‘Just get your foot out of the door.’
‘I’m not moving until I get a chance to talk about this properly.’
Her face suddenly twitches into animation. ‘Fine, okay?
Yes, fine, I’ll let you in. Now get your fuckin’ foot out of my fuckin’ door, alright?’
I remove my foot, try to ignore the pain. She closes the door, slides the chain off and opens it up again.
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘But if you’re after a cuppa, you can fuck right off.’
I follow Alison down a dim hallway into a living room that looks like it’s been decorated by a bunch of drunken students.
The curtains are held up with drawing pins. Unframed posters dot the walls, a thin layer of dust on them. Alison heads straight for a ratty-looking easy chair with a throw rug on it, and sits on the arm. A small lamp provides the only light in the room, even though I catch a whiff of a scented candle.
‘I’ve still got some things I need to ask you,’ I say, taking a seat on the couch. I can’t make her out. Sitting there on the arm of the chair, an oversized Elvis T-shirt stretched over her knees, she looks her age. I think. I can hear her biting her nails, but the light in this place makes her look like one of those anonymous witnesses, her features hidden in a half shadow.
After a long silence, punctuated with her gnawing, she finally sniffs. ‘Why didn’t you call Mo?’
“I told you. I’ve got questions for you.’
‘Fuck do you care?’
‘I don’t know. Got some stuff to get straight, that’s all.’
‘So you’re still going to call him?’
‘You don’t want me to? Way I see it, I’d have thought you’d be eager to leave.’
There’s a sound that could pass for a laugh, but I’m not sure. ‘You don’t know the first fuckin’ thing, do you?’
‘That’s why I’m here, Alison.’
She leans over to grab a cigarette from a gold Bensons pack and the light from the lamp catches her face. A flash of recognition, but I can’t place who. It’s not Mo. Her face is round, her body type a far cry from Mo’s streak of piss physique. And she doesn’t have Morris Tiernan’s hard features.
In fact, it’s difficult to believe she’s related to either man. Her face is softer, like a child. Mousy hair, mousy eyes.
She must get her looks from her mother.
That is, what little looks she has left. A big ugly bruise covers her right cheek. It looks fresh and painful.
‘Rob do that to you?’
She glances at me, then lights the Benson. ‘What do you think?’ She blows smoke at me. ‘Who did your nose?’
‘A bouncer at that club you used to work at.’
She smiles with the healthy side of her face. ‘Good.’
‘What was the fight about?’ I say.
‘What fight?’
‘The fight that landed you with that. The barney you had last night.’
“I didn’t fight last night.’
“I was outside, Alison.’
She takes a long drag on her cigarette, stares at me as she exhales through her teeth. ‘Then why didn’t you come up?
You might’ve been able to help me out a bit.’
“I thought about it.’
‘Thanks for that. A lot of fuckin’ good thoughts do me.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘About what?’
‘About Rob.’
‘What can I do? It depends on you, dunnit? I don’t have much of a say in the matter, do I? I’m fucked. So’s Rob. But I’m not going without a fight.’
‘Don’t push it, Alison.’
She leans across the light again, sits back with an ashtray shaped like a seashell and flicks ash. ‘What’d you say your name was?’
‘Callum Innes.’
She purses her lips, looks like a kid about to have a tantrum. ‘Well, Mr Innes, I’m not going back to Manchester.
You don’t know the half of what’s going on here.’
‘Then how about you wipe that fuckin’ pout off your face and tell me?’
Alison shakes her head. The pout’s gone, but she’s fallen silent.
‘Nah, look. When I walk out of here, I’m calling Mo. That’s a given, right? And I’m going to be watching this place to make sure you two don’t do a flit and make me look bad because Christ knows it’s been a hard slog getting to this point and I’ll be fucked if I let some brat tell me how to do my job. Now all I can do right now is listen to your side of things.
You want to keep your mouth shut, I can understand that. I’ll just walk out of here and call your brother.’
‘We shouldn’t have done it,’ she says.
“I know.’
“I can’t go back.’
‘You’re going to have to.’
‘Mo’s a fuckin’ bampot. I can’t go back to him.’
‘And Rob’s any better?’
‘You don’t know Mo, Mr Innes.’ She flicks more ash and sets the cigarette in one of the shell’s grooves. ‘You don’t know what he’s like.’
“I know exactly what he’s like. He’s a psycho. And I’m not saying going back to Manchester’s going to be easy, Alison, but it’s got to be better than staying here, isn’t it? How much of the cash has Rob done so far?’
‘It’s not that.’ A sigh breaks out of her. ‘Rob’s got his problems, yeah, but we’re working on them. And you know what Mo’s gonna do to him when he gets up here. He’s a jealous fucker.’
‘What’s he got to be jealous about?’ I say as I light up.
Alison blinks. ‘What’s he got to be jealous about? How about – I dunno – the mother of his kid rips off his dad and buggers off to Newcastle with some bloke she’s been fucking?’
‘What kid?’
But I know the answer. That’s where I’ve seen her before, that’s where that spark of recognition came from. The toddler with Uncle Morris. The sleeping kid in the pushchair.
The kid looked just like his mother.
‘Mo’s your brother,’ I say.
‘He’s my half-brother. My mam wasn’t his mam.’ She starts picking at something on her top lip. ‘Dad doesn’t know about it. Thought I got myself knocked up by some lad on the estate. But he went mental about it. And as much as I wanted to tell him the truth – y’know, see Mo get the same treatment – I couldn’t do it. I kept my mouth shut.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not a grass. And, fuck’s sake, why would I tell him? It’s not like it was rape.’
‘You’re sixteen,’ I say.
‘Seventeen next month,’ she says. ‘And Christ, it wasn’t as if Mo was the first.’
Find me a runaway…
I exhale smoke, shift in my seat. Something rages under my skin and I can’t get a grip on it, one of those internal itches.
‘So, what? You run out on the kid and ‘
‘Make a new life up here.’ Alison looks at me. Her right eye is half-closed. ‘I’m not proud, Mr Innes. But you’re
