Thicker Than Water

‘After they knocked down—’

‘What are you here for, Fix?’ Mum asked, putting down her empty glass. ‘Really?’

‘You mean besides seeing you?’

‘That’s what I mean, yes.’

‘It’s about Matt,’ I said, bluntly. ‘You know who it is he’s meant to have attacked?’

‘Kenny Seddon.’

‘So I was thinking I’d shake the tree a bit. Talk to some people who might know more than I do about what Kenny was up to before—’

‘Before someone sliced him up like a bacon joint.’

‘Well, essentially. Yeah.’

Mum nodded, straight-faced. ‘Go on, then.

‘Anita and Richie Yeats,’ I said. ‘And Kenny’s brothers, Ronnie and Steve. Do you have any idea where they ended up?’

‘The Yeatses are over in Bootle now,’ Mum said, counting them off on her fingers. ‘That’s Eddie and Rita Yeats, I mean - Rita Brydon as was. I haven’t seen Anita in donkey’s years. Richie was living with them, or so Ernie Hampson said, but I heard they gave him down the banks and showed him the door.’

Her expression told me that something momentous was being left unsaid.

Mum pursed her lips. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you know. A grown man, and he’s never done a day’s bloody work in his life. He’s a waster, Fix, and there’s nothing down for him. Some people are never going to do any good for themselves if you give them a hundred years. And he’s - you know . . .’ Mum made the limp-wrist gesture.

‘He’s gay?’ I said blankly.

Mum pursed her lips and nodded.

‘You’re saying they kicked him out because he’s gay?’

Mum stood her ground.

‘Thanks for the tip, Mum,’ I said, cutting her off. And thinking of Juliet I added, ‘At least he didn’t go outside his own species.’

I think the homophobia must be a generational thing: it’s certainly not class or geography, because you can meet the same bullshit in Hampstead just as easily. I remembered now that Richie had made some non-standard life choices even as a kid - he was the only boy in my circle of acquaintances with a skipping rope - but I’d never read anything into that.

"‘Now Ronnie Seddon -’ another finger went down ‘- he was selling drugs at the Palm Tree, until he tried to sell them to a couple of plain-clothes coppers, so that was the end of him.