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III
Throbbing music filled the dark room, disguising the shriek of trainers on the rubber floor and squeals of excitement. Paddy was crouching on one of the wooden walkways, keeping her body behind the partition so that she couldn’t be shot from the ground.
The memory of Terry’s BCG stabbed at her throat. Somehow her relationship with Terry was getting confused with the seagull in Greenock: a big ugly threat that wanted something from her that she didn’t have.
She heard a scream and turned to look down the dark walkway. Through the smog of dried ice she could just make out a strip of tiny colored lights, red through to yellow. There was a child down there and they’d just been shot.
Every person in the room had a pack strapped to their front and back, little light sensors on it to pick up the beam of the bulky laser guns they all carried. Shoot someone and their pack went off for thirty seconds and you got points. Her job here was to lose by a higher margin than Pete and be good about it, to show him it didn’t matter. She had thought it might freak her out after seeing Terry, being here among excited children shooting each other, but it was just an electronic version of tig.
Pete was down there somewhere, on the floor, chasing other kids or hiding, sneaking along a wall, the pack too big for him really, banging off his thighs when he raised his legs to run or climb a ladder.
They came here all the time and Pete always played the same game. He liked to run around as much as possible, fodder for the bigger kids who lay in wait in the good vantage points. She loved it that he was reckless but if he had played cautiously she would have cherished that too.
Her pack vibrated and gave off a little wind-down tune. She turned to see a smug boy of BC’s age standing behind her. “Looserrr,” he drawled.
She tutted and stood up straight, knowing her pack was off and she couldn’t be shot again for a while. “Oh dear,” she said, being good about it, “I’m rubbish at this.”
But her assassin wasn’t listening. He sauntered past her towards another set of lights twinkling in the dark, shot his laser gun at the target, and she heard a pack sighing the death jingle. She recognized Pete’s groan in the dark. “Looserrr.”
“Is that you?”
He walked over to her. “I’m getting shot all the time,” he whined.
“Everyone gets out sometimes.”
He dropped his head and his shoulders sagged with disappointment. Together they looked over the top of the walkway at the scurrying figures below. Somewhere a pack sang sadly in the darkness. “Looserr.”
“I don’t think that boy’s very nice,” she said, but Pete was watching the floor and didn’t answer.
Sweat beaded his face. He pushed the hair back from his forehead, the sweat making his fringe stand up in a spiky tiara.
“This is a good laugh, eh?”
“Aye.”
She wanted to reach out and kiss him but contented herself with touching his shoulder with her fingertips.
Paddy had been ambivalent all the way through her pregnancy. She was unsure about her fitness to be a mother, whether she could love the baby, whether she should have had an abortion and waited for the right man. But she didn’t believe in the right man, didn’t think she’d ever want to get married, and thought Pete might be her only chance to have a child.
From the moment he was born she knew she’d done the right thing. His fingers, his toes, the wrinkled promise of his testicles, every detail was hypnotic. It was like living with a pop star she had a crush on. For the first year she had a compulsive need to kiss him. Being in another room, even waking to his screams in the burning-eyed middle of the night, her heart rate rose at the thought of seeing him. The rest of life was nothing but a hollow interval until he was there again.
Her intensity worried her. She could only imagine how hard Pete would have to fight to shake her hand from his shoulder. She’d have done it for him but she didn’t know how.
Standing next to her now, he raised himself on tiptoes, looked out over the ridge, and turned back to her, smiling. “Hey, Mum, guess what?”
“What?”
Gri
“Ya wee bissom!”
He laughed and ran away.
“Hey,” she called after him in the dark, “I’m not feeding you for two days.”
“My dad’ll feed me,” he called back.
IV
George Burns knocked on the front door like a hungry bailiff with a short temper. He didn’t even bother with a hello when Paddy opened it but swept into the hall, tutted at the boxes still scattered on the floor, and looked around for Pete.
“Hi, Sandra.” Paddy held the door open farther and invited his wife into the flat.
Sandra was blond, tall, and so thin she could have opened letters with her chin. Her rigorous grooming routine verged on manic and always made Paddy think of unhappy zoo animals that lick the same spot over and over until they go bald.
“Paddy.” Sandra dipped at the knee, making herself smaller, an apologetic smile twitching at the corner of her lipsticked mouth.
“Come on in.” Paddy took her warmly by the elbow and brought her into the flat. “Did you have a nice weekend in Paris?”
Sandra’s eyes skittered around the floor. “Nice. Good weather. Lovely hotel room-” She stopped abruptly, pressing her lips tight together, as if the words were fighting to get out. Paddy could imagine what the words were: he’s furious, get me out of here, I’m hungry all the time.
Paddy regretted having a baby to Burns. He was a nightmare to negotiate with and wasn’t a particularly warm father. Keeping her options open, she’d tried to muddy the father issue but Pete had popped out a perfect model of his dad: thick black hair, wide green eyes and the telltale dimple on his chin. And there was Burns at visiting time, the clay and the mold. When Pete was hospitalized with pneumonia Burns visited once a week and brought the four-year-old bunches of flowers.
“Where is he?” Burns was already brisk and impatient to get away. He usually saved it until he was bringing Pete back.
“He’s just getting his new Transformer.” Paddy spoke slowly, calmingly. “He wants to show it to you.”
“Is Dub in?”
“Naw, I haven’t seen him today.”
“Tell him I was asking for him.”
Pete arrived then at the door to his bedroom, already wary, sensing the atmosphere among the adults. Dumbly, he thrust the blue-and-red plastic robot out at them.
“Show your dad what it does, though.”
Without a word, Pete pulled a robot head here, clicked the legs that way, and held the truck out for inspection. A brittle silence descended on the hall.
“Wow,” Paddy tried to prompt Sandra and Burns, “that is amazing.”
Neither of them said anything. Sandra shifted her weight uncomfortably.
“Isn’t it?” Paddy said to Burns, a vague threat in her expression.
Sandra looked at the floor again and Burns gave Paddy a furtive smile. “Great, yeah. A real breakthrough in toy making.”
Paddy could have hit him. “We watched your show the other night.” From the corner of her eye she saw Sandra bridle. “That was a breakthrough, too.”
The effect was immediate. Burns snapped at Pete, “Where’s your coat?” Pete ran back into his room and came out with his blue-and-white tracksuit top. “You can’t wear that, we’re going to lunch with a television producer. We’re going to a nice restaurant. You need to wear something smart.”
It was too much for Pete. His mouth turned down at the corners and he started to bubble. “I don’t wa
Paddy rushed across the floor to him, glad of an excuse to hold him. “Aw, son.”
Behind her Burns sighed. “For God sake, you shouldn’t baby him like that. He’s got to learn that he needs to dress smartly sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”