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It was supposed to have been a one-off, but borrowing a car from the garage where Stephen worked had somehow become a bit of a regular occurrence. This was their fifth outing, and the plan was always the same. Stephen would collect a car, pick up the group of friends and from there they’d drive to the old airfield outside of town, taking it in turns to perform screeching doughnuts, and racing up and down the runway. Stephen would then return the car, clean it up if necessary, and leave it in the hope his boss would be none the wiser. He’d wanted to put a stop to it after the first time but somehow he hadn’t quite found the courage to say no. Not to Joe, anyway. Joe could be very persuasive. And besides, Stephen didn’t want to lose face. Or lose friends, for that matter, even if he knew deep down they were only spending time with him because of the cars.
‘Yeah, I’m coming.’ Stephen threw the end of his cigarette on the ground and climbed into the passenger side.
‘Strap in, lads, we’re going for a ride.’ Joe revved the engine. The car was a rather unimpressive family saloon but the thrill of it being stolen more than made up for that, as far as Joe was concerned.
Stephen looked across at Joe, wanting desperately to ask if he was sober enough to drive, but instead he clenched his fists and stared ahead. The windscreen was spotless – Stephen had cleaned it himself earlier that day – and as he remembered his boss thanking him for a good day’s work, a wave of nausea washed over him.
This really would be the last time, he told himself, as the boys headed out of town in the stolen car.
* * *
Denise Hirst stood in her kitchen, watching the kettle boil. The sound of it grew louder and louder, seemingly magnified by the silence blanketing the room. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was late, much later than usual. Normally Stephen would come through the door whilst she was still on the sofa, feet up, watching something pleasingly familiar and benign on the television.
She made herself a cup of tea, stirring it slowly, watching the surface of the liquid as she did so. Maybe one more text message wouldn’t hurt.
Sitting back down at the table underneath the window, she reached over to move the bottom corner of the curtain to see if there was any sign. But the street outside was quiet, not a soul to be seen. Picking up her phone, she squinted at the screen before typing out another short message. She put the phone back down, picked up her steaming cup and took another quick look outside.
Being the mother of a teenager was never going to be easy, but she’d assumed there would have been a point where he’d start to make slightly more sensible choices.
Her son was nearly nineteen and still living at home. It was just the two of them, and had been since Stephen’s father had left her just after Stephen’s second birthday. Not that that had ever worried Denise; in fact, had Stephen’s father stayed she was sure life would have been a whole lot more complicated.
They’d met when she was just eighteen and, within a year, she was pregnant. They’d talked about getting married – at least, he had – but the pregnancy had been something of a surprise to Denise and she just wasn’t ready to marry him. So they’d stayed together, getting themselves a small flat on one of the ‘better’ council estates, and for a while life had been good. When Denise gave birth to Stephen, she’d never been happier.
Then everything changed. Stephen’s father lost his job at the local engineering factory and, after months of fruitless job-hunting, turned back to old habits. He’d managed to hide his very toxic relationship with alcohol from her before they met, but now within a few months the bottle was the most important thing in his life, and with it came a vicious temper. Mercifully, days away from his wife and son became nights away too, until one day he just didn’t come home at all.
Denise had spent the first few years after he left hoping he might walk back through the door a changed man, but over time she and Stephen became an increasingly tight unit of two. Stephen had no memory of his father, or so Denise assumed, so she removed almost every trace of him from the flat. The only memento she allowed to stay was one photograph of the three of them together, taken by Denise’s mother years ago. The picture was one of pure happiness, Denise looking down adoringly at her beautiful baby boy, Stephen’s father smiling at her. She kept it in a drawer beside her bed, face down, every now and again permitting herself a moment to look at it and remember them as a family of three. But it was never long before the more familiar memories of hiding her bruises flooded her mind, along with a crushing sense of shame.
Instead, Denise had long ago decided it was safer to rewrite history, for Stephen’s sake. She’d told him his parents had decided to separate because they weren’t getting on and that his father had taken a job abroad. She lied about him sending money back each month for the two of them, not wanting Stephen to know that she worked twice as many jobs to make up for the shortfall.
When Stephen started school, his natural shyness held him back from making friends easily. He was always on his own; Denise didn’t remember him ever bringing a friend back after school. Desperately worried for her son, she moved him to another school in the hope that he might settle. But he didn’t and before long the bullying started. Stephen withdrew into himself more than ever before, and as much as Denise tried to gently persuade him to find hobbies or play football with the other local children, Stephen barely left his room.
Then, in his last year of secondary school, he met Joe, an older boy on the estate. Joe seemed to take Stephen under his wing and before long Stephen was out with his ‘friends’ almost every evening, but Denise feared they were up to no good. She knew she had to give Stephen some space, but every time she tried to talk to him about what he was doing, Stephen shut her out.
‘They’re my friends, Mum. You don’t know them! Why do you always think the worst of them?’ he’d shout.
‘Because I’m your mother and it’s my job to worry about you.’
‘Well, what else am I going to do, Mum? Sit here with you, watching mindless crap on the telly?’ The arguments invariably ended with Stephen leaving, slamming the door behind him, and taking Denise’s heart and happiness with him.
Getting a job at the local garage had been, she’d hoped, just the kind of change Stephen had needed. Determined not to have to go back to school, he got himself a position as an apprentice and, much to Denise’s relief, seemed to have found something he genuinely enjoyed. He worked hard, spending long hours at the garage and he clearly loved the company of those he worked with, talking about them occasionally with his mother when they ate together in the evenings. For a while, she felt that things were at last settling down to something nearer normal.
But then the trouble started again. Stephen heading out late at night, not getting back until the early hours, Denise lying in bed wide awake, or sitting by the window with a cup of tea, waiting for him to return. She asked him who he was with, what he was doing, but his responses were non-committal at best.
Denise rinsed her empty cup and put it upside down on the draining board. She pulled the cord around the middle of her dressing gown a little tighter and headed to her bed, leaving the hall light on behind her.
* * *
Joe hit the dashboard. ‘Drop us up here. You’re OK to take the car back, aren’t you, Stevie-boy?’ The two others laughed in the back.
Stephen was now driving; the roads were empty. ‘Yeah, no problem.’ Actually, he was relieved. The sooner they got out, the sooner he could get the car back. And this was, he told himself, absolutely the last time he was going to let this happen. If he was found out, he’d lose his job and he really didn’t want that.
He pulled over in a lay-by and they got out of the car, slamming the doors behind them. It was barely a mile back to the garage so Stephen turned down the music, tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and set off towards the industrial estate.
Just then, his phone vibrated in his pocket with a message. He reached for it, shifting in his seat. Pulling the phone out, he glanced at the screen. Three missed calls and a message from his mum. His stomach lurched. He felt guilty for causing her to worry but he felt angry, too: why did she treat him like a baby?
Stephen threw the phone onto the passenger seat, looking back up at the empty road ahead. One last quick blast before returning it the garage wouldn’t hurt, would it? And besides, this was the last time he was going to borrow a car so he might as well make the most of it. It wasn’t like he needed Joe any more. He’d made new friends at the garage and, unlike Joe, they didn’t expect him to steal cars for fun.
The light of the street lamps bathed the road ahead in a soft orange glow. He turned the music up again and put his foot down.
