I should have got Orla out of my system, now that I’d actually slept with her, but sometimes I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life in a hazy Orla-dream. That’s where I was the next afternoon: on my back in a colder, emptier bed, trying to remember the touch of her fingertip on my eyebrow. How her skin tasted. How cool or warm her breath was when it touched different parts of my flesh. It was a lot to remember; it took a lot of my concentration. I’d already switched off my phone, because Orla never called me when she was spending quality shopping time with her mother, and there was nobody else I wanted to talk to. Now I closed my eyes and swore violently, trying to ignore the insistent ringing of the doorbell.
‘No Words of Wisdom today,’ I muttered at the ceiling. ‘We’re out of stock.’
Ring, ring. Hammer hammer hammer. Ring.
‘Nobody home. The Soul Doctor is Out.’
Hammer. Riiiing. Riiiiiiiing.
‘Eff off and get a life.’
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.
I thought this was what parents were for. Answering the door.
Course, they were both out. Seemed like they disliked my company as much as I disliked theirs. Growling, I rolled off the bed and slouched downstairs. If this was the Jehovah’s Witnesses, there was about to be a Crime of Religious Hatred.
That could not be a familiar silhouette beyond the distorting glass. It could not.
I flipped the snib and flung open the door. Oh yes, it could.
‘You’re dead,’ I told Shuggie.
He didn’t look intimidated, of course, but it struck me that he wasn’t wearing his usual calmly critical, lost-in-space look. He was panting, chest heaving, his eyes wide and scared.
‘It’s K-Kev,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I … I’ve seen …’ He hauled in a breath, stammered something incoherent, all consonants. At last he managed, ‘I seen him!’
That was something I never thought I’d witness: Shuggie losing his grasp of English grammar. ‘You can’t have seen Kev, Shugs. He’s in the slammer.’
Getting his breath and his brain back, he shook his head violently, as if it was me that was being stupid. ‘No, no. Not Kev. Kev got stabbed.’
‘What?’ Shuggie really brought out the drooling idiot in me.
‘In the Young Off— … in that place. He got in a fight. Got in a fight and got stabbed.’
‘How could he get stabbed?’ I roared.
‘Sharpened spoon.’ Shuggie blinked, as if he was thinking. ‘You can sharpen the –’
‘Shut up! You can’t have seen him! Where did you see him? Hospital?’
‘No, no, I didn’t see Kev. Mickey. It was Mickey I saw.’
‘What?’
‘Stop saying that!’ cried Shuggie. ‘It was Mickey, understand? I saw Mickey. He’s raving, off his head, cursing Allie to hell and back. It’s Mickey I saw!’
I was only immobile for a moment. Then I spun and ran back into the house, taking the stairs two and three at a time, grabbing the banister and hurtling round the landing so fast I almost stumbled. In my room I yanked on the drawer so hard it shot right out of the wardrobe. I fell on my backside, then scrambled up to dig among the jumpers. Shuggie stood at my back.
‘When?’ I snapped. ‘When did you see him?’
‘Hour ago.’
‘Where’ve you been?’ Unfair and savage, but I couldn’t help it. Why didn’t the little tosser have a phone?
‘Your phone’s off. I tried to phone you, I borrowed one.’
I snatched my phone out of my pocket and stared at it stupidly.
‘Did you call the polis?’
‘I never thought. I was trying to find you. I never thought …’
He was babbling. I wished he’d shut up. I wished I didn’t own so many damn jumpers. ‘Shut up. You did right. Shut up.’
‘I looked everywhere, Nick.’ He was almost in tears. ‘Never thought you’d be home.’
I didn’t reply. Fair enough.
Even his voice sounded white. ‘Mickey won’t hurt her.’
‘Yes he will.’ I couldn’t find the bloody knife, couldn’t find it. I flung jumpers aside. Catching one reflexively, Shuggie clutched it against his chest.
‘He wouldn’t dare, Nick, he wouldn’t.’
‘Yes he would.’ I didn’t know why I was wasting my breath. Shuggie knew he was talking crap; he was only trying to calm me down. Oh God, there, at last. I snatched the knife from a fold of sweatshirt fabric. Even through scraps of Daily Record I cut my finger, but I didn’t have time to suck it. Shuggie stepped hurriedly out of my way as I grabbed my jacket.
‘Get the polis,’ I said.
I think he tried to follow me because I heard him shouting my name, but he couldn’t keep up. Just as well. He’d done his bit and I wouldn’t want him keeping up, not now. Good old Shuggie. Time to butt out of my business now.
I was thumbing my phone keypad as I ran, but remembered in two-and-a-quarter seconds there was no point. Allie’s phone had been nicked. She hadn’t got a new one yet. Didn’t like it. Never used it.
I was keen not to fall, there being a blade shoved into my pocket, but I ran as fast as I could anyway. After a bit I slowed to a jog. After all, I didn’t know where she was.
My lungs hurt. Hesitating at the pedestrian traffic lights by a huge roundabout on the bypass, I felt panic choke me. I didn’t know where to start. I thought about the High Street, and the shops. If she was in town, she’d be safer. Mickey wasn’t stupid enough to attack her in front of loads of people, and even if he was, someone would intervene.
I thought about that for a moment. No, they wouldn’t.
Then I remembered Drugstore Cowboy, and Richie the not-very-bright security guard. Richie was hard enough, or he thought he was. Richie was willing to have a go at me, and he was big and ugly enough to have a go at Mickey. Please, Allie, I thought. Please be shoplifting in Drugstore Cowboy. Even if you get arrested for it, please be busy nicking stuff. In fact, please get arrested and taken to the cells. Best place for you.
The little green man bleeped at me. I stood and stared at the crossing. Cars had had to stop for the red light and one driver was mouthing abuse at me and tapping his temple. Then he tapped it harder, called me a name I could lip-read. I could only stare at him. As soon as the lights started flashing he screeched away with a stink of scorched tyres.
I didn’t know what to do. Turning one way, then the other, I whimpered.
A bunch of girls came to a halt across the road from me, poking their fingers into bags of hot chips, laughing and swearing when they got burnt. They didn’t wait for the green man, just sauntered across, earning blasts of horn from drivers and repaying them with a finger and a mouthful of shrieked abuse.
‘Oy, gorgeous.’ One of them grinned at me through the chip clamped between her teeth like a cigarette. She had a scraped blonde ponytail, smoky made-up eyes, a row of gold studs edging her ear like glittering bites. She reeked of chips, heady and vinegary.
‘Gina,’ I said. I was acceptable in the sight of Orla’s gang now, but a fat lot of use they were to me. Hopelessly I said, ‘You seen my sister?’
She swallowed the chip, screamed abuse at a lorry driver, then turned back, shrugging.
‘Lost the heidcase again? Can you not tag her or something?’
‘Forget it,’ I spat, and turned to make for the railway bridge.
‘Oy,’ she shouted after me.
I didn’t have time for Gina to take the piss and I spun on my heel to tell her so, but she wasn’t laughing, she was frowning. She nibbled the end of a chip, then pointed it at me.
‘Second person that’s asked me that.’