Odd, Vinnie decided. Very odd. But then this was his sister and that idiot they were talking about. Nothing that pair got up to would surprise him.
Walking back up through the snicket to his sister’s in the gathering dusk, Vinnie wondered how well his nephew and nieces would remember him. Three years was a long time when you were just a nipper – would Sammy and Lou even know who he was? By now, their memories of him would be pretty hazy.
Little Robbie, though – perhaps he would, because Titch would have reminded him. He knew the lad still thought about him at least because Josie had sent a fire-engine picture he’d done for him in with one of her letters. It even had Vinnie’s name emblazoned on the side of the truck. He’d displayed it proudly on the wall of his room along with his family photos and posters. Bless the little tyke. He wondered how he was. Was it a bit better than it used to be? He hoped so.
But the evidence outside told a different story. As he walked up their path it was like going back in time. Had anything changed here? He doubted it. The front was certainly no different – a mess of broken toys, overgrown weeds and random bits of wood – and when he knocked on the same peeling paint on the same filthy door, it felt like he’d never been away.
It was no different inside. Getting no response from his knocking he tried the front door and finding it unlocked, pushed it open and stepped into the hall. A couple more steps took him to the living room and, pushing that door open too, he was greeted with the scene he half expected. The TV was on, the fire was lit, the room was a sea of the usual mess and, in the midst of it, his older sister and his nephew.
‘Now then!’ he boomed.
‘Uncle Vin!’
Robbie leapt up on seeing him. ‘Yay! Uncle Vin!’ He ran across the room then and cannoned into Vinnie, arms as wide as his grin. ‘Nan said you were coming home! Have you come to watch the telly with us?’
‘Fucking hell, mate!’ he said, casting his eyes over his nephew. ‘Whoah there! You’ll have me over! And look at you! You’re so big – how old are you now?’
‘I’m ten!’ Robbie told him proudly. ‘An’ I’ll be 11 in January! Mam! Mam, look who’s here! Auntie Titch, come downstairs! Uncle Vin’s here!’
Robbie ran into the hall to shout for Josie to come down and Vinnie smiled at his enthusiasm. It felt good to be looked up to, which he knew he was. Young Robbie thought of him as some kind of hero, always had. Hardly surprising given the idiot of a man he currently lived with.
Robbie had certainly grown up a bit, and from the size of him, he was going to be a big lad. He already had impressive muscles and looked a lot older than his years. He’d be okay, Vinnie decided. Able to look after himself. Well, as long as he didn’t take after his excuse for a mother.
Vinnie looked across at his elder sister, who barely stirred at the sound of her son’s voice. She was sitting in exactly the same place on exactly the same couch, the same lazy-lidded half-smile frozen on her face. So, here too, absolutely nothing had changed. No, it was worse – she couldn’t even wait till the fucking kids were in bed before chasing the fucking dragon, by the looks of things.
‘Vinnie!’ he turned around to see his younger sister enter the room. Christ, he thought – now she had changed. Where’d she get those lanky legs from?
Just like Robbie had, she crossed the room in an instant and threw her arms round him. ‘You might have fucking waited for me to get home!’ she told him, her voice muffled by his coat as she clung to him.
‘And you,’ he countered, ‘might have made the fucking effort to bunk off school so you could be home!’
She was still in her uniform. In fact, if Vinnie wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing one of his old school jumpers. He recognised the frayed cuffs and a splat of green paint that had never washed off. He chuckled to himself and did a quick mental calculation. What was she – 14? Fuck. When he’d left she’d still been in primary school. He pulled her off him and held her away from him, grinning, trying to get his head around how much she’d changed. And she was obviously doing the same, because she laughed at him. ‘You growing that bum-fluff on your face for a joke?’
He glanced across at his older sister. Thank fuck for his younger one, all things considered. She’d got sharper since he’d left, but in a good way. ‘Where’s the girls?’
‘In bed,’ Titch said. ‘I just got them off.’ She frowned. ‘Again. They were already off – and then you come banging on the door.’
He became aware of a tugging on his coat. Robbie. ‘Uncle Vin! Uncle Vin! Can we go out and play footy?’
‘With me in this?’ Vinnie joked, smoothing the lapels of his Crombie. ‘You’ll be lucky, mate! Tomorrow, maybe. After school. I gotta speak to your mum now, okay?’
‘And it’s time for bed,’ Titch said. ‘Because I have to get off now too.’
‘You’re off?’ Vinnie asked, feigning disappointment. Much as he was pleased to see his little sis, he didn’t want her earwigging while he was talking business with Lynds. ‘Charming!’ he pretended to huff. ‘Thought you’d be desperate to see me! I walk in the door and you walk out of it!’
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I rushed home specially. But mam said you were off to the Bull for the night, didn’t she? And there was no way I was sitting in on my own, was there?’ Her expression softened then. ‘And I’ve got to meet up with Caz anyway. We’ve got some homework to get finished.’
Vinnie grinned again. ‘Mam said you were still a goody goody. She was right, then? Right, young fella,’ he added, sweeping Robbie up onto his hip. ‘Time for bed, then, mate, I think.’
‘Yay!’ said Robbie, throwing his arms around Vinnie’s neck. ‘You going to tuck me in, Uncle Vin?’
‘Tuck you in, mate? How old d’you say you are now?’ He smiled at his nephew and glanced across at his feckless older sister. ‘Oh, go on, then, you big sissy,’ he said. The poor little bleeder. What kid deserved that for a mother?
He said goodnight to Titch, promising to catch up with her properly the next day, and by the time he came down again, the kitchen strip light was switched off and she’d gone. Lyndsey, however, seemed not to have stirred since he’d left her, and there was still no sign of Robbo. There was just the smell of him – the stale greasy stink the whole place had, and which he remembered as if it was yesterday.
Jesus, he thought crossing the room and roughly shaking his older sister, what a way to live a life. If there was one thing he was never getting into, ever, it was fucking heroin – it fucked you up like nothing else.
‘Christ, sis,’ he said, as she spluttered and cleared her throat. ‘I can’t believe you’re on the gear already. Can’t you wait till they’re in fucking bed at least?’
She roused herself a little and pulled herself up into a semi-sitting position. She looked a state; even worse than he’d remembered her. Her long hair – once dark and glossy – was as lank and dirty as his was clean, she had dirt under her nails and spots on her face.
‘Fuck off, Vin,’ she said. ‘You come to see us or just fucking moan?’
‘Let me see,’ he said, casting his gaze around. ‘Bit of both. State you fucking live in. Those poor fucking kids. Don’t you have any shame?’
‘Yeah, yeah, save your sermon for someone who cares,’ she said, flapping a dismissive arm and reaching for her baccy tin. Anyway, you alright? How was your holiday?’
‘Educational,’ he told her, feeling suddenly twice the age that was written on his birth certificate; as if he’d lived more life in three years than she had in ten. ‘Anyway, it’s Robbo I’m after. I hear he’s got something going on that