Chapter Three
'Get out and mind your own business.'
'It is my business,' Alicia sharply insisted, 'no thanks to you.'
In her pink pyjamas, Alicia had tiptoed barefoot over the velvety, cream carpet on the landing like a silent fuse the hand of her obsession had itched to ignite. Bang! She'd rushed Davie's bedroom door like a virulent blast to tear nerves if not hinges out. In a navy blue T-shirt and black boxer shorts, her brother hadn't so much as twitched on his swivel chair. And it was with a deadpan expression that he'd slowly spun round and tried to send his sibling on her way. Instead, her tongue insolently sparking, her arms truculently akimbo, Alicia had swept aside a pair of crumpled, inside out jeans with her left foot, usurping more of her brother's territory. Davie smirked; what a bozo! Alicia most effectively frightened her own shadow. As if evading her now, its barely perceptible legs stretched like flimsy bridges across the deep blue sea of his bedroom carpet, allowing its nebulous upper body to crawl up the sky-blue wall. It was opposite the window his chelping sister ought to take a running jump at, but which only framed midday's surprisingly clear heavens between crescent moon pattern curtains.
Her shadow's head fell short of the bottom edge of Davie's solar system poster, but Alicia's indignation was out of this world. 'Because of you thieving, cheating pirates the music and film industries have less money to invest in new talent. I therefore want you to explain how you expect me to get a recording contract?'
'Ahoy there, me hearty!' Davie couldn't help laughing, even if, before Alicia's outburst, he'd been dolefully thinking about Dad. 'That's all t' music me ears desires!' He flamboyantly waved his hands as if conducting an orchestra of computers playing a symphony of smooth whirring. The instrumentalists were a trim, high performance laptop on his desk along the wall from the window, and three older, chunky models balanced on various annuals for boys on his made bed. His navy quilt cover featured Mario of computer games fame.
'You're so sad, Davie. Since when did pirates go to the Royal Albert Hall or the opera?'
'It's a sea-shanty, airhead-in-a-wig.'
'My hair's natural.'
'I like how you don't deny there's nothing between your ears.'
'Stop it. Before you kill me.'
Satisfied that the last four films of this weeks' order would soon be burned onto discs, Davie slowly, pensively, spun on his revolving chair. He had a few questions for Alicia, but asking them would draw out her stay in his room, and it wasn't as if she'd give him any answers. For no real reason he started spinning faster, round and round and round. Alicia got it into her head that he was mocking her. 'Humph!' She stooped to the floor and rolled a pair of his socks into a ball. Her shot bounced off Davie's forehead. He braked against the bed with an outstretched leg. His dizziness fading, he scrutinised his impossible sister, his blue eyes lively, glinting with amusement. Though a little on the skinny side, Davie's chipper manner and unusually clear teenage complexion were suggestive of cute, loveable angelhood to those who didn't know that, ever since infanthood, he'd had a quite wicked understanding of how to infuriate Alicia, which he could now sometimes achieve just by drawing breath. Grinning like a buccaneer in a grotto of treasure, he surveyed his room: 'The good ship Davie'll continue to sail to riches where'er they may be an' anyone that don't like it will walk mi plank.'
'You are a plank, Captain Slack Sparrowlegs. Why don't you go out and make some friends or, better still, get a girlfriend to occupy your time instead of interfering with my chances? It's coming to something when a sister has to ask her brother if he cares.'
Davie bit his tongue; shouldn’t a daughter care about her dad?
'Well, do you care?'
'It depends.' And why wouldn't Mum tell him where Dad was staying? 'What am I supposed to be bothered about?'
'Me! You halfwit!'
He wanted her out of his sight. 'Something isn't quite adding up, is it?' He histrionically scratched his head of bedraggled brown hair, remembering as he did so that Mum had forced some money into his hand so that he'd get it cut in the town. There are more important things, he'd thought, his two slices popping from the toaster. 'See that bookshelf in the corner?'
'You never read.'
'I read a lot of things.'
'Such as?'
'Rotten, selfish people.'
‘Are you sure you're not writing your autobiography?'
'The point is,' said Davie, 'it is mine. I can do what I want with the books on the shelf because, you guessed it, they're also mine. More clues. The bed? The TV? The Xbox? The stacks of films? The wardrobe is full of my clothes. And that's because…?
'We can be sure you haven't the talent to become a comedian,' Alicia answered, scowling.
'Who's looking for laughs? Do you get the message?'
'I'll leave when you promise me you're going to stop pirating music and films.' She stepped up to the foot of the bed, crossing her arms. 'Until then, I'm staying put.'
Like mother like daughter, Alicia might be judged to have it all so far as the look of idealised femininity goes; her flowing blond locks, big, emerald eyes, devastatingly curvaceous cheekbones and shapely lips seemed to have been woven, cut, sculpted and moulded as if some deity had deemed the young girl's perfect hourglass figure should be stunningly accompanied through life. Of course, it takes more than an image, and Alicia's father had doubted whether his daughter's head was wired up when she'd refused his offer to pay for a professional portfolio that would surely, even to his sceptical mind, flabbergast every modelling agency in London. Alicia had been adamant. 'I'm a singer! There are a million pretty girls, and look what happens to so many wannabe models. Conned by sleazy men or persuaded by dirty money into starring in those vile films that the pervy boys at college bluetooth each other.'
Not that Davie considered any of it of great significance. 'Don't do promises like that. Sorry.'
'You're letting kids see eighteen certificates. Films are rated for a reason, you know.'
'Nice try. But you've watched loads of them and you've only just turned eighteen.'
'I matured earlier than most. Everybody says I'm a lovely-looking young woman.'
'Not everybody.'
'Name somebody who doesn't.'
'Me. Anyway, looking like one isn't the same as being one.'
'Please? Pretty, pretty please? I can put in a good word for you with any girl you can think of.'
'I copy a few films for friends,' he yawned, used to her scheming changes of tack. 'I do have some, even though you think you've patented popularity.'
'Let me look in your bag...' Davie was too quick for her. He snatched away his Nike holdall and dropped it to safety behind his chair. He sat tight; his arms folded and his legs spread outwards, ready to trip his sister if she came too close. Davie was confident she wouldn't directly attack his computers - the last time she'd tried such a sorry tactic, he'd sneaked into her room, delved in her washing-basket, and snapped a pair of her knickers on his mobile. She'd kept her meddling hands to herself ever since he'd threatened to hang out her dirty washing on the internet. Judging by her tears, even the thought of such humiliation hurt badly. Davie had concluded that as appalling as it might seem, sometimes in life, only low-down tricks get the desired results.
Alicia tossed her head back with the contemptuous elegance she'd copied from the gorgeous, flighty star of a classic movie and practised in her bedroom mirror. 'That's a brother's love, is it?'
'About the measure of it.'
'It's wrong!' Alicia stamped her foot.
'You know about doing the right thing?' Davie had had enough. 'Amazing! You'll know, then, that you were wrong to pretend you didn't know what Mum was up to?'
'Mum said…' - Alicia froze, her face whitening and contorting like she'd walked onto a sharp knife - '…she wouldn't tell you about that.'
'I heard you arguing when you thought I was out.'
'Well… It isn't criminal! I'll tell Mum you've bee
n bullying me if you say anything else. It isn't my fault they’ve split up.' Alicia crossed her fingers behind her back, oh my god, what if Davie had heard her mother's harsh words about the money she'd taken from Michael?
He hadn't, apparently. And he couldn't stand another pointless scene about family misfortunes. He wanted to be in the know, not to be beat round the head with get-out clauses. 'The music and film industries won't go bankrupt because I download a few things. People can't always afford to pay their prices. That's where I step in and provide a service. Think about the limousines and swanky dos that you look at online. Not exactly evidence that the stars are suffering, is it? The big-timers have canny accountants. My mate's dad is always posting stuff on Facebook about tax-avoidance. Now get out!'
'I'll…' But Alicia quickly overruled bluffing Davie by letting on she'd report him to the police. Mum would make a scarier noise than any siren if Alicia so much as hinted at dropping her brother in it as well.
Davie aped Alicia's screeched 'I'll find some way to stop you!' as she retreated from his room. He could agree with his sister on one thing; she was special, certifiably so. She'd get close to celebrity only by taking up stalking in her spare time.
Alicia tearfully fled across the landing and into her room. Her vast collection of teddy bears seemed to urge her to hide. Under her duvet, she quietly sobbed at the injustice of everything. She hadn't cheated on Dad! Why should she be blamed for him moving out? How she'd always hoped that Mum and Michael would be a flash in the pan! By keeping quiet she'd given Mum every chance of coming to her senses. If she'd told Dad about Mum's secret straight away, then they'd have been finished quicker than X-factor rejects. At least, Alicia thought, my way meant Mum could have stayed with Dad without him being any the wiser and injured. She'd tried to make the best of a bad situation, and her parents had always preached about the virtues of doing that. Hadn't she suffered bad dreams, haunted by those sickening noises she'd heard when she'd walked in on Mum and her gremlin-faced bit on the side? She hated him! How she wished she hadn't told Dad that she liked Michael the most!
Alicia shed her tears in a house in the middle of an estate on the south side of town, which is, for all intents and purposes, no different to the north side. When they were built, the town's oldest streets typically sheltered colliers' families; the red brick houses stand in crooked, surly lines, relics of noxious, oppressive duties that have willingly been wiped from popular memory. Were it possible for the original occupants to learn that their damp, poky dwellings now command head-twisting prices on the housing market, they'd doubtlessly spin with shock in their graves. Some might even be tempted to rise from underground in the midnight hour to explore the strange town. Who could say what they'd make of the world they'd once hoped and struggled to better?
It is commonly said that modern technology has transformed the globe into a village, and it is perhaps some inverse parallel that it is possible to move in ever-decreasing circles in the town on a grander scale than ever before. The old terraces conspicuously, awkwardly border and merge with newer developments, the most recent of which were thrown up in no time on any spare land, and whose streets often abruptly, expectantly snake as if an adventurous, creative spirit designed them without really knowing where they might lead. Which is other red-brick terraced estates, up yonder, down yonder, roundabouts, and, of course, back to your own front door. In a place such as this it is no mystery that home is both where the heart is and where the same suffocating four walls loom.
Maybe this stewing, hideous duality of domestic content and claustrophobic restlessness goes some way to explaining a pervasive tendency to love or to hate with fierce tenacity. It manifests in a kind of social schizophrenia, which is not to be confused with conventional, gossipy two-facedness because, though often as petty, it can be that much barmier. By way of a broad example it might be said that the generally unimaginative, honest, hardworking folk carve out the gentlest, most loyal, unconditional friendships and also the most unbelievably invidious, ugly enmities; the locals can turn, and it is most often on one another rather than the other cheek or on those who should rightfully be blamed for the area's deep-rooted social ills. While it might be proposed that excessive drinking, which remains the locals' most popular escape from their clockwork routines, bears some degree of influence on the rancorous shenanigans in the fragmenting community, the culprits themselves would shout down any such suggestion. Everyone can take their booze; on pain of death will anyone dare to say otherwise. Hic.
This is a culture of simple, strong passions and uncomplicated beliefs, where everyday demands and hassles and a dearth of education going back generations - until there are no records - have wrought an underlying native character marked by scathing cynicism and soft-headed gullibility. The people buy into nothing and fall for everything. No one seems to know the way or have the will to put anything right, and if they did, their ideas would be rejected as sentimental fairy stories with big price tags. And nobody believes anything they read. Ahem.
Though scarcely an environment that bitterly evidences the great divide between the rich and the poor, and for a good reason - the better-off mostly reside in cul-de-sacs on the quieter outskirts and the rich live it up elsewhere - variations in affluence amongst the common clan are discernible with even cursory glances. The box-like gardens of less impecunious households often show off neatly trimmed lawns, hanging-baskets, flowerbeds and clipped shrubs while, against the kerbs over their creosoted fences or boundary walls, motors that range from the class of rust-buckets to polished pride and joys are parked. By contrast, the poorer houses' grotty ambience of persistent decline tends to spill over, fertilising miniature jungles whose close proximity to society is exposed by the miscellaneous, oxidising junk strewn across them; a collapsed bed frame, a bust carburettor, a burnt out grill. Grubby curtains are often drawn in the windows of such homes, keeping the little warmth in, and fuelling snide remarks from passers-by who should know better.
Nearly every street discloses some wonky balance, to a greater or lesser extent, of this hard-earned respectability and hard-faced poverty. If tourists were grabbed by a bizarre whim to take an eye-opening trip to see how it is beyond Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and Legoland, and came here, they'd quickly get lost in an anarchic diffusion of perspectives and realities - like the spray from thousands of aerosols slanting from multiple directions and creating nothing more than dripping, indecipherable graffiti - and a paradoxical, reductive struggle so entrenched it has slyly assumed to define human nature. In all but the most open, carefree or impoverished minds festers the desire to beat the neighbours while hoping they stay in the race. No Joe Soap and his missus who have grafted to pay their mortgage, or who are grafting to save up for years to get a mortgage, wants their patch or dream, more or less the same thing, to degenerate. Without dreams, what have they got?
Perhaps remembering the streets of their own towns or cities where lurks the shadowy, unknown antagonists in those despicable, unsolved crimes, our imaginary tourists might surface with overwhelming gratitude on the precinct amongst the huddle of listed buildings whose images have, along with the castle ruins, hogged the few postcards printed in honour of the ancient market settlement-cum-modern urban maze. Our tourists might - having readjusted and decided that the local accent is friendly rather than intimidating - breezily saunter past the ever-dwindling range of goods and services offered by charity shops, bookies, near empty pubs, mobile phone outlets and banks, thinking they must soon arrive. For, right here, at the antique site of commerce, the calamitous carnage of internet and hypermarket price wars can especially be witnessed. The change for the worse is all around, even if the aged, penny-watching pedestrians who shuffle along the precinct habitually grumble, 'A fiddle - it's always been the same,' before contradicting themselves with, 'Bring back the good old days' and, 'It was terrible, much worse in our day', which it still is, of course. Surely - our tourists would mutter amongst thems
elves - something must be here to entice us with a dash of contemporary pizzazz? Ha-har! There it is. A glossy, flimsy, concertina leaflet pushing the neon and chrome glitz of the corporate leisure complex on the edge of town.
Beautiful bods, flabby carcasses, families; they all hang out where the chain favourites want to be consumed, gut-loads of sugar and gherkin-enhanced fat, no extra charge. Here's choice! Here's steal deal meals! Here's the minimum wage! Wetherspoon's, Burger King, Chiquito's, Nando's, Frankie & Benny's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Indian buffets undercutting Chinese competition. Why not shoot each other at Laser Quest? Ski and tumble down slopes of fake snow? Bowl a strike or a turkey? Ha! You'll know you've been stuffed when you find the holes in your wallets and purses. Didn't you look closer and wonder at too many empty seats? The complex has to drag them in from miles around because the boisterous local lads and lasses have already worn the T-shirt and figure drinking away their wages is better value. Boom, boom, boom go the leisure complex's bars, drowning the ker-ching of their tills. To the locals the whole enterprise has become known as a place to avoid working at and which turned off the lights of the town's night clubs.
Punters aplenty ride up the escalator to take a trip with Cineworld to worlds of daring romance, no drugs required for hallucinations. Every fool character possesses special powers to thwart - wait for it - near inevitable disaster. Even the bad guys do it dandy and refuse to swear in front of our moms before getting gunned down. Except, of course, the computer generated monsters or weird folk with funny skin who breed in deserts. They get wasted, no questions asked. Most of the audience don't know the meaning of 'metanarrative', yet everybody thinks they know the score, and an unreliable, unshakeable, officially-sponsored reality is honed that bit more.
Regardless of the town centre's blue plaques and the leisure complex's wham-bam-we need another tenner-mam buzz, a few visitors might gladly take the unsignposted, south-easterly road out. It is one of the authentic, less indulged, unexploited pleasures to drive through the countryside and park up on the narrow pavements of a quintessential English village that peaceably rests in a valley just beyond the town's immediate horizon. The village boasts a fairly exclusive hotel, a medieval church, whitewashed stone cottages and a few mansions better hidden by the dense foliage of great trees than the poorer dwellings in the town are concealed by mucky, drawn curtains. But better than any of this, up and over a stile, through a cow field, is the fresh, thick woodland where picking flowers is forbidden and which shelters magnificent, elusive deer among the usual creatures great and small.
A slender, meandering river, populated by dace, gudgeon and perch, flows through the valley. Sometimes it gurgles and froths over the shallows' rocky beds under overhanging trees, more often it lazily serpentines left and right, running deeper, through the grasslands of the valley floor that partitions the dense woodland on each steep slope. As long as ramblers block out the thunderous zoom of traffic from the viaduct that crosses the valley at a vertigo-inducing thirty metres, the canopied footpaths through the woods are an idyll, just be mindful to step over the stuff dog-owners occasionally neglect to scoop up. But it isn't so much very different to cow-dung, anyway. Perhaps a more cultural surprise is provided by folklore and a few historians, to boot; according to it and them, this gentle landscape was the refuge of the real, more villainous, war-like Robin Hood. Not that anyone is scared they'll encounter outlaws' ghosts. Even the most credulous folk have suspicions that, at the start of the twenty-first century, there are crueller big-shot bandits around and they don't ever have to go into hiding.
But most of our imaginary visitors, after quickly satisfying their inquisitiveness, would be most thrilled to find themselves - having sped beyond the huge, blank block of a factory that churns out jelly sweets by the ton - on the carriageway that leads to the illusionary getaway of the motorway. For accelerating up the ramp onto the M62, our visitors could, if they so decided, speed along onto other roadways until they'd travelled through the north, back down through the midlands and into the south, discovering that, after thousands of years of civilisation, the big towns and cities of England are, for the many, one and the same. Only their histories differ. And despite the glut of quickly constructed retail parks bursting with the same brand names or closing down sales, and the high streets dominated by the same big banks that like to say yes under certain terms and conditions, a question might pop into our travellers' minds. What went wrong? And then maybe they'd ask the same question about home.
No such question was on young Davie's mind as he set out on the five minutes tramp through the nippy streets to the workingmen's club where, outside, he'd hand over his sports bag. With over one hundred copies of recent blockbusters and chart hits sliding around inside, it gave off repeated clicks as he paced along. Alex - a twenty-something cousin on Cathy's side of the family - had added Davie on Facebook around the time the teenager had first reproduced films for school friends. The long thread under Davie's status-of-the-day about some yet to be released DVD had struck Alex as most fascinating.
The next afternoon, Alex appeared on the doorstep in leathers, offering to treat his kid cousin - who he hadn't seen in way too long - to a pulse-racing ride out. A Yamaha 125cc ticked over in the street. Cathy took one look at it and thought she recognised death. Though Davie didn't like the look of Alex, he sensed some rip-roaring fun. Pushing beyond his mother at the door, he stepped out onto the lawn, taking a closer look at the immaculate machine on the other side of the fence.
'I'm the smartest rider, Aunty Cathy,' Alex bragged. 'I've only come off once.' He rapped his gloved knuckles on the spare white helmet he was holding, 'And there's no better protection on the market.'
'Not getting on in the first place is safer still,' Cathy replied, stiffly. 'And it's nearly time for tea. Maybe another time.'
'You ever been on one of those, kid?' Alex pointed at his bike while turning to Davie. 'They ride wilder than the girl of your dreams.'
'Sorry?' snapped Cathy.
Alex tossed Davie the spare helmet. 'Good catch. Let's hit the road and show it what we've got, kid.'
Davie tried the helmet on. Kind of like a stuffy, soft head vice but, he thought, pulling the slightly scratched visor down, he bet he looked cool in it. And that decided it. What a coup! The lads at school might see him shooting through the streets. 'We'll only be gone a short while,' he said to his mother, rushing to the gate.
'Hold your horses…'
'Ha ha! Good one, Aunty Cathy. Carts are history and we're going, too.' Alex's shaded visor concealed his wink, which wasn't quite as audacious as the removal of his L-plates ten minutes beforehand. 'Don't worry about tea. I'll get him a bite.'
'You be careful,' Cathy called, her maternal protectiveness undermined by her discomfort at not yet knowing if she'd find the family meal in the fridge or the freezer. Overtime for the stock check was compulsory. And her colleague, Jessie, had gossiped with both tongues of her two faces when they'd nipped for a coffee afterwards.
Taking the quickest route out of town, Alex zoomed down dusty country lanes, banking corners as if maintaining pole position over ghost riders in hot pursuit, crazily rising on the back wheel down straights that unexpectedly dipped away. Davie clung to his big cousin like the ride of his life was going to cost him it.
'It's pure exhilaration when you hang out with me.' Alex smirked as his shaky younger cousin dismounted. They'd pulled over at a cronky roadside burger van that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Over the stubbly, recently-harvested fields that still hoarded bales of hay, Davie spied a long row of houses that, from this distance, looked fit for a colony of ants. He couldn't name the town or the village, whatever it was.
Alex let Davie straddle the bike while they chewed greasy cheeseburgers with onions and he pitched his proposition. 'I put word out round the factory I work at and in the pubs and clubs I drink in, compile a list of the stuff people want and you, my whiz-kid cousin, do me pro
ud with your technical abilities.'
'And I get what out of it?' Davie asked, tomato ketchup leaking out of his burger and onto his chin as if a vampire had misdirected a snap at him. 'Balls.' He'd dropped his napkin in some spilled oil.
'The guy whose bike leaked that has more to worry about than you,' Alex said, grinning, returning from the burger van with several wet wipes. 'They'll stop you staining your tracksuit top if you squirt again. Good at sports?'
'Not bad at football,' Davie replied, wiping his chin.
'You look like a footballer.'
'Suppose.' Davie shoved the last of his burger into his mouth.
'Tasty?'
'Not bad. You didn't say what I get?'
'Suspicious mite, aren't you? A quarter of the profit.'
'It's not worth the effort.'
'Ok, ok. We sell 'em for a quid each and go fifty-fifty on what we make. I know a guy who works in a warehouse who'll sell us cheap discs.'
'Stolen goods?'
'Raw materials on discount.'
'Fifty-fifty?'
'You make it - I sell it. Two halves of the same job. I'll drum up plenty of business. C'mon, high fives.'
'Can we go home now?' Davie said, after sealing the deal.
'Fancy walking?'
'Huh? It's miles away. I meant on your bike.'
'Don't hang on like a big girl's blouse, then.'
Davie failed to complete the first week's orders; they had so many and he had so little time, and that was after he'd recruited his pal, Eddie. Only when the younger cousin said he'd pull out of the deal because no one had mentioned slavery did carping Alex finally agree to invest their initial takings in some reconditioned computers going cheap in a charity shop. Even with fairly sophisticated software, Davie had found the arrangement troublesome because he had GCSE coursework to mull over and the internet connection wasn't fast enough this side of town. The reconditioned computers proved to be efficient enough to send Alex laughing all the way to the bar. After overheads - the price of knocked off discs - the cousins were splitting in the region of one hundred and twenty quid every week. A nice little earner for someone whose most arduous task involved scribbling a few titles in a pocket diary he'd considered useless when he unwrapped it the previous Christmas. Alex's distribution method worked on the philosophy that customers would approach him or even chase him up for their films or tunes. Though Davie disliked his cousin because there was nothing about him to like, for the time being, he couldn't think of a way of cutting Alex out. Every time he received his share, Davie pocketed a small amount for a few little luxuries, paid his sub-contractor, Eddie, and saved three brown notes. The nest egg of his master plan was incubating.
Before crossing the road to the club, Davie texted Alex, who usually picked up the merchandise on Friday teatime at the end of the street, but who'd had other engagements this time round. Alex swaggered out of the club's entrance as Davie stepped up onto the pavement, having waited for a single-decker to pass. 'Ah, my geeky kid cousin.' Alex spoke slowly like a drunk who didn't want to slur. Davie's dad had done it on the few occasions he'd stayed out too late. Alex's mousy hair was gelled up in what the younger cousin secretly called boy band reject style; more stupidly, the older of the two pirates stuck needles into his arse cheeks and injected steroids so his vest and jeans bulged with swashbuckling brawn.
'Couldn't get away from floozy yesterday teatime, you'd know how it goes if you were more like me. Let's be having them.' Alex reached for the bag of discs, every finger blinged up, every inch of skin up to his vest's straps covered by tattooist's ink. Davie had never worked out what the designs on either arm were meant to represent, and he hadn't asked for fear of being splattered with bullshit. 'Right-o, kid. Thanks for everything. See you next week.'
'Something you're forgetting?'
'That'd be?'
'What makes the world go round?'
'You can't have my heart, kid, all the babes are after it. I might let you kiss my ass, I suppose.'
'It's sixty three.' Davie impatiently held out his hand.
'Don't get stroppy, kid. What's up with you?'
Davie said nothing.
'Frigging moody kids.' Alex took a slender roll of notes from his back pocket and twirled it between two fingers as he passed it over. 'I'm short of change. The rest can't be urgent.'
'I need it,' said Davie, unrolling the notes to count them.
'I've my own place to keep. What do you need the money for? Your mam and dad get you everything, don't they?' Alex dug in the front pocket of his jeans for his wallet. 'There. Three nuggets. We're square.'
'There are one hundred and forty eight films in the bag. You'll owe me fifty-nine pounds and twenty pence next week.'
'Better not forget the twenty pence, eh? Get yourself off. I can't spend all day talking to kids.'
On the other side of the road Davie recounted his money - to be double sure - rolled it back up and tucked it in his pocket. Instead of taking the first right that would lead him - via a few more turns and a snicket - to the end of his own street, he went straight ahead for a hundred or so yards and, after looking over his shoulder, turned left into a short, scruffy dead end. A couple of high panel fences blocked out several overgrown, nettle-ridden gardens and, presumably, those who didn't cultivate them. Number ninety-three's gate was wide open. Its garden was a bed of gravel with straggly weeds poking through at the foot of the low, panel fence. It needed another lick of creosote. No one answered Davie's first rap on the mucky white UPVC door; the TV was so loud he could hear Donald Duck irreverently quacking away. Davie quickly typed and dispatched a text and, just to be certain, thump, thump, thump. 'Bloody hell, Davie, don't knock the cobwebs down - they hold the place together,' Mr Woods said, self-deprecatingly as he opened up. He was a bald, chubby man of average height, with his front teeth missing and a flattened snout like he'd once been clobbered with a frying pan. The corners of his grey eyes had deep crow's feet as if the birds found him so innocuous they sometimes perched on his face. His bitty, out of date, discoloured red England away top had brown sauce stains closer to his heart than the badge.
Leaning over the chipped and smudged banister at the bottom of the stairs, Mr Woods yelled, 'Eddie! I'm sending Davie up!'
Davie steeled himself for that intense, sickly-sweet stench of the Woods' place; urine, stale grub, and something else. It didn't really trouble him anymore except on a hot day when it was so potent that it caustically tickled the back of his throat. Before stepping over the threshold he wiped his feet on the mat, which was more of a gesture than a necessity - the chocolate hall carpet, threadbare in several places down the middle, was so covered in bits and bobs that it might burn out a new vacuum if Mr Woods got round to replacing the knackered one. Down the hall, through the open kitchen door, pans and plates precariously towered up out of the sink and over the empty Chinese takeaway cartons scattered on the draining board.
Mrs Woods died of cancer three years ago and Mr Woods had said he'd keep the place respectable in her memory. However, going out to work to support their kids - Eddie was the second eldest of two brothers and two younger sisters - and housekeeping proved to be too much for a man who grew evermore partial to nattering over a lager or three. Although for the past year Mr Woods had only found agency work, here, there, for a few weeks at a time, his family's abode showed no signs of the scrubbed orderliness Mrs Woods had left it in. Her husband had figured tidying up was never going to bring her back.
'How's your dad?' Mr Woods asked, causing Davie to stall on the stairs.
'Not too sure. I haven't seen him for over a week. There's been a fallout.'
'So I've heard. Shame. Get yourself up, then.'
Red-haired, tubby Eddie was spread, belly down, across the grubby quilt on his bed. The quilt was stained with coke, tomato ketchup and curry sauce. Eddie was half-dressed in a red and white hooped T-shirt, Santa boxer shorts and blue socks with holes in the toe-ends as
if he was immune to the cold of the room. Davie thought it was warmer outside. Furiously pressing the fire button on a control pad, Eddie's eyes didn't so much as flicker from his TV screen. 'Prepare to have your head knocked off,' he said by way of a welcome as he reached the next level.
Navigating the scattered laundry, dog-eared textbooks, action figures and empty pizza boxes on the floor like they made up a minefield, Davie dropped a tenner onto the quilt. 'You turned out twenty movies?'
'Spot on.' Eddie stuffed the note into his pillow before reaching to the floor for a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms, which he pulled on after rolling on his back. Davie settled on the edge of the bed with the other control pad, staring at the TV screen and psyching himself up for the test ahead. Eddie saved the game he'd blasted away on and loaded up - after scrambling through a pile of discs on the floor - their number one street fighting game. Following a quick fire exchange of insults, the boys set about breaking each others bones with sticks and whatever else came to hand in the virtual world.
Perhaps an hour later, Mr Woods pushed open the door with his shoulder. 'Snap's served,' he said, presenting a ham and pineapple pizza in eight slices on a plate. In his other hand, he carried a big value bottle of cola with two blue beakers upside down on the neck. 'Tuck in, lads. You need stamina when you're scrapping the day long.'
'Nice one, Mr Woods.'
'Cheers, Dad.'
'Shit, shower, shave, and then I'm dropping the girls off at our Barbara's. I fancy a few refreshments. Make sure you don't kill each other.' Grinning, he closed the door behind him.
Picking his second slice of pizza from the plate on the bed, Davie got something off his chest: 'Alex is a prat and I get the feeling he's going to mess up in a big way.'
'Just use him until you find another outlet,' said Eddie, munching. 'The money's cool and he's access to the old fogies who don't know how to download their own stuff.' Eddie never turned down an offer to up production.
'He was already wrecked when I just dropped off this week's stuff.'
A saucy pineapple chunk slipped from Davie's pizza slice onto his fingers; he popped it into his mouth.
'You write the titles on the discs. People know what they've ordered. How can he get that wrong?'
'He'll find a way. He was the undisputed clown of the family until my clueless dad knocked him off the top spot. What a family I've got.'
'Your dad's all right,' said Eddie, frowning.
'I don't understand how everything went on without him knowing.'
'You didn't know about it.'
'That's different. I'm not married to my mum.'
'She's a good sort, too,' Eddie added, thoughtfully.
'She is?' And then Davie recalled how his parents had helped to look after Eddie and his two younger sisters when their mother approached the end. 'Pity about our Alicia.'
'She does her own thing very Alicia-ish. No one does it better.'
'You mean she's nuts.'
'Alex will go nuts if you try to cut him out.'
'Don't put me off our pizza.'
The boys became aware they'd been playing for hours when Mr Woods' voice drifted up the stairs. He was telling his daughters, with a boozer's loud, maudlin insightfulness, that they'd best stop squabbling because a time might come when they only had each other.
'Ok, our Graham's in Afghanistan, but where does he think I'm going?' asked Eddie.
'Maybe it's time for me to move, though.' Davie made a gap in the curtains and peered out. The streetlights had switched on. No matter what Mum, Dad and Alicia thought, Davie applied himself at school, and he'd resolved to knock a big hole in his history and maths homework so most of Sunday could be dedicated to an IT project. When he'd been to college, he intended to set up a computer shop with the money he'd put away. By his mid-twenties, he'd be a venerated entrepreneur. That was the big difference between him and Alicia; his dream was realistic.
Davie couldn’t say ta-ra to Mr Woods because he was already snoring in his armchair, his jowls and belly sagging. He'd spilled gravy on his leaf green polo shirt. Davie waved at eight years old Amy and seven years old Jess and they shyly giggled before returning their attention to kid-sized fish and chips in trays and cartoon Alice in Wonderland on TV. The aroma of vinegar made Davie peckish; he pinched a chip from Jess and popped it into his mouth pretending no one had seen a thing. The girls giggled again. Amy generously held out her portion and Davie snapped up a few scraps. He'd burn some more entertainment for the little strawberry blonds, bless them.
Davie jogged through most of the estate. He'd never liked the snicket at night; though a short cut to his street, it was pitch-dark and he always expected someone or something to jump out from the hedges to pin him to the junior school's railings. Zombies don't exist, he said to himself mentally, sprinting through the darkness. And it was when he emerged into the street, panting, that he was surprised. 'Well, well, well, just the very soul,' said a gravelly voice. Damn! It was the bulldog-faced bruiser, Liam Briggs. He got up from the edge of the pavement, rolling his wide shoulders, looking colossal and menacing in a black bubble jacket. Liam had been in the school year above Davie until he'd been expelled a few months before last year's exams for bludgeoning his luck through every rule. Since then, as far as Davie was concerned, Liam had been as invisible as a gloved felon's fingerprints. Until his luck just ran out.
'Well, it's been nice seeing you,' Davie said, his puff returning, trying to keep his voice steady. 'Must dash.'
Liam blocked him. Davie could smell on Liam's breath the cig he'd just snuffed out.
'We can be of service to one another,' Liam smiled, resting his paw on Davie's shoulder.
'Don't think so.' Davie shrugged off Liam's clamp.
'Now, now…'
'Will you let me pass?'
'As you wish.' Liam stepped aside.
'Catch you…'
Thud! Davie's face chewed asphalt. Liam cruelly smirked as he twisted his victim's arm up his back. 'I could have you anytime, boy.' Instead, Liam let go of Davie's arm, removed his knee from his back, got up and pulled the dazed lad to his feet by his wrists. Davie's palms stung with grazes and a throbbing lump had swollen over the brow of his right eye. It hurt like the time he'd been clipped by a motorist and knocked off his pushbike several years ago.
'The streets aren't safe these days,' Liam said, before tut-tutting.
Davie licked grit from his scathed hands and spat it into the gutter.
Liam's expression hardened when he gazed into Davie's eyes and couldn't see tears. 'A little songbird has told me all about it.'
'The saying is little bird. And I don't know who's been tweeting what but they're making a twit out of you.'
'A clever, talented lad like you can't think on about what's going on? You'd better use your head.'
'Can't hear any bells ringing.'
'Ding-DONG!' Davie creased double at the impact of the hook to his ribs; it stole his wind and left him raw and rasping for breath.
'I understand that you're raking in a tidy profit every week. I'll settle for half to make sure no harm comes your way. It's a standard agreement. You've probably seen it in action on one of those films of yours. I've got your number. I want a payment in the next few days. Don't wait for an invoice.'
'You're joking,' Davie gasped.
'Have I got a red nose? Am I on stilts? Did I just put a custard pie or the floor in your face?'
'I don't - Christ, did you have to hit me like that? - make that much. It doesn't work like that.'
'Two days. Make it worth my while.' Liam slipped up the snicket into the shadows.
Davie trudged up the street nursing his elbow, which had started to hurt more than his stinging palms, the lump on his forehead, the ache in his guts, combined. Though he grimaced, fighting back tears, he felt proud he hadn't gone down when Liam had slugged him. The thug would have expected him to drop like a condemned man through the gallows' tra
p door. There was a time when Davie would have run indoors crying for his dad whenever someone bigger was looking for trouble, but he couldn't rely on the old man now. That was the past. And physical pain was the least of Davie's worries.
It was bad enough that torrent sites were being forced to temporarily close down, even disappearing altogether; how the hell did Liam work out he was coining enough for them both? Because he was a great dumb lump. Davie sniggered, hurting his ribs. He could always tell that other great dope, Alex, and he'd soon knock Liam straight. Bad idea. Liam had an enormous, lawless family and it was unwise to lock horns with them. How stupid! Warring families! It sounded even more like one of the crappy gangster movies from where Liam had no doubt half-inched his swindling idea. Not that films could be blamed for Liam's idiocy; he was the sort of opportunistic scumbag who would try anything once, no matter where he'd heard about it. Sure, you heard the stories about his alcoholic parents and rotten childhood, and felt so much sympathy up to the point where you met him. He was too unpredictable. Mean. Downright dangerous. But it didn't matter if he was the devil incarnate; there was no way Davie could pay, and he wouldn't if he had all the money in the world. It was a matter of principle. He just had to be careful wherever he went, once ambushed, forever on guard. And he'd make sure Alex always picked up the discs at the garden gate. Ha! It was easy - no problem, after all. His moronic cousin had become the key to continued success. Everybody has their uses, so it seems. Liam Briggs might as well choke on popcorn - or whatever he stuffed his fat face with - as he idolised his movie hoods and freaks. He couldn't do nuthin'. Though it might be a laugh if he put a horse's head in Alicia's bed.
Alicia was practicing her singing in the shower and Davie hoped her rendition of some lovey-dovey pop song would drown out any creaks on the stairs. He gently closed the front door. 'Where have you been all day?'
Shit.
'I'm talking to you.'
'Eddie's.' He slipped his trainers off, wincing at his stinging hands and aching ribs. 'I've already eaten.' He put a foot on the bottom stair. 'We had pizza.'
'Let me take a look at your haircut.'
'I'm just…'
'Now!'
There was no way out of it. She'd only follow him to his room. Davie dragged his feet to the kitchen.
'Look at the state of your face!'
'I tripped over a kerb running home.'
'Have you been drinking?' Cathy slammed down the knife she was using to slice a carrot and shot across the kitchen to sniff Davie's breath. Negative. 'What are you like? We'd best get you cleaned up. Look at your hands! And you've put the knee of your jeans through!' Another thought occurred to her. She looked sternly into his face. 'Have you been fighting?'
'I said, I fell.'
'Did you fall?'
'Ok. I bumped into Mike Tyson and thought I could beat him in one round now he's retired.'
'Your lip still works. I suppose you must be fine, give or take a bruise.'
She was wiping Davie's battered brow with antiseptic wipes by the sink when Alicia bounced into the room, her blond hair darkened by shower water, a stripy red and orange beach towel wrapped round her from her chest down to her thighs. 'Mum, I'm in such great voice, hitting all the high notes… Who did you bug?'
'He's tumbled.'
'He's been drinking. He gets the money…'
'Alicia, credit your brother with some sense. And I'm going to have a word with him about that later.'
'Huh! Anyway, Mum, I'm absolutely smashing your favourite song. It's on next week's set list!
'That's brilliant, babe.'
'I suppose,' said Davie, pulling away from his mother, 'a little songbird like you doesn't care when her brother meets with an accident. Been on the phone to anyone today?'
'Davie, come here and let me…'
'I've spoken to a few friends. Got a problem with that? And don't be absurd - you've fallen over. Remember?' Alicia snorted down her nose. 'I best go and get into some clothes. Don't wipe his bum, Mum. He's big enough to do that for himself,' she laughed, making her exit.
'Stop pulling faces, Davie, and let me get done. I've my tea to finish. And how come you haven't had your hair cut?'
'I forgot. I've still got the money.'
'Get it cut on Monday after school. You can limp there, can't you?'
Davie recoiled as Cathy pressed a tad too hard with a wipe. But it was nothing to what someone he knew might get. Forget the gangster movies that Liam was likely too fond of watching, there'd be a real enough war in this family should he find out Alicia had tipped off the great meathead. And Davie would make sure he won.