For another second they just stare at me in stunned silence. Then they turn.
'That's not fair,' Ed screams, his face flushed red with anger. 'You can't do that.'
'I just did, now shut up.'
The room is suddenly filled with more noise than ever as they both protest at the same time. It's loud enough to bring Josh waddling in. He starts screaming just because the other two are. I ignore the lot of them. I push past them all and storm through the flat to the bathroom. I sit down on the toilet. The lock on the door is broken and I have to push my foot against it to keep it closed and to keep the kids out.
'Dad, will you tell him,' Ed shouts from just outside the bathroom. Christ, is there no escape? What do I have to do to get some peace and quiet? 'Dad, Josh is messing with the remote control.'
I can't bring myself to answer. I know he knows I'm in here but I just can't bring myself to speak to him. I push my foot a little harder against the door as Ed tries to push his way in from the other side.
'Dad… Dad, I know you're in there…'
I let my head loll back on my shoulders and I look up at the ceiling. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the window. It's pretty small but we're on the ground floor and I reckon I could squeeze through if I really tried.
Jesus Christ, what am I thinking?
Am I seriously considering trying to escape from my own house through the toilet window? Bloody hell, there has to be more to life than this.
iii
Chris Spencer had been laying the drive in Beechwood Avenue for almost a day and a half and the job was not far off finished. It was a cash-in-hand job on the side for Jackie, a friend of a friend of his girlfriend. He'd started digging out and laying the foundations first thing yesterday morning and now, Saturday lunchtime, he was two- thirds of the way through putting down the block paving. It was hard, physical work and he was on his own today after being let down by his brother who, for a few quid, usually helped him out with jobs like this. It was a cold day but at least it was dry now. It had been raining earlier and he'd started to wonder whether all the effort and the loss of his usual Saturday morning lie-in would be worth the wad of cash he was hoping to shove in his back pocket.
The wheelbarrow was empty again. Tired and hungry he stood up and brushed the sand off his knees, ready to fetch another load of paving bricks. A couple more hours hard graft, he thought, and that would be everything but the edging stones done. He pushed the barrow over towards the half-empty pallet on the grass verge at the side of the road. His calculations had been just about spot-on, he smiled to himself. He'd quoted Jackie for two and a half pallets of bricks but it looked like the job was only going to need two. He'd shove the rest of the bricks in the back of the van and use them on the next job. It wasn't much of a saving but it all helped. It was all profit.
He was half-way through filling the barrow when the motorbike pulled up beside him. It was a huge, powerful thing with a wide exhaust and an impossibly loud engine. He'd heard it approaching from the bottom of the hill. Must be Jackie's son, he thought. She'd said something about him coming over to see her this afternoon. He glanced up and nodded an acknowledgement to the rider as he parked his machine and rested it on the kickstand. The leather-clad figure flicked back his visor and took off his helmet.
'All right, mate, how you getting on?' he asked. 'Mum said it was looking good.'
'Almost done now,' Spencer replied, loading the last few bricks into the barrow and standing up straight. He stretched his back and looked across at the other man. 'Couple of hours and I should be finished. Just got to get the rest of these bricks down and finish off the edges. I think it's…'
He stopped speaking and stared into Jackie's son's face.
'What's the matter?'
Spencer couldn't answer. He couldn't speak. He was filled with a sudden, indescribable sense of panic and fear. His heart thumping in his chest, he took a couple of nervous backwards steps towards the house and tripped up the lip of the bricks he'd already laid, landing on his backside. The other man walked towards him and held out his hand to help him up.
'You feeling okay, mate? Want me to get you a drink of water or something?'
Spencer recoiled. He scrambled back to his feet, grabbing a heavy lump hammer as he got up. He launched himself at Jackie's son and wrapped his left hand round his throat. Knocked off-balance the two men fell awkwardly to the ground, Jackie's son on his back with Spencer on top, pinning him down.
Spencer lifted the lump hammer and brought over a kilogram of metal smashing down into the middle of the other man's face, caving in his forehead and the bridge of his nose and killing him almost instantly. He lifted the gore-covered hammer and bludgeoned what was left of his face another five times, leaving his head virtually concave, hollowed out like a deflated football.
Spencer got up and stood breathless over the corpse before being thrown off balance again. Jackie, wailing like a banshee, ran from the front of the house and shoved him away from the body of her son. She screamed and dropped to the ground when she saw the hole in his head and the mass of splintered bone and pulped flesh where his face used to be. She looked up at Spencer but all she saw was the bloodied edge of the lump hammer as he swung it towards her.
6
'We're going to be late,' Lizzie grumbles. I know we are, but there's not a lot I can do about it. If she'd given me more notice that we were supposed to be taking Edward to a friend's birthday party then we would have been fine. Half an hour to get the kids ready and out isn't enough. Part of me wishes she'd forgotten about it for another hour. I want Ed to have a good time and enjoy himself of course I do, but I'm not looking forward to spending the next couple of hours sitting in a kid-friendly and adult-unfriendly 'fun-barn' attached to the side of a pub. It's not how I'd planned to spend my Saturday afternoon.
'We'll get there when we get there,' I tell her. 'Getting wound up about it isn't going to help.'
'I'm not wound up,' she snaps, proving that she is. 'I just don't like being late, that's all.'
'We won't be late. We've got a few minutes yet. The pub's only round the corner.'
'I know but look at the traffic.'
'There's probably been an accident or something,' I tell her, sitting up in my seat and craning my neck to try and see further down the road. 'I think there's something going on at the top of the hill. Once we get past that the traffic will clear.'
I hear a muffled thump and a yelp from behind me. I glance over my shoulder and glare at the kids who are crammed shoulder to shoulder on the back seat. They hate being in the car nearly as much as I do. It's too small for us all to fit in but what can I do? I can't afford to change it so they'll just have to put up with it for now. We all will. Lizzie looks at them and then leans closer to me.
'We're going to have to feed them,' she whispers, keeping her voice low so they don't hear.
'Ed will eat at the party, won't he?'
'Yes, but…'
'We'll get the other two a packet of crisps or something,' I say quickly before she gets any ideas. I think I know where this is heading.
'They'll need more than that,' she says. 'We're going to be out for a couple of hours. Why don't we just make it easy for ourselves and have a meal.'
'Because we can't afford it.'
'Come on, Danny, we might as well. We're going to be sat in the pub anyway.'
'We can't afford it,' I say again. How much clearer do I need to make it? 'Look, we'll drop Ed off then go back home and have some dinner. I'll come back and pick him up again after the party.'
'Is it worth all the hassle and the extra petrol? Let's just stop and have a meal and we can…'
'We can't afford it,' I snap for the third time as we reach the top of the hill and pass whatever it is that's
