Cleaning Up Read Free Page B

into school today - no problem. He’d got there because his mum had dropped him off at the fuckin’ school gates. He’d landed back home at around eleven last night. He’d sent her a text about seven but had ignored her subsequent responses, eventually turning the mobile off just to get her out of his head. He’d been smoking with Matt andJunior pretty much all of the afternoon and for most of the evening too. He was well battered. They had headed out for a kebab, too skint to score any more weed and then they had gone back to M’s for some more Grand Theft Auto. Matty only had the third one but he was talking up being at the front of the queue to buy the new one.
    She’d gone ballistic when he made it home, coming out of the lounge room at him like a bat out of hell. She’d caught up with him just as he’d placed his foot on the first of the stairs. She must have been sat there in the dark and silence waiting for him, fucking mad she was. At first he thought she was going to hit him, that was something she hadn’t done for years and he was surprised at his reaction to her anger. He’d instinctively pulled back from her with a jolt of fear. But, as usual, her concern had outweighed her anger and, after a lengthy bollocking, she’d made them both toast before insisting that he go up to bed.
    Now here he was, stuck in this fucking dump of a school. Apart from the late morning history lesson with O’Donnell he’d been bored absolutely shitless. He’d always liked Donno, a big bluff Glaswegian, who effortlessly handled the kids whilst bringing the subject alive. Last year, Pasquale had done a project for him on Scott’s South Pole expedition and he had been given the best marks in the class. He’d really pulled that out of the bag - writing the assignment as a diary illuminated with sketches. O’Donnell had been that impressed that he’d taken it off to show the other teachers, some of whom had shown it to their own kids. He’d been a fucking star for the rest of that week. Today was a monumental drag but at least the fit girls in the class were a distraction and there were more than a few of them to perv at.
    Anyway, he’d be out of here next year right enough. He, M and Junior had a plan to make some readies. The three of them were putting down some rhymes together. They were always up for it but they often ended up too blasted to really get it together and whatever they tried was usually lost in a fit of giggles and piss taking. They nailed it sometimes though - for real. He’d keep it low key for the next few days at least until she cooled down. She’d come round, she always did. After all, she was his mum.
     
    Tommy’s old man was at the bar when he walked into the Crown, holding court with a small gaggle of his cronies in attendance. Mick may have been physically diminished but, in his cups, he was as verbally robust as he’d ever been. A break in the juke box roar gave him the gist of the conversation.
    ‘Free trade, free trade,’ Mick opined, ‘what’s so fucking free about it. Bending over for t’ rich and powerful they mean… fucking wankers.’
    Yep he’d heard that one before - plenty of times. He agreed with it too but he wasn’t in the mood for the splenetics, not just yet. Mick’s Think Tank nodded along in easy unison; Nev, an easy going beta male who was an old mate of his dad’s from the Union days, Teddy Black, a ruddy faced scowler who only smiled on public holidays and Danny ‘Drink’ Gorman who looked plastered enough to nod along in agreement to Pol Pot.
    He stuck his name up on the board and fed some coins into the jukebox, wryly noting that none of his selections had been penned after the turn of the millennium.
    Just as he finished his choices there was bit of a commotion behind him at the tight entry doors of the pub. A few youngish scallies had rolled in. They were travelling abroadby the look of them, down here from either the Coleshaw or the Barrington. They were