It was five in the morning when Brendan woke up. He'd slept since something like four o'clock yesterday afternoon, only briefly waking once, hours ago, disorientated after a dream: one of the usual dreams.

He got up and padded into the front room. Macca was on the sofa under a blanket, fast asleep. Brendan had only meant to have a few hours' sleep yesterday, then be up again by the time Macca got home from work sometime after eleven; then Brendan would have taken the couch and Macca could have slept in his own room. It didn't seem right, turning up out of the blue and commandeering the poor lad's bed.

Brendan was mildly surprised that Macca hadn't tried his luck and slipped into bed beside him. Time was, he would have done. He'd loved Brendan, hadn't he? Said so enough times, even when he knew he'd be battered for it. But not any more, apparently: and that's what happened, wasn't it? Love died. Or it was a delusion, people kidded themselves that they felt it because they thought it would fix things, make things possible, protect them from a hostile world. Romantic bullshit. Even when people thought they felt it, it didn't stop them betraying the person they were meant to love. All it did was ramp up the pain.

He went to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen, where he picked up from the table the two hundred pounds that Macca had got from the cashpoint to lend to him yesterday. Then he went and got dressed in yesterday's jeans and sweatshirt. His leather jacket was on a hook by the front door: he shrugged it on, then glanced across at Macca to check that he was still asleep, before searching the pockets of the jacket he'd seen him put on when he went to work yesterday. He found Macca's keys: bingo. Brendan would be back before he'd need them, assuming that like yesterday, he didn't have to leave for work until the afternoon.

Brendan shut the flat door gently behind him, and went down the stairs and out through the door onto the street. It was five-thirty now, and despite the insipid light from the streetlamps, it felt pitch dark. Apart from the occasional car passing by, it was dead silent.

He stood for a few moments. It would be an hour or more before people were around in any number, and longer before the shops and businesses came to life. But he was free to walk, and to breathe in the icy air, and he felt rested and energised.

He tried to remember when he'd last had a good night's sleep, never mind thirteen hours straight through. It was hopeless in prison, on a thin mattress on a narrow bed, with nameless men in other cells clattering and shouting all night long; he'd never slept for more than a couple of hours at a stretch, not for those two months. Before that? Before that, there'd always been something on his mind that he couldn't help teasing away at in the quiet and the dark. Money. The club and its politics and Warren Fox. Danny Houston, his body buried now, Brendan supposed, but often present in his head in its final hellish moments; and there, he was sure, in his future when in one way or another Brendan would have to pay. That was enough to bother anyone's peaceful nights, but there were other things too. His kids, of course: worrying like any parent would about how they were growing up. Better off without him, probably.

He'd found out in August that Declan had changed in the year since Brendan had moved out of their home. He'd visited them, of course, from time to time – usually when things had turned to shit in his new life and he'd needed a place to run to. Usually it was just for a few days. Brendan would book into a B&B, spend the day in the bars if it was a school day and see the boys after, or pick them up from home in the morning if they weren't at school. Either way, he'd take them out, spoil them, buy them stuff, treat them to all the fast food they could eat; keep moving, never stay still long enough for them to ask the questions they must want to ask about why he'd fucked off and left them behind. Then he'd take them home and have a row with Eileen, and do the same thing the next day and the next until it was time to go back to England. Make promises to come back soon, and maybe they would come and see him in the holidays, why not? Wonder if they knew he was lying.

Then in August Declan really had come, and amid all the panic, Brendan gradually realised that what he'd missed in all those trips to see the kids was that this son of his was no longer the boy he'd been a year before. He had the traits of a teenager at times – sullen, monosyllabic, a bit of a brat – but it was something of a pose, as if he was trying it on for size, because at other times a kind of sweetness came through. And Christ, Brendan had mucked him around. In prison, he'd thought back to a day in the park when he'd sat the lad down and told him what it took to be a man; and the memory of it made him clammy with sweat. His own father's voice spewing out of his mouth and into the ears of his son.

But the poison didn't take. The proof of that, and the proof that Declan was growing up just fine without him, came when Brendan held Declan in his arms, and Declan held him just as tightly in return, after Brendan said the words for the first time in his life: I'm gay. Declan, with all that courage and love, was more of a man than Brendan had had the nerve to be. Love? Maybe that kind, between a parent and a child, was authentic. Not guaranteed, but authentic.

Before Declan came: that was when Brendan had last slept all night long. He didn't remember the night, but he remembered the feeling the following morning, that the day was alive with potential, and that the summer would never end.

:::::::

He'd walked around for some time now; the sky was lightening and there were people around. Brendan had forgotten his bruises and black eyes, but now he was reminded as he saw the various expressions on the faces of those who happened to glance at him: curiosity mainly, but also distaste and, sometimes, pity.

He bought a paper and went into a cafe for breakfast. At eight thirty-five he moved to a table by the window, and began to watch the pedestrians passing by. Soon, kids in school uniform started to appear, and he scanned each one as he sighted them in the distance.

Brendan was beginning to think they'd changed their route to school, when there they were, coming round the far corner on the other side of the road, unmistakeable even before they drew near. Declan, tall and fair, his hand occasionally landing on his little brother's shoulder to steer him or hurry him. Padraig, not so little any more, dark-haired and laughing. They were both laughing. It hadn't destroyed Declan, then, knowing his dad was gay, and knowing his dad was banged up on three charges of murder. Brendan wasn't sure if Padraig knew either of those things. Eileen had told Cheryl on the phone that Declan knew about the latter; and about the former, Declan knew courtesy of Rae. Rae, with her penchant for spreading information that she ought to keep to herself. She'd paid for it now, but even in death she'd managed to fuck with Brendan's life. Still, if she hadn't let her mouth run away with her that day in September, Brendan would still be living with the terror of his son finding out what he was. There would always be fears, but that one at least was gone: he should have thanked Rae, really. Maybe one day he would take her some flowers.

He remembered that day, hearing Stephen's footsteps coming up the stairs at Chez Chez, and seeing his face. Stephen's face, looking scared, and looking brave.

"What are you doing here? I thought I told you to..." Brendan had willed Stephen to speak, but he seemed unable. "What? What is it? Has something happened? Stephen?"

Thinking, It must be Lynsey, because he'd asked this boy to go and keep an eye on her, and the boy had agreed even though Brendan had hurt him, and hurt him, and hurt him.

"Brendan..." A tremble in his voice, but his eyes unwavering.

"Something happened to Lynsey? Tell me." A breath. "Please."

"No, it's not Lynsey. It's..." Then his words tumbling out. "Rae came round, she was angry. Angry about you, I think, about you and me, and she said... she said you were never gonna admit that you were gay - "

Par for the course for the little bitch.

"Jesus, Stephen - "

"And Declan heard. She didn't know he was there, Brendan, none of us did. She's sorry, she said she's sorry, but he knows now, Brendan, he knows..."

Wanting to lash out at him for bringing that girl into his life, into his son's life. Moving round from behind the bar to grab him and teach him a lesson. But Stephen standing there, holding his ground, somehow stopping Brendan in his tracks before he'd laid a finger on him. Then, time slowing down, and a terrible clarity. Knowing what had to be done: the conversation that he'd convinced himself he would never have to have.

"What did he say?" Startling himself with the calmness of his own voice. "Declan, did he... did he say anything?"

"He ran upstairs. I think Lyns was gonna talk to him." Stephen's eyes still full of fear.

Christ, he hadn't had to come. The boy had guts, to be the one that brought the news.

Turning from him, because as well as the fear there was something else in his eyes, something that looked like love, and if it wasn't for that, none of this would be happening.

Feeling weakened, and needing to feel strong.

"Mind the bar for me."

"Brendan?"

Stopping on the way down the stairs, but not turning back to look at Stephen again.

"What?"

"It's gonna be okay."

Thinking, How can you believe that?

But he'd been right, hadn't he? Stephen wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but at least about this, about telling the truth to Declan, he had been right all along.

:::::::

The boys drew nearer, and now they were directly across the road. Declan had a new hairstyle: it reminded Brendan of...

Too close.

They were too close. He turned away from the window, because he couldn't let them see him like this. He didn't know if they knew he was out. He didn't know if they knew – and for the first time, Brendan thought it of himself – that he was missing.