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Not that he would have been any use anyway. Steve’s weak leg wet with piss and drink and his arm clamped round Danny’s shoulder. Only helped him out because he owed Steve from the last giro day, and when they got over the wall into the yard Steve sobered up enough to turn and hold him by the throat with his good hand and say You tell any bastard where I’m staying and I’ll murder you I’ll rip your bloody head right off. His voice quiet and slurred, his thumb pressing between the cords of Danny’s neck like a fishmonger finding his way to the bone. Which wasn’t what
     
    He shouts again, his fists clenched by his side and his whole body straining up towards the window. Steve! Are you there are you fucking there? He picks up a handful of stones and throws them at the window, and they go arcing through the empty window-frame before clattering into the room where Steve lies, laid out neatly on his bed, a ghost of a smile twisting across his face and his eyes closed and Ant laid out against the opposite wall, the pigeons on the roof leaping up at the sound and scattering westward across the alley and the canal and the reservoir, climbing higher over the wooded hillside of the park and the dual carriageway beyond, their underbellies catching the last faint light of the day as we peer from the darkened windows of the van to watch them passing overhead, as we look down at the zippered bulk of Robert’s body between us and we remember he remembers we we
     
    The ground a long way off and the branch in your hand a useless piece of dead wood and you’re falling through the
     
    His brother still owed him from when they were kids, and he knew it. Danny had always helped him out back then, when he could, when they’d still been placed together, when it had been just the two of them against everyone else. Sitting in their room at night, whatever room they happened to be in that night because it kept changing. Talking about ways to get out and ways to find their parents and ways to go and live on their own somewhere with no care workers telling them what they could and couldn’t do. And every now and then when things had been bad his brother saying What were they like can you remember can you tell me what they were like? Which he couldn’t but he’d make out like he could, he’d say They were tall and Dad had red hair and sometimes a beard but then he got it shaved and Mum was a bit fat and she was always baking cakes she used to let us help and they had loud voices they both did a lot of shouting. His brother didn’t know better. He’d only been a baby when they’d been removed. Might have been true he could hardly remember himself but so what. He could remember the house sometimes but so what. Thick brown curtains in the front room and he could only ever remember them being shut. But so what. Red rug on the floor where he used to play with these wooden bricks and they were the only toys he could remember being in the house. Ants on the kitchen floor. Everything quiet one day, no one around when normally there were crowds of people in and out the house stepping over and around him and shouting and laughing and saying Will you get that fucking kid to bed. Putting one brick on top of another until the whole pile falls over. Door bangs open and people everywhere. Shouting and crying and footsteps up and down the stairs and someone picking him up and she smelt different she didn’t smell right. His brother didn’t know about that, he’d never asked and he’d never been told. No one had ever asked. And if they had. If they’d asked him how it felt. He’d say It’s like when you’re climbing a tree and the branch breaks off. You’re still holding on to the branch but you’re falling through
     
       Why didn’t you contact the police immediately?
    Don’t know, I was just, I was in a state.
    Where did you go?
    I went everywhere, I was looking for someone.
    Where did you go?
    I went to the Abbey Day Centre, and