Blood Ties: Family is not always a place of safety. Julie Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ He jerked his head towards Darren, who was snoring now, his lower lip hanging open and his fringe over his eyes. ‘You don’t want to be stuck up here. Come downstairs and enjoy yourself. I’ve just nipped up to change my tie – managed to get bitter splashed all over it – but I told your mam I’d pop my head round and ask you down for a bit. She’s in a good mood, I promise,’ he added after a pause.

      ‘Okay,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’ Then she uncurled her long legs from under her and went across to turn off the telly. Darren would be out for the count for the rest of the evening now probably, and there was no point in it playing to itself. She stretched, having stiffened up, then went across to the mirror above the fireplace. She looked respectable enough, she decided. Well, almost. She’d definitely have to go and run the brush through her hair. Not that she was actually that bothered about spending time in the pub this evening. She’d have far rather gone off to the Bull as she’d planned – there might well have been a few people she knew in there tonight. But with her mate Linda down with a bug, her evening had been effectively over – to walk there and turn up alone required the kind of confidence and courage she didn’t possess, even if a girl going to a pub alone wasn’t frowned on.

      But there was one thing drawing her down, and she wondered if her dad knew it. Terry might be in for a bit. You never knew, anyway. Worth running the gauntlet of the battle-axe for that.

      There was no law, that was the thing. That was the thing that really rankled. That was the thing that had really stuck in her craw in the week that had passed since Irene had called her a slut, for possibly – just possibly – being attracted to Terry Harris. Who was a widower. No longer married. Whose wife had been dead over two years now. How did that make her a slut exactly? By what rule? That was the thing that really got to her. The sheer lunacy – even over and above the name-calling aspect – of Irene thinking there was something so fundamentally wrong about a single girl being interested in a similarly single man; it wasn’t like Terry’s wife had died a month back or anything. It had been two whole years. Why on earth shouldn’t she like him and him her?

      If he even did, which wasn’t a given – Kathleen was too aware of her own naivety to kid herself too much – it might well just be a case of wishful thinking anyway. It probably was, much as she always felt his eyes staying on her just that little bit longer than normal. But even so – there was still the principle. That was what mattered.

      She glanced back towards Darren. It was a rare Saturday night when her stepbrother wasn’t out till the small hours. It was very out of character for him to be slumped where he was on any night, in fact. There were few evenings when he didn’t go out at some point.

      But then Darren had been behaving oddly ever since she’d confronted him. And not just with her – with everyone else in the family too; he’d been grumpy, uncommunicative, unwilling to engage. And had been slumped in that armchair pretty much every night this last week, downing beer, dropping off, and then waking up ratty, before stomping off again, with a grunt, to his bed.

      She kept thinking she should ask him again – why a gun? Who was he scared of? Or, if he wasn’t, what was he up to? Instinct still told her he’d tried to get one because he was frightened someone was after him, but now the idea of him being involved in some sort of crime had taken root in her mind, she couldn’t seem to shake it off. Time and again she had wondered if she should say something to her father. She almost had, too – the previous night, when he’d got home from work late – but she’d got no further than ‘Look, Darren …’ before being subjected to such a mouthful that she vowed that she would keep her ‘fucking nose out’ as instructed, as the slap he’d suggested she might get if she didn’t – again, completely out of character – didn’t appeal.

      No, best leave him to it. Whatever ‘it’ was. That was clearly what he wanted. And she wasn’t that naïve. If someone was after him, he’d presumably sort it out. He’d have to. And if they weren’t – if he was planning to do something criminal … well, perhaps Terry would be in and she could speak to him again. Perhaps, she decided, as she went to get her hairbrush, he could even speak to Darren instead. At the very least, he might be able to give her some advice.

      She went to get her brush – perhaps she’d add a lick of Vaseline to her lips, too – to find her and Monica’s bedroom in its usual Saturday night state of disarray – a wasteland of discarded tops, laddered stockings, open pots and spilled powder, much of which would be swept to the floor when she tottered back home again, significantly worse for wear, gusting alcohol fumes across the space between their beds.

      Which was reason enough, Kathleen supposed, to go down. If she had a couple of halves herself she’d probably sleep all the better – the better not to be awake when Monica crashed in.

      She ran down the stairs, the swell of noise and cigarette smoke rising to meet her, and the first thing she noticed was that she’d been right on one count – Irene was perched on a chair at a table near the bar, holding court with a gang of her favourite cronies from the estate. She was half-cut, by the looks of it, despite it still being quite early, and laughing just a little too loudly and raucously for it to be natural; she was playing to her audience. She saw Kathleen almost as soon as Kathleen had seen her and it was the expression on her face that would stay with Kathleen later – and expression of such confident, unthinking, everyday contempt, the like of which she wouldn’t be seeing again.

      ‘Oh, Jean, that’s priceless!’ she said, nudging her friend and turning slightly. ‘But hey up, better keep it down, girls – big lugs is here. And you know what she’s like for spreading the gossip.’

      The other women laughed. Why would they not? She was a figure of fun to them. And if she’d learned one thing since becoming part of the fabric of a public house, it was that the insight of drunk people was every bit as lacking as their inability to realise how boring they always sounded was immense.

      She glanced around in search of friendlier company. Mary, now recovered, seemed to be coping fine behind the bar, which was presumably why her dad wasn’t there.

      ‘If you’re looking for him,’ Irene called across, without any prompting, ‘he’s in the best room playing dominoes. Meant to be bloody helping, he is. Lazy old git. And her …’

      Kathleen let the sentence drift away as she headed to the best room where, up till ten or so minutes ago, a band had been playing, the members of which were still busy getting their leads and amps together, and who nodded a hello to Kathleen as she entered. She knew them well. They played regularly – had done for as long as she could remember. A trio of men, nearer her dad’s age, all from the Canterbury Estate, who sang country music, folk songs, some unbearably sad to listen to; one in particular which Mike, who did most of the singing, and had known her dad back in his printing days, had always told her had been a favourite of her mother’s.

      The jukebox was still blaring in the main bar – to which many had now decamped – but in contrast this room could have been somebody’s dining room, so was a choice spot for the older customers to drink and play their dominoes in peace.

      Her dad seemed pleased to see her. ‘There’s half a lager here, love,’ he called as she glanced around. ‘And we’ve nearly finished this game if you want to join in the next one.’

      Kathleen quite enjoyed the odd game of dominoes – it was one of those childhood things that had always bound her and her father – but it was Saturday evening and she couldn’t quite escape the feeling that a seventeen-year-old girl playing dominoes with her dad represented a tragedy just that bit too big to be borne. She pulled up a chair, though, to be friendly, and accepted the drink.

      ‘No СКАЧАТЬ