Bad Blood (Tales of the Notorious Hudson Family, Book 5)

by Julie Shaw

  ‘What, Mo?’ Christine answered.

  ‘God, no! Don’t be daft. Christ, does he even know? And I’m assuming if he doesn’t you’re not telling him.’ Rumour had it, Nicky knew, that Mo had kids all round town. All denied, obviously. And no one challenging it, because no one challenged Mo. Him included. He shook his head. ‘No, mam, of course, you ninny. What do you think?’

  His sister pulled a disgusted face. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. She’s made it well clear she wants nothing to do with me or the baby and, trust me, that’s just fine by me.’

  The baby apparently dozing, Christine stalked off into the kitchen, where she rolled up her sleeves to fish a couple of mugs from the muddy washing-up water in the orange plastic bowl. Nicky grabbed the teapot and leaned past her to tip the old tea into the sink. She smelt sweetish, of baby, but not unpleasantly.

  ‘Where shall Eddie put all this lot?’ Josie asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway. She looked as officious as ever, and had a large cardboard box in her arms. ‘And where’s that fucking divvy Brian?’

  Josie always had the usual McKellan swagger, and it irritated him. Her mam was a Hudson (and didn’t he know it) and her brother Vinnie was a local hero. He’d been banged up – for a long time – for murdering a local nonce, who it was said had had a piece of Josie when she was little. Which probably accounted for the chippy way she tended to address all men – Eddie excluded – and though Nicky kind of understood that, it still riled.

  He stuck his head out of the kitchen doorway and pointed out his bedroom to Eddie, who was close behind with another box and a couple of bin bags.

  ‘I’ll come and help you,’ Chrissy said, drying her hands on a tea towel as she followed him down the hallway.

  ‘He’s in his room, Jose,’ Nicky said, as Josie took over with the mugs. ‘And you don’t need to worry. Everything’s sorted. Like I told your Eddie, I’ve told him none of the hard stuff while Chrissy’s staying, and whatever else he does, he does it in his room.’

  ‘Like you can tell him what to do in his own flat?’ Josie said, swilling the mugs out under the tap. She wasn’t being sarcastic, he realised, just stating a possible truth. But still it irritated him that, on the one hand, she could say that, and on the other, that being exactly what she was pretty much ordering him to do. Like he was being auditioned for the role of his sister’s fucking landlord!

  ‘Course I can’t, Jose,’ he shot back. ‘Like you say, it’s his flat. But I think he’s being a diamond about it, as it happens. He could have just as easily told me to fuck right off, couldn’t he? And, by the sound of it, it’s not like there are a whole lot of other options.’

  ‘No, but if he –’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Josie,’ Eddie said, returning to catch the end of their conversation. ‘He’s only in the next bloody room. He’s been right as rain letting them stay, so I think we should keep out of it.’ He glanced meaningfully at Nicky, even so, as he said this. Then added, albeit lightly, ‘at least for now’.

  Nicky knew a warning when he saw one, and would normally have bridled, but he had a lot of time, not to mention a lot of respect, for Josie’s Eddie, and he genuinely wanted to help his sister out. Even so, he couldn’t wait to get rid of the pair of them, because the truth was he was already craving something stronger than the hurried joint he’d just had, even if he’d have to sneak around to have it.

  By the time half an hour had gone by, and they were still all camped in the sitting room, Nicky was having a rethink. Not about the tab he was looking forward to, but his whole morning’s strategy; emptying all the ashtrays, sweeping the carpet with the useless battered carpet sweeper (he’d have been quicker picking the dirt off bit by bit) and the wipe round with the lemon Ajax he’d found under the sink, which gave the sitting room the impression that it was properly clean. To the nose, if not to any eagle eyes like Josie’s.

  Because with them all so apparently comfortable in the unusually clean and tidy flat, they were lingering much longer than he’d reckoned on. Sipping their teas, chit-chatting about weird baby nonsense, meaning it was getting increasingly likely that Brian would release himself from his self-inflicted purdah. And he did.

  He appeared in the doorway, scratching his ribs, seeming insubstantial and unbalanced. Like a wraith or a ghoul from a bad trip or a dream. ‘All right?’ he said, to no one in particular. ‘Is there a brew going?’ He nodded towards Josie’s mug. ‘I could murder a cup of tea.’ He staggered out of sight then, leaving an after-image of inky stubble and fright-wig hair, only pausing to tip his head back round the door and, for reasons Nicky couldn’t fathom, saying, ‘Oi, Chris, are you breast-feeding that sprog? I bloody hope not. Can’t have those fried eggs of yours spilling out all round the place!’ He then laughed at his own joke and ambled off to the kitchen – simultaneously coughing his guts up – leaving Christine scowling and Josie shaking her head. ‘Give me strength,’ she said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. Give me strength.’

  ‘Sorry, Jose,’ Nicky said, feeling the need to say something. ‘He’s normally sparko at this time. We must have woken him up.’

  Josie stood up. ‘Oh that’s Bri in “awake” mode, is it?’ She looked at Christine and something passed between them. Nicky knew what, too. A look that said sorry. Sorry we can’t take you straight back to where you came from. And for a moment, Nicky wished she would change her mind and do it. That solid dependable Eddie would do the kind thing and let her stay with them after all. How long could it be before she got a council place, for fuck’s sake? Because the look said it all. This place – his place. Brian’s druggy shithole really wasn’t the right place for a baby.

  But that wasn’t going to be happening. So his dump it would have to be.

  Josie was hugging Christine now. ‘Now, are you sure there’s nowt else you need me to get for you? Just say if there is and I’ll get it and bring it up.’

  She was obviously headed to his mam’s, probably because her own mam was round there with their Paula. They were thick as thieves. ‘Long as you don’t bring the old witch round here too,’ he said, collecting the mugs up.

  ‘No danger of that,’ Josie said. ‘Though, actually, now you mention it …’ But then neglected to finish the rest of what she’d been thinking. That she could stage some sort of reconciliation? Make his mother take Chrissy back? Who knew? All he knew was that it wasn’t happening. His little sister, who his mam didn’t love, had shagged Mo, who she did love. It was all wrong. But at the same time, those were the facts.

  So no question. He knew his mam. There’d be no going back.

  Chapter 7

  Christine opened her eyes and tried to focus. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear the baby crying, and she knew she should get out of bed and see to him. She closed her eyes again for a moment but soon opened them again. It was all too easy to get sucked back into blissful unconsciousness; more and more now, since she’d been living with Nicky and Brian and the bright morning bustle of Josie’s busy home was no longer there to pull her along.

  Instead, she was constantly pulled under. Neither Nicky nor Brian lived anything like normal lives; their comings and goings seeming to have no relationship whatever to the time of night or day. They would sleep in till late – often late into the afternoon – and often went out in the small hours of the morning. Other times they’d be up with mates till gone six in the morning, filling the flat with dope fumes, popping pills or snorting coke, sometimes cackling uncontrollably, and, though at other times they were quieter, there seemed hardly a night where at some points she’d not be woken up – with a start – by music blaring loudly out of nowhere. Though both lads were unfailingly nice to her, and always cooed over Joey, it was like they were living inside a madhouse.

  A shithole of a madhouse as well. Christine had no more love of housework than any other sane person. And it was all she could do to take care of Joey currently. But the filth and the mess and the stink made her yearn for home; a yearning that shock
ed her to the core.

  Most of all, though, she yearned for the life she had lost. For her little bedroom, for the reassuring routines of her life. For her job down the market – a greater shock, to discover that – and for the sleep she had once taken so much for granted. For the freedoms she had never once considered to be freedoms – to sleep, yes, but also the simplest of freedoms. To get up and shower, put some clothes on, sling her bag over her shoulder, leave one place and walk or run – hop, skip or jump, even – to another, without having to consider anything – anyone – but herself.

  Joey was building up a head of steam now, and, her situation being what it was, she knew she must silence him, and quickly. For all that Nicky and Brian could bring in a brass band and have it play all night and all day outside her door, she felt the weight of her indebtedness to them constantly. She must at all times try to minimise Joey’s presence in their lives. Much as they would chuck him under the chin – and in Brian’s case, with his disgusting fingers, to Christine’s great anxiety – she was always alert to the expressions of irritation that she would catch cross their faces when they thought she wasn’t looking. She was a nuisance, an inconvenience, an imposition and a pain, and she knew full well that they were counting the days till she got a flat sorted as much as she was.

  She plucked Joey from the pram that was also doubling up for a cot. Josie had a proper cot at home, all ready for her to borrow, but he was too small for it yet and, all being well, she’d be in her own place before it came to putting it up. He kicked his little legs out as she pulled him to her face, nuzzling into her cheek, rooting, going pink in his annoyance. He really was little more than a machine, she decided. One that lived just for two things – milk and sleep.

  He felt hot, soft and squidgy, and smelled uniquely of baby – a scent she only now understood. ‘Ooh, that gorgeous baby smell!’ Josie said that often. ‘I could breathe it all day. They ought to bottle it.’ And she’d been right. They really should.

  Joey’s other end, predictably, smelled rather less lovely. She knew just from the weight of him that his nappy was drenched, even though he was in one of the two-sizes-too-big ones that were all she’d been able to get from the Co-op. She lay him down on the bed, undid the poppers on his babygro and removed it, recoiling as the ammonia hit her nostrils. ‘You’re going to have to wait, little man,’ she whispered, as he started up yelling again. ‘Hush now. I’ve got to go and warm your bottle!’

  In that, at least, she did have a modicum of order, having learned the hard way that if she didn’t make his night and morning bottles up, life became all that much more unbearable for both of them. As it was she’d still have to wait for the kettle.

  She stepped out into the hallway and immediately felt her foot hit something solid. ‘For fuck’s sake!’ she mouthed, as a can of Special Brew started spewing its contents all over the ratty carpet. She leaned down to pick it up – she no longer wondered why she’d find such a thing in such a place – and, looking across to the lounge, saw Nicky sparko on the futon, and, judging by the fetid smell, he’d not been asleep that long.

  She lifted the kettle, found it full enough, and switched it on, surveying the kitchen with her usual distaste. There was washing-up piled everywhere, in tipsy, random towers – pretty much the only thing that stood apart, in the corner of the windowsill where’d she’d cleared a space for it, was her big yellow transparent steriliser, in which bottles and dummies bobbed and which, on a bright day, when the sun hit just so, painted golden puddles on the lino.

  She took the jug from on top of it and went to the fridge for the bottle, wrinkling her nose almost as much as she did when changing Joey’s nappies. It was like one of those things Mrs Goodson, her PE teacher, had once identified when surveying the furthest reaches of the school changing rooms – a whole ecosystem, right there.

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, she ventured into the lounge, not to wake her brother – God help her if she did – but to do as she always did at this time of day, make a stab at restoring some sort of order. The room was completely trashed – and even more so than was usual, as a result of the windfall she’d been responsible for when she’d finally got her social money the previous day. She’d hung on to what she could – there was stuff to buy – not least nappies and formula – but, as she’d pretty much sponged off Nick and Brian for the best part of three weeks now, she felt it only right that she give them most of what she had left.

  Which had gone quite a way – all the evidence was in front of her. The coffee table was scattered with Rizla cigarette papers, overflowing ashtrays, and the dust from the cocaine powder and rocks they’d had the night before. Take-away containers vied with crisp packets and chocolate wrappers and shards of smashed poppadoms, and the makeshift pipe Nick and Brian used for burning their crack cocaine was overturned on the floor.

  Yes, twenty quid had gone a long way. A ridiculously long way. There had even been enough left for cider and lager which, as Brian had pointed out, giving her one of his explosive back-slaps, was ‘a bit of a bonus – the icing on the paaaaarty cake!’

  The smell in here was as bad as the one in her bedroom and though she didn’t dare open the curtains on her slumbering brother she could at least reach behind them to let in some air. If not, she decided she would have to seriously consider feeding Joey out on the frigging landing.

  She did it soundlessly, but he heard it even so. ‘Oh I do wish you’d fuck off, Snow fucking White,’ he groaned amiably. ‘Damaged at fucking birth, that’s what you were, you know that?’

  Christine couldn’t help but smile. For all that he drove her mad, and lived like a pig in the proverbial, Nicky didn’t have a bad bone in his body. ‘Yeah, by being born into a family that had you in it,’ she countered. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not hanging about. I have this thing. I need to breathe.’

  She ducked the answering cushion, and headed back into the kitchen with some empty glasses. Today, she thought, as she half-filled the jug and set the bottle in it, today I shall tackle this mountain of washing-up. Do something useful. Set an example to my waster of a brother – who seemed to be calling her now.

  ‘Chris!’ His voice was low but the urgency in it was unmistakable. She popped her head back round the living room door to find him up on his feet. He stabbed a finger in the general direction of the window. ‘There’s someone outside!’ he hissed. ‘Some fucker snooping around on the landing!’

  Christine spread her palms. ‘Maybe the postman? Or the milkman?’ As if. No such luxury. But she couldn’t see or hear anything.

  Nicky ran his hands over his face. She could hear the stubble rasping on his chin. He listened for a bit longer, then his shoulders dropped a little. ‘Maybe not, then. But it was like someone was hovering outside. But you’re right. Maybe not. Make some tea, yeah?’

  Christine went and refilled the kettle and popped teabags in two cleanish mugs. Then wrung out the cloth she used to wipe Joey’s bottom. Nick and Brian were always twitched on that score – people turning up uninvited – which made her worry about the sort of characters they hung out with. But it was obviously nothing, so she told him the kettle was on, then picked up the jug and went to sort out the baby.

  He was still squawking, and continued to complain while she cleaned him, but was soon soothed when she picked him up and popped the bottle in his mouth, though with the stench, she decided she’d feed him in the lounge. With Nicky up – even if he went back to sleep shortly after – she’d at least have a modicum of fresh air.

  She’d just settled on the futon – Nicky was now in the kitchen, doing the tea – when she heard the knock on the door.

  So he’d been right. ‘See?’ he mouthed at her, clearing a space on the coffee table for the mugs. ‘Told you, didn’t I? Someone’s snooping around.’

  ‘Hardly snooping,’ Christine whispered. ‘They’ve knocked on the door, haven’t they?’

  ‘Fuck’s sake!’ Nicky whispered back. ‘And it’s not even half nine!�
�

  He went across to the window that looked out onto the landing, and carefully moved the curtain a couple of inches to one side. A stripe of white sunlight divided the carpet into two, dust motes dancing around above it. ‘Trust me, no one comes at this time,’ he said, peeping out through the narrow slit. ‘Shit!’ he hissed then. ‘Are you expecting someone, sis? It’s a woman with a fucking briefcase!’

  Galvanised, now, Christine glanced anxiously around the living room. ‘Shit!’ she whispered. ‘Nicky, clear some of this crap away! Oh, God. Typical. I bet it’s someone from the housing.’

  ‘The housing?’ Nicky gawped at her.

  ‘Yes, the housing!’ she snapped at him. ‘They said they might visit before I got an offer off them, didn’t they? I told you. So they could check on –’

  ‘Check on what?’

  ‘Check on me, you numbskull! Check where I’m living!’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Nicky said, going immediately into action, grabbing up all the evidence of his and Brian’s drug taking the previous evening and kicking curry containers under the coffee table. Christine could only watch him, because Joey was still sucking hungrily on his bottle and if she moved now he’d probably freak. Not that he needed her help. It was a long-practised manoeuvre and he was like a whirling dervish. And fair enough that he was doing it, anyway, Christine thought. What a bloody state they’d made of the place. Thank God the woman hadn’t come half an hour earlier.

  The knock came again, more sharply this time, while Nicky was still in the kitchen, stashing everything out of sight. So she obviously knew they were in there. Probably heard them talking earlier. And it could be worse, Christine thought. Brian could be spark out on the floor, as he often was. Thank God for that at least. Chances were that he’d be comatose in his room for hours yet. ‘So I do let her in, right?’ Nicky said, popping his head around the door again.