Jackie looked at her in utter bewilderment. ‘What you on about, you silly mare? He done a good thing, he was looking out for his own!’
The pride in Jackie’s voice made her sound almost happy at her daughter’s predicament. Freddie had come home, practically murdered the poor girl, caused ructions with everyone in the house, and to Jackie that was love.
Maggie wanted to laugh. ‘Will you listen to yourself, Jackie? He didn’t attack her because he cared about her, he attacked that girl because it’s a taint on him if she’s a fucking junkie. Use your loaf, wipe the shit from your eyes and see him for what he really is.’
Jackie looked at Maggie. Even in jeans and a shirt she looked lovely, perfect. She always looked perfect, always looked like an advert for healthy womanhood. But she wasn’t anything, not really, she just thought she was better than everyone else.
‘If his daughter is a junkie then he has to deal with other people knowing that. It’s like admitting defeat, admitting he has failed as a father. It has nothing to do with you or the kids or love. It’s not about you, you silly bitch, it’s about him. It’s always about him.’
‘You are wrong, Maggie. For all his faults, he loves us.’
‘He treats you like dirt, he laughs at your drinking, he takes what he wants from you and then he leaves you for weeks on end and you let him. You let him, Jackie, because for some unknown reason you think that he is a wonderful person, yet he has systematically destroyed you and those kids since day one.’
Jackie shook her head then. This was getting too near the mark, too near the truth and she could not take that, not tonight, not ever. ‘You are wrong, Mags, he loves us, he loves his family.’
Maggie picked up Jackie’s cigarettes and lit one before saying through a sarcastic smile, ‘Look around you, look at your life, at how you live. Your daughter is an addict because you are an addict. Any one of those fucking, shite-talking, pop psychology daytime TV shit shows you watch would tell you that, Jack. Kimberley has had a good teacher and it was you. You’ve been pissed for years Jackie. You’re a fucking drunk.’
Jackie was frightened by what was being said now, she didn’t want this. She just wanted to drink in peace and get a few hours’ kip.
‘How dare you fucking lecture me—’
Maggie said through gritted teeth and with as much menace as she could muster, ‘I dare, Jackie, because someone has to tell you once and for all that this has all got to stop! The man you love hates you and you are too fucking thick to see it. Do you know that him and Jimmy earn the same money, more or less, and you are still in a council house? Love, think about it. What’s he spending that dosh on, eh? It fucking ain’t you and yours, is it?’
She looked around the ruin of her sister’s home and then said sadly, ‘It’s a shit hole, Jackie. And look at fucking Little Freddie. He is off his trolley, and no one seems to care! Where is he now, eh? Still wandering the streets, I bet. And what about poor Kim? She has been on the brown for ages and you never noticed. I knew there was something wrong with her, and I tried to help her, but you never noticed! Those kids are invisible to you unless they are the reason that keeps Freddie by your side. Freddie has an eighty-grand car parked outside on the kerb, and your toilet has been broke for weeks. Don’t you think that is a little bit odd? Does nothing penetrate that drink-sodden brain of yours?’
She lit another cigarette and watched as Jackie gulped at her vodka and wine once more.
‘Stop it, Maggie, you say one more word and I’ll fucking knock you out.’
Now Maggie did laugh. ‘I ain’t a kid any more, Jackie, frightened of my big sister. You raise your hand to me and I’ll lay you out once and for all.’
Jackie knew what she said was true, and that was what stopped her from attacking Maggie physically. Jackie made a point of attacking only the people she knew would not fight her back. Unless she was drunk of course, when anyone was fair game, but even then she relied on the other people around her to stop the tear up at some point.
‘I am trying to help you, Jackie, trying to make you see sense. Even Freddie can see you have a problem, so if he loves you so much why ain’t he tried to get you any help? I know the girls have tried to talk to you, they tell me how worried they are about you, and I try and talk to you too but it’s a fucking waste of time. But now you have to see the fucking big picture. Your life is a mess and you have to try and do something before it’s too late.’
Jackie understood her sister genuinely wanted to help her, while the majority of the people in her immediate orbit were hangers-on who ignored her problems and just used her. But it was so hard for her to admit, because she knew no one else would want to be with her. If she let herself think about it, she would see exactly what she was, and exactly what to expect from her life.
‘Go home, Mags, I can’t handle this.’
Maggie sighed. ‘Do you realise you ain’t once mentioned the fact that your Kim is on drugs, or wondered where your son is? Do you realise that, Jack? You only mentioned it when you were telling me how your Freddie loves you. Are you going to get her any help at all? Are you going to sort out some kind of rehab, or will that be left to me as usual?’
Jackie didn’t answer her.
‘Look in the mirror, Jackie, smell the house you live in with your family. Look at the floor and the walls and the furniture, and then you tell me that you are all right with the way you live and I promise I will back off.’
Jackie sat down on a stool and finished her drink, and as she poured herself out another one she heard Maggie leave the house.
Jimmy and Freddie were sharing a beer in Jimmy’s new snooker room. Maddie had been asked over to watch Jimmy Junior, and when Jimmy had finally picked up Freddie in the early hours he had no other option than to bring him back to his.
He knew Maggie would not be best pleased, but what else could he do? Freddie, as far as he was concerned, had done a good thing, had done what Jimmy would have done in a similar situation. Though he admitted he would not have harmed Kimberley, Freddie and his temper were legendary and he felt bad about it now.
‘Fucking some drum this, Jimmy.’
Jimmy shrugged. ‘It’s all relative, ain’t it? I like this house and so does Mags, in fact she loves it.’
‘At least she looks after it for you. Not like Jackie, she wouldn’t clean up if her life depended on it.’
Jimmy smiled. ‘She never was one for the Hoover, old Jackie.’
They both laughed. It was the first time they had actually sat and talked properly since the night that Lenny had died. They made a great pretence of friendship, but the tension was always there between them. Tonight, though, they seemed to be back on track.
‘She tried, a few times she really tried, you know. But the drink and Jackie . . .’ For the first time ever, Freddie was talking about his wife without a joke, or a nasty remark. ‘Now my Kimberley is on the skag. Ironic, ain’t it? I fucking shifted enough over the years, and now my daughter is a slave to the brown.’
Jimmy refilled their brandy glasses. ‘Come on, Freddie, it could happen to anyone, any family, it’s part of society now.’
Freddie held up his cut-glass brandy snifter and said sarcastically, ‘Thanks to us, and people like us!’
They both laughed once more.
‘How’s me little fella, then?’
Jimmy grinned. ‘I love that little boy, Fred. He is so fucking clever, only three and he can write his name.’
Freddie nodded. ‘His father’s son him, eh?’
It was said with a laugh but Jimmy felt, as always, that there was an underlying current he could not put his finger on. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Freddie feigned innocence. ‘What on earth is wrong with you, Jim? I said he was his father’s son and you are his father, right? So where is there anything to fucking mean?’
Jimmy relaxed. ‘Sorry, Freddie, but sometimes I feel you are taking the piss, and you do take the piss, you know.’
Fred
die sipped his brandy before saying, ‘I don’t, Jimmy, not with you, anyway.’
It was heartfelt and it was enough to placate Jimmy.
‘He is a lovely kid, Jimmy, and I think the world of him. He is a real little Brahma, bless him. How is Maggie, by the way?’
Jimmy shrugged. ‘All right, why?’
‘Nothing, mate. It’s just she seems very offish with everyone. Now she’s always been like it with me, but Jackie thinks she is not coping that well with motherhood.’
Jimmy wanted to laugh out loud, and Freddie said in a jokey voice, ‘Talk about the pot calling the kettle, eh?’
Jimmy smiled. ‘She is just a perfectionist, that’s all. If Maggie does a job she does it to the best of her ability.’
‘Now, Jimmy, if you had a son like mine you would know what worry was. That little fucker is out all hours, roaming the streets, causing havoc. I reckon they’ll take him away soon, and do you know what? I think it would be for the best.’
Jimmy was astonished. ‘You’d let him go away, into a home?’
He spoke in disbelief, and Freddie answered him as honestly as he could. Needing to say the words out loud.
‘Look, Jimmy, this is strictly between me and you, right?’
Jimmy nodded, intrigued.
‘The other week he was accused of sexual assault. Now the little girl said it was him and his mates, but she withdrew the allegation. Jackie won’t have it. She thinks the girl was up for it, it was just a kids’ game, but I think that he has got something drastically wrong with him. He killed the neighbours’ dog a few months back. He put a fucking plastic bag over its head and suffocated it. I know it was him. They were too frightened to accuse him outright, obviously, but I knew it was him when Jackie told me, because he killed Bugsy’s boy’s rabbit the same way.’
Jimmy was in utter shock at these words.
‘How do you know he killed the rabbit?’
Freddie shook his head in dismay. ‘I caught him. He was supposed to be caring for it while they went on holiday. I went into his room and it was on his lap, dead, and the bag was stuck to its face.’
‘What did you do?’
Freddie wiped his mouth nervously before saying in a quiet voice, ‘I mullered him, and then I told him that he had to keep stumm. But I tell you I was sickened, and you know me, there ain’t much that can bother me. But he is a kid, and he is mad as a cunt. As soon as they said about the dog I knew it wasn’t the first time.’
Jimmy nodded, but he wondered if, in all his grief, Freddie remembered his own need to hurt and his own loss of control that had caused two deaths, to his knowledge. But then Freddie lived by a different set of rules to everyone else.
‘Remember we were all laughing in the pub because I said the rabbit had died and we’d put out an APB on a white fluffy rabbit with a black tail? Well, I got a new rabbit and gave it to Bugsy’s boy, and he never knew the difference. I told Bugsy the other rabbit had dropped dead, but I know he wondered, could see it in his eyes.’
Freddie swallowed down a big gulp of brandy before saying angrily, ‘I blame her. She was drunk all through her pregnancy, you know that. I think that affected him. I love him, he’s my son, but unless something is done about him he will end up on a psych wing somewhere on a fucking no-parole life sentence.’
Freddie had seen people in prison like his son, and he had experienced them first-hand. ‘He is a big fucker for his age and all. What happens when he’s a six footer? Even I won’t be able to handle him then, do you see what I mean now? He has got to go, and fucking Jackie, well, she won’t believe there’s anything amiss. He could kill everyone in the house and she’d still give him an alibi.’
‘Fucking hell, Freddie, that’s outrageous. Can’t you get him seen to privately?’
Freddie laughed then, a tired, sad little laugh. ‘Do you think spending money will change the diagnosis? Only, according to his social worker he exhibits “classic signs” - her expression, not mine - of a sociopathic personality. In short, he has no morals, no remorse, no feelings for anyone or anything, no emotions whatsoever. So what he does, right, to hide his fucking nut nut status, is he mimics them. Pretends to feel things he cannot feel. At least that is what the book said in the library.’
Jimmy knew he spoke the truth, and he felt sorry for him because he knew that Freddie, for all his faults, did in his own way care for his kids. Little Freddie had kept this man tied to a drunken woman he loathed. Though, of course she also suited Freddie at times because she put up with anything he could throw at her.
He found it hard to believe this was his blood relative, the man he had once looked up to, loved and admired. Now he was often hard put to even talk with him, and if Freddie knew just how much Ozzy had given over to his cousin in the last few years, he knew that Freddie would not be able to cope with it. He knew Freddie saw himself as the instigator of their empire, and he accepted the truth of this. But Freddie also conveniently forgot that if it had been left to him, they would have both been back on the pavement hustling within a year. He had wiped out Clancy and that act had given them the opportunity, but it was him, Jimmy, who had brought them to where they were now. Freddie needed to accept and understand that, but instead he saw himself as having been done down, the street expression for his situation. If he only looked at how he lived, not a penny to call his own, expensive things bought for cash and then left to go to wrack and ruin. And Jimmy knew he had never once put a few quid away for a rainy day.
Yet this was the man who honestly believed he should be running what in effect, if legit, would be the equivalent of a big corporate company. They dealt with Europe, Africa, the Far East. Anywhere there was drugs or contraband to be exploited. Freddie did not know the half of it, and never would if it was left to him.
‘So what are you going to do about him, Freddie?’
He shrugged. ‘Only fuck himself knows the answer to that one, mate, and he ain’t talking.’
Ozzy was glad when the cell was opened by a screw he trusted and owned. He motioned for him to come to where he sat on the bed and then he asked him to get two other inmates as he wanted to see them.
The man nodded.
Five minutes later, a young Irishman called Derry and a large black man called David bowled into the cell.
‘What you want, Oz?’
He smiled. ‘Get me to the wing doctor. Last night I was doing press ups when I cracked me fucking ribs.’
They laughed, as he knew they would but they did what they were asked.
Ozzy knew, one sniff of weakness and he might as well lie down and wait for the chiv to arrive. This way he had a valid reason to see the quack, and he knew the doctor well. He had been dealing out fucking contraband to the cons for years.
Maggie walked into the snooker room with young Jimmy in her arms, and smiled tightly at the two men.
‘Shouldn’t you be at home with your wife?’
Freddie had noticed that over the years she had become more and more cocky towards him and he also knew that the more she pushed him, the more he would make her life a misery. Sometimes he left her alone for months, then out of the blue, when Jimmy had overlooked him, or he heard a whisper that Jimmy was involved with something he knew nothing about, he would remember this little piece before him and it would all start again.
‘Come on, Mags, would you want to go home to Jackie?’ Then, holding out his arms, he said to the child, ‘Come to me, my little darling. He’s his daddy’s boy all right, like the spit out of his mouth.’
Maggie snorted in derision. Placing the boy carefully on the carpet, she said nicely, ‘Go to Nana, sweetheart, while Mummy talks to Daddy.’
Even her voice was wrong when she spoke to the child, even her endearments sounded forced, but Jimmy Junior did as he was bidden.
‘You stop trying to be nice to my boy, and try being nice to your own fucking kids. How about Kim, then? You going to see her? Only, you know you broke her leg, don’t you?’
Fred
die didn’t know this, and Freddie didn’t much care.
Jimmy said calmly, ‘Come on, Maggie, this is not the time or the place.’
She snapped her head towards her husband and said angrily, ‘Well, I am sorry, Jimmy, but I think it is.’
Freddie laughed then. ‘Careful, you don’t want to be in the doghouse now, do you?’
Maggie walked towards where he was sitting. It was a big room, with a snooker table and a pool table. It had a large and well-stocked bar and it was wood panelled. One of these men was the love of her life and the other was the canker that had grown inside her for so long she felt that she would explode with hatred. Yet she had to tolerate him no matter what. Because if the truth ever came out she would lose everything, and so would everyone she held dear.
The huge fireplace had a large leather wing chair on each side, and the men were sitting there as if they did not have a worry in the world. This made her so angry she felt she could physically attack them.
‘Don’t you try and cause a fucking row with me and him. Unlike you, Freddie, my husband respects me, and I respect him. But I would not expect you to understand that concept because you treat everyone in your family like shit. By the way, Kim is going into rehab. I sorted that out today, so you needn’t worry about her. Not that you would.’
She was poking her finger into his face now and he could see the hate inside her.
‘But I tell you now, Freddie, my sister is in bits and you need to talk to her about her drinking because for some unknown reason she thinks you care about her. So put your drink down, and get a cab, and fuck off out of my home.’
‘You going to let her talk to me like that, Jimmy?’
Jimmy got up and stretched before saying, ‘She has got a point, Freddie. It’s time I got ready for work, anyway.’
Freddie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In his book Maggie should be getting the clump of a lifetime for that little outburst. Instead, she was still in his face.
‘If you have anything else to say to my husband about me, say it now. Now, do you hear me? I dare you to say it to him now.’ Her eyes told Freddie that he had lost this game, that she was angry enough to let the cat out of the bag.