You didn't know if he'd want you in his bed, after Amy took his children from him because of you. Yet here you both are.
"I'm sorry," he said to you after that taxi drove away with his kids, when he turned and saw that you had followed him. I'm sorry. Sorry for what? For choosing his kids over you, you guess, even though you'd told him he had to. Sorry it failed, and it's you he was left with? Sorry because he knows that things between you will never be the same as before: maybe that was his sorrow.
He came into your arms, and there in the street you held him, but when you walked home together there was a space between you, and when you tried to tell him you'd do whatever it took, pay whatever it cost to bring Leah and Lucas back to him, he didn't seem to hear you. It was too soon for him to think straight, so you didn't push it.
You had to put in a few hours' work at the club, but he was on your mind the whole time so you finished early and came home, and you were scared of what state he'd be in when you opened the door. The flat was dark, and you found him in bed, and you stood for a moment and held your breath to hear if he was breathing, and over the sound of your heart's hammering you heard that he was. Still you didn't move, you waited and watched him until your watching woke him. He stirred, opened his eyes.
"What time is it?"
"Not ten yet," you told him. "You had anything to eat?"
"Not hungry."
You were starving. You made yourself a sandwich and ate it standing in the kitchen, then you heated up a mug of milk and spooned some sugar into it, and grabbed a handful of cookies out of the jar and piled them on a plate, and took them into the bedroom, and put them down on the bedside cabinet.
"Here."
"Said I'm not hungry."
"Gonna have a bath," you said, and you wanted to stroke his hair but you didn't know if you'd lost the right to touch him, so you left him on his own.
After your bath you went into the bedroom to get a T-shirt and boxers to put on. He was sleeping again, you thought; and the milk had gone, and some of the cookies. You were going to leave him on his own again, because you didn't know if you'd lost the right to share his bed, so you turned to go.
"Where you going?"
"Nowhere." You got into bed.
And so here you both are.
You've been to sleep but you're awake now. He has his back towards you, but not against you as it often is, and the space between you is cavernous. You listen again, wanting to hear the long, even breaths of his sleep, but instead you realise that he's crying. You prop yourself up on your elbow and put your hand on his shoulder and say, "Steven," but he shrugs you off and you lie back down and you don't know what you can do that will make him – or you – feel better.
Next time you wake up it's because he's shaking you, and as soon as you open your eyes he's trying to drag you onto him. You let him pull you so that you're on your side and facing him, but what he's doing is making you uneasy: the desperation of his mouth on yours; his hand blundering under your T-shirt and reaching around your back to press you against him, wanting to haul you on top of him as he rolls onto his back. Many times he's been avid for you, but this is different. When he says, "Come on, Bren. Come on, I wanna fuck," there's not the usual spark of desire and challenge in him. Instead, his eyes are blank and his face is smudged with tears.
"Steven," you say, and you hug him against you, try to calm him down but he says, "What's the matter? Don't you... why don't you want me?" – and is that it? Does he think when you said today that you would move out, that you were just shrugging your shoulders? Does he think that it was easy for you to walk away?
"Jesus, Steven." You kiss him, and he breathes hotly into your mouth and grabs at your body, and you prise his hands off you so you can scramble out of your clothes.
You're barely inside him before he says, "Harder," and you feel his heels under your arse trying to force you deeper, and you do what he wants, and his head jerks back into the pillow, and his fingers dig into your shoulders. And then his legs uncurl from around you, and he pushes you off him and you're confused, but it's a different position he wants, and now his ankles are hooked over your shoulders and you enter him again, and he says, "Hurt me."
Often, you're rough with him but it's a game that you both know you're playing, and it's not what's happening here . It's not pleasure he's wanting: he's chasing oblivion, and it's an impulse you recognise, and you think there's something else you recognise too. Does he think that he deserves it, to be ill-treated, to be abused? Does he think it's all he's worth? "Hurt me," he says, and you ease back from him and say, "No," and he says, "Why not? You might as well," and he's angry, and you can't tell who he's angry at, you or himself, but either way it kills you.
You're not going to hurt him. You won't be a weapon for him to use against himself, so when you plunge into him as deep as you can go, there's nothing violent about it, and if it frustrates him it's only momentarily, because as you rock with him, the backs of his legs braced against your chest as the weight of your body bends him in half at the hips, he goes with you and his cries start coming.
His eyes are screwed closed. Usually you tell him to open them when he comes, and when you come, but this time you don't because if he looks up at you now, you're scared that you'll find yourself looking into the eyes of a man you don't know.
:::::::
His head is on your shoulder when you fall asleep, but by morning he's moved away from you again. You get up and get dressed for work, and then you sit and listen to him moving from bedroom to bathroom and back, and eventually he appears. It looks like he's taking the day off work, as he's not in his deli uniform.
He sits himself down in front of you, and hands you an envelope without saying a word. In the space of a few seconds your mind races. The only time he's written to you in his life before was one day last summer, when he told you that he'd got even with you and had chosen to spend his life with Douglas. What's he saying now? Goodbye? But this is not a letter, it's a card, and you realise what it's for. It's Valentine's day.
He doesn't even look disappointed that you've nothing for him. He looks as if it's just one more thing that he doesn't have.
He leaves the room then comes back with his jacket on.
"Going down the school," he says. "Got to tell them Leah's not coming back."
"Steven – " you say, but he's gone.
You open the card. There's a picture on the front of a door with a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the handle, and on the inside there's a printed message saying Happy Valentine's Day to my boyfriend, and between Happy and Valentine's, Steven's drawn a little arrow and written 1st. Then underneath, in his best handwriting, it says, Your worth the wait. Love you, and then all along the bottom he's put – and you count them – seventeen kisses.
You guess he wrote this before Amy showed up yesterday.
You don't deserve him. You knew it before and you know it now, but you've got to at least try to make things better, so you make a few calls to track down the phone number of that lawyer, the one who got Mercedes McQueen off the hook when the smart money said she had no chance. You reckon Jim McGinn performed some sleight of hand back then, and Christ knows what the truth was among all the stories he spun to get his client off – you suspect that shifting the blame for Lynsey's death from Dr Browning to Riley Costello was strategic, but that's one of the sleeping dogs you're letting lie for now. Anyhow, it's McGinn's determination you want to hire, not his morality, so you give him a call and ask him to meet you at Chez Chez.
:::::::
You've rung Steven, told him you've set up this meeting, and he's not impressed. He's been to the school and now he's on his way to the nursery to explain about Lucas, and you tell him, if he comes and meets this lawyer with you maybe he won't even need to explain to the fucking nursery, because maybe he'll be getting his kids back. He says he'll come to the club when he can, and if he's in time he's in time, and if he's not he's not, but it won't make any difference either way.
Jim arrives, and you explain the situation, and he's up front with you that it's not his field but he knows a bit about it, and he says there's a fighting chance in the light of Steven having had sole care of the kids while Amy was out of the country. You phone Steven again, and after a few more minutes he shows up.
Probably doesn't help to have a domestic in front of the lawyer.
Steven doesn't want to go to court about this, he'd rather try and talk Amy round, but you point out to him that she isn't even answering his calls. You need a drink, and Kevin's there so you tell him to pour you one, and it's not your first, and Steven's all up in your face then, "Oh yeah, cos drinking in the daytime, that's gonna help the situation, innit." You tell him you're trying to help, but he says it's not what he wants. Then Jim offers to go through the facts for Steven, and Steven doesn't see the point but you say, "Hear him out, please," and he relents and stops to listen.
It sounds to you like there's hope, and as you listen you start wondering if it's a road you could go down to get to see your own kids, at least the first step, which Jim stresses is the best option: negotiate with the mother.
As soon as Jim goes, Steven says, "Didn't need that."
You look at him. He's angry and not in the mood to be helped.
"We'll get your kids back, Steven," you say.
"Stop saying it, Brendan. Right, cos you know for a fact, Amy's gonna fight to the death to keep them kids away from you." He starts walking away.
"So then we convince her that I've changed." As you say it, you can feel your temper rising, threatening to make your words a lie.
"Yeah, with a glass of Scotch and a weirdo lawyer, yeah." He's heading for the exit.
"You know what, forget the lawyer," you shout, "And forget the Scotch," and you throw your glass and it misses his head – just – and smashes against the door.
He turns and looks at you, and he doesn't look as shocked as you feel. He looks let down.
"Sorry, I..." you say. "Steven, I'm sorry – "
He's gone. Hurt me, he said, and you have.
:::::::
You've been calling him, or trying to: he's not answering. You've left messages telling him you need to chat, talk things over. You need him to hear that you're sorry, and to believe it, but every time you call it goes to voicemail, and you can feel your life – the good things in it – falling away piece by piece. And it's your own fault, you've fucked it up, and you're mad at him but mainly you're mad at yourself, and again his number goes to fucking voicemail and you lash out at the nearest thing. This time the nearest thing doesn't matter, it's the door of a cubicle in the toilets. and you kick it off its hinges.
You stand there for a moment to get your control back, and then you start to leave but something catches your eye. The door knocked the cover off the toilet roll holder as it fell, and what was hidden inside is now exposed: it's a packet wrapped in plastic and tape, and you pick it up, and you know what it is. Someone's brought drugs into your club, enough to sell. Enough to get the club closed down, and enough to get you sent down.
This is all you need. You put it into your pocket and go out of the toilets and into the office, and shut the door. You need to get rid of it, but there are punters around now and you can't be seen flushing white powder away, so for now, you lock it in the safe, and you think. There's no point looking through the CCTV footage because you don't know how long ago the stuff was hidden, and people go in and out of the toilets the whole time.
When you get back to work, everyone you look at is a suspect.
:::::::
You've taken a whiskey out onto the balcony and you're getting some air, when you hear police sirens. It takes a few seconds for the sound to register, but when it does you run back inside, push through the customers and get to the office, and get the cocaine from the safe. Then you run out again and down the steps, and you'll have to bin it somewhere and hope it doesn't get found because your prints are on it.
"Brendan? Is that what I think it is?" Steven's appeared from nowhere. "Go on, let me see." He grabs it off you.
"They're not mine."
"Drugs?"
This is worse than the police finding them. This is Steven thinking you've broken another promise.
You tell him you found them. You make him look at you, and you tell him, "You know I don't do this any more. I don't."
"What was I thinking, giving up my kids for you?"
He shoves the package back at you, and leaves you. You bury it among someone else's rubbish, and get back to the club, and all the time you're sitting there while the police move the customers out and search the premises from top to bottom, all you can think about is Steven, and what he meant when he said he'd given up his kids for you. You thought it was you he'd given up but that Amy was being stubborn in still taking the kids anyway. Only now you're wondering if he'd tried to hold on to you as well as to Leah and Lucas, and that was why Amy didn't relent.
The police find nothing. They don't apologise, but they let slip that they were acting on an anonymous tip-off. Someone has tried to set you up.
:::::::
You didn't get home until the early hours, and like the night before, Steven was in bed. You thought about sleeping on the sofa, but in the end you let him decide: he could have told you to get out when you got into bed, but he didn't. Probably he would have done, but it would have meant he'd have had to stop pretending to be asleep.
He's gone to work by the time you wake up in the morning. You're woken by a phone call from your sister, who has been arrested for offences related to prostitution, and has spent the night in a police cell. Jesus. You get some of the story from her, enough to know that she's guilty only of stupidity, and she says she didn't call you til this morning because she knew there was a raid at the club and thought you had enough on your plate. You tell her you'll sort it, and you do, you make a call and send her a solicitor. Then you call Steven and leave a message on his voicemail. You apologise again for throwing a glass at him yesterday, and you tell him that the drugs were planted, and as you say it you remember Amy asking you if you could be sure that your past wouldn't come back to bite you, and you wonder if this set-up was proving her right.
On your way to work you look in the deli window. Steven looks pissed off, and you chicken out of going in to see him. When you eventually bite the bullet, he looks at you as you walk in, and his mouth forms that perfect pout that set you imagining all kinds from pretty much the first time you ever laid eyes on him. It's distracting.
You ask him if he's avoiding you. He says he had orders to sort out: that's a yes, then. He still hasn't heard from Amy, and he says he can't say he blames her, the kids probably are better off with her.
"For the last time, Steven, the drugs, they ain't mine."
"Course they aren't."
It's fucking frustrating. You know it's your fault that Amy's taken the kids, but for Steven not to believe you over things that aren't your fault... You thought you'd got past this, the two of you.
"Read my lips. They ain't mine."
"You finished? Only I got paninis to wrap."
You put your hand over his to stop him doing what he's doing and make him listen, and you tell him that someone put those drugs in your club, and you're going to find out who. Then you walk out and head back to work.
:::::::
There's something about Kevin.
Every time you turn around, he's there, and you've seen him watching you, and you know nothing about him, not really; and yesterday you startled him as he came out of the toilets, and he was... twitchy. So you're wondering if he knows something about that cocaine.
You're going to talk to him, only Steven comes to see you. He's heard about Cheryl's bit of bother, and you tell him she'll be out in an hour. Then he says he wasn't thinking straight before, with all the stuff with Amy on his mind, but if you say you didn't know anything about the drugs, he believes you. He's changed his tune, but you can't help wondering what would happen if you needed him in your corner when it really mattered.
"You didn't believe me, did you? You couldn't take my word for it, could you?"
He doesn't say anything. He just slouches off, but Kevin's still there behind the bar, watching and listening, and you focus on him now.
You ask him about the drugs, and he denies it. You know he's not the brains behind it anyhow. "The question I have is," you say to him, "Who made you put the stash in my club?" He fronts it out, tells you to check the CCTV, looks you in the eye, and you're inclined to believe him: he's just a kid, and he'd be more scared of you than he appears to be, wouldn't he, if he was guilty? You issue a vague threat to kill him if you ever find out he's lied to you, but for now, you're going to let it go.
:::::::
Seamus calls in at the club. He's taken to doing that, more so since you moved out of Cheryl's and in with Steven, and it's always at times when it's quiet, and you'll turn around and he's there, and you don't know what he wants, and you get angry with yourself for the shiver of fear that runs through you because, what can he do to you now? You're taller than him, stronger, so you ought to man up. Only it happens every time: he unnerves you.
This time, you're in the office and there's a shadow in the doorway and it's him, and you begin to sweat.
"What do you want, Dad?"
"Can't your old man come and see you now, son?" He bares his teeth in a smile.
"I'm working." You look down at the papers in front of you on the desk, and try to read the figures but they're out of focus now.
"Had a little win, thought I'd share the good fortune. You can take Steven out, my treat."
"No," you say quickly, then, "No thanks. I don't want your money."
"Tell him you won it yourself if you like. It'll be our secret."
Tell them you caught it yourself if you like. It'll be our secret.
You're nine, maybe ten years old, and it's a good day. You're at the beach, and your stepmum's there, and Cheryl and a friend of hers, and all of you are making patterns of shells and pebbles on the sand around the sandcastles you've made; and then something blocks out the sun, and you squint up and see your dad. Coming to see what we can catch in the rock pools, son? You shake your head, and he says, Oh, you'd rather play the little girls' games? And he winks at the girls, and this pal of Cheryl's giggles, and your dad holds his hand out to you, and you take it and he pulls you to your feet, and he picks up the fishing nets, and you walk off with him beyond the breakwater, your hand in his.
The rock pool fascinates you. If you watch for long enough, you see that the stillness of the water is an illusion and in reality, it's teeming with life. You've got a shrimp net and you trawl it slowly along just beneath the surface, and when you lift it out there's a tiny crab in it, and you show it to your dad and he says, Not worth having, and you shake it out onto the sand and it stays still for a moment as if it doesn't know which is its best hope, running or playing dead. Then it scuttles away into the shade of a rock.
There's a splash and the water is disrupted. Your dad has plunged his hand into the pool, and when he pulls it out he's holding a crab the size of his clenched fist. What about that, Brendan? he says, and he holds it out for you to look at, and he laughs as he waves the creature in your face, and you jump backwards but you laugh too. He drops it into the fishing net and twists it so the top is closed and there's no escape. Tell them you caught it yourself if you like. It'll be our secret, he says, and you say, Okay, and then when he starts to unbutton his shorts, you say, No.
The crab is struggling. You concentrate on it, its claws trying to dig down into the sand, its fragile legs flailing. Every move it makes tangles the net more tightly around it.
"It'll be our secret," Seamus says, and you put down your pen and stand up.
"I said no, didn't I?" you say, and he stares at you for a moment, and then he goes.
You need to get away.
:::::::
You've called Eileen. The kids finish school today for the half term holiday, and with all that's happened with Leah and Lucas, and with the way everything's started to feel in a state of flux, you badly want to see Declan and Padraig.
Eileen surprised you. They'll be in Dublin for the week, she said, and if you want to go over she won't stop you, but she won't have you in the house, and you've got to understand that if the boys say they don't want to meet with you, she's not going to force them. It's more than you'd dared hope for, and it feels like a lifeline.
You go to the deli to tell Steven. He's outside, and you tell him straight out, "Gonna go away for a few days."
"Oh, right... Want me to come with you, then? Doug can handle this place for a few days on his own."
You didn't expect him to say that. Not after he walked out of the club today; not since you lost him his children.
"Think I'll go away, just me. Get out of your hair for a while."
"I was wrong to accuse you, but... you get why I did." There it is: however much you try and change, it'll never be enough to put your past to rest.
"You're gonna be okay on your own for a bit, aren't you?"
"Yeah," he says, but he doesn't seem certain, and you think maybe he'll ask you to stay, maybe he needs you as much as you need him. Then he says, "Yeah. Course I will."
:::::::
He comes home and watches as you pack your bag. You wonder if you're doing the right thing, giving yourself space, giving him space too, when there's been too much space between you these last couple of days. You're frightened that when you come back, he'll have decided that being with you is still the mistake he thought it would be two months ago, when he was planning on putting three thousand miles between you for the rest of your lives. You have to take that risk though, because you need him to be with you only if he wants to be.
You spend a couple of hours tying things up at the club before you have to leave for the airport. Steven comes to see you off, and you stand by the taxi in the pouring rain, and you tell him, "If you don't want me to go, Steven, all you have to do is say," and you want more than anything for him to say, Stay with me.
"No, go. Have a nice time with your kids, yeah?"
You'd give anything if he could be with his kids, and that's what this is, or part of it anyhow. If he wants to call Amy and tell her you've gone, this is his chance. That's why you don't pull him into your arms like you want to, and hold him and kiss him: in case this is goodbye.
:::::::
You get a taxi from Dublin International and it takes you a couple of miles south to your hotel, and you ask the driver to wait while you check in and dump your bag in your room, then the cab drives you the rest of the way to the city centre. Eileen and the boys aren't due to arrive from Belfast until tomorrow, and you can't face spending what's left of the evening out in the suburbs.
By the time you're in town, you've just got time for a couple of drinks, and you go to a pub you know just north of the river. It's a kind of relief to be here, and you hope this trip and the distance it gives you will clear your head; and you hope that with you out of Steven's hair, he will find himself resenting you a little less and wanting you a little more.
Two double Bushmills in, and your perspective starts to shift a little. You start regretting cold-shouldering him when he came to tell you that he believed you about the drugs, and that he was sorry he hadn't taken your word at first. Fuck. After everything he knows you've done, and everything he knows you are, how can you let him apologise to you, let alone throw it back in his face when he does? You lean on the bar and you close your eyes, and you remember when he said to you, You'll always be my problem and stood by you even though you weren't even together then. He meant it, didn't he? He doubts you but he comes back to you.
You don't deserve him, but you want with all your heart for him to decide you're worth another chance.
You leave the pub and you walk round the corner and make it to the off licence just as they're pulling down the shutters to close up. You get a bottle of whiskey to take back to your hotel. As you stand waiting to pay, you notice on the counter a box of padlocks, with a sign printed on it saying "Love locks" €14. You pick one out of the box.
"I'll take this too," you say.
"I'm obliged to advise you," the fella behind the counter says, and you can tell by his sardonic delivery that it's a line he's said many times before, "You best not be hanging it on the bridge, or the City Council will be after me."
"Course not," you say.
He takes your money then says, "There's a pen there, if you're wanting to write something on it. Permanent marker, so."
You take the pen, and you smooth your thumb over the cold metal of the padlock, and then you write on it BRENDAN and then STEVEN.
On the Ha'penny Bridge, the air is colder than it was in December.
You walk quickly to the place where you found him that night. You remember him turning away from you and holding on to the railings, and that's where you stand now and look down into the water flowing darkly beneath you.
They're called love locks. If you love somebody, you write both your names on a padlock, and you throw the key into the river. You weren't thinking of doing one, were you?
The lock clicks closed. You're still for a moment, and then you kiss the key, and you throw it. You see it glint for a fraction of a second in the light cast by the lamp beside you on the bridge, and then it disappears from sight, and you imagine it floating under the water, and resting on the river's bed for ever.