before. He pictured the faces of those he’d met since he’d been on the streets. He’d seen shame sometimes, and anger, in those faces. He’d seen disease and despair and a hunger for any number of things that could be dangerous to be around. But he’d also seen resilience, or at least the strength that can come through resignation. “A lot of these people are being killed every day,” he said. “Little by little…”
Hendricks reached into his plastic bag, rummaged for two more cans.
“Shit like this just makes you stronger,” Thorne said. “You move a little closer together. We look out for each other.” He looked over at Hendricks. “What?”
Hendricks held out the beer, unable to keep a slightly nervous smile at bay. “You said ‘we’…”
Thorne reached across and took the can. He’d already drunk three but was feeling unusually clearheaded. He wondered if all that Special Brew-a beer he’d sworn by everything he held sacred never to touch again-had somehow increased his tolerance to the weaker stuff. He popped the ring pull. “This stuff must be stronger than it tastes,” he said.
If you screwed up on a computer game, nobody minded. You could always have another bash. It was easy enough to go back and start that level again.
He wasn’t screwing up; he rarely did because he got plenty of practice. But people-real-life, flesh-andblood, human fuckups-weren’t quite as predictable as those he was happily blowing away on screen. The real ones moved around; they weren’t where they were supposed to be. And they had an irritating habit of looking much the bloody same in a darkened doorway at three in the morning…
He’d planned to be long gone by now. Somewhere sunny and expensive, where people smelled good and the only ones dossing down outdoors were sleeping on the beach because they couldn’t find their way back to the hotel. That had been the idea, anyway. Taking Thorne out of the picture was meant to be something of a last hurrah, but it hadn’t turned out that way.
When he’d completed the level, he turned off the PlayStation and ejected the game. He sauntered through to the tiny kitchen to make himself some tea. It was important to wind down a little; you had to let the adrenaline level drop and level out if you wanted to get any sleep at all. He sat in his underwear, watched the kettle, and waited. Trying to picture the sea. To imagine it like glass, lapping gently at the sand; to look down at himself, lying golden and satisfied, like a pig in shit with all his worries far away. This was something he’d become good at over the years: he’d developed the ability to lose himself, and to watch as he reappeared elsewhere; somewhere safe and still. But as the kettle boiled, the salt water began to seethe and the sea quickly grew rough. The waves became larger and crashed onto his beach, forcing him to move. Soaking the sand…
It wasn’t time to relax quite yet.
He carried his tea back to the bedroom and lay down.
As soon as he’d seen that newspaper-the photo of a young man called Terry Turner below its lurid headline-he’d realized that he’d made a mess of it. He’d known deep down that he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. It was a pain in the arse, having to rethink, but to have left would have felt wrong. He knew that if he had done so, he could never have relaxed.
He didn’t set a great deal of store by much anymore, but he still believed in the virtue of a job well done.
TWENTY-NINE
There were no more cans in the bag.
Though Thorne-as far as he could work out- had drunk as many as Hendricks, he felt none the worse for it. He was still worn out and frightened; he was still lost. But for that moment at least he wasn’t alone, and he welcomed the clear understanding of his place in the world that chance, or cheap lager, had lent him. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant place to be; not where he was in the life he was pretending to have, and certainly not in the life that was truly his to live with. The life that sooner or later he would have to go back to. Face up to.
His place in two worlds…
“I think I should make a move,” Hendricks said. Thorne grunted, waited, but it looked as though thinking about it was as far as his friend was going to get for a while. The rain had stopped, but water was running off the roof of the covered walkway, falling on three sides of him as he sat back against the wall.
He saw something else clearly, something that most people-even if they knew the truth of it-were happier to ignore. He saw the dreadful ease with which the line separating two worlds could be breached. He had chosen to take that step, and could retrace it, but he knew that for those with no choice at all, it was usually a one-way crossing.
“We’re only two paychecks from the street,” he said.
Hendricks turned his head. “Right…”
“Two paychecks. A couple of months. That’s all that separates a lot of us from sleeping in a doorway.”
Thorne had heard Brendan talking about this, so he knew it was likely that Hendricks had heard it many times. But he wasn’t talking for Hendricks’s benefit, and besides, the man who was now lying next to him seemed perfectly content to listen.
“I mean, obviously it depends on circumstances,” Thorne said. “On having the right sort of family, or more likely the wrong sort of family. It comes down to not having the support when you need it most. You see what I’m saying? You’re earning enough to pay the rent, or make the mortgage repayments, right? You make enough money to eat and have a social life. But you’ve got no capital of any sort, you’ve got decent lumps owing on your Visa, and on a few store cards, and you’re paying for a car on tick or whatever. You get two months’ notice and you’re fucked. Really, it sounds unbelievable, but you could easily be comprehensively fucked. You might not realize that straightaway, but your whole life can go down the toilet in those eight weeks.
“And this is not a fantasy, Phil. This is how a lot of people live. And I’m not talking about poor people either, or drug addicts, or pissheads. These are not people on Channel Four documentaries. These are average people. These are average families a lot of the time, who can find themselves homeless very bloody quickly. Living in hostels and care homes before you can say P45.
“You’ve got two months. Normal notice period. Now, the council might pay your rent, but by the time those payments come through, your landlord’s thrown you out on your ear because he can’t be arsed waiting for his money, right? They might pay the interest on your mortgage, but there’s a limit on that depending on how generous your local council is, and banks get stroppy pretty bloody quickly when the checks start bouncing.
“Two months…
“You still owe money on your cutup credit cards, and you lose the car sharpish because you can’t make the payments on that, and it’s weeks before the DSS gives you anything. So, bit by bit, you lose everything: job, car, house, credit rating. Wife and kids, if it all goes really tits up. It all just slips away; or it’s taken away by force. If you’ve got good friends or close family who are there for you when this happens, then fine. Likely as not, you’ll be all right. You might not fall too far or too hard. But if you haven’t…
“I’ve met people, Phil… Most of them haven’t finished falling yet.
“You’d be amazed how quickly good friends can become distant acquaintances. How fast close family just become people with the same surname. If you’re unlucky, you find that blood means fuck-all when you’re in the shit. When you stink of failure…”
Hearing footsteps, Thorne looked up and saw a young man walking past on the far side of the street, swinging an orange-striped traffic cone at his side. He watched as the man leaned against a shopfront, heaved the cone up to his mouth, and made his own Friday-night entertainment by blowing trumpet noises through it.
Thorne looked to his right and saw that Hendricks’s eyes were closed. “Are you tired or am I boring?” he said.
A smile spread slowly across Hendricks’s face, then, with one of those sudden bursts of energy unique to men under the influence, he climbed rapidly to his feet and slapped his hands together. “Right. I’m away…”
“How you getting back?” Thorne asked.
“I’ll pick up a cab.” Hendricks squinted across the street at the cone trumpeter.
“He’s great, isn’t he?”
Hendricks turned back to Thorne. “We must do this again. Well, not this, but when you’re back, you know,
