Martina Cole: Close

That bastard Lance was dead but would never be forgotten by any of them, no matter how hard they tried to push him from their thoughts.

His death had been the finish of their mother, even though Eileen knew she had hung on until she knew he was finally gone.

He was to be buried in a pauper's grave, no service arranged, no nothing, and she knew that everyone in their world would wonder why. They would be expecting pomp and circumstance, assuming he would be laid to rest like all the others. They would expect a big do, even though he had died, allegedly, at the hands of his older brother. Nothing had been proved yet, and she hoped that nothing ever was.

Lance had crossed the line, and the heinous nature of his offence had sent shock waves through the whole family. She also knew that the reason he had died would never be forthcoming from any of them. It was another secret, and they were used to secrets, being secretive was second nature to the Brodies.

Let people guess, let them wonder, she didn't care any more.

It was over, it had happened, and it had been dealt with.

Christy, unlike his brother, Pat, was in a squad car being driven into London. He had been questioned about Lance's death as had the rest of his brothers and sisters. Too much had been swept under the carpet with his family, and even though he knew his mother thought it was all for the best, he also knew without a shadow of a doubt that old scores would soon need to be settled. Whatever she thought, and no matter how much she had begged them all not to react to circumstances and events. Once she was gone, it would be open season and they all knew that.

He expected the rows to start, though Patrick would probably put a block on them.

Shawn sipped at his tea and watched as his sister Kathleen made sandwiches with a speed that denoted years of practice. She had lived with their granny and Lance, and been used as a gofer for most of that time. Women were strange in that way, loyal but strange.

He smiled at her sadly and she stopped what she was doing to grab his hand and smile down at him. These two were close, even in a family as close as they all were.

His skin was so dark against hers, yet she never saw that, none of them did. He was the baby and they all doted on him. Most of them anyway.

His father had wandered into their lives and then wandered back out again, turning up periodically, not really a part of the family, but accepted all the same.

His earliest memory was of his mother's smiling face, and his brother Patrick taking him from her arms as she got herself ready for work. He had been about three years old, and he could still smell her particular smell. Cigarettes and Estée Lauder, he had never been able to forget the aroma of safety that smell had always engendered in him.

He wasn't silly, he knew it had been hard for her when she had produced him, but he also knew that she had never cared what anyone thought. His brothers and sisters had loved him more if anything, yet he had been conscious of his colour from an early age, though mostly only when he left the comfort of his home. Now though, it didn't matter, times had changed, and things were different. And he was dreading the death of the woman he loved like he loved no other.

Lance was the only one in the family he had never cared for. He had been a bully and a vicious bully at that, but Shawn knew that his silence had been right and when it had finally come to a head, he was glad that he had not been the one to cause it.

Like his sister, he had suffered at his hands on more than one occasion.

He had seen him in the mortuary, identified the battered body that had not suffered enough, the sneaky bastard lying in peace, and he had finally relaxed knowing that his tormentor was gone for ever.

He smiled as he remembered the scandalised expression on the faces around him as he had hawked in his throat and spat on the corpse of his older brother. 'That's him, the ponce.'

He had said it with as much hatred as he could muster, and he had enjoyed the shock-horror it had caused. They were such a close family, put on such a united front, no one would have believed the undercurrents and the feuds their closeness covered up. Now though, all his thoughts were with the woman upstairs in her bed, and he felt the wetness of his tears as they slid down his face and was amazed to realise he had been crying all along.

Kathleen held on to the hand that had steadied her as a child, that had washed her, brushed her hair and hugged her and the feel of its trembling and the warmth of the papery skin, were almost too much to bear.

This woman had given them life, had taken care of them all, visited the boys in every prison in the country come rain or shine, advised her daughters on every aspect of their lives and even when times were so hard there was hardly a bite to eat in the house, had provided them with a meal through the sale of the only asset she possessed. Her strength had communicated itself to them all at some time or another, she had solved her children's problems with a quiet dignity, or screaming anger, depending on the circumstances and her mood. She had stopped war from erupting, and welcomed back black sheep over and over again. She had held them together with the sheer force of her will and her overpowering love. What would happen to them all now? Who would keep them all together, make sure they didn't fall apart, didn't rake up the past and cause murders?

She had always been the voice of reason, had been the one who smoothed over quarrels and made sure that they remembered they were family. Stopped the fights before they began and reminded them that, at the end of the day, each other was all that any of them really had. As close as they were, they had all fallen out big time over the years.

She had been the voice of reason. She had stopped Patrick from murdering on more than one occasion. She had glossed over trouble with a smile, and she had forced them all to lie, if necessary, for the greater good of the family.

Now though she was dying, and none of them was going to find it easy to live without her.

'He's a spiv, like his old man, but what can you do?' Barry Caldwell held out his arms in supplication and the men in the public house smiled with him. They were strained smiles though, and Barry observed that much and learned a valuable lesson. He had fucked with the wrong person.

Patrick Brodie, however, laughed heartily at the man's words.

It had been said about him in jest many times but he knew it was the truth. Barry had been well and truly had over and, like many a man before him, he was finding out that Patrick Brodie was not a man to cross.

Pat knew, better than any of them, what he was. But unlike the men around him, he knew exactly how far he was prepared to go to get what he wanted. All his life he had been looked down on, abused and treated like shit. This was in part because his father was a big, drunken Irishman with a mouth that ran away with him, and a gambling habit that he had never been able to afford. Consequently, his son, Pat Junior, was close-mouthed, hardly drank, and made his living from the bets amongst other things.

But it was also because he had been abandoned by his mother, had had no formal schooling, dodged the draft with a cheery smile and his natural ambivalence, that made him a law unto himself very early on in life.

He had no intention of fighting for a country that he saw as holding men down and offering them nothing except back-breaking work. He had said as much to his commanding officer. He had also robbed the army stores blind; the black market was still thriving at the time, and he had used that for his own ends.