Mal sat up and poured himself another drink.
Wallace said, ‘What happened then?’
‘That’s how I trained to be a film editor. It’s why we’re here today.’
The phone rang in the silence. Wallace answered.
‘Mum? Is that you?’
It was Andrea, downstairs. Mal started to put his clothes on. ‘Champ, we’d better go.’
‘Why should we? I don’t want her!’
Mal wanted to plead with the boy to be polite but knew it would make things worse.
Outside the hotel, Mal introduced Wallace to Andrea.
‘He’s my real daddy but not really,’ said Wallace.
‘You can only have one real daddy.’
Wallace was staring at her. She crouched down and showed him the ring through her nose.
‘You can touch it.’
He stroked it.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Nope. Well, it does now. I’ve got another one, called a stud.’ She put her tongue out.
‘Yuckie. What if you swallow it?’
‘See if you can grab it, Wallace.’
It was a good little game.
‘Can we go to the pier?’ asked Wallace.
Mal gave Wallace a five-pound note.
‘Of course.’
Wallace said to Andrea, ‘He’s going to start being all nice now you’re here.’
Wallace walked in front, doing karate kicks and shooting imaginary people. He made circular movements with his arms and hands which Mal recognised from rappers. Mal said that when he was a kid, he and his friends wanted to be ‘hard’, like the cockney criminals they’d heard about. Now the kids based themselves in fantasy on Jamaican — American ‘gangstas’.
On the pier, Wallace stopped suddenly to get down on his knees and peer through the wooden slats to the sea below.
‘Come on, gangsta,’ said Mal.
‘What if we fall through?’ said Wallace. ‘We could die down there.’
Andrea took his hand. ‘I’m quite a swimmer. I’d carry you to safety on my back, like a dolphin.’
Wallace disappeared into the hot, noisy arcades and began to dispose of his money. As they followed him, Andrea told Mal about the film, for which most of the finance was in place; she was rewriting the script. They had time to discuss the films they were currently thinking about when, to Mal’s surprise, Wallace said he wanted to go on the trampolines. His money was gone, but Andrea offered to pay for him. Wallace took off his shoes and jumped up and down, yelling.
‘A great kid,’ laughed Andrea. ‘Where did you get him?’
Mal sighed and described to Andrea what it had been like seeing his unwanted son for the first time. He told her what had happened since, and how things stood between them.
They filled Wallace with ice-cream and chocolate. When an argument developed about candyfloss and he used Mal’s phone to ring his mother and began weeping, Mal had to tell Andrea that Wallace was hungry.
They parted and Mal took the boy for fish and chips. In the hotel, Wallace refused a bath but at least got into his pyjamas. Mal set him up in front of the TV, where he became instantly absorbed. Mal would be able to slip the bottle of whisky into his pocket and open the door.
‘What are you doing?’ The boy was staring at him in panic.
‘I’m going downstairs to have a word with Andrea.’
‘No!’
‘I won’t be long. You’ll be fine.’
Mal shut the door before the boy could say anything else. He put his ear to the keyhole but heard only the commercials, which, no doubt, Wallace was mouthing the words to.
Andrea was waiting. They walked quickly through the part of town Mal was familiar with, past clubbers and those looking for restaurants, into a more dilapidated area called the Old Town. He was surprised to see working fishermen preparing to take their boats out for the night. Behind this, the streets narrowed; the close houses seemed to lean across the lanes and almost touch at the top. There were red lights in some of the windows here. She pointed at a house. ‘You could score here.’
They entered a pub that seemed full of rough, tattooed late adolescents, most of whom looked like addicts. She went round the place, greeting those she knew. They were pleased to see her, but she was not like them.
Outside again, she said, pointing, ‘We could put the camera there and the actors could run into that alley. We could follow them — that way!’
He turned, needing to see and feel what she did. He noticed there was a sort of silence or poverty — of inactivity or emptiness, he would have said — which you didn’t find in London.
She told him, ‘The people here think London’s a stew full of foreigners. They hardly go there.’
‘It’s about time we declared independence.’
Mal’s legs ached but he went on, pursuing and, at times, questioning her enthusiasm. At last they stood in a cobbled square where the streets seemed to lead in all directions. Mal heard a shout and Wallace came rushing towards them, wearing his pyjamas, football gloves and trainers.
‘I followed you!’
Mal wanted to pick him up but the shivering boy was too heavy.
‘All this way?’
‘You tried to leave me!’
‘You were safe in the hotel.’ He crouched down and embraced Wallace, kissing his petrified hair.
‘Someone was going to steal me!’
‘No!’
Andrea took off her sweater and tied it around his neck. Holding hands, they ran back. In the hotel lounge, Andrea ordered hot chocolate and crisps for him.
‘You two.’ She was laughing. ‘You look exactly the same.’
‘We do?’ said Wallace.
‘How could you be anything but father and son?’
Mal and Wallace were looking at one another. Mal said to him, ‘I would never leave you for long. We were only trying to figure out how to make Andrea’s movie.’
Wallace asked, ‘What’s it about? You’re not going to run away from me again, are you?’
‘I’m too tired. In fact, I’m exhausted and broken.’
Mal fetched drinks for himself and Andrea.
Andrea said, ‘The story is this. I was nearly grown-up but not quite when my mum and dad said they couldn’t live together any more. From then on, I would have to move between them.’
‘Like a parcel, like me,’ said Wallace. ‘You don’t want to be posted everywhere all the time.’
‘It was worse than that,’ she said. ‘The film is called Ten Days and is set around the time I was sent to stay with Dad — quite near here — for a holiday. Mum wanted to be with another man, you see, which Dad guessed. When I arrived, I found that my poor father couldn’t get out of bed for fear of falling over. All he moved was his arm, to drink. I would sit with him, listening to his stories or watching films. While he was asleep, or passed out, I’d roam about the town on my own, making friends with the locals. Kids always complain there’s nothing to do in such places. We found plenty to do, oh yes.’
Wallace nudged his father.
‘She was so bad.’
‘The baddest, me. Back home, when I was asked what Dad and I did on our hols, they worked out that Dad had gone crazy. I was never allowed to see him again.’
‘In your whole life?’
‘He liked drink and they thought it made him a sick person, a fuck-up.’
‘She swore!’
‘Dad died a month later. They didn’t tell me properly. I heard about his death from a relative. I ran away from home to attend the funeral and I stayed down here a few more days, meeting his friends and sleeping in a tent in the woods. I got into more big trouble at home. I didn’t like my new stepfather and came down here to live.’