Laroche did sign up for a literacy course, sneakily, and Michael only found out about it when one of the kangas mentioned the unlikeliness of the fact as he came to collect him and escort him to the class. He raised his eyebrows at Michael as he went through the door and it only occurred to him afterwards how bulked up he looked. Remand prisoners could wear what they wanted and he was testing that one to the limit: sweatshirt, hoodie, scarf. More than you’d strictly need for the precarious season when summer threatens to spill over into autumn.
Two hours later and he was back, whistling.
They observed a silence while the kanga slammed the door and locked it and then removed the key.
“What did you learn, then? You kept that one very quiet.”
“Ssshh,” said Laroche, noisily. He unwound his scarf. “Fuck me, it’s hot.” He unzipped his hoodie and shrugged it off. “I learned,” he said, “that money can buy you whatever it is you want.” He elbowed his way out of his sweatshirt and there hanging from a strap around his neck was an inflated bag of the sort that comes in a wine box, a silver one with a plastic tap. “It’s me birthday,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “let’s party!”
“What on earth–?”
“A little bit of finest lap. Want some?” he lifted the strap over his head and laid the bag reverently on the table.
“Where did you get that?”
“Got it in Education, wotch you got me started on.”
“What’s it made of? Is it wine?”
“Wine?” Laroche scoffed. “It’s a hundred percent certified moonshine, made from carpet fluff, or whatever the lads can get their hands on: potato peelings, used tissues, it all goes in oink oink. Fetch us that glass.” He nodded in the direction of a clear plastic tooth mug, clouded with spit and toothpaste. “On second thoughts…” he went bouncing onto his bed and lay back. “Chuck it over.” He nodded at the bag, which Michael passed him. “Let’s get the fade on!”
Laroche poured some alcohol directly into his mouth, shortening and lengthening the stream of it by lifting his arms until it overflowed, trickling along his cheeks and into his ears, down his neck, into the pools of his collar bones. His white face flushed and he started to splutter and sat up. “Man oh man thass the bomb diggedy! Wanna try?”
Michael eyed the dripping sack of hooch. He was primed to refuse, to sit at the table and do a crossword, to write a letter to – somebody, his lawyer, somebody. He bit his lip. “Well, just a taste, then.”
“Have a day off from yourself,” said Laroche, handing him the bag. “Just this once.”
~~~
In the end, Michael had about a fortnight off from himself – at least that’s what it felt like. He lay on his bed as the room gently repositioned itself around him, gathering speed.
“What’s it made of again?”
“Fuck knows,” said Laroche, dreamily. “What gets left down the plug for all I know – best not to ask. Works, though, doesnit?”
It worked so well that Michael thought he might already be going blind, until he realised that it was mid-evening and the light was fading. “I don’t know when I was last this pissed.”
There was what passed for silence in the remand wing of a prison: hollering, the occasional raw shout; outside in the neighbourhood a car alarm was sounding. Michael floated in and out amongst the noises.
“My W.I.F.E. – as in Wash. Iron. Fuck. Etc. – is going to call the kid Marianne. Whaddya make of that then? She’s going to call the kid we both know isn’t mine after my ol’ girl. Woss the game?”
He surfaced briefly. “Maybe she is yours?”
“Tell us another,” Laroche belched. “Not according to my sums, leastways.”
“Maybe your sums are as ropey as your writing was. Maybe you’re scared because the sums are right.”
“Fuck off. I ain’t scared.”
“If you want to be the baby’s dad, then saying so makes it so.”
Laroche rolled his head to one side and looked at Michael. He closed one eye, trying to focus, then half-closed the other; open, close, round and round, chase, chase.
“If you say something often enough it gains currency. If your,” Michael hesitated, “wife,” he said delicately, “is offering you a line–”
“I wish she was. Bit of charlie now would go down nicely.”
“–then take it.”
“More red-eye?” Laroche squirted some alcohol into his own mouth, but he was having trouble with the tap; fumbling, misfiring; then he seemed to be having trouble with the bag as well, mastering its almost empty shapelessness. “Aw fuck it. Trousered anyway. Woss the point.” He was sprawled across his bed, but he seemed to slump further. “Be a crap dad anyway, in ’ere. What kind of dad would I be?”
Michael tried to wrestle with the answer, but his tongue was like wire wool and his mouth was dry and the blood was turning to rust in his veins and he’d never missed Charlotte more than he missed her at this moment, never missed her more, and because saying something makes it so – “I loved her.”
“…You’re malcolmed…” mumbled Laroche “…yer sappy one…”
“I did though; I really, really loved her. She wasn’t always easy to love, but I did.”
“Wotch you love about her, my old drinkin’ bud?”
“I loved the fact that she was different. She wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met. It took guts to set up house with me, when everyone was being so negative about her living with a younger guy. I do believe she loved me, for a bit, and I loved her because of that.”
“Sorry, run that past me again…”
“It wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it.”
“Yer gets back wotch you put in – ha ha,” Laroche gave a guttering laugh. “Didn’t have you down for a toy boy, mind.”
Michael lay looking up at the ceiling, following the cracks in the paint work, making continents out of them, the warmth from the liquor ebbing. He turned on to his side and the room slung itself after him. He felt sick and curled up on his bunk, trying to block out the world. He let his eyes fall shut. “Is it really your birthday?” he asked thickly.
“Nah.”