36

 

            I waited for him after school.  I parked the car around the corner so he would not know I was in.  I sat patiently at the kitchen table and drank my tea.  The clock on the wall told me I had ten minutes until he rolled through the back door.  I smiled to myself.  I thought about what I had to say to him.  I thought about grabbing his face and squeezing it until his eyes popped out.  Then I told myself to calm down, to rein it in and take it slow.  So I nodded, and sipped my tea and took deep, slow breaths, in and out, in and out.  It wasn’t exactly that I had a bad temper.  I wasn’t one of those people that went beserk and lost the plot.  I wasn’t like that, because I felt positive most of the time.  I dreamed big, and I stood tall.  That was fine.  That was good.  I didn’t like things going wrong.  I didn’t like disorder and chaos, or things that fell out of line.

Time ticked by.  He was late.  I finished my tea and stretched out my legs beneath the table.  I picked up the pack of Benson and Hedges and pulled out a cigarette.  I didn’t have long.  If he didn’t come home soon, there would not be much time before Kay got back in, and I needed to be down the club early as well.  Damn it, I thought.

I lit the cigarette, chucked the lighter onto the table and glowered around at the small room.  It wasn’t enough for me, that much was certain.  Poky little council house.  Paying someone else’s mortgage.  When things had moved forward a bit more, we would buy them out, or better still, buy a bigger place.  There was not much you could do with a little council house.  I had already repainted all of the rooms and bought odd bits of furniture to smarten the place up, but a terraced council house was what it was, and served the function it was supposed to serve.  It housed poor people.  The humble, and the meek.  The lazy and the ignorant.  I only had to look around me.  Look at the neighbours!  Fat greasy alcoholic bitch next door, never once drew back her curtains, and let her scuzzy cats crap in our garden every fucking day.  Next door to her, single mum and three screaming brats.  Awful.  She was rake thin and chain smoked while the brats ran riot in the close.  She wore tight jeans and cropped tops, and her stringy hair was always scraped up high on top of her pointy head.  Horrible.  Next door to her, the old couple with the manky German Shepherd.  All you could hear was coughing when you walked past their place.  All you could smell was gravy.

That was the trouble with estates I thought, grimacing to myself.  They were hopeless places.  Full of kids on bikes, roaming dogs, and washing lines full of pants.  Men in green overalls tinkering with cars and smoking roll ups.  The stench of roast dinners wafting across the back gardens on a Sunday.  People who thought they were going places because they had moved up from a flat, to a two up two down house.  People with no ambition, the work shy and the pathetic.  You saw them everywhere.  It made me sick.  Kay and I, we were better than all this, I thought.  I could see us on the other side, over on Cedar View Hill, one of those roads.  Sea views and driveways like streets.

I finished my cigarette and glanced at the clock on the wall.  I shook my head, got up and put the kettle back on.  I shoved my hands into my pockets, and felt them pulsing there with energy.  I pulled one back out and scratched my neck and thought about strangling his.  I made my tea and sat back down.  I strained my ears for the sound of footsteps on the drive.  He wouldn’t ride the bike of course.  Ungrateful arrogant little shit stain.  I had time to consider what was happening.

I thought about Pippy then.  Ha, Pippy.  I smiled to myself and rocked the chair back on its legs.  I’d felt bad about Pippy, but then, I was just a little kid really.  You feel a lot of doubt and guilt when you are just a kid.  I didn’t feel guilt about my brother Dennis, obviously.  No way.  But Pippy, well, he was my mums you see.  She was a stern woman, my mother, still was.  They used to say that she didn’t suffer fools gladly.  As a child, I had no idea what that meant, but I gathered it had something to do with the haughty look that remained on her face at all times, and the way she glared at people she did not approve of, like the postman who whistled too loud, and the lady next door who showed off too much cleavage.  My mother had a way of looking people up and down and sniffing when they spoke to her.  They didn’t always notice.  Some people are fucking thick skinned you know.  I used to notice though, when I was playing on the floor behind her.  No one was really good enough, no one was as good as us, and it was something she would often remark on.

She was a stern woman, yes.  Stern and firm, and didn’t believe in frivolity or nonsense of any kind.  The only thing she softened at slightly, was Pippy, her dog.  She got him before I was born, so he was pretty old and arthritic by the time I was old enough to really consider him.  He was a Pekingese dog, with this flat little face and these black, bulging eyes.  Pippy loved my mother and curled up on her lap whenever she sat down in the evening to do her knitting.  She used to say he was a good judge of character.  Well maybe he was, or maybe he wasn’t, but in his old age, Pippy got to be a bit of a grumpy bastard.  That was how I saw him anyway.  Grumpy, snappy little bastard.

I was afraid of him for a while.  He would snap at you if you tried to pet him.  In his old age he took to crapping in the hallway whenever he felt like it.  One day I was pushing toy cars up and down the hall and he strutted along on his short little legs and squatted over one of my cars.   I remember my mouth falling open as I watched the steaming brown shit curl slowly out of his arsehole and onto my car.  I remember what I wanted to do.  I wanted to take that car and ram it right up his fucking arsehole because that would teach him a lesson.  Instead, outrage and offended, I jumped to my feet, rushed up to him and cuffed him over the head.  He snarled at me, his horrible little black lips rising up over his rotting little teeth.  I remember thinking, how dare you?  You take a shit on my car and you snap at me?  I remember gasping at him, in pure disbelief and horror.  He should have been ashamed!  He should have scuttled off with his thick plumy tail stuffed right between his legs.  But no, not Pippy.  Pippy thought he had every right in the world to shit on my toys.  And now he was growling at me and would probably bite me if he got the chance.  So I kicked him.  I kicked him hard, and I suppose I had gotten pretty big for my age by then, as the kick sent him flying right into the door.  I know I felt scared then.  He sort of crumpled.  He was dazed.  I looked around but we were all alone.  He wasn’t snapping at me now.  So I walked up and smacked him over the head again.  I smacked his little rounded head so hard that my hand smarted in bed that night.   I smacked him again and again to teach him a lesson.

Pippy was never the same after that.  My mother used to say he had gone down hill.  He would walk in circles instead of in straight lines.  He forgot how to climb the stairs.  He took to crapping inside constantly until my father could bear it no longer.  He carried him off to be put to sleep when my mother was at her friends house one day.  I remember her words when she returned, when my father told her what he had done with Pippy.  “Well that’s the end of that then,” she had said.  And it was.

I was going to think about Dennis for a while, but I made the mistake of looking at the clock again.  I shook my head in anger.  Fucking damn it.  He still wasn’t back and Kay would be home any moment.  I picked up my second cup of tea and hurled it at the wall.

37

 

 

            Well it all went to shit didn’t it?  Of course.  Like everything always fucking does.  I sometimes think it works that way, you know.  Some people sail through life, they glide through it, they bump around a bit, but it’s never too stormy, never too bad.  And some people, it’s like the tide is turning against them the whole fucking time you know?  That was how I felt anyway.  That was exactly how I felt when Mrs. Baker told me I was not allowed to join the school paper.  I felt a rush of things; a rush of disbelief, of hurt, of wanting to cry, of wanting to scream and stamp my foot, and then this one solid feeling settled over me, and I closed my mouth and just glared at her.  I felt defeated.  She was mortified, or course.  You could see it in her eyes, because she could barely look at me, and her cheeks were red, and she kept wringing her hands just like my mother did when Howard was not around.  She looked a bit like she might cry at one point.  “It’s not forever,” she kept insisting as I glowered in front of her. “No one is saying you can never join the paper Danny.  It’s just it appears there’s been some trouble, with the police?  And the thing is, the board of parent governors feel strongly that students in years ten and eleven really ought to be setting a good example to the younger members of the school.” I just stared at her.  Waited for more.  Waited for her to turn the knife she had just shoved into my back.  “It’s just, it’s just,” she said, floundering now.  “They can’t be seen to endorse that kind of thing.  Like I said Danny, no one is saying you can never join, there will be other opportunities and please don’t stop writing and sharing your work with me!”

I shook my head at her.  My body felt small and hard with knots of rage.  I lifted my lip in a snarl and turned for the door. “Fuck it,” I told her.  “Shove it up your arse!”

It was Friday.  There was double maths to endure before the final bell rung.  Not for me though.  I was going home.  With my folder, with my potential clutched under one arm, I stormed from the library, along the corridor, with the double doors at the end in sight.  I heard a voice call out to me in concern, but I did not react until I felt her hand claw at my arm.  It was Lucy.  She was waiting outside her classroom with Zoe, who was chewing gum and looking bored.  I couldn’t help it, but I felt my anger deepen at the sight of her.  She looked so fresh faced, so pretty and wholesome and new and clean, and everything I was obviously not, and then I remembered that her dad was on the parents governors board and so was Eddie Higgs. “What’s wrong?” she was asking me, her brow creased in concern, her hand soft around my arm.  I pulled free and she immediately shrunk back into the wall.

“Tell your dad thanks a lot!” I growled at her.

“What?  Why?”

“Because he’s on that governors board of shitty little arseholes with Higgs dad, isn’t he?  And they don’t want the likes of me on their school paper, that’s why!”

She could only stare back at me, hurt and not understanding.  Zoe looked unimpressed and stepped to her side, slipping her arm through Lucys in a protective gesture.  “I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head at me.

“Ask your dad Lucy,” I told her, looking away and stamping my foot in impatience with everything.  “Oh fuck it.”  I looked back at them and shrugged. “What’s the fucking point anyway?  Just forget it.”  I turned and stormed away.  I kept going.  Through the doors, across the playground and out of the gate, leaving them all behind.  No one saw me.  No one stopped me.  Who would know?  Who would care?

I stuffed my folder into my bag in a careless, hurried anger, and kicked along, hands in pockets, eyes down.  I told myself I didn’t really want to be on the stupid paper.  It was probably just run by stuck up snobs and pricks like Higgs anyway.  I crossed Somerley road and headed to McDonalds for a milkshake.  I paid for a chocolate shake and started to walk home. “Your stuff is really good,” Mrs. Baker had called after me.  Like what the fuck did that matter if they didn’t want to know?  I sucked on the straw and realized that was what it all came down to.  They thought I would be a bad influence on the other kids.  Fantastic.  As I headed home, I tried desperately to shake it all off, the unfairness of it all, the awful undeniable truth that they just didn’t want me there.  I remembered Lucy then, and my stomach sank, and my heart ached, as I saw the hurt on her face when I had laid into her. It made a sick feeling spread throughout my body.  I would have to apologize to her when I got the chance.  It was not her fault her dad hated me.

It looked like I had the house to myself, so I grabbed a packet of crisps and a kit-kat and took them up to my room.  I pressed play on the stereo and nodded to myself when the music kicked in.  Don had taped me a load of Bob Dylan and I was slowly but surely falling in love.  I scribbled down the lyrics whenever I could.  I couldn’t resist.  When you sit and hear words that lovely, words put together in the most beautiful and meaningful way, with melodies and guitars that set your heart beating, you just want to hold onto them somehow.  I saw lyrics like moments, gone too fast, fleeting.  I tried to hold onto them by writing them down.  O where have you been my blue eyed son?  And where have you been my darling young one?  I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways, I’ve stepped in the seven sad forests, I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans… I was shaking my head, just stood at my desk, wondering why he wrote about twelve mountains, and six highways, why were the numbers important?  Why was the forest sad, and the oceans dead?

I was thinking about all this, to take my mind off the school newspaper, and Lucy, and I had turned it up loud, so I didn’t hear his car slide into the driveway and I didn’t hear his heavy footsteps as they tore up the stairs towards me.  All I became aware of was the sudden emergence of him, the monster, bursting into my room, slamming the door back into the wall, his red face bursting with violent desire, his small eyes gleaming with it.  He was in my room and stealing up all of the air.  “Hello Danny!” he cried out at me, sounding nothing less than delighted with himself.  He grabbed me by my hair, twisted it around his fist and slammed me back into the wall next to the door.  “What’re the chances eh?” he sneered into my face.  “I was driving down the road and spotted you!  Coming out of McDonalds!  Fancy that eh?  Got let out of school early did you?  Or are you just a skiving little shitbag?”

I swiped at his hand, I dug my nails into his skin and raked them up to his wrist. “Get off me! I’ll kill you!”

“Oh yeah, about that!” He pulled me from the wall by my hair and pushed me face down onto the bed, pressing a chunk of knee right into the base of my spine.  With one hand still tightly entwined in my hair, I felt the other searching the pockets of my school trousers.  “So where is it then?  Where is it?  Must be here somewhere, oh yeah look!  Here we are!” He tugged the small switchknife from my back pocket and released the blade.  “You shouldn’t be carrying this about with you, you little idiot,” he told me gleefully. “You’d get in real trouble with the police if they caught you going about with this!”  He brought the blade down right in front of my face.  “Gonna’ kill me, are you?” he asked me then, and his voice was soft and dangerous and husky with malice.  He pressed the cold edge of the blade against my cheek. “Gonna’ kill me are you Danny?  Gonna’ fucking kill me?” I had stopped struggling and I lay still, my eyes fixed on the tip of the knife that rested millimetres from my pupil.  I blinked and breathed and waited.  “I don’t think you are, do you?” he asked me, still in that rasping, excited voice. He pressed the blade harder into my skin.  “Are you?”

“No,” I said. “No.”

“More like I’ll be the one killing you eh?” he taunted, sliding the knife back towards my neck.  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, you know.  How I’d do it.  How I’d chop you up, and bag you up and just dump you somewhere, and no one would ever know.  I’d get away with it you see, because you’re such an irritating little shit stain who would give a shit if you just took off eh?  If you just vanished. Easily done Danny, I’m fucking telling you mate.  It would be easily  done.”  His hand tightened in my hair.  He was holding it so tight it felt like it was about to be ripped from my skull. I closed my eyes and waited.  I bit down on my tongue, my lips, everything, determined not to cry out, not to give him the satisfaction of a sound.  “But I’m not an unreasonable man,” he said, pushing his lips down right into my reddening ear.  His voice came out sluggish and thick and his breath smelled like Juicy Fruit chewing gum.  “I want to give you a chance, you see.  I want to talk to you again about how to be a good boy, like I told you, remember?  So you’re gonna’ listen to me alright? We’ve got some time together now, see. You’re gonna’ listen to me, and stop fucking around, and opening your mouth when no one wants to hear it, right?  You’re gonna’ be a good boy instead, yeah?” I had no option but to nod my head in reply. “Good,” he said.

Howard removed the blade from my neck and stuffed it into his own back pocket.  He let go off my hair, pulled me over onto my back and delivered a hard cold slap to my face.  It was so hard I felt my teeth rattling in my gums.  For a moment I thought I was going.  My vision blurred and everything went grey.  I blinked furiously, and felt the urge to just roll my eyes back into my head, to just let myself go.  “That’s better,” he was saying to me.  “That’s what we want.  Now you look at me, you look at me you little son of a bitch.”  I kept blinking, and lifted my hands to rub at my face, but he didn’t like that, so he pinned my wrists to the bed, and as my vision sorted itself out, I was face to face with him.  He was too close.  I didn’t want to look.  I turned my face away.  I didn’t want to believe in him.  “That was unbelievable the other week,” he was saying to me, his leering smirking mouth just centimetres from my cheek. “All that throwing a tantrum about the bike, threatening to kill me!  Your little loser friends threatening me too.  You want to tell them they don’t know who the fuck they’re dealing with.  That’s what you want to tell them Danny.  I let you have your fun, but playtime is over now mate.  Now I’m being deadly fucking serious with you.”

I let myself glance at him.  I saw his thin lips stretched back from his teeth, and the teeth gleaming down at me, coated with saliva.  I saw the pale piggy eyes drilling into me, and I saw what was behind them, something dark and murderous, something that longed to destroy me.  “You’re gonna’ say sorry to me now,” he told me. “Before we sit up and have our little chat.  You’re going to say sorry to me, you’re going to say you’ve finally learnt your lesson, and you’re sorry for all the shit you’ve put me through lately.  And then we’re gonna’ start over again, and this time you’re gonna’ follow the fucking rules!  Now come on, let me hear it.  Let me hear how sorry you are.”

I looked away from the vile face that hovered above mine.  I felt something hardening inside me.  Something that rose up and chased away the fear.  I saw my legs dangling off the bed between his.  I saw my only chance to fuck him over and I took it.  I lifted one leg, pulled it back and rammed my foot right into his balls as hard as I fucking could.  Howard let go of me then, and I scrambled up and away from the bed.  His hands went to his balls.  His face was white and silent and screaming.  His eyes bulged and ropey drool slipped from his lower lip.  I didn’t look at him any longer.  I ran.

I ran and ran in crazed and hysterical style, all the way to the park.  I didn’t stop running.  I ploughed through the undergrowth and the bushes until I made it to the base.  I knew the others would meet there after school because it was Friday.  I fell through the door, landed on my arse, giggling and shaking, and kicked out with one foot to close the door.  My skin still crawled with fear, and my face stung and my head throbbed with it all, but I fixed my mind on Howard’s mask of pain, and I laughed and laughed.  I dropped my head into my hands and clung to my hair.  “Oh my god, oh my fucking god,” I panted and laughed.  I closed my eyes and sat like that for ages.  My body felt wired.  All the strings pulled tight.  Then I remembered the group bottle of whiskey we kept stashed in one of the cupboards.  There was a good half left, so I unscrewed the cap and started swigging it to calm myself down.  I felt dizzy and sick from all the running and from all the fear.

The boys arrived promptly back from school and were surprised and pleased to find me there.  Jake held out his hand for the whiskey so I passed it to him. “Heard you walked out of school?” he asked. “You’re gonna’ be in so much shit!”

“Couldn’t stand it another fucking minute!” I cried up at him, grinning wildly.  I guess I was on fire with adrenaline or something, because I felt delirious with it, high as a kite on a few swigs of neat whiskey.  Michael was giving me that strange look again, the tight, nervous one.

“Are you okay?” he asked me. “Your face is all red.”

“Nothing,” I shrugged at him, glancing at the other two who were rooting through their schoolbags at the table.  I rolled my eyes at Michael letting him know now was not the time. “Shut up,” I told him with a smile.  He narrowed his eyes, and his shoulders slumped.

“Why’d you walk out then?” Billy wanted to know.

“Stupid paper,” I told him with a sigh, remembering. “They won’t let me on it, so I thought fuck the lot of you then, and went home.”

“Who won’t let you on it?” asked Michael.

“Parent governors, whoever they are.  I’m bad news!”

“That’s not fair,” frowned Jake, passing the whiskey to Billy.

“Yeah, their loss,” he agreed. “Your stuff would make that shitty rag worth reading. Hey, you should start your own underground paper or something!  Give them a run for their money!”  He passed a handful of tapes to me.

“What are these?”

“From my dad,” Billy said with a sigh. “Been trying to give them to you all day.”

Still sat on the floor where I had landed, I looked the tapes over one by one.  Two Bob Dylan albums, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, Disraeli Gears by a band called Cream, and two more mix tapes, which blew my mind to be honest. Taping albums for me was one thing.  But him actually sitting there, probably for hours, putting on records, pausing and recording the tape, writing them all down, thinking about what to put on, it just amazed me that he would do that.

“Loads of old stuff,” yawned Billy. “He’s pushing it on you ‘cause all I care about is Nirvana.  Just chuck it in the bin if you don’t like it.”

“You’re joking,” I said, shaking my head, as I stared in a daze at the tapes in my hands.  “This is amazing Bill. How can I ever thank him?”

Billy laughed at me. “Just listen to them then,” he said, as if this should be obvious. “That’s all he wants.”

I blinked hard and nodded.  A wetness had invaded my eyes.  I just felt so amazed, so touched.  I blinked again and got to my feet. “Thanks Billy, I mean, tell him thanks.  I really mean it. Make sure you tell him.”

Michael had taken a seat at the battered table and had opened up his little tin. “Got something else here to cheer you up Danny-boy,” he said.  I went to have a look.  His tin was full of the usual things; card for roaching, tobacco and cigarette papers.  But he also had a little dark green bud in there. “Popped home,” he looked at me and winked. “Anthony was feeling generous! So it’s Friday, and we’ve got booze and weed, and Jake’s got the munchies, right Jakey-boy?”

Jake dragged his bag up from the floor. “Oh yeah,” he said, and tipped it out onto the table.  We all laughed.  Three bags of fizzy sweets, a huge pack of Doritos, a large bar of Dairy Milk chocolate and a packet of marshmallows. “Borrowed from my mum,” he explained with a shrug.

We spread out and relaxed after that.  The rusty old caravan was our second home, our secret place.  We laughed, and we smoked, and we drank  and we giggled at nothing until our cheeks hurt and our bellies ached.  When it got dark we went outside and collapsed on the grass.  We all lay on our backs, sharing a final cigarette and staring up at the sky as the stars blinked to life amidst the blackness.  “I lost my knife,” I said to Michael as I passed the smoke his way.  He took it carefully between his fingers, inhaled, and then exhaled very slowly, both of us watching the grey smoke as it curled and twisted up in front of our eyes.

“I’ll get you another one,” he told me, and I nodded, understanding right away.

“Anthony?”

“Of course.  Anthony.”

35

 

 

September 1993

I never thought the day would come when I would look forward to getting back to school, but that September, I found myself staring down the days ahead with a sense of urgency to return there.  There was a mundane and solid kind of normality about school, a sturdiness within its walls that made me feel safe, as I walked through the doors, with my headphones on.  I breathed out, this massive sigh of relief, I guess.  At school there would be no need for tiptoeing around, no need for craning my head around doors before I entered rooms, no need to exist in a state of constant anxiety and fear.  I felt it drop from my shoulders as I walked through the entrance, and I hadn’t in truth realized until then, how much it had been hanging over me. I was an addict to my headphones by then.  My Walkman went everywhere with me.  Wherever I went, my music came too.  In my room, the stereo remained on, and when the lights went out I pulled on my headphones and let the voices and the lyrics sing me to sleep.  I walked into school, feeling haunted and hunted.  I’ll start this off without any words, Kurt was booming into my ears, I got so high I scratched til I bled, love myself! Better than you! I know it’s wrong, but what should I dooooooo…I’m on a plain… I kept walking, hearing nothing but the music, staring around at the place as if seeing it for the first time, feeling odd and disjointed, like I was not the same boy anymore.

I had been existing in an unforgiving state of paralysis.  I was waiting, waiting for repercussions, waiting for payback.  Some nights I would wake up in a sweaty tangle of sheets, convinced that a shadow hung over my bed, wielding a knife or a hammer.  Who would notice?  Who would care?  I would have to get up, check the lock on the door.  I could feel him waiting, you see.  I could see it in his face, in his eyes when they rolled in his face like glass stones, watching me, always watching me.  I could hear it in his voice, when it dripped with promise and menace, when it lowered to nothing more than a hush, when he promised me pain, promised me lessons.  My mother was tearful and anxious all of the time.  She was convinced I was some kind of pot head.  She looked at me as if she pitied and feared me, as if she wanted to hold me under the shower and wash me clean.  I did not speak to her, not ever.  I could barely even stand to look at her.  Howard was working longer hours, and his absence made her wring her hands and tug at her hair.  When he was home he hissed his rage through his teeth at me, and I knew that he was just waiting, that he was just refuelling his weapons.  I wondered if I ought to be doing the same.  I had Michael, and Anthony, and when I remembered this I could breathe again. But they were not there with me at night, when I saw the shadow that lingered outside my door.

I wandered into school with my folder of writing tucked nervously under my arm.  We had a special assembly that morning, just for years ten and eleven.  Mr. James took centre stage in his usual sombre manner, his hands linked at the small of his back, his chest thrust forward as he walked from one side to the other with his eyes on us all.  I sat with my legs crossed, my folder on my lap, and my eyes and ears transfixed on the big man as he stalked back and forth.  He gave the feeling that he was about to reprimand us all, wipe the floor with us even.  There was anger in those eyes, and in that walk and it fascinated me.  “I want to talk to you about potential today,” his deep voice boomed out upon us.  “What it is, what it means, who has it.  For half of you sat here, today marks the beginning of your GCSE courses.  Today marks your chance to wipe the slate clean, to start again, to show us what you can do, to try your very hardest even when things don’t come easily, to take seriously what you did not before, to decide on your goals and your aims, and how to reach them.  And for the other half of you sat here, today marks the start of your last year in this school.  Your final chance to buckle down, to do what you need to do to get the results you need, to secure the college places, the apprenticeships and the jobs I know you are hoping for.  I hope the importance of this day is not lost on any of you.  I stand here today and I look at all of you.” He stopped pacing then, stood in the centre of the stage and glared out at us. “And I can see your potential. I can see it.  You may not be able to see it at times, you may not always believe in it, but it is real ladies and gentlemen, it is real and it exists in every single one of you.  Potential.  That’s what you have.  All of you.  Every single one of you sat right there now, you have the potential to do great things, to make your dreams come true, to do anything that you want to do.”  He started stalking again then, and it felt to me like he was getting angrier.  I squirmed just a little on my arse on the hard hall floor.  I couldn’t help but feel like he was talking just to me.  That he knew about the other little trip to the police station, that he knew about drunken parties and trying pot.  I swallowed guilt.  “I want you all to think about this, to try to recognize your own potential today,” he went on.  “You have no idea how it angers and saddens me to see potential wasted.  When I come across people who had all the chances, all the possibilities, all the potential to succeed, but who for whatever reason, threw it all away, let it slide, didn’t bother, didn’t try.  This is your time people.  Make no mistake, do not forget that this is a vital time in your lives.  This is your time to work hard, to reach those goals, make those dreams come true.  You have to put the effort in now, you have to work hard, stay focused.  You have to believe me when I tell you that every single one of you sat here in front of me today is capable of great things.  Of amazing things.”

I swear to god his eyes landed on me when he had finished his speech.  I swear to god he looked right into my soul and told me to buck the fuck up.  I swear to god he fixed his eyes on my knotted hair and my grimy nails and my roll ups in my pocket.  I tightened my grip on my folder, on my potential, and when first break rolled around, I marched it right on over to Mrs. Bakers office.  The school newspaper had their after school meetings in the IT suite that led off from the library.  I found Mrs. Baker there, drinking coffee and ploughing through paperwork.  I felt out of place and stupid as I sidled on in, glancing around at the wall to wall computers and printers.  She beamed at me when she saw me though. “Ooh hello there Danny, are you here to take me up on the offer to join the paper after school?”

“Well yeah,” I said unsurely, shuffling in a little further. “I just brought some stuff I’ve been writing over the summer.  Nothing much.”

She immediately reached out to me, reminding me then of a small child reaching out to grab sweets from someone.  She looked so delighted, so excited, that I felt a bit embarrassed, and had the slight urge to hug my folder to my chest and hang onto it.  I didn’t though, I passed it to her and stuffed my hands into my pockets.  She held the folder out in front of her, and I felt like I had just handed over a piece of my soul.  “How exciting!  Well Danny, if your essay writing is anything to go by, these should be excellent! Well done, and thank you so much!”  She was a very excitable kind of person, I suppose.  I shrugged and headed back for the door, but she called out to me then. “Would you be able to come back and see me tomorrow Danny? There’ll be a few more things we need to discuss.”

“Like what?”

She shook back her grey curls to smile at me reassuringly.  “Oh not much really, it’s just the board of parent governors are very involved in the newspaper so..”

“Why?”

“Pardon me?”

“Why are they involved in it?”  Already my back was going up, you see.  Already my defences were kicking in.

“Oh well,” she made a face and stroked her chin and glanced up at the ceiling as if hoping to find the answer up there.  “Well they always have been,” she said eventually, grinning inanely and shaking her grey perm again.  “They’ve always been right behind us.  Very supportive I have to say.  With funding as well!  But it’s not a problem!” she cried then, biting her lip and giving me this patronising and sympathetic look.  “They’ll be so pleased to have some fresh talent on board!”

After school Billy roped me into coming back to his house.  I didn’t really need much roping to be honest.  Jake had declined the offer, complaining that his father had arranged yet another job interview for him, so off he went.  Michael was in detention for being disruptive in class.  I could have kissed Billy when he’d asked me to come back to his.  It wasn’t just the relief of deferring my return home, it was the warmth that spread through me when I thought about walking through his front door.  It was only a little terraced house, exactly like ours, but why did stepping into it feel like I was stepping into another world?  My nostrils twitched, as soon as the front door opened and the wind chimes jingled up above it.  Burning incense, and spicy food on the stove.  Scents and sounds that intrinsically linked me to Billy’s house, to Billy’s life; one I was painfully jealous of.

You walked in and June was there, there to greet you, always with mess on her like paint, or yoghurt, mucky handprints or splashes of dinner.  She didn’t give a shit.  She didn’t do her hair, or her nails or her makeup like my mum did.  She was just how she was.  Willowy and gentle and bathed in calm.  The kitchen was small, just like ours, but somehow it seemed bigger with the amount they had crammed in.  An old pine dresser she had repainted pale blue, stuffed with mismatched and brightly coloured crockery.  Spider plants bloomed across the windowsill, side by side with cacti and herb pots.  The walls of the kitchen were covered in old band posters and the spiky spidery artwork of children.  Billy rushed by it all, because it was always the same for him, so he thundered on up to his room to put some noisy guitars on, but I lingered, I paused, I went slow.  She had this little radio on the kitchen windowsill and she kept it tuned into this classic station, classic fm or classic rock and roll or something.  Sometimes she would just be stood there, wooden spoon in hand, staring out of the window whilst lost in song. On that day I was pulled in too, taken gently by the elbow by some pure little melody that led me to the kitchen doorway and made a pain swell in my heart, made a clutch for my soul.  She sensed me there right away and turned and smiled and laughed at herself, as she twirled a length of pale blonde hair around one slender finger.  “Oh!” she laughed. “Hope you didn’t hear me singing!”  I shook my head to let her know that I hadn’t.  I didn’t know what else to say, because there wasn’t anything, I just wanted to listen to the song.  “Do you like this too?” she asked me then, turning to face me.  She tapped the wooden spoon against her palm.  I shrugged, and smiled.  “Billy hates it,” she said, grinning widely.  I nodded.  I wanted her to be quiet so I could hear it properly.  It was just the chorus that kept getting me, it was so sad, so desperate, at the same time full of a kind of gutting hope; ah well I may as well try to catch the wind.  It was like the singer knew what he wanted was impossible, and that hurt him, but yet he knew he would try to catch it anyway, and he would do it smiling.  “It’s by Donavan,” she said, when it had finished too soon.  “It’s very old.  But somehow, whenever I hear it, it’s like time has stood still and I am transported back, and I’m a teenager again! Funny eh?” she grinned at me. “How music can make you feel?”

Like an idiot, I just nodded and smiled, because I had no words for her.  There was nothing I could do or say to explain to her how the song had made me feel, just hearing it for the first time.  How it had lured me towards her intensely private moment, how it had made me feel sad and happy at the same time, and how crazy that was.  I went up to Billy after that, tried to join in the conversation, while he blasted Nevermind at our eardrums at high volume.  It made him all aggressive, you could see that.  He was a short little kid who felt big and tall and snarly when he jumped around in his bedroom to screaming guitars and snarling lyrics.  But that was the day I discovered Bob Dylan too, and things got exciting after that.  Because there was always something new, always something unexpected and beautiful, something to lift your soul above the shit, something to smile about.

I’d just gone down to get us drinks, and Billy’s dad was sat in the lounge, in his special arm chair, with his eyes closed.  Until he told me, I had no idea who the singer was, I only knew that the songs were gentle and yet fast, and the lyrics intelligent and beautiful, the kind of lyrics that made me want to rewind the song to hear them again, to understand them.  Not wanting to disturb Donald, I climbed into the other armchair. His was positioned in the corner of the room, in his music corner, right next to his record player.  The player was surrounded by piles and piles of records and cassettes.  He had shelves on the walls above, where he kept all of his seven inches, and gathered along either side of the player were all of his twelve inches.  He had so many that they were stacked on the floor as well, propped up against the wall and running along the bottom of the cabinet.  I knew for a fact they were all in alphabetical order, and that he could find whatever record he wanted just like that.  With his head back, and his eyes closed, he would have appeared asleep, if it had not been for the glass of rum and coke in one hand, and the fingers of his other hand which drummed against the arm rest of the chair in time to the music.  He smiled and mouthed along to the words of the songs.

Billy had appeared, outraged and indignant, grimacing around the door at us. “What are you doing listening to this lame old hippy music?” he had demanded scathingly, as his father opened his eyes and laughed. “Not enough guitars or drums!  Come on!”

“I like it,” I shrugged at him simply.  I got out of the chair and Donald nodded at me in thankful approval.

“You have fine taste young man,” he said. “And despite my sons best efforts you refuse to be narrow minded about music.  You want to try some Johnny Cash yet?”

“Noooooo!” Billy yelled in frustration, running across the room to grab my arm. “No bloody country music dad! Just stop it!”

Donald rose from his chair then, this ear splitting grin across his freckled face. He started rifling through the records nearest to him. “What about some Velvet Underground or Cream? The Kinks!”  He was laughing as his son groaned.

“Dad!”

“The Rolling Stones then? The Sex Pistols? Come on son, where do you think the music you love came from?”

Billy let me go and I was at the records in a shot, while he shook his head at the pair of us.  “For gods sake,” he murmured, knowing it was too late.

34

 

            And so I had to remind myself yet again.  Patience.  Early days.  All that crap.  I was getting restless though, that was the trouble.  I was vibrating under the surface.  I talked to myself at night in my head.  Thought about what I had, and who I was.  Lee Howard.  The co-owner, the sole manager of an up and coming nightclub.  My own boss.  My own man.  Plans whirling in my head constantly, about the refit for the club, about the direction I wanted to take it in.  I hadn’t got there in a hurry.  I hadn’t got to the top of my game by rushing things, by moving too fast.  Being patient and clever had got me everything I had ever wanted.  The job, the cars, the woman, the power, all of it, in the palm of my hand.  Everything.  Nearly everything.  Everything except for that fucking kid.  That kid was fast becoming a thorn in my fucking side.  A constant nagging headache.

I found myself mulling it over at work.  It would invade my mind, without my permission, at the strangest of times.  Going over paperwork at my desk, or whilst on the telephone to a supplier.  It would leap into my head, bold and gleeful, taunting and goading me.  I would be in the middle of a conversation with the cleaners about doing their check lists properly, and I would hear it in my head; that little fuck up telling me he was going to fucking kill me.  My mind would wander away with it.  I would feel my fists tightening at the end of my arms, my muscles tensing.  I had the feeling I was treading on dangerous ground, but I was not sure why, or how.  I wasn’t exactly sure why it enraged me so much to realize that I had not yet made the little bastard cry.

He was trying to ruin things between Kay and I.  I knew it, I knew he was.  In his own, sneaky little way.  He was at it all the time.  Putting ideas into her elderly mothers mind, trying to turn her against me.  He had a big mouth.  He had gone back on our deal.  I could see how Kay was weakened in his presence.  She liked to think she was tough, but she was unable to keep it up for long.  I had seen it many times.  Her resolve would soften, her tears would fall.  She wanted him to like her, and his behaviour made her uneasy.  I seethed in silence when I thought about the party.  She never should have let him go to that party in the first place.  What was she thinking?  I told you so, I said to her afterwards, I bloody told you so.  “You want him to like you all the time,” I pointed out to her, “and that’s not doing him any favours! That’s not how it works.  It just means he has no respect for you, none whatsoever.”

I was right.  I was fucking right about it.

I recalled my overriding feeling towards my own parents as a child, and it was fear.  Pure and simple.  Fear of doing the wrong thing, fear of upsetting or disappointing them.  I did my best to avoid this fear by doing what was expected of me, doing my best, making them proud.  It absolutely sickened me when I watched the way that boy strolled about, thinking he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.  At age fourteen!  It shook me to the core.  The defiance in his eyes.  All the time.  All the time it was there.  And what made it worse, the tougher I was on him, the more defiant he became.  I will fucking kill you.  If I had ever dared to say that to my parents…

He should have been in line by now.  Like everything else.  That was how it was supposed to be.  That was how I had envisioned it.  I hate you and one day I will fucking kill you.  It popped right into my head when I was serving customers on a busy night.  I saw his little face over theirs.  Piercing blue eyes under lank blonde hair.  Hate and defiance.  I was perplexed by his attitude; I had no idea what to do with a rebellion.  Every time I thought about that boy threatening me, every time those words trundled through my mind, my entire body would prickle with rage.  The words would set off a powerful physical reaction within me.  My breathing would intensify, air rushing in and out of my nostrils as my teeth clamped together.  I would feel my body shudder, and then begin to tense, hair by hair, muscle by muscle, limb by limb.  And then it was like there was nowhere for it all to go, and it felt almost impossible to stand it.  My fists would curl up, one by one, and the sensation made me feel restless and unsatisfied, like a dog that has not had a walk for days.  The intensity of it all would consume me and I would be unable to sit still, unable to concentrate.  When I closed my eyes at night, all I could see was that boys scowling, petulant face, his messy hair hanging all over the place, and I would long to seek him out, to grab him, to squeeze him until he was begging and crying and saying sorry, I’m sorry.  There were words I needed to hear him say.

I did what I could to alarm Kay.  I put in longer hours at work, until she came to me with red-rimmed eyes, anxious that things had gone wrong between us.  “I have to put in the extra hours,” I assured her. “The refit is under way, and I need to be there or it’ll all go tits up.  I need to put the work in now honey, to make a better future for us all.”  It was all paying off, I told her.  There was a buzz on the street about Nancy’s.  It was becoming the place to go.  She lapped it up, as I knew she would.  It was easy to placate her.  The right words, chosen carefully.  I was doing my best to make them happy, to provide for them.  I was working my arse off, night and day.  I wanted to make her happy and proud of me.  I hoped that one day, Danny and I would be friends.

“You’ve got a big mouth,” I told him at the dinner table one night.  Kay had rushed to answer the phone in the hallway, so I nudged the door shut with my foot, and lowered my knife and fork to the table.  I clasped my hands together under my chin and looked him right in the eye.  He was sat like he always sat.  Elbows on the table, his cheek resting in one hand as if it was far too much trouble to hold his own head up and eat his food.  He pushed the mashed potato around the plate, a slight snarl on his face, as if the food offended him somehow.  “I kept my side of the deal but you didn’t keep yours.  I told you not to make an enemy of me, but you didn’t listen.  Now I’m going to be your enemy until the day you die.”  He got up then, scraping back his chair, too arrogant to want to listen to a word I said.  He went to walk past me but I caught his skinny arm and held it tight.  I tugged him towards me, until my face was next to his and I could whisper softly into his ear.  There were lots of things I wanted to say to him, but I had to be patient.  There were so many things we needed to get straight between us that it was frustrating only having a moment.  “You know, I’ve always thought I’ve got it in me to kill someone,” I told him in that moment. “Only thing that’s stopped me before is the fear of getting caught…but you know then I got thinking the other day, about kids like you.” I tightened the grip on his arm until I heard him release a gasp.  It felt so thin and weak in my grip, I felt like one more squeeze and it would snap. I had to stop myself.  That is the thing with violence sometimes, you know.  It can take you further and further.  “Little shit stains no one would even miss if they just disappeared…Kids who run off all the time ‘cause they’ve got into trouble.  Run off.  Disappear.  Who would know?  Who would care?”  I shrugged my shoulders calmly, dropped his arm and turned back to my dinner.

It wasn’t enough.  In fact talking to him in snatched moments like that only seemed to make me feel worse.  That night I lay awake for hours while Kay snored gently beside me.  The night of the party came back to me again and again.  It was bad enough that the boy always had his mouthy little sidekick with him, but now he had the criminal older brother watching out for him as well.  Keep checking over your shoulder, he had said to me, his voice a smooth whisper, a promise dancing in his dark eyes.  I saw the look in those eyes and I recognized it.  It was cold, and hard and it was what prison did to a man.  You won’t see me coming, he had told me.

Enough was enough.  Scumbag kids threatening me, warning me off, sticking their noses in.  Sulky little motherfucker storming around the house I paid for.  I finally made up my mind on a sultry September night, just days before the new school term began.  I had been patient for long enough.  I was avoiding my own fucking home, just so I wouldn’t have to see his sneering little face laughing at me.  I was looking over my shoulder, staring into the crowds at work, wondering.  It was becoming a joke.  So I picked up the phone and dialled the number of an old friend.

“D.I Freeman?” the gravelly, whiskey soaked voice rasped from the other end.  I let out a raucous, appreciative laugh.

“Jack!  You old bastard!”

“Lee?  Lee Howard? Fuck me!”

“The one and only. How the fuck are you, old man?  Long time no see!”

“I’m hung over mate, how the fuck are you?  How’s that new place you got going?”

“It’s blinding mate, gonna’ be unbelievable.  That’s why I’m calling you Jack.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, got a proposition for you old man.  How would you fancy a new job and a new place to live?  Got a situation here that’s right up your fucking street.”

32

 

            I got ready for the party up in my room.  I’d had my outfit planned out for days.  My favourite black jeans, with the ripped knees.  My baseball boots.  My new Nirvana top, and a faded checked shirt chucked on top.  I didn’t brush my hair.  I had thick tangles all over it, and a couple of really hard knots at the back underneath.  I didn’t care, I liked it.  The more Howard moaned on about my hair, the worse state I wanted to let it get into.  I sat on my bed with my hair tucked behind my ears to roll a few smokes.  I waited until About A Girl had ended, then slid the smokes into my back pocket, took out the cassette and slipped that into my other pocket.  Before I left my room I paused to look in the mirror and smiled at the cut to my lip.  It made me look tough, I thought.  Like I’d been up to no good.  Fuck it.  I was going to have a hell of a night and not give a shit about anything.  I wasn’t going to be afraid, not once.  I wasn’t going to hide.

Down in the hallway my mother came from the lounge and buzzed around me as if she were excited on my behalf.  She frowned at my lip. “How did you do that?”  Howard had reared up behind her, seemingly from nowhere, filling the hall with his arrogant bulk.  He rolled his eyes as my mother turned her face up to him.

“Mucking about doing stunts on the bike,” he said with a chuckle. “Isn’t that right Danny?  Being a bit silly wasn’t you?”

I didn’t answer him.  I pulled from her fussing hands and opened the front door.  “Listen,” she said, touching my shoulder. “Absolutely no drinking at this party okay?  Are you sure Michael’s dad is going to be there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be popping over later to check,” Howard announced then, a flicker of a smile on his face as his eyes met mine.  “You know, just to be on the safe side.”

“Don’t let him do that!” I said in exasperation to my mother, as I wrenched the door open and stepped out into the evening.  “Tell him to mind his own business!  You said I could sleep over there!”

“Yes, yes I know, alright,” she said hurriedly as she ushered me out. “Just have a good time but behave yourself, and we’ve got a deal. Okay?”

“Okay.  Thanks.” I stalked away before either of them could change their minds and turned the corner to head towards Michael’s house.  The front door was open, music spilling out onto the street, and I could already see Michael on the doorstep, smoking and laughing with some older boys.  He threw down the butt and cried out when he saw me.

“Whoo hoo he’s here!  The birthday boy is here!”  He reached out and grabbed me into the house, pushing a cold bottle of beer into my hand.  The house seemed impossibly full of people, and the music was thumping from the top to the bottom.  “Hey, hang on a minute,” he said in the hallway, his eyes frowning as his smile fell away from him.  “What you done to your lip?”

I lifted the beer and downed nearly half of it without stopping for breath.  My eyes were on Michael, and on the inside I was telling him, I was saying the words for him to hear and to know he did it, Howard did it, what should I do?  Mike waited, and his face was angry, as if he could somehow hear those words in my head, as if he already knew.  I lowered the beer, laughed out loud and clapped him on the back.  “Nothing!” I yelled over the music. “Who cares? Let’s get wasted!”

Michael just nodded at me.  I grinned carelessly and pushed my way through to the kitchen.  There was long limbed Jake, sat up on the side, swigging beer and swinging his stick like legs back and forth. “Danny boy!” he cried out, reaching behind to grab a white plastic bag, which he held out to me.  “Happy birthday mate!”

I took the bag and pulled out a quarter bottle of Bells whiskey. “Nice one Jake! Thanks!”

“Nice top,” Billy told me with a curt nod of his head. “Come and taste this first.  Been working on this for ages, just for you.”  He had taken over the entire kitchen table with a selection of spirits and mixers, and was stirring the contents rhythmically in a large plastic bowl.  He thoughtfully spooned a cupful into a waiting plastic beaker and handed it to me.  “Tell me what you think.”

I sipped the drink cautiously.  It was sour and extremely strong, and I coughed quickly, forcing it down before it came back up again.  I shook my head, my eyes watering as I handed the cup back to Billy. “More juice or something,” I spluttered at him. “Too strong! You’ll kill someone!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, nodding as he went back to his bowl and started to pour more liquids in randomly.

“Hey the birthday boy himself!”

I spun around to see Anthony thrusting his way through the people towards me.  He cut a distinctive figure, as his bare, toned torso slipped between the other kids, his dark eyes bright and alert and fixed entirely on me.  He had a drink in one hand, and draped his other arm around my shoulders, which for that moment made me feel like the most important person in the room.  “Hi Anthony!” I grinned up at him. “Great party already!”

“Happy birthday to you mate, you got a drink?”

“I got this!” I showed him the whiskey from Jake.  He nodded and looked around at all of us.

“Fair enough but go slow eh boys?  I don’t want any puking, fitting or collapsing okay? I don’t want any of your folks banging on my door ‘cause you got poisoning!”  We all nodded in dutiful reply.  Anthony still had his arm around me, and pulled me slightly to the side then, as if he wanted to confide in me away from the others.  I unscrewed the cap from the whiskey and sniffed it.  I was feeling better already. Better than I had in ages.  I was feeling like me again.  The old me, the not giving a shit, the arguing back, the snarling urge to scrap, was all seeping back.  “I got something to say to you mate,” Anthony was telling me, his tone lowered slightly.  He removed his arm from my shoulder then and placed a hand on the wall next to us, as if to steady himself.  Then he leaned down towards me, and I could smell the cheap beer on his breath.  “Mikey is worried about you, you know?  He seems to think this boyfriend of your mums is giving you a hard time.” He raised his eyebrows at me.  “Eh?  Is that right?  Is that how you hurt your lip?”

I lowered my eyes from his, while I struggled with the question he was asking me. I was going to say nothing, I was going to throw him off the scent, but then I looked up into his face and when I saw the look he had, I stopped.  He looked desperately concerned somehow, and I don’t know why, but it made me nod back at him.  I couldn’t take it back then.  I watched the anger fill his eyes and I watched his jaw tighten and his back stiffen up.  He glanced away briefly and then he spat on the floor and glared back at me with fierce eyes.  “I fucking hate that kind of shit,” he hissed, shaking his head at me.  “Bullies mate.  Listen to me.  Mike says you’re the best friend he ever had, so that makes you pretty cool in my eyes.  Let me tell you something Danny.  If that arsehole over there gives you any more shit, you just tell me alright?   I know plenty of people who will kick the shit out of him on my behalf, okay?  I only have to say the word.” He stared at me expectantly so I nodded in reply.  “I’ll tell you something else,” he went on.  “Our dad was like that when we were kids.  If you did anything wrong, or if he was just in a bad mood, he’d just smack you one, just like that.  But one day I got big enough you know?  Bigger than him.  I smacked him back.  Fucking knocked him right out.  Right down on the kitchen floor.  He never tried it again, I can tell you that.  He never laid a hand on either of us after that.  You’ll be big enough one day, you know that right?”  I nodded again but a little unsurely.  Anthony had obviously not seen the size of Howard, I thought.  “Go on then,” he told me. “Go and enjoy your party.  It’s what it’s all about mate.”

I nodded again rather uselessly.  I felt sort of dazed. “Okay,”I said. “Thanks Anthony.” I wanted to say more to him than that, but I realized right away that there were no words adequate enough to convey what it meant to me.

“Not a problem,” he said, moving away from the wall and swaying on his feet, though I couldn’t be sure if it was from the drink, or the music.  I remembered my new tape then and pulled it from my pocket.

“Hey I just got this today, can we put it on?”

Anthony took it and turned it over in his hands.  “Okay, alright, but we’re not playing rock stuff all night. Got to have the dance stuff too.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome.” He turned around and walked smoothly out of the kitchen with my tape in his hands.  I turned to find Michael hovering near by and I passed him the whiskey and grinned.

“Okay?” he asked me.

“I am now. Your brother just offered to kick Howard’s arse any time I want.”  Michael laughed, a huge smile instantly lighting up his eyes, as he punched the air triumphantly.

“Yes! I fucking told you didn’t I?”

My best memory from that night came early on in the party.  Billy got sick of Anthony’s dance music and snuck off to put Nevermind on.  He returned to us moments later, grinning fiendishly beneath his mop of red hair, already strumming his air guitar to the opening chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit.  We hooted and yelled, we jumped to our feet, we threw our arms around each other and thrust our drinks into the air.  Everyone stopped and stared, and I caught glimpses of their bemused faces, their rolling eyes, and it only made me love it even more.  Knowing they were watching us, knowing they didn’t like it, or they didn’t get it, or it wasn’t for them, just unified us even more.  We got off on it, we felt it explode inside of us, it was ours and we owned it.  We leapt up and down, headbanging, spilling our drinks all over the floor, screaming along, taking over the whole kitchen, taking it all with us.  We knew all of the words, but the bit that got to me the most then, as we clung to each other, as we stared into eachothers crazed and knowing eyes, was the bit that went; I’m worse at what I do best, and for this gift I feel blessed, our little group has always been, and always will, until the end. Well it was kind of beautiful, but I never would have said that to anyone.  We were just four scruffy grungey kids going mental in the kitchen, pissed off our faces, and they were all watching us and laughing at us and wondering what would happen to us.  “With the lights out it’s less dangerous!” we roared back at them, jumping, turning, gripping hold of ourselves. “Here we are now! Entertain us!”  I was inside a moment that I never wanted to end, the four of going insane, and I knew that if anything could set your heart on fire, it was music like that, moments like that.  I felt a descending sadness that the moment would inevitably end, just like the song would, just like the party would, just like everything would.

Antony humoured us with a patient smile for the next four songs, and by that time we were wiped out and shining in sweat, and we collapsed around the table together, our eyes meeting and gleaming with pride.  Anthony returned to the kitchen with a small tin in one hand.  He paused at the table, waited for the music to kick in and then held up a finger and nodded.  “Primal Scream,” he informed our waiting faces. “Believe me, you’re gonna’ love this.”  He gestured for Michael to scoot along the bench, and sat down on the edge. “Now boys,” he said, opening the lid from his tin.  I leaned forward slowly, my nostrils working.  There was a thick sweet smell coming from the tin. “We’re gonna’ calm things down a notch now, chill things out a bit yeah?” We smiled, and reached for our drinks but he shook his head at us. “Now hang on.  Wait for this.  No more to drink unless it’s water.”

Michael dropped his head into his hands. “Ahh!  I’m thirsty!”

“Water,” Antony told him unwavering.

“What’re you doing?” Jake asked him.

“Calming things down a bit.  Hang on.”

We were all quiet then.  We watched him sprinkle tobacco onto a large cigarette paper.  Then he took some musty green leaves from his tin and sprinkled them on top.  I was hot, hot all over, I felt like my brain was going to explode inside my skull, I was so hot.  It wasn’t just the heat, or the music or the dancing, it was everything; the here and the now, us.  I watched Anthony rolling the paper up, sticking a roach into one end and screwing up the other and I knew that any of us would have done anything he asked right then.  That was how it felt.  I understood why Michael wanted to be like him.  I did too.  I wanted to be him.  We watched, our mouths hanging open, our eyes wide and absorbing, as he lit the joint and inhaled.  He then smiled and held it across the table to me.  “Have a go on that birthday boy,” he said to me, as I took it carefully in my fingers.  “First time?”  I nodded.  His smile widened, touching his eyes.  He patted the table and stood up. “Well take it easy then.  No puking on me.  And if any of you do need to puke, do it outside yeah?”  He laughed at us softly and walked out.

“Wow,” was all Billy could breathe when it was his turn.  His green eyes were fixated on the joint as he examined it between his fingers. “My parents used to smoke pot in the sixties.  Maybe we’ll turn out like them!”

We laughed.  Before long all we could do was laugh.  Our eyes watered.  Our stomachs ached.  We couldn’t string sentences together without crumbling into giggles.  I found myself drifting backwards, towards the wall behind.  Once my head found it, I became stuck there.  I could only swivel my eyes from one side to the other.  My mouth was fixed in this permanent dopey smile.  Eventually I became aware of the sound of Billy throwing up somewhere, and Jake, laughing and laughing and laughing.

Anthony, in my eyes, the hero, the saviour of everything, arrived just in the nick of time with an armful of delivery pizzas.  They were the most delicious things I had ever smelled in my entire life.  He gave me a friendly shake of the shoulder. “Tuck in lads,” he said. “Then you’ll be raring to go again. And hey, look I found outside!” He stepped back so that we could see Lucy and Zoe standing nervously behind him.  Zoe had a bottle of wine swinging from each hand.

On some level, at least at the back of my muddled head, I understood and accepted that the party was going to end in carnage.  One way or another.  I had a deep seated feeling that there was shit to yet hit the fan with Howard, and I considered this in a rather detached way, as I floated in and out of consciousness some hours later.  My head was resting on my arms, which were folded on the table top.  I could hear Michael talking close by.  He sounded like he had a sore throat.  Billy was asleep on the table and had been for some time.  He lay completely stretched out, his head thrown back and his mouth a gaping hole of emerging snores at one end, his tatty trainers dangling off the other.  I lifted my head to gaze at him, and had a fuzzy memory of Anthony carrying him in from the garden.  What crossed my mind then, as the full impact of the drinks that had gone before began to hit me, was the memory of Howard saying he was going to check on us.  Had he?  Had he been and gone?  Had my mother kept him away like she’d say she would?  Or worse than all of that, was he still to come?

I groaned a little and shifted back on the bench, suddenly realizing as I moved, that someone was leaning on me.  Oh yeah, I remembered.  Lucy.  How long had she been there?  What had we been talking about again?  I yawned and stretched out my arms.  “Lucy?”

“Mmm?” She opened her eyes and smiled up at me. “Was I asleep?”

“Think we both were.”

“Oh my parents…they’ll murder me.”

“Thought you were sleeping at Zoe’s?”

“Oh yeah.  You’re right.  I am aren’t I?”

“So no need to worry.”

“No need to worry,” she echoed. “But maybe sobering up a bit is a good idea, if I’ve got to get Zoe home. Have you had a good party Danny?  A good birthday?”

“The best,” I told her, and I meant it.  I slipped my arm around her shoulders without even thinking about it.  She didn’t object though.  She just wriggled into me and rested her head down upon my chest.  I sort of missed a breath then, and stared down in awe at the back of her head, at this shine of nut brown hair.  I stared at it and thought about kissing it.

“Where does your dad live Danny?”

The question caught me off guard, coming out of nowhere.  It was just the sort of question Lucy would ask though, I realized.  I glanced across the table at Michael, who was attempting to roll a cigarette with Zoe asleep on his lap.  “I don’t actually know,” I told Lucy with a little shrug.

“Really?” she asked, while her arms snaked slowly around my middle.  You wouldn’t believe me if I said it, but the crush of her slim arms against my mottled middle was the best feeling in the world ever.  A pain that took my breath away. “You really don’t know?”

“Haven’t seen him in years.”

She looked up then, and her face was so close to mine, I could have stuck my tongue out and licked the tip of her button nose.  “Well when was the last time you saw him? You don’t mind me asking do you?  Everyone tells me I’m too nosy.”

“I don’t mind,” I shrugged. She grinned, and her eyes looked all dewy and sleepy.  Her head went down again, bumping against my rib cage.  It was funny, how her doing that made me feel bigger and stronger, like a man almost.  I hugged her to me and stroked the round of her shoulder with my hand.  “It was when I was about nine,” I told her. “’Cause I remember he turned up for my birthday and took me to McDonalds.  Then it sort of faded out after that.”

“Do you know what happened to him?  Do you know where he went?  Or why?”

“Not really. All mum says is he got in trouble.  Had to go away.”

“But hasn’t he ever like phoned you?  Or written to you?  Or anything?”

“Nope.”

I heard her release this massive sigh.  She was totally relaxed against me.  Almost asleep again, I wondered, stroking her shoulder.  I could feel one of her hands playing with my t-shirt, rubbing the material between her fingers. “Awful,” she sort of shuddered. “I can’t imagine that.  I mean, I know I’m lucky my parents get on so well, but if they did ever split up or something, I know my dad wouldn’t just vanish from my life.  I know he wouldn’t.”

“It is a bit shit if you think about it,” I agreed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to upset you on your birthday.  Just tell me to shut up.”

“No it’s okay, I like talking to you.”

“Did he look like you?  Was he anything like you?”

“Hmm, mum says he was nothing but trouble.  Everyone says I look like my mum though.  She says he was fine for a while and then he just got bored.”

“That’s not very nice!”

“Nah.  I don’t think I’d get bored of having a kid.”

“God, me neither!” She tightened her arms around my middle then, just for a second, but it was enough to squeeze the breath out of me again, and I winced above her head. “Do you know what my mum says?” she asked me then, lifting her head and turning her face up to mine again.  I shook my head, smiling.  “She says children are the most precious thing in the world to you.  That when you have them, you realize what love means.  What do you think of that?”  My smile stretched.  I wanted to laugh at her and her drunken, wide eyed face.  I wanted to hold her face and kiss it.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “Maybe that’s how it should be?”

“That’s how I’d feel,” she said, defiantly.  I picked up a strand of her hair and watched it slip through my fingers like silk. “Do you think you’ll ever try to find your dad Danny?”

“I dunno.  Maybe.  One day.  If I feel like it.”

She was staring at me with this really dopey look on her face.  She was frowning a bit, but smiling madly, and her eye makeup had smudged around her eyes, making them look even bigger and browner.  Anthony’s music was pulsing through the walls again, and the music was a swelling within me, of so many things, love and lust and energy. I stared at her and she stared at me as if she were examining me, figuring me out.  I stroked her hair back from her face.   I felt like I was in a scene from a movie, or something.  We were lost for a moment.  Just the two of us, in a bubble of life swept up and intensified by the music.  The song was incredible.  I later found out it was called Come Together, and I later found out that Primal Scream were pretty fucking amazing to play at parties.  “You are so sweet Danny,” she said then, and she pressed her finger against my cut lip.  I winced a tiny bit and then kissed the tip of her finger and grinned hungrily, wanting more. “And one day, I think, I am going to marry you.”  She was moving off me as she said it, and it made me laugh out loud the way she said it, all matter of fact and prissy. I wanted to tug her back down onto me.

“Really?” I asked her.

“Yep,” she replied firmly, using my knee and the table to help herself struggle up from the bench. “But right now I really, really have to get home…get Zoe home I mean.”  Michael took the cue and pulled Zoe up from his lap by her arm.  She stared around at us in a confused, blinking daze.  Lucy limped around the table, and slipped her arm around Zoe’s waist, and with Mikes help they hoisted her to her unsteady feet.  We watched them go, just smiling.  A few moments later Anthony poked his head around the kitchen door.

“Think I better walk those two home,” he said, and was gone again. I looked at Michael and we grinned at each other. For once, his face appeared peaceful and calm, as he lit the cigarette he had taken ages to roll and blew smoke swiftly across the table.

“You should have kissed her,” he said to me after a time.  “When are you two going to get it together anyway?”

“Patience,” I said, running my tongue slowly over my lower lip, savouring the taste of her finger that lingered there.  “When I do kiss her, it’s going to be special.  It’s going to be just me and her, and it’s going to be special.”

Michael was shaking his head “You soppy bastard.”

33

            “Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be…” It seemed important to murmur along with the music, as Michael and I sat on the back doorstep side by side, soaking up the last remnants of the party.  We had both been sick at some point, Billy was still snoring, Jake had disappeared somewhere, and we were sat shakily on the step, our sweaty faces turned upwards to receive the cool night air.  We were passing the last of the whiskey back and forth, taking the tiniest sips each time, grimacing every time the liquid scorched our throats.  It was nice sat like that, my elbow banging into his every time we passed the bottle back.  “As a friend, as a trend, as an old enemeeeee…” The music was lower now.  People had dispersed home, passed out, or coupled off.  I liked the feel of the summer air on my bare arms, and the way the slight breeze lifted and rustled through my hair.  Every now and then I just inhaled it all, sucking the sweet smell of damp cut grass into my lungs, absorbing the melodic beats that soothed my ears from inside the house.  Anthony and the remainder of his friends were gathered in the lounge; we could hear the gentle murmur of their conversation punctuated with laughter.

“Your brother is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met,” I told Michael, passing him the bottle and pulling out the last of my roll ups.  I lit it, and shoved the lighter back into my pocket.

“I know, I told you.”

“How did he end up in prison then?  He just seems so good.”

“He was worse than us at our age,” Michael explained with a shrug. He passed me the bottle and I passed him the smoke. “Always in trouble, he was.  They had to send him to jail in the end. This was his first time in adult jail though.”

“Maybe he won’t want to go back then,” I mused.  I shifted my arse on the cold step.  The thought of what he had said to me in the kitchen made my stomach suddenly feel alive with butterflies.  “I really really don’t want him to.”

“Me either,” said Michael, his voice low.  I looked at him and he was squinting into the darkness at the end of the garden.  We swapped the bottle and the smoke back over.

“And I swear…that I don’t have a gun…no I don’t have a gun,” I sang along softly, until he nudged me.  “What?”

“Shh a minute.  Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh.”

I followed his gaze, my heart already starting to thump into action, but all I could see was a mess of shadows and darkness.  Maybe the creak of the broken gate in the breeze.  Mike nudged me again.  He pushed his elbow into mine and kept it there. “I heard something.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “Like what?” I whispered.  Michael shifted forward, tipping his head from one side to the other as he tried to make sense of the jumble of shapes.

“The gate,” he murmured, and we both stared at it, and as we stared, we both heard it.  The gate creaking, and the creak growing louder and louder.  The creak then tapered off, and was replaced by the sound of approaching footsteps.  I felt my stomach shrivel up inside of me.  I felt my entire body becoming drenched in cold.  We looked up, both of us, we stared in horror as Lee Howard’s impossibly large figure seeped out from the shadows.  I felt Michael’s body freeze beside my own.  Our elbows remained locked together, two sharp points trembling against one another.  Howard approached us in a jaunty manner, like a friendly bear, swinging his chunky arms, while a sly smile slid across his face.

“What we got here then eh?” he asked. “Couple of little smart alec gay boys sat out on the step?” He laughed at himself.  Actually threw back his head and guffawed at us.  He stopped right in front of us, towering over us like something from a horror film. We could see all of his small, straight teeth gleaming in the moonlight.  “No one answered the front door kiddies,” he told us, his hands settling on his hips.

“What do you want?” Michael demanded, and I could tell he was trying to make his voice sound tougher than he felt right then.

“Came to check on things like I said I would,” Howard replied, self-satisfaction curling up his lip as he spotted the bottle between Michael’s hands.  Mike realized too late and tried to hide it behind him, but Howard leaned down and snatched it from him.

“Hey!”

“Hey what?  You boys aren’t supposed to be drinking!” He eyed us smugly, pushing the bottle into his back pocket.  I fixed my eyes on the ground then.  The urge to be sick was coming back.  My stomach was turning over and over as cold waves of nausea hit me one after the other.  Howard lifted one foot and placed it on the step in between us. I stared at it in revulsion.  The shiny black leather.  The little heel.  The pointed toe.  “Whiskey, my little friends, is for adults,” he said, leaning down over his knee towards us, bringing his big face just inches away from ours. We both shrank back automatically and as we did, his smile lengthened.  His eyes found mine. “Your mum sent me over in the end Danny. I didn’t even have to insist pal.  She was getting worried about the noise coming from here.  Worried someone might call the police, and you and me know you don’t need any more attention from them, don’t we?  So I said I would come over and check.  I told her you were probably all fine.  But best to check no one’s letting underage kids drink, eh?”

“We only had a sip,” Michael spoke up rigidly. “No harm done.”

“Well I’ll be the judge of that thank you,” Howard said, his eyes flicking up and into the kitchen. “Looks like you’ve had more than a sip anyway. And who’s that on the table eh? Passed out from drinking is he?”

“No, he’s just asleep,” said Michael.

Howard looked back down at us.  He sniffed loudly, and then again. “You know what else I can smell? Pot.  Weed.  Can you smell that?  Go on, take a sniff.” He made an awkward face and scratched his beard. “God I hope no one’s been a naughty boy and brought illegal drugs to the party! Wouldn’t that be silly? That would be unbelievably silly wouldn’t it?  Boys already in trouble with the police smoking weed at a party!”

“The party’s over,” Michael informed him coldly. He kept his voice steady, but I could feel the cold tremor in his elbow.  “You can go now. We’re all just gonna’ go to sleep.”

“So where’s your dad?”

“Huh?”

“Your dad.  Your dad dummy.  Danny said your dad was going to be here the whole time, to keep an eye on things.  So where is he then?” He tipped his head in sympathy. “Or was that just another lie Danny? Because you’re pretty damn good at lies aren’t you eh?”

“He went out,” Michael said quickly. “He had to go out, but he’ll be back in a minute, won’t he Danny?”

I looked at him in bewilderment, my mind vacant and frozen.  He nudged me again with his elbow.  My cigarette dangled, forgotten from one hand.  “Ah,” said Howard, leaning forward and plucking it from my hand.  He dropped it and ground it to dust beneath the heel of his cowboy boot. “Looks like Danny’s lost his tongue as well as his mind here tonight. Come on then little man, let’s get you home eh?”

I felt the panic sweep violently through me then, and I knew it was partly because of the drink, and the weed, but it was suddenly so all consuming, it was horrible and I could barely breathe.  I stared right at Michael and opened my mouth.  I wanted to scream out to him to do something, to help me, but nothing would come out, not one single fucking word.  A hot trail of sweat snaked down from behind my ear to my neck, and somehow, sensing all of this, Michael’s hand clamped heavily down on my arm and held on tight. “You’re not going anywhere,” he told me.  “You’re staying the night remember?  Your mum said.”

“Yeah and she also said no drinking!” Howard barked then, his voice going up a level and making us flinch, as his forehead came crashing down over his stone like eyes.  They burned angrily into me, and I looked away, down at the ground, transfixed by the way it suddenly seemed to be moving and shifting beneath my feet. “Do you remember that eh?  You remember what she said to you before you left the house? Eh fuck brain?  She said no drinking, didn’t she?  As per fucking usual she trusted you and you blatantly lied to her face.  Now I’m not pissing around here mate, get the fuck up and come back home now, or I’m really going to embarrass you in front of your little friend!”

“You’re not gonna’ fucking touch him right!” Michael yelled then, his grip tightening painfully on my arm.

“Hey what’s all this then?” Anthony.  It was Anthony.  I looked over my shoulder to see him striding through the kitchen.  I closed my eyes and dropped my head.  Thank fucking god.  He stood in the doorway behind us, his head cocked to one side in curiosity. “Hello, who’s this fucker boys?”  A group of his friends had appeared behind him.  They stood, solemn faced and cross armed.  I desperately wanted to move, to get up and scurry inside the house where it was safe, but I was afraid my legs were too weak to hold me and I would simply fall to the ground in front of them all.

Michael climbed to his feet though, dragging me up with him.  “This is Lee Howard,” he told his brother. “The guy I was telling you about.”

Anthony stepped forward quickly then, a gleam of delight leaping instantly into his dark eyes.  “Oh yeah?  Really?  Is this him?  Come to pay us all a visit?”

“Who the fuck are you?” Howard growled in reply.  I felt brave enough to check his face then and what I saw surprised and pleased me.  The taut expression was one I had not seen before.  He looked angry and embarrassed, unsure even, pissed off he had been caught.

“Michael’s brother,” said Anthony, his tone flat, his face cold.

Howard hitched his thumbs through his belt. “Oh the one just out of prison?”

“That’s me.  So anyway what’s going on boys?  This fella’ trying to ruin your fun?”

“He’s trying to take Danny home,” Michael said in disgust. “And he doesn’t want to go with him.”

“Ah no, that’s not on is it?” said Anthony, shaking his head.  “Coming and upsetting him on his birthday?  Ah that’s not nice.  He’s staying here with us mate.”

“He is not supposed to be drinking!”

Anthony ignored him and looked at us. “Go on in boys.  Get your heads down.  Party’s over.”

Michael wasted no time pushing me through the door and past Anthony’s friends.  Neither of us dared to look back.  We hurried through to the lounge, where we discovered Jake, fast asleep and curled up in an arm chair.  I plonked myself down on the sofa.  I was shaking.  Michael turned the music off and looked at me.  “It’s all right,” he said, sounding uncertain.  “Anthony will scare him off.  He’s been gagging to get the chance.”  I nodded back silently, pulled my legs up onto the sofa and wrapped my arms tightly around them.

Just moments later Anthony appeared calmly in the doorway.  “It’s alright,” he told us with a shrug.  “He’s gone.  Said you could stay the night.”

I released this small, nervous laugh as Michael crossed the room to slap his brothers hand.  I felt stupidly and deliriously drunk and happy and relieved all at once.  “God.  Thanks Anthony.”

“You were quick,” said Michael. “What did you do?”

“Do?”  Anthony turned to go.  “Didn’t have to do anything Mikey.  He wasn’t gonna’ take on three of us was he?  I told you. Fucking bullies man.  Fucking hate them.”

When he was gone Michael fell onto the sofa beside me, pressed his hands to his face and giggled in nervous relief.  “Shittinghell,” he said behind his hands. “I’m sorry mate, but there’s something about that fucking man…Jesus Christ, I was shitting myself.”

“I feel such a dick,” I said then.  He dropped his hands and glared right at me.

“Fuck off!  Don’t be stupid mate.  Seriously.  It’s all cool.”

I nodded.  Okay then.  I let my head drift back.  I closed my eyes.  I felt safe, and yet not safe.  Two hours later I woke up suddenly, bathed in sweat and threw up violently, all over the lounge floor.  The room was black and silent. The walls heaving, the shadows alive with evil.  Everything was fucking horrendous.

The morning brought sunlight, mercilessly bright as it exploded through the gaps in the curtains, and attacked my aching head.  I woke up to head pain, creeping nausea and a mixture of emotions.  I was going to be sick, so I had to make myself move, and weave my way through the sleeping bodies in order to reach the downstairs toilet on time.  I puked and heaved until my guts strained with the effort.  When I sat back on my ankles I saw the crusty splatters of sick that had dried on the legs of my jeans overnight.  I dropped my head into my hands and moaned.  I guess it was my first proper hangover, and it was vile.  My brain felt like it was going to implode inside my skull.  It hurt even just opening my eyes and looking at things.  My mind swam with memories from the night, but I latched onto one and clung to it, refusing to examine anything else that wanted my attention.  Lucy.  Her finger on my lips.  Telling me she would marry me one day.  I tried to hold onto her, but my mind jumped to Howard, reliving the way he had emerged from the shadows like some kind of horror show.  I stared at the lumpy yellow sick in the toilet bowl, and already, there was this little ball of fear tying itself up tight in the pit of my belly.  I breathed out, and thought about Anthony stepping in and helping me, how amazing that was.  But I still had to go home at some point.

I put if off for a while.  I sat in the kitchen and listened to the house come alive with the sounds of groaning, and vomit splashing into the toilet bowl.  Survivors grouped together in the sunlit kitchen, our faces pale, our smiles weak.  I had that feeling again, despite the pain and the nausea and the fear of going home, I had that feeling of a moment being intense and beautiful.  Of belonging.  The radio was on.  Meat loaf was telling us he would do anything for love…but he wouldn’t do that, and we were swapping looks, sniggering.  Anthony, the star of the show, made us all coffee and handed out painkillers like sweets.  Jake declared rather unhelpfully that he had peaked too soon, slept through most of the party and as a result felt just fine.  Billy on the other hand, could not stop throwing up.  “I’m poisoned, I’m dying,” he said on return from the toilet. “I need my mother.”

“Your mother doesn’t need you!” joked Anthony shoving a cup of strong coffee at him.  “Get that down you.  No one is going home until they’ve stopped puking.”

I sat and listened, breathing it in, as stories of the party were swapped and shared.  It was unanimously declared to have been the best party ever.  “Wait til you’re my age,” Anthony laughed at us, shaking his head.  “You guys haven’t seen anything yet.  Makes me jealous actually.  You’ve got it all ahead of you!”

Michael laughed at his brothers words, and I again I noted the loving admiration in his eyes, and it made me smile despite the horrible banging pain in my head.  I knew I had to stop delaying the inevitable, and get on home.  I nodded to myself when I recalled Anthony’s words, his promise.   When the day had slid casually into afternoon, I slid out from behind the table where a card game had started, and I announced flippantly that I was off home.  I felt the silence of them behind me, as I headed for the door, and my cheeks flushed.  “Thanks guys,” I told them. “Best party ever.” I stepped out into the day.  I meant to go quickly before any of them could say anything terrible like good luck, and I nearly made it, but then Anthony spoke, quietly and firmly, looking up from the card game.

“Remember what I said yeah?”

I nodded thankfully.  “Yeah.  Thanks Anthony.”

After that I trudged slowly home, with the sunlight hammering my head.  I pulled back my shoulders, clung to Anthony’s words, and swallowed my fears.  I could have sunk to the ground in relief when I saw my mothers’ car parked in the drive behind Howards.  I found the back door open, and the pair of them sat at the table, smoking and drinking coffee.  There was a brief stab of concern in my mothers’ eyes when she ran them up and down and took in the state of me, but that was quickly replaced by exasperated anger. “Well look at you,” she said, in this hard flat voice.  “You certainly look and smell like you had a hell of a night.”

I looked down at my vomit splashed boots.  “Okay,” I said. “We had some drinks.  We shouldn’t have.  I’m sorry mum.”  I gave a little shrug of my shoulders and hoped I looked as pathetic as I felt.  “I’m paying for it now, believe me.”

I raised my eyes long enough to see hers staring at me, narrowed and cold.  “I hope you don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”

“No.  Was just saying sorry, that’s all.”

“Lee came to check on you because I asked him to.  I was getting worried about the noise.  He came to check on things and found you and Michael drinking whiskey, already off your faces!”  I nodded in reply, letting her know I did not deny it.  “He gave you a chance to come home and sober up, but you wouldn’t come.”

“He shouldn’t even have been there!” I cried then, finally allowing myself to look at him.  He was sat in the chair the way he always did.  Leaning right back, his big thighs spread wide open, one hand curled around the coffee cup on the table and the other cupped around one knee.  “It’s nothing to do with him,” I tried to point out. “If you were worried you should’ve come over! We were fine!”

“Fine?” My mother snorted in disbelief, got to her feet and began to stalk around the kitchen as if her anger made it impossible for her to remain still any longer.  “I’m going to ask you something now Danny and for once in your life I want you to tell me the truth.  Lee was worried it smelt like pot over there, like cannabis.  Now you look at me and you tell me the truth young man, were any of you smoking cannabis over there?”

“No,” I said it quickly and firmly, staring back into her eyes. “It was incense.  He smelt some incense burning.”

My mother reached for me then. “Come here then, let me smell your clothes, I’ll soon be able to tell!” She made a grab for my new top but I sidestepped her and swiped her hand away from me.  “Come here!” she cried in anger, reaching for me again.  She got hold of my arm, pulled me to her and sniffed my clothes.  “Stinks!” she yelled in triumph, looking at Howard, who merely rolled his eyes and gestured with his hands as if to say I told you so.  I tried to wrench free, but she held on tight. “Don’t you lie to me! Lee came to see if you were okay and you repay him by letting Michael’s brother threaten him!  Did you know about that, did you?  You’re lucky we didn’t call the police ourselves!”

I waited until I felt the grip on my arm lessen, and then I tore myself away from her and headed into the hallway.  “You lied to us!” she called after me.  “You said you wouldn’t drink, and that was a lie, and you said Michael’s dad would be there and that was another lie!”

“Yeah, so what I lied?” I turned around and shouted back at her.  I threw my arms out to either side of me. “I just wanted to have some fun for once!  Then he has to turn up and ruin it all as usual!”

“He was looking out for you! I asked him to check on you!”  She sounded weaker now, I thought, close to the tears of desperation I had seen her cry so many times over me.  Sensing this, Howard rose from his chair, stood behind her and began to massage her shoulders.  I watched the way her small body leaned back into his, and it was like all of the fight and fury leaked out of her and she just sagged against him.  It looked like she was being slowly eaten alive by him and in a way I realized that she was.  She shook her head at me, and tears shone in her eyes.  “Danny we let you go to that party in good faith.  You said there would be no drinking and we believed you.  How can I ever believe a word you say?  All you’re capable of is lies!  And Lee said you’ve been horrible about your bike!  What is wrong with you?”

I curled my lip at her.  “Yeah ‘cause I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from him ever!  So tell him not to bother!  Take it back to the shop or burn it, I don’t care!”

“How can you say that?” she wailed at me, raking her hands down her face. “How can you be so ungrateful?  And what on earth did you say to your Gran yesterday?”

“What?”

“Your Gran Danny!  She called me last night in a right state! What on earth did you say to her about Lee?  She’s a frail old woman for gods sake!”

“I told her you ought to be careful,” I replied shrugging defiantly.  I pushed my hands into my pockets and felt my legs shaking down below.  It wasn’t fear though, it was nothing like that, it was anger, black and thundering, rolling through my body, causing all of my limbs to vibrate violently.  “I told her the truth, that you know nothing about him!”

From behind her shoulders, Howards eyes stared into mine.  They appeared dull and lifeless, inhuman as they watched me trembling with rage.  I stared back at him, and I could feel the anger behind my eyes, thumping and clawing to get out.  “You wouldn’t know the truth if it hit you between the eyes!” my mother cried at me.  Howard nodded at this.

“I spoke to her to smooth things over,” he announced then, in this very calm and reassuring tone, as his fingers flexed and curled over her thin shoulders.  He winked at me.  “She’s quite excited to meet me now isn’t she honey?  Think we’re going to go and visit her soon.”  She nodded in reply, and fuck I felt it then, the rage as it escaped and rolled over me in snarling vicious waves.  My breath came sharp and shallow.  I felt like I would erupt from the inside, and spew my blackness right across the kitchen.  I pulled my hands from my pockets and pointed at my lip.

“He did this!  He did this!  Not the bike!  Him!”  I was trembling so hard my legs felt weakened, and I had to lean against the wall, as I pointed at Howard, and he stared back at me, his eyes deadly and his smile thin.  “He slapped me mum!  It’s the truth!  Yesterday morning!”

She was shaking her head very slowly and her colour had drained.  She looked me up and down, and she frowned, as if she had no idea who I even was.  Then she folded her arms tightly around her body and clutched herself, while Howard’s arms remained draped over her shoulders.  I could see it, right there in her eyes, and it was like being smacked in the face all over again, but worse, far worse, it was like I was drowning in pain, and I started to pull back, to retreat.  “I don’t even know you,” she said, and her voice was dry and rasping. “The lies that come out of your mouth Danny, the lies! How can you even stand there and….” She trailed off, her mouth too dry to finish the sentence.  I watched her struggle to swallow, struggle to work her tongue, and I looked above her head and he was encircling her from behind, closing her off, and he was smiling at me.  The lips moved to reveal the teeth and the thin eyebrows shot up then down in a smirk that made me tear myself from the wall.  I blundered heavily down the hallway, my eyes filling with stinging tears, the walls and the stairs blurred as I rushed up them.

I locked my bedroom door behind me and fell onto my bed.  I covered my face with my arms, and choked on sobs.  I felt like I was falling.  I was gripping and clawing and snatching out for something to hold onto, but there was nothing and I was just falling, faster and faster.