Chapter 8
I only hesitate after a twenty-minute walk that takes us out of one of the richest parts of London to somewhere very different.
We enter a rat run of alleys slicing between postwar high-rise housing.
Compared to the gold and silver towers built for bankers and tech bros we left behind at Canary Wharf, my home turf is graffitied. And grim.
It’s ugly. A million miles from Kensington’s townhouses. I guess that’s what Dair sees while a silent audience watches from the walkways above us, sizing up whether he’s here to buy what they’re selling or if he’s worth mugging. Then they see me. Cool stares turn warm, and I lift my chin in return.
Dair sees that too.
“You know them?”
“Those kids? I know their fams.” If he has more questions, the only answer I got is, “This is home, innit.” I won’t deny or downplay it. For every trap house here, there are ten more front doors I could knock on and be offered a cuppa.
I can’t help seeing it through Dair’s eyes. And through the eyes of high-flying Heppel Exes, which I suppose partly answers one of Harry’s questions about me keeping my distance.
I turn that over on the way through more alleys devoid of sunlight, where Dair tells me about his last care-home shift.
About accidental puddles he mopped up long after midnight.
And about slow dancing with a client who mistook him for her husband.
“No two shifts are ever the same.” His laugh echoes, attracting attention.
Shadows shift.
Just like that, my guard rises just like Kev drilled into me, and I shove Dair behind me, ready to do what I once did for Charles.
Thank fuck, I don’t have to scuff my knuckles today—the man who steps out is the de facto lord of this housing-estate manor.
I just look like a hard man. This is the real deal. Last I heard, he was on remand for intent to supply. This afternoon, he’s free to deliver a message.
“Sorry to hear about Stacey, mate.”
I nod. “Thanks.”
“She did my sister a solid. Helped her do a midnight flit with my nephew while I was banged up. Said Stacey wouldn’t take no cash for it.”
“That sounds like her.”
He eyes me. “Was it you who got my sister’s stuff out?” He tilts his head in the direction of the river. “Top floor of a block in the Wintergreen estate. Night-time job right at the end of the summer.”
“Yeah. I remember.” Remember? My poor plates of meat didn’t let me forget for days. “How’s she doing? And your nephew. He was handy that night. The lift was out of order. He helped a lot.”
“Deshaun’s a good kid,” this gang lord says as Dair edges out from behind me to watch, wide-eyed again.
“And my sister’s doing better. Her fracture’s all healed now and Deshaun’s back at school.
Only got a few months left. Don’t think he would have made it to the finish line if they’d stayed living with that dickhead.
” This big, hard man does a little fracturing of his own, and his voice lowers.
“I didn’t know what was going on. She never told me or I would have got it sorted.
I have now. Paid her ex back.” He inspects his own knuckles.
“By the way, I saw your old man while I was away. Paid him back too, for you.” He meets my eyes.
“As a thank-you for my sister, yeah?” He surveys me.
Surveys Dair too. “You two need anything?”
I’m pretty sure that’s a drug-related offer. I shake my head, and he melts back into the shadows.
Dair lets out a long breath. I don’t expect what he blurts out next.
“That was a blast from the past. I don’t mean the midnight-flit thing.
That was no surprise.” We aren’t too far from the school where I failed.
Dair redefines me. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?
Help if people are in trouble.” It takes a moment to tune in to what else he shares.
“I mean getting approached by a drug dealer was just like being at home. My first home, I mean.” His voice is a touch strangled.
“Right down to me almost peeing my pants.”
I do laugh then, and that’s a whole lot better than the slow but sure ratcheting of tension I’ve felt on the way here from a more gentrified location. “You lived someplace like this?”
He blows away all my Highland-heather assumptions.
“Look up the Gorbals. Its tower blocks used to be famous for black mould and muggings. That’s where I lived for a while before.
..” He breaks our eye contact and walks faster.
“Before I was taken into care. Then I lived all over.” He speaks quickly, all bright and breezy in a way I’m starting to learn means I should pay close attention.
“Which was fun, because who doesn’t want to be the new kid at school after school after school?
” He lowers his voice. “Not sure if you already noticed, but I’m a wee bit gay. ”
“Yeah, I noticed.” I sling an arm around his shoulder. “Seems like a plus point to me.”
He chuffs out a low laugh. “Well, the kids at each new school noticed as well. And they noticed how I sometimes can’t help getting…” He doesn’t need to say emotional. I get it.
“No one wants to be an easy target.” This comes from someplace still raw deep inside me.
“And it’s shit when it’s due to something you can’t help.
” I channel Harry, and even if I have no intention of using his pen as he suggested, I can say this and mean it.
“You go ahead and feel your fucking feelings. Don’t let anybody stop you. ”
He gives me a suspiciously watery smile, but he also nods. “That’s what my final foster parents told me. Thank fuck for them. They let me finish school at home miles away from anywhere like this.”
“Where was that?”
“On the Isle of Harris.”
“And now here you are on the Isle of Dogs.”
Dair chuffs out another laugh and echoes someone who once labelled me as a brave boy. “I can’t lie. I was expecting a lot more puppies, but at least I’ve got one of my own. Well, Hector thinks he’s a puppy. He’s actually an old fella.”
“Yeah? You got a dog?”
He nods and slides out his phone to show me a blurry photo of pink tongue, white muzzle, and long, silky ears.
“A spaniel? Alice’s favourite.”
“Aye,” he says softly. “Can’t wait to see him.”
“Where is he?”
“Waiting at home. My foster parents are looking after him while I clear this place. And my cat.” He slips his phone away and backtracks to the subject of an isle I never heard of before today.
“Once I was done with school, they helped me get a job on the same estate where they still work. Not a housing estate like this. One with a castle where shooting parties are held. The only job there for me was as a game-bird beater.”
We’ve reached the far side of an isle of my own, our toes almost to the edge of a river banked in grit, which is where he comes to the end of his story.
“I helped to raise the wee birds. Watched them hatch. Saw them learn to fly and then I was meant to scare them into taking flight right in front of a line of rifles.” He shakes his head.
“You couldn’t do it?”
“No. And neither could one of the guests at my very first shooting party.”
I remember who told me that Dair might be his ticket to heaven.
“Charles.”
Dair nods. “He had a chat with me. Then he had a longer chat with my foster parents, and they gave him their blessing.”
“To do what?”
“To kidnap me and take me home with him.”
He’s joking about the kidnapping. He must be. For the first time, I do feel a bit weird about both of us going home with the same person. Dair nips that weird feeling in the bud. “He delivered me straight to one of his neighbours. Alice needed care, and I needed—”
I go straight to the top of the class with this answer. “To be helpful.”
He gifts me the kind of smile that could make me carry no end of beds and sofas for zero payment. “Charles helped me find an adult education course. I started a certificate in care.”
“Which you passed with flying colours.”
“I did.” He puffs up a little. “Found my thing. Something I was actually good at. I know care isn’t for everybody. That the pay is shite and that the only way to make more than a basic living is to be the owner of a care home. People look down on it, especially if men do the caring.”
I repeat what he told Blake. “But it still matters.”
Dair leans against a barrier between us and a great view across the river. He only has eyes for me, and that combined with everything he’s shared is…
A lot.
He’s well and truly unbuttoned his lip about issues other people gave him a hard time for.
I can almost hear my cousin telling me to shut my yap, and I got no intention of breaking that promise—I like the way Dair sees me.
You’re so smart, Vincent.
But what he’s told me today means I can’t keep this in. “What you said about going into care. About how it felt. That could have been me, if my fam hadn’t stepped in. Sorry it happened to you.”
He looks about to ask more questions.
I head off before he can, already regretting opening my big mouth.
Don’t let anyone see where you’re weakest.
Dair follows me again, his lips pressed together when I hold open the door into a tower block where, thankfully, the lift works.
It grinds its slow way up, and Dair finally breaks his silence, thankfully not to ask about one of the worst times in my own life.
He studies the lift button I pressed. “Fifteen floors up? Bet the view is epic.” He keeps seeing positives where other people might see downsides to living in a shit neighbourhood.
“Does your cousin’s place overlook the river? ”
“Yeah, it does. The best view is from the spare room.”
Dair’s laugh creaks like the workings of this postwar elevator. “Trust me, you don’t need to add incentives to get me into your bedroom.”
That’s bare.
And honest.