The Make

make a barber. In some places, he was nearly bald; in others he had six or twelve or two inches of auburn hair remaining. Not a good look. One of his first jobs once he’d been out of the hospital’s clutches had been to get his arse over to a good hairdresser, tout suite.

‘Oh my God, what happened?’ asked the male stylist.

A nutter happened, that’s what.

‘Student prank,’ said Harry.

‘Well my dear you should sue,’ said the stylist, and proceeded to trim off anything that remained of Harry’s previously long and lustrous locks.

‘Fuck me,’ he’d said when he looked in the mirror at the finished job.

He looked very unlike himself. With a uniform inch of hair over most of his scalp, and the worst of the bald bits concealed, added to his weight loss courtesy of the Deano Drax starvation diet, he looked harder, meaner.

‘You look so different,’ Em told him now. ‘That hair. You are going to grow it back, aren’t you?’

‘If you like,’ said Harry. He rather liked the lean-fighting-machine look, but he could see that Em wasn’t impressed. She preferred the louche cavalier Harry, and what Em wanted, she got, as far as he was concerned.

‘We were so worried about you,’ said Jackie, when they all sat down and tea and cakes were ordered.

So was I. ‘Hey, I’m fine. It’s over.’

‘That man . . .’ said Emma.

‘Deano Drax.’

‘Why did he do this to you, Harry? What did you do?’

‘I didn’t do a thing. It was George.’

‘Your brother?’

Harry nodded. ‘George rescued Alfie from Deano Drax. After that, Deano was after all the Doyles with a vengeance.’

Jackie’s face was clouded with concern. ‘But . . . he’s locked up now, isn’t he? He won’t do anything like this again . . .?’

‘My brother-in-law talked to the police yesterday. Drax is still in hospital, in a coma. They think he’ll come out of it. And after that, it’ll be prison for a long stretch.’

‘But what if they eventually let him out?’ asked Emma, with a shiver.

‘They won’t,’ said Harry, trying to convince himself as much as her. He was afraid they would.

‘We were so scared,’ she said, her blue eyes locked with his. ‘We thought we’d lost you.’

‘Me? Nah.’ Harry grinned reassuringly, although he didn’t feel like it.

Harry knew they were right to be concerned for the future. No one could predict what would happen with Drax. And now he was feeling better, he had to face the fact that he was going to lose Em very soon. She was due to go back to Hong Kong next week, after New Year. She would go on with her life, a high-flying, exciting life of opportunity, and he . . . well, what the fuck was he going to do? He’d already decided that escorting wasn’t for him, although taking part in it had been a revelation to him. He’d met Jackie, and Em, after all. So there was no way he could say it had been all bad. But . . . what now?

Their tea and cakes arrived. Harry fell upon the cakes like a starving man which, up until a few days ago, was precisely what he had been. His two girls watched him indulgently. He felt so at home with them, so happy. But it would all end soon.

And then . . . what?

He just didn’t know.

Chapter 79

Gracie, Suze and Lorcan called in to see George just before New Year. He was out on a normal ward now, and he could speak. His head was still a bandaged mess, but that would heal. He was returning, oh so slowly, to normal.

When they arrived, Alfie was there. They stood at the door to the ward. There were six beds in there, all occupied; George’s was at the far end on the left, beside a big window. Weak winter sunlight was filtering through the grime and alighting on Alfie’s blond hair, lending him a halo of gold.

Alfie and George were holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. As they stood there at the door, George said something and Alfie laughed, then raised George’s hand to his lips and kissed it.

‘Oh,’ said Suze, startled.

Gracie looked at Lorcan, then back over to her brother and the boy sitting with him. She refocused. Realized that what she was looking at was a pair of lovers, totally absorbed in each other. Everything clicked into place. Alfie’s outrage at Sandy’s claims that she and George were engaged. George’s behaviour in his early years, the way he had always seemed to keep girls at a distance. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense.

‘Jesus,’ said Suze, and Gracie could see that she was really shocked.

‘Why don’t you take a moment outside?’ Gracie suggested.

Suze looked at her daughter. ‘Did you know about this?’ she hissed.

‘No. I didn’t. But this is still George, we still love him.’

‘I don’t know . . .’ Suze shook her head.

‘Come on. Just take a minute, okay? Lorcan, stay with Mum outside, will you? Just for a while. I’ll go see George.’

Lorcan and Suze went back outside and Gracie went over to the bed. She noticed that Alfie slid his hand away from George’s as she approached, but George snatched it back again.

‘Hiya George,’ she said.

‘Gracie,’ said George hoarsely. ‘After all this time. What brought you back down here?’

‘You did,’ said Gracie with a smile. ‘And a fire at my casino, and a bag of Harry’s hair. Hi, Alfie.’

‘Hi Gracie.’ Alfie beamed at her.

‘Did you actually know I was standing there talking to you, back in Drax’s sitting room?’

‘I thought you were an angel. But what you were saying sort of got through, so I followed you out.’

‘Alfie’s been telling me what happened out at that bastard Drax’s place,’ said George.

‘It was pretty scary,’ said Gracie.

‘But Drax is out of it, right?’

‘Yeah, he is.’ She hoped Drax was going to be put away for a long, long time, but there was a niggling doubt at the back of her mind, a feeling that this might not be over. She turned her thoughts away from that, back to George – and Alfie.

‘Has this been going on long?’ she asked.

‘This? This what?’ asked George.

Gracie nodded to Alfie, then to George. ‘Come on, George. What do you think I am, blind?’

‘Ah,’ said George.

‘We’re in love,’ said Alfie, sticking out his chin, daring her to make trouble.

Gracie smiled. ‘Alfie, I’m on your side.’ She glanced between them. ‘God, George, you might have given us a clue though. And I think Mum’s in shock; she’s outside but she just saw you and Alfie holding hands.’

‘Fuck,’ said George, his face falling with dismay.

‘She’ll come round,’ said Gracie. ‘Although I don’t think your fiancee Sandy’s going to be very pleased.’

‘She’s mental,’ said George.

‘That bitch,’ said Alfie vehemently.

Gracie looked a question at them both.

‘She was a client I escorted,’ said George. ‘But she started getting funny ideas. That we were dating, that we