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dire; that much she knew. There was no way they would be able to raise that kind of cash. If they had been able to get their hands on six hundred pounds they would have been living the life of Riley and eating like a gladiator on his day off. Her husband had pulled some stunts over the years, but this was a blinder - even by his standards.
    Danny watched his mother as she digested the information, and he knew that she had not even noticed the two pound notes he had placed on the table. His father’s debt had made his contribution to the household look paltry by comparison. He was working when he should be in school, he was dressed like a tramp when how he looked was all important to him, he had few friends because he couldn’t afford to take part in any of their teenage high jinks; even the Saturday morning pictures was out of his league. He was an outcast among people who were classed as the poorest of the poor. He was trying to make a difference for his brother and sister, ease his mother’s burden, the same mother he knew, who was not even aware of the sacrifices he made to try and lighten her load. Turning from her he went into the bedroom he shared with his younger siblings and, lying on the bed he shared with Jonjo, he forced back the tears, because he knew they were a luxury he couldn’t afford.

Chapter Two
    Danny was quieter than usual, but no one noticed. He was living on his nerves, waiting for his father to come home and, at the same time, hoping that he didn’t turn up. His younger brother and sister were both feeling the tension in the household and he was past putting their minds at rest. His mother, however, gravitated from cursing her husband over hill and dale, to crying because she was convinced he was dead somewhere. Stabbed or beaten to death over six hundred quid. Then the reminder of the amount he had foolishly gambled away would set her off on a tirade of cursing once more.
    Everyone knew about it now, so, on top of everything else, they were a talking point for the whole estate. Something his mother, always a proud woman, found very difficult to cope with. It was as if their whole life was now under scrutiny, and they didn’t know how to react to it. His father was becoming smaller and smaller in his mind, his absence making Danny resent him, even though he knew that, until his father could pay his debt off, it would be madness to come anywhere near this estate, let alone his family.
    As Danny made a pot of tea, he heard a hammering on the front door and, turning down the gas underneath the boiling kettle, he walked out into the small hallway. Pushing his mother into the bedroom with his younger siblings he shut the door firmly on them all. The terror was already enveloping him, this was the knock he had been waiting for and, now that it had finally arrived, he knew his courage was deserting him.
    ‘Open the fucking door, we know you’re in there.’ The voice was full of hate and the knowledge that whoever was listening to it was already frightened. It was a debt collector’s voice, the voice of someone who had said those same words over and over again, and yet meant them more each time.
    Danny stood in the small hallway gritting his teeth as he willed the shaking that had suddenly attacked his body like an ague to stop. Then, swallowing down his fear, he opened the front door, just as the hammering started up once again. ‘Relax, what do you want?’ His deep voice and irritated demeanour was not lost on the visitors.
    Danny was looking at two men; one tall and thin, the other short and fat. He saw a facial similarity and assumed, rightly, that these were the Murray brothers of local legend. They were both blond, with thin straggly hair and small brown eyes. They had the same flat bone structure and rounded, Slavic-looking features that they had inherited from their mother. They looked like a pair of simpletons, an act they had perfected over the years to make people think they were