He walks into the club, and as he passes me there's a good three feet of space in between us but he still inclines his shoulder away from me like he wants to maximise the distance.
I push the door closed. Stand facing it for a moment. Wonder what I can conjure up that might distract him from what he's come here to demand of me: Tell me what happened with Walker.
I turn around.
He's half way across the dance floor, standing looking at me, just him and me alone in the building. The one light I'd not yet switched off – a work-light over here near the door – barely reaches him, and other than that there's just the green neon exit sign beyond him and the one behind me, and the low glow from the glass-fronted refrigerators over there behind the bar. Their combined effect makes him look sallow, ghostly.
"Well?" he says.
"Sorry, Steven, you've lost me. I've had a long day."
"Don't."
"Don't what?" I walk towards him, frown like I'm baffled by whatever trivial thing is on his mind; hold my arms out to the sides, palms towards him, Nothing to see here. "You're gonna have to elaborate."
He shakes his head.
"Don't make out you don't know what I'm on about, cos I know Cheryl phoned you."
"Cheryl?" I say, but I don't think anything in my bag of tricks is going to work on him; the attempt feels tawdry. I feel tawdry. "Yeah. She said she'd spoken to you."
"So she did phone you."
Fuck.
"You said – You said you knew she had."
"I knew she would." He shrugs, barely, like there's no triumph in catching me out, just disappointment.
He waits for me to say something.
"D'you want a drink, Steven?" I'm delaying, and he just stares at me. "Or tea? Tea, yeah? I can put the kettle on, I'll go and – "
"I'll have water."
"Water. Okay."
I go to walk round behind the bar, but he says, "I'll get me own," and he goes round there himself and gets a bottle out of the fridge, and then when he starts to make his way out again he stops and says, "Want one?"
I don't. Not water anyways. Anyways, before I answer him he's put down his bottle and picked up a glass, and he's sloshed into it an unmeasured amount of Scotch whisky that almost splashes over the brim.
"Easy there," I say. "That's my profits you're spilling." I hope it sounds like a joke, like my heart isn't beating at the base of my throat hard enough to choke me.
He drinks it himself, gulps at it till it's half gone then sets the glass down on the bar, grabs his water and comes out onto the floor again. I walk over to the whisky. There's still more than a double double left and I'd like to do like he did, swallow it down so it kicks in right away, but I don't. I sip it, put it down, turn and look at him.
"Walker," he says.
I take a breath. "What did Cheryl tell you?"
He frowns for a second like he thinks it's a trick question, but he answers it regardless.
"Not much. I said to her that me and you had a bit of a... Cos I found out Mitzeee was the first person you told about your dad before you told me. Only Cheryl didn't realise I was talking about Mitzeee, did she, she thought I was talking about Walker."
"Okay."
"And she tried to make out that she meant when he kidnapped you and made you talk about all them things." His voice is starting to rise: it's almost a relief after the deadness of him up till now. "Only she was lying. I knew she was lying, cos that would'a been after you told Mitzeee, not before. Cos Mitzeee'd gone to America by then, hadn't she, so you'd already told her, so you must'a told Walker before she went. Before. So is it true, Brendan? Was it him that you chose first?"
"'Chose'? I didn't choose him."
"What, so he forced you, did he?" He's fiddling with his bottle of water, twisting the cap on and off, agitated. "Look, right, Brendan, I'm not having a go. I'm just... just... I wanna get things straight in me head. Cos I don't understand. Please, just tell me."
"Yeah. Yeah, I told him. Not... Not how I told you or Anne, though, Steven, not all the..."
"When?"
"When we were... Me and Chez, when we were at the holiday house. Y'know, when I got blown up? Then. Well, before, obviously. Before I got blown up."
"What was Walker doing at your nan's house though?"
"I dunno, he was just around, just..."
"'Around'."
"Yeah."
"Right."
"Steven, I'd just... You know what I was like with that house. My head was fucked. Okay? Nana, she'd just told me that she knew, she'd known all along, and then I – And then she died. And I got this idea that... that it was like a line in the sand, y'know? The past was... And I thought if I could just cross that line it would be over, I'd be able to... change things, be someone different, let myself – "
"Did you kill her? I mean, I know you said you did, but you've never actually said it to me."
"Yes."
"Did Walker know?"
"No one knew. No one knows, only you."
"You told everyone when you confessed."
"I took that back, Steven, you know that."
"What about Cheryl? She must've asked you about it after, course she did."
"I lied. Told her I'd made it up."
He's silent for a minute. I watch his face: he's processing this – fitting it into the story he knows, I guess – and then he gets back on track.
"So then you just, like, went and told Walker about your dad because your head was mashed."
"I... Yeah, something like that."
"Why though? What, did you think, oh, he's a decent bloke, I can tell him this massive secret that I've kept all locked up for me whole life?" He checks himself, and then he's earnest. "I know you was upset, but that's not you, Brendan. You don't, like, blurt things out, whatever's going on, specially something like that. Specially not to just anyone."
"I dunno, Steven. I shouldn'a trusted him."
"So why did you?"
"I didn't. Not really. I told you, my head was wrecked, and he..." I turn away, swallow the rest of the glass of Scotch. "Jesus. My advice, if you're getting a taste for this? Stick to the Irish kind, it won't burn your insides out."
"He what?"
"You want another?" I glance at him; I neither expect nor get an answer, and I go behind the bar again and give myself a refill, and he's not saying anything, and I can feel his eyes on me, and I stay behind the bar, and in the end it's me that caves in and breaks the silence. "I couldn't talk to Chez, could I. I couldn't tell her about her dad. But he was there, Walker, so."
"Did he follow you there? Cos he was investigating you, weren't he. Did he just, like, show up?"
His questioning is stringent. For the first time in many years I wish Steven Hay wasn't so clever.
I shake my head. "I called him."
"Because you needed him to go with you? Same as I went with you when you went to the house before you sold it?"
"No, it was nothing like that. I didn't call him to go there, I called him before that, before I knew I couldn't get out of taking Nana there. It was something... something else I needed him for, a job, not..."
"But he stuck around."
"Like a bad smell."
"You must'a wanted him there. I mean, that house is in the middle of nowhere. You could'a told him to get lost, couldn't you, after he'd done this job you called him for. So you could'a gone there just with Cheryl and your nan."
"Cheryl wasn't talking to me. I dunno, Steven, maybe I had to have someone."
He looks startled, and then something else washes over him, and even though he's over there and I'm over here safely behind the bar, I can hear his breaths quicken.
"Brendan? You and him... Were you..? Were you and him – ?"
"It was nothing."
"What was? What was nothing?"
"It was a shag. Okay? It was nothing."
"You had sex with Walker?"
"It was a mistake."
He's shaking his head. "I don't believe this."
"Steven, it – "
"You had sex with him."
"It was once. One time, just one time, the night before we went to the house."
"How? I mean, how come? This is not..." He turns away, shaking his head, and when he turns back he's alight with emotion: anger; pain. "So that's why you could talk to him, cos he was your – "
"He wasn't my anything. Jesus."
"That's why you trusted him, cos you were all loved up, were you?"
"'Loved up'? For fucksake, Steven, it was a shag. We don't all have to be going steady like you and Miss Congeniality were at the time, by the way."
"No, don't you dare bring Doug into this." He's pacing now, off across the floor and then towards me, and he places his plastic bottle carefully on the bar and lays his hands palms-down either side of it, and when he speaks again it's quietly. "Did you kiss him?"
"No."
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
"You might as well tell me."
"Alright. Alright, he kissed me."
"Did you kiss him back?" he says, and I answer him by saying nothing. "After? Or only before, when you was... when you was seducing him?"
The word sounds ridiculous, unnatural coming from him, so much so that I laugh. Only for a second though because of the look on his face of astonishment that I could find something funny when everything we have is on the brink.
"It wasn't like that. I never seduced him. I never wanted him. He came to me."
"And you just couldn't resist, even though you didn't want him? D'you even know how pathetic that is? Oh yeah, that's right, have another drink."
"Starting to get on my nerves now, Steven, with all this..."
"So come on, then, how come you ended up fucking him, eh?"
"What?"
"I mean, you say you never seduced him, so how did it happen? Got pissed, did you, and he was the first bloke you saw?"
"No one was drinking. We had a fight."
"A row?"
"A fight. A fist fight. Knocked seven bells out'a each other, and then he just... we just..."
"He kissed you, off the back of a fight?"
"Yeah."
"And you kissed him back, and then you... So what was it like? Was he good, eh? Did you fancy another go so that's why you let him stick around?" He walks to the end of the bar and comes round behind it, and he's straight to me, in my face. "Well? What was he like in bed?"
"I wouldn't know, Steven, cos I had him on the floor."
"Fuck you." He shoves me, both hands on my chest, and I stagger backwards from the surprise of it as much as from the force.
"Seriously? This is how you wanna play this?"
"'Play'? I ain't playing, mate, this is... I don't..."
"Look. Look, yeah, I don't remember it because I – "
"You remember you done it on the floor."
"Yeah, that's all I remember about it cos I was out'a my fucking mind, I keep telling you. Had a fight, had a fuck, that's it. That's all, end of story."
"That's what you like, is it?"
"What?"
"A bloke like that, like him. Six foot whatever, all... A bloke that's gonna hit you back when you hit him, is that what you want?"
"Steven, don't be – "
"Is that what does it for you? A bloke that don't just take it? Eh?"
He throws himself at me again, harder and faster this time but this time I'm ready for him and he winds himself when his breastbone hits the hand I put out to block him, and the momentum is with me now so his feet barely touch the floor until I've got his back against the wall.
Glasses and bottles shudder on the shelves.
"Get a grip, Steven."
"Get off me." He struggles, tries to prise my hand off his chest and when that doesn't work he lashes out wanting to claw my face and I jump away from him.
"Back off, boy. Back down."
"Or what?"
"Don't tempt me."
We stare at each other for a second and then I turn away and go out through the door behind the bar. From there there's two options, either round to the back stairs and the rear exit, or through into the kitchen. I choose the kitchen, because I'm not leaving, I'm just putting some space between us. That's the idea anyhow, but as soon as I'm in there he's behind me and he's switched on the lights, and all the hard, shining surfaces – the steel, the tiles – seem to amplify the brightness and expose me for what I am, shabby and dark.
"Oi," he says, and he grabs my arm and yanks it, and I turn to face him, and he says, "I'm not finished."
There's nothing shabby about him, or dark. He's blazing.
"No?" I say.
"No. Cos you're still... There's still things I can't, like... Cos you said your head was a mess cos of your nan, but she hadn't died yet, had she, before you slept with him? And she hadn't told you that she'd always known about Seamus, cos you've told me that was at the house. So, like, one minute you was phoning him cos you had a job on, and the next minute you was in bed with him, so – "
"It wasn't a bed, I told you."
"No. No." He's onto me again, and I've got him by the arms, and he's flailing kicks at me trying to unbalance me. "It's not a joke."
"Alright. Alright."
"There was nothing wrong with your head that night, was there. You just wanted him. You liked him."
Suddenly he gives up struggling, and my hold on his arms is to stop him crumpling.
"Steven – "
"Why can't you just admit it?"
"There's nothing to admit."
He's instantly reanimated. He whips his arms out of my grip but he doesn't retreat: if I wanted to reach for him I could.
The tendons in his neck are like wires. His body, under its soft layers of T-shirt and hoodie, is jagged. His eyes are wide, ice-blue, the pupils shrunken in the glaring light.
"Stop acting like I'm angry about nothing. It weren't nothing. It's not nothing."
"It was four years ago. He's dead and buried. What do you want me to do, huh?"
"Just... just..."
I take a step closer.
"Steven."
"I hate you."
I grab him when he flies at me again. We struggle. He pulls at the front of my shirt: I feel his nails on my chest and then I feel his other hand squeezing my crotch, and instantly there's a blood rush and I'm getting hard. We look at each other and we kiss. Our teeth make a noise when they clash. I get my hand down inside his trackies and tug at his cock and balls. He drags my shirt out from my suit trousers and his hands make contact with the skin of my flanks: his fingers dig into my flesh. Then he sinks to the floor, slides his trackies off and his underwear, and lies back, looking up at me. I don't know what to do, so I do what he wants. I take off my jacket and lay it on the island worktop; I unbuckle and unzip and get down on the floor between the spread of his knees. I spit into my hand and get myself harder; more spit, and I open him up. I lean forward and kiss him: his jaw is rigid. He feels for my cock and touches its head to his hole, and I push inside. His fingers are there again on my waist, my ribs, boring in with their nails.
He cries out, and I stop where I am.
"You wannit?" I say to him. "Or you changed your mind?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah you do or yeah you changed your mind?"
"I do."
I ease in deeper again. We're too dry though and my skin is getting dragged so hard it's painful, or it will be. I pull out of him almost all the way, and he says, "I said yeah," and then the fury leaves his face and he says, "Are you alright?"
I make myself wet with spit again, all up the shaft this time, and then I give it to him, get swallowed up and taken over by his body heat, and when we come we're kissing and his hands are in my hair.
I lie back on the cold floor, and zip up, and he scrabbles for his clothes and puts them on as he lies there. I start to get up and he says, "Mind your head," in time to stop me hitting it on the island on my way up.
"Thank you," I say. "Could'a knocked myself out."
"Whatever." He gets up and goes and unfurls a length of paper towels, bunches it up, wets it under the tap and comes back to where we were. He gets down on his knees, wiping here and there.
"Cleaners'll be in in the morning, won't they," I say. "They'll do that."
"I ain't leaving them handprints to find, and any..." He carries on, and I wash my hands, and then I see him pick something up and put it down with a click on the steel surface of the island. "Shirt button," he says.
"I've got two missing."
He sits back on his haunches and looks around, spots the second one and puts it with the first.
"There you go."
"Might as well bin them. Unless you're gonna sew them back on for me..?"
"Launderette will if you tell them." He stands up, scans the floor to see if he's done a good enough job; goes and throws away the used paper towels. "It's a decent shirt, you can't just bin it cos there's buttons come off."
"Dry cleaners."
"Eh?"
"It's a dry cleaners that does my shirts, not a launderette, so."
"Do they dry clean them or do they wash them?"
"Wash."
"Yeah, exactly, so it's a launderette. Is there nothing you don't lie about?"
"Okay. Can we just..?"
I go to him, rest my hands on his shoulders, get as far as touching my lips on his mouth before he turns his head away and shrugs me off him.
"That's what you done with him, is it? Fucked him on the floor like that, then gave him a kiss?"
"Seriously? We're back to this again?"
"Why? Did you think it was over? Are you stupid or what?"
"Reckon I must be, thinking you were gonna act like an adult."
"Was it?"
"Was what? What?"
"Like that, with him."
"Like we just did? No. It was nothing like... like us. Okay? I love you for chrissake."
"Was it though?" He's thought of something else, and it's cold in here but I feel sweat forming under my arms. "Just, like, spit and... Cos you wouldn'a had no lube with you, would you, not unless you planned it."
"Course I didn't plan it."
"Did you have a condom?"
"I always had a condom."
My face must have betrayed me.
"Liar. It was him, weren't it? You said it was some bloke you picked up that you done it with without a... I'm right, aren't I?"
"Okay, yeah, but that's only because I wasn't – "
"It makes me sick." He means it: he darts over to the sink and retches.
I go to him, touch his back tentatively, and then when he doesn't shake me off I rub it, squeeze his shoulder. He's not bringing anything up except bile and alcohol – I guess he hasn't eaten all night. He spits out the last of it, straightens up, wipes his mouth and his eyes. Throws me a look – bitter, broken – and then he walks out of the kitchen, switching out the light as he goes. I shut my eyes for a minute to adjust to the dark, then I find my jacket and put it on, and follow him back into the club.
He's gone round in front of the bar and he's leaning on it with his head in his hands, sitting on a stool. His bottle of water looks empty.
"Want another drink, Steven?"
He shakes his head so I go round and pull up a stool too, an arm's length away from him.
"Does anyone else know you slept with him?" he says.
I think about lying, but he'll know.
"I told Anne. Not for years, not till she came and stayed the night at ours, but..."
He lets out some kind of laugh, Course you told her before you told me.
"Cheryl?" he says.
"No. I think... I think she might'a guessed something happened at the time but no, she don't know."
He remembers something else.
"I'm so stupid," he says. "I cooked for him, didn't I."
"You what?"
"I cooked for him, round at yours. Yeah, that was the last time I saw you before you went off and got blown up – Joel's birthday dinner. You got me to do the cooking, and he was there, Walker, and he was being dead weird, saying weird things, and... Was that because he was jealous, cos you was doing something nice for Joel?"
"He was weird because he was weird."
"Yeah, but – "
"Yeah but nothing. Okay, one, there was nothing going on with me and him – there was never any fucking thing going on – so jealousy wouldn'a come into it. And two, he wasn't even supposed to be there, he just turned up."
"So why didn't you tell him to do one?"
"I dunno, Steven, maybe for the same reason I didn't tell Douglas to do one when he turned up."
He ignores that and carries on building his case.
"And there you go, you was normal that day – you was having a laugh with Chez, so your head wasn't messed up."
"You think? You think I was normal at that party, whatever it was, that dinner party?"
"Yeah. No. Yeah, you was normal with me. You was fine with me."
He's tired. When he's tired and when he's angry his accent gets more Manchester and his grammar gets looser, more childlike somehow. I've noticed it before.
"That was because it was you." I risk reaching out and touching his elbow; he doesn't bat me away but I don't let my hand stay there in any case. "I wasn't fine with him there. With Chez with her anecdotes about when we were younger, taking the piss out'a me, I wasn't fine with that. I wasn't myself."
"You were laughing though." He's quiet for a moment, concentrating on the memory. "Yeah, you did seem different, thinking about it. Not different-bad though, just... like you said, not yourself, not you."
"Except with you."
He nods. Thinks. Turns his head then to look at me.
"So Cheryl was alright with you then, weren't she, at that party."
"Yeah."
"And you don't reckon she knew about you sleeping with Walker. So that's not why she weren't talking to you. She was already not talking to you when you slept with him, weren't she." He sits up straight now, turns on his seat so his body is facing me; takes my silence – correctly – as confirmation. "So something happened, in between when you went away with Chez and when you slept with Walker, that mashed your head and made her hate you. Cos she did, didn't she, she hated you. When you was in the hospital after, she didn't want nothing to do with you."
"Oh, so you admit now that my head was mashed after all? Well ain't that something."
"What was it, Brendan? What happened?"
I count all the things off on my fingers: "My sister wasn't talking to me. I'd lost Lynsey not one month before. Anne had just got banged up for seven years and I'd helped get her caught. And you... You were all wrapped up with your buttoned-up boyfriend. You don't think that's enough?"
"No. I mean, yeah, it's enough to send most people round the bend, but it doesn't explain why Chez went like she did. So are you gonna tell me? You might as well, Brendan, cos how bad can it be?"
I get up and I go behind the bar and fetch the bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses, place them on the bar in front of our seats; walk back out and sit back down, and pour.
"How bad can it be." I sip the whisky; hold it up and look at it, glowing dark amber against the light from the fridge.
"Brendan?"
I glance at him, then back at my drink on the bar in front of me.
"She saw something. Me, doing something."
"Cheryl did?" he says, and I nod. "What did she see, Brendan? What did she see you doing?"
"She wasn't supposed to be there, on that trip. It was gonna be just me and Joel, only Chez hijacked us because of Nana being ill, and if she hadn'a... If she hadn'a, she wouldn'a seen – "
"You and Joel? That's what she saw? You and Joel?"
"Me and – ? No. Jesus. No. You don't seriously think I'd – ?"
"I don't know what to think, do I? I never thought you and Walker, but I've found that out, so yeah, why not you and Joel, eh?"
"Because he was a kid, that's why. Jesus."
"Was that why you gave him that birthday dinner, then? Yeah, cos you reckoned he was old enough then, so then you went away with him cos you wanted – "
"No. He was a... like a son to me. Kinda like a son. I wouldn'a tried anything, not with him."
We stare at each other. He nods.
"I know you wouldn't. I'm sorry, I never meant..."
"I know you didn't. You don't have to say sorry. It's been a bumpy night, so."
We both fall silent. He sips his whisky carefully.
"So go on then. What did Cheryl see? And what's it got to do with Joel?"
"See, we took someone. Me and Joel, we... I. I saw him, outside the old club, Joel and his old man. Michael, his name was. Mick. You heard what he was like, didn't you? The kinda man he was?"
"I know, yeah. He beat up Joel's mum. That's why Joel was on probation before, weren't it, cos he beat his dad up for beating his mum up and then his mum took his dad's side. Least, that's what I heard."
"Village gossip?"
"Yeah."
"Well the gossip was true for once. Only it wasn't just Joel's ma he beat up."
"Joel as well?"
"The usual story."
Steven nods. It's a story he knows.
"So you saw him giving Joel a hard time?"
"Yeah. I couldn't leave it, Steven, that kinda man acting like that to a young lad. Cos it wasn't a one-off, it was... it was a pattern."
"Joel told you, did he?"
"He didn't have to. I knew, I could see. You would'a too, you would'a known, just looking at the two of them. You would'a known, better than me."
The silence goes on for so long this time that I jump when he speaks again.
"So what did you do?"
"Took him."
"What d'you mean?"
"Got him in the boot of my car. Joel didn't want to. I knew he didn't but I knew best didn't I, didn't think I was... abusing the kid as much as his stepdad had, just in a different way." I drink, and pour another. "Teach Mick a lesson, that was the idea. Scare him shitless, let Joel feel like he was on top at last."
"And that was what Cheryl saw? You teaching that Mick a lesson?"
"No."
"Brendan?"
"It went... went too far."
"He was the other one that you said you'd killed." He nods to himself like I've just confirmed something he knew already.
"You wanna hear the funny part?"
"'Funny'?"
"I didn't kill him. How about that? Reckon I gotta hand back my serial killer badge, or does three still qualify?"
"Don't talk like that, I can't... I don't wanna..."
"Sorry."
And then he figures it out: of course he does.
"So it was Joel then."
"He didn't mean to. It was an accident in the end, but there was no way we could'a come clean, no jury would'a believed it was an accident. We'd have gone down for it, both of us, no question. So I had to deal with it. Joel was in no fit state, so I had to make it go away."
"How?"
"Called Walker, first off. He seemed like the kinda fella that's not squeamish when it comes to accidents. I even thought... thought it would keep his mouth shut about our other escapades, if he was in this with me. Ha."
"Ex... Escapades? What..?"
"Stupid things. Robbery, whatever. Nothing for you to get excited about, okay?"
"But all that time he was a policeman. It's mad, it's like..."
"I knew he was slippery, hiding things, but I never thought he was a copper, not for one second. Thought he might'a tipped them off about a thing or two, but... So we moved the body, him and me. And then... I had a hunch, I guess. So I moved it again without him. And then I... I disposed of it. I was disposing of it, and that was when... when Chez..."
"That's what she saw?" He's alert now – more alert. I can hear it in his voice.
"Yeah."
"She saw you... what? Burying him? Dumping him somewhere?"
"I had to... I had to do it properly. It wasn't just me, it was Joel, he'd got his whole life ahead of him. I couldn't risk it getting dug up, washing up on a beach, anything, so I had to... And Chez, she found me. Saw me from the road, just... a freak chance, but she did, and she came in, and..."
"What? What was you doing?"
"I was gonna burn it, but it was too... It would'a taken too long if I... So I had to, I had to cut it up first or it never would'a..."
He stands up and somehow his stool topples to the floor as he stands, with a crash that seems to shake the room. I get up too, stand back. Can't look at him.
"Him," he says. "You cut him up. It's not an it, it's someone's body, a person."
"He was a nobody, Steven, worse than that. It's better that he ain't alive any more."
"Oh god. It doesn't matter what he was like, don't you get it? It's what you did, cutting up a body – who could do that? It's sick, it's like, I don't know, it's..."
"He was dead. What difference does it make what happened to him afterwards? He was already dead."
"You think it doesn't – ? No wonder Chez couldn't stand looking at you after that, if she saw..."
"So how about you? Is that what you're gonna do, is it? Gonna stop talking to me now? Gonna finish with me because of this?" I stare at him, trying to tell if there's a possibility he'll say, No, I'm not going anywhere: but there's nothing on his face except horror; so I turn my anger and my fear into ice. "It's nothing, Steven, when you think about it. Nothing compared with leaving a girl to die in a burning shop."
He looks confused, then the penny drops.
"I never... I never meant to, I thought she... How do you know about that?"
"A little jailbird told me."
"Warren? When?"
"When I paid him that visit, few months back."
"Why didn't you say something? That's... You should'a said, instead of..."
"It was in the past. It wasn't who you are now. It didn't make a difference. Take your pick, Steven."
"Fuck you." He goes off, pacing across the floor into the darkness.
I call after him, "I mean it. All those things, I mean them. It doesn't... it doesn't make you a monster, it's just something you did at the time." It doesn't make him the kind of monster that pulls the teeth from a dead man's mouth, or that stores up information about the man he loves to use as a weapon when his back's against the wall. "Steven, please."
He comes back out of the gloom.
"Louise didn't die. She was alright, she was fine, and I never meant..."
"I know. I believe you."
He goes back to his drink, peers at it then drains the glass. We're both sunk in gloom, the distrust thick between us.
"So is that everything? That's what Chez saw, you... getting rid of..."
"It's all... It's all."
"Is it?"
"Jesus. It's the redacted version, okay?"
"I don't know what that means."
"Redacted? It means... I'm leaving out some of the details, okay, just... Because it's better if you don't hear it all."
"Better for who? Joel? You?"
"For us. You and me. You got enough pictures in your head when you look at me, without..."
"Details of what?"
"Teaching Mick a lesson. Disposing of him. You know enough without that."
I step towards him and he jumps back.
"Don't touch me."
"Steven."
"No. No."
He swerves round me and heads for the stairs. I watch till he disappears where they turn a corner but I don't follow him: the door to the club room is locked so there's nowhere for him to go and he'll have to come down.
I finish my whisky, then I go and sit on one of the long seats along the edge of the dance floor, and wait.
:::::::
I'm in a maze of mirrors. Every way I turn there's a reflection, distorted, hideous.
:::::::
I wake up. It takes a moment to remember where I am. My head hurts; my back is stiff. I don't know if I've slept for minutes or hours.
Steven could have left.
I run up the stairs, and he's there, slouched against the locked door. I think he was asleep too only my footsteps on the stairs brought him round.
"Come on. What you sitting on the floor for?" I hold my hand out to him. "Come on, Steven."
He ignores me.
I sit down on the floor beside him; he doesn't move away.
"It's like a bad dream," he says. He sounds spent.
"I wanna... When I was inside, you know I talked to someone? A psychiatrist."
"I know, yeah."
"Talked about... about how my dad used to, if he saw something in the news about some priests caught abusing young lads or whatever, he'd go on about how it was disgusting, how there was a place in Hell waiting for them, for paedos, for... And I'd be looking at him, and I could see, he was sincere. He meant every word, as if every word didn't apply to him, and I couldn't get my head around it. And the psychiatrist, he called it dissociation. It's a trick the brain can play if there's something it needs to hide from. So Seamus, he knew what he was but his mind hid it from himself. Same as when he was... I got so I could act like it hadn't happened, or even while it was happening I could separate it off somehow. Sometimes. Not all the time. And I think... I think that's how I did what I did to the... to Mick's dead body. It was like I... I did what I had to do. Dissociation. I learnt it at my father's knee."
"And then Cheryl saw you, and it wasn't separated any more. That's why your head was a mess."
"Yeah."
"Was it a surprise when he kissed you? Walker I mean. I mean, did you know he was gay?"
"He wasn't. He did it to get under my skin, get my trust."
"That's mad. How could he do that to himself?"
"Did you know he came to the hospital, after the explosion? Came to tell me I made his skin crawl. Said I disgusted him." I look at Steven and smile. "I thought he was you. The painkillers I guess, but I thought for a second it was you coming into my hospital room."
"I did come to see you."
"I know. You told me about your engagement."
"That's not why I came though. I was worried about you. Scared. I came out of love."
We move a little so our arms are touching.
"You're frozen." I take off my jacket and drape it over him, the collar under his chin.
"It's weird though," he says, "That he thought kissing you would be enough to convince you he was up for it, when you'd known him all that time."
"It wasn't the first thing. He kissed me once before. Months before, when he first came into town." I pause, expect an explosion, but all there is is a shiver of tension beside me. "That was all it was. I made sure he knew I wasn't interested after that. He kept on though, told me stuff... Lies, I know now, but... He said he was like me, had a wife, kids, but he knew he was... I dunno. Gay or bisexual or whatever – not straight. Unhappy at home. And he'd show up, y'know? Saying he was bored, wanting something... And before we... before I screwed him, he'd already... When we were on that trip, we'd a hotel, and he came to my room because there wasn't a spare one for him, he said, and we slept the night. I think he wanted to... If I had'a been up for it, he would'a got his... his plan going then, but I wasn't. I didn't like him, Steven, didn't fancy him either."
It's dead quiet. All I can hear is his breathing and mine, and after a while we fall into sync, in and out, in and out, and minutes pass.
"He groomed you."
"What?"
"That's what he was doing, Brendan. All that, the stories and the kiss and the sleeping in your bedroom, he was grooming you."
"No. No, I wouldn't be so... I was a grown man, that's – "
"It's true. Can't you see it? It's not your fault, Bren. He was... He was evil."
We both go quiet, letting it sink in, or trying not to.
"D'you wanna go, Steven? Fuck knows what time it is. Yeah?"
I stand up with a groan, and this time when I extend my hand he takes it and I pull him up. He hands me my jacket and we go downstairs.
When we go out onto the street, dawn has started to break, although its thin light is less bright than the street lamps that will still be on for a couple more hours yet.
We walk slowly. I think we're both stiff from sitting on the floor in the chill of the club.
"I didn't, by the way. I didn't kiss him again. Not during, and not after."
"Just leave it now. I don't wanna talk any more."
"Okay."
I catch his arm and try and look at his face but he comes into my arms and we're kissing, there in the street, before I get a chance to see him. His lips are soft, familiar.
When the kiss ends I open my eyes. His are still closed, and when he opens them it's slowly like the lids are heavy. Tears are weighing them down. He sees me looking and he shuts his eyes again and turns his head away as if it'll stop me seeing. As if I won't know.
