She looked haunted and it bothered him and he couldn't understand why she was like it. Kathleen had been such a happy girl, such a chatty child. Could it really be because of what had happened all those years ago? The twins had been three years old then, so he supposed it was possible Kathleen had understood more than they had realised.
Lance came into the room with three mugs of tea balanced precariously on a small tin tray. The tray made Patrick smile, it was one they had nicked from the local pub years before because he'd liked the two little Scottie dogs on it, one black, one white, advertising a blend of Scottish whisky. He had eaten his dinner off it while watching TV so many times and seeing it now brought back buried memories of his father.
He forced them away. The past was over now and it was pointless revisiting it; he had learned that much in prison. In prison you realised that things were happening on the outside and no matter how much you cared there was nothing you could do about them. You were in the world but you were not part of it any more. Problems were suddenly huge, even the smallest, and eventually you had to come to terms with your inability to deal with them, to deal with anything that was happening in the outside world. Because you couldn't be a part of it all any more, you had no way of making it all better. He still felt that way; he felt as if he was on the outside looking in. The twins had grown up since he had been gone and little Colleen, who had been a chatty four-year-old was now a chatty eight-year-old and he knew he had missed out on a large part of her life. Christopher was a diamond but again, he didn't really know him now. And Shamus had grown from a small boy to a bruiser expelled already from school. Four years was a long time in their little lives; it was a long time in his life too. Visits were not enough to keep anyone informed of what was really happening in the family and any problems were glossed over anyway so the person banged up wouldn't worry too much. Again, the attitude was why worry them when there was nothing they could do.
Patrick watched the kids go to bed tonight and knew that they had been going to bed without him for years and it hurt him. It upset him, like Kathleen upset him. He couldn't help wondering if he might have been able to help her if he had been around. Lance, it seemed, was the person she turned to. He was a great guy and he made sure he was always there for her if she needed him. Lance was a fucking star and he knew that without him the family would have disintegrated. Especially where Kathy was concerned. He drove her places and picked her up so she didn't have to worry about getting home alone. He sat in her room with her for hours when she was in one of her depressed moods. As odd as Lance could be, he was always there when he was needed. Patrick only wished he could have been there to take some of the burden from him.
Now he was home once more and he was going to see to it that they were all taken care of and would make sure that none of then ever went without again.
And as for Brewster, he was going to have a straightener with him at some point. Sneaking around with slags and his mother still having to work the club for him. Oh, he was biding his time all right and when he finally had what he wanted, he was going to make that cunt pay through the nose for his blatant neglect of his family. Lenny was going to realise, once and for all, that he had a mission in life and that mission was to take care of his family. Even the family Lenny had provided before going on the trot. Patrick had gone away a boy and come back a man. He had experienced many things in stir and one of them was the need to take back control from people who believed they were your intellectual superior. Brewster was a cunt but he would bide his time before he forcibly pointed that fact out to him; he needed to see how the land was lying in that direction and wait until he was settled once more. It took a while to acclimatise to being on the outside and when he had sussed out all the options he would take great pleasure in distributing his own brand of retribution.
As they sipped their tea, he saw Lance look at Kathleen with a frown. Patrick knew he was as worried about her as he was himself. After all, he had been left as the eldest and had been left to take care of them all. He looked around the room; it had hardly changed since he had left it years earlier. There was the same couch, the same TV, the same carpet, the same everything except it was more dilapidated. In fact, it looked like something from a documentary on poverty in the Western world. The whole drum needed upgrading and refurnishing. It was like a doss house. But then seven kids tended to do that to furniture; it took a battering on a daily basis. Most furniture wasn't really built for large families.
As Brewster was caked up with dough it didn't seem a lot to assume that some of it might have been thrown in his mother's direction. She had needed someone to protect them when his father had been outed and he had understood her logic, even admired it. She had the sense to know they were in danger from the Williams brothers and whoever was pulling their strings. Brewster had been the obvious choice and it was the price they paid for the world they lived in.
Lenny had been all over Lil once and all over them as well; he had been the answer to their prayers after his father's death. Then one day he had just stopped coming round and his mother had been left with two more children and Patrick had been old enough by then to understand exactly what the ponce had done to her. He had taken on the mantle of breadwinner then and it had landed him in the poke. Now he was a grown man and he was not about to let anyone interfere with his family ever again. His mother had kept them together no matter what and he was determined to take the onus off her, to take the mantle of breadwinner on himself once more, as his father would have wanted him to, have expected him to. Now he had settled back in and had a working knowledge of what was going on around him, he could work out a proper plan of action at last.
'Hello, Lil.' Lenny was smiling at her and Lil noticed that his teeth had become grey since they had last talked properly. From his red flushed face to the veins across his cheeks, he looked what he was now, a drinker. Lenny was old, he was like a parody of the man he had once been. Seeing Lenny like this was awful; for all that he had done to her, she didn't wish him any ill. She had learned a long time ago that bad things happened to people soon enough; they didn't need her wishing it on them. As her mum always said, what goes around, comes around. It seemed it had come around to Lenny sooner than any of them had thought. Lil smiled easily, not letting any of her pity or her nervousness come through. She looked cool and this pleased her. 'To what do we owe this pleasure, then?'
Lenny shrugged; that annoying, heavy-shouldered shrug that gave the impression of complete indifference to whoever was talking to him at the time. She had seen him do that to so many people she had actually forgotten just how irritating he could be.
He was watching her and, he had to admit, she looked good considering her age and the fact she had birthed seven kids. But then, Lil had the kind of skin that most women would kill for, and he knew that first-hand, he had seen every inch of her.
'This is my club, Lil. I don't see how you can question me about coming in here, do you?'
As always, he was making a point, trying to remind her of things best left forgotten. He couldn't help himself; he had to hurt and wound, make people feel they were inferior to him. For once, Lil took the bait. After the night she'd had she was suddenly up for a row. Who did he think he was? Who did he think he was talking to?
'With respect, Len, this was actually my club long before it was ever yours, remember. My husband bought it many years ago and you just took it, didn't you, after he was murdered?'