Hidden Sin: Part 2 of 3: When the past comes back to haunt you. Julie Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ Billy was already there, revving up Mo’s black BMW, one pudgy pink arm – it was almost like a leg of lamb, Joey thought – hanging from the open window. Seeing Joey, he raised it in greeting.

      ‘What’s the emergency then?’ Joey asked as he slid into the embrace of the smooth leather passenger seat.

      Billy shrugged. ‘Fucked if I know, lad,’ he said. ‘I’m like the three wise monkeys’ dumb cousin, me – hear fuck-all, see fuck-all and say fuck-all.’ He laughed loudly at his own joke as he pulled out of the car park. ‘I’m just the hired muscle, mate. No good asking me owt.’

      So Joey didn’t. He was happy enough to listen to the radio anyway, and just enjoy the sensation of being driven around Bradford by a hired driver, in a top-of-the-range Beema. Though, were it his, he’d be the one behind the wheel. And it wouldn’t be a BMW, it would be a Jaguar. Though he couldn’t help wondering about his unexpected summons. And to the house rather than the club. Alone. Why?

      It was no more than fifteen minutes before Billy pulled up at the gates to Mo’s mansion, which looked no less imposing than when he’d been there before. More, even, on account of him not feeling quite prepared. He wished he’d nipped inside and changed into a different pair of jeans – his were still slightly damp, and a small mark on the thigh that he’d only just noticed made him feel slightly anxious and scruffy. He can take me as he finds me, he told himself sternly as he climbed out, echoing another of his dad’s endless sermons.

      ‘You can walk up from here,’ Billy said, ‘while I fuck off and play with the car for a bit. I’ll see you when I see you.’ He then must have pressed something – or Mo had, from inside the house – because the gates began parting to admit him.

      Just like the previous time Joey had come here, Mo was already standing on the doorstep, only this time he was dressed in normal clothes. Well, normal for Mo – which was a world away from normal for Joey. A dark grey suit – had he come from, or was he heading to, a meeting? – and a brilliant white shirt to match his teeth.

      His dreads were tied back, and a pair of shades was stuck into them.

      He pulled them out and donned them as Joey began taking off his trainers; placing his left foot behind his right so he could wriggle the first foot out. ‘Don’t worry about that, son,’ Mo told him, touching his arm. ‘Just wipe them. This isn’t Buckingham Palace – just my home.’

      It seemed an odd thing to say. But then this felt like an odd encounter. Joey didn’t know why, exactly, but it felt so even so. He wiped his feet on the coir doormat, then followed Mo over the threshold, where he wiped his feet on the inside doormat as well.

      This time, he followed Mo into the vast chrome and granite fitted kitchen – which, even more than last time, looked like somewhere no one actually did any cooking. Had Mo’s ‘girl’, Marika, just been? But then he reflected that Mo probably didn’t spend much time here. Living alone, in this vast place, must be a very different business than in the overcrowded terrace he shared with his mam and dad, and now Nicky. He wondered if Mo ever felt lonely.

      He felt glad, then, that Paula had persuaded him to go home. As his dad had said gently to him only yesterday, he’d punished his mam enough.

      ‘Take a seat, boy,’ Mo said, pointing to a black leather bar stool – one of four that were arranged around a freestanding breakfast bar. ‘It’s called an Island,’ Paula had whispered to him the last time. ‘You want some coffee?’ Mo asked him, nodding in the direction of a complicated machine that stood hissing on the adjacent worktop.

      Joey climbed up onto the nearest stool, careful not to place his hands on the pristine and fingerprint-free granite.

      Joey had already smelled the coffee, and he nodded a yes. Wake up and smell the coffee, he thought to himself. Well, he was certainly doing that right now. He drank in the aroma. Proper coffee, too. He couldn’t wait to tell Paula. And with the thought came a memory that he held very dear. Of Paula saying, when she’d stayed over, the night he’d gone back, that when they got their own place, the first thing they would do would be to buy a proper percolator. How did that happen? How’d you get from going out a couple of times to planning to live together in so short a time? It was as unexpected as it was exhilarating, but it was infinitely more exhilarating. Was that how it worked? That when you knew, you just knew?

      After some ceremony – elegant cups in matching saucers, a fancy cream jug, tiny teaspoons – Mo finally handed Joey his coffee and sat down opposite him.

      ‘This is the life,’ Joey said, because the occasion seemed to call for it. ‘I tell you what, if me and my Paula ever make it big, we’re going to have a place just like this too.’ He felt himself redden under Mo’s benign scrutiny. ‘“If” being very much the operative word,’ he added quickly.

      Mo, who’d taken a delicate first sip, set down his cup and shook his head. ‘Don’t use the word “if”, boy,’ he said. ‘That’s just setting yourself up to fail. Use the word “when”, always. Say “when” you make it big. And even if that isn’t what you’re doing right now – yet – always intend on making it big. Always.’

      Joey grinned. ‘Is that what you brought me here for, Mo? A pep talk?’ Then cursed himself for his boldness because it seemed to displease Mo, who stood up abruptly, and went to the window, where he stared silently out across the vast expanse of garden. Or at least that was what it looked like; he could be staring into space. He had his hands in his trouser pockets and Joey could see the tense way in which he was holding himself.

      Joey picked up his own cup – the handles were so small it was a job getting his finger into the hole – and wondered if Mo was about to let him go. Or tell him things at the club weren’t working out. Something bad, anyway. The little speech – and the way Mo had said it – had felt altogether like the sort of thing you’d say when you were about to let someone down.

      ‘What is it, Mo? Did we do something wrong?’ Joey asked finally, the sound of silence getting altogether too loud. ‘Are things still alright down at the club?’

      He braced, waiting to hear that everything had gone tits up before he’d even got started. He hadn’t forgotten how many clubs had been set up and closed down before this one. Oh, how his mum would bloody crow.

      Mo shook his head and turned around, then crossed one ankle over the other, leaning back against the run of kitchen units. His shoes were as brightly polished as the worktops. Did he look like things were going tits up? No.

      He sighed. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, boy, okay? So I’m just gonna say it.’

      ‘Say what?’ Joey asked him. ‘You’re fucking scaring me now, Mo.’

      Mo’s teeth flashed white as he returned from his vigil at the window. He sat down again. ‘You’re my boy, Joey,’ he said. Then nothing more.

      Again came that sense that Mo was setting him up for a disappointment. ‘Yeah, I know that,’ Joey said. ‘Course I do. I know you have my back.’

      ‘No, Joey,’ Mo said. ‘I mean that I’m your father.’

      When he recounted it later, to Paula, as he obviously would, Joey knew he would struggle to find words to describe it – that ‘what the fuck?’ moment when he thought Mo was kidding, then the thump in his chest and, as the blood flowed in his temples, a sensation of falling – of almost spinning out – when, no more than half a second later (it was almost instantaneous), СКАЧАТЬ