15

Anthony

November 2004

Thankfully, the letter arrived while Chrissie was working.  She had taken the car to pick up a load of ironing from an elderly client, and would be driving the load to her friend Gina’s house to get it done.  Anthony knew this was an excuse more than anything, to get out of the house, and out in the car on her own, without the kids, without him.  He knew she and Gina would drink endless cups of coffee and gossip about their week, and moan about their other halves, while the ironing took a back seat.  Anthony did not mind.  Just as Chrissie sometimes craved time on her own at the weekend, he craved the time at home, with the kids. 

They were both in the kitchen, when Anthony heard the post drop through the door and onto the mat.  Jess had lined up her army of Sylvanian figures on the kitchen table and was chatting away, making each figure talk out loud.  Liam was working his way through a thick pile of drawing paper, scribbling and doodling ferociously, with his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth.  Anthony grabbed the post from the hallway and took it back into the kitchen to open.  “Daddy can you be this one?” Jess asked, holding out a little furry brown bear figure.  Anthony took it obligingly and tucked it under one arm while he started to open the post.

“Let daddy just open the letters,” he told his daughter, “then I will.  Is it a girl or a boy?”

“It’s the dad,” Jess informed him in a tone that let him know this should be obvious, “that’s the daddy bear daddy!”

“Oh okay.  One minute baby.”

The letter was nestled between his mobile phone bill and one of those letters enticing you to get out yet another bank loan.  He opened it first out of curiosity.  The envelope was plain white and addressed him as Mr. Anthony Anderson.  He tore it open and pulled out the folded up paper inside.  It was thick, good quality paper he thought instantly, and had been folded very precisely and stiffly.  Intrigued he flipped it open and found himself staring at a photo of Danny.  Immediately, Anthony felt his body grow cold.   He swallowed nervously, raised his eyes briefly to check the kids, then lowered them back to the page.  Danny’s photo had been photocopied onto the paper, and positioned right in the middle of the page.  It was a recent photo, he realised with growing dread. It could have been taken days ago.  Above the photo, typed out in black bold letters it read; THIS MAN IS A KILLER.  Underneath the photo were the words; STAY AWAY FROM HIM.  Anthony held the paper with fingers that started to shake without his permission.  He felt like dropping it to the floor and stamping on it, he felt like it was alive and would somehow taint him if he held it much longer.  He turned quickly and dropped it onto the sideboard.  He stared down at the photo, trying to work out where it had been taken and when. 

It looked like it was outside.  Anthony peered closer.  Danny was staring towards the photographer, but not right at them.  It looked like his hair was being blown slightly by the wind.  He was not smiling, but his expression looked calm and relaxed.  Anthony scrutinised the background, trying to pick out anything that would give him a clue as to where it had been taken.  He could see the legs of other people.  Was it a busy high street?  Somewhere with shoppers passing by?

He looked again at the writing.  The message was obviously short and to the point, but did the sender know he already knew Danny had killed a man? Or was the sender simply trying to warn people he had been seen with, in case they did not know?  Anthony rubbed his chin, deep in thought.  There were two ways you could take this he decided.  Someone had it in for Danny, the graffiti was just the start and this was the next step. That much was plain.  But was the letter, addressed to him, meant to warn him, assuming he did not know Danny’s past?  Or did the sender already know he knew?  In that case, it was a different sort of warning, he thought.  Stay away from him.  Stay away from him, or what?

Anthony looked again at the envelope.  He almost smacked himself on the head then.  How had he not noticed before that it had no post mark, no stamp?  It had been hand posted.  Before, or after the postman had been?  Or maybe someone had passed it to the postman and asked him to drop it through?  Anthony picked the letter and envelope up and hurried towards the front door.  “Daddy, the bear!” he heard Jess call out after him tiredly.

“One sec baby!” he called back, and opened the door.  He stuck his head out and looked up and down the road.  Nothing.  No one.  Not even the post van was in sight.  He closed the door slowly and looked back down at the letter.  This was bad, he thought.  This was bad for so many reasons, not least being that whoever sent it knew where he lived.  And assuming he did not stay away from Danny, would they know?  How would they know, and what would they do?  Anthony felt panic then, real live panic banging in his chest, and he quickly stuffed the letter back into its envelope, folded it in two and pushed it into his back pocket.  He walked back to the kitchen, picked up his mobile, his cigarettes and his lighter and opened the back door.

“Daddy!” Jess wailed at him in frustration.

“Ah babes, sorry, I’ve got to call Uncle Mike,” he thought quickly when he saw the agonised look on her face, and reached for the biscuit tin.  He found two kit-kats and chucked them onto the table.  “Have a snack and then I’ll be right back to play okay?”

Outside Anthony closed the door, lit up the cigarette and phoned Michael.  The phone rang and rang, but just before it went to messages, it was picked up.

“Hello?”

“Mike?”

“No, it’s Danny.”

“Oh shit.  Is Mike there Dan?  I need to speak to him.”

“He’s out for the count mate.  Had a late one last night.  Vomit all over the bathroom!”

“You’re joking me?” Anthony sighed and pressed his fist to his forehead. “Um,” he said then.  “Something weird just happened.  Have you had any post yet today?”

“Don’t know,” came Danny’s reply.  “Hold on, I’ll check.”

Anthony waited while Danny checked.  He thought about telling Danny about the letter and felt sick suddenly.  “Nothing,” Danny said down the phone suddenly, making Anthony jump.  “Why?  What’s going on?”

Anthony sighed in reply.  “I hate to tell you this Dan, but whoever did that graffiti has taken things up a level.”

“What?”

“I just got a letter.  Hand delivered.  Addressed to me.  It has a photo of you inside, and says ‘this man is a killer, stay away’.”

There was a long silence, during which Anthony smoked his cigarette, shivered without a coat on, and stole longing glances at the back door and his children beyond it.  There was something creeping and horrible about all of this, he thought.  It left a nasty taste in his mouth when he tried to imagine who had crept up to his door with that letter. Who and why?  Finally he heard Danny clear his throat on the other end of the phone.  “Okay,” he said quietly, sounding shocked.  “I’m gonna’ have to call the cops again Anthony.  They might want to come and get it from you.”

“Okay, no problem,” Anthony told him.  “I’ll be in.  I’m sorry mate, I really am.  I don’t know what to say to you.  This is just…” he shook his head, searching for the words to express the disgust he felt with the package now inside his pocket. “This is just outrageous,” he said, dropping his shoulders and scratching his head.  “I can’t believe anyone would want to do this to you.  I really can’t.”

“I better go,” Danny said in reply.  “Thanks for telling me Anthony.”

Anthony hung up the phone and lingered outside to finish his smoke.  He felt like a prick he realised, dropping that on Danny.  But what else could he do?  You couldn’t just ignore something like that, especially not after the two lots of graffiti.  He paced back and forth for a moment, trying to think.  Like Danny and Michael, Anthony could not help but place Lee Howard’s father as the main suspect.  It had to be someone who was close to Howard, someone who didn’t believe Danny’s version of events, someone who didn’t think he should be free.  Anthony wondered if the old man was getting some help though, if it was him.  He was an old man, wasn’t he?  How would he be following them all about, finding out where they lived and taking photographs?

Oh it was not worth thinking about, Anthony groaned to himself and stubbed his cigarette out against the wall before pressing both hands to his eyes.  Should he tell Chrissie?  Maybe the police would come and go before she got back, but then the kids would tell her, wouldn’t they?  Anthony opened the back door and went back into the kitchen.  He looked at his kids sitting at the table.  Liam with his head still down, and his pen still flying.  Jess was just staring back at him with narrowed eyes. 

“You’re not supposed to smoke daddy,” she said to him, and he smiled at her softly.

“Sorry darling.  Daddy is sorry.”  He looked at her and felt a huge lump forming in his throat.

 

Half an hour later Anthony received a text message from Lucy; don’t know wot do 2-got letter warnin stay away from Dan!! Anthony immediately pressed call, his heart thumping in his chest.  He edged out of the lounge where both the kids were engrossed in a DVD and closed the kitchen door softly behind him.  Lucy answered on the first ring.  “So did I,” Anthony said breathlessly.  “About half an hour ago.”

“Oh my God…” Lucy sounded close to tears.

“What does yours say?”

“It’s a photo of Danny and says ‘this man is a killer, stay away from him’.  I don’t know when it came Anthony.  I went for a jog with my neighbour and it was there when I got back.”

“Hand delivered or stamped?”

“No stamp, so hand I guess.  Yours?”

“Same.”

“Oh my God Anthony, what does this mean?”

“I’ve told Danny already,” Anthony whispered to her.  “He said he was going to call the cops.  You better let him know about yours, because they might want to come and get it.  It’s evidence.”

“Someone knows where you live too,” Lucy breathed down the phone, her voice tight and thin. “Someone knows where we all live, and what our names are, and they know we’ve been with him and….”

“Calm down Lucy,” Anthony told her, though he felt anything but calm himself.  “It’s just like the graffiti babe.  Just words.  It can’t hurt you.  It’s some nasty spiteful person trying to scare us all.”

“Yeah but who?” Lucy hissed back at him. “That’s what I want to know! And they’re doing a pretty good job of scaring me now!”

“Lucy, can you call or text Billy?  I don’t have his number.”

“You think him too?”

“We were all together at the pub that night, last month.  We haven’t all met up together since then.  I just want to see who else got one.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, sounding relieved to have some instruction.  “I’ll call him.”

“Call me back if he got one.”

“Okay Anthony.”

Anthony hung up on her and stood for a moment just staring down at his phone.  He wondered if Danny had told Michael the news yet.  He wondered if the police were on their way.  How seriously would they take it?  Would they really pay that much attention to an ex-con getting picked on?  He nibbled at his fingernails, eyes on his phone, half expecting it to jump into life in his hand at any moment.  He looked at the time and knew that the chances of the police and Chrissie running into each other were getting pretty high.  He would simply have no choice but to explain it to her, which would mean telling her about the graffiti a few weeks back.  He could see her face now.  And she still hadn’t said yes to meeting Danny.  She had a different excuse every time he suggested it.  This was not going to go down very well at all. 

His mind worked quickly then, flicking back and forth between being honest and grown up, telling her what had happened and dealing with the fall out.  Or hiding it from her.  Somehow.  A thought occurred to him then.  Get the letter over to Michael’s place so the police wouldn’t have to come to him.  The kids would enjoy the walk.  They could stop at the park on the way back.  They would not see the police, so they would have nothing to tell their mum.  He felt a stab of guilt then at how quickly his mind had seized on dishonesty, but that didn’t stop him from punching in a quick text to Danny’s phone, whilst slipping into the hall and shoving his feet into his shoes.  “Got to go out kids!” he yelled at the lounge.  “You fancy the park?”

 

Within another thirty minutes Anthony found himself shoving the letter, which had begun to feel like a dirty dead weight in his pocket, into Danny’s hesitant hand.  He had come down to the bottom door to collect it.  “Sorry,” Anthony told him instantly, and he realised he was saying sorry for more than just that.  “Didn’t want to drag the kids up, once they see Uncle Mike I’ll never tear them away.”

Danny looked from one child to the other.  “Hi.”

“Hi,” they both replied dutifully, looking unsurely back at their dad.  Danny turned the envelope over in his hands.

“Lucy too,” he said.  Anthony nodded.

“And Billy.”

“Really?” he looked up.

“She just text me when I was on my way over.  What did the boys in blue say?”

“Just to hold tight,” Danny shrugged wearily and managed a smile. “Wait for them to come around.  I guess they have a lot of other important stuff to do.”

“I’m sorry,” Anthony said again, slipping one hand absentmindedly onto Liam’s shoulder.  He realised then that this was the first time Danny had met his kids, and felt like a complete scumbag.  “I thought it best to get the letter to you, to save them the trouble of coming around.” He shrugged while Danny nodded in understanding, and felt repulsive in his uselessness.

“No problem,” Danny told him, and looked back over his shoulder. “Think Mike is waking up.  I better go and fill him in.”

“Lucy gonna’ come over?”

“No I don’t think so.”

“Oh.  You two okay though yeah?”

“I think so,” Danny sighed and pushed one hand back through his hair.  He looked tired, Anthony thought.  He looked like he was okay, like he was holding it all together somehow, but the dark circles under his eyes gave away the fact this was not easy, and he was only just about managing it.  “Hey,” he said then, brightening a little, “did you ever get shit like this when you got out of jail?”

Anthony grinned awkwardly, and sort of pushed Liam to one side. He leant forward towards Danny.  “They don’t know about all that,” he whispered, his smile trying not to be a grimace.  Danny made a face and bit his lip.

“Oh whoops.  Sorry.”

Anthony sighed, glanced at the kids, and then looked back at Danny. “Look this is all crap,” he said quietly. “I feel like a massive dick.  I’ve got to get these two to the park then home, then I’m gonna’ come back over tonight okay?  I think me you and Mike could do with a chat.”

“Okay,” Danny shrugged at him.  “Sounds cool.  You don’t need to feel like a dick, by the way.”

“I’ll explain later,” Anthony rolled his eyes and moved away from the door. “See you then, okay?”

Danny nodded and closed the door.  “Who was that daddy?” Liam asked as soon as the door had closed.

“You know, me and Uncle Mikes friend, Dan.  I told you all about him, didn’t I?”

“Oh he was the one that had a long holiday,” Liam nodded thoughtfully, hands in pockets.  Anthony held his hand out to Jess and breathed out in relief when she automatically slipped her small hand into his.

“That’s right,” he told Liam. “Right let’s find the park and get you home before mummy gets back, yeah?  We’ve got to get all the mess cleaned up before she gets home haven’t we?” They walked on in silence, but Anthony could not help looking back over his shoulder once or twice.  It felt wrong, he realised, walking away, leaving Michael and Danny there alone.  It reminded him of how awful he had felt when Michael had finally moved out to live alone.  After Danny was sent down it had just been the two of them, lost and swamped in their own guilt and misery over everything that had happened.  It was hard, but they had each other, and that had been enough to get them through, that and visiting Danny as often as he would let them. He had met Chrissie just a few months later, and that had been hard on Michael, he knew.  Sharing his brother had been difficult enough, but he had tried his best not to get in their way, when they had all moved into a bigger flat together.  He had tried, but Anthony had seen the same look in his dark eyes every day.  He would be polite to Chrissie, he would try to be considerate, but he did not think she belonged, and she had felt the same about him.  With the impending arrival of baby Liam, Michael had finally moved out when he was eighteen.  It hadn’t felt right at all, Anthony remembered.  He had felt like he was abandoning him, even though it was Michael’s decision to go.  There had been some relief when Michael had met and moved in with Jenny.  Anthony had been so excited about that.  They would both be fathers now.  They could take the kids out together, and maybe Michael and Chrissie would eventually see eye to eye. But of course Michael had screwed that all up from day one, messing around with other girls, and then ending up on his own again. 

Anthony walked on, aware of the heavy feeling in his gut, the instinct that told him to turn around and go back and be with them.  But then he looked down at his kids and saw he had no choice.  This was nothing to do with them.  They were the ones that needed protecting.  Michael and Danny were grown men now.  He told himself this again and again as he herded his children to the park.  It did not seem to make him feel any better, and neither did the lies he was preparing in his head to tell his wife.

14

Kay

 

 

            She often found herself alone in the evenings, or at least alone with a bottle of good red wine for company.  She told herself it was simply the way she preferred it these days.  She had few real friends.  Old friends still lingered awkwardly in the background, popping up from time to time to see how she was doing, trying to find the right words to say to a woman who had lost everything.  Newer friends had deserted her like rats leaping from a sinking ship, disgust and distaste smeared on their faces, none of them wishing to associate with a woman who had allowed her son to be abused under her own roof, by her own husband.  The whispering and the nudging had died down a bit now.  She lived and worked just outside of Redchurch, and rarely went back that way, so she was less likely to be recognised.  But even so, there were many times she felt watched when she was out.  There were many times she felt the urge to hurry back home and lock the door behind her.  She sometimes only felt safe when she was tucked up under her favourite throw on the sofa, with a glass of wine in her hand, and something dumb and meaningless on the TV.

            Except she would not be alone on this evening.  She had received a mysterious text message on her way home from work, which she could only guess came from Danny’s girlfriend Lucy.  Well, that’s if she was his girlfriend, Kay sighed, as she put her feet up on her sofa, wine glass in hand.  She really had no idea what was going on with those two, and had only seen her son once in the last two weeks.  Since the scene at the cemetery he seemed to have gone back to burying his head in the sand, she thought, refusing to talk about the past, or anything connected to it.  When she had last seen him he had let her take him out for lunch in her nearest pub.  He had told her about his visits to the job centre, about courses and possible jobs he had been thinking about.  She had listened to him intently and proudly, pleased beyond belief that he was making a move towards the future, and relieved to see the energy in his eyes, but at the same time it had worried her.  She had made tentative steps to talk about the graffiti, and what his thoughts on it were now, but he had ignored her attempts.  As far as she knew  nothing else had happened since someone had sprayed ‘murderer’ across Michael’s door.  But she had to ask herself reasonably, if anything else had happened, would Danny have told her?  She did not know the answer to that.

            Kay checked her watch.  Ten to six.  Lucy had asked to come over at six.  Kay had text back that this was fine, and had not asked why, or if anything was wrong.  She remembered Danny had said something about Lucy wanting to talk to her, about Lucy having questions, and she supposed that the time had come for Lucy to ask them.  The wine was helping both her nerves and her defensiveness.  She was on her second glass and it was doing a fine job keeping the hostility she felt in check. 

            She rested her head on the back of the sofa for a moment.  She realised she was almost excited about having a visitor, such a rarity they were these days, but she was also equally on edge about what Lucy had to say to her.  She had all the answers, all the come backs she had been forced to use over the years, in her mind and ready to fly.  You knew before I did and you didn’t say, was one she had only just thought of, and she was not going to let that one slip, should Lucy start too aggressively with her.  That one would sting a bit, she imagined, but it was the truth.  She had been thinking about it ever since the text came through.  She had been running that summer, the summer Danny turned sixteen, through her head again.  The summer they had been packing up to move to Cedar View.  Kay thought back, as she had many times before, trying to retrace when she had first started to feel uneasy, or scared around Lee, and it was this time that always stood out for her.   Still, far later than Danny had worked him out, she thought taking another sip of wine, and checking her watch again.  

            She recalled her drinking had accelerated around that time, and she had shrugged it off, explaining it away on the house move.  Moving house is one of the most stressful things in life, she had told herself on many an occasion that summer, as the sale went through.  That was when she had felt the first shivers.  Lee had been tense and explosive at times, though never really with her, not at first.  But she had seen another side to him, that was certain.  He was unpredictable and moody, yet bursting with a sense of his own power and importance, repeatedly reminding people that had pissed him off, about the cost of the house he was buying, as if having that much money excused him from being decent about anything.  Kay held her wine glass with two hands, one wrapped tightly around the delicate stem, and the other holding the cup lightly, fingers tapping against the glass.  Unbeknown to her of course, at exactly that same time, her son and his friends had been plotting and planning their escape.  They had all been in on it, she knew now.  All of them.  And when Lee and her had called the police and reported him missing, they all knew where he really was, they all knew and they all kept it quiet.  To protect him.  To protect themselves.  She thought about this now and she shook her head, still unable to quite fathom it.  After the move, after Danny’s disappearance, she had found out for herself what a monster her husband really was, but what still stuck in her throat, even now, was that they were just kids at the time.  Just kids, sixteen years of age.  They hadn’t felt they could trust anyone except themselves.  She still had the niggling and disquieting feeling that she did not even know the full story.

            Kay checked her watch again and saw that it was six o’clock.  She picked the remote up from the arm of the sofa and turned the volume on the TV down a few notches, in case she didn’t hear the doorbell buzz.  The move, she recalled with a deep shaking tremble, the move had set him right off.  It was like a mask had fallen.  It was like he had been in disguise all along.  It had bewildered her how enraged he seemed to be by Danny running off.  He accused her daily of not caring enough about where he was and what he was doing.  He would come home from work later and later, explaining that he had been out looking for him.  Then there was the incident when he had supposedly, allegedly threatened Danny’s friend Jake outside the cafe where he worked in town.  His bar manager had provided him with an alibi, so nothing had ever come of it, but he had gone wild that night, after they had left.  That was when she had seen it.  That was when she had realised the truth in the note her son had left her.  He scares me.  But it was worse than that, wasn’t it?  It was far worse than that, and as Danny had recently reminded her himself, there was probably still a hell of a lot that she did not know.

            She knew how sinister he had suddenly appeared to her.  How the house she had been so childishly excited about, how suddenly made her feel like a child.  It was his house, and his rules.  He had been particular about cleanliness and tidiness in her rented terrace, always on at Danny to tidy his room, and carrying out spot checks.  Kay had thought it a good thing, she recalled grimly.  It was good that Danny did as he was told.  It was good that finally there was an adult he listened to.  But in that house, on Cedar View, it was her turn to do as she was told.  The first time it had been his hands around her throat, no words spoken.  She should have known there would be a second time, and there was.  A slap to the face during an argument about housework.

            The third time had convinced her she was in trouble.  The third time, the time he held her face into her own bowl of soup, until it clogged her nostrils and filled her throat, while his voice ranted from above about how cold the fucking soup was, how she had not put enough effort in.  She had known it then.  There had been no denying it, no explaining it away on stress, no hiding from it or justifying it.  She had seen him then, she had finally seen him, and her heart had exploded with grief and horror, not for herself, but for her son.

           

The buzzer sounded then, loud and harsh, jerking Kay from her memories and making her spill wine over her arm and the sofa.  “Shit,” she hissed under her breath, placing the wine on the floor and brushing at her arm, as she headed for the door and slapped the button down.  “Hello?”

            “Hi, it’s Lucy.”

            “Hi Lucy.  Come on up.”  Kay held the buzzer and then opened the door and waited for the girl to come up the stairs.  She realised she was relieved of the distraction, even if it was going to mean more rehashing of the past.  Lucy came rather timidly up the last few steps and walked towards her, looking like she was unsure whether to even smile or not.  Things had always been frosty between them, Kay mused, even before Danny had ran off.  She had been so glad that he had a nice girlfriend, so relieved there was someone else to keep him on the straight and narrow, but she had felt even then that Lucy did not think much of her in return.  She offered her a genuine smile however, and held the door open for her.  “How are you?”

            “Good thank you,” Lucy replied politely, just like the polite girl her parents had brought her up to be.  They still lived a few houses down from the home Lee had died in on Cedar View.  Kay took the girls coat and showed her through to the lounge.  She watched Lucy from behind as she walked through, taking in her slim neat body in grey bootleg trousers and cream coloured short sleeved blouse.  She guessed she had come straight from work at the school, as she did not normally dress so smart.  Her hair was pinned up with a clip and she looked nervously at the sofa before Kay nodded at it.

            “Go on take a seat.  I was having wine, do you want some?  Or would you like a tea, or coffee?”

            “Oh,” Lucy raised her eyebrows at the glass on the floor. “I could have one glass of wine I suppose.  It is Friday after all.”

            “Okay.  Take a seat, go on.”  Kay fetched her a glass of wine from the kitchen and passed it to her.  Lucy took a seat on one end of the small sofa and Kay retook hers on the other side, patting hurriedly at the wet patch her wine had made.  “So,” she said, looking straight at Lucy.  “I would love to be polite and ask about your day, and the school, and other things, but I imagine you’ve come here for some reason more specific and pressing than that.  So do you just want to get to the point?”  She hoped she did not sound hostile, but it seemed more honest to get straight into it.  Lucy blinked in surprise and sipped her wine before answering.

            “Thanks for seeing me,” she half shrugged. “I guess it’s been years?”

            “Yes probably,” Kay agreed. “Which again, is why I realise you’ve not just come to make polite small talk with me.”

            Lucy looked down, sipped more wine and seemed unsure how to proceed.  Kay felt for her then.  “So how is my son?” she sighed and asked.  “Have you seen him this week?”

            “Once,” Lucy nodded.  “I cooked him dinner.”

            “And?  How did he seem to you?”

            “Oh, you know, okay I suppose.  On the outside.  He was telling me about going to the job centre.  He’s been going a lot you know, trying to figure out what he wants to do now.”

            “And there’s been no more graffiti or anything?”

            “No nothing,” Lucy shook her head quickly.  “Nothing at all.  Thank God.  I’m guessing it was one or two idiots being silly.”

            Kay nodded in reply.  “Well let’s hope so.  Did he tell you about our little trip to the cemetery a few weeks ago?”

            Lucy frowned instantly. “No!”

            “Typical Danny,” Kay rolled her eyes.  “Keeps things from people doesn’t he?  He’s really good at that.”

            “I hope you don’t mean…?”

            “My husband abusing him?” Kay asked briskly.  “I suppose I do mean that in a way, but not just that Lucy.  He does it all the time.  He only tells people what he wants to.  There must be tons of things you know that I don’t, and he didn’t tell you he made me drive him to Lee’s grave, for the second time.”

            Lucy looked even more confused and distressed now, and Kay looked away from her young face, not enjoying the look on it one bit.  “Second time?”

            “He and Michael went there before, I don’t know, the day after he got out maybe?  They took a piss on it for a laugh and an old man, Lee’s father apparently, came along and saw them.  And Danny has not told you any of this, I can tell by the frankly horrified look on your face.”  Again, Kay did not feel any joy or triumph in telling Lucy things she did not know, awful things, but she wanted all the cards laid out on the table before Lucy got started on her.

            Lucy seemed to take a moment or two to compose herself.  She looked wide-eyed and shook her head slightly before taking another tiny sip of wine.  She looked back at Kay and Kay saw anger in her brown eyes.  “He did not tell me any of that.”

            “I told you.  And I’m not being vindictive Lucy, I am simply being honest. My son has never been good at lying, but he is very good at not telling people things.”

            “I suppose he wanted to protect me,” Lucy replied, somewhat defiantly. “I guess he thought I would be angry.  And I am angry, I mean.  Why would they go and pee on the grave?  Oh my god, honestly,” she dropped her forehead to her hand for a moment.  “Idiots.  They’re as bad as each other.  It was really his father, the old man?”

            “Well we suppose so,” Kay shrugged, draining the last of her wine. “He apparently shouted at them and they ran off.”

            “This was before the graffiti?  Before any of the graffiti?”

            “Yes,” Kay nodded. “But as you say, nothing else has happened since?  Maybe we all need to calm down and let it lie.” 

            “I’m gonna’ fall out with him next time I see him,” Lucy said, her eyes meeting Kays with anger again.  “I can tell you that.”  Kay smiled at her, uncrossed her legs and got up with her wine glass.

            “Well you deserve the truth Lucy.” She stalked into the kitchen, retrieved the wine bottle and came back to the sofa with it.

            “What happened when you took him there?  Why did he want to go back again?”

            “Well he was worried wasn’t he?  That Lee’s father was behind the graffiti, that there would be more to come.  He wanted to grill me about Lee’s family, and whether they would want some kind of revenge.  In the end though, he mostly got angry and shouted at me and walked back and forth on the grave.”  Kay neatly poured herself another glass of wine, placed the bottle on the floor and crossed one leg back over the other.  Lucy was staring at her aghast.

            “He hasn’t told me any of this.  In fact the last two weeks he has done a spectacular job of making me think he is fine, and everything is okay.”

            “Lucy,” Kay shook back her hair and looked at the girl seriously. “Why did you want to see me tonight?  I mean, I am happy to sit here and fill you in on the less than happy side of Danny that I’ve been receiving, and you can fill me in on the side he’s been presenting to you, but why are you really here darling?”

            Kay felt the wine warming its way through her and it was a feeling that she always liked and welcomed.  She felt her body loosen along with her mind. Lucy looked fidgety, she thought, tense.  She smiled at her, hoping to put her at ease.  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said then, “but it sort of shocks me, the way you talk about Danny.  You might not realise it, but you sound angry at him, with him.  Like you want me to see a side of him that’s not very nice or something.”

            “Lucy, you were the one who asked to come and see me tonight,” Kay said, putting her back on track.  “Yes I do feel angry at Danny at the moment, but that is only because I can see he is pretending to everyone, pretending that all is okay when it’s not.  Why did you want to come?”

            “I don’t know,” Lucy said quickly, too quickly.  “Well I mean, I do, but…”

            “Danny told me a few weeks ago that you might want to talk.  He didn’t say why.”

            “Well okay,” Lucy drank a large mouthful of wine somewhat bravely, and sort of wriggled on the sofa, as if she was gearing herself up to come out with it.  “It’s not just one thing.  It’s lots of things.  And for some reason, so much has been going through my head since he got out, about what is right and wrong, and what I’m doing, and you for some reason, just seemed the best person to talk to about it.”

            “Really?” Kay was surprised. “Why me?”

            “I’m not sure if I should be with him or not,” Lucy said then, blurting it out loudly, and then covering her mouth with one hand.  “There,” she said, dropping the hand and sipping more wine.  “I said it.”

            “Okay, okay,” Kay said, at once pleased and stunned that Lucy should wish to confide in her, whilst aware that she was on her third glass of wine and should be very careful about what she said to the girl. “You better take me through this slowly Lucy.  What’s wrong?  What are you thinking?”

            “Don’t get me wrong,” Lucy said, again too quickly, and Kay could see the shininess to her eyes suddenly.  “I love Danny.  I mean, I really love him Kay.  I’ve loved him for years, since I first met him probably.  So it’s not that, because I don’t want you thinking that.”

            “Okay.”

            “I loved him for so long before he ever even noticed me,” Lucy went on, finishing her glass and starting to place it on the floor.  Kay thought quickly, snatching up the bottle and pouring the last of the wine into her glass before she could think twice about it.  Lucy did not protest.  She just looked momentarily stunned, and then lifted the now full again glass to her lips.  “It sounds silly, but I just sort of like adored him from afar, that kind of thing?  I thought he was gorgeous,” she glanced sideways and half grinned at Kay. “I mean, he stood out from the other boys, you know?  They were all short hair, or bloody awful curtains, and he was different, he was gorgeous but sort of unapproachable at the same time.”  Kay found herself smiling helplessly. It was lovely she thought then, lovely to hear Lucy’s schoolgirl view of her son, her son who had been driving her so insane at that time. “Anyway,” Lucy sort of flapped a hand and drank more wine before going on. “It seemed to take ages for him to speak to me, to notice me, and then years before anything happened.  So I mean, I just don’t want you thinking that I don’t love him, because I do, so much.” She was looking at Kay and shook her head once.  “I do love him so much Kay.”

            “Okay,” Kay grinned at her.  “I believe you.  I get it.  So what is the problem?”

            “The problem,” Lucy sighed, “is not so much what happened, or why, but it’s the eight years spent apart.  It’s like we never really got the chance to get to know each other.  We had about a year as a couple.  Sixteen years old.  And then, you know…”

            “Okay,” Kay nodded again, sort of enjoying herself now.  It had been years, she thought then, years since she had engaged in a conversation like this with another woman.  “But you waited for him Lucy.  All those years.  You came to meet him from prison.”

            “Yes,” Lucy nodded firmly, wine glass in both hands. “I did.  I wanted to.  And yes, I did wait for him.” She lifted the glass then and drank two large mouthfuls, almost finishing it off, and Kay searched her mind, wondering if there was another bottle in the fridge, and thinking to herself that here was a girl who had had a tough and stressful week at work dealing with other people’s kids, here was a girl who was simply relishing the chance to get off her face and talk her troubles away.  I am in the firing line at some point, Kay thought and knew, but I can handle it.

            “But?”

            “But I didn’t you know, wait wait.” Lucy half shrugged again.  “I mean, I had this boyfriend at university.  And then another fella a bit later on, but that was less serious.”

            “Lucy,” Kay said to her. “No one would blame you for that.  He went to jail when you were sixteen?  You couldn’t be expected to put your whole life on hold.”

            “But I did, that’s what I mean,” Lucy insisted, sitting forward suddenly, urgently, “I did! I had this boyfriend Lewis, I went out with him for a year, my first year of University.  It was sort of serious, I could see myself with him, but then there was Danny in the background.  I went to visit him whenever I could.  As much as I could.  He wrote to me.  I wrote to him.  He was always there. I got so confused, and it wasn’t fair on Lewis so I called it a day.  We gave it another go a year or so later, but I thought, unless I stop visiting Danny, I can’t give Lewis what he wants, and every time I visit Danny, I know that it is Danny I really want.” Lucy sighed then, and pushed one hand forcefully back through her hair.  “Anyway, I saw someone else a while later.  I let it drag on, but I knew it was never going anywhere.  What I’m trying to say Kay, is that the last eight years, I’ve seen other people, I’ve tried it out, you know?  I’ve fucking tried to move on, and I’ve failed.”

            “Okay,” Kay said, feeling the strong urge to reach out and touch the girls arm.  She did not though.  She still had the distinct impression that Lucy had particular things she wished to say to her at some point.  Didn’t they all? “So what’s the problem Lucy?  Why don’t you think you should be with him?”

            “Because he hasn’t had that chance,” Lucy shrugged and looked at her.  “Has he?  He’s been locked up.  Since sixteen.  He hasn’t had the chance to play the field or whatever.  So how the hell can he really know what he wants?”

            “Oh I see.” Kay nodded and thought again to herself, is there more wine in the fridge, maybe I should go and check, because this is really getting interesting now.

            “You see?” Lucy echoed her. “He’s twenty-four, but in terms of experience he’s really still sixteen.”

            “You’re saying you think he should play the field then come back to you when he knows what he wants?”

            Lucy blinked at her.  “Yes,” she said in surprise.  “That is what I’m saying.  And I know it sounds mental.  After loving him for so long, to even think about pushing him away and risk losing him for good, but the thing is, I know now.  I could be so selfish really, because I know exactly what I want Kay.  I am old enough and wise enough, and I’ve seen enough to know exactly what I want, how I want my life to go, but he hasn’t has he?  Would it be unfair of me to push what I want onto him when he hasn’t really had a chance to find out if I am really right for him?  If he really loves me?” 

            The girl had tears in her eyes now.  She did a good job of blinking them away, but Kay knew.  She got up then and headed for the kitchen.  She needed more wine, even if Lucy refused it.   “So basically,” she said, on the way, “you think he ought to have a break from you and play the field and then come back to you if he realises you are the one for him?”

            “Yes,” Lucy agreed, sounding almost bereft in her relief. “Yes, that is what I mean.  But I can’t say that to him can I?  From a man’s point of view?  He will think I’m insane and just trying to hurt him.”

            Kay found a bottle of cheap white in the fridge, a gift from a man she had rebuffed recently, and brought it back to the lounge.  “But a woman,” she looked at Lucy, “a woman would know what you mean?”

            “Well you obviously do.”

            “Lucy,” Kay smiled, unscrewing the cap. “You are so sweet.”

            “Hey?”

            “You love him so much, you know he is the one for you, yet for some reason you are insecure enough to think he doesn’t feel the same about you, because he hasn’t had the chance to play the field?”

            “You don’t agree?” Lucy was frowning at her.

            “I have no idea,” Kay admitted.  “And I can understand where you are coming from.  Totally.  I would just say take it slow.  Look for the signs.  Be careful.  If you put it to him the way you put it to me, he could misunderstand.  You could both get very hurt.”  Kay deftly poured herself another glass of wine, and then held the bottle out to Lucy.  Lucy looked at it in confusion.  “Come on,” Kay said to her.  “You’re not just here to grill me about your love life, are you?  You’re here to grill me about my parenting skills.  Maybe you’ll need some dutch courage for that.”

            Lucy blinked.  Then held her glass up.  “I can’t drive now,” she said.

            “You can sleep here.  It’s Friday.”

            Lucy frowned, and pushed back her hair before nodding unsurely.  “Okay. Thanks.”        

“So you want Danny?” Kay asked, leaning back into the sofa. “You’ve worked that much out.  He’s the one you want.”

            Lucy nodded, unsmiling.  She took a mouthful of wine, before leaning back beside Kay. “It’s easy for me,” she said.

            “What else do you want?”

            “Just normal stuff,” Lucy shrugged.  “Happiness.  Babies.”

            “Babies?”

            “Why not?” Lucy looked her way.  “That’s what I want.  I can see it all clearly, but that is so selfish.  I can see me and Danny forever, you know?  I can see kids, and a home, and a life.  But I think in truth, all of that scares the shit out of him.”

            “You’re worried that he’s too damaged,” said Kay.  “That it will never get any better for him.  That the past will always be there, ruining things, yeah?”

            “I’m worried,” said Lucy, drinking more wine.  “That he’s a sixteen year old kid in the body of a twenty-four year old man.  No experience of other girls, except me.  I know how I feel about him, because I was always comparing those other men to him, and I just always wanted him.”

            “You might find he surprises you,” Kay said. “But hey, it’s nothing to do with me.  I would love to see you two together forever, because I think you are so good for each other, you balance each other out, so different and yet so similar, you know?  All I would say Lucy, is be very careful.  He is very fragile, despite what he thinks, and very angry too.  I don’t want to see you two wreck what you have.  I don’t honestly know where he would be without you.”

            Lucy looked at her then, sipped more wine, and crossed one leg over the other.  Here it comes, Kay thought, almost excitedly, because for one, she wanted to get the inevitable accusations over with, and for two she was getting drunk, and found confrontation a lot more welcome when drunk. “So really,” Lucy said then, and her tone was suddenly very brittle, “how much did you know?  About what went on?”

            “Why do you need to know?”

            “I need to know because you are part of his life, and he’s made his peace with you, and if me and him do make a go of it in the long term, then you and me will be in each others lives, won’t we?”

            “Gosh, especially if you have children,” Kay said, stifling a drunken giggle. She saw Lucy’s nostrils flare.  They both took another mouthful of wine. 

            “Well, whatever,” Lucy said. “Danny obviously needs you in his life, and I want to respect that, but I’ve always had a hard time coming to terms with it.”

            “With what Lucy?”

            “Well, with what happened to him!  Under your roof!  If we all knew, how didn’t you?  You know?”  Lucy pushed herself up slightly, drained the last of her wine and automatically held her glass out to Kay, as if getting plastered now was a given.  Kay obliged, lifted the bottle and refilled her.  “I just don’t get it.  I’m sorry.  I don’t mean to come here and argue with you.  But I really really want children one day Kay, and I just can’t even begin to consider someone treating them like that, under the same roof?”

            “You don’t think I ask myself the same question every single day?” Kay said to her.  “You don’t think I feel guilty enough already?  See, I knew this was really why you came tonight.  I am sure all of Danny’s friends would like their turn with me, given the chance.  So would a lot of people Lucy.  I have no real friends, you do know that?  I’m not expecting you to feel sorry for me, but I just want you to know that you are not the only one that blames me on a daily basis.”

            “It’s not that I blame you,” Lucy said, shifting slightly on the sofa and running a hand back through her hair again. “I just don’t get it.  I just had to speak to you, eventually, you know?”

            “It’s not like Danny ever came and told me,” Kay said, and her voice sounded to her more defensive, more hostile than she had intended, but she wanted Lucy to know that it was the truth.  She shook her head at her.  “Well apart from this one time, right at the beginning, and you probably already know that he said it in the heat of an argument and I didn’t believe him. I didn’t. I hold my hands up and admit it Lucy. At that time he’d been trying very hard to split me and Lee up and I just assumed it was his latest ploy.  And after that nothing. Really. Lucy, he never told me anything again.”

            “But I don’t think people do,” Lucy shrugged.  “When they are in that situation. And especially if you didn’t believe him when he tried! People in situations like that, they don’t tell people, do they? Not unless they are very strong and confident, and he obviously wasn’t at that time, being thirteen and at war with you anyway.  He thought you wouldn’t believe him.”

            “I didn’t know Lucy,” Kay said then, taking more wine.  “If that’s what you came to ask me.  I know that’s what everyone is always dying to ask me.  How could I be such a diabolical mother?  Well…” she snorted through her nose. “I never ever pretended to be a great mother, you know?  I never ever made out I knew what I was doing, I had John at nineteen you know.  I had no clue.  No clue whatsoever.  My mother had to show me how to change his nappies and burp him and everything, because I was a mess.”  She looked at Lucy and nodded seriously.  “I loved David, his dad, but I was not ready to be a mother.  I didn’t get on with my own mother but I was forced to ask her for help, which she gave me gladly, but not without making me feel even crapper about who I was. So there you go Lucy,” she looked at her defiantly. “I was a crap mother from the very beginning, so what do people expect?  I was never any good at it.”

            Lucy was staring back at her, her eyebrows down, her teeth chewing at the side of her mouth. She had curled her legs up under her on the sofa, and the bottom of her wine glass was resting on one thigh.  “You were never any good at it?” she repeated back what Kay had said to her.  “What is that supposed to mean?  I don’t understand.”

            “Well of course not, of course you won’t understand Lucy.  I hear your parents are lovely?  I mean, Danny has always said, how lucky you are.”

            Lucy nodded instantly. “I am, I really am,” she agreed. “They are lovely.  Completely supportive, wonderful, caring parents.  I couldn’t ask for more.  I had the best childhood ever, really I did.”

            “Well you know,” Kay said, one arm now lounging over the back of the sofa, “I’ve always wondered about it, if you pass on the way you were brought up?  Assuming you have a lovely safe childhood like you did, you will aim to give your children the same?  I think we all try to better what our parents gave to us, but at the same time, you learn how to be a parent by watching your own parents, don’t you?” Lucy shrugged in reply and took another sip of her wine.  “Well,” Kay sighed, “I used to think I would never behave like my mother, but looking back I was probably just like her.  She was cold, you know.  She was distant and preoccupied, and I always got the feeling me existing just got in her way all the time.  I didn’t have any brothers and sisters, and I always remembering hearing her when people asked if she had any more children, she would say God no!  One is enough! Just like that, like the thought horrified her.  I sort of thought I wouldn’t have kids myself, because I was too selfish and flighty and unsettled, but then, you know.  I had two.”

            “You thought Lee was good for Danny, didn’t you?” Lucy asked then, and Kay could see what she was doing, bringing the conversation back in line, back to what she wanted to examine.  She paused for a moment before replying.

            “Lucy, what I’m trying to explain to you,” she said with a sigh, “is that before Lee came along, I was a pretty hopeless mother anyway.  Ask John, if you ever get the chance.  I bounced from one man to the next, looking for attention and approval.  John brought Danny up more than I did, you know.  I used to lean on him so much, because he was so level-headed and calm, and Danny and me were the same, so explosive and self-absorbed.  He always hated me having men.  So yes, to begin with I did think Lee was good for him.  He seemed to know how to handle him, and he just took control, he let me relax.  Stupid, eh?” She laughed a small bitter laugh, “as that was obviously exactly what he wanted me to do.  Let him be in charge.”

            “You didn’t ever suspect anything?” Lucy pressed, shifting her position on the sofa and bringing her knees up to her chin.  “Did you honestly think Danny liked him?  I just can’t believe that Kay.  Even before I knew what was going on I could tell he detested that man.”

            “Could you?”

            “Yes!  I remember I saw him on the beach, the day you were getting married?  He was there in his suit and tie, looking miserable.  Said he wasn’t going.  We sat down and talked about other things, because that’s what he always did.  Talked about other stuff, but even then I could see this horrible sadness in his eyes Kay.  And I was just his friend then, just an outsider.  How could I have seen that, and you didn’t?”

            Lucy was growing more horrified and distressed by the minute, Kay could see, and she guessed the wine was not helping.  “I thought it was drugs,” she shrugged at her.  “There was all this talk of drugs…and his behaviour, at school and home, I just thought it was that.”

            “It was that too, and we know whose fault that was, don’t we?”

            “I knew nothing about that!” Kay replied, her voice rising now.  “That is one thing I can promise you.  Lee was as straight as they come.  Barely even drank.  I had no idea whatsoever he was supplying drugs, or Jack was, or whatever.”

            “It just seems Kay,” Lucy sat forward suddenly then, dropping her feet back down to the floor, “that you somehow had your eyes closed the whole time?  Whether by choice, or whatever I don’t know, but it’s like you were blind.  Your son is messed up, whether it’s drugs or something else, you still don’t do anything about it?  That’s what I can’t get my head around, you see.  And I was lying next to Danny a few weeks ago, just staring at his back, at all the scars, and all I could think about was you.  All I could think was how?  How could you not know?”

            Kay felt the tears coming then.  She choked them back, and wiped furiously at her eyes.  She thought then, I don’t need this girl telling me I am a diabolical mother, I know I am, I know I was.  She knew she had floated through those years in a sea of fog, that had protected her from reality, but how much of that fog had been her own construction, and how much had been Lee’s?  She had spent years trying to figure out the answer to that question, to how much blame and guilt were really hers?  How much had she really known?  That was what Lucy was driving at.  That was what Lucy needed to know.

            “There were two incidents,” she said then, sniffing loudly and watching Lucy’s face darken as her anger intensified. “Two things that I saw, that I should have paid more attention to.  Two chances I suppose you could say, to question things and maybe see where it was all heading.  There was one day when Danny seemed to be winding Lee up.  He was counting for my benefit.  He wanted me to notice how much Lee criticised him.  So he was counting, and Lee had a headache, and out of nowhere he picked up the remote control and hurled it at him.”  Kay swallowed, rubbed away the next flow of tears and lifted her glass to her lips to moisten them.  “Danny ducked and it missed him and he ran out.  Lee was so angry.  I should have seen it then, shouldn’t I?   But I guess I focused on the fact Danny had been teasing him.  I didn’t want to lose Lee.  I mean, I did really love him, as repulsive as that must seem to you now.”

            “What was the other thing?” Lucy asked coldly.

            “Christmas Day.  The first Christmas we all had together.  Well John didn’t come back for it.  Danny was winding him up again, I could tell.  At the breakfast table, asking me for wine when he knew Lee wouldn’t like it, and then I let him, so Lee was mad at me, and I felt like I could never please either of them.  Danny started swearing.  Lee lost his temper and slapped him.”

            Kay could see the disgust in Lucy’s eyes and she accepted it.  She remembered feeling cold, watching her son tear from the house, his face bleeding.  She remembered looking at Lee, at the size of him compared to Danny.  And then he had started working on her.  That was how it had felt.  Like he talked her out of the alarm bells that were ringing in her mind, and started to convince her of a totally different truth.  Danny was always to blame.  Danny was a bad kid.  Danny was out of control, and rude, and disruptive and there was only so much anyone could take of that before they lost their temper.  Danny was trying to ruin it for them.  He was trying to push him away, like he did with Frank Bradley.  She had not wanted to lose Lee, she knew that now, and maybe that was why Lee had found it so easy to talk her around to his way of seeing things.

            “You chose Lee over your son,” Lucy said to her, and she nodded.

            “Yes, you are right, in a way I did.” Kay looked around for a tissue, as her eyes continued to leak.  Failing to find one, she got up and stalked back into the kitchen to snatch a piece of kitchen roll from the holder on the side.  She paused for a moment to dab at her eyes with it, before heading back to the sofa.  She glanced quickly at Lucy and wondered how bad this was going to get, and whether it was going to do any of them any good.  “It wasn’t conscious,” she said to Lucy’s glaring face.  “I didn’t sit and decide, I want Lee and Danny can go to hell.  It wasn’t like that.  What I really wanted was us all to get along and be happy!  And do you know, a lot of the time it seemed like that?  Or maybe I just wanted to desperately believe it, I don’t know, but in some ways after Lee came along, Danny started behaving better and I was relieved.  And I had no idea what was really going on.  I had no idea Lee was so….so obsessed with him, because that’s what I started to realise, once we were in the Cedar View house.  I started to realise a lot, but I just want to get it straight with you Lucy,” she screwed up the tissue and held it in her hand. “I never knew he was beating him, I never knew he used a belt on him, I never knew he gave him drugs, I never knew he did any of those things, I promise you.”

            “The man was sick,” Lucy said then, her lip curling in disgust.  She looked across the lounge with pinched up lips, and then lifted the glass and quickly tipped the last of the wine down her throat.  Her eyes travelled to the bottle on the floor, and Kay picked it up and offered her more.  She nodded and waited while it was refilled. “Sick and depraved and a control freak and a sadist.  I can’t even bear to think about it sometimes, and then sometimes I just can’t stop thinking about it!  I half never ever want to hear what he did, and I half want to ask Danny every time I am with him.”

            “Does he tell you, if you ask him?”

            “Sometimes,” she shrugs.  “But I don’t like to.  I feel like it hurts him, and that’s not fair.”

            “And tell me the truth,” Kay asked, sloshing more wine into her own glass. “Does it bother you what Danny did? How did you feel at the time?  How do you get your head around the fact he killed someone?”

            Lucy automatically shot her an icy look.  “How do you?” she demanded.  “How do you, when you know it could have been avoided if only you’d been a better mother?”

            Kay took an intake of breath, and let the hurt roll through her.  It was okay, she thought, sucking in more breath, and following it with more wine; she had heard worse than that.  She had taken worse abuse from John.  “Well I had the benefit of finding myself in the same position, with Lee I mean,” she spoke the words slowly and carefully, her eyes locked on Lucy’s.  “And believe me, during that year of hell there were plenty of times I thought seriously about killing him.  There were times I would have done it, in self-defence, had I been able to get to a weapon in time.  And there were times I lay awake in bed after he’d beaten me, thinking of ways I could kill him and get away with it.”

            “But lucky you,” said Lucy, her tone cold.  “Danny did the job for you.”

            “This is getting us nowhere,” Kay said then, sighing and shaking her head, and looking down into her glass, just to get away from Lucy’s accusing eyes.  “I have heard this all before Lucy.  From everyone.  How is this supposed to help you?”

            “I don’t know,” Lucy said with a careless shrug.  “I just know I had to talk to you at some point.  I had to try and understand.”

            “And do you?  Or do you just hate me even more?”

            “I don’t know,” Lucy said honestly.  “I sometimes find it hard to believe that Danny doesn’t hate you.”

            “Well think about that for a moment,” Kay said quickly, sitting forward.  Lucy frowned at her in distrust.  “No,” she insisted, “if anyone should hate me it should be him.  If he really thought I knew what was going on, if he thought I knew what Lee and Jack were up to, what a mess he was in with it all, he would have nothing to do with me, would he?  Would he?  You see, he knew I was kept in the dark, because he helped keep it that way, for whatever reason.”

            “Because of shame!” Lucy cried suddenly then, her brown eyes shining with sudden tears of anger.  “Because of shame and fear, Kay!  That’s why he kept it from you, and us.  He tried like hell to even keep it from Michael and Anthony.  They only worked it out because their father had been rough on them in the past.  They only got the truth out of him because they kept trying, they kept trying to help him…” Lucy broke off, spluttering helplessly over her own tears.  She placed her wine glass between her lowered knees, and covered her face with her hands.  Kay watched her uselessly, her hands in her lap, her glass empty.  What was this all about, she found herself wondering sadly?  When was this blame game ever going to end?  “The thing is Kay…” she heard Lucy struggling through her sobs.  “We don’t even know the half of it…we don’t even know what went on…what he said about Jack Freeman, at the trial…”

            “Something went on,” Kay said, nodding vehemently.  “I know it did.  The day he came to the house, the day he did it…Lee was goading him, telling him if he did anything stupid he’d go to prison where there would be more men like Jack.” She shook her head at the memory. “I didn’t get it then…I was just horrified that Danny was there like that, just raging and screaming in the hallway.”  She blinked, seeing in her mind the way he had pushed up his shirt to show her his back, the way the horror had pieced slowly together in her mind…how Lee had been so very late home the night before, and how when he had rolled into bed his breath had smelled of whiskey, and he had chuckled to himself as he reached for her and smacked her on the backside.  “He was in such a state,” she told Lucy now, and again felt the strongest urge to place her hand over Lucy’s, to pull her near and face the pain together.  But she knew she could not.  “And he screamed at Lee that he remembered what Jack had done…that he had pretended to be asleep, or dreaming, or something.  I sort of forgot about it until the trial.”

            “What happened to Jack Freeman?” Lucy looked up and asked.  Her face was awash with tears, and her lip trembled.  Kay sighed.

            “No idea.  Haven’t got a clue.  He just vanished.”

            “And Danny really thinks Lee’s family might be behind that graffiti we got?”

            “Well he did.  Maybe he’s calmed down about it now.”

            “What about Freeman?  Do you think he could be?”

            Kay shuddered and shook her head quickly. “I don’t see how.  Or why for that matter.  Please don’t say that to Danny will you?”

            “Course not. I just want him to forget about all of that.  I want us to get on with our lives, and be happy.” Lucy wiped the palms of her hands down either cheek and looked at Kay with a small smile.  “Do you think we have a chance of that?”

            “You do,” Kay told her firmly, and this time she gave in to the urge to touch her, and she placed her hand briefly over Lucy’s knee.  “You really do.  Give it time.  He’s only just got out.  The real healing starts now.  Another few years from now, I’m sure things will be so much easier.” She pulled her hand away, and got up from the sofa.  “I think I’ve had maybe too much wine!” she joked, and Lucy nodded in reply.

            “Me too.  Are you sure it’s okay to stay over?”

            “Certainly,” Kay told her.  “I’ll get you some blankets and make us both a cup of tea, how about that?”

            Lucy managed a smile.  Kay went to leave the room, but Lucy suddenly got up from the sofa.  She looked at her awkwardly, her eyes scanning the room. “You were right really,” she said softly, “you know, what you said about Danny being the only one with any right to hate you?  And if he doesn’t, then we shouldn’t.  He did tell me he hid it from you well.  He told me Lee would do things that wouldn’t show, stuff like that.  I can kind of see how you wouldn’t have known how bad it was.”

            Kay wanted to hug her.  Never had words spoken so hesitantly meant so much to her.  Nothing would ever lift the weight of guilt she felt, and nothing would ever stop the things she didn’t know from haunting her every time she looked at her son, but Lucy’s words made her want to cry.  “Thank you Lucy,” she nodded at her.  “I’ll get you those blankets.”

12

Michael

 

 

                        It was Lucy crying and laughing at the same time that woke him up.  He was utterly confused at first.  Confused by the noise coming from his lounge, and confused by the other body sharing his bed with him.  Then slowly he remembered it all.  Drinks, the pub, punching Anthony, losing Danny, murderer on the door.  That was all of it, wasn’t it?  He gave Billy a kick and swung his legs out of bed.  Billy sat up with his mobile in his hand.  “God, I’ve got like six missed calls from Sophie,” he complained, looking like he was finding it hard to open his eyes.  Michael grunted and started pulling on clothes quickly.  The flat was freezing as usual. “What’s going on in there?” Billy asked him, as he busily typed replies into his phone.  Michael shrugged.

            “I don’t know.  I’ll go and find out.  You want coffee?”

            “Nah, I’m gonna’ shoot straight off actually.  Sophie’s been really worried by the looks of it.”

            Michael groaned as he headed for the door.  “Don’t tell me you’re another one totally under the thumb,” he said, and left the room.  In the lounge he found Danny with his arm around Lucy, looking distraught.  She was holding a tissue to her mouth, had tears running down her face, and yet her shoulders were shaking with barely controlled laughter.  “You had a nose bleed or something?”

            “No,” Danny told him quickly, regretfully. “It was fucking me.”

            “You what?”

            “It was an accident,” Lucy said in a firm voice as she glared at Danny. “He was having a bad dream and his fist caught me, that’s all.”  Danny just hung his head, while Lucy turned to Michael and rolled her eyes at him.  “Will you tell him Michael?  It was an accident.  He was asleep, for Christ’s sake.”

            Michael could see Danny felt terrible.  He was biting at his lower lip, his eyes staring, his forehead low.  He thought the best thing to do was make light of it.  He let out a raucous laugh, as Billy followed him into the lounge, and he reached out to Danny and slapped him on the back.  “First me and Anthony, now you two, eh? Maybe we should cut down our drinking!”

            “You all right Luce?” Billy was peering at her curiously.

            “Yes,” she replied impatiently.  “Do you want a lift home Billy?  My dad just texted me, he’s already round at mine to sort the door out.” Billy nodded at her and grabbed his coat from the back of a chair. Lucy turned and pointed a finger into Danny’s face. “And you,” she said, “first you get on the phone to the police and tell them about these doors, okay?  Then you have a nice day with Mike and Zach, and stop being so silly about this.” She looked at the tissue she was holding, and then screwed it up and stuffed it into her pocket.  Danny nodded at her in reply. “I’ll call or text you later,” she added as she slipped her shoes on. “So keep your phone charged up okay?”

            “Okay.”

            Michael watched Lucy lean in for a kiss.  Danny sighed and grabbed her by the arms, leaning down to kiss her properly on the lips.  “Thanks Mike,” she said, as she walked towards the front door with Billy. “You have a good time with Zach yeah?”

            “Oh yeah, you can count on it. And thanks for helping sort this place out Luce.  Really appreciate it.  You are a total legend.”  He kissed her on the cheek at the door, and shook hands with Billy. “Don’t be a stranger mate.”

            Billy grinned and held his hand out to Danny as well. “So good to see you Danny,” he was nodding vigorously. “Best and most mental night I’ve had in ages! Good to be back together again, wasn’t it?”

            “Definitely,” Danny nodded at him. “You say hi to your dad for me yeah? I’ll make my way around to him when I can.”

            “I will, I will. He’ll be really pleased.”

           

            When they had gone, Michael dived into the kitchen to finally put the kettle on.  “So,” he said, with his back to Danny. “You really going to call the cops?”

            “Have to,” came the reply. “It’s not fair on you guys.”

            “It’s only paint Dan. It’ll wash off.”

            “That’s not what I mean. Its scared Lucy, I know it has.  Besides, maybe we should put our trust in them this time, you know.”

            Michael turned to look at him, wondering what that meant, but Danny was already walking away, frowning as he tapped numbers into his phone.  Michael left him to it, and tried not to listen, as he made them both coffee and toast, and then tidied the kitchen up a bit more for when Zach came.  Danny reappeared ten minute later with his hands in his pockets and a resigned expression on his face.  “They’re sending someone over here when they can,” he shrugged. “So I guess I better stay in all day and wait.”

            “Okay mate.  That’s not a problem.  What did they say about it?”

            “Not much really.”

            “They won’t be able to do much,” Michael commented, carrying their coffee and toast through to the lounge.  Danny followed with sagging shoulders.

            “I know, but at least I can text Luce, and tell her I’ve tried.  She deserves that.” He sank onto the sofa besides Michael and rested his head in one hand. “God Mike, did you see her lip?”

            “Oh Danny, don’t get hung up on it,” Michael warned him. “It was an accident.  You lashed out in your sleep.  It’s not your fault. You always used to sleep like that at the bed-sit, remember? It’s not your fault mate.”

            “No maybe not, but it just makes me question even more what the hell she’s doing with me.”

            “Don’t be stupid. She’s crazy about you. Always has been.”  He looked at Danny as he ate his toast.  “You worried about this graffiti?” he asked him then.  Danny nodded in reply.  “You been thinking what I’ve been thinking?”

            Danny dropped his hand, sat back in the sofa and looked wearily at Michael. “The old man?”

            “Yeah.  What do you reckon the chances are?”

            “I don’t know.” Danny picked up his toast and held it unsurely between his fingers.  “The graffiti came after we saw him in the cemetery, so…” His eyes met with Michael’s again.  Michael nodded, and tried to read his expression.  They knew each other so well, he thought then, even eight years apart had not changed that. 

            “So it could have been him,” he finished Danny’s sentence for him.  “Or someone he got to do it.  Didn’t he live in Essex though?”

            “I think so yeah.”

            “You might have to ask your mum,” Michael said then, with a mouthful of toast.  “Like did she ever go to meet his folks?”

            Danny frowned, took a tiny bite of toast and chewed thoughtfully.  Finally he lifted and dropped his shoulders.  “I don’t know.  I have no idea.”

            “But you never met them?” Michael pushed. “Howard’s family never came down here?  To stay or anything?”

            “No,” Danny shook his head. “Never.”

            “Maybe he lives here now,” Michael was thinking aloud now.  He took a sip of his coffee and watched Danny’s eyes grow wider in alarm. “Think about it,” he said to him. “What were the chances of him being there, of him driving down from fucking Essex to visit the grave or whatever, and being there at exactly the same time we go and take a piss on it?” His lips tugged into a grin at the thought of this.  Danny just looked confused and concerned.

            “I don’t know,” he shrugged again. “It could be possible.”

            “But chances are slim,” Michael persisted. “Very slim my friend.  I reckon you need to speak to your mum urgently.  Find out what she knows about them and their movements after you got sent down.”

            “You really think it’s Howard’s family behind the graffiti?” Danny said this softly, his voice not more than a whisper.  Michael put down his coffee.

            “I don’t mean to scare you mate, but who else would it be?  Who else would give a shit?  I mean, if I remember rightly, at the time everyone was on your side.  You know, especially because your mum believed you and told her story.  You know?”

            Danny shivered violently and dragged his phone back out from his pocket. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

            “What, it being Howard’s family?  How much family did he even have?”

            “I’m not sure.  Just his mum and dad I think. Oh and a brother. Although I never knew if that was true or not.” He rubbed at his chin with two fingers.

            “Brother?”

            “He mentioned one a few times,” Danny said again, phone in hand.

            “Well,” Michael said. “You need to find out then. I think they’re the top suspects in all this.  Okay, it could just be some retard trying to wind you up.  If so, time will tell.”

            Danny looked at him sharply.  “What do you mean?”

            “Well I mean, they know where you’ve been staying since you got out.  Here and Lucy’s place.  They know your movements.  If they want to take it up a notch they can.”  Michael got up then, with his plate and cup in hand.  He could feel his friend’s eyes burning into him from the sofa. 

            “So you think I did the right thing calling the cops then?” he called after him.  Michael turned at the door.

            “Yeah.  Just don’t mention the part about us pissing on the grave, okay?”

            He watched a slow smile creep across Danny’s face.  “Okay.” 

They spent the next few hours cleaning and tidying the flat.  Michael tried hard not to let the strange frisson of excitement he felt show itself to Danny.  He texted ‘sorry I am a twat’ to Anthony, and hoped to receive an equally self-deprecating reply.  Danny sent a message to his mother asking if he could meet with her again, and was waiting for a reply when the doorbell buzzed.  Michael checked the time, before slinging on his coat and grabbing his car keys from the coffee table in the lounge. “That’ll be for you,” he told Danny. “I’ve got to get Zach now.  See you in a bit yeah?”

Danny nodded grimly in reply and came to the door.  Michael ran down the stairs and opened the bottom door to let the two police officers in. “He’s up there,” he told them brightly, and sauntered off down the alley to his car.  As he got in, he lit up a cigarette, and rolled down the window.  His phone beeped. Anthony; u r lucky I didn’t smack u back.  Michael shrugged and turned on the engine before replying with; cops with Dan now. More graffiti. On way 2 get Zach.   He drove off, his cigarette between his teeth, his mind whirring with everything that had happened.  He couldn’t deny to himself that it all made him feel alive again, that there was adrenalin pumping through his veins for the first time in years, and that made him kind of a bastard.  Billy had said it himself though, he thought defensively, he had said last night had been great and mental, and he was right.  Who wanted to live a boring life anyway, he questioned as he sped through the streets towards his ex-girlfriends house.

 

She rented a little mid-terrace just ten minutes from the high street.  It was along a busy main road, just next to the level crossing, which led to the school opposite.  Would be Zach’s school he realised, before long.  He had to park around the back and walk round.  As he approached the front door to knock, Michael carried with him the familiar heaviness of nerves in his belly.  It was a small amount of dread, he realised, at seeing Jenny and Zach, at how both of them served to remind him of how hugely he had fucked things up. The door opened and he fixed a huge smile upon his face, and before he could even address Jenny, Zach zoomed past her and flung himself at him.  “Daddy daddy!” he was yelling excitedly.  Michael laughed, and sat him on his hip.

“All right mate?  You been good for your mummy?”

“He’s been very good,” Jenny smiled. “He’s had his coat and shoes on for half an hour and his bag all packed, bless him.”

Michael checked the small Thomas the Tank Engine rucksack his son had strapped to his back.  “Oh yeah!  Look at that!  What you got in there then?”

“Um, colouring book, crayons,” Zach started to count the items off on his fingers, and Michael swapped a proud look with Jenny. “Teddy, spare pants, spare socks, snacks and some sweeties for you daddy!”

Michael grinned and cuddled him close, planting a kiss on the top of his head. “Sounds good to me buddy.  What do you want to do today?”

“Play cars…oh no I forgot my cars!” Zach looked momentarily alarmed. Michael quickly dropped him down to the floor.

“Well off you go and get them then, quick!  We need cars don’t we!”

Zach ran off, back down the hallway, his rucksack swinging from side to side.  Michael sunk his hands into his pockets and looked to Jenny.  She looked well, he thought.  She looked like she had had her hair done maybe.  She had a soft, round face, and full lips that she had passed on to Zach.  She hadn’t passed on her wide blue eyes though, and Michael remembered how they had stood out to him when he had first met her, how beautiful and innocent she had looked.  In a weird way, there had been something about her that had reminded him of his best friend, his locked up best friend.  Face of an angel, but how different he had been underneath.  It had amused and bewildered him when he discovered that Jenny was just how she looked on the outside, sweet, beautiful and innocent.  He thought about telling her that her hair looked good, but then changed his mind.   He often worried that she still had feelings for him, just because of the way she sometimes looked at him, and he was loathe to encourage her or give her any false signals. “Um, Jenny,” he said instead, looking awkwardly down at the carpet. “Do you remember me telling you about my friend Danny?  Who was in prison?”

Jenny nodded quickly.  She was still smiling at him, but kept her arms crossed over her chest. “Yes of course I do.  Is he okay?”

“Yes, yes he’s okay, he’s out now.  He came out a few days ago.” He raised his eyes, expecting to see her expression change or darken in concern, but Jenny’s smile simply grew wider.

“Oh wow, really?  That’s great!”

“Yeah, yeah it is great.  The thing is though, he’s sort of staying at mine for the moment.  Until he gets himself sorted.” He looked at her apologetically. “I thought you might want to know.  Because of Zach.”

Just then Zach came hurtling back, this time throwing his small arms around his mothers legs. “Bye bye mummy, I’m going now!” Jenny laughed and picked him up for a hug.

“It’s fine,” she told Michael over Zach’s head. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Zach will enjoy meeting him.  It doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you think.”

“Oh okay, okay, thanks Jenny, that’s great.” He nodded at her in thanks, almost tipped her a wink, and then thought better of it.  He had messed her around enough, he thought.  She was supposedly happy now, wasn’t she?  With this new guy Brian.  Leave her to it, he told himself as he took Zach’s hand and went out of the door. “What time do you want him back tomorrow then?” he looked at her and asked.  She leant in the doorway, head cocked and eyes on his.  That was it; Michael thought then, that was the look.  That was the look that filled him with gut wrenching guilt.

“Bring him back to suit you,” she told him, her smile gentle and tentative.  She was always so grateful, he remembered, so grateful for everything, and yet really she should want to be as far away from him as possible.  He was toxic.  He had caused her nothing but heartache.  He felt the urge to touch her arm, or kiss her cheek, just to thank her, but he knew he could not.

“Okay, well I’ll text you then?  Check when it’s okay.  Say bye to mummy Zach.”

“Bye mummy!”

 

Michael walked his son back to his car, lifted him onto his booster seat and strapped him in.  He sighed shakily before he closed the door on him and walked around to the driver’s side.  That little tiny body, he would think to himself, I am responsible for that little tiny body.  It was at once both humbling and terrifying.  He drove slowly home, checking his mirrors constantly, checking everything. 

Back at the flat he discovered Danny alone again, stood at the window and smoking a cigarette, which he quickly stubbed out when he saw Zach.  “Oh hi.  Hi, you must be Zach?” Michael grinned, thinking that his friend looked as terrified as he felt himself.  Look at us, he wanted to laugh, two grown men shit scared of a little boy.  Zach smiled shyly, his hand clinging tightly to Michaels.

“He’s brought loads of cars,” Michael said, looking down at him. “Haven’t you buddy?  Why don’t you show Danny your cars?  This is my good friend Danny.”

Zach slowly pulled his hand from Michael’s and knelt down on the floor, letting his rucksack slip from his arms.  He did not speak, but just grinned as he unzipped his bag and started to pull out his toy cars, one by one.  Michael caught Danny’s eye.

“So what did they say?”

“Oh not much.  Not much.  I can keep a record if I like,” Danny shrugged and closed the window he had been smoking out of.  “You know, write down the times and dates if anything else happens.  They asked if I had any names, any people I might suspect.”

“Did you tell them any?”

“Nope.”  He sighed and walked apprehensively towards Michael’s son.  He looked as if he wanted to say something to him, but then sort of gave up and sighed again, and shrugged uselessly.  “He looks like you Mike.”

“I know he does. Goddamn handsome he is.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Oh I don’t know, I never know.  Play it by ear.  Maybe take him to the park?  McDonalds?  Where you see all the other sad weekend dads.” Michael rolled his eyes and dropped down beside Zach. “These are the coolest cars ever mate.  Which one can I be?”

“This one,” Zach said and placed a bright red sports car into his palm. “That’s like your car daddy.  You be it.  I’m this one.” He held up a sleek shiny silver car then started to broom it across the carpet.  Michael looked up at Danny and shook his head at him. 

“Clueless I am,” he said.  Danny frowned.

“You seem fine to me.  I’ll put the kettle on.”

Michael watched him leave the room, and then got down on his belly and pushed the little red car alongside Zach’s.  He looked at his son, at his little boy, and took a deep breath.  Three years now, he thought.  When was he going to stop feeling so utterly terrified every time he was left alone with him?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13

Danny

 

 

            Danny found himself watching Michael and his son from afar.  He felt undeniably twitchy and nervous, and kept his phone in his hand, looking at it constantly to see if his mum had replied yet.  He watched Michael playing with Zach, pushing toy cars around the lounge.  He watched the way Zach looked at Michael, the way his big brown eyes grew even wider, and it reminded him of the way Michael had once looked at Anthony.  The little boy was beautiful he thought, when he dared to look at him.  A small, neat version of Michael.  His mother obviously cared for him well.  His clothes looked clean and ironed.  His hair was cut short, but had Michael’s thick dark waves on top.  He looked at him, and shook his head at him in wonder.  It was almost impossible to believe Michael had created this little person, and not only created him, but helped nurture and shape him, and keep him safe.

            He didn’t understand what Michael was so worried about either.  He seemed perfectly natural with the boy, as far as Danny could tell.  The little boy hung on his every word, and kept shoving his little hand into Michael’s.  Michael made him lunch and even cleared the table so he could sit there to eat it.  They both stood back and looked at him then, mesmerised by this small person, feet swinging from the chair, lips smeared with strawberry jam.  Michael nudged Danny with an elbow. “You think you and Lucy?” he asked. “You know?  One day?” He nodded at Zach.

            “No way,” Danny said it too quickly, and saw his friend’s brow crease in concern.  He felt like apologising. “No offence,” he said. “But it’s not for me.”

            “Well I thought that, until he came along.  I know I said it’s scary, but I wouldn’t change it now, you know.  I wouldn’t be without him.”

            “No way,” Danny said it again, offered Michael a grin and turned away to give fuss to the dog. 

            “Why?  What are you scared of?” Michael’s voice followed him.

            “Oh, just everything!” Just then his phone beeped and he thought thank fuck, and pulled it from his pocket.  His mum; I’m free now honey, on my lunch break. Shall I come and pick u up? He breathed a sigh of relief and typed in; yes please. Flat 21a Belfield park high street. Thanks.

            He put the phone back into his pocket. “Mum’s coming to pick me up, so I’ll be out of your hair for a while.”

            “Oh I was hoping you’d come to the park with us, but never mind.” Michael stood behind Zach’s chair and reached out to mess up his dark hair.  Danny watched the little boy squirm and giggle in delight.

            “Have you made things up with Anthony?” Danny asked him.  Michael lifted his eyes to the ceiling.

            “Sort of.”

            “What was that about anyway?  Why did you hit him?”

            “He was going on at me,” Michael shrugged. “Saying it’s about time I acted like an adult, that sort of thing. The trouble is mate; he stays with his wife out of this sense of duty. He’s like determined his kids won’t have an upbringing like we did.  He thinks I’m doing that to Zach, you know.  Letting him down.”

            “I’m sure he doesn’t really think that.”

            “Well he basically said it Dan.” Michael told him. “He said I didn’t realise it but I was acting like our parents did.  Always drunk and that.  That’s why I hit him because that was a fucking low thing to say, and even though I’ve texted him sorry, I will be having that out with him when I see him, believe me.”

            “Neither of you are like your parents,” Danny said softly, watching Michael’s face as his gaze settled back on the top of Zach’s head.  “Neither of you need to worry about that, you know.  You’re both lovely people.  Amazing parents.  I’ve only seen you with him a few hours and I can see how amazing you are.”

            “I wouldn’t say that mate.  I messed things up majorly with his mum.  I am bloody lucky she lets me have anything to do with him.”

            “You were young,” Danny shrugged at him.  “You didn’t love her.  That’s not your fault.  That doesn’t make you a bad father.”

            “No I really hurt her I mean,” Michael looked up at him.  “I really messed with her head, even though I didn’t mean to.  I led her on.  Broke her heart.  I don’t know why.  I just couldn’t cope with it all.  And actually, now that I think about it, I was just stupid.  We were good together.  I mean, we could have been.”

            “You’re too hard on yourself,” Danny told him.  “You’re doing the best you can, that’s what you have to remember.  You’re already doing a hundred times better than your parents did, yeah?”

            Michael grinned at him wryly.  “Be pretty hard to do worse than them,” he said, and then narrowed his eyes slightly at Danny.  “Is that kind of why you don’t want any kids?  I mean, because you think you’ll do a bad job?”

            Danny wiped his mouth with his hand and looked away.  He did not know how to tell Michael that the thought of having his own child, a tiny helpless child, a vulnerable being totally dependent on him, actually chilled him to the bone.  How would he do it, he thought, how would he do all the things that fathers do, how would he tell a child off, discipline a child?  What if it all got too much and he lost his temper?  What if a light smack led to something more?  He felt suddenly like he could not breathe in the flat, with Zach there.  There was something about his tiny little body that made him uncomfortable, made him anxious, and he could not really pinpoint why.  How could he trust himself though?  Babies cry, they cry all night, and little kids; they throw massive tantrums and drive their parents crazy.  He recalled, how many times his mother had literally pulled out her own hair trying to deal with him.  They had locked horns and fought viciously from the beginning.  Even back then, even before things really went downhill, they had been more like enemies than anything else. 

            “Just couldn’t do it,” he muttered to Michael, checking his phone again. “It’s not me.”  He glanced up long enough to see the look in his friend’s eye.  The knowing.

            “Fair enough,” he said

 

Twenty minutes later his mother sent a text telling him she was parked outside, so he grabbed Kurt, said goodbye to Zach and left.  His mother was smiling in hopeful anticipation as he climbed into her car with Kurt under his arm. “Does that dog have to go everywhere with you?” she asked jokingly.

“He’s old now,” Danny replied, with a sigh. “Not got much time left.  I missed most of his life, so yes, he does have to go everywhere with me.”  He glanced at her, and wondered if that had come out pricklier than he had intended, as she stared back at him, her eyes wounded.

“Okay,” she said slowly.  “Sorry for asking.  Are you okay?  You don’t look like you’ve slept well.”

Danny breathed out through his nose and stared straight ahead through the windscreen, as she turned the key in the ignition and started to drive.  “I have these dreams,” he told her stiffly.  She looked his way, silently waiting for more. “About the day I killed him.  I have the same dreams nearly every night.”

He heard her suck in her breath, and then exhale it slowly as she absorbed this information, as she shouldered yet more guilt.  “I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I’m sorry love.  Maybe they will stop now, in time.”

“Hope so because I get pretty violent in them, and last night I accidentally smacked Lucy in the mouth.”

His mother gasped.  Covered her mouth quickly, and then immediately tried to disguise her shock.  “Oh Danny.  Was she okay?  You didn’t mean it!  Maybe you need to see the doctor about these dreams?”

“Maybe.”

“Was she okay?”

“Yeah I suppose.  I cut her lip. I don’t know why she bothers with me.”

“Oh Danny don’t say that!” his mother cried at him as she drove. “She loves you, anyone can see that, and you deserve that love, for God’s sake.”

“Well I’ll just probably ruin her life, that’s all.”

“Oh aren’t you the gloomy one today?” Kay scolded him then. “Now come on, you ought to be focusing on the positives.  Like being free.  Like starting your life.  And having a girl who worships you, and friends who would do anything for you.”

“Yeah, and I’m already fucking things up nicely for them,” he told her darkly, looking her way.  He wondered what was wrong with him.  He had been feeling tense in the flat, looking forward to escaping, but it seemed like as soon as he had got into the car, darkness had fallen over him.  He felt strangely petulant and accusing.  He felt like a kid. 

“What do you mean?” she asked him.

“Well since I got back, Lucy and Michael have both had things sprayed on their front doors.” He looked back at her and saw her eyes, flitting nervously from the road, to him and back.  “’Killer’ on Lucy’s,” he explained. “And ‘murderer’ on Mikes.  So I called the cops today, and they came round, but there’s not much they can do, so I’ve just got to sit back and wait and see if this person targets me or my friends again.” He shrugged his shoulders at her and realised there was a vicious part of him that was enjoying the guilt etched heavily on her face.  “So that’s fun.  Wondering what will happen next.  Trying to work out who might have it in for me.”

He waited, looked sideways at her and saw her swallowing nervously, her hands tight on the steering wheel.  “I don’t know what to say,” she said finally. “I’m glad you contacted the police.  They’ll keep a log.  I don’t know why anyone would do that, I really don’t.  Everyone was on your side, you know.  Everyone.”

“Not everyone,” Danny corrected her, looking out of the window and realising that they were heading down Barrack road. 

“What do you mean?”

“Not his family,” he said to her. “Not his parents.”

“What?  Lee’s parents?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “They wouldn’t have been on my side.  You know I never even thought about it before.  Not once.  Totally forgot he had a family.  Totally forgot about their existence.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say Danny, but…”

“Hey, do me a favour, take the next left, yeah?  I want to go to the cemetery.”

“What?” His mother practically screamed at him.  He breathed in and out slowly, attempting to hold onto himself, although he wondered if he could somehow feel himself slipping gradually away.  That little voice inside his head, the little voice that calmed him down and told him what to do had fallen silent.  “Why Danny?  What do you mean?  Why do you want to go there?”

“Just do it,” he told her, and his tone was fierce.  She swallowed, blinked in dismay at the road ahead, and signalled left.  Yeah that’s right, he thought unkindly as she turned the car down the road and through the iron gates to the car park, you do whatever I say, because you have to don’t you?

She stopped the car and turned off the engine.  “Danny…”

He opened the door abruptly and got out, only stopping to drop Kurt down to the ground to trot at his side.  He started to walk quickly across the gravel.  He heard the other car door slam shut, and his mother’s footsteps crunching urgently after him.  She caught his sleeve and held on. “What are you doing?”

“I came here the other day,” he told her.

“What?  Why?”

“To check,” he shrugged at her, hands in pockets.  “To make sure there was a grave and everything.  To make sure he was dead.”

His mother was getting breathless, hanging onto his sleeve and hurrying along at his side. “Oh Danny,” she cried helplessly.  “What are you doing?  Why do you want to be here now?”

“He was here.”

“Who?”

“An old man.  Lee’s dad.” He shot a look her way, accusingly.  “What’s his name?  Do you know his name?”

“Jerry,” she told him, tears now shining in her eyes. “He’s called Jerry, but he doesn’t live around here Danny.”

“Well he was here the other day.  He saw me mum.  He shouted at me!”

They both stopped walking then.  They had arrived at Lee Howard’s grave without even trying to locate it.  They looked down and saw the fresh bunch of mixed flowers someone had laid there. “Yours?” Danny hissed at her.

“No!” she shouted back.  “Why would they be?  For God’s sake!”

“Whose then?  His dads?  See?  He’s here.  He must know I’m out, so he came back, he’s here, and it’s probably him doing all this stuff!” Danny pulled his arm free of her grip and stepped away from her.  He felt the rage creeping over him slowly, edging its way through his limbs.  He tried to shake it off, but realised he did not really want to.  Maybe he needed it, he reasoned.  Like that day.  Like that morning when he had placed all the knives around his clothes before leaving the bed-sit. 

“Jerry was here?” his mother was asking him, wringing her hands together nervously.  He nodded at her, and then down at the grave.

“Me and Mike,” he said then, “we were pissing on it.”

Kay’s eyes widened in disbelief.  “Danny!”

“What?” he sneered back at her.  “What about it?”

She just shook her head at him, her shoulders sagging. “He saw you?”

“Yeah he saw us.  He didn’t like that I can tell you!” He searched his pockets, found his packet of cigarettes and pulled it out.  “Ooh no, he didn’t like that.  The old cunt.  Started storming over, waving his fucking stick!” Danny tipped back his head and roared laughter up at the sky.  Kay looked on in distress. He stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it up, puffing grey smoke viciously into the air.

“You shouldn’t have done that, you know,” she was saying.  He glared at her.

“Why not?  Why shouldn’t I come and piss on his grave?” he demanded, watching her flinch.  “I told him I would you know!  Yeah!  Didn’t know that did you?  In the kitchen.  He’s all stabbed up and bleeding and whining and I told him I was gonna’ piss on his grave.” Kay was looking at him as if she did not recognise him.

He sucked hungrily on his cigarette, expelling sharp bursts of smoke into the cold air around them, while his mother shook her head at him. “You need help son,” she said eventually.  “You need help to come to terms with it all.  With being out.  With what you did.”

“There’s nothing that can help me,” he told her. “What’s done is done.  Whatever.  I just want to know who has it in for me and why, so I can work out what I’m dealing with.”

Her forehead furrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

“So I know what to expect,” he shrugged, wondering why it was not obvious to her what he meant.  “Say it’s Howard’s dad?  Say it’s him.  He’ll have more lined up, won’t he?  He’ll have more little tricks up his sleeve to pay me back, won’t he eh?  That’s not gonna’ be it.  There’ll be more.”

“Danny, you just have to leave it with the police, you just have to…”

“Howard was good at little tricks you know,” he cut in suddenly, smiling at her.

“What?”

“Oh yeah.  He was really special at tricks.  Really clever.”

“What tricks Danny?” Her tone had lowered, her eyes softened. He saw the way she pursed her lips, as if holding them in with her teeth, preventing them from trembling. 

“Oh you know,” he rolled his eyes at her, and started pacing back and forth across the grave, smoking his cigarette. “When he first moved in.  You remember me and Mike played pranks on him to scare him off?”

“I remember.”

“Well once he was in, he paid me back,” Danny laughed at her bewildered expression, and the mounting horror in her eyes as she watched him stomping across the grave.  “Like moving my stuff,” he went on, staring down as he marched. “Hiding my stuff so I couldn’t find it.  Going in my room and messing with stuff.  Messing with my head.  Salt on my toothbrush, that was another one.  Slashed tyres on my bike, and then there was the whole him running over my bike thing, you remember that?”

“You were always just leaving it in the driveway,” Kay murmured, shaking her head at the ground.

“Yeah, but not that time,” Danny corrected her.  “I put it away.  He got it back out.  He ran over it.  So let’s say his dad is really pissed off with me for killing him, and pissing on his grave, and wants to play some tricks on me?” He stopped pacing then and cocked his head at her, his eyes narrowed.  “He’s the number one suspect as far as I can see.”

“I didn’t know about those things Danny,” his mother said, her voice small and lost.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh don’t start,” he groaned. “Why didn’t you tell me?  Why didn’t you tell me?  You know why mother! Anyway, I thought I was going crazy half the time, imagining it.  I thought people would laugh at me if I said.  And I thought in a way, I deserved it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d done it to him.  He paid me back.  Cool.”

“It’s not cool, Danny.” Kay reached out for him then, attempting to grab his arm and slow down his pacing, but he was not ready to be stopped, or reached out to.  He pulled away and continued to walk back and forth over the grave. “Look, we need to go,” she said instead, trying to catch his eye. “We shouldn’t be here Danny.  It’s just not right.  Can you stop that and listen to me please?”

“Did you ever meet his parents?” Danny asked, ignoring her plea.  He kept his eyes down and focused on his feet as they marched back and forth.  He was aware of something rising inside him, something that he had kept crushed down for the past eight years.  He felt it, coming from his belly, from deep within, anger and grief and horror, swelling like a pregnant wave. 

“What?  Yes.  Once.”

“When?”

“At the wedding.”

“Oh yeah.”  He stopped walking for a moment, cigarette in hand, eyes lifting briefly to the pale white sky.  His mother watched him, anxiously pulling her coat tighter around her body.  “I didn’t go.”

“I was so upset at the time,” Kay said, rolling her eyes at her own stupidity back then.  She placed her hands inside the pockets of her coat and stared at him, but he would not meet her eyes. “Of course, Lee made such a deal of it, how wrong it was for you to make me cry on my wedding day.  How selfish and attention seeking you were.” She lifted her chin, releasing a sad and hollow laugh at herself. “God it still sickens me you know, how easy I was to manipulate.  How easily I saw his view of things, instead of yours.” Kay coughed to clear her throat and edged closer to where her son remained with his feet planted right on top of her dead husbands grave.  “And then, when we came back from the honeymoon, he made this huge show of talking to you man to man, do you remember?  He made out like you’d been upset, but he’d talked it over with you, and now you were fine.  I bought it.  I can’t believe it now, looking back, but I actually believed it.”

Danny sucked the last of the nicotine from his cigarette, before dropping it to the ground, and grinding it out beneath his shoe.  Looking down, he saw the muddy track his marching had engraved upon the plot.  His footsteps, for everyone to see.  People would think it disgusting, wouldn’t they?  Disrespectful and outrageous.  He stepped away, and found himself standing on the opposite side to his mother.  “I’d run away,” he told her.  She frowned instantly, not understanding.

“When?”

“The day you came back from honeymoon. The day you’re talking about. I tried to run away.”

“What do you mean you tried?”

“He came up to me in my room,” Danny heard himself speaking, he heard the words leave his mouth, and it only occurred to him then that it was the first time he had ever spoken them.  That there were many, many unspoken things.  That really, no one knew the truth, no one except him and Howard.  He stared down at the mess he had made of the plot and his stomach tightened.  “He laid down the law.  You know what he said?  All this shit about being my dad now.  My dad.  It made me want to vomit.  He told me to tidy my room.  When he left I just snapped, I just thought I’m not taking this anymore, I’m not.  I packed a bag and hid it.”

“Oh Danny,” he heard his mother murmur.  He swallowed and concentrated instead on the images in his mind.  He could see his younger self frantically stuffing clothes and money into a bag and hiding it under his bed.

“I ran out, when you’d both gone to bed because you were jetlagged.  Do you remember? We all had pizza together in the lounge.  You looked so happy.”

“I remember that.”

“I thought he was asleep, with you,” Danny went on, and he felt his stomach tightening further still, only now the tightening, the sensation of the air being squeezed from his body, was travelling up to his chest.  “Then he appeared behind me when I was running for it, he shouted at me, so I kept running.  Got to the base in the woods.” He flicked his gaze up finally to meet his mothers.  She was staring back at him with wretched eyes.  “Me and the boys, we had this base.  This old caravan we mucked about in.  But he knew about it somehow mum.  He left it a while, and I was just settled and calming myself down, when he burst in on me laughing.” He watched his mother flinching, her eyes darting around, bouncing from his and away again, as if she was finding it increasingly difficult to look him in the eye.  Danny gritted his teeth then, as the emotion flooded him.  He realised he had not thought about that moment for years.  He had never told anyone about the only other time he had tried to get away.  How Howard had held him by the arms and told him he knew everything about him, that he had eyes everywhere, so he could never escape.  “He threatened to hurt you, you know,” he said to his mother then.  “He said he’d hurt you to teach me a lesson. He said he could kill you.  Anyway, I gave in.  I let him take me back home.  Then the next day he fucking worked his magic on you as usual.” Danny’s top lip lifted in disgust.  He dug back into his pocket, needing another smoke.

“I know,” Kay’s voice was small and hoarse.  She had now folded her arms across her chest, and when he looked, he could see thin trails of tears sliding down each cheek.  “He should have been an actor, that man.”

“I’ve never told anyone about that. Until now. I felt like such a prick.”

“Why?”

“Why?  Why did I feel like a prick?”  He was lighting up another cigarette, cupping it between his hands, as the wind had started to pick up.  “Because I was pathetic.  Because he knew everything and I was just a stupid little kid.  Because he was always going to be bigger and stronger than me.  Because it was humiliating in every possible way.  That’s why.”  He shrugged his shoulder and kicked at the dirt with one foot.  “Anyway, fuck it, right?  Look at him now eh?” He caught his mother’s eye and pulled a fake smile across his lips.  She shivered in reply.

“We need to go Danny.  This is not doing any good whatsoever.”

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“Find Lucy.  Think about a job.  Start to live your life.  I thought you more than anyone would not want to drag the past up like this.” She walked slowly around the grave then and stopped at his side.  He was staring back at her and he felt strangely enraged by her.

“Dragging up the past?” he questioned. “I’ve barely told you a thing about the way it was for me, you do realise that don’t you?”

Kay inhaled a deep breath, keeping her arms crossed firmly. “I know that.  And I’ve told you many times that you can talk to me about anything you want, but right now Danny, right now, stood here, this is not the right way, or the right place.”

“I’m not the one dragging up the past anyway,” he said sulkily, narrowing his eyes at her as he puffed on the smoke.  “Someone else is, remember?  Someone who knows who I’m staying with.  Someone who wants to give me a message about what I did.”

“You need to ignore it, you can’t let it get to you…”

“Mum, you don’t understand, this is the thing, you just don’t get!” His voice was gradually getting higher.  He looked at her and felt a roaring frustration, and it was overwhelming, when during eight years of incarceration he had so looked forward to her visits, and her news, and her love.  “It’s happening again, that’s what you don’t get!”

“Oh Danny, please…”

“Mum, this is the same.  I’m fucking telling you!  There’ll be more, I know it!” He stared into her eyes, hoping she could somehow read his fear, but she was just shaking her head at him.  “It won’t just be graffiti mum, will it?”

She took his arm then.  She placed her hand on his forearm, and his trembles spread up her own arm.  “Danny, listen to me.  I can understand why this is kicking it all off again for you.  Coming out of jail is a huge thing.  Coming back here, to Lucy and your friends, to all the memories you’ve spent years ignoring, it is bound to mess with your head.  Maybe we should think about getting you some professional help.  To help you get through this period of transition.”

“Mum,” he said to her, and he placed his other hand over hers, where he could feel both his own shivers and hers.  “Did his dad move back here?  After he died?  Did you ever hear from his parents?”

He saw her swallow and her eyes darted away quickly before returning to meet his.  “His father was very angry,” she said, her voice tight.  “But that does not mean he is behind the graffiti and even if he is Danny, the police are the ones to deal with it.”

“Did he speak to you?  Did he confront you about what I did?”

“He threw a fit when I turned up at the funeral.”

Danny stood back slightly.  “You went to the funeral?”

“I stayed in the distance.  I was trying to make sense of it all.  I don’t know.  I don’t know why I went, but anyway, neither of them liked it one little bit.  There was a scene.”  She pressed her hand down upon his arm. “Danny, let’s go now.  I thought I was going to take you out for lunch or something.  I wanted to hear all about the last few days and how it’s been.  All your news. I know what John gave to you, you know. I wanted to ask you about that.”

Danny growled in impatience and shook her hand away.  “Don’t even mention that!  He can fuck off as well. Where was he when I really needed him eh? And the last few days have been shit,” he told her.  “Because someone’s following me around spraying killer wherever I go. Kind of hard to move on and feel good about the future with that hanging over me.  And then there’s Lucy and my friends, all in a mess, all fucked up in their own way, and all because of me.”

“Well what does that mean?” Kay demanded, as she dragged the back of one hand across her leaking eyes. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, shaking his head.  “But it’s true, that’s all.  They haven’t really moved on, any more than I have, and we’ve all just been pretending that we have, that’s the thing.  Because there’s Michael still living the life we lived back then, for that year in the bed-sit.  He hasn’t changed or moved on mum.  He’s terrified of his own kid.  He thinks he’s messing it up.  And I know why.  And Lucy, I smacked her in the mouth last night, you know?  So what the hell she wants to do with me I have no idea!”

“Danny, calm down,” Kay reached for his arm, and this time when he tried to pull away she held on tight.  “You are your own worst enemy when you get like this!”

“Oh am I?” he snarled back at her, and yet again, when he looked into her face he felt that swelling rage again, that wave rising up suddenly.  “I thought my worst enemy was six foot under!”

She dropped his arm and shook her head in disgust.  “Just stop it.  There is no need.  There is no need for melodramatics.”

“Oh drama queen am I?  I remember you calling me that.  And him,” he jerked his head viciously towards the grave.  “Drama queen, craving attention, wasn’t I?”

“Danny I want to go, I want to get away from here right now!”

“Mum, someone has it in for me, and yet again, here you are, not listening to me.  Not wanting to hear.  Not believing me.”  Danny drew on his cigarette and puffed the smoke over her head.  She looked mad now, he thought.  Now they were getting somewhere.  Now they were getting to the truth of it.  Eight years, he thought then, as he trembled with rage before her, taller and bigger than her now, a grown man apparently, although god knows he did not feel like one.  Especially when he was around her. She was glaring back at him, guilt and anger filling her eyes, her mouth a small, hard line. 

“What is this supposed to achieve?” she asked him.  He laughed at her.

“I just want you to believe me for once mother.  You say you’ve felt guilty for  years, for not knowing what he was like, but you still think I’m melodramatic and a martyr, isn’t that what you said the other day?”

“I don’t think I will ever understand you Danny,” she said this softly, and her eyes lost some of the anger, as she looked him up and down and sighed.  “Whether we are too alike, or too different, I still can’t decide.  But you must know that I love you.  And good God, you must know how bitterly I regret what you went through, and I thought, I just thought that we had moved on past that?  I thought you and me were okay?  But suddenly I really don’t feel like we are.”

“I wanted to forget it all,” Danny said then, throwing down the second butt.  He did not bother to stamp on it this time.  “That was the easiest way to survive.  I could have killed myself I suppose.” He shrugged at her casually. “That was always an option.  A way out of constant self-loathing.  But I didn’t.  Because of Lucy, and my friends, and because I didn’t want him to win.  So I tried to forget it all, and you know that better than anyone.  You know because you came to visit me even more than Mike did.  And how often did we talk about the past mum?”

Kay looked down then.  Her blue eyes scanned the ground, sweeping back and forth across the churned up grave which held the body of her husband.  “Not much,” she admitted with a sigh.  “But I thought that was what you wanted.  You seemed so brave, yet so young inside prison.  You were trying to be hopeful, I could see that. It seemed best to let you be like that.  To talk about other things.”

“Yeah well,” he looked away from her then.  He was taken back by the sudden sting of tears in his eyes.  He stared down at the grave, and then his eyes moved to the headstone.  Beloved son it read there.  “As far as you know his parents stayed in Essex then?”

“His mother died.”

“When?”

“Not long after.  Few months.”

Danny frowned. “So that’s probably my fault too then.”

“Don’t be stupid.  I want to go.  This is giving me the creeps.”

“Did he have any other family?” Danny asked her.  “Any close friends apart from Freeman?” He saw her intake of breath then, at the mention of the other unspoken thing that lay between them.  He stared into her eyes, challenging her, but at the same time, wondering if he would ever have the guts to tell her about the part Jack Freeman had played in Lee Howard’s death.  She knew what he had said at the trial, but they had never spoken of it. 

“He had a brother,” she said to him.  Danny felt suddenly filled with wonder and confusion.

“Did he?  I didn’t know for sure. He mentioned one a few times.”

“They fell out.  Years before I met him.  When they were kids.  Dennis I think he was called.  He mentioned him once or twice but they were estranged.  Had nothing to do with each other.”

Danny looked back at the headstone, mystified. “I wonder why?”

“Who knows?  He never said.  He wasn’t at the funeral anyway.  Danny, let’s go now.  I really don’t think this is doing you any good love.”

“Okay,” he nodded at her.  He breathed in, and felt something else take the place of the anger and the sorrow that had been swelling up inside of him.  He wondered if he could hear that other part of him, the sensible talking part that had talked him through the years in prison, telling him that everything would be okay, trying to do the same again now.  He nodded again, and stuffed his hands into his pockets, and finally stepped away from the grave. “Can you take me back to Mike’s?”

“Oh,” his mother looked up at him in dismay.  “Danny I was really hoping we could have some lunch together.  Or you could come back to mine later…”

“No I don’t think so.  Could do with being alone right now.”  And he strode on ahead of her, little Kurt at his heels.

“What are you going to do?” she called after him, following him as he wound his way through the rows of headstones.  “I don’t want you to do anything stupid, Danny.”

“Like what?” he turned and looked at her when they had reached the car park.  He looked around, noticing that there were two cars parked there alongside his mothers.  They hadn’t been there before.  He found himself walking slowly around them both, his eyes running over the number plates and the makes.  Kay unlocked her car, and watched what he was doing.

“Danny?”

He made a mental note of the cars, a ruby red Galaxy people carrier, and a silver-blue Ford Focus.  He nodded to himself and got into his mother’s car.  He did not speak on the journey back to Belfield park.  He looked at his phone twice, to see that he had messages from Lucy and Anthony.  Lucy was letting him know her father had managed to get the paint off her door, and Anthony wanted to know how he was. Unfortunately forced to revisit the past, he replied to this one.  Anthony immediately sent another text asking what he meant. More graffiti on Mike’s door last night. Think it could be Howard’s family.  Again, Anthony text him back almost instantly, just as they pulled up into the alley behind Michael’s flat.  They were just in time to see the back of Michael and Zach, as they walked hand in hand around the corner at the other end of the alley. Fuck! Anthony had messaged, I’ll try and come round later.

“Is that his little boy?” Kay was asking, nodding towards where Michael and Zach just disappeared from view.  Danny looked up and nodded.

“Yeah. Zach.”

“Ahh.  How old is he?”

“Three, I think.”

“He looks just like Michael, doesn’t he?  He’s adorable.” Danny looked her way and saw a sad smile stretched upon her lips.  He thought that she looked pale and drawn.  Another person touched by his company, he thought bitterly and opened the car door. “I can still see you at that age,” she said then, and he hesitated. Her eyes were fixed ahead on the alley, on the spot where Michael and Zach had vanished. “You were so cheeky.  So fearless.  The amount of times I took you to the doctors or the hospital because you’d jumped out of a tree or thrown yourself off of something.  Always up to mischief you were.”

“Mum, I’ve got to go…”

“What is Michael worried about? He looks like he is doing a good job to me.  Looked like a happy little boy.”

Danny shrugged tiredly.  Did he really want to try and explain it to her?  Did he really want to engage in any more conversations about the past?  All he could really think about was snuggling up on the sofa with Kurt and trying not to think about anything, just for a while.  Then he imagined he would phone Lucy and see how things were between them.  “I think Lucy wants to talk to you, by the way,” he sighed as he swung his legs out of the car.

“Oh.  That sounds ominous for some reason.  Why?”

“I don’t know,” he stood up and shrugged. “I think she wants to understand it all.  I don’t know,” he shrugged again.  “You’ll have to ask her.  Shall I tell her that’s okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Kay replied, lifting her hands from the steering wheel just briefly.  “Danny, I wish we could have at least gone for some coffee or something.  I was so looking forward to seeing you, and I didn’t envision our time together being at the cemetery like that.” She released a sigh and managed another smile.  “Is there anything else you want to know?  Anything else I can answer?”

Danny scratched his head and glanced behind him at the door, where the word ‘murderer’ was still splashed violently across it.  “Look,” he said, turning back to her. “I’m sorry about that.  I got myself a bit worked up, with the graffiti, and just you know, hurting Lucy and everything.  The cops don’t seem to think it’s anything to worry about so I’m going to try to relax.  Maybe nothing else will happen.”

Kay was nodding at him, looking relieved. “Yes.  Maybe nothing will.  Maybe Jerry was just down visiting the grave.  I guess he must do that.”

A thought occurred to Danny then. “Was he at the trial?” he asked. “Were any of his family at the trial?”

“Jerry was,” Kay nodded in reply.  “Just him.”

“And did he ever say anything to you?  I mean, did he believe what I was saying about his son?”

Kay bit down on her lip and her eyes dropped to the floor of her car for a moment, before she lifted them painfully back to meet her son’s questioning face. “He had a few words to say to me,” she told him. “I tried to ignore him, and I certainly did not want to listen to him.  He did not believe you, no.  He did not believe the picture your side tried to paint of his son.”

“They were close weren’t they?  Him and his dad?”

“I think so.” Kay frowned slightly. “In a weird sort of way.  He would visit his parents maybe once a month, maybe less.”

“He had a lot of respect for them,” Danny insisted. “I remember that.  I remember him going on about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just, you know.” Danny lifted his shoulders and shook his head before dropping them down again.  He realised that he felt exhausted then.  His body felt utterly wiped out. “You know, he’d say I didn’t respect him like he respected them. That annoyed him a lot.”

“Who knows?” Kay murmured then, shaking her head, and then rubbing at her eyes with both hands. “Who knows what went through his mind?  God knows I’ve spent enough years trying to figure out who I married, and what he wanted.  I still think you knew him a lot better than I ever did.  For all the wrong reasons.  Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“We can talk like this any time you know.” She reached out then across the passenger seat, and he looked down at her hand, held out to him.  He took it hesitantly in his own.  “I know it’s painful, and it’s horrible, but maybe that’s where we went wrong, you know, when I saw you in prison?  If it helps you come to terms with things, if it helps us both make sense of it all, we can talk like this any time.  You know?”  He nodded at her, and smiled a small smile. “It’s a hell of a lot to get your head around,” she went on, tightening her fingers around his hand, “and you are still so young.  I just want you to be happy Danny.  Just happy and carefree, like you should be.  If it helps you to off load, you can, you know?  You can even tell me about Jack as well, you know….”

Danny grimaced uncontrollably and dropped her hand. “Look I better go mum, it’s freezing out here, so…”

“Okay, I’m sorry Danny, I didn’t mean…” Kay pulled her hand back to the steering wheel and blinked her sudden tears away. “I’m sorry,” she said, again, as he closed the door.

“It’s okay,” he told her, before her walked away, but it wasn’t.  It wasn’t okay, and he wondered if it ever truly would be.  He found his key, unlocked the door to Michael’s flat and went inside.  He found it warm, for the first time since he had arrived.  Kurt jumped straight up onto the sofa and curled into a tight ball.  Danny thought about making himself some tea, but did not seem to have the energy.  He paused for a few indecisive minutes, just standing in the lounge, staring at Kurt on the sofa, a million things roaring and tumbling through his mind. 

He realised then that he had mistakenly thought coming out of prison was finally the end of it all.  The past would be the past, and he would just move on.  Now he saw things differently.  He sat down on the sofa next to Kurt and dropped his head into his hands.  I don’t know who I am…I don’t know who I am… The same thought kept pushing through the whirlwind of his mind.  I’m a naughty little boy who drives my mother mad…It was all coming again, he felt it helplessly, and supposed it did not matter now that he was all alone again, and there was no one to pretend to, no one to hide from. I’m a sulky teenager and I hate all my mother’s boyfriends…Tears were filling the space behind his closed eyes.  He used one forefinger from each hand to push them away as they emerged. I’m so angry, so angry, I want to make her pay, I want to make her sorry. It was like a drumbeat throbbing inside his brain, all the memories and the emotions, and he shook his head slowly from side to side.  The pictures in his mind flashed up endlessly, rolling and blurring into each other, and stupid things, stupid thing he had not thought about for years.  Getting arrested at school for punching Eddie Higgs in the nose.  At one time it had seemed like the worse thing he could ever do, it had felt like the end of the world, and it had felt like his mother would never be able to claw back from the utter loathing she must have felt for him then. I’m scared, I’m scared all the time…I’m just a little man, a little man, I’m a shit stain, I’m nothing, I’m weak and helpless and no one knows…

He saw himself in his mind then, caught by the man he would later plan to kill. It didn’t matter what thing he had done wrong, sometimes it was nothing, sometimes it was something, most of the time it was Howard’s desire to inflict pain and exert control that propelled things forward, and they would both find themselves trapped within it, trapped in a cycle. Howard holding him down on the floor and telling him he was going to slap his face until he either cried or bled.  He had refused to cry.  Howard’s eyes had been lit up, shining with that intense look he always got when he started lashing out.  In the end two streams of red had snaked out from either nostril, and Howard had seized upon them gleefully, using his thumbs to press down on them, almost pushing the blood back into his skin, as he smeared it with his thumbs outwards onto Danny’s cheeks. Danny had never felt so marked, as he had felt then, so owned.

I’ll fucking kill you, how many times had he been brave or stupid enough to say that to Howard?… One day I will fucking kill you…Had he meant it?  When he was a skinny fourteen, fifteen year old kid?  When he was hurt and bleeding, when every part of his body throbbed with the memory of hard fists?  Had he meant it, had he known he would one day do it?

Danny rubbed frantically at his eyes, wiping at the tears that kept coming, wondering if he was going crazy.  Had he been crazy that day?  Insane?  They had asked him if he could remember what was going through his head, the police had asked him, his solicitor had asked him, the therapist had asked him.  All he could remember, all he could still remember was thinking it will be over, I am going to end it, I am going to end it, so it will be over…Something had snapped inside him that day.  He knew that now.  And it wasn’t just the lines of coke he had snorted before he left the bed-sit.  Something had died inside of him.  Something had been lost, something human, he reasoned, something had been missing in order for him to do what he did that day.  Was it still missing?  Was there still a part of him dead inside?

I am a killer…I killed him…I ended him…but I didn’t end it, I didn’t end it, because it’s not over….

10

Lucy

 

            “So what music are you into these days?” Billy was asking Danny. Lucy was between them, and Billy had to lean across her to talk to Danny.  He was holding a Jack Daniels and coke, and every time he laughed out loud, he sloshed a tiny bit over her lap.  She was not as drunk as them, but she was drunk enough not to care.  It was lovely seeing Billy again, she thought, staring into his freckled, grinning face every time he replied to Danny.  He looked so much like his dad, she remembered.  His parents had been lovely, she thought, really lovely.  They had all loved going to Billy’s house after school, back then.

“Didn’t get much chance, you know, inside,” Danny was telling him, pint of beer in one hand, and unlit cigarette in the other.  Billy nodded quickly, his brow furrowed in seriousness. “But I mean, you might laugh, because you used to take the piss about me liking Bob Dylan, but I still really like him, and Neil Young too.  I bet your dad’s got all his fucking records!”

Billy looked like he would explode with excitement.  “Yes he has! He fucking has!” he roared with laughter, spilling another drop or two of whiskey over Lucy as he rocked back in his chair.  “Oh I can’t wait to tell him you said that Dan, he will be so fucking happy, he really will!  You know what he’s like, the old hippy git.  You’ve gotta come and see him, you really have.”

“I will, I will,” Danny nodded in seriousness, raising his pint at Billy. “He’s on my list mate.  He was good to me.  I’ve never forgotten that.  Plus, he can help me get back into the music.  Does he still listen to the vinyl?  Don’t tell me he’s into all the fucking downloading or whatever you call it?”

“Oh no, no worries there,” said Billy. “Firmly stuck in the past when it comes to records, believe me.  He’ll love to see you mate, he really will.  He’s always asked about you, you know.”

Lucy watched Danny absorb this, and saw his jaw twitch, and his eyes dart away from Billy’s face.  It was inevitable though, she though with a sigh.  Almost every conversation any of them had, would somehow trail back to the fact he had been away, he had missed out.  Every now and then his new phone would beep and he would hand it to her in bemusement.  “What now?  Which of you cunts keeps making it bleep at me?”

They all roared laughter in response.  Michael and Anthony had been sending him sporadic text messages throughout the evening.  “We’re helping you get used to it,” Michael told him.  “You need the practice.”

Lucy squinted down at the phone in her hand.  “Oh,” she said, looking up.  “It’s your mum.  She must have put her number in already.”

Michael and Anthony swapped glances. “What does it say?” Danny asked her.

“It says, how are you, are you okay, and when can she see you again.” Lucy handed the phone to him.  “You going to text her back?”

He looked totally lost.  “No I can’t get the hang of it.  I’ll call her tomorrow.  Come on then, I need another drink.  Who’s up for tequilas this time?”

“Now you’re talking,” Michael told him, hitting the table with his fist.

“Now you’re paying,” Anthony said, eyebrows raised at his brother. “I bought the last lot.”

“I’m broke!” Michael wailed, tugging at his pockets.  He looked at Billy and Lucy, but before either of them could reply, Danny patted the breast pocket of his shirt, and Lucy saw the envelope his mother had given him sticking slightly out the top.

“Hey, hang on,” he said, “These are on me actually.”

“Nice one!” beamed Billy.  Michael and Anthony just looked at him quizzically.

“Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?” asked Michael.  Danny patted his pocket again, and got up from the table.  He looked down at Lucy.

“Can you help me Luce?  I don’t know about all these pin numbers and shit.”

Lucy smiled and got up with him.  At the bar, he pulled out the envelope and passed it to her.  She took out the debit card and passed it back to him, and then showed him the four-digit number that was printed on another piece of paper inside the envelope.  “All you do is type that in when the barmaid gives you the thing.  Just type in those four numbers, yeah?  Or do you want me to do it?”

“No, no,” he shook his head, taking the envelope back.  “I’m hammered but I reckon I can manage it.  Have to do all these things myself eventually don’t I?”  He looked at the bar, trying to get the barmaids attention.  Lucy touched his arm.

“Are you all right though?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.  I really am.” He looked at her and gave her a smile.  She frowned, thinking that it was a pretty effective smile, apart from the fact it went nowhere near his eyes.

“Okay,” she said.  “So you’re gonna’ keep the money?”

He shrugged quickly, looking away and letting her know that he still did not want to discuss it.  “Can’t sponge off you lot, that’s all,” he said.  She nodded and left him to it.  Back at the table, Michael had his phone out and was showing Billy recent pictures of his little boy.  Lucy remembered the hours they had just put in, sorting out his hole of a flat.  It still needed a hell of a lot doing to it, but at least, she reasoned, the fridge was clean and hygienic, the carpets were vacuumed, and all of the bottles and cans, and other bits of rubbish on the floor had been chucked out.  She had actually enjoyed helping him straighten it out.  Partly for little Zach’s benefit, and partly for her own.  It had taken her mind off of everything for a few hours.  They had worked together, chatting and laughing and totally avoiding the subject of where Danny might be.  He was a grown man, she had kept telling herself.  But at the back of her mind, part of her found this hard to accept.  Yes, he was the same age as them.  But he had been in prison since he was sixteen years old.  He had not experienced life and independence the same way they all had.  She had spent the hours tidying Michael’s flat, stupidly picturing him lost and alone, wandering the streets, a frightened sixteen year old in the body of a twenty-four year old man.

Anthony leaned towards her then.  He was pretty drunk, she thought, watching the way he swayed slightly on his bar stool, and placed one hand flat on the table, as if to steady himself.  “He’s gonna’ keep the money?” he asked her.  “I’m asking you because I can’t ask him.  I think me and Mike are banned from talking about it.”

Lucy smiled in amusement.  “I think he just doesn’t want us to pay for everything, that’s all,” she shrugged at him.  “God know what else he is thinking.  He sure as hell isn’t telling me yet. Did Mike tell you about his dad?” Anthony shook his head at her. “He saw John earlier, and John had found his dad. He’s spent some years tracking him down. Passed the guys name address and number to Danny in an envelope. Pretty amazing, hey?”

Anthony was quiet for a moment, his eyes searching hers. “Bit of a day for him then?” he sighed finally. “To say the least. What’s he gonna’ do about that?”

“No idea. He’s not saying a word right now Anthony. Not about anything.”

Anthony put his hand on her arm and squeezed it.  “Ah Lucy, don’t be sad, don’t you be sad.  You do look sad.”

“I’m fine.  You’re pissed!”

“Loving it,” he grinned at her.  “It’s amazing!  But don’t you worry little darling.  He’ll be fine.  He’ll tell you everything, if you give it time.  I’ve been in prison twice, you remember that?” He leaned back slightly on the stool, as if giving her the chance to look him over and remember.  She nodded, smiling at him fondly.

“Yes, I remember.  Thanks Anthony.  You are always full of good advice, you know.”

“Hey,” he said then, squeezing her arm again and leaning forward. “About your door!  Do you want me to come and repaint it?”

“Oh no, it’s okay.  My dad is coming over tomorrow, with some apparently industrial strength paint remover, whatever that is.  You know what he’s like.”

“He’s probably worried about you,” Anthony said in a low voice, his eyes darting to the bar.

“Well yeah.  You know how he is.”

“And you?  Are you worried?”

“What, about the graffiti?” Anthony nodded at her.  “No.  Not if it’s just a one off.”

“And if it’s not?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, looking up as Danny came back from the bar carrying a tray of tequila slammers. “Hire security?”

“I did it,” Danny announced proudly, placing the tray down on the table in front of them all.  “The next round is on me too!”

He sat back down, as the rest of them whooped and cheered, and reached for the shot glasses.  Lucy joined them.  It had been years since she had done tequila slammers, she thought recklessly, as they all held their hands over the glasses, lifted then slammed them back down onto the table.  Lucy chucked the liquid down her throat and felt the heat explode there.  She reached almost blindly for her wine glass, pouring the sweet rose down after the tequila to take away the burn.  She looked around at them all.  They were all laughing, and wiping their mouths, their eyes bulging and burning.  They looked happy, she thought, and she wondered it if was ever real happiness, or if it was always just something created and spurred on by alcohol.  They certainly hadn’t been this joyful at the start of the evening, she recalled.

It didn’t matter, she told herself, shaking her head quickly.  Danny had left the table again.  She looked for him, suddenly aware of how blurry her eyesight had become.  It needed the odd little shake of her head to sort it out.  That was kind of funny she thought.  He was at the bar, oh that was all right.  It looked like he was getting them crisps, but when he came back he had crisps and more shots, this time of whiskey and coke.  “We are gonna’ be slaughtered,” she heard Billy moan beside her, burying his head momentarily in his hand.

“Your girlfriend won’t mind?” Lucy asked him, leaning back into him, realising that she had not asked him about her yet.

“She’s out anyway,” he shrugged. “She’s out with all her mates tonight on the piss.  We’ll see who gets home drunkest and latest!”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Walking the dog!  She’s a vet nurse.”

“Ah that’s so nice,” Danny said then, nodding in approval.  “I bet I’d like her.”

“Yeah, you would, you really would,” Billy nodded enthusiastically. “Sophie’s great.  So, so funny, like really funny.  She’s a nutter basically.”

“Where’s she out tonight?” Lucy enquired.

“Oh Howler, you know what used to be Nancy’s?”  Billy stopped when he realised they were all staring at him, and then he made it worse by slapping his hand over his mouth and looking apologetically at Danny, who was looking away, picking up his drink, trying to shrug it off.

“You twat Billy,” Michael was drunk enough to scold him.

“Oh sorry, Danny, mate. I didn’t think.  Got the biggest mouth ever haven’t I?”

Lucy felt the stiffness in him beside her.  She longed to touch him, slip her hand over his arm and squeeze it the way Anthony had with her moments earlier, but there was something that kept holding her back, and it confused her. She didn’t know what it was.  “Don’t be stupid,” he told them all, shrugging. “I don’t care.  Chill out.”

“Got any pictures of Sophie on your phone?” Anthony quickly filled the silence and Billy looked horribly grateful, yanking his mobile out of his pocket and flipping it open.

“Oh yeah, yeah, and the dogs and cats.  We’ve got a lurcher and a collie, you know?  Great fun!”

Lucy looked at the photos.  They all did, except Danny.  She wanted to look at him, to check his face, to touch his body and feel whatever he was feeling, but he seemed untouchable suddenly.  She felt the barrier, even if he did not mean to put it up.  She looked at Billy’s photos, and she heard herself asking questions about them, making comments, like Michael and Anthony, but in her head she was questioning Danny.  What was it like when you worked there for him?  What happened there?  What did he do to you?  What did they all do to you?

Another round of drinks followed, and Lucy found herself veering towards nausea.  She managed to wobble to the bar and fetch herself a drink of water to slow things down, and that was when a guy there tried to chat her up.  She was really too wasted to notice properly.  He was sort of big and wide, with a tight t-shirt, and tattoos winding around each thick arm. He was looking her up and down, holding a bottle of beer, and grinning at her.  She tried to ignore him, asked the barmaid for water, and held onto the bar; grimly aware of the sick spinning that had started in her head.  She could hear him chatting, hear him laughing, but the music seemed loud, and she was concentrating on that, and trying not to be sick, more than him.

Then suddenly she felt Michael arriving beside her, shoving himself in the small gap between her and the guy at the bar.  She was about to smile and hug him to her side, when she saw him push his face close to the other mans, his lips pulled back into a vicious snarl.  “Why don’t you fuck off and stop trying to cop off with my best mates girl?” he was saying.  Lucy was confused.  She found Michael’s elbow and tried to pull him back.  The other guy, the guy she had barely even noticed, was laughing into Michael’s face, and she knew that was not good.

Michael shouted something almost inaudible in its rage, and then he had the other guy by the front of his t-shirt.  Lucy looked helplessly back at their table.  Danny was not there.  Billy had his head in his hand, but Anthony, thank fuck, Anthony was already on his feet.  The guy’s friends were crowding around, spoiling to join in.  Lucy felt herself stumbling backwards, away from them all.  She watched Anthony grip his brother by the arms and pull him firmly away from them all.  “All right, all right, all right fella’s,” he was saying, and she saw the way they all listened, the other young men, they all fell back, grumbling, swearing, but leaving it.  Anthony wrestled Michael away from the bar and shoved him back towards their table.

Lucy found her pint of water and followed in a daze.  At the table, Billy gave her a worried look and put his head back in his hand.  “Man I am wrecked, wrecked,” he was moaning to himself.

“What was that about?” she heard herself asking.  “Where’s Danny?”

“He was cracking onto you, the fucking bastard,” Michael was still fuming.  Anthony kept one hand on his arm, calming him.

“Fucking calm down you fucking idiot,” he was saying.  Lucy watched Michael face him darkly.

“Don’t call me an idiot!”

“Why not eh?  That’s what you are.  That’s what you act like.  Nearly starting a fight over nothing!  Lucy was fine.  That guy was just chatting, you arsehole.”

“Oh fuck you, where’s my drink?  I had a drink here!”

“No, you’ve had enough.  When Dan gets back, we’re taking you home.” Anthony drained the last of his own drink and nodded at Lucy and Billy. “That’s it now.  Party over.  Well done Mikey.”

“Where the hell is my fucking drink?”  Lucy stared in confusion at the horribly angry young man opposite her.  She almost did not recognise him.  The Michael Anderson she had known years ago hadn’t been like this, she thought.  His anger, his scowling eyes, had all been a front, a trick.  He wasn’t really like that, back then.  He was so sweet, she thought in dismay; he was always looking on the positive side, wasn’t he?  He was always holding out hope.

“How many benders have you been on already this week?” Anthony was asking him, and she knew that he was too drunk as well, because more often than not these days he did not argue with Michael.  “You need to sober up if you’ve got Zach coming tomorrow.”

“It’s okay, it’s fine,” Michael argued back, looking over at Lucy. “She helped me sort the flat, didn’t you Lucy?  It’ll be fine.”

“You do know you’re not a kid anymore,” Anthony told him then.  Lucy watched the darkness spill across Michaels face as he glared in disgust at his brother.

“Yeah, so you keep reminding me, like every fucking day! Grandad!  So what age are you meant to stop having fun then, eh?”

“You’re a grown up,” Anthony was staring right back at him.  Lucy watched in stunned silence.  She realised she had never seen them like this before. “And you’re a father.  About time you acted like both.”

Michael’s mouth dropped open for a moment.  Lucy looked around, wondering desperately where Danny had gone, and if Billy mentioning Howard’s old club had really effected him, or not?  “Oh don’t you even start with that, you fucking condescending prick.” She looked back at Michael. She felt wounded by the vitriol in his voice.  That was Anthony he was talking to!

“You’re acting like our parents did, Michael,” Anthony said then, his voice very controlled and even, his eyes daring Michael to disagree. “And you don’t even realise it.”

Michael looked close to an explosion.  “You what?”

“Dad, in and out of our lives.  Both of them always drunk.”

“You fucking cunt!” Michael shot back at him.  Lucy reached out then, grabbing at Billy’s arm.

“Where did Danny go?  Where did he go?”

“I don’t know Luce,” Billy shrugged at her.  “I didn’t see.”

“Just ‘cause you’ve got it all worked out eh?” they heard Michael saying now, leaning as close as he dared to Anthony.  “Happy are you?  You and the Queen Bee over there?”

“Don’t bring her into it,” Anthony warned him, shaking his head. “This is about you and your behaviour.  When are you going to grow up and settle down?”

Michael was roaring, shouting, Lucy realised then.  His face was twisted in rage and hurt, his hands were gripping his chair.  “When are you gonna’ realise we don’t all want to be like you?  We don’t all want your boring, cosy little domestic life!”

Anthony was breathing hard and fast.  His nostrils were working quickly, and his mouth was a hard straight line.  “I bet Zach does,” he said then.  Lucy looked quickly at Michael.  Michael spent all of two seconds absorbing this remark, before he rammed his fist into Anthony’s face.  Lucy and Billy gasped in horror, jumping up from their seats, as Anthony just about managed to save himself from hitting the floor.  He got to his feet instead, whipping his coat off of the back of the stool and slinging it over one shoulder, while his other hand touched his cheek, where the blow had landed.  He eyed his younger brother with distrust.  “People grow up Mikey,” he said to him, “they grow up and they have their own kids.  You’ve had the kid, but you haven’t grown up.”  With that he turned and left.  They all watched him stalk moodily across the pub and out of the door.

“Come on,” Billy said then, taking control.  He had one eye on the bar staff and the other customers, who all seemed to be staring their way.  “Let’s go.  Let’s get you home Mike.”

Lucy scrambled around, snatching up her coat and her phone, and looking desperately around for Danny.  “Can you check the loos for him?” she said to Billy, as Michael got to his feet and shrugged his coat over his shoulders.  Billy nodded and scuttled off, but came back shaking his head.

“Phone him,” Michael said darkly, heading for the door.  Lucy pulled her coat on, slipped her arm through Billy’s and followed Michael out of the door, with her phone to her ear.

It rang and rang, all the way down the high street.  Michael walked out ahead of them, his head hanging low and his hands in his pockets.  “Jesus what a night,” Billy was saying next to her.  “I have never seen them two like that before.”

“Things have changed,” Lucy said, more to herself than to Billy. “Things have changed a lot.”

“You’re telling me.  How weird is it?  I mean, in one way it just feels like yesterday, doesn’t it?  That we were all little kids at school, you know, getting in those stupid fights with Higgs, you remember all that?  Moaning about schoolwork and detentions.  Then in another way, it seems like hundred million years ago.” Billy released a long, drawn out sigh.  “It seems like another lifetime ago.”

Lucy knew what he meant, but she walked on in silence, with the phone glued to her ear the whole time, and her eyes scanning the area, looking for him. They finally found him, when they turned the corner into the alley way that lead to Michael’s flat.  He was leaning against the locked door, smoking a cigarette, and he eyed them all coolly as they approached.  Then he moved away from the door and nodded at it silently.  “Welcome home eh?” he said gently.  They all looked.  Someone had painted ‘murderer’ in blood red letters right across Michael’s door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11

Danny

 

            Michael released a stream of abusive swear words, kicked his own door, and then opened it so they could all get in.  “Oh my God,” Danny could hear Billy expressing his confusion behind him.  “That is so out of order!  Who would do that?  Why would someone do that?”

“Don’t worry about it Billy,” Lucy told him quietly.  “We’re not going to let it get to us.”

“But why?  Why would someone do that?”

“Because that’s what I am,” Danny heard himself say suddenly, as he reached the small landing at the top of the stairs.  He looked back at the three of them and felt like laughing at their dumbstruck expressions.  The only thing that stopped him was the hurt and the confusion in Lucy’s eyes.  “That’s what I am, don’t forget,” he mumbled this, turning from them, as Michael fumbled with his second key.

“This night has gone to shit,” he was complaining. “If I catch any bastard spraying my front door I’m gonna’ fucking beat their head in.”

“You gonna’ call the police?” Billy asked, as they all piled into the cold, dark flat.  Kurt appeared in the hallway, wagging his tail unsurely.  Danny scooped him up and headed into the lounge, with the small dog tucked up under his chin.

“What’s the point?” Michael had replied, switching on the kitchen light. “What can they do?”

“They should know about it.  It’s harassment.”

Danny sank down onto the sofa in the lounge, and immediately snatched the blanket from the back and pulled it around him and Kurt.  Lucy lingered in the doorway, her hands in the pockets of her duffel coat.  “Room in there for me too?” she asked him, eyebrows raised.  He patted the sofa in reply.  She crossed the room and slipped in beside him.  “You missed the fight,” she said quietly.  He looked at her.

“What fight?”

“Mike punched Anthony in the face.”

“You’re joking, why?”

“They had a row about his behaviour,” Lucy shrugged. “About him growing up.”  Danny shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Weird.”

“So where were you?  Where did you go?  I was getting worried.”

“Oh,” he looked down at Kurt.  “I needed some air.  It was getting a bit hot and stuffy in there, you know.  A bit claustrophobic.”  He looked back at Lucy and he could see that she was both hurt and angry.  He shrugged.  “Sorry Luce.  I’m pretty drunk.  I’m an idiot.  As usual.  And then I get back here and see that, sprayed all over the door.  Nice, eh?”

Lucy sighed and dropped her head onto his shoulder.  She still had her hands in her pockets, and she was shivering.  Danny tugged the blanket, and pulled it over her knees for her.  “It must be the same person,” she said, her voice only slightly above a whisper.  He nodded.

“Maybe.”

“Horrible,” she said then, lifting her head and staring at him.  “Horrible fucking bastards.  I am so sorry Danny.”

“Don’t be stupid, it’s all right,” he felt himself softening, he felt his guard weakening, at the sight of her tear filled eyes.  He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, kissing her firmly on the top of her head.  “I can handle it, don’t you worry.  It’s nothing.  Just stupid idiots trying to bother me.”

“It scares me though,” she said, and he knew that she was only saying this because she was drunk.  When sober, she kept it all in check, he thought, her emotions and her reactions, she controlled them all so well.  Everything about her was so thoughtful and considered.  But here he saw her exposed, raw and emotional.  “It really scares me.  I mean, how do they know where you are staying?  They must be watching us, have you thought about that?”  She was staring at him, her brow creased with lines of worry, her eyes begging him to reassure her.

“Course I have,” he told her.  “Look, maybe they’ll get bored.  If spray paint is all they’ve got, then fuck it.  Who cares?”

“But whoever it is, they know where you are.  They know about me, and Michael.  They’ve been watching.”  He felt her tremble beside him, and hugged her tighter.  It sounded like Michael and Billy were making tea in the kitchen.  He could hear them chatting in low voices.

“If anything else happens,” he said then, looking down into her eyes. “Then I’ll call the police, okay?  Does that make you feel better?”

“I think you should call them anyway Danny.  Tomorrow.  Tell them about both doors.  Please.”

“Okay then,” he nodded.  “Okay I will.”  He dropped his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes.  “Christ I’m hammered Luce. That was fun for a while though, wasn’t it?  Us of all back together again.”

“It was fun for a while,” she agreed, her head back on his shoulder.

“It will get better, won’t it?” he said with his eyes still closed.  “I know it will.  Everything will all get better.”

“I feel a bit like you’re shutting me out, you know,” he heard her say then, and he opened his eyes and looked back down at her, but she kept her head against his shoulder and he could not see her face.  He rubbed her arm up and down with his hand.

“I’m sorry Luce.”

“It’s not your fault.  I don’t blame you.  We could do without all this extra shit, couldn’t we?”  She laughed a little, her shoulders shaking, and he patted her arm, just as Michael and Billy staggered into the lounge.  Billy was carrying a tray with four cups of steaming tea placed on it, while Michael was struggling with four plates of buttered toast.  He lowered two onto the little table next to the sofa.

“Tea and toast guys.”

“You legend,” Danny smiled, sitting forward and grabbing a plate. Billy handed out the teas and collapsed into the ragged armchair next to the sofa.  His face was flushed bright red.

“I am so drunk!” he exclaimed suddenly to them all, and they all looked at each other, before laughing at him.  “What?  I am.  I really am!”

“You don’t change Billy, you know that?” Danny said to him, grinning.  “I like that about you mate.”

Michael was grinning from ear to ear as he munched on his toast, mug of tea in hand.  Danny thought about asking him why he had punched his brother, but he stopped himself.  There was a simple happiness for a small moment, he thought, looking at them all, as they ate their toast and drank their tea in silence, and bringing up anything else would just ruin it all again.  So he plastered a dopey smile across his face, and let the remainder of the alcohol push him that way, instead of the other, instead of the way it had been herding him.  He and Mike would talk tomorrow.  He would get to meet Michael’s kid.  He would call the police and get them to come and see the door.  He would do it to please Lucy, to make her feel better.  He would not go back to sleep at hers, not for a while, not until things had died down.  He repeated these things over and over again in his head, nodding to himself, and listening to the advice he was giving.  He had done that a lot in prison.  Talked to himself, calmed himself down.  It was almost like a little part of him separated off and gave advice from afar.  It was good advice though, he reasoned.  Take each day at a time.  Don’t look too far ahead, or it will freak you out completely, don’t look too far back or you will become entangled in the mess of the past.  Live for today, and handle each thing one at a time.

He was still drunk, his head banging and a low level of nausea setting in, when Billy and Michael decided to call it a night and share the bed in Michael’s room.  Like old days, like old days, Danny smiled to himself, as Lucy turned the lounge light off, and climbed back onto the sofa with him.  He lay along the length of the sofa, and she slipped in behind him, pulling the blankets right over their heads to keep out the cold.  It was a tight fit, but at least it would keep them warm.  Kurt remained curled into a tight ball in the crook of Danny’s arm.

He felt himself drifting off, consciousness dipping and falling, and then lifting slightly again as he felt Lucy slide her hands under his t-shirt, running them softly across his back.  She was drunk too, he remembered, and smiled slightly to himself.  He could hear her slow, measured breathing, in out, in out.  He could feel her hot breath on his skin, as she pushed his t-shirt up to his shoulders.  He felt her lips press against his skin, between his shoulder blades and he giggled softly under the blanket, as it tickled.  He heard her hitch in her breath.  Was she crying?  He waited.  The nights drinks lined up inside his head, drumming out an unwelcome brain beat.  He took deep, slow breaths, hoping his toast wasn’t about to show itself again.

Her fingers followed the patterns of his scars, and he sucked in his breath, suddenly aware of the wetness that leaked from her eyes against him.  She was circling one finger, tracing the scar, around and around.  “Lucy?” he asked her in the darkness.

“Are they cigarette burns?” her voice whispered back, her voice dripping with agony and emotion.  He felt himself stiffen.  He wished he was asleep, he wished he was gone already, so he wouldn’t have to answer her.  But she was waiting.  And she was drunk, and crying.  And she thought he had been shutting her out.

He let the silence drift for a moment, his eyes closed.  Then; “Yeah.”

Her breath hitched again behind him.  One of her hands was on his chest, palm flat against his skin, pulling him into her.  The other hand remained behind; the finger paused in the middle of the circular scar.  “From prison, or from before?”

Again, he let the silence walk on, listened to her breathing, felt her body trembling behind his.  Then he sighed.  “From before.”

He heard her swallow, and gulp back tears, as she tried to compose herself.  But he could feel the slow slide of tears wettening his top.  She stopped circling the scar and wrapped her arms around his middle instead, pressing her cheek against his bare back.  He could hear her crying steadily, and he let her.  “Why?” she was whispering, trying to hold it all in, “why?  Why would anyone do that?”

“As a joke,” Danny told her, and he was surprised at how gentle and calm his own voice sounded.  He found her hands with his own and closed them on top of hers.  He thought if he held onto her, if he could just somehow hold onto her forever, then he would always be okay, he would always be safe.  “When he was bored. He used to flick them at me.  Stuff like that.”

“I don’t understand,” she was still sobbing into his back.  “I will never understand how one person can do that to another.  It’s just not fair…”

“No,” he agreed.  “It’s not fair. And I still don’t understand it either.”

“You must have thought about it a lot.”

“Mmm.  The only thing I came up with is what a power hungry control freak he was. He used violence when he felt he’d lost control.” Danny coughed twice, clearing his throat.  In his mind he saw a brief flash of Howard’s face when in full rage, tiny eyes glinting with promise, small teeth bared.  He quickly opened his eyes again, blinking the image away.  “And I think he got addicted to it.  To violence.  It made him feel better, it calmed him down to lash out. He just got worse, and worse.”

He felt Lucy shaking her head behind him. “Makes you wonder how he was brought up,” she murmured. “Makes you wonder about what he was taught.” Danny thought again of the old man at the cemetery, and the gleam of outrage in his eyes.  “How did it feel, spending the money?” Lucy asked him then.  “Did it feel like Mike wanted it to feel?  Like you were getting revenge again?”

“No,” he told her softly.  “It didn’t.  It felt sick.  It should feel like it’s over, though, shouldn’t it?” he lifted one of her hands to his mouth and kissed it.  “It was meant to feel like it was all over.”

“And it doesn’t?  Because of the graffiti?”

“It’s just starting again Luce, that’s all,” he sighed, patting her hand. “It’s all a bit crazy, isn’t it? I think me being here has brought it all back for all of you, you know. I didn’t mean to make you feel shut out either.  It just feels weird, like people are treading on eggshells around me, not wanting to say the wrong thing.  I hope that will change one day.”

“They don’t want to bring up the past, in case it upsets you. Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“Your mum,” he felt her sigh heavily against his skin.  He turned over then, taking care not to knock the snoring dog from the sofa.  He wriggled around to face her, and she pulled her hands away from his body, bringing them up to wipe at her eyes.

“What is it?” he asked her.  He could see her lower lip trembling as she tried to control herself.

“I just don’t understand that’s all.  I know you’ve made your peace with her, and I’ve tried to get my head around that…but…” she trailed off unsurely, wiping her eyes once more, before she slid her hands back around his middle.  Danny pressed his forehead to hers, and kissed her nose.

“Lucy, she didn’t know.  I’ve been over it with her like a thousand times.”

“She really didn’t know?  Didn’t know anything?  I find that hard to believe, and I know you did too back then.”

“She actually thought he was good for me,” Danny smiled a little bitter smile at this.  He was surprised by Lucy’s questions.  She had never asked much before.  It seemed like most of the time it was a topic they avoided.  It certainly wasn’t the sort of thing you talked about during prison visits.  You talked about good things then, how people were, what they were doing, what was going on in the world and so on.  “Before he came along Luce, I was a pain the arse for my mum.  She had no control over me whatsoever.  Howard took advantage of that.  Before she knew it, he had it looking like we were fucking best mates.  If she didn’t know what to do or say to me, she would let him.  He made it that way Luce, because he convinced her he could handle it.  He was like a different person around her.  Sometimes I could hardly believe the difference, especially at the start. He was so good to her, you know?  So kind and attentive and calm, just sorting everything out for her all the time so she didn’t have to worry. He could sort things out. So she let him.”

“She really didn’t know anything else?”  Lucy pulled her head back then, so that she could look into his eyes.  He frowned and smiled down at her.  He wondered why it was so important for her to know what his mother had, or had not known.

“She knew he was tough on me,” he admitted.  “She knew he was strict, and controlling and all that.  The odd clip round the ear, or whatever.”

“So did she ever see him hit you?”

“Well yeah, once or twice.”

Lucy’s jaw tightened instantly. “Well that’s what I mean, Danny.  That’s just what I mean.  That should be enough for any mother!  What was she thinking?  Why was that okay?  That’s what I mean!”

“Lucy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you are a bit drunk…”

“Yeah, so what?  I’m drunk so I’m saying what I think for a change, I’m saying how I feel.” She looked away from him briefly, blowing out her breath as if to try to calm herself down again.  “I was thinking about meeting with her, you know, going with you next time you see her.  I was thinking lots of things Danny. You know, like me and you settling down one day.  I was thinking about Mike’s little boy coming over tomorrow, and Anthony’s kids.”

“What about them?”

“Just….just, I don’t know,” she seemed momentarily exasperated by her own lack of words.  Then she met his eyes again, and her eyes were fierce.  “Maybe I will meet her,” she said. “I’ll meet her, and ask her myself, all the questions I have, so I don’t have to pester you with them.”

“You’re not pestering, don’t be silly.  I told you, you can ask me anything.”

“But I feel like it hurts you to think about it, and talk about it.  You should be able to forget it.”

“I’ll never forget it Lucy,” Danny told her, pulling her closer again and resting his chin on top of her head.  “It’s a part of me, whether I like it or not.  But I have to find a way to move on, don’t I?  I have to find good stuff in life.”

“And seeing your mum, being on good terms with her, that’s part of that is it?  That helps you?”

“It’s not easy,” he admitted. “But let me put it this way Lucy, then you can think about whether you should talk to her or not.  Howard did his worse when it was just him and me.  He would do things that wouldn’t show up, like punch me in the head.  If anything showed up, he’d get in first and tell my mum I’d fallen off my bike or been in a fight, or whatever.  I never told her any different, because he had me terrified.  I thought I’d end up in care, and he said worse things went on there.  He said he’d kill me, or he’d kill her, and I believed him. I was scared he would do things to hurt you lot, like he did to Anthony. So he got away with it.  Even that time, when Mike sent the fucking police around to see me, I could have told them the truth, I could have said Mike was telling the truth, but I didn’t.”

He felt Lucy’s head dip up and down under his chin as she nodded. “She must live with the guilt every day, I guess,” she murmured.

“Yeah, it’s ruined her life, that’s for sure.  John still won’t have fuck all to do with her. We’ve all got to find a way to move on, that’s the only way I can look at it.” He moved his head and kissed her again, this time on the forehead. “I know she turned a blind eye to a certain extent, and I know I could have tried harder to make her see, and what can either of us do about that now eh?  Nothing.  It’s done.”

“Okay,” he heard Lucy’s voice getting drowsy now, thick with impending sleep.  “Okay, I’ll talk to her, I will.  I’ll give her a chance.”

Danny nodded and closed his eyes upon her head.  He listened to her breathing get slower and slower, and heavier as she dropped into unconsciousness.  He shivered and tugged the blanket tighter around them.  His last thought before he drifted away himself, was wondering how bad the hangovers would be in the morning.

That night he dreamed violently.  It was all there, in vivid colour, as real as day, everything, every last detail.  In reality, Danny could not clearly remember much about the day he had stabbed his stepfather to death.  It came to him in a series of blurred, and underdeveloped images and moving pictures, a bit like a scratchy old movie, and most of what he remembered was the emotion of that day.  The overriding one being sheer blind rage, followed by a shaking sensation of relief and joy that it was over, that he had ended it, and he was free.  But in his dreams it played out almost exactly as it had happened that day.  Dreams treated him to a scene-by-scene, detailed account of what took place that morning, in his mother and Howard’s Cedar View home. The clearest bit found him on the kitchen floor, where his head was full of pounding blood and Howard had his hands in his hair as he bounced his head upon the hard floor, and he croaked something at him, and then when Howard leaned close to hear what he was trying to say, he saw the knife plunging in, and he felt it heavy in his hand, and he felt it puncture through the silk dressing gown he was wearing, rapidly slicing through skin and muscle after that.  He would see the bright red blood pumping out over the knife, flowing warmth onto his hands, and then he pulled the knife back out and went back for more.

Sometimes it would be him getting stabbed, or they would both be stabbing each other.  These made for the most violent dreams, where sometimes he would wake up on the floor, or with bloodied fists from punching the wall.  This time it was Lucy’s alarmed wailing that snapped him out of it.  He woke up, and found her face staring back at him in horror, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes horribly wide and scared. He did not understand at first.  He looked down at himself.  He was knelt on the floor beside the sofa, and all the blankets were with him, tangled around his middle.  He was holding up his fists, as if wielding knives at an unseen enemy.  But Lucy was not unseen, and she was not the enemy, but when she lowered her hands, distraught tears flowed down her face, and her mouth was cut and bloodied.