She ushered Lyndsey and Jeff into place for breakfast. She poured their extra-milky tea. ‘How come we’ve only got one pint?’ she asked Frank and only then realised they were her first words to him.
‘That bloody Nesta from next door came round while you were out. She says she can’t afford milk. So I gave her it.’ He crumpled his first emptied can.
‘She’s been round here every day for a week! I told her no more.’
‘I didn’t know that. What do you want me to do, go round and take it back?’
Busy with cornflakes, Fran waved him away. Lyndsey and Jeff were chatting between themselves. ‘That would be something at least. You’d give her the stair carpet if she asked, you’re that daft. You’re addled.’
Frank gritted his teeth and rubbed his belly. ‘She’s got that baby. If she can’t afford milk —’
‘If she can’t afford milk, she should lay off the Woodpecker. So should that dopey husband of hers, that Tony. Some people will do anything to get their booze.’
‘I’m getting ready for work.’
Fran shouted after him, ‘You can look after the bairns tonight. Me and some of the lasses have decided we’re having a night out tonight. You’re staying in and you’re not getting drunk.’
He turned around. ‘You’ve organised this quick.’
She snorted. ‘It’s about time.’
‘I see.’
Fran went to the sink and turned the taps on, making lots of noise. The noise drummed away the tension in the air.
At last he said, ‘I want you in by eleven.’
Then he was gone, leaving the kids kicking each other under the bench, and Fran silently watching over the sink as it filled. All you’ve got to do, she told herself, all you’ve ever done, is ride out the worst of it. It was what she was best at. She could cling on for dear life. Anyone else would have got shot of Frank years ago ... yet here she was. When things got tough, that was when a grim resolve came over her and she dug her heels in even harder. Her mother said she’d learned her stubbornness from the horses she’d broken in with her brothers. She had subdued them all to her implacable will in a way those strapping boys had never managed. Fran simply held out for people. Until the age of nine she had, with the grimmest intensity, thought that she was herself a horse.
Something of that hadn’t quite left her. When she and Frank made love he always felt gripped to her, that his heart would burst before she would let him go. And she in turn felt that she was carrying him and she made herself strong and content to be ridden like this, by him.
She lifted the plates one by one from warm soapy water and watched the scum of grease slide into the froth.
He woke ten miles away from home in a stifling room. When he opened his eyes, the air was dark orange because of the curtains, which hung in musty velvet folds. On an armchair misshapen by their thrown-off clothing, a marmalade cat was sitting. It stared unblinking at Vince. It nodded at him once and then was gone, out of the door they had, in their haste, left open.
He had a peculiarly guilty thought about abandoning Penny on the streets of Darlington. But she could look after herself, surely? Odd that his first thought — after last night of all nights — should be of her. Maybe he had dreamed about her. He groaned, feeling yesterday’s events wash over him slowly. He could taste lemon and tequila and something less definable. His tongue, his eyes and his cock all felt tender and bruised and he moved carefully, aware that the slightest twitch might break the delicate train of his thoughts. It might unhook him from yesterday’s surprises and render them untrue. His memories always took some reeling in. But when they came it was with a clarity he could relish, and one he was convinced nobody else ever knew.
The light in the room was a treacly amber and it was dulling him somewhat. He couldn’t work out what time it was. The day before seemed caught in flight, etched in the air before him. He couldn’t see where the arc of his memory ended. Which meant that the story was going on still. He was still embroiled in something. So it didn’t matter what time it was, whether he was late for work or not. There could be no question of going in. He’d phone. He was busy.
There was a line of warm sticky heaviness down his left side and leg. A trickle of sweat on the flat of his stomach. Andy was still deeply asleep, by the look of it, glued to him. He was on his back, impassive, as if determined that sleep should have no effect. For all that his expression seemed peaceful and content.
He could feel their bodies sticking in other points of contact. Their feet were tangled warmly together like shoes. His palms itched to be back around his lover, for the feel of him. Vince could feel his cock shrugging and thickening itself, leaning out towards the sleeping Andy. Gently Vince peeled himself free of the semi-embrace and moved across the bed. He was determined to make that call.
In the hallway there was a payphone. He remembered that. He looked around for something to wrap around himself and decided not to bother. Andy lived alone. He had nothing to be ashamed of here.
This was something he had promised himself long ago he would never do again. And yet it was bliss.
The hallway was dowdy and grey. He nicked ten pence from the money box and rang the school. He got the secretary and made himself sound terribly afflicted with cold. Her voice in his ear was tinny and nonplussed. Shamefacedly Vince clutched the plastic coil of the phone’s lead and looked down at
