Runaway

I

Forty miles from London, the coach from Leeds pulled off into Toddington Services, and their driver drew up in an empty slot in the lorry park. For several minutes he spoke animatedly to someone on his mobile phone before reaching for the microphone. They were taking a short comfort break, he told his passengers, and they might like to take the chance to grab some food or coffee. There was a Costa Express and a Burger King, and an M&S Simply Food if anyone wanted to buy sandwiches for later.

Jack shook Ricky awake, and the young man blinked in confusion. It was obvious that for a moment he had no idea where he was. Then the fog cleared and reality crystallized. And with clarity came depression, his brain flooded with the recollection of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. His life had turned to crap in the space of a day. He glanced ruefully at his grandfather, who smiled at him.

‘Come on, Rick. Time to get yourself a pee and a coffee.’ He paused. ‘And you can take Maurie to the loo.’

Ricky glared at him and got to his feet with difficulty, stretching muscles that had stiffened up in the last three hours. He took Maurie by the elbow and helped him up.

Maurie himself looked dreadful. Worse, if anything. The skin on his face was the texture of clay, but paler and tinged with green. He had taken painkillers earlier, and their effect still dulled his eyes.

Jack watched as his grandson helped the dying man down the aisle of the bus, and remembered how Maurie had flown at him in a rage the day that he learned about Rachel’s abortion. How his fists had torn a tooth from Jack’s mouth and broken his nose. And he thought how young, stupid and impulsive they had all been.

He had never forgiven Maurie for what he did to him that day, because he had never had to. There was nothing to forgive. Maurie had done nothing to him that he hadn’t deserved. What was more surprising was that somehow, somewhere along the way, Maurie had forgiven him. They had gone on to play in a band together until Maurie’s final year at university, and Rachel had never been spoken of once. Almost as if she had never existed. But the affection they had once felt for each other was lost. Until that moment, three nights ago, when Jack had sat on Maurie’s hospital bed and stared mortality in the face. And something of what there had once been between them was there again, in a look and a touch. A bond of fifty years that had never quite been broken.

They were last off the bus, Dave leading the way. But the driver rose from his seat as they approached the door and blocked their path. He seemed much bigger out of his seat than in it. The three old men and Ricky looked at him, and there was a brief stand-off.

‘Alright,’ the driver said. ‘Who are you?’

Dave glanced at Jack.

And Jack said, ‘The party from Leeds.’

‘Are you hell!’ The driver glared at them. ‘I’m just off the phone to Leeds. The party that were due to join the bus there was found wandering about the city centre. Poor bloody souls wondering what happened to their lift, and asking if the coach had gone yet.’

Jack saw panic in Dave’s eyes.

‘Run!’ Dave shouted, and he shoved the driver in the chest, forcing the big man to step back and sit heavily in his seat.

But the speed of their exit from the coach failed to live up to the urgency in Dave’s call to flee. He climbed stiffly down the steps and turned to help Ricky down with Maurie. Jack was forced to stand and wait until the door was clear, embarrassed and avoiding the driver’s eyes.

The driver looked at them with a mix of anger, consternation and amusement. He shook his head and waited a full sixty seconds until all four of them had made it on to the tarmac.

Then he stood up and leaned out of the door. ‘At that rate you might just make it to the loos by the time the cops arrive.’ He started dialling a number on his mobile. ‘I’m calling them now. But even if they take their time coming, you boys are going nowhere fast. No way out of here except back on to the motorway.’

They made their way as fast as Maurie’s progress would allow, across the car park to the Moto building that housed the shops, restaurants and toilets. They went straight to the men’s room, where Jack and Dave stood at the urinal listening to Maurie throwing up in a cubicle, the door open and young Ricky standing over him to stop him from toppling head first into the bowl.

Dave glanced at Jack. ‘This is madness, Jack. We shouldnae have done it.’

‘Bit late now.’ And Rachel’s words to him in the taxi came echoing back across half a century. ‘Only thing we can do is get there.’

‘Then what?’

Jack shrugged and zipped up his fly. ‘Whatever Maurie wants.’ He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘I’ll be surprised if he makes it through the week.’

After they had washed their hands, and Maurie’s face, and Ricky had wiped the sick from the old man’s collar, they went into Costa Coffee and sat at a table.

‘Can’t even afford a bloody coffee,’ Ricky muttered. ‘So what are we going to do? Sit here until the police come and get us?’

‘No!’ Maurie surprised them all with the strength in his voice.

‘What, then?’ Jack said. ‘Like the driver told us, there’s no way out of here except by getting back on the road.’

‘We’ll hitch a lift.’

They all looked at Maurie as if he were mad.

‘Maurie, there are four of us,’ Jack said. ‘And none of us have got the legs for it. I used to look quite good in a kilt, but a miniskirt’s out of the question.’

Maurie forgot their woes for a moment and chuckled to himself. ‘Raitch would have got us a lift in five minutes.’ Then almost as if he only now heard his own voice, he became suddenly self-conscious and glanced at Jack.

Jack’s face reddened. ‘Aye,’ is all he said, and he looked at his hands on the table in front of him.

Dave stood up suddenly. ‘Well, if we’re gonnae get a lift, we’d better start looking for it before the cops get here.’

They decided that their best chance of cadging a ride would be at the petrol pumps and so made their slow, painful way across the parking lot to the filling station.

‘This is crazy,’ Ricky kept saying. ‘No one’s going to give us a lift. I wouldn’t give us a lift.’

Jack left the others hanging around the pumps, and positioned himself outside the door to the shop where all the motorists came and went to pay for their petrol.

The first person he approached, the driver of a Ford Transit, told him in no uncertain terms where he could go, and Jack lifted two fingers to his back as he returned to his van. Others weren’t as rude, but equally firm in refusing them a lift.

The rest watched as Jack stopped half a dozen or more motorists on their way in or out, before he got into a lengthy conversation with a young man in a dark suit. When the man disappeared into the shop to pay, Jack hurried across the forecourt to a blue Volvo Estate. He stopped at the driver’s door and peered inside, then turned and waved urgently to his nephew and his two old friends.

‘Come on, quick,’ he said as they approached, and he held open the rear door for Dave and Maurie. Dave slipped in first, then Ricky helped Maurie and was about to follow him when Jack said, ‘Not you. You’re driving.’ He opened the driver’s door for him, then glanced towards the shop before hurrying round to climb in the passenger side.

But Ricky just stood on the forecourt looking bemused. ‘Driving?’

‘Hurry up and get in,’ Jack shouted at him. ‘Quick! The key’s in the ignition.’

And suddenly it dawned on Ricky what was going on. ‘I’m not stealing a car!’ he said emphatically.

‘We’re not stealing it, Rick. We’re borrowing it. The young man’s got sales business in there. We’ll drop it off for him at the next service stop. A minor inconvenience.’

Ricky was incredulous. ‘You mean he’s agreed to it?’

‘Just get in the fucking car!’

Ricky slid reluctantly behind the wheel.

‘Go, go!’ Jack shouted at him.

And Ricky started the car. He pushed it into first gear and eased it out from beneath the canopy towards the exit signs.

‘Why would he agree to lend us his car?’

Jack rolled his eyes. ‘Sometimes I wonder if they didn’t get their figures wrong when they gave you that IQ test.’

Dave was cackling in the back. ‘Haha! Just like Thelma and what’s-her-name.’

‘You mean we are stealing it?’ Ricky glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the young man in the dark suit running after them, shouting and waving his arms. ‘Jesus!’ He started to slow down.

Jack looked at him, urgency in his voice. ‘Better go, son, or we really will be in trouble.’

Ricky breathed his anger and frustration. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this!’ And he dropped into second gear and accelerated away from the chasing driver.

As they passed their coach, still parked up in the commercial vehicles section, Dave leaned out of the back window and raised his middle finger to the driver whose face, as they sped by, was a mask of astonishment.

II

‘Madness! Pure bloody madness!’ Ricky’s eyes had the startled look of a deer caught in headlights. They flickered constantly between the road and his rear-view mirror. ‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into any of this. We’re going to go to jail, you know that?’ He turned his gaze, fired with fear and anger, on his grandfather. ‘You’ve ruined my life.’

There was a time when Jack, too, might have shared Ricky’s anxiety. But to his surprise, he found that he really didn’t care any more. What did any of it matter? And what could anyone do to him that might be worse than the life of mediocrity he had lived until now? The life he had wasted. If it came to it, he would step up and take all the blame.

‘We’ll be on the security cameras,’ Ricky wailed. ‘The cops’ll know who we are.’

‘They won’t have a clue who we are,’ Jack said. ‘Three old guys and a fat boy borrowing a car and dropping it off at the next services. Not exactly high priority when you compare us to murderers and bank robbers.’

But Ricky wasn’t going to be comforted. ‘And that poor man.’

‘What poor man?’ Dave asked.

‘The one whose car we’re in!’

‘Poor, nothing!’ Jack said. ‘That was a bloody expensive suit he was wearing. And the car’s not his, anyway. He’s a rep. It’s a company car. And like I said, it’s not stolen, it’s borrowed.’

The next services turned out to be the last on the M1, just thirteen miles from London. Previously Scratchwood, now London Gateway, it had provided a viewpoint eighteen years before when Princess Diana’s hearse had followed a route up the M1 to her childhood home at Althorp, where she was buried. Jack remembered watching it on TV. Not normally a sentimental man, he had surprised himself by crying.

Ricky pulled the Volvo into a parking space and turned off the engine. He sat back in the driver’s seat and breathed deeply. There was a fine mask of perspiration covering the contours of his face.

Jack said, ‘See? Not so hard, was it?’

The look of barely contained fury that Ricky turned on his grandfather was more than even Jack could deal with, and he averted his eyes to escape the accusation in it.

The moment was broken by Dave opening the back door. ‘I’m off for a pee. Back in a tick.’

‘You’ve just been,’ Maurie said.

Dave grinned. ‘Och, that was half an hour ago. You know how it is at oor age.’ He slipped out and hurried away across the tarmac to the shops with a strange, crouching gait.

Jack was distracted by a mobile phone lying in an empty cup holder between the two front seats, and he picked it up. ‘Look,’ he said to Ricky. ‘We can just call him and tell him where his car is.’

Ricky made a face. ‘How can we call him when we’ve got his phone?’

‘Ah. Good point. That’s why you’re the one with the high IQ, then.’ He thought about it, then switched on the phone and opened its address book to scroll through the names. He stopped at the end of the ‘B’s. ‘This is him here. Adam Burley.’

‘How d’you know that?’ Maurie asked.

Jack grinned back at him. ‘Cos it says “Me” next to the name.’ He scrolled down. ‘And here’s Jessica Burley. Bet that’s his wife. Or his mother, or his sister. Any of the above will do.’ He tapped to dial and handed the phone to Ricky. ‘Here.’

Ricky almost dropped it, juggling it in his hands as if it were red hot. ‘What?’

‘Just tell her where the car is.’

‘Me?’

They heard a voice answering, and Jack nodded encouragement to his grandson.

Ricky bared his teeth and raised the phone to his ear. ‘Mrs Burley? I... I don’t know if you’ve heard from Adam. But his car was stolen. Well, not stolen. Taken.’ Then he corrected himself again. ‘Borrowed.’ He winced at the voice in his ear. ‘Doesn’t matter who I am. The thing is, his car’s safe and sound, and it’s in the car park at London Gateway Services on the M1. We’ll leave the keys for him under the driver’s mat.’ And he hung up quickly, before she could respond.

The look he gave his grandfather would have curdled milk. But he couldn’t come up with words adequate to express his feelings. Instead he leaned over to drop the phone into the glove compartment and got out of the car.

‘Out!’ he said. ‘The sooner we get away from this damned car the better.’

He and Jack helped Maurie out of the back seat, then Ricky hid the keys, and they hobbled across the car park to the huddle of box-like buildings that housed the facilities, the metal tip of Jack’s walking stick clicking erratically on the asphalt.

Inside, they stood in the middle of the crowded concourse, looking around, feeling more than a little lost. They were so, so near to their goal. But without wheels, they might just as well still have been in Glasgow. People milled around them as if they weren’t there, and Jack had that sense of invisibility again. This was no longer his world. At some point, without his even being aware of it, the baton had been passed from one generation to the next. The past and present co-existing in the same space, but barely touching. The world he had known, populated now by others. Ricky’s generation, he supposed, and their parents. Although Ricky was as alien here as his grandfather. Too clever, too fat, his knowledge of reality scarcely extending beyond his bedroom and the virtual world of his violent computer games.

The names of all the commercial outlets around them were known to Jack, of course, but familiar only in name. Starbucks. Waitrose. Costa Express. A bewildering array of food and drink, newspapers, magazines, people, children, more people.

‘So what now?’ Ricky’s voice forced him out of his cloud of uncertainty, and he tried to clear his mind. But nothing came to him.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Well, we’re not stealing another car.’

‘No.’

Maurie’s voice, thin and reedy, cut above the hubbub. Once such a beautiful voice, Jack thought.

‘Where’s Dave?’

They looked all around, but there was no sign of him. He had been gone for ten minutes or more.

Jack said, ‘Better check the toilets.’

There was a constant stream of men coming and going at the urinals. But Dave wasn’t among them. Three of the cubicles were occupied. Jack raised his voice. ‘Dave, are you in there?’

No reply.

Ricky went off to search the shops and restaurants, while Jack and Maurie stayed in the toilets in case Dave showed up. Maurie leaned back against the wall by the dryer and closed his eyes.

‘Are you going to be okay, Maurie?’

Maurie slowly opened his eyes to look at Jack, and nodded. ‘As long as I make it through the day tomorrow. There’s somewhere we’ve got to be by tomorrow night.’

‘Where?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Maurie, we’re taking an awful lot on trust here.’

Maurie stared at him through his misery. ‘It’s all I ever asked of you, Jack. That you trust me. Will you do that? Will you?’ He paused, then, ‘I’m sorry I hit you. I really am. It’s been on my mind.’

Jack’s smile was wry and touched by sadness. ‘Aye, for fifty years.’ Then, ‘I trust you, Maurie.’

Ricky returned after about ten minutes. He shook his head. ‘No sign of him.’

Jack sighed deeply. ‘Damn him!’ Then a worm of suspicion wriggled its way to the head of his queue of thoughts. ‘Wait a minute.’ He strode across the floor of the toilets. ‘That end cubicle’s been occupied the whole time we’ve been here.’ He rapped on the door with the head of his stick. ‘Dave! Dave, are you in there?’

There was a brief hiatus before Dave’s muffled voice returned to them. ‘Can a man no’ get five minutes tae himsel’?’

‘What are you doing in there?’

‘Whit dae ye think?’

‘Are you drinking?’

The silence that followed was laden with guilt before the denial. ‘Course not!’

Ricky looked at his grandfather, appalled. ‘Where would he get drink?’

Jack banged on the door again with the brass owl’s head. ‘Open up, Dave. Come on, open the door!’

Another hiatus, then they heard the bolt being pulled back and the door swung in to reveal Dave sitting on the toilet, three cans of beer in plastic wrap cradled in his lap, two empties on the floor and a third in his hand. ‘You’re just spoilsports, the lot of ye.’

Jack stared at him in astonishment. ‘Where did you get those?’

‘They were on the floor by my feet in the back of the car. Wasnae gonnae tell you. You’d just have chucked them oot the windae.’

Jack reached in to try to grab the remaining cans, but Dave wrapped his arms around them.

‘I’ve been good for long enough. We’re on a wild fuckin’ goose chase here, and nae bloody idea why.’ He glared across at Maurie, who hadn’t moved from his place beside the hand dryer. Then a sly smile crossed his face. ‘Anyway, I’ve earned them.’

‘How’s that?’ Jack wasn’t in the mood for forgiveness. Dave had promised to stay sober.

‘Oh, just caught sight of a wee notice oot there. Didn’t know this was a coach stop, did you? On the road tae London. Another one due in...’ he glanced at his watch, ‘aboot twenty minutes.’

Ricky expressed his feelings in a snort. ‘And we’re going to buy tickets with what?’

Dave laid his remaining cans carefully on the floor and stood up. With slightly unsteady fingers he pulled his shirt out of his trousers and rolled it up to his chest, revealing a thread-worn canvas money belt around his waist. He grinned. ‘Remember that? Saved us once, saved us again.’ Now he laughed at the look on Jack’s face. ‘What’s more amazing than the fact that I’ve still got the bloody thing is that I can get it roon my middle.’

Jack shook his head. ‘Aye, it’s called the alcohol diet. Keeps you skinny when you don’t eat.’ He paused. ‘How much have you got?’

‘Aboot a hundred quid.’

‘And when were you thinking of telling us?’

Dave raised his eyebrows indignantly. ‘I’m telling you noo, amn’t I?’

Half an hour later, the rumble of wheels on tarmac vibrated beneath them as their coach accelerated down the M1 towards what they would once have called the Big Smoke.

They sat again at the back of the bus. Dave had only one can of beer left, and Jack had been relieved to find that there was a toilet on-board. But for the moment, Dave was asleep, one side of his nose and mouth squashed up against the glass of the window, a tiny drool of saliva seeping from the near corner of his mouth.

Ricky sat beside his grandfather, his mood little improved. ‘So where are we going to sleep tonight?’

Jack shrugged. ‘No idea.’

Ricky sighed. ‘Great!’

Maurie’s clawlike old hand came between them from the seat behind, a slip of paper trembling in big-knuckled fingers. ‘Here,’ he said to Jack, urging him to take it. ‘Call this number.’

Jack unfolded the piece of paper and looked at the number. ‘Whose is it?’

Maurie managed the palest of smiles. ‘Who do you think, Jack?’

It was a moment or two before realization dawned, and Jack’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’

Maurie nodded.

Jack handed the number to Ricky. ‘Call that number for me, Ricky, son.’

‘Who the hell is it you want me to talk to now?

But Jack shook his head. ‘Just dial the number. I’ll do the talking.’

III

It was evening by the time their bus pulled into Victoria Coach Station, and drew in alongside a long row of buses. Late sunlight slanted in through the pitched-glass roof, casting the shadow of the white-painted iron superstructure that supported it across the tarmac below.

Jack had watched the city unpacking itself before his eyes on the other side of his window. Tall buildings and narrow streets choked with traffic. Pavements jammed with folk on their way home from work. Tree-lined avenues in spring bloom, swallows dipping and diving through the waning sunlight that angled its way between apartment blocks and skyscrapers. And it brought back very vividly that day fifty years before when they had arrived by train at King’s Cross and stepped on to the streets of London for the very first time. And there was still an excitement in it.

They were last off the coach, Dave still woozy from beer and sleep. And Maurie, it seemed, losing strength by the minute. Jack and Ricky helped him down the steps to the concourse. It was only when he turned that Jack saw Luke standing there.

It was a strange, heart-stopping moment. He had not set eyes on his friend since the day they parted at Euston Station. There had been no contact between them over the years. No letters, no phone calls. Not really surprising, since neither knew the other’s address or telephone number. But, then, neither had made the effort to find out. They might each have died that day, and yet here they were half a century later staring at one another across all the years in between. And Jack knew that he would have recognized Luke anywhere.

He was still tall and lean and boyish. His shock of fair curly hair was now a shock of white curly hair, but just as abundant. His face was deeply creased by the scars of time, but his pale green eyes were just as full of life and gravity as they had been when he was a boy. He gazed at Jack with unglazed affection. And Jack stood looking at him, almost overpowered by the unexpected wave of emotion that broke over him. How extraordinary, he thought, that the feelings developed during those few short adolescent years should have survived all the decades that had passed since. He stepped forward to shake Luke’s hand, but at the last moment put his arms around him and hugged him instead, feeling the strength of the other man’s hug in return.

When they drew apart, Luke’s eyes were shining. ‘You haven’t changed, Jack.’

Jack laughed. ‘And you should have gone to Specsavers. Or are you too vain to wear glasses?’

Luke laughed. But the lines of fondness and affection that creased his face quickly turned to furrows of concern when he looked beyond Jack to the feeble, failing figure of Maurie Cohen. ‘Bloody hell!’ The oath was whispered under his breath.

Jack glanced back, then lowered his voice. ‘He hasn’t got long, Luke. Maybe only days. Weeks at the most. I didn’t even know he had your number or I’d have called you sooner.’ Then he turned towards the others. ‘What do you think, boys? It’s Peter Pan! How come we’re all old farts now and he hasn’t aged a day.’

Luke laughed then, and stepped up to shake Dave’s hand. ‘Still got trouble with your piles, Dave?’

‘Oh, aye, they’re murder, Luke. Hanging in bunches, noo.’

Then he took Maurie’s hand and held it between both of his. His smile faded as he gazed into Maurie’s drug-fogged eyes. ‘I didn’t know, Maurie. You should have told me.’

‘And you’d have done what? Waved a wand and made it all go away?’ He chuckled. ‘You didn’t need to know, Luke. But I’ll be pissed off if you’re not at my funeral.’ He placed his other hand over the back of Luke’s. ‘Need your help before I die, though. We all do.’

‘Anything,’ Luke said. ‘All you have to do is ask. You know that.’

Then, almost as if for the first time, he noticed Ricky, who was hovering awkwardly in the background, as discreetly as his weight would allow.

‘My grandson,’ Jack said. ‘Rick. Sorry. Ricky. Don’t ever let on I told you, but I’m proud as hell of him.’ And he was embarrassed to meet the look of surprise that Ricky turned in his direction.

Luke shook his hand. ‘Then I’m honoured to meet you, Ricky.’ He nodded back over his shoulder. ‘My car’s parked outside. I was going to take you straight back to my place, but you look like you could do with a decent meal. And I know just the place.’

IV

The Merchants Tavern was just off Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, in a narrow alley of shops and pubs and restaurants beneath yellow-and-red-brick apartments that leaned overhead and seemed to close it off from the darkening sky.

The restaurant itself was in a converted workshop with skylights and exposed ducting, but it had been expensively remodelled with polished mahogany and green leather. Luke had phoned ahead to book a table.

When they were seated, Luke said, ‘The chef’s a young Scottish lad. Cut his teeth in France under one of the world’s top chefs. Opened this place a year or so ago. Fantastic food. Can’t be long before he gets himself a Michelin star or two.’

That Luke was in his element here was evident to the others, and it had the effect of making them feel distinctly uncomfortable. Where he was clearly accustomed to fine dining in expensive restaurants, Dave or Jack were more used to Chinese or Indian carry-outs, or pizzas at Dino’s. There was a time, perhaps, when Maurie might not have felt like such a fish out of water. But his days of good living had all preceded his eighteen months in Barlinnie. And life had never been the same again.

A voice raised itself from beyond the leather banquettes, in a kitchen open to the restaurant. Chefs in silhouette moved back and forth from pot to pan, and from oven to grill, in a kind of ordered and orchestrated chaos.

‘Mr Sharp!’ A tall young man in chef’s whites detached himself from the others and made his way to their table, grinning broadly. He shook Luke’s hand. ‘Great to see you again. How you doing?’ His east-coast Scottish twang was unmistakeable.

Dave said, ‘Jesus Christ, we’ve been in London half an hour and talked to nothing but Scotsmen!’

The chef’s grin widened. ‘We’re taking over the world.’

Luke said, ‘Neil, these are my friends from Glasgow. Wanted to treat them to something a wee bit special. Just a main, I think.’

Neil said, ‘I’ll do a wee special for you, then. For the table. Slow-cooked rib-eye, thyme-roasted onions and a few girolles thrown in. How’s that?’

‘Sounds good.’ Luke beamed at the others, searching for approval. But the smile faded a little in the face of their blank looks. ‘Doesn’t it?’

Jack shrugged. ‘If you recommend it, that’s good enough for me.’

Maurie said, ‘I’ll not eat, if you don’t mind. Just some water for me.’

‘Will there be wine with that?’ Dave looked hopeful.

Luke nodded. ‘We’ll order something from the list.’

‘I’ll get that sorted, then,’ Neil said.

But before he could head back to the kitchen Ricky said, ‘What’s rib-eye? It’s not... eyes, is it?’ There was distinct panic in his voice.

Neil smiled indulgently. ‘It’s beef.’

‘Do you not have a burger, or pizza or something?’

Jack dropped his head into one hand, muffling his voice. ‘Oh dear God!’

‘Do you not like beef?’ Neil asked him.

‘Well... it’s okay, I suppose. I don’t like blood running out of it, though.’

Jack thought Neil’s patience was worth a star in itself.

The chef said, ‘No blood running out of this, I promise you. If it doesn’t melt in your mouth, you can have your money back.’

‘My money back.’ Luke grinned. ‘My treat.’

And none of them was about to argue with him.

Luke ordered a bottle of red. And with their glasses filled and their rib-eye cooking, a strangely awkward silence descended on the table.

Luke let his eyes drift from face to face. ‘So how’s everyone been? What have you being doing for the last fifty years?’

Jack’s laugh was a little forced. ‘Not a lot.’

Luke smiled. ‘That must have kept you pretty busy, then.’

Dave blurted, ‘I done my City and Guilds in plumbing and bent pipes aroon’ my knees for most of them. Bloody wrecked them an’ all.’ He took a long draught of wine from his glass. ‘My knees, that is.’

Luke turned his gaze on Jack. ‘You were going to go to university, Jack.’

Jack nodded and looked at his hands on the table in front of him. ‘I did. But it wasn’t for me, Luke. Ended up with the Bank of Scotland.’ He flicked a glance at Ricky and saw that his grandson was assiduously avoiding his eye. He deflected attention away from further elucidation. ‘Maurie was the smart one. Got his law degree.’

Luke seemed surprised. ‘What did you practise, Maurie? Criminal law?’

‘Nooo.’ Maurie shook his head. ‘Civil. Property. Conveyancing mostly.’

There was more awkward silence then, and it was clear to Jack and Dave that he wasn’t going to mention the disbarment or his eighteen months in prison.

‘What about you?’ Jack said. ‘Nice car, nice togs.’ He cast his eyes around the tavern. ‘Fancy restaurant. You’ve obviously done well for yourself.’

Luke nodded. ‘I have. But it didn’t come easy. Or quickly. Truth is, I’d probably have ended up in a shop doorway somewhere if I hadn’t met Jan. Saved my life, she did.’

‘How?’ Dave drained his glass and pushed it towards Luke for a refill.

‘By falling in love with me.’ He laughed. ‘Though God knows why. But, you know, sometimes it takes someone else seeing the worth in you for you to find it in yourself.’ He looked around the table. ‘No one follow a musical career, then?’

There was a collective shaking of heads, and Luke smiled ruefully.

‘Me neither. Designed and printed T-shirts and sold them off a market stall. Jan was teaching, and we rented a place in North London. She got pregnant and we had a wee boy, and we needed some more income. Someone told us about work for babies, you know, doing TV ads and that sort of thing. Wee James was cute as hell, and we got work for him quite easily through an agency. We didn’t realize it at first, but the money had to be put into a trust for him. Not that we grudged it, but having been through the process it got us to thinking, why not set up a wee agency of our own, get some more kids on our books? Take a percentage. There was obviously work around. So that’s what we did, starting from a back room in the flat.’

He shook his head and took a sip of his wine.

‘I would never have guessed that life would take me in that direction. But one thing led to another. We expanded to take adults on to our books. By the time we retired, we had the biggest modelling and acting agency in the UK. The two boys run the business now, and that’s our pension.’ He looked at the others. ‘You guys got kids?’

‘Just the one daughter,’ Jack said. ‘And my grandson, of course.’ He paused. ‘Wife died a year or two ago.’

A little of the sparkle went out of Luke’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Jack.’

Dave said, ‘My wife left me. And I’ve got one brute of a son. Good riddance to them both.’

Luke seemed embarrassed, unsure of what to say, and let his eyes stray towards Maurie. But Maurie was preoccupied, his eyes and mind elsewhere.

Jack said, ‘Maurie never married.’

The same awkwardness returned to the table, but it was broken almost immediately by the arrival of their food. Ricky poked suspiciously at his meat in its rich, dark gravy, before very reluctantly pushing a little past unreceptive lips. Only for his face to lighten with surprise, eyes opening wide. And he took another, bigger mouthful.

‘Wow!’ he said. ‘This is amazing.’

And Jack allowed himself a small, private smile.

Dave tipped the last of the wine into his glass and said, ‘Maybe we’d better get another bottle. I’ll pay for it.’

But Luke just smiled and signalled the wine waiter. ‘Like I said, it’s my shout.’

Wine and food released inhibitions accumulated over five decades, and the four old men were soon talking about that day fifty years before when Jack was expelled from school and they all decided to run away together.

They laughed about the robbery in the Lake District, and Jeff crawling about in the cemetery in the dark, looking for the van keys. They recalled the thrill of their escape with Rachel from the Quarry Hill Flats, pursued in the pitch black through tunnels and drains beneath the city.

Dave said, ‘I’ll never forget being chased by yon car in the dark and almost running head-on intae the cops. Jees! Jeff was like a madman behind the wheel!’

Ricky ate and listened in wide-eyed silence as his grandfather and his one-time band mates reminisced. Sometimes laughing, sometimes shaking heads in disbelief at long-forgotten moments. Even Maurie joined in.

But by the time their plates were cleaned and the second bottle of wine was empty, they had exhausted the source of their conversation. Memories could only fuel so much talk. The greater part of their individual lives had barely, if ever, touched. And beyond that handful of very intense years shared in their teens they had little else in common.

There was only really one thing left to address. But as if they all knew that these fond moments of precious reunion would be lost for ever once they did, none of them wanted to be the first to raise it.

By way of avoidance, Luke said, ‘So what were you doing stuck at a motorway services on the M1?’

Ricky’s theatrical sigh made Jack laugh, and he gave Luke a potted version of their entire, eventful trip down from Glasgow.

Luke listened in astonishment. When Jack had finished, and Luke stopped laughing, he said, ‘You guys are just as crazy as you were back then.’

‘So what’s it like, Luke?’ Jack said. ‘Living in London.’

It’s what they had set out to do all those years before, but only Luke had stayed.

Luke scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘It’s funny. Since we first arrived here in sixty-five, everything’s changed, but nothing has, if you know what I mean. Not really. London exists in that same old bubble. It’s still another country. A virtual city state, these days, fuelled by financial services and ignorant of anything that’s happening anywhere else in the country. If you live and work here, why would you care what happens elsewhere? Until the bloody Scots threatened to vote for independence and take the oil revenues away! Road signs point to The North. And the north is for holidays, or shooting or fishing. No one wants to know about unemployment, or food banks or pensioners in poverty. No one here wants to lift that stone to see what lies beneath.’ He shook his head. ‘But the truth is, London’s been good to me, and I could no more go back to Scotland now than fly in the air. This is my home.’

Which brought a thoughtful silence to the table, and Jack wondered fleetingly how it might have been if he, too, had stayed.

But the moment couldn’t be put off any longer.

Luke leaned on the table and examined their faces carefully. ‘Why are you here?’

With difficulty, Maurie fished his dog-eared newspaper cutting from the Herald out of an inside pocket and pushed it across the table to Luke. Luke read in silence, and they watched as his mouth fell slowly open.

‘How did I miss this?’ he said. But he didn’t expect an answer. He read on, then he looked up. ‘Who’d have believed that Flet was still alive all these years?’ When finally he’d finished reading, he looked puzzled. ‘This is what brought you back to London?’

No one else seemed willing to explain, so Jack said, ‘Maurie claims that it wasn’t Flet who killed that fella, after all. But he won’t say who did. Just that he knows who killed Flet.’

Jack could see a thousand questions forming themselves behind Luke’s eyes.

In the end, all Luke said was, ‘In that case, why wouldn’t you just go to the police?’

All heads turned towards Maurie.

The old lead singer of The Shuffle sighed, as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘It’s too late for that now. Fifty years too late.’ He drew air into his lungs, as if summoning courage. ‘Before we left Glasgow I made a rendezvous to meet up with an old friend of ours tomorrow night.’

‘Who?’ Jack said

But Maurie just shook his head. ‘You’ll find that out when you get me there.’

‘Where?’ Luke asked. ‘Where do you want us to take you?’

Maurie lifted his chin, thrusting it out almost defiantly. ‘The Victoria Hall.’

Jack lay in the dark listening to Ricky’s slow, steady breathing and knew he was not asleep. They were in a back room on the second floor of Luke’s semi-detached townhouse in Hampstead Heath, Jack in the double bed, Ricky on a fold-down settee. Curtains were drawn on windows that looked down on to a substantial back garden and the heath beyond. Dave and Maurie had rooms on the floor below. Luke’s boys had been in large attic rooms he’d had built into the roof, before they grew up and moved out to establish their own lives and their own families. Now Luke rattled around in this big house on his own with his Jan, who had turned out to be a petite, very sweet lady in her early sixties with short-cropped hair the colour of brushed steel. Her strong features reflected a strong character that had been in evidence within moments of meeting her.

She had welcomed Luke’s old friends with open arms, diplomatically disguising the shock she must have felt when confronted with the dying Maurie. She made tea, and prepared rooms for them all, and chattered like a bird. But Jack could see that all her talk was just a way of covering her concern, and he caught her frequent glances at Luke, searching perhaps for some kind of reassurance. What did they want? How long would they be staying?

The house was beautifully maintained and impeccably furnished. At current London prices, Jack reckoned, it was probably worth somewhere between £1.5 million and £2 million. As someone who had spent his life counting other people’s money, it was clear to him that Luke had more of it than he could possibly imagine.

Depression settled on him like dust from an explosion as he lay in Luke’s bed, in Luke’s house, replaying the story of Luke’s success. Thinking about the woman Luke had met and married, the partnership they had forged from love to raise a happy family and create a successful business. It wasn’t that Jack was resentful, or even envious. He begrudged Luke none of it. But the contrast with his own sad story was so painfully stark that all the regrets of his life came flooding back to very nearly drown him. All the missed opportunities and squandered chances. The loss of Rachel. His unrealized dream of becoming a professional musician. Dropping out of university. Settling always for second best, because that was the path of least resistance. Leaving him now, in his late sixties, widowed and alone, treading the boards in the role of a non-speaking extra until it was his turn to exit the stage.

He was almost startled by Ricky’s voice coming unexpectedly out of the darkness. ‘I always thought,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why... but I always thought that, you know, old people were just annoying.’

Jack chuckled, glad to have a focus other than his own self-pity. ‘I suppose I can be pretty annoying at times.’

‘I didn’t mean you in particular. Though you can be more than annoying. Trust me. I meant old people in general.’

‘Of which I am one.’

‘Of which you are one.’

‘Well, you see, there’s the thing right there, Rick. I don’t think of myself as old. In my head I’m still the boy I was at seventeen. I just can’t do the things I did back then, and I get a shock when I look in the mirror. But I don’t see me as you do. In fact, I can look at fellas ten years my junior and think of them as “old boys”. I look at attractive young women and delude myself that they might still fancy me. It’s just a matter of perspective.’

He heard Ricky sigh. ‘Can I finish?’

‘Sorry, Rick.’

‘What I’m trying to say is that you never think of old people as having been young once. I mean, you know they were, but you just can’t picture it. All you see is the grey and the old, and you get fed up hearing how everything was so much better when they were young.’

Jack laughed. ‘You’ll be saying that yourself, some day.’

‘Aye, well, you see, that’s hard to imagine, too.’

Jack thought about it. ‘You never can. Not when you’re young. You think you’ll live for ever. You know you’ll die sometime. But it’s so far away, you can’t imagine that either. Then one day you’ll look in the mirror, and see forty-year-old Ricky staring back at you. And before you know it, it’ll be fifty-year-old Ricky, then sixty-year-old Ricky. And suddenly you’ll see the finish ahead of you, like buffers at the end of the line, and you’re hurtling towards them and there’s no way to stop the train. And everywhere you’ve been on your journey of life, the people you’ve loved, the things you’ve learned and seen, they’ll all be gone. In a moment. Just like they’d never been. And all you’ll want to do is grab folk by the shoulders and tell them that you’ve done extraordinary things. Like that old man at the lunch club in Leeds. Just so they’ll know you existed. Just so you won’t get airbrushed out of history, like you’d never been there in the first place.’

Jack’s voice fell away then, and he lay thinking about his own words, thoughts to which he had never before given form. And he heard himself say, ‘But then, maybe you haven’t. Done extraordinary things, I mean. Maybe you never were and never will be anything special. And no one’ll miss you when you’re gone, and when you’re breathing your last you’ll wonder what was the bloody point of any of it.’

There was a long, laden silence.

Then Ricky’s voice. ‘But you have.’

‘Eh?’

‘Done extraordinary things, Grampa. I mean, I knew you’d run away to London when you were a kid. It always just seemed boring to me. But listening to you all tonight, around the table, made me realize there was so much more to it than I ever imagined. To you. And them. And all that stuff about a murder? And the killing of that actor? And Rachel? I don’t know anything about her. And Jeff. I never even knew there were five of you in the group.’

‘Aye, son, there were five us. And Rachel...? Rachel was the biggest love and the biggest regret of my life. Then and now. I did wrong by her, Rick, and I lost her.’

There was a long silence then, and Jack began to listen for signs that his grandson had drifted off. He wasn’t expecting it when the boy spoke again, several minutes later.

‘Grampa?’

‘Yes, Rick.’

‘What happened to Jeff?’