by Esme Devlin
Nothing.
Then the toilet flushes at the other end of the hall.
I don’t hesitate, I duck inside the bedroom I’m standing in front of and press my back to the nearest wall, eyes flying straight to the bed.
It’s empty.
But it’s definitely Kieran’s room.
I take in the room as I hear the taps go on in the bathroom. A MacBook sits on a desk next to the chest of drawers. An Xbox purrs in its spot next to the television. The navy blue covers are crumpled and pulled back, the bottom sheet untucked and trailing along the floor.
The place smells like it hasn’t been aired out in a month. I wrinkle my nose as I hear footsteps padding along the hall and the door beside me opens.
Kieran walks in, his face lowered and glowing from the reflection of his huge fucking iPhone.
“Alright mate?” I keep my voice low, but that doesn’t stop the boy from almost jumping right out of his skin. He drops the phone on the carpet and we both watch it as it flips a few times on impact, and lands face up.
He’s watching himself some lesbian porn.
I look back at him the exact same second he looks back at me.
He swallows and a smile plays on my lips. He’s scared, but defiant, and that is absolutely the sweetest brand of fear. “She told you?”
“She did.”
“What did you do to her? She’s not replying to my texts.”
I miss a beat, because I love watching him squirm. I learned that once in a thing I watched about politicians or presidents or some shit. The more you pause, the more someone hangs on for what you’re going to say.
It’s effective, the boy is practically twisting before my eyes. “She got what she had coming to her.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Kieran doesn’t pause. He mustn’t have watched that video.
I just smile at him because right now, he might have the papers, but I have all the cards. I’ve not even touched him, but that’s another lesson I’ve learned in my relatively short life, and this one was from the King himself — my old man. The fear of what you have coming is worse than when it hits. When it hits, you know what it is. You can fight it, you can defend yourself. You’re high as fuck on adrenaline and that shit is stronger than any drug. But those moments when you don’t know what it is or when it’s going to come, when the thing in the pit of your stomach feels like it’s going to fall out your arse… those are torture. Those are terror. Those are true fear.
And that’s why I smile at Kieran.
“I won’t do anything if you give me those papers,” I tell him.
“And what if I don’t?”
I shrug. “That’s the point when you find out.”
I push off the wall and walk across the room as if I own it, heading to the TV and his Xbox. I fiddle with the wires and pick up random things that sit on top of the drawers. A bottle of aftershave. A cufflinks box. A USB stick.
Spinning on my heels to face him, I see that he’s watching me the way you’d watch a bear who had you cornered. “If you were a piece of paper, where would you be?”
He doesn’t answer so I begin to walk his room, my steps light and slow. Calculated.
“I used to play a game with the boys when I was just a sprog — they’re downstairs by the way, with a petrol can and a Zippo — but listen to me, I’m digressing.” I chuckle and flash him a smile. “Anyway, we’d play this game where we’d hide something really important, usually something we’d stolen from the other, and they would walk around while we would say “hot” or “cold”.”
I go over to his bedside table and pull out the drawer. “Sounds shit right? But we’d spice it up. We’d think of better ways to say hot and cold. Like, I dunno… Colder than a hookers heart or… hotter than a paedo in a nursery.”
I rake the drawers slowly, like I’m deep in thought, then I turn back around to look at him. “Hotter than petrol fumes evaporating into a zippo lighter?”
Kieran swallows. “You’re cold.”
I nod and head over the desk below his window. “But there’s only so many ways you can say hot or cold when you have the vocabulary of a nine-year-old… so we’d do other stuff. We’d put a time limit on it. How long do you think we gave the person?”
I watch him shrug and then turn around to open a box that’s sitting under the desk. “Give me something, Kieran, you’re killing me here.”
“You’re getting warmer.”
I chuckle. “And you are shit at this game. Are you bored? The boys used to get bored when I couldn’t find the thing — my house is massive. But I wouldn’t stop. Like a dog, following the scent of a bitch in heat I wouldn’t give up. Didn’t matter what it was… a £1 coin or a fucking lollypop. If it was mine — I wanted it. And if I wanted to find it — I did. And they quickly learned not to play with me, because I couldn’t play nicely. I’m done with playing, Kieran.” I leave the desk behind me and walk over to him, pushing him up against the wall with my chest.
He doesn’t even fight me. He doesn’t even look at me.
I pull the knife out of my pocket and flick it open, letting it glint in the light of the TV before I hold it up to his neck. “Michelle — she’s mine. Those papers — I will find them. I will burn this place to the fucking ground and I will come back for the ashes.”
I dig the sharp end into the flesh of his neck. I’m not slashing anything, although I could. One slice and he would be a statistic. I dig it in just enough to draw the slightest drop of blood to the surface, and I smile while he winces in pain.
“Under the bed,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Good boy.” I smile, retracting the knife and moving it from my right hand to my left. Then I did something I probably didn’t have to do, but I knew it would make me feel good, so fuck it. I clenched my hand into a fist, pulled it back and hooked him right in the place where his nose meets his eyes.
He buckles instantly, hands flying to his face while he tries to cry quietly. “That one was in case you’re lying.”
I stick the knifed hand under his arm and pull him up, taking another swing for his stomach with my right. The wind knocks out of him, and this time I let him fall to the floor. “And that one was for fucking with Michelle.”
Then I’m over to the bed in a shot, crouching down to my knees and trying to see if Kieran Townsley is a smart boy or a stupid one.
Might as well have a tea light candle, for all the use the TV is, but I stick my hand under, shuddering at the dusty as fuck socks and finally my fingers slide over something that might be what I’m looking for.
I pull it out, sitting back on my knees and tearing open the top of the brown envelope. I don’t have to look at the contents for more than five seconds to see he’s got us by the balls, good and proper.
Jumping up to my feet, I eye him as I cross the room towards him. “Well done, Kieran. You just got to keep your house. Mutter a word of what’s in this envelope to anyone and you’ll find yourself standing outside in your fucking housecoat watching it burn to the ground.”
Then I step over him, giving him a last kick in the stomach as I go. This time he cries out in pain, and I wonder if I let my anger get the better of me and broke a rib or something.
Fuck it. I walk through the door just as the woman I can only assume is Mrs Townsley walks out of her bedroom in a bright pink nightdress.
Her mouth opens and I shake my head at her, giving her the death stare. She shuts her mouth, her eyes asking me what the fuck I’m doing in her house. “Evening, Mrs Townsley. Kieran was just helping me with my homework.” I smile at her while I shake the envelope in my hand. “I’ll be leaving now.”
I walk down the hall and hear her running towards Kierans room behind me just as my foot lands on those bastard noisy as fuck stairs. I bang on the walls as I race down them, shouting for the boys to move. They come from the living room just as I reach the bottom of the stairs, and Jody pulls the front door open. “Did you get it?”
&
nbsp; “I did, aye,” I tell him, the four of us legging it down the garden path.
The look on Kieran’s face said he wasn’t going to be phoning 999 anytime soon, but I can’t say the same for his wee mother.
Chapter 22
MICHELLE
“Shell.”
A voice.
A deep voice.
A voice like gravel.
The voice of Tommy Heenan.
I sit up in bed, wide awake, heart racing before I even have the chance to remember my own name. I remember that voice coincides with danger though. I remember we’re not what we were before.
Then I blink, and just like that I remember everything.
Why is he here?
I slide across the bed and switch my lamp on, and a cool white light illuminates Tommy.
He’s standing at the foot of my bed, hands by his side. He’s dressed all in black, from his cotton tracksuit with the hood up to the thick gloves that cover his hands. His jaw is peppered like he hasn’t shaved, and his eyes are red like he hasn’t slept. He looks menacing, every bit as scary as the night he followed me in the shadows at my birthday party.
This time is worse though.
This time he hates me with good reason, and without my moral high ground to use as a shield, every ounce of courage I once had with Tommy seeps away into the mattress. And when his eyes, clear and blue but hollow and empty, focus on my eyes, I realize just how far the feelings of loathing I once had for him have seeped away, too.
“Why are you here?”
That seemed like the best question to ask. When we last parted, he told me to get out, he didn’t want to see me, he didn’t want to touch me, and he didn’t want to hear I was sorry. So why is he standing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?
“Brought you a present,” he says, his face emotionless and his voice ice cold.
I sit up further, tearing my gaze away from him and looking around, trying to work out what he’s talking about. I notice an envelope resting on the covers at the bottom of my bed and I move forward on my hands and knees to retrieve it. He watches me carefully. I look at him because I don’t need to open it. I already know what’s in it.
What I don’t know is what he did to get it.
“How?”
He shrugs, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him move since I switched the lights on.
“Tell me, Tommy.” I want to know if Kieran got hurt. If Kieran will retaliate. If Tommy will be in trouble. I want to know all of those things, but only so I know what happens next.
“I don’t need to tell you anything. Not anymore.” I search his face, for what I don’t know. Some hint that he is bluffing, maybe? That this is just a temporary punishment and he’ll back down?
He said it was me and him.
He said I was his.
I want to be his again.
Maybe he saw my thoughts running across my face. Maybe the way I was looking at him made him uncomfortable. Maybe he’s just hurting, or maybe he’s telling the truth and he’s beyond hurting. But whatever it is, he turns his back to me and the tension that was in his shoulders drops. “Your money’s on the chair. Goodbye, Michelle.”
I’m up off the bed in a second, before he’s taken his third step towards the door.
I walked away last night. I let him push me away. I’ve barely eaten all day. I tossed and turned for hours last night trying to get to sleep. I told myself I was worried about Kieran’s plans, about my dad going to prison, about what Tommy was going to do to me.
But I know I was lying to myself.
The only thing he could do now to hurt me, really fucking hurt me, would be to walk through that door and never look back.
“Tommy, wait,” I tell him, grabbing the sleeve of his hoody.
He looks down at my hand like I’m burning him. Like I’m the annoying bug again, and he wants to squish me. “I know I don’t deserve that, what you just did for me. I don’t deserve your forgiveness and I don’t deserve you. But you don’t deserve me either. You teased me. You changed me from a content, happy little girl to one who cared about how she looked, how she dressed, how she acted. One who was scared to grow up in case she couldn’t find a way to make it out. You humiliated me in front of your friends. You took my car. You took my freedom. You pushed me, more than once, to the point where I lost the sense of what was right and what was wrong. I should have hated you for what you did, and instead I… instead I fell for you. But how could I fall for someone who did all that to me? I wasn’t running, Tommy, you pushed me away.” I shake my head at him. “You said I won — I didn’t win. I’m here right now, after everything you’ve done to me, holding on to your arm while you look at me like I’m dirt on your shoe. How is that winning?”
He doesn’t take his eyes off my hand, and I don’t let him go either. I watch him while he swallows. “You win when you let go of my arm.”
I shake my head again, trying to urge him to look me in the eye. “I don’t care about winning anymore. You win.”
His other arm comes up and I think he’s going to push me away, but he doesn’t. He circles around my body and pulls me in close to his hard chest, so close I can hear his heart beating. He’s warm. He smells like danger and testosterone and whatever else Tommy smells like, my own personal drug. A smell I could never tire of.
His muscles clench as he wraps himself around me, and I snake my arm up his back, feeling the curve as he bends his head down and rests his chin on mine.
I don’t want to leave this place, in his arms, next to his heart. I want to put my things down and make a home here. I want all the things he wanted… I want to laugh while we’re fighting and cry while we’re fucking. I want to watch him grow up from the boy who couldn’t use a knife and fork properly, to the man who would knife anyone who stood in our way.
That’s when it hits me.
I hated Tommy since the day I met him, but what I hated most about him was his freedom. And it’s only now I’m older I can see that it wasn’t hate, it just felt like it because we were kids.
What it really was, was envy.
I hated him for it and at the same time I wanted to be him. I didn’t envy his big empty house or his lonely life or his dad who scared the shit out of me, but I hated the way he refused to let that stop him. I let the vice around my neck stop me from living, while Tommy found a way to live within it.
Is it possible that the reason you grew to hate someone can be the same reason you grow to love them?
I’m wondering that when he breaks whatever moment we were having and pulls away. I told him I didn’t care about winning. He can win if he wants, as long as he stays.
He tilts my chin up towards his head and looks into my eyes, and I swear there is a sadness in them so intense that it almost stops my heart.
I forget to breathe.
“There are no winners in this game, darlin. There never was. We were both fucked from the start.”
I’m trying to process what he means, and praying it’s not what I think he means, when he bends down and brushes his lips against my parted ones.
Then he steps to the side and walks towards the door. I pivot, not ready to believe this is happening, didn’t he hear my thoughts? I was about to tell him, just as soon as I’d sorted them out in my head.
But he doesn’t look back.
He does the only thing he could do to hurt me; he walks right out of the door.
My heart has been broken before.
It broke the day I got engaged to Tommy, the day that is tattoo’d just below my heart. I didn’t get the tattoo to signify heart break, because it’s only now I’m realizing that my heart was broken that day.
It wasn’t a smash, like dropping a glass vase from a great height. I’d say it was more like a disease, slowly eating away at me every day, even on the days I felt good. They say a girl’s first love is always her father. He didn’t break my heart in the smashed glass vase way. He did something worse to it. He gave me the disease.
And if it was my father who turned my heart into this broken thing, this diseased thing that wasn’t working properly… then Tommy was the only one who ever came close to curing it. Only I never knew at the time that was what he was doing. When you get used to living with a broken heart, you become really fucking good at drowning it out.
So, if someone asked me now, did Tommy Heenan break your heart? I would say no. Tommy didn’t break my heart. He didn’t drop it from a great height and watch it smash into a thousand tiny pieces. He didn’t crack it. He didn’t chip it. He didn’t infect it. Tommy didn’t break it because you can’t break broken things.
He just gave me a taste of what having a working heart felt like.
And what’s worse is I can’t even say that he snatched that taste away. He didn’t.
I did that all to myself.
But regardless of whether my heart is broken, or recovering, or cracked or diseased… I do what seems like the only logical thing to do when a man who made me feel things walks through the door and doesn’t look back. I invite my friends over, they bring three tubs of Ben & Jerrys Cookie Dough, and we watch Nicholas Sparks movies under the duvet all day.
“I can’t watch this bit,” Ada says, pulling the covers up over her face. The bit where they’re old but they’re still dancing, still every bit as in love.
I can watch it. It tears my heart out every fucking time, but I can watch it.
“Do you think that can happen? I mean the guy lives and breathes for her, still, after all those years,” I ask.
Ada shrugs, watching again now the scene is over. “My wee granny and grandad are like that. Fifty years married, five kids, god knows how many grandchildren. You can feel their connection when you walk in the house.”
“Yeah, that was before social media.” Lawrie says, taking a spoonful of ice cream and turning the spoon upside down in her mouth. “I don’t believe that shit can happen these days. Our generation always wants more.” She takes another lick and we both turn around to watch her, sensing she’s not finished. “People don’t stick around when things get difficult, they just move on to the next new shiny thing, the greener grass, if you will.”