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  ‘What?’ Behind him, that voice, issuing from the final doorway down the hall. No, he realised with a sickening plummet of heart into gut – this part he had simply not braced himself for.

  He turned and it was Shackleton who loitered on the threshold, the familiar look of enmity mutating into one of hard amusement.

  ‘Eh, what the fuck are yee deeing? Jesus, man. How, Lind, look who’s here.’

  Gore stepped forward, since there was no turning back. For a moment he believed Shackleton would bar the door with a swell of his chest. But he stepped aside.

  There in the midst of some ghastly black-walled room, lit solely by candles, she was down on her knees, a paisley do-rag tied round her head, a wadded J-cloth in her hand, a spreading stain on the crimson tufted carpet and some spray-gun ammonia close at hand.

  Was she seeing him as she stared? What was within? He couldn’t hazard.

  ‘Dear me. I’ll let you’s two alone a minute, shall I?’

  He heard Shackleton but did not see him. Heard the door close. And he had to look aside, at the black gloss on the walls, the black satin curtains, the black-sheeted bed with its black vinyl headboard – all a dirty sort of a black, fit for a black mass on a wet afternoon. The ammonia odour was mingling with some foul undercurrent.

  And she? She was rubbing her hands on the knees of her denim skirt, studying them as she did so.

  ‘Looking for me, were you?’

  ‘Yes. I came to find you.’

  He made to help her to her feet but she was launching herself upward, and he saw at once that she was boiling, swelling with temper.

  ‘Look, don’t –’

  ‘Why?’ She shoved with both hands at his sternum and he was painfully jarred, flung up both his own hands in defence, which she tried to flail her way through still. ‘Come on, say. Why? Why the fuck, man?’

  ‘I had to know. The truth.’

  ‘Happy now, then, are you? Seeing us like this?’

  ‘No, but I understand now. I know I’ve been wrong.’

  ‘Oh, wrong? You, wrong?’

  ‘Yes, wrong, but it’s okay now.’

  ‘It’s not okay for me. Not for me, John.’

  His toneless responses seemed to have sapped at her. She rubbed her face, paced away to the darkened window, turned, then thought better, then turned again, her arms crossed in defiance. ‘Big kick for you, is it? Slipping around, fucking spying on us?’

  ‘No, Lindy, of course not, it’s the opposite.’

  ‘Then why do it?’

  ‘Because I care for you. Because you can’t go on doing this.’

  ‘I don’t do this, you know? I don’t fuck anybody. If that’s what you’re thinking. Or I dunno, is that maybe a letdown for you?’

  ‘No, God no, you don’t understand …’ He had to lower himself down to sit on the edge of the odious black bed, for it all seemed hopeless, insupportable, unremitting. He could see the livid hurt in her, could feel it under his own skin, wanted so badly to transmit to her how he had lived with the same despondency and still found this path through it.

  ‘What don’t I understand?’

  ‘That you can’t stay like this. I don’t just mean this …’ He waved a hand. ‘I mean this mire you’re in, Lindy. Because of him. When you only need to take a step out of it. Cut the link. You can. Leave it, just walk away.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Her voice was flat. ‘I’ve not got a choice. You’re a fool if you think that.’

  ‘No. No, that’s wrong, you do. I’ve thought that way, but it’s wrong, you say it’s your life but it doesn’t have to be. There’s another life.’ He realised that some part of what was coming from his mouth had been foreign to him until this very moment. ‘This one, it’s a poison to you.’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘I love you. I want to take care of you.’

  This seemed the gravest outrage yet.

  ‘Aw look, I just want you to go, man. Now. I mean it, really. Before I –’ And a stifled shriek came out of her, a painful compound of hurt and frustration.

  ‘I’ll go, I’m going. But you’re coming with me.’

  ‘I’m fucking not.’

  ‘You are, you have to, Lindy I need you to.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘I’m not going without you.’

  ‘You’re an idiot. They were right. I thought you knew better.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  She almost laughed. ‘Whey, everyone, man.’

  ‘I can protect you from them. I can, I promise you. I know what to do now. I love you, and I’ll protect you.’

  She stared at him as if each word, each phrase, worsened the injury – to her face, to her shaking head, her wounded eyes and sorry mouth, the thumbnail now being worried between her front teeth.

  There was a thud at the door and it was thrust open, Shackleton sweating displeasure. ‘Lindy, howay for fuck’s sake, there’s a fella, you’re wanted.’

  ‘A minute, man.’

  The door swung to. Gore came forward, got his hands around her arms, and though she flinched and writhed it lacked conviction, for he wrested her into him. His plans had dwindled to nothing, lacking all substance. Feeling had surged up in their stead.

  ‘Lindy, are you hearing me? I love you.’

  ‘Shut up, man, you don’t, you just don’t.’

  He took hold of her head, kissed her brow, took her hands in his and kissed them, laid a hand on her throat. ‘I’ve said, I was wrong, I treated you wrongly. I want to make good. I have to. Because you’re everything to me. You are. You’re all I have, nothing is anything without you.’

  He had said it and, with a force that ran the length of him, he believed it. Then he released her in fright as Shackleton charged back in.

  ‘Right, fuckin’ shift yourself – you and all, Gore.’

  Gore’s chest was so drum-taut with feeling he feared he had nothing left for this new assault, this hard-faced bruiser coming right at him. At the last he was redeemed.

  ‘Leave us be, man, we’re gannin’.’

  Gore followed Shackleton’s glare in wonder, for this seemed a small marvel.

  ‘Whaddaya mean, “gannin’”?’

  ‘Home. Gannin’ home.’ She was untying her do-rag.

  ‘You’re fuckin’ not, Lindy. You canna.’

  ‘I’m sick, man, I can’t do this tonight.’

  Shack’s bullet-head swung toward Gore. ‘This your doing? Eh? Eh, dickhead, I’m talking to you.’

  He looked as if he could strike, and if this was a fight, Gore knew, he was already doomed: the hammer in his coat would be extracted and lodged in his skull.

  ‘Leave him, Shack man.’ Her amazing calm seemed that of profound weariness. ‘I’ll square it with Stevie, I’ll call him, it’ll all be on us. Alright? So now you can fuck off an’ all.’

  Shack was looking from one to the other of them now. In the low candlelight his skull looked as though it had been carved from white stone. But he was blinking, brow tilted, his tongue working behind his teeth. The visible thought process was spectacular.

  ‘Alreet then. Alreet. Run along.’

  Gore looked to Lindy. Whatever her self-command, she clearly had not expected this either.

  ‘Thank you,’ Gore heard himself say.

  ‘Thank you,’ came the sneering response, just a little menace exuded, as was this man’s wont. And yet their way was unimpeded.

  So he walked behind her, legs a little shaky, passing a slack-jawed young man stood gormlessly by the reception. Her calm stunned him, but was a blessing of a sort. The next station could only be worse, probably bitter and ugly, calling for deeper reserves of resolve. She had put him on the spot again, condemned him to try to see it through.

  *

  ‘Steve, are you listening to us?’

  Yes and no. He heard her, mostly. But it was an effort of will, and there was a limit to what he could usefully contribute. By his reckoning they had alrea
dy spoken enough tonight of this difficult juncture in Ally’s career.

  ‘I’ve gotta know what you think, but.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, should I try it with this other band? Or do I stick with this lot? Or, I dunno, do I just pack it in?’

  Stevie saw no doubt – her singing wasn’t to the standard of her dancing, and the showband she had been fronting for a few months had clearly told her as much that afternoon. His own afternoon had been spent still drinking down the spoils of a Saturday passed at Newcastle Racecourse, the first meeting of the jumps, where a risky fifty quid at twelves on Take No Prisoners had paid off in spades. He had been on Johnny Walker and Carlsberg ever since, burning through a rare elation rather than slaking any special thirst. Now his tandoori mixed grill was being set down before him, and he realised that his eyes had been a good deal bigger than his stomach.

  ‘Steve. I’m asking you, please. Have you got a view?’

  ‘Aw, have I not fucking said?’

  ‘Don’t be so irritable, God.’

  ‘I’m not, man, I’ve said. There’s only way to gan about it – you’ve just gotta decide what you wanna do and set yer’sel to it. Y’knaa? See where you want to be in the end, do what you need to get there. It doesn’t matter what any other bugger thinks.’

  ‘Do you not like wuh voice, then?’

  ‘I like everything about you, pet.’

  It was no lie. When they first met, when Mickey Ash had started squiring her to Zeus – then she had the same twee powder-pink prettiness, the same flesh-baring compulsion he’d seen in a million Geordie blondes. Now her skin seemed airbrushed, there was copper in her variegated coiffure, her wardrobe was cutaway but classy. She was pure sleek. He had thought her dim, too, in those early days – thought that a fact when she took up with Dougie. But she had shown herself shrewd and attentive, had chose her moment well to tell him she had always been shy of him. There was, he had decided, a certain grace in their being together now, after all this time. She was adaptable, too, fazed by next to nothing, certainly not by his now making camp at her little walk-up flat on Fenkle Street, commandeering her tidy bedroom with several crates of his rough gear.

  Something, though, had changed. This night alone had begun all wrong, he saw as much in her face when he pitched up in his pub suit of leather and jeans. He had thought it a night to relax. She had a definite agenda.

  ‘If it’s gonna work for me I’ve got to do it now or not at all. That’s if you and me are serious, like.’

  ‘What’s not serious about you and me?’

  ‘You know what.’

  Decidedness – that was the quality in her he had never expected, just the thing for a nice untaxing evening. He nearly laughed. ‘Ally, just – think about it a minute, eh? Do you want a kid? Really? Or is it just the idea you’ve started fancying? Cos of what’s-her-face?’

  ‘Don’t be bloody rotten. What do you take us for?’ She poked at her plate. ‘I’ll tell you this for nowt, if we’d a child you might give us half the thought you give them others.’

  ‘What you talkin’ ’bout?’

  ‘You know, man – Karen and Lindy.’

  ‘Ally, divvint go down that owld road. It’s just – it’s a fact, right, I divvint need another bairn.’

  ‘Well, I think you do. Cos it’s not like you’ve got the ones you’ve got.’

  ‘Bollocks, man. They’re my kids, I see ’em when I want to, and that’s all – it’s all squared and agreed with the mothers. What?’

  ‘You. “The mothers”, like. Is that what they were? Just the little baby-ovens for you? Incubators?’

  ‘Nah. Wasn’t a bit like that. It’s just how things turned out. Didn’t turn out like I was meant to be with ’em. Neither of ’em.’

  ‘Cramped your style, did it? Couldn’t live with ’em once they got a bit broody?’

  ‘It were nowt like that. Bloody hell. Tell you what – you but, you’re gannin’ the right way about it.’

  It was a try at levity, buttressed by a version of the Sharky smile. But she had taken offence and, so decided, would not be shifting. Her fork sifted her plate as if food itself had been the slightest pretext, now indigestible.

  ‘It’s like you don’t ever think about the future …’

  He rubbed at his temple, disbelieving. Truly she had picked a strange moment to turn slow-witted. ‘Ally, the future’s all I ever think about. It’s just there are times you’ve just got to get from day to day, nowt else. Deal with what’s right in front of you. Can you not see that?’

  ‘Whey, that’s what I’m having to do – cos of you. I don’t know where I am, Steve. You use me flat like a lodging, you don’t tell us owt why. If you’re thinking of packing in what you’re doing, I’ve got to do something, we’ve got to think where we’re –’

  ‘Have I not said? How many times? I’m not fuckin’ packing in. They’re not real problems, these, none of ’em. All it needs is time and we’ll sort them, man. So will you give it a fuckin’ rest?’

  He was leaking adrenalin, he knew, burning off aggressive carbohydrates, and it was wrong that she suffer the force of this pent-up feeling, the price he was paying for being in a kind of hiding, permanently switched off and shy of attack mode. The fury reared up in him suddenly, he saw himself doing it and still couldn’t arrest it.

  They ate, then, in silence, until Stevie’s phone pulsed in his coat pocket, and he rummaged for it thankfully.

  ‘Do you have to? Answer that?’

  ‘I do.’

  The hubbub of the restaurant was hopeless, so he rose and stalked toward the door, only to find a pint-sized waiter darting to his side.

  ‘Sir, excuse me, where do you go?’

  ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you pal? I just got me plate, man. That’s wuh lass owa there.’

  Outside he paced about the stoop, glancing back through a porthole in the door at Ally, who still wasn’t eating.

  ‘Aye, what?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at a mate’s, where are you, Brian?’

  ‘The Damask. We’ve had some bother. Lindy’s pissed off, there’s neebody on.’

  ‘Eh? Pissed off where?’

  ‘Off home. It was Gore, see. He come round, started –’

  ‘Gore? The fuck was he doing?’

  ‘I divvint knaa, do I? He just showed up. It was him talked her into it, like, pissing off, looked like to me.’

  ‘What, and you just let ’em off, the pair of ’em?’

  ‘Whey, what was I s’posed to do? Give her a smack? Or him, like?’

  ‘You’re supposed to use a bit of judgement, man. Jesus, you coulda given fuckin’ Gore a clout, that would’na taken owt.’

  ‘Well, see, I didn’t know that was your view on things, Steve.’

  ‘Aw, fuck me. So what? What are you doin’?’

  ‘What do you think I’m doing? I’m gunna lock up, send the girls home.’

  ‘Like fuck y’are. Divvint you fuckin’ move your arse, Shack, I’m gunna gan fetch her back.’

  Silence from the subordinate. ‘Aye, well …’

  ‘Aye right. You hear us?’

  ‘Aye, I do. Whatever you say, boss …’

  Some valve in his head had come clean off its thread. Every association in his life now a source of disorder in his house, a cause of calamity. She, perhaps, had been overdue her little revolt. He? Stevie could not have foreseen the aggravation that was John Gore, not if he’d been given a million years.

  Back at table he sat only to spoon up some hasty mouthfuls and swig from the three-quarter pint.

  ‘Listen, I’ve gotta do a quick bit business, but you stay –’

  ‘Aw what, Steve?’

  ‘You stay and finish, here’s the money. I’ll see you back at yours.’

  ‘Who was it? Was it Shackleton?’

  Old Shack – nobody liked him, he didn’t care. Stevie thought it almost enviable. He tossed his chin in the affir
mative.

  ‘Just leave it, man. Can you not just?’

  ‘Don’t tell us to fuckin’ leave it. I’ll be an hour. Hour tops.’

  He threw on his leather and stomped out, cleaving the air, his boots hardly touching the ground en route to the car park off the Gallowgate. There as he left it, the heap-of-shit cut-and-shut Corsa that Shack had secured him from his mate in Shiremoor, where the Lexus was garaged. A joke vehicle, but functional, negligible, permitting him to feel he had slipped into sweet anonymity round town. For that much service, he supposed, he had Brian to thank, since Brian always had a sharp eye for a deal.

  Chapter IV

  RECKONINGS

  Sunday, 24 November 1996

  He sat on the faux-leather sofa beside his subdued beloved, perched on a knife edge of his own forging, quietly going mad. By their abrupt return they had disturbed Yvonne from her planned viewing. Now she slurped at a mug of tea intended to send her kindly on her way. But she seemed reluctant to quit the faux-leather armchair, burbling in her clotted accent of how the boy was no bother but was surely a bit spoiled. Lindy nodded at the news that Jake had been safely abed since eight-thirty, though his toys were all rudely upturned around the laminate floor as though he had been abducted.

  Amid the blather Lindy favoured him with half of a smile, a godsend of sorts, for in the taxi she had seemed remote. ‘Glakey’, wasn’t that her word? After a fruitless phone call to her friend Claire, she had slipped down the seat and into silence.

  ‘I’m proud of you,’ he said after a while.

  ‘I’m doing this for me, John. For me.’ There were pensive moments before she added, ‘So I hope you’ve got a plan, mister.’

  Now, though, it was as if little of note had occurred that night, other than what she told her auntie – that she had developed a chill and planned to curl up. Nonetheless they were both smoking cigarettes, sharing the ashtray, the sliding door to the garden shoved aside. Perhaps she had attained some prized sense of relief. It was too bad he had to wreck it. She was putting off her phone call, but he could not delay his. Nor could he be sure of the size of disturbance he was liable to cause in her house. He had toyed with the notion of smuggling it out, and seen that for futile. It would have to be found in its place. She could be no party to his process until it was done. So he would have to do it, then persuade her of its wisdom. He would have to vouch for the integrity of Robbie Chisholm, an unknown, perhaps unknowable quantity. It was a headlong leap into the dark, but the moment had come, was already past, nothing left but the fall.