‘Listen, love, I need to run. I’m really sorry. Something’s come up. I’ll call you later.’
And he was gone.
Catherine stood with the brown envelope in her hand. She stared after her husband as he ran across the street, a car almost running him over.
ELEVEN
Marty heard the bass thumping when he was 30 feet from the house. It was 9.30 on Friday night. He knocked and heard a voice over the music.
‘This is fucking shite. Get the other CD back on.’
‘What the fuck do you know?’ someone shouted back.
Micky peered through the curtains before answering the door. There was a cheer when Marty walked in the room. It was as much for the gear as it was for him, but he tried not to think about it.
Ten people sat in Micky’s ma’s front room. They were draped over chairs, on the arms of sofas, huddled on the floor. Marty saw Petesy in the corner talking to Tony Loughrin. Locksy had two black eyes and a white plaster taped round the bottom of his left ear.
‘Cunt beat the shite out of me,’ he said loudly to Petesy over the sound of the heavy bass. He took a drink from a two-litre bottle of cider. ‘Still. Fuck him. You should have seen the state of us last weekend. Off-our-faces. Pure brilliant.’
Petesy smiled, pretending to buy the forced bravado. He looked away and took a drink from his can of Harp. For all his talk, Locksy looked as if he’d gone nine rounds with Mike Tyson. Across the room Marty was laughing, playing the big man, handing people pills and taking the money. He looked up and caught Petesy staring at him. Locksy was the last person he wanted Petesy talking to. Marty tipped his head and raised his eyebrows. For a moment Petesy thought about blanking him, about trying not to like his mate. He looked at Marty’s Ralph Lauren sweater and remembered the crabs story. He grinned, realizing he couldn’t dislike Marty if he tried.
As soon as he walked in, Marty had clocked Cara and her mate sitting on the floor in the corner. She had on a blue tracksuit top with the zip halfway down. Her hair hung across her face and she kept flicking it back with her hand. Marty decided to give it half an hour. He knew the cheer as he walked in would have done him a favour, but you didn’t want to seem desperate.
Micky was supposed to be staying with his aunty while his mother was in Benidorm with his step-da. His real da had left when he was six and his mother had taken up with someone else a couple of months later. Micky hated him and spent as much time out of the house as possible. His mother had locked the place up before they left but Micky had climbed the drainpipe and got in through his bedroom like he always did.
‘Peter Parker’s got nothing on me.’
They all scored off Marty and were waiting for the pills to kick in, slagging him off that his gear was shite. Half an hour later and folk were chewing gum as if their lives depended on it. They nodded to the music, rubbing their faces with their hands. Micky was talking fifty miles an hour about who would win a fight between Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Locksy stood in the corner, jabbing his hands in front of him in time with the music.
‘Fucking brilliant!’ he exclaimed to no one in particular.
Upstairs, Marty was in the toilet. His head was buzzing. After he pissed he stood and stared at himself in the mirror. He rubbed his face. Warm waves rippled through his body. He smiled, trying to connect the face in the mirror with the mad thoughts whirling round his head. It was OK. It was all OK. No. It was better than that. It was mental. It was fucking mental. He tossed another pill in his mouth and took a slug of water from the tap.
Outside the bathroom Marty heard a girl’s voice call him from one of the bedrooms. He walked in and saw Cara sitting on the bed. Micky still slept under the same Liverpool FC duvet he’d had when he was eleven. His da, his real da, was fanatical about Liverpool. If you got Micky started he would name every single player that had ever played for them. Positions, previous clubs, everything. The light was off in the bedroom but Marty could still make out the poster on the wall. Thirty men in red sat in three rows, their hands on their knees. They looked out into the room, smiling their encouragement.
Marty had no fear now about talking to Cara. He was going to get off with her, he knew that. He had been watching her across the living room earlier in the night, trying not to let on. She sat on the bed, chewing gum, sipping her can of Harp. He sat beside her and could smell perfume, mixed in with the odour of beer, cigarettes and the stale scent of Micky’s teenage bedroom.
‘Got any pills left, Marty?’ Cara asked.
‘Might do.’
‘Go on and give us another one, would you?’
‘What’s it worth to you?’
‘Don’t know.’ She smiled with fake coyness. ‘I am sure I can think of something.’
Cara reached over and ran her hand up the leg of Marty’s jeans. She pressed down on his fly, raising her eyebrow at his knob underneath. The warmth flowing over Marty’s body rippled towards his crotch. He felt himself start to harden.
‘I might have a few left in my pocket there.’ He leaned back on the bed.
Cara reached into the pocket of his jeans. She moved her hand around, taking hold of his knob through the lining. She squeezed it a few times, and began working him up and down. The pills added to the pleasure and Cara’s hand movements sent warm waves out over Marty’s body. She felt the small bag of tablets in his pocket and took it out, handing it to Marty.
‘I think I’ve found it.’
Marty smiled, taking a pill from the bag and handing it to her. She threw it in her mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of Harp. Marty leaned over and started kissing her. He could hear muffled voices downstairs, the bass coming up through the floorboards, the distant sound of Locksy shouting: ‘Fucking yeeeeow.’
It was after four in the morning. Marty was downstairs rummaging through the cupboards of Micky’s ma’s kitchen. Heinz tomato soup. Jacob’s crackers. An empty biscuit tin.
‘Fuck me, Micky,’ he said to himself, biting into a dry cracker. ‘You call this a kitchen? I’m calling social services. Report your ma for neglect.’
Nobody was listening.
Marty turned round and saw Petesy sitting just through the door.
‘Come on, Petesy. Twenty-four-hour garage. Let’s go.’
‘Ah Marty, I can’t be fucked.’
There followed two minutes of cajoling, talk of crisps, chocolate bars, cans of Coke. It was the promise to tell Petesy about Cara that finally clinched it.
At the garage Marty bought twenty Regal, four bags of salt and vinegar, two Mars bars, a Drifter and two cans of Coke. They sat round the back of the garage, eating like their lives depended on it.
‘I fucking love these,’ Petesy said, stuffing a handful of crisps into his mouth. Half the crisps ended up on the ground near his feet. He picked up the fallen soldiers.
‘It’s OK. The three-second rule.’
Back at Micky’s there was no talking, no drinking, no dancing. The music had stopped.
Three men stood in the middle of the living room. Black ski-masks covered their faces. They wore jeans and dark green Army jackets. Two of them held baseball bats. The other held a large flick-knife in front of him. He was turning it round as if it was some kind of foreign object that fascinated him.
In the hall Micky lay in a ball, wheezing. He’d opened the door and been hit in the stomach with the butt of a baseball bat.
Heavy footsteps came down the stairs. A fourth man, also in a skimask, entered. He had a deep voice.
‘They’re not fucking here.’
Locksy sat in one of Micky’s ma’s armchairs, wishing he was invisible. The man with the knife came over, his eyes bulging, staring out of the mask. He raised the knife and stroked it down the side of Locksy’s already bruised face.
‘Where are those two cunts?’
He didn’t need to name them. Locksy’s eyes were wide open as he tried to pull back from the knife.