44

 

October 1993

Three weeks after she left to care for my Grandma, my mother returned.  Howard informed me on Sunday night, that she would be back in the morning, and that I could go back to school finally.  The coincidence of this was not lost on me obviously.  It would give them the entire day alone together, plenty of time for Howard to work his charms.  That night I’d laid awake for hours and hours, my guts churning at the thought of returning to school.  As strange as it may sound, I’d fallen into a sort of routine with Howard during those weeks, and I suppose I’d got used to it.  He’d been right really.  It was simple if I followed his rules.  He was nice to me I suppose, in his own way.  With my friends out of the picture, with no distractions or rebellions, we had come to an understanding of sorts.  He seemed happy, when I look back.  He would try to engage me in conversations.  He had even started to ask me what music I thought would draw people in at the club.  The night before my mother came home I lay awake, thinking about it all.  I thought about what I’d been for three weeks, what he told me I was; a good boy.  I thought about carrying on, keeping it up, staying in line and playing along with the twisted version of happy families he had constructed so violently in my mothers’ absence.   Let him win.  Just live with it.  And then I would take the knife out from under my mattress and feel the weight of it in my hands.

Holding it like that made me think about fighting back, and made me think about Michael, and Anthony, and war.  I pictured his big face, and the way his little eyes glowered and glared, and I imagined sticking the knife right through one of them, right up into his brain.  I’d hack his balls off and sling them around his neck.  I would feel something; this little shudder of fire within me, this hardening, and I would tap the knife against my other palm.  I could make life difficult for them forever, I would think.  I could be the thorn in their side for as long as I liked.

But then my mind would take me back, whether I wanted it to or not.  Take me back to scenes that made my body want to shrivel up and wither away.  I would remember the view I’d had from the floor, of the carpet, and the wall, and the piles of magazines under my bed.  I’d remember seeing his boot coming in and going out, as I tried to cover my head with my arms, and my body would tremble and moan at me, and remind me how small and vulnerable it really was, how fighting back was for idiots and suicides.  It floored me with shame and guilt, but I never wanted to find myself in that place again.  So there you have it.  I was a coward at the end of the day, and it was a shock even to me.  My best friends’ brother was in prison, and it was my fault.  You can’t even imagine the weight of guilt that settled upon my shoulders every single day upon waking.

I came down the stairs cautiously when I heard her in the hallway.  She dropped her suitcase, pushed her loose hair back behind her ears and held her arms out to me.  Howard was right behind her, arms crossed, shirtsleeves rolled up and a warm and confident grin dominating his face.  I glanced at him, wondering whether I would be able to detect just the tiniest bit of guilt or fear, but there was nothing.  He seemed pleased to see her and keen to show off how hard we had been working in her absence. “All better I see?” She asked, throwing her arms around me on the last step.  I winced and pulled away, and heard her click her tongue at me and laugh nervously. “Oh sorry I forgot, too big and cool for a hug these days.”

I looked at her, saying nothing.  I looked into her face and tried to recognize her, but three weeks was a long time, and my entire world had changed.  I was not the same boy anymore, and I eyed her warily.  “He’s a teenage boy, what do you expect?” Howard laughed and pulled her into him.  She melted against him, wrapping her arms around his thick middle and shaking her hair back again.

“Well I’m just glad he had you to look after him honey,” she said, and I wanted to vomit, so the best thing to do was get the fuck out of there.  I picked up my schoolbag, slung it across my chest and opened the front door.  “Your Gran is fine by the way,” my mother said then, when I was half way out. “Thanks for asking.”

“Ah teenagers,” Howard joked again, his chin on her head and his eyes on mine. “Don’t be too tough on him babe. He’s been an excellent help to me at the club.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?  That’s brilliant Danny!  Well done.”

“Yeah,” Howard went on, rubbing her back with one hand in a circular motion, as his eyes remained on mine.  “Been earning himself a bit of money helping out.  Might even get him involved in the music side of things, you know.  He certainly knows his stuff.” He gave me a wink over her head that chilled me to the bone, and I looked once again at my mother, and the way she buried her face in his chest, sighing and closing her eyes as if she had never been more satisfied or at home.

“I’ll be late,” I said gruffly, and pulled the door shut behind me.  The morning was chilly, the grass on the front lawn dusted with sparkling frost.   I folded my arms over my school blazer and started walking fast.  Get through it, I told myself as I stormed along towards school, just get through it.  I felt pretty grim and nervous to be honest, as I walked along on my own.  The only way I could make one foot go in front of the other was by pulling on my headphones and pressing play, and thinking about what I had planned after school.  It was a treat really.  Something I had been promising myself ever since I had discovered it.

Down the road from the club was a little record shop.  It hadn’t been there long.  I had to walk past it to get to the post box when Howard sent me out to post letters.  It was small and narrow, and I couldn’t see much just walking past, and a lot of the time it said closed on the door, but I’d promised myself after school, I’d go there.  Alone.  I’d push open the door and wander in and I’d take the money I had saved up from helping at the club.  It was enough.  It would get me through the day.  It was something to look forward to.

Inside the building, I felt like a ghost as I slipped along the corridor.  Maybe there was something about me that let me go unnoticed, or turned people away from me, but it felt odd, like I was not really there. I kept close to the wall, my eyes down, my pace hurried and anxious.  The first person I saw that I knew was Lucy, pushing her hair behind her ears as she walked along towards her form room with Zoe.  She caught my eye, stopped in her tracks, but do you know what I did?  Looked the other way.  Let my hair cover my face and walked on.   I had to go and see Mr James after registration, which seemed a strange and pointless thing.  I sat on the other side of his desk, eyes down, and thinking about the last time I had listened to him speak; that speech he had given us about potential, the words that had got me fired up about joining the school paper.  He watched me carefully and asked me if everything was alright at home.  I nodded.  He watched me again and asked me if I had recovered from my accident okay.  I nodded that I had.  “I hope you’re keeping up the writing,” he said then, smiling this tentative smile at me. “Try out for the school paper again?”

I got up, crossed the room and opened the door.  I didn’t have to sit there and listen to shit like that.  His words stuck in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. “Better get to class,” I mumbled and walked out.

I scuttled about, avoiding everyone, not saying a word.  Leave me alone I wanted to tell them all, keep away.  It was better like that.  Safer.  When the bell rang I went out a different way and headed into town with my hands in my pockets and my eyes on the ground.  I didn’t lift my head until I had walked past the club, and when I did, I could see the guy from the record shop, and it looked like he was closing up early.  He was very overweight, and was struggling to haul in his advertising sign from the pavement.  He had one foot inside the shop, holding the door open, while he tried to wrestle the heavy sign in at the same time.  I flicked back my hair and approached slowly.  The Record Shop it said in bold black print on the sign, Vinyl and Cassettes, bought and sold.  The man nearly had the sign through the door, so I broke into a run then, desperate not to be shut out, and grabbed hold of one end for him.

“Let me help,” I said.  He looked at me like I was mad.  He blinked at me in hostile surprise.

“I’m closed,” he said, taking advantage of my assistance for a moment to smooth back his long thinning hair, which he had pulled into a low ponytail.  He had a scruffy blonde beard and moustache and was wearing a Bob Dylan t-shirt with a brown stain on the front.  I was trying to peer around his bulk into the shop.  I could smell it already, even out there on the pavement and it sent a tingle down my spine and made me think of Donald Madisons music area.  The smell of dust and vinyl and obsession.

“I’ll give you a hand,” I enthused, lifting my end of the sign up from the ground.

“Alright,” he relented, picking up his end and shuffling backwards until we were inside the shop. “But I’m still closed.  I’ve cashed up and everything.”

“It’s not even four o’clock,” I told him.  He shoved the door shut behind me and turned the sign around to ‘closed’. “I didn’t even know this shop was here until the other day,” I said.  The man paused with one hand on the door handle.  He looked like he was a bit out of breath, as his big gut heaved up and down.  I took a moment to run my eyes all over the shop.  I was mesmerized.  In a dream.  I felt the tension of the day dropping out of me, all of it, all of everything.  So much music.  There was so much music! The narrow length of the shop was packed, floor to ceiling with shelves, shelves jammed with records and tapes.  What little wall space remained was covered in posters of all the greats.  The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and The Smiths, Hendrix, Dylan, Neil Young, The Sex pistols, The Clash, even Nirvana!  I could have done a little happy dance when I spotted the Nevermind poster with the swimming baby up on the wall behind the counter.  I must have looked a bit weird, stood there in his shop with my eyes glazed over and my tongue lolling.  He sort of cleared his throat to get my attention and when I looked back at him, he had his arms folded and was tapping one foot.

“Not been here long,” he said to me then. “Won’t be here much longer neither if business goes on the way it has.  That’s why I’m closing at four smart arse.  I’ll save money if I close.”  I nodded, and smiled at him.  I didn’t want to go.  I wanted to stay in there forever.  So I smiled.  I think I had forgotten how to smile until that moment.  Maybe it was an extra special smile because of that, who knows, but it worked.  He smiled back at me, although his eyes narrowed in his doughy face.  He had features that reminded me of Father Christmas.  A broad nose and full lips, ruddy cheeks, and that scraggy bushy beard.  His eyes were chestnut brown and looked me up and down as he rubbed at his beard. “Oh let me guess,” he was saying. “Going by the state of you.  Grunge fan.  Nirvana?”

I nodded and grinned at him, beaming ecstatically.  “Yeah!  They’re the best!”

“Like Neil Young do you?” he asked me, this slightly snide tone creeping into his voice as he opened the door again.  I shrugged.

“Sort of.  Just getting into him really.”

“Hmm. Like the Pixies do you?  Sonic Youth?  Dinosaur Junior?”

I shook my head.  I had heard of Sonic Youth, but not the others.  He laughed out loud at me then, he slapped his thigh and it wobbled under the loose linen trousers he wore. “Call yourself a grunge fan then?” he said, his shoulders shaking. “Jumper of bandwagons!  Go on with you.  Go and do your homework before you tell me you’re a grunge fan.”  He ushered me out onto the pavement and I tried to protest, tried to resist, tried to tell him that I had money I wanted and needed to spend on music, but he wasn’t having any of it.  He was still laughing when he closed and locked the door on me.

So I went back the next day, straight from school, and he laughed out loud when he saw me coming.  “I’ve got money,” I said to him, helping to grab the sign and carry it through the door again.  “If you’ve got anything by the Pixies or Dinosaur Junior I want to buy it.”

He laughed and laughed, and locked the door behind me and waddled up to the counter, where he had just started to cash up the money.  I followed eagerly, a ten pound note clutched tightly in one hand, my eyes already climbing the walls and scanning the shelves.  He had a record player behind the counter and it was on.  I recognized the song instantly. It was There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, by The Smiths.  I nodded at the fat man as he sidled around the other side of the counter, still grinning away. “I’ve got this,” I told him eagerly. “Though it’s not my favourite one on the album.”

He stared at me shrewdly. “What album?”

“The Queen Is Dead,” I told him, and his eyebrows shot up.  He made a face and nodded and went back to his money.

“Smiths fan?”

“Oh yeah.  I like anything.  I mean everything.  I mean most of everything, anything that’s good, I mean, not shit like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston, or fucking Meat Loaf.” I stopped myself before I could spew on any longer.  I slipped my hands back into my pockets and waited for him to respond.

“Hmm,” he said, picking up a stack of two p’s and sliding them into a money bag. “Music fan eh?  Is that it?”

“Yeah,” I nodded enthusiastically, and stepped closer to the counter.  His brown eyes narrowed, scrutinizing me.  I bit my lip and pulled my ten pounds back out to stare at.

“Tom Petty or Tom Waits?” he shot at me then.  I blinked.

“Waits!”

“Best song?”

I thought for a moment. “I Don’t Wanna’ Grow Up!”

“Beach Boys, Beatles or Stones?”

“Beach Boys.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“God Only Knows.”

The fat man nodded, and tapped his fingers against his mouth.  “Hmm. Sex Pistols or Clash?”

“Easy.  Clash.”

“Why?”

“Way more music.  And Joe Strummer.  And White Man In Hammersmith Palais.”

He tipped his head slightly. “That’s your favourite?”

I shrugged. “At the moment.”

“Hmm,” he said again, stroking his beard.  “Final question.  Best Bob Dylan song and why.”

I breathed out.  “Positively Fourth Street.  Because it’s just one giant fuck you isn’t it?  I like that.”

“Hmm,” he shrugged. “I’m gonna’ make myself a cup of tea to drink while I cash up.  You’ve got about ten minutes to find a record that will change your life.  Go!”

I ended up with Dinosaur Juniors Where You Been and REMs Automatic For The People on cassette, and a vinyl copy of Nirvana’s Heart Shaped Box.  He didn’t say anything when he bagged them up and took my money.  He just had this smile on his face.  So of course I went back, whenever I could.   I went back whenever I had money, or whenever I just wanted to become lost within the walls of the shop.  Because that was what happened to me once I was inside.  I would feel like I had stepped into another world, where there was peace and solitude, and a comforting musty smell that cloaked me when I walked in and lingered on me for hours afterwards.  I would feel like I belonged, that was the simplest way I could articulate it.  I felt like I belonged there, and I was a part of it all.  The fat man, who I later found out was called Terry, would speak to me when he felt like it, and grunt at me the rest of the time.  He was always sat on a stool behind the counter, a cup of tea on the go, and his head in a music magazine.  If I was lucky he offered me a roll of his eyes or an amused chuckle.

The record shop filled my mind, when I was at school, or at the club.  I loathed being near Howard, but sometimes being at the club was actually okay.  Sometimes I almost found myself enjoying it.  I was lost in my own head of course.  Collecting glasses while I thought about the dusty Neil Young record I had discovered that afternoon, or the copy of Nirvana’s Blew, with the full version of Love Buzz on it.  I’d be so gone, wandering around in my own mind, nodding my head to a beat no one else could hear, that half the time my fear would drop away and leave me alone.  Howard was always up to his neck in it anyway at the club.  I’d catch glimpses of him rushing about, or yelling down the phone.  It looked like chaos to me at times, but he seemed to thrive on it, always storming about with his shirt sleeves rolled up and a slight frown creasing his large forehead.  I stayed out of his way and did as I was told.  The Friday night dj was a hell of a lot better than the Saturday one, who only played popular cheese.  The Friday played a bit of everything, so if I was lucky I got to hear Smells Like Teen Spirit every once in a while.  Jack Freeman was always there.  Sometimes he would be with other people, drinking and talking, smoking endless roll ups.  Sometimes he would be sat alone, looking like he preferred it this way.  I watched him, but I couldn’t work him out.  I thought back to the conversation I had overheard between him and Howard that day, the day it had all gone to shit.  But I was no closer to understanding what ‘work’ he did for Howard, or what his ‘links’ were.  He seemed harmless though.  Sort of bumbling and apologetic.  He reminded me a bit of that TV detective, Columbo, the one who always shuffled around looking like shit.  Sometimes he would lean over, pour a dash of his whiskey into my coke and tip me a wink.

42

 

            I put the phone down and turned towards the kitchen, where my toast was still under the grill.  There was a sudden knock at the door behind me, loud and intrusive, so I growled under my breath and spun back around to answer it.  I wrenched it open and these two little pale faces peered back at me cautiously.  Two of those twat faced kids.  The tall skinny one again, and the short ginger one.  They both jumped back a little when I opened the door.  They were all nervous and twitchy. “What now?” I snapped at them.

“Calling for Danny,” the tall one said, scratching at his skinny neck. “For school.”

“Oh he’s not going to school.” I watched them eyeballing each other in confusion.

“Is he here then?” the ginger one questioned.

“He’s here, and he’s not going to school,” I told them, before taking a long drag of my cigarette and puffing the smoke out over their heads.  “You know when you were looking for him yesterday?” They both nodded silently. “You know where he was?”  They looked at each other again, frowning, and then turned back to me and shook their heads, no.  “He was riding his bike along the cliff top.  Doing stupid stunts on his new bike.  Drunk or something.  Taking stupid fucking chances, trying to be cool, and the stupid prick rode too close to the edge and fell off.  Took a nasty tumble down. He’s too banged up to go anywhere for a while.” They stared at each other and I watched their eyes growing wider, their mouths tighter.  They didn’t believe me, I could see that, but I also knew that it didn’t matter one bit.  I held onto the door and shrugged.  “Stupid eh?”

“Well can we see him then?” the little one asked quickly, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.  I rolled my eyes and grimaced.

“No chance,” I laughed at them.  “He’s banned from seeing you lot.”

“Why?” the tall one demanded.

“Because I just found out what the other ones brother has been up to over there, that’s why!” I was enjoying myself now.  I relished the dumbstruck looks on their dopey faces, and the guilty way they shuffled backwards and looked at their feet.  “Got arrested for drug dealing yesterday didn’t he eh?  You know that already right?”  They nodded miserably, unsurely, and shuffled back even more, now they could see this was getting them nowhere.  “Had his own little cannabis farm I heard, right there round the corner, that’s what I heard. Did you know about that?  Course you did you skanky little pot heads. So Danny is keeping away from all of you from now on, you got that?  So stay away.”  I leaned out towards them, and dragged my eyes slowly across both their faces. Then I stepped back and slammed the door on them.

After all that annoying shit, I took a good amount of time making my breakfast.  I went for the full works to prepare me for the day ahead.  Three fat sausages, four rashers of bacon, two fried eggs, beans and toast and mushrooms.  I washed it all down with a huge mug of strong tea, and sat for a while at the kitchen table, my legs stuck out, my hands resting on my full belly.  I felt like a new man that morning.  I was looking forward to meeting Jack at the club later and having a chuckle about it all.  I felt calm, clean and energised.  I felt like I had never slept better, or woken up more assured.

When my food had gone down, I got up and cleaned up the kitchen.  Everything in its place and a place for everything.  Clean, tidy, in order.  Kay would be impressed when she returned, and we hadn’t even really got started yet.  I could have filled a skip with the pointless crap floating around in that house.  When I felt in the right mood, just cool and calm and together, I picked up the toast I had left to go cold on the side, and carried it up the stairs.  I pushed open his door and walked into his room breezily, whistling to myself as I crossed the room and placed the toast on his desk.  I pulled the curtains back, cracked open a window and turned to look.  The place was a shit tip.  Clothes on the floor and on the back of his chair.  Stacks of magazines sliding out from under the bed.  Loose socks, and random shoes.  Books on the floor, books on the desk.  I shook my head at him, as he moved and stirred beneath his covers.  I just breathed for a moment.  I could smell his shitty pissy smell, and I could feel his fear coming in waves from the bed, and I wondered if I could smell it too, rising up and tingling my nostrils.  Thick, pungent waves of fear, and grime.

“Made you some toast little man,” I announced then, retrieving my pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket and plucking two out.  I stuck one between my teeth, yanked back his covers and tossed the second one at him.  He didn’t move.  He just stared back at me through his bruised eyes and I looked him over and I nodded, and I thought, you’re fine, you’re okay.  “That’s for you as well,” I said, nodding at the cigarette that had landed on his pillow.  “But not until you’ve got out of bed and had a fucking shower.” I lit mine and nodded at his silent, staring face.  “That’s right fella, you heard me.  Up out of bed, come on now. Out of your pity pit now, time to get cleaned up. We’ve got a lot of work to do.  And you fucking stink.” I wrinkled my nostrils and pulled the duvet right off the bed.  It would all need washing.  He’d been laying in his own piss all night, the vile little bastard.  He stared back at me, breathing heavily through his nose, his legs curled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them.  “Come on,” I said, breathing a fast puff of smoke into the air above his bed.  “I’m not joking, come on, up you get, get moving. Come on tough guy, show me how tough you are now eh?  Stop being a fucking baby and get out that bed!”  I waited, smoking my cigarette, and when he started to move, I felt this rush of joy and warmth and I smiled down at him. “Wha-hey! That’s the ticket! Go on then!”

My smile soon faded when I was forced to witness his agonizingly slow progress.  He was inching towards the edge of the bed, grunting and groaning, refusing to look at me with his hair all over his messed up face, moving as if every bone in his body was broken.  I was disgusted, and my patience ran out when he just sat there on the bed, his feet on the floor, and his head hanging.  His face was screwed up, and he was breathing too fast.  I let out a growl and snatched him up by his arm, forcing him onto his feet.  He cried out in pain, his mouth stretching open, and I dropped his arm in disgust and peered into his face as his head drooped down again. “Fucks sake!” I hissed at him. “Stand up and be a man for once in your life!  You like to make out you’re such a little tough guy, you fucking show me then! It doesn’t hurt that much, so don’t you dare make out it does!  I went easy on you, you little shit stain!  You ought to thank your lucky stars you’ve never run into my old man!  Now come on, move it, I want you cleaned up, the smell of you is making me sick!”

I jammed my cigarette back between my teeth and gave him an encouraging push towards the door.  He got going then, wincing and hissing and moving like an old man, while I followed hungrily from behind, resisting the urge to just shove him down the fucking stairs and be done with it all.  “Right, in the shower,” I told him, outside the bathroom. “And chuck out your clothes, I’m putting a wash on and stripping your bed.  Once you’re clean and dressed you can put it all back together again with clean bedding, and then I want you to clean and tidy your room.  I’ll bring all the stuff up and put it in your room for you.  I am talking hoovering, dusting, proper tidying, everything in the right place, yeah?  The windows, the skirting boards, the lightshade, the fucking works!  It’s like a bloody little rat infested pit in there and I’m not having it anymore.”

I stepped back and let him shuffle on into the bathroom.  He closed the door behind him, and I waited out on the landing, smiling and tapping my foot, and revelling in the obedience I had waited all fucking summer for.  I was pleased when he opened the door a few minutes later and tossed out his filthy stinking clothes.  “Good boy,” I told him, and picked them up and took them downstairs with a spring in my step.

We were alright for a couple of days, like that.  He was really good for me.  I watched him, time and time again, biting down on the pain, biting down on the urge to rebel, and he did everything I asked.  That morning he worked on his room, slowly and methodically, and when I was finally happy with it, I made him lunch and let him have another cigarette.  We sat at the table in the kitchen together, eating scrambled eggs on toast, and then we smoked in silence, and there was a sort of knowing peace and understanding between us.  He was clean for once.  He had fresh clothes on.  He had washed and brushed his hair.  I let him sleep for a bit in the afternoon, and then in the evening I took him to the club with me.  I repeated the story wherever we went.  People looked at him and laughed and rolled their eyes and asked him if he had learnt his lesson.  He was polite, and said that he had.  He washed up some glasses in the kitchen for me, and he mopped and swept the floor out there.

The next day we went to work on the rest of the house.  Room by room we hit them all.  We scrubbed and polished and sorted through.  We filled black bin liners with crap and rubbish, and it was so satisfying to me, getting rid of it all.  The house smelt fresh, from top to bottom.  Every surface shone and sparkled.  There were no more piles of crap because everything had a place.  The satisfaction spun through me, making me feel taller and prouder and lighter.

The only wobble came when the police knocked on the front door one day.  I was pissed off.  No one had warned me.  I didn’t have time to speak to Danny.  I just had to let them in. “Is it about the neighbours?” I asked them as they sidled graciously into the hallway.  Officer Heaton sort of shrugged and scratched his chin and looked a bit awkward. The other fellow, Osbourne was his name, said nothing.

“Sort of,” said Heaton. “It’s awkward really.  The younger brother has been making a total nuisance of himself down at the station, and at school too by the sounds of it.”

I shook my head and looked at them in pity. “Oh no.  Well that’s to be expected I suppose. Not too happy with his brother being carted back off to jail eh?”

“No, funnily enough, he’s not.  Is Daniel in Mr Howard? I’m afraid we have to talk to him for a moment, in private.  The Anderson boy has made some complaints, and we have to obviously do our jobs, and speak to him.”

I frowned and gestured to the lounge where the boy was seated, with a cup of tea.  I felt irritated beyond belief then.  I hoped to god they weren’t taking that Anderson scroat seriously.  The kid obviously had it in for me, and was looking for someone to blame now his brother had been banged up again.  I felt desperate to tell them this, and I felt desperate to tell them how much progress I had made with the boy.  He wouldn’t be taking up any more of their time, that was for sure.  He was on the straight and narrow now, with me.  Doing as he was told and being good.  I was doing a great job taking care of him, I wanted to tell them, as they pushed open the lounge door and piled in.  I’d made him nice meals, and everything.  Jesus fucking Christ.

I had to wait in the hallway.  I hovered around the door, listening in.  I hoped he would remember what I had told him that morning after his shower.  I hoped it would ring fresh and clear in his little head.  “Your friend Michael has asked us to come and check on you,” I heard Heaton saying to him. “He seems to think you didn’t get hurt on your bike.”

“What’s happened to Anthony?” I heard the boy ask quickly, and my back went up, and the hairs on my neck bristled and stiffened.  Why was he asking that for?  Why did he fucking care?  I stepped closer to the door, my lips pressed tightly together, my hands closing into fists behind my back.

“Anthony Anderson was arrested for suspected drug dealing last Sunday,” Heaton was saying to him. “He’s in remand at the moment, awaiting trial.  Do you know anything about any of that?”  There was silence, so I was forced to assume the boy was shaking his head at them. Heaton cleared his throat. “Well, Michael Anderson seems to think you didn’t get hurt falling from your bike.  Can you tell me yourself how you got injured Daniel?”

The answer was quick and firm.  “Fell off my bike.”  I sagged against the door in relief, before pulling myself together and backing off a little way.

“You’re sure?” Heaton was asking. “There’s nothing you want to tell us while we’re here?  Nothing at all? Michael seems to think Mr Howard is to blame.”

“Fell off my bike,” the boy said again, even firmer this time, as if he even believed in it himself. “Being stupid at the cliff.”

Good.  Good boy.  It was a relief in more ways than one.  Not only did it shut the Andersons up, it satisfied the police, and it made me feel at peace again inside.  I appreciated his loyalty and his common sense.  I would reward him for it later.  Give him some money for helping at the club.  He could save up for music he wanted then, I thought, nodding to myself in the hallway.

That afternoon the three boys rolled up on their bikes after school.  I saw them from the lounge window. The other two hung back, but the raven haired Anderson boy was like a little ball of fired up rage and frustration.  He started yelling up at the windows. “Danny! Danny! He won’t let us see you!”  He had his hands cupped around his mouth. “Danny! Are you alright mate?  Danny!”  When there was no answer to his calls, he started picking up stones and rocks and hurling them at the windows.  I didn’t bother answering the door or speaking to them.  I just picked up the phone and called the police.  The other boys had dropped their bikes and were trying to pull the Anderson kid away, but he kept shaking them off and pushing them away.  “Danny!” he kept yelling. “I need to talk to you!  Danny! I need to tell you what happened to Anthony!  It’s all a set up Danny! You have to listen!”

43

 

            I had no choice but to sit and listen as the stones clattered endlessly against the house.  For some reason it made me feel under attack.  I was actually relieved when I heard the police car squeal into the close minutes later, to take Michael away.  I dropped my head into my hands and closed my eyes.  I was glad Howard was keeping them all away, I didn’t want to see them, any of them.  Once they had all gone, silence followed.  I sat and waited to see if Howard would come up or not.  Just waiting, started the fear chain reaction off in my body.  It was one thing after another, and always began with a drying mouth and the urge to swallow repeatedly.  The hard knot in my stomach which had become a permanent fixture, would start to quiver and writhe into life, and the knot would grow fingers, and those fingers would flex and claw inside of me.  My hairs would stand on end, and my breathing would become fast and shallow and panicked, as coldness seemed to spread to every nerve ending.  The dryness in my mouth made me lick my lips a lot, and it felt like there was something alive, and creeping in my stomach.  It was like there was an invisible weight hanging over me the entire time, pressing down on me, making it an effort to even breathe.  When he did not come up, I lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

It hurt too much to lie on my back for long, so I twisted onto my side and stared at the wall instead.  I picked at a scab in my ear and felt vile, like a worm, a worm that had crawled into a hole.  Because of me Michael had lost his brother.  I still didn’t know exactly what had happened over there, and there was no way in hell I was going to ask Howard.  But he was gone.  They had taken him.  It was my fault.  Simple as that.  It was my fault and I knew it, and I would know it forever.  Because of me Michael had lost the only good thing in his life. I didn’t understand why he wanted to see me, except for to maybe smack me in the mouth.  And Anthony…shit, I couldn’t even bring myself to think about him, I couldn’t even….

I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore.  I didn’t really care if I lived or died right then.  I’d seen my face, that morning Howard had hurried me into the shower.  I’d stood naked, in front of the steamed up mirror, waiting for the warm water to run in.  I’d spread my palms out against the glass, rubbing away the steam to reveal who I was.  What I saw there tortured and disgusted me.  This wasted, ravaged boy, battered and bruised and smeared in his own blood and piss.  His face distorted and swollen, his eyes blackened, his back a pulse of private agony.  I got into the shower and washed myself with a flannel.  I’d watched the blood running down.  I stared at it in a horrified wonder, as it swirled in pinkish circles around my feet.  I took a piss and saw that even my urine was tainted with blood.  Every little movement was a lesson in pain.

He’d been waiting for me out on the landing of course, when I’d emerged, stiff and shocked, with a towel wrapped around my middle.  He’d been smiling gently, while his small eyes seemed lively and excited.  I could see the hoover already half in my room.  “That’s more like it,” he’d said to me, with a brisk clap of his hands. “Don’t look so sorry for yourself now, see. That’s what being tough is all about.”

I’d stared at the floor.  And then I had taken this big breath, and asked the only question I had for him.  “How do you know I won’t tell what you’ve done?”

This electric silence had filled the small space we occupied together on the landing.  He’d stepped up close to me, his eyes dark and loaded with warning. “How do I know?” he asked in hushed tones. “How do you know anyone would believe a fucking word you said?  Your own mother doesn’t believe a word you say, so what makes you think anyone else would? I’ve already told her, you know, what a clumsy prick you were on your bike.”

I’d lifted my shoulders in a small, painful shrug. “Not all this would come from a bike.”  It was true, and I should have clung to it tighter, but looking into his face then made me wish I could suck the words back in.  He stepped even closer, with this sinister, almost tender smile stretching across his face.  He’d taken my face then, and pulled it up to look at his.

“Do you like being fourteen Danny?” he’d hissed softly into my ear.  “Do you want to make it to fifteen, or sixteen?  If you knew how quickly and easily I could erase you from this earth, you wouldn’t dare to ask me questions like that.  And what about your little friends eh?  Do they like their little lives the way they are?  Or should I fuck about with them a bit more eh?” His fingers had tightened on my cheeks, springing tears from my eyes.  “You think about that for a moment Danny.  You think about that.  I can work my way through the lot of them if you want.  If you want to make this their business, go right ahead.  Join them in. I fucking dare you.  Or you could just shut the fuck up and do as you’re told, and wouldn’t that be a better option for everyone eh?”  I nodded, quickly and firmly under his hand.  I just wanted to get away from him.  I couldn’t bear the stench of him.  You’re totally fucking insane, I thought in numb shock when I looked into his eyes, totally fucking insane.

I didn’t go to school for the next two weeks.  Howard went instead, to pick up my work and fill them in on my progress.  Some of my classmates had made me this huge get well soon card and signed it.  He let me have it, only after he had checked that Michael’s name was not on it.  My mother called a few times to let us know how Gran was doing.  I spoke to her once.  She asked about my accident and she sighed and wondered when I was ever going to learn my lesson.

The weird thing was, the more I repeated the story to myself, or others, the more I came to believe in it.  It’s strange how your mind can play tricks on you like that.  If I thought about it enough, I could almost see how it would have happened.  I’d been zooming up and down the little hills, close to the edge of the cliff, getting closer and closer to the grassy edge, daring myself to go faster and faster.  I’d looked away briefly, maybe distracted by a dog running by, or a kite in the sky, and my front wheel had twisted and slipped and down I had gone.  I’d hit all these rocks on the way down.  I was bruised and broken and jumpy and I wouldn’t be doing that again in a hurry.

Sometimes I mused about the stripes on my back, but Howard assured me they were nothing.  They would fade and vanish.  They were a lesson that I had learnt well, and that was that.  He told me one day that his own father had kept several belts hanging on the inside door of their larder when he was a kid.  All different lengths and thicknesses.  Depending on the trouble Lee was in, depending on the crime, he would be ordered to go and fetch a certain belt for his dad.  He’d smiled at me then and tipped me a wink that made me cringe. “See,” he seemed keen to point out. “Not as bad as him, am I?  No way.”

Michael had stopped trying to call and shout at the house, but one day when I was alone there, I found this package on the doormat.  It was addressed to me, naming me as Mr Daniel Bryans, and it had my full address written on it, but had not been stamped.  I’d taken it upstairs and closed my door behind me.  It was wrapped in brown paper and when I tore it off I found Nirvanas new album inside.  There was no note, and it did not say who it was from, but I knew.  I put the cassette on and sat and listened.  I pulled out the inner sleeve and glanced through the lyrics.  That was when I noticed what he had done.  There was a song called Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, and Michael had underlined some of the lyrics before giving it to me.  Hate, hate your enemies.  Save, save your friends. Find, find your place.  Speak, speak the truth.

It was….I don’t even really know what it was.  It was amazing and touching and terrible and heartbreaking all at once.   I didn’t know what to do.  I felt a little bit better, listening to it, knowing he did not hate me, knowing he still wanted to fight back.  But at the same time I felt wretched and pointless, and undeserving.  I didn’t know what to do about any of it, so I did nothing.  I did what Howard wanted me to do.

I’d started going with him to the club in the evenings.  “We’ll find plenty to keep you busy,” he would tell me on the drive over.  “That’s what boys your age need you know, to keep them out of trouble.” At Nancy’s he gave me jobs to do, like collecting and washing glasses, and changing the bins.  It was strange being there.  I felt on edge with nerves the whole time, yet sort of intrigued to be on his territory.  It was like another world to me.  The darkness, the flowing warmth from the bodies in the crowd.  The thumping music that swept them all up and got them all going.  The lolling bodies and leering faces, the couples groping in corners, the women throwing up in the toilets.  It was fascinating to get a glimpse into the adult world, and into his.  I could tell right away that everyone there respected him, feared him even.  He was not one for joking around with the staff, or anything.  He was one for getting the job done, and getting it done properly.  I saw him fire two people on the spot while I was there.  The rest of the staff kept their heads down, and I had the distinct feeling that they regarded me with pity.

I was allowed to perch at the end of the bar when the night was drawing to a close.  The refit was all done, and everyone murmured that the place was unrecognizable.  People remarked how swish it all was, how it was closer to an uptown London establishment than a dingy club in a seaside town.  I didn’t get it personally.  In fact I struggled to disguise my sneer when I looked around at what he had done to it.  All the fittings were black and silver chrome, there were mirrors everywhere, and black leather stools lined up at the bar.  In the corners there were soft black leather sofas.  It all left me with a bad taste in my mouth, although I wasn’t exactly sure why.  Somehow the place seemed to speak volumes to me about the kind of person Lee Howard was.  It was confident, brash and swaggering.  It commanded attention, dominating the end of the high street where once the place had sagged into oblivion.  Now there were black and silver flashing signs that called people in from the street. The doormen wore sharp silver suits and black boots with steel toecaps.

Howard had installed a bigger stage, and talked about having theme nights, old school discos and tribute bands.  He had just kicked off a student night every Monday, where people could buy a pint of beer or cider for just fifty pence, if they had their student union card with them.  Down at the other end of the bar I would see Tony Phillips, sinking beer after beer with two old men.  His bearded face appeared washed out and bloated under the harsh lights of the bar.  It was beneath these same lights that I would also see Howard’s friend, Jack Freeman.  He was there most nights.

He was a broad, shuffling man in a dark overcoat, his dark hair peppered with grey, was neck length but thinning on the crown of his skull.  He was usually unshaven, and had a pudgy floppy look about his cheeks and lips.  Some nights he would sit right next to me, and would buy me the odd coke, usually without saying a single word.  Other nights I would spot him down the other end of the bar, conversing aimably with strangers.  It was weird, but Howard seemed to really like the guy.  He would ask his opinions on things a lot, and then laugh out loud at his answers.  He often addressed him as D.I Freeman, which always made the older man erupt into phlegmy reams of laughter.  I didn’t understand the joke.

`           “So are you a policeman or what?” I asked him one night.  The man blinked and turned his head to look at me in surprise, as if he had gotten used to me never speaking.  He grinned at me then, this lip curling toothsome grin, that crinkled up the saggy skin around his eyes.

“Oh yeah course I am mate,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “You bet.”

I frowned in suspicion and curiosity.  Well was he or wasn’t he?  I glanced around the club, which was emptying out slowly as closing time neared.  There was a group of young men in checked shirts and trainers at the other end of the bar, holding beer bottles by their necks and laughing raucously with two girls who looked like they had had too much to drink.  A woman around the same age as my mother had just staggered up to the bar, slammed her shiny red handbag down on the top and demanded a final vodka and coke.  I watched Howard appear out of nowhere to serve her.  I watched the smile he used with them all, this terribly fake one, the one he showed to the rest of the world, and I watched her lap it up, like they all did.  I wondered if that was how he had snared my mother.  I watched him in bewilderment, shaking my head slightly.  It was eerie to witness.  This well spoken, gracious man, flirting gently with the punters.  I watched his face behave in an ordinary, pleasing way, and I could barely believe it belonged to the same man who had talked so casually about cutting me up and throwing me out with the rubbish.

“Have you been friends with him long?” I asked Freeman then, and again, he turned to look at me as if he had forgotten I was sat there.

“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “We go way back.  I knew his dad.  His dad owned a gym you know.  Trained up boxers.”

“Great,” I said, raising my eyebrows and looking away. “That explains a lot.”

“I get the feeling you’re not his biggest fan?” Freeman inquired, a teasing smile on his rubbery lips.  I glanced at him unsurely.  I thought about how dishevelled he always looked, always wearing the same heavy dark overcoat, and loose grey or blue trousers, with a white or blue shirt, open at the neck with no tie.  He looked like shit and yet he drove this smart new BMW car.  I shook my head at him, and he made a face and shrugged his big round shoulders. “Oh well fair enough, but I think he’s got your best interests at heart, you know.”

“Really,” I said and wrapped one hand around the tall glass of coke before me.  I wondered what he would say if he knew about the stripes that decorated my back, or the crusts of scabs that pinched and wept every time I moved.

“You don’t think so, obviously,” he nodded.

I stared ahead, at all the bottles of wine lined up in the racks on the other side of the bar, waiting for their turn to flow.  “I think he’s fucking mental,” I replied softly, so softly that he had to lean closer to me to hear.  “I think he’s an evil motherfucker.” There was a moment of silence between us and then Jack Freeman snorted loudly and patted me on the shoulder.  I winced and shook him off.  I wanted to sling my coke in his fucking sloppy old face.

“I like you mate,” he told me when he had finished chuckling.  “You make me laugh, plus, you’ve got balls, which I like.  Hey, you want some cigarettes?”

“What?”

“Cigarettes. You smoke?”

“Yeah.”

“I got a load you know.  Went on this booze cruise to France last month.  Bought loads for my old mum. Got back and she’d passed away while I was gone, can you believe that?” He grinned at me as if waiting for an answer, so I just shrugged. “Anyway, they ain’t my brand, can’t stand ‘em. You want some?  Look.”  He pulled back one side of his long coat, displaying the inner pocket.  He plucked out a pack of cigarettes whose brand I did not recognize and passed them to me.  I took them fearfully, warily, my eyes shooting around for Howard, my mind in a sudden muddle. “Take ‘em,” he laughed. “You look like you need ‘em more than me!”  So I took them.  I folded my hand over them and pushed them deep inside the front pocket of my jeans.  Then I went back to drinking my coke in silence until it was time to go home.

Some hours later I was lying on my bed in the darkness, my hands folded on my chest, Nirvana’s new album playing softly beside me.  It was strange and unexpected that the tap on my window came just as Radio Friendly Unit Shifter had begun.  I sat up in confusion and just stared at the window for a moment.  I was sort of frozen and stiff, hardly breathing, not understanding.  Then the tap came again, gentle, yet urgent, and I made myself move, and I crossed the room like an old man, and pulled back the curtains and there was Michael.  I gasped in surprise and slid the glazing back.  What the fuck? I mouthed at him, as a huge and wicked grin leapt across his face.  He mouthed shh at me and started to haul himself up onto the ledge.  I peered out to see how the hell he had managed it.  I could see his bike propped against the porch and worked the rest out from there.  “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed as he practically threw himself through the window and landed in a heap on the floor.

He sat himself up, his back against the wall and pressed a finger to his lips.  His eyes shot to the door, and so did mine.  We held our breath and listened, but all we could hear was the TV buzzing downstairs.  When nothing happened, Michael let his head drop back onto the wall and breathed out in relief.  “That was easier than I thought,” he said.

“Michael…” I started, but when I saw him gazing at me, I stopped, mainly because all the words I wanted and needed to say to him sounded so pathetic and inadequate inside my head.  His own smile had faded as his eyes ran over my face.

“You’re a hard man to find these days,” he joked, forcing another smile that did not touch his eyes.  “This is fucking messed up mate…”

I just shook my head, and I couldn’t even look at him then.  I just crouched in front of him and stared at the carpet.  “Mike,” I started again, quietly, uselessly.

“Sight for sore eyes aren’t you?”

“Yeah, and you.”

Michael sat forward slightly, looking me over. “Fell off your bike did ya’?”

“Yeah.”

“Bollocks.  It’s okay.” He leaned forward then, closer to my face.  His eyes were angry as he stared into mine.  “It’s okay, it’s me.”

“Okay.”

“Where the fuck is your mum?”

“With my Gran. She had a fall.”

Michael shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Fucking unbelievable.  She goes away and leaves you with him?  Fucking brilliant.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” he responded angrily, hissing the words through his clenched teeth.  “It fucking matters.”

I sat back on my heels, raised my eyes from the carpet and looked him in the eye. “What happened to Anthony?”

He rolled his eyes again and plastered a fake smile across his face for me. “He’ll be okay.  You know what he’s like.”

“But what happened?”

“Forget it,” he said, shaking his head, so that his hair toppled back into his eyes. “You don’t need to worry about that…It’s not your fault Danny.”  I said nothing to this.  There was nothing I could say.  He swallowed, glanced away and ran a hand back through his hair, sending it back over his forehead. “Howard set him up,” he said then, curling his top lip ever so slightly and shaking his head quickly. “I mean, I can’t prove it.  But I know it.  And he won’t let us in, he won’t let us anywhere near you.  He says you don’t want anything to do with us now, that’s not true is it?” He caught my eye and I frowned and shook my head at him. “I know,” he went on, speaking softly yet viciously, directing his intense gaze down onto the carpet. “He’s lying, like he’s lying about everything. We came back from the base Danny, and there were cops everywhere, and they were dragging Anthony out of the house, yeah?  Took him away. Busted, they said.  Someone tipped them off.”

“Busted for what?” I asked, my voice a strangled croak.

“Dealing cannabis,” he shrugged, breathing out through his nostrils. “But it was a set up Danny, a fucking set up.  Listen to me.” He swallowed again, and leaned towards me, shaking his hair from his face and looking me right in the eye.  His head was lowered, his eyes piercing. “They busted the house and found an ice cream tub in the bathroom, you know in the toilet cistern? Wasn’t ours Danny. Never seen it before in my life. Anthony has a little box you know.  You’ve seen it.  A box he keeps in his room. He only smokes enough for him, and that’s it.  You know that right?”

“Course I fucking do,” I sighed, my head dropping forward into my hand.

“Well it was a set up,” he continued. “Someone broke in Dan. Broke in and put it there and called the cops.  I know it.  I’ve tried to tell them, but no one will listen will they? ‘Cause of Anthony’s history.  He wanted him gone, didn’t he?  Howard?  He wanted Anthony gone, after he threatened him. You know it Danny.” He was staring at me intently and I knew what he wanted; a reaction, anger, a plan, anything.  I didn’t give him any of those things.  I gave him a blank face, impassive eyes and silence.  He sighed and licked his lips.  “Danny, I sent the police round.  I badgered bloody Mr James until he listened to me and called them. No one believes me about Howard.  Why didn’t you tell them?”

I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes then.  It was terrible, the confusion and the pity and the anger, and I couldn’t look at him so I rolled my eyes and pushed myself up from the floor.  I walked stiffly to my bed and sat down on the edge, pressing my hands to my face and yawning behind them.  “Danny?”

“Mike, I fell of my bike yeah?”

“What?  Bullshit, and we both know it. Why are you protecting him?”

“It’s not him I’m protecting,” I whispered hoarsely, my eyes shooting towards the door, and what I knew lay on the other side of it.  Michael got angrily to his feet and gestured at the window.

“Come on, let’s just get out of here.”

“Just don’t,” I said with another yawn. “I’m fine.  I’ll be fine.  Stop worrying.”

“Yeah?” he demanded then, hands on hips. “And what if you fall off your bike again?” I glanced up and he held my gaze, his eyebrows rising up under his hair and his foot tapping softly against the floor. “What if you get really hurt next time?”

I sighed again, looked away from him and climbed into my bed. “You better go Mike. You don’t want him to catch you here.”

“I’m not going anywhere if you’re not coming,” he replied adamantly and stalked across the room to the light switch. “You better shift over,” he said to me then. “You take one end, I’ll take the other.”

“Mike, you can’t.”

“Fucking can,” he sat down on the bed and pulled his boots off.  “I’m not leaving you here alone mate, I don’t care what you fucking say.  I’ll be like the invisible man, I promise.”

I shook my head at him but I was too tired to argue.  I couldn’t stop yawning and my head felt groggy with it all.  I lay back on my pillow and he turned off the light and crawled into the bed at the other end.  We were silent for a moment.  I had forgotten about the music, but it was still there, Kurts soft words were still rolling out into the darkness, and we listened for a while, lying like statues under the duvet; I wish I was like you, easily amused, find my nest of salt, everything is my fault, I’ll take all the blame, aqua sea foam shame, sunburn with freezerburn, choking on the ashes of her enemy….all in all, is all we are…all in all, is all we are…

            “Thanks Mike,” I said to him when the song had finished.  My voice was tight.  My emotions as ever intensified by the music, sponging off it, soaking up the sadness.

“Best mates?” he asked hopefully in the darkness.

“Best mates,” I told him.

He poked me in the morning, and I woke up suddenly, horrible images filling my mind, and leaking from me as my eyes flew open.  I took a huge breath, and my hand went to my neck.  Michael was pulling on his boots, his face flushed and concerned. “Got to get back to Bill’s,” he was mumbling. “I’m staying there while they find my mum. Have you still got your knife?”

I was muddled from sleep and shook my head at him. “No.”

“Here take mine,” he growled and threw one at me.  I hid it under the duvet and watched him walk to the window.  It was barely even light outside and I wondered what had woken him up, and got him moving.  “Can you come to the base?” he whispered back to me. “About twelve ish?  We can talk properly there.” I watched his eyes travel nervously to the closed bedroom door.

“I dunno,” I shrugged at him.

“He can’t keep you locked up forever,” he told me, pulling back the curtain and the glazing.  “Tell him you’re meeting Lucy or someone like that.”

“I’ll try Mike.  Hey, Mike?”

He had swung himself up onto the ledge, and in the darkness all I could see of him was a silhouette and two shining eyes. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.  About Anthony.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he laughed at me. “You didn’t do anything.  Just get yourself to the base, that’s all you have to do.  The war isn’t over yet you know Danny. He hasn’t fucking won yet.”

I lay on my bed for a long time after he left, and all I could see in my head was his face, and his carefree grin, and the confident way he had told me Howard had not won.  I felt his desire not to let Howard win, and I understood it.  Anthony was the only decent thing he had in his life; something worth fighting for.  It totally crushed me when I thought about him, locked up in some cell somewhere, not knowing what would happen to him, and tears would run down my face every time I pictured him there, stuck, imprisoned.  Look what he had tried to do for me and look where it had got him.  I felt wrecked as I lay there, like a person who was incomplete, shattered.  I felt like I would rather die than be alone again, but at the same time I could not face the idea of seeing them all at the base, meeting there with them, as if nothing had ever happened, as if everything being destroyed was not down to me.

I knew what I had done.  I knew the mistake I had made.  At the party, when Anthony asked about my lip, I should have said I had fallen over, or walked into a wall.  If I could have gone back in time to change it, I would have done.  Anthony would not have tried to help me, and Michael would still have his brother.  Twelve o clock came and went, and I had not moved.  I could not face them.  I couldn’t let Michael do it.  In Utero played endlessly beside me.  Every time one side finished I would flip it over and play the next, again and again and again.  It was almost as good as having Michael there beside me.

40

 

            I was saying goodbye to Jack on the front step, when one of the kids Danny hung about with came reeling around the corner.  The tall skinny one with the stupid floppy hair.  He looked like he was shitting himself already, and when he clocked us he looked it even more, his big eyes growing bigger like saucers, as he skidded to a stop.  He had been running, and looked for a minute like he was going to fall over his own gangly legs.  I rolled my eyes at Jack, who chuckled softly and walked on down the path back to his car.  The skinny kid approached the door nervously, pulling the cuff of his scruffy shirt down over his hand and fiddling with it, as his eyes shot about all over the place.  I regarded him coldly, narrowing my eyes at him, flicking my ash out onto the path.  I held onto the edge of the door so that I could slam it in his face when needed. “Do you want something?” I asked him.

He stuttered the beginning of a reply, then stopped and looked away, as if expecting help to be close behind. Then he looked back at me and tried to peer around me into the hallway. “Is Danny about?”

“Nope. Haven’t seen him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No idea.”  I decided that was enough conversation and slammed the door on his gawky gormless face.

I turned around, and there was the boy in question, flinging himself at the back door.  I laughed out loud and went after him.  So he’d been in the house the whole time had he?  Fucking hilarious.  I produced the back door key from my pocket and dangled it from my fingers when he turned slowly to stare at me in dawning horror.  “Looking for this little man?” The boy had his hands wrapped around the door handle, and despite seeing the key in my grasp, he continued to wrench it up and down.  I slipped the key back into my pocket and approached him casually.  My nostrils twitched as I got closer to him.  He reeked.  It was smoke, and beer, and dirt and weed, and mashed in with all of that was fear, pure and raw, and pulsing darkly behind his vivid blue eyes.  I was pleased to see it at last, so I took a moment to look him over, to consider him.  Then I shook my head in disgust and disapproval.  His clothes had been slept in, and were creased and dirtied.  I could see black dirt beneath every fingernail as his hands clung to the door handle.  I planted my hands on my hips and cocked my head to one side.  I licked my lower lip. “All right then?” I asked.

He gave up on the door and flattened himself against it, hands splayed out like starfish behind him.  “Where’s my mum?”

I laughed and leaned over him, placing one hand on the glass behind his head. “Well something happened, something terrible, and she had to go.”

“What?  What did you do?  What have you done to her?”

I laughed again. “I didn’t do anything little man. It’s your Gran, she had a bad fall and broke some bones. In really bad shape.  Your mum’s gone to look after her for a while.” I watched him taking this in, his mouth opening and closing in confusion, his brow furrowed with despair.  “She said she’ll phone in a few days to let you know how things are.”

“You’re a liar,” he said to me then, his face trembling, his shoulders growing rigid. “She wouldn’t just leave me here with you!”

I smiled, enjoying the way his face changed the more it sunk in.  I wondered if he would shit his own pants before today was through.  “Oh dear,” I said, offering him a sympathetic smile. “It looks like she has! Couldn’t wait to get away from you, if truth be told. Had a gutful of you lately mate. I did try to warn you.  Didn’t I eh?  I did try to make you listen.”

“You’ve probably done something to her!” he barked at me then, a flash of defiance returning to those eyes. “You were going mental when I left yesterday!”

I moved my face down to his, so that our noses were level.  “Well I expect she will call you in a few days and let you know she’s just fine.  Although I did tell her not to worry about a thing.  Said it would give us some much needed time together eh?  Just you and me.  Gives us a chance to iron things out eh?” I smiled a delicate, thin smile and stared right into his eyes.  I searched them, meaning to locate the slightest sliver of anger and stamp it out.  “Don’t worry about a thing,” I told him soothingly. “Everything will be alright. You might not have your dad, or your brother, or your mum around, but you have me eh? You’re not alone see.  I’m still here for you, because I care, you know, I care how you turn out little man.”

He started shaking his head, no.  He went to move off, to get past, but I put a hand to his shoulder and kept him still.  I examined him again.  Dirty, stinking clothes. That long scruffy hair.  He reminded me of every piss soaked loser who had ever rolled into one of my bars, desperate for salvation and hunting for it at the end of a bottle.  “You’re lying,” he started chattering. “You’ve done something to her, I know, I saw, I saw the cops! I heard them!” He was panicking now, I could see.  I held him back against the door and stared at him hard.

“Shut up and calm down. I’ll do the talking thanks.  By the time she comes back, we’ll be like one happy family, okay?”  I think I drifted off for a moment then, just lost maybe, in the importance of it all.  I remembered seeing Kay off, helping her to pack her bags and take them to the car.  Don’t worry about a thing, I had assured her.  I’ll be just fine with Danny, I promise.  I can cope with whatever he throws at me.

“Let me go!” the little shit was growling at me now, his hands on mine, his grubby little fingers trying to prise mine from his shoulder.  I clamped them down and stared into his face. He looked and sounded like a vicious little animal, and I realized then that was what he was, at the end of the day.  An untamed animal.  Utterly wild.  I felt my patience run into a brick wall, and it was all that he deserved.  “Let me pass!  Get the fuck off me!” I felt my body tense, bristling under the surface, and the blue eyes were flashing back at me like angry sirens, and my mind retraced steps to threats in the kitchen and to aching balls and how it should never have happened.  That whining little voice.  That screwed up little face.  Angry.  That angry little face, when it should have been scared, and sorry.

“Right!” I roared into his face then. “Time to learn some lessons!  The first one being getting that look out of your eyes!” I jabbed him right in the eye with my finger then, and he cried out in horrible pain, his hands flying to his face, his body crumpling down the door.  He cried out like I’d thrown acid in his face or something.  I closed my hand around his neck and pulled him back up. “It out now?” I bellowed at him. “Has that fucking look gone?  That fucking look!” He struggled and gasped beneath my grip, so I clamped down harder.  I could feel everything that way.  I could feel the energy in those thin muscles, like coiled springs, as the fear and the rage surged through his body like electricity.  I could feel it all hot and sizzling beneath his clothes. I checked his pockets and right away found another knife. “Where the fuck d’you keep getting these from?  It’s those filthy friends of yours, isn’t it eh?  Those scumbags around the corner!”

I wrenched him from the room.  I discovered that his neck was so small and puny that my fingers met around the front, creating a perfect circle.  I took him upstairs like that, barely aware of the fingernails that raked and tore at my hand.  I kicked open his bedroom door and then kicked it shut again behind us “Time for lessons,” I told him. “You’re a constant fucking thorn in my side, you know that?” I peered into his bright red face, as it seemed to swell and distort right before my eyes.  “Has that angry defiant look gone yet, has it?” I peered into his eyes but all I could see was bulging eyeballs and bloodshot whites. I threw a fist into his stomach and right away his legs went, and the air whooshed right out of him like a balloon being deflated, but I didn’t let him fall, I held him up by the neck.  “I better teach you the rules so you don’t forget this time. I’ll teach you how to behave.  I’ll teach you how to be a good boy, eh?  That’s what you’ll be when I’m done, you got that you little shit stain?” I pulled my fist back again, and let him have it a second time.  I let him drop, and he hit the floor and curled right up, moaning, gasping, sucking in huge gusts of air.

I found a cigarette while the boy found his breath, and lit it up and just smoked it calmly for a few moments while I watched him.  He coughed, over and over, and wrapped an arm around his body, while his other hand  rubbed at his neck.  How are you going to get out of this now, I wanted to ask him, what’s your plan?  His chest was heaving in and out.  I felt all of the power and control seeping through me and I inhaled his fear, finally, sucked it right up.  I smoked, and examined the target for a moment, the cigarette pinched between my teeth, and then I aimed a kick between his shoulder blades and sent the little fucker right across the room.  “I’ll break you if I’m not careful,” I mused and walked over to him.  He was by the window, moaning and shaking.  “Not so tough now are you eh?” I asked him and kicked him in the arse. “Not such a big man now!”

41

 

            What I discovered was pain has many different levels, as does hate.

I also discovered that fear is worse than pain, far, far worse.  I remembered this from before and tried to tell myself again.  Pain is just pain, I said inside my own head while my body was being taken apart on the outside.  Don’t let him take you apart on the inside.  What?  I don’t know, just don’t let him, don’t let him.

I tried to stay out of it.  This was a scene I wanted no part of.  I wasn’t there if I didn’t want to be, and this was not really happening to me, but was a dream, or a thought, or an imagining.  I tried to curl up safe and untouched in the darkness of my own mind, while the different levels of pain played out their symphony all over my body.  Pain was a warning bell I told myself.  It was what it was.  Like stubbing your toe, or falling over, or nicking yourself with a knife.  It was just your body telling you that something was wrong.  My body was screaming at me, trying to get my attention.  That was good.  The pain blocked out the fear, and that was good, because the fear was worse, the fear became you and consumed you and then you didn’t even want to live anymore.

I was on the floor, and he was still kicking the shit out of me.  At times he seemed demented with it.  Like an animal.  I caught glimpses of his snarling sweaty face, his rolling balls of eyes, his gritted teeth, and I thought he’s gonna kill me, and that’s it, that’s how it all ends, before it ever really begun, and I haven’t even got any fucking music on.  I would have liked to die to some music, at least.  I would have liked that.  Then he would slow right down, and that was worse.  He took his time about it.  Thought about where to kick me, and I guess there was a logic behind that, fuck knows.  He walked around me in circles, smoking and flicking his ash at me.  When he had sucked the life out of his smoke, he crouched down next to me, lifted up my t-shirt and stubbed it out on my ribs.  I howled into the carpet then, tears flooding my eyes and soaking my cheeks. I screamed and I shrieked a promise to him inside my own head, one day I will fucking kill you, I will get you back I will kill you!

He’d lost the plot, gone insane, gone mental.  Was he ever going to stop? My face pressed into the carpet, I wondered if I would die there.  I thought, I am fourteen years old and I’m going to die like this, on my bedroom floor… I helplessly considered my organs rupturing and exploding within me. I could almost imagine my liver, my heart, my kidneys all under attack with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

Howard was muttering away.  Something about me being a good boy now, about never messing with him again.  I closed my eyes against the floor, took another kick to the ribs and thought no mate, I won’t mess with you, I will just fucking kill you…Still, his voice droned on, eerily pleasant and easy going now.  He picked me up then, scooped me up from the floor with his meaty arms and dropped me onto my bed.  For some reason, I felt even more helpless there, exposed and vulnerable, and there was something so sedate and planned about all of it, something that made me want to cry out, to rebel and reject it.  But I was choked up, I was wound up so tight with layers of pain, one piled on top of the next and nowhere for it to go.  “Do what you’re told and everything will be fine,” he was telling me from above.  “Fuck me off, do it wrong, and I will punish you.  Easy.  Simple.”

I was on my front.  I coughed and turned my head to see him unbuckling his belt and pulling it free from the loops of his jeans.  I closed my eyes when the first strike came.  He put his foot on my shoulders to keep me down.  There was nowhere to go.  There was nothing to say.  There just came slices of sharp, needling pain, the kind that takes your breath away from you and makes you feel as cold as ice.  He panted with the exertion of each flick of the belt.  “This will sort you out!” he was raging from above. “Fucking little shit stain! You won’t fuck with me after this!”

He was right and he was wrong.

I’ll tell you something though.  There is pain, and there is bad pain, and there is pain that makes you cry and scream, and there is pain that you actually wish would just kill you so it will be over, and then there is pain that breaks you.  I felt it collapse inside of me if you want to know the truth.  My fight, my rebellion, my fuck you, all of it, the whole lot.  It was like a stack of cards being swept to the floor.  It was like a brick wall tumbling slowly down. I’d thought it was impossible to feel any more pain, but I was wrong.  This built a whole new layer on top of the rest, and I couldn’t take it.  I would have done anything for it to stop, for it to go away.  I cried and sobbed and screamed into my duvet.  My back was on fire.  I was crying and mumbling and drooling and begging him to stop.  He did stop then.  The belt dropped onto me, and lay there, like a dead hot snake, and I sensed him leaning over me again, examining what he saw.  I tried to tell him.  I tried to let him know what he had done.  I opened my mouth and wanted to tell him okay, he had won, I was down, I was beaten, but my throat was clogged up with fear and blood and all that came out was thick coughing.  My mouth felt full of it, and my nostrils too, struggling to work.

I was trying to nod at him, trying to tell him to stop, trying to tell him whatever the fuck he wanted to hear.  He leaedt down close to me and took my face in his hands and pulled me around to see him.  His eyes were slits in his face.  His mouth turned down.  He did not seem happy, or anything.  Just still and calm, and then he brought his other hand up, balled it into a fist and pressed it against my cheek.  I stared into his eyes, desperate to understand what I saw there, what he was.  I wondered if I was staring into the eyes of a devil, of something inhuman and evil, and in the horror of it all I felt my bladder let go, and I felt the warmth of urine spreading out from my crotch.

He rolled his fist across my face, from my cheek up to my eye socket, and from my eye down to my nose, and chin.  His expression was pensive, wondering.  Then his eyes widened in sudden inexplicable excitement, and his tongue shot out the corner of his mouth, as he seized upon one of the tears that fell from my eye.  He pressed his thumb hard into the wet trail it left, as if checking it was what he thought it was.  And then his hand fell away quickly and he stood back, and I watched him through swollen eyes and saw his face change yet again.  I thought I saw just a tiny flicker of guilt, or alarm as he stepped back from me and pointed his finger.  “Hope you’ve learnt your lesson,” he said to me, his chest rising and falling as he spoke. “You’ll do everything you can to stay on my good side now won’t you eh? You’re gonna’ do it now, aren’t you?  You’re gonna’ be good?” He waited for an answer so I blinked and nodded.  “Good,” he said, and he did look pleased, you know, like this was a job well done.  He even rubbed his hands together and cracked his knuckles. “Good. You can help me get the house nice and clean for your mum, and you can start coming over the club to help out, earn yourself some money, what about that eh? Sound good? And no more hanging about with those scummy kids. You might find they’re not so keen to be mates with you after today anyway.  Sorted them out too I have.  But I warned you didn’t I?  I warned all of you not to mess with me.”

I felt a rising scrambling panic in my chest then, and the tears were coming thick and fast, and I wanted to ask him what, what had he done?  What the fuck had he done to them?  I remembered the police car, and the wail of sirens when I had been hiding in the lounge, and the strange man, and Jake at the door, and all of it weighed me down, pressed me right down into the bed.  I truly felt like I would never get up again, never feel the surface of the earth beneath my feet again. I felt like I was done.  I was over.  Howard nodded at me, pursed his lips and left my room, closing the door softly behind him.

I listened, my breath held like a prisoner within my throat as his footsteps continued down the stairs.  I heard the TV go on in the lounge, and within seconds he was laughing and cheering down there to some wrestling match he had recorded.  I could hear kids outside on their bikes, screeching and laughing, skidding around the close, calling out to each other in the sunshine.  Doing circuits, I thought, around and around, so that their mums could still see them from the window.  Everything out there remained bright and friendly and normal.  I moved onto my side, relieving the pressure on my back, and I lifted a shaking hand to wipe at my face, but it seemed pointless.  I was covered in blood and sweat and snot and tears.  I was cocooned in a tight blanket of pain and shock.  The fear was spreading through me now, as the shock kicked in.  It careered through me like some kind of disease, like something rotting me from the inside.  I didn’t know what to do, but I guessed that was fine, because there was nothing I could do.  I could barely move.

I knew what he had done, and why.  He had filled my body with pain.  So much pain that it blotted everything else out.  It became the winner, the victor.  My head, my heart, my soul was all full of it.  Pain and fear spinning in circles, endlessly.  When I look back now, I can see exactly why he did it, and I can see how it worked.  There is only so much you can take, you see.  Only so much you can take before you’ll do anything and become anyone just to make it stop.  I felt myself falling to pieces on that bed, and I cried for me and I cried for my friends, and I felt like a dirty little shit who had no right to feel anything, and the feeling only made me cry harder.

I fell asleep, or I fell unconscious, I am not sure which.  I woke up at one point, and it was dark, and I wondered if Howard had gone to the club, and I wondered if I could escape, or call someone, but when I tried to move my body screamed at me to stop.  I moaned into my hands, as all the deep and shaking layers of pain awakened within me.  All I could do was gently wrestle my duvet over my head and bury myself in the darkness.  I thought to myself, I am lying here covered in blood and piss, and I can’t do anything about it.  Michaels jeans clung to my thighs, drenched in stale urine.  I felt cold with disgust.

The next time I woke up, it was morning, and I could hear Howard downstairs on the phone.  I pushed the duvet away from my head and strained my ears to listen.  “He won’t make it in all week,” he was saying to someone. “Probably not next week either, going by the state of him….Yeah, he’s seen the doctor.  It’s all superficial to be honest, nothing broken, but you know, a lot of discomfort….Lucky he didn’t kill himself really, kids eh?” There was a long silence, and all I could hear then was my own rasping, congested breathing.  “Oh yeah, no problem, I’ll call in later and pick up any work…Ah yes, yes, we have spoken to him about walking out on Friday.  I know.  I know, skating on thin ice eh?…Okay.  Okay, no problem, thank you Mr James…bye now.”

I blinked my shock and outrage.  I felt a tiny shiver of helpless fury and frustration.  The stinking repulsive liar.

38

 

            I was in a foul and filthy mood all weekend.  In fact I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so pent up with frustration and evil intent.  The worse thing about it was not being able to tell anyone why.  I had to deal with the usual shit at work with a swollen ball sack, and a quivering crawl of rage clinging to my spine.  I blamed my bad mood on the unreliable builders, and staff who couldn’t seem to do anything properly, and the bastard boy stayed out all weekend, doing as he pleased.  “Thought you didn’t like him hanging around with those kids,” I complained to Kay on Friday night when I got back from the club and slipped into bed beside her.

“He’s at Billy’s,” she murmured, keeping her eyes closed. “Don’t mind Billy.”

“But they’ll all be there!” I protested, indignantly. “And I bet if you phoned his parents now, they won’t know a thing about it!  Bet they’re all round at the Andersons place, where there are no parents Kay.  No parents. Is that okay with you?”  But she was already snoring again, so I had no choice but to switch off the lamp and slip down under the duvet.  I crossed my arms behind my head and glared at the ceiling.  Down below, my balls ached and groaned.  I couldn’t even allow myself to think about it too much.  The anger was too much to contain, too much to hold onto.  A skinny weasly little kid like that kicking me in the balls.  Getting away.  The anger clouded by mind every time I remembered it.  He hadn’t even said sorry.  He hadn’t even looked scared, or anything.  Just the same flashing eyes, the same curled lip, the same, the same!  I had to keep hold of myself.  I had to remind myself that Freeman was on his way.  That an empire was being constructed and you didn’t build something like that in a day.  It took time.  But the wheels were in motion.

I wondered if he dared to come home the next day, after all of that, but he did.  Kay spotted him from the lounge window, late on Saturday afternoon.  She watched him through the net curtains, as if in a dream.  Her shoulders loose and lolling, a yellow duster dangling from one hand, a cleaning spray clutched in the other.  I was lying on the sofa, catching up on some wrestling from the night before.  I felt dark.  I’d had a headache all day, and still, my balls throbbed.   I watched Kay yawn and shake back her hair.  Then she clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Look at him, scuffing along. Why doesn’t he just ride the bloody bike?  He must feel left out of all his friends!”

I snorted laughter behind her. “Kay, that boy takes the piss out of you on a daily basis.  He does ride the bike, I’ve seen him.  He just pretends he doesn’t to get at you.”

She shook her head again and sighed. “The lies that come out of his mouth…”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I complained, shifting with a wince on the sofa. “I’ve had no joy getting him to do his chores lately either. His room will have rats in it soon.”

“I’ve got to get him to do something about his hair!”  She lifted the net then, shook her head at him and squirted the spray at the glass.  “He can’t even see where he’s going Lee.”

“He doesn’t brush it, doesn’t wash it,” I added, rolling my eyes. “I’m surprised they let him in school looking like that. Oh that reminds me, you had a call from them.”

She spun around then, mouth open. “What about?”

I shifted again, narrowing my eyes as I heard the back door open and close.  “Well apparently he walked out yesterday, before the bell.  Just took himself off.”

I watched as her shoulders sank even lower. She pressed the hand with the duster to her face and grimaced behind it. “Oh god not again, do we have to go through all this again?  You’ll have to talk to him Lee. He won’t even look at me, let alone listen to me.”

“You’re not tough enough.”

She dropped the hand and leaned back against the window, crossing her arms over her waist.  “Danny can you come in here a minute please!” she called out, keeping her eyes on me.  I picked up the remote and pressed pause on the video.  He slunk in, hair all over his face, giving it the smallest of shakes so that he could peer out at us through one scowling eye.

“What?”

Kay swallowed, bracing herself. “You’re grounded.”

He crossed his arms.  Shot a look at me.  “Why?”

“You know why,” she snapped, hands going to hips now, cheeks flushing. “Did you think the school wouldn’t phone and tell us that you walked out?”

He shrugged.  “I felt ill.”

“Liar,” I barked from the sofa.  Kay looked at me.  They both did.  She was giving me the eyes, all soft and pleading, her weakness showing already.  Danny pushed his hair back with one hand and stared at me with a challenge in his eyes.  I wiped my mouth.  Sat up a bit.  Tried to work out why the fuck he wasn’t looking scared, or worried…or anything.

“Can we have this conversation without him involved?” he asked his mother while he eyes bore into mine, as if trying to tell me something.  I bristled nervously.

“Your mum wants me here,” I spoke up before she could. “You won’t listen to her or respect her, so she wants me to help. And you’re grounded.  For a week.  And your friends are not allowed over here, and you will tidy your room properly and do the chores I’ve asked you to do all week.”  I lifted my eyebrows, daring him to refuse.  I saw his mouth snap shut.  His eyes widened at me, and he drew breath in through his nostrils to puff out his chest.

“You haven’t asked me to do any chores, you liar,” he said to me. “All you do is pick on me and criticize.  See mum?  It’s him, not me!”

I pulled up my legs and lowered them to the floor.  If Kay had not been there I would have ground his sneering little face into the carpet.  She put down the cloth and the spray and held out her hands, looking from me to him. “Come on you two, calm down,” she said. “Danny, you need to listen to Lee and…”

“You need to listen to me,” he snapped, talking over her. “You need to open your eyes!  Look, time it, give it five minutes and count how many times he is a prick to me for no reason. You just don’t pay attention!”

“You snivelling little git,” I heard myself complaining as I shifted to face him properly.  There he was.  Five foot nothing of skanky haired arrogance.  He was stood like a little rigid bull ready to charge.  I’d held a knife to his skinny neck and he was facing me like I was nothing, like I was no one.  His face lit up in satisfaction.

“One!” he shouted at his mother.  I felt my headache looming, rearing back to life behind my eyes and in my temples.  And every time I moved, my testicles would nudge me with dull, lingering pain.  I felt it.  I felt it jarring through my crotch.  The school shoe hammering up into my privates, smashing them.

“Shut up and go to your room,” I told him, shaking my head, warning him.  “Get up there and tidy it instead of standing her arguing with us! It’s not so hard, is it?  Doing what you’re told?” My voice had climbed louder. Kay lifted her hands once again and sort of waved them at us.

“Two!” he shouted again, his eyes gleaming with a triumph I could not fathom. “Anything else?”

“You cheeky little shit!” I roared, half up. “Do as you’re told and get to your room!”

“Three,” he announced, shooting a brief smile at Kay. “Called me a shit.”

“Little bastard, go on get up there!” I gestured violently with one hand, urging him away.  Inside me my blood was boiling and thick and rushing to my brain.  I stood up with the remote control clenched in one hand.  “Do as you are told! Now!”

“Four.”

“Danny,” his mother pleaded then, rubbing at her mouth with one anxious flapping hand. “Enough now, just go up, please, go on.”

He didn’t say anything.  He just smiled at me, goading me, looking cock sure and full of himself.  Slam.  I felt that foot thundering into my balls, causing an explosion of pain that made me feel sick.  I felt sick now.  My head pounded at him.  I shook my head once. Pointed my finger. “Go up.  Now.  When are you going to get it through your thick head, that none of this childish shit is gonna’ split me and her up?  Eh?  That’s what this is all about isn’t it?  Day in, day out, doing whatever you can to come between us.”

“Five,” he said.

“What the fuck?  What are you going on about?”

“Danny stop it,” Kay begged, both hands at her mouth now.

“Look what you’re doing to your mother, and you don’t even care do you? You’re the most spoilt, selfish boy I’ve ever met!”  He stared back at me, fearlessly. There was something coming from his eyes then.  They burned with it, something reckless and dangerous, something that told me this was all starting to escalate out of my control. His eyes were big and round and electric blue, and his body faced mine, standing his ground, standing tall.  I felt a sharp pain clawing behind my eyes.  I squeezed them shut, trying to block it out.

“Six,” he announced calmly, smoothly.  My eyes shot open.  I looked at Kay.

“Will you stop him?” I begged her, holding my head. “I don’t feel well baby, and this is all he ever does!  Throws tantrums and winds me up!  Please baby, just get him away from me, he’s getting on my last nerve.”

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” he stated quietly.  Yes he was, and he knew he was.  He knew exactly what he was doing, and it was just another vicious attempt to ruin things between me and Kay.  As usual she appeared frozen and distraught.

“You know what you are doing!” I roared at him, the words spewing from my mouth before I had the chance to contain them.  “You’re doing what you always do when she’s at work!  Being rude and arrogant, winding me up!  Trying to get rid of me!”

“Six,” the little shit declared, really smiling now, as he looked at his mother and nodded in satisfaction.  I lost it then.  One minute the remote control was clutched so tightly in my hand that my knuckles ached, and the next it was spinning through the air towards his head. He ducked, and it smashed against the wall. “Seven!” he yelled, and ran.

“You better run!” I bellowed after him, sinking in urgency back onto the sofa.  My head was a horrible mess of pain and banging.  Kay said nothing.  I watched her move to the wall, and bend down to pick up the control.  She straightened up and looked at it in her hands.  The plastic black casing had split all down one side, and the battery compartment was hanging off.  The phone was ringing in the hallway but she made no move to answer it.  She just stared down at the broken remote.  “Honey, he drove me to it,” I said then, and she blinked and looked at me. “My head, it’s a migraine or something,” I told her pleadingly. “I just need to lie down.  I’m sorry honey, he pushed me too far. You’ve no idea how awful he’s been lately.  Aren’t you going to answer the phone Kay?”  She shook her head slightly and placed the control on the arm of the sofa. “Baby?  The phone?”

“Oh yes, right.  God.”  She stalked out into the hall and I sank back into the sofa.  Jesus Christ, I thought, fucking unbelievable.  Winding me up like that.  I glanced nervously at the broken control and chewed at my thumb nail.  I could hear her murmuring softly in the hallway.  I wasn’t throwing it at him, I would tell her when she came back.  I was aiming at the wall, and I just wanted to shut him up, make him go away, leave me alone…

She came back in then and her face was pale.  She frowned at me and her eyes were confused. “It’s my mother,” she said. “She’s had a bad fall.  She’s in the hospital.”

39

 

 

            I was smiling as I turned the corner, and I smiled even more when I spotted Anthony sat on his front step, polishing his shoes.  I sauntered over to him, my shoulders beginning to shake with a daring chuckle, my head full of the flying remote control and the kick to the balls.  He looked up when he saw me coming, and squinted in the sun.  I liked the way he was sat out there like that, with the front door wide open, and all the curtains pulled back.  It was funny really, how the place seemed more of a home when Mrs Anderson was not in it.  We could go around to the front door, avoiding the debris of the alley way, and Anthony was always there, exerting this forceful kind of calm, and authority.  I thought Michael was lucky, having a brother like that.  A proper brother.  “You just missed Mike,” he called out to me as I approached. “Made him take some videos back for me.”

I stopped in front of him and found my pockets with my hands. “Was just looking for somewhere to kill some time,” I shrugged at him.

“He’ll be back in a minute. Are you guys camping out again tonight?”

“Was just about to ask my mum,” I said, gazing back over my shoulder.  “Oh well.  Fuck it.”

“Why are you still in your school clothes?” he grinned at me.  I looked down at myself, and laughed.

“Oh yeah!” I glanced back again, not relishing the idea of going back. “D’you think Mike would lend me some of his? I can’t face going back there again.”

“Course he will. Here, have a seat.” Anthony shifted along so that I could sit down next to him on the step.  He paused in his polishing, his eyes on me. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Mike doesn’t seem to think so.  What about that fucker over there?  He leaving you alone like I asked him to?”  His eyes held mine, and I hesitated, my mind retracing steps to the hand twisting in my hair, and the knife on my neck.  Then I reminded myself of the kick to his nuts, and of the remote hitting the wall instead of me, and the look of horror on my mothers face.  I nodded at Anthony.

“Yeah, I think he got the message.”

“Well,” he said with a sigh. “I suppose that’s good enough.”

That night, the four of us reconvened at the base, with sleeping bags and blankets rolled up under our arms.  We had all told our parents we were sleeping at Billy’s and he had told his he was staying at Michaels.  “Looks like I’ve got myself a job,” Jake was complaining, once we were all settled.  We had built a campfire, and were sat around it perched on logs and wrapped in blankets.  It felt like the night, and the good mood would last forever.  Like there was no coming back down from this moment, from togetherness and laughter and peace.  We groaned collectively in response to Jake’s announcement.

“The café?” Michael laughed, as he rolled a joint on the lid of his tin.  He was becoming pretty deft at it now, and concentrated like hell on every single one he constructed, declaring each to be better than the last. Jake rolled his eyes and nodded.

“Just don’t turn up!” Billy advised, jabbing at the fire with a long stick.  “You don’t want to work there mate. Imagine all the tossers from school coming in, you’ll have to serve them, and they’ll all take the piss out of you!”

“I know, I know,” said Jake, rolling a fist into his tired eyes. “I can’t do anything about it. He’s obsessed with me having a job.”

“Well at least you’ll have your own money,” I pointed out.

“Yeah and no fucking time to spend it in!” laughed Billy.  “Oh fuck it up mate, you’re gonna’ have to.  Turn up late.  Or stoned!  Steal from them!”

I had a smile on my face for all of them. I thought about how great last night had been at Billy’s, all of us together, almost every minute spent rolling around with endless belly aching laughter.  And now here we were, bundled in blankets while the dark skies cloaked us in a solitude that felt intimate, and safe.  I felt like I did not have a care in the world, and although that was a lie, I let myself go along with it, because it felt so good.  When Michael passed the joint my way, I took it, whispered a thank you and dragged on it hungrily.  The sweet smoke rushed into my lungs, sending an instant seep of calm through my bones.  “I love your brother Mike,” I told him, as I grinned up at the black, scarred skies.

“He’s the best,” agreed Billy, as Jake nodded sleepily.

“I know it,” said Michael. “Oh that reminds me. Here you go.” He dug into his pocket and hurled something at me. “For you.  In case you need it.”

I picked the folded pen knife up from my stomach and turned it over wonderingly in my hands.  “Oh my god Mike, this is a cool knife!”

“Courtesy of Anthony,” he told me proudly.  I held it in my hand for a moment longer, enjoying the cold weight of it against my skin.  Then I tucked it down into the pocket of the jeans I had borrowed.  It felt like a comfort, and a friend, sitting there.

“I might not need it so bad anyway,” I told them all then.  “Things are looking up.”

Billy suddenly jerked into a sitting position and starting waving his hands about in the air.  His mouth was stuffed tight with pink marshmallows, and he was faced with the option of eating them quickly, or spitting them out.  “He’s having a fit or something!” Jake burst out, slapping his own knee in amusement.  We all fell about laughing then, as Billy continued to wave his hands about, whilst munching as fast as he could on his mouthful of marshmallows.  We were wiping tears from our eyes by the time he finally swallowed the last lump, and took a massive breath. “Shit guys! I totally forgot! Got something really important to tell you!”

“Whoa hang on, hang on,” said Michael, holding one hand up at Billy while he nodded at me. “Danny was gonna’ say something first.”

Billy groaned and looked like he was going to wet himself if he had to hold it in much longer, but he accepted the joint from Jake and waited his turn.  I pulled my legs up and wrapped my arms around them.  I felt all of their eyes turn on me.  “Well,” I said slowly. “Just about Howard, that’s all.  He’s probably still losing the plot right now, I mean. I wound him up a bit in front of my mum, ‘cause I just wanted her to see what an arsehole he really is, and he totally fell for it. Lost it and threw the remote at me!  Right in front of her!”

“Oh my god really?” cried Jake.  Michael shook his head at me darkly.

“Fucking bastard.”

“Yeah but now she sees him,” I enthused, looking around at them all. “Now she sees what he’s really like!”

“She’ll kick him out for sure,” Jake was nodding in certainty. “No way can he go round doing things like that.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Nah I doubt she’ll throw him out…not yet anyway. She’s in too deep. She swallows all the shit he feeds her.  But it’s a start, and I feel better anyway, and the other thing, you know yesterday when I was in the base?” They all nodded back at me, eyes wide and expectant and excited. “Well I’d just run from home. You know why? ‘Cause he started picking on me so I kicked him in the balls!”

“Noooooooo!” Billy screamed at me from across the fire, slapping his hands to the sides of his face, his jaw falling open, while Jake clapped his hands together and hooted with laughter.

“No way!  Nice one Danny!”

Michael had scrambled onto his knees. He reached for me and pounded me on my back with sheer delight and energy, his brown eyes shining with pleasure. “Danny you legend that is shit hot! You should have told us yesterday!  That’s the best thing I ever heard!  Did you get him really good?  This is great news mate, great news. That smug bastard is going down.”

“I got him real good,” I looked back at him and grinned.  I couldn’t take my eyes off their faces then, any of them.  They were all fired up, on my behalf, slapping hands with each other and punching fists at the air.  “Pounded those nuts,” I went on. “Next time I’ll fucking stamp on them!”

“Brilliant,” Jake said. “Love it. He’ll be on his way out for sure mate. His bags will be fucking packed by now.”

“Well whatever happens I bet you feel taller eh?” Michael asked, smiling warmly at me. “Well done mate, wait til I tell Anthony!  You fucking showed him!”

“You kicked him in the balls!” Billy squealed, erupting into helpless giggles all over again.  “Little old you!  The fucking size of him!”

“Hey come on,” Michael said to him. “You had something to say.”

“Oh shit yeah!” Billy leaned forward and passed the joint back to Michael. “Okay okay,” he said, stifling a huge yawn. “You won’t believe this guys.  This will knock your fucking socks off!”

We all looked at each other, and that was it, we were off again, rolling around laughing, screaming.  I don’t know why it was funny, but it just was.  I kept picturing Billy with his socks off, and that was it, infectious laughter I could not contain.  My eyes were running now, and my belly ached, and the more annoyed Billy looked, the more I wanted to laugh at him.  “Come on now,” he urged us finally. “This is serious!  This is actually very serious, and it’s about Howard Danny, so shut the fuck up laughing.”

“Go on,” said Michael, nudging me. “Spit it out.”

I was off again then, fuck knows why.  I had to curl up into a ball with my forehead against the ground and screech my laughter into the earth.  Billy threw a pine cone at me, and Michael prodded me with one foot.  I couldn’t help it.  Maybe I was losing the plot myself, who knows?  Maybe laughter was the way it started; going insane, losing your mind.  I felt so weak with it, I had to roll onto my back and press my hands over my mouth.  I couldn’t look at any of them.  It was that bad.  If I had made eye contact with any of them I would have been screaming again.  So I held onto my mouth, choked on giggles and listened.

“Well first thing is,” I heard Billy saying. “Steve don’t work there anymore. Came over last night and said it.  He got let go.”

“Why?” asked Jake.  Michael was silent, and watching.  I could feel his mood darkening quickly, and I imagined his face straightening right out, those powerful eyes beginning to scowl under his hair.  I thought about that and tried not to react to Billy’s news.  It was horrible though.  The bad feeling spreading through my guts.  I didn’t have to press down my giggles any more then.  I just wanted Billy to shut up.

“Officially Howard told him he’s got too many staff with the refit going on, so he’s letting some go, but Steve reckons that’s bullshit. Obviously Howard’s found out he dates my sister, and so he got rid of him.  Makes sense.”

“Shame for Steve,” remarked Jake.

“Nah,” said Billy. “He’s off to uni somewhere soon anyway, he wasn’t arsed about the job really. Said he hated working for that guy anyway.  But anyway, listen, that’s not the whole thing, that’s not all of it.  Last night, Steve is clearing out his locker in the staff room, when he heard Howard and Phillips having this argument next door. The staff room is right next door to their office, apparently. Anyway the door is shut, but Steve is all alone, so he presses up to the wall and he can listen in.  Phillips sounds totally out of it, he reckoned. Shouting and swearing, banging into stuff, really pissed up.  And Howard is just laughing at him.  Not in a nice way.” Billy paused then, and I got the feeling he was waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say.  I sat up though, slowly and stiffly, hating the way their eyes were all on mine in this dark and expectant way.  Truth was, I just didn’t want to hear or know this kind of stuff.  Billy took a breath and went on.  “Anyway Phillips is shouting, accusing Howard of fiddling the books and stealing from him! Then he hears Howard laughing, and he says no one would believe a washed up old drunk like him anyway.” Billy’s eyes grew wide as he looked around at us, as it sunk in. “Didn’t even try to deny it guys.”

“Fuckinghell,” breathed Jake, his brow low over his eyes.  He shivered in his t-shirt and pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders.

I was nodding.  Seemed like all I could do was nod, at Billy, and at Mike as he stared at me questioningly. “Shit Billy, Steve was lucky they didn’t catch him,” he said. His eyes were intense with excitement and fear.

“He was too nervous to listen to any more, so he left,” Billy shrugged. They all looked at me then, indicating it was my turn to speak, to comment.  I tried to force some fuck it kind of smile, but the information seemed to clog and choke my insides, and my face felt too rigid and frozen to move.  There was terror, clawing at me from within, trying to scrape its way free, and all I wanted them to do was change the subject, talk about something mundane or stupid or boring or funny. I looked down at the ground in a trembling silence and I wanted Billy never to have brought it up.  It didn’t feel useful for me to hear what a twisted bastard Howard was.  I knew that already.  I didn’t want to know about any of it.  I gave a half shrug to satisfy them.

“Makes sense,” I muttered. “He wants that place all to himself I bet.  Phillips will be gone in no time.” I picked up a stick and poked at the ground with it.

“But we know now!” Billy seemed excited to point out. He looked around at us desperately. “You know, it’s information!  We can blackmail him or whatever! We can stop him!”

“Dunno how realistic that is Bill,” said Michael, with a slight smile. “Don’t think anyone would listen to us lot, you know.”

I nodded and laughed a little. “Yep.”

“But it is useful, right?” Michael looked at me hopefully.  “One way or another?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged back.

“Well next time you kick him in the balls you can tell him you know what a thieving stinking bastard he is!” Billy yelled, dissolving into giggles once again.  Jake started to shake with laughter beside him.

“I can’t get that image out of my head. It must’ve felt so good.”

“Well anyway, maybe your mum would’ve seen sense by now and chucked him out, hey?” Michael picked up a fir cone and hurled it at Jake. “Stop dicking around, you’re letting the fire go out!”

I was relieved.  Michael had ended the conversation, and I listened to it stumble onto other things.  School, girls, music.  I let the information churn around in my head for a while, because there was nothing else to do with it.  Eventually it got tired and fell down asleep, and so did I.  I fell asleep long before they all did, my body too full of drink and pot and everything else, to stay awake any longer.

I woke up in the morning with The Smiths singing in my ears.  Was a nice but kind of sad thing to wake up to.  This bright blue sky, streaked with stretches of cloud, and the pleading tones of Morrisey strumming through my mind as I stared up at it all. Haven’t had a dream in a long time, see the life I’ve had would make a good man bad, so for once in my life, let me get what I want, Lord knows it would be the first time. I sung along for a bit, my arms folded behind my head, my lips moving silently to the music.  One by one, I watched the others struggle into consciousness, stretch out their limbs and brush the night from their eyes.  Jake was in a hurry.  He had to start work, and ran around yawning and raking his long fingers through his tousled hair.  We laughed at him when he left.  Well Michael and Billy called things out to him, which I could not hear, because I kept my headphones on.  I stayed where I was, on the ground, rolled in a blanket.  I didn’t want to go anywhere ever.

Mike kicked me when they were leaving.  I pulled my earphones off. “Eh what?”

“Going back to mine for breakfast and movies, come on.”

“I’m staying here,” I told him, though I had no idea why, I just knew that I was.  They laughed at me and cycled off together.  I closed my eyes.  It was just me and the music, I thought.    I stayed like that for ages, listening to song after song.  Sometimes I kept my eyes shut, and I could have been anywhere I suppose, floating in the middle of the ocean, or drifting through the sky on a cloud, or on the moon.  I could have been anyone.  Sometimes I opened my eyes and stared at the sky.  I watched the clouds moving past.  The world was turning beneath me, I thought.  I was watching time pass.  I felt relaxed, and yet uneasy at the same time.  I would have been okay if I could have stayed there forever, I suppose.  In that moment, left alone, and at peace.  It was the knowing that time would push me on and shove me over, that I would have to get to my feet and place one foot in front of the other, it was this knowledge that gave me a tight feeling in my chest.

I got up then, because it was depressing me.  I wanted to enjoy nice things, I wanted to soak up the beauty whenever I saw it, the music and the sky and the woods all around me, the solitude, all of it, but I couldn’t do it.  I got up because I would have to eventually anyway, so why put it off?  I mooched around the campfire, delaying leaving.  I sat on a log and poked at the remains of the fire.  My mixtape rolled onto my current favourite Nirvana song which was Lithium.   I turned it up loud and grinned to myself and sung along loudly because no one was there to hear me; I’m so happy, ‘cause today I found my friends, they’re in my head!  I’m so ugly, that’s okay ‘cause so are you!  We’ve broke our mirrors.  Sunday morning is every day for all I care…light my candles, in a daze ‘cause I found god!  It was supposed to make me feel better, listening to that, and singing loudly.  I tried to jolly a good feeling along for a while, but then I gave up and thought fuck it, it’s not happening.

I remembered Lucy and used my new knife to carve a heart into the log I was sat on.  I wondered if she hated me now.  I thought about apologizing to her for yelling in her face like that. I thought about going over to her place, but I knew I would not be welcome there now, and her dad would more than likely slam the door on me.  I recalled how I had shouted at her, at gentle, sweet Lucy and hot shame touched my cheeks.  I got out my last roll up and smoked it sat on the ground, with my back against the log.  What a prick, I thought dejectedly, and puffed the smoke viciously up into the air.  With each puff I watched the dancing curls of smoke twist and leap up into the atmosphere.  I tried to keep my eyes on them for as long as I could, and I thought how fragile they looked, rising higher and higher, dispersing until they had all disappeared.

I hung about for a few more minutes, using a stick to write my name in the dirt, while my stomach growled and groaned in hunger.  Finally, I stuck my hands in my pockets and started home, my head down, my shoulders slouched.  I realized that the trouble with good nights like that, the trouble with fun times, was that they couldn’t last forever, or even very long at all.  You were on a high, that you had to come down from at some point.  You tried to avoid it, or delay it, but it got you in the end.  You got dragged back down, and then you had to just kick along with everyone else until something good happened again.

I passed Michael’s house and almost considered going in to join him and Billy, but I suppose the curiosity got the better of me.  I walked quickly around the corner, pulled my headphones down and then sort of snuck up on my house, ready to take flight at any moment should I need to.  What I found was worrying and strange.  My mothers’ car had gone.  I couldn’t think where she would have gone at that time on a Sunday, as she never ever worked a Sunday.  His car was still there, and parked on the street, right outside our house was a solitary police car.  My guts crawled right up to my throat and I started backing off right away.  There was no fucking way I was going back in that house without my mother there, and the police?  What the fuck?

I found the knife in my back pocket and curled my hand around it briefly, as I scurried away towards Somerley road, not even thinking about where to go.  That was when I discovered the handful of change Michael had left in the back pocket of his jeans, and I decided to go and have a milkshake and decide what to do.  I paid for a chocolate shake and took a seat at the window to drink it.  My mind swam with so many things it was difficult to hold onto any one of them.  I was simultaneously planning the apology I would give to Lucy at some point, while I wondered if I had enough change back at home to pay Mike back for the milkshake, and tried to decide how long I ought to sit there.  How long was safe? The shake was just enough to shut my grumbling belly up, and I sucked it slowly, watching the traffic roll by on Somerley road.  I pictured Jake on his first morning at the café in town, and smiled a little to myself, wondering if they would make him wear an apron, or a hair net.

I could have sat there for longer, dragging it out, as the queasy feeling in my gut got worse and worse.  But they played shit song after shit song and it got to the point where it was making me angry.  I actually considered asking to speak to the manager about it.  Play a bit of everything, I wanted to tell them. Play the shit pop songs if you want, but then play some real music too, or I’m not coming in here anymore. I didn’t though.  I crushed my drink carton and tossed it in the bin on my way out.

I walked back home slowly, my feet like lead.  I wondered what I would find there.  Part of me longed to believe what Jake had suggested; that my mother would have seen a glimpse of Howard’s true colours and asked him to leave.  It was a nice thought, but I couldn’t believe in it.  I knew how much she relied on him, you see.  He was paying for everything, for one thing.  But maybe it was a start?  Maybe she would look at him differently from now on?  And maybe it was the beginning of Howard’s mask slipping?  It had to be hard, I reasoned, keeping up a pretence like that day in day out.  As I got closer to the house I saw that the police car had gone, and the drive was empty.  My shoulders sagged in utter relief.  I laughed at myself and went around the back.

I let myself in cautiously.  Peered around the door and strained my ears for something, anything.  I crept in, closed the door behind me.  Picked up an apple from the bowl on the side and sunk my teeth into it.  I felt strange, I have to tell you.  I felt a bit like I was on a film set, and people were watching me, and everything was fake and constructed and set up.  I walked down the hallway, and pushed open the lounge door.  Nothing.  No one.  So why did I feel like one of those characters in a horror film?  Creeping around in the dark, knowing, just knowing that something bad is going to happen somewhere, some time…

I put the TV on low, flicked to MTV and sat on the sofa.  Immediately I felt the tiredness wash over me.  Sleeping on the ground had left me washed out and sore.  I’d had unsettling dreams that I could barely remember now.  I yawned, finished my apple and let my head rest back.  I would just wait here for a bit, I thought.  Wait for my mum to show up or phone.  Wait until I knew what the fuck was going on.  I thought about Billy’s information from Steve, and closed my eyes for a moment.  It was interesting, I supposed.  A bargaining tool, or a weapon, of sorts…

I woke suddenly.  I jerked up, cold spiky fear seizing my heart and squeezing the life out of it.  I forgot how to breathe for a moment.  It felt like a small bird had become trapped in my chest and was battering me there with tiny panicked wings.  The front door had opened, and there were voices in the hallway.  Howard, and another man.  I pressed mute on the TV and climbed over the back of the sofa, lowering myself down to a crouched position on the floor behind it.  I heard the lounge door creak open and held my breath. “Just checking,” Howard grunted, and the man in the hallway laughed appreciatively.  He didn’t come in.  Instead I heard footsteps head into the kitchen. “Time for a cuppa’?”

I was on my hands and knees, my fingers digging into the fibres of the carpet, my throat frozen shut in terror. “Nah better get on in a minute,” the other man replied.  He had a very low, gravelly voice, and it did not belong to anyone I knew.  When he spoke it sounded like his voice was strangled in phlegm, and he had a smokers cough.

“That was another siren,” Howard commented, and he was right.  I could hear a siren outside, wailing closer and closer.  The men laughed together in the kitchen.  I sat back on my ankles and tried to calm my breathing down.  “Let’s go upstairs,” Howard said then, sounding like the idea excited him. “We’ll be able to see it all from the back window.”

Chuckling and snorting like school kids, the two men shuffled back down the hallway and I listened to their heavy tread on the stairs.  “It’s all fucking kicking off,” Howard was saying, and I felt cold, cold all over.  Shit, I was thinking, shit, shit, shit. Fucking shit, what the hell was going on?  I heard another siren and wanted to press my hands over my ears.  I heard them coming back down again, and realized my mistake.  I should have ducked out of the house while they were up there.  “Better get you the keys then,” Howard was saying.  There was a jangle in the hallway as he took some keys down from the hook next to the door. “There you are mate.”

“Right-o.  Nice one.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve got a lot to move?”

“Nah, not a lot no.  Just the stuff my old mum left me.  This couldn’t have come at a better time for me Lee.  Her place is on the market now.”

“Won’t take long to sell. People always looking for bolt holes in London. What’ll you do with the money?”

“Was thinking I might invest in a really good nightclub.”

Brash, abrasive laughter followed.  Laughter which set the strange man off coughing again.  I decided to move.  I crawled from the sofa to behind the lounge door.  I was going to make my move the next chance I got, and I knew I would have to be fast.  I heard cigarettes being lit, and could smell the smoke filling the hallway. “Come down later,” Howard said. “Just a lick of paint here and then, and we’re all done.  You’re gonna’ fucking love it.”

“Can’t wait.  Looking forward to it mate.”

Howard responded with a hearty chortle. “Knew you’d be up for it.”

“You know me too well Lee.” The man coughed again, and it sounded like if he went on much longer he would chuck up a lung.  He settled himself and cleared his throat. “I take it you got links around here?”

“Came with the club.  Might need yours as well though.”

Behind the door, my head was racing.  Links?  What links?  What the hell did that mean?  I covered my mouth with one hand.   I was shaking a stupid amount.  From my head down to my toes.  I wondered if I would be able to run properly in that state.

“Not a problem,” the other guy replied, and I heard the front door open up. “Better get off then.  Been a long day already.”

Howard laughed out loud and the sound of it grated in my head, making me wince behind my hand.  “I appreciate it,” he said. “Things were getting out of hand.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.  But anyway, I owe you enough favours my friend, so don’t mention it.”

“Good man.  See you later.”

The front door closed and I used the wall to pull myself back to my feet.  I heard Howard in the kitchen.  I pressed myself against the wall and realized that I was trapped.