Still Midnight

Ironed pyjamas and warmth and toast. Pat began to salivate. He wanted to walk in, shed his jacket and stay, but a sharp shoulder hit him from behind, shoving him into the house. Eddy barged in, stumbled over the door mat and staggered sideways up the pink hall, his crazy crab dance watched by everyone, until, bandy-legged, he regained his balance. His balaclava had slipped off-centre, blinding him until he tugged at it, remembered his gun, raised it, seemed surprised at the sight of it in his hand.

Watching from the other end of the hall, Pat could sense his embarrassment. Eddy took a deep breath, tipped his head back and shouted through the mouth of the balaclava, ‘BOB! BOB!’

His entrance, dress and ma

Pat looked at the girl again. The colour had drained from her cheeks, her eyes were wide, watchful of Eddy, looking out for her father. He was struck by her again, felt his heart slow and the hairs on his skin rise as if reaching towards her. She saw him look, his pale blue eyes pleading and wondering.

Aleesha was a teenager and therefore only interested in the world as it spoke about her. She saw Pat like her, long for her to like him back and despite her bewilderment and terror, his frank admiration warmed her. Still, she was young and in the presence of her father and felt suddenly terribly embarrassed. Dropping her head forwards so that a curtain of black hair fell across her face, she rolled a shy step back towards the living room door.

The movement made Eddy jump. He pounced towards her, snatched her arm, yanked her back towards Pat. ‘DON’T FUCKING TRY. GET OUT HERE. STAY OUT HERE.’

Having thrown her off balance he let go and skipped back down to the pyjama’d man, leaving Aleesha bent over to the side. She glared at the arm Eddy had dared to touch. Ballsy as fuck. Pat smiled beneath his woolly mask. When she stood up straight her face was an inch from Pat’s chest and she looked up at him, her plump lips parting, her fear superseded for a moment by anger.

In that moment, when she was no longer terrified, Pat’s wool-framed eyes asked her a wordless question. Aleesha arched her back, stood tall, looking down her long nose and answered with a slow, proud blink.

Each smiled and looked away.

The sight of the unfamiliar pink carpet brought Pat to his senses. He raised his heavy gun at the ceiling, half heartedly, as if he was showing it to her, and Aleesha smothered a panicky giggle.

A sharp click drew every eye to a door across the hall. It opened slowly and a big square man looked out into the hall. Billal took after his uncles, not his wee daddy, and his hugeness was unexpected and alarming.

Though only a few feet away, Eddy screamed at him, ‘BOB? Are you Bob?’

Eyes wide, shoulders stiff, Billal stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him. His hands stayed behind his back, holding the door handle firmly.

‘BOB?’

‘No,’ said Billal quietly. ‘I’m not… no one called Bob here, mate.’

‘OPEN IT!’ shouted Eddy, jabbing the barrel of the gun at him. ‘OPEN THAT DOOR!’

Billal glanced at his feet and swallowed awkwardly. ‘Um, no, actually, I won’t.’

At this Aleesha snorted, giving Pat an excuse to look at her again. Her hand was over her mouth, fingers glittering prettily with small cheap rings, false nails glued on badly, the index finger nail squinty. She couldn’t be over seventeen. He shouldn’t think those things about a seventeen-year-old. He had nieces that age.

Eddy stepped purposefully over to Billal, pointing his gun at his nose. ‘MOVE IT!’

Hypnotised by the gun barrel, the big man stepped slowly to the side. Eddy raised his foot and kicked at the door with his heel.

The room was dimly lit. Straight across from the door was an old-fashioned double divan bed, high, with a dark wood headboard, much marked. Sitting in the bed was a wild-haired, bloated woman, two fingers of her right hand scissored around a hugely swollen brown nipple. In her other hand she cradled the bald head of a tiny baby.

She stared at the gun barrel and clutched the baby to her breast, covering herself with it.

Eddy was still staring at the place where the exposed nipple had been. ‘Out,’ he said. ‘Get out here.’

Billal stepped between them, his palms forming a wall in front of the gun barrel. ‘Careful with that, mate.’

Eddy panicked. ‘DONT TOUCH MY GUN! NOB’DY TOUCH MY GUN.’

‘OK, OK.’ Billal raised his hands high in surrender, ‘No worries, no bother.’

‘AND YOU,’ Eddy stepped aside to shout at the woman in the bed, ‘OU T HERE.’

‘Oh. But I’ve not to get up,’ she said, looking at the big man for backup. ‘I could haemorrhage.’

Eddy glanced at Pat, saw him stealing a lingering look at Aleesha’s hair, and screamed across the hall, ‘LIFT YOUR FUCKING GUN, PAT.’

Everyone in the hall realised his mistake before Eddy did. He should never have said Pat’s name. Billal look away, the daddy flinched and Aleesha snorted and suppressed a panicked laugh.

Eddy bit his lower lip and began to tremble with panic. It wasn’t going well. It wasn’t going well at all. Feeling himself without an ally in the hall, Eddy spun back to Billal. ‘FUCKER! YOU FUCKING FUCK! BOB! WHERE’S BOB?’

Billal raised his hands in surrender. ‘Mate, there’s no one called Bob here. There’s no one else in the house. We’ve got a wee baby here. Just go.’ He gestured to the front door. ‘You just go and we’ll say nothing, right? Just you go on out and there’ll be no problem, eh?’

‘Who’s shouting?’ A mother’s command. Everyone stiffened and turned to look at the back of the hall.

Sadiqa was wide as she was tall, which wasn’t very. She didn’t have her glasses on and so peered down at the two black shadows. ‘Omar? What are you boys doing?’

With the incongruous grace of a fat boxer, Eddy skipped down the hall, grabbed both her and the old man by the forearm, dragging them up to Billal’s side. He stood them in a line, pointing his gun at each in turn, shouting so loud his voice cracked. To Aamir, ‘WHO,’ to Sadiqa, ‘IS,’ to Billal, ‘BOB?’

Sadiqa was the only one who answered. ‘A gun…?’

Eddy’s attention was on her now and Aamir stepped forward to distract him. His hands were up, his eyes down, and he wobbled his head, obsequious as an old country boy. ‘Son, we’s all Indians here. There’s no Bobs here. No Bobs, wrong house.’

Sadiqa looked at the back of Aamir’s head and sucked her teeth disapprovingly.

But Aamir ignored her and continued to beg. ‘No Bobs, mate. Wrong. You go. No problem.’

The black velvet clock ticked loudly.

No one knew what to do. Except Aleesha. Addled with fear and the bold compliment of Pat’s gaze, she was sure that the whole thing would be OK, that coming in with a gun was somehow a benign misunderstanding. She wanted it to stop. Looking at the side of Pat’s head, she smiled and reached her left hand forward to the woollen rim, intending to whip the balaclava off with a cheerful ‘Ta-da’, put an end to the awkwardness.

Unexpected fingernails scratching the back of his neck shocked Pat into a spin.

He hadn’t meant to pull the trigger.

Omar and Mo jumped when they heard the muffled ‘whoomph’ coming from the house and saw the flash of white light in Billal and Aleesha’s bedroom window.

They turned to each other for confirmation of what they had seen, read the shock on one another’s faces and threw their car doors open in unison, dropping their cigarettes in the street, leaving the doors wide as they bolted over the pavement. One after the other they leapt over the low garden wall, scrambling around the corner to the front door. Omar kicked it open.