Hazeclass="underline"
This was all they’d ever get -
A ten-year-old girl with medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, carrying a black drawstring gym bag, a ten-year-old girl who was not their daughter, a reconstruction -
Not Hazeclass="underline"
I stood in the road in tears again, a hand squeezing mine -
The hand of a ten-year-old girl with long straight fair hair and blue eyes, wearing an orange waterproof kagool, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, pale blue denim trousers with a distinctive eagle motif on the back left pocket and red Wellington boots, carrying a plastic Co-op carrier bag containing a pair of black gym shoes -
Clare:
Waving bye-bye to the ten-year-old girl with the medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing the light blue corduroy trousers, the dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and the red quilted sleeveless jacket, carrying the black drawstring gym bag, the ten-year-old girl who was walking away -
Hazeclass="underline"
Walking away as the rain fell down through the dark, quiet trees and into her dark brown hair and her quiet brown eyes as her mother screamed and screamed, her nails in the road in the rain, screaming and screaming -
This is what you’ve done, this is what you’ve done, this is what you’ve done.
Then there were feet behind me, not children’s feet -
But boots, police boots through the puddles -
Dick shouting: ‘We got him, Boss.’
The rain falling through the dark, quiet trees -
‘Up Church Street.’
The little girls gone -
‘We’ve fucking got him.’
Just the history and the lies -
Resurrected.
Chapter 8
You have dreams -
D-20, here comes retreat; Friday lunchtime you meet Gareth in Billy Walton’s and give yourself the afternoon off, it being his birthday, tea and fishcakes in teacakes with chips and peas sorting you out for the first pint of the weekend, racing pages open, Gareth still going on about Grittar losing the fucking National and how it’s not right, women trainers, be women football managers next, and you’re nodding along, the old woman on the table opposite you with her mouth full of lipstick, potato and fish, her eyes wrapped in bandages, she points at you with her fork.
And in your dreams -
Your bellies slopping with tea and fishcakes in teacakes, chips and peas, you cross the Springs to the indoor market and the secondhand book stall, Gareth getting his weekly additions to his porn stash, you helping him choose, the woman behind the stall pointing out a few he’s missed, you treating him, it being his birthday, the rain streaming in through the roof, you wonder what the fuck will happen to this place when they finish the Ridings, Gareth with his secondhand porn in a brown paper bag, the readers’ wives with their plastic carrier bags, their umbrellas and their meat, kids under their feet.
In your dreams, you have wings -
Back out in the puddles of blood, past the fish stalls, the tripe and offal shop, up the side of the Fleece, behind the back of the Bullring, out opposite the bus station and into Tickles, just in time for the afternoon stripper and that first pint of the weekend, Gareth moaning about the plastic glasses, standing room only as Disco Ken cues up Billie Jean and out traipses Tina, all tassels and tits, telling half the room to fuck off and forking anyone she’s missed, no wink today for John Piggott, solicitor to the strippers and the deejays, the bar men and the bouncers, the spots on Tina’s back catching in the lights.
But all these wings in all your dreams -
Three pints later you’re next door in Hills between turns, waiting for the two-thirty from fuck-knows-where, out of cigs and hungry again, busting for another slash, an old bloke holding open an Evening Post and a photo of Hazel Atkins with the words Hazeclass="underline" Police Arrest Local Man in Morley, big-black-bloody-type and doesn’t-look-so-bloody-good says Gareth and hanging-is-too-good-for-him agrees the old boy, your brain, your bladder and your belly contorted, screaming and howling, the old man smiling, nodding and blinking, his teeth yellow, stained and loose in his gums bloody, black, and sore.
Are huge and rotting things -
Fifth pint and two packets of beef and onion, Gareth wants a decent pint across the Bullring in the Strafford, you telling him to piss off cos he only wants to go in Ladbrokes and why doesn’t he anyway because you’re quite happy here watching the little stage, the mirror ball shining and Phil Collins playing over the empty dancefloor, waiting for Disco Ken to give it a bit of Too Shy which is Blonde Debbie’s song, quite looking forward to Debbie coming on, fit despite two kids and the plasters the brewery make her put over her tattoos.
The room red.
Back out in the rain again, ducking next door for the night’s cigs, forty of them to be going on with, telling Gaz you’ll see him at six down the Waterloo, half-past at the latest, but he’ll be in Clothiers opening time if you change your mind, and you wander over the Bullring to Greggs and buy a bag of pasties for your tea, corned beef and Cornish, then you walk back up to St John’s, past the Grammar School and on to Blenheim Road, the tarmac coated with thousands of pieces of broken glass from a shattered windscreen, some of them a deep, dark and bloody red.
You have dreams -
Quarter-past five and you’re soaking in Matey, a big Gordon’s on the edge of the bath, slice and ice, careful not to bloody nod off again, out and dressed, fingers full of green super-strength Boots hair gel, washing down the last of the pasties with another gin and tonic, out of slice and ice, feeling better already, putting on Rod and wondering if you shouldn’t wear kegs instead of jeans, fucking the money and calling Azads for a taxi down the Waterloo and the start of the Westgate Run, smelling your breath on the phone and cleaning your teeth again and again and again.
And in your dreams -
Gareth’s at the bar already, half-drunk Tetley’s in his hand, everyone else piling in right behind you: Sarn, Kelly, Daz, Hally, Foz, Dickie, and Mark the Fireman, across the room a group of lasses starting the run themselves, hen night, everyone laughing and joking and Gareth doing the honours: a spirit for everyone in first pub then the birthday boy doesn’t buy another drink all night, yours a Southern Comfort, but he knows that and there’s an old man at the bar in a white coat with a tray of whelks and you quietly check your shoes for dog-shit, your ears burning.
In your dreams, you have fears -
You are in the White Hart before the hen party, Gareth and Sarn playing arrows, Kelly telling jokes and taking piss out of Hally and Foz, same old stories getting funnier and dirtier as the weeks turn into months and the months into years, Daz dissecting Leeds’ season starting with Harvey back in Waterloo, now on to Thomas, Dickie stoned and half asleep and Mark the Fireman putting shit on the jukebox and getting the same in return, beer in the ashtray, beer on the table, beer on the seat, beer on the floor, Kelly reminding everyone of the time Foz shat in a girl’s handbag upstairs in Raffles.
But all your fears in all your dreams -