Vince shrugged. ‘He’s like that anyway.’
Penny looked at him now. He looked terrible. ‘Don’t worry about it. People will be all right. It’s not like you’ve made a mistake or anything. I don’t think you had any choice about coming out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There were rumours going about anyway.’
He shrugged. ‘Ah, well.’
‘They can’t do anything to you.’
‘No. But sometimes it feels as if people can cut you down to size with just a few words.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get home and meet this bus driver my mam’s seeing.’
‘He’s coming round, is he?’
‘That’s what she came to school to tell me.’
Vince shook his head and whistled. ‘She’s a right one, your mam.’
‘You can say that again.’
Then they said goodbye and turned to leave each other. He turned back to give her a swift hug and Penny lurched awkwardly into it, as if she wasn’t comfortable with people holding her. Walking away, Vince felt sixteen again, walking home on the slippery school field, fumbling embraces with girls.
ELEVEN
Vince’s dad often came home with injuries. He worked in a factory on machines with heavy, grinding parts. Something like that. Vince never asked about the particulars. For as long as he could remember his dad had been coming home sporting bandages, sticking plasters, even slings. It was part and parcel of the job.
Further down school Vince had detested metalwork. He fell behind the rest of his class, keeping his specially bought, oatmeal-coloured apron spotlessly clean, avoiding the machines. He had seen enough industrial injuries.
His father slowly came to accept that he was not the sort of boy who tinkered with metal machine parts. In a way he was pleased. It would keep him out of trouble.
Vince let himself into the kitchen, finding his father at the cooker, in shirtsleeves, stirring a pan of baked beans. Before looking at him, Vince’s father bent his neck to light a cigarette on the ring. Vince stared at the smouldering tobacco flakes left behind.
‘What’s happened to your face?’
‘Someone decided to have a go at me.’ The make-up must have rubbed away, he thought. There’s none to replace it with in this house.
‘Who? Have you phoned the coppers?’
‘No.’ Vince made his way up the narrow staircase. The house was very small, its walls yellow with ingrained fumes and covered with ancient LP covers, stuck up with drawing pins. The carpet on the stairs was full of swirling blue and purple shapes. To Vince, the carpet colours and the LP covers meant home, though he would never wear the colours or play the records.
A night at home. Here we go. Should’ve brought Andy back. He clicked on his room’s light, across the landing. Ha! What would Dad make of Andy? A lathe operator most probably. Ask him if he’s ever considered the possibility. Andy might be interested too. Vince could see him working at a lathe, working intently, his mind on nothing in particular but bringing two surfaces together. To grind them into powder. Andy’s scary eyes glaring at the spinning blades, happy for ever more. He mustn’t let Dad and Andy meet. Andy was too susceptible. He could turn into anything, whenever anyone asked him to. This facility scared Vince, and it made him jealous. Now that he thought about it, it was with Andy that he felt most wooden and intractable.
Vince’s room was large and very bare. Its walls and floor were a searing white. The expanse contained a single mattress sprawled messily in the centre, out of kilter with the right angles of the room. Vince’s bed looked as if it had been sailing under its own steam from one side of the room to the other.
One wall had two mirrored doors, walk-in cupboards where Vince stored all his things. He couldn’t bear to look at them all at the same time. Clothes, books, paintbrushes, were only useful when they were useful. Besides, he hadn’t really unpacked since moving back here in August. When he left Lancaster he loaded the tiny hire van, crammed it all in, and drove across the mountains. When he got back to Aycliffe he had just shoved everything in the cupboards. He didn’t want to see his things out here. They belonged in the house by the canal in Lancaster. There, everything had been perfect. He wanted everything still in boxes so he could leave at a moment’s notice.
He closed the door and sat on the mattress, admiring his collection of open air and space.
Jane was gone. It was Peter’s teatime. Fran’s own kids were in the front room with children’s BBC. They were biding their time till Neighbours came on. Today was special, there was a wedding.
Fran busied herself hacking vegetables in the kitchen. She nicked her thumb with the potato knife. For a moment she glared at the white slit just above her knuckle, defying the blood to come. Then she started worrying that it wouldn’t come at all: ‘I’m turning into a potato!’ So she was glad when the glistening line of red sprang up, flooded over and dribbled on to stainless steel. She held her hand under the tap, watching it sluice away. It kept bleeding.
When the knock at the back door came, she had to twist awkwardly to open it. Nesta’s daughter Vicki stood there, blinking in the light from the kitchen. Even though it was freezing she was in a thin cotton dress. Her hair was matted with grease, plastered across her pudgy, mottled face. She wouldn’t even look at Fran as she asked, ‘Is my mam here yet?’
Fran shook her hand dry and turned off the tap. She let her full concentration fall on Vicki, seeing her grey socks rolled down, her bruised, skinny legs. ‘I haven’t seen her all day, pet. Is she still not home?’
Vicki looked at her. Beads of blood poked out of the flap on Fran’s thumb. They merged and began to trickle again.
