Blood Ties: Part 2 of 3: Family is not always a place of safety

She continued out of the room, her dad following, switching off the light with careful fingers. It was only when they were back on the landing that she saw his face was white.

‘What have you found, Dad?’ she said again.

He shook his head. ‘I told you,’ he mouthed. ‘Nothing.’

And she knew he wasn’t telling her the truth.

Chapter 9 (#u37f60eaa-34a3-5a06-bfb1-a0f71486f617)

Kathleen stood back against the wall behind the bar and tried to listen. It was late afternoon, just a few days before Bonfire Night, and whoever was at the other end of her dad’s whispered telephone conversation must have things to say that he didn’t want anyone else getting wind of – presumably Irene – because he’d stretched the phone cord all the way out from the end of the bar and taken the receiver out to the bottom of the stairs.

But he wasn’t doing much of a job of keeping the conversation private. He was obviously getting angry. He was certainly raising his voice.

‘Well you can’t get blood out of a bleeding stone, can you?’ he snapped, his voice close to a shout now. ‘So there’s no point coming here, pal. No point whatsoever! I owe you nothing,’ he hissed, obviously checking the volume of his voice. ‘And there’s more than me here if you’re thinking of coming mob-handed.’

There was a long pause then, whoever he was speaking to obviously giving as good as he’d got. Then, ‘Step one foot in my boozer and see what happens then, eh? I’m about sick of this – folk chasing us for money we don’t owe! It’s the police next if it doesn’t stop. I mean it!’

Kathleen jumped away just as her dad burst back through the door into the bar. He looked angry and stressed and she wished she could help him. This wasn’t the first of that sort of call he’d had to deal with – far from it. And it was almost as if Darren’s creditors were working together. Nothing for ages – not a peep out of anyone – and they were suddenly all coming out of the woodwork. As if they’d waited for what they thought was a respectable amount of time before calling up en masse to try to get what they were owed out of her dad. Was one of them the reason Darren had got himself that gun?

‘Creditors again, Dad?’ she asked after he’d slammed the phone back on the bar, and tried to impose some order on the now-twizzled cord. She hadn’t forgotten that he’d hidden something from her in Darren’s bedroom. Perhaps his debts were a lot more than they’d thought. ‘Dad, I told you, I’ll deal with them for you. I’d be more than happy to. You know that. No point in you getting it in the neck all the time, is there?’

She would too, she thought – which had been something of a surprise to her, as much as it evidently was to her father, who’d looked at her when she first suggested it as if she’d gone batty.

‘You?’ he’d said then, glancing nervously upstairs. He’d seemed obsessed with keeping all of it from Irene, and she sort of understood that. But it was surely only a matter of time before she found out for herself.

‘Yes, me,’ she’d countered, looking at him defiantly. ‘I’m not a child, Dad. And I’m not as wet as you obviously think I am, either. I’ll tell them straight. No nonsense.’ She knew she would, too. And it wasn’t just because she saw it as a way to help with the guilt, either. It was as much because she had that much pent-up anger and frustration and hurt inside her that it would be good to have a way to let some of it out.

John shook his head now, just as he’d done the last time. ‘No,’ he said, and in a tone that made it clear there was to be no more discussion. ‘Some of these people … They’re … No, lass,’ he said firmly. ‘Okay? Forget about it. I can sort it out. I just wish they’d have a chat among themselves and get the blinking message. That they’d bugger off and let that be an end to it.’

‘They will,’ she reassured him. ‘Sooner or later they will, Dad. They have to. It’s not fair that they’re chasing you for money our Darren owed. It’s just not fair.’

But fair or not, the creditors had kept on coming. Friends Darren had borrowed from, apologetic but still insistent. Loan sharks who’d loaned him silly amounts of money at ridiculous interest rates. Bookies who had happily let her stepbrother rack up credit on the horses. Heated phone calls. Letters and threats in person.

She watched her dad as he served the last customers of the day shift, and she worried about him. Worried about the painted-on smile that was now conspicuous by its absence, by the fact that he wasn’t chatting to the punters like he normally did, but sitting up on the high stool at the far end of the bar, staring into space, as if in a world of his own – a world full of threats from nasty people? She supposed it must be.

Not that the real world they were inhabiting was any better. Irene had started coming down and working again a bit, here and there, but she was so volatile and unpredictable it was as if she’d been possessed by some demon, and everyone – including Monica, who usually gave as good as she got – tiptoed around her as if she was an unexploded bomb. Which, in some ways she was, because the slightest and most unlikely thing could set her off. And in one of two different directions as well – either to breaking down, sobbing hysterically and rushing off upstairs again or, worse, flying into a rage that could turn violent in an instant, particularly if she’d been drinking, which she was now doing a lot.

Kathleen continued to observe her father, and felt a welling of frustration. Always so quiet and even-tempered, he’d been a different man these past couple of weeks. He’d found a temper; a tone that meant Darren’s creditors knew they shouldn’t mess with him, yet that was the rub of it. He still seemed unable to use it where it was most needed – on his wife.

But now as then, it seemed, he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. ‘Cut her a bit of slack, love,’ he’d say. ‘She’s in a terrible way, you know that. Be patient. We’ve all got to make allowances at the moment.’ And as a consequence, it was as if they were living with a sleeping dragon, who could wake at any time, breathing fire, and destroy anything in its path. Or perhaps more accurately, as if she was the mad woman in Mr Rochester’s attic, every so often screaming and rattling her chains.

So Kathleen made allowances, for her dad’s sake, because he had more than enough on his plate. She did as Monica did – well, as far as she was able, given that, unlike Monica, she couldn’t go off to work – in that she tried to keep out of Irene’s way as best she could, and counted out the days till she’d next be seeing Terry.

And now the day had come. It was Firework Night and, just returned from his latest job abroad, he’d be round pretty soon to pick her up. He was taking her to the huge Firework Night celebrations that were being held around the enormous bonfire that now sat in pride of place in the middle of Ringwood Road and which, among other things, included a pie and peas supper.

November 5th had fallen on a Friday this year, which made it even more special – for lots of people it would mark the start of the weekend. And while Terry had been driving to somewhere in Holland and back, everyone on the estate had been preparing for it. It wasn’t strictly legal – they held it on the corner field by the youth club, which was land owned by the council – but Canterbury Estate being what it was, i.e. a law unto itself, there was about as much chance of it not happening as Guy Fawkes himself rising from the grave.

Best of all was that she didn’t need to work tonight, not at all. Her dad had promised her the night off because the pub wouldn’t be busy anyway; a lot of the regulars would be at the party with their wives and kids, enjoying the fireworks; it would be just the hardcore and the moaners; the ones who disapproved of anything that involved lots of people having fun.

But they were in a minority. Almost everyone on the estate looked forward to it, so the group that organised it – the Jaggers and the Hanleys – had been collecting bits of money from everyone who could afford it for weeks. Enough to buy plenty of fireworks, and, of course, hundreds of sparklers for the little ones. After all that effort, having fun was non-negotiable.

And fun she knew she would have; excitement was already bubbling up inside her. That and the butterflies that took flight in her stomach every time she thought of seeing Terry again. Despite her generally level head, and her sensible pragmatism when it came to romance, Kathleen knew she was falling, headlong – had already fallen, in fact, and too far to be able to haul herself up again. It would have happened anyway, because Terry’s looks and his kindness had always drawn her to him, but it was also because he seemed to feel the same way as she did, which could only fan the already blazing flames. She tried her hardest not to but she couldn’t help the frisson she felt whenever she thought of him kissing her, or her pulse from racing whenever a shadow walked past the pub window that might be his. In that sense it had been something of a respite, him being in Holland. Out of sight, he was very much in rather than out of mind, but at least it gave her a chance to come up for air.

She’d taken great pains, however, not to let the depth of her feelings show – not to Monica (who’d taunt her mercilessly), and especially not to Irene, who’d already made it more than clear what her feelings were about them; that there shouldn’t be a ‘them’ in the first place.

And, on that score, things were even more complicated than she’d thought. There had seemed to be a bit of a sea-change in that regard since Darren had died – a very unexpected one, as well. Had she not known it to be ridiculous, and even making allowances for Irene’s drinking, Kathleen wouldn’t have considered it outside the bounds of possibility that Irene was even making a play for Terry herself.

At first, she’d dismissed that; even been cautiously optimistic. Irene being nice to them? Coming over to chat to them? Had her dad said something? Had he pointed out to Irene that they were doing nothing wrong? And had Irene, understandably preoccupied with losing Darren, finally decided that her perspective needed changing? That life was short, and there was nothing wrong with her going out with Terry after all?

But she was soon disabused of her now naïve-seeming optimism. Terry had been in the pub just the night before he’d gone away, having a drink with a couple of his mates. And Kathleen, who’d been working, had stood and watched, open-mouthed, from behind the bar, as Irene had gone over to collect some empties from their table, and, while leaning across Terry to pick up some glasses, had actually pressed her satin-clad bosom hard against his shoulder.

It had been an action so obvious that it left no room for doubt, and as Irene had returned with the glasses, to the far end of the bar, Terry’s bemused glance at Kathleen had said it all.

But tonight they’d be free of her – free of the pub, free of the gloom there – and as she wriggled into her slip she felt a thrill of excitement that it would be her body pressed against his later on, huddling close, as they’d need to, to keep the bitter cold out, as the fireworks leapt and danced in the sky.

‘Jesus Christ, girl – what the hell do you think you look like?’

Since Irene and her dad had been busy eating their dinner – which she had cooked for them, as per usual – Kathleen had hoped she’d be able to finish getting ready for her date unmolested. No such luck, clearly, as she emerged from the bathroom to find Irene, fist aloft, ready to rat-a-tat-tat it against the door.

Kathleen had changed her outfit several times. Which was quite a feat, given her meagre wardrobe, and the need to wrap up to keep warm. But her eventual choice – a roll-neck sweater and her navy knee-length kilt – seemed about as unlikely to incur her stepmother’s wrath as would a head-to-toe boiler suit.

But it wasn’t the fact that her knees were on show that seemed to attract Irene’s ire. ‘What do you think you look like?’ she sneered. ‘You’re actually going out like that? You look like a twelve-year-old, off to see the bleeding vicar!’

Darren’s dead, Kathleen intoned to herself. She’s deranged. Make allowances. You’ll be gone in half an hour. It doesn’t matter what she says. Don’t rise to it. Just DO NOT rise to it!

And you look like a whore, she answered, even if only in her head. An old one, as well. With your old-lady bosoms bursting out of your nasty satin blouse, and that ridiculous short skirt, and that horrible red lipstick …

‘It’s cold out,’ she said, sidestepping Irene. ‘I’m dressing sensibly.’ Then she half ran, half skipped down the stairs.

Unusually, given how eagle eyed she was these days, she heard Terry’s voice before she saw him. ‘Now there’s a sight for sore eyes!’ he said, picking up his pint and slipping off the stool he’d been sitting on at the far end of the bar.

Her father, who’d been chatting to him, smiled his agreement.

She slipped through the hatch, wishing blushes could be turned on and off like radios, to stop the static crackling between them as their eyes met. ‘You look nice too,’ she told Terry brightly. ‘I like your jumper.’

‘This old thing?’ he said, pulling at the front of it and frowning. It was a big chunky jumper, like a fisherman might wear. Sort of stone-coloured, flecked, with a big floppy roll-neck. It suited him. It also looked home-knitted. She wondered by who. His mam and dad lived hundreds of miles away. He’d come to Bradford with Iris. Had his mam sent it up for him? She hoped so. ‘About a million years old, this is,’ he told her. ‘I’m lucky the moths haven’t had it. Like a drink before we go, love? While I finish this up?’

‘Half of lager, please,’ she said, but her dad had beaten her to it. One had appeared by her arm even before she answered. Terry handed it to her, grinning. ‘How’s that for service, eh?’

She sipped the head off it. ‘How was Holland, then?’

‘Flat and full of cheese.’

‘When did you get back?’

‘Three quarters of an hour ago. Traffic’s been murder.’

‘Only three quarters of an hour back?’ Kathleen said, shocked. She remembered him saying he’d be driving overnight to catch a dawn ferry, too. ‘God, Terry,’ she said, ‘have you slept at all? You must be shattered!’