Friday was fish and chip day for Ian and the lads. They’d found a good one near to the site in Stretford that did chips just the way Ian liked them, thick and long, not dripping in fat. They all took their fish and chips back to the site and sat around eating whilst going over that weekend’s sport. United were playing a friendly against AC Milan and Colin, the site stud, said it presented him with a
dilemma.
‘ Why does it?’ asked Ian.
‘ Well’ Colin began ‘ I’m seeing this bird from Yorkshire, right? Dead fit, curves in all the right places and not a bad shag’.
‘ And?’ Ronnie chirped in.
‘ Well the day of the match, Sunday, is the only time at the weekend she can get down and the match is live on sky sports so what do you do?’
‘ Record it?’ suggested Ian, feebly. He had to smile. Colin looked like he’d got the weight of the world on his shoulders.
‘ Can’t record sky on my telly, it won’t work for some reason’ said Colin. ‘ And I can’t have it on … you know, and concentrate on me bird’.
The rest of them thought this was all hilarious.
Marek offered to shag Colin’s bird for him so that he could watch the match but somehow Colin wasn’t too keen on the idea.
‘ I think you are the spoil sport’
Marek teased, his accented English sounding very funny when he came out with sayings like that.
‘ I think you’re right,
Marek’ said Len, the foreman. ‘ He’s very much the spoil sport. Aren’t friends supposed to share stuff, Col?’
Colin stuck two fingers up ‘ Yeah, yeah, you can all do one’.
‘ Well you won’t be doing one if the match is more important!’ said Ian.
It was just after four when Ian finally got round to ringing Kevin at home to see if he’d be back next week. His wife Sandra answered.
‘ Sandra?’ said Ian.
‘ Yea, oh
Hiya Ian. Sorry, I’ve just this minute walked in from picking the girls up from school. That’s why I sound all breathless. How are you?’
‘ Aye, fine, fine, thanks. Look Sandra, could I get a word with Kevin?’
‘ You’d have a job’.
‘ Why?’
‘ Well he isn’t here’
‘ Oh? Has he gone to the doctor’s? That’s why I was ringing. I wanted to know if he was going to be back at work next week’.
‘ Doctor’s? He’s not ill. Well not as far as I know but then why would he tell me? I’m only his wife’.
Ian started to feel uncomfortable. ‘ Sandra, you’re not making sense, love. He rang in sick on Tuesday saying he had some kind of stomach bug’.
There was silence at the other end.
‘ Sandra?’
‘ Yes, I’m still here. He told me you’d given him some time off’.
‘ You mean Kevin’s not sick?’
‘ I’m dropping my own husband in it but … he was in a right strange mood on Monday night after he’d been down to your yard to collect some stuff or other and he kept shouting at me and the girls when he got back. He kept looking at his watch and all, and his moby. He was acting strange, different. If it wasn’t Kevin I’d think he had another woman but he hasn’t got it in him. He tossed and turned all night and the next morning he looked like he’d seen a ghost’.
Sandra’s story made Ian very nervous. ‘ Did you ask him what was wrong?’
‘ Of course not’ said Sandra ‘ I wasn’t interested. I just wanted him to stop acting evil with me and the girls’.
A very typical Sandra answer, thought Ian. ‘ So what happened on Tuesday morning, Sandra?’
‘ He went off to work as usual. Or so I thought’.
‘ What do you mean?’ He didn’t want to get impatient with her but Jesus, she could drag it out so she could.
Sandra sighed irritably ‘ He rang me from Manchester airport and said he was getting on a plane to Belfast. He said there was some sort of family emergency and that you’d given him time off to go and sort it’.
‘ What kind of family emergency?’
‘ How would I know? You know I don’t have anything to do with Kevin’s family over there’.
Ian sucked in breath. She’d never met any of Kevin’s family ‘over there’ but had still decided she didn’t like them. And she’d never ‘let’ Kevin take their daughters to see his side of the family in Ireland. ‘ And when is he coming back, Sandra?’
‘ No idea, he didn’t say. I’m not altogether bothered to tell you the truth as long as the money keeps coming in but Ian, are you telling me he told you he was sick?’
‘ That’s right’ said Ian. He was furious with Kevin. ‘ Have you tried ringing him on his mobile?’
‘ Yes, a couple of times’.
‘ And?’
‘ Each time it’s been switched off’.
‘ I see. So why would he lie, Sandra? ’
‘ I don’t know but it isn’t my fault. Don’t blame me’.
‘ I’m not Sandra but I’ve got a business to run and Kevin has … well he’s left me in the lurch this week. Look, can you ring his Mum and Dad and ask them if they can get a message to him and ask him to ring me? I need to know what’s going on, Sandra’.
When she rang back Sandra told Ian that according to Kevin’s Mum and Dad there was no family emergency and that Kevin wasn’t staying with any of his relatives. They didn’t even know he’d gone to Northern Ireland.
‘ Just answer me one question, Sandra. Has Kevin made a start on the guttering?’
‘ Guttering? He only did it last year’.
Ian put down the phone and drove straight down to the yard and opened up. It was a mess. Everything was out of place and it didn’t take him long to see that certain items were missing. Pipes, nails, some disused glass bottles that Ian kept for storage, they were all gone. It was as if he’d taken the things himself and forgotten to account for them. But he hadn’t taken them himself and the last person to be there was Kevin.
He scratched his head in disbelief. ‘ Jesus, Kevin!’ he exclaimed. ‘ If you fuck my life up now I’ll kill you!’
Shaun Campbell knew that other men lusted after his girl. He was well used to it. But none of them would ever dare to cross the border of his territory. He’d nuke them if they did. Still they couldn’t help themselves. She gave them no choice.
Natalie always had a happy valley thing going on. She didn’t possess a top that wasn’t made of
lace and chiffon with two thin shoulder straps. Her breasts were more than ample and were like water behind a dam wall, always threatening to crash through. She wore her skirts so short she made the imagination pack up and go home. She knew how to use her legs to make men sweat. But she was Shaun’s girl and they had a fantastic sex life when Natalie wasn’t letting her head mangle the rest of her. She could be a moody cow.
‘ Do you want a drink?’ Natalie asked. They’d just returned from a meal at a new Spanish restaurant in the centre of Belfast.
‘ Yea’ said Shaun ‘ The usual, babe’.
Natalie fixed herself a vodka and diet-coke and opened a beer for Shaun. They sat on the sofa and switched on the telly but there was nothing much on except for a mini-series starring Amanda Burton in which her character seemed to spend the entire ninety minutes walking around getting stroppy with people and looking down her nose at them whilst conveniently glossing over her own failings. Same actress, same character, different show, thought Natalie. Boring, boring, boring.
Shaun started kissing her neck and she froze.
‘ Not tonight, babe’ she protested.
‘ Why not?’ Shaun asked as he slid his hand under her top and caressed her breast.
‘ Don’t, Shaun, please’. She tried to pull his hand away but she knew it was no good. It was a token gesture. His strength was no match for her.
‘ You know I can’t help myself, babe’ said Shaun. Christ, he hoped she wasn’t going into one again. He really wasn’t in the mood for that ‘ I want my beautiful girl’.
‘ No, Shaun, I said … ‘
‘ … you don’t make it easy for me, walking around dressed like that. I want you all the time but if all you’re doing it for is to tease me … ‘
‘ … no Shaun, it isn’t like that. It’s just … ‘
‘ … look, this is all wasting time. Go through to the bedroom and take your clothes off. Relax a bit and wait for me. I’ll finish my beer and when I come through I expect you to be ready’.
Without saying anymore Natalie stood up, bit her lip, and did exactly as she’d been told. She got nothing from the act itself. It was just something she had to get through.
Afterwards Shaun fell straight to sleep like he always did, leaving her to dream about the life she’d had before her Uncle had ripped it all away from her. The life of the little girl who liked to go to her bedroom with her records.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Graham drove up the hill to the cemetery that seemed to dominate the landscape for as far as the eye could see. He hadn’t been to this particular part of it for nearly twenty years.
He turned left just inside the gates and walked further up the hill. He remembered the clump of trees that formed a natural boundary in the middle of the cemetery and they still looked ancient and proud. He remembered the chaos in his heart on the day of the funeral. He remembered that part of it more than any other.
As his consciousness moved up through the years, he walked along the white gravel path. As he neared the place he was looking for he saw a woman tending the grave. She was dusting it down with a cloth and placing fresh flowers in the vase that was built into the headstone.
DUNCAN ARTHUR LAURENCE
BELOVED SON OF PATRICIA AND JAMES
LOVING BROTHER OF CLAIRE
We shall always miss you.
‘ Can I help you?’ the woman asked when she saw Graham standing there.
‘ You don’t remember me do you, Mrs. Laurence?’
‘ Should I?’ asked Pat Laurence who stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans.
‘ I’m an old friend of your son Duncan’ said Graham ‘ Graham Armstrong? Remember me now?’
Pat took a moment but then it all came back to her. She did remember Graham. He’d been at the house many times but that was all a very long time ago.
‘ I do remember’ she said ‘ But I doubt if Duncan will. I haven’t seen you at the grave before’.
Graham knew he didn’t have any right to be but he couldn’t help but feel hurt at Pat’s reproachful tone. ‘ Sorry, Mrs. Laurence. I did always mean to come’.
‘ I’m sure you did’ said Pat, unconvinced. None of her son’s friends had visited his grave. She could never forgive them for that.
‘ How are you?’ Graham asked. She looked like someone who got by from day to day without too much thought. She was wearing a pair of jeans, trainers, and a white blouse that she hadn’t tucked in. She didn’t look scruffy exactly. She just didn’t look like she bothered with herself that much.
‘ Getting by. A mother doesn’t expect to bury her child’ she said, looking down at the grave of her son. ‘ It’s the wrong way round’.
‘ I understand they never found the other driver? The one who caused the accident?’
‘ No’ said Pat ‘ He got away Scot free and is probably still out there somewhere. They never let me see his body, you know? They said it was burned beyond recognition. He had to be identified by his dental records’. She broke down and began to cry. Graham placed his hand on her shoulder.
‘ It’s been twenty years, I know’ she blubbered ‘ But it doesn’t get any easier. There isn’t a day goes by without me thinking about him’.
‘ You wouldn’t be a mother if you didn’t’.
‘ I ache for my son, Graham. Even after all this time’.
Graham wanted to tell Pat that the body lying in the grave wasn’t that of her son. He wanted to tell her that Duncan was alive and that he’d only played dead the last twenty years. But he couldn’t tell her. Not until he’d gone over to Manchester and checked it out for himself.
‘ I’ll leave you to it, Mrs. Laurence’ said Graham. ‘ I’ll be on my way’.
‘ Why did you come here today?’ she demanded.
Graham hesitated. The look of hurt and pain in her eyes was killing him.
‘ I mean, why wait twenty years? You and Duncan were good mates and you’ve just wiped him off like he never existed at all’.
Graham took a deep breath and then said ‘ It never seemed the right time, Mrs. Laurence’.
‘ Oh never seemed the right time’ she scoffed ‘ That’s what everybody says when they can’t be bothered’.