Thicker Than Water

‘We didn’t talk about anything a lot!’ he said. ‘He was two hundred miles away, Castor, and we didn’t have a blind bastard thing in common to start with. If we talked once a year, it was all we did.’

‘But you had strong opinions about Anita, obviously,’ I observed. ‘You didn’t think your brother should be taking up with her.’"

"Steve shook his head. ‘Not just Kenny,’ he said. ‘Anyone. Fucking psycho-bitch from Hell! You know what she did to him with that bit of steel. And anyway she wasn’t worth picking up off the street. She was a scissor-reflex slut, like all the women in her family. Getting herself knocked up before she was twenty, then carting the kid around with her from pillar to post while she was looking for another shag!’

Steve’s face twisted with distaste. I raised my voice as I answered, loud enough for the earwigging receptionist to hear me very clearly from across the room. ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, Steve. Sexual morality’s a funny thing, when you think about it. One man’s meat, kind of thing.’

Steve cringed, hunching his shoulders. ‘Keep your frigging voice down,’ he whispered hoarsely.

‘Then keep it respectful,’ I counter-suggested, ‘In case you’ve forgotten, the psycho-bitch from Hell episode was when Anita saved my life from your much more scarily psycho brother. So remove the beam from your own eye first, eh, Steve?’ Another thought struck me, so I pushed on, dropping my voice again. The receptionist wasn’t even trying to pretend not to eavesdrop now, so I threw her a friendly wave over Steve’s head. He started and turned, the hunted expression coming back onto his face. ‘Who was Blainey?’ I asked. ‘The guy she named her kid after, I mean. Did you ever meet him?’

Steve opened his mouth to speak, and judging from his expression it was going to be another mouthful of bile. But our eyes met and he hesitated, then changed gear. ‘I saw him a couple of times,’ he said. ‘He was . . . nobody. Really, nobody. A gobshite from Childwall Valley who was stupid enough to let her bring another man’s kid into his house.’

‘Nobody?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Then why do you remember him after sixteen years?’

Steve was silent for a moment. In case he was trying to come up with a lie, I pressed him again. ‘Why do you remember him?’

Steve exhaled: a world-weary sigh of resignation.

‘Kenny sent me and Ronnie over there to have a look at him,’ he said.

‘What? Why did he do that?’

‘I have no fucking idea. Because he never saw sense where Anita was concerned.’

I turned this fact over in my mind. ‘Just to look, or—’

‘No. We warned him off. Told him that if he didn’t drop Anita, someone with a flick knife and no sense of humour was going to drop him.’

‘And did that work?’

‘Yeah. She was on her travels again in short order. We did it a couple of times after that, too. In the end she packed her bags and fucked off south. Which was always what she was going to do, but you couldn’t tell Kenny that. He thought that if he terrorised enough of her boyfriends, in the end she’d come running back to him because he’d be the only viable option. Dozy fuck.’

Steve looked away towards the windows, where the Mersey flowed by in its sluggish brown majesty. ‘Well, it took him sixteen years,’ he said bleakly. ‘But he got there £t hd ain the end, didn’t he? Got the both of them. Anita and her fucked-up kid, too. Fantastic, eh? A real Hollywood happy ending. Except that Anita still couldn’t stand him, really. And her brat thought cutting pieces out of himself was the best game in the fucking world.’

‘Pot, meet kettle,’ I said.

Steve stared at me, half mystified and half annoyed. ‘What?’

‘Kenny was a self-harmer, too.’

The annoyance won out. ‘No, he bloody wasn’t. Kenny cut lots of people in his time, but he never cut himself.’

‘I saw his body, Steve,’ I pointed out.

‘So what?’ Steve demanded, unimpressed. ‘I’m telling you, Kenny never cut himself. It used to drive him apeshit when the kid did it. He gave him a proper fucking hiding whenever he caught him at it. The last thing he’d do was . . . you’re full of shit, Castor!’

His indignation at this slur on Kenny’s memory was overriding even his sense of self-preservation. The receptionist was now talking on the phone to someone, casting urgent glances in our direction. I could see that this conversation was going to have to be curtailed.

‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter. If Kenny found Mark so creepy, why did he let him stay on after Anita bailed?’

‘No idea,’ Steve said. ‘But I can tell you it wasn’t for love. What he had going with Anita was fucked up seven ways from Sunday, and we’ve all suffered for it. But the kid he just despised.