by Adam Millard
THREE
Past YE OL’ SEAFOOD CENTRE Jamie ran, his nose so full of sweat and snot that for once he couldn’t make out the distinctive aroma permeating the area around the ramshackle business. A stack of pallets threatened to crush him as he took the next corner, though that might just have been his imagination as they didn’t even wobble as he brushed past them at ten miles-per-hour.
Part of him wanted to hide, to wait Lee Kurtz out, and he could. In these back streets, away from the seafront, there were myriad hiding places. There were cobblestone alleyways no more than a foot wide you could slip into; there were garden walls you could jump, lie down right there in someone’s flower border until the danger had passed.
There was also the chance that Lee Kurtz wasn’t as dumb as his portly counterpart, and so Jamie kept running, aiming for home and hoping that Lee gave up well before then.
“I’m gonna find you!” Lee’s voice echoed around the thin street, though he was nowhere to be seen, hadn’t yet made it onto that particular lane. By the time he did, Jamie was onto the next, panting and sweating and wondering how the day had gone so very wrong.
This is Scottie’s fault, a voice inside Jamie’s head chirped up. If he hadn’t tossed them out of the arcade, for your benefit, might I add, you’d be enjoying a nice casual stroll home right about now.
Jamie knew that wasn’t true, that Scottie had done the right thing. Those assholes were going to cause trouble for him no matter what the outcome. If not now then later.
He quickly made his way onto Waters Lane, sprinted past the corner shop-cum-post office-cum off-license, and continued up the hill. Lee was still nowhere to be seen, but Jamie knew his pursuer wouldn’t give up that easily. Not if it meant having to face the wrath of his Commander-in-Chief. I tried to keep up with him, Calum, I did, I did, but the fucker’s got a bit of pace…
Up the hill, past the playground with the screaming kids and smoking parents, Jamie turned right into Stable Field Way. When his house came into view, every part of him screamed out with joy. He was sure neither Calum or Lee knew where he lived, which meant that as long as he made it in through his front door, this chase was over and Lee had a rather long walk back to Calum with his tail between his legs.
As he ran down the path of his house, slamming into the front door and turning the handle at the exact same time, Jamie didn’t notice the lack of car parked on the driveway. It just didn’t register with him. But then when the door failed to open, it hit him like a freight train.
His mom wasn’t back yet.
“Fuck!” he muttered. He was exhausted, and it was all for nothing if he didn’t get out of sight and fast. Where’s my key? He rifled in his pockets, searching for the small Yale key which opened the front door. His heart raced as he went through each of his pockets, raced even faster each time his hand came out empty. Fuck! He tried to remember the last time he’d had it. He’d definitely had it at lunchtime, hadn’t he? It didn’t matter. It was just one more thing he would have to explain to his mother later.
Moving along the side of the house, Jamie eyed the fence, but knew he would be wasting his time trying to open it. His mom always kept it bolted in three places, except on bin days when it was left open so that the men could get to the trash. Today was certainly not a bin day, and that fence looked mightily high, especially after such an intense run.
You can do it, Jamie… just… breathe… and—
The run-up wasn’t ideal, but it was enough to get momentum, and as Jamie leapt for the top of the fence he knew he’d underestimated himself. He was up and over that thing in less than three seconds, albeit noisily, but as he came to rest on the other side, the relief washed over him and his emotions threatened to get the better of him.
Fuck you, Lee! he thought. And fuck you Calum!
He tried not to think about tomorrow, when they would no doubt catch up to him anyway. He tried not to think about that at all.
FOUR
Scottie Lipman entered The Lacon Arms at just after six, which was good timing, as far as he was concerned, because happy-hour had just started. The pub was busy, as usual, but Scottie was only here for an hour. The majority of his drinking would be done back at his room, which was built—as if nothing more than an afterthought—at the rear of the arcade, where it was cheaper and therefore a helluva lot easier to get fucking wasted. Occasionally, though, he wasn’t averse to a drink or two of the social persuasion; it was the only time he really got to talk to adults.
“Hey, Scottie,” said Angela Michaels, The Lacon Arms’ most sought after barmaid. Scottie was old enough to be her father—or at least her naughty uncle, he thought, but quickly regretted it—and knew that someone as young and pretty as Angela wouldn’t be interested in a hulking barrel of a tattoo-toting reject like him. Knowing your limits is a good thing, and Scottie was wholly aware of his shortcomings, of which there were plenty.
“Can I get a double JD, no ice, when you’re ready, Angela?” He rifled through his pocket for the wallet which was always there. Often empty, but always reliably there. When he felt the thickness of the wallet as he brought it out, he smiled. “And one for yourself, if you’re in the mood.”
Angela poured two shots of JD into a short glass, smiling as she worked. She had the prettiest smile, framed by dimples which looked deep enough to drown in. “Tough day at the arcade?” She handed him the glass, watched him knock it back in one go and place it back down on the counter, alongside a crisp twenty.
“Ah, no tougher than usual,” he said, watching as Angela poured another two shots into the glass. He wondered if she knew he had a drink problem, if she worried about such things, or if she was happy so long as he was, and so long as the money kept going into the till. “Had some trouble with a bunch of kids, but that’s kids for you. Angela, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you before, but you don’t have any…”
Angela turned to the till and keyed in the correct sale. “Kids?” she said—almost snorted. “Hell no. How old do you think I am?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Scottie said, feeling the burn in his chest as the whiskey went down and did its thing. “I was just about to offer you some sage advice.”
“Always useful.” She handed him his change, which he placed down on the bar with every intention of putting it all in the till before the end of happy-hour.
“Don’t,” Scottie said. “Don’t ever have kids. They grow up to be little fuckers. Trust me on that. I have to watch the little bastards on a daily basis, coming into the arcade, sticking bubble-gum on anything it’ll stick to, spilling drinks and… fucking ketchup all over my machines. Kids are dirty, and they’re assholes.”
Now Angela did laugh, and those dimples threatened to swallow Scottie whole. He wouldn’t have complained about it, either. “Well, I wasn’t about to start spitting out kids anyway, but after that little tirade, I might get rid of my womb on eBay.”
“Good,” Scottie said. “Best move you’ll ever make. Just remember me for fifteen percent commission.” He grinned and finished off the second drink. Angela set about replenishing his glass, leaving the JD bottle right there on the counter where she could easily reach it in a minute or two when the entire process could be repeated again.
“You never had kids, did you?”
The words came out so fast and so easily that they were confusing to Scottie. His frown said as much. “Who, me?” Angela nodded, watching him intently. “I did have one kid,” he said, though he didn’t know why he was saying it. It was the last thing he wanted to talk about. It was always the last thing he ever wanted to talk about. And so it came as something of a surprise when his son’s name crossed his lips less than a second later. “Jake.” God, this isn’t how I planned my night, he thought. Some fucking happy-hour.
Angela must have sensed something was wrong; the smile dropped from her face, the dimples vanished, and eye-contact quickly followed. “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pressed—”
“No, it’s fine,
” Scottie said. “It’s just… I… well, Jake died when he was three years old. I wasn’t there at the time, but he managed to get out into the garden.” Don’t fucking think about it. Just tell the story, but don’t fucking think about it! “We had a big fishpond. Jake loved the fish, but he used to call ‘em tish. I don’t know why.” So long ago, and yet it hurt like it happened yesterday. “That day—three days before his fourth birthday, if you can believe it—I was working a shitty sales job, doing door-to-door, getting told to piss off more often than not, but it paid the pills, or at least it did when the commissions came in. Janet, my wife at the time, was at home. She didn’t have to work; we had enough coming in with me selling life-insurance to people who I managed to convince had a good chance of dying in the next three-to-five years, and our money was topped up with certain benefits.” Scottie picked up his glass, took a few sips, hissed as the whiskey worked at his gut, then continued. “Only left him for a minute, Janet said. To change the bedsheets, she reckoned.”
Angela grimaced, as if this sudden imparting of new information caused her tangible pain. And perhaps it did. Scottie was too busy staring at the water-ring his glass had left on the counter to notice.
“That day, Jake must have wanted to get up close and personal with the tish. There was no way of contacting me, either. I didn’t have a mobile phone. Only pricks and yuppies had mobile phones back then. Not like now. You know, I’ve seen kids—can’t be older than five—walking around the arcade with their face buried in an iPod.”
The barmaid seemed to appreciate this momentary change of subject. “It’s the same in here,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve found mobile phones down the back of the sofas, loaded to the brim with pictures of cartoon characters and videos of Postman Pat.”
Scottie scoffed, then became serious once again. “Anyway,” he said, swirling the remains of the whiskey in his glass, “by the time I got home in my beat up Sierra, the street was filled with blues and twos. Janet was standing at the front door. I’ve never seen a person so white in my whole life. Like a ghost, she was. Whiter than that, even. And she was shaking like she had that… what is it that kid from the films had?”
“Parkinson’s?”
“Just like that,” Scottie said. “My boy had been dead for three hours, give or take, and in those three hours I’d managed to sign up six dopey old people for critical illness policies they didn’t even fucking need.” He knocked back his drink and sighed. Down went the glass, in went the refill. A perfectly-oiled machine.
“I’m so sorry, Scottie,” Angela said. Scottie could see that she meant it, but in that moment all he wanted was to see those dimples again.
Waving her apology away, Scottie said, “It was a long time ago. I haven’t thought about it for ages.” A lie. “These things are meant to test us.” It happened around the same time you started drinking heavy. If it was a test, he had failed miserably.
“That one’s on the house,” Angela said, motioning to the freshly-filled glass on the counter. “Don’t tell anyone.” She winked at him, as if a huge secret had just passed between them.
Scottie smiled as he picked up the drink, watched Angela go about her business. He glanced up at the clock hanging behind the bar, next to the peanuts attached to a piece of card with a nude woman hiding behind the packets yet to be purchased like some saucy advent calendar.
It was twenty-past-six.
Half an hour later Scottie would be staggering back to the arcade, thinking of Jake, cursing his useless ex-wife, and fighting the urge to simply walk across the dunes and throw himself into the sea.
Perhaps I’ll see some tish, he thought, humourlessly.
FIVE
Jamie sat staring at the fish pie sitting on the plate in front of him. Steam rose from it in great tendrils, as if the thing was still alive. Sitting opposite, blowing noisily on a forkful of piping-hot cod in white sauce, his mother—Linda—watched him, had been watching him for almost a full minute. When the fork went down with a clatter, Jamie knew what was going to come next.
“Are you going to tell me why you were in the garden when I got back?” She poured herself a tall glass of water before filling Jamie’s glass. Jamie wondered what would happen if he picked up the glass and slammed it straight into his face. Would he still have to answer the question? “Don’t tell me you’ve lost another key…”
Silence. Jamie was too busy contemplating picking his fork up and slamming it directly down into the sinewy part of his hand. Would the fork embed in the table, or would the bone stop it from going all the way through?
Would I still have to answer the damn question?
Linda sighed. She already knew the answer, didn’t need Jamie to confirm it. Instead she picked up her fork and resumed blowing the food clinging to the tines.
“How was Grannie?” Smooth move, buster. Change the subject, show some actual interest in the old woman, save yourself a grounding.
“Fine,” said his mother. “She asked about you, why you hadn’t come to see her.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her you had a lot of studying to do,” said Linda. “I wasn’t gonna tell her the truth. That you’d rather hang around that damn arcade all day.” She finally pushed the fork between her teeth and slid the food from it on the way back out.
Jamie felt awful, and yet a small part of him knew that he hadn’t really missed anything. It wasn’t as if Grannie Dale could still get about. She had no adventures to share, or stories to tell. They would have sat in silence, staring at the huge wooden TV in the corner of the room even though it wasn’t switched on, wondering why the hell the clock sitting on the mantelpiece was so loud, for Christ’s sake. After three hours of that, his mother would have suggested a game of Scrabble, and Grannie Dale would have courteously declined because ‘I can’t see the tiles as easily as I used to’. Three cups of rancid piss-water tea later, they would head out to the car, waving back at the net-curtains, not knowing if the old lady was standing beyond them, waving back, or not. It was hardly a trip to fucking Alton Towers.
“I’ll take the tram next week, go and see her,” Jamie said, prodding at his fish-pie with very little intention of eating it. Living by the sea, you quickly grew tired of fish in its many forms. What I wouldn’t give for a hearty McDonald’s…
“You?” said his mother, incredulous. “On the tram?”
“That’s what I said.” Jamie couldn’t believe this. He was trying to do the right thing, and here he was being ridiculed for it.
Linda must have sensed his discontent; she began to nod overenthusiastically, grinning as she did. Jamie could just about make out the tiny fish bones protruding from her teeth, and if he hadn’t been sure about not eating his dinner before, he was now. “She’ll love that,” Linda said. “I’ll telephone her, let her know you’re going. What day—”
“Nobody says telephone anymore, Mom,” Jamie said. “And I’m not sure what day it will be yet, so don’t go telling her. I’d rather just show up, if I’m being honest.”
“She’s a busy lady, your grannie,” said Linda. “You might want to let her know beforehand so she can pencil you in.”
Jamie was about to retort when he realised his mother, who wasn’t the funniest person in the room at the best of times, was being sarcastic. “I’ll try to keep it to the days she’s not playing tennis or running marathons,” he said.
“Don’t forget abseil Wednesdays,” Linda added, though she felt guilty for making fun almost immediately, and once again tried to change the subject. “Can I ask you a question?”
“If it’s about dinner, I’m just not hungry.”
“No, it’s not about dinner, and let it be known that there is nothing wrong with fish-pie. You used to love fish-pie when—”
“When I was little and not sick of eating fish or seafood every single day of the week?”
“Smart-mouth.” Linda sipped at her water before asking, “No, I wanted to
know if everything was okay with you. You’ve been acting strange ever since you broke up for the summer holidays. Kind of depressed, but then I ask myself, what could a kid of fifteen be depressed about?”
“I’m not depressed,” Jamie said. As far as he was concerned, depression was for drug-addicts and the jobless. He was neither, at least not yet. It was Calum Rowe and Lee Kurtz giving him shit day-in, day-out. It was this place, not having any real friends, and school? He wasn’t missing that one jot. In fact, he was dreading going back after the summer. His last year, one filled with important exams and nights of endless study. And none of it mattered because, in the end, he was going to ask Scottie for a job at the arcade, and Scottie was going to say yes, and that would be that. “I’m fine.” He wasn’t great at lying, however he was a teenaged boy, and when a teenaged boy tells you that they’re fine, you’d better believe it because you’re not going to get anything else out of them.
His mother knew that better than anyone.
“You’d tell me if… if you were having problems or you were in any sort of trouble…” She let that one hang, though they both knew she would be the last to know if he was in trouble, no matter how serious.
“Everything’s cool, Mom.” He picked up his fork and prodded indiscriminately at the pie, anything to pass the time until he could go to his room and listen to his music or play his guitar. He was trying to learn the new Kaiser Chiefs album in its entirety, and there were a few songs he hadn’t quite got the hang of yet.
There was a moment of silence, and then Linda said, “If I make you a peanut butter sandwich, will you eat it?”
Jamie sniggered. “I thought you’d never ask.”
SIX
The truck thundered along the motorway, its driver smoking a roll-yer-own and doing everything he could not to fall asleep at the wheel. His name was Jack Beeton, and Hemsby was his last stop for the night. By six a.m. he would be tucked up in his cab, watching barely legal porn on his laptop, maybe rubbing one out before nodding off for a couple of hours. Then it was all the way back to Bristol, cargo delivered, clock out for the weekend, maybe hit a few bars, a strip-club, JUMPIN’ JACK’S CASINO, where his wages would take a hammering or he would come away flush as fuck, phone in sick on Monday morning, hit a few more strip-clubs…