The rest of Sunday crawled by. Brendan would have liked to get out of the flat, find a pub and pass a few hours watching and listening and maybe engaging in a bit of conversation like he used to do, back in the days when the prospect of going home to Eileen made the skin of his body feel tight. Pubs were a refuge back then: not the bars and clubs where he did business and had to be constantly alert to the nuances around him; but old men's pubs, the kind of place where the pressure was off and the cast of characters never varied. Sometimes, you just needed things to feel familiar.

It was out of the question, though. It was unlikely he could go into any bar in Belfast and not have someone recognise him, and mention him in passing to someone else; and he knew he was being paranoid, but he still didn't want to be found and dragged back to his real life.

He made a quick trip out to the shops, and came back with some beers and a microwave chilli and, half believing what Macca had said to him this morning about the amount of crap he ate, a bag of salad to go with it. Tomorrow, Brendan would go to the bank and collect his replacement credit card – if it wasn't there waiting for him at last, he would refuse to leave until they got their bloody act together – and then he'd be gone. He hadn't come to Ireland to be a prisoner again, and if he went back home to the South he wouldn't feel like he had to hide out any more. All he had to do was get through the rest of today on his own.

Fuck Macca. Fuck him and his Sunday dinner at his nan's with his boyfriend, and his Sunday night at his boyfriend's trendy apartment. Fuck Liam too. Brendan would be glad to leave them to it: he was fine being alone.

It was just, aloneness had a different quality to it on a Sunday, burdensome and portentous. Waiting for your dad to get home from a day going from pub to pub. Or wondering what was in store at school the next day, who'd be there, who you'd have to avoid, who would make you feel stuff that made your guts twist with the fear of what you were. Or waiting for your wife to come back downstairs from putting the kids to bed, her hair soft and wavy from the steam in the bathroom, her skin perfumed, the desire in her eyes already shaded with the expectation of rejection.

Brendan opened a beer and dug out his phone, the one Macca had sorted out for him as his own was still in an evidence bag in a police station somewhere. He'd only used this one a couple of times, just to give the bank a piece of his mind; there was no-one he wanted to talk to. He looked at the time: two o'clock. Back at Chez Chez, the place would be getting busy about now, punters starting to drift in for a hair of the dog, and the music would be mellow. Maybe he should give Cheryl a call, find out how things were going. She'd been upset when she'd been on the phone to Macca the other day; Brendan had listened as Macca tried to reassure her that her brother would be okay. A quick call to her would put her mind at rest.

He found her name in his mobile's contacts. What would he say? What could he say? She'd be full of questions, and the more he evaded, the more counter-productive it would become. When are you coming home, Brendan? He couldn't answer that, even for himself, and Cheryl would be hurt by any answer that wasn't Now.

He scrolled past Cheryl through the other names.

Stephen.

Stephen might be at work now. Brendan imagined him nodding his head to the music as he served at the bar; counting out change into a customer's hand; giving them a smile if they remembered to stop talking to their mates for a second to say thank you. Or preoccupied with things going on in that head of his, in that life of his that Brendan sometimes felt he knew nothing of. Doing his job, collecting glasses, shifting crates, a neutral mask shielding his inner life.

Call number.

Brendan held his breath as it rang.

"Hello?" His voice hit Brendan like a punch to the base of his throat. "Hello?" Stephen said again.

Brendan strained to hear the background sounds, to work out where he was. A running tap, he thought. Then a child's voice, must be Leah: "Who is it, daddy?"

He was at home then, in that run-down flat where they'd first gone to bed.

His voice was further away now as he gave up trying to hear who was calling: "I don't know, sweetheart, I think they've gone." And then the connection went dead.

Brendan threw the phone down onto the sofa beside him, and ran his hands through his hair, and rubbed at his eyes with his fists. Why the fucking hell had he called that number? To hear his voice, like some lovesick schoolgirl? Get a grip. Stephen was nothing to him any more: how could he be, when Brendan was nothing to Stephen? No, he was worse than nothing to Stephen. To Stephen, he was Rae's killer.

:::::::

He was into his second week in this prison. He was trying to feel his way towards a way of coping with it, watching how older hands got through the days; trying to contain his temper, trying not to let his thoughts run away with him. Keeping a lid on his terror.

Visits were the most important moments you could have as an inmate. Mealtimes came second, a long way behind, but visits were what the men all seemed to live for. It was hard though. Agonising, seeing Cheryl doing her best to be positive for him, but so fragile beneath the surface that he found himself exhausted after their time was up, from his efforts to make her think he was okay.

As he walked into the visiting room and saw Cheryl waiting at one of the small tables, her curls absurdly piled on top of her head, her clothes a clashing mix of defiantly cheerful colours, Brendan felt a rush of love for her. Bad start: he'd been trying not to feel anything for anyone, because in here, even more than out there, emotions made you weak.

You weren't supposed to kiss your visitors, but the guards seemed to take a pragmatic view. They'd turn a blind eye to a kiss on the cheek, but step in if someone's girlfriend tried the kind of move where something could be passed from mouth to mouth. Brendan gave Cheryl a brotherly kiss, and chanced a quick hug, breaking away before the wardens got antsy.

"Alright sis?" He smiled as they sat down opposite each other.

"You look dreadful, Brendan."

"Cheers."

"Oh no, I mean, how long since you've had a shave? It's getting way past designer stubble," she teased, but then her face changed. "Oh god. Have they taken your razor away? Are they worried you might - ?"

"No. No, I'm growing me beard, is all. Fancied a change, okay?"

"But you've always had a tache, Bren. It's you."

"Not in here, Chez. This ain't me."

"Oh, Brendan." Her eyes flooded with tears, which she blinked away.

"Hey, hey, don't be getting upset. You're meant to be cheering me up." He squeezed her arm, and searched for a change of subject. "What's been going on at home? Not running me club into the ground I hope."

"Certainly not." Cheryl pulled herself together. "Business isn't great, but it's always a bit quiet before the students come back, so there's nothing for you to worry about."

"Foxy giving you any trouble?"

"Huh! I can handle him, don't you worry."

"And the staff? No problems there?"

"Nope, we're all trundling on."

"Good." Brendan waited for Cheryl to expand on her answer, but she didn't. "All under control then."

"It'll all still be there waiting for you when you get out."

"If."

"When."

It was If, whatever Cheryl wanted to believe; but there was no point distressing her again – Brendan couldn't bear it if she broke down.

"Anything been happening, aside from the club?" His question felt forced; he wasn't much of a one for smalltalk at the best of times, but everything else was too big for here and now.

Cheryl thought for a moment.

"Well, some of the kids organised a memorial for Rae, like a little service thing only it was outdoors, not in a church or anything, and they let off balloons for her. You should have been there, Bren, it was really touching, you know?"

"That's..."

"I'm an idiot! Oh love I'm sorry, that's the last thing I should be telling you about. Look at me, just rambling away as if - "

"It's okay. It's good that they... that her mates did that." He paused. "Musta hit them hard, losing her like that."

"I still can't believe it myself. Poor Ste, he's taken it hard."

"He okay?" Brendan heard the tightness in his own voice.

Cheryl hesitated, as if choosing her words for once.

"He made a speech."

"Stephen?"

"Yeah, wrote it himself and read it out in front of everyone."

"Stephen did?"

Stephen, who struggled to read and write.

Brendan had figured out early on that Stephen wasn't stupid. He was shockingly under-educated, and Brendan hadn't hesitated to play on his insecurity about it, but he could be wily and astute. But he had a reading problem which had come to Brendan's notice the first time he'd given him a list for the cash & carry, and Stephen had told him he couldn't read his handwriting – the cheeky fuck – so he'd had to tell him what half the items were. There'd been an embarrassment there, a defensive bravado that was easy to see through. After that, Brendan would always read out the list to Stephen before he gave it to him, like he was just double-checking it for himself; well, it wasn't the lad's fault, was it, if he was dyslexic or whatever, so no point making it a big deal.

It was funny though, he had a knack for doing the rotas. Stephen would find a quiet corner and sit there with the charts on his lap, his hair flopping over his forehead, his tongue peeping out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. Then suddenly he'd finish it and smile, and go and get on with his next job, and Brendan would check and he'd have sorted it. If you'd told him that he'd taken a problem with a load of variables – the staff all with their different availabilities, the different numbers of people required for each shift depending on the time of day and the day of the week – and he'd solved it by the application of logic and mathematics and lateral thinking, he'd have looked at you like you were talking Latin. Maybe Brendan should have told him anyway.

"Stephen did?"

"Yes, and it was a lovely little speech," Cheryl answered quietly. "Honestly, you'd have been so proud of him."

"He's a good lad."

"And he's in bits, Bren. I'm sure when he calms down he's gonna realise it wasn't you."

Brendan felt an icy blade slide into his spine.

"What wasn't me?"

"It wasn't you that killed Rae. Ste's all over the place, he's not seeing straight, so it's not surprising that - "

"He thinks I did it?"

"Well, yes, but so does nearly everyone. I mean not me and Lyns, obviously, cos we know you, but - "

"Stephen knows me. He knows me. He knows I'd never hurt a woman, he knows that. He knows me."

"I'm sorry, love. Brendan? It'll be okay, he'll come around, once the shock wears off he'll see sense, and I'm sure Amy'll talk to him and - "

"Amy? Jesus."

"Amy doesn't think you did it, she can see it, so she'll make Ste see, and when you get out, you and him can have a talk, maybe start afresh - "

"Fuck him."

"Brendan!"

"Talk to him? Why would I wanna do that? I'm well out of that, believe me."

He got up and strode to the exit, and got taken back to his cell. The walls seemed to lean in towards him, and he slumped onto the bed, his head spinning. If even the people closest to him didn't believe him, he had no hope at all.

:::::::

Brendan was first in line when the bank opened its doors on Monday morning, and finally his new credit card was ready for him to collect. He signed for it, then went back to the flat.

As Macca had spent the night at Liam's, Brendan had slept in his bed instead of on the sofa, and had had a better night's sleep. The bed was comfortable, and there'd been a certain comfort, too, in having the scent of the lad around him. It brought with it a kind of nostalgia for this same place in that year when Brendan had taken possession of the boy and the bed, and used them both. At the time, it had felt complicated, living with Eileen, fucking her nephew, aware that Macca's feelings were getting out of control, but carrying it on anyway because the sex was good and the process of picking up men for one-off encounters disgusted him even more than this affair did. Christ, he remembered once he'd battered Macca for using that word, affair.

Complicated, then. Looking back though, it had been a walk in the park.

Brendan started to make the bed, but stopped. Let Macca see that it had been slept in. He imagined him coming home and seeing it and curling up in the hollow Brendan had made and, fresh from his perfect boyfriend's designer bed, getting off on the imprint that Brendan had made on his body as well as on his mattress.

He began to round up his possessions and to pack them into his holdall. There was too much stuff to fit in, since he'd bought some new clothes here in Belfast. He binned some of the things he'd worn in prison – he never wanted to see them again – and decided in the end to leave one or two things here. Obviously he would need to come back to the city to see his kids again before he returned to England, so he might as well call in on Macca. He would pick up his things and pay back the money he owed him at the same time.

He took a chance that he wouldn't want his suit on his trip across the border, so he hung it up in Macca's wardrobe, bundling what must be Liam's clothes out of the way to do so. He put the paperwork from prison and a few other bits and pieces in a carrier bag in a drawer, then double checked that he'd got everything he needed. He found his passport in a side pocket of his holdall, and there was something else in there too, in a clear plastic bag in which his property had been returned to his solicitor by the police. He'd already taken out his cross and his cash and whatever else, so all that was left in there was his bracelet. He held the heavy metal cuff between his fingers, studying its hard, dull sheen.

Brendan had bought it for himself on an impulse; he'd been in a jewellery shop in Chester looking for a present for Cheryl to cheer her up after the safe had been robbed soon after the club had opened, and he'd noticed it, the strength of it, the solidity.

He remembered the eyes of the boy on it, first time he wore it. See something you like? Made him blush – even back then in the times before Stephen knew what he wanted, it wasn't much of a challenge, but Jesus, it was a pleasure. It's mint, that, and a slight smile, a change from the customary pout, his lips parted like they were made to be.

Brendan remembered a night in a bar. A gay bar. A date, you'd call it, if you were into that sentimental bullshit. The boy, careful and cautious but full of wanting it to mean something. Needing it to. His hand reaching out across the table and across the chasm, touching your hand, his fingertips brushing the metal cuff, and although his touch was brief – already he knew the risks he took – you wanted to escape. And you did. You touched his hand, briefer even than he'd touched yours, like an offering, an apology for what you were about to do. And then you ran.

He remembered a stolen afternoon, a feverish fuck, his hands on the pillow either side of the boy's head. The cries Stephen made as he writhed and thrashed and abandoned himself to the sensations. His limbs flailing, and his fingers finding the bracelet on Brendan's wrist and hooking inside it, and staying there in their collapse, delicately trapped together, his knuckles against Brendan's pulse.

Brendan was going to put it on. He still liked it, didn't he? There was nothing different about it, now that it wouldn't join them any more.

He stuffed the cuff back into the plastic bag and shoved it into the drawer.

He had another quick look around, scribbled a note for Macca, and left.

Brendan caught a bus to the station, and bought a ticket for the next train to Dublin.