73

 

            On the morning of my sixteenth birthday, I awoke to the smell of bacon frying, and to the sound of someone vomiting noisily in the bed-sit below ours.  Anthony had pinned old sheets and blankets to the large sash windows, but the morning sun burst through them with ease.  I was so confused for a moment.  I could hear Oasis playing, but I had no idea where it was coming from, and for a while I really had no idea where I was or what was going on.  Hey you! Wearing the crown! Making no sound…I heard you feel down? Well that’s too bad, welcome to my world!  I was on the left side of the pull down bed, the side closest to the kitchen.  I was face down, and because the springs were knackered it felt like I had been lying on rubble all night, and I moaned and groaned as I rolled slowly over to my side.  I could feel Michael, sprawled out beside me, flat on his back with his arms and legs stuck out to the sides.  I felt reality juddering to life within me.  It was like my heart didn’t want to get going, to be honest.  I kind of felt the urge to punch myself in the chest, just to give it a kick up the arse.  I didn’t want to move, but I made myself.  I peeled myself slowly away from the thin and sagging mattress, and swung my legs out of the bed.  I lowered my feet dubiously down to the thin threadbare carpet, and immediately pulled them back up again. It felt sticky to the touch, so I got my feet back on the bed and wrapped my arms around my legs.

            Michael snored on behind me, and Anthony whistled softly to the music in the kitchen, scraping and shoving bacon around in the pan.  I yawned, scratched at my neck and tried to work out exactly why I felt so crap, so weighed down.  I found myself wondering if I could still remember Jaime Lawler’s number by heart.  I thought back to the stresses of yesterday.  It was all a bit of a blur.  Like a dream.  We had arrived at the bed-sit in a flurry of adrenalin and fear.  Terror was buried under the surface of excitement.  We were bordering on the hysterical the whole time.  Collapsing in fits of tear streaming laughter when Michael pulled open a drawer in the kitchen and the knob came off in his hand.  Anthony falling over backwards onto his arse when we carried up the TV he had liberated from his mothers lounge.  I’d laughed, and felt myself growing weaker with every step.  I couldn’t concentrate on anything, I was lost inside a shadow, and when we finally fell down in front of the TV with cans of beer and cold toast, it was drink and drugs my mind felt drawn to.  I watched Michael, trying to cover up his own fear, licking his lips and jumping at every single tiny little noise.  Anthony was just Anthony.  I didn’t know how he did it, but I admired him all the more.  He remained calm and composed, offering us lazy, confident grins around the cigarette that dangled permanently from the side of his mouth.  “I’ll go shopping tomorrow,” he told our silent, sombre faces.  “Get some proper food in.”  He had then spent a good half hour trying to tune the telly in, cursing and making us smile faintly in a stupor behind him.  After that, we sat and watched the TV in silence, only able to guess at eachothers thoughts. 

            I had no idea what time I had finally fell into an uneasy form of sleep, but I did know that it was hours after Michael and Anthony had both began to snore, and another few hours after the guy downstairs had turned his awful techno music off.  With the music off, the guys dog had started to complain.  Just a mournful yip, yip, yip to begin with, which soon built up into a genuine howl of protest.  At some point I heard the man swearing loudly, and stomping across his floor to the door, presumably to take the dog out for a piss.  After that, silence.  I lay on my back beside Michael with my arms folded behind my head, not even remotely sleepy.  All I could think about was the knife in my hands, my fingers curled tightly around the handle, and the strange bounce of leather versus steel, as the blade pierced right through the top of his shoe…I closed my eyes to wish it away, but it wouldn’t go.  The blood filled my mind.  It pooled and swam and ran like a ruby river, gushing behind my eyelids.  My hands began to shake as they relived the fleshy wrench of the knife as it ripped back out of the foot.  My feet jerked and twitched at the end of the bed, as I fought the urge to release the nervous energy inside of me.  My teeth found my lower lip and gnawed at it savagely.  I shook my head back and forth, and rubbed at my eyes, but I was unable to rid of my mind of Jack’s face, saggy and flabby as it stretched the folds of skin into an almighty scream.  I felt like punching my eyes in.  They would not close.  They would not rest.  I felt this sad, sick twisting inside of me and wondered if it would be gone by the morning, if any of it would truly ever go away.

            Despite the tantalising smell of frying bacon, and the relative safety of the fourth floor bed-sit and double locked door, I had realised miserably upon waking that it had not.  If anything, the feeling had intensified, and as I sat shivering on the edge of the bed, all I could think about was my mother back at home, reading my note and wondering where I was.  I can’t explain the pain inside of me right then.  I felt angry with myself for it.  I should have been happy.  Things were going to be so cool.  We’d made it; we were out, we were safe and the good times could flow….but the fears and the sadness were ballooning helplessly inside of me.  I felt panic close to the surface.  What would she do with the note when she found it? Would she show Howard?  How soon would he be after us? What if we’d been seen getting into the taxi?  What if his people, whoever they were, had seen us in Belfield Park?  I gulped.  My throat was dry and I had to open my mouth to breathe.  I couldn’t stop staring at the closed door.  What if he was out there now?  Lurking in the shadows, under the stairs or in the hallway?  I hugged myself tighter.  What if he was waiting out there somewhere, just waiting for the chance to get me alone?  Oh my fucking god, I thought then, as the goosebumps marched out across my skin, he would be insane with anger by now, he would kill me.  I’d defied him in the worst way possible.  I’d connived and planned behind his back.  I started chewing at my nails desperately.  What if he had Jack with him, hunting me down?  Jack and his bloody foot? They would want to kill me, I knew it.  They would be dying to get their hands on me and make me pay.  I rocked myself back and forth.  I was close to tears.  Close to outright panic.  Close to shut down, or something. 

            Anthony swished brashly through the beaded curtain, carrying a large plate of bacon and toast.  He paused and frowned when he saw me rocking on the bed. He held the plate hesitantly out towards me. “Morning mate, you alright? You don’t look like you slept well.”  I shook my head at the plate, so he withdrew it and crouched down in front of me.  “Come on, you sure?  You must be hungry.  You’ve got to eat.  Got to get some meat back on them bones, yeah? What’s the matter eh?”

            “Feel sick,” I managed to tell him through my chattering teeth. “Sorry.”

            “Well okay, maybe later then yeah?” He placed the food on the floor and examined me quizzically.  “You’re shaking like a leaf mate, are you cold?” I shrugged.  I wasn’t cold, not in the slightest.  I was just shaking like a fucking wreck. “I went out like a light,” he said, then, grinning at me. “Must have been the stress of it all!  I was whacked.  You didn’t sleep well then?”

            I shook my head.  “Not much.”

            “Should’ve rolled you a spliff,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I bought a tiny bit of grass off Jaime.  You want a smoke now?  Might help you chill out a bit.”  He didn’t wait for my reply.  I didn’t really care either way.  He stood up and picked his ruck sack up from the floor, beside the rickety sofa-bed he had slept on last night.  He perched on the edge of the sofa and opened his little tin.  He rolled the joint in silence, but every now and again I felt his eyes upon me.  “You’re freaking me out, I have to say it,” he sighed eventually.  “What’s with the rocking?  Hey, happy fucking birthday by the way!”

            I tried to smile, but it didn’t work. “I thought I’d feel better…”

            “But you don’t?”

            I shook my head. “They’re gonna’ come after me Anthony.”

            “They’d have to get through me first,” he reminded me sharply.  He finished the joint, lit it up, dragged on it twice and then got up and came and sat next to me on the bed.  He passed it to me and I took it between my trembling fingers.  “There you are mate, have a bit of that and chill out.  They’re not gonna’ come after you.  They don’t know where you are, and why would they bother?”

            I inhaled and passed the smoke back to him. “You don’t know them like I do,” I said to him.  I was thinking about that night in the caravan, when Howard had followed me there after I’d tried to run away.  Great black waves of fear shook through me as I recalled his words, and his gleaming, vindictive eyes.  I’d done it again.  I’d broken the rules.  Took the piss out of him.  Stepped out of line.  He wouldn’t just let it go, I knew it.  “We won’t be that hard to find,” I murmured. “He’ll track us down.  Easily.”

            “They might just leave you the fuck alone,” Anthony shrugged, his tone hopeful and bright.  I knew it was what he and Michael were counting on.  It being over.  Us, escaped and free with the nightmare behind us, and only good times ahead.  He was clinging onto it and I didn’t blame him for one second.  “Have you thought of that?  It might just be over.”

            “It’s not over,” I said, shaking my head firmly. “I can feel it Anthony, that’s why I couldn’t get to sleep.  My body wouldn’t let me.  That’s why I just woke up in this stupid state. It’s ‘cause my body’s telling me not to relax, it’s telling me!”

            Anthony laughed rather nervously, as Michael started to stir and turn in the bed behind us.  “Don’t talk shit Danny, you’re gonna’ scare yourself like that.”

            “It’s true Anthony.  I can feel it.”

            “Well then we’ll call the police,” said Anthony.  “If they do a single thing, if either of them bother you even once, we’ll call the police.  Fuck it, we’ll tell them everything. You’re not alone now, you know.  You have to remember that.  You’ve got me and Mike here now.”

            Michael yawned as he struggled up into a sitting position.  “What’s wrong?”

            “Nothing,” Anthony told him. “Just Danny freaking out a bit.  It’s no wonder really.”

            “You can’t be with me twenty-four seven,” I pointed out. “And we’ve all got jobs we need to go to.”

            “Hey can I have some of that?” asked Michael, nodding at the joint we were passing back and forth.  Anthony held it out to him, and then scooped the plate of bacon and toast up from the floor. He placed it on the bed between us and helped himself to half a slice of slightly burnt toast. 

            “Just relax mate,” he said to me again.  “Just have a smoke, have a drink, do whatever you need to do. It’s all bound to be a head fuck for you today.  It would’ve been alright probably if that perverted shitbag hadn’t tried it on with you yesterday. Christ, if I ever got my hands on that filthy, disgusting old fuck…”

            “Yeah, it’s not like you stab someone in the foot every day, is it?” Michael piped up sleepily, helping himself to a slice of toast with bacon.  Anthony rolled his eyes at him and shook his head at me.  Michael shrugged. “Well it’s not, is it?  I didn’t sleep so well myself actually.  Had really weird dreams.”

            Anthony patted my shoulder reassuringly. “It’s all gonna’ take some getting used to, that’s all.  Give it time.  You’ve been through more shit than most people deal with in a lifetime, and as I have to remind you again, it’s your sixteenth fucking  birthday!” He grinned at me and got to his feet, clapping his hands together as he did. “Right, you two finish that off. I’m gonna’ try the shower out, and then go and get us some decent food.”

            “You’re going out?” I questioned, staring up at him.  He sighed very gently.

            “Yep. Too right I am.  In fact, we all are later.  We’ll have a walk down to the beach or something, yeah? Just to show you, that nothing is gonna’ fucking happen!” He gave us a flash of his brilliant, confident smile and walked around the bed and into the tiny bathroom.  I stayed on the bed, pulling the sleeping bag back over me, and shivering still. 

            Michael was munching on bacon in between drags on the spliff. “You have to believe him, you know,” he said to me. “He won’t let anything happen to us.”

            “He might not be able to do anything about it,” I told him unhappily. 

            “You need to call Lucy mate.  Get her over here.  You can’t be all down and depressed on your bloody birthday!”

            I nodded at him.  I didn’t for one moment believe that she could make me feel any safer, after what I had done, but I liked the thought of curling up with her and blocking the rest of the world right out.  I could kiss her neck and play with her hair, and show her the mix tape I was working on for her.  Maybe if I felt relaxed enough by then, I could just fall asleep beside her, I thought.  That would be alright. 

            Anthony endured a very brief shower.  We sat on the bed giggling behind our hands, every time he screeched out that it was too fucking cold, and then it was too fucking hot.  It was pretty funny to listen to.  When he came out, he threw on some fresh clothes and made a very brash and cocky show of getting ready to leave our little hole.  Michael got up when he had gone and double locked the door behind him.  I watched him traipse over to the windows and press his forehead gently against the glass.  The monotonous techno music had begun thumping again downstairs.  Michael sighed, came away from the window and joined me back in the bed.  We watched TV for a while, and then he made us both a cup of tea, and we sat in the bed drinking it.  He tried to say helpful and encouraging things to me, suggesting we have some kind of house party at some point, or got out later to celebrate my birthday.  I didn’t say much.  I just sat and smoked a chain of cigarettes until Anthony returned.

            When he got back, he banged on the door and shouted at us to let him in.  I watched from the bed as Michael unlocked the door, and his brother bustled back inside, lugging four bulging plastic bags with him.  He promptly dropped one and two tins of beans rolled out across the floor.  Michael pounced on the food, snatching up a selection pack of crisps and a packet of cheap ham.  “Get out of it!” Anthony yelled at him, trying to haul it all into the tiny kitchen. “It’s got to last!”

            “You sound like mum,” Michael smirked after him, picking up the beans and passing them to him through the beaded curtain.  Anthony laughed out loud and started opening and closing the cupboard doors with exuberant bangs.  Then he appeared in the doorway, shoving the curtain to one side and lighting a cigarette.

            “Guess I’m mum and dad now!” he joked, winking at me.  “Fancy that eh?  My age with two bloody kids!” he laughed and nodded at me questioningly. “What about it then Danny-boy?  What’s the plan? You’re sixteen mate!”

            I smiled.  I wanted to snap out of it, I wanted to please them and be brave for them, and I wanted to stop craving the things I knew I shouldn’t touch again. “Think I’m gonna’ call Lucy,” I told him, and he grinned back at me wildly.  “Get her over.”

            “And Billy and Jake,” said Michael. “Party time!”

            “That’s more like it,” agreed Anthony, “now you’re talking. Let’s get them all round and give that guy downstairs something to complain about! We’re free boys! Let’s fucking enjoy this!”

 

            Later that day, Jake and Billy and Lucy arrived together.  They had caught the bus over, and from the looks on their faces, I imagined they had been checking over their shoulders the entire time.  Billy strode into the bed-sit, wide-eyed and impressed and carrying a bag full of tapes he wanted us to listen to, and Jake swung a heavy bag onto the side in the kitchen and plucked two nice looking bottles of wine from it.  “No one asks me for I.D anymore,” he shrugged in response to our astonished expressions.  I watched them all from the safety of the bed I had barely moved from all day.  I sat there and wondered dully if the house party included me telling them I had stabbed a man yesterday.  I listened dutifully while Billy dissected The Stone Roses Second Coming album, as it played in the background.  I nodded in all the right places, but my tongue was this useless lump of meat inside my mouth, and my mind, a tangled, bewildered mush.  I saw Jake eyeing me warily from across the room, his eyes narrowed and uncertain.  I knew what he was thinking.  He was thinking I was fucked up on drugs again, and that’s why he was keeping his distance from me.  Well I wished I fucking was.  I would have done anything right then to escape it all.

            But then Lucy accepted a glass of wine and dropped down onto the bed beside me, and there was no awkwardness, no hesitation between us, and I found myself reaching out for her instantly, as I felt the horror coming to life again inside of me, threatening to tear me right apart.  I needed something to hold onto, and I held onto her.  I wrapped my arms tightly around her neck and buried my face into her neck.  The rest of them became nothing more than a background noise to me then, as I clung to her, and she waited patiently, stroking back my hair, her body loose and sinking into mine.  “Something bad happened yesterday,” I told her when the others had started shouting at each other over the music.  She curled her legs up with mine, and it was like there was this physical barrier between us and them. I could hear the talking and the laughing, and the music, but it all sounded far away from us. Her face was just millimetres from my own.

            “What is it?” she asked me. I leant forward and pressed my lips onto hers suddenly, before pulling back and dropping my head down onto the pillow. 

            “Don’t hate me.”

            “Why would I hate you? I could never hate you, silly.  Tell me what happened.”

            “I stabbed Jack in the foot,” I whispered it to her, holding her face down next to mine, our hair covering us, shielding us from the outside world.  She tightened her arms around my shoulders.

            “Oh my god.  Why did you?”

            “He attacked me. Howard sent him. I had to do it.” I closed my eyes then.  I thought, you know Jesus Christ, I just can’t stand this, I just can’t do this.  I don’t know how to put one foot in front of the other anymore.  I don’t think I will ever have the will or the energy or the courage to leave this bed.  I think I will just fade away here.  Images of pumping blood and red footprints and his screaming face had filled my head again, invading my sanity.  “He walked out okay….Mike and Anthony cleaned up…we came here.”

            Lucy shushed me.  She used her hand to smooth my hair back over my forehead and she kissed my nose.  “Shh,” she said. “It’s okay then.  It’s over.  You had to do it.  You got away.  I’m proud of you.”  I opened my eyes.

            “How can you be?”

            “Because you’re still here.”

            I couldn’t speak then.  I closed my eyes because they were overrunning with tears.  She curled up with me.  We felt like one.  “Everything is gonna’ be okay,” she told me.  She kept telling me it.  “Go to sleep.  You’re exhausted.  I’ll look after you.  I’ll love you forever, do you know that?  Danny…you’re my Danny-boy…do you know that?”  Our bodies were tightly entwined and in that moment, somehow I was able to believe her.  I let her stroke my hair and she spoke to me softly the whole time, and I guess at some point, it worked, and I fell asleep.

            When I woke up, the lights were on, and it was dark outside.  The bed-sit smelled of pot and spilled beer.  Jake was lying on the floor laughing so hard with his hands clutching painfully at his belly.  Anthony was cutting up pizza in a massive box on the carpet.  Lucy held onto me, and we sat up together, blinking.  I didn’t know what to say, or do, so I just watched them all.  I watched them laughing and singing and shouting and I loved them.  My soul trembled and swayed with it all.  I wanted things to be good.  Just then, Anthony saw I was awake and leapt up to his feet, shoving the knife at Michael to cut the pizza. “Birthday boy, birthday boy,” he sung in a drunken voice as he turned off the light and shoved through the curtain into the kitchen.  There was a strange, hysterical silence.  He came back through, carrying a small chocolate cake just covered in candles.  I smiled, and I laughed.  Lucy squeezed my hand.  It was brilliant.  Happy birthday to you, they sang it at the top of their lungs.  They danced and clapped, and everyone was happy, everything was okay.  Billy came to the bed when I had blown out the candles.  He was drunk and stoned and smiling like a lunatic. He leaned towards me and he pressed a white envelope into my hands. 

            “Happy fucking birthday from the happy fucking fat man!” he garbled at me, before stepping backwards, tripping on someone’s discarded shoe and falling onto his arse.  They all roared with laughter and Michael jumped on top of him, ruffling his thick red hair.  I looked at Lucy and she was smiling this serene and beautiful smile for me.

            “Been looking forward to this,” she said, her arm through mine.  They were all staring at me again.  “Open it!” she urged, giggling.  “Come on!”

            “It’s from Terry?” I asked, ripping it open.

            “Yep,” said Lucy.

            “Fucking fat man!” Billy bellowed at me from the floor.

            I opened the envelope and pulled out two tickets.  Tickets.  My mouth fell open.  My breath froze in my throat.  My heart stopped.  Oasis.  October.  Live.  Bournemouth.  I blinked again and again and again, my mouth hanging open, my hands holding the tickets and just shaking, shaking like crazy.  They all started laughing at me.  “His face!” Billy screeched, rolling around under Michael. “Oh his face!”

            “Danny!” Michael was yelling at me, his dark eyes intense with excitement. “We’re all fucking going!”

Anthony put the cake on the bed and shoved a glass of wine into my other hand. “Cheers mate!” he yelled over the music.  “Happy birthday!”

            I couldn’t speak, or anything.  All I could do was stare at the tickets in my hand.  The room became a dark and spinning tunnel of lights and colours and noises around my head.  I felt like I was standing on top of the world and it was spinning recklessly and violently beneath my feet, and I was looking up, I was looking upwards, my eyes on the sky, my head in the stars.  If you could take moments like that and capture them completely, into some perfect essence that you could bring out again and again, whenever you needed to, whenever you needed help, whenever you needed a lift, or some hope, some light, then do you know what?  I think we would all live forever. 

72

 

            I was lost.  I was drowning.  Stranded within a deep, and immobilising trance.  All I could do was stare at the deep red puddle that was slowly spreading across the kitchen floor.  I stared at it, and my eyes filled with water, and all I could think was how could that much blood come from one foot?  The puddle seemed to be growing and growing before my very eyes.  Jack had walked out of there, grunting and groaning, leaving half of his blood behind.  Maybe later I would find him collapsed on the driveway, having bled to death.  It seemed impossibly red, and bright, and impossible that Jack had just shuffled on out, leaving that much gore behind. 

            The phone rang suddenly in the hallway, cutting me from the silence and yanking me from my trance.  I backed slowly out of the kitchen, still clutching the wet knife between both my hands, keeping my eyes on the blood, until I stumbled back into the front door, and reached out blindly for the phone.  I fumbled for it, knocked it from the cradle, reached down to the floor and made a desperate panicky grab for it.  “Hello?” I did not recognise my own voice.  It sounded  so small and tight, and seemed to come from another place entirely.

            “Danny!  It’s Mike. We just took another load over to the bed-sit.  Christ, we’re spending a fortune on bloody taxis, you doing okay?”

            “Mike?”  I sank back against the door in sheer relief.  I closed my eyes tightly and pressed the heel of my other hand into them, swathing myself in a brief and comforting darkness.  The knife was still clutched between my fingers.  “Shit Mike, oh shit, shit!”

            “What?” Michael sounded immediately alarmed. “What is it?”

            I swallowed and tried to find the words, but my throat felt tight and raw. “Shit Mike,” I said again, and gave up. 

            “Shit, what is it?” he cried. “What’s wrong?”

            “Can you come over here quick?”

            “We’re there, hang on,” he slammed down the phone and I was alone again.  My hand started to shake.  It shook so bad that the receiver fell through my fingers and thumped down to the floor.  I kept thinking, any minute my mum or Howard is going to come through that back door and see that blood…any minute, any minute, any minute.  I stayed where I was, with my back pressed into the door.  My knees felt weak, like they might buckle at any moment.  I told myself to move, I told myself it was urgent, I had to move, had to get out of there, but it was like my body had gone into shock or something.  It was useless.  Nothing more than jelly and sagging bones.  I was drained and empty.  There was too much in my head.  Too much fear, too much everything.  I needed help, so I remained where I was, kept my eyes closed and took deep slow breaths. 

            Less than two or three minutes passed before I heard their footsteps running urgently up the driveway.  Then they banged their way through the back door and just stopped.  “Danny?” I heard Michael’s voice call out.  It sounded high and frightened.  “Danny!”

            “Here,” I called out weakly, suddenly feeling horribly sick as Michael stepped cautiously into the hallway followed by Anthony. 

            “Shittinghell are you okay?”

            “Whose fucking blood is that?” Anthony rushed to my side.  He took my arm gently and pulled me away from the door, as if checking for wounds.  I gulped air and shook my head.  I felt faint and weak and my head was swimming and murky.  My eyes felt huge and staring, and I was trembling all over. 

            “Jacks,” I whispered to them.  They looked at each other in wonder, and then their eyes tracked slowly down to the knife in my hands. 

            “Shit,” said Anthony.  “Where is he?”

            “He left.  Walked out.”

            Michaels dark eyes remained fixed on the knife.  “Did you stab him?  With that?”

            I nodded.  “In the foot.  I stabbed his foot.”

            Anthony pulled his shoulders back, and faced me squarely with his hands on his hips and nodded.  “Cool.  I’m guessing he did something to deserve it?”

            I nodded.  I thought I was going to cry then.  I was trying like hell not to think about any of it, why Jack had rolled up like that drunk and angry, what he had wanted.  I felt overwhelmed with a horrible swamping kind of sadness.  That’s the only way I can describe it.  I wanted to get out of there and never come back.  I wanted to make it all go away.  “He was drunk,” I managed to tell Anthony, as the tears started to roll.  “I think Howard sent him.  He tried to get me.”

            Anthony’s face twitched.  He was swallowing rapidly and just nodding his head constantly, and his hand reached out for me and then stopped and returned to his hip. “Right,” he said.  Michael tugged at his arm.

            “Are we gonna’ clean that all up?” he asked in a small voice.  “Before someone comes?”

            “Yeah, I’ll do it.” Anthony gave his brother a push towards the stairs. “Get up there and get Danny’s stuff for him, we’re going.  I’ll clean up the kitchen and then we’re out of here, okay Danny?  We’re gone.” I felt confused.  Dazed, and out of it.  He placed a hand softly on my shoulder. “To the bed-sit right?  In a minute.”

            I managed a nod, and Michael shot up the stairs without a single word.  Anthony turned and hurried back into the kitchen.  I stayed against the door, numb and growing number.  I could hear Anthony opening and closing doors.  Water running into the sink.  A bottle being sprayed.  Michael came hurrying red-faced back down the stairs, clutching my ruck sack in one hand, and a bunch of stuffed full carrier bags in the other.  He dumped it all at my feet and dashed back up for more.  I continued to hold the knife so tightly it made my fingers throb.  I could hear Anthony spraying and mopping in the kitchen.  My feet were glued to the floor, my muscles all locked and refusing to move. 

            Michael ran back down the stairs and dumped another load of bags.  He held out a bundle of hastily rolled up posters. “Got these down for you,” he said gently. “We can decorate the bed-sit yeah? And all the tapes on your bed, and that, I put them in the ruck sack okay?  That’s everything. You okay to get going?” he touched my arm briefly. “I don’t like the thought of hanging around here much longer.” I nodded at him and Anthony came back into the hall, a bulging carrier bag in one hand.  He held it slightly behind his legs as if the contents were unsafe.

            “Done,” he said grimly.  “You wouldn’t know anything had happened.” He looked at me for a moment and then cleared his throat. “Did the bastard do anything Danny?  Are you okay?”

            “I’m okay.”

            “Good.  Why don’t you let me have that for a bit?” His eyes were on the knife.  I eyed it suspiciously, frowning, not really understanding anything anymore.  Anthony stepped closer and prised it carefully from my frozen fingers, and slid it into the back pocket of his tracksuit trousers.  He stooped down and grabbed some of the bags Michael had packed.  Michael followed suit, holding my stereo under one arm for me.  “Let’s go boys.”

            I moved from the door.  I had just remembered the note in my pocket.  It seemed somehow the only clear and obvious thing inside my head.  I had to leave it for my mum.  I told them to hold on, and walked shakily back into the kitchen. “What you doing?” Michael called after me in thinly veiled exasperation.  The kitchen floor was sparkling clean, and the room reeked of lemons.  I saw her coffee mug on the draining board, upside down.  I picked it up, slid the note inside and put the mug back in the cupboard. 

            “Danny?” Anthony was calling from the hallway. “What are you doing mate?  Come on, we need to call a taxi quick.”

            “Coming.”

            I traipsed back down the hall.  Antony opened the front door and held it open while we scurried out under his arm, all instinctively scanning the street for trouble.  Anthony nodded to the corner of the road, and we headed there briskly, heads low, eyes moving everywhere.  We got to their house and Anthony unlocked the door, told us to stay put and disappeared inside.  Michael and I waited in silent shaking shock on the doorstep.  The day was muggy.  Everything seemed still, and waiting.  I could hear a TV chattering in the lounge next door.  Small children squealed from a far off back garden.  I looked up at the sky and it was solid blue, and cloudless.  Sweat pooled under my arms and across my forehead and I wondered if I had ever felt so utterly wretched, so immensely exhausted and weak before.  I didn’t think my legs could hold me up much longer.  Michael just stared around constantly, jittery and chewing at his thumb nail.  Anthony reappeared and we looked to him instantly for reassurance and instruction. “Taxi in ten minutes,” he told us. Michael grimaced and spat out a chunk of nail.

            “What if the cops come?” he asked.

            “They won’t come,” Anthony told him. 

            “But how do you know?”

            “Mike, that fat slug is not gonna’ call the police, don’t worry about it. The only person we need to worry about is Howard, and getting out of here without anyone seeing where we’re going.”

            “He’s at the club,” I spoke up, finding my voice again.  “He called mum and told her to go and get the keys to the new house.”

            Anthony leant in the doorway, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.  “What then Freeman just shows up at yours uninvited?”

            “Yeah,” I said, meeting his eyes. “I heard a noise in the kitchen and went down.  There he was.”

            “Howard sent him then,” Anthony said darkly, spitting suddenly out onto the parched front lawn.  “Sick fucking bastard…one last attempt to get control, eh?  What a fucking…” he just shook his head then, as his words dried up.  I knew what he meant anyway.  There weren’t any words to describe what it was, what Howard was, what any of it was.  Anthony sighed then. “That’s what bullies live off, you see,” he told me.  “Fear and control.  He thinks he’s losing it so he sends his little sidekick over to help him out again…fuckinghell mate, I am so glad I gave you that knife.”

            “Why’d you stab his foot?” Michael asked me then, still chewing relentlessly at his nail, as his eyes shot anxiously up and down the street. 

            “I was on the floor,” I remembered.  I felt the intense urge to just lie down then.  I just wanted to find the ground and sink into it.  “His foot was just there.  I got my knife out.”  I shook the images from my head, as the gruesome scene replayed itself over again.  The drops of saliva as they flew from his rubbery lips when he threw back his head and howled.  Anthony touched my arm, bringing me back.

            “You did the right thing, you had no fucking choice mate. He’s lucky you didn’t stab him somewhere worse! Fucking dirty cunt deserved it.  Oh hey, look boys.”  He nodded and we followed his gaze, and there it was at last, a big shiny black taxi cab pulling slowly into the close.  Anthony slapped our backs and leant past us to grab the bags.  “Here we go then boys,” he said as cheerily as he could manage. “Say goodbye to your shitty little lives!”

            It took less than ten minutes to load up the waiting taxi with what we had salvaged from our old lives.  I took a window seat, my skin clammy and hot as I pressed my face up against it and watched the houses getting smaller and smaller.  We sped away from it all, and I wanted to feel better about it.  I wanted to feel the weight lifting from me.  I wanted to feel the wind in my hair, and hope in my heart.  I longed for a rush of pure relief.  Instead I felt cold, and numb and totally removed from everything, as the enormity of it all began to hit me.  There was no hope, no relief, no sense of freedom.  Just cold, hard fear.   

71

 

 

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

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

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

            “Making Lucy a tape.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

70

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            I had to do something.  Something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            “Jack?”

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

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

            “What?” he shouted back at me aggressively. 

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

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

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

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

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

            “I get it.  I understand.”

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

            “Honey?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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