Saturday's Child

I grab a pint, sit next to her. She shifts position.

'I thought you'd be back in Manchester by now,' she says. 'That's what you said, right?'

Straight in with it. 'I'm not going back until tonight.'

'So it's all finished, then.'

'A couple of wee things to tie up. But, yeah, I'm pretty much done here.'

'Huh.'

We drink. I stare at the pictures on the wall. When I glance back at her, she looks like she's about to say something. Staring into her gin like the answer's at the bottom of her glass. Her mouth is open. Then she says, 'I was drunk the other night, okay?'

'Okay.' Setting myself up now, preparing for the kick into touch.

I don't normally do that. I don't normally bring people back to my flat, y'know? It's not what I do. But I'd had a really bad morning, and sometimes you just want a drink. Some- times that's the only thing on your mind and fuck respon- sibility. I was in one of those moods.'

'That's okay,' I say. I think I know where this is going.'

When she looks at me, her eyes are glassy. Gin'll do that to the best. It's industrial-strength mascara-thinner. 'Let me finish, Cal. This isn't easy.'

'Okay.'

'So when you don't call me the next day, and all I've got is like a few snapshots of the night, I get to wondering, like, how far did I go? And I remember you leaving, but I don't remember why you left. And I don't want you to think I'm some sort of slag, y'know?'

I know.'

'Because I'm not, Cal. I'm really fucking not.'

I never thought you were.'

'So… did we?'

'No, we didn't. I had to leave.'

Donna laughs to her,self, but she catches the sound in the back of her throat. She dabs at one eye, smudging her make- up. I do have some pride left, you know.'

'It's me, Donna. Don't worry about it.'

'So what do you want to do?' she says.

I drink my pint, swallow and sit back in my seat. "What do you want to do?'

'I like you, Cal. I just think we got off on the wrong foot. Bad first impressions and that.'

'Maybe.'

'I don't know how it can work.'

'You don't know how what can work?'

'Us,' she says.

'You want to chalk it up.'

'Pretty much.'

*

You can prepare yourself all you want, be as hard as you want. But at the end of the day, rejection is still a kick in the neck.

This is absolutely fine, I tell myself. This is just spot on. Tickety-fuckin'-boo. I don't hang around much after that first pint, make my excuses and leave, because I can't rationalise being dumped before a relationship begins.

Behind the wheel of the Micra, I stick in a tape and let it play out. I want to scream 'bitch', I want to call her and yell spiteful things down the phone, but that won't make much of a difference.

Chalk it up.

And if I'd slept with her? Maybe that would have been different. Or maybe she would have felt worse and not answered the phone. Depending on what she remembered. Christ, she gets drunk and I pay the price because I'm too much of a gentleman.

Like anything could have come from it. The age difference, the distance between Manchester and Newcastle, a million different reasons why it wouldn't work. Like the sex issue.

Fuck's sake, it always comes down to that. The sex is the thing, another Marie Claire myth. It doesn't matter that the guys who handed a scalding to James Figgis thought they'd teach me a lesson too. It doesn't matter that they bitched me. That kind of truth isn't first-date material, but then neither's sex. At least it wasn't when I was growing up. I feel like I've been out of the game so long, they changed the rules on me.

I stop by a chippy and sit with my dinner wrapped in newspaper. I stop by an off-licence, grab a half-bottle of cheap vodka and stick it in the glove compartment. It's a tic, an unconscious action. Something I do when I don't know what to do. The world just pissed on you? Buy booze. A nice little defence mechanism. I can't touch it, though. Not when I'm supposed to be driving Alison back to Manchester to- night. Give it three and a bit hours on the motorway, though, and I'll be gagging for a decent drink.

And a hot shower, my own bed. Some decent music on the CD player. Then back to my old life, for what it's worth.

I eat most of the chips; sling the rest out of the window. By the time I reach Alison's flat again, it's quarter to eight and I'm early enough to sit for a while and stare through the windscreen. Trying to be calm. Knowing that it's just a matter of time before I'm back home and all of this is memory.

Johnny Cash sings 'Solitary Man' as rain spots the glass. I click him off. I don't need to be reminded.

And I can't wait any longer. I get out of the Micra, hunch my shoulders to the rain, and trot across the road towards the block of flats. The place is dead, the way it should be. When I get to the front door, I press the buzzer for thirty-five.

I wait.

Nothing.

I buzz again, lean hard this time in case something's not connected. Then wait. And again, nothing. Check my watch and it's eight on the dot now. I take a step back and look up at her window. It's dark. Which means something's fucked here. Rob found out and beat her to death. Or she changed her mind. I check my mobile for messages. Nothing.

She's in the shower, she's asleep, she's knocked to the floor, gagged and bound and screaming for help in a dark flat.

Shut up, man.

So I buzz again, because it might just be that she can't hear it. And because it's something else to do. I'm out of ideas. Why wouldn't she be there? Unless someone got to her.

The guy in the black leather jacket, maybe. He's not a copper. He could be working for Morris, but then why would Morris check up on me?

I walk round to the carpark. Stokes' Escort isn't there. No lights in any of the windows, so either Stokes has found out and done something stupid, or he's managed to persuade her to do another bunk.

If that's the case, then I'm back to the drawing board. Even worse, they're going to be looking out for me, and they know what I look like, the pair of them. Christ, Alison, why'd you have to go and piss me around? I mean, she knows what's at stake here and it's certainly not a chunk of stolen money.

I should have kept my mouth shut. I shouldn't have gone up there; I shouldn't have talked to her. She's still a bloody kid, and she's not about to trust one of Morris' goons over her own boyfriend, even if he is a prize prick. If I was any kind of detective, I'd have known that. But I had to play Sir Galahad.

Bollocks to the job. I've had enough. Let Mo handle it from here on out. I'll get the scally on the phone, let him know the situation. As far as I'm concerned, I'm finished with it. I'm gone. Their fucked-up little family, their problem.

I start to cross the grass, hit pavement. I'll ring Mo from the car, then drive home. There's nothing more I can do here. And if he wants to get hard with me, I'll remind him that I have dirt to dish. Let's see how Morris reacts when he finds out his son's been keeping it in the family.

Somewhere, there's the sound of an engine. I don't hear it properly until I'm in the middle of the road. Then this horrible grating sound rises above the rain and I have to cock my head to figure out where it's coming from. It gets louder, closer. I narrow my eyes, peer up the road.

Definite movement.

And then two headlights blaze up like a couple of fiery white eyes. Roaring, the engine gunned for all it's worth.

I'm stuck. Caught and frozen in the glare, thinking daft thoughts like wasn't this the beginning of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)? And, fuck me, but tyres do squeal. I thought it was just the movies.