Bad Blood. Julie Shaw

the mother who’d thrown her out. And closer still. Which provoked a kind of helpless, wretched fury.

      After all, who could she really blame but herself?

Chapter 6

      Hanging over the balcony on the sixth floor of Elizabeth Towers, Nicky Parker had only two thoughts on his mind. The first was that he’d be spending the foreseeable future sleeping on Brian’s ratty futon. And the second – unbelievable, even a whole twenty-four hours later – was that, in theory (he’d have to see what Chrissy had to say about it), he was officially related to Rasta Mo.

      ‘You’re joking, right?’ he’d said to Eddie down the Listers the previous evening. And, despite Eddie’s stern looks (he’d already delivered The Lecture about shaping up while his little sis was staying) Nicky’d genuinely thought he was having a laugh. But he hadn’t been. No, she hadn’t actually admitted it, as such, not to him. But she certainly had to Josie, and why would she lie? And who the fuck else’s would it have been, given that it was half-caste? And then Eddie had gone back to his droning, like he was Nicky’s dad or something. No drugs round the baby. No weed. Definitely no heroin. And don’t look so shocked. I’m not wet behind the ears, mate. Keep it clean. Don’t fuck up. Don’t fuck things up for your sister.

      Nicky had had half a mind to tell Eddie he should bloody well keep the pair of them, if he was that worried about things at the flat. But, weirdly, given how mortified he’d been when Chrissy had asked if he could take them in, there was this strong, unlikely sense in him that it was his responsibility anyway. That with his fuck-up of a mother going ape – no surprises there, given Mo – it was his duty to step in and help out. So on one level he even resented Eddie thinking that he didn’t have it in him to do so.

      He took a drag on his joint and scanned the road below for signs of Chrissy and her baby’s arrival. It was so hard to get the words ‘her baby’ around his tongue. Yes, it had happened, no doubt about it – it was coming to fucking live with him – but he couldn’t quite square the thought of his little sister, who he still essentially saw as a kid, and the business of her having given birth to her own kid. And in doing so, making him an uncle.

      Unbelievable. A fucking uncle! And – even more unbelievable – to Rasta Mo’s son. Still, there was an upside, and it was the fact that it made his mam a granny. That was the most laughable part of it all. Her with her make-up, and her tart’s clothes, and her pathetic denial – did she look in a mirror, ever, and actually see herself?

      His mam a granny. She couldn’t hide that under an inch of slap. And that was probably as much the reason she’d told Chrissy to fuck off out of it as anything else she’d come up with. Which made him smile too. She was like the Telegraph and fucking Argus when it came to gossip about anyone else. But her a granny. No, she wouldn’t like hearing that one bandied about – not one little bit. She’d hate that as much as the other enormous bombshell. Nicky still couldn’t quite believe it. That it was Mo’s.

      He recognised Eddie’s Escort while it was still some way distant – one of the benefits of having such a lofty view of life – so there was time to take a last welcome drag before grinding the joint out under the heel of his boot, and for the tell-take smoke to blow away. That little ginger cow would do her nut if she copped him smoking. And then there’d be another tedious lecture.

      He hoicked his jeans up and pushed open the flat door with his foot. ‘They’re here, Bri,’ he yelled into the hallway as he entered. ‘Fuck off into your bedroom for a bit, will you, mate? Not for long. Just till the Gestapo have gone.’

      He heard a mumbled ‘yeah’. Brian already knew the score. He shuffled about like a pensioner, and usually smelt like one too, and with his sallow skin and with him having a pair of pupils you could usually park a fucking bus in, Josie and Eddie would only have to take one look at him to set them off again. About fucking junkies and how they were a scourge on the world. Which was as ironic as it was boring, given that Josie was a McKellan. Her sister was one of the dealers he sometimes bought from. But perhaps – he had the wisdom to admit it – that was why. Lyndsey, a mum herself, was a fucking state.