Certain details in this book, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
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First published by HarperElement 2018
FIRST EDITION
© Julie Shaw and Lynne Barrett-Lee 2018
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Cover photographs © plainpicture/Valery Skurydin (young woman); © Romany WG/Trevillion Images (figure)
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Source ISBN: 9780008228484
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008228538
Version: 2018-04-03
Contents
Be the man your father never was. Mo had never forgotten being told that. By his mum’s younger sister – his dead mum’s younger sister. A woman whose memory burned much more brightly than his mum’s did, because she’d died when he was not much more than three.
He remembered where he’d been, too, when he’d been told that. Not long out of prison, not long settled in Spain – as far as he could get to escape the ferrety attentions of DI fucking Daley. A place where he could rebuild his empire undisturbed. At the Tikki Bar in Puerto Banús, more specifically; a piece of the Caribbean on the posh part of the Costa, that he’d set up with his partner and friend, Brown Benny. Like Mo, Benny had done time – in his case, in London – having been caught with a car boot full of fake twenty-pound notes.
The call had come via the girl Mo employed to mind his villa, and who’d given his aunt the number, as being the place she could most likely track him down.
He remembered being in two minds about whether to take the call, too. As a rule, Mo didn’t need to take calls he didn’t want to. The name Marcia hadn’t immediately registered either. When Benny’s lad had come across and said there was a call for him from a Marcia, he’d first off assumed it was some bird he might have messed around with, or just messed around. No doubt with some tedious teary female rant.
‘She said it’s about family,’ the boy had persisted, and Mo had hesitated. The lad was well trained in interrogating unexpected callers. If he thought Mo should take it, then maybe he should.
‘It’s Shah,’ she had said, without preamble, once he’d answered. She’d only ever been known as that – just between the two of them, always Shah. He’d no memory of it himself but she’d told him when he was older. That, back during those first terrible months after his mum died, he’d wail for her apparently – ‘Marcia! Marcia! Marshah!’ And his dad, mad with grief, would go running to fetch her. And she’d come. For a while, at least. Till it all got too shitty. Till she met a ‘decent’ man and moved far, far away – somewhere in London, they’d gone. And even she – saint that she’d been through it all – couldn’t, wouldn’t, separate him from his dad. And so left him to his fate. Which became even shittier. Because his dad had lost a wife and been left with a son, when – and he never tired of telling Mo this – it should have been the other way a-fucking-round.
He barely saw her after that. Couple of times a year, no more. And each time she did she’d have this look in her eye. Something like regret, but never quite enough. When he’d run away, he’d gone there, but he was too big, too angry. Even she couldn’t deal with him then.
‘Your father’s dead,’ Shah said briskly. ‘Thought you might want to know.’
‘You thought wrong.’
That’s what he’d said. And he’d meant it. The scars – emotional and physical – were too deep. The memory of endless evenings cowering in his filthy box bedroom while his father, blind drunk, but with ears like a fucking elephant, played cards with his dole money and more often than not lost. It made little difference. Win or lose, he’d still strap him.
Mo still meant it now. That would never change, ever. But he’d never forgotten what she’d said to him, either, ten minutes into what had turned out to be an epic conversation, mostly detailing the reasons why he needed to sort his life out. Stop dealing in gear. Stop going to prison. Stop treating the world like it owes you a bloody living. Try making one – an honest one. Make your mum proud, you hear me? You’ve learned your lesson now. Grow up. Be the man your father never was.
Well, he was always going