Dean
He had enough fish and chips for the two of them.
But everyone liked fish and chips.
When things got bad, it was easy to forget there were still good people out there.
People who wanted to help. The rehab lady, who’d persuaded him to open up about what he’d done, what had been done to him.
This lad from the charity who had driven the Transit, helped him unload second-hand furniture for the little bedsit.
It was better than the halfway house, miles better than the last place—although that wasn’t difficult. The main thing was that she didn’t know where he was. That her new bloke didn’t know, that he didn’t have to do his psycho routine again just to prove he was the big man.
Dean retrieved the probation letter from one of his half-dozen plastic bags and laid it on the little side table to read later, when he’d had something to eat.
That stuff had never come easy to him, the letters always shifting and jumping on the page.
He could recognize the shape of his own name printed at the top of the page in black capitals—Dean Fullerton—but only by the angles and lines made by the letters rather than because he could see the order they were in.
He got two chipped plates out of the cupboard, hunted around until he found a knife and two forks that looked clean enough.
A first meal to christen the new place. He put one of the paper-wrapped packages—cod and large chips with plenty of salt and vinegar—onto the bigger plate and then began to unwrap his own, grease from the chips already soaking through the plain paper onto his fingers.
“I got enough plates,” Dean said, mustering a hopeful smile. “You can stay and eat here, if you want.”
The lad checked his watch, looked back toward the door as if he was in two minds about something.
“Thanks,” he said finally. “I’m starving.”
“You’re welcome.”
The lad returned his smile.
“Actually,” he said, moving toward the front door. “I’ve just got to fetch something from the van first. Back in a sec.”