Double Kiss

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  He tried opening each of the locked drawers with plain brute strength to begin with. No luck. They all held firmly. He pulled the desk away from the wall and tried getting in from the back, but it was solid there too and underneath looked the same.

  Sod it. Needs must. He went through into the airing cupboard, where the Old Man kept his tools. And not just tools either. He glanced warily back at that cavity there in the brickwork that the Old Man had tipped him off about last year. The one that had had the box with the pistol in it, that had already done Frankie way more harm than good. He dug out a couple of screwdrivers, a rasp file and a mallet from the Old Man’s toolbox. Should do the trick just fine.

  It took him less than two minutes to get into the first drawer. Another five and he’d busted open the lot.

  8

  ‘Well, it’s definitely an improvement on your last place,’ Frankie said to his brother the next day.

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, bruv.’

  But Frankie wasn’t kidding. Just like the proverbial cat with nine lives that he was, it seemed this Tuesday lunchtime that Jack had once again landed on his feet. The flat Tommy Riley had stumped up the deposit for was a one-bedder on the corner of Bonchurch Road and Ladbroke Grove. Hardly what you might call a palace in terms of size, but it was clean and was in an area clearly on the up. Little bruv was going to make a few quid profit on this and that was for sure.

  Not that Frankie hadn’t still got his reservations, of course. About Riley having funded this. About Jack still working for Riley, even if he did say what he had him doing wasn’t front line. But he had to admit it, standing here now, Riley stumping up the deposit for this certainly had its advantages too. And softly, softly, catchee monkey, as they said. Play his cards right, make a success of the tournament, and Frankie might even be able to winkle Jack out from under Riley’s wing and have him keep this place.

  ‘You going to be all right for keeping up the mortgage payments?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. Tommy put me in touch with this financial advisor bloke. He got me a good deal.’

  ‘But all in your name, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Just relax, OK? For once in my life, this is all totally and utterly above board.’

  ‘The view’s not bad either,’ said Frankie, staring out of the kitchen window down at the little restaurant across the street. Brasserie du Marché. A young woman was standing out front talking into a mobile phone. In a white shirt and black apron.

  ‘Pretty, isn’t she?’ Jack said.

  ‘What?’ Frankie pretended he hadn’t seen.

  ‘Her name’s Tiffany. Part-time waitress. Part-time personal trainer. Full-time stunner.’

  ‘Tiffany? Sounds expensive. A friend of yours?’

  ‘No, not a close one. Or not that close. Not that I haven’t tried . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘She reckons I’m too young for her. Cute, was the word she used.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’ve always been that, haven’t you, you little git,’ Frankie said, ruffling Jack’s hair.

  ‘Piss off,’ Jack said, good-naturedly, pulling away. Frankie grinned. ‘You sure it wasn’t this that put her off?’ He flicked the little bunch of hair Jack had got tied up on the top of his head. ‘Whatever the hell this is.’

  ‘A topknot.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s in right now.’

  ‘In the barber’s bin is where it should be.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha. At least I don’t go round looking like some extra out of Reservoir Dogs,’ he said, flicking the lapel of Frankie’s jacket. ‘But you never know. She might like it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tiffany. Come on, let’s pop across the road for a sherbet and a bit of scran and find out. It’s French. All steak and frîtes, not chips.’ He picked up his black trilby from on the back of the door. Not much of an improvement, it had to be said. But at least it hid that monstrosity on the top of his bonce.

  ‘Fine,’ said Frankie. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Why the hell not? The steak and frîtes bit anyhow. ‘My shout, let’s call it a house-warming present.’

  ‘Bed-warming, more like, if you play your cards right.’

  Frankie ignored him. Boys’ talk. He’d been guilty of plenty of it himself over the years. Something he’d grown out of a bit more lately. You saw the nasty side of it, running a club. Not that Xandra couldn’t handle herself, but it still amazed him how many punters still thought she was on the bar menu too.

  The food over in the brasserie was as good as Jack had promised. The last place he’d taken Frankie to eat was his favourite dodgy doner van up in Islington, so this meal came as a relief. The waitress, Tiffany, was nice too. Even prettier close up. Funny with it. As in ha ha, rather than weird. She told them both this filthy joke about three blokes going skiing as they were paying their bill. It brought tears to Frankie’s eyes.

  ‘You not gonna even ask her for her phone number?’ Jack said, as they stepped out into the sunshine.

  ‘Nah, I’m good.’

  Not that he didn’t like her. He did and he reckoned the feeling might be mutual too. Because there she was, watching him. And no denying it. There was definitely a little spark there. He knew as well how useless he was at the moment. No good for a relationship at all. His head either still too messed up missing booze and missing Sharon, or too focused in on the tournament and the Old Man – not to even mention this bloody postcard that might as well have been burning a hole right in his suit jacket pocket.

  ‘So what now?’ Jack said. ‘Hit the bars? Quaff a few lagers and tequilas?’ He smiled, a little sadly, and flung his arm round Frankie, pulling him close. ‘Only kidding, bruv. I know how hard it’s been. But you’ve done well, you know. I’m proud.’

  Jack . . . proud of Frankie? Blimey, how the world moved on. Who knew, maybe his little brother really was finally growing up after all?

  ‘And, to be honest,’ he added with a grin, ‘you were getting to be a bit of prick lately, whenever you got drunk.’

  Frankie had no comeback for that.

  ‘So what say we go hit Lisboa instead?’ Jack said.

  ‘That still there, is it?’

  ‘Part of the furniture. You could drop a ten megaton bomb round here and they’d still be serving the finest coffee this side of Bar Italia.’

  But it wasn’t just the coffee that was good, Frankie remembered. The Portuguese pastries would give Bar Italia a run for its money too.

  Their shadows stretched out ahead of them between the tat stalls either side of the street, as Jack steered them onto Portobello Road.

  ‘Do you remember?’ he said, sparking up a fag. ‘That time we crawled right the way down from here into Notting Hill, stopping at every effin’ bar on the way?’

  How could he not? ‘Yeah. Good times.’ A couple of years back now, when Frankie had still been able to drink recreationally. Before it had become a lifestyle, and then a deathstyle after that. When he’d still been able to switch off.

  His nostrils flared, catching a whiff of Jack’s baccy. Something inside him swooned. A longing for all of it. The old days. The fags and the booze washing over him, carrying him along. He gazed down Portobello Road, bathed in sunshine. A street stretching as far as the eye could see with pubs nicely lined up either side, all lifted by the blue sky overhead. How easy would it be?

  ‘But old times, eh?’ said Jack, rounding the corner onto Golborne Road. ‘Come on, let’s go get you that coffee.’

  They passed the fishmonger’s, antique shops and furniture stores, and bagged themselves a nice sunny table outside Lisboa and ordered a couple of espressos. Jack took a final drag of his fag before stubbing it out. Smoke drifted across Frankie’s face, but this time he just waved it away. The moment had passed. The temptation. He didn’t want it any more. Not the fags or the drink.

  Jack excused himself for a leak and Frankie took his opportunity to sweeten up his coffee even more. He was going to need it for wha
t was coming next. Because the time had come. No point in putting it off any more. Even though he knew, just knew, that no matter what he said, no matter how he handled this, it was going to lead to a row.

  He took the postcard from his jacket pocket and placed it image-up on the table. What he’d found in the drawers, after he’d gone through their contents, it had soon been enough to convince him that this was from her. No one else.

  Letters and postcards by the score, that’s what he’d uncovered amongst a bunch of other crap the Old Man had been keeping stashed away – old bills, cancelled insurance policies, maps.

  All the letters and cards had been from her. From Mum to the Old Man. But there was no evidence of any that had come back. Was that because she’d kept them somewhere else? Maybe he’d chucked them out for some reason, or had never bothered sending any himself?

  The correspondence went right back to when they’d first met. To some dance he’d walked her home from, to their first dinner. Even their first night together got a mention. Frankie’s skin prickled with embarrassment even now at the thought. The letters brought to life when he met her mum, Frankie’s gran, and when she’d stayed in Sicily with her distant relatives – each with unpronounceable names, like Vaccaro, Giordano and Ferrara. On one of them there’d even been a lipstick kiss, alongside the letters SWALK – sealed with a loving kiss. Shortly after they’d moved into their first flat together and the letters had stopped. Not much point in writing to each other when you lived under the same roof, Frankie guessed.

  He’d compared the handwriting in all of them, all the capital letters that he could, with the ones on the postcard sent to him. He’d even bloody gone out down Menzies and bought tracing paper and put the different samples side-by-side on another piece of paper. Until he was as good as certain – or as good as he reckoned he was ever likely to be – that the handwriting matched.

  It wasn’t all he’d found in that drawer either. There’d been newspaper clippings too from ’88, the year his mum went missing. Scraps from local papers, even a clipping from the Standard too and appeals for anyone who’d seen her, for her to get in touch with the police and let her family know she was well. But there were clippings about other women – unidentified female bodies. ‘Jane Does’, one of the clippings had said. Homeless people found dead. Drug overdoses. Drowning victims from the Thames. Each of them neatly crossed out whenever the poor woman in question had been identified. The victims weren’t just London either, they were in Essex, Kent, even as far as Ireland and France. It seemed like the Old Man, no matter what he’d told Frankie to the contrary, had been carrying out a little investigation of his own.

  ‘What you looking so serious about, bruv?’ Jack asked, sitting back down.

  9

  ‘This,’ Frankie said, tapping his finger firmly on the postcard and pushing it across the table towards Jack. ‘I got sent it a couple of days ago.’

  Jack picked it up and gazed down at the picture, baffled, before turning it over and reading it.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said.

  ‘What’s written there. It’s almost exactly the same as what Mum told me the day she went.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She made me promise that I’d always be there for you. No matter what happened.’

  Jack’s expression crumpled. ‘You mean, she knew she was actually going to be –’

  ‘Leaving? No. I’m still not sure if that’s what she actually meant.’

  ‘But you only thought to tell me about it now anyway?’ Jack couldn’t keep the resentment from his face.

  ‘Because she might have meant nothing by it. She might just have been doing what mums do. Just telling me to keep an eye out for you, that’s all.’

  ‘And now this postcard? Jesus.’ Jack pushed back his chair from the table, away from Frankie. ‘You’re telling me you think this is from her? That she’s still alive and wants to –’

  Jack couldn’t even bring himself to say it. But Frankie knew damn well what he’d been about to say. That she’s still alive and wants to see us again. Frankie already knew that Jack had blocked this possibility out a long time ago. Every time Frankie had ever raised their mum over the years, all Jack had done was look away. Like Frankie was some kind of a mug for even thinking about her at all. Only now did he see it, that glimmer of hope in his eyes.

  ‘Well, who else can it be?’ Frankie said.

  Jack flipped the postcard over and stared at the image again. ‘And, what? You expect me to believe that she’s just out there? Living it up on Mallorca? And that, what, she’s suddenly just decided to drop us a line? Out of the goodness of her own heart?’

  ‘I know it’s weird. And shouldn’t make any sense. But think about it. What happened to you last year. Everything I did to . . . to help you, Jack. She must have somehow found out.’

  Jack didn’t know the half of it, what Frankie had done, the things he’d done, to prove Jack’s innocence. Because Frankie had told him nothing the one and only time he’d asked. But he’d seen Frankie’s face. How badly he’d been beaten. Whatever Frankie had done for him, Jack knew it had been no walk in the park.

  ‘And what now?’ Jack said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that,’ he hissed, trying to keep his voice down. ‘What now? Because if you’re right, if this really is her, then why the hell is she writing to you? What does she want?’

  ‘Want? What do you mean, want? Can’t you see? This might be brilliant. This might be the best news ever. This might mean that she –’

  ‘That she what, bruv? Gives a shit?’

  ‘No. Yes. That she’s alive. That she’s still out there.’

  Jack shakily lit himself another cigarette – anger, fear, even hope? ‘Or maybe this isn’t even from her at all,’ he said.

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anyone. Some nutter.’

  ‘What, just writing to me out of the blue?’

  ‘Anyone,’ he repeated. ‘Someone who just doesn’t like you. Doesn’t like us. Someone who wants to wind us up.’

  ‘But what’s written there. What she said to me that day. How could someone else know? No one else was there when she said it. No one but me.’

  ‘You could just be reading all that into it. It might just be what you want to believe. What’s actually written here, it might not be about that at all.’

  ‘But what if it is?’

  Jack shoved the postcard back at Frankie. ‘Even if this is from her, even if she’s not dead like Dad says, and for some reason she’s decided that it’s suddenly OK now to get in touch . . . well, I don’t want to know.’ He stared unblinkingly at Frankie. ‘I mean it. If she’s been out there somewhere all this time, if she could have come back before, and chose not to . . .’

  ‘She might have had a reason. Can’t you see that? For keeping her distance till now.’

  ‘There is no reason. Not good enough for that. No way. She skipped out on us, that’s what she done. I don’t know what happened to her after that, but that’s how she left . . .’

  There it was again, skipped out, the same phrase he always used. The thing he truly believed.

  ‘She packed her bag, didn’t she?’ Jack went on. ‘Don’t you forget that.’

  ‘Someone packed her bag,’ Frankie said. ‘Took her things. Doesn’t mean it had to be her. Doesn’t mean she went of her own choice.’

  ‘Yeah, you tell yourself that, bruv. You tell yourself that like you always do. But what if you’re wrong, eh, Frankie? What if she just left us because she wanted to? Because she didn’t want to know us no more?’

  Frankie stared at Jack’s trembling fingers. Almost took the cigarette from him and stuck it in his own mouth. He wished he had a comeback for what he’d just said, but he didn’t, because what if he was right?

  ‘Even then, I’ve still got to know,’ he said. ‘One way or another. I’ve got to find out if this is from her.’

  Jack stub
bed out his cigarette. Frankie thought he was about to storm out, but instead he closed his eyes and rubbed at his brow.

  ‘You shown it to the Old Man yet?’ he finally asked.

  ‘No.’ He was booked in to visit him on Thursday, the day after tomorrow. It was the same day he visited him each week.

  ‘But you will?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He really didn’t. How would the Old Man react? Probably even worse than Jack. He’d hardly spoken about her for years.

  ‘He might be able to tell better than us if it’s her writing or not,’ Jack said. ‘I mean, they were together for nearly twenty years before he screwed that up too.’

  Him. Or her. Frankie had never asked either of his parents why they’d split up. He remembered him and Jack being sat down together and told. By her. How sometimes people stopped being in love. How sometimes when they did they started arguing all the time. How they’d both decided that it would be best for everyone if they spent some time apart.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s what I was thinking too.’

  ‘And he’s probably got a right to know an’ all, hasn’t he? I mean, if it really is her. And I’m not saying it is. I’m not saying that a-bloody-tall. But he’s got a right all the same. In case she is actually, I don’t know . . . reaching out, back into our lives, after all this time . . .’

  Jack sucked on his cigarette, staring at the floor. Frankie knew he was panicked. That he was panicked. That he wanted this whole thing with their mum to go away. Back into the box he’d been keeping it in all these years. So he could get back on with his life.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Frankie said. This conversation was done. Frankie put the postcard back in his pocket and stuck down a fiver for the coffees. He wasn’t in the mood for pastry any more. His appetite was shot.

  They walked back to Jack’s flat in silence. Tiffany was outside the restaurant again, and gave them a little wave and a smile. Frankie just nodded in reply, he felt wrung out and exhausted. Christ, if talking to his brother about his mum was this hard, how much worse was it going to be talking to his dad?