Julie Shaw - Blood Ties - Family is not always a place of safety

Most of all, though, Kathleen was sick of the family she’d inherited when her father, having taken over as landlord at the Dog and Duck had attracted – and married – this cow of a woman. That had been a day to remember – the day she’d always remember, as being the one where her old life had come to an end. The day she’d been gifted not just a wicked stepmother worthy of any gruesome fairy tale, but an ugly stepsister (ugly on the inside even if she wasn’t on the outside) and a stepbrother who, though he could occasionally be kind to her, was – as was so often the way with Darren lately – the root cause of her current misery.

Irene was an idiot. A stupid woman who couldn’t see past her own nose. Not when it came to her precious son. And since Darren himself was the one who understood that the best, he never wasted an opportunity to exploit it. He didn’t pull any punches about it, either. So much so that all the regulars in the Dog and Duck knew the truth of what was happening, and how Darren was taking the piss out of Irene. But, oh, how she wished her dad hadn’t just said what he’d said. Not just because it set Irene off on one of her rages but because everyone downstairs in the pub would be able to hear it – and knowing Mary, the other barmaid, they’d be able to hear it all too well, because she’d probably turn the music down so that everybody could have a laugh.

Worse still, though, was that this could go on for hours yet. Once Irene was off on one, she didn’t have an off button. Kathleen glanced at her watch. She really needed to leave them to it. She was due on the bar again in an hour and she’d yet to even have her bath. She shifted her legs a little, which had stuck to the stupid plastic cover Irene insisted on keeping on her stupid settee. Why the fuck she insists on covering this piece of shit up, I’ll never know , she thought as she painfully extracted the back of her thighs from it. Happily, Irene was too busy shouting at her dad and punching him in the chest to notice, so she was able to stand up and slip past the pair of them to the door.

Well almost. She’d not quite reached it when she felt a sharp tug on her pullover. ‘Go on, you ugly little bastard,’ Irene spat. ‘This is all your fucking fault!’

How the fuck is any of this my fault? Kathleen thought. She remained silent, though, knowing better than to voice something so inflammatory. Instead, she found herself cringing slightly, as she so often did, in anticipation of the usual crack around the head. But it seemed Irene hadn’t finished ranting yet.

‘If he didn’t have you to support,’ she railed, almost as if she’d known what Kathleen was thinking, ‘we wouldn’t be in this sorry position in the first place! Fucking leeching off us all the time, never out of our frigging sight, then maybe your father wouldn’t begrudge my frigging kids a bit of something when they need it!’

‘Irene!’ John shouted finally. ‘For God’s sake, let the girl go. She’s got to get ready for work, hasn’t she? And there’s no point giving her a bollocking, is there?’

With Irene letting go of her, so she could return to the assault on her husband, Kathleen took the opportunity to slip out of the door. And she would have legged it, had she not almost fallen arse over tit over Darren himself, who’d clearly been squatting down, earwigging at the keyhole. He was twenty. A grown man. But he looked like a ten-year-old, sneaking around, looking like the shifty sod that he was.

He stood up. And then he grinned at her. ‘Steady on, kidda,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury.’ He gave Kathleen a friendly slap on the back. ‘Everything alright in there?’

Kathleen didn’t even reward him with a dirty look. ‘You know damn well it isn’t, Darren,’ she hissed. ‘Have you gambled all your wages away again?’

‘Tut, tut, tut, our young ’un,’ Darren said, managing to mock her even as he’d caused so much shit. ‘I was robbed on me way home again. Two black ’uns it was. Big as houses and bold as brass, the pair of them. It’s called “demanding with menaces”, it is. Should be a law against it, shouldn’t there?’

‘And I suppose she’s subbing you all week again to make up for it, is she?’ Kathleen demanded, shaking her head. She stabbed a finger towards the living-room door. ‘You cause all this shit, Darren. You. So how is it fair that it’s me that’s on the end of it all the time? I’m the one who has to work here, remember? You’re off doing your job, and Monica’s off doing hers. And I’m the one who has to deal with all the shit you create!’

She could feel tears – angry, frustrated tears – threatening to spill over her cheeks. She sniffed hard to stop it happening. God, how sick she was of it.

‘Hey, them’s the breaks, our kid,’ Darren said before walking off, whistling, leaving Kathleen open-mouthed in his wake.

An hour later, in the bar, Kathleen kept her ‘trap shut’, as always. That she must keep her trap shut was one of Irene’s most frequent orders, and, having no wish to heap even more attention on her excuse for a family, she was only ever happy to oblige.

Not that she cared that Mary, their regular barmaid, would have already filled all the regulars in on what had gone off. Once perhaps, but she was way past that now. In fact, lately, she realised, she’d even stopped being embarrassed when the locals took the piss over their pints. It was as if they’d even developed a kind of camaraderie with her, complicit in their amusement that Irene could be so thick as to keep falling for all the lines Darren spun her.

‘I wish I had a mother like yours, Kathy,’ one of the estate lads was saying. ‘I’d get fucking robbed every week an’ all.’

His mate burst out laughing, and handed an empty pint glass across for Kathleen to fill. ‘Nah, come on, Gez,’ he ribbed his mate. ‘Shame on you. You’re making out like Darren’s lying! Like he’s not in the bookies every single bleeding day backing anything that moves. Give the poor lad a chance. He’s been robbed blind. Again .’ He winked at Kathleen. ‘Any one of us could be as unlucky as he is.’

Kathleen felt a smile twitch her lips, if only a small one. And for all their ribbing, they were just speaking the truth. She knew it, her dad knew it, Monica probably knew it too – well, if she could find the energy to think about anything other than herself for two minutes at a stretch. No, the fact was that Darren’s problems with gambling were common knowledge, and no one could believe that Irene didn’t know it.

Kathleen pulled a nice top on the beer for him. ‘You’re right,’ she said mildly, glancing from one to the other. ‘My brother is the unluckiest lad in the world, he is. Take no notice of all the gossip. He hasn’t got the gambling fever at all. He’s just got big bloody holes in his pockets.’ She allowed her smile to widen. ‘That and a face that thieves like to punch …’

The two lads roared with laughter and Kathleen laughed with them. This shift – the seven-till-nine one – was the one bright time in her day. With her dad and Irene upstairs having their tea (or tonight, perhaps, throwing it at each other) it was a port in the storm before her dad came down and joined her and Irene did likewise – though her version of work was slightly different; more waltzing around the tap room playing the big ‘I am’.

But for these two hours, she felt free. She felt able to be herself. And it occurred to her that, actually, it was more than just that. For those two hours every day, people actually wanted to talk to her.

For two hours a day she wasn’t invisible.