paranoid, and because he suddenly seemed so grown up, so mature and contained.  He had even grown a little fluffy beard for fucks sake.  He seemed old before his time to me.  I felt like there was a giant chasm between us.  Maybe he had been thinking the same as me, as he made his way awkwardly towards the back door, hovering there with beer in hand, drinking it in quick, nervous gulps.  I looked up and smiled at him to break the silence. “Alright then Jake?”

            He nodded, but remained unsmiling.  “I will be.  Once the bloody exam results are in.  Can’t stand all this waiting around.”

            I nodded, but I didn’t understand. I hadn’t thought twice about the handful of exams I had turned up to.  I couldn’t give a shit.  They meant nothing to me, and I had no idea why they meant to so much to him.  “Well you know you’ll be fine,” I shrugged at him. “So why worry?”

            “I dunno,” he shrugged back. “Born worrier I suppose. That’s what my mum says anyway.”

            “Sixth form then?” I asked him, struggling to think of ways to keep the conversation flowing.  “Like Lucy?”

            “Yeah, that’s the plan, if I get the right results.”

            “You’ll be fine,” I said, offering him a smile.  “Smart boy like you.  Don’t know what you’re worried about.”

            Jake returned the smile a little stiffly.  “So what about you then?” he sighed, as he lowered himself down beside me on the step.  “You seem well.  I mean, you seem better.”

            “Not so bad today,” I corrected him with a wink.  “You never know with me.  Next time you see me I’ll probably be a fucking wreck!” I laughed, but Jake had trouble even smiling at my joke.  He kept his eyes on me. They looked restless and troubled.

            “Why?” he asked me.  I could only meet his gaze for a moment or two before I had to look away.  I shrugged and drank my beer.

            “Complicated.  Home stuff.  Shit stuff.  I dunno. Sometimes it’s just easier to get wasted and forget about everything.”

            “Well it’s a shame,” he told me with some certainty, as if he had been thinking about it a lot.  “Because you’re nice guy, you know, you always have been.  And you’re clever.  You probably don’t realise it or whatever, but you are.  You could be like a real writer or something one day. “

            I laughed . “I doubt it!”

            Jake smiled tentatively. “How about the record shop anyway? You are so lucky he gave you a job there like that!”

            “I know, I know,” I grinned. “Terry is a lazy arsed, opinionated rude fucker, but he don’t half know a lot about music.  We argue all the time.  It’s hilarious.”

            Jake grinned at me and nodded. “I bet it is.  Well done.  I mean, I’m glad for you.  I hope it all works out. Good luck with it.”

            I looked at him sideways, and thought that saying good luck was as close to saying goodbye as you could get without actually saying it.  I didn’t know why, but a kind of sadness washed over me then, and I felt heavy with it, and wanted to run away from it.  I thought about the different paths our lives would take, and how it was inevitable, that people would come in and out of your life, all of the time, moving on when things changed.  All those kids at school, I thought, most of them won’t stay in touch, they won’t stay friends.  It will all fade away.  Like nearly everything does.  Some would go one way, and some would go the other.  One day they would pass each other in the street and not even recognise each others faces.  Jake would get into the sixth form and then he would go away somewhere to a University, and he would meet serious, sombre faced people like himself, and he would do well, he would do really well, and he would have a good life, an honest life.  “And you,” I told him warmly.  “Good luck with everything.  And hey, I’m sorry, yeah?  About being a total prick most of the time lately.  Hopefully things are looking up now anyway.”

            “I’m sure they are,” he agreed, holding up his bottle to clink against mine.  “Definitely.  Cheers mate.”

            “Yeah.  Cheers Jake.”

 

            It was a different story when Lucy turned up.  It was more like saying hello, then goodbye.  It was like saying hello for the first time, it was like seeing each other properly for the first time.  How can I explain it?  I felt this forceful and urgent desire, this need to be near her, when she arrived through the kitchen, bright eyed but hesitant.  I did not hand around or hang back or hesitate.  I did not hover in the background, or wait shyly for her to come to me.  I got briskly to my feet and walked away from Billy in mid-conversation, to meet her in the house.  Then we moved soundlessly back towards the hallway together, and through to the lounge.  I took her hand into mine. Girl From Mars by Ash was playing on the radio, and I thought, if this goes well, I am going to remember this song forever…

            “I’m a twat, and I’m sorry about everything,” I told her.  I searched her eyes with my own.  I looked into her face and all I could see was goodness, and all I could see was a future, a good future.  Every part of my body seemed to tremble with longing and I felt like my entire heart, my entire life lay right there in her hands.  Her fingers moved, entangling with mine, and my heart lurched violently within my chest.  She moved nearer to me.  Her hair smelled like the beach.

            “I’m a twat,” she said, with a teasing kind of smile that sparkled in her brown eyes. “And I’m sorry about everything too.”  A raise of her eyebrows, and her hand tightened on mine.  I swallowed, leaned forward, and kissed her cheek.  I heard her sharp intake of breath, so I stepped back and looked into her face.  I felt like everything was happening, everything was clashing together right in front of my eyes, and I felt like life was an amazing, wonderful thing, and then she reached up, her hand sliding slowly up to caress my neck, on the very spot Howard had placed his boot just hours earlier. I closed my eyes, leaned in, and found her mouth with mine.  Just the sensation of her lips, pressed against mine seemed to send my body into overdrive.  I felt myself harden down below.  I felt like a man, like someone who had finally grown.  Her hands linked behind my neck, under my hair.  I had never felt anything like it before and it was setting me on fire.  She was kissing me back, and we kissed for a long, long time.  I never wanted to let her go again.  It had been such a long time coming, and now my body ached with a desire I never knew it possessed.  My heart had flooded with joy.  I kissed her passionately and forcefully, I held her tightly to me, and I wanted to tell her everything, I wanted her to know about it all, I wanted her to know me and see me totally, as I really was, and I wanted her to stand by my side forever, just radiating warmth into my life.  I ran my hands back through her hair, and I could barely believe that I was almost sixteen years old and had never truly felt alive, until that moment. 

68

 

 

            I struggled with my impatience, watching Kay pack.  She was irritating me the entire time, and as she talked, and wept, and snotted all over the place, I kept getting these intense visions of violence in my head.  She would pack a few things, and then collapse all over me in tears again.  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her to get her fucking act together.  Instead, I held her close and patted her shoulder and let her cry it out.  I felt like reminding her that she had never liked the old bitch anyway, and every time she sniffed the snot back up her nose, I felt like grabbing a tissue and ramming it into her face.  That would give her something worthwhile to cry about, I thought.  But I didn’t.  I did everything the way I was supposed to do.  I helped her pack, made sure she had money, checked her car for oil, water and fuel.  She lolled against me in the driveway after I had packed the boot for her. “Our last words were harsh ones,” she was moaning into my shirt. “Do you know what the last thing I ever said to her was?  Mind your own business and leave me alone!” She pulled back, gazing up at me with her streaming red eyes. “How awful Lee!  How awful is that!” I agreed with her; it was awful, it was fucking disgusting to be honest.  But I didn’t tell her that obviously.  I soothed her, and rubbed her back, and kissed her sweet little face, tasting her salty tears before she pulled away and ducked down into the car.

“We all say things like that,” I told her, as she pulled across her seat belt.  “That’s life honey.  We can’t possibly know what is around the corner.”

She sniffed and nodded, and turned the key in the engine. “I’ll be back by the end of the week.  Trust her to want to get buried in the middle of bloody nowhere in Cornwall.  You make sure Danny helps you with the packing and everything.”

“Oh he’ll be helping me alright,” I smiled at her brightly. “Don’t you worry about that.  Call me when you get there okay?”

When she had gone, I had work.  My mind was busy the entire time.  My thoughts dominated by him and whatever it was he was up to.  Jack came in late in the night.  His brow was all creased and concerned, his rubbery lips jutting out like a petulant child. I sighed and rolled my eyes when he came to the bar.  Why did I suddenly feel like his despair was my responsibility?  I shoved a whiskey at him and hoped that would be the end of it, but he hauled his fat carcass up onto a stool and beckoned me closer.  “No sign of him,” he told me, shaking his head, and reminding me of a shaggy, drooling dog.  I scratched my forehead and winced at him.  What did he expect me to say?

“Don’t get all worked up,” I shrugged at him.

“Don’t know what I did wrong,” he replied morosely.  “Did I do something wrong?  I thought we were friends.”

“Well you thought wrong, didn’t you?” I snapped at him in disgust.  “Isn’t it obvious Jack?  The little shit was using you all along.  Maybe he’s found another dealer, maybe he’s given it up for lent, who knows?  Who gives a shit?”

Jack viewed me darkly over the rim of his glass. “You,” he said evenly. “You do.”

“Oh do I?”

“You’ve lost control,” he reminded me. “It’s all slipping away from you…You know what else is weird?”

I was losing my patience with him.  The very sight of him appalled me.  The man was turning into a fucking joke.  Sitting in his flat, mourning and moping over a teenage boy who wouldn’t come near him with a fucking barge pole. The great fat bearded slug.  “I’m sure you’re about to tell me Jack. What else is weird?”

“Lawler,” he said. “Can’t get hold of him most the time.  When I can, he’s jumpy as fuck…evasive.  Whatever’s going on, he’s involved.”

I walked away from him then, pretended I had other people to serve.  What was the point?  Being too close to him was probably bad for my health.  If the man was too stupid to realize the little fuck had been using him the entire time, then I had little more to say to him.  I was going to drag it out of Danny that very night, when I returned home from work.  I stood outside his room for a really long time, just listening to his music beating softly through the closed door.  I thought I recognized the song that was playing.  I was pretty sure it was by The Rolling Stones.  There’s no time to lose, I heard her say…catch your dreams before they slip away…dying all the time, lose your dreams and you may lose your mind…ain’t life unkind?  It made me wonder what he was doing in there…what he was thinking, and feeling.  Flashes of blood and gore slammed through my mind.  I stepped back.  My foot twitched and I could feel it kicking out, finding soft flesh and burying itself in it.  My hands unclenched at my sides, and I could almost feel the soft hair falling through my fingers.  I stepped back again, and I thought, no.  No, let the little fucker stew on it a bit longer.  Let him lie awake all night with his guts in a knot, wondering if I am coming in.  Let him think I am coming for him at any fucking moment.  Let him dream about me, and we’ll compare notes in the morning.  I went into my own room, peeled off my clothes and slipped gently into bed.  I’m coming for you, I thought, as I drifted easily towards sleep, I’m coming for you, and then you’ll be fucking sorry…

He had something on his mind the next day; I could sense it right away.  I listened from the kitchen, turned the radio off, and stuck my head forward.  I could hear him rushing around up there, scurrying from his room to the bathroom, and back again, as if he had slept in, as if he was supposed to be somewhere by now.  I walked slowly to the door, and waited there, with my eyes narrowed and my hands trembling with the urges that rolled and thumped through my body.  He was back in the bathroom again.  Brushing his teeth.  Not hanging around for breakfast then.  The toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened again.  He was coming down the stairs now, so I kept back.  I could tell what he was doing.  Stepping from one side to the other, avoiding the stairs that creaked the most.  He was always creeping around, I thought then.  Always trying to sneak in and out without being seen.

I hung back until he came into sight, crouching down in the hallway to tie up his laces.  He had his headphones around his neck as usual.  The black cord wound down to the waistband of his jeans.  He stood back up and I made my move; taking him out with a heavy blow to the back of the head that sent him crashing into the front door.  I approached the fallen body, and I could feel the surge of power rocketing through me.  It was like an electric current, it was like being on fire, it was like I was burning from the inside.  Inside my mind I briefly considered the phone call I could make to Kay later.  Just killed your precious little fuck up of a son baby, sorry about that, went too far, thought he’d bounce back like normal but he didn’t! I’d be laughing at her, laughing at her dumb voice when it questioned me, laughing as I explained to her how I took him apart piece by piece, just because I felt like it…

I savoured every moment of delicious power, of knowing that he was down because I brought him down, that he would stay down until I let him up, that I was the boss and that was the way it was.  I felt like I held the entire universe inside my own fist and could do with it whatever I wished.  The boy was moving now, grunting as he tried to get his knees up under him, with one hand pressed to the back of his head, fingers splayed.  I towered over him and then booted him in the ribs, laughing out loud at the breathless gasp he made as he slumped back down again. “Don’t move, don’t even think of moving, don’t even lift your fucking head unless I say you can, right?”  He nodded, with his cheek against the carpet, his hair covering his face.  “Good. Going somewhere were you?” I asked him. “Sneaking off again, were you?  You’re not going anywhere until you tell me the truth.  So we can do this the hard way, or the easy way.”  I lifted my foot and placed it down on his neck, grinding my boot into the skin.  He cried out, but kept still.  Sensible.  I leaned down over my knee. “Where you going?” I could see one blue eye staring back up at me through a mass of tangled blonde hair.  “Where were you going?” I asked him again.

“Record shop…” he panted.

“Bullshit.  I don’t believe you.  You’re going to see them boys, aren’t you?  There’s something going on between you and them, isn’t there eh?  I need to make that phone call to the cops, don’t I eh?”

“No!  No you don’t!  I was going to work, swear to god I was…”

I increased the pressure on his neck, and all he could do was squirm and take it. “I want to know why you’re not going around Jack’s anymore.  He’s sad about it, did you know that?”  He said something that was indistinguishable so I eased the pressure and leaned forward. “What did you say?”

“He was giving me the creeps…”

“What the fuck kind of thing is that to say?” I roared down at him.  “What is that supposed to mean?  Giving you the creeps? He wasn’t giving you the creeps when he was handing dope and whizz out like fucking sweeties, was he eh?”

“I don’t wanna’ do all that anymore…”

“Really?” I sneered, pressing my boot down again, “Is that so you lying sack of shit?  And you expect me to believe that, do you?  You just woke up one day, and suddenly Jack was creepy and drugs are a no no? You know I could kill you right now, you pathetic little motherfucker?  Snap your neck in a heartbeat.  Take you somewhere far from here and just dump you.  I’d tell your mum you packed your stuff and ran away.  Is that what you’re planning is it eh?  Running away again?”

“No,” he spluttered under my boot.  “No I’m not.”

“You better not be lying to me,” I warned him, gazing down over my knee.  I moved my boot around, feeling his neck with it.  I felt like I was very close to slipping into some kind of trance.  Everything seemed to have slowed down, and blurred around the edges.  I questioned dimly if I was actually just dreaming… “I’ll find out if you’re lying to me.  I’ll find out if you go anywhere near those Anderson boys, and then I’ll do exactly what I promised I would shit stain, I’ll get those sniffer dogs sent round to their house, and I’ll finish those little fuckers for good.  You’ll never see either of them ever again.  And as for you, well, I’ll punish you and you’ll realize then how easy I’ve gone on you up until now…”  I straightened up then and removed my foot.  I heard the boy start to take deep, sucking breaths of air.  He pushed his hair from his face with one hand, and then just lay still.  “Your mum’s gone,” I told him, and he nodded. “Gone to sort out the funeral and your Grans stuff, and all that crap.  While she’s gone, you do not breathe unless I say so, got it?”  I nudged his arm with my toe and he nodded again. “You do not leave this house unless I say so, and you do not use the phone unless I say so, and you do not answer the door unless I say so.  I want to know exactly where you are at all fucking times, you got that?”

“What about work?”

I thought about this for a second.  I knew it meant a lot to him, that place.  He kept going on about how he would get a job there when he was sixteen.  “Hmm,” I said, scratching my chin.  “We’ll see.  Maybe if I drive you in and pick you up afterwards eh?  When he’s gonna’ start paying you?”

“He pays me a bit.  I’ll give it you?”

I laughed, tickled by the hopeful, pleading tone to his voice.  He moved his arms and crossed them in front of him, lifting his head unsurely and slowly, his eyes on me, yet unsure whether they should be.  “Yeah, give it to me,” I told him blankly.  I was bored now.  There was a list of things to do lying on the kitchen table.  I nudged him again with my foot. “Right, up you get then.  I’m writing a list.  Got shit loads to sort out while your mum is away.  Sale is going through on the new house, so we got to get this place packed up and cleaned up ready for tenants to start viewing.  So there’s plenty to keep you busy okay?”

He was rubbing at his neck.  “What shall I do first?”

I smiled.  I half wanted to tell him he was a good boy.  But there was something too contrived about his question.  It was like he was asking exactly what he knew I would like to hear.  I watched him struggling up to his knees.  I experienced a brief urge to boot him back down again, but it passed, and I just felt tired.  He turned to face me once he was back on his feet, and scratched nervously at one arm.  “You can take everything out of the fridge and clean it from top to bottom.  Then you can get started on the oven.  Then you can go to the shop and get some things we’ve run out of.”

He  nodded. “Okay.”

I slipped an arm around his shoulders and led him towards the kitchen.  “Then you can pop over to Jacks and keep him company for a bit while I’m at the club.  He misses you, you know. He told me that.”  I felt his body freeze under my arm and I laughed, and hauled him along.