The Songs of Manolo Escobar Read Free Page B

populated with garish customised cars. The family-run shops were gone, closed and shuttered, replaced by a single mini-market with grilled windows covered in adverts for low-cost energy drinks and cigarettes.
    The car pulled up outside the compact, two-bedroom house in which I’d grown up. It hadn’t changed in any significant way since my youth. My parents were among the few residents who still rented from the council. ‘Why I wanna buy a bloody house?’ Papa demanded testily whenever I tried to point out the financial benefits of owning property. ‘If I wanna fix roof or windows, I phone the council. If I buy a house, I dae myself.’
    Mama had heard the car’s rasping engine and was standing on the doorstep, ready with a smile and a needy embrace.
    â€˜How is my boy?’ she asked, her accent as much Glaswegian as it was Spanish.
    â€˜I’m doing fine, Mama.’
    She eyed me sceptically. ‘You don’t look fine, are you eating?’
    â€˜I’m eating.’
    â€˜But are you eating properly?’
    There was pathos in her concern that made me feel slightly sad – that I was in my mid-forties, with a family of my own, that I earned in a month what she and Papa lived on for a year, and yet she still felt responsible for my welfare.
    I stepped into the hallway and was met by the smell of lambs’ kidneys braising in sherry. I made my way upstairs to my old bedroom, which hadn’t changed since I’d shared it with Pablito thirty years before.
    I’d kept urging Mama to redecorate it, even offering her the money, but she said she didn’t have the heart. It retained the imprint of teenage boyhood, with fading posters of rock bands hanging limply from the walls, along with occasional cut-outs of footballers from Spanish magazines, with their 1970s mullets and sideburns. Neither Pablito nor I ever saw them play, but we pretended we idolised them to humour Papa.
    Other than twin single beds, the only item of furniture was a cheap mock-pine chest of drawers purchased from an industrial estate in Renfrew. On top of it sat a couple of well-thumbed Alistair MacLean novels and a clutch of dusty, scratched cassette cases.
    I dumped my holdall on the floor and collapsed on to the bed, lurching precariously to one side as the loosely-sprung mattress sagged beneath my weight. I felt a sudden urge to speak to Cheryl. I pulled out my mobile phone and dialled our home number, but the moment I heard it click on to voicemail, I wished I hadn’t.
    â€˜Hi, I’m just checking in, to see if you’re all right,’ I said, trying to sound casual and breezy. ‘Just thought I’d touch base.’
    Touch base
? What the hell did that mean? I hated making these phone calls, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Even if she’d answered, we’d have had a few moments of unsatisfying, directionless conversation, then I’d probably have spent the rest of the night worrying, rehearsing in my head every syllable she’d spoken, every pause, searching for clues as to what she was really thinking.
    I felt trapped inside my aching body. I changed into a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. I trudged into the bathroom and threw some cold water over my face, rubbing my eyes to dislodge the crumbs of sleep that had built up on the train journey.
    At the bottom of the staircase was a large bag of dirty laundry. Mama had told me on the phone that Pablito might be eating with us, although she wasn’t certain he’d definitely make it because of his work schedule. He’d promised to ‘pull some strings’, she said. He’d recently switched jobs – again – his latest designation being in what he referred to as ‘petroleum retail’.
    I entered the living room and found him and Papa kneeling in front of the television set, crouched over some sort of electrical item.
    â€˜Hey
hermano
, how’s it going?’ I asked