It’s never the time or the place.
I shrug and shake my head and he carries on his conversation about fan belts. I sip from my half of Guinness, letting the metal taste swim around my teeth, and watch him, turning the volume down in my head so the scene goes silent. I try to picture him my age, nearly seventeen and unsure of himself, or scared, or confused or even slightly nervous, but I can’t. Dad’s emotions only seem to do the primary colours; happy, sad or angry. I know that can’t be true, all the other shades must live underneath his skin.
I look round the room of mostly men. A collage of weathered faces from different generations and I think about how each face has a life attached to it. A string of details that stretches out of the door, along local roads to where they sleep. A wife, a kid, an old sofa, an empty fridge. The spaces they own, somewhere else. How they choose to come here, and how people like to keep the different parts of their lives separate.
“Stop thinking will you, Lukey?” Dad’s frowning. I stare back at him, trying to let him know how stupid his statement is, but I know what he means, and sometimes I wish I could.
Dad finishes his pint and sighs. “You know where too much thinking gets you.”
By the time Tommy shows up with Micky, Dad and his mates are telling the same story for the seventh time, with slurred edges. Micky rubs his knuckles over my head. “And how’s Mr College?” I look at Tommy as Micky grabs my shoulders. “Shame some of your brains couldn’t rub off on this one.” He points at Tommy with his thumb, then sits down and gets immediately absorbed into the group of grown-ups. Tommy doesn’t say anything. Dad sends me to the bar and Tommy takes my seat to go through the same customary greeting and piss-taking from each tipsy mechanic in turn that I got an hour and a half ago.
Donna’s changing a vodka bottle from the spirit rack. She smiles as I place my empty glass on the rubber beer mat.
“Same again, Lukey?” Her voice is a beam of light cutting through the coarse bush of testosterone. What the hell are you talking about?
I look down.
“Two pints and two halves please. Micky and Tommy are here.”
Donna puts the vodka bottle down and starts to pour the drinks. I’m watching her as she moves, like she’s operating a machine she’s known forever and, like I do most times I speak to her, I get a flash of lying on my side on our living room floor under my duvet. I’m ten years old and pretending to be asleep while her and Marc fool around on the sofa behind me. Getting a sneaky glimpse of her black bra.
“So how’s college?” She places two halves on the bar and starts on the pints.
“All right, yeah,” I say, and even as the words are coming out of my mouth, I know they’re too quiet.
“What? I can’t hear you, babe, speak up.” She just called you babe.
I punch out my words to cut through the pub noise, just as things fall quiet. “It’s all right. Just started this week.”
My stomach drops as people turn to look at me. My head goes down as I wait for them to stop staring. Donna puts a full pint next to the two halves and they look like a single parent Guinness family. I stop myself saying it out loud. She’s laughing.
“That’s good. Knew you were the one with the brains.”
Her eyes lift my head up and I’m looking at her. Her black hair cut short like only some girls can do, her chocolatey eyes, the warmth in her smooth face. Her mum’s Italian and you can tell. I crack a smile and feel the skin of my cheek, and I want to say sorry. Sorry for what happened.
“Be uni next, eh?” she says.
I hold out the tenner Dad gave me. “Dunno about that.”
Donna holds my hand as she takes the money. Her thin fingers are strong.
“You get out of here first chance you get.” And she’s smiling, but there’s something else in her face, and she knows I see it. I look down again and she lets go.
“You do what you want, handsome. Ignore us bitter old ones.”
I take my change and feel Marc’s name crawling up my throat. I know she’s been counting days too, walking around under the same cloud of my big brother. Handsome?
I swallow, then look back at Donna. “You’re not old.”
Donna leans forward on the bar, her thin arms pushing her boobs forward. I try not to stare.
“Just the bitter I need to work on then.”
And then she’s gone, down the bar to serve an old man.
She called you handsome.
And I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I feel warm, and I’m wondering if this is how Marc felt every time he was with her.
Some old timer leans over the bar and stares at Donna’s body. I feel my muscles tensing as I look at his cracked blotchy face. Then he’s looking back at me, staring with cloudy eyes and he nods the nod, the one that lets me know that just like everyone else in here, he respects what Marc did.
Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm.
It sounded like something from an ITV courtroom drama.
ABH, with greater harm and higher culpability.
One year and six months.
I remember I had to look at Dad to see whether that was better or worse than they’d expected. Dad’s face didn’t move. Mum was already crying. I was wearing my funeral suit, my eyes trying to find somewhere to settle that didn’t feel wrong.
The room was four different shades of beige and the wooden gate that separated Marc from everyone else was so low it didn’t make any sense. The magistrate gave a little speech about Marc’s disregard for another human life. How Craig Miller could’ve died and how, by driving round looking for Craig, unashamedly asking people where he was, Marc had demonstrated a premeditated intent to cause harm. Nothing about Craig’s history of terrorising people since I could remember.
The charge, combined with Marc’s record of minor charges for affray and violent conduct, led the magistrate to extend the sentence to twenty months.
Mum wailed, like twenty months was so much worse than eighteen. Dad’s face still didn’t move. I stared at Marc, standing firm in his white T-shirt, his chin up, like he was posing for a photograph, and I wanted to shout at the judge. To explain. Make it better.
But I didn’t. I just stood there, next to Dad, watching my older brother as the magistrate spoke.
The hammer banged. Dad held Mum as she cried and reached out towards the stand. Marc sighed and shook his head. “It’s OK, Mum. I’ll be all right.”
Then he looked at me, as the two officers led him away, and he smiled.
Marc Henry. The convicted hero. Wrong to the law, but right to anyone from round our way who knew Craig Miller, the nastiest piece of work around. Marc Henry. Local superstar. Guardian angel. Completely oblivious to the dead space he was about to leave behind.
“She is so fit!”
Tommy’s voice is almost angry as he speaks, the smoke flowing out of his mouth like exhaust fumes. We’re standing outside the pub. He shakes his head. “I swear down, your brother, man. Lucky bastard.”
I cut him a look.
“What? I’m just saying, prison or no prison, Donna’s amazing. I’d … man, I don’t even