30

Lucy

 

 

For the first time she could remember, Lucy phoned in sick and took a day off work.  She didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she supposed a lot of it was exhaustion and worry catching up with her.  For the past few weeks, since Danny had stormed away from her at the beach, she had barely slept at all.  She was kept awake hour after hour, wondering if she had made a terrible mistake, fearing that she would never get him back and would be forced to regret it for the rest of her life.  Michael had said just as much to her, in fact.  You better hope he comes back to you. Like Danny, Michael had not understood her reasons either.  He saw things in black and white, she realised, and to him, if she and Danny loved each other, then they should be together.

Lucy spent the morning under her duvet on the sofa, watching rubbish on TV and feeling too sick to eat breakfast.  She felt the familiar wretched sensation of guilt in her gut, and the thought of food actually made her gag.  The only people who seemed to understand what she had done, were her parents, and Danny’s mother.  Maybe being that much older, from a different generation helped them see the situation the way that she did.  Danny had so much to work through, so much growing up and figuring out to do, how could he do that with her attached to him?

            Lucy had sent him three texts that he had not answered.  Each had suggested that they be friends, and meet up if he wanted to talk.  No answer.  She wondered helplessly if he was out meeting women and it ripped through her like glass.  Just then, her phone beeped and she found it on the coffee table and pulled it under the duvet to inspect.  It was her mother; I’m just around the corner, fancy a cuppa?  Lucy smiled and immediately agreed. 

  Her mother let herself in less than ten minutes later, called out a breezy hello and started moving around the kitchen, putting on the kettle and doing the washing up.  “Tea or coffee?” she called in to Lucy.  “Anything to eat?”   She poked her head around the door and frowned.  “Oh my, don’t you look a sight for sore eyes?  Good job I came around!  Haven’t seen you that pale since you were little.”

“Tea,” Lucy replied, unsurely, as he mother walked over to her and placed a hand across her forehead.

“You’re not hot,” she exclaimed.  “You just look awful darling.  I expect you’ve picked something up from the kids at school.  Surprised you don’t more often!”

“Probably nearly immune,” Lucy sighed, as her mother went back into the kitchen to make the tea.  She tugged her duvet back up to her chin.  Her mother came back in with two cups of tea, sat down beside her on the sofa and passed her one. 

“You deserve a day off anyway,” she said. “You work so hard.  And there’s been so much going on lately.” 

Lucy blew on the top of her tea and then sipped it carefully.  She knew her mother was referring to the graffiti and the cut power lines, and the phone call.  Interestingly, there had been nothing else since her and Danny had parted ways.  Just thinking about it gave her a cold chill all over.  They had been watched at some point, by someone, and that was more than creepy.  She still had her mobile in one hand, and ran her thumb across the buttons, wondering if he was okay.  If something else happened, would any of them tell her now?

Her mother watched her for a moment and then asked; “so have you heard anything from him?”  It was like having her mind read constantly, Lucy realised in amusement. Did all mothers have that natural knack?  She thought briefly then of her ongoing communication with Kay.  She heard from his mother more than she did Danny, these days, she realised with a sad sigh.  Kay had called her in concern, after Danny had turned up at her flat, ranting and raving.  Too much going on in his head, her words to Lucy had been, don’t feel too bad Lucy, you did the right thing and I tried to tell him that, and I think deep down he does understand. Lucy clung to this statement at night, when sleep was increasingly impossible.

“No, nothing,” she told her mum, sipping more tea.  She felt her stomach starting to protest.  “Which is fair enough.  I think I really hurt him mum.  The way he must see it, I’ve let him down again when he needed me.”

“You don’t want to have a relationship like that though,” her mother leaned against her and advised. “With one of you always needing the other, or needing help. It should be equal and you shouldn’t have to view him like a child.  That’s not fair on him, or you.”  Her mum slipped an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder. “I think you did the right thing darling, but I do hope he comes around and sorts himself out.  Me and your dad would like to see you both make a go of it.”

“Really?  Even after everything?”

“We just want you to be happy Lucy.  That’s all any parent wants.  If he makes you happy, then that makes us happy too.”

Lucy nodded and went to sip more tea, but suddenly she had to put the cup down quickly, dropping her mobile to the floor and covering her mouth with both hands.  Her stomach was heaving.  “You all right?” she heard her mum ask in alarm, as she flung back the duvet and ran for the bathroom.

Not much came up, because she had hardly eaten in days.  Just tea, and water and yellow bile.  Lucy splashed her face with cold water and then wiped it dry with a towel.  When she straightened up to look in the mirror she could see why her mother had come over to feel her forehead.  She did look awful.  Pale and clammy, with grey shadows under her eyes.  She rolled her eyes at herself and padded miserably back into the lounge, where her mum was waiting to wrap her up in the duvet again.

“Oh dear me,” her mum was saying, as she rested her head on a cushion, feeling the strong urge to close her eyes.  She gave a little chuckle then, like mothers do when their child is looking a bit pathetic.  She smoothed back Lucy’s hair, kissed her pallid cheek and joked; “you’re not pregnant are you?”

Lucy jerked her head up to stare at her mum in horror.  “No mum!”  She put her head back down, and then she couldn’t help herself, she had to check the dates off in her mind, count off the weeks, and question again, what date was it today?  Her mother was watching her more intently now.

“Lucy?”

“No mum,” she said again, firmer this time, because she couldn’t be, she just couldn’t be, she was not that stupid, and she was just ill, and…oh Christ. Her mum had narrowed eyes trained in on her.  “No mum,” she repeated.  “No way.”

 

Without meaning to, Lucy soon drifted into an uneasy sleep.  Her mother stayed with her, cuddling up next to her to watch daytime TV.  She woke up at lunchtime, still feeling sick, but her stomach was empty.  Her mother made her a sandwich and said she had to go, and Lucy promised to eat the food and stay in bed.  As soon as her mother had gone, Lucy flung back the duvet, got up from the sofa and ran into the kitchen to find her bag.  She dug through it frantically, shoving tissues and chocolate wrappers out of the way until she found her diary.  She pulled it out, sank into a kitchen chair and started to flip through the pages.  She always marked the day she was due on with a dot on the day.  The day she actually came on she would mark with a cross, and the day her period ended she would mark with an x. She located the last dot and her heart sank with her stomach. It was worse than she had feared.  Fuck she thought, sinking her head down onto her arms, I’ve missed two periods! How the hell did I not notice that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael

31

 

 

            When Michael returned from Jenny’s he found Danny still lying on the sofa, with his feet up, and Kurt asleep on his stomach.  Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ album was playing rather loudly.  “So how did it go?” he felt compelled to ask immediately, slinging down his jacket and collapsing into the chair beside the sofa.  Danny turned to face him and smiled weakly and sheepishly.  Michael frowned.  “Did you?”  He lifted his eyebrows in question and Danny nodded.  “Again?” 

“Mmm.”

“Fucking hell mate!” Michael exploded, thumping the side of the chair in excitement.  He laughed out loud and then tried to reel himself in.  There was a part of him that was undeniably and stupidly proud of Danny, the lad in him, he guessed.  He wanted to laugh and clap him on the back and hear all the gory details.  But he forced himself to calm his enthusiasms down, because as usual, there was far more to all this than met the eye, and another part of him found it all a little unsettling.  He looked at Danny questioningly, legs crossed at the ankles, and hands on either arm rest, his fingers drumming restlessly.  “So,” he started, “was this before or after the interview?  Or let me guess, you didn’t even do the interview?  She just wants your body, not your mind and your story?”

Danny frowned back at him with a faint smile.  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and I feel the same, believe me.  It was after.”

“Ooh,” Michael made a face, as if in pain. “Now that is kind of weird.  Any booze involved this time?”

“No,” Danny shook his head and looked even guiltier. “I can’t even blame it on that, can I?”

“What can you blame it on then?  Do you like her?”

“I don’t know.  Not really.  Maybe.” He shrugged, looking lost.  “I don’t know Mike.  She just came at me.”

Michael’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened. “Did she?  Oh mate!  You poor thing!”

Danny smirked. “It wasn’t all bad.”

“Course it fucking wasn’t, you dirty bastard.  What, she felt all sorry for you or something?” Again, he narrowed his dark eyes and drummed his fingers.  There was something about all of this that made him uneasy, and he could tell by Danny’s face that he felt the same.  “She might be trying to get more out of you,” he suggested. “You know, by getting closer to you?  I wouldn’t put it past a hack to do that.  They’re all immoral aren’t they?  They have to be.”

“I don’t know,” Danny shrugged. “She said something before she left.”

“What?”

“That me and her had more in common than I knew. What do you think that means?”

“Don’t know mate,” Michael replied. “She didn’t kill anyone, did she?” He laughed at his own joke, while Danny rolled his eyes at his never-ending ability to be distasteful.  “Just trying to get round you, I reckon,” he went on. “That’s why I don’t trust her.  She wants her precious article at any cost.  If she was professional and all that, she wouldn’t be sleeping with you would she? It is a bit weird mate, that’s all.”

“I know,” Danny was nodding.  “I know it is.”

“So how was the interview?”

“Mmm, not nice.” Danny got up from the sofa then and stretched his limbs out. “Had quite a long trip down memory lane,” he said. “Stuff I haven’t even thought about for years, let alone talked to anyone about.”

Michael looked down at his hands, bringing them together in his lap. “Freeman?”

“Yeah,” Danny nodded, grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the table, and threw one to Michael before lighting one up himself. “And look at this.  Wait until you see this,” he was digging around in his pocket. “This will freak you right out.”

Michael caught the folded piece of paper when Danny tossed it to him.  He  opened it and saw Jack Freeman’s name scrawled upon it, and a neatly written address beneath.  Immediately he got to his feet and held the paper out at arms length, as if it somehow disgusted him. “Danny, this is just outside town! This is the address of a pub!”

Danny came forward, snatched the paper back. “A pub?”

“Yeah!  I know of it.  It’s the local this girl I used to see lived near.  The white swan or something, or white horse?  It’s near the beach.  Rough area. Seabourne?”

Danny swallowed, smoked his cigarette and looked nervous. “You’re sure?”

“Yes!” Michael nodded emphatically. He felt his heart hammering into action in his chest, as the fear and the adrenaline he had grown to know so well, started to flow aggressively. “I’m sure.  I recognise the road name, it’s packed full of cheap b and b’s, and student flats, and this one pub.  It’s on the corner.  Bit of a dive with a bad reputation.  He can’t live there Danny!  He can’t live that close!  Didn’t he go back to Essex?”

Danny had stuffed the address back into his pocket. “I just thought he had,” he admitted. “I assumed he had.  Howard never said any different.  Maybe he did.  Maybe he came back!”

Michael shook his head, trying to clear his mind and organise his thoughts.  He smoked his cigarette and found himself at one of the windows.  He couldn’t stay away from them sometimes.  It was always so busy out there on the high street.  So many different people, coming and going.  “Shit,” he said, looking back at Danny. “I wish we could tell Anthony this, Dan.”

“No,” Danny shook his head firmly.  “He’s just got things back on track with his wife, and he’s been left alone since we stopped telling him stuff.  Same for Lucy.  It’s like anyone we see for too long, gets targeted, have you noticed that?  Like me sleeping at my mum’s the other night?  Right away she gets a nasty letter.  It’s like there are spies everywhere out there Mike, just waiting to pounce.”

Michael sighed, feeling frustrated. “So what do we do now?”

Danny patted his pocket where the address was, and Michael felt his heart sink a little lower. “Go see him.  We have to.  It’s the only way.”

“Fuckinghell, I don’t even want to think about it mate,” Michael groaned, dropping his head into his hands for a moment.  Danny arrived next to him at the window.

“I’m not as scared as I was,” he said, looking at Michael.

“You’re not?”

“No. I don’t know why.  Maybe it was seeing Dennis Howard.  Piecing things together in my mind.  I don’t know.  But Freeman is the next link, we have to see him.  It makes my skin crawl, but I have to talk to him.”

Michael sighed and nodded.  “Okay then.”  He felt the urge to pat Danny on the shoulder, or something, to congratulate him on being so brave, and so held together, but he didn’t.  He breathed out slowly and gazed back out of the window.  He found his eyes drifting back to the flats opposite, the ones you could never quite tell were empty or not.  “I wonder about those flats over there,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“Those flats.  Who lives there.  You can’t tell, look.  No obvious signs.  Be the perfect spot to spy on us from, wouldn’t it?”

Danny peered closer. “Maybe.  You think they can see right in here?”

“When the lights are on, yeah. Plus they could see who walks around to the back.  Just makes me wonder sometimes that’s all.”

“Don’t worry,” Danny told him then.  “We’ll soon have this all sorted.  When can you come with me?  When are you free?  I want to do if before I chicken out.”

“Whenever you want,” Michael replied, with a heavy heart. “Just say the word.”

“Well we could go now,” Danny said, his voice cracking slightly.  He cleared his throat and shrugged. “Just to find it.  We don’t have to go in.  Could just check it out for another time.”

“Okay,” Michael agreed.  He pulled himself away from the window, crossed the room and stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray.  “Let’s go,” he looked up at Danny and said. “You’re right, we need to do it before we chicken out.”

Danny nodded, scooped Kurt up from the sofa, and they left the flat.

 

They sat in Michael’s car, shaking from the cold, teeth chattering, while Michael let the old engine warm up.  He pulled a pair of fingerless gloves from the side of the door and put them on.  Danny had zipped his coat up to his chin and wrapped his arms tightly around Kurt, who was also shivering violently.  “Just takes a while,” Michael murmured, glancing up when he saw a car park a few spaces back behind them in the alley.  He thought nothing of it, rubbed his hands together, put the car into gear and drove off, the car juddering in protest as it crawled jerkily out of the mouth of the alley.  He glanced in the wing mirror to see that the other car had followed them.

Three turnings later, Michael had a bad feeling. “Oi,” he said to Danny, jerking his head towards the rear view mirror.  “Is it me being totally paranoid, or is that black car following us?”

Danny looked, and kept looking.  “Make a few random turns,” he advised.  Michael did just that, turning left when he really needed to turn right, and then doing the same again at the next junction.  The small black car remained behind them the whole time.  Michael swallowed, his throat draining of all moisture.  “Shit,” he said, his eyes jerking between the both mirrors, and the road. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Keep going,” Danny shrugged, his expression dark.  “Just drive to this pub and see what happens. I’m getting the cops number up on my phone just in case.”

“Good thinking.  You ever seen that car before?”

Danny peered into the wing mirror on his side again.  “What is it a Golf?” he asked.  Michael nodded.

“New one.”

“Then yeah.  I think I have.”

“Shit!” Michael exclaimed, feeling tremors crawl down his spine that he knew were not from the cold, “when?”

“At the cemetery, the last time I was there,” Danny replied. “In the car park. I made a note of the cars in my head, you know?  With everything going on.”

“It could be Jerry Howard then?”

Danny nodded silently and fiddled with his phone.  They drove on, both nervously checking the mirrors as much as they dared, a heavy silence between them. Seabourne was the area next to Belfield Park.  It was a nicer area in parts, closer to the sea, with lots of bed and breakfasts, hotels, and retirement homes.  A lot of these were in good condition, or undergoing renovation, but there were just as many that had become run down as well.  Michael drove through street after street lined with battered wind beaten b and b’s, and old Victorian homes that resembled a lot of the bed-sits on Belfield Park.  At the corner of one of these roads sat a pub.  Michael slowed the car to a stop just outside, but left the engine running.  He looked up at the rear view mirror, and watched the black Golf pull in a few spaces back.  He tried to make out how many people were in it, but the windows were dark, and it was hard to tell.

“This is it?” Danny asked, his voice a croak, as he stared out of the window up at the pub.

“Yep.  The White Horse, not Swan.  It’s a shit pit by the looks of it. There are loads of student places around here.  It’s pretty much a student pub.”

“So how can Jack Freeman live there?”

“Maybe he works there,” Michael shrugged, watching the car behind. “Maybe he owns it?”

Danny did not answer.  He was staring at the pub.  It was sat on the corner, with a garden going most of the way around.  The overgrown grass had a number of weather beaten picnic tables scattered across it.  They watched two long-haired young men saunter up, the collars of their coats turned up against the wind, shoulder bags across their chests.  They pushed through the double doors and disappeared inside.  Michael glanced at a blackboard near the doors.  It said live music every Friday night on it.  “What do you want to do about those guys behind?” Michael finally asked Danny.  Danny sighed, his shoulders dropping as he turned to look at Michael.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.  “I suddenly feel like a little kid again, how about you?”

“The same,” Michael was happy to admit.  “It’s times like this I wish we had Anthony on board.”

“Mmm.” Danny looked back into the wing mirror.  “Let’s get out,” he said suddenly, lifting Kurt carefully onto the back seat.  “Stretch our legs and see what they do.”

“Okay.” Michael turned off the engine and got out, while Danny climbed out his side.  They met on the pavement and looked nervously at the black Golf.  Danny frowned and took a decisive step towards it, when suddenly it roared back into life and screeched off down the road. They looked at each other, stunned.

“Oh,” said Danny.  “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Did you get the plate number?” Michael asked then, his hand going to his head in frustration.  Danny shook his head. “Oh we’re so dumb.  We were sat there long enough to note it down.”

Danny turned on the pavement and sunk his hands into the pockets of his jeans.  He stared up at the pub with a wretched and nervous expression that Michael well understood. “Shall we pop in?” he heard him ask. “Just put our heads around the door?”

“I’m right behind you,” Michael said, patting his back and nodding firmly, hoping that his voice sounded strong and confident.  They started towards the pub garden, dragging their feet.  “Just say the word and we’re gone,” he reminded Danny as they weaved their way through the picnic tables towards the doors.  A group of three young girls came out, just as they reached them.  They all looked around nineteen or twenty years of age, and were giggling and laughing, totally oblivious to the pain that was building in Michael’s chest, as he imagined it was in Danny’s.  They let them pass, and Michael held the door open as Danny stepped inside.

It was pretty much what he had expected he thought, looking around. The double doors led into an entrance, where another blackboard, this time up on the wall, listed the various bands playing there this week. On the opposite wall a whole host of leaflets and posters advertising everything from lonely hearts, to music tutition, to live events at other venues, had been tacked up by people.  They could hear music playing, and Michael strained his ears, thinking it sounded like an REM song from a few years back.  They went through the next set of doors and saw the bar.  It was a u shape, and reminded Michael of the layout at Chaos.  You had tables and chairs and fruit machines to the right, and a small stage and a dance floor to the right.  There was less seating on this side, but as the stage was empty, various groups of young people were perched on it, pints in hand, deep in conversation.

Michael looked back at the bar. It did not seem busy.  There were a few more clusters of students to the right, spread out across the tables and the bar stools, and a handful of people leaning on the bar, chatting or waiting to be served.  It was warm, and smelled like the sea.  Michael shivered and nudged Danny with an elbow. “I can’t picture Freeman in a joint like this,” he said, his voice low.  “I don’t get it.”

Danny nodded, staring at a young woman with bright pink hair who was behind the bar.  She had chubby cheeks and a ring through her nose.  Danny started to move towards her, so Michael followed cautiously.  They didn’t stand out, he realised, in their usual scruffy jeans and trainers, they didn’t look any different from the other young people in here, but Michael felt different.  He felt older for one thing, and he felt afraid.  He remembered the times he had encountered Jack Freeman, back when Danny had thought nothing of going to his flat nearly every day.  There had been a time where that was where he went, if he wanted to find Danny.  It had made his guts twist then, even before Anthony and Jaime had discovered the truth about him.  Michael had never liked the way the man just sat there, barely speaking, yet letting them use his flat, drink his whiskey and take his drugs.  He remembered him and Danny chatting and laughing on one sofa, while Freeman sat sprawled out on another, and he remembered every time he looked up quickly he would catch Freeman watching them out of the corner of his eye.  It had given him the creeps.

Danny approached the bar and smiled pleasantly at the young girl.  “Can I help you?” she asked brightly, rubbing a damp cloth briskly across the bar top.

“Just two pints of Carlsberg please,” Danny replied, resting one elbow on the bar and nodding at Michael who nodded back.  The girl got the drinks and Danny took out some money to pay her.  She then went around the other side to serve someone else.

“Should have asked her,” Michael hissed. “Who’s in charge.”

Danny shrugged, looking around him, his dark blue eyes scanning the place, and jerking from person to person. “I just want to wait a minute,” he explained. “I’ll ask before we go, don’t worry.”

“If we see him, are you gonna’ talk to him?”

“Be a bit pointless coming here if I didn’t,” Danny shrugged and sipped at his pint.  Michael breathed out, trying to release the tension he felt inside.  He sat on the nearest bar stool and gulped his pint quickly.  He wanted to go.  He didn’t want to see Jack Freeman, and he didn’t want Danny to speak to him either.  He was starting to hope they would just finish their drinks and leave with nothing.  He found himself staring at the space behind the bar.  There was a narrow corridor going out to the back, and Michael could see the usual boxes of crisps and nuts piled up along the wall out there. He imagined there was a room, or an office, or a kitchen back there somewhere, and despite gulping his pint greedily, his throat felt like sandpaper.

Danny kept looking around, he noticed.  Not in an obvious way, but just checking the place out, and the people.  He looked stiff, and his face was pale, making the stitches in his forehead stand out even more.  Michael sighed, and rubbed tiredly at one eye, and again wished that Anthony was with them. 

“We’re just having the one yeah?” Michael checked with Danny, when his pint was nearly gone.  Danny nodded silently.  Michael drained the last few mouthfuls and plonked his glass back on the bar.  “Can you see the mens?” he asked. “Think I’ll have a piss before we go.”

“Over that side, past the stage,” Danny said, nodding.  Michael slid down from the stool and glanced at Danny’s drink.  He only had a few mouthfuls left.

“Hurry up,” he advised. “And don’t go anywhere without me.  I’ll be back in a sec.”  Danny nodded in agreement, and Michael set off for the toilet.  He crossed the dance floor, looking around him quizzically, wondering what kind of music filled the place on a busy Friday night.   He discovered the men’s toilets were surprisingly clean and fragrant for a change.  He did his business as fast as he could, zipped himself back up and hurried back out.  That’s it, he thought to himself, we can go, we can get the fuck out of this creepy place, and maybe Caroline got it wrong anyway…He then stopped in his tracks half way across the empty dance floor, because he could see Danny at the bar, and his body language had changed dramatically.  He was staring, his eyes wide, his lips tight, at someone stood behind the bar.  Michael forced himself to walk on, his chest tightening painfully.  He arrived beside Danny and saw whom he was staring so intently at. 

There was no mistaking him.  Except for looking older, and greyer, he was exactly the same as he had been back then.  There was a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, and he was unshaven, wearing a light blue shirt that was half untucked.  The buttons were straining across his beer belly, which had grown even bigger, and he had a few extra chins as well, Michael noticed.  Jack Freeman.  Behind the bar.  Staring back at them silently, wonderingly, as if he were not quite sure what or who he was seeing, as if he was trying to place them, and understand them.  Caroline had got it right. 

Danny seemed frozen to the spot, his eyes locked on Freeman’s.  Michael looked from him, back to Freeman and saw the man relax his pose, placing one foot forward. Michael wondered if it was the one Danny had stabbed. Freeman lifted his chin up at them, his eyes squinting curiously.  If he was alarmed, or worried, or anxious in any way to find the two of them there in his pub, then it did not show in his face.  He knew them though, Michael could see that.  Eight years on, he knew them all right.

Michael swallowed, reached out to touch Danny’s arm, and that was when he pulled away, spun around and tore out of the pub.  Michael went after him, letting the pub doors swing shut with a bang behind him.  “Can’t do it,” Danny was mumbling already, as they hurried towards the car.  “Sorry Mike, not today, I can’t, I can’t do it.”

“It’s all right mate, calm down,” Michael unlocked the car and they climbed in.  He started the engine and raced off before Danny could ask him twice.

Danny

 

 

            It made him feel physically sick every time he thought about another interview with Caroline Haskell.  “You don’t have to do it,” Michael had told him more than once.  “You don’t have to do anything.”

“The police have nothing,” he had shrugged in return.  There was a part of him that wanted to do nothing, sit back and give up, let them do their worse, whoever they were.  Roll with the punches, he had mused, just like the old days.  There was another part of him that was increasingly tempted to deal with it all by just getting hammered.  He thought about this a lot.  He could get drunk and do the next part of the interview.  He could roll around to Jack Freeman’s, out of his face, and see where that led them all?  He could dive into a bottle and pretty much never return.  And then there was the part of him that missed Lucy.  The part of him that saw her face every time he closed his eyes.  The part that missed her with a searing physical pain and did not know what to do about it.

Anthony wanted him to call her.  Anthony thought they should stay friends, and keep talking.  Michael wanted him to sleep with more women.  Anthony wondered if all the harassment had died down, because nothing had come his way for a time.  Danny and Michael knew this was because he didn’t know what they were planning next.  Jack Freeman.  The big one.  The name tasted sour and thick upon his tongue when he spoke it.  They didn’t tell Anthony what was next on the agenda, and they didn’t tell him about Dennis Howard, and they didn’t tell him that Kay had received another nasty letter, just hours after Danny had left her flat.

It wasn’t over.  Danny knew it in his bones.  He told himself to be strong and stick to the plan.  At least they were doing something.  It was horrible but it was better than just sitting there, waiting to be attacked. He had thought starting work for Terry would be a welcome distraction, but in fact it just brought its own worries. He found himself scrutinising nearly every customer who entered the shop.  Who were they? Were they in there to spy on him? How long before Terry got a brick through the window for employing him?  The worry of it all was exhausting, so two weeks after he had slept with her, Danny sent a text to Caroline Haskell, telling her he was ready for more questions.  His phone practically exploded into life in his hand.  She wanted to know when and where and how had things gone with Dennis?  Danny told her to come to Michael’s flat, and left it at that.

While waiting, Michael busied himself with tidying and sporadic cleaning.  He was both concerned and amused about Danny seeing Caroline again.  “Maybe I should hang about, you know, just in the kitchen?  In case you need me?”

“I’m not drunk this time,” Danny reminded him from the sofa where he was relaxing with Kurt.  “You can leave me to it.”

“You won’t shag on my bed will you?”

“Fuck off Mike.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.  Going to Jenny’s.”

“Yeah?”

“She’s doing my lunch.”

“Lucky bastard,” Danny grinned. “Off you run then.”

 

Alone in the flat, Danny closed his eyes and used the time to try and clear his head.  He had known he was going to lose it with his mum as soon as he had set eyes on her.  Maybe he had subconsciously gone there for that very reason.  Better to act like a shit around your mum, than anyone else, he supposed.  That’s what they were there for, weren’t they?  He felt a chill though, when he thought about how he had looked up into her face, how the same thought had pounded through his mind ;it is all your fault, it is all your fault, fucking everything is all your fault!  He had said it to her, and he had meant it.  Now he just felt numb and confused again.  He told himself she hadn’t known, he hadn’t told her, so how could it all be her fault?  Lee had practically brainwashed her from day one, he remembered.  Had he ever tried to tell her again, had he ever sat her down and explained what was happening to him?  No, he thought now, encased in the silence and blackness of his own mind, he hadn’t.

Jack Freeman.  He didn’t want to think about him, he didn’t want to go and see him, but he had to.  He toyed with the idea that Jack would know nothing about who was harassing him, that it was Jerry Howard and a few hired hands.  But there was something that niggled at him now, more and more after meeting Dennis.  Maybe Jack Freeman was behind more than he realised.  Back then he had seemed to be just this bumbling, shuffling sidekick of Lee’s.  Just this smoking, whiskey-sodden loner, who barely spoke a word.  He had seemed so harmless.  Going to his flat had been cool, he thought, remembering how he had felt the strange and useless urge to make Michael and Anthony understand this.  He’d had all these cool old books for one thing. Danny had sat and read them when he was alone.  If he’d gone to Billy and his dad for his music fix, then he had gone to Jack Freeman for his literature fix.  There had been an odd unexplained peacefulness at his place.  No questions were ever asked.  No comments were ever made, unprompted. 

Michael had never liked it, he remembered, sucking in his breath and rubbing the heel of one hand deep into his eye.  Michael had never been comfortable there.  Even when they were alone.  He would always seem restless and fidgety, and make suggestions about other places to go.  Danny recalled how sad and desolate he had always felt when Michael did leave, to find some real fun elsewhere.  He hadn’t had the words to explain to him back then, what made him stay.

He considered it now.  He remembered the books, and how it had felt to go rustling through them all, pulling them out by their dusty spines and then spending unknown hours lost among them.  He remembered taking all his music there, because Howard complained about it at home.  He could put his albums on, as loud as he wanted, and just sit back on one of the battered old sofa’s and just get lost in it.  All alone, he would close his eyes, feel the beats reverberate through his bones, as the lyrics scorched through his soul.  He would feel alive.  He would feel like he was surrounded by hidden secrets. 

Then there were the drugs.  He hadn’t realised, at first, that Howard was in on it, so at home he lived in a constant state of fear about his little tin being discovered.  He hid it in his sock drawer for a while, then grew paranoid about that and moved it to the top of his wardrobe, and then after that stuffed it under his mattress.  The thought of Lee finding out, was enough to make his skin sweat.  But at Jack’s place, he could just relax.  He would set up his stuff, roll a joint and not worry.  Not even give it a thought.  Jack had introduced him to Jaime Lawler, the local drug dealer, who had introduced him to speed, and uppers and downers.  He had been searching for some kind of oblivion, some kind of way of living that would make him shut down, forget, not care, and he had found it.

At Jack’s place, his stomach would unwind.  The pain of it would ease and flow away.  He didn’t have to give a shit what he said, or what he did.  Lee was impossible to please.  Something you did right one day, done the same the next day, would be completely and unforgivably wrong.  Danny recalled, how some days, when in a rage he would demand that Danny look at him.  It would incense him if he so much as glanced away, or even blinked.  He would have to keep his eyes on Lee the whole time he was speaking, or else.  Then another day, this would be wrong.  Another day it would be don’t look at me, don’t you fucking look at me unless I tell you you can! And he would have to stare at the floor, or the wall, or anything.  You could never win, he remembered with a sigh, as the buzzer in the hall sounded loud and angry. 

He got lazily and reluctantly from the sofa, and half regretted not being drunk again.  He pressed the buzzer and let her in, leaving the door propped open with the brick so that he could return to his sofa.  Caroline Haskell came purposefully and curiously into the flat.  She nudged the brick out of place with her foot, and let the door slam shut behind her.  Danny nodded at her from the sofa, with Kurt pulled back onto his lap.  He lit a cigarette.  He had put ‘Nevermind’ on not long before.  She stopped, shaking her hair back over one shoulder, and frowned slightly at the song playing, as if trying to place it in her own mind. 

“Nirvana,” he helped her out, folding one arm casually back behind his head and crossing his legs up on the sofa.  Caroline made a face of recognition and dropped her shoulder bag onto the nearest chair.  He noticed she was wearing a slim fitting pencil skirt, knee high boots, and a tight fitting shirt.  She looked like she had made an extra effort, he thought lingeringly. 

“Oh yes, of course it is,” she said, of the music, slipping her coat off and arranging it carefully on the back of the chair.  “I take it you’re a fan?  Or were?”

“Just taking a trip down memory lane, on your behalf,” he explained to her with a smile.  She frowned in question.  “To put me in the mood, for your questions,” he explained with a roll of the eyes.  She nodded and sat down, pulling her bag back up onto her lap.

“Ah, I see.  A big fan as a kid, were you?”

“They were my first love,” he mused.  “In terms of music, I mean.  The first music I ever got properly, totally obsessed with, you know?  I used to lie down with my head between the speakers at my friend Billy’s house.  Wouldn’t give a shit what I looked like.  Just wanted to hear the music in my brain.  Every word, you know?  Everything.  Every part of it.”

“Wow,” Caroline raised her eyebrows at him.  “You really do like your music.  I was never into this stuff, personally.”

“Still a classic album,” he argued.  “Always will be.  You know, at the time this was out, to me, it was like every fucking thing it said, every single line of every song, meant something to me personally, you know?  Really, I am serious.  Every line of every song.  Can you say that about any albums that you own?”

Caroline had pulled out her familiar notebook and recorder and organised them neatly on her knees.  “No,” she admitted after a moments thought.  “I can’t.”

“Well I can.  I was fucking devastated when he died.”

“Oh God, yeah, I’d forgotten about that!  That was awful.”

“Suppose you shouldn’t really have heroes,” Danny remarked, reaching out from the sofa to tap his cigarette against the ashtray.  “For that reason, I mean.”

“So this music brings back a lot of memories for you?”

Danny looked up and caught her eye.  “Have you got your recorder on yet?” he asked her shrewdly, thinking he would not put it past her.  “Is that your first question?”

“No, of course not!” Caroline laughed, waving a hand at him, but her cheeks had flushed an instant shade of red.  Danny chuckled.

“Don’t you want to know how it went with Dennis?” he asked her. 

“Yes, of course I do, how was it?  What was he like?”

Danny found himself examining her through narrowed eyes.  It did help having the music on, he realised then.  It somehow transported him back to another him, a braver him, a stronger him.  A kid who had broken every rule there was but didn’t know why.  That was good, he thought, that would help, that memory of who he had once been.

“Did you know he was a retard?” he asked Caroline brightly. She looked surprised and confused, but he was pretty sure she was faking it.

“A retard?”

“Yeah, you know, backwards?  Probably not meant to say retard these days, are you?  Simple, you know?  Don’t know how he’s allowed to live alone actually.  He was like a five year old.”

“Was he really?”

Danny nodded at her.  “So he wasn’t too much help anyway.  Well, he was in some ways.  But I don’t think he’s got anything to do with the harassment.  So I need the next address don’t I?  I need to know where Jack Freeman lives these days.”

“Ah, of course,” Caroline opened her notebook, pulled the lid from her pen and began to scan down her open page, her brow furrowed. “Which leads us to our questions then.”

“I should probably have offered you a drink or something.”

“What are you drinking?” she looked up and asked him.  He grinned.

“I’m having a day off.  For my liver.”

Caroline grinned and lifted one eyebrow.  “Okay.  I’ll get started then, shall I?”

“Fire away.”

He watched her as she gathered her hair in one hand and flung it behind her shoulder, as her expression changed the way it always did when she got down to business.  “You were telling me before, about how and when the violence from your stepfather began.  Can I ask who else knew about it, at the time?”

Danny sighed and crossed his arms over his chest.  “Ooh look at you, getting right to it.  Anyone would think you were one of those people, you know, who slow down to look at car crashes?”

Caroline’s eyes jerked up to meet his.  “Pardon me?”

“Just a joke,” Danny laughed, enjoying his position.  “Michael and Anthony knew after a while.  They figured it out.”

“Why them, and no one else?”

“Is that number two?” he checked, grinning at her deviously.  She pressed pause and looked confused.

“No of course it’s not, I was just pressing you, that’s what journalists do!  Can you answer it please?”

“Oh Jesus Christ, you’re taking the piss you are.  If I added up all your questions there’d be about ten by now, you know.”

“Danny, please.  Come on.”

“Okay, okay then.  Why them?  Probably partly because they were the people closest to me, and partly because their dad was rough on them too.”

Caroline opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it and looked back down at her book.  “Okay,” she said, obviously getting onto question number two now, “Can you tell me specifically, some of the memories you have of those years, before you killed him?”

Danny stared at her in confusion and pity.  He smoked the last of his cigarette and stubbed it out. “This is some article you’ve got planned isn’t it?” he asked her with a faint smile.  She pressed paused again, and he saw her steady herself, clenching her teeth ever so slightly, and smiling a brittle smile. “What angle are you doing it on?” he asked.  “I mean, what’s the theme?  What’s the title even?  Let me guess; when kids kill or something dramatic like that?”

“Danny,” she said, her tone as patient as her eyes were fierce. “I did explain to you before, that after I have asked all the questions, I will write the article and then show it to you before I do anything with it.  If you don’t like the angle, or the theme, you can take it up with me then.  Can we just get on with this now?” She made a show of checking her watch. 

“Memories,” he said then, lifting his gaze to the ceiling and exhaling dramatically so she would think he was thinking it over.  “What kind of memories?  Memories of good things or bad things?”

“Things to do with Lee Howard.  So that we can understand what led you to kill him, you see.”

“Oh of course, I see, of course that’s what you want.  What do you want me to do then?” he looked her sharply in the eye.  “List all the evil things he did for you?”

“Well, basically, I just want to put across your side Danny, the history behind it, you know?”  She was looking back at him expectantly.  Danny half expected her to get out the piece of paper with the next address on it and start to wave it in front of his face enticingly to encourage him.  He sat up instead, lowering his feet to the floor, and splaying the fingers of one hand so he could count off on them with the other.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go.  Ooh, where to start?  Oh I know, he got Anthony sent back to jail because he tried to warn him to leave me alone.  How about that?  He’d not long come out of prison for stupid stuff.  He has a go at Howard at my fourteenth birthday party, when he tries to drag me home from it.  Next thing some drugs are planted in his house and the cops show up, and Anthony is back in the slammer for another year.” Danny clapped his hands triumphantly while Caroline stared at him curiously.  “That enough for you?  Michael loses the only good thing in his crappy life because of Lee Howard.  He also got rid of my mum by sending her off on some trip to a friends for a few weeks, while he beat the shit out of me and told my teachers and the cops that I fell off my bike at the cliff.  That was good.  That’s a memory for you darling, or do you want more detail than that?  That was the first time I thought I was going to die, you know?  I thought he’d never stop.  But he was very clever, I realise now.”

“How do you mean clever?”

“Well he never put me in the hospital, I mean.  He never broke my bones.  I think he held back, in some way, from what he could have done.  Now, if you think about it, how premeditated is that shit?”  Danny nodded at her staring face.  “Just doing what he needed to do to keep me in line.  Oh hey, there’s another memory for you! I was never in line, you see, whatever the fuck that means.  That was his ambition, his goal.  To get me in line.”

“And did he ever succeed?”

“Stupid question,” Danny replied scathingly.  “Who’s dead, and who’s not eh?  He didn’t get me in line.  I didn’t let him.”

“You fought back?” Caroline asked. “And before you say it, yes that is the next question okay? How did you fight back?”

“I just tried not to let him win,” Danny shrugged in reply.  He got up then, stretched out his muscles and wandered over to Michael’s Cd player.

“Can you be a bit more specific?” Caroline’s voice followed him.  He shrugged.

“I stood up for myself.  When I could.  Even if I knew it would make him angry.  It was fun sometimes.  Sometimes being a pain in his arse was better than being shit scared the whole time, you know?  So I’d wind him up, tell him to fuck off, that kind of thing.  Not all the time though.  Most of the time I did everything I could to stay out of his fucking way.”

“Did that work?  Would he leave you alone?”

“No, not really,” Danny mused, picking up the case to Nevermind and holding it in his hands.  “Because he’d seek me out.  I tried to run away once and he dragged me back.  He got me working in the club so he could keep an eye on me.  He got me going to Jack Freeman’s place for the same reason.  He would come in my room once a fucking day and inspect it, looking for reasons to go mental.  Stuff like that.  Once he married her, he was even worse.  Even more controlling and insane.”

“My final question for today,” Caroline said behind him with a sigh.  He heard her turn the pages of her notebook.  He ran his own fingers down the list of songs on the back of the CD case.  For a moment he toyed with the idea of turning around and telling Caroline Haskell exactly what each song had meant to him back then and why.  How he had found solace and a place to escape to in that music.  How he had grown his hair like Kurt Cobain’s and copied his style of dress.  How just the sound of Kurt’s voice snarling the chorus to Smells Like Teen Spirit had set his heart on fire every time, and how the sorrowful tones of Something in The Way had caused him to sob for hours into his pillow, after he had learnt of his idols death. 

“Go on,” he murmured, not turning around.

“I’d like you to explain Jack Freeman’s part in all of this.  How you met him and when, and what your relationship with him was like.”

Danny turned around to look at her.  “I don’t even know the answers to that,” he shrugged at her. “So how am I supposed to explain it to you?”

“Start at the beginning,” she advised patiently, staring right back at him, unflinchingly.  Danny tapped the CD case against his palm.  He forced himself to think back, just to satisfy her, just to get the address of the man in question.  He wondered again what the hell he was doing with this woman.  Was this helping, in any way?  People sometimes said that the way to escape from the past was to talk about it, to figure it out, in order to close the door on it.  Danny had always found that the opposite was true.  He had not spoken a word about it to anyone inside prison.  He had said as little about it as he could get away with.  He had kept silent, and kept his head down, and somehow he had survived.  Since he had been out, it seemed like the past was all around him again, impossible to shut away.  Not only the harassment from whoever thought he should have been inside forever, but from his mother, from Lucy, and his friends, from the area, and the music, and people like Caroline Haskell, people who wanted to know all the juicy and gory details. 

He blew out his breath and stared once again down at the CD case.  ‘Come As You Are’, had just started.  Was the music painful to listen to, he wondered, frowning at the track list again?  He had thought it would be; the amount of times he had curled up under his duvet with this album on in his room, pain pulsing angrily through him, pain that reminded him how small and useless he was.  He shook himself out of his daydream then.  Let’s get this fucking over with, he thought, preparing to harden himself once more, do what she wants, get the address, sort this shit out and let it all be over.  For a moment it stunned and amused him that there was still a large part of him that faithfully believed that a normal, decent life lay just around the corner.

“Freeman turned up at the same time Anthony was set up and arrested,” Danny told her, watching her brow furrow in interest instantly.  “We’d camped out the night before, I came home and fell asleep on the sofa and woke up hearing two voices in the kitchen.  Howard and Freeman, though I didn’t know who he was then.  I heard them talking about the flat Howard was letting him have, and some kind of job.  Then he left.  I didn’t know then what had happened to Anthony, but I tried to sneak out the back door because I knew he’d be pissed at me, because Anthony had frightened him off at my party and he hadn’t managed to get me back yet, and he did, he caught me and told me mum had gone away for a few weeks.  It was just him and me.” Danny walked slowly back to the sofa, CD case still in hand.  He dropped down beside Kurt and the little dog immediately climbed back onto his lap.  “Just in case you don’t know, I was pretty small for my age when I was fourteen,” he said, not looking up, while the sound of the tape recorder whirred on.  “And Howard was like a fucking giant to me, you know.  So I was pretty scared to think my mum wasn’t there.  He bust me up so bad I couldn’t go to school.  I told you all that already.  And he let me know my friends wouldn’t want anything to do with me now either.  Years later, the night before I killed him, he admitted it to me, that he and Jack Freeman had done that to Anthony.  Jack used to be a copper.  He snuck in and planted the drugs then made an anonymous call to the cops.  Bye bye Anthony, about the only person big enough and brave enough to stand up to him.”

Danny sighed and lifted his gaze to Caroline, who was listening intently, tape recorder on lap, elbow on knee and head in hand.  “So that was the first time I knew about Freeman,” he went on.  “Then I met him in the club, because that period of time was when Howard started making me go with him, when mum was away.  Freeman just looked like this homeless guy or something, you know?  Just unshaven, and a bit grubby, just sat at the bar the whole time smoking and drinking whiskey.” Danny shrugged his shoulders.  “Nothing special.  I didn’t trust him, but mainly because he was Howard’s friend from Essex, so I assumed he was a dick.  He was all right though, after a while.  I wasn’t scared of him.  He’d sneak me drinks and smokes at the club, and it was all like, don’t let Lee know, our secret, you know?  I thought that was okay, at fourteen, fifteen years old.  It made me feel good, I suppose.”

Danny sat forward then, found his pack of cigarettes under a magazine on the coffee table, and pulled one out.  “So you had a good relationship with him, for a time?” Caroline prompted him.  He stuck a cigarette between his teeth, located a lighter in his pocket and lit up, nodding.

“Yeah.  Sort of.  He didn’t say much, you know?  He was the silent type.  He didn’t have a go, or criticise me, like Howard did.  He started letting me come over his flat. That was nice, just to get away from Howard. Mike would come over too, sometimes.  That was when we started doing speed.”

“Who gave you the speed?” Caroline was quick to ask him.

“Freeman did.  He did all sorts.  Right in front of me.  One of the first nights I was there, without Howard, he lit up a joint and passed it to me.  I’d already tried it, because Anthony let us smoke some at the party I’d had.  And then it was speed, stuff like that.” Danny sat back in the sofa again, hand dropping onto Kurt.  “Anthony would only touch pot and booze, that was it.  I know it sounds mad, if you’re anti-drugs or whatever, but they were the only two he said were safe, and only if you were sensible.  And he was right too.  Speed was not safe.  Nothing else was, but when someone is just handing it to you, at that age, and you hate your life and you’d do anything to escape, you kind of go along with it right?” He looked at her and she stared back silently.  “Anyway,” he went on, “so that was that.  Soon I was into all sorts.  Right off the rails I was.  He made out the whole time that I shouldn’t tell Howard, that he’d go mad at us both, that kind of thing.  So then one day in the club he introduces me to this drug dealer guy, Jaime Lawler, and says I have to buy stuff from him from now on, because he was worried Lee would find out.  So I did.  I had no choice.  The guy was okay.  He kind of became a friend in the end.  He was the one that gave me the coke, the night I…” Danny raised his eyebrows at her questioningly and she nodded right back in understanding.  “Anyway, again I had no idea Howard was behind all of this.  All of it.  He’d called Jack and got him down here because he needed someone to help him get rid of Anthony.  He knew the guy was a fucking….pervert or whatever….” Danny sucked in his breath with a hiss and looked longingly at the door.  He had to hurry this up, he thought then, this was getting more unbearable by the minute.  He smoked the cigarette hungrily, barely stopping for air. What else would she want to know?  “He knew he was dealing me drugs, even though on the surface he would have killed me if he’d caught me doing them.  He knew I was at that flat all the fucking time, not seeing my mates much, and my mum thinking Jack was so nice and sweet, and he knew I was off my face the whole time I was there.”  He smiled sadly at Caroline and shrugged again. “He knew what could happen.  He held the strings, you see.  He owned Freeman because he knew his past.  He used him to control me when he couldn’t.  Fucked up mind games.  Fucked up shit however you look at it.  He knew.  He controlled it all.  I truly believe it gave him a sick thrill, putting me in that position.  It taught me my place, one way or another.  He was the boss and I should never forget it.”

He fell into silence then.  Stared at the door and craved a drink.  Caroline Haskell flicked through her notebook, checked things off with a biro and waited for him to go on.  When he didn’t, she tossed back her hair and smiled a sad smile at him. 

“Danny?  What happened then?”

“I don’t know,” he answered her, and it was the truth.  He didn’t know for sure.  He only knew the feelings of disquiet and unease he had woken up with back then, and the strange images that had sometimes rumbled through his hungover mind, and how he had briefly thought to question things, but then halted his mind, because his mind was so young, and so fucked, and could not cope with much more.  So he had pushed things aside, ignored memories or convinced himself they were dreams or drug induced hallucinations. “One time I know I woke up and he was sat there in the dark…staring at me, then I fell asleep again…but woke up another time and he was stroking my hair.  I just slept.  I was always so fucked when I was there.  I didn’t let myself remember anything, if that makes sense. I didn’t want to.  I had this safe place to go, because I tried to stay away from my friends so Howard wouldn’t fuck with them again.  I went there to escape him.  To be left alone.  I knew something was wrong, but I don’t think my mind could have dealt with it if I’d questioned it, or thought about it.” He shrugged again, and looked at her expression, wondering what he saw there.  Was it pity, like he saw in so many other faces?  Was it distrust and accusation, the other emotions he picked up from people who knew what he had done?  Or was it just plain morbid greed?

“When did you know for sure something was wrong?” she asked him, her voice hard to read.  Danny sighed.  He almost reminded her that her questions were up, but then he thought fuck it.  What did it matter?  He was still probably selling his soul, one way or another.

“Anthony found out,” he told her, taking a sick kind of satisfaction in the sudden widening of her eyes, and the frantic flying of her pen across the pages of her open notebook.  He nodded at her.  “Bless him for that.  He paid Jaime Lawler to keep his nose to the ground at all times, to be on our side if you like.  He worked his arse off in a sweaty pub kitchen, was the only parent Mike had at that time, when he got back out, and he risked it all again to help me, to get them away from me.  He scrimped and saved to pay Jaime to find stuff out.  Jaime even had to bribe a copper he knew to do a check on Freeman, and that’s when he told me and Mike to stay the hell away from him.”

Caroline Haskell braved a question into the heavy silence that fell. “What had he found out?”

Danny swallowed, brushed back his hair and thought get it over with, get it out, fucking say it, tell her, end it. “When he was a detective, he had this rent boy as an informer, and the kid was fourteen, and accused Freeman of molesting him.  He then dropped the charges, and I don’t know for sure, but I reckon his good friend Howard was behind that.  Because I can just see how he would scare the shit out of a kid that age, you know, and let Freeman get away with it?  That way he has power over them both, as usual, just the way he likes it.  So anyway.  We stopped going to his flat after that.  We started planning our escape, and that my friend, is so the end of the interview for now.  I can’t do it anymore.” He looked at her and forced a smile that felt weak and alien upon his lips. She smiled graciously and he thought that she looked tired all of a sudden.  She clicked a button on the recorder, and bowed her head as she placed it down into her bag with her notebook.  She got up then, smoothing down her skirt and shaking back that glossy hair of hers again.  He watched her coming towards him on the sofa and wondered what the fuck that meant.

Caroline Haskell then hitched up her skirt as much as she could considering how tight it was, and climbed astride his lap, as he stared up at her, both amused and horrified simultaneously.  She stared down into his eyes and he narrowed them back at her, trying to figure her out, and it crossed his mind to wonder if she was not somehow a little bit turned on by his misfortune, and then she picked up his hand and pressed a folded piece of paper into it.  He unfolded it and glanced down at the name Jack Freeman and the address that followed, before pushing it deep inside his pocket and looking back up at her face.  “Good interview,” she told him, her voice becoming a silken purr, “better than last time I have to say.  And you don’t just get a piece of paper as your reward.”

  “I don’t?”

She shook her head at him.  “I can’t seem to stop thinking about you.”  She was staring down at him wonderingly.  Danny thought briefly about turning her down, about moving her gently to one side and getting up.  An image of Lucy flashed through his mind, and he felt the pain stabbing through his chest again, and it was too much to bear.  He let her kiss him, when she lowered her face towards his.  He told himself it was wrong, wrong, in so many ways, but he didn’t stop it.

 

He lay on the sofa and smoked, while she found her things and put her clothes back on.  He pushed a hand through his hair and thought, I can’t even blame it on alcohol this time. He thought of Lucy again, and wanted to cry.  He watched Caroline, and wondered why her face seemed different, when she wasn’t firing questions at him.  Okay, she was naked, and hurriedly pulling her underwear back on, but her face looked softer, and younger.  Did he even detect a trace of embarrassment in her eye, as she yanked up her skirt and zipped it up?  “Your turn to rush off this time,” he mused, deciding to break the ever awkward silence.  She found her bra and struggled into it, smiling weakly.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really do have to be somewhere quickly.”

“I’m not worried.  You don’t have to apologise to me.”

Caroline smiled again and started to pull on her top.  “When do you think you will visit Freeman?” she asked him.

“Soon as possible,” he replied quickly, knowing it was the truth. “Before I can think about it too much or wimp out.”

“I can’t imagine you wimping out Danny.  You seem incredibly brave and together to me, for someone who has gone through all that.”  Caroline slotted her feet into her heels and smoothed her tousled hair down with both hands.

“Can I ask you something?” he said from the sofa.

“Sure.”

“Why is this really all so important to you? I mean, I get that it’s your job, and you were curious back then, and all that. But why do you want to write this article so much?  Why does it mean so much to you?”

Caroline Haskell slipped her arms into her coat, not meeting his eye, and picked her bag up from the floor.  She came towards him then, hair all messy and cheeks flushed red, and as she leant down to kiss him goodbye she said; “I’ll tell you all about it another day.  But let’s just say you and me have more in common than you realise.  I’ve got to go.  Let me know how you get on.”

Danny watched her turn and click out of the flat in her neat little heels, hair swinging across her shoulders.  He wondered what she could mean by that, as he pulled the note back out from his pocket and looked at the name and address she had written on it for him.  He had been expecting the address to be somewhere in Essex, surely that was where the man had slunk back to all those years back?  But it wasn’t.  It was an address Danny recognised to be about ten minutes away.

27

Michael

 

            Keeping the plan from Anthony did not sit well with him, not one little bit, but he had promised Danny.  The address was near Southampton, which was why Danny had thought it seemed familiar for some reason.  He had lived in Southampton as a child.  They waited a few days before they went.  Everything had fallen quiet.  There had been no letters, no bricks, no eerie phone calls, nothing.  Everyone was starting to relax slightly, Michael noticed.  Chrissie had moved tentatively back in with Anthony.  They were working on things.  Anthony had promised to tell her the truth from now on, which in some ways made it easier for Michael to keep it from him.

He had to admit, he preferred the idea of him, Danny and Anthony all being together to visit Lee Howard’s estranged brother.  But doing it that way would put Anthony in an impossible position.  He would have to choose between letting them down, and lying to his wife.  Danny was right then, Michael decided, as the two of them set off early on a Friday morning, it was better this way. 

Still, knowing that did not stop Michael’s belly from feeling sick from the moment he woke up that morning.  They talked for a while about what to take, if anything?  What was the plan?  What were they going to do when they got there?  In the end they just packed themselves and Kurt into the car, and drove off. 

Michael fiddled with the radio for a while, finally swearing in disgust and turning it off. “There is no fucking good music these days,” he muttered. “Or if there is, I can’t find it. You found any masterpieces yet at the fat man’s?”

He looked at Danny, sat in the passenger seat with his arms around Kurt.  He was staring silently out of the window, and he had been that way for the last few days.  Michael had left him to it mostly.  He had heard from Lucy after the episode on the beach. “You’re nuts,” he had told her desperately, “please don’t do this!  He’ll be a mess, he won’t get it!”  Lucy had been crying, trying to explain how she felt.  Michael had felt the urge to hang up on her, but he hadn’t. 

“I just need to know he really wants me,” she had said, and Michael had thought that was just typical of a woman.  He was hoping the rest of the story would come out on the journey.  Danny had been brooding for days. 

“We should have a night at Chaos, you know,” he suggested, breaking the silence again.  “That could be a laugh.”

“It would have to be just you and me,” Danny replied, still staring out of the window.

“Eh?  Why?”

“You know why.  Gotta’ keep away from the rest of them,” Danny turned briefly to give Michael a dark stare.  “So they don’t get hurt.  Seems to be working lately.”  He sighed, and looked back to the window.

“Well not for much longer,” Michael said, “not once we’ve had it out with these three fuckers.  It’ll all be over mate.  You’ll be able to get on with your life.”

“Sometimes I doubt that will ever happen.”

“Oh don’t you be such a fucking pessimist!” Michael scolded him. “Don’t you pull that on me!  I’ve had enough of you sulking around these last few days.  You need to keep your chin up.  Think positive!”

Danny did not answer.  Michael rolled his eyes.  They had reached a junction, and he took the opportunity to light up a cigarette and pass another one to Danny.  He drove on, rolling down the window to let the smoke out.  “So spill the beans then,” he said. “What went on with you and Haskell?”

“Eh?”

“The interview.  Her pound of flesh.  Don’t try and tell me she gave you the addresses for nothing.”

“I’ve only got one address,” Danny corrected him, rolling down his own window and hanging one elbow out.

“One?  What happened to the others?”

“We didn’t trust each other,” Danny shrugged. “So I answered five questions for one address.  If this works out, I’ll answer some more questions, and so on.”

“Christ,” Michael gave him a puzzled look.  “She’s a viper that one, isn’t she?  That’s pretty clever that is.  What did she ask you anyway?”

“Oh just the usual shit.”

“It was okay then?  You didn’t mind?”

“I was drunk to be honest.”

“Oh Danny, you twat!” Michael groaned.  “I should have known.  I should have come down there and chased her off.  What a sneaky bitch!  Let me guess, she bought the drinks right?”  Danny shrugged in reply.

“It doesn’t matter.  It was easier to do it drunk.”

“Whatever you reckon mate.  Just be careful with her, I’m telling you.  She was relentless about it, eight years ago. I’m serious!” he shot a look at Danny, who yet again refused to meet his eyes.  “She followed Jake and Billy and Lucy to school and back, she hounded me and Anthony at the bed-sit, I’m telling you.  She wanted a visitors pass to see you inside.  She was obsessed!”

“She admitted that herself,” Danny told him, his tone weary. “She said she was there that morning, when the cops brought me out the house.  She saw it.  She told me all that.  I don’t care.”

“Well what does she want exactly?  To get famous? What?”

“I don’t know.  It’ll be some big article I think,” Danny smoked out of the window, his other arm carefully wrapped around Kurt.  “I’ll get to see it and check it before she publishes it.”

“She’ll be hoping to sell it to the nationals, or some stuck up ladies magazine or something,” Michael shook his head in disgust. “They’ll all be fighting over it mate.  She’ll make a fucking fortune, you do know that right?”

“Don’t care.”

“Okay.  It’s up to you.  You must know what you’re doing.”

“Not really,” Danny sighed again, and looked at him sheepishly. “I sort of went and slept with her afterwards.”

Michael’s mouth fell open.  He stared at Danny, but then had to look back to the road.  “Jesus fucking Christ!” he exclaimed in disbelief. “You filthy bastard!”

“Hmm.”

“You must have been hammered!”

“I was.”

“Oh and Lucy had just messed with your head,” Michael was nodding now, as it all began to make sense.  He shook his head and grinned sideways at his friend. “Oh well, fair enough, fair enough mate.  I don’t blame you.  She was hot back then, and she’s still hot now!  How was it?”

Danny just groaned and covered his eyes for a second. “Oh Mike don’t ask me that.  I feel sick enough about it.”

“Don’t feel sick about it, you idiot, any one of us would have done the same!  I know I would have, if she was laying it on a plate for me like that!”

“It’s kind of wrong though?”

“I don’t know,” Michael laughed and shrugged. “Not really.  You’re single now thanks to Lucy freaking out about nothing.  Isn’t that what she wanted you do do?  Sow your wild oats?  You’ll have to tell her mate, see if she’s happy now.”

Danny did not answer, and Michael realised that was the cue to change the subject.  He chuckled to himself silently though.  “You animal,” he murmured in amusement.

 

“We’re nearly there,” Danny remarked some time later.  Michael nodded, and wondered if his guts felt as sick as his own did.  Danny had an old a to z spread out on his lap and was frowning down at it.  They were driving through a pleasant looking housing estate just outside of Totton, not too far from the city centre.  Michael kept his eyes on the road signs, driving slowly. 

“You okay?” he asked Danny.

“I’m looking forward to this,” Danny replied, and Michael knew right away that he was lying.  Never mind, he thought, if we do this right, we’ll be making progress, we’ll be on the way to sorting this shit out.  Danny tapped his fingers on the map and checked the piece of paper Caroline had given him.  “Should be next on our left,” he said, looking up.  Michael drove on, his stomach tightening further.

“We should have bought weapons,” he commented. 

“We’re just gonna’ talk to him Mike.  We have to keep cool, okay?  In fact, unless I give you the nod, you just stay back and stay quiet, yeah?”

“Okay.  No problem.”

Michael pulled up in front of the house, and they both sat in the car, exhaling pent up breath, and staring out at number fifteen Rise View drive. It was an end terrace, possibly two bedrooms by the size of it.  The front garden was slightly overgrown, and the drive was empty.  There was a side gate, with two broken panels, leading around to the back.  The house had a small porch, and the windows were hung with tatty grey net curtains.  Michael noticed that there were no obvious signs of children, or family.  It looked a lot like a single man lived there alone.   Michael breathed out again and nudged Danny.  “What do you want to do mate?”

Danny was already getting out of the car.  He placed Kurt gently on the seat, left the window slightly open and gestured for Michael to follow.  They both stubbed the last of their cigarettes out on the pavement and looked again at the house. “Come on,” Danny muttered, and sinking his hands into his pockets, he headed for the door.

Michael followed, keeping just behind him.  Danny pressed the doorbell.  Michael felt his stomach do a flip, and his hairs stand on end.  He looked around at the rest of the street, but it seemed dead and quiet.  The inner door was opened and the shape of a man shuffled into the porch, undoing various locks.  Finally the porch door was pulled open and a face peered out at them.  If Danny was as taken back as Michael was, he did a fine job not showing it.  The face looked uncannily like Lee Howard.  The same high brow, the same small eyes, the receding hair-line, and small neat teeth were all identical.  The man looked like he had not shaved for a few days, and Michael could see he was wearing an unflattering beige cardigan and grey trousers.  “Hi,” Danny said quickly, and again Michael was amazed at how calm and steady his voice came out. “We’re really sorry to bother you sir.  Are you Dennis Howard?”

The man squinted at them both, looking confused and concerned. “Yes,” he said, and Michael noticed his voice was higher than Howard’s, and Jerry’s.  And when he spoke, his expression seemed different to theirs too.  Michael guessed he must be in his late forties at least but his voice somehow made him sound younger, younger and confused.  “That’s me.  Can I help you?”

Danny glanced momentarily at Michael, then back at Dennis. “Ah sir, Mr. Howard, this is a bit awkward.  This is about your brother Lee?  And your dad, Jerry?  I really need to talk to you about them.  Would we be able to come inside?”

The man’s forehead was creased with concern. “Lee’s dead,” he said, spluttering slightly over his words, spit flying out from between his lips.  He let the door open slightly wider though.  “That’s my brother.  He died.”

Danny looked wonderingly at Michael again.  “We know that sir,” he said to Dennis.  “Um, can we please come in and talk to you?  We really won’t be very long at all.”

“Okay,” the man agreed, sounding brighter then, and pulling the door wide open for him, as he shuffled back out of their way.  “You can come in.  I’m doing a crossword.”

Michael followed Danny in.  Something was not right, he thought.  This guy was not what they had expected at all.  He closed both doors behind them, and the man led them into his lounge, which was at the front of the house.  It smelled of vegetables, Michael thought sniffing, cabbage and leeks, that sort of thing, as if the guy had been eating them all day.  Now they were inside, Michael looked closer at Lee Howard’s brother.  He was shorter and slighter than Lee had been, sort of stooped over even.  He put his hands into the pockets of his loose grey trousers now, and stood sort of clumsily and awkwardly in his own room.  Then suddenly his face lit up, as if he had remembered something.  “Tea?” he asked them, and Michael saw he had a strange way of looking at them.  He sort of kept his head turned away, and looked at them sideways, as if he thought he wasn’t allowed to look right at them.  It was odd, Michael thought, really odd.  “I can make tea!” he said.  Danny looked at Michael and then shook his head at Dennis.

“No thank you Dennis.  Can we sit down a minute?  We won’t keep you long.”

“Yes, yes, you can sit down there,” he jerked his shoulder towards a short green sofa, and Danny and Michael promptly sat down.  The man nodded towards the armchair he was stood next to.  There was a newspaper on the seat.  “I’m doing a crossword,” he said again.  Danny nodded.

“Um, Dennis?  Lee was your older brother right?  You grew up together?”

“My big brother, yes,” the man replied, closing his eyes as a strange smile pulled his lips out to either side.  He kept his hands balled in his pockets.  Michael wondered why he did not sit down.  “He’s dead now.”

“And Jerry, he’s your dad?”

“Oh yes, yes, my dad, yes.”  Again Michael watched him talking to them, with his head turned slightly the other way. He was looking out of the corner of his eye the whole time.

“Do you see your dad much?” Danny asked him. 

“No he doesn’t come here,” was the immediate reply.  The man screwed up his face as if thinking.  “Oh he used to come to River House.  He came there!”

“What’s River House?”

“Where I was, where I lived, at River House.  He came there!  But he doesn’t come here, no.”

Danny looked at Michael and shrugged.  Michael mouthed the word simple to him, wonderingly and Danny replied with a quick nod.  He looked back at Dennis, who was still standing with his fists in his pockets.  “Dennis, you don’t know who I am, do you?”

“No,” the man shook his head, and smiled a little.  Danny bit his lip briefly and then sat forward on the sofa, his hands clasped between his knees.

“Dennis, your brother Lee, he was my stepfather for a while.”

Dennis screwed his face up again, his eyes disappearing. “Oh.”

“Yeah, he married my mum, Kay?  Did you know that?”

“Oh he had a bad boy, I know that,” Dennis nodded triumphantly, as if he was pleased he had remembered this piece of information.  “They told me that.  Dad told me that yes.  Lee had a boy, he had a bad boy.”  He carried on nodding.

“Yeah, that was me,” Danny went on.  “We didn’t get on.  Do you know what happened to Lee?  How he died?”

“Bad boy did it,” Dennis nodded in certainty, eyes on Danny, but head turned.

“That’s right,” Danny said gently.  “And I went to prison for a long time.  But now I’m out.  The thing is, some people are out to get me.  I think it might be your dad.  Wanting revenge.  That’s why we came to see you today.  To see if you could help us.”

“Oh,” Dennis said wonderingly.  “I don’t see my dad anymore.  He’s not proud of me.  He was proud of Lee.”

“Yes, I know he was.  Why wasn’t he proud of you Dennis?”

“Because I was at River House.  Because I was a bad boy.”

Michael sat and stared.  The guy sounded almost rehearsed in his answers, he thought, as if he had been told the same things again and again.

“You were a bad boy?” Danny was leaning forward even more, just perched on the edge of the sofa now.  “What do you mean Dennis? What did you do?”

“Oh it’s a secret,” Dennis whimpered now, his voice a little higher, his eyes darting about the room, his head turned even further the other way.  He was turning his body now too, sort of shuffling around, away from their staring eyes.

Danny got up.  Michael watched him approach the man slowly, sort of stooping to catch his lowered eyes.  “Dennis,” he said in a gentle voice. “It’s okay.  I’ve got a secret too you see.  Maybe me and you are the same?  Did they think you were a bad boy too?”

“Yes!” Dennis said, nodding vehemently, looking distressed now. “Yes I was!”

“But why ?  What did you do?  We won’t tell anyone, we promise.  I can tell you my secrets, if you tell me yours.”

Michael watched, mesmerised from the sofa.  If he had imagined this scene in any way, it had never been like this.  The guy was obviously not quite right in the head, for whatever reason.  It kind of explained why Lee had never mentioned him, he thought, and it explained why Jerry had been so proud of Lee, and had nothing to do with this son.  The poor bugger, he found himself thinking. 

“It’s because I did bad things,” Dennis spluttered now, his eyes still on Danny. He had pulled his hands out of his pockets and sort of curled them up under his chin, as if trying to protect himself somehow.

“What bad things?” Danny asked him.

“I did bad things with Lee’s friend,” Dennis said then, backing himself up to the wall, his hands knotted under his own chin, his face turned away, but his small eyes still fixed firmly on Danny.  There was a shattering silence.  Michael got to his feet.

“What friend?” Danny asked, his voice a whisper.  Michael stared, waiting, knowing, dreading.  He felt vomit rise in his throat and swallowed, coughing and tasting bile on his tongue. 

“His friend Jack,” Dennis told them, shrinking even further now. “His good friend Jack.  Bad things.  I was a bad boy.  So I went to River House.  Did you go to River House?”

Michael watched Danny’s shoulders fall from behind.  “No,” he told the man with a heavy sigh.  “I went somewhere else.  Jack Freeman was still Lee’s friend when I knew him.  I know who you mean.”

The man dropped his hands a little and moved slightly away from the wall.  He was staring at Danny in wonder.  “Did you do bad things with him too?  Is that why you are a bad boy too?”

Danny turned abruptly and nodded at Michael. “Let’s go,” he said gruffly, his eyes down.  “We’re sorry we bothered you Dennis. We have to go now.”

Danny headed quickly for the door and Michael followed. He took a last lingering look back at the guy, whose face fell as they left the room. “Goodbye,” he called after them, shuffling slowly into the hall. “Goodbye!”

Michael closed both doors behind him and unlocked the car so Danny could get in.  “You okay?” he asked, knowing he would not get an answer. Danny swept Kurt from the seat and hoisted him into the back.  Michael sat for a minute, key in the ignition, not sure what to do.  He looked at Danny, and saw his face was like thunder, and his fists were clenched tightly in his lap.  “Danny?”

“Fuck!” he snarled suddenly, lashing out and punching the dashboard. “Fuck! Fuck’s sake!”

“What is it?”

Danny shook his head, punched the dashboard again and then dropped his head down into his hands.  He clawed restlessly at his hair for a moment, and then jerked back violently and smashed his fist into the door.  “Danny stop beating up my car!” Michael gasped, hoping to joke him out of it.

“Just drive!” Danny snapped back at him, lifting one foot onto the seat and turning his face to the window.  “Just fucking get us out of here!”

“All right, all right, calm down, just calm down, I’m going.” Michael started the car and pulled away from Dennis Howard’s house.  “That was weird,” he said, right away.  “That was not what I expected at all.  The guy was not all there, right?” he glanced at Danny who nodded in return.  “Christ.  Those bastards.  That’s why they never mentioned him, right?  They were ashamed of him.  Sounds like they shut him away somewhere.”  He glanced sideways again.  Danny was shaking his head slightly, but quickly, pulling at his bottom lip with his fingers and looking like he wanted to kill someone.  “Dan?” Michael pressed gently.  “Just tell me you’re okay, yeah?  What are you thinking?”

“Fuck,” Danny said again, and then took a deep breath.  “Fuck.  Nothing.  Just drive.”

 

Michael did as he was told and drove.  As they neared home, Danny spoke up, only to ask if he could drop him at his mother’s house.  Michael was concerned.  After everything they had just discovered, why did Danny want to go there?  “Why?” he asked him.

“Need to talk to her.”

“All right mate.”

There was nothing else he could do.  He pulled up and let him out a short while later.  Danny took Kurt from the back seat, muttered a thank you and stalked away without another word.  Michael watched him go, feeling both bewildered and uneasy.  His gut reaction was to contact Anthony, or Lucy, but frustratingly he was not allowed to.  He drove on towards home occupying the shell-shocked silence alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28

Kay

 

           

            Having received his message, Kay left work early and hurried home as fast as she could.  She arrived to find him sat at the top of the stairs, just outside the door to her flat, with his little dog beside him.  She approached cautiously, never certain what mood she would find him in.  He had mostly been avoiding and ignoring her lately, so it had automatically filled her with both hope and fear to be summoned this way.  She stopped in front of him, and he did not look at her, but merely got stiffly to his feet and waited to be let into the flat. “Are you all right?” she asked him, dragging out her keys.

“No I’m fucking not,” was the terse reply.  Kay grimaced and let them both in.  Danny slouched into the lounge and sat on the edge of the sofa.  She glanced at him worriedly, before dropping her keys and handbag on the side table, and bustling into the kitchen to put on the kettle.

“You want tea?” she asked him over her shoulder.  He did not answer, and when she poked her head back around the door, he was staring morosely down at the carpet, his hands laced together tightly between his knees.  She thought he looked tightly sprung, as if about to explode at any second. She decided to make him one anyway, almost as a way to delay whatever was about to erupt.

Kay brought the teas and a plate of biscuits through to the lounge, and set them down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.  She hovered then, not knowing whether she ought to sit beside him, or on one of the armchairs. She struggled in her mind to decide upon a question.  She thought about asking him how the job was going, but then she decided not to delay the inevitable. “What is it?” she asked finally, standing next to him.  “What’s wrong?”

“Where do I start?” he sighed, lifting his hands and pressing them briefly to his face.  “Fucking everything, how about that?  Life is one shit disaster after another, and I wish I’d stayed in fucking prison, how about that?” he dropped his hands and stared up at her, challenging her to disagree. “I’m seriously thinking about disappearing.  Just going away.  Going far away and never coming back.”

Kay sat down cautiously beside him.  She longed to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t dare.  She could feel the anger throbbing from him violently.  “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened?  Start at the beginning?”

“The beginning?” he questioned, gazing at her in wonder, as if he simply did not understand her.  “Well I’m not sure where the beginning is mum.  I think to be honest it’s when you met a psychopathic maniac and decided to marry him!  That might be the beginning!”

“Okaaay,” she nodded slowly. “I can see where this is going.  You don’t look like you are coping you know honey.  You look awful.  I did say before I thought you should get some help?”

“I want to punch something,” he said then, his eyes wide.  Kay flinched without meaning to.

“Danny?”

“I do.  I really fucking do.  I want to punch something.  I’m gonna go fucking mental in a minute!”

She got up then.  She couldn’t stop herself.  There was a look in his eye that unsettled her and made her nervous.  She picked her tea up from the table and crossed the room to stand next to the patio doors that led out to the balcony.  “You need to take some deep breaths, calm down and talk to me Danny,” she looked back and told him.  “Either that, or you go somewhere else, somewhere safe and find something to take it out on.  Or maybe I should call Lucy?”

Danny laughed then, rolling his eyes at her.  “Lucy dumped me mum.  Few days ago.  She called it quits.  It’s over.”

Kay released her breath slowly then, a small amount of relief falling over her.  So that was what this was about.  It was beginning to make sense.  “Okay,” she said carefully.  “What did she say?”

He waved a hand at her in frustration, his expression dark.  “Oh just a load of crap about me needing to be single!  She wants me to shag around or something, so she can be sure I want her.”  Danny shook his head, his lips curled.  “Fucking bullshit.  She just wants out.  Simple as that.  I’m too much trouble.  I’m damaged goods.”

“Don’t say that…”

“But it’s true.  That’s what she thinks, I know it.  Who can blame her eh?”

“Oh come on now,” Kay tilted her head at him sternly. “Don’t you start all the self-pitying crap with me Danny, you know I won’t stand for it.”

“You are unbelievable,” he said then, and she saw his hands reach out to either side of his legs, gripping onto the edge of the sofa, as if trying to anchor himself in place.

“Danny, I just mean calm down.  This won’t do any good.”

“It’s all your fault, you know that don’t you?”

Kay looked at him steadily.  She liked the distance between them, but could not stop looking at his hands, gripping the sofa so hard his knuckles had turned white. 

“Okay,” she said.  “You’re probably right, and we all know that.  What do you want to do about it?”

He turned then wildly, letting go and plunging his fist into the sofa cushion.  Kay flinched again, and backed closer to the doors.  She stood back and watched her son lose control.  She watched him digress to nothing more than an enraged infant, as he swiped the cushions, threw them to the floor and kicked them, before turning and knocking the cups and plate from the table so viciously they were hurled across the room, the white china shattering against the far wall.  He then stomped towards the wall, kicked at the pieces of broken crockery, before pounding both fists into the wall, one after the other.  She heard him grunting with pain and rage.  She felt tears in her eyes and longed to touch him, to comfort him and hold him, but her feet remained planted to the ground.

Finally she watched him pull in his fists, wincing in pain, and he turned and sank slowly to the floor, holding one hand in the other, his back sliding down the wall.  She went to him then.  She put down her mug and crouched down beside him.  The anger was slowly ebbing away, and now he hung his head miserably in one hand, pushing his bloodied knuckles back through his hair and hanging on there.  Kay touched his cheek, smoothing away his tears.  “It’s good to let it out,” she said softly to him then, her face close to his.  “It will do you good.”

“I saw his brother,” he said then, his eyes down, his head still hanging.  Kay tensed and pulled back.

“Whose brother?”

“Lee’s.   I found out where Dennis lived, and me and Mike just went to see him.”

Kay sucked her breath in and looked wildly around the room, shaking her head in confusion.  “Dennis?”

“Dennis is mentally handicapped, in some way,” Danny muttered through his hanging hair.  “That’s why Lee never saw him or talked about him.  He’s simple mum.  Backwards.”

Kay waited, blinking in surprise, at a total loss for words, not understanding.  Danny crossed his arms over his knees then, and lowered his head, totally obscuring his face from her.  She could see his shoulders shaking though.  She put her hand on his shoulder, waiting for more.  “He said they put him in some kind of home,” he said then. “Because he’d been bad.  He’d been bad with Lee’s friend Jack.”

Kay stiffened in confusion.  She patted his shoulders and had never felt more useless or lost.  “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean mum? Jack must have…” he sighed a shuddery sigh, his shoulders heaving slowly up and down as he battled to regain control of himself.  “I think he meant Jack messed around with him…They told him he was bad and shut him away.”

Kay tightened her grip slowly on his shoulder, rubbing it firmly.  She brought her other hand up then, now that she was sure he would not pull away, and she placed it on his head and gently smoothed back his hair.  “This is why you are like this,” she said softly, and watched him nod.  “He wasn’t what you expected to find. Oh Danny, when is all this mess ever going to end?  Do you want to talk to me Danny?  Do you want to talk to me about Jack?  You and Jack?”

She felt his head shake slowly under her hand.  “I don’t know…” his voice came up muffled.  “’Cause I don’t remember…I don’t know.”

“But you think there was something, don’t you honey?  You remember something, don’t you?”

Her hand bobbed up and down as he nodded his silent reply, and she felt the tears cascading then, flowing effortlessly down from her eyes, and her cheeks began to sting and she tasted them on her lips.  She pressed her forehead down onto his hair.

“I don’t know what was dreams, and what was real,” she heard him mumble, and he sounded so very far away, that she wrapped both her arms tightly around him, keeping her head next to his.  “I used to wake up really confused…I thought I dreamt stuff…I thought it was the drugs.  I didn’t want to think about it.”

“And that bastard knew though, didn’t he?  He knew what Jack had done, what he was capable of…” Kay felt it then, stronger and deeper than ever, the hatred that had been festering inside her for years, she felt it double and intensify, and she had no idea what a person was supposed to do with a feeling like that.  If he wasn’t already dead, she thought then, I would kill him.

“I didn’t know that…I didn’t know anything for sure until Anthony found out.  He and Jaime Lawler did the digging.  It took him ages you know, and he had to pay money.  But when he found out, he told me and Mike to stay away and we did.”

“But before that?  Before that, you were around at his flat a lot, I remember,” Kay breathed slowly into his hair, wishing that her touch and love alone would be enough to mend him, but knowing in her heart that there would never be anything she could do.  “Oh it disgusts me now…to think back, how cosy and nice he made it seem. Like Jack was looking out for you.  Giving you somewhere you could hang out.  I thought it was really nice of him.”

“I’ve got to find him next.”

Kay pulled back, her arms now loosely around him.  “What?”

“Jack.  He’s next on my list.  This reporter woman is helping me find them.  So I can stop all this harassment.”

“Danny look at me.”

He did, painfully slowly, dragging the back of one hand across each wet eye. He met her eyes as if it were the hardest thing in the world to do.  “I have to,” he told her.  She frowned, shook her head at him and reached out to touch the stitches in his head.

“I don’t want you to.  Leave it to the police Danny, please.  It isn’t safe. Look what they’ve done to you already.”

“It’s too late.  I’ve already started and I’m not giving up now,” Kay looked at him and saw a little light return to his eyes, a little anger and fight, and she wanted to smile at it, but at the same time the thought of what he was proposing was terrifying.  “I have to try and end this,” he went on.  “To get them to stop and leave you all alone.  Leave me alone.  I’ll try mum, I’ll try to stop them, but if it doesn’t work, and if the cops do nothing, then I’ll have to leave.  I’ll go far away.  I’ll be on my own.  I’ll have to.”

She looked back at him and she didn’t know what to say except for; “I’ll help you.  What can I do to help you?”

“Nothing,” he shook his head.  “You all have to stay out of it.  I’ve got to do it mum.  I’ve got to close the door on all of this for good.  It’s the only way.  It’s the only chance I’ve got.”

“And what about Lucy?  Are you going to close the door on her too?”

Danny blew out a huge breath, blinked a few times and rubbed his face dry with both hands.  He got up slowly, using the wall to help, and then stumbled across the room to the sofa.  “She’s closed the door on me,” he replied, dumping himself down again and yawning.  His little dog had immediately jumped onto the sofa beside him and climbed nimbly onto his lap. 

“It’s not like you think,” Kay told him, kneeling down and picking up the pieces of broken crockery.  “She loves you.  You know she came to see me and told me?  She just needs to know she’s enough for you, that you really want her.”

“She told you that?”

Kay looked up and saw him eyeing her cautiously from the sofa. She wondered wearily if he would erupt again.  “I told you, she came to see me.  To talk about you.  Well, a lot of it was her wanting to know how I could have possibly stood by and let Lee…well, you know.  But aside from that, she was worried about where you two were heading.”

“Well what does that mean?”

“It means, she spent eight years without you, living a life, gaining a little experience of life and the world, and it didn’t take much for her to work out that you are the one she wants.  For good.”  Kay got up, dusted down her skirt and carried the broken pieces into the kitchen.  She deposited them into the bin, grabbed the half bottle of wine in the fridge, two glasses, and marched back to where he was sprawled on the sofa.  “Here,” she poured him a glass and pushed it at him.  “You look exhausted.  Have that and maybe a good sleep.”

Danny took the glass. “Why can’t she accept that I do want her?” he asked, trying and failing to stifle another huge yawn.  “Why can’t she believe that?”

“Well, probably because of what you’ve been through,” Kay sat down beside him.  “It’s not a normal situation is it?  Maybe you just have to try to trust her Danny.  That she’s doing it for the right reasons,” she lifted her shoulders in a shrug and dropped one hand onto his knee.  “Maybe a little time apart will do you both good.  You know, give you both time to think and take it all in.  Being back together after eight years would be tough enough on its own, but then there’s all this other stuff to deal with too.  I know you won’t like me saying this, but I do understand what she is doing, I think she is doing it for your own good, and I think somewhere deep inside you do know that.”

Danny did not answer.  He finished his wine and rested on the sofa.  She watched him smoke two cigarettes, one after the other, before he let his head fall back.  Ten minutes later he was asleep.  Kay sat and looked at him, a smile trembling on her lips.  Reminds me of when you were a baby, she thought to herself, fight, fight, fight, all day long, until you finally crashed, totally exhausted.   He stayed the night, covered up on the sofa with a blanket, his little dog curled up beside him.  Kay spent the night watching him. It will end for you, she promised him silently, I know it will.

25

Lucy

 

 

            It was going to be a strange, seeing him.  Lucy had a lot on her mind.  She was still feeling shell shocked and on edge since the creepy phone call.  Nothing else had come her way, but the news of the fight in the pub had reached her before she could get over to Michael’s flat.  Danny had sent a humorous text to warn her; we all look like shit!  Lucy didn’t find any of it funny though.  All of it, from the letters and the bricks, to the phone calls and the fight, all of it turned her stomach and sickened her.  More and more she found herself in sympathy with Anthony’s wife.  Who would want to be caught up in all this mess, she wondered?  Who would choose to?

Danny came out of the flat limping slightly, with Kurt at his heels.  Lucy looked him up and down, shaking her head slowly in despair.  He grinned at her and sort of grimaced, trying to edge her towards a joke.  He had a deep cut to the right of his forehead, just above his eye. She winced at the criss cross of stitches, the ugly bruising.  She felt the immediate urge to hug him, but then something stopped her, something held her back, and she sighed, and guessed she knew what it was.  “The police have come up with nothing?” she asked, thinking it to be a useless question, and one to which the answer was obvious.

“Nah,” he shrugged in reply. “Not yet.  But they will.  The pub?”

“I don’t think so,” Lucy replied, glancing over her shoulder nervously. “Can we just go for a walk to the beach with Kurt?  Maybe get some fish and chips?”

“That sounds brilliant,” Danny beamed, and she knew again that he was faking it.  That he had been doing that a lot with her.  She slipped her arm through his and they walked on.  “Can I duck in on the fat man on the way back though? Saw him in the pub last night and he kind of offered me a job!”

Lucy stared at him in surprise, genuine relief flooding her. “Did he? Really?  Terry?”

“Yep,” Danny nodded proudly, and she could see how excited he was about it. “Just got to say hi quick. See what he reckons. Is that okay?”

“Course it is! That’s amazing news Danny, I am so pleased for you.”

“Me too,” he beamed, hugging her to his side with one arm. “Everything okay your end?” he asked he after a few moments had lapsed past in silence.

“Fine,” she nodded. “Actually Carl stayed over last night.” She glanced up at him, looking for a reaction. “I was a bit freaked out again.  Just keep feeling watched, you know?”  She saw him clench his teeth briefly before replying.

“Oh that was nice of him.  Yeah, I know what you mean.  After yesterday, I feel like I should be looking over my shoulder the whole time.  But fuck it.  What can we do?” He shrugged at her. “Just have to hope the cops come up with something.”

“Do you still want me to do that search online?  I haven’t really had the chance, with everything going on.”

He shook his head at her. “No, no don’t bother.  I’m just leaving it to the police Luce.  I don’t want you involved.  I don’t want any of you involved.” He shrugged at her again.  “Safer that way.”

They came out onto the high street, and slipped between the hurrying crowds. They headed down towards the crescent, at the end of the high street.  “How are Michael and Anthony?” Lucy asked eventually. Danny released a sigh.

“Lucky they weren’t hurt worse,” he admitted. “Poor Anthony went down like a sack of shit when that ape brained him with a pint glass. He was out for a while.  They were kicking the shit out of him.  Then I got this!” he pointed to his cut. “Didn’t pass out though.  Think we got them back a bit.” He chuckled softly to himself, and Lucy pretended not to notice.

“Unbelievable,” she said again, shivering as she couldn’t resist another look over her shoulder. “Makes you feel unsafe, wherever you are.”

“Wherever I am,” he corrected her, with a wry smile.  Lucy rolled her eyes at him and nudged him with her elbow.

“It’s not your fault.  These people are sick.  They need to be stopped.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Danny said then.  They had reached the crescent, so called because of the little crescent shaped park to the right of the main road.  It was surrounded by a loop of knackered old benches, usually filled with sleeping bodies wrapped in blankets. It was fairly empty now though.  A young man in a hooded top was throwing a Frisbee for his bull terrier, and two young women in short skirts were smoking next to the bus stop.  Lucy shivered again, and wondered why Danny and Michael liked this place so much.  Belfield Park had not changed, she thought.  It was still bed-sit city, a place filled with unfortunate people. 

They took the road to the left, which wound slowly and gently down to the beach.  When their feet hit the sand, Kurt trotted off ahead of them, sniffing the sea air and wagging his tail that much faster.  “Gorgeous,” Lucy breathed, as the wind from the sea swept her hair back from her forehead.  “Freezing, but gorgeous.”

“We’ll get fish and chips along there,” Danny said pointing to the promenade. “There’s a place always open.”

“Lovely.”

They walked on, hand in hand now.  Lucy told herself to enjoy the closeness while it lasted.  They got their fish and chips and sat down on the sand to eat them.  They tasted divine, but Lucy found herself closely watching every person that passed them.  She wondered if Danny was examining them all as she was, wondering if any of them were watching them, or following them, wondering if they were about to be set upon or attacked at random.  It was a horrible, disquieting feeling, which made the fish and chips harder to appreciate, as her stomach began to knot and twist in nerves.  When she could eat no more, Lucy pushed her share onto Danny and decided it had been long enough.  “Who was that woman yesterday?” she asked him, looking sideways to catch his expression.  She saw it immediately before he disguised it.  Guilt.  Fear.

“Woman?”

“Yes.  Outside my flat.  I saw you with a woman.  You looked like you knew her, and then you walked off with her.”

“Oh!” Danny sounded amused now.  “That was just that reporter woman that’s been sniffing around.  Caroline Haskell.  She keeps hounding me for an interview.  She reckons I need to tell my side of the story.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.  That’s who that was.  I went to the pub with her, only because she said it was on her and I thought it might shut her up.”

Lucy nodded and looked back out at the sea.  She was silent for a while, remembering a younger her and Danny, sat like this, side by side, week after week.  It had started the day she had spotted him stalking angrily past in his suit, the day he refused to go to his mothers’ wedding.  They had started meeting there every Sunday morning.  Sometimes no one would see him all week.  He would be like the invisible kid. So oh how blessed and lucky she felt when she was the one he chose to meet with.  Most of the time they would sit and not even talk.  He’d never been much of a talker, she remembered.  If she wanted conversation with him, then she would have to work at it, and ask him questions, pull him slowly out of himself.  She remembered seeing his bruises.  Different ones every week.  For a long time she was too innocent, too sheltered to realise what they meant.  She imagined him as the bad boy they all said he was.  Getting into fights and scrapes.  Doing stunts on his bike.

There was that time he had weeks off school, and the teacher had told them all he had been hurt at the cliff top, falling from his bike. They had all made him this stupid big card, and signed their names.  Only Michael, Jake and Billy had refused to sign it, and she had wondered why.  Years later she was to learn that he had been hurt at home.  Anthony had been arrested for drugs offences.  Michael had been going crazy the whole time telling anyone that would listen that Lee Howard was behind it all; Anthony’s arrest and Danny’s accident. That Anthony had warned him to leave Danny alone, and this was the outcome.  Anthony gone.  Whisked back to jail for something he had not done.  Lucy shivered again, and this time she could not stop.  She felt him go to put his arm around her, and she stopped him by pulling away.  He frowned at her, his eyes hurt.  “You’re not going to like what I’m about to say,” she warned him then, and he looked even more worried.  “But I’m going to say it.  I want you to listen and try to understand.”

“You’re scaring me Lucy,” he said.  She knew.  She felt wretched.  She hung her head for a moment.

“I think we should stop seeing each other for a while.”

“What?”  His voice was a croak, a strangled cry.  She looked up, right into his eyes and thought to herself, she would probably never say anything so vital, so important again, so she had to get it right, she had to make him understand so that it would hurt him less. 

“It’s not because of all the stuff going on,” she assured him, placing one hand over his and squeezing down.  Her hair was being whipped back and forth by the wind from the sea.  She lifted one hand to hold it away from her face. “It’s scary, and I am scared, but that isn’t why I’m saying this.”

He looked bereft, and so confused.  “Why then?”

“Partly because of that woman.  Well not her specifically.  But women.”

“What?  I don’t get it.”

“It’s going to sound crazy, but I’ve been worried about it for some time.  Even before you got out.  And the way things have been going, I’ve thought it more and more.  And then seeing you with her, the way you looked at each other, I knew I had to say it.”

Danny pulled his hand out from under hers and glared. “What do you mean, the way we were looking at each other?  I don’t even know her!”

  “I know that, I know, I’m not accusing you of anything.” Lucy searched for his hand again and found it with hers, even though she felt his stiffen under it.  “The thing is Danny, we just had each other right?  Before you went to prison?” he nodded at her, biting at his bottom lip.  “And while you were there, I had a couple of boyfriends, you know that right?” Again, he nodded.  She swallowed, feeling a little like she was suddenly elevated to the adult position, and him down to the child’s. “So I had the chance, you see, to experience other people, other relationships, and that proved to me that it was you I wanted.  I couldn’t stop thinking about you Danny.  It was never going to work with other men, while I still thought I had a chance of something with you.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, sounding exasperated. “You’re not making any sense!”

“Just listen,” Lucy insisted, her eyes on his.  “What I’m saying is I had that chance, to experience other people, to figure out what I wanted, but you haven’t.  You’ve been locked inside since you were sixteen.  You only know about me.  You see?  How do you know for sure that I’m the one for you?”

Danny laughed then, but the sound made Lucy pull her hand from his.  It was a brutal, bitter laugh, and it matched the hardness that had suddenly filled his eyes. “You must be fucking kidding me?” he asked her.  “This must be some kind of joke, right?”

“No, Danny,” she shook her head at him. “And when I saw you with that woman, I realised it even more.  You need to be single.  You need to do all the things you never got the chance to do.  Be young free and single, a young lad, all of that.  So you can figure out who you are and what you want.”

It wasn’t getting through.  She could see that now.  His eyes were clouded with anger and resentment, his jaw jutting out, his lips screwed tightly together.  He looked so young all of a sudden that it was heartbreaking.  She wanted to reach out and wrap her arms around him, but she knew that was just another part of it all that was wrong; her feeling the need to mother him.  It was all wrong. 

“Let me get this straight,” he said to her then, his voice cold.  “Because I’m obviously really fucking dumb.  You’re dumping me right?”

“No, Danny,” she tried to explain, reaching for his hand again, but this time it was him who pulled away.  “It’s not like that.  Please try to listen to what I’m saying.  I’m giving you the chance to find out what you want.  I need to know that I’m really what you want, that I’m enough for you, that we’re right together.  I can’t get rid of the feeling that you’ve not had the chance to…” Lucy shook her head then, searching for the right words.

“To sleep around?” Danny finished for her, his voice louder.  She looked at him and sighed.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Yes it is, don’t bullshit me Lucy.  You want me to be single?  You want me to go and shag around for a while?” He widened his eyes, waiting for her to answer.  She couldn’t.  She was perilously close to tears. “That is what you’re saying, isn’t it?  Because I haven’t had the chance?”

“That’s sort of it,” she tried again. “But I don’t want you to think it’s because I don’t want to be with you…because I do…I just…”

“You’re doing this for my own good?” he cried, throwing up both hands, and knocking all the chips from his lap.  Lucy looked at him and wanted to shrink away.  His blue eyes flared back at her, his top lip curled. “This is so fucking funny! You’re dumping me after only a few weeks.  So I can sleep around?  Nice one Lucy.  Fucking class.”  He got up suddenly then, taking her by surprise.  He was marching away across the sand before she even had time to call out. 

Lucy forced herself to get to her feet and run after him.  She caught his elbow, but he pulled it viciously away.  “Danny, don’t just storm off, for God’s sake!”

“Why?  What else have you got to say to me?  I don’t think I want to hear anything else thanks Luce.  I already feel like a right fucking twat.”

“You don’t need to, don’t be silly! Just stop and talk properly to me.  Talk like a grown up.”

“Oh so now I’m not a grown up either?” He did stop walking then.  He whirled to face her, his expression close to rage.  “So in your eyes I’m not a real man, or a grown up until I’ve shagged some random women?  Right?”

“No Danny, no,” Lucy shook her head.  The tears were coming now, and she could do nothing to stop them.  “It’s more than that.  You’re not giving me chance to explain.  I just want you to be sure that’s all.  How can I live the rest of my life knowing you just got stuck with me?”

“Stuck with you?”  Danny shouted at her. “How am I stuck with you?”

“Because, because of all that happened.  Because you didn’t have a normal life, when you were a teenager.  You didn’t get to be like other teenagers!”

“And that makes me stuck with you?”  He placed his hands on his hips and shook his head at the sand.  “You’re insane Lucy, you really are.  I thought you’d credit me with more intelligence.  I loved you, you stupid cow.” He lifted his eyes to hers then.  “I fucking loved you back then and I love you now. I don’t understand why you’re doing this to us.”

Lucy bit her trembling lower lip and pressed her hand up to his cheek.  He did not pull away this time.  He just stared at her in misery, not understanding.  She felt like a bitch and wondered what the hell she was doing.  “I’m doing it for you,” she told him, realising that as she spoke them, the words sounded hopeless. “I want you to be free and find out who you are, and then come back to me when you know it’s right.  I’ll wait for you, I promise.”

His eyes hardened again.  His lips tightened and he slapped her hand away from his face.  “Don’t bother,” he snarled at her.  “You did this to me once before, remember?  When I didn’t show up to your precious beach?  Ha, how fucking fitting here we are on another fucking beach!  I guess you planned this all, yeah? Don’t cry.” He placed a finger on her cheek, and pressed down on the tear that lay there, wiping it away so roughly that she flinched and drew back from him.  “Don’t fucking cry over it Lucy.  You did this before.  You gave up on me then, as soon as the going got tough.  I forgave you that time, because you didn’t know the full story.  Well you can forget it this time.  I’m not forgiving you this time.  You want me to go and shag other women yeah?”  He gestured wildly to the beach around them.  “Right then.  Off I go!  I’ll report back, shall I?  I’ll text you all the grotty details?  Let you know how I get on, shall I?”

“Danny, don’t…”

“Well you’ll want to know, won’t you?  You’ll want to know who I do it with, and what it’s like?  Hey, maybe they’ll teach me some new tricks eh?” He stepped towards her again, this time pushing his face right down into hers.  “Maybe that’s what this is all about.  Not experienced enough for you, am I?  Not good enough in bed?  Or maybe you think I’m damaged goods, eh?”

“Danny!” she stared at him in horror.  She watched his face shut down.  All emotion seemed to flood right out of it.  He just looked pale and cold.

“Fuck you,” he said, and walked away.

Lucy stood alone on the beach, her body shaking with sobs.  She covered her mouth with both hands, watching him go.  He walked briskly and stiffly into the distance, with the little dog hurrying along at his heels.  She felt sick.  She had known it would go badly, but she had not expected his fury to come like that.  It had been like looking at a stranger, she thought helplessly.  Oh God, what have I done?

 

 

 

 

 

 

26

Danny

 

 

            This just keeps getting better and better.  This is fucking unbelievable.  I wish I’d stayed inside.  I wish I’d been locked up forever. In a state of shock and confusion, Danny made his way back towards the high street.  He felt like he had been slapped in the face.  Kicked in the balls.  He felt like she had ripped the ground from right under his feet.  Why did she want to hurt him so much?  Why now?  In the middle of all of this shit?  She wants shot of me, she wants out, why am I surprised?  Why would anyone want me? He walked on, faster and faster, head down, hands in pockets, unable to make sense of it.  He felt blinded by rage and choked by pain.  He wanted to go to the pub and get smashed.  He wanted someone to come and have a pop.  Get into a fight.

His mind wandered back to the previous day.  The fight.  In a strange and unsettling way, it had been something he understood.  Something he recognised.  Fear is worse than pain.  He remembered how he had figured this out when he was a kid.  How it had helped him get through the bad times.  How he used to sit and study the pain, remove himself from it, as far as he was able to.  He would try to separate his mind from his hurting physical body, and analyse the pain, try to work out exactly what it was.  It was burning, or it was throbbing, or it was sickening dull ache in his belly from the day before.  Whatever it was, he had worked out a way to get away from it, whilst accepting it at the same time.

It was the fear, he remembered now.  It was the fear that was so horrible, so soul-destroying.  It was the physical manifestation of fear, the spine tingling sensation, of fingers creeping along your skin, then coming to life inside the pit of your belly, stirring you up.  It was the same now.  The fear of what could happen, the fear of who was after him, and what they might do next, that was a hundred times worse than the pain of having a glass smashed in your face.  Danny smiled to himself bitterly, and marched down the high street.

He almost stormed straight past Terry’s shop. It was only nearly bumping into a skinny kid with a pink mohican that stopped him in his tracks.  The kid staggered off down the street, a pile of vinyl twelve inches tucked gleefully under one arm.  Danny peered through the open door, and his shoulders sagged. He wanted to get to the pub badly, but he didn’t want to let Terry down, so he took a deep breath and walked into the shop.  Immediately he stopped in the doorway and inhaled deeply, even closing his eyes for a brief, calming second.  A smile touched his lips, before fading away again.  The smell, it was the same, just the same. Dusty shelves, dusty record sleeves, and the smell of the vinyl itself.  Danny looked around him.  Another scruffy haired teenager had his back to him, while he flicked ruthlessly through the records.  The shop was smaller than Terry’s old one, so it appeared overstocked, almost every conceivable space had been filled with shelves, and tables overflowing with records, cassettes and compact discs. 

Just then Terry appeared behind the counter, mug of tea in hand, tea stains already dripping down his wide swinging belly. Danny nodded at him. “You look knackered Terry,” he said to his old boss, stepping up to the counter and shaking the man’s hand again. Terry slipped onto his stool. Danny raised his eyebrows at the way his huge body disguised the stool, making it look like he was floating in mid-air.

“This is it,” Terry groaned, “I can’t keep up with it, son. I’m bloody killing meself in here. You’ve come to tell me you can start today, right?”

Danny grimaced. “How about tomorrow?” he asked, thinking again of Lucy, and the pub, and oblivion.  “I’ve got to meet someone now. I can come in first thing tomorrow? You’ll have to show me the ropes though. I’ll be rusty after all these years.”

“You’ll be fine,” Terry persuaded him. “All right, tomorrow morning it is. I can only offer you twenty hours or so at the moment. Money is tight. But we’ll see how things go, right?”

“That’s amazing Terry, thank you,” Danny told him, and reached for his hand again. He shook it firmly, looking squarely into the fat man’s eyes. Another one who tried to help me, he thought, looking at him then, let me hide in his shop, he knew I was in trouble, and he never asked why, he just let me hide. “This means a lot to me, you know Terry. More than you know. I’m gonna’ feel good now, you know, with a  job to come to.”

“Ah, go on with you,” Terry pulled his hand back and waved it at him. “It’s no big deal. I’m getting old and you were always a bloody good worker for me. It makes sense.”

Danny smiled. He reached out again and clapped Terry on the shoulder. He wanted to say more, to thank him more eloquently, more meaningfully, but he knew Terry was not an emotional man, nor a talkative one. Their conversations back then had only ever been about music. Danny still remembered the many times he had crept hesitantly into Terry’s shop, just down the road from Howard’s club.  He had started flicking through vinyl versions of his Nirvana albums.  Before long he had become embroiled in heated discussions with Terry about music.  It had grown from there, he recalled. He would pop in every day. Mostly just to look. To listen to the records the fat man played on the counter. Then he had started to help out, for nothing at first, just to have a place to go, somewhere to hide, and he would get lost in the music, and he would discover new music and old music, and all of it was better than being at home.  “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he said to Terry, and slunk back out of the shop.

Immediately he remembered Lucy and felt all of the joy drop out of his soul again. Lucy could fuck off.  Okay, that was sorted.  Fuck her.  What she had just said made no sense at all.  To him, if she loved him then she should want to be with him, and stick by him, end of story.  To do anything else was just giving up, just letting him know it was all too much for her.  He thought back to the day he had mentioned to her.  The day he had apparently stood her up at the beach.  The night before he and his friends had discovered Chaos for the first time, the club that played their type of music.  He had been so determined to go, to go and dance and sing and get high and forget it all.  Nothing was going to stand in his way. 

Danny reached the Olde Inne and pushed roughly through the doors.  He made his way to the bar, glaring at anyone who dared look his way, and abruptly ordered a pint of beer and a shot of whiskey from the girl there.  They had drunk whiskey that night too, he thought grimly.  He had endured a scuffle with Howard in the hallway to get out.  He had tried to stop him, but he’d got away, he’d got out, and he’d ran through the night to Michael and Anthony’s house, bloody faced and euphoric.  The night had been amazing.  Danny sat grimly in the corner with his two drinks, and his dog, and lit up a cigarette. 

He thought about Chaos now.  Just around the corner, only minutes from the bed-sit they had ended up running to.  How it had been good song after good song, and he had taken Michael into the toilet with him to take speed again.  They had been so high, so happy, so untouchable.  But like all things, it went to shit in the morning.  He’d woken up late and run to the beach to meet Lucy, his body a horrible mess from Howards’ abuse, and a night of drinking and speeding.  She hadn’t been there.  So he’d kept running, on to her big house on Cedar View.  Her big house and her concerned old man, looking down at Danny like he was a piece of shit on his shoe.  She’d given up then, he thought viciously, she’d walked away, turned her back because he was too much trouble, too much hard work, and she was doing it again now.

He recalled Anthony, collaring him on the way back through the estate,  furious with him for giving Michael speed.  Another face, another pair of eyes judging him, looking down on him so he’d run to the park and felt like there was no point in anything.  He’d sat on the bench and felt like the wind could just blow him away.  He rolled up his sleeve now, looking for the scar.  He still had it.  He’d sat on that bench in a cloud of self-loathing, and he’d taken his own knife and slashed his own arm, and that had felt good, that had made him relax.  And then what had he done?  He thought back, frowning deeply over the rim of his pint glass. Oh yeah.  He’d wandered over to Freeman’s place hadn’t he?  Because Jack Freeman wouldn’t judge him or look down at him, or get mad at him.  And sure enough, Jack Freeman had plenty of stuff over there to chill him out.  Plenty of stuff to make him not give a shit about anything.

His phone went off then, and he cursed under his breath, dragging it out.  It was Caroline Haskell.  What time and where? Danny lowered his pint, thought for a moment, and then typed in his reply; In the Olde Inne, Belfield Park high street.  I’m there now.  A few moments later she replied; on my way.  Danny sat back, picked up his whiskey and downed it in one.  He sat and glared at the table, lost in a dream.  He felt helplessly entangled in the past, as there it was, all the fucking time, ruining things and coming back to haunt him.  He had known coming out of prison would not be easy, he had known it would take time and adjustment.  But he had never expected this.  His mere presence was yet again wrecking the lives of the people he cared about.  Just as it had done back then.  He thought then, for the first time, about moving on.  Starting anew.  The thought appealed to him in a way it never had before.

Caroline Haskell arrived just five minutes later, which took him by surprise.  But nevertheless, he was relieved to see her.  She nodded to him, went to the bar, and then came over with two whiskey and cokes, shoving one across the table at him.  She dumped her large bag to the floor, flicked back her glossy hair and sat down opposite him.  “Hi,” she said then, exhaling breath, stretching her arms out and yawning widely.  “I was close by anyway.  Good to see you.” She winced at his face. “What happened to you?”

“We were set upon,” he replied with a sigh.  “In here, yesterday.  Three men.”

“Oh God.  Why?  What for?”

“Well I might be able to find out now.  If you’ve got that information for me.  Thanks,” he said then, picking up the drink she had bought and tipping her a wink.  “Cheers.”

“So what are you doing in here at this time?” Caroline asked, folding her arms on top of the table, and shaking her hair back again.  Danny looked her over quickly, before downing the second whiskey in one again.  She was wearing her denim jacket again, this time over a tunic and leggings combination.  He thought briefly and painfully about Lucy, alone on the beach, and then he smiled at Caroline.

“Feeling sorry for myself,” he told her.  She cocked her head to one side and her bottom lip jutted out, making an ah poor you face.  “Normally I try not to do that.  But today I’m making an exception.”

“Really?  Why’s that?”

“My girlfriend just dumped me,” he looked at her, lifting and dropping his shoulders wearily.  He sighed, and pushed one hand back through his hair. Caroline was frowning at him in sympathy.

“Oh no!  I’m so sorry Daniel.  Why?”

“Call me Danny,” he said, and shrugged again.  “That’s the thing.  I don’t really know why.  Maybe because I’m me and everything I touch turns to shit?” he raised his eyebrows at her expectantly, and she laughed and picked up her own drink.

“Oh I’m happy to take the risk,” she said, taking one sip, before leaning down and dragging a thick bound notebook from her bag.  “Anything I can help with?  Being a woman, I mean?”

“Nah,” he shook his head quickly.  “Forget it.  It’s boring.  So what have you got for me?  You didn’t take long.”

“Told you, it’s my job,” she replied brightly, folding her arms on top of the notebook, while he frowned at it curiously.  “But we had a deal remember?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your interview,” she reminded him, with a coy roll of her eyes. “I’m not sure I want to give you this information, then have you cancel on me.”

Danny leaned back in his chair again, slipped one arm around Kurt, who was sat next to him, and drank slowly and thoughtfully from his pint.  Finally he lowered it and narrowed his eyes at Caroline.  “You think if you give me the information I won’t give you an interview?”  She grinned in reply and nodded. “Okay, but how do I know this information is correct?  I need to check it out first.”

“Three addresses,” she told him. “Dennis Howard, Jerry Howard and Jack Freeman.  All three men are alive and well.  Thought that was what you wanted?”

“It is, but how do I know that’s where they really live?” Danny decided to play her at her own game.  “How do I know I won’t give you your interview, then go to find them and find it’s all crap?  Made up?”

“Because that would be wrong, and I don’t operate like that, plus you could complain about me and I could lose my job!” Caroline Haskell looked at him triumphantly, but Danny was not convinced. Trust no one, he thought, looking back at her intently, while a grin pulled at his lips.  He drank more beer while she thought it over.  Finally she took another sip of her own whiskey, and looked at him shrewdly. “So we both find ourselves not trusting each other?” she questioned. “This is interesting.  And probably a sad indictment of our faith in other people!  I like you Danny.  You remind me of me.”

“Brilliant,” he shrugged carelessly. “So what do we do?”

“Okay, looks like we will have to do this bit by bit.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“You answer some of my questions,” she tapped the book under her arms. “Then you get one address to check out.  If it’s correct, you come back to me and answer more questions.  And so on.  Obviously the interview will be taped.  In stages.”

“Hmm,” Danny picked up his pint and drank it down to the end.  He put the empty glass on the table and crossed his arms over his chest.  “We’d end up seeing quite a bit of each other that way.”  He didn’t know why he said that, but he did like the way a bit of colour crept into her cheeks as she smiled back at him.  She did the hair toss again, even though she didn’t need to.  There was no denying the warmth in her voice, as she looked him quickly up and down again.

“Well that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?”

Danny shrugged, giving nothing away. “And we’d both get what we want.”

“Looks like it.”

“Okay then,” he said before he could think about it too long and change his mind.  He reached across the table and patted the book.  “Fire away.”

“What, now?” Caroline frowned at him, and then at the pub around them.  “Here?”

“Why not?” Danny asked.  “We’re both comfy aren’t we?  No one is listening.  You got your tape recorder thing on you?”

“Of course I do.”  She looked excited now, he thought, watching as she dug back into her bag and pulled out a neat black recording device.  She placed it on the table and pressed a few buttons, before flipping her notebook open.  Danny tried to peer at the writing she had scrawled across the pages, but she moved her hand to cover it.  “Okay then.  We can get started.  How many questions do you think is worth one address?”

Danny sighed.  “I suppose it depends on the questions.”

She looked at him quizzically. “Five?”

“Okay.  What the hell.”

She looked like she could not believe her luck, he mused then, feeling a faint stirring of disgust, as she got to work, sucking on the end of her pen as she looked through her notes, and checked the tape recorder again.  She seemed suddenly businesslike and hungry, like she had seemed on the other occasions he had met her.  He sat back and waited, wondering what he was letting himself in for.

Caroline Haskell flicked back her hair and fixed him with a steely gaze. “How old were you when you first met Lee Howard?”

Easy, Danny thought then, in amusement, that’s one question you silly bitch.

“Thirteen,” he told her.  “I was thirteen.”

“How would you describe yourself at age thirteen?”

“What the fuck?”

“That’s the next question Danny,” Caroline had reached out and pressed pause on the recorder.  She eyed him suspiciously.  “You said five.  That’s the next one.”

“But what does that mean?  How am I supposed to answer that?  Why do you want to know that?” He glanced at the bar then, thinking of another drink, and she caught his gaze drifting and got up suddenly. 

“You want another pint?  Or another whiskey? Maybe it will help loosen your tongue.  If not, we’re in for a very long day!”

Danny sucked his breath in, trying to think things over.  He didn’t trust her.  He didn’t trust her an inch.  Suddenly this all felt wrong, wrong and intrusive, and he panicked slightly, thinking if that was the second question, what the hell would the third one be?  Where was this leading, and what else would she demand to know?  Without waiting for him to reply, Caroline walked briskly to the bar, taking her notebook with her.  For a brief, confused moment, Danny thought about getting up and walking out.  Finding Lucy on the beach and begging her to reconsider. 

But then she came back with another pint and another whiskey, and he felt himself weaken, and he realised how regrettably weak he really was, as he picked the whiskey up hungrily and downed it.  She sat herself back down, her brow furrowed with thought and concentration.  “You want these addresses, don’t you?” she reminded him, while her finger paused above the button on the recorder. “You want to see these men and sort things out don’t you?  Or have you changed your mind?”

Danny thought about Anthony then.  His head bandaged, his life in ruins, as he ran off to try and talk his wife around again.  He sighed, held his pint in one hand, and thought of it as a friend that would get him through this, whatever this was.  He nodded at her and she pressed play.  “How would you describe yourself at age thirteen?”

“I was a little shit,” he told her, his eyes on the table, his tone dull. “If you want to know the truth.  I was smoking, I was drinking regularly with my friends.  I started smoking pot just before I turned fourteen.  At thirteen I had been arrested twice, for fighting other boys at school.  I was a little bastard most of the time, especially to my mother.  I did what I wanted to do.  Is that enough?”

Caroline nodded, unsmiling.  “How would you describe your relationship with Lee Howard in the early days?”

Danny swallowed.  His throat was dry, so he took a few guilty gulps of beer before answering.  “Um…it was not good.  I didn’t like my mother seeing him.  I had a big problem with all of her boyfriends, if you want to know the truth.  They were usually dickheads and tossers, one way or another.  I didn’t think he’d be any different and I was right.”

“In what way were you right?”

“Is that number four?”

“Um, no, I was just trying to get you to explain.”

“Oh okay.  Well he was very full of himself.  He part-owned Nancy’s nightclub and thought he was the bees knees.  He was one of those people who talks over other people, you know, interrupts all the time?  Always thinking they’ve got something better to say?  I couldn’t stand him.”  Danny rolled his eyes, faking boredom, drank some more beer and carried on.  “I thought he was arrogant and rude and bossy, all those things.  The second time I met him he tried to intimidate me.”

“How?”  Caroline Haskell was staring at him, as if transfixed by what he was saying.  He wondered distastefully how long she had waited to hear all this shit.

“He just squeezed my neck in the kitchen, after our meal, when we were washing up.  Nothing heavy, but it was a warning.  He told me nothing I could do would scare him away from my mother.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“What number question is that?”

“It’s still number three Danny, I’m just trying to get you to explain what you mean.”

“Who is seriously going to want to read all this shit?” he exclaimed then, shaking his head at her.  She looked annoyed and pressed pause again.

“What’s the problem?”

“This, this is shit.  This is boring shit.  You’re wasting your time.  No one is going to care.”

“Danny I probably won’t use everything you say,” she tried to explain, “it doesn’t work like that.  I just need as much information as possible to put the story together, so it’s all true.  I’ll let you read the article when it’s put together properly, I promise you.  You’ll be able to have say on what goes in.”

Danny drank from his pint.  He felt pretty drunk now and wondered if it was obvious to her.  He shrugged at her carelessly. “Okay whatever.  Go on then.”  She smiled gratefully and pressed play again. “Me and my friends,” he told her. “We played tricks on my mums boyfriend, the one she had before Howard.  To get rid of him.  Just stupid kid stuff, so we did the same to Lee.  Except mum had warned him about it, so he knew what to expect.  We still had a go though.  Laxatives in his beer one day.  That kind of thing.”

“So the relationship was not good, even back then?”

“No,” he said, sounding bored.  “It was not good.  It was never good.  Question number four now surely?”

“Yes.  You claimed at your trial that Lee Howard physically abused you behind your mother’s back.  Can you tell me when this first began?”

“Jesus,” Danny groaned, covering his eyes with one hand and shaking his head into it.  “Okay.  I think…there was that in the kitchen, and then a few weeks later she let him move in. I tried to kick up a fuss but no one cared.  My brother left for University around that time.” He closed his eyes, screwing them up tightly under his hand, trying to remember.  “I think…I’m not sure, but I think it was this time I was in the kitchen at night, and I was getting myself something to eat, because I’d been like sulking or whatever, refusing to eat meals with them.  He came in from the club and went a bit mad about it, saying it was his food, that kind of thing.  Oh yeah, I know, I remember.  I said fuck you, which was pretty brave of me really, because he was built like a fucking gorilla!” Danny dropped his hand and found himself laughing slightly, as Caroline Haskell watched him, pen poised above her notebook.  He knew he was drunk then.  Finding that memory funny.  “He grabbed me by the neck and sort of slammed me down on the kitchen table.  Okay?  That was it. So it was a few weeks after I met him, when I was still thirteen. Then a few weeks later he roughed me up after I got arrested.”

“Arrested for what?”

“Fighting at the beach.  He picked me up.  Got physical.  Told me not to tell my mum and he’d keep the arrest quiet for me.” Danny shrugged.  “And from there it continued.  He started having lots of fun.  Let’s put it that way.”

“Okay.” Caroline nodded and glanced at her book.  “Why didn’t you tell your mum about this at the time?”

“Ah I wondered when we would get to this,” he laughed again. “I did try actually, once.  She didn’t believe me, and to be honest she had good reason to expect me to lie.  I didn’t bother again after that, because I was embarrassed.  I felt like a dick.  I was scared.  Take your pick!” he was counting out on his fingers.  “Because he told me she wanted to put me in care, because I was too much trouble, and if I went to care worse things would happen to me, and he could convince her to do that any time he wanted.  Because I didn’t want anyone to know, if you can believe that.  My friends, and everyone at school, they all thought I was this bad boy, you know?  Tough and cool, all that shit, and I loved it at that age, didn’t I? Having that reputation.  Wouldn’t have been cool if they knew what went on at home.  Like him playing tricks on me, making me think I was nuts.”

“How do you mean?”

“Salt on my toothbrush.  Hiding my stuff.  Messing with my mind. He was getting his own back.  That’s the last question right?

Caroline looked down at her book, lips screwed tightly together, forehead wrinkled.  “Um, well..”

“That was five questions Caroline,” he said, in a teasing, sing-song voice, leaning towards her.  “Turn your tape recorder off now please!”

“Okay, okay,” she pressed a button and dropped the recorder back into her bag.  She closed the notebook, but not before tearing out a page at the back.  She folded this into two, and pushed it across the table.  “A deal is a deal.  That’s your first address.”

Danny lifted his eyebrows, picked it up and unfolded it.  He looked at what was written down and thought for a moment.  He thought it sounded fairly local.  Somewhere he had heard of.  The name on the paper was Dennis Howard.  He nodded, folded it and shoved it into his pocket.  Caroline was watching him carefully, her arms crossed on the table.  “Thank you,” he told her.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“The police have probably already spoken to him.”

“Probably,” he shrugged and picked up his drink.  “So how did I do anyway?  Get everything you wanted so far?  Juicy enough for you?  Leave you thirsty for more?”  He found himself laughing, but was not really sure why.  He watched a slow grin lighten her face.

“I have to be honest with you Danny,” she said, and drank the rest of her whiskey in one.  “Your story has fascinated me from the beginning.  I was one of the first on the scene that morning, in Redchurch.  I’ve always found it an intriguing tale.”

“Really?” he snorted.  “Even eight years later?  There must be loads of other stories more fascinating than this.”

“Not to me,” she shook her head, and got up from the table.  “I think I’ll have another drink, would you join me?”  Danny nodded.  He thought about offering to pay, but she was already at the bar.  He looked at the back of her.  She had slipped off her jacket, and he could see the neat, trim shape of her now.  She looked like she was one of those women who took good care of herself.  Her bottom, he mused then, was particularly pert and well structured.  Danny was jerked away from his thoughts by his phone going off.  It was a message from Michael; Lucy just phoned me-u ok?  Danny pulled out his cigarettes and lit one up, as he typed back; dumped, getting pissed now.  Caroline came back to the table, this time with a bottle of red wine and two glasses.  Danny looked at them in amusement.  His phone buzzed again; where? Who with? I’ll come. 

“Looks expensive,” Danny nodded at the wine, as he keyed in another answer for Michael; with Haskell, don’t come I’m fine.got an address. Be home soon.  He thought that ought to keep Michael satisfied for a while, and he was right.  His phone fell silent.  Caroline poured the wine.

“I’m a wine drinker most of the time,” she shrugged. “Don’t think I could stomach another whiskey.  Did you know I reported on your story at the time?”

“Mike said.  I kept all the newspapers actually, but I never looked at the reporters names.”

“Why did you keep them?”

He shrugged.  “Don’t know.  Just did.  So eight years later you still want to know about it?  Seems weird to me.  You would have moved on.”

“It was one of those cases that shocked the nation, Danny,” she looked at him rather sombrely, her fingers gently caressing the stem of her wine glass. “Maybe you don’t really realise that.”

“You don’t know a lot, in prison.”

“I suppose not.  People were shocked though.  Not just locals either.  Everyone.  I was only twenty-two at the time.  Hadn’t been on the paper very long at all.  I was lucky to be allowed down to the scene.”  She flicked back her hair, and straightened up.  “I was there, you know.  When they brought you out of the house.  You came out first, and then the body a while later.”

Danny did not know what to say.  He drank the wine and felt slightly removed from it all, which was actually quite nice.  His body had that fuzzy warm feeling flowing through it.  He felt tired and sleepy, and strangely at ease, now that the tape recorder had been put away.  “Can’t believe you saw all that,” he said to her.  “Weird.”

“It was fascinating,” she went on.  “It really was.  For a fresh faced reporter like me.  There was this skinny little kid coming out in handcuffs, covered in blood, and grinning.  That was the oddest thing Danny.  You were just grinning.”

“Was I?”

“Yes!  And your friends, Michael and Anthony, and Lucy, is it?  They were all there too, being held back by the police.  They were shouting, trying to get your attention.  I was overwhelmed really,” she shrugged at him and sighed.  “I wanted to know there and then, what the hell had gone on in that house, who you were and why you had killed someone, and why you were smiling about it! I had so many questions.  And frustratingly I never really got that many answers.”

“You were at the trial?” he asked her.  She nodded quickly.

“As much as we were allowed.  It didn’t really answer my questions though.  I mean, it did, and there were a lot of people vouching for you, a lot of people speaking on your behalf, but nothing from you.  I still didn’t know why.”

“Why?” Danny asked her.  “Why what?  Why did I kill him?”

“I suppose so.  Why, everything.  You must ask yourself the same questions Danny.”

He shrugged again.  “It’s not that hard to figure out why,” he said, and he watched that hungry look return to her green eyes again.  He saw them flick towards her bag, and he wondered how much she would love to get that recorder back out and hit play again.  But it was too late.  She had used up her questions, and he had the first address.  “There have been lots of cases over the years, of abused wives finally snapping and killing their husbands.  Same thing.  Someone pushes you that far, someone makes you feel there is no choice.  Well I had a choice I guess.  Me or him.  My life or his.”  He drank more wine, slowly, watching her face over the rim of the glass.  He could see her eyes searching his, he could feel the energy of her thirst and her desire.  He waited for what she would ask next.

“Do you ever regret it?” she asked finally.  “Do you ever wish you hadn’t killed him?”

Danny smiled at her.  He reached out then, sliding his hand across the table and laying it gently over hers.  She sucked in her breath, surprised at his touch.  “I don’t ever regret it,” he whispered to her.  “I don’t ever regret wiping that monster from this world.  It was the best day of my life.”  He saw her controlling herself, stiffening slightly in her chair.  His smile grew wider.  He patted her hand and wondered if she would pull away, if she would recoil.  But suddenly she turned her hand up the other way and laced her fingers through his.

“We could take this wine back to my house,” she hissed, her head low, her hair skimming the table.  Danny grinned recklessly.

“Why the hell not?”

 

He realised how drunk he was when the cold November air hit him, as they stumbled from the pub.  Caroline hailed a taxi and they bundled in, giggling.  Danny did not pay much attention to where they were headed, but it seemed a fairly short journey.  The next thing he knew, she was fumbling with her keys, and they then they were in the hallway of her house.  She nodded through to a large open plan living space, and kicked off her boots.  He wandered slowly through, his head spinning, his mind a mess of anxieties, guilt and excitement.  He did not have any time to focus on any of them.  He felt her arms snake around his middle from behind, and when he turned around, she pulled his jacket from him and dropped it to the floor.  He felt himself guided back towards a lush leather sofa, and watched, wide eyed and silent, as she came towards him, peeling off her dress. “I really should not be doing this,” she said, with a giggle, before pushing him down and climbing on top. 

 

When it was over, he thought two things almost simultaneously, as Caroline rolled herself in a throw from the sofa and padded into the kitchen.  He thought viciously about sending Lucy a text, telling her what he had just done, and with whom.  And he thought, what the hell have you just done, what have you done?  The alcohol was wearing off slowly.  His head was throbbing, and so were his balls.  He pulled his jeans back on while Caroline was busying herself in the kitchen.  It looked like she was making coffee.  He found his last cigarette and looked up at her. “Do you mind if I…?”  Caroline smiled at him indulgently.

“Course not.  Go for it.  Coffee?”

“Yeah, that would be great.”  He fell silent then, at a complete loss for words.  What could he say?  Why had he done it?  He leant back on the sofa, smoking.  Caroline padded back over with two mugs of coffee, and handed one to him.  He saw her eyes take him in then, the scars and the marks on his naked chest.  He felt sickened again, and put the coffee down to reach for his t-shirt.

“Please don’t tell my boss,” Caroline said, slipping into the space beside him, and making very little effort to cover herself with the throw.  He glanced at her, and pulled his top over his head.

“I won’t.”

She drank her coffee, watching him.  “You okay?”

“Yeah.  Course.  Just kind of shocked that we did that.  I mean, we don’t even know each other.” He smiled slightly, puffed smoke across the room, and looked away from her.  He looked at the door, and hoped she didn’t notice.  She wriggled closer then, her hair loose and soft upon her bare shoulders.  He felt her fingers stroking the back of his neck, and he flinched, it was a knee jerk reaction, but she pulled away, looking intrigued rather than hurt.

“Sorry.  Didn’t mean to make you jump.”

“It’s okay.  Sorry.”  He thought about telling her how Howard had always grabbed him by the neck, held him down by the neck, as if that was the easiest way to control the rest of the body, and he supposed it was.  And sometimes he had stroked his neck too, very slowly and deliberately, teasing out the tension, preparing to strike harder.  Danny shook himself and picked his coffee back up, glancing again at the door without meaning to.  This time, Caroline did notice.

“Keen to get out of here, eh?” she said, with a knowing smile.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down.  “Don’t take it personally.  I was drunk.  I mean, I still am.  We shouldn’t have done that, should we?  I mean, it seems a bit wrong.”

“Well I suppose,” she shrugged carelessly and settled back in the sofa, her coffee in both hands. “But then it’s not like I’m your boss, or you’re mine, or anything.  I’m not the police either.  There’s really no reason why we shouldn’t.  You said you were single, and I certainly am.”

“How did it feel then?” he thought he may as well ask her.  Their eyes met, and he found hers dazzling with excitement.  “Sleeping with a killer?”

“It felt great,” she laughed in reply, shaking back her hair.  “You were great.”

“That wasn’t why I was asking.  You just seemed so obsessed with all of this.  I don’t get why.  I’m nothing special.”

“Well I’ll be the judge of that,” she purred, moving closer again, this time dropping her hand very gently onto his forearm.  “When are you going to visit Dennis Howard?  I’m already looking forward to the next stage of our interview.”

Danny got up then.  He put his cup down on the polished floorboards and grabbed his jacket from the floor.  He couldn’t stand it, he had to get out, get away from her.  He wondered why it suddenly felt like he had sold his soul to the devil. 

“Sorry,” he muttered at her, not meeting her eyes as she watched him pull on his jacket and head for the door, cigarette still in hand.  “My head’s a mess.  I’ve got to go.”

He found his way outside, looked around and realised he had no idea where the fuck he was.