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  Gore was tracing a line around the rim of his mug, trying to recall any experience from his past that approximated to this.

  ‘Now, see me, right? I’ve got my line of work, been at it lot of years now. And I don’t say I’m an angel. Cos there’s bother in it. There’s trouble, aye? All I’m about – all I’ve ever done – is help people enjoy tha’selves. But where you’ve got that, you get tossers and worky tickets and – excuse us, John – but absolute fucking ratbags who wanna ruin it for everyone. And sometimes I’ve gotta give it out to them what had it coming.’

  Gore nodded as seemed mandatory, dunking a biscuit.

  ‘People I care about, though, them what’s dear to me – I do right by. So who’s gunna judge us for that?’

  Stevie was looking very intently at him. Gore was determined to remain noncommittal. The gaze finally relented, dissolving into that devouring grin. ‘So you like her, but? Our Lind? She’s a smasher, isn’t she?’

  ‘I’m very fond of her, Stevie.’

  ‘Whey, champion. She was too good for me, I’ll tell you that.’

  Stevie appeared satisfied, gave Gore’s forearm a pat with the formidable flat of his palm and tipped back his mug to drain it. Then he picked up the remote control as if this were his own parlour and snapped on the television – Football Focus, the picture and sound fuzzy. ‘Eee, I tell ya. I only just got her this and she’s knacked it already …’

  Gore was emboldened that it might now be his turn. ‘And she works for you, is that right? Lindy?’

  Stevie glanced sharply, not so friendly. Then he leaned back as if oblivious – working his shoulders, straining his chest, as though the tea were percolating down through his massive and convoluted internals. ‘Not for us, nah. Not really. I mean, she’ll do the odd night in this club I’ve got now, club I manage. She’s got bits of things with some of the same lot I’ve done bits for. I’ve put a bit word in for her, like. Over the years.’

  Stevie was rummaging inside his black bomber jacket and he retrieved his mobile phone, becoming very absorbed in its face, punching buttons as if composing a tune. Gore was turning over the wreckage of his plans for the day, and a range of possible parting words. For the moment he let himself tune into the TV show, its prolonged report on whether Man United could turn round a worrying slump against Arsenal.

  Then a key was scratching and turning in the front door. Lindy surfaced from around the wall, laden with plastic shopping bags. Clearly she was not happy with the sight that met her, not even the neglected freesias. Gore, for his part, was stunned by what he beheld – a glum dark-eyed androgyne. Stevie clambered to his feet. ‘How pet, the hell you done to your heid?’

  She looked through him. ‘John, what you doing here?’

  ‘I thought I’d drop by. Your sitter let me in. I found Stevie and Jake.’

  ‘Aye, I think he got a shock and all.’

  She looked about her, as if trapped. ‘So what do you –’

  ‘Perhaps I should –’ He moved toward the sanctuary of the hall.

  ‘Hang about there.’ From Coulson’s lips it sounded like an order. ‘I’m just thinking, like. Maybe John fancies comin’ wi’ us this afternoon? You’re a Mag, aren’t you, John?’

  *

  Strapped into Stevie’s Lexus they drove, a family plus guest, down the Barrack Road, past affable milling hordes in multiple variants of black-and-white stripes, and scattered cheery clusters of claret and blue. On another day, Gore was dully aware, he might have been diverted by the sociological view from the soft leather back seat, rather than feeling raw-skinned, tongue-tied, dull and disconsolate.

  Stevie parked and marched his troops through a private entrance, up five flights of stairs, and down a strip-lit hotel corridor to the door of an executive box. ‘Pal of mine’s treat,’ he said, pushing in, without elaboration.

  There were ten to a dozen bodies thronging the space, a pack of youngish men in good coats, some of them built to Stevie’s scale, sporting gold chains, sovereign rings, grade-one crops. They loitered about a table strewn with the remnants of a meaty buffet lunch, and the mood was bullish, a fog of smoke and garrulity, the boys charging their glasses from a wet bar. Gore hung back uneasily at Lindy’s shoulder, conscious that she and he were the reserves of silence in this full-throated room, and he the butt of some barely suppressed sniggers. He accepted a bottle of beer from Stevie and sought seclusion, stepped quietly out of doors onto a tight balcony that squatted over the eighteen-yard line, folding chairs arrayed down its length. The fine green checkerboard fuzz of the turf seemed vast, likewise the raked amphitheatre seating and the projecting Perspex rainshield that made a gloomy rectangle of the sky. The hubbub and the thumping chants rising from the standing fans might, it seemed to Gore, have made for a Roman ambience, were it not for the rather shiftless ambling ball-games of the players warming up on the pitch below. He stared at all this for as long as seemed fit, deeming the company indoors hateful.

  Back inside, bets were getting loudly placed with a gangly penlicking youth in a shirt and tie. The banter was of West Ham, today’s opponent, and – with near-lurid relish – of having ‘murdered’ Man United just the other week. A few big dogs were huddled over the team sheet, pulling at it as if for scraps, prominent among them a perma-tanned Scot in a camel overcoat, a rusting tub of a man waving a rank stub of cigar.

  ‘Oi, Stevie, where’s your fifteen-million man then? Your Geordie messiah?’

  ‘Not playing, Roy man, he canna, he’s under the knife wi’ his groin.’

  ‘You what? Fifteen million and you broke him already? Shitting hell, Stevie. Good bit of business, that.’

  The exterior din rose, for the teams were jogging onto the field and the afternoon sodality hastened to their seats, clutching brimming drinks, packets of tabs and lighters.

  As the match got under way, Gore wrestled with the matter of how he should conduct himself. Resigned to his situation, he remembered anew the longueurs of live football. Excitement must have dissipated in others too, for they watched with furrowed brows. To his right Lindy wore a hunted look, chain-smoking, eyes watery, repeatedly wiping her raw nose, a soft black cotton cap pulled about her ears, nursing her vulnerable head. To his left Stevie bounced Jake on his knee, tucking a black-and-white scarf round his neck, keeping up a non-stop verbiage, teaching him a song. ‘Phi-lippe, Phi-lippe Al-bert, everybody knows his name …’

  Gore supposed that no one else in this bristling company knew him from Adam, or wished to improve their acquaintance. But when West Ham scored, he found himself applauding gently and instinctively, and one of the strangers barked at him. ‘Divvint clap the other side, man, we divvint fuckin’ pay to hear that.’

  Stevie’s riposte was harder. ‘Whey, man, language. The bairn.’

  Come the half-time whistle and the pensive trudge of players from surface, Gore looked to Stevie, who seemed untroubled by Newcastle’s deficit. ‘Well, I’m about ready me bait,’ he announced, rubbing his hands. ‘Lind, will you gan doon the back into the cheap seats and fetch us in a pie?’ A few more stray orders got shouted.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Gore murmured, rising unheeded.

  Back out in the concrete maze she knew where she was going and he followed in silence, until she threw him a look that seemed to implore that he keep in step.

  ‘John, look, I’ve been wanting to tell you. With Stevie, but –’

  ‘I know. We’ve talked.’

  ‘You’s two? What did he say?’

  ‘Not much more than you.’

  They took up places in a slow-shuffling queue before a counter vendor of teas and reheated snacks. Warily she watched him, as he chewed over his intended words.

  ‘Have you really wanted to tell me? Or did you just plan on – oh, I don’t know – toughing it out?’

  ‘I told you from the start, John, I was happy telling you all about us, any bloody thing. It was you told us you didn’t wanna know.’

  ‘Yeah, but �
�� God, this – you could have just told me anyway, Lindy. It would have been helpful.’

  ‘It’s personal, man, between me and him, it’s not summat we gan round shoutin’ about. How would it’ve helped you?’

  ‘Because. We’ve had an association, me and Steve. You know that. So you and me – I mean, it would have saved me feeling how I feel now is how.’

  ‘Fine, I hear you. So now you know. Happy?’

  ‘Oh, I’m over the moon, Lindy, it’s … delightful. There, look, don’t miss your turn.’

  They threaded their way back through the corridors, blisteringly hot snacks ill-cushioned by napkins in their palms. For Gore the thought of returning to that box in this temper was a prison sentence.

  ‘How the hell did it happen then? The two of you?’

  ‘Aw, now you want the story, do you?’

  ‘Don’t be like that. I’m just …’

  ‘Look, I used to gan a lot to this club. Zeus.’

  ‘I know it. I went to a funeral there.’

  She frowned. ‘Well, Stevie was doorman, right? There was a crowd of us used to knock about after it shut, we’d gan on to parties and that.’

  ‘You went out together?’

  ‘Nah, it was just one night. One or two.’ She sighed. ‘We were pals, he was like me brother. Used to buy us stuff, little gifts and that. There was just a night we ended up at mine and we were both a bit off it, and … that’s how.’

  ‘How did you handle it? When you found out?’

  ‘Handle it? I called him up and telt him. He come round and gave us a big speech. All serious, you know what he’s like. How he’d always see us right and all, but he wasn’t ever gunna be tied down. I said get away, man, as if I’d set me cap on you.’

  A smile squeezed itself out of Gore. That much, at least, served to recall a girl of whom he had once grown fond. ‘So you just managed? Alone?’

  ‘I’ve always managed. Stevie, but, his big thing – I mean, I can’t fault him, not for money, or time. He gets us what we need. I could do it me’sel if I had to, but Jake – I know how it works, he should have a daddy, it’s boring but it’s just the bloody truth. Stevie’d never let us have it any other way.’

  They were too close to re-entering the lion’s den for Gore’s comfort. He took her arm, arrested her steps. ‘Look, you can say. If you’re scared of him.’

  ‘Stevie? Naw, man. It’s just a set-up we’ve got, it’s fine. Look, we’re not like … I mean, he’s got another one somewhere. Another bairn by another lass? I know nowt about it. ’Cept they don’t get on, him and the mother. But with us, he’s fine. Fine. Not so clever the day, like …’ She sighed. ‘It’s not important, but. Jake’s got us – he doesn’t need owt except us. He likes men, right enough, I thought he liked you. But you’ve not said a word to him all afternoon.’

  Gore groaned. ‘Lindy, I find this a bit awkward, you know?’

  ‘You do? What about me? I dunno, John, you just pitch up … then you’re sat there like stone as usual, not kissed us or held wor hand or owt.’

  ‘It didn’t’ – he forced out between teeth – ‘seem quite the place.’

  ‘You don’t need his permission, y’knaa. What, are you scared of him?’

  He had felt himself bluster, and now wanted badly to be terse and chilly. But irritation was reinstated on her face, a stronger force.

  ‘Come on, these are burning a hole in us.’

  *

  On the way home – the radio cranked up to reports, interviews and supporters’ views of the Toon’s second-half revival – Gore sat in the back, one eye on the restless boy fastened in at his side, the other on the disparate pair of twitching shaven necks before him. This bizarre domesticity, his ill-sorted place in it, had begun to upset his innards. Worse, in his head, was a kind of vertigo. Who were these people? How had his mission directive brought him to this impasse, this queasy back-seat function?

  I’m a missionary – that’s it, that’s what I am. They told me, ‘Take the good word to the natives, just ignore their manners.’ And what have I gone and done? Treated myself to the first fuckable native girl. Turned out she was wed to the chief.

  At Oakwell Gore helped Jake from the car, seeing that Stevie and Lindy lingered in the front seats for what seemed like a troubled exchange – his hand clamped to her shoulder, her chin on her chest. Uneasily he turned his attention to the boy.

  ‘Did you enjoy the match, Jake?’

  ‘Nah. Was crap.’

  ‘You didn’t? Why not?’

  ‘We’s just drew. Didn’t get seein’ who’s-his-name.’

  ‘Didn’t you like it when Newcastle scored?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘Liked the noise. That was mint.’

  Then the Lexus was pulling away, Stevie offering a thumbs-up.

  From the dim upstairs landing he watched Lindy watching Jake grow steadily immersed in the act of scrawling on a page. Then she rose and pulled the door to, and Gore followed her down the stairs. The bunch of freesias remained limp under cellophane on the coffee table.

  ‘John, look, I’m sorry … I dunno, if your feelings are hurt I’m sorry. It’s my life, but, see? It’s just what happened. I can’t apologise for that, can I?’

  Gore shrugged. ‘No. Of course you can’t.’

  ‘So what are we gunna do then? You and me?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … Try to get along. Like we’ve been doing.’

  She lowered herself to the arm of her chair, pulled off her soft hat, looked at him ruefully. ‘We’re a pair, aren’t we?’

  She rubbed her eyes. He moved to her side and folded her into an embrace – nuzzled and kissed the top of her head, surprised to find it softer than it looked. He felt her clasping on to him with something like feeling.

  ‘Do you still want to see us, like?’ She spoke into his chest. ‘I mean – what do you want?’

  ‘Maybe we just need to give it a bit of time,’ he said, staring out through the open micro-blinds into her darkened garden, as desolate as his own.

  She freed her face from his front buttons. ‘What does that mean, but?’

  No idea. Time for you to change entirely. You, or me. Time for me to think how to get out of this cleanly. He cursed himself and this quandary of a day, at the outset of which he had fancied that all existing grievances and gridlocks were soon to be relieved by best effort. What was the game plan now?

  ‘I do think – that I need more time with you. The two of you.’

  ‘Me and Jake?’

  ‘Yes, you and Jake. Who else?’ He relinquished hold of her shoulders. ‘What do you say, shall I fix us all a bit of dinner?’

  She bit her lip and glanced disconsolately toward her thin wristwatch.

  ‘Aw, I’m working the night, man. Gotta get me’sel together.’

  ‘Where are you working?’

  ‘Where? Aw, at the club, just.’

  ‘Teflon?’

  ‘Aye, Teflon.’

  He was much too familiar with her usual candour to ignore the clear unease, the sudden indirectness in her gaze. Liar, he thought, the vehemence of his feeling arriving unbidden.

  *

  Before he reached his doorstep he knew what he would do with the evening. He wouldn’t call it spying. There seemed no other means by which his curiosity could be relieved. And it didn’t seem a terrible subterfuge to discreetly test her word, observe her in her environment. If all was well and the mood right, he could perhaps step from the shadows and surprise her. After such a day, he reasoned, how bad could that be?

  He cooked a simple omelette, drank two glasses of white burgundy, listened to a CD selection from The Well-Tempered Clavier. For an hour or so he sat at his desk over some notes, though nothing he typed cohered into sense. He was merely idling, waiting for the night-time to deepen. When the hour seemed apt he went to his wardrobe and reviewed his sparse options. A ‘clubby sort of a bar’, hadn’t she said? Generic smartness, would that pass muster? Thus his black suit, a wh
ite shirt, a grey tie. He shined a pair of Oxfords, assumed the accessories, combed his hair with tap water, splashed some old pale cologne about his cheeks. It would have to suffice. As ten o’clock ticked round he dialled a local cab firm, then extinguished all his lights and sat waiting in silence.

  ‘I’m after a club called Teflon?’

  ‘By the Swing Bridge, aye?’

  They proceeded down the Hoxheath Road, Gore sunk in disquiet, until the driver grunted some words he didn’t catch.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m saying, you want in Teflon you might have a job? Don’t mean owt by it, like, but it’s a trendier lot than yer’sel, mostly. Least that’s what ah see.’

  Gore said nothing, only gazed out of the window at the hurly-burly of the night streets as they broached the Quayside – traffic solid, raucous hubbub in the air, lads and lasses in pavement packs, baring a good deal of skin to the cold – insulated, maybe, by the first half-dozen drinks of the evening. The girls teetered on heels, tossing hair and bouncing cleavage, clutching tiny bags, faces thickly veneered, paler thighs flashing – lots of tiny dresses, some on rather large girls. The boys walked the walls, fists in the pockets of heavy-belted jeans, biceps thick in pocketed short-sleeve shirts, big and yet straining to make themselves bigger – so young and full of it, as if they might surge out onto the road and stop cars with the flats of their hands. Gore’s reflection met him in the muted glass. Were you ever that age?

  Paid up and deposited at street level, the wind off the Tyne whipping at his trouser legs, he walked with irresolute tread across the cobblestones toward the entrance of the club, a converted building. A couple passed him, the girl stumbling forward as her four-inch heel snagged between cobbles. Ten yards ahead a rope-cordoned square of six-foot-by-six marked the doorway of Teflon – from within, the metronome thump of bass; without, a smallish queue filing in turn past the eye of a brick-solid doorman. Gore endured some derisive gum-chewing looks to reach the end of the line. But a few of the males seemed to favour dark trousers and crisp shirts. Perhaps his outfit would pass?