It’s About Love

“What did Zia say?” I ask.

Tommy flicks his cigarette out the window. “To wait out back and he’d dip out. What time is it?”

I look at my phone. “Half four. You should get one of them air fresheners, man, them little trees.”

“What you saying? You saying my car stinks?”

“Like an ashtray.”

“You wanna walk?”

My phone beeps. It’s a text from Dad.

How wis fist wk big man? Dodx

I picture him lying on his back under some battered old car, taking ten minutes to type the message, his thick thumb hitting four buttons at once.

Good thanks. See you tomorrow

Tommy tuts. “Where is he, man?”

I look up at the concrete building. “He’s probably being watched. What did he say the manager guy’s name was again?”

“Dunno. I’m starving though.”

Then the fire door pops open and Zia pokes his head out, like a meerkat sentry. He looks both ways, then nods at us. He’s shaved his beard back to rough stubble and he’s wearing a hair net. Tommy laughs. “He looks like my mum after a shower.”

“Yeah, ’cept your mum’s beard’s thicker.”

He tries to dig my thigh, but I grab his fist and squeeze.

“All right, all right, get off, Luke!”

I hold him a second longer, then let him go and open my door.

“Yes, boys!” whispers Zia. The whites of his eyes sparkle next to his skin. Fists bump, then he says, “Wait here,” and he’s gone. The fire door clicks closed and me and Tommy are standing with our backs against the wall.

Tommy points up at the security camera facing the car park. I nod. The door opens again and Zia hands me a small, torn cardboard box. I can see Babybels, a ripped pack of Jammy Dodgers and a can of Relentless. I look at Zia.

“What’s this?”

Zia frowns. “Dinner.”

Tommy looks into the box. “Dinner for who? A crack head?”

“If you don’t want it, don’t eat it, man. I have to be careful what I take, don’t I? We have to put the damaged stock out the back and if I tear expensive stuff, Pete the Prick flips out.”

Tommy takes out a Babybel. “Couldn’t you just get some crisps or something?”

Zia pulls the box back out of my hands. “Look, if you wanna give orders, go Chicken Cottage, yeah? I’m not a waiter. You want this or not?”

I put my hands on the box. “Course we do. Thanks, man. What time you finish?”

Zia lets go of the box and sighs. “Ten. We gotta stack up the shelves for the staff working tomorrow.” He scratches his velcro stubble. Tommy pulls open a Babybel and the three of us just stand there. One supermarket employee, one builder’s apprentice and me. A year ago we’d all be in school uniform.

Zia clicks his fingers. “Yo, check this out. I thought up a new bit. Upgrades, yeah? Like with phones, but for your friends and family.”

Tommy looks at me and rolls his eyes. Zia carries on. “So I’d be like, OK, I’ve got the standard Tommy friend, yeah? But I wanna upgrade, cos the new one has got better features and that, like he never asks to borrow money, and he doesn’t say dumb stuff and get us into trouble.”

Tommy pushes Zia. “Shut up, man. Why am I the one who gets upgraded? You say dumb stuff all the time.”

I smile. “That’s not bad, man. You think that up today?”

Zia nods. “Nothing else to do while I’m stacking sugar.”

“Yeah, well I’ve heard it somewhere before,” says Tommy.

Zia frowns. “Shut up, that’s mine. It needs work, but it could be good.”

Tommy smiles through a mouthful of cheese. “So you gonna sort out an actual gig then?”

Zia stares at him. “Maybe I will.” Something clatters from inside. Zia looks back over his shoulder. “I gotta go. Come get me later, yeah?”

We nod. Fists bump.

Me and Tommy start towards the car, but stop when Zia calls out, “Lukey!” We turn back. “One more week, eh?”

Tommy looks down. I give an awkward shrug. Zia does his good Samaritan smile. “Ring me if you wanna talk, yeah?”

Then he slides inside and the door shuts, leaving me and Tommy standing there, silent. I stare at the ground.

“You all right, Lukey?”

“I’m fine.” I start walking.

As we get to the car, Tommy points at the box. “Yo, the Relentless is mine.”

I look at him as I open my door. “Course it is.”

He opens his. “What you saying then? FIFA at mine?”

I nod. He smiles. “Friend upgrades, that is pretty funny.”

I stare up at the supermarket building, at the security camera, and picture a dark room with a wall of black-and-white screens. I zoom in on one and see me, standing next to the car, staring up into the lens.

One more week. Is he thinking about me?

Mum said: Life’s a record on loop; we just have to learn to love the song.

It’s after midnight when Tommy drops me off.

Mum works nights at the weekend and she turns the heating off when she leaves, so the house feels like an empty cave. I kick off my shoes and climb the stairs.

The landing light has no shade so the bulb shines a circle across the ceiling and walls. Standing outside my room the landing stretches away to my left, towards his door. I feel it pulling me. Like I always do. Like part of him is always here. So I walk towards it.

The gloss painted wood, something pulsing behind. The cheap silver handle. The dark jagged letters carved into the white:

MARC’S ROOM

I remember sitting in my pyjamas on the landing right here, my hair still damp from the bath, listening to him play the first Eminem album. Knowing the words were bad, but not really understanding and feeling like I wanted in on the secret.

I picture inside now. The perfectly made bed with his barbell underneath. The football posters. The black veneered shelves full of trophies, nearly two years untouched. Two years of waiting, weighing everything down, pressing things into their place. My hand moves up to my face. Not long now.

I push my bedroom door closed behind me, take Leon from my DVD shelves. I switch off my light, open my laptop on my bedside table to face my pillow, slide in the disc and lie down on top of my covers. The Columbia Pictures logo comes up, the lady holding the torch as the trumpets play, and I feel the tingle in my blood. My heads sinks into my pillow as the camera flies over the water, then trees, and the strings start to play and the names of actors appear and everything’s all right. I get to go somewhere else.

Morning sunlight splits my ceiling in half. I stare at the crack in the ceiling plaster that cuts from the corner in towards the lampshade like a thin black root and I feel my face.

I reach down into my bag, pull out my notepad, grab a pen from my bedside table and …

A waterfall of rain.

Leia’s staring from behind it. Her hair’s out in a big afro like from some old 1970s cop show. She’s wearing the big black coat, but the front is undone and there’s a clear V of naked skin. It’s like inside a tent or a cloud or something, everything washed in white. Leia licks her lips and raises her hand to point straight at me with two fingers. The water hits her hand and her face goes out of focus. Then there’s fire, behind her and on both sides, tall flames that don’t touch her but feel like they’re all around. Her face becomes clear again and she’s wearing an eye patch and the water is gone. Her head tilts. She smiles, then her mouth mimes a gun shot and she’s stepping forward, fingers still pointing, as she moves closer and her coat is falling open. Flames dancing. Closer, and her skin, and closer, and the fire behind her, and more skin, and closer and closer and

I lower my pen and stare at the ceiling. What the hell’s all that about? You think she dreamt about you?

My laptop’s still open from last night. I close it, then slide off my bed down into press-up position on the floor. Back level, I feel the warmth spread across my shoulders and I smile. Thirty reps, then fifty crunches and repeat. Every morning for two years. At least my body will be ready.

I can hear the TV as I come downstairs.

Mum’s lying under her duvet on the sofa, half watching a chunky man cooking something with fish. The curtains are open. Dad’s old varnished wooden clock, shaped like Jamaica, ticks like a mantelpiece metronome in between Marc’s trophy for under-sixteens’ 800m champion and a glass-framed photograph of a younger me and him on a climbing frame, me watching as he swings from the bars.

“Make us a coffee, Luke.” Her heavy eyes don’t leave the screen.

INT. – DAY

Close-up: Bubbles and steam cloud clear plastic.

I stare out of the window over the sink, holding the milk, as the kettle starts to boil. Our small square of back garden is overgrown and next to the fence I see the old deflated leather football nestled into the grass like a white rock.

I spoon coffee into the big mug with the black cat on it and keep stirring as I pour the hot water three quarters to the top. I shake the plastic milk carton like I’m making a cocktail, bang it on the sideboard to bubble it up like Marc showed me, then stir slowly as I add a little to the coffee, making a whirlpool of froth to the top edge of the mug.

Some people have machines that do it for you; in our house you do it yourself.

Mum’s eyes are closed and she’s mouth breathing. I kneel down next to the sofa, resting the mug on the floor and see she’s still wearing her nurse’s clothes under the duvet. Her skin’s pale and, with her mousey hair in a ponytail, she looks young for a mum. I hold my hand up next to her face. My skin’s darker than hers, but lighter than Dad’s, and I think about genes and twisted strings of code. Then I notice the photograph of Marc in his Aston Villa youth kit tucked between the cushion under her head and the arm of the sofa.

“Mum. Mum, why don’t you get into bed?” I put my hand on her shoulder.

She jerks awake and sits straight up, kicking the coffee all over my lap. I shout out and fall back as the hot coffee burns my thighs through my jogging bottoms. Mum looks terrified.

“Luke!” She falls forward off the sofa half on top of me, grabbing my shoulders. “Are you OK?”

The photo of Marc drops on to the floor. I can feel the heat branding my skin. “I’m OK, Mum. It’s all right.”

She sees the photograph and lets go of me to pick it up. Then she pulls the duvet away and looks down at the dark brown patch on the cream carpet. “Oh, look what you did! You need to be careful, Luke.”

“Me?”

“This is gonna need shampooing. Get a cloth, hurry up!”

So I go to the kitchen, my thighs pulsing from the heat, to get a tea towel to clean up the mess I didn’t make.

Walls work both ways. What keeps you safe, keeps you separate.

“Of course there’s a difference! These ones are Honey Nut, Dad. They’ve got honey and nuts in …”

“But I don’t want honey and nuts.”

I laugh. Zia’s putting on a voice for his dad, playing both parts in this little comedy routine, hunching over and everything, pretending to adjust his glasses. Me and Tommy are his audience, sitting on the lime-green leather sofa. I can see our dark reflection in the black screen of the massive TV behind him.

“Are you kidding, Dad? Let’s treat ourselves, yeah?”

“I don’t want a treat, I want breakfast.”

“But Dad, you’re the West Midlands Carpet King, you can afford to splash out on a better cereal. Look, these ones are called clusters, they look good.”

“Cornflakes.”

“How about Cocopops?”

“Cornflakes.”

“Fine, but let’s at least get the Crunchy Nut, yeah?”

“You think I became successful by eating crunchy nuts? What’s wrong with you? You used to love cornflakes, you too good for cornflakes now?”

I laugh and Zia stops his routine.

I nod at him. “This is good stuff, man.”

Zia bows. “My life is my scrapbook.”

He’s got no idea how cool that sounded, and I make a mental note to write it down later.

“Has your dad seen you do it yet?” says Tommy.

“Are you mad? In fact, we should go. He’ll be back soon.”

Me and Tommy stand up.

“You should show him, man. You’re getting good,” I say.

“Oh yeah. ‘Hey, Dad, Tommy and Luke reckon I should jack in the supermarket job you’re making me do and sack off your plans for me and the family business. Yeah yeah, they think I should try and become a stand-up comedian. They think I’ve got potential.’”

His face is pure sarcasm. Zia’s dad doesn’t even like us in the house, let alone giving his only son career advice. Tommy looks round the room. “Yo. Your sister about?”

Zia digs his arm. “Shut up, yeah? It’s not funny.”

“What? I’m just saying.”

“What are you just saying, Tom?”

Tommy blinks slowly. “I’m just saying, that I think Famida is a rare beauty and I’d like to make her my wife.”

I laugh. Zia stares at Tommy. Tommy carries on. “My older, foxy wife.” He closes his eyes and smiles like he’s just tasted the best ice cream in the world. Zia goes for him and they’re in a two-man rugby scrum. I watch their reflection in the TV.

Zia joined our school in Year Five, but he really came into his own when we moved up to secondary. He was the kid who always said the cool thing at just the right time. Some of the one-liners he rocked to teachers were incredible. Like the time when Mr Chopping was laying into us in chemistry and shouted, “Do you think I enjoy spending my time with immature young boys?” and without even blinking, Zia was like, “I don’t know sir, I’d have to browse your internet history.” Brilliant.

I punch them both and they stop wrestling. Tommy cracks his neck and takes out a cigarette. Zia cuts him a look. “Don’t even joke you idiot, come on, let’s go.”

“Where we going, anyway?” I say.

Tommy puts his cigarette back and shrugs. Zia puts his hands on our shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. We got wheels!”

INT. CAR – DAY

Close-up: A pine tree air-freshener swings from the rear-view mirror to the sounds of boys laughing.

We don’t have anywhere to go and Tommy’s happy just driving around, so that’s what we do. I get shotgun and Zia’s in the back behind me. There’s no stereo in the car, but it doesn’t matter cos just driving with no sound feels good. Like a music video on mute.

Then I have an idea.

We drive round to old Mr Malcom’s house and nick apples from the tree in his front garden, then park outside our old school. It’s only been a summer since we left, but it feels like forever. The black metal front gates are locked and it looks kinda small.

“Shithole,” says Tommy.

Zia nods. “Load up.”

Standing in a line in front of the gates, we cock our arms back and try to hit the technology block windows.

I’m the only one to reach, my apple exploding on the thick double-glazed glass. “Eat that, Mr Nelson.”

We stop by West Smethwick park and watch the second half of an under-twelves game. It’s Yellows vs Reds. Within minutes, Tommy’s shouting instructions to the Yellows’ defence.

Some of the parents stare.

The Yellows win 5:1.

At about four we stop at Neelam’s on the high road and get masala fish and ginger beers, then park up near the bus stop and eat in the car. Heat from our food steams up the windows.

“We could go anywhere,” says Zia through a mouthful of naan just as I was thinking the exact same thing; how we could just choose a direction and drive. All we’d need is petrol money. Tommy nods and I wonder what places they’re both imagining. London. Manchester. Paris.

“Wolverhampton,” says Tommy.

“What?”

He looks at me. “We could drive to Wolverhampton.”

I stare at him. “Wolverhampton? That’s where you wanna go?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” He takes a big bite of his naan. “Jamie says wolves girls are well up for it.”

Zia leans forward in between our seats. “I never went to Blackpool.”

Tommy scoffs. “What the hell’s in Blackpool?”

“What the hell’s in Wolverhampton?” says Zia. “At least Blackpool’s got a rollercoaster.”

Tommy thinks about it. “Oh yeah, the Pepsi Max one, eh?”

Zia’s nodding. “Exactly. The Big One.”

Tommy nods back. “Yeah, sick. I’d go Blackpool. We should go to Blackpool. What you saying, Lukey? Blackpool road trip soon?”

The two of them look at me, chewing in sync, and it feels like they’re on one side and I’m on the other.

I shrug. “Yeah, Blackpool. Wicked.”

Zia said: My life is my scrapbook.

INT. PUB – NIGHT

The cackle of old man laughter.

I step out of the toilet into the noise of The Goose. It’s already pretty full and I can’t see across the room, but I can hear Dad’s deep laugh from the corner. I weave between bodies, tensing my shoulders the whole time in case I’m bumped.

Most people in here know each other, or at least they know of each other. I’m Little Lukey, Big Joe Henry’s kid, to the older ones, and to everyone else, Marc Henry’s little brother. I’ve been getting served at the bar since I was fifteen.

As I pass the bar, Donna smiles at me. My brain sends mixed messages to my face and I half smile, half grimace. What the hell was that, you idiot?

The flatscreen TV up on the wall shows Sky Sports News and it looks out of place, like a rectangular piece of future pasted into an old photograph. Don’t start with that stuff. Not here.

Dad’s sitting in the corner on the leather bench with two workmates from the garage on either side of him, all five of them still in their dark blue overalls, like some old boy band with Dad as the lead singer. The wall behind them’s deep burgundy and holds cheaply framed pictures of the local area from like a hundred years ago.

Whenever I see Dad with other men, even now, his size still hits me. He’s another half bigger in every direction than the closest guy to him. I think of kids looking up at him when we’re in town, their eyes wide, like they’ve discovered Big Foot.

“You OK, son?” He’s looking at me as I sit down on my stool across the circular table.

“I’m fine, Dad. Just déjà vu.”

Dad’s mate Lenny sticks out his bottom lip as he looks at me. “Catching your old man up, aren’t you, college boy?” He bends his arms like he’s a posing body builder and I turn in my seat.

“He’ll be bigger than me,” says Dad, smiling proud and nodding at me. I sit up straight and look at him. His square face is tired and scuffed with oil, but his eyes sparkle. I think of him driving me to pick up my GCSE results and the pair of us sitting in silence in the car after I opened them and got what I needed.

Lenny points at me. “Just don’t forget us when you’re rich and famous, eh?”

He nudges Dad. Dad does his polite laugh and I watch the little fans of wrinkles spread from the outside corners of his eyes.

“What’s on your mind, Lukey?” His voice is like thick gravy and everything about him has that calm that comes from knowing that nobody can really mess with him. It makes you feel safe. Mum used to call him her ‘handsome Shrek’. He knows what I’m thinking about. Him asking me what’s on my mind is his way of letting me know that he knows, and that now isn’t the time or the place to talk about Marc coming home.

It’s never the time or the place.

I shrug and shake my head and he carries on his conversation about fan belts. I sip from my half of Guinness, letting the metal taste swim around my teeth, and watch him, turning the volume down in my head so the scene goes silent. I try to picture him my age, nearly seventeen and unsure of himself, or scared, or confused or even slightly nervous, but I can’t. Dad’s emotions only seem to do the primary colours; happy, sad or angry. I know that can’t be true, all the other shades must live underneath his skin.

I look round the room of mostly men. A collage of weathered faces from different generations and I think about how each face has a life attached to it. A string of details that stretches out of the door, along local roads to where they sleep. A wife, a kid, an old sofa, an empty fridge. The spaces they own, somewhere else. How they choose to come here, and how people like to keep the different parts of their lives separate.

“Stop thinking will you, Lukey?” Dad’s frowning. I stare back at him, trying to let him know how stupid his statement is, but I know what he means, and sometimes I wish I could.

Dad finishes his pint and sighs. “You know where too much thinking gets you.”

By the time Tommy shows up with Micky, Dad and his mates are telling the same story for the seventh time, with slurred edges. Micky rubs his knuckles over my head. “And how’s Mr College?” I look at Tommy as Micky grabs my shoulders. “Shame some of your brains couldn’t rub off on this one.” He points at Tommy with his thumb, then sits down and gets immediately absorbed into the group of grown-ups. Tommy doesn’t say anything. Dad sends me to the bar and Tommy takes my seat to go through the same customary greeting and piss-taking from each tipsy mechanic in turn that I got an hour and a half ago.

Donna’s changing a vodka bottle from the spirit rack. She smiles as I place my empty glass on the rubber beer mat.

“Same again, Lukey?” Her voice is a beam of light cutting through the coarse bush of testosterone. What the hell are you talking about?

I look down.

“Two pints and two halves please. Micky and Tommy are here.”

Donna puts the vodka bottle down and starts to pour the drinks. I’m watching her as she moves, like she’s operating a machine she’s known forever and, like I do most times I speak to her, I get a flash of lying on my side on our living room floor under my duvet. I’m ten years old and pretending to be asleep while her and Marc fool around on the sofa behind me. Getting a sneaky glimpse of her black bra.

“So how’s college?” She places two halves on the bar and starts on the pints.

“All right, yeah,” I say, and even as the words are coming out of my mouth, I know they’re too quiet.

“What? I can’t hear you, babe, speak up.” She just called you babe.

I punch out my words to cut through the pub noise, just as things fall quiet. “It’s all right. Just started this week.”

My stomach drops as people turn to look at me. My head goes down as I wait for them to stop staring. Donna puts a full pint next to the two halves and they look like a single parent Guinness family. I stop myself saying it out loud. She’s laughing.

“That’s good. Knew you were the one with the brains.”

Her eyes lift my head up and I’m looking at her. Her black hair cut short like only some girls can do, her chocolatey eyes, the warmth in her smooth face. Her mum’s Italian and you can tell. I crack a smile and feel the skin of my cheek, and I want to say sorry. Sorry for what happened.

“Be uni next, eh?” she says.

I hold out the tenner Dad gave me. “Dunno about that.”

Donna holds my hand as she takes the money. Her thin fingers are strong.

“You get out of here first chance you get.” And she’s smiling, but there’s something else in her face, and she knows I see it. I look down again and she lets go.

“You do what you want, handsome. Ignore us bitter old ones.”