Eileen was seeing someone else.
She'd been nervous about confessing it to Brendan, he could tell – and rightly so: Michael Donovan, for fucksake. He knew him vaguely, and looking back, it was obvious the guy had been sniffing around Eileen for years, waiting for his chance. Jesus, it hadn't taken her long, had it? They'd only been separated a couple of months, and she'd got a new man in her bed already. The thought made him feel sick to his stomach: Brendan was the only lover she'd had until now, and she was bound to compare them.
When she told him the news, over a civilised cup of tea in Chez Chez, she said as much: it was different with Michael, and he made her different too. Yeah, bet your life. Michael fucking Donovan was just the kind of man it was safe for a woman to have sex with. He wouldn't have to hold back because there was nothing to hold back, his desires would be appropriate, he wouldn't need to fear doing her damage because there was no life force in him. He wouldn't have the balls you needed to fuck a man, someone who could square up to you and give as good as he got. Pusillanimous prick.
Brendan got on with his plan to obtain the money that his wife had come for. The sooner she was away from here, the better; he didn't trust her not to say something to Cheryl about the Macca thing, not any more.
He went to see Carmel in the salon where she had a part-time job. As she was due to meet him straight from work so they could head off to the airport, he knew she would have her luggage there with her. He had to listen to her mind-numbing chatter while he waited for an opportunity to slip his bundle of cash into her bag. It was all the money he could muster: he would complete the deal in Barcelona, Carmel would, like last time, unwittingly carry the cocaine back when they flew home the day after tomorrow, and he had a buyer waiting. It was risky, but the profit would be huge and Eileen would be out of his hair. And Declan would get his treatment, which was the whole point. It was always about his boys.
Once he'd managed to stash the money, Brendan escaped the women at the salon and went back to the club. It was only a few minutes later when Stephen put his head round the door of the office.
"Here, Brendan, have you heard what's happened?"
"Enlighten me."
Stephen frowned at that, then explained that a customer had just come in and said there'd been a fire in Evissa, something about a candle falling into someone's bag and – Brendan didn't wait to hear any more, but shoved the boy out of the way and ran the short distance from the club back to the salon. And yes, of course it was Carmel's bag that had caught light, and yes, of course all that remained of Brendan's cash was charred fragments. He launched into a verbal assault on Carmel, grasping for the most vicious truths he could think of about her ignorance and his contempt for her. He wanted her to know that she'd been nothing to him, less than nothing: how could a woman – a woman like her – be anything else?
He'd been only vaguely aware that for some reason Stephen had followed him from Chez Chez, but now he registered him saying, "That's enough," and Brendan knew he needed to leave before his anger drove him to something worse than shouting in Carmel's face. He wanted to knock Stephen out for his presumption; but instead, Brendan listened to him, and left.
:::::::
Later, Brendan was alone in the upstairs bar, staring into his third whiskey, attempting to make his problems seem further away. Stephen came up the stairs and stood beside him. You had to admire this kid's nerve; you'd think seeing Brendan so unhinged back there in Evissa would have freaked him out. Instead, here he was, telling him off about Carmel again – but more in sorrow than in anger this time, and with the recognition that desperate men will do desperate things when it's for their children's sakes.
Then Stephen said the exact words that Macca had said to Brendan on the phone this morning. I'm worried about you. What was it with these boys? Did they think he was that weak? Or was it something in them, something they had that made them able and willing to look inside his armour? Brendan couldn't understand it, nor did he want to. More whiskey. Whiskey was easier.
:::::::
Stephen was right about one thing: what desperate men will do.
The trip to Spain was off, as Brendan now had no money with which to pay the supplier. Eileen was on at him again the next day, suggesting he should borrow from Cheryl. He wouldn't do that: even if she had enough liquid cash, which he'd seen no sign of, he couldn't stand the thought of being in debt to his little sister. So his options had narrowed to two, as far as he could see.
First, he phoned Danny Houston. He didn't ask for a loan, because being in hock to him was a place no-one would want to be; he just asked for his share of the next trip, which Houston could easily take out of Brendan's half of the profit they would make.
"I'd love to help, Brendan, you know me, but you seem to be under the misapprehension that I'm a bank manager."
Sarcastic bastard. Brendan would have hung up on him, if Houston hadn't beaten him to it.
His second and final option, then, was to steal the club's takings. The thought filled him with guilt, but it would be okay, the club was insured against theft – at least it had been in August, because Cheryl had got back all the money he'd stolen from the safe. What cut him up, though, was how upset she would be. Desperate men.
Looking back after it all went wrong, Brendan struggled to work out whether it had been worth it. There'd been some mix-up so instead of Rhys leaving the club with the takings, it was Cheryl; and it was Cheryl who crashed to the ground unconscious when Brendan hit her, not realising until it was too late that it was his sister. It was Cheryl who ended up in hospital.
Brendan took the money anyway.
He handed over to Eileen next day the amount she had asked him for, and they parted on fairly good terms. This treatment for Declan better work; Brendan might just be able to look at himself in the mirror again if it hadn't all been for nothing.
Certainly, it had set things back again with Stephen, who apparently suspected him of the theft of the money. Was there anything that boy wouldn't blame Brendan for? He was right about it – he usually was – but even so, it made Brendan frustrated that he was viewed in this way. Frustrating in more ways than one: when he got up close to this lad, close enough to see the fine down on his face and to feel his breath, it was only to intimidate him and lay down the law; when what he wanted to do was to throw him onto the nearest surface and find out if the reality of Stephen's body matched the version that he saw when he shut his eyes at night.
:::::::
"Is Eileen back from England yet, nan?" Macca asked on the phone, as casually as he could manage. He knew that the possibility that Eileen and Brendan had got back together was remote, but he couldn't help worrying. Eileen had taken Brendan back when they'd split up in the past, although as far as Macca knew, those times were about trouble with the police rather than sex – and certainly not sex with her nephew.
"Yes, love," his nan said, "She's just back. I love those boys of hers, but I can't say I wasn't glad when she picked them up."
"I bet. So, how did it go with her Brendan?"
"Well, put it this way, Eileen got what she went for."
"Yeah?" Macca waited for details, but none came. "What was that, then?"
"Didn't she tell you, love? It was money for their Declan's doctors she went for."
"Oh, right. So... they're not gonna try to make a go of things then?"
"Ha! If she lets that man back in her house after what he's done, she'll have me to answer to. If Brendan Brady wants to take up with some tart, he doesn't deserve my Eileen."
Macca flinched. So that was still the story was it? Another woman. He felt strangely hurt. He knew that Brendan feared anyone finding out that he was gay, but once Eileen knew, Macca had hoped there would be a kind of ripple effect, and eventually the right people would know and not care, so that Brendan might just accept himself enough to have him back. But now that he knew that Eileen was colluding in Brendan's secrecy, Macca could see how naïve he'd been to hold on to even such a fragile hope.
He felt as if he was being written out of his own history. A whole year of his life, the year in which he had been most alive, had gone by without any witness but Brendan - and Eileen, of course, at the end, but she had no idea about how it was and what it meant, and in any case she wouldn't care. Why should she? Brendan should, though. Macca knew that the love in their relationship had only gone in one direction, but Brendan had wanted him, there was no doubt about it. Needed him, even: Brendan's body had told him that, time after time, with its ferocious hunger.
:::::::
Brendan tried another change of strategy with Stephen: talking. He asked him what was on his mind, planning to remind him that they had something in common. He told him quietly at the bar that the money he'd given Eileen had come from selling his wedding ring and not, as he knew Stephen believed, from mugging Cheryl. Then he threw in the convincer, about how everything he ever did was for his sons, and it worked: I'm the same, Stephen said. Job done.
And then... and then Brendan began to explain that he wasn't the villain that people – Stephen – believed him to be.
Stephen was on duty, but there was no-one about, and they had a drink together. Brendan told him to have what he liked, and Stephen poured Brendan his usual whiskey and the same for himself, even though it was obvious he wasn't used to it and it made his eyes water. Brendan found himself telling this boy how he'd been sidetracked from his early ambitions by the realities of marriage and children, and how he'd drifted into crime to make ends meet. This wasn't part of the plan: say enough to get Stephen back onside, yes, but leave it there, don't go getting into really personal stuff, the stuff you never spoke about. Fuck. Must be the whiskey.
