30

 

            Well the boy still looked at me sort of funny, but give it time, I thought, give it time.  Patience was the key.  It was still early days I assured myself whenever I experienced a flicker of doubt, which was seldom.  I didn’t generally see the point in self-doubt, or guilt, the sort of things that tortured Kay so pointlessly.  I wasn’t like her, you see, I didn’t question myself on a daily basis.  I walked through life with my eyes ahead.  The past is dead and gone, and the present is a stepping stone to the future.  I had kept my eyes ahead for a long time, you see, knowing that I would recognize what I was searching for when I found it.  I was close now, I could feel it.  I could feel it in my bones.  I was almost exactly where I wanted to be in life, with just a few loose ends left to tie up.

I was impressed with myself, to be honest.  My parents assured me I had good reason to be.  Stooped slightly by the arthritis that had followed him into old age, my father was still a big, proud man.  “My son the businessman!” he would smile and shake his head whenever I returned to Essex.  “My son the entrepreneur!”  He loved it.  He loved telling people that I owned a nightclub, that one day I would own a string of them.  My younger brother had been weak, and feebleminded, a disappointment to us all.  It was me they had poured their hopes and dreams into, and I had always felt proud and grateful to carry this burden for them.  In fact, it was their attitude and determination that propelled me through life when I was younger and shaped my personality into one that never faltered, never questioned what had to be done.

My father Jerry had been a bare knuckle fighter back in his day.  One of the best.  I can still recall the feeling of pride that lit and grew inside of me when I went to watch him fight.  He made mincemeat of all of them, back then, took them all down to their pitiful knees.  People used to call him Jerry the Bear, because of the solid, lumbering way he was built.  He still kept in good shape despite the arthritis, and he still carried with him the fearless reputation of a man not to be messed with.  He used to run a gym, back then.  He would train up these undisciplined young boys to be fighters.  I had nothing, he used to tell them, I had nothing and I could have been no one, but I worked hard and you can do the same.  It was an ethic to be proud of, something I wished to emulate and carry forward for him.  It was a noble thing, I felt.  To start with nothing and to work your way up, to climb higher and higher through bloody mindedness and sheer willpower.  I used to help him out in the gym, and then as soon as I was old enough, I started collecting and washing glasses in the local pub.  My parents had encouraged me, of course.  It didn’t matter to them what line of work I went into, as long as it had a clear route to the top.

Like I had told Kay’s boys over the dinner table that night, I had done the lot over the years.  Collecting glasses, washing up, cleaning toilets, working the doors, serving behind the bar, you name it, I did it.  Picked up drunks from the floor, mopped up puddles of sick and broke up fights.  Seeing those kinds of people trail in and out, the ones that reeked of piss and whiskey and dribbled their words of self-pity down their chins, they made me even more determined to reach the top.  I liked a drink myself from time to time, but I never relinquished control.  I let other people do that.  To lose control was to be weak.  Those people that weaved in and out of pubs and clubs, babbling nonsense and falling over their own feet, they had lost control, they had handed it over, and lived life in a shambles.

By the time I reached my mid-twenties I had grown into a bear of a man myself.  Chip of the old block, people said when they saw me coming.  Those were the days I earned a fortune with my shaved head and my shiny black bomber jacket, standing sternly on the doors of the roughest nightclubs in Essex.  There was rarely any trouble when I was on a shift.  And every time I returned home with a pay rise or a promotion, my father would take my hand in his and pump it up and down, while his blue eyes glittered with pride.  I lived a frugal existence, saved my money, stashed it away, but it was all going to be worth it one day.  I had a goal, and it was unmoveable.  It would happen, and that was all there was to it.  By the time I was thirty I would be managing a swanky London nightclub, and by the time I was forty, I would own one.

Nancy’s had come along at just the right time for me.  It was the first place I had sunk my own money into, and in the long run it was going to be worth every penny.  This was the decrepit dying piss hole I was going to turn around.  This was the place people would be talking about in months to come.  It would become the towns’ main attraction, the ugly duckling transformed into a swan.  It would make my name and I would be someone.  The other half was still owned by Tony Philips, this ailing alcoholic I had no intention of sharing the limelight with for long.  For the moment, as long as he remained drunk and in the palm of my hand like everybody else, then everything was going to plan.

And now of course, I had Kay.  The top prize.  The icing on the fucking cake.  She summed it all up didn’t she?  Who I was, and what I deserved.  I had known that the first time I set eyes on her.  She seemed to carry this rare, warm glow within her.  It was like a golden haze that surrounded her, spreading out to whoever was near, touching them with light and hope.  Now that she was mine, people liked to tell me how lucky I was.  Jammy bastard, the men leering over the bar informed me.  Lucky sod.  To be honest, such comments offended me.  Luck didn’t come into it.  It had nothing to do with luck.  I co-owned and managed a nightclub that was already clawing its way up from the bottom, bringing crowds in and creating a buzz around town, and I lived with a beautiful woman because I deserved to.  Simple as that.

She hadn’t been difficult to impress, of course.  She just wanted someone to be nice to her, to pay her attention and spoil her.  She just wanted someone to be honest and true, and not mess her about.  She was enthralled by Nancy’s, and my stake in it.  She was touched by my relationship with my parents.  To her, I was someone going places.  I was a catch.  It did not really surprise me when I discovered how easy she was to wind around my finger, or how adoringly she hung onto my every word.  She was relieved you see, to have someone on her side for once, to have someone to lean on, someone who sympathised.

Well I’d seen kids like Danny before you see.  They were ever present in my fathers’ gym, snot nosed kids, wet behind the ears and spoiling for a scrap.  Thinking the world owed them a living.  Mollycoddled and pandered to, but we soon knocked the snot right out of them.  Took them apart and built them back up the right way.  Kids these days were even worse.  They had it far too easy.  They were not getting the things they really needed to survive in life; guts and determination.  Nerves of steel.

The boy was a slight problem, that was true enough, but this did not deter me, not one little bit.  In fact I was rather relishing the challenge.  Like with the club, what was the point in having everything handed to you on a plate, finished and perfect?  I liked to stamp my mark down on things, you see, polish them off in my own image.  Challenge made life more interesting, and the end result, the success, far more satisfying.  The boy was a problem, but the problem was his, not mine.  I was close to achieving everything I had ever dreaed of in life, and it was laughable to conceive that a thirteen year old brat of a kid was going to get in the way of it.

Early days, I reminded myself at the end of each one.  Early days.  The boy had a choice, I reasoned, a simple choice.  If he made the right choice, then everything would be okay, and everything would fall into place, and he would stop looking at me as if I were some kind of monster.  He would start to look at me in a different way, I was sure of it.  I considered that by now he knew he had met his match.  That the game was over.  I had my feet well and truly under the table, and he knew it.  And all that business had been a godsend anyway.  It allowed me to play the victim before Kay.  To plant seeds in her sweet, stressed out little head and watch them grow.  And she had begged me in the end.  Move in, she had said, move in with us, I can’t do it on my own anymore, I can’t cope.  I could help her.  I knew how kids like that ended up if no one watched out for them.  There were plenty of the little bastards roaming the streets all glassy eyed and looking for trouble at night.  Plenty of underaged losers spewing up their alcopops and shagging their friends girlfriends in dirty alley ways.  In years to come, they would replace the fat slugs that slithered onto my bar stools, burping into their beers.

The boy was simple to me.  A spoilt brat who had gotten used to having his own way.  He didn’t want to share his mother with anyone else and he believed that bad behaviour got him what he wanted.  He had guts though, at times.  It amused me.  Stupidity as much as anything, but there was a fire in those eyes I longed to put out.  It made things interesting and it made me wonder how long it would take to get him in line the way I wanted.  I wondered this in the same way I wondered how long it would take to get the club up to scratch.  Well, it was all just a matter of time, patience and hard work, to be honest.  The boy made it easy for me in every way.  He was always in trouble, always fighting and scrapping, so who would notice a few more bruises?  Who would believe an attention seeking liar?  He liked to think he was tough, but I knew the truth of it.  I knew I would have to take him apart before he understood what being tough really meant.  I would wipe out the cold defiance in those blue eyes, I would obliterate it and replace it with something else.  Sometimes, you needed to experience how shit and disappointing life could be before you finally sharpened up and recognized the rules.

If the boy broke the rules, or forgot the rules, then things would be tough for him.   I had no problem with this.  In fact I was rather starting to see it as my responsibility to set him on the right path.  He didn’t have anyone else, did he?  No father, no brother, and as for Kay, well, I adored the woman inside and out, but she was totally inadequate sometimes as a parent.  I saw it, time and time again.  Half the time she didn’t even know where he was, and didn’t even think to question.  He shuffled through the house smelling of cigarette smoke, and she didn’t bat an eyelid.  She offered him no direction, no purpose.  She rarely corrected him.  She seemed happy to just allow him to float along, causing trouble when it suited him.  Well it was simple in my eyes.  Kids messed up, you punished them, and showed them the way.  The only thing that had surprised me slightly was the rush I’d felt that night in the kitchen when I’d introduced his face to the table.  It had come out of nowhere, this swelling, this roar of adrenalin and power.  I’d wanted to breathe it in, suck it up, inhale it.  It was still there when I woke in the morning, still tingling through my muscles.  I’d felt my chest expand with the memory of it.  A smile had crept across my face when I received the phone call to pick him up from the station.  Guilt, I felt no guilt.  I would teach the boy how to be a man, and one day, I knew he would thank me for it.

31

 

August 1993

Two days before my fourteenth birthday, I received an urgent phone call from Michael.  I answered it half asleep, which was the state I seemed to exist in permanently; not quite with it, with the constant urge to blink at the world around me.  He told me his mum had gone away for a bit, and his brother was home from prison.  Get over here now, he said, his voice tight and hushed with emotion.  I got dressed in a daze and hurried over to him.  He answered the back door to me, and he looked dizzy with excitement; his dark eyes shining brightly, his smile so wide it touched his ears.  His chest was bare, and browner than ever, as he seized me by the arm and dragged me through the door. “Get in, get in here,” he hissed, showing all of his teeth.  I allowed him to drag me inside, and there was this young man, who was unmistakably Michael’s older brother, sat on one side of the kitchen table.

It seemed like I was staring at a Michael from the future.  It was odd really.  I could see exactly what he was going to look like in years to come.  Anthony sported the same thick black hair, though he kept his shorter than Michael did.  He had exactly the same almond shaped eyes, like melted chocolate, warm one moment, dark and menacing the next.  He gave you the feeling that he could shake your hand or hug you, just as easily as he could knock you out or smack you.  He was taller, and broader, his bare chest rippling with lean, hard muscle.  He was sat at the table in a pair of loose tracksuit trousers and nothing else.  As I walked in, he looked up and offered me a knowing smile.  “Well you must be the famous Danny,” he said to me, and I was smiling then, in spite of myself, in spite of the foggy daze that seemed to cling to me lately.  I couldn’t help but smile at him.  I liked him.  Right away I liked him.

“You must be Anthony,” I said, enthusiastically, as Michael gave me another friendly shove towards the table. “Nice to meet you!”   I sat down next to Michael.  Anthony nodded at me courteously.

“Nice to meet you too.  Mike’s been telling me all about you.”

“Yeah?” I glanced sideways at Michael, who nudged me in return, as he folded his arms over the table, still smiling that crazy, satisfied smile.

“Just filled him in on your legendary status around here,” he told me. “You know, breaking Higg’s nose, for starters!”

“Sounds like the creep deserved it,” Anthony remarked, before I could open my mouth to defend myself.  I closed my mouth, grinned and nodded at him.  His eyes were down, as he concentrated on tapping tobacco along the fold of a cigarette paper.  Michael nudged me again, his expression serious now.

“What happened after, you know?  The beach thing,” he asked me.  “When you went home and that.”  He had those frown lines on his forehead again, I could see them tensing just beneath his hair.  I forced a nervous smile which I doubted would appease him.

“Nothing.  He didn’t tell mum.” I turned my gaze back to Anthony’s deft fingers, as they rolled the cigarette quickly and neatly.

“Why didn’t he?” Michael asked.

“Got a deal,” I shrugged. Anthony looked up then, lifting the roll up and pushing a roach into one end.  He didn’t say anything while he finished it off, but he gave off the air that he was about to, so the both of us waited silently, our eyes on him, our breath held.

“Oh yeah,” he said finally, his shoulders stiffening. “Mike’s been telling me all about him too.  Sounds like a right piece of shit.”

“Prize prick,” Michael said instantly. “Isn’t he Dan?”

“Just one big giant twat,” I agreed happily, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth as I imagined the list of expletives I could add to that if they wanted me to.  “You know what his latest thing is?” I asked them. “Picking on my hair!  He thinks it’s unsuitable for us to want to look like Kurt Cobain.  He doesn’t find him suitable as a role model, apparently.” I rolled my eyes in dramatic, amused fashion and grinned at Anthony.

“What?  And I suppose he thinks he is?” Michael cried, shaking his head in disbelief.  “What a cunt!”

“I think your hair is cool,” said Anthony, offering me another polite nod, as he stuck the roll up between his lips.  I grinned.

“Thanks.”

“Grow it longer, just to piss him off!” Michael suggested.

“Yeah, I’m gonna’.”

“Get a load of tattoos, when you’re older,” said Anthony, with a casual shrug.  He lit the roll up, located an ashtray and dragged it towards him.  I nodded slowly, gazing intently at the patterns and swirls that adorned his upper arms, and chest.  I wished I knew what they all stood for, what they all meant to him.

“I will,” I said. “Yours are so cool.”

“Trouble is they’re addictive,” he laughed. “You get one and that’s it, you want more and more.”

“So what is it like to be out of jail?” I asked him then.  He puffed smoke downwards and tapped the roll up briskly against the ashtray.

“Amazing,” he nodded at me.  “Even more amazing that mum and dad aren’t here to do my head in, isn’t it Mike?”

“Oh yeah,” Michael said, patting the table with both hands.  “Hope they stay away for ages!  Party time while they’re away!”

“Suppose I’ve got to find some kind of job,” Anthony said with a yawn, leaning back into the wall behind, his position so sprawling and relaxed that I sort of felt my body mirroring his; loosening, melting, ridding itself of tension.  “But I guess we better talk about this party of yours eh?  Shall we have a drink?  Here look.”  He grabbed a bottle from the crowd that stood lined up at the other end of the table.  Most were empty and corkless.  He snatched one and pulled it forward. “Looks like mum forgot to polish this one off before she went.”  He stuck the roll up between his teeth, pushed a pile of magazines to one side, found three empty mugs and plonked one down in front of each of us.  He opened the bottle and sloshed us each a drink.  “Cheers lads!” he announced, raising his.  Michael and I grabbed ours and copied.

“Cheers!”

“Cheers!”  I nodded as I sipped, having never tasted wine before.  It was warm and sweet and I just hoped it would not show on my breath too much when I went home. I sighed a little and looked back at Anthony, who had returned to his languid position against the wall.  He reminded me of a cheetah or a jaguar, as he lolled there smoking his roll up, all long loose limbs dangling, while his eyes remained sharp and alert.

“So there’ll be people I need to invite,” he was saying. “People to catch up with.”

“Obviously,” said Michael, nodding along.  I looked at him and tried not to smile too much.  I noted how different he seemed around his brother.  He seemed younger, of course, but not just that, he seemed quieter if you like, gentler, and you could see the way that he hung onto his brothers every word.  And now that I had the infamous Anthony Anderson right before me, I could also see how many of Michael’s mannerisms and characteristics came from him.  Mike’s warmth and humour, his fierce, don’t give a shit attitude, had all been finely honed in honour of his older brother.  Michael was a smaller version of Anthony, I realized, and I found this rather touching.

“We’ll kick things off around eight.” Anthony was telling us, as he leaned forward and topped up our drinks. “Invite who you like but tell them to bring their own drinks.  And make sure people have cleared it with their parents or whatever.  The last thing we need is mums and dads banging on the door in the middle of it.”  He raised his eyebrows at us and we nodded back at him faithfully, so he grinned and stubbed out his cigarette.  His smile was like Michael’s too, I noticed then, full of promise, and mischief. He rubbed his palms together in glee. “Gonna’ be a great night boys!”

On the morning of my fourteenth birthday, I was dragged out of groggy, unsatisfying sleep, to the sound of my mother tapping persistently on my bedroom door.  “Wakey wakey birthday boy!” she was cooing girlishly.  “Come on, I want to see you open your presents before I go to work!”  I blew my breath out over my drooping lower lip, threw back my covers and stumbled from my bed.  I opened the door and there she was, beaming like a vacant lunatic in her Co-Op uniform.  She did a little dance, with her arms full of presents wrapped in black and white striped paper.  The whole thing unnerved me; not least the presence of Howard, lurking sullenly behind her, with his fleshy arms crossed over his puffed out chest.  “Happy birthday Danny!” she sung, while I pushed out a tense smile as my shoulders sagged.  This was how it would always be, I mused.  Life; marred by the looming form of a vaguely censored monster.  He was never too far away from her.  It was as if he dared not leave us alone together for too long for fear we might put our heads together and figure out the truth about him.  I accepted the gifts she pressed into my arms and sat down on the edge of my bed with them.

“Thanks mum,” I said, wincing at the thought of opening them with an audience.  My stomach was already doing its new thing.  The stuttering realization of fear.  The climbing, scrabbling build up of bunching up nerves.

“Fourteen years old!” my mother clapped her hands together and declared, spinning halfway around to announce this news to Howard.  “I can’t believe it!  You’re getting so grown up!”

I have to admit, I was impressed with the first gift from her.  It was a brand new Nirvana t-shirt, white, with a black image of Kurt Cobain playing his guitar.  I was so surprised and excited, I started pulling off the one I already had on. “Mum this is amazing!  Thanks! I love it!”

“Ooh love, what have you done to your tummy?” I heard her asking me, as I tugged the new top down over my head.  In my excitement I had completely forgotten about the spread of colours on my abdomen.  My stomach sank even lower.  I pulled the t-shirt down and ran a hand back through my hair, and for a moment all I could do was stare at the floor, as a million things rushed through my head in a panic.  I opened my mouth.  What if I said it?  What if I pointed at him and told her?  I swallowed, picked up the next present and started to open it.

“Just playfighting,” I heard myself mutter.  “Just mucking about.”

“You should be more careful,” she told me, clicking her tongue.  “One of you will get hurt!” I nodded and then gasped again.  She had bought me Nirvana’s first album Bleach.  I had a taped version from Billy, but not the real thing.

“Wow mum!  Thank you!” I smiled in genuine surprise.  My mother laughed and looked pleased with herself.

“You’re welcome!  I’ll admit I did ask the man in Our Price to help me a bit!”

“Love it,” I said, turning the cassette over in my hands.  There was a snort from behind then.  Howard cleared his throat.  Tapped his toe twice.  My mother turned to look at him, and he smiled at her sweetly.

“You’ll be late for work,” he warned amiably. “If you don’t get him down to see the other one.”

“Oh Christ, you’re right!” she cried, checking her watch and making a face.  “Danny, open the rest of those later!  The main one is downstairs!  Come on!” I put the parcels behind me, and she tugged me from my room and out onto the landing.  We followed Howard down the stairs, and into the kitchen, but just at the door, she pulled me back and then placed her hands over my eyes.

“Mum?”

“It’s okay, it’s alright, just walk forward.  Into the kitchen.” I stepped warily forward, my hands slightly raised, until I felt the cold of the lino beneath my bare feet.  “Okay, look now!” she said and dropped her hands.  I looked.  Leaning seductively against the kitchen table, shining in the golden light that streamed through the  window, was a beautiful midnight blue mountain bike.  My mouth dropped wide open.  I was so happy, so surprised I could barely speak. I reached out for it, touched the handlebars and then dropped one hand onto soft, leather seat.

“Do you like it?” my mother asked from behind me.  It was the stupidest question I had ever heard in my life.  It looked brand new, but it couldn’t be.  I’d never had a new bike in my life, and neither had John.  They were just too expensive.  I was grinning so much it was beginning to hurt my cheeks.

“It’s amazing!” I told her, as she grabbed her workbag from the side and planted a clumsy kiss on my forehead.

“Glad you like it honey, I’ve got to run.”

“It’s amazing mum, thank you so, so much…” I crouched down, running my hand down the slope of the frame. “How did you ever afford it?”

My mother opened the door, her car keys swinging from one finger. “Ah well,” she chuckled, “You’ll have to thank Lee for that love.  It’s from him as well.  He even picked it out for you. I’ll see you both later!”

She left.  I froze.  My finger was stuck to the frame, my eyes fixed ahead.  Had I heard her right?  The pleasure and the excitement slipped right through me then.  I practically heard it crashing into the floor.  I finally moved my hands from the bike and dragged them slowly down my face, closing my eyes into them briefly, wishing it was not true.  I dropped them into my lap and glared at the bike.

“Well you heard her,” Howard spoke then from behind, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction that dripped from his voice.  “You gonna’ thank me properly, or what?”

I didn’t answer him.  I couldn’t.  My mouth was dry, and my throat raw and closed.  I wanted to reach out and touch the bike again, I wanted to drag it through the door, out into the sunlight and climb onto it, but I knew I could never do any of those things now.  I heard him stepping closer.  “Hello?” he snapped.  “Did you hear me?  I think you’re supposed to be thanking me properly.”  There was a pause, as he lit his cigarette and inhaled.  The smoke drifted up and over my shoulder, tickling my nostrils.  “Oi,” he said then, and poked me in the back.  I remembered the circle on my arm and started to shake.  “You’re meant to be thanking me remember.”

I breathed out slowly.  Every part of me wanted to crawl away in shattered pieces, but I tried to control myself, tried to hold it together, as my gaze lingered miserably on the beautiful bike that I would never be able to ride.  “You picked it out?” I asked him.

“Course I did.  Your mother wouldn’t have a clue about picking out a decent bike, would she?” He stood next to me then and placed his hands on the bike, one on the handlebars and the other on the seat.  “She wanted to get you a second hand one, but I said it was better to get new.  This is expensive you know.  You need to take good care of it and make sure you lock it up all the time.”

I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have.”

“You what?”

“You didn’t have to.  You should’ve saved your money, I mean.”

“Ungrateful little bastard,” Howard said softly, the cigarette drooping from his slack lips.  He let go of the bike and stood tall.  I kept my eyes to the floor.  I was scared that if I looked up into those tiny, deranged eyes I would either piss myself in fear, or explode with rage and neither would be a good thing on my birthday.

“I am grateful,” I told him tightly.  “I just mean you didn’t have to.”

“You seemed pretty happy with it a minute ago,” he said. “Until you found out I paid for it!”

“Look,” I said, dragging my eyes from the floor to meet his.  I took another deep breath to steady myself, to force myself on.  “You don’t like me.  Why’d you want to buy me this?” I gestured weakly at the bike and watched his eyes seem to glaze over with rage.  We stared at each other.  My shoulders rose and fell while my breath hissed through my nostrils.  I knew I should shut up.  Leave it at that.  Get to my room, to safety, but the argument was there, building up behind my tongue amidst a thousand others, the unfairness of it all. “You’ve only done this to impress her,” I heard myself saying.  “You hate me.  You’ve only done this to impress her and make me look bad, like you always do.”

His head cocked slowly to one side.  His cigarette dangled until he plucked it out with his fingers and breathed smoke up towards the ceiling. “Is that right?  I thought I was buying you a bike for your birthday to be nice.  But you know better, eh?”

I took a step backwards then, back towards the hall.  I licked my lips as Howard stared into me.  “I’ve been toeing the line,” I said.  “But it doesn’t make any difference with you.  You’re still a bastard to me the whole time.”

“Oh is that right?” he nodded now, dipped his whole head up and down as if he were bobbing about under the water.  His hands were on his hips, the fag had smouldered out, and his broad shoulders were twitching and rolling.  “So buying this bike is being a bastard to you is it?  I’m sorry Danny I didn’t realize! And I suppose getting you to clean your room and help around the house is being a bastard to you too, is it?”

I rubbed at my stomach with one hand, and stepped back again. “You know what I mean.” I said. “So I don’t want that bike thanks.  Take it back.  Get your money back.”

“You what?”  He thrust his head forward from his rippling shoulders then.  His far reaching forehead had turned a purplish red, and his eyes were bulging.  “Do you want to say that again, in case I misheard you?  Do you want to say those words again?”

I took another step backwards. “I don’t want it,” I told him. “I don’t want anything from you.”

His expression was mortified, not just enraged but baffled, and disappointed, as if the words I spoke were the last words he had ever expected to hear.  He came at me then, and it was like he had to, because he didn’t know what else to do with all that confusion and conflict.  “Well you’re fucking having it if I say you’re having it!” he roared at me, grabbing the front of my new top and dragging me forward by it.  He pushed his face into mine, and I turned my cheek, and I could feel the blackness coming from him, the impossible shaking rage, and I could smell old Spice and peppermint mouthwash and Benson and Hedges fags. “You’re fucking having the fucking bike, alright?”  There was no way out so I nodded at him.

“Alright!”

“Look at it.”  He let go of my top and spun me around to face the bike.  He dropped his hands onto my shoulders.  I could hear his rapid, laboured breathing.  It occurred to me that he was trying to calm himself down, rein himself in, and it crossed my mind then to incite him to lose control, to provoke him further and see how far he went.  “Look at that bike.  I never had a nice fucking bike like that when I was your age!  Brand fucking new it is!  Most expensive one in the shop! You will be grateful for it, you hear?” I glared at the wretched bike, seething under the weight of his hands, and I pictured myself lashing out and kicking the bike, slamming it hard into the pavement.  He squeezed my shoulders then.  It felt like he was screwing them up, scrunching them in his claw like hands, and the pain was sharp and nasty hitting all of the nerves, whipping the breath to scream from me. “Do you understand?” he roared into my head.

“Yes!” I screamed back at him. “Yes!”

He let go.  “Now turn around and say thank you properly like you should have done in the first place.”

I was shaking as I turned around to face him, but it wasn’t so much from fear anymore, but from anger.  I ran my eyes over his big red face, as his piggy eyes glittered with spite.  I wished I had a flick knife on me.  I thought about how it would feel to shove a blade right into one of those round marble eyes.  “I hate you,” I told him.  He slapped me hard across the mouth.  The force whipped my head to one side and I tasted blood and I was glad.  I sucked it up between my teeth and let it sit on my tongue.  And I looked back at him and gave him a small smile. “I hate you,” I told him again. “And one day I am going to fucking kill you.”

I ran then.  I moved so fast he had no time to react.  He was stunned and rigid, still taking in the threat and I ran for the hall, skidding past the phone just as it started to ring.  I don’t know why I snatched it up and answered it.  I saw myself doing it and wondered why I wasn’t just running past it, running for my room.  “Hello?” I barked into it, my back to the wall.  Howard appeared in the hallway as if he had not even moved.  His head was low and slightly forward.  His lips had disappeared and his brow overshadowed his eyes.

“Daniel is that you?” My grandmas voice was on the other end, high pitched, brittle, and pissed off.  I pressed a finger to my mouth, and looked at the blood on it.

“Yeah it’s me,” I told her with a little laugh. “How are you?” I felt my lip throbbing as I spoke but I was pleased, pleased that it was just pain, pleased when I saw Howard’s shoulders relax into defeat.

“Happy birthday!” she was telling me. “You better tell me all the trouble you’ve been up to lately.  You better tell me all about this new man in your mothers’ life. She hasn’t brought him to meet me yet you know!”

“You mean Lee?” I asked, keeping my eyes on him.  Holding him back. “Oh yeah I can tell you all about him Gran.  What do you want to know?”

He backed off then.  Turned and slunk into the kitchen, and it was weird the joy that washed over me then.  I felt wired and alive.  I felt the blood pumping from me and I pictured him stood like stone in the kitchen.  Moments later I heard him slamming the back door behind him, and I dropped my head back onto the wall as the relief nearly floored me.

Later that night I was sat on my bed, listening to Bleach and still basking in this rare feeling of triumph.  My tongue flicked back and forth across my cut lip and I realized that it was okay.  That it was only pain, and pain was better than fear.  I had my notebook balanced on my knees and I left it there while I curled my fingernails up into the palms of my hands.  I pressed them into my skin until it hurt and I told myself there, see?  Just pain.  That’s all it was.  I replayed the beautiful words in my head. I hate you and one day I am going to fucking kill you.  I wriggled with pleasure and scribbled into my notebook.  I pictured the bike still stood in the kitchen, beautiful and pointless.  I swore to myself I would never ride it.  The music swept its rage up inside of me, setting my teeth on edge as I gritted them together and nodded along violently.  Doing what he wanted had got me nowhere.  So fuck it, I thought.  Fuck being a good boy and toeing the line, fuck it!  Fuck it, it’s no life just being bored and scared the whole time, fuck it! Pain is okay, I wrote in my book.  Pain is okay because it reminds you that you are still alive.

28

The custody sergeant was a man in his fifties, with dazzling white hair, and a handlebar moustache to match.  I found myself gazing at him in wonder, while he took down our names and addresses.  He reminded me of Captains Birds Eye.  He just seemed bored, I thought, bored of his day, bored of life.  We were taken through to be fingerprinted, which I assume they did on purpose to shit us up a bit.  It worked on Higgs, I can tell you.  By the time they were done, the angelic faced shit was a blubbering mess of snot and tears.  I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been feeling so sick.

We had to sit and wait on a hard bench, where the custody sergeant could keep his weary eye on us.  Officer Heaton made the calls and then came to stand in front of us to give us a stern talking to.  Michael and I gave well practiced nods, kept our expressions solemn and ashamed, and called him sir.  Higgs sat and sobbed noisily the whole time.  Luckily for him, his parents arrived first to pick him up.  They stormed through the double doors, the mother all small and nervous and wringing her hands before she dragged her child away from us to wrap her arms firmly around him.  The father, who looked uncannily like his son, was nothing less than outraged.  I thought he was going to explode, or have a heart attack or something.  He was shouting and swearing and gesturing pretty violently towards Officer Heaton.  Michael and I looked on in vague amusement.  He was the colour of beetroot as he exploded in front of us all. “Those thugs are bullying my son!  Targeting him!  Why the hell have you arrested him, when it’s them attacking him!”  Officer Heaton took him aside in the end.  I wished we could have heard what was said, but when Mr. Higgs emerged, sweating under the arms of his short sleeved shirt, he merely stalked rigidly past us, and stormed out through the doors, with his wife and child scuttling after him.

The sick nerves kicked in after that.  I felt worse than ever.  Sweat had broken out in a slick sheen across my forehead, and between my shoulder blades.  I was starting to shit myself about all of it.  Getting picked up by the police again.  Pissing my mother off.  Howard.  Michael and I had to sit and wait on that bench for another agonizing fifteen minutes after Higgs left.  I sat and considered the passing of time as nothing less than cruel torture.  It was almost a relief when Mrs Anderson, in all her shrew faced glory came strutting hen like through the doors, with Howard just behind her.  At least the waiting was over.  There was a sickening twist of nerves in my gut though, making me gag once more, making my skin crawl.  The moisture evaporated from my mouth, and I could not look at Michael, as I knew the fear would be stamped all over my face.

“You might think it’s just boys being boys,” we could hear Heaton telling them at the desk.  “But it keeps being the same boys, and I’m sick of the sight of them to be honest.  One more offence like this and they’ll both find themselves up in front of the magistrate.”  He turned his eyes on us then, as we sat on the bench with our heads hanging, both of us unwilling and unable to meet their eyes. “Is that what you want?” he asked, and we shook our heads in unison.  “I suggest you stay away from Edward Higgs, including at school,” he went on, sighing loudly.  “I don’t want to see any of you back here a third time.”

“It won’t be happening again,” Howard assured him then, his smile broad and enticing.  He stood with his feet spread and one hand resting lightly on his hip.  He gestured towards me with his other hand.  “Things have been a bit unsettled at home, you know, with moving and everything.  I’m not making excuses of course, but hopefully this was just a silly moment of madness.  Things are more settled now.  Hey, how’s the sale on the house going anyway?  Meant to ask you the other night.”

I shifted my feet on the floor, looked up through my hair and saw the two men standing with relaxed poses.  I felt Michael jab me urgently with his elbow, but I was still not able to look at him.  He got up reluctantly when his mother stormed past him, shoving her way viciously out of the doors.  He trailed after her slowly, his feet dragging.  Howard came towards me then and gestured for me to get up, so I did.

I was staring in a half day dream, my eyes fixed on Michael, up ahead.  I saw his mother grab him by the back of his shirt.  She was squawking in that awful desperate voice of hers, the one that made her sound like she was close to killing herself.  I felt Howard slip his hand around the top of my arm as I remained still and staring.  “When will you ever fucking learn?” Mrs Anderson was screeching.

“Let’s go,” said Howard, his tone light and playful, his eyes on me.

“Where’s mum?” I asked then, as we went through the doors.  I was annoyed at how my voice came out, all strangled and weak like a fucking baby’s.

“Working her arse off, where d’you think?” he answered sharply. “They called the house, and lucky for you, I was in.” I looked up, but not at him.  I kept my eyes on Michael just ahead.  I felt strangely like I would be okay, as long as I could still see him.  As we walked towards his car, I felt his grip on my arm tightening.  I pulled back, but he tightened his hold even more, sending short bursts of pain up and down my arm, so I took a breath, forced my teeth down over my tongue, and said nothing.  He led me to where his silver Mercedes was parked, and the grip on my arm was growing tighter by the second, and as we reached the car, I gasped and winced, and I knew I was in trouble alright, and I remembered my face against the table that night and I felt this terrible panic roaring up inside of me.  Howard unlocked the car and finally opened the passenger door for me, and then I was sick.  It came out of nowhere.  Just frothed up over my teeth and landed on my boots.  “Fucks sake!” Howard cried, stepping back from it.  I just stared at it miserably, my shoulders sagging and my breath hitching.  There was no more.  Just that one puddle of pale cream sick steaming at my feet, the end result of too much vodka and too much sun.  “Get in,” he hissed, so I did.  He slammed the door, walked around the bonnet and climbed in the other side.

I gazed vacantly out of the window then, and I saw Michael getting into his mothers’ beaten up old Escort, and she was still screaming at him from the drivers’ seat, and when he said something back to her, she lashed out and slapped him across the back of the head.  The door closed on him and our eyes met.

Howard ignited the engine. “Let’s get you home little man,” he said chirpily.  I could feel the top of my arm throbbing and burning.

“It wasn’t our fault,” I said then, my eyes still on Michael, as both cars drove away.

“Oh well of course, you would say that wouldn’t you?”

“You can’t do anything to me, it’s not your right, if you touch me even one time I’m going to tell my mum.” I said it all so fast it was more of a jumble of words without spacing, without breaths taken in between, and although I was shit scared I forced myself to look up at him, to let him know how serious I was.  A small and knowing smile appeared on his face, as his eyes flicked calmly from the road, to me, and back again.  I examined the outline of his face from where I was sitting.  His beard and moustache, so painstakingly trimmed and groomed.  His large, straight nose was a dominant feature, as was his broad forehead, sloping  back into the receding line of hair.  He held the wheel with one hand while he dug around in the side of the door and retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.  He dropped the pack between his legs, plucked one out and lit up.

“Well aren’t you the little tough guy then?” he said to me, raising his eyebrows and looking strangely delighted with this.  “Giving me lip like that.  No one asked you to speak you know.”

“I mean it.”

“Oh you mean it, do you?  You mean it?  Well let’s get you home and have a little chat, then we’ll see what a tough guy you really are.”  His smile faded slightly now, and I sensed the atmosphere grow colder.  I turned my face to the window and watched the outside world, which suddenly seemed so far away, rush by in a whirl of colour and activity.  Howard drove smoothly through the town, and smoked his cigarette silently.  As we drove over the two bridges, he finished it and tossed the butt out onto the road.  “You’re really quite something, you know?” he said to me then, his elbow hanging out of the window. “I mean, I know your mum warned me, but it’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?  So what’s it all about then eh?  All this getting in trouble and being a smart alec?  What’s the problem?  All this dressing like a hooligan and listening to creepy music and giving your mother cheek?  You like being a troublemaker do you eh?  You like being mister tough guy and getting into fights?”

I stared out of the window as we sailed on towards the roundabout that would take us back to the estate.  I felt the sun beating down on my lap through the windscreen, warming the legs of my jeans.  I could smell my own vomit, somehow cheesy and dusty, wrinkling up my nostrils.  “I’m talking to you you miserable little shitbag!” Howard barked at me suddenly and aggressively, punching the steering wheel and making me jump.  He sounded anything but playful now.  “I asked you a question, don’t you dare ignore me!  I asked if you like getting in fights!”

“Sometimes,” I answered quickly, my face trembling.  “But it wasn’t like that.  They just chased us.”

“Yeah right,” he sneered. “That’s why the police picked you up and took you in, because it wasn’t like that, because it wasn’t like that! Bullshit you little liar.  And what about the drink then eh? Sitting on the beach boozing with your friends were you? I thought I had a conversation with you about toeing the line and behaving yourself.  Do you even remember that conversation?  Answer me dummy!”

“Yeah I remember.  And it’s nothing to do with you, what I do or…”

“Didn’t take you long to forget then did it?” he said, talking over me as he sped us towards home.  I glanced at him and saw his eyes were narrow and cold.  His face muscles twitched, and there was this weird unsettling energy about him then.  “I’m starting to think you didn’t listen to a word I said,” he growled, as he sped the final distance towards home and skidded the car to a halt in the driveway. “Right then,” he snapped. “Out you get. Looks like we’ve got some more talking to do little man.”

My heart was beating so fast, so hard, it was painful.  I thought about running, as I climbed warily out of the car, but he was already behind me, shepherding me quickly, urgently towards the house.  He seemed to block out everything, even the sun.  As soon as we were behind the house, and out of view, his hand was on my neck.  I was appalled and enraged, and sick of it, and I twisted sharply away from him, spinning myself inadvertently into the back door and pointing a warning finger his way. “Get your fucking hand off me! You’ve got no right!”

“C’mere,” he snarled, reaching behind me to unlock the door. I tried to duck under his arm, but he was too quick, kicking the door open and shoving me through it at the same time.  I stumbled into the table, and he was in, closing the door behind him and looking at me with glittering eyes.

“Don’t you dare!” I heard myself squawking at him. “You dare touch me! You dare touch me!”  He threw back his head and laughed at me.

“Or what?  You’ll tell your mum?  You really think she’d believe a word you said, you stupid little twat? After all the lies you’ve told her!”  He shook his head and was laughing so hard his eyes watered a bit.  “She never believes a fucking word you say!  She told me herself!  Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie or a story.  She’d think you were just trying to split us up again, that’s what.  She’d think it was another one of your pathetic schemes.  Anyway,” Howard stretched himself tall and looked as if he had news for me.  “She told me to help out with you, you know that?  Yeah!  She told me not to take any shit off you!”

“You’re lying,” I said, my eyes searching for a way out.  He was stood in the gap between the table and the sideboard, and the only way out was the door.  I edged towards it, my hands sliding out behind me, searching for the handle.  “And she would believe me.  She’s only just met you.  She’d believe me over you!”

He snorted at me. “You believe that if you like little man, but you haven’t heard the conversations we’ve had about you lately. She’s at the end of her tether with you.  Can’t stand you most the time.”  He placed his hands on his hips and thrust his face towards me. “And besides that, don’t you forget who’s in charge around here now mate. Who pays the fucking rent and bills!  So if I tell you to do something, you fucking do it, and if I tell you not to do something, you fucking don’t, get it?  Or is that too complicated for you to understand?”  He stepped closer then, his small round eyes hard and shining in his swarthy face.  He pushed his face right up to mine. “Is that too hard?” he asked me. “Shall I spell it out to you?  You…do…what…I…say, okay?  All right?  Can you get your head around that?”

I stared back into his eyes.  I did not flinch, or move back, or look away.  I met him.  And I swear to god, for just a moment, and most likely fuelled by vodka and adrenalin, I felt no fear.  I mean, really and truly. There was no fear because for just a moment, as I stared back into his eyes, I forgot I was younger, and smaller, and I was expanding instead with hot red hatred that seemed to fill and swell within me.  “Why don’t you just fuck off?” I asked him.  He looked surprised.  He pulled his head in and his eyes grew rounder.

“What did you just say?”

“Just fuck off,” I repeated, through gritted teeth. “You’re nothing but a bully, and me and my friends are gonna’ find out all about you and get you the hell out of here, just you wait!” My heart was still hammering like crazy, but the anger was intense and delicious, and I meant it, and I thought about Michael and his plans, and Project Arsehole, and I clung to it, I clung to any fucking thing that would summon anger in place of fear.

“Say that again why don’t you,” Howard invited, rocking back on his heels. “Tell me to fuck off again.”

I ran my tongue over my dry lips. “Fuck off you fucking piece of shit bully, go and fuck yourself!”

Howard made a noise then.  It was like an excited growl that squeaked at the end, and his right hand shot out and grabbed my face.  Those huge meaty fingers dug deep into my cheeks, and I tried like hell to wrench free, but he pulled me forward, then slammed me back into the door, and the back of my head bounced against the glass window. I blinked, tasting blood as the insides of my mouth mashed against my teeth, and a spiralling shock of pain reared up in the back of my skull.  He held onto my face, squeezing so hard I thought my bones would collapse and crumple in on themselves, and then I felt the other hand, the impossibly huge fist, as it ploughed into my belly.  He let me go, and down I went, spluttering, gasping, retching for air that would not come.  I went down onto my knees and there was no pain at first, just no room to breathe. It felt like I was drowning, and my lungs stretched and begged for air, and then his face was right in mine again, and it was a horrible, twisted, hating thing. “Do you want some more you little prick?” he was bellowing at me. “Come on, you like fighting so much, get up and show me!  I got some more for you here if you like it so much!  Come on, you like fighting so much, you fight with me!  Come on you big girls blouse!  Get up and take a shot!”

I couldn’t speak, or breathe.  The room was swimming before my eyes, but I put one hand onto the floor and used it to push me up, while my other arm wrapped around my middle, where it felt like my guts had exploded and died.  The pain was hitting now, pushing insistently through my punished organs, making my stomach heave again and again, and the back of my throat taste of vomit.  Howard was getting impatient, hopping about from one foot to the other. “Come on, come on,” he kept saying to me. “Get the fuck up and show me what a tough guy you are! Come on!  Show me what you got! I’ll give you one shot at me mate, one shot to show me.”

He had to wait, his barrel chest rising and falling as his breath arrived short, and excited.  I fumbled for the door handle and used it to pull myself up.  I started coughing, and taking huge breaths to refill my lungs with oxygen.  “Come on, come on,” Howard was urging me, his tone softer now, his eyes almost dreamy.  “That’s it now,” he said as I straightened up the best I could. “That’s it, come on, come on, you know you want to.  Think how good it will feel.  You can do it.  I’ll give you one shot to show me how tough you are.”

I straightened up a bit more.  My belly was a roaring fire of agony, and the taste of bile in my throat was getting stronger.  My stomach felt like it was in my back, crushed and whimpering, and I still had to take these huge long sucking breaths to recover, but as I did, I kept my eyes on Howard, and thought about where to hit him.  The eyes were too small.  The mouth had teeth.  I wanted the nose.  Like with Higgs that time.  I recalled the feeling of my fist smashing into the bridge of his nose, and I was decided.   I hung onto the door handle with one hand, and curled the other into a small, tight fist.

“Come on then you little shit stain,” he was sneering at me goading me into action.  “Take your best shot tough guy.  Come on.”

Okay, I thought then, okay I will.  Fight back.  I’d fight back.  I would smash him right in his arrogant face and see how he liked it.  I didn’t know if I could do it.  I was just used to fighting kids my size, in scrappy little playground scuffles, with fast punching and kicking.  There was that worried, nagging little voice at the back of my head again then, telling me that this was all bizarre and wrong, that adults didn’t do this, that all of this was leading somewhere darker.  I leaedt back against the door briefly, as the pain ripped and shredded through me, but I still felt the anger, it was still there, growling back into life.  That fucking bastard!

I made my move with the intention of catching him off guard.  I lunged at him suddenly, throwing my fist into his face with as much force as I could gather, ramming it into his nose.  The second I made contact, I felt the sharp pain careering back down my wrist, and I cried out, pulling my arm back into my chest, shrinking back against the door with it.  Howard had rocked back ever so slightly with the hit, but he was laughing at me.  He shook his head and a thin smile stretched out across his face.  “That’s the best you got?  That’s really the best you’ve got mister tough guy?” he asked me.  “That was pathetic! C’mere!”

He grabbed me away from the door and threw me down onto the kitchen lino.  Before I could get up, or roll away, he placed his boot on my chest, and pressed down, applying just enough pressure to keep me down there, squirming under his foot.  Tears sprung into my eyes, and I used my hands to shove and pull at his boot, but it was useless.  I had no breath left in me, you see.  I could barely breathe with him standing on me like that. “Listen here, you listen here now, you little shitbag,” he was growling down at me, and as I stared madly up at him, he looked like a giant, like a mutant of a man, his head touching the ceiling, his limbs like tree trunks, and I wanted desperately to call up, this is not fair! “Who’s the strongest eh?” he was asking me in amusement, his top lip rumbling up and down as he spoke. “Who is the real tough guy here eh?  You or me?  Come on, answer, I want you to tell me, who is the strongest?”

It took nearly all of my remaining strength and rage to force any words out with his foot crushing down on my ribcage like that, but just staring up into his leering face, made this intense rush of anger scream through me yet again, and I wanted to kill him, and that my friends, was the first time, and the first of many.  I wanted to be as strong and as big as him, I wanted to surprise him with superhuman strength and power.  I wanted to pick him up with one hand and squeeze the evil stench of life right out of him.  I punched at his boot, again and again.  “Fucking piece of shit bastard!”

Howard giggled down at me.  His sloped forehead creased slightly. “Do you want to say that again?” he asked me.

“Fucking…piece…of shit…bastard!”

He looked surprised, and then annoyed and pushed down harder with his boot, until I could feel the rest of the air within me being squeezed out. “Repeat it,” he dared me.  “Call me a piece of shit bastard again.”

“You!” I gasped up at him then, because I had no choice.  “You….the strongest!”

He laughed in sheer delight, rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and smiled back down at me.  “You are so funny,” he told me then, and finally lifted his foot away.  He stood over me then, one foot on either side of me, and I could only lay there, fighting for breath.  “You really make me laugh.  I see this fiery thing about you, and it really amuses me.  It’s not going to get you anywhere though, just so you know.  I’m here to crush it right out of you every fucking time.  You got that?”  He stepped over me then and walked over to the fridge.  I watched with disbelieving eyes as he pulled open the door, grabbed a cold beer and slammed it shut again.  “Now listen,” he said to me brightly.  “What do you say to this?  I got a deal for you.  You don’t tell you mum about our little wrestling match today, and I won’t tell her you got picked up by the cops for being drunk and fighting.  How about that?  That sound good to you?  That sound fair?  Because believe me mate, you really don’t want her finding out about that.  If she found out about that, believe me, you’d be on a one way ticket to fucking care!  I’m serious.  Is that what you want?”

I looked up at him and saw him smiling delicately, with his head tilted gently to one side, as he took me in.  His small eyes were full of it, I thought, loving it.  “Do you want her to put you in care mate?” he asked from above.  “Because let me tell you, once you’re in there, there’s no fucking way back out again, I can tell you.  My little brother was like you once, you know.  He was a naughty boy, so they sent him to care.”  He nodded at me and drank slowly from his can.  He lowered it and licked his lips. “True.  Oh and the things that go on in those places,” he sort of grimaced and shook his head.  “We never saw him again, you know.  You want that to happen to you, if you keep being a naughty boy?”  I saw no point in speaking, so I just stared back at him silently while his eyes burned down into mine.  “So I’ll do you a favour shall I?” he asked. “I won’t tell your mum what you’ve been up to this time, and you won’t tell her we got a bit carried away with a wrestling match, yeah?  Alright? Come on.  Answer me.  Show me some life.”  I nodded at him once.  “Good, thought so,” he said briskly as he turned away. “Good boy.”

I lifted my head to watch him saunter casually towards the lounge, still sipping from his beer.  I watched the way he rocked from side to side as he swaggered, like a fucking caveman, the arrogant fucking maniac.  I remained on my back for a while, just breathing.  I heard the TV come on in the lounge and I thought to myself, okay, if I didn’t know it before, I fucking know it now; the man is a complete lunatic.  I lay on my back on the kitchen floor while my mind travelled around the areas of pain in my body.  My hand throbbed from hitting him.  My head pounded at the back.  My cheeks ached.  I felt like I’d been run over, ploughed down and left for dead.  I wondered what the hell to do, and I realized that they didn’t prepare you for this sort of thing at school.  They didn’t have classes about situations like this.  They didn’t hand out leaflets on what to do if your mum invites a deranged psychopath into your home.  I forced myself to think clearly and saw that I had two options.  Get to my room and lock the door, or just get the hell out of the house.  I chose the latter.

I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself onto my hands and knees, grunting quietly against the pain.  I held onto my gut, holding it into place.  I scooted on my knees to the back door, and used the handle to help me up again.  I saw there was a long crack in the glass pane, where my head had collided with it.  I rubbed groggily at the back of my skull and opened the door.  Vomit rose up then, suddenly and without warning, as the sticky summer air met my nostrils.  Another puddle of sick spewed from me, all across the doorstep.  Walk, I told myself urgently, fucking move.  I stepped over it, and although my legs had started to wobble, I made them move.  I closed the door behind me.  I could feel a splash of warm sick on my chin, so used the back of my hand to wipe it away.  With every laboured step, the pain in my gut made me grunt and wince.  I went to the only place I could think of.

When I kicked open his back gate, I saw Mike was sat out on his doorstep, smoking a fag.  His dark hair hung over one eye, and one side of his face looked bright red and angry.  I limped towards him, and felt his eyes wander over me curiously.  “Shittinghell,” he said softly as I lowered myself down beside him. “You look awful!  What’s happened?  You been sick or something?”

“Few times,” I nodded, and looked at the house. “Is she out?”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “She gave me a lecture about behaving myself then went to meet her mates at The Ship.  She has a quirky parenting style.  What about you?  Could’ve shit myself when Howard walked in.”

I shrugged and searched my pockets for a smoke.  I came up with nothing so he passed me his.  “Here.  You look really awful mate.  What happened to your face?”

“Huh?”  I touched my cheek with one finger. “Nothing.  I don’t know.”

“Did he smack you or something?” Michael was peering at me closely.

I rested my head in one hand and smoked.  I felt old and faded and sickening.  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.  “Did he though?” Michael asked me again in a lower tone.  “Because if he did, he can’t do that Danny.  He’s not even your dad or anything.  He isn’t anyone!”

“Just…” I scratched my head and struggled to find an answer, something that would make him shut up for a while.  “Just a wrestling match,” I said finally and nodded. “You know what he’s like…trying to get me into it….so stupid.” Michael stared at me, his eyes narrowing slowly. “He’s obsessed isn’t he?” I said quickly. “What a wanker.  I got him one good though.  He thought I was just playing along, but I smacked him a really good one right in the nose.”

Michael laughed beside me.  “Yeah?  Did you?”  I nodded, forcing my lips into a weak smile.  I passed the smoke back to Michael, and he finished it off and hurled the butt into the grass.  Our smiles had faded quickly.  “He still shouldn’t do all that you know,” he said then.  “Not if you don’t like it.  Is he gonna’ come looking for you?”

“No way.  I can stay over, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, course you can. She’ll be too half cut to notice by the time she gets back.  You sure you’re okay though?  I mean…”

“Forget it, it’s nothing,” I told him, and started to get up.  I tried to do it without giving away the grating pain in my middle.  “Why don’t we have a drink or something?  Cheer ourselves up.  Everything always goes fucking wrong.”

Michael laughed cheerily and scrambled to his feet. “Are you nuts?  Thought you’d just been sick!”

“Who cares?”

“I like your thinking.  Okay then, fuck it.  Come on then, let me be your barman for the day.”  Michael hurried into the dark house, calling back over his shoulder. “What would you like, young sir?  We have everything in stock!”

I shuffled my way into the lounge behind him and dropped onto the sofa, while he began to root through his mothers’ drinks cabinet.  Michael laughed, but I found the sound of it to be hollow, and anything but happy.  We would have a drink or two and fall asleep, I thought then, and I watched Mike as he poured us a shot of whiskey each with a shaking hand.

 

29

I woke up the next morning wrapped in an itchy green blanket on Michaels bedroom floor.  I seemed to be surrounded by rubbish and the messy teenage debris of his existence.  Jeans he had stepped out of and kicked aside.  Random socks with holes in them.  Grubby trainers, crumpled magazines and discarded food wrappers.  I stared at the yellowed ceiling and was immediately and miserably aware of the intense, cramping pain in my abdomen, accompanied by the urge to vomit.  My mouth was running fast with saliva.  My tongue wanted to loll, and my stomach was clenching.  I could hear Michael snoring softly on his bed, as I lifted the green blanket away from me, peered down and pulled up my t-shirt.  I gasped when I saw it; the perfect fist sized bruise, ugly and blackening.  I felt a mixture of awe and revulsion as I stared down at it, and it seemed like a stain, an unwanted mark forced upon my skin by someone I loathed. It made me want to scratch it away.  It made me feel like part of him was on me. I dropped my t-shirt back down and lowered the blanket. Tears pricked at my eyes and I wondered again, what the fuck to do?

I lay there for a while, in a depressed silence, trying to think, but every time I got a reasonable procession of coherent thoughts on the go, I would feel the blow to the stomach again, and see his face pushed into mine, and they would scatter, and fall away.  I wanted to curl up and cry.  I turned my head to look at Michael.  He had kicked his covers away, and was lying on his back with one leg dangling to the floor, and one arm lying over his forehead.  The side of his face turned to me, still looked a bit red. I swallowed and thought about telling him everything.  Why the hell didn’t I? Why had I lied about my bike?  Why hadn’t I told him about the tricks at home, and the nasty things Howard had been saying to me when mum was not around?  Maybe Mike would want to know. Mike, he didn’t take any shit from anyone, did he?

I glanced at my watch.  It was twenty past eight.  I wondered how Howard had explained my absence to my mother.  I thought only a little bit about telling her.  I had this feeling that her not believing me would hurt a hell of a lot more than a blow to the stomach could.  I kept hearing his words in my brain, over and over.  She would send me to care.  I would never get back out.  Worse things happened there.  I remembered her threatening it that time to John, when I had been on the landing, eavesdropping, and a tremor of fear shuddered through me.  I felt cold all over, despite the fierce August sun beating through Michael’s open curtains.

I lay there with my eyes closed.  I wondered for the millionth time what to do, what to say, how to say it.  I was tired, so tired.  The urge to be sick was coming back, and just as Michael began to moan and twist on his bed, I sat up quickly and reached for the bin he kept under his desk.  It was so full of crushed drinks cans and screwed up paper, I had to push it all down with my hand so there was room for me to be sick on top.  “You okay?” I heard Michael asking groggily, as I retched into the bin.  There was nothing left to come up, just sour yellow bile.  I nodded my head between retches. “Why you being sick?” I shrugged, wiped my mouth with my t-shirt and set the bin back down.  “Do you want some water or something?”

“Nah.”

“Something to eat?”

“No thanks.”

“Smoke?”

I shook my head and lay back down, trying not to irritate the bruise too much.  Michael swung both feet to the floor and yawned and scratched his head. “Why don’t you tell me what happened with Howard?” he asked me then.

“Nothing.”  I said it quickly, automatically, without thinking, and then I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the doubt in his.  My head was pounding from the exertion of vomiting, and I knew then, why I didn’t tell him.  It was simple really.  I didn’t want him to know.  I didn’t want him to see me that way, floored and beaten, flat on my back with the bastards big foot on my chest.  I didn’t want to see myself that way; to me that was someone else, that kid on the kitchen floor, that wasn’t me, and I never wanted it to be me.  That’s not who I am, I thought in confusion.

“What’re you gonna’ do?” he asked me then. “Go home and face your mum?  You think Howard would’ve told her by now?”

For a moment I had no idea what he was talking about.  I opened my eyes and frowned up at the ceiling, and rubbed at my temples with one hand.  “Huh?”

“The cops,” he said, gesturing in impatience. “Think she knows?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he said then, and he said it in this very firm, confident way which made me turn my head to look at him again.  He pushed back his thick black hair and underneath, his eyes were fierce with energy.  “Anthony will be back soon.  And he’ll sort that fucking twat out for you Danny.  I promise you.” I nodded and said nothing, but inside, I started to wonder, I started to wonder if this was a tiny fragment of hope I could cling to.

Eventually I crept back home, and I was playing a game with myself, pretending everything was alright, and there was no crippling pain in my belly, and there were no hairs stood on end on my neck.  I wanted to go to bed, listen to Nirvana and sleep.  What I found when I walked through the house, was my mother and Howard, entwined tightly in the lounge with the TV on low.  They both looked up and smiled at me as I passed by.  I stopped, and felt for a second like I had accidentally stumbled into another reality.  She tilted her head, her eyes were full of love, and she asked me how the sleepover had gone.  I shrugged in dumb uncertainty.  Howard squeezed her shoulder and winked at me over her head.  “You look pale,” she said then, frowning a little. “Are you coming down with something?”  I nodded, my expression vague.  Howard’s eyes remained brightly on mine.

“Off to bed, I’d say,” he said then with a nod.  I watched the way my mother looked back at him adoringly every time he spoke, and I watched the way her hands sought out his, reaching for them and bringing them down into her lap.  I didn’t feel like I could ever tell her anything then.  I just turned away from them and hurried up the stairs to my room.  Howard had obviously kept to his side of the bargain, I thought when I found my bed, and my music.  I wondered dismally what would happen if I didn’t stick to mine.  It’s a test, I thought then, folding my arms behind my head.  He’s told me to stick to the rules and now he is testing me.  I felt weak then, too weak to fight back, too weak to complain, so I just stayed in bed and listened to Kurt Cobain proclaiming I’m a negative creep, I’m a negative creep, I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned.   I decided I had no choice but to play along with things, and see what happened.

I tried really hard after that.  I was nothing less than a fucking suck up.  I did whatever they told me to, without complaint or attitude.  My mother was in a constant state of shock about it.  She kept widening her eyes every time I did what I was asked to do, she kept smiling inanely at me while my bruise changed colour daily, as it spread out across my abdomen like a violent rainbow.  I couldn’t wait for it to just disappear.

When my mother was at work, Howard would start to grumble.  He couldn’t help himself.  He hated mess.  It set him on edge, made him restless and irritable.  He brought the vacuum cleaner up to my room one morning when I was still in bed, tapped on my door and stood out on the landing, smoking a cigarette.  I opened the door and saw the hoover, and a whole bunch of cleaning sprays, and cloths beside it.  I felt the urge to scream fuck you at the top of my lungs, but I didn’t.  I just sighed and dragged the vacuum cleaner in through my door.  “Good boy,” he announced in this overly enthusiastic tone that reminded me of the way people praised their dogs.  He came forward, positioned himself in the doorway and frowned into my room. “Bloody mess,” he said, shaking his head almost sadly. “Don’t know how you can stand it.  What is that bloody awful racket going on anyway?”  I turned to my desk, picked up the Nevermind cassette and passed it to him without speaking.  He turned it over in his hands, cigarette jutting from one corner of his mouth. “It’s too loud,” he declared then. “How can you understand what they’re saying?  It’s just all noise and screaming!” He wrinkled his nose as if the cassette itself offended him.  I took it back and chucked it on my bed.  “Favourite band are they?” he asked me then, jamming one hand in the pocket of his jeans.  I felt my cheeks getting warm.  I felt my jaw stiffening.

“Yep.”

He snorted derisive laughter at me.  “ Yeah  I can see that!  Personally I think you look a right state dressing like that.  And all that hair!  You can’t even see where you’re going half the time.”

“Not your problem,” I reasoned, glancing at him briefly.  I plugged the vacuum into the socket under my desk.  He just leaned in the doorway, puffing his smoke all over my room.

“Bloody depressing shit, if you ask me,” he went on. “Well come on then.  Get a move on.  We can show your mum when she gets home.  She’ll be well pleased.”

I stared back at him, not understanding.  I looked behind him, wondering when he was going to leave.  He didn’t leave though.  He refused.  He stood there the whole time, shouting out when he thought I had missed a spot on the carpet.  Then he passed me the sprays and told me to clean the window and the walls and the skirting boards.  I said nothing.  What could I say?  I just did it, vacuumed and dusted and cleaned the whole room from top to bottom, not saying a single solitary word, until he was finally satisfied.  He gave it a once over, squinting and peering around, as if desperate to locate a speck of dust, or a rogue sock.

“All right,” he said then, narrowing his small eyes at me. “Good enough.  But you’ve got to keep it this way, that’s the thing.”  His thin eyebrows shot up into his shining forehead and a smile tugged at one side of his mouth.  He looked at me as if he were waiting for something, and I thought I had an idea what it was.  A fuck you.  I had one for him, I had a million, but I clenched my teeth together so hard I made my tongue a prisoner.  I kept my lips clamped down.  I breathed heavily through my nose, and I smiled back at him.

He should have been happy.  He should have known when he had things easy, shouldn’t he?  Well, later on today I guess I’ll find out if he’s as capable of regrets as I am, but somehow I doubt it.  So you see, I did try.  I did try to play it his way.  I did try to toe the fucking line he laid down for me.  But as that week wore on, it became more and more obvious, that the man had standards I would never be able to meet.  As the days tumbled by, I became so disgusted, so enraged, so bottled up with blood red mist and dark, dangerous thoughts, that I could barely even breathe in the same room as him.  My mother had nothing to say whatsoever.  Howard barked his orders from morning until night.  He handed out chores and jobs as fast as he handed out criticisms.  One thing he became particularly adept at, was handing out arduous tasks when he saw I was about to go out.  Suddenly the washing machine would need emptying, or the whole house would need vacuuming from top to bottom.  I realized I was still being tested, and it grated at me daily.  I felt like my nerves were being shredded, peeled away, one by one.  If I washed the dishes, he would say they needed doing again.  If I tidied my room, he would say I couldn’t go out until he had checked it.  He freaked out if he found even the tiniest speck of dirt or grit on the carpet, and he leapt about like a girl if his bare feet ever came into contact with crumbs on the kitchen lino.

He started playing the victim around my mother.  Another cunning stroke in his master plan, I guess.  He would get out his pack of cigarettes and then frown at them. “Oh that’s funny,” he would say. “I’m sure this was a full pack earlier.”  Her eyes would meet mine, dark with disapproval.  He did the same with his beers and his whiskey too.  He was always certain some was missing, but he never liked to make a fuss about it, of course.  It was okay, I heard him say, maybe I miscounted, maybe I’m wrong, just forget about it.  Bullshit he wanted her to forget about it, that was the real truth.  Bullshit, because everything that came out of his thin lipped mouth was utter bullshit, he just didn’t want her to see it.  I knew exactly what the fucker was doing on a daily basis; turning her against me, not that there was a lot of turning left to do.  I wondered every day, what would happen if I told her the truth?  Would she believe me?  Would she believe the colours on my middle?  After everything that had happened between us, would my word really mean a thing to her?  Sometimes it felt like both her and I were living in the palm of his meaty hand, and I could feel him squeezing us tighter and tighter, until one day there would be nothing left of us, nothing but empty shells, puppets.

On occasion I thought about calling John.  I even stood in the hallway once or twice, staring at the telephone in a sort of trance.  But then I would start to think about how it would sound.  Howard makes me tidy my room.  Howard thinks I steal his cigarettes.  Howard insists I behave myself, so I am.  Want to hear any more brother dear?  I could see Johns face, joining up the dots, thinking well, you bring it on yourself Danny, that’s the thing, and besides, it’s about time you calmed down.  Would he come running back if he knew?  I didn’t think so.  Then I would picture him, safe with his precious dad at the other end of the country, enjoying his course, meeting girls, having fun, and it made this fiery ball of hatred leap into life in the pit of my stomach.

I lay awake night after night, contemplating how normal life was unravelling fast.  That was the sensation I had.  Reality was changing.  The ground beneath my feet was shifting, become rocky and untrustworthy.  I realized that I didn’t feel like anyone else.  When I looked around me, I didn’t recognise them, and I didn’t recognise me either.  I didn’t know where I had gone, but the boy I was turning into was no one I cared to be.  He was a boy who took these things.  He was a boy who did not fight back, or complain.  He was a boy who clung to the unrealistic hope that the dark things around him were not really real, were not really happening, or would simply go away one day.  He would wake up in the morning and everything would be back to normal.  He would know who he was again.  He would know what to do.  On the day that Howard used the inside of my arm to stub his cigarette out, I lay awake even longer, contemplating the nature of violence.  The burn was a perfect little circle of violence.  I could not take my eyes off it.  The memory was already unclear, fogged around the edges, dulled by shock.  No words had passed between us.  He had taken my arm as if it belonged to him.  He had smiled a sinister smile, his lips parting slowly to reveal the tiny row of teeth.  His breath smelled of the peppermint mouthwash he used.  It felt like he was giving me an injection.  A moment of sharp, breath hitching pain.

Violence.  In the dictionary it described it as a rough, or injurious physical force, action or treatment, an unwanted exertion of force or power. I thought about it every day, what it was, what it meant, and why.  Like the marks on my stomach, I felt like the circle stained and marked me.  I worried that it could somehow seep through my skin, his violence, seep through and reach me.  I wondered if in time I would become infected by it; if the raging blood of his violent nature would run alongside my own, changing who I was, and who I would become.  The small things you see, the small things always add up to more.  They pile up on you, day after day.  That was what he was doing then, and it was working, as I felt the shame weighing me down, diminishing me.  It now horrified me to think of telling anyone.  The gang, for instance, they thought of me as a fucking legend; I was the new boy who had started school with a fight, and got arrested for breaking Edward Higg’s nose.  They thought I was tough, like them.  Michael thought I was tough.  What would he think of me if he knew the truth?  If he knew that this man who was barely more than a stranger could take my arm in the kitchen and press his cigarette into my skin, and that no words were spoken, that I didn’t even cry out, or make a sound?  He would look at me differently, that was for sure.  Did I want to fight back?  Yeah, more than anything.  I just didn’t know how.  I felt like I had totally disintegrated since Howard had arrived in my world.

26

            I wondered what he expected me to do.  I wondered if he expected anything.  I wondered if it worried him at all, what I might do, or say, but the more I saw of him, the more it dawned on me that he did not worry about anything.  That nothing infiltrated his conscience.  So you might be wondering why I didn’t tell my mother right away.  I wonder that myself sometimes, especially now, when I look at what a fucking mess my life has become.  It was difficult though, for a number of reasons.  They were always together, for one thing.  Because he worked nights, they would be together whenever she was home from the supermarket where she worked.  She was addicted to him, I think. I mean, she craved him.  She would wrap herself around him like a scarf, and they would move themselves around the house like that, like one person instead of two.  He was always scooping her up in his big meaty arms and carrying her like a child.  Whenever I saw them in the lounge, they would be entwined, tangled together, and you could barely see where my mother ended and Howard begun.  So getting her on her own was not easy.

I was scared she would not believe me.  I had the conversation in my head over and over again.  I tortured myself with how to begin it.  Mum I need to talk to you.  Mum I need to tell you something.  Mum, look at this.  There were fingertip sized bruises on either side of my neck, well covered by my hair which was now shoulder length.  In my mind, I would show her, I would tell her what had happened. But then I would picture her face.  The narrow eyed gaze she offered me, the skeptical arch of her eyebrows, the doubting expression that furrowed her forehead whenever I said anything.  I started to believe that she wouldn’t believe me.  That she would think it was my latest ploy to try to chase Howard off.  She would be disgusted, that I should sink so low.

The other thing that stopped me saying anything to her was my own confusion.  I was confused about what had happened that night.  You might think it was pretty clear cut, pretty obvious, but I now know that your mind has ways of making you doubt and question things when something unexpected occurs.  Sometimes I lay in my bed and tried to remember what had happened.  Had he been joking, for instance?  Had he been messing about with me?  Had he been trying out some of his wrestling moves on me, to try to impress me?  Somehow, as stupid and unlikely a scenario as this was, it became more appealing to me than the actual truth.

And weirdly enough, after that night, he did start trying his wrestling moves out on me.  Even in front of mum, which she thought was hilarious, until I told them both to go fuck themselves.  “Just trying to get you interested in sport,” he called after me, his tone baffled as well as disappointed. “It’s good for you, you know.”

I knew what was good for me, and that was keeping as far away from him as possible.  Two days after the incident in the kitchen, Michael and I were watching MTV together at my house.  There was a loose plan of sorts, to call for Billy then head on down to the beach for some food and fooling about.  The beach had become the social hot spot for everyone that summer holiday.  I wasn’t much of a fan of it myself.  Endless sand, and kids running about screaming, and roasting under an impossibly hot sun.  Great.   I couldn’t get myself going somehow.  I just sat perched on the edge of Howard’s precious leather sofa, while Michael sat slumped beside me, as I flicked through the music channels, just desperate, without knowing why, just absolutely desperate to find some Nirvana, or something, anything good.  Anything with some soul, some guts.  Instead I was repulsed by a rolling puke fest of Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson hits.  I was shaking my head, rolling my eyes when I heard that bloody Gabrielle song, Dreams, or some such shit.  It was everywhere, all the fucking time.  My mother searched for it on the kitchen radio, and washed up singing to it.  “Look at this,” I finally growled over my shoulder at Michael, who was staring at the TV screen with a dazed and appalled expression on his face. “If it’s not bloody soppy love ballads, fucking Michael Bolton and Toni Braxton, then it’s awful fucking dance shit.”

“Shit,” Michael agreed, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t believe peoples listen to this crap.  God, not that one, turn it off, turn it over!”  I looked back at the screen.  It was Ace of Base singing Another Baby.

“Ugh,” I said in fury, and kept scrolling.  The next channel was playing Runaway Train by Soul Asylum.  I kind of liked it and had bought the single in Woolworths.  I breathed out slowly and let it play.  “Better than the rest of that awful shit.  Must be the worst year for music ever.”

Just then we heard the front door open and close with an exuberant bang.  I felt my stomach hit the floor, and I looked at Michael, and opened my mouth to say hey, forget this, let’s go to Billy’s, but there was Howard already barging into the room, and planting his giant arse right in front of the TV. “All right boys?” he called out, his voice booming back at us over his shoulder as he stared at the Soul Asylum video. “I recorded some wrestling last night, you mind if I put it on?”

I sighed ever so slightly and passed him the remote.  “C’mon,” I muttered to Michael.  He nodded and reared up from the sofa.  He had a demeanour which impressed me then; his eyes on Howard, bright and questioning, unflinching. Howard held the remote and caught my shoulder as I tried to slink past.

“Hey, you don’t have to go! I’m not chucking you out. Stay and watch it with me! You’ll love it!”

I should have wriggled free from his hand, but I felt trapped then, trapped in a potentially humiliating scene, with Michael staring at me as if he did not know me, and Howard sort of jumping about from one foot to the other, like a boxer in the ring gearing up for a fight. “C’mon don’t be a misery, don’t be a spoilsport,” he started saying in this really upbeat, jovial voice, turning me around to face him.  I seemed to transform into a statue then; I was as stiff and unyielding as a board.  I had nothing to say because my throat was choked up with fear and dread and confusion, and I was just thinking for fucks sake no, for fucks sake don’t. “I’ll teach you both some moves,” he went on, suddenly wrapping his arm around my neck. “I’ll teach you how to get out of them.  You know what a neckbreaker is?”

I couldn’t look at Michael then, partly because of Howard’s arm, and partly because it would probably have killed me to see the horror and the embarrassment etched on his face.  I could feel him staring daggers at Howard though.  All of a sudden then, I felt his hand around my arm, and he sort of firmly tugged me away from Howard. “Yeah, all right, we get it thanks,” he said, as Howard’s arm fell away from me. “We’re not really interested in wrestling.”

Howard’s eyes were full of glee and self-confidence.  He laughed at us and threw himself down on the sofa, which creaked and groaned beneath his weight. “Oh you don’t know what you’re missing!” he cried at us in good natured amusement. “Top class entertainment! You boys don’t even like football, do you?  Do you not play any sports, not any?”

We ignored him, and left the house.  Outside Billy’s I was faced with yet more humiliation.  They all wanted to know what the hell had happened to my bike.  I paused for a moment before replying.  I looked at their bemused faces and could see they were waiting for something hilarious. Billy’s mum had lumbered him with this huge picnic basket full of food, and he had it balanced precariously on the handlebars of his bike.  I kicked at the ground, my hands in my pockets, my headphones around my neck.  “Left it on the drive,” I mumbled at them. “Howard ran it over.”

Michael frowned at me in silence, while Billy and Jake just laughed. “You dick!” exclaimed Billy, climbing onto his.

“Totally dead?” Jake enquired.  I nodded regretfully. “What you gonna’ do now?”

“Birthday coming up,” I shrugged.

“We could try asking the rich folk to let us cut the grass again?” Michael said as a suggestion as we started to head towards the beach. “Save some money up that way?”

“Not worth it,” I replied. “They’ll just say no.”

“Oh wow, positive thinking!”

“My dad’s making me get a Saturday job,” Jake said then, pushing his bike slowly along beside Michael. “He already has an interview lined up for me at the shoe shop in town.”

“You’re gonna’ spend your spare time fetching shoes for people?” Billy smirked at him, obviously safe in the knowledge that his parents would never suggest such a thing to him.  “You fucking bell end Jake!”

Jake shrugged his bony shoulders. “He doesn’t want me bumming around all the time,” he explained to us with an extended yawn.  “He wants me to get experience, and start saving some money.”

“These years are meant to be for bumming around!” Billy complained loudly. “Ah fuck it Jake, just fuck up the interview, you have to!  You’re not old yet! This is our time!”

Michael laughed and nudged me then. “When’s your birthday?”

“Two weeks.”

“Well guess what? My brother will be back by then!” His grin was huge, his dark eyes sparkling under his mop of black hair. “We’ll have the biggest fucking party this town has ever seen!”

I watched the others swapping amazed looks, as Michael nodded on.  I wondered why he hadn’t told me this before, but then I guessed he had probably been waiting for an audience.  It was the kind of news that deserved an audience, I thought, smiling back at him.  It was the kind of news that deserved a celebration.  “He’s really getting out?” Jake was asking, his jaw hanging open in awe.

“Yep,” Michael nodded proudly and smugly. “Had the call last night.” He glanced at me then. “Wanted to wait until we were all together to tell you. Just two weeks boys, just two weeks, and life will be fine!”

I walked along, nodding and smiling where I was expected to.  I was pleased for Michael obviously, pleased for him, and intrigued to meet the infamous Anthony Anderson, but somehow I couldn’t get as excited as I would have liked.  Two weeks was such a long time, I reasoned.  A lot of shit could happen in two weeks.

Down at the beach, we dumped our stuff on the sand and gazed around.  It looked like the entire school was down there, I thought, squinting out at the constant flow of bare legs and wet heads parading past us.  Billy was in a ridiculous state of excitement about it all, which I found hard to understand.  Weren’t these all the same people we saw and loathed inside school, day in, day out?  Why were they suddenly all his best mates?  He and Jake dashed off towards the water, Billy hollering out at someone he knew.  I unbuttoned my shirt and sat down on the sand, pushing my bare feet under it and wriggling my toes about. Michael jumped down beside me and handed me a perfectly constructed roll up. “Thanks.”

“No problem. You look like you need it.  Fucking Howard, eh.” I nodded morosely and accepted the light he held out.  I inhaled deeply and then breathed a smooth stream of smoke up into the air.  I could feel him watching me.  “What a dick,” he added. “That Howard.  Such a twat.”

I had the feeling he was trying to edge me into a conversation I did not want to have.  So I nodded and rolled my eyes to show I agreed with his sentiments; Howard was a dick and a twat, alright.  “You okay?” he gave in and asked me finally.

“Yeah, I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well with John gone, and that arsehole living with you…You can come back and stay with me again you know.  Any time you like.  My mum won’t even notice.”

“It’s okay.”

“Are we gonna’ start some more shit with him then?”

I glanced at him sideways. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” he shrugged. “Project Arsehole.  We need some new ideas.”

“It’s too late Mike,” I told him, feeling a little overwhelmed for some reason. “He’s got his feet well and truly under the table.  There’s no point.”

“What?” Michael demanded, sounding really annoyed. “Why?”

I groaned a little and lay back on the sand, draping one arm over my eyes as I smoked.  “Because it’s over, that’s why.”

“How is it over?  Because he’s in your house?  You can still get rid of him!  We can still try!”

I sighed under my arm and wondered why everything always had to be such a fight with him.  Why did he even care? “Look he’s the big boss man now, yeah? He pays for everything.  His rules.”

“Yeah well it shouldn’t be like that, should it?” he demanded hotly. “Are you just gonna’ give up?”

I nodded. “Yes.  I am.  I am giving it up.  Okay with you?”

“No not really.  Because I know how much you hate the guy.  I know he makes your life a misery.”

I felt a jerk of panic then, that’s the only way I can describe it.  I felt freaked out and under inspection, like the true pathetic me was rising close to the surface, too close, and I had to hide it, I had to keep it from him.  I grew panicked that he had seen the bruises.  That he knew something.  I jerked to my feet. “You don’t know shit actually,” I said, and walked angrily away.

He let me go, but I could feel his eyes on me wonderingly for a long time, as I weaved moodily in and out of the crowds.  I walked on like that for ages, just staring down at the sand beneath my feet.  I pulled my headphones on and listened to The Smiths. Take me out tonight, they sang, in dark and solemn tones, because I want to see people and I want to see light, driving in your car, oh please don’t drop me home, because it’s not my home, it’s their home, and I’m welcome no more.  You shouldn’t really listen to depressing music when you’re down, should you?  I didn’t care though.  The words were a sort of comfort to me, I suppose.  I felt like I always did when listening to the music I loved.  That the words were meant just for me, that they had me in mind, and were going to help me somehow.  I truly believed that, you know.

So I walked on, listening to The Smiths, which turned into The Clash singing I Fought The Law.  I walked on, staring down at the sand, and as I walked, I felt like there was some invisible pressure on my shoulders, pushing me down the whole time, pressing me deeper into the sand.  Everything felt like an effort.  Walking, moving along, even breathing, all of it.  I didn’t like the way I felt one bit.  Sort of down and low and disgusted and enraged with myself.  I wondered again, why I didn’t tell Michael.  I reasoned with myself that there was no point.  What could he do anyway?  He was a fourteen year old kid and a known trouble maker.  Another kid no one would believe.  In truth though, somewhere at the back of my mind, I knew it was because I was humiliated by it all.  I kept seeing myself the way I knew Howard must have seen me that night; some skinny runt of a kid forced down on the kitchen table.  Put right in his fucking place.  No way out.  And the memory, when it came, both choked and slaughtered me.

I kicked along morosely, brooding over my situation, when suddenly I felt a small hand pull at my arm.  I whirled around, startled and nervous, and there was Lucy Chapman, smiling her sunny smile at me, waving her hand a little bit in the air.  I pulled down my headphones.  “Sorry,” I said. “In a world of my own.”

She laughed.  She was wearing this bright red swimming costume, with a little blue denim skirt on the bottom.  Her hair had that beach look to it.  Like she had been swimming, and then laying on the sand, and now it was all half damp twirls that smelled like coconut.  I snapped out of my daydream.  I felt my heart pumping loud and fast.  I felt all these fuzzy warm feelings rippling through me softly, drowning out the dread.  “It’s all right,” she said to me. “Penny for your thoughts, as my mum says.”

I smiled slightly and shook my head. “You wouldn’t want to know.”

“Oh okay.  The others here?”

“Yeah, back that way.  I was bored.  Just having a walk.” I couldn’t help staring at her then.  I tried not to, but the way she was, all tanned and freckled faced, and her hands wrapped around the shoulder strap of her huge beach bag, she was just too much.  Too much.

“So how’s your summer been so far?” she asked me. I continued to smile at her, probably in this really dopey way.  I couldn’t get enough of her.  It was these waves you see.  These waves of warmth and goodness that just radiated from her, whenever I was around her.  I couldn’t explain it.  I still can’t.  “What’ve you been up to?”

“Oh you know,” I said with a half smile, meeting her eye.  “Getting in trouble.”

“Well funny you say that, because there was this wild rumour going around that you ran away from home and got taken back by the police!” She was staring at me in wonder, her chestnut eyes watching mine.  A clump of damp hair fell from her ear across her eye, and she pushed it back with one finger. “Is that true?”

“Hmm, sort of.”

“You ran away?  Why did you run away?”

“That’s an exaggeration.  I was only at Mike’s and my mum knew I was there.  She just sent the boys in blue to scare me.”

“My dad heard it from someone else,” she grimaced at me in regret. “You know how small towns are.  I was worried about you though.”

We started walking then, just slowly at first, back the way I had come.  “Hmm,” I said. “Bet your dad’s worried now then.”  She made a face.

“Yeah, kind of.  He’s a bit over protective.”

“He wouldn’t exactly jump for joy if I asked you out again then? You know, on a proper date this time?  Just me and you?”

We stopped walking again, and she turned to face me, and her eyes were troubled and a little guilty and when she shook her head at me, I felt my good mood crumble to dust.  “No he wouldn’t let me yet,” she said. “Definitely not.”

“Not right now because you’re too young?” I pressed her.  “Or not right now because of what he’s heard about me?”

“Both.”

“Okay.  No problem.”  I scratched my head and started walking again.  She caught me up though, and surprised me by slipping her arm through mine.

“But I agree with him on one thing.”

“What?”

“I am too young.  For all that.  I mean, I look at Zoe and she’s like determined to live life at a hundred miles per hour.  But I’m not ready for that.  We’re only kids once, right?”

I decided to take this as a compliment of sorts, how else could I take it?  So I smiled back at her, and enjoyed the weight of her arm through mine.  “So would your dad have a problem with us just being friends?  Just meeting up like this?”

“No,” she said, smiling broadly. “Not at all.”

That day at the beach turned out to be one of the best ones I had that entire summer.  I forgot about everything.  I forgot about mum, and Howard, and my face against the kitchen table, and I forgot about whether I was going to tell anyone or not, or whether anything like that would ever happen again.  That day was all the things it should have been.  It was laughter and piss taking, and music and hastily rolled cigarettes, and girls in bikinis, and wrestling each other in the sand.  It was staying out as long as we could; watching the sun spread a mirage of warm colours out across the sparkling ocean.  It was feeling Lucy beside me, her bare arm against mine, her warmth spreading through me, keeping out the cold.  It was sun tans and sandy hair, and shirts tied around waists, and feeling like we could stay there like that forever.  Those kinds of days are rare, and get rarer the older you get, so when you  get one, you should hold onto it for as long as possible.  I didn’t want that day to ever end. I didn’t want to have to trudge home, with no bike, back to them.

When I went home, mum told me my dinner was cold and Howard looked up from his newspaper and smiled at me.  His eyes were like cold stars I thought.  I took the cold dinner to my room and poked at it.  I was a tumbling mess of so many things.  I listened to About A Girl and smiled thinking about Lucy.  Then I sat and shuddered when I remembered my head hitting the table.  I remembered the shock I had felt afterwards, alone in the kitchen.  Shock which left me frozen to the spot, unable to understand or believe what had just happened there.  And then something else had slipped over me, this woeful feeling of having my worst fears confirmed, of having been right from the beginning about this guy.  The anger shook through me from time to time, especially when I heard him laughing with my mother downstairs.  Fucking ugly twisted ape man.  Small eyed balding gorilla.  I would find myself comparing him to animals, and then thinking that this was insulting to animals.  I would find myself thinking, I need to do something, maybe Mike was right, maybe we can keep the plan going, maybe there is something big I can do to get rid of him.

But you know what happened whenever I next saw the man?  Fear.  Fear would kick in out of nowhere, blindsiding me, staggering me to the core.  My mind would feel white with shock and awe, and the fear, it was paralysing and consuming, and all I could do was try to avoid the man, try to keep out of his way.  I soon noted what times he usually left the house, what times he usually returned, what times he watched his favourite TV shows.   I made myself scarce when I could.  I tried to remain off his radar, getting up from the sofa whenever he walked into the lounge, disappearing to my room when I heard his key in the lock, or his car purring along outside.  It seemed the smartest course of action, for now.  I came to the dinner table when asked and ate my food wordlessly, while my mother babbled on about nothing, and if I ever found her alone, the words would fill my head, almost frantically, the words I needed to say.  But they would dry to nothing inside my mouth every time I came close to speaking them.  I found myself wanting to forget about it.  I talked myself into believing something I knew was not true; that it would never happen again.  That it had been a one off.  Sometimes I would hear my mother rattling down the phone to John, exclaiming how well behaved I was being, and it made me feel cold and sick and I felt the urge to snatch the phone from her hands and beat her over the head with it.

I wrote in my notebook daily, constantly.  That became the hole into which I poured my thoughts and my emotions, as they streamed like piss out of me on a daily basis.  I tried to stay focused on exciting things, like Michael’s brother coming out of prison, and the party he was planning to welcome him home.  Sometimes he would look at me just a little too long.  He would ask me how things were at home. “Alright,” I would tell him. “He’s a prick but I just stay out of his way.”

27

So inevitably things unravelled again.  Badly.  Obviously they did, or I wouldn’t be stood here now, with the knives and everything.  It was a week before I turned fourteen.  Days later I would look back and see that it had been inevitable, that everything in my life had in fact gained this sort of grim inevitability.  I sometimes felt that if I stared hard enough into the distance, I could see the shit that was coming, just around the corner, but I had no way, no idea how to avoid it.  The trouble was, everyone was obsessed with going to the beach.  It had become a magnet for every teenager in town, and I started to resent it, the familiarity of it, seeing the same faces every day, being part of the crowd.  I wondered what the hell they had left to say to each other.  Oh look, it’s the beach!  The one we’ve lived next to our entire fucking lives! I tried suggesting other places to go, other things to do with our time, but the rest seemed fixated on mixing with the girls there.  Michael and Zoe were now officially girlfriend and boyfriend.  She could barely survive twenty-four hours without seeing him, it seemed, and I was starting to find just about everything tedious.  The sun, the sand, the endless burning skies…The only thing that made it bearable was the hope of seeing Lucy there, but her parents were stricter than most and would not always let her come down.

So that day there bad omens from the start, and I could feel them, believe me I could.  First, Lucy did not show up, and Zoe had no idea if she would.  Secondly, the batteries on my Walkman died on me, so I didn’t even have music to settle my grated nerves.  Jake was at another job interview.  Michael was all bare chested and thrumming with teenage hormones, a warm beer in one hand, and Zoe in the other.  I found myself gazing off into the distance almost constantly, examining the horizon for a brown haired girl in a bright red swimming costume.  Billy was unintentionally pissing me right off. He was particularly hyper that day, racing around the whole time, constantly over excited about seeing people he knew.  “You’d think you would’ve had enough of these losers by now,” I grumbled, as he returned from yet another exuberant meet and greet. He merely laughed at me, smoothing back his wet hair.

“They’re not losers, they’re friends from school!”

“You hate them at school,” I reminded him tersely. “And you saw them yesterday! Nothing has changed Billy.”

“Well maybe you’re the loser!” he said, making a face at me. “And I don’t hate them at school. I don’t hate anyone.”

“Shut up Billy.”

“Yeah shut up Billy,” laughed Michael, as he took a break from kissing Zoe, who sighed very dramatically and leaned into him, pressing her cheek against his naked chest.  I groaned and rolled over onto my stomach, stuck a cigarette between my teeth and lit up.

“You’ll have black lungs,” Zoe informed me with a lazy, love struck smile.

“Do I look like I give a shit?”

“You don’t give a shit about anything!” she laughed back at me.

I lifted one hand and ploughed it back through my sweaty hair. “Ah I keep telling you lot, I’m just bored of all this…it’s boring lying here!”

“Oh you’re just in a shit mood ‘cause Lucy hasn’t shown up yet,” she teased, lifting her head momentarily from Michael’s chest before dropping it back there again.

“It’s not that,” I argued. “It’s the same pissing place, every pissing day.”

“Grump,” Billy said, gazing out across the sand. “Hey isn’t that Mark over there?”

“I don’t know Billy,” I replied, not looking up. “Why don’t you go running over to find out?”

“I’m going to,” Billy retorted, getting abruptly to his feet.  When he had gone, I lifted my head from my arms and stared at Mike pleadingly.

“He’s driving me mental Mike.”

Michael was grinning back in amusement.  “Me too.  He’s so fucking hyper.”

“Hey you two,” Zoe purred then, “I’ve got something here to cheer you both up.” She was smiling rather pleasingly, as she ducked out from under Michael’s arm and began digging around in her oversized striped beach bag.  I could have kissed her when she tugged out a large bottle of vodka and a bottle of coke.  “How about something decent to drink?” she asked, grinning wickedly.

I rolled over, sat up and clapped my hands.  “Alright Zoe!  Nice one!”

“Where’d you get that?” asked Michael, staring in wide mouthed awe, as she stuck the bottle of vodka between her knees and unscrewed the cap.  She poured in the entire bottle of coke, replaced the lid, shook it up a little and then took the cap back off and allowed herself the first few gulps.

“Older brothers,” she shrugged, dragging a hand across her wet lips and passing the bottle to me.  “There you go Danny-boy, that’ll stop you moaning!”

“I think I love this girl,” Michael mused, when the bottle made its way around to him.

“Me too,” I enthused.  I sat there for a while then, taking the bottle and swigging it when it came my way.  I was just smiling and nodding and blinking.  It was the first time I had ever tasted vodka, and it made me want to cough, and brought water to my eyes. The effect was pretty instant, I have to say.  My spirits were already climbing mile high, and I was wondering if sprawling on the beach with your mates wasn’t actually such a bad way to spend a day.

“Knew it’d cheer you up,” Zoe winked at me, and downed a few more mouthfuls.  She had this reckless look in her eyes then, and it sort of thrilled me, because I could understand it.  I wanted that drink to keep coming, maybe forever.  I wanted to hang my arms around her and around Mike, and I wanted to not give a fuck about anything ever.  I guess that’s why people drink eh?  Because of the way it makes you feel, like all you ever need to do is just laugh, and laugh, and not care.

“Are we gonna’ save some for Billy?” I asked then.  Zoe looked at Michael, her shoulders bunched up as she giggled.

“Only if he’s back on time,” Michael said, and we all laughed.

By the time Billy did return, dripping wet from a dunk in the sea, the three of us were huddled together, lapping up the dregs of the bottle and giggling like fools.  He stopped just in front of us, frowning deeply as he examined what we had turned into during his brief absence.  “What is so funny?” he asked us suspiciously.  We looked at each other, and tried and failed to contain our amusement.  His eyes then narrowed in on the bottle that swung loosely from Zoe’s hand, and his mouth fell open in dismay. “You bastards! Is that booze?”

Zoe burped into her hand, swayed against Michael’s shoulder and held the bottle out to Billy. “Here you go Bill!  Happy birthday ginge!”

To that, we all fell about laughing.  Billy took the bottle and slumped down into the sand beside us. “Not my birthday,” he grumbled, lifting it to his mouth. “And don’t call me ginge.  I can’t believe you shits drank this without me!”

“Ah no poor Billy,” I giggled at him helplessly. “Serves you right for running all over the beach trying to be mister popular!”

Billy tipped the last of the drink down his throat and hurled the empty bottle miserably into the sand behind him.  He crossed his legs and dropped his head into one hand. “You’re all total bastards,” he admonished us.

“Cheer up Bill,” laughed Michael.

“Easy for you to say,” he returned with a sneer. “This day is turning out to be a complete shitter.  First of all I nearly get my arse kicked by Higgs and his mates, and then come back here to find my so-called-friends have been drinking without me! Thanks a lot!”  He gazed at the sand mournfully, as he scooped up a palmful and watched it slip through his fingers.  Michael had hoisted himself into an upright position.

“What did you say about Higgs?”

“Oh him and his twat friends, they’re over there having a football game.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I caught up with Mark to say hi, had a bit of a kick around, and then it turns out Higgs bought the fucking ball, and ‘cause of this everyone is his best fucking buddy or something, so then I had to take off so they didn’t kick my arse!” Billy scooped up more sand with both his hands and let it trickle slowly down onto his bare feet.

I looked quickly at Michael, wondering if he was thinking what I was thinking, and the quick, firm nod he gave me told me that he was.  He leaned towards Billy then, his dark eyes wide and alert.  “Does he want to start shit with us?”

“No,” Billy groaned. “He was just being his usual tosspot self.”

“Think he wants to start shit with us Mike,” I said, my tone grave but my smile stretching as Michael looked my way, and started nodding.  “How about we go over there and kick their arses?”

“Don’t bother,” said Billy. “You guys are drunk.”

I shrugged and started to get up.  “So what?” I argued, suddenly starting to feel a bit aggressive.  “I’ve really kind of missed Higgs lately, what about you Mike?”

Michael got to his feet and rubbed lazily at his belly.  “Oh yeah,” he said. “I’ve missed him a lot.  And we’re not in school now, are we Danny?  No teachers, what a shame.”

Zoe had slipped down onto her belly, and her sunglasses had slipped down onto her nose.  She gazed up at us, waving her feet from side to side in the air behind her. “You guys are gonna’ get killed….” She warned in a sing-song voice.

“This won’t take long,” Michael told her. “You coming Bill?”

“Oh Christ,” Billy grumbled, climbing back to his feet. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.  You do realize there are four of them and three of us?”

“You do realize they’re all pansy arsed dick faces?” I replied, causing Michael to double up with loud laughter.

“You’re drunk and you’ll get killed,” Zoe said again, resting her head down on her folded arms. Michael merely shoved Billy and I to get us moving.

“Ignore her!” he commanded. “To war men!”

We marched off, one after the other, and I allowed the stupid thrill of it all to overtake me.  I knew I ought to stay away from Higgs, but the vodka had made me feel careless and brave, and fuck it, I hadn’t felt like that in a while.  I had missed it.  I felt ridiculously big and brave and confident as we frogmarched our way across the sand behind Michael.  We weaved arrogantly through the crowds, on the hunt for a common enemy. “Take no prisoners,” Michael was chanting as we walked. “Shoot to kill!”

We soon spotted Higgs and his friends, kicking a ball about near the waters edge, all shirtless and impossibly and beautifully tanned and glowing.  It was the sight of them that set me off really.  The gleaming polished smiles, the perfect fucking hair, and I felt it rush through me like a torrent then, just pure fucking hatred, deep fucking anger, out of nowhere.  I thought about John getting fired, and leaving early, and the trouble I was in and the fear that greeted me every time I turned the light out at night.  All of it, all of it seemed to come down to one boy.  I broke into a run, Michael and Billy close behind.  I saw this definite and wonderful expression of alarm on Higgs face as I hurtled towards him at top speed.  But then a flicker of a smile crossed his lips, and he nudged one of the boys close to him, alerting them to the oncoming attack.  The first thing that happened was me colliding with Higgs, knocking him down onto his backside.  The second thing that happened was more of a surprise.  Higgs suddenly had a far bigger crowd with him than Billy had realized. They seemed to assemble behind him out of nowhere, and we instantly saw our mistake.  “You guys are dead,” Higgs informed us happily, as he got up from the sand, brushing at the seat of his swimming trunks.

We looked at each other once, turned, and started running.  Billy was already miles ahead, this squat flame haired boy streaking off into the distance.  We were slower, weighed down by alcohol and too much sun.  We raced back past Zoe, who appeared to be asleep, up onto the promenade, and past the beach café and shop.  I looked back over my shoulder once and saw at least eight or nine of them tearing after us, their expressions grim and determined.

“Watch it!” a man on the promenade warned us, as we roared through. The crowd became denser, but we kept running, we kept hurtling forward, until Billy crashed into a fat woman carrying two trays of chips.  Michael and I skidded to a halt, and turned back, just as they came at us.  It seemed to be over in seconds.  I remember brief moments of frantic scuffling and punching, and then there were stronger, surer arms pulling us apart, holding us back from each other.  I found myself staring blankly up into the face of Officer Heaton.  I remembered him from that morning at Michael’s house, the morning they had ordered me to go home.  There was another officer holding onto Michael and Higgs.  Everyone else seemed to have dispersed unseen back into the crowd.  I felt sick then.  I gagged, swallowed, gagged again.  I was horribly certain I was about to throw up on a policemans shoes.  Officer Heaton gave me a withering look of displeasure and recognition.  “You again,” he sighed. “Have you been drinking?”

I shook my head and pointed at Higgs. “They were chasing us!”

“You’ve all been drinking,” Officer Heaton said firmly, shaking his head at me as if daring me to lie a second time.  “Drunk and disorderly in a public place boys.  You better come down the station with us and sober up.”

24

 

            Michael’s mother was still away, so I stayed put.  I worried about her coming back though, and started to think about asking Billy if I could crash at his next.  John finally came storming around on Monday morning, hammering on the front door so loudly Michael had no choice but to let him in, or risk upsetting the neighbours.  “You don’t have to live with that bastard, do you?” I asked him, when he appeared in the lounge, where I was sprawled out in the dark watching This Morning.

“I’ve got all my stuff packed up in the car,” John ignored me and said.  “You need to stop being a baby and come home to see me off.”

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself,” I muttered darkly.  He rolled his eyes and stamped his foot.  He looked hot and sweaty and out of patience.

“That’s crap, why am I here then?”

“To say goodbye.  Goodbye John.”

“You have no choice,” he shook his head and told me then.  “You either come home yourself, or mum is going to call the police and send them over to fetch you.”

I jerked forward then, my legs uncrossing and my feet slamming into the floor.  I felt all of my anger and frustration crashing into me then, and in that moment it might as well have all been his fault.  “They can’t make me live with that bastard!” I hissed at him through my tightly clenched teeth.  He recoiled slightly.  Stepped back into the hallway where Michael was hovering unsurely.

“Try living in some care home then,” he told me in thinly veiled disgust. “See if you like that any better.  Look, you don’t have to like the guy.  Just come home and behave yourself and they’ll leave you alone.  It’ll probably fizzle out before you know it.  You know what mum’s like.”

I leaned slowly, wearily back into the sofa and crossed my arms.  I looked back at the TV. “Just go John.”  John emitted a soft growl before turning to look at Michael, lifting his hands and dropping them in a loose, help me, gesture.  Michael just looked around at the hallway awkwardly and scratched at his arm.  Finally, my brother gazed at the floor, shook his head twice and walked out.

After a few moments had passed, Michael stepped into the room. “You’re really not gonna’ see him off?” he asked me.  I glared back at him, as if the answer were obvious. “Come on,” he said. “It could be your last chance to make him listen.  Think about it that way.”

“He’ll never listen Mike.”

“Just try,” Michael urged. “He’s your only brother mate, that’s all I’m saying. I would never want to fall out with mine.”

“Fine,” I huffed then, getting up from the sofa.  “But it won’t work, I promise you.”

I left the house and rode home, picking up my pace a little as the words I wanted to say to John began to gather inside my head.  I was struggling though.  None of them seemed to be the right words.  None of them seemed to do what I needed them to do.  And as I neared the house, and his car parked outside of it, I was no closer to finding them, no closing to getting them to say what I needed them to say.  I saw my mother and Howard going back inside the house and closing the door behind them.  I wasn’t sure if they had seen me or not, but I was glad they had gone.  John was in his car, with the engine on.  He must have spotted me in the wing mirror, as he turned the engine off then, and rolled the passenger window down.  I rode my bike up to the window and peered in at him.  He breathed out in relief and offered me this hopeful smile.  “Ah Dan,” he said. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”

“I don’t want you to go John,” I said, and I don’t know why I said it, or why I thought it.  I just looked at him then and thought don’t go, just don’t go.  His smile fell away and his shoulders drooped.  “Not yet,” I added, when I saw the look on his face.  “I’ll come home, if you do.  I want you to stay longer, to check him out.  I want you to listen to me a minute.”

“Oh Danny, please, don’t do this to me!” he groaned. “Don’t you think I’ve already had this speech a hundred times from mum?  Am I supposed to never leave home?  Look after you two forever?”

“John, just listen a minute, about Howard…”

“Danny, I spent a lot of time with him yesterday and he’s really not that bad.  You just need to climb off your high horse and give him a chance yeah?  Stop judging him based on people from the past!”

“But listen, there’s something about him…something…I’m not just saying this!”

“What are you talking about?”

I stared back at him, words filling my head and dropping away again.  I didn’t seem to have the words to describe my dread, my sense of fear, because I couldn’t even explain it to myself.  The way Howard had squeezed my neck that day.  How he had blocked the doorway, and called me a stupid bastard.  All of it.  I wish now that I had just spat it out, just told him exactly what had happened, exactly why it was bothering me, but I stand by the reasons I didn’t.  I knew what he would think.  “What is it?” he demanded impatiently.

“He’s…he’s just not very nice to me.”  That was all I could come up with, and even as I said it, I heard how childish and pathetic it sounded.  John was giving me that look.  The weary eyes, and the shaking head and the sigh he always released in order to muster up the patience he needed to deal with me.

“What the hell do you expect Danny?” he said to me. “Mum told me everything.  You slashed his tyres and spiked his drink and vandalised his club! Grown ups are never very nice to you, in case you hadn’t noticed, and that’s because of the way you behave!”

I saw this was going nowhere.  John was itching to be on the move, to be driving away from here, and us.  I had the strongest feeling then, that he would never be back.  So I pulled away.  I lifted one foot onto the pedal of my bike.  “You know something John?” I asked my brother.

“What now?”

“Go and fuck yourself! I’ve got fourteen year old friends with more guts than you’ll ever have, so go on, fuck off!”  I spat on the ground, kicked off angrily and rode away from the car.  I was faintly aware of John calling my name, but I ignored him and kept on going until I was gone.

In the end, I had no choice but to return home.  Two police officers turned up at Michael’s house on Tuesday morning, battered on the door and woke up Mrs. Anderson, who had wobbled home the night before.  “Do we have to escort you home young man?” one of them asked me, directing a nod to the patrol car parked in the street.  I looked at it and felt a desperate sinking feeling in my belly.  I didn’t bother answering them.  I simply thanked Michael, apologized to his mother, got on my bike and cycled slowly home, with the police car rolling along slowly behind me.

Unable to get my head around what she had done, I refused to speak to my mother for the first few weeks of the summer holiday.  I didn’t see any point. As far as I was concerned, we had nothing to say to each other.  She made the odd, tentative attempt to make amends with me, but whenever she opened her mouth to speak to me, I turned around, walked to my room and locked my door behind me.  I moved around that house like some silent, brooding storm cloud.  I played music in my room that tortured my soul, or at least, that was how it felt.  Everything had a desolate feel to it.  I kept my door closed, and locked.  I stayed out of the house as much as I could, but when I was there, I lived in the side-lines once again, and in the background, I was always watching.  I watched Howard move all his stuff in, and I watched him relax into position.  It became quickly evident to me that he was a man with particular tastes and ways of doing things.  He bought his big silver monstrosity of a TV with him, and our old one was taken to the tip.  He bought his TV cabinet with him, complete with shelves full of wrestling videos.  He paid for us to have Sky TV installed so that he could carry on watching all his favourite shows.  Whenever I walked past the lounge, I would see them curled up on the sofa together, eating popcorn, or large bowls of crisps, laughing and shouting at the wrestling referee.  She was able to leave her job at the garage and just work at the Co-op instead.  He spoiled her with new clothes, meals out, and visits to the hairdressers.  She looked better than she had in months.

I tried hard to avoid dinner times, when we would eat things that Howard liked.  It was either meat and two veg, or steaks and thick cut chips.  The cupboards became overflowing with his snacks.  Jam filled donuts, tortilla crisps and dips and Jack Daniels whiskey.  I would shake my head and slam the doors in disgust.  I didn’t want to eat a single thing that appeared to be his.  That was getting harder and harder though, as he took control of the shopping and paid for everything on his credit card.  My mum thought she was in heaven.  She could buy whatever she liked.  She could fill the trolley right up, and not have to walk around the supermarket with a calculator in her hand.  His belongings started showing up everywhere, replacing all of ours.  His brand new brown leather sofas were brought in to replace mums tattered paisley ones.  I missed those sofas when they were gone.  I couldn’t remember us ever not having them.  There was a smiley face on the arm of one.  I’d drawn it in permanent marker when I was nine.  His were too sleek, too shiny, and too rigid.  They creaked and groaned when you moved on them.  I stood back and watched it all without comment.  The house seemed mismatched and at odds with itself.  Howard enjoyed things that were new, and smart and top of the range.  I found myself pining uselessly for the old and the tattered and the original.

He seemed intent on immediately stamping his mark over everything and my mother seemed to welcome it at every turn.  He was like a dog, pissing all over his new territory, warning others off.  And I ran into his warnings every day.  He was a man with rules.  He liked order.  He said he thrived in a neat and orderly environment.  He said the mind could not function properly if it were surrounded by clutter. He would make a cup of tea, drink it, and then wash the cup, wipe it up and put it away again.  He remained humorous about it, but you could tell he just did not understand why everyone else didn’t do the same.  He had rules, and they crept in stealthily.  Shoes were to be removed at the door.  He and my mother had slippers lying in the hall, and they would slip into them, before slipping into eachothers’ arms.  He was particularly protective of his leather sofas, announcing regularly how much they had cost, and walking around them about a hundred times day, checking them for rips or stains.  I strained my ears every time I heard them together, looking out for bickering or arguing, desperate to pick up even a hint of a crack in their sickly sweet love story.  But there was never anything.  More and more I looked at them and felt that they were united against me, taking sly little shots, giving me a message.

John called a few times from Leeds, to let us know how things were going, but I refused to speak to him.  I didn’t have a brother any longer.  And every night, the worse thing was the uneasy, gnawing feeling that settled over me.  I couldn’t sleep while my stomach was all tied in knots.  I couldn’t even write about it in my notebook, because I didn’t know how to explain it, I didn’t have the ability to articulate it…

I think Michael was the only one who noticed a change in me.  He kept slapping me on the back and telling me to snap out of it, or wake up.  “Don’t worry about it,” he kept telling me, whenever he found me lost in thought, chewing at my nails. “Don’t panic.  It’s not over, you just have to bide your time.  What goes around comes around.”

The thing was, Michael spoke the truth without even realizing it.  He was right, I mean, when he said that what goes around comes around.  He was talking about karma, I guess, people getting what they deserved, people’s actions coming back to haunt them.  His words came back to me the morning I discovered salt had been sprinkled onto my toothbrush.  I was close to retching, having spat the vile mixture of Colgate and salt back into the bathroom sink.  I turned the tap on, stuck my head under and let my mouth be filled with water.  Then I stared down at the globule of frothy toothpaste I had spat into the sink, and poked it with my finger.  I lifted it to my mouth and tapped it with the end of my tongue.  Salt.  No fucking denying it.  I washed it away and inspected my toothbrush.  I was bowled over with confusion.  Blown away.  I wandered from the bathroom in a fuzzy kind of daze.  The taste of salt lingered in my mouth all day, and the bad feeling lingered even longer.  The same thing happened again before bed.  I checked my brush first this time, and sure enough, someone had sprinkled a liberal dose of salt onto it.  I stared at my reflection in the mirror above the sink.  I shook my head at myself.  I was dumbfounded.  I didn’t know what to do, or say, so I did nothing, said nothing.

After that, strange things started happening every day.  I could have cried the day my favourite Doc Marten boots went missing from the hallway where I had been told to take them off.  “Probably in your room, under your bed, with everything else,” my mother said when I asked her about them.  I felt the red mist close to the surface whenever I was near her, so I backed off wordlessly.  They weren’t under my fucking bed, because I had taken them off in the fucking hallway the night before!  Now they were not there.  They were gone.  I felt like a dick, hunting everywhere for them, even out in the garden.  I even phoned Michael and Billy to check I had not left them at one of their houses and walked home in my socks without realizing it.  I felt like I was going mad.  I didn’t want to confront what the feeling in my belly was telling me, so I didn’t; I just kept on hunting for them.  For two days they were missing.  Two whole days.  And then, just as inexplicably as they had vanished, they reappeared again, lying discarded in the hallway, with the laces missing.  What the fuck?

The tyres on my bike went down overnight, and when I turned it upside down to check for punctures, I discovered an inch long slash in each one.  I recalled what the gang had done to Howard’s car, and I felt sickened and threw the bike down in horror.  There were other things too.  Weird stuff was mounting up day by day.  It was getting harder and harder to breathe and at night I lay in a tortured suffering and felt like something was coming, like something was getting closer and closer and closer.  Sometimes I would come home from school to find my bedroom door wide open, when I knew I had left it shut.  Another time my wardrobe doors had been flung open, as if someone had been searching for something.  On that occasion, I kind of flipped out a bit, and stormed down the stairs to demand some privacy.  My mother looked up from her magazine in the kitchen.  She looked at me like she always did; like she both pitied me and feared me, and as for him, Howard, he was stood behind her, massaging her narrow shoulders.  And he was smiling, like he’d won the fucking football pools or something.  So I lay awake, night after night, wondering if I was imagining half of it, or blowing it up in my mind.  I wondered if I was going nuts, or having some kind of teenage breakdown.  I was unable to fathom any of it.  I couldn’t come to terms with an answer, I couldn’t clutch at anything solid.  I felt like I had wandered into a bad dream and couldn’t find my way back out again.

I didn’t tell my friends about any of this.  Not even Michael.  I wasn’t exactly sure why I kept it all to myself.  Except that being with my friends was about the only time I felt good, and relaxed, and if I felt like that, I didn’t want to ruin it by talking about the darkness I felt seeping into my life.  I didn’t want to bring us down.  There were a few times I came close to confiding in Michael, especially when he asked me how things were with Howard in my house.  But then I would think about how it would sound if I told him; ridiculous.  I would shut my mouth and try to make it all just go away.  In some ways, I suppose I thought okay, fair enough, the bastard is paying me back, whatever.  I thought maybe I did deserve it, and I thought maybe my mother would agree.  But this other anxious, nagging voice told me that adults were not supposed to behave like that.  I mean, two wrongs don’t make a right, isn’t that what they were always telling us?  And as for the man himself, he carried on as if nothing was wrong, as if everything was fine and dandy and normal.  That was either exactly how he felt inside, or he was one hell of a good actor.  When I thought about it, he reminded me of how Eddie Higgs performed at school, because that’s what his behaviour was; a performance.  Sweetness and light in the classroom, and evil unleashed in the playground.  It was the same thing and it revolted me.  I watched Howard worm his way into my mothers good books on a daily basis.  It was as if he was constructing himself as her perfect man; meeting every expectation and desire, and then some more.  With her, it was easy to see why she doted on him the way she did.  Everything he said was so good-natured, so reasonable, so helpful.  Everything he suggested was designed to make life easier and more bearable for her.  Because she deserved it you see, she deserved having someone to look after her.

He suggested that I ought to help out more around the house at my age.  He winced when he saw the state of my room, and started leaving the hoover outside my door as a hint.  He wondered why I couldn’t collect up my own dirty washing and bring it down to the machine instead of expecting her to do it.  He made a noise in the back of his throat when I left the dinner table, and them, to the washing up.  To every remark, every suggestion and comment, my mother would nod with enthusiasm and fix me with a challenging stare.

I tried to avoid him wherever possible, but when I did run into him, his tones were never quite so pleasant out of my mothers’ earshot.  His voice would rumble gruffly and sneeringly out from between his neat rows of teeth.  “Turn that awful shit down, you’re giving me a headache,” he rapped on my door once to complain.  Another time, I was minding my own business, eating my breakfast at the kitchen table, when he came up behind me and stopped.   I knew he was there.   I could sense his presence and smell the Old Spice aftershave he plastered on every morning.  He stood there for a few minutes, right behind me, not saying a word.  I finally gave in and looked up at him expectantly, and do you know what he said to me then?  He smiled a bit, leaned towards me and said; “Where’s your old man then eh? Ran off and left you did he, eh?”  I turned my head slowly, stiffly, back to the table and blinked down into my cereal bowl.  What the hell kind of question was that, right out of the clear blue sky?  I didn’t answer him, couldn’t bear to look at him let alone speak to him, but he carried on, talking in this low, sneering voice while my mother pegged clothes out on the line.  “Couldn’t be bothered with you I suppose. Ah that’s not very nice is it?  Your own dad not wanting to be around you.  I must be lucky eh?  Got a great relationship with my old man.”

And then next, came the death of my bike.  My mother, calling to me from outside in an exasperated, pained tone, and when I arrived on the doorstep, her gazing at me rather solemnly and apologetically as she explained that Lee had accidentally ran over my bike when he had returned from the club in the early hours of the morning.  “I did tell you a million times not to leave it in the middle of the drive!” she said, all flustered and torn between pity and anger, as per fucking usual.  I rushed past her to see it.  There it was, this awful tangled ruin of a bike lying in front of his prick mobile car.  Tears of disbelief sprang into my eyes before I lashed out, kicking first the useless bike, and then his car.

“I put it away!” I cried over my shoulder, shaking my head as I stared down at the wretched, mangled thing.  “I put it away I know I did! That stupid tosser ran over it on purpose!”

She did not reply.  She did not try to soothe or console me.  She just slunk back indoors, and already I could hear his soothing tones placating her in the kitchen.  I sank down to my knees on the driveway and allowed the deep rage to spread through me, and as it did I felt it pulling me down, hanging me with weights, making it impossible for me to hold my head up.  “Bastard,” I growled through tightly gritted teeth.  My hands were bunched up fists sat uselessly in my lap.  “Bastard.”

Sometime later, when things got worse, when things started to unravel in spectacular fashion, I took the time to reflect and came to the conclusion that Howard must have had his own master plan in action the entire time.  Maybe from the very beginning, maybe from before he even met me.  Like Michael’s Project Arsehole, his would have involved a Plan A and B, and so on as well.  His would have had it’s subtle, thought out phases of appliance.  As time passed, I found it easy to see how he would have implemented it.  And he had been right about one thing.  I never should have made an enemy of him, but it was too late by then, it was all too late.  We had inadvertently started this war, this battle, and the cycle was in motion, and it was one of those vicious circles, wasn’t it?  It was certainly vicious anyway.  His Plan A would have been making my dear mother like putty in his big hands.  Playing on her insecurities, her fear of being alone, her inability to cope, her exhaustion.  Plan B would have been the pranks he played to get back at me.  Sinister but ultimately harmless.  Plan C kicked in shortly after.  Plan C was made a whole lot easier for him by the absence of John, and any adult that would believe a word I said.

25

 

             Life was satisfying and frustrating in unhappily equal measures.  I was obviously used to living on my own, and I understood that moving in with Kay and her son was going to involve some compromises.  I was not a man who finds compromise easy.  It did not sit comfortably with me; giving in.  Of course, in business, at work, there were always times when compromise was needed, but I tried to keep them at a minimum.  I was not the boss so that I could do things the way other people wanted.  I was the boss so that I could have things my own way.  The right way.

I sensed early on that Kay longed for someone to take control.  She had been in the driving seat for years, you see.  She had been alone.  Some people are born to be alone, they are made that way whether they like it or not.  Kay was not one of those people.  She spent her early years trying desperately to please her mother.  Despite her feistiness, she was at heart, a people pleaser.  We’d had long, drawn out conversations about her early marriage, to Johns father.  “We married too young, but we were in love and we wanted to prove everyone wrong,” she said.  She did it to escape her mother, you see.  She had John when she was twenty years old.  She tried to make it work, all of it.  For a long time, she stuck at it, day after day, until one day she looked at herself in the mirror and realized that she was living a lie.  She did not love David, not the way she was meant to, not the way she knew he loved her.  She stuck it out for a bit longer, for John, and for everyone who loved David.  She thought if she put her heart and soul into it, she would love him properly one day, she would feel the nerves of passion in her belly once again.

She succumbed to an extra-marital affair.  “David was too nice,” she explained, the night we sat in the car up on the cliff top.  She was drinking champagne and wearing a knee length dress.  The dress had slipped down her knee when she lifted one over the other.  I watched its silky crumple towards her thigh.  “He was too eager, too everything.  Drove me mad in the end, that’s why I did it, and God I know it was evil of me really, to hurt him like that.  It was like I wanted to destroy my whole life.  My mother thought I had gone mad.  She really did.”

I understood.  I had not met David, it was unlikely I ever would, but I could see him in John.  He stayed in the middle, on the fence, like his mother, born with the desire to please others, but without the defence mechanism that led her to be fiery.  John was consistent, placid and plodding.  I found him pleasant and dull.  He wanted to see good in people, so he picked it out, even from the bad.

“And after that I guess I got what I deserved,” she went on, now leaning into the leather of the seat, resting her head back, showing an extension of pale, slender neck.  She emitted a long, solemn sigh.  “On my own, with a young child.  My mother wouldn’t speak to me let alone help me in any way.  So I struggled on.  Bloody hated it though.  Having to do it all myself.  All the decisions, and the sleeplessness, everything.”

She didn’t really need to explain anything to me.  I could read her like a book.  Her face hid nothing, she wore her heart on her sleeve.  She longed to be cherished.  But she felt the need to offload on me, and that was fine.  I was a good listener.  I enjoyed hearing her story unfold.  The thing was, her story always came back to him.

She called him her son, but really he was her penance.  She felt guilt whenever she looked at him, because he never should have been born.  He never should have been.  “Stupid fling,” she said of his father.  “I fell for him in a schoolgirl crush type way.  He was younger than me, a guitarist in a band, full of charm and confidence.  He could have had any girl he wanted, but he liked me.  And he was funny, and wild, and adventurous, and it was all great fun for a while, but that was all it was ever meant to be. Until I found out I was pregnant.”

She had expected him to run like the wind, but he was curious about family life.  She was just starting to get her life back, with John at school, and a part time job, and a stab at a social life, and now this.  This thing growing inside of her.  This parasite latching on to an unwilling host.  She told me her deepest secret that night in the car.  Later on I reclined the passenger seat, slipped her dress over her head and fucked her with my hand held over her mouth.  But before that, she told me.  Her eyes were heavy with overloaded mascara and metallic blue eye shadow that had collected in the lines.  Her lipstick had worn off and her hair was tousled.  “I’ve never told anyone in the world this,” she said, and her eyes seemed to pierce right through me then, they seemed to shine a light right through my heart, and I wanted to crush my lips down upon hers until I felt our teeth clash.  “It’s the worst secret I have,” she went on, her voice a small girls whisper.  “People would hate me if they knew. I hate myself.”

In truth, what she did, or nearly did that day was neither evil or wrong, and if I had known her back then, I would have told her this.  She didn’t want the child that was growing inside of her.  The thought of it made a panic rise up in her chest, a sensation of life escalating out of her control and away from her dreams.  She resented the ache in her breasts and the sickness in the mornings, and she resented the thought of being chained to Brett forever more.  She took a taxi one day, all alone.  She went to a place, in secret.  She had to sit in a waiting room for a long time, with other women, who looked just like her, pale and drawn and soaked in guilt.  She had an appointment at ten o’clock to kill the baby.  She was going to take a pill that would make her start to bleed.  The blood would leak and flow until the baby flowed with it.  She would go to the toilet and flush it away.

That was it.  Her dark secret.  The reason she viewed her son with fear and self-loathing.  “I still don’t know what made me run out,” she croaked, closing her eyes briefly and then opening them to the release of one solitary tear.  “Maybe it was what my mother would have said, maybe it was Brett.  Maybe it was the baby.  I don’t know.  But I ran out, I couldn’t do it, and so I had him.  And you know what?  This will sound terrible Lee, but as soon as he was born, I held him and looked into his face, and he looked back at me, and I thought, he knows.  He knows.  Crazy I know.  He was minutes old for God’s sake.  But I felt it that day, and then I felt it again and again.”

By this, she meant the years that followed.  The sleepless nights that did not end until he was three.  The tantrums and the wilfulness.  “He was horrible,” she told me, a small smile playing on her lips.  “I mean, I can say it because it was true, and because he knows it’s true.  He was so sweet on the outside that everyone fell in love with him, because he was such a beautiful child.  But they didn’t see what he was like on the inside, they didn’t know what he was like at home.  Christ, it was one battle after another.  Everything! Getting him to eat, getting him to sleep, getting him dressed, whatever.  Everything was a fight, all the time, and of course by then Brett was bored and stressed, and then he got in trouble with the police and I kicked him out.”  She looked a little self-pitying then, her lower lip protruding slightly, her eyes downcast.  “So I was totally alone, with these two kids.  Didn’t have a clue what I was doing most the time.  Just gave in to Danny to shut him up.  Just gave him whatever he wanted because I was too exhausted to fight him.”

Too exhausted, and too full of gut churning guilt whenever she looked at his face, more like.  Fancy living with someone, day in day out, knowing that you came close to killing them?  That you were minutes away from extinguishing their existence before it even began.  Imagine what that would do to your mind, and your soul.  Of course, Danny did not know that she had wanted to abort him.  Of course, he didn’t.  He didn’t know it at thirteen and he sure as hell didn’t know it as a newborn baby.  It was just her guilt torturing her, convincing her that karma was staring her in the face every time she changed his shitty nappy.  He didn’t know what she had nearly done, but he did know that he had one over on her, because kids can pick these things up.  He knew she was weak and he knew something was not quite right, and he took advantage of this, and that became their life.

So I knew.  I knew her secret, and I knew his.  I knew their story.  But we were here now.  I had stepped onto a new block of life.  The next one in the order.  It was as it was supposed to be.  We had our love, and we had our home, and we had our future, and it was this that gave me satisfaction, as I had known it would.  The frustration was a less welcome thing; something I had not planned for, something I was compromising on.  The thing was, I wanted to know her story.  Her own story, made up of the steps of her life that had led her to me.  But all she could talk about was him.

Her story was him.

I listened, I always listened.  But her obsession frustrated me.  It was however, imperative that I had all the information, so I was never going to tell her to shut up about him.  I already knew he was our enemy.  I knew it before I met him.  I knew it when she told me all about James, and Frank Bradley.  When she laughingly tried to warn me off.  I didn’t quite grasp the severity of it until the night the little bastards slashed my tyres though.  That was when I knew I had to play closer attention.  There was a spanner in the works, plotting to mess things up.  Okay then.

So I allowed her to whine on about him.  Day after day, night after night.  Romantic meals that became peppered with her exasperation with his school report, long walks at the beach that turned into animated rants about his rudeness, or his smoking.  Her body, weak against mine, as she sobbed about how lonely she was, how she could not cope anymore, how she was close to giving up. “He actually hates me,” she told me the day we decided I would move in to lend a hand.  “That’s the thing that scares me, because I know it’s true.  And he doesn’t just hate me because I’ve made a mess of things, and he doesn’t have his dad, he hates me because he has no respect for me, because he looks down on me.”

“You can’t go on like this,” was what I told her.  “You’ll end up in hospital or something.  You need to look after yourself at some point, put yourself first.”

“But I’ve let it slip for so long.  I have no control over him, whatsoever.”

“You can reclaim it back.  Little steps.  You’ll feel stronger anyway, once I’m there, because you’ll have back up and support.  You won’t be doing it on your own anymore.”

I didn’t have to convince her obviously.  Yes, moving in was my idea, but it was something that would benefit us both, in more ways than one.  She needed financial help.  I had lent her money for the rent twice, and more for bills she was behind with.  It was pointless, wasn’t it?  We would both save money if we lived together.  There was nothing to stand in our way, as far as I could see.

She reminded me of slashed tyres and spiked drinks, and in response, I roared with laughter. “You think that would put me off?  You think I’d let little kid stuff like that keep me away from you?  That’s nothing, and I can guarantee you, give him a few weeks to get used to it, and life will be fine.  I can guarantee it.”

“He will make our life hell!” she had nudged me playfully and laughed.  “If he’s done stuff like that already, what the hell will he do when you’re living there?  Christ, I wouldn’t eat a thing or drink a thing if I were you!”

“Doesn’t scare me,” I told her.  “I’m not frightened of a thirteen year old and neither should you be.”

Well he reacted as we expected he would, so that was fine, we were prepared and we even laughed about it later.  Him throwing a tantrum, trashing his room, running off.  I wanted to laugh in his face the day he cycled home with the cops behind him.  I didn’t need to though.  The humiliation was dragging his shoulders down.  He was in a sulk then.  Hilarious stuff.  John gone, and him refusing to speak to his mother.  He built up a wall of silence and refused to come down from it.  Dinners were eaten in silence.  Anything we said to him, or asked of him, was returned with silence.  Well, he probably thought he was punishing us, but what he was actually doing was giving us an easy ride, a rest.

So I settled in.  It felt like home, but that was more to do with coming home to Kay every night.  Waking up and rolling over to see her face in the morning.  She owned a rare kind of natural beauty.  She looked stunning with her hair and make-up done, like a model, but she didn’t need any of it.  First thing in the morning, she looked like an angel, she looked like she could smile and break your heart.  She was happy and it showed.  She slept well and awoke rosy cheeked and wide eyed.  She could relax about money, and bills, and decisions.  She laughed about it.  “Oh you do it!” she said.  “I’m not doing anything!”

It was other things that frustrated me, not Kay.  I didn’t like clutter and rubble around me.  You don’t need it.  You don’t need to hoard magazines, and collect ornaments, or crockery, or pictures.  Your mind needs space around it.  Mess irked me.  It made me wince and grimace.  It made me feel restless.  So that was one thing; to start making some rules.  For their own benefit.  Kay laughed the first time she saw me dragging a hoover around the lounge, snuffling up toast crumbs from the floor.  “I just can’t stand mess,” I kept telling her with a smile.  “I can’t leave it there and look at it, I can’t sit and watch the TV with it there.  Sorry honey.”

“Don’t bloody apologise!” she had roared in amusement.  “You carry on love!”

Well…things build up, and you can’t tolerate it forever.  Spanner in the works, and all that.  Thorn in my side.  Because she worried about him, and she fretted about him, about whether he was eating enough, or sleeping enough, or up to no good when he was out with his friends.  And still, the guilt.  The guilt plagued her mercilessly.  It was another one of my frustrations; her feeling bad about herself.  It wasn’t right, or fair.  Enough time had passed, and now it was time to iron out those lingering frustrations and get things settled the way I wanted them to be.  I had compromised, and now it was getting thin.    So I wondered what this kid was really made of?  He didn’t look like much to me.  So he had a nice looking face, big deal, so what?  Apart from that he wasn’t much to look at, or think about.  I looked at him and thought that she had made a big mistake not aborting him when she had the chance.  He was a waste of space with a sneering expression and hair like a girl.  He dressed down to the extent that he looked like a tramp most of the time.  He listened to music so loud it shook the whole house.  So I started with a few tricks, a few pranks, as he was obviously such a fan of these childish things.  I played him at his own game to see how he would like it.  I don’t suppose he did like it much, but he didn’t say a lot about it, so I carried on, seeing how far I could push, seeing how much I could get away with.

I came home from work late one night.  It was about three in the morning, and there he was, creeping around the kitchen, rifling through the cupboards for food.  It all fell into place then; how he managed to avoid meals with us and not starve to death.  Sneaky little fucker.  I felt a stab of anger and resentment immediately.  In fact just running into his scowling little face was enough to set my teeth on edge.  There he was, helping himself to food I had worked and paid for, while he did fuck all, despite me pressuring Kay on numerous occasions that he ought to have chores.  I decided there and then that the ridiculous silence had gone on long enough, and it was about time him and I got a few things straight.  I went into the kitchen, and closed the door behind me.

I dropped my keys onto the kitchen table, making him jump and turn in guilt, packet of crisps in one hand, chocolate bar in the other.  “All right you little fucker,” I sighed, raising one of my feet onto the nearest chair and leaning out over my knee.  My entire being seemed to fill the room then, and I felt it in myself, the way the energy fizzed through my body.  I felt myself physically fill the room, and I felt the boy diminish, and I liked it.  “What’re you doing sneaking around the house at this time?”

He glared back at me, despising me for even speaking to him, for even looking his way.  He glanced at the crisps he held.  “What does it look like?”

I chuckled softly and smoothed my beard with my thumb and forefinger.  “Fuck me, you can speak after all!”  He sort of rolled his eyes and grunted and made to move past me, but my foot came down quickly, blocking his path, blocking everything.  “Oh no you don’t,” I told him calmly.  “You put those back right now.  If you ate the meals your mother makes, you wouldn’t be hungry now, would you?  So put them back.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” he started to say, but I wasn’t interested, so I finished for him.  I snatched the items from his hands and hurled them at the wall behind.  He stared back at me, open mouthed and scared and I was glad.

“I pay for that food, little man,” I hissed down at him, pointing my finger at his face.  “I pay for the fucking food by working my arse off, so you don’t turn down the meals we provide, and come down here in the middle of the night, stealing, all right? You’ve got no respect, you know that?  No respect for anyone, and I’ve pretty much had enough to be honest, watching what you put your mother through. I’ve run out of patience.”

There was this loaded silence between us then, as he stared at me, and I stared at him, and so I waited.  I watched his face as he switched between anger and fear.  I wondered which one he was going to land on.  It really intrigued me; what this little rebel without a cause was made of.  I wondered how long it would take to get him into line.  Finally the boy licked his lips, swallowed and gave it to me.  “Fuck you,” he said to me, as clear as day.  Fuck you.

I took him by surprise.  I laughed at him and then grabbed him by the back of the neck and slammed his head down onto the table.  I was surprised by how light he was.  I could have picked him up like that and tossed him across the room and watched him crumple in the corner.  “What did you just say to me you little bastard?”  I kept him down by his neck and pushed my lips right into his reddening ear.  “What did you just say to me?”  I tightened my grip on his neck then.  Dug my fingers into the skin as hard as I fucking could.  I felt like they would pop through the skin and meet in the middle of his neck.  He was making this aaaaaa sound right at the back of his constricted throat, with his eyes squeezed shut.  I leaned in so that I could see the fear and the surprise on his face, and in his eyes when he opened them to find out what the fuck was going on in his pitiful little life, and I soaked up that look, I mean I relived it for days to come, and it was a surprise to me, the power I had and the way I sucked it right up into me.  “You got something to say to me now little man?” I relaxed my hold and asked him.  “You want to say that again?”

“No,” came the breathless, panicked reply, and I was pleased with that, so I let go of his neck.  I placed my hands down on the table on either side of him, and I was leaning right over him, and he was like my prey, caught, ensnared, powerless until I decided otherwise.  I watched him lift one shaking hand to rub at the marks on his neck.  His face was working, like he was trying like hell not to cry.  I wondered how brave he really was.

“That’s right,” I told him from above.  “You’ve got nothing to say to me except yes sir, and no sir, do you get that?  Things have changed around here you little shit stain, do you get that now?  And I want you to stop being a spoilt little baby and taking the piss.  Toe the line, and we get to be one nice little happy family.  Piss me off again, it won’t just be your bike gets broken.”

I straightened up then.  Smoothed back my hair and walked out, leaving him there to think things over.