82

 

 

May 1996

            They were not happy about me seeing her.  None of them were.  None of them, except Anthony.  He didn’t say much about it, but I got the feeling that he was the only one who sort of understood it.  He never gave me any grief about it anyway, never tried to talk me out of going.  “Shittinghell, not again,” Michael would roll his eyes and complain every time he found out I had been to see her.  I didn’t tell them when I was planning it, but they always knew by the time I returned.  “You’re insane,” he would tell me, shaking his head. “And why the hell do you have to be so secretive all the time?  It’s like when you were on drugs, only I think I preferred that!”  I’d shrug my shoulders, keep my thoughts to myself, and allow him the opportunity to do the same.  “How do you make sure it’s safe?” he would ask me sometimes. 

            “I go when he’s at work,” I told him simply.  “We sit by the window, so we can see if his car comes. I’d run out the back.”

            “He’s gonna’ find out,” Michael gripped my arm, and his dark eyes searched mine, pleading with me.  “One way or another, sooner or later, this is gonna’ backfire.”

            “He’s old enough to make his own decisions,” Anthony spoke up for me from across the room.  Michael glared at him, and Anthony returned his glare with a patient smile. “It’s his business if he wants to help her Mike.”

            The very idea seemed to enrage him.  He stood up from the bed, his feet hitting the floor with a bang.  He looked between Anthony and I accusingly, as if we were in on this together, just to infuriate him. “Why bother?” he demanded to know. “What has she ever done for him?  One day, that psycho maniac is gonna’ catch on, and then they’ll both be dead meat!”

            It was obviously an idea I had entertained myself, many times.  But nothing ever happened.  Howard remained what he had been for almost a year now.  A gruesome and somewhat ghostly figure from the past.  We still hurried out of Redchurch after a certain time, and life went on.  I visited my mother when I could, which was usually once or twice a month, and I said very little about it to anyone.  I still didn’t fully understand it myself, so what was the point in trying to explain it to the people who hated her?  The thing was, every time I saw her, she seemed stronger, more like the old her.  It made me smile, you see, when I saw her like that.  I remembered some good times we had shared, in between annoying boyfriends.  Her, John and I, muddling our way through together.  There had been good times before, before everything happened, and it felt nice to remember them.  She would sit and stare at me with this shininess to her eyes, telling me about funny things I did and said when I was a little kid.  She had the old spark back, maybe.  That fire in her eyes, and instead of clashing, we were meeting somewhere in the middle, as friends.  She had confided in John to a certain extent.  Told him that she wanted to leave Lee, and set up on her own.  He was prepared to help her when the time came.  He had opened a bank account in his name and posted her the debit card and the pin number.  She could put money in whenever she wanted, save up for her escape, and Howard would not realise a thing.

            I would go and see Lucy afterwards.  I’d be a bit high on the adrenaline of it all.  She would look at me the same way Michael did.  Fear and reproach in her eyes, and every word she spoke, picked out cautiously, just in case.  “I feel better,” I tried to tell her.  “I can’t explain it.  It doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven her, or we’re all okay, it’s just I feel better when I talk to her.  It’s helping me understand stuff.  I can’t explain it to you any better than that.”  She would just slip her arms around me, rest her head down on my shoulder and hold me tight.  She wouldn’t say anything about it unless I pushed her.

            “I’m just scared,” she would say, a flicker of a smile dancing on her lips before fading away again.  “Silly me.  I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

 

            They were more on edge than I was.  I don’t know why.  One night we were mucking about at the back of the disorderly crowd that queued to get into Chaos, when Michael became utterly convinced he had seen Howard’s car.  One moment it had all been laughing and joking, pushing each other about, and ruffling Billy’s new haircut, and the next, it all changed.  Michael, his face as white as a sheet, his hand reaching and clinging to his brothers arm, while his other pointed down the road, to the fast disappearing brake lights of a low, silver car.  Anthony slapped him on the back and told him to get his act together.  “Millions of cars like that about,” he moaned, rolling his eyes at me.  “For fucks sake Mikey. Don’t give us all the willies when we’re here to have a good night.”

            The atmosphere had changed completely.  Before Michael got scared, it had been electric, pumped full of joyful apprehension and the sense of belonging.  “Sorry,” he started mumbling, when we all looked on uneasily, shuffling closer together, our hairs on end, our good feeling dead inside of us.  I didn’t blame him.  I couldn’t count how many times I had felt my heart stop at the sight of a silver car.  But I had learnt to live with it.  What else could you do?  I looked at my friends then and felt like a shit who didn’t deserve them.  They were all tense, forcing smiles, while their eyes flitted about nervously, and their imaginations worked over time.  I felt a guilt so heavy it made it difficult to breathe.

 

            A similar thing happened just a few weeks later.  Enough time had passed to convince us to breathe again, to relax our shoulders, and go with the flow.  We came out of Chaos at two in the morning, sweat shining on our foreheads, our eyes alive with the music that still pumped through our veins.  As usual, I felt on top of the world.  I was right up there, right up there in the sky, pounding my feet upon the earth, shaking it up.  I had one arm around Lucy as we drifted down the road and towards the takeaway place on the corner.  We were craving chips and kebabs, followed by a smoke and wind down music back at the bed-sit.  They’d played my Smiths request just before we bustled out, and I was still singing it in a loud and drunken voice, as we bundled down the road together. Lucy clung to me, and smiled as I sung; “And after all this time, they don’t want to believe us…and if they don’t believe us now, will they ever believe us?” I looked at Lucy, kissed her forehead and she laughed at me. “And when you want to live, how do you start? Where do you go?  Who do you need to know?”

            “You’re nuts,” she told me, wrapping both arms around my middle.  I could feel the sweat on my back drying in the night air. “But I like it when you’re nuts,” she added.  We had reached the shop, and we piled noisily in through the double doors, leaving only Billy and Jake outside to finish their cigarettes.  Anthony was ribbing Michael about some girl he had pulled.

            “Old enough to be your fucking mother,” he was laughing as Michael viewed him with cool distain.

            “Just jealous,” he responded calmly.  “I saw you giving her the eye.”

            We ordered our food, laughing and talking easily, with sleepy eyes and groaning bellies.  We were heading back towards the doors, when Jake pushed them open and scuttled in, Billy at his elbow, both of them wide-eyed and alarmed. It was Anthony they went to.  I saw Jake grab his elbow, pull him close, and all at once I felt like the floor of the kebab shop had turned to mush beneath my feet, and I was sinking, sinking slowly down.  “What is it?” Anthony was saying, maintaining his cool exterior as always, holding the door open while we pushed cautiously back outside. “What?  What did you say?”

            I hung back, my hands warming under the white polystyrene container that held the kebab I now did not have the stomach for.  I felt Lucy slide her arm through mine.  I saw Michael sidling anxiously to his brothers side, while Jake spoke to him, in hushed, earnest and slightly panicked tones. “Swear to god,” he was saying, leaning in to him, pointing with one hand out towards the narrow alleyway that ran between Boots and Woolworths opposite the kebab shop. “Over there. Billy thought so too, didn’t you Billy?”

            “Stop panicking, everyone, stop panicking,” Anthony told us, shoving his kebab and chips at Jake. “Hold this.”  We all watched breathlessly as he crossed the street, and sauntered over to the mouth of the alley.  He was swallowed by the blackness, for just a second, and then reappeared, holding up his hands and shrugging.  “Nothing there,” he said, running back to us. “No one there.  You sure you saw him?”

            “Dunno,” Jake shrugged his shoulders and glanced sheepishly my way. “It was dark.  There was someone there, right Billy?  We saw a face when he lit up a fag.”

            “Was a big fella’,” Billy nodded, swallowing nervously. “Same kind of build.  Not much hair.”

            “Could’ve been anyone,” Anthony said, taking back his food and heading around the corner, towards home.  We scuttled after him, looking back over our shoulders. Jake was looking very confused, and scratching at his neck.

            “It was really dark,” he said, looking at me. “Probably wasn’t him…Sorry everyone.”

            “You obviously thought it was him,” argued Michael, catching him up. “Or you wouldn’t have looked so panicked, and told Anthony.  I thought I saw his car weeks ago.”

            “Calm down, calm down,” Anthony was telling us all.  He reminded me of a sheepdog then, herding us all back home, munching sporadically on his chips, while he lingered at the back, his eyes moving restlessly across the darkness.  We scurried on, and he held the door open while we piled into the dank, foul smelling hallway of our building.  I watched him close the door slowly, sticking his head out for one last scout of the area before he let it slam heavily behind him.  He turned and exhaled in relief, and saw me staring at him, as the others started up the stairs.  “It’s alright,” he said. “Take no notice.  They’re jumping at shadows.  It was nothing mate.”

            “Yeah, I know,” I told him. “I’m not worried.”

            “Good,” Anthony started up the stairs beside me.  “Let’s not let it ruin our night.”

            “I’m not worried,” I repeated, and he looked at me then, as if he did not believe me.  At the top of the stairs, they all waited for Anthony to unlock the door and let them in.  They looked shaken up, scared and huddled together.  I couldn’t resist a look back over my shoulder as I came up behind him, my eyes staring into the darkness below, my ears straining for the sound of footsteps.  Once we were inside the bed-sit, Anthony closed and double locked the door and then just stood with his back to it for a moment, just breathing, not looking at anyone.  Lucy went into the kitchen and started to fill the kettle.  Michael paced about, from window to window, rubbing his arms and staring out at nothing.  Billy and Jake collapsed onto the bed, murmuring to each other, their foreheads creased with frowns.  I felt like a massive shit.  They were seeing shadows, freaking out at the slightest thing, all because of me.  All because I was seeing my mum, stirring up the past, making them feel unsafe again.  I decided I would cancel our next meeting.  I would phone her in a few days and tell her what had happened.  I felt Kurt’s tiny paws on my legs, and stooped down to pick him up. 

            “Better to be safe than sorry, eh,” I muttered, burying my face in the soft fur around his neck.

 

           

 

 

 

 

83

 

 

May 1996

            “Why do you only ever listen to ‘The Queen Is Dead’?” Terry was asking me, in what sounded like genuine puzzlement.  I was crouched down next to the door, with a tower of cassette tapes beside me.  A lady in her forties had just dropped a box of old tapes in for us.  She’d spent a good twenty minutes telling Terry how her husband had been having an affair, so she had started dumping and selling all of his treasured possessions behind his back in revenge.  She hadn’t wanted any money for the tapes, which was fortunate, because most of them were shit.  I was busy shelving them, and as most of them seemed to be by Abba, I was knelt by the door, in the A section, shoving them in one by one.  My facial expressions were changing rapidly from dismay, to disgust, to outright horror. 

            “Because it’s my favourite one obviously,” I replied to Terry’s question. “Why do you only ever listen to ‘Blonde On Blonde’?”

            “It’s the best one,” Terry told me authoritatively. 

            “In your opinion,” I corrected him.

            “But what you are forgetting,” he went on regardless, “is that The Queen is lacking the best song the Smiths ever wrote.”

            I rolled my eyes.  The man was obsessed. “’Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before’?”

            “Exactly.  Best Smiths song ever and it’s not on The Queen.”

            “It’s still a bloody good album Terry. What about ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’?  I love that song.”

            “Not as good as Stop Me.”

            “Isn’t it time we had a cup of tea?”

            “I don’t know Danny,” he sighed, rising slowly from his stool. “Remind me who’s the boss again eh?”

            I looked up in time to see him smiling knowingly as he headed out the back.  It was his way of ending arguments about music that would have no ending, unless he reminded me who the boss was.  That was how he won the arguments, you see.  I’m the boss, it’s my shop, therefore I must be right about everything.  He had asked me the same question this morning when I had turned up early for work.  He’d shook his head at me, pointed at the kitchen and told me to get the tea on. 

            I went back to my work, dusting off a Dolly Parton cassette and shoving it ungracefully into the D section.  ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ was playing on the record player, so I started to hum along to it.  I picked up the next tape, and rubbed it on my thigh to clean it off, and that was when I saw a shadow fall over me.  I looked up at the door quickly, but the shadow fell away, and the sun blinded me, bouncing off the windows and the cars parked on the road, and whoever had stopped at the door to stare in, had moved away.  It took a second for my mind to catch up with my body, and then I took a steadying breath, got to my feet, opened the door and peered out down the street.  I put up one hand to shield my eyes from the bright morning sun, and I can’t deny, I had the sudden strangling urge to close and lock the door.  I pushed it down though, because I had to, because I had seen nothing, heard nothing.  I went back to the tapes. 

            Moments later Terry waddled back in, holding mugs of tea and sloshing them over his belly as he walked. I slipped the last tape, an Elvis compilation, into a space in the E section, and approached the counter for my tea, wiping my dusty hands down the legs of my jeans.  Terry eyed me curiously.  “What’s the matter with you?  Seen a ghost?  You’ve gone all pale.”

 

            I could have gone home at threeish, but I’d just discovered I liked Johnny Cash, after getting into an argument about country music with a bearded man who was a regular.  He was one of the very few customers that Terry allowed to hang around the counter, drinking tea and talking about music.  He’d finally got tired of my smirks and sneers about country music and had demanded Terry put some Cash on the record player.  I’d folded my arms across the counter, slipped into my own little world, and listened. Moments in and my foot was tapping, my head was nodding and I had to admit that I liked it.  “The Man in Black,” the bearded man tipped his head at me and winked. “You cannot be a music fan and not appreciate The Man In Black.” 

            “Cool,” I agreed with a smile.  Terry merely groaned at me.

            “See I’ve told you before not to be so narrow minded about music.”

            I snorted in response.  “Says he that sneers at nearly everything that’s been given the Brit Pop label!”

            “I do not,” he argued back.  “I was the one who told you how big Oasis would be!  And I like Blur, and I think Pulp are amazing, among others.  It’s all the other hanger-on’s I can’t stand, the bandwagon jumpers!”

            “You’re scathing about it as a genre,” I reminded him patiently.

            “Because I hate genres, because if you give something a name, or a label, or pack it away in a fucking genre then it’s far too easy to kill it or declare it dead.  Look at your precious grunge sonny boy, what happened to that?”

            I shook my head in despair.  “You know what happened to that Terry.”

            “Excuse me, a type of music does not just end because one singer tops himself!”

            “I never said it had ended,” I argued back. “You’re saying that!  I still love grunge.  I love all music.”

            The bearded man laughed at us, patted me on the back and finished his tea.  He picked up his purchases and slipped them under one arm. “You do now kid,” he told me, and walked towards the door.  I sighed and started to search the shelves for Cash records, while Terry sniggered at me from behind the counter.

            “Here he goes again,” he chortled. “Walk The Line is the best one, you know.”

            “In your opinion,” I replied.

 

            We closed up at five, Terry shooing the last doe-eyed indie kid out of the door with a copy of Suede’s Dog Man Star tucked under one arm.  Terry had spent the last ten minutes trying not to laugh at the poor kid, who in his khaki duffel coat and John Lennon glasses, had tried and failed to engage Terry in a meaningful debate about the next big thing.  “Fucking Liam Gallagher wannabe,” Terry groaned when the door was locked.  “Can’t anyone just be themselves these days?  You don’t see me walking around walking with a bloody Morrissey hair cut do you?”

            “You couldn’t have one anyway,” I told him with a grin as I fetched Kurt’s lead down from the hook out the back. “Your hairline is receding.  You could have a Phil Collins.” My shoulders were shaking with giggles as I clipped the lead onto the dogs collar.

            “Don’t ever mention that jumped up little bastards name in my shop again young man!” came his petulant roar from behind the till where he was stood cashing up.  “I’ve warned you before smart arse! That name is not to be spoken in here, unless you want the sack!”

            I opened the back door. “That, and Rod Stewart yeah?”

            “Post The Faces, yes, that name is also banned!”

            “I’ll have to make a list,” I called out.  “See you tomorrow Terry!”

            “See you tomorrow mate.”

            I closed the door behind me and headed down the alley with Kurt trotting at my side.  I stopped to locate my cigarettes, and light one up, thinking I would just about have time to smoke one before my bus arrived.  As I cupped my hands around the cigarette, I heard a car purring softly up behind me, and without turning to look at it, I moved to the side to allow it to pass.  It trundled slowly past me, as I puffed on my smoke and shoved the lighter into my back pocket.  It was moving slowly, so I gave it a quick glance, and walked behind it.  It crawled to a stop at the end of the alley, and just sat there, the engine still running.  It was then that I saw the number plate, and stopped walking.  I felt myself shrinking fast, mentally and physically.  L-HOWARD. Howard’s car, it was his car, Howard, it was him.  Howard.  My eyes flashed up and down the alley, seeking a way out, as panic seized and crushed my heart, sending it beating into a wild frenzy that threatened to explode from my throat.  It was suddenly hard to breathe.  I stood in the alley, staring, one hand shaking with the cigarette, Kurt’s lead wound tightly around the other one.

            Howard.  I could feel it in every nerve and muscle in my body.  The engine remained running, but the car stayed where it was, blocking my way out.  I had to go that way.  My bus stop was that way, out on the main road.  If I walked back the other way, I would have to go all the way around and would miss the bus.  I looked down at Kurt and the little dog wagged his tail back at me unsurely.  I sucked in a lungful of air and hoped it would unfreeze my blood and give me the strength to keep walking.  I looked over my shoulder again, back at the shop.  I knew Terry would still be cashing up.  I looked back at the car, and it was still there, still waiting.  Long, and low, and silver, reminding me of a shark, circling its prey.  Kurt shivered and whined on the end of his lead so I looked down at him again.  “We want to go home, don’t we boy?” I said to him, and in response to my voice he wagged his tail so furiously that his entire body wagged with it.  “About the only time I’ve wished you were a Rottweiler,” I murmured, and looked back up, back at the car, still waiting.  What did he want?

            I sucked in another chest full of air and started to walk.  It felt almost alien, and totally wrong to be walking in that direction, towards that car.  My movements felt stiff and uncontrolled like a robots.  I kept telling myself that it was daylight, that there were people just around the corner, that there was nothing the bastard could do to me that he hadn’t already done.  As I got closer, the drivers door was shoved open, and he stepped out, leaving the engine on and flicking a cigarette butt to the ground as he got out.  I stopped moving.  I lifted my own cigarette to my lips, sucked on it hard, my eyes narrowing upon him, my other hand tightening on the dog lead.  There was a silence between us that took my guts and scrunched them up so hard they began to ache.  There was the hand, once more, inside my belly, clawing at my flesh, sending warning signals all over my body.  I lowered the smoke, breathed out slowly and waited to him to speak, waited for something to happen.  He was looking at me with a very calm, pleasant expression on his big face, but there was no denying the gleam in his eyes, because I had seen it a hundred times before.  Finally, his little thin eyebrows moved up and down rapidly and he spoke; “long time no see, eh little man?”

            I realised that my feet were frozen to the ground.  They felt like concrete all of a sudden, and this heavy, dragging feeling was spreading quickly through me.  “What do you want?” I heard myself asking him, my voice just above a mutter.  He cocked his head at me.  He rested one arm along the top of the open car door, and then his other hand tapped the roof of the car, in quick succession, boom, boom.  His eyes drilled into mine.

            “Saw you walking there,” he said. “Thought I’d say hello.  How are you?”

            “Fine,” I told him.

            “Your mum wonders how you are,” he said then, dropping his arm from the door and stepping away from the car.  I felt small again, as the man from my nightmares approached me, his big arms swinging in short shirt sleeves.  He stopped just in front of me, and his smile was radiant, and he seemed to inhale loudly, as if sucking up my fear through his flaring nostrils.  I wondered if he had missed it.  “She’s always asking about you, always wondering how you are.  You look well.  Off all those drugs now eh?”

            I could not answer him.  My throat had constricted, barely allowing me room to breathe, let alone speak.  I just kept my eyes on his, trying to read them, trying to understand what this was, what this meant.  He nodded his head at me calmly.  “Well you must be,” he concluded.  “You look so well.  Feeling better these days, eh?”

            “What do you want?” I asked him a second time.  The alley around us had become nothing but a grey blur.  It had ceased to exist.  There was nothing in the world, except myself, and Howard, and whatever was going to happen.

            “So suspicious,” he mused, allowing himself a soft chuckle.  “I only wanted to say hello and see how you are.  Your mum misses you, you know.  It’s been so long since she saw you.  You could visit her, you know.  She’d like that.”

            I was finding it torture, keeping my eyes on his, but I couldn’t risk looking away.  I was faintly aware of my chest rising and falling rapidly beneath my t-shirt, as my body tried again to kick start me into flight.  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Not while she’s with you.”  I pulled my feet up from the ground, and they felt like they were being sucked down into it, and I had just managed to put one foot in front of the other, when he took hold of my arm.  Just above the elbow, the grip was loose, but I froze, and it was everything in that awful second, as his power encircled my arm, it was everything, holding onto me, not letting me go, everything.  It all came back, in a horrendous flush of images and memories that slayed me, and made my legs turn to jelly, and my eyes threaten to weep.  I stared at the ground, because I could not bring myself to look back into that face while a thousand brutal images raced through my mind.

            “Whoa, slow down,” came his whispered reply, slick with glee.  “Why the hurry?  Don’t you want to come and see your mum?  I can give you a lift, right now, if you want.”

            I shook my head.  “No.  She can come here, if she wants to see me.”

            “Oh really?  Okay, I’ll pass that onto her,” and just like that, the hand fell away from me.  I stumbled forward, nearly tripping over my own feet in surprise, and I forced my legs on, forced my feet to keep moving on, not looking back. “I’ll give her the message,” the voice, thick with hunger, dripping with malice, followed me down the alley wall, echoing from the walls.  “’Cause she hasn’t seen you in so long, has she?  She misses you so much, you see.  See you soon then, yeah?  There’s a good lad.”

            I walked faster and faster, breaking into a run at the end of the alley, dragging poor Kurt with me, scurrying out onto the pavement, barely remembering to look both ways before I dashed out across the road towards the bus stop.  Seconds later the bus pulled up and I ran onto it, throwing down my money, yanking off my ticket and finding a seat at the back, where I sat and huddled with Kurt, against the window.  I was shuddering violently, and felt extremely close to being sick.

 

            I felt a little bit better when I stepped off the bus at the other end, and took another deep breath of relief, steadying my nerves.  I let Kurt do his business outside, before we opened the door and went into the building.  By the time I had dashed up the stairs and reached the bed-sit, I was worked right up again, my heart a monster in my chest, my mind questioning whether Howard would have followed the bus here.  I went inside, and saw Michael lying on his belly on the bed, with a can of beer in one hand.  I closed the door, locked it, then went to the window to peer out.  Michael was watching me, already suspicious.  “You okay?” he asked me, and I flashed him a quick, brittle smile, thinking to myself that he probably knew me better than anyone.

            “Yeah, fine,” I told him, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.  I filled it with water, switched it on to boil, and leant against the worktop with my arms wrapped tightly around my middle.  I shook my head and swore at myself.  Was I really going to do this again?  Lie to him?  Was I really going to be pretend nothing had happened and everything was fine?  Where had that got me last time?  I licked my lips, and stamped my foot and felt the frustration juddering through me.  What the fuck was I doing?  Before I could think twice, I stuck my head back through the curtains, and looked at Michael, still on the bed.  He looked up expectantly.  “Not okay actually,” I told him, and he was on his feet, and in the kitchen, and offering me his beer.  I took it, and his eyes focused in on my trembling hands.

            “What’s up?”

            “Just saw Howard.”

            “What?” Michael’s mouth gaped in horror and he stepped closer to me, his eyes bulging as I nodded back at him and leant back against the cupboard with the shivers twisting violently through me.  I gulped the beer as he continued to stare.  “Oh my fucking god.  When?  Where?  What happened?”

            “Outside the back of the shop, in the alley.  He drove past then stopped his car, and got out.”

            Michael covered his mouth with one hand, shook his head in misery. “Oh no.  What did he do?”

            “Nothing.  Acted all friendly.  Wanted to know how I was.”  I lifted my shoulders and dropped them, and passed Mike back his beer. “Asked if I wanted a lift to go and see my mum.”

            “Did he touch you?  Did he do anything to you?”

            “I started to walk away and he grabbed my arm, then that was it.  He said what he had to say.  Let go.  I walked away.”

            Michael swallowed beer and passed it back.  “You think he knows?  That you’ve been seeing your mum?”

            “I dunno, he didn’t give anything away, but maybe he does.  Yeah.  I mean…that would explain it.  Jesus Mike…” I sighed heavily, rubbed at my dry lips and then sloshed more beer down my throat.  I was shaking hard, and it was getting worse.  I wrapped my arms back around myself, trying to hold still, trying to calm down.  Michael kept shaking his head, his dark hair hanging over one eye, while the other stared out, solemn and afraid. 

            “He knows Danny, he must do, he must have found out!  I swear I saw his car at Chaos that time, then Jake and Billy thought they saw him in that alley…”

            I nodded at him.  “I know.”

            “What’re we gonna’ do?  He might have followed your bus here!  He might know exactly where we live!” Michael leant in the doorway and took the beer back from me.  He finished it off in nervous, little gulps. I stared at the floor and felt the strength leaving my legs, leaving all of me.  I wanted to lash out suddenly then.  I wanted to smash in all the cheap flimsy cupboard doors, and swipe my arm across the manky pint glasses collecting flies on the draining board.  I clenched my teeth together and tried to hold onto myself.  Michael was watching me.  I felt my legs weaken further.  Any minute now I was going to hit the floor.  “Danny?” he asked me softly. “You okay?”

            “No!” I retorted, quickly and fiercely, looking up.  “He called me a good lad.”

            “Did he?”

            “Good lad, he said.”

            “So?”

            “I don’t know…” I trailed off for a moment, not sure of what I meant, or how I felt, or anything, and I covered my face with my hands, and suddenly my knees dipped, and I went down, my arse bumping into the floor and staying there.  I buried my face in my knees, grabbed at my hair with my hands.  “Fuck!  Fuck!”

            Michael came forward.  “Mate?”

            “Fuck I don’t want to be like this!”

            “Like what mate?”

            “Like what he makes me!  A victim!”

            Michael crouched down slowly. “You’re not.  You’re not.”

            “I am!  I fucking am!  That’s what he makes me! That’s how he makes me feel, now I feel like it all over again!” I rolled my head into the cup of one hand, and stared at the floor.  My feet twitched at the ends of my legs.  I was remembering things I had fought so hard to forget.  I wanted to fight back, I wanted to do something, I wanted to kick the place apart. 

            “He doesn’t make you that Danny,” Michael was saying quietly. “You’re you, and he can’t touch you now.”

            “He’ll do whatever the fuck he wants.”

            “We won’t let him.  We’ll call the cops.  We’ll tell them everything.”

            I just glared at the same grubby spot on the lino, until my eyes moved out of focus, and I was not sure whether it was tiredness, or tears that blurred my vision.  In my mind I saw myself crushed down into the floor, a boot grinding into my neck, pushing me down, holding me in place, taking everything away.  “That’s not who I am,” I murmured to myself.  “He made me like that, and that’s not me, that’s not me.  I won’t be like that again.”

            “No way you fucking will be, I told you.  Come on mate, up you get.  Anthony will be home soon.  He’ll know what to do.” Michael nudged me, got to his feet and held his hand out to me.  “Come on,” he urged me.  “You’re you.  You’re not whatever he thinks you are.”

            “Good boy,” I muttered, distastefully, taking his hand and letting him haul me back to my feet.  I held onto my head with one hand, followed Michael through the curtain, and plonked myself down onto the bed.  The springs sagged and creaked beneath my weight.  Michael started to walk in small circles. 

            “We’ll find another place to live,” he was saying quickly.  “We need to move again, that’s what we need to do.  Get out of here.”  He stopped circling and looked at me.  “And please, please do not keep seeing your mum!”

            I nodded silently from the bed.  I had already decided that much myself. 

 

            “He’s trying to scare you,” Anthony told me firmly, when he had arrived home and been greeted with the news.  He carried some bags of shopping into the kitchen, put them on the side and strode back out again.  He regarded Michael and I, sat shivering on the bed, with a stern expression.  He kicked off his shoes and cracked his knuckles.  “Looks like he’s succeeded too, so he must be one happy motherfucker about now.”  He placed his hands on his hips and looked at us, shaking his head.  “Look, he doesn’t know where we live, that’s why he went to your shop.  He’s just trying to scare you.  Don’t let him.”

            “He must know I’ve been seeing mum,” I spoke up dryly.  Anthony nodded.

            “Yeah, probably.  Or he’s just bored and felt like stirring things up again.”

            “But why now?” Michael questioned helplessly. “It’s been like ten months or something!”

            Anthony shrugged at the pair of us. “Who knows how his sick mind works? Maybe he does know about Danny seeing his mum.  Danny, you should call her.  See what she says.”

            “What time is it?”

            “After six.”

            “Okay, pass me the phone.”

            Anthony grabbed the phone and chucked it at me.  “I’m putting the kettle on, and a shit load of chips, anyone in?”

            “We’re both in,” said Michael. “D’you buy any fish fingers?”

            I dialled the number and got up from the bed.  I stuck one hand into the pocket of my jeans and stalked restlessly around the room, while it rung.  It seemed to ring for a torturous eternity before finally she picked it up.  “Hello?”

            I stopped next to one of the windows and pressed my forehead against the cool glass.  “Mum, it’s me.”

            “Danny!  Are you alright?”

            “Mum, listen, does Lee know anything?  About us meeting? Or about you trying to leave him?”  I gazed down at the street below.  I watched a trio of young girls, dressed to kill and tottering on high heels towards the high street.

            “Why?” her voice immediately lowered and hushed with fear.  “What’s happened?”

            “I just saw him today,” I told her, feeling the give of the glass under my head, knowing I would only have to apply a little more pressure before it cracked against my skin.  “He was outside my work.  He spoke to me.”

            “Oh my god honey!  Oh god I am so sorry! As far as I know he knows nothing! But maybe he does….oh shit, how would he know?”

            “I dunno,” I told her tersely, wanting to hang up on her now.  “Just wanted to warn you.  I won’t see you again for a while mum.  I can’t.”

            “Okay, honey, I understand.  Maybe we could arrange to meet somewhere else?”

            “No.  Not at the moment.  I’ve got to go.”  I hung up on her and turned around.  Anthony was in the doorway, watching. “Says she doesn’t know anything,” I told him. “I told her I won’t be around again.”

            “Fair enough,” he nodded “But you see what he’s done here, don’t you? He’s left you alone for nearly a year, let you settle into your life, and relax.  It’s almost like he wanted you to relax and enjoy yourself, ‘cause then it’s all the more fun when he pops back up again!  He’s messing with your head mate.  Just don’t let him.”  With that, he ducked back through the curtain, and I was left staring.  Easy for you to say, I almost called after him.  Instead, I went back to the bed and lay down with the dog.  My eyes jerked towards the door every few seconds.  The spike of fear was sharp and turning within me.  That night I drifted in and out of restless dreams, one half of me convinced that Anthony was right, that nothing was going to happen, and the other half of me dismally certain that Howard holding onto my arm in the alley way, was just the beginning. 

            

81

 

April 1996

            I’d felt myself teetering close to the edge of sanity, many times since he left, but I’d pulled myself back every time.  I’d held on.  I had forced myself to fall back on the things I knew and trusted; patience and composure.  I had my eyes wide open. I suppose that was one good thing to have come out of it all.  I knew I was surrounded by jealous backstabbers who wanted to see me fail.  They were everywhere, waiting to watch me fall, watching to see if my empire was about to implode.  Fuck you, I wanted to say to them on a daily basis, fuck you all.  That greasy whale still gloating in his cesspit of a record shop.  Those sneering, long haired kids still sneaking around town when they thought I wouldn’t notice, thinking they had won, thinking they had got one over on me.  I ran these things over inside my mind constantly.  I allowed them to grow and swell and burn inside of me.

            I went to work, and I worked hard.  The club was a ridiculous success.  I had more money than I knew what to do with.  I drank a little more than I used to, and then I went home.  Each and every day I woke up in the morning and wondered whether today would be the day I got my revenge.  I thought about it constantly.  Did I want revenge, and if so, what form would it take?  What would I do?  I had to be careful.  I sometimes felt like I was utterly detached and removed from the rest of normal society.  I was lost at times, without Jack.  We’d been the same, him and me.  We saw what had to be done and we got on with it, no time for tears, no cause for regrets, or worries.  I missed the understanding that had existed for so long between us; that we were above the rest of them, that whatever we wanted was ours for the taking.  We’d had some good times, you know,  me and Jack.  Some good times.  I didn’t have anyone I trusted anymore, and I missed just sharing a drink with him.  I sometimes found myself gazing around, wondering if I ought to try to replace him, narrowing my eyes in search of another right hand man.  But there was no one.  That Lawler kid Jack had seemed so keen on, was nothing but a waste of space junkie, no good to anyone.  Jumped out of his skin if you so much as spoke to him.  I didn’t trust him.  I watched his movements like a hawk.  I had to be careful.  There were eyes that darkened when they turned my way.  Rumours circulating about the whereabouts of Jack, Chinese whispers about a kid beaten up in the centre of town, stories about people you should not mess with…

            For months I’d trawled the streets after dark in my car.  Part of me was looking for him, part of me was desperate to catch sight of him, walking along the street alone, and part of me was just killing time, just searching for ways to sooth my rage.  In the end, I’d resorted to sorting Kay out when she needed it, and it was enough, almost.  I’d let things drift so long with her, and she’d been taking the piss for months.  I knew there was more to his disappearance than she was letting on.  I knew she’d been in on it somehow, she must have been.  She never once sat and shed a tear for him, you know?  That always struck me as very odd, for one thing.  It was like she already knew he was safe, and she didn’t need to worry.

            So I’d known, I had always known she was involved.  The night I returned home from work and found her curled up asleep on the sofa with a piece of paper clutched inside her palm, was the night I had my suspicions confirmed.  It was back in February, and I had driven home from the club in the early hours of the morning, with a can of Carlsberg wedged between my thighs.  My car prowled slowly through the back streets of town, my eyes as always, scanning the streets and the alley ways, peering into crowds and clusters of youths, trying to pick him out.  When I arrived home, I’d reached for my Jack Daniels and a glass.  Right away, I’d noticed the state of the kitchen.  Two mugs and a plate turned upside down on the drainer.  Why the fuck couldn’t she follow the job through?  Dry them, and put them back in the cupboards?  I put my whiskey down, and did it myself, snatching a clean tea towel from the hook and rubbing aggressively at each mug, and the plate, before putting them where they were supposed to be.  I wondered why there were two mugs.  She didn’t normally have visitors, so my skin prickled and crawled with growing rage, and I poured myself a whiskey and downed it in one.  I would have to speak to her again about the state of the house.  I mean, it was a joke.  What the fuck did she do all day anyway?  Lounged around in her bloody dressing gown watching crappy American chat shows, no doubt.  I didn’t make her go out to work, did I?  All I asked for in return was a nice, clean, and tidy house to return to, to be proud of.  I wondered how many times I would have to drill it into her.  She should have known how I liked things by now.  For fucks sake, even the fucking boy had done a better job than her.  I peered around at the rest of the kitchen, feeling with my socks for any dirt or dust on the floor.  I could feel something, something that felt like biscuit crumbs, and my body grew rigid with displeasure.

            Lazy bloody cow.  I stalked through to the lounge, only to discover the TV still on, flickering in the darkened room.  “Bloody woman,” I muttered, storming over and switching it off.  I turned around, deciding to settle on the sofa to sink a few whiskeys, and that’s when I saw her there.  She was fast asleep.  Curled up sideways and covered in her silly pink fluffy throw.  The phone was on the coffee table next to her, and there was another plate down on the floor.  For fucks sake.  I walked over to her.  Considered giving her a good slap to wake her up and send her to bed.  It was then that I saw the curl of paper sticking out the end of her tightened fist.  I stopped, and mulled it over.  I crouched slowly down next to her sleeping face, cocking my head over to one side and listening to her breathe.  I wondered how far under she was.  I put out my hand, closed my thumb and forefinger around the edge of the paper, and tugged.  It slipped from her grasp easily and she did not stir.  I stood up and moved back, grimacing as I uncurled it in my own hand.  It was an address.  An address in Belfield Park.  Written in that sneaky little shits handwriting.  I folded my hand over it and glared back down at her, considering my options, as the heat flooded me violently. 

            I turned in a slow circle, letting it sink through me.  Then I stopped, and stared back at her, shaking my head slowly from side to side.  I curled a fist and considered smashing it quickly into her pretty little nose.  That would wake her up.  Then I would grab her by the hair and shove the piece of paper into her gaping mouth.  I’d make her fucking eat it.  I shook the fist at her as she slept on.  “You were meant to be tell me when he got in touch,” I snarled at her in the darkness.  I opened my hand and watched the paper float back down to land on her covered lap.  “You lying, sneaking, treacherous little bitch…” I narrowed my eyes.  A satisfying realisation washed over me, and I felt calm again.  I nodded at her.  “Oh you want your precious boy back now do you?  Is that it?  You miss him, do you?  Well sweetie, you only had to say.  If you want him back that much, I’ll get him for you.”  With a smile upon my lips, I left her alone, turned and walked out.

 

            The next night I had left the manager in charge of the club.  I got in my car and drove it over to Belfield Park.  It was a stinking, filthy, rotting corpse of a town.  It reeked of fish and chips, seagull shit and decaying seaweed.  All the homeless people gravitated there.  You saw them shuffling about everywhere.  Sleeping on benches, and downing cans of Special Brew with their toothless friends.  Tough dogs on chain leads.  Sleeping bags and newspapers scattered around their feet.  The buildings were all falling down, collapsing, sagging within their own depression.  They needed to take a fucking bulldozer to the entire area in my opinion.  It was a waste of money, wasn’t it?  A seaside town in a state like that, full of dossers and scroungers, layabouts and criminals.  I drove around the miserable back streets, with my window rolled down, and my elbow hanging out.  I caught a glimpse of people heading to Chaos.  I drove smoothly past them, my eyes squinting as I took in the dirt and the squalor.  Every street was mile high with rancid Victorian doss houses.  Bed sit city, people called it.  I felt above it all, as I passed them by, the Goths and the skinheads, the metalheads and the hippies, and the punks, all flowing, all pushing towards Chaos, like warped followers of some twisted religion, all flocking towards their church. 

            I smoked cigarettes as I drove, finally turning the car around and letting the engine idle lazily at the end of the road, with the club in sight.  I recalled the address on the paper, and counted the dwellings to the right.  A smile pulled my lips across my face.  That was it then.  The tall red building.  The shithouse on the corner.  How nice.  They’d moved in opposite their favourite club.  How very nice.  How extremely convenient. How fucking easy they had made it.  I smiled further when I thought about going in there, finding the little shit stain in the middle of the crowd and making a fool out of him.  Dragging him back out by his scrawny neck.  Dragging him back to his lying whore of a mother.  The anger clenched painfully at my chest.  I wondered what to do.  I had been given the information I needed.  Not just the address, but the evidence against Kay.  She was a lying bitch, keeping things from me, planning things behind my back.  I wondered what else she was keeping from me, what else she was up to, and I wondered what to do about it all.

            I tapped my ash out of the window, down onto the grimy street below.  I glanced up and to the right, as another bundle of scruffs made their way towards the club.  I pressed myself instantly back into the seat, because it was them, it was fucking them!  It was all of them.  There was the dark haired boy, Michael, and his older brother.  Christ, you could hardly tell them apart these days.  The other two little idiots were there too.  The ginger one, and the one  I’d given a talking to in the alley that day.  And there was the precious boy himself.  Her darling son.  King fucking Danny, eh?  I felt the trembling start in my dry, pursed lips, and in my nostrils as they widened, and in my eyes as they rolled back to stare at my step-son.  He was throwing his head back with laughter, one arm slung around his girlfriends shoulders.  I wanted so much to go over there and give him something to fucking laugh about.  I shook my head, and my eyes glazed over, and I felt sick, and numb and raw.  Tears moistened my eyes.  I gave you so many chances, I was thinking, so many chances to be good, so many chances…and you couldn’t do it could you?  Couldn’t just be a good boy? My hands were frozen to the steering wheel, clawed and shaking and I hung onto it, using it to anchor my aching body to the car.  I put the car into reverse suddenly.  I took one more lingering look at the laughing boy, with his friends.  I wanted something so badly then, and it angered me, what I wanted, it repulsed me and shamed me.  I screeched off down the road with it banging and clattering noisily inside my head.  I wanted to give him one more chance.

 

            I kept away.  I forced myself to.  It was too soon.  Too obvious.  He would be nervous and jumpy, having passed his address over to her.  Fucking little idiot.  It made me laugh sometimes when I was alone, at work.   I would sit behind my desk and chuckle.  Why did he trust her eh?  Why did he think she gave a shit?  Big mistake, I would tell him when the time came.  I let the weeks and the months slide by.  I kept up the sunny pretence when I had to.  I kept myself ticking over, I kept my mind on work, and I tried not to let anything show.  But I was watching, the whole time, I was watching her, and watching for signs of him.  I knew he came over sometimes.  There were less biscuits in the tin, and she didn’t eat the bloody things, did she?  One day I found white dog hairs on my trousers.  Another day I found the toilet seat up in the downstairs loo.  I knew it was him.  I could smell him.  It enraged me down to the very core of my soul.  To think of him, that little piece of shit, thinking he could stroll on into my house whenever he fucking felt like it.  I bet he was feeling full of himself alright.  I bet he thought he was unfuckingtouchable. 

            I pretended I knew nothing.  I let them think they had fooled me.  I let them carry on their little game of pretence and lies.  I didn’t know exactly when I would put a stop to it, I just knew that I would feel it, when it was time, when it was right.  You can’t rush things, I reminded myself, as ever.  Patience is the key.  Patience is always the key. 

80

 

 

            I guess I retreated a bit after that.  Pushed them all aside for a while.  I don’t really know why, except I suppose I was very confused, and needed time to think.  On the way back from my mothers I had shut Lucy out completely, pulling on my headphones and pressing play.  I sat slumped against the window, pulling my hand away when she tried to reach for it.  Pretty nasty of me, I know, but I couldn’t help it.  The memories were making me sad, and angry, and I was scared I would start shouting at her, or something. It just seemed impossible that I would be able to contain that much feeling.  I kept my mouth shut and my eyes turned away, simply to avoid hurting her.  If I’d opened my mouth I might have started screaming and I might never have stopped.  So she sat there beside me, her hands entwined in her own lap, her teeth chewing at her lips, while I pressed my forehead to the glass of the window and nodded along to The Stone Roses.  Never go anywhere without music, I’m telling you.  You never know when you are going to need it.  Sometimes I….fantasiiiiiiiiiise, when the streets are cold and lonely, and the cars they burn below me. I watched the town rolling past the window and a deep and dark depression seemed to settle over me.  I felt like I’d always felt back then.  What’s the point in anything?  Really?  There’s no god, there’s no heaven, there’s no afterlife, only this, endless turning shit and stress, so what’s the point?  Are you all alone?…Is anybody home?….Are you made of stone?  Dunno mate.  Might as well be.

            Back at the bed sit, I avoided their eyes and their questions, only shaking my head to indicate that I was not in the mood for talking.  I changed the tape in my Walkman, clipped the lead onto Kurt and went back out again on my own to walk him.  I left them behind, with  their puzzled, cautious faces, and their weighted silence following me out the door. I knew they would talk about me when I was gone.  Let them, I thought, let them.  I walked Kurt down to the beach and let him off.  It was freezing cold, the sea was rough and grey and violently throwing murky looking froth up onto the sand.  Kurt ran about barking at seagulls.  I lit a cigarette and sat on the steps to the promenade. 

            I didn’t think about anything for a while.  Just sat, and watched Kurt chasing the birds, and listened to the music.  That’s the nice thing about having music constantly with you, you see, you can immerse yourself in it, in the melody and in the lyrics, you can hold your own shit at bay for a while.  I’d picked Radiohead, completely at random.  The sea crashed silently, Kurt’s barking was muted, and my head was full of tortured words; You can crush it as dry as a bone, you can walk it home straight from school, you can kiss it, you can break all the rules, but still everything is….broken…Why can’t you forget?

            I sat there and instead of thinking about my mother, and what to do about it all, I thought about calling Jaime up, buying some speed or some pills or some coke from him and getting high, getting really fucking high.  I remembered how it used to feel.  Like I was untouchable, like nothing could get through, like everything was fucking amazing.  I remembered how I used to laugh, and smile, at nothing.  How amazing the music would sound, how my imagination would take me off to other places, beautiful places I never knew existed within my own mind.  I could do with some of that now, I was thinking.

            Do you want to know the other thing I was thinking?  You won’t like this.  I was thinking about pain, and what it was, and what it amounted to, and how easy it was to withstand if you knew how to.  I was wishing I still had my knife on me, but I didn’t, I hadn’t carried one about for months now.  I pulled up my sleeve and traced a finger down the jagged scar I’d given myself that day on the bench at the park.  I touched it, stroked it, and couldn’t deny the incredible urge I had to get something sharp and just tear into myself with it.  I don’t know why.  I’m not a shrink.  I just felt the urge.  I wanted to see blood and I wanted to feel that little hiss of pain that reminds you that you are still alive.  I wanted to scratch at my own skin until it all fell away.  I hated it.  I hated the feel of it, weighing me down, coated in the shame of the past…how to get rid of it?  How to get free? 

            I rested my elbow on my knee, dropped my head into my hand and tightened my fingers in my hair.  I closed my eyes.  I breathed in and out, and it didn’t seem enough.  It didn’t seem real.  I wanted to take my head and crash it into the rocks.  I don’t know why. Tears were stinging under my eyelids, so I wouldn’t open my eyes for a while, refusing to let the bastards out, the weak shitty little bastards.  I kept them in, I squeezed them backwards, I shook with it all inside of me.  Finally I had to breathe, I opened my mouth up wide and sucked in salty sea air, and opened my eyes and the tears dried on them, and I stared out at the sea, at everything.  I wanted a drink.

           

            Weeks passed, and my friends watched me like a hawk.  Lucy was more attentive than usual, walking on eggshells around me, the rigid smile she offered doing fuck all to soften the fear in her eyes.   I was feeling suffocated.  If they weren’t offering to come with me every time I left the bed-sit, then I’d find them whispering in corners, and asking me if I was alright the whole time.  I knew I was lucky to have people that cared, really lucky, but all the same, I was having to bite my tongue the whole time for fear of snapping at them.  I knew they meant well, but I didn’t want to be that person anymore, that scared kid they all felt sorry for, that little kid they wanted to look after, and keep safe.  I didn’t want to be watched over, or seen as a victim.  I decided it was time that I stood tall and took matters into my own hands.  It was time I had some control for once.  It was time I addressed the past, so that I could move on into the future, and leave it all behind.

            I showed them my bravest face at all times, whether they bought it or not.  I got drunker than usual when we went to Chaos, just to let rip, just to not give a shit, and it worked.  I told Lucy to stop worrying, that everything was fine, but she didn’t believe me, I could see it all over her face.

            “You’re thinking of going back to see her again,” Michael said to me when we were alone in the bed-sit one evening sharing a bottle of cheap wine.  Anthony was on a late shift at The Ship, so we had the place to ourselves.  I frowned at him, wondering how long he had been thinking about asking me that question.  I took a sip from the wine bottle and held it out to him.  He took it from me, and I stuffed my arms back under my sleeping bag, where I had Kurt all curled up asleep on my lap.  It didn’t matter what we did, that bed-sit was always freezing cold, winter or summer.  Anthony had bought two electric heaters, pinned thick blankets up over the windows, and stuffed towels under the doors, but it made no difference.  You could always see your breath when you spoke.  You had to wear three pairs of socks, and we seemed to be permanently wrapped up in duvets or sleeping bags. 

            “You mean my mum?” I asked him patiently, and he nodded, guzzling from the bottle, his dark eyes watching me carefully.  I rolled my eyes at him, shook my head and looked back at the TV.  TFI Friday was on, one of our favourite new shows.  I didn’t want to have the conversation I could sense him gearing towards.  “It’s just Lucy thinks that you are,” Michael went on, when a few minutes had passed, and I knew why he was asking then; because Lucy had probably begged him to speak to me.  “Because,” he went on again when I didn’t answer. “You keep changing the subject whenever anyone brings it up, and you’re really quiet about it…not good quiet…She’s really worried about you mate.”

            He passed the bottle back and I took it, easing one arm up from the sleeping bag to take it.  I sighed and looked at him.  “I knew it.  She put you up to this.”

            “You can’t blame her mate.  You’ve been weird since you saw your mum.  Might help if you told us about it, you know.”

            “Nothing to tell,” I shook my head. “Nothing that Lucy hasn’t already told you.”

            “But not what happened Danny, I mean how you felt, how you are now.  Whether or not you’re thinking of going back?”

            I drank the wine, staring back at the TV.  I felt dozy and sleepy.  I wondered why everything always had to be so hard.  I swallowed, wiped my mouth and passed it back. “Let me ask you a question Mike,” I said to him.  He nodded at me, waiting. “What do you think about your own mum these days?  I mean, she wasn’t exactly mother of the year either, was she? Do you know where she is?  Would you go and see her if she wanted you to?”

            Michael smiled at me wearily. “We’ve got her address,” he replied with a casual shrug. “My Aunt sent it.  Apparently she’s getting help for her drink problem. So fucking what?  You think I care?”

            “You wouldn’t go and see her then?”

            He shrugged again. “Don’t think so.  No reason to.  She left, didn’t she?  Her choice.  I’m not chasing after her.  If she wanted to see me, then fine, she can come here, see how it goes.  I’m not running after her, not ever.”  He passed the bottle back to me.

            “What about your dad?” I asked. “Do you ever think about him?”

            “Nope,” he said, shaking his head quickly. “Not once, not ever.  Wouldn’t waste my fucking time mate.  They screwed up, see?  They don’t get another chance.”

            I looked back at the TV, drank some more wine.  Michael lit up a cigarette beside me and tucked his legs up under his chin.  We were quiet again for a while, just watching and chuckling at the antics on TFI Friday.  During the ad break, we finished the wine and I lit up my own cigarette.  “Do you ever think about it though?” I asked Michael then. “I mean, why they screwed up so bad, or if they care about it now, if they regret it?”

            Michael turned his incredulous eyes upon me.  He looked about to ready to burst with indignation and contempt for my musings.  “Why would I waste my time mate?  The way I see it, it’s simple, right?  They never wanted kids, ‘cause they were both fucking boozers, got pregnant twice by accident, had me and Anthony and then legged it the first chance they got.  What more is there to understand?”

            “But would you talk to them, if you could?” I persisted. “If you got the chance?  If either of them turned up here, knocking on the door?  You’d have questions for them, wouldn’t you?  You’d want to try to understand it?”

            He sighed. “Look Danny, I get it, this is obviously how you’re feeling since you saw your mum.  I get it, you want to go and see her again, I don’t fucking like it, but I get it.”

            “Do you?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “You must want to make her feel bad yeah?  Rub her nose in it a bit, make her feel bad, ‘cause you got away from it all, and now she’s getting it, which is fucking funny if you think about it, considering she didn’t believe you.”

            I frowned at him and shifted under my sleeping bag. “Hmm,” I said. “That’s not really it Mike.  I mean, I do sort of want to let her know, the stuff she doesn’t know, to get it off my chest or whatever.  But I don’t think I want to make her feel any worse than she does.”

            “Oh you think she feels bad?” He shook his head and laughed. “You think she feels guilty about what happened to you?” I shrugged at him. “Yeah, right, well I don’t.  I think she feel scared and wants your help.  And I think if you go back there mate, you are asking for serious fucking trouble.  Think about it.  That bastard has left you alone for ages.  You really want to give him a reason to start it all up again?”

            “I know that,” I told him, dragging the ashtray across the bed to tap my cigarette against.  “But it didn’t make me feel good Mike, seeing her all beaten up like that.”

            “Yeah, she probably wants you back again so he can go back to hurting you, and not her!” Michael was staring at me angrily.  He tapped his cigarette and wiped at his mouth hard.  “For fucks sake Danny.  Why’d you write the 999 down for her then?  That must have made her feel like shit, and rightly so!  Why should you help her?”

            “I regret that now,” I looked him in the eye and told him.  “I do.  I’ve felt bad about it ever since.”

            “Oh fuckinghell Danny,” Michael sighed miserably and shook his face into both of his hands, before dropping them heavily and looking at me in pity. “Mate.  Please, please do not feel sorry for that woman!  She is a grown woman mate!  She can leave any fucking time she wants, she can call the cops, tell the neighbours, get a divorce!  What’s stopping her?  You were a kid, and you shouldn’t forget that Danny. Why the hell do you feel bad?” He glared at me, expecting an answer that I just didn’t have.  “What have you got to feel bad about?  So you were a pain in the arse as a kid?  So fucking what?  You should have been able to tell her the first time he did anything, and she should have believed you, and that should have been the end of it!  He should have been out!  You know that don’t you?  You know she let you down, fucked you over?  What about Freeman and all that shit?”

            I got off the bed then.  Pushed my sleeping bag down in one quick motion, tipping unsuspecting Kurt out onto the floor.  I ran my fingers through my hair, back and forth, stretching and yawning as I stepped out from the bag.  “Don’t,” I told him, before walking into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

            “Sorry,” he called out after me.  “But you have to remember all that shit Danny, so you don’t make the mistake of going back to her!  I don’t wanna’ fucking remind you of all that shit, all the stuff that went on, but you have to remember, you have to ask, where was she eh?  Where was she the day you broke down on the beach?  Where was she the day you had your famous bike crash?  All the rest of it?  Eh?”

            I turned the kettle on and reappeared in the doorway.  It was time for the conversation to end.  And to do that I knew I would have to give in to him. “Alright,” I said. “You’re right.  I’ll leave it.”

            He turned around on the bed to face me properly.  I thought how much like Anthony he looked these days.  If he grew much taller they would look like twins.  “Look,” he said to me. “Let me tell you what I think, for what it’s worth.  You don’t owe her anything.  She’s done sod all for you.  She let that cunt move in when she knew nothing about him, she didn’t care if you liked him or not, she didn’t believe you, she turned a blind eye and she’s still fucking with him!  And now he’s beating her up, she wants to see you?  You went and saw her, and you told her to call the cops.  What else can you do?  Nothing mate, nothing. Because if you go back there, if you try and help her or anything, that crazy bastard is gonna’ catch wind of it and then we’re right back to square fucking one, aren’t we? You don’t want him back in your life, do you Danny?”

            I looked at him and shook my head.  My mouth felt dry, and my skin was crawling with goosebumps. “Okay,” I told him, and in that moment, I meant it.  “Okay.  You’re right.  I know it.  Sorry.”

            Michael laughed a little nervously.  He got up to turn the channel over. “Well hallelujah!  Thank fucking god!”  I made the tea and brought it in.  We wrapped our hands around the warm mugs, with our sleeping bags pulled right up to our chins.  “This much coldness is insane,” he remarked, puffing his breath into the air to demonstrate. “It would drive anyone mental.  I can’t cope with it much longer, I’m telling you.  I keep expecting to wake up and find us all frozen stiff!”

            “We should complain again,” I said.

            “Anthony has, millions of times! They don’t give a shit, but hey, you know what?” he looked at me with a sparkle in his eye. “Anthony reckons another month or so and we could afford another place, a bigger, better place. Like a flat, with bedrooms, and heating!”

            I grinned back at him.  “God, that would be amazing Mike.”

            “I know, I know it will.  Everything will be amazing, just so long as you stay away from the past, yeah?”

            I smiled, and nodded, and looked back at the TV.  I knew that would be enough to satisfy him, but inside my own head, I knew it was never going to be as simple as that.

 

            So in my head, I devised a plan.  I didn’t mean to.  I want you to know that.  I didn’t want to.  It just kept happening.  It got into my brain and refused to be kicked out.  It formed, painstakingly slowly over several sleepless nights.  I would lay awake, remembering how those cold fingers of fear had once lived inside my belly, scrabbling around in there night after night.  How they had fallen quiet, for so long now.  I wondered if it was the same for her, my mother.  I imagined how she felt, hearing her husband return from work at night.  I wondered how quickly he started laying into her, what little things he used as reasons and justifications for hurting her.  I wondered if there were house inspections, and interrogations about her whereabouts.  She had no friends, I knew that.  No one to turn to.  No one to tell her what to do.  I’d lie awake, knowing exactly how she felt if she broke a cup, or left a smear on the window when cleaning it.  I knew that she probably found herself living with a constant gnawing terror in her gut, that warded off sleep, and peace, and sanity.  I lay awake, night after night, denying to myself, what I knew deep down inside.  That I had to see her again.  Maybe just once.  On my own, without Lucy.  I had to see her again and get some answers.  I had to find some peace somehow, from somewhere. 

            I knew what my friends would say, so I did not tell them.  I asked Terry if I could work late one night.  “You don’t have to pay me,” I was quick to point out when he looked about to argue.  “I’ve got this list, getting longer all the time, of people I’ve got to call about records they wanted.  I’m too busy to do it in the day.”

            “Well it’s up to you then,” Terry told me with a shrug.  “I’ll be upstairs getting my lips around a frozen meal for one.  Let me know if you have any trouble closing up.”

            I had no trouble closing up.  I ran up the stairs and knocked on the door to his flat, sliding the keys under the door for him.  “Cheers!” I heard him call out, as I dashed back down the stairs.  I grabbed my coat from the hook, pushed my arms through it, clipped Kurts lead on and went out the back way, taking care to properly slam the heavy door behind me.  It was dark.  I paused to button my coat up to my chin, and pull my scarf out from my pocket to wrap around my neck and over my mouth.  I put my hood up, shoved my hands into my pockets and set off down the alley as if I owned it, with Kurt yawning and trotting alongside me. 

            I tried to ignore the violent lurching of my heart, which felt like it had been asleep for some time, only to be rudely awakened by the memory of fear.  It was remembering now alright, as I walked with my shoulders hunched against the cold, towards the back of Howards club.  They would just be starting to open up, I thought, and sure enough, there was Howards flashy silver Merc, parked out the back.  I breathed in, and then out, looked straight ahead and kept walking.  I walked down to the end of the alley and then turned right and came out onto the high street.  I walked fast, because it was cold, and I wanted to warm up my bones, and I walked fast because I wanted to outrun my fears.  My mind was fighting a battle with my body the entire way there.  My body was playing the old game, screaming at me to stop, to turn around and run, to get away and be gone, while my mind attempted to argue calmly back, and I took deep breaths, and thought about Lucy, and music, and my friends, and I walked on and on.

            I listened to Oasis as I walked.  Don’t ever stand aside, don’t ever be denied,  they roared into my ears as I marched grimly on, you gotta’ be who you be, if you’re coming with me, I think I got a feeling I’m lost inside, I think I got a feeling I’m lost inside…When I reached the house, I stopped on the driveway and pressed stop.  The security light flicked on, drenching the drive and me in cold yellow light.  Immediately I saw a movement in the kitchen, and as I approached the front door, it was opened to me.  She was surprised to see me.  You could see that.  She was really shocked.  Tears filled her eyes again.  Her face looked much better, not so swollen, and the bruises had faded.  She looked like she was going to have a scar on her lip though.  I slipped past her and into the hallway with Kurt, and began to unbutton my coat.  She was wide eyed and nervous, but was smiling.  “He’s at work,” she told me, her voice coming out croaky, little more than a whisper.  She closed the door and gazed down at the dog.  “So who is this then?”

            “This is Kurt,” I told her.  “And I know Lee is at work, because I checked.  Walked past his car.”

            “What are you doing here?” she asked me, stepping forward and sort of reaching for me with her arms, before thinking better of it, and wrapping them around herself.  I shook a hand through my hair, flattened by my hood.

            “Came to see if you called that number yet,” I said.  She opened her mouth, and then closed it again, her shame turning her cheeks pink.  She shook her head at me.

            “I know I should…”

            “Easier said then done?” I asked at her, a smile tugging at me lips.  She smiled back.

            “I need to work out what to do,” she said. “I’m not as strong as you Danny.”

            “Plenty of times I should have called that number, but didn’t,” I told her then and shrugged. “Don’t even know why I didn’t, half the time.  So are you gonna’ make me a cup of tea or what?  It’s bloody freezing out there.”

            She nodded, and turned into the kitchen.  I unclipped Kurt, and he scampered around the hallway with his nose down, before hurrying quickly after me, and sitting down on my feet.  I didn’t blame him.  I felt the same.  Everything about the house made me feel small.  The kitchen was immense.  The shininess made my eyes ache in their sockets.  At the far end were French doors that led out onto a patio.  Two cream sofas were positioned there with view of the garden.  The ceiling was high, as were the cupboards.  I could imagine my mother stretching up on tiptoes to try to reach them.  The interior doors were huge, making me feel like a child.  It was like the house had been designed for giants.  Or monsters.  I felt an overwhelming sense of relief that I had got away before they moved.  I didn’t fit in a house like that.  I stood out like a sore thumb.  My mother looked tiny, I thought, as I watched her move jerkily around the room, making the tea.  She was wearing a long floaty blue top, and tight jeans.  She had lost weight where they had been none to lose.  Her golden waves were twisted and pinned up at the back of her head.  I leant back against the marble worktop and felt my mouth growing drier.  My stomach was now in knots.  I kept expecting Howard to walk back in at any moment.

            “Can’t say I like your house much,” I remarked to break the silence.  She crossed her arms and waited for the kettle to boil.  She offered me a wry and knowing look.

            “Well not exactly your taste is it?” she grinned, nodding her head at my scruffy attire and nearly shoulder length hair.  “I’ve missed you, you know,” she said then. “I was shocked when you ran away that day.  Really shocked.  I was that naïve, I really thought things would be better in this house, when we all moved into it together.  Then I was sort of relieved, in a weird way.  I don’t know, it was like I always had this awful tension inside of me, and whenever I looked into your face, I would see it staring right back at me.”

            “Yeah?  What was it?  The truth?”

            “It was after my mum died,” she went on, gazing at the kettle as the steam began to pummel out of the spout.  “I realised what an awful relationship I’d always had with her, and that I was doing the exact same thing with you.  I started to see things about Lee, after she died, things I’d either not noticed before or made excuses for. I started to feel uneasy, but at the same time, I so wanted things to work out. Didn’t want to be on my own again, I suppose.” She shrugged her small shoulders and turned to pour the water from the kettle. “So I was relieved for a while when you went, for you and for me.  What I couldn’t understand was Lee’s reaction.”  She was frowning as she set the kettle back down and picked up a teaspoon to swirl the teabags in their mugs. 

            “He hates to lose,” I said, my eyes shooting back to the front door.  “It would have been okay if he’d thrown me out, if it had been on his terms, not mine.”

            “Maybe you’re right,” she sighed, picking up one of the chrome canisters that lined the worktop like soldiers.  “Are you still one sugar?” I nodded and watched her spoon it in.  “He kept going on about it, especially the first few weeks.  Storming around the house, furious all the time, accusing me of helping you go. He even accused me of not caring about you like he did!  Said you were holed up with druggies and criminals.  I couldn’t understand why he cared so much, I mean, he was horrible to you most the time you were here. Why would he want you back?  I didn’t get it.”

            “Control,” I said flatly, taking the tea when she handed it to me.  “There’s probably a name for what he’s got.  He has to be completely in control, of everything.  He has to own you.  That, and he’s addicted to violence.  Which explains why he attacked my friend Jake for no reason because he couldn’t find me.”

            Mum turned and rested her back beside mine.  She wrapped one thin arm around her body and held her tea up to her lips.  “I think you’re tight,” she murmured. “The first few times I made excuses…I was probably in shock.  I couldn’t think straight.  I tried to understand why he did it, but all along I knew why really.  Because he wasn’t the man I thought he was.  He was someone else entirely.  And it all came out.  And then it got worse.” She sipped her tea as her eyes filled up with tears.  “I’m terrified of him now,” she said softly. “I don’t know what to do.”

            “He’s pretty good at deceiving people,” I said to her.  “You ought to see the people down at the club, they all fucking love him!  He’s king of the castle, and that’s what he thrives on.  Yeah, he fooled you, but not just you.  He fooled the cops, the school, John.  He took advantage of what he walked into, you know.”

            “I do know,” she nodded firmly. “Me and you at each other’s throats, because you didn’t like my boyfriends.” She laughed a little and pushed a strand of golden hair back behind one ear.  “Well you were right weren’t you?  They were all bastards or idiots one way or another.  Jesus Christ, I should have listened to you.  I should have known you were only trying to protect us all.  I really don’t deserve you, you know, not then, and certainly not now.”

            “I was a little shit though,” I reminded her with a grin.  “I wasn’t like John.”

            “God no,” she laughed. “You weren’t, and I bet I bloody told you it a million times a day!  But I didn’t love you any less, you know that, right?”  She turned her body to face me.  “You were hard work, oh yes, from day one, but that just scared me you know, as you got older.  You were becoming more and more like me.”

            “Really?”

            She looked me right in the eye.  “Yep. I was just like you, with my mother.  Didn’t think about it until she’d died.  But I was always arguing her, challenging her, fighting her.  Now if you ever kids, just don’t make the same mistakes hey?”

            She winked and smiled at me, but I felt unable to return it.  I felt terribly worn down then, as if just being in his house was draining the life from me.  “I am never having kids,” I told her.  “Never.  No way.”

            “Well of course you’d say that at sixteen years old.”

            “No, I mean it, I really do. No way I’m risking passing on that motherfuckers parenting skills.”

            She just stared at me in silence.  I sighed and looked down at Kurt sat on my feet, and wondered what the hell I was doing there.  I checked the door again, and I hated the feeling that was rising inside my chest, that old fluttery feeling of panic stirring.  I rubbed at my eyes with my hand.  “I don’t even know why I came…”

            “I don’t deserve you to be here, I know that…”

            “No one knows I’m here.  Not even Lucy.  They all think I’m nuts.  They think I’ll get all caught up in it again.  Get myself in trouble.” I shrugged and put down my cup.  “So are you going to leave him or what?  ‘Cause I think that’s the only way I can keep coming to see you. If you’re not with him.” I found it hard to look at her then.  Inside was this awful heaviness pulling me down, grabbing at my heart and squeezing all of the joy out of it.  Michael had been right, I thought, I should stay away from the past.  She was thinking about it, holding her cup in both hands under her chin, as he eyes scanned the room nervously and her teeth chewed at her lip. 

            “There’s a part of me that still loves him,” she replied so softly I almost missed it.  I felt like punching myself in the head when I realised what she had said.  I pushed one hand through my hair and held onto my head, while my heart was yanked down to the floor. 

            “Don’t say that,” I begged, turning away from her.  “Fuck, I come all the way here, to fucking help you and you go and say that! You can’t say that mum, if you fucking knew him like I do, you wouldn’t be able to say that!”

            “A part of me, I said, a tiny part of me. There are obviously sides to my relationship with him that are different to yours.”

            I just stared at her, enraged, unable to believe what I was hearing. “What the fuck does that mean?”

            “It means it’s complicated, that’s what it means.  It’s not as simple for me to just leave, Danny.  I’m not young.  I have no friends round here thanks to him, and the house is in his name, and I have no job!”  She finished her tea, wiped her mouth with the back of one hand and carried the cup over to the sink.  I felt the strongest urge to just laugh at her.

            “You don’t need money.  You just go.  You just leave.  Go to John, or back to Southampton. Call the police.  Get him arrested.  There are plenty of choices mum.  Or you can carry on like you are, a prisoner living with a psychopath, and this will be the last time you ever see me.”

            “I do want to leave him Danny, for goodness sake, I do!” She whirled around, tea towel clutched in one hand.  “I just need to work out what to do, financially and everything else. I know I can’t go on like this, I know that, I know I can’t..” She made a noise like a sob and covered her face with her hands.  “He’ll kill me if this carries on….I know it.”

            “He’s dangerous,” I said, my eyes shooting back to the door again.  She lowered her hands and traipsed slowly back towards me.  “I’m serious mum. If he’s only just started hitting you, you’ve got no idea how bad it will get.  He’s twisted inside.  He enjoys it mum, haven’t you noticed that yet?  He gets a kick out of it, I swear to God, it’s like a drug, it calms him down…” I had to break off, move back from her, my eyes held prisoner by the fucking door.  The memories were back again, trying to choke me, dark images crashing through my mind, trying to force their way through before I could push them back where I kept them. 

            She folded her arms and her eyes searched my face. “That’s why you came back today?  To convince me to leave him?”

            I sighed, my shoulders dropping under my heavy coat.  “I dunno mum.  Don’t know why I’m here, or what good it will do.  Maybe I’m an idiot hey?  I ought to stay away.  Let you get on with it.”  I thought suddenly of Lucy, up in her room, doing her homework, and a sharp pain pulled at me and made me want to run towards her.  “No one thinks I should be here.”

            “Then why are you here?”

            “I don’t know,” I repeated again, helplessly.  But I did know.  I knew there was still this little part of me that felt like a kid, a kid who just wanted to make his mother listen to him for once.  “Maybe I needed to hear something from you,” I exhaled loudly and glanced again at the front door.  “I don’t know.”

            She stepped towards me, her face so wrecked with emotion that I could hardly bear to look at her.  She was slowly reaching out for me, and I was torn in half, caught between wanting desperately to fall into her arms, and running for the door and never returning.  “That I’m sorry?” she asked me.  “That I was a crap mother from start to finish, that I let you down  so badly, that I will never forgive myself?  I should have known better Danny.” She stopped right in front of me, and her hands rose hesitantly and jerkily up to my face.  I froze, dreading her touch as much as I craved it.  Then I watched her hands curl into fists and draw back under her own chin.  “I thought it was drugs,” she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears.  “And god, how much I want to ask Lee about what Lucy said, about the drugs, because I still don’t understand Danny, I don’t understand any of it. Was that true?  Was it him and Jack all the time?”  I nodded at her and her eyes fell shut, squeezing our fresh water. “Bastards.  I can’t say anything, I can’t let him know I’ve seen you…”

            I pushed my hands into my pockets and tried to swallow the lump that was forming in my throat.  “No,” I said. “Don’t let him know, don’t say anything to him, whatever you do.” She moved forward suddenly then, catching me off guard, and her arms were around me before I could react, or pull away.  I stiffened against her and despised the tears that were threatening me, and she just held on.  She buried her face in my clothes, and the sobs shook both our bodies.  I gave in to it quietly.  I toyed with the grotesque possibility of Howard walking in and catching us.  “My son,” she was mumbling into my chest.  “I’m so sorry….so sorry….”

            “It’s alright,” I told the top of her head. “I’m okay, you know.  I’m okay.”

            “I will leave him,” she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeves and pulling back to look at me.  “There has to be a way.  I’m going to speak to John. What do you think?”

            I managed a tight smile.  “Think that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”  She nodded firmly.

            “The least I can do is get that man out of my life and then I can start to try to make it up to you.” She planted her hands on her hips and shook her hair out of her eyes, and I thought she looked stronger like that, almost like the old her. “I’ve got to get myself out of this god awful mess.”  She eyed the kettle and then looked back at me.  “How long can you stay?”

            I shrugged. “Another hour maybe.  As long as it’s safe.”

            “We can see the road from here,” she said, nodding at the window.  “And the light goes on when a car pulls in the drive.  If he does come back, you’ll have plenty of time to run out the back way.”

            I nodded.  “Okay then.”

            I ended up staying another hour.  I breathed, in and out, slowly and methodically the entire time, nurturing a thin restraint on my pounding heart. Never again, I kept telling myself, my eyes narrowed as they moved constantly between the door and the window, never again will I get stomped on by that evil bastard…and if mum leaves him…Relax, I told myself.  My mind whirled with confusion, hope and fear.  My mother chattered on.  I took my turn when I was supposed to.  I told her about the bed-sit, and my job, and my writing, and my dog.  She sat up on a high kitchen stool, her hand wrapped around her cup, and her eyes moist as she listened to me talk about my life.  “You always were a strange kid,” she grinned at me, and I supposed I was meant to take that as a compliment.

            “I’ll write down my address,” I said to her, before I left. “So you can pass it on to John.”  She passed me a piece of notepaper and I scrawled the address on it and passed it back. 

80

 

 

            I guess I retreated a bit after that.  Pushed them all aside for a while.  I don’t really know why, except I suppose I was very confused, and needed time to think.  On the way back from my mothers I had shut Lucy out completely, pulling on my headphones and pressing play.  I sat slumped against the window, pulling my hand away when she tried to reach for it.  Pretty nasty of me, I know, but I couldn’t help it.  The memories were making me sad, and angry, and I was scared I would start shouting at her, or something. It just seemed impossible that I would be able to contain that much feeling.  I kept my mouth shut and my eyes turned away, simply to avoid hurting her.  If I’d opened my mouth I might have started screaming and I might never have stopped.  So she sat there beside me, her hands entwined in her own lap, her teeth chewing at her lips, while I pressed my forehead to the glass of the window and nodded along to The Stone Roses.  Never go anywhere without music, I’m telling you.  You never know when you are going to need it.  Sometimes I….fantasiiiiiiiiiise, when the streets are cold and lonely, and the cars they burn below me. I watched the town rolling past the window and a deep and dark depression seemed to settle over me.  I felt like I’d always felt back then.  What’s the point in anything?  Really?  There’s no god, there’s no heaven, there’s no afterlife, only this, endless turning shit and stress, so what’s the point?  Are you all alone?…Is anybody home?….Are you made of stone?  Dunno mate.  Might as well be.

            Back at the bed sit, I avoided their eyes and their questions, only shaking my head to indicate that I was not in the mood for talking.  I changed the tape in my Walkman, clipped the lead onto Kurt and went back out again on my own to walk him.  I left them behind, with  their puzzled, cautious faces, and their weighted silence following me out the door. I knew they would talk about me when I was gone.  Let them, I thought, let them.  I walked Kurt down to the beach and let him off.  It was freezing cold, the sea was rough and grey and violently throwing murky looking froth up onto the sand.  Kurt ran about barking at seagulls.  I lit a cigarette and sat on the steps to the promenade. 

            I didn’t think about anything for a while.  Just sat, and watched Kurt chasing the birds, and listened to the music.  That’s the nice thing about having music constantly with you, you see, you can immerse yourself in it, in the melody and in the lyrics, you can hold your own shit at bay for a while.  I’d picked Radiohead, completely at random.  The sea crashed silently, Kurt’s barking was muted, and my head was full of tortured words; You can crush it as dry as a bone, you can walk it home straight from school, you can kiss it, you can break all the rules, but still everything is….broken…Why can’t you forget?

            I sat there and instead of thinking about my mother, and what to do about it all, I thought about calling Jaime up, buying some speed or some pills or some coke from him and getting high, getting really fucking high.  I remembered how it used to feel.  Like I was untouchable, like nothing could get through, like everything was fucking amazing.  I remembered how I used to laugh, and smile, at nothing.  How amazing the music would sound, how my imagination would take me off to other places, beautiful places I never knew existed within my own mind.  I could do with some of that now, I was thinking.

            Do you want to know the other thing I was thinking?  You won’t like this.  I was thinking about pain, and what it was, and what it amounted to, and how easy it was to withstand if you knew how to.  I was wishing I still had my knife on me, but I didn’t, I hadn’t carried one about for months now.  I pulled up my sleeve and traced a finger down the jagged scar I’d given myself that day on the bench at the park.  I touched it, stroked it, and couldn’t deny the incredible urge I had to get something sharp and just tear into myself with it.  I don’t know why.  I’m not a shrink.  I just felt the urge.  I wanted to see blood and I wanted to feel that little hiss of pain that reminds you that you are still alive.  I wanted to scratch at my own skin until it all fell away.  I hated it.  I hated the feel of it, weighing me down, coated in the shame of the past…how to get rid of it?  How to get free? 

            I rested my elbow on my knee, dropped my head into my hand and tightened my fingers in my hair.  I closed my eyes.  I breathed in and out, and it didn’t seem enough.  It didn’t seem real.  I wanted to take my head and crash it into the rocks.  I don’t know why. Tears were stinging under my eyelids, so I wouldn’t open my eyes for a while, refusing to let the bastards out, the weak shitty little bastards.  I kept them in, I squeezed them backwards, I shook with it all inside of me.  Finally I had to breathe, I opened my mouth up wide and sucked in salty sea air, and opened my eyes and the tears dried on them, and I stared out at the sea, at everything.  I wanted a drink.

           

            Weeks passed, and my friends watched me like a hawk.  Lucy was more attentive than usual, walking on eggshells around me, the rigid smile she offered doing fuck all to soften the fear in her eyes.   I was feeling suffocated.  If they weren’t offering to come with me every time I left the bed-sit, then I’d find them whispering in corners, and asking me if I was alright the whole time.  I knew I was lucky to have people that cared, really lucky, but all the same, I was having to bite my tongue the whole time for fear of snapping at them.  I knew they meant well, but I didn’t want to be that person anymore, that scared kid they all felt sorry for, that little kid they wanted to look after, and keep safe.  I didn’t want to be watched over, or seen as a victim.  I decided it was time that I stood tall and took matters into my own hands.  It was time I had some control for once.  It was time I addressed the past, so that I could move on into the future, and leave it all behind.

            I showed them my bravest face at all times, whether they bought it or not.  I got drunker than usual when we went to Chaos, just to let rip, just to not give a shit, and it worked.  I told Lucy to stop worrying, that everything was fine, but she didn’t believe me, I could see it all over her face.

            “You’re thinking of going back to see her again,” Michael said to me when we were alone in the bed-sit one evening sharing a bottle of cheap wine.  Anthony was on a late shift at The Ship, so we had the place to ourselves.  I frowned at him, wondering how long he had been thinking about asking me that question.  I took a sip from the wine bottle and held it out to him.  He took it from me, and I stuffed my arms back under my sleeping bag, where I had Kurt all curled up asleep on my lap.  It didn’t matter what we did, that bed-sit was always freezing cold, winter or summer.  Anthony had bought two electric heaters, pinned thick blankets up over the windows, and stuffed towels under the doors, but it made no difference.  You could always see your breath when you spoke.  You had to wear three pairs of socks, and we seemed to be permanently wrapped up in duvets or sleeping bags. 

            “You mean my mum?” I asked him patiently, and he nodded, guzzling from the bottle, his dark eyes watching me carefully.  I rolled my eyes at him, shook my head and looked back at the TV.  TFI Friday was on, one of our favourite new shows.  I didn’t want to have the conversation I could sense him gearing towards.  “It’s just Lucy thinks that you are,” Michael went on, when a few minutes had passed, and I knew why he was asking then; because Lucy had probably begged him to speak to me.  “Because,” he went on again when I didn’t answer. “You keep changing the subject whenever anyone brings it up, and you’re really quiet about it…not good quiet…She’s really worried about you mate.”

            He passed the bottle back and I took it, easing one arm up from the sleeping bag to take it.  I sighed and looked at him.  “I knew it.  She put you up to this.”

            “You can’t blame her mate.  You’ve been weird since you saw your mum.  Might help if you told us about it, you know.”

            “Nothing to tell,” I shook my head. “Nothing that Lucy hasn’t already told you.”

            “But not what happened Danny, I mean how you felt, how you are now.  Whether or not you’re thinking of going back?”

            I drank the wine, staring back at the TV.  I felt dozy and sleepy.  I wondered why everything always had to be so hard.  I swallowed, wiped my mouth and passed it back. “Let me ask you a question Mike,” I said to him.  He nodded at me, waiting. “What do you think about your own mum these days?  I mean, she wasn’t exactly mother of the year either, was she? Do you know where she is?  Would you go and see her if she wanted you to?”

            Michael smiled at me wearily. “We’ve got her address,” he replied with a casual shrug. “My Aunt sent it.  Apparently she’s getting help for her drink problem. So fucking what?  You think I care?”

            “You wouldn’t go and see her then?”

            He shrugged again. “Don’t think so.  No reason to.  She left, didn’t she?  Her choice.  I’m not chasing after her.  If she wanted to see me, then fine, she can come here, see how it goes.  I’m not running after her, not ever.”  He passed the bottle back to me.

            “What about your dad?” I asked. “Do you ever think about him?”

            “Nope,” he said, shaking his head quickly. “Not once, not ever.  Wouldn’t waste my fucking time mate.  They screwed up, see?  They don’t get another chance.”

            I looked back at the TV, drank some more wine.  Michael lit up a cigarette beside me and tucked his legs up under his chin.  We were quiet again for a while, just watching and chuckling at the antics on TFI Friday.  During the ad break, we finished the wine and I lit up my own cigarette.  “Do you ever think about it though?” I asked Michael then. “I mean, why they screwed up so bad, or if they care about it now, if they regret it?”

            Michael turned his incredulous eyes upon me.  He looked about to ready to burst with indignation and contempt for my musings.  “Why would I waste my time mate?  The way I see it, it’s simple, right?  They never wanted kids, ‘cause they were both fucking boozers, got pregnant twice by accident, had me and Anthony and then legged it the first chance they got.  What more is there to understand?”

            “But would you talk to them, if you could?” I persisted. “If you got the chance?  If either of them turned up here, knocking on the door?  You’d have questions for them, wouldn’t you?  You’d want to try to understand it?”

            He sighed. “Look Danny, I get it, this is obviously how you’re feeling since you saw your mum.  I get it, you want to go and see her again, I don’t fucking like it, but I get it.”

            “Do you?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “You must want to make her feel bad yeah?  Rub her nose in it a bit, make her feel bad, ‘cause you got away from it all, and now she’s getting it, which is fucking funny if you think about it, considering she didn’t believe you.”

            I frowned at him and shifted under my sleeping bag. “Hmm,” I said. “That’s not really it Mike.  I mean, I do sort of want to let her know, the stuff she doesn’t know, to get it off my chest or whatever.  But I don’t think I want to make her feel any worse than she does.”

            “Oh you think she feels bad?” He shook his head and laughed. “You think she feels guilty about what happened to you?” I shrugged at him. “Yeah, right, well I don’t.  I think she feel scared and wants your help.  And I think if you go back there mate, you are asking for serious fucking trouble.  Think about it.  That bastard has left you alone for ages.  You really want to give him a reason to start it all up again?”

            “I know that,” I told him, dragging the ashtray across the bed to tap my cigarette against.  “But it didn’t make me feel good Mike, seeing her all beaten up like that.”

            “Yeah, she probably wants you back again so he can go back to hurting you, and not her!” Michael was staring at me angrily.  He tapped his cigarette and wiped at his mouth hard.  “For fucks sake Danny.  Why’d you write the 999 down for her then?  That must have made her feel like shit, and rightly so!  Why should you help her?”

            “I regret that now,” I looked him in the eye and told him.  “I do.  I’ve felt bad about it ever since.”

            “Oh fuckinghell Danny,” Michael sighed miserably and shook his face into both of his hands, before dropping them heavily and looking at me in pity. “Mate.  Please, please do not feel sorry for that woman!  She is a grown woman mate!  She can leave any fucking time she wants, she can call the cops, tell the neighbours, get a divorce!  What’s stopping her?  You were a kid, and you shouldn’t forget that Danny. Why the hell do you feel bad?” He glared at me, expecting an answer that I just didn’t have.  “What have you got to feel bad about?  So you were a pain in the arse as a kid?  So fucking what?  You should have been able to tell her the first time he did anything, and she should have believed you, and that should have been the end of it!  He should have been out!  You know that don’t you?  You know she let you down, fucked you over?  What about Freeman and all that shit?”

            I got off the bed then.  Pushed my sleeping bag down in one quick motion, tipping unsuspecting Kurt out onto the floor.  I ran my fingers through my hair, back and forth, stretching and yawning as I stepped out from the bag.  “Don’t,” I told him, before walking into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

            “Sorry,” he called out after me.  “But you have to remember all that shit Danny, so you don’t make the mistake of going back to her!  I don’t wanna’ fucking remind you of all that shit, all the stuff that went on, but you have to remember, you have to ask, where was she eh?  Where was she the day you broke down on the beach?  Where was she the day you had your famous bike crash?  All the rest of it?  Eh?”

            I turned the kettle on and reappeared in the doorway.  It was time for the conversation to end.  And to do that I knew I would have to give in to him. “Alright,” I said. “You’re right.  I’ll leave it.”

            He turned around on the bed to face me properly.  I thought how much like Anthony he looked these days.  If he grew much taller they would look like twins.  “Look,” he said to me. “Let me tell you what I think, for what it’s worth.  You don’t owe her anything.  She’s done sod all for you.  She let that cunt move in when she knew nothing about him, she didn’t care if you liked him or not, she didn’t believe you, she turned a blind eye and she’s still fucking with him!  And now he’s beating her up, she wants to see you?  You went and saw her, and you told her to call the cops.  What else can you do?  Nothing mate, nothing. Because if you go back there, if you try and help her or anything, that crazy bastard is gonna’ catch wind of it and then we’re right back to square fucking one, aren’t we? You don’t want him back in your life, do you Danny?”

            I looked at him and shook my head.  My mouth felt dry, and my skin was crawling with goosebumps. “Okay,” I told him, and in that moment, I meant it.  “Okay.  You’re right.  I know it.  Sorry.”

            Michael laughed a little nervously.  He got up to turn the channel over. “Well hallelujah!  Thank fucking god!”  I made the tea and brought it in.  We wrapped our hands around the warm mugs, with our sleeping bags pulled right up to our chins.  “This much coldness is insane,” he remarked, puffing his breath into the air to demonstrate. “It would drive anyone mental.  I can’t cope with it much longer, I’m telling you.  I keep expecting to wake up and find us all frozen stiff!”

            “We should complain again,” I said.

            “Anthony has, millions of times! They don’t give a shit, but hey, you know what?” he looked at me with a sparkle in his eye. “Anthony reckons another month or so and we could afford another place, a bigger, better place. Like a flat, with bedrooms, and heating!”

            I grinned back at him.  “God, that would be amazing Mike.”

            “I know, I know it will.  Everything will be amazing, just so long as you stay away from the past, yeah?”

            I smiled, and nodded, and looked back at the TV.  I knew that would be enough to satisfy him, but inside my own head, I knew it was never going to be as simple as that.

 

            So in my head, I devised a plan.  I didn’t mean to.  I want you to know that.  I didn’t want to.  It just kept happening.  It got into my brain and refused to be kicked out.  It formed, painstakingly slowly over several sleepless nights.  I would lay awake, remembering how those cold fingers of fear had once lived inside my belly, scrabbling around in there night after night.  How they had fallen quiet, for so long now.  I wondered if it was the same for her, my mother.  I imagined how she felt, hearing her husband return from work at night.  I wondered how quickly he started laying into her, what little things he used as reasons and justifications for hurting her.  I wondered if there were house inspections, and interrogations about her whereabouts.  She had no friends, I knew that.  No one to turn to.  No one to tell her what to do.  I’d lie awake, knowing exactly how she felt if she broke a cup, or left a smear on the window when cleaning it.  I knew that she probably found herself living with a constant gnawing terror in her gut, that warded off sleep, and peace, and sanity.  I lay awake, night after night, denying to myself, what I knew deep down inside.  That I had to see her again.  Maybe just once.  On my own, without Lucy.  I had to see her again and get some answers.  I had to find some peace somehow, from somewhere. 

            I knew what my friends would say, so I did not tell them.  I asked Terry if I could work late one night.  “You don’t have to pay me,” I was quick to point out when he looked about to argue.  “I’ve got this list, getting longer all the time, of people I’ve got to call about records they wanted.  I’m too busy to do it in the day.”

            “Well it’s up to you then,” Terry told me with a shrug.  “I’ll be upstairs getting my lips around a frozen meal for one.  Let me know if you have any trouble closing up.”

            I had no trouble closing up.  I ran up the stairs and knocked on the door to his flat, sliding the keys under the door for him.  “Cheers!” I heard him call out, as I dashed back down the stairs.  I grabbed my coat from the hook, pushed my arms through it, clipped Kurts lead on and went out the back way, taking care to properly slam the heavy door behind me.  It was dark.  I paused to button my coat up to my chin, and pull my scarf out from my pocket to wrap around my neck and over my mouth.  I put my hood up, shoved my hands into my pockets and set off down the alley as if I owned it, with Kurt yawning and trotting alongside me. 

            I tried to ignore the violent lurching of my heart, which felt like it had been asleep for some time, only to be rudely awakened by the memory of fear.  It was remembering now alright, as I walked with my shoulders hunched against the cold, towards the back of Howards club.  They would just be starting to open up, I thought, and sure enough, there was Howards flashy silver Merc, parked out the back.  I breathed in, and then out, looked straight ahead and kept walking.  I walked down to the end of the alley and then turned right and came out onto the high street.  I walked fast, because it was cold, and I wanted to warm up my bones, and I walked fast because I wanted to outrun my fears.  My mind was fighting a battle with my body the entire way there.  My body was playing the old game, screaming at me to stop, to turn around and run, to get away and be gone, while my mind attempted to argue calmly back, and I took deep breaths, and thought about Lucy, and music, and my friends, and I walked on and on.

            I listened to Oasis as I walked.  Don’t ever stand aside, don’t ever be denied,  they roared into my ears as I marched grimly on, you gotta’ be who you be, if you’re coming with me, I think I got a feeling I’m lost inside, I think I got a feeling I’m lost inside…When I reached the house, I stopped on the driveway and pressed stop.  The security light flicked on, drenching the drive and me in cold yellow light.  Immediately I saw a movement in the kitchen, and as I approached the front door, it was opened to me.  She was surprised to see me.  You could see that.  She was really shocked.  Tears filled her eyes again.  Her face looked much better, not so swollen, and the bruises had faded.  She looked like she was going to have a scar on her lip though.  I slipped past her and into the hallway with Kurt, and began to unbutton my coat.  She was wide eyed and nervous, but was smiling.  “He’s at work,” she told me, her voice coming out croaky, little more than a whisper.  She closed the door and gazed down at the dog.  “So who is this then?”

            “This is Kurt,” I told her.  “And I know Lee is at work, because I checked.  Walked past his car.”

            “What are you doing here?” she asked me, stepping forward and sort of reaching for me with her arms, before thinking better of it, and wrapping them around herself.  I shook a hand through my hair, flattened by my hood.

            “Came to see if you called that number yet,” I said.  She opened her mouth, and then closed it again, her shame turning her cheeks pink.  She shook her head at me.

            “I know I should…”

            “Easier said then done?” I asked at her, a smile tugging at me lips.  She smiled back.

            “I need to work out what to do,” she said. “I’m not as strong as you Danny.”

            “Plenty of times I should have called that number, but didn’t,” I told her then and shrugged. “Don’t even know why I didn’t, half the time.  So are you gonna’ make me a cup of tea or what?  It’s bloody freezing out there.”

            She nodded, and turned into the kitchen.  I unclipped Kurt, and he scampered around the hallway with his nose down, before hurrying quickly after me, and sitting down on my feet.  I didn’t blame him.  I felt the same.  Everything about the house made me feel small.  The kitchen was immense.  The shininess made my eyes ache in their sockets.  At the far end were French doors that led out onto a patio.  Two cream sofas were positioned there with view of the garden.  The ceiling was high, as were the cupboards.  I could imagine my mother stretching up on tiptoes to try to reach them.  The interior doors were huge, making me feel like a child.  It was like the house had been designed for giants.  Or monsters.  I felt an overwhelming sense of relief that I had got away before they moved.  I didn’t fit in a house like that.  I stood out like a sore thumb.  My mother looked tiny, I thought, as I watched her move jerkily around the room, making the tea.  She was wearing a long floaty blue top, and tight jeans.  She had lost weight where they had been none to lose.  Her golden waves were twisted and pinned up at the back of her head.  I leant back against the marble worktop and felt my mouth growing drier.  My stomach was now in knots.  I kept expecting Howard to walk back in at any moment.

            “Can’t say I like your house much,” I remarked to break the silence.  She crossed her arms and waited for the kettle to boil.  She offered me a wry and knowing look.

            “Well not exactly your taste is it?” she grinned, nodding her head at my scruffy attire and nearly shoulder length hair.  “I’ve missed you, you know,” she said then. “I was shocked when you ran away that day.  Really shocked.  I was that naïve, I really thought things would be better in this house, when we all moved into it together.  Then I was sort of relieved, in a weird way.  I don’t know, it was like I always had this awful tension inside of me, and whenever I looked into your face, I would see it staring right back at me.”

            “Yeah?  What was it?  The truth?”

            “It was after my mum died,” she went on, gazing at the kettle as the steam began to pummel out of the spout.  “I realised what an awful relationship I’d always had with her, and that I was doing the exact same thing with you.  I started to see things about Lee, after she died, things I’d either not noticed before or made excuses for. I started to feel uneasy, but at the same time, I so wanted things to work out. Didn’t want to be on my own again, I suppose.” She shrugged her small shoulders and turned to pour the water from the kettle. “So I was relieved for a while when you went, for you and for me.  What I couldn’t understand was Lee’s reaction.”  She was frowning as she set the kettle back down and picked up a teaspoon to swirl the teabags in their mugs. 

            “He hates to lose,” I said, my eyes shooting back to the front door.  “It would have been okay if he’d thrown me out, if it had been on his terms, not mine.”

            “Maybe you’re right,” she sighed, picking up one of the chrome canisters that lined the worktop like soldiers.  “Are you still one sugar?” I nodded and watched her spoon it in.  “He kept going on about it, especially the first few weeks.  Storming around the house, furious all the time, accusing me of helping you go. He even accused me of not caring about you like he did!  Said you were holed up with druggies and criminals.  I couldn’t understand why he cared so much, I mean, he was horrible to you most the time you were here. Why would he want you back?  I didn’t get it.”

            “Control,” I said flatly, taking the tea when she handed it to me.  “There’s probably a name for what he’s got.  He has to be completely in control, of everything.  He has to own you.  That, and he’s addicted to violence.  Which explains why he attacked my friend Jake for no reason because he couldn’t find me.”

            Mum turned and rested her back beside mine.  She wrapped one thin arm around her body and held her tea up to her lips.  “I think you’re tight,” she murmured. “The first few times I made excuses…I was probably in shock.  I couldn’t think straight.  I tried to understand why he did it, but all along I knew why really.  Because he wasn’t the man I thought he was.  He was someone else entirely.  And it all came out.  And then it got worse.” She sipped her tea as her eyes filled up with tears.  “I’m terrified of him now,” she said softly. “I don’t know what to do.”

            “He’s pretty good at deceiving people,” I said to her.  “You ought to see the people down at the club, they all fucking love him!  He’s king of the castle, and that’s what he thrives on.  Yeah, he fooled you, but not just you.  He fooled the cops, the school, John.  He took advantage of what he walked into, you know.”

            “I do know,” she nodded firmly. “Me and you at each other’s throats, because you didn’t like my boyfriends.” She laughed a little and pushed a strand of golden hair back behind one ear.  “Well you were right weren’t you?  They were all bastards or idiots one way or another.  Jesus Christ, I should have listened to you.  I should have known you were only trying to protect us all.  I really don’t deserve you, you know, not then, and certainly not now.”

            “I was a little shit though,” I reminded her with a grin.  “I wasn’t like John.”

            “God no,” she laughed. “You weren’t, and I bet I bloody told you it a million times a day!  But I didn’t love you any less, you know that, right?”  She turned her body to face me.  “You were hard work, oh yes, from day one, but that just scared me you know, as you got older.  You were becoming more and more like me.”

            “Really?”

            She looked me right in the eye.  “Yep. I was just like you, with my mother.  Didn’t think about it until she’d died.  But I was always arguing her, challenging her, fighting her.  Now if you ever kids, just don’t make the same mistakes hey?”

            She winked and smiled at me, but I felt unable to return it.  I felt terribly worn down then, as if just being in his house was draining the life from me.  “I am never having kids,” I told her.  “Never.  No way.”

            “Well of course you’d say that at sixteen years old.”

            “No, I mean it, I really do. No way I’m risking passing on that motherfuckers parenting skills.”

            She just stared at me in silence.  I sighed and looked down at Kurt sat on my feet, and wondered what the hell I was doing there.  I checked the door again, and I hated the feeling that was rising inside my chest, that old fluttery feeling of panic stirring.  I rubbed at my eyes with my hand.  “I don’t even know why I came…”

            “I don’t deserve you to be here, I know that…”

            “No one knows I’m here.  Not even Lucy.  They all think I’m nuts.  They think I’ll get all caught up in it again.  Get myself in trouble.” I shrugged and put down my cup.  “So are you going to leave him or what?  ‘Cause I think that’s the only way I can keep coming to see you. If you’re not with him.” I found it hard to look at her then.  Inside was this awful heaviness pulling me down, grabbing at my heart and squeezing all of the joy out of it.  Michael had been right, I thought, I should stay away from the past.  She was thinking about it, holding her cup in both hands under her chin, as he eyes scanned the room nervously and her teeth chewed at her lip. 

            “There’s a part of me that still loves him,” she replied so softly I almost missed it.  I felt like punching myself in the head when I realised what she had said.  I pushed one hand through my hair and held onto my head, while my heart was yanked down to the floor. 

            “Don’t say that,” I begged, turning away from her.  “Fuck, I come all the way here, to fucking help you and you go and say that! You can’t say that mum, if you fucking knew him like I do, you wouldn’t be able to say that!”

            “A part of me, I said, a tiny part of me. There are obviously sides to my relationship with him that are different to yours.”

            I just stared at her, enraged, unable to believe what I was hearing. “What the fuck does that mean?”

            “It means it’s complicated, that’s what it means.  It’s not as simple for me to just leave, Danny.  I’m not young.  I have no friends round here thanks to him, and the house is in his name, and I have no job!”  She finished her tea, wiped her mouth with the back of one hand and carried the cup over to the sink.  I felt the strongest urge to just laugh at her.

            “You don’t need money.  You just go.  You just leave.  Go to John, or back to Southampton. Call the police.  Get him arrested.  There are plenty of choices mum.  Or you can carry on like you are, a prisoner living with a psychopath, and this will be the last time you ever see me.”

            “I do want to leave him Danny, for goodness sake, I do!” She whirled around, tea towel clutched in one hand.  “I just need to work out what to do, financially and everything else. I know I can’t go on like this, I know that, I know I can’t..” She made a noise like a sob and covered her face with her hands.  “He’ll kill me if this carries on….I know it.”

            “He’s dangerous,” I said, my eyes shooting back to the door again.  She lowered her hands and traipsed slowly back towards me.  “I’m serious mum. If he’s only just started hitting you, you’ve got no idea how bad it will get.  He’s twisted inside.  He enjoys it mum, haven’t you noticed that yet?  He gets a kick out of it, I swear to God, it’s like a drug, it calms him down…” I had to break off, move back from her, my eyes held prisoner by the fucking door.  The memories were back again, trying to choke me, dark images crashing through my mind, trying to force their way through before I could push them back where I kept them. 

            She folded her arms and her eyes searched my face. “That’s why you came back today?  To convince me to leave him?”

            I sighed, my shoulders dropping under my heavy coat.  “I dunno mum.  Don’t know why I’m here, or what good it will do.  Maybe I’m an idiot hey?  I ought to stay away.  Let you get on with it.”  I thought suddenly of Lucy, up in her room, doing her homework, and a sharp pain pulled at me and made me want to run towards her.  “No one thinks I should be here.”

            “Then why are you here?”

            “I don’t know,” I repeated again, helplessly.  But I did know.  I knew there was still this little part of me that felt like a kid, a kid who just wanted to make his mother listen to him for once.  “Maybe I needed to hear something from you,” I exhaled loudly and glanced again at the front door.  “I don’t know.”

            She stepped towards me, her face so wrecked with emotion that I could hardly bear to look at her.  She was slowly reaching out for me, and I was torn in half, caught between wanting desperately to fall into her arms, and running for the door and never returning.  “That I’m sorry?” she asked me.  “That I was a crap mother from start to finish, that I let you down  so badly, that I will never forgive myself?  I should have known better Danny.” She stopped right in front of me, and her hands rose hesitantly and jerkily up to my face.  I froze, dreading her touch as much as I craved it.  Then I watched her hands curl into fists and draw back under her own chin.  “I thought it was drugs,” she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears.  “And god, how much I want to ask Lee about what Lucy said, about the drugs, because I still don’t understand Danny, I don’t understand any of it. Was that true?  Was it him and Jack all the time?”  I nodded at her and her eyes fell shut, squeezing our fresh water. “Bastards.  I can’t say anything, I can’t let him know I’ve seen you…”

            I pushed my hands into my pockets and tried to swallow the lump that was forming in my throat.  “No,” I said. “Don’t let him know, don’t say anything to him, whatever you do.” She moved forward suddenly then, catching me off guard, and her arms were around me before I could react, or pull away.  I stiffened against her and despised the tears that were threatening me, and she just held on.  She buried her face in my clothes, and the sobs shook both our bodies.  I gave in to it quietly.  I toyed with the grotesque possibility of Howard walking in and catching us.  “My son,” she was mumbling into my chest.  “I’m so sorry….so sorry….”

            “It’s alright,” I told the top of her head. “I’m okay, you know.  I’m okay.”

            “I will leave him,” she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeves and pulling back to look at me.  “There has to be a way.  I’m going to speak to John. What do you think?”

            I managed a tight smile.  “Think that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”  She nodded firmly.

            “The least I can do is get that man out of my life and then I can start to try to make it up to you.” She planted her hands on her hips and shook her hair out of her eyes, and I thought she looked stronger like that, almost like the old her. “I’ve got to get myself out of this god awful mess.”  She eyed the kettle and then looked back at me.  “How long can you stay?”

            I shrugged. “Another hour maybe.  As long as it’s safe.”

            “We can see the road from here,” she said, nodding at the window.  “And the light goes on when a car pulls in the drive.  If he does come back, you’ll have plenty of time to run out the back way.”

            I nodded.  “Okay then.”

            I ended up staying another hour.  I breathed, in and out, slowly and methodically the entire time, nurturing a thin restraint on my pounding heart. Never again, I kept telling myself, my eyes narrowed as they moved constantly between the door and the window, never again will I get stomped on by that evil bastard…and if mum leaves him…Relax, I told myself.  My mind whirled with confusion, hope and fear.  My mother chattered on.  I took my turn when I was supposed to.  I told her about the bed-sit, and my job, and my writing, and my dog.  She sat up on a high kitchen stool, her hand wrapped around her cup, and her eyes moist as she listened to me talk about my life.  “You always were a strange kid,” she grinned at me, and I supposed I was meant to take that as a compliment.

            “I’ll write down my address,” I said to her, before I left. “So you can pass it on to John.”  She passed me a piece of notepaper and I scrawled the address on it and passed it back.