When I got home Mum went ballistic. About staying out, my eye, my shirt, how worried sick she and Dad were. Although, to me, Dad didn’t seem to be worried or sick.
‘All boys need a black eye now and again; it’s a rite of passage, Maggie,’ Dad said from behind his paper.
‘Who did it? Tell me who did it?’ Mum shouted in my face. ‘Was it one of them?’ When she said them her head nodded towards our front door, aimed directly at Pav’s.
‘I told you, I slipped in the shed and banged it against the table.’ I couldn’t exactly tell her that the Dudas’ secret daughter landed a cracker on me, could I? That would be suicide for our friendship.
‘Slipped in the shed, my eye!’ Mum turned to Dad. ‘What do you think, Bert?’
Dad ruffled his paper.
‘He must think we’re a couple of eejits, Maggie, that’s what I’d say.’
‘I don’t,’ I said.
‘You’d better not or you’ll get another black eye to match,’ Mum said.
Dad’s paper shuddered. I didn’t know if he was laughing at the content within it or what Mum had said. Sometimes Dad just laughed at Mum for no reason.
Mum went on about how money doesn’t grow on trees and that I wouldn’t be getting any new things for a very long time because I had no respect for money or clothes.
‘Go, get up them stairs out of my sight.’ Mum puffed at her inhaler as I dutifully got out of her sight.
I didn’t think fourteen-year-olds got sent to bed. Guess I was wrong. At least I could keep the light on, unlike when I was younger. I could still read and write. Worry about Erin F.
Lying on my bed, I thought about Pav and found myself getting angry with him. Blaming him for my swollen eye and the dullness in my stomach. I didn’t want to see his Old Country face. Thank god Max and Bones done him like a kipper. I thought about The Big Man’s pending visit and the steel in the shed. I thought about the troops and Captain Duda. How could she and Pav be related? How?
And I thought about Erin F. Oh, Erin F, what will I say to you at school? How will I explain my swollen eye? My broken heart? My dented ego? It was all for her. All the pain and anger, it was all for her. And even though my heart was broken, I knew it would still go on thumping. She deserved it.