Seventeen 8 страница

Someone took a pouch of rolling tobacco out and passed it around. Jinty licked some fag papers and tenderly poured a thin line of golden tobacco in. “Put that away! ” said Agnes, seeing a chance to repay them for the vodka. She reached into the deep pockets and pulled a pack of Kensitas out of the mink coat.

Bridie looked at the glossy gold packet, at the gold-plated lighter. “Jeezo. It’s like the Queen of England has moved in. ”

“It makes a right difference when you don’t have to pick the baccy off your teeth, ” Jinty agreed.

The women took one each and lit the cigarettes. They all took long greedy draws and savoured the taste in silence. They held the cigarettes between the thumb and forefinger, as if gripping a pea-shooter. They studied Agnes, her painted nails dancing in front of her face like so many red ladybugs. Between delicate fingers, she took light shallow puffs as they sucked their cheeks thin. Then she lifted her other hand and took deep greedy mouthfuls from the mug.

“Where ye frae then? ” asked Jinty, reaching out to touch her emerald earrings.

“Originally? Germiston. But I suppose you could say all over the East End. I’ve moved a fair bit. ”

“All ower the East End, eh? ” echoed Bridie, nodding sagely. “A Good Catholic wummin then. What brings ye out here to our wee scheme? ”

Agnes faltered. “My man heard it was a nice place to live, safe for my weans. ” She paused. “Good Neighbours. ”

“Aye, ” said Bridie, with a laugh. “It’s no Butlin’s, but that sounds like the good auld days. That mine has been dying for years. There’s hardly nae work there for naebody anymair. Every year we’ve got mair men sat at home, wanking in the daylight. ”

“There’s a couple who’ve still got jobs. Mainly filling in the holes to make sure no kiddies fall in, ” added Noreen. “Don’t want any mair accidents, see. ”

“Accidents? ” asked Agnes.

“Aye, it’s always been a gassy seam. They used to have to pump the methane out just to work it. Mind, the men knew this; they knew what they were working against and respected it best they could, but one day it just fell in on the poor souls. Pure collapsed. There was an explosion that burnt them all up. Left some weans wi’ no daddies. ” Jinty was still staring at Agnes’s earrings. “It made a lot of lonely women. ”

They turned and looked at the house that belonged to the woman with the skull face. Bridie sighed. “Don’t worry about Colleen McAvennie. Her bark’s worse than her bite. ”

“Is she your cousin as well? ”

“Oh, aye, but no blood, ye see. She’s just protective of her Jamesy. Used to be he was a good-looking fella. He was a big burly banksman; used to ferry them up and down in a cage lift in that shaft. Got burnt in that mine, took the skin all off his shoulder and the side of his neck. Red as a July sunburn. ” The women bowed their heads, almost as a sign of respect. “A fine-looking man nonetheless. ”

“Anyways, where did yer man go off tae wi’ them fancy red cases? ” asked Jinty suddenly.

“He’s a taxi driver; sometimes he needs to take his stuff with him, ” she lied. It was thin. “He works the night shift. ”

Jinty sucked at her teeth. She laid a sympathetic hand on Agnes’s. “We wurnae born yesterday, hen. He looked to me like he was leaving for longer than that. ”

Bridie waved her cigarette at Jinty. “Och, never mind her. Don’t sink to her level. All we are saying is, we’ve aw got men and we’ve aw got men trouble. ”

The women puffed on their fags in empathy. Noreen looked worried. “How you gonnae feed yersel if he disnae come back? ”

Money was always on her mind, her heart was gnawed with the worry. “I don’t know. ”

The women looked from one to another. Bridie spoke first. “We’ll have to get ye on benefits. Ye can go up the office on Monday morning. Ye’ll have to tell them ye’re needing disability allowance, otherwise they’ll have ye up the dole every Thursday. ”

“Will they sign me on to disability? ”

“Ah widnae worry, hen. They’ll take one look at yer address and give it to you easy. Look at this place. ” Bridie waved her hand into the empty street. “It’s no like there are any new jobs coming here. Disability is the only club we’ve got, and Monday is club day. ”

Agnes lifted the vodka mug again and stared down into the faint clouds. The tea must have been very milky.

Bridie topped it up to the brim with a smile. “Aye, ah took ye for a drinker. ” She drew on her fag. “Aye, the minute ah saw ye, ah spotted it. They thought you were the big I Am, all done up in sequins, like some big dolly bird from the city. But ah could see through it. Ah could see the sadness, and ah knew ye had to be a big drinker. ”

The women nodded and cawed, “Aye, ” like a murder of crows. Agnes froze with the mug on her lips.

“Do ye drink anything and everything? ” asked Bridie.

“Pardon? ” said Agnes, lowering the mug.

“Is it a very bad problem ye’ve goat? ” clarified Bridie.

“I don’t have a problem. ”

“Look, hen. Ye’re standing out here drinking vodka in the middle of the street. Ye’ll have no problem signing on the disability looking like that. ”

“You have a mug of vodka as well. ” Agnes was affronted.

Their mouths turned downwards unkindly as they tilted their mugs towards her in the orange street light. The filmy whiteness of milky tea showed in each one. “No, hen, we’re drinking piss-cold tea, ” scolded Bridie. “It’s only ye who’s neckin’ vodka like it was tap water. ”

Agnes’s face smarted red. The women smiled pityingly through tight lips. The pupils of their eyes, hooded by their lids, looked black in the orange street light. Agnes looked into the mug and threw the rest of the vodka down the back of her throat.

Bridie held up her hand. “Listen. One day at a time and aw that shite. Ah’ve had a wee problem maself. Six weans and a husband out of work? You better believe ah drank. ” She squashed the finished cigarette doubt into the dust with a sandalled toe. “It was the blackouts that did me in though. Ah couldn’t take that first five minutes of every day waking up and wondering who said what to who and what bastard ah’d had a fight wi’. Ye’d go into the kitchen scratching for a cup of tea, and they all look at ye side-a-ways. Then ye’d look around and one of them would have a black eye. Then ye’d go to the mirror and ye’d have one an’ all. ” The women all nodded in empathy. Nobody laughed.

Jinty added, “I’ve stood up at Dolan’s shop talking about Dallas with women ah’d dragged along the street by the hair the night afore. ” She curled her hands into fists, her thin body animated by the scandal. Then she pointed at skull face’s house across the road. “Do ye a’member the time Colleen felt Isa was making eyes at Big Jamesy? ”

Bridie tutted. “That was a nonsense. They’re blood. Everybody always forgets that. ”

“Well, there was no telling Colleen about that. ” Jinty turned to Agnes. “Now oor Colleen disnae take a drink. She’s right close to the Baby Jesus, takes him everywhere in her heart. But this one Monday morning, she took a drink, a right good hammering. She’s gone up the post office and done in her Monday Book, spent every fuckin’ penny and swilled it down her neck. Her weans were greetin’ and starvin’, and she drank every drop. She gets a plastic bag and goes up and down that road scoopin’ up dog shite. White ones, black ones, runny and hard, near fills the bag to the top. She took this bag of dog shite and staggers up the road there. ” Jinty pointed towards the slag hills. “She puts on a yellow marigold glove and she starts throwin’. Ah mean absolutely covers the front of Isa’s house. She was throwin’ that shite and screamin’ for Big Jamesy to come out there and face her like a man. ”

“What happened? ” Agnes asked.

“Aye, ah’m getting to it. ” Jinty slung a sly look over her shoulder to Colleen’s gate. “She showers the place in dog shite, you could smell it for miles. It goes on the windows, sticks to the pebble-dash. Drenched. Lord knows ah’m no a big fan of Isa—her man took early redundancy from the Pit, and she spent it at the bingo and won a pretty penny—bu-ut I do not condone throwing shite in the street like a savage. ”

Bridie took up the tale. “Anyway, turns out Big Jamesy wisnae diddling Isa. He was working. Working! Of all the things to be doing. He got himself a part-time job hauling scrap and couldnae tell anyone for fear they’d shop him to the disability. ”

Jinty kissed her Saint Christopher. “Here Colleen thought he was at it, and the man was out trying to make a bit of extra money. ”

“Thank God for blackouts. ” Bridie crossed herself solemnly. “Look. Ah know why ye drink, hen. It’s hard to cope sometimes. Ah steer clear of the drink, but ah still need a couple of these every day. ” She took a baby’s aspirin bottle out of her pocket. “Bridie’s little pals. ”

“Aspirin? ” asked Agnes.

“Naw! ” Bridie licked her top lip, she leaned in closer. “Valium. If you want just try a couple. A wee taste that’s all. If you want more, I’ll look after ye. Special price. ” Bridie pushed down and unscrewed the lid of the small plastic bottle with a smile. She tipped two into Agnes’s palm like they were sweeties. “Here, just try it, and welcome to Pithead. ”

Ten

His mother was nowhere to be found. He cupped the bone-white tooth in his hand; the little incisor floated in a pool of spittle and blood, and he was sure he might die. Was this what happened now that he was seven? He was afraid to probe his teeth with his tongue should they all come loose. He needed to find her to ask. But his mother was gone.

Shuggie stood with his face against the rusty metal gate and watched a pack of pit dogs roam by. Five male dogs harassed a small black female dog. They made a high yipping noise as they prowled past, and Shuggie pushed his lips between the fence slats and sang along with them, yip yip yip. He listened to the dog’s song, and it was as if they were calling him outside. He wasn’t allowed out the front gate without telling her, but then she wasn’t here.

Keeping his plimsolls planted firmly inside, he stuck his head out and looked left and then looked right. He played a game of holding his breath and then darting out and darting back, all the while stealing glances up and down the short road to try to see her.

She wasn’t there.

The pack of dogs called him out of the gate. Shuggie picked up his dirty blond dolly and tossed her out on to the pavement. Daphne landed with a raspy crack and made a snow angel in the dust. He leapt out and grabbed her, darting back inside like a little bony fish, closing the gate with a loud metal clang. He looked over his shoulder, no one came to the window and no one came to Bridie Donnelly’s window. There was no one watching. She wasn’t there.

Shuggie opened the gate again and followed the dogs. There was a clutch of women standing in men’s slippers on the corner. They had been talking animatedly about something, but he saw how they lowered their voices as he approached. One of them turned and curtsied towards him. Trying to look casual, like he didn’t care, he made a show of dancing along the dusty road past the chapel on the hill. He made a great game of kicking plumes of dust into the sky and danced farther and farther from home. He came to the Catholic school and watched children play at their morning break. He stood in the shade of a horse chestnut tree and wondered why he wasn’t in school himself. There hadn’t been cartoons on that morning, so it hadn’t been Saturday, he knew that much, but she hadn’t laid his clothes out like she sometimes did, so he hadn’t gone, and she hadn’t said anything.

The boys were mercilessly kicking a bladder into the corner of the playground, and they saw him before he noticed them watching. “What’s that ye’ve got? ” shouted the smaller of the brown brothers, the sons of the skull-faced woman, Colleen McAvennie. Shuggie instinctively hid the Daphne doll behind his back.

“Hello, ” said Shuggie with a polite wave. He mimicked the swishing curtsy of the miner’s wife and gracefully extended his left leg out behind himself.

Open-mouthed, they peered through the peeling railings and drew their eyes up and down the length of him. “How come ye’re no in school? ” asked Gerbil, the younger one, picking flakes of green paint from the iron.

“I don’t know, ” Shuggie admitted with a shrug. The boys were only a few years older than him but were already thick-built and brown from summers spent outside, exploring marshes and throwing cats into the Pit’s quarries. He had seen them easily move heavy loads of their father’s scrap from the back of his lorry.

Francis McAvennie narrowed his dark eyes and said, “It’s a’cos your mammy is an auld alky. ” He watched Shuggie’s face to see the sting of the words.

Gerbil McAvennie put a flake of iron paint between his lips. “How come ye don’t have a daddy? ” His voice was already deep like a man’s.

“I d-do, ” Shuggie stuttered.

Gerbil smiled. “Where is he then? ”

This Shuggie didn’t know. He had heard he was a whoremaster and that he was raising another woman’s weans while he fucked every bastarding thing that sat in the back of his taxi. But it didn’t seem right to admit this. “He’s on night shift. Making money for our holidays. ”

The break bell went, and Father Barry came out to line up the playing children. Gerbil reached his hand through the fence, his long fingers snatching at Shuggie’s doll. Francis gurgled like a happy baby and joined in the game till they were both grabbing wildly. Shuggie stepped back into the shade of the horse chestnut tree. “I’m telling Father Barry on ye! Ye should be in school, ” they screamed.

Clutching Daphne to his chest, Shuggie turned on his heels and ran away as quickly as he could. He was out of breath by the time he came across the Miners Club, but he could still hear the McAvennie boys calling out for Father Barry.

The club was run-down and empty-looking. Shuggie pulled himself up and hung from the bars on the windows. Then he idled around the forecourt, where spent lager kegs bled out puddles of flat ale. The dirty lager mixed with petrol and made lochans of shining rainbows. Shuggie knelt down and pushed Daphne’s blond hair into the iridescent puddle. When he took her out, the shiny yellow hair had turned the colour of night, and he tutted. Where were the beautiful rainbow colours? He pushed her down again and held her under the surface longer this time. Her eyes automatically closed, like she was sleeping, but she was smiling so he knew she was OK. When he lifted the doll out of the puddle, the black liquid rolled off her face and down on to her white woollen dress. Her cheap yellow hair had turned matte black. He stared at it and realized that for a minute he had forgotten about his mother. Daphne smelled funny.

For a while he weaved in and out of the lager puddles. He peered out on to the road, and when he was absolutely sure Father Barry was not looking for him he darted across the road and into the mouth of a wooded lane he had not seen before. The lane backed a row of older-looking miners’ cottages that were joined at the back with a communal garden. At the near edge of the garden sat a large brick bin shed. It was flat and rectangular, with no windows and a dark opening, where a painted green door now hung open and broken. At the side of the bin shed lay a washing machine, the kind used in hospitals or government buildings, solid and big as a wardrobe. It was too heavy for the bin men to take away, so it lay rusting next to the shed, and fat lazy flies dipped in and out of its shadow.

Inside the machine sat a boy, with his legs above his head, curled around the drum like a broken-backed cat. “Want a spin in my carnival ride? ”

Shuggie was startled to find him in there.

The boy swung inside the drum and rocked in semicircles, in one second his feet were above his head, the next his head were above his feet. “Look, it’s dead fun! ” he coaxed.

Shuggie held Daphne out to him and offered her up for first go. The boy uncurled from inside the drum, pushing out his long brown legs, like a spider through a keyhole. He arched his body out backwards; straightening, he was almost as tall as the metal machine. He was a good year older than Shuggie, at least eight or nine, starting the long stretch already.

“Hiya. Ma name’s Johnny. Ma maw calls us Bonny Johnny. ” he said with a tight smile. “It’s supposed to be like a wrestler’s name, but I think it’s pure shite. ” He slapped his own forearm like the wrestlers on television did before a fight. He chopped at the empty air. “Whit’s your name, wee man? ”

“Hugh Bain, ” he said in a shy voice. “Shuggie. ”

The boy was watching him, peering through half-lidded eyes the same way Shuggie had seen the miners’ children squint when he raised his hand in class. It was a blend of disbelief and disdain. He had often seen his granny look at his father this way. Shuggie turned his left kneecap inwards.

Then Johnny smiled. His face changed so quickly it made Shuggie take a step back. It was like a flick of a light switch, and his face brightened like a bare bulb in an empty room.

“Is that a dolly ye’ve got, Shuggie? ” The boy was using his name like he had known him a long while. Without waiting for an answer he added, “Are ye a wee girl? ” He stepped into the long grass, flattening it as he came.

Shuggie shook his head again.

“If ye’re no’ a wee girl then ye must be a wee poof. ” He tightened his smile. His voice was low and sweet, like he was talking to a puppy. “Ye’re no’ a wee poof, are ye? ”

Shuggie didn’t know what a poof was, but he knew it was bad. Catherine called Leek it when she wanted to hurt his feelings.

“Do ye no’ know what a poofter is, wee man? A poof is a boy who does dirty things with other boys. ” Johnny was up against Shuggie now, nearly double his height. “A poof is a boy who wants to be a wee girl. ”

Bonny Johnny was a dirty white colour, like he had been steeped in tea. He had sepia skin and honey-coloured hair and eyes like amber lager. When Johnny smiled he had all his big boy teeth already. Shuggie worried the gap in his own smile with his tongue. Johnny snatched the doll from him and tossed her into the drum. “See! She wants a ride. ”

Johnny pressed himself into Shuggie’s back, put his arms around his waist and lifted him up into the mouth of the machine. Shuggie climbed up into the drum, and he felt a helping hand give him a final push as he tumbled in. Clutching Daphne, he looked back out into the daylight, his bare legs chilled by the cold metal.

Johnny grabbed a raised ridge inside the drum and moved it slowly from left to right, rocking it as gently as a baby’s crib. Shuggie fell over and scrambled for ballast against the swinging, he tensed all his muscles and bared his teeth, like a scared cat. Daphne slid away, clanging around the cylinder.

Johnny kept on rocking gently. “See it’s no’ that bad, is it? ”

The motion came to remind Shuggie of the pirate ship ride that sat outside his grandfather’s favourite bakery. He gurgled with involuntary laughter.

“Haud on, ” said Johnny. He gripped the metal ridge tighter, and bracing his body against the machine for purchase, he rocked it harder. Shuggie’s head and knees travelled in semicircles as Daphne hit the roof. The muscles on Johnny’s neck stood out as he pulled the drum round with all his might. Shuggie spun head over heels. He spun over and over, again and again, his head cracking on the metal paddles, his foot hitting him square in the back.

The drum slowed and Shuggie crashed into an upside-down heap. A thick arm grabbed one of the metal bars and stopped the centrifuge. A siren wail rose in Shuggie as the pain shot down through his crown, his split knee, and his bruised shins. From behind his waterfall of tears he could see a large hand come down again and again on Johnny’s head, the boy ducking for cover to protect his face. The attacker was too tall for Shuggie to see a face, just the angry lashings of a tattooed arm, slapping the boy’s bare neck and shoulders.

“Whit in the name of the wee man have ah telt ye about playing with that fuckin’ washin’ machine? ” scolded the headless torso. With his fat thumb, the man jabbed towards the drum. “Get. That. The fuck out of there, afore ah really gie ye something to greet about. ”

As swiftly as the figure had arrived, it disappeared again. Johnny stood in the opening looking like a battered dog. His smile was gone, his ears were pinned down. He reached in and plucked Shuggie out of the drum. “Listen. Ye stop that greetin’, or I’ll gie you something to greet about. ”

Out of the drum the daylight was almost blinding. The pain in his head stole the colour from his sight.

Johnny looked the boy up and down. There was blood on Shuggie’s leg from where the metal had burst the skin, and bruises were already showing on his arms and legs. Johnny whipped him around the corner through the black flies and into the cool darkness of the bin shed. It smelt sour as curdled yoghurt.

In the dark, Johnny spat on his hand and rubbed it over the boy’s wet face and then down the length of his bloody leg. It made everything worse. The blood became a spittle wash, smearing further instead of wiping away. The boy grew panicked, his eyes wide in fear. He ripped a handful of large green docken leaves out of the dirt and scraped them up and down Shuggie’s leg. He scrubbed until the blood lifted off and was replaced by a thick trail of mushed green plant mucus. The chlorophyll stung the cut. Shuggie started to girn again.

“Haud still you poofy wee bastard. ” All the tones of his earlier friendliness were gone. Shuggie could see his father’s red hand marks blooming across Johnny’s sepia skin.

It was quiet in the bin shed but for the buzz of fat bluebottles. Johnny rubbed and rubbed the little boy’s leg until his breathing calmed. His rubbing turned Shuggie from white to red to a deep green. As the panic left Johnny’s eyes, slowly the fake smile returned to his tanned face. It was very dark in the bin shed.

Bonny Johnny stood up again, a wiry silhouette against the bright daylight. He handed Shuggie the pulped green leaves and then he took down his gym shorts. “Stop girning, ” he said, through his big boy teeth. “Now you rub me. ”

By the time Shuggie had limped back to the Miners Club the sun had nearly dried up the rainbow puddles. He’d left Daphne in the machine. He didn’t ever want to go back.

As he climbed the stairs to the hallway he could hear her on the phone. “Fuck you, Joanie Micklewhite. You tell that whoremastering son of a Proddy bitch that he cannot have his cake and eat it too! ” Each filthy syllable was enunciated with the alarming clarity of the Queen’s English. “You shitty, dick-sucking bastard. You are as plain and tasteless as the arse end of a white loaf. ” The receiver went down with a clang, and the bells tinkled with the impact.

Shuggie reached the end of the hallway and turned the corner. His mother sat cross-legged at the little telephone table with the mug on her knee. She looked at him like he had risen from the carpet itself. She didn’t notice his missing tooth or the leg, stained with blood and spit and docken.

Plastered on her face was the glassy grimace that came from under the kitchen sink. She took her earring and threw it across the room before she picked up the phone again. “Now I’m in a mood to tell your granny where to fucking go. ”

The house was only a stone’s throw from the bus stop, but Leek walked home very slowly. His legs were heavy from the day’s graft on the Youth Training Scheme, his insides heavy with the dread of what might lie at home. He only hoped for a peaceful hour so he could draw, but it had been a year free of peace since they had moved to the Pit.

He knew Catherine would not come home again tonight. She was getting adept at sneaking around under Agnes’s nose, holding her secret life with Donald Jnr away from their disintegrating mother. Instead, Catherine blamed her boss for all manner of slave-driving and told Agnes she would be late at the office and would need to stay at her granny’s. Leek saw how his mother worried over money, how she worshipped Catherine’s weekly pittance, and so she said nothing. Leek knew Catherine really was at Donald Jnr’s, lying on the blowup mattress in his mother’s spare room and trying to keep her hand locked over her modesty until Donald finally married her. After all his years of practice, Leek was angry that it was Catherine who was disappearing first.

It was still daylight, but there were harsh lights on in every room, and the curtains lay open in a shameful way. It was a very bad sign. In the front room Shuggie was idling between the net curtain and the glass. His palms and nose were pressed flat against the window, he was rocking his head back and forth in a soothing way, and no one was telling him to stop. When he saw his brother he mouthed Leek and left a grease smear on the glass.

The net curtains fluttered to life. A shadow fell across the window, and Agnes appeared behind her youngest. Leek raised his hand in a half wave and put his other on the gate in a gesture that said he was coming home. Agnes smiled out at him, the too-toothy grimace that telegraphed a thousand messages. Her eyes seemed dull to him, unfixed, and instantly he knew she was gone.

She disappeared again, back to the telephone table, back to the drink.

Leek picked up his tool bag and turned away from the house. There was an insistent chink-chink on the glass. Shuggie’s lips were wide as he overenunciated dramatically: Where. Are. You. Going?

Leek mouthed silently, To Granny’s.

Shuggie tried to steady his lips. Can. I. Come?

No. It’s too far. I can’t carry you.

What he never told Shuggie was that he had once found his real father’s address. Brendan McGowan. It was there, in Agnes’s phone book, circled in many different colours and thicknesses of ink, as if she had gone back to it, again and again, over the years. Leek had walked to this address the winter before and had sat on the wall opposite the broad Victorian tenement. He’d watched a man come home from work, a man he didn’t recognize, but who shared the same tired stoop. A man with eyes of the same light grey. The man parked his car in front of the building and then walked past Leek on the street with nothing more than a polite nod.

As the door opened, three small faces had raced down the close to greet him. Leek had watched the happy, rowdy family sit and eat at a dining table pressed against the front window. He’d watched them talk over the top of each other, the children standing defiantly upright on the dining chairs as the man laughed at their excitement. Leek had watched for a long time before he folded the address and dropped it between the slats of a storm drain.

Leek picked up his tool bag and headed out of Pithead. He turned his back to Shuggie and dared not look again at the pleading face in the window. It was going to rain and it would be a long walk to Sighthill. He was tired, he had been tired for a long time now. All he wanted was a rest.

Eleven

Colourless daylight poured through the net curtains. It poked her in the face, and with a snort she thumped back into consciousness. Agnes opened her eyes slowly and found herself staring at the cream Artexed ceiling with its icy stalagmite texture. Her lips wouldn’t close over the sticky film on her top teeth as the dry boak rose inside her. Under her right hand she felt the slippery damask fabric of the armchair. Her fingers traced the familiar fag-burn holes. She was vaguely upright, cradling a dead phone receiver.

She sat still awhile, her head tilted over the back of the chair, like an open pedal bin. She closed her eyes again and listened to her brain thump loudly. Like a tide, the blood flushed in and out, in and out of her skull. Over the ebb she could tell the house was empty. It was early, but the boy had taken himself off to school again. He had already missed too many days. Too many days sat at her feet, just waiting and watching. The school didn’t like that. Father Barry had said that the Social Work would have to be notified if he did not start having a regular attendance.

Some mornings she would wake up with a fright and find Shuggie staring at her. He would be dressed, dwarfed by the bag slung over both shoulders, his face washed and his wet hair parted and brushed in the front only. She would lie there, fully dressed, trying to pull her dry lips over her teeth, while he would say, “Good morning, ” and then quietly turn and leave for school. He hadn’t wanted to leave without letting her know he would be right back afterwards. He took her pinkie in his and swore it.

The house was quiet. She tilted her head forward into her hands, and the blood filled the back of her eyes. Shuggie wasn’t standing there as usual. On the table in front of her was a mug of cold tea, the top already congealed with a milky skin. Next to that a slice of white toast poked through with a clumsy knife, littered with lumps of butter too thick to spread. With a hand over her eyes she scanned the low coffee table for something to calm the shakes. She tilted mugs towards her and looked inside for a mouthful of beer. The mugs were empty. Agnes reached for a cigarette and with a sorry whimper pulled the last one out of the packet. She lit it with shaking fingers and took a long drag.

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