Trilogy Collection

‘Ssssh!’ he said, conscious that Mrs Elliot might hear them. ‘C’mon,’ he gestured, ‘Good girl, Lou … fetch it over!’

They all watched mesmerised as Vinnie fought the now writhing cat, to get the cable around its front legs. It was hissing and putting up a valiant fight, but was no match for its human tormentor. Grabbing Mrs Elliot’s washing line, he flipped the end of the cable over it a couple of times, letting the cat fall – the cable straining now – strung up by its front legs.

He turned to the little ones, who were looking up at him, wide-eyed with shock. ‘See, this cat’s not really a cat, kids,’ he explained, tying the cable off. ‘It’s a piece of wet washing.’ He pointed to the terrified animal. ‘And it can stay the fuck there all day now, till it dries.’

‘It’s just a big old kitty, Uncle Vinnie,’ said Sammy nervously, not at all convinced.

Vinnie smiled softly and bent down to tickle beneath his niece’s chin. He felt better now he could see the shock and awe in the children’s eyes. ‘No, Sam. It just looks like a kitty, but it’s not really. Now, we off to Nan’s for brekkie or are we not?’

‘Are you just going to leave it there?’ Lou wanted to know. ‘Like, till it dies?’

‘What do you think?’ Vinnie asked her. ‘C’mon – quick. We gotta go!’ He hauled the kids over the next fence and told them to head straight beneath the hedge opposite. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Quick. I think I can hear her!’

Then once he’d seen them all go through and knew he was safely out of sight, he quicky unlooped the cable and let the cat go, booting it up the backside as it skittered away. ‘Last time you’ll go for me, you big fat fucker,’ he hissed at it. ‘Next time you won’t be so fucking lucky!’

The job done, he vaulted the fence and plunged after the younger children, pleased with having seized upon an excellent opportunity for self-promotion, proud of a good job well executed. Some things needed seeing and some things definitely didn’t. Children talked. Children blabbed. Children told tales that made reputations. And he knew what it was that he wanted them blabbing. What they said about Vinnie mattered. Especially now.

Chapter 3 (#ub0b25701-d126-509d-97b1-76fe329d1888)

Little Josie was sitting on her dad’s knee, eating her cereal, watching her mother move restlessly around the kitchen. She knew her mum was upset because she was trying so hard not to look it – turning up the radio till it was much too loud for comfort, and singing raggedly along to the song on it. ‘Sweets for my sweet,’ she sang. ‘Sugar for my honey …’

She always sang along to that one if it came on, but her voice wasn’t quite right today. ‘Are you alright, Mam?’ she ventured.

‘Course she’s alright, Titch,’ said Jock. ‘Eat your cornflakes.’ His eyes followed June as she walked to the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Where you going now?’ he asked her. ‘Just leave him alone, he’ll be down when he’s ready.’

June spun around. ‘He’s been ready all fucking morning!’ she spat back at him. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’m bringing our fucking son down here, instead of leaving him up there to stew on his own!’

Josie started to cry – she couldn’t stop herself – and climbed down from her dad’s knee, placing her now unwanted cereal onto the floor. Why did they have to argue today? She sat on the hearth of the fireplace, pulled her nightie over her knees and sobbed. What was she supposed to do without her brother? Left here with these two – what a bleedin’ nightmare!

No one understood how much she loved Vinnie – if they did, they wouldn’t carry on like this all the time. Her dad started shouting and swearing about Vinnie and she clapped a hand over each ear to drown it out. Shut her eyes too, to block the whole day out. She loved her dad but he shouldn’t talk about her brother like that. He was always saying that her mam didn’t love anyone except Vinnie. Josie knew that. She knew her mam didn’t love her very much, but she didn’t care. Lyndsey didn’t like her neither, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was that she had her Vinnie, and now they were taking him away from her. She started to sob harder as the fact began to hit home.

She felt a touch on her head. A light one. She opened her eyes. It was Vinnie, come downstairs, dressed in his flared jeans and favourite Rolling Stones T-shirt, and looking like none of it even mattered. ‘What’s up with your face, Titch?’ he asked her, sitting down beside her. ‘It looks like a smacked arse. Cheer up!’

Josie smiled as Vinnie joined her by the fire.

She rubbed her eyes. ‘I don’t want you to go away, Vin – when are they coming?’

Vinnie looked at the big guitar clock hanging from the wall. It was one of a batch he and his mates had stolen a while back. Half the houses on the estate now had one the same.

He gave her an odd look. Was he scared? She couldn’t tell. ‘About 10 minutes, our kid,’ he said. ‘But look, Titch, I’m not gonna be away for ages. I’ll probably be back after Christmas.’

‘After Christmas?’ Josie wailed. This news was too terrible to even think about. ‘But what about your presents and your Christmas dinner?’

Vinnie pulled her close and hugged her tight to him. He smelled of Hai Karate and Vosene, just like he always did, and his freshly washed hair tickled her cheek. ‘Just save ’em for me, eh?’ he said softly.

He then turned to his mum and grinned. ‘That’s right, innit, Mam? You’ll save me a Santa sack for when I get home, yeah? Cos I’m sure Saggy Tits Sally won’t be buying me a selection box this year.’

June frowned, her expression hardening. ‘God, I hate bleedin’ social workers, Vin!’

She was on one now, full throttle, and Josie watched in awe. She always did when her mum transformed from little sex-kitten June into this arm-swinging, neck-shaking, raving lunatic. ‘They’re all bastards, the lot of ’em!’ she railed now. ‘Locking up innocent kids …’

Then Jock kicked off too. ‘Innocent? For fuck’s sake, give this woman a fucking Oscar. That’s his trouble, June. You!’

‘Piss off, Jock,’ she snapped. ‘Who asked you?’

June glanced through the window, as she’d been doing every other minute for the last half hour. Josie could tell just by the way she stiffened that they must have come for him. And they had. ‘Oh fucking hell, Vinnie,’ her mum said. ‘They’re here. They’re outside!’

Vinnie jumped up. This was it. Josie scrambled up as well. Did Vin feel as terrified as she did? He must be feeling shit-scared by now, mustn’t he? But if he did, he wasn’t letting on. The only way she could tell that he might be was by the way he licked his lips before he spoke. ‘Go to the door, Mam,’ he said. ‘Don’t have ’em in. My stuff’s all here, I’m just gonna go out and get off. Don’t be showing me up, all coming out.’

Vinnie then turned once again to his sister and winked. ‘Never be ashamed of our tears,’ he whispered. ‘Remember that?’

Josie nodded and tried her best not to start wailing. Her mum and dad wouldn’t have a clue what Vinnie meant, but she did. It was a sad part in the book Great Expectations. That was another thing she’d miss and it made the tears well even more – her brother reading to her late at night when he was excited about one of his books.

She remembered the words from this one very well. Pip, the hero, had been sad about leaving for London and his life changing, and sad about Joe, but after he’d cried, he felt ready to go on again. Trust Vinnie to dig up one of his favourite stories, she thought, to try to make her feel better. And it did. And she’d have to hang on to it, because now he really was leaving her. He gave her shoulder another quick squeeze and then he was out the door.

Josie dragged her dad’s foot stool across the tatty linoleum, positioning it under the front-room window so she could climb up to wave Vinnie off. June was beside her, holding back the once-white net curtain, trying to put on a brave face, while Jock sat back in his armchair and rolled a cigarette.

‘Stop crying, Josie,’ June said gently, giving her an unexpected hug. ‘You’ll upset him if he sees you.’

She lowered the net, just as the black car pulled away, then walked away from the window, sighing heavily. Josie remained where she was till the car disappeared, and with it, her brother. Life was certainly going to be a lot quieter without Vinnie, she knew that. She felt strange, as though she had suddenly lost part of herself. She wondered if her mum felt the same. Like there was a hole in her stomach. She certainly looked angry as she turned to look at Jock. ‘Happy now?’ she asked him, waving his plume of smoke away.

Jock was having none of it. ‘You can blame me all you like, you stupid mare. But we all know whose fault it is, June. If he wasn’t such a little fucker, he’d be going nowhere, would he?’

‘Fuck off, Jock,’ she spat back. ‘You’ve never liked him, never stuck up for him, you’ll be loving this.’

Josie shook her head sadly. Was this what she had to look forward to now? These two at it all the time? As sure as she knew night followed day, she knew that her mum wouldn’t settle until Vinnie was home. That this argument would grind on till he was home, as well. Josie wrestled with emotions that sometimes felt wrong where her brother was concerned. She loved her brother every bit as much as her mum did, but she could also see her dad’s point. She knew that Vinnie had a bad streak. Was even nasty to her sometimes. She shuddered as she remembered some of the tricks he’d played on her, and yesterday’s had been no exception.

She still shuddered as she brought it to mind. The sight, the sounds, the smell – the horrible smell. If Vinnie hadn’t been leaving her today things would have been different. She’d still be fuming with her brother about that.

She should have seen it coming though. That was the thing. What possessed her? Him asking her if she wanted to go to the cemmy with him and his mates should have told her he’d have mischief in mind. And it wasn’t like she agreed because she thought they’d include her much – they wouldn’t. She’d only said yes because she didn’t have anything else to do and because she liked to look at the inscriptions on the gravestones.

She always had. Since she was little and had gone to the cemetery with some nuns from her school and they’d done rubbings with paper and a pencil on some of the more ornate graves. It was on that visit that she’d come across the resting place of one of her uncles. She’d been shocked at first, to think of Uncle Brian being buried right there with all the other dead people, but after a while she’d got used to the idea. In fact, she’d often go back, after that, to see if she could find other dead relatives. The rest of the family would tease her and call her a nutter but she didn’t care. She felt at ease with the dead.

And that’s what she’d been doing, mostly, while the boys messed about, trying to scare each other by telling ghost stories, when Vinnie, without warning, but who must have planned it all beforehand, had grabbed his little sister and pushed her backwards. She had fallen straight into the open grave just behind her, which had been freshly dug ready to take a new coffin. Yes, it had been empty, but still she’d screamed and screamed, terrified – imagining all sorts, scrabbling down there among the worms and the maggots, while the boys just stood and laughed at her, tipping their heads back. That was typical of Vinnie, and Brendan and Pete too, they were thick as thieves – they were thieves – and bad as each other. It felt like forever before they finally deigned to haul her out, by which time she was out of her mind with fear and disgust.

Oh yes, Josie knew what her brother was, but she loved him even so, and listening to her parents now, screaming at each other like she wasn’t even there she wondered just how she was going to get through till Christmas. It seemed like such a long way away. Today though, she just had to get out of there. She’d go and get dressed, she decided, and see if there was anybody knocking about on the estate who she could play with. She’d been allowed off school today because of Vinnie, so she didn’t hold out much hope of seeing her friends, but anything was better than being stuck indoors with her warring parents.

Josie went up to her bedroom and dressed in the one pair of jeans that she owned; tatty flares passed on to her from an older cousin, which she was just about short and skinny enough still to fit. Though only just – she grimaced as she pulled them up and then, looking down, lowered them again, pushing them down on her hips so that the bottoms touched the floor. Grabbing her cowboy shirt and sniffing the armpits, she sighed. It hadn’t been washed and she could smell it – though that was nothing new. Her mam had never been much of a housewife.

Josie sometimes envied her best mate, Carol; her mam always did the washing and Caz always smelled nice. As she pushed her arms into the sleeves anyway – there was nothing else to wear – she wondered what it would be like to live in a family where the kids had everything done for them. If Josie needed something clean, she usually had to wash it herself, more often than not in her own dirty bath water.

She made a final check of herself in the mirror on her window ledge. Her ginger hair, as ever, annoyed her. She kept it short. That way there was less of it for people to remark on. She spat on her hands and ran them through it, trying to tame it a little further, then checked her teeth – which were white as white; the thing she was most proud of – and headed back downstairs into the hall.

She slammed the door as she left, just to make a point. She felt angry. Defiant. Rebellious. Though she knew it was probably a waste of time as her parents probably wouldn’t even notice she had gone. After walking around the streets for an hour, she realised that she had been right. Nobody was about. Nobody she wanted to see, anyway. She thought about calling at her sister’s as a last resort. Though she didn’t particularly want to. She couldn’t stand Lyndsey – even though she loved her nieces and nephew – and knew all about her drugs and her thieving. She decided that she might as well go anyway – see if they were off school. Plus she was getting cold. It might be nice to go indoors for a while.

She started to walk the familiar route when she thought she heard someone call her name. She looked around but couldn’t see anyone.

‘Titch!’ the voice called again. It was a man’s voice. ‘It’s me, love.’