55

Realising that Thomas’s allegation would only start the process I told the policemen about Collins’ attempt at intimidation, showed them the printed-off photo and the corresponding item on Collins’ camera phone. From the look on their faces this was sufficient to remove him from our presence. Whether they took him back to their station for questioning, or they’d pay him a professional courtesy and just let him go outside the hotel, I didn’t care. His impact on the situation was finished and as soon as the other players found out he’d been compromised, I was sure their reaction would be more robust than ours was. If I was him I’d be heading for the nearest airport.

The policemen took all of our details, the phone and the photograph, and after they’d elicited promises that we’d all be willing to make statements they accompanied Collins out of the hotel.

‘How did Collins and Coulson ever get involved with each other?’ I asked when we were on our own.

‘A child abuser,’ Chris said, ‘and a child trafficker? Their kind always seem to find a way to get together. Perhaps Collins passed some of his victims on to Coulson to keep them quiet? Who knows? But to stay in the job and off the radar for so long, I wouldn’t put it past him.’

We drifted into silence.

I considered the look of relief and pleasure on Thomas’s face when the cops took Collins away. Of course, only one of his abusers was on track for some kind of justice. Would I ever see something similar? Did I even want that?

‘Are you thinking you need to get some kind of closure now with Mum?’ Thomas asked as if he had been reading my mind.

‘She all but spat in my face the last time,’ I replied.

‘What about you, Chris?’ Thomas asked.

‘The woman is dead to me.’ Chris’s voice was flat and brooked no argument.

‘Sounds like you need more, though, John. Worth another go?’ Thomas asked.

‘I don’t know. Is it wise?’

‘Only you can answer that. In this case it wouldn’t work for me. I don’t want to ever see that woman again. But you’ve had a lifetime with her … What do you want to get from it?’

I sat with his question for a moment or two, not quite sure how to articulate the charge of emotion that rose through my mind and body whenever I thought of my mother.

‘Honesty. I want her to be honest. I want her to see what she did to me. To us. I want an explanation. I want her to say she’s sorry. I want penitence, tears and snot.’ The pitch of my voice was rising. ‘I want her to beg forgiveness and to throw it back in her face. I want to know why. I want to know how she hid it from Dad. I want to get all of this…’ I stabbed at my forehead with the stiffened fingers of my right hand three times ‘…out of my head. I want to take this black, fucking cloud and shove it down her throat…’ I tailed off, surprised at how quickly my anger had risen up in me.

‘All very understandable, John,’ Thomas said as he reached across and placed a hand on my knee. ‘But be prepared for the fact you might not get any of that.’ He looked over at Chris. ‘You’re awful quiet.’

‘What can I say?’ He looked away from us for a second, and as he did so he wiped a tear from his cheek. ‘I thought I’d dealt with this. I thought I was through the other side. But Jesus,’ his voice broke. ‘This is bringing it all back.’ He looked up to the ceiling and exhaled a long, wavering breath. ‘Fuck.’

‘Hey,’ I said, feeling my own sadness rise in response to his. ‘Why did you never talk to me about this? And why didn’t you shake some fucking sense into me?’

Chris wiped another tear away, and raised an eyebrow. ‘You kidding me? Mr Shitty Memory? You had to come to this in your own way, John. In your own time. Any attempt to force you to go there would have caused nothing but grief, and I didn’t want to fight you on this.’

‘Did you guys fight a lot as kids?’ Thomas asked, and I could see he was processing the fact that he should have been there, been our big brother.

‘Some,’ Chris and I both said at the same time, and we each gave a small, self-conscious laugh.

‘Did you each know the other was being abused?’ Thomas asked.

Chris and I both looked at each other, and then each gave a small nod of recognition.

‘Oh, it ranged from bitchy comments to full-on fist fights,’ Chris said. ‘Looking back it feels like we never stopped having a go at each other.’

‘I was so jealous,’ I said.

‘Me too,’ Chris said. ‘I wanted Mum to myself. I knew it was off-the-chart wrong, but at the same time it was really the only thing that mattered. How twisted is that?’

‘She was playing you; you know that, right?’ Thomas asked. ‘She would be getting off on pitching you against each other.’

‘Yeah, but we were fighting each other well into our teens,’ I said. ‘By that time we should have grown the hell up.’

‘You’re being too harsh on yourself. The patterns had been set in concrete when you were little boys,’ Thomas said shaking his head. ‘And that shit is difficult to get past.’

‘Isn’t that the truth,’ Chris said quietly.

‘Oh man, I’m so sorry, guys,’ Thomas said, his eyes heavy with self-recrimination. ‘If I’d stayed. Talked to someone else. Shouted from the fucking rooftops. Done something else, you guys might have been okay.’ He jumped to his feet, looking about him as if the solution to all of this was still just out of his reach.

Chris stood up too. ‘This isn’t on you. None of it is. You were just a kid yourself.’

I got to my feet. ‘You can’t blame yourself, Thomas. That’s crazy.’

Thomas looked at me, hands out, as if begging me to take away his pain, his eyes red. He began to shake his head, as if the thoughts it contained were too much to bear. ‘I should have done something instead of just running away. I fucked everything up.’

‘Hey,’ Chris repeated. ‘This is not on you.’ Tears were running down his cheeks. He reached out and pulled Thomas into a hug.

I joined the hug, resting my head against a curve of bone where my brothers’ foreheads were touching, my arms out wide, resting on each man’s shoulder.

I’ve no idea how long we stood there for. Each of us weeping, processing, healing. I only knew a connection was being made.

Despite everything, we were brothers, at last.

Sometime later, Chris excused himself.

‘I need a lie down in a darkened room and some paracetamol,’ he said with a weak smile. ‘You guys okay?’

Thomas and I both nodded. And I could see that we each needed to be on our own for a time. So we said our momentary goodbyes and agreed to meet up soon to sift over everything we’d learned, each of us knowing we’d made a start on learning how to become real brothers to each other.

Outside, on the street, as I walked to my car I heard rapid footsteps nearing me and Thomas shouting, ‘Hang on a minute, John.’

I turned to face him. ‘What’s up?’

‘Coulson,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s … eh, what do you want with him?’ As I asked I read his dark look and felt something dark uncoil in my belly.

‘That’s nothing for you to worry about,’ he replied.

‘For your own sanity you don’t want to be messing around with that man.’

‘I thought I’d dealt with all of the stuff he did to me, but…’ Thomas turned to the side, his neck bent, his arms rigid. ‘Coulson has to pay.’

‘Pay? Pay how?’ I asked.

Thomas met my eyes and I could see his were swimming with the threat of violence. There was an atavistic anger pulsing from him that caused me to step back. Reading my reaction, he exhaled and gave himself a shake.

‘I need to confront him, that’s all. And give him a wee scare.’

‘Jesus, Thomas, that’s not a good idea.’

‘Let me decide what is or isn’t a good idea, John. Where is he?’ Thomas asked as he stepped closer to me.

Momentarily cowed, and recognising that he was using his physicality to intimidate me into giving him what he wanted, I steeled myself. I would not go on in this relationship with such a formative moment. I placed a hand on his chest, pushed him back a little and looked him in the eye. ‘If you go, I go,’ I said.

‘Not a good idea,’ he replied.

‘Let me decide what’s a good idea,’ I said, throwing his own words back at him.

‘I like your style, little brother,’ Thomas said, his eyes shifted slightly as if he was making a quick calculation. He placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Tomorrow, then. Come and get me just after nine and we’ll go and speak to him.’

At home I poured myself a large whisky and sat on the sofa and ran through everything that had been revealed that day. I was determined I wasn’t going to allow myself to push everything into a dark corner of my brain again where it could be forgotten, and fester. If I was ever going to overcome my past I had to face it and own it.

Sometime later, perhaps an hour, my mobile rang. It was Liz.

‘Do you know where Thomas has gone?’

‘He’s gone?’ And I knew instantly where he was headed. ‘Shit.’

‘Where is he, John?’ She sounded close to tears.

‘He said he needed to confront Coulson.’

‘Fucking idiot,’ she said. ‘Right. Pick me up in five minutes. We need to stop him before he does anything stupid.’

‘How does he know where to go? I didn’t tell him.’

‘Perhaps he asked Chris?’

‘Listen, I don’t think it’s wise for you to come along, and, besides, who’s going to watch the kids?’

‘Billy’s grown quite fond of them. He’s in here every five minutes playing with them.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, remembering the look on Thomas’s face earlier that day. ‘You really don’t want to…’

‘John, you better come and get me or—’

I hung up. A minute later I was out the door, down the stairs and in the car.