Dougie ignored him. ‘That knife at my feet. Look. By the pedals. Throw it out the window. Throw it hard!’
‘Jesus, they’re right there. Right behind us. They’ll see us do it. Dougie, slow down!’
Things shot by.
It was busier here among the pubs than the closed shops of the city centre.
The Ghost stared out with mounting horror as they passed the giant Midland Bank, closed for the day. Men in flat caps, smoking. Women with freshly curled hair heading out of the bingo hall. Men playing dominoes in the glowing warmth of a pub. A fight brewing outside, the crowd now distracted by the speeding car and the police siren behind. Just an ordinary Saturday night in 1964.
The police car was inching closer.
They sped around the roundabout with a screech and a skid, the car leaning like a craned neck.
‘They’re going to be massive,’ Dougie said, his frenzied eyes on the road ahead. Wilbur wondered what the hell he was talking about. ‘Bigger than the Beatles. The crowd. It was amazing.’
This was Dougie. The creator of chaos who pretended things were normal, even as they had spiralled far beyond control.
‘You waved your knife at half the crowd … Jesus, Dougie. Who cares if the band we just saw are going to be big or not? Just stop the car. They won’t send you back down. You haven’t hurt anyone. Well, Tommy. But he won’t go to the law. Look … just pull over.’
‘Too late now. Listen, Wilbur – listen, lad. Here’s the plan. We keep going down here till we’re out of county. Soon as we’re in the Peak District there are no lights. No street lamps. No cars. Nowt. What we do … LISTEN TO ME … What we do is we drive off the road into the middle of nowhere. Just foot it over the moors as far as we can. No lights on the car. Then we make a fucking run for it. It will be pitch black … LISTEN … it’ll be dark and we can just stay out there, ditch the car, then circle back to town on foot …’
He was looking at Wilbur with wide, wide eyes as if this was a genius idea. Desperation made you cling to the worst idea if it was the only one.
‘Every second we stay in this car we are getting deeper into shit, Dougie—’
‘You’re leaving me in the lurch, lad.’
The Ghost tried to unpick what he had meant here – Oxford? Leaving him with their mother?
‘Slow the hell down.’
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘I’m thinking stop the fucking car.’
‘You think you’re above me.’
‘Dougie—’
‘Having a thick little thief as a brother.’
‘You’re not thick, Dougie, you just don’t try … Jesus. Slow down.’
‘But everything I know, Iknow.School of hard knocks. I was never a kid, Wilbo. Mam didn’t understand things. I saw it how it was … with her and Parkin.’
‘Mr Parkin?’
‘Aye. Making eyes at him.’
The Ghost remembered how he had taken these words and fully signed up to Dougie’s lifelong grudge against their old landlord.
‘Dougie …’
‘It’s all right for you. Ihaveto look after her.’
‘Oh, Dougie…’ The Ghost was realising what this was all about. Dougie felt abandoned. And by all of them. By their father for dying, by their mother for her retreating mind, and now by Wilbur himself.
Every mistake Dougie had made, right down to him wanting to fight the world, could be explained by having to take this on. Too much, too young. If you felt like everything was under threat, then everything was a fight. He wasn’tjealousof Wilbur. Not wholly, anyway. He just wanted to keep everyone together, because all he had known since their dad died was a sense of pulling apart.
