You Against Me

Three

There’s a way of slicing the skin from an orange that means none of the bitter white stuff gets left on the fruit. Mikey didn’t use to know this. Dex had taught him. It was hypnotic, seeing if he could peel the whole thing without the skin breaking once, coils of bright orange trailing to the floor. He liked his fingers being sticky. He liked knowing that when he’d peeled the whole lot, Dex was going to show him how to make a brandy glaze.

There was peace at the pub. Routine. Jacko poured peas and sweetcorn into saucepans of hot water. Dex scrubbed potatoes by the back door, his bare feet in the rain. Mikey had sorted the salad bar like he did every morning – prawn cocktail, egg mimosa, coleslaw. They were OK, the three of them. Everything was as it should be. It was easy to forget the world outside.

‘You two boys are quiet today,’ Dex said. ‘You got girl trouble again?’

Mikey shook his head. ‘Not the kind you mean.’

‘I have,’ Jacko said. ‘I can’t get one.’

‘Sienna’s got a sister,’ Mikey said.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Dunno, never met her.’

‘How long you been seeing Sienna?’

‘Two weeks.’

Jacko laughed. ‘Well, introduce me to her sister quick, ’cos that’s a world record for you.’

Dex waved the peeler at him. ‘If I had daughters, you two would terrify me.’

‘It’s Mikey you want to be scared of,’ Jacko said. ‘He can get any girl he wants, I swear it. Hey, Mikey, tell Dex about your first time.’

‘With Sienna?’

‘No, your very first time.’

Mikey grinned. ‘I’m not telling him that.’

‘She went down on him,’ Jacko said. ‘Met her in a bar, never even knew her name and she went down on him.’

Dex tutted. ‘That stuff’s private. You shouldn’t be talking about things like that.’

‘Can you believe it?’ Jacko said. ‘That any girl would do that?’

‘I can’t believe half the things you two get up to,’ Dex said.

Mikey wondered what Dex would think if he knew about Sienna crying into her pillow the night before. How he hadn’t wanted to kiss her, how he couldn’t be bothered to undress her, how he’d almost changed his mind about the whole thing and then crept home in the middle of the night.

He stared at Dex for a bit, trying to work him out. He had a shaved head and a mad French accent and he looked like he’d thump you if you eyed him wrong, but Mikey had never heard him raise his voice, never seen him lose his temper. He had tattoos on his hands that he did himself with a pin and a bottle of ink – I LOVE SUE spread across his knuckles. He did stuff for her too – fantastic grub after hours, presents when it wasn’t her birthday. He even wrote her a song once. Jacko said he was a doormat. But maybe that was love?

The door swung open and Sue stood there. She folded her arms and looked the three of them up and down. ‘I need a cleaner. Someone chucked up in the bogs last night.’

‘You’re looking at chefs, mon amour,’ Dex told her, without looking up from his peeling.

She snorted, took a step in and tapped Mikey on the shoulder. ‘You’ll do.’

Mikey shook his head at her. ‘I’m about to make a flan.’

‘It’s a pub, not a Gordon bloody Ramsay restaurant. You’re here to pot-wash, and you’re here to clean the toilets if that’s what I want you to do. Come on, we open in twenty minutes.’

He took the plastic apron she offered and tied it over his jeans. He followed her through the bar to the cleaning cupboard. She handed him a mop, a bucket, a bottle of bleach, then led him to the toilets. ‘And make sure you wash your hands after.’

As he threw buckets of hot water and bleach into the bogs, Mikey felt a heaviness settle over him. It was all right if he was in the kitchen, or out with Jacko. Even with a girl it went away a bit. But these last two weeks, whenever he was at home or just by himself, it crashed back. As he washed down the walls with a mop, he thought about where he’d be in a year, two, five. He counted out ages. In five years Karyn would be twenty. Holly would be thirteen. His mum would be forty-two. He’d be twenty-three. He shrugged the numbers away in irritation. It was the kind of calculation kids did. Go too far with numbers like that and you ended up dead.

He tried not to breathe in the stink as he swilled the mop under the tap. He tried to remember that one day he’d be worth more than this. He’d live in London, maybe get a place in Tottenham, where his mum grew up. He’d have a chef’s job and earn tons of cash. He’d get season tickets for Spurs and invite Holly to all the home games. He tried to believe it as he put everything back in the cleaning cupboard and washed his hands with soap from the dispenser.

He needed a fag. Surely Sue wouldn’t moan at him for that? The bogs were sparkling. Outside, it was raining hard, a sudden rush dumping from the sky. He liked it. It matched his mood.

He stared at the cars parked by the harbour wall, their windows steamed up, the people inside waiting for the pub to get its act together and serve them lunch.

The door swung open and Jacko came and lit up a fag next to him. Together they watched a girl walk past, hands in her pockets, shoulders shrugged against the rain. Jacko sucked his teeth. ‘I love the way every single one of them is different.’

He was always coming out with mad stuff. It was comforting. With your oldest friend you should be free to say what was on your mind.

‘Bail today,’ Mikey said.

Jacko nodded. ‘I saw your mum in the pub last night. She reckoned he’ll definitely get it this time.’

‘The cops made some deal with his lawyer, that’s why. Soon he’ll be running about like he did nothing wrong.’

‘What’re you going to do?’

‘Dunno. Got to do something though. Karyn says she’s never leaving the flat again.’

Jacko looked at Mikey long and hard. ‘You serious?’

‘I told her he wouldn’t be allowed near her, but it made no difference.’

‘Bastard!’

Mikey nodded, knew Jacko would understand. ‘I went by his house again. I wanted to get him, but he wasn’t there.’

‘You went solo?’

‘I got mad. I had to do something.’ Mikey threw his fag end into a puddle, listened to it hiss. ‘Anyway, you were at work.’

‘I’d drop everything.’ Jacko slapped Mikey’s back with the flat of his hand. ‘You should know that.’

Mikey told him the whole story then – the spanner, the journey to the house, the party to celebrate getting bail. It was good standing there talking about it. It warmed Mikey up.

‘They’ve got caterers and everything. I met his mum and sister and they thought I was a mate of his, even invited me to the fucking thing.’

Jacko whistled. ‘Man, that’s mental!’

‘Imagine telling Karyn that. Imagine how that’ll make her feel.’

‘Don’t tell her, it’s too harsh.’ Jacko chucked his rollie stub into the puddle at their feet. Two soggy cigarette butts floating together like a couple of boats.

A plan began to form in the silence. It was a crazy plan, and Mikey tried to push it away, but it kept building. He thought of home, told himself he should have a kick-about in the courtyard with Holly to make up for not taking her to school, told himself he had to get some shopping in case Mum forgot. But the plan wouldn’t go away. His family would have to manage – he couldn’t look after them all the time. ‘You busy tonight?’

A slow smile dawned on Jacko’s face. ‘We’re going to crash the party?’

‘I promised Karyn I’d get him. Why not get him on the night he least expects it?’

‘You want me to call backup?’

He meant Woody, Sean, Mark – the lads they’d gone to school with, the ones they’d fought side-by-side with through years of playground scraps and teen battles over territory. They still met up for regular games of pool and a pint, but all of them had moved on. Woody was married now, even had a kid on the way. Sean and Mark were apprentice brickies. The night Karyn came back from the police station, they’d been solid when Jacko called them. None of them would forget the anger they shared that night, but it wasn’t fair to ask them again. Karyn was his sister, this was his fight.

‘We’ll get noticed if we go team-handy.’

Jacko nodded. Mikey could see him running over the basics in his head – tactics and plans for intel kicking in. In school fights, Jacko had been strategy king. His hours on the Xbox proved useful in the real world.

Sue came out then and tapped at her watch.

‘There’ll be loads of people there,’ Jacko said as they followed her back through the bar. ‘But we’ll have darkness as cover.’ He held the door to the kitchen open. Dex had the radio tuned in to his usual country station, where the songs were always about divorce and heartache and preachers. He waved the peeling knife at them.

‘My boys!’ he said.

Jacko leaned in to Mikey. ‘You want me to drive?’

‘You’re up for it?’

‘Course! I’m here for you, man. I’ll do whatever you need.’

Mikey smiled. It was the first time anything had gone right for days.