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in before him, but he wasn’t home yet. We waited a bit, then ate our tea. We were still laughing and joking, thinking he’d snuck off for a pint, that he’d come home later on, a bit unsteady and slurring his words.
    We’d planned to sniff at him, through the beer fumes, for scent, or check his face for lipstick. We couldn’t wait for him to have a girlfriend, a daughter we’d never been able to have in them happy days—not for lack of trying, I can tell you. All his friends had girlfriends and he didn’t. He was a good-looking lad, and Colin said he must be a bit fussy. I’d nodded and wondered if he was shy, if I should sort out some introductions?
    But he didn’t come home. We sat up until midnight and he didn’t come. I turned out the light under the potato hash I’d saved for him and stomped upstairs in anger. Colin sat for a while longer then came up. Neither of us slept, waiting for the door to click open.
    Maybe he’d met a girl? He might have stayed at Phil’s or, God forbid, had an accident. I had him off his bike in a gutter on Coal Pit Lane, then in the infirmary. We couldn’t rest, and Colin got up at six and ran over to Phil’s.
    It turned out that Thomas had been there in the morning and left his bike. They’d planned to go to the pub later, after work, after tea, and he’d leave his bike until then. He’d taken his dinner with him. The Billy can of tea and the sandwiches.
    Phil had seen him off across Hyde Road, only half a mile from the joinery. But he never got there. My Thomas never arrived for work.
    Johnny Stokes, his boss, told the police later that he’d never missed a minute of work. In fact, he’d been early every day. He’d shown willing and was gifted. But he hadn’t turned up that day.
    He’d not turned up later on at Phil’s either. Phil told Colin that he thought he must have changed his mind and gone home. That he’d come and pick his bike up later or in the morning. I knew when I saw Colin pushing his bike over the cobbles that something was badly wrong. Colin’s face was grey and he looked very tired.
    ‘He’s not been at Phillip’s, Bess. He’s not been at work yesterday.’
    ‘What do you mean? Where the bloody hell is he then?’
    In contrast with Colin, who’d had more time to think about it, my cheeks flamed red and I felt a fire inside rise up to my mouth, where the words spat out as hot as flames. Colin went through the whole story again.
    ‘I’ll bloody kill him. He’ll be somewhere drunk. Too much like my bloody father. I’ll kill him when I get my hands on him.’
    Again, a careless turn of phrase that would haunt me afterward, somehow beckoning what happened closer.
    Colin set off for Stake’s Joinery to get the full story and I sat down in the kitchen and lit a cigarette. I smoked Park Drive, unfiltered. Everyone did. My teeth were yellowed through the heavy-duty drawing in and blowing out of the acrid smoke. I fumed through five cigarettes, one after another, watching as the ash floated through the air and fell to the floor.
    By the time Colin returned I was surrounded by a ring of grey fallout, my colourful dress hidden behind the smoke hanging in the air around me. I only remember because it was exactly the same as how I felt on the inside. Cloudy, slightly hazy. And partially hidden from view. I smiled weakly as Colin shook his head.
    ‘He’s not been to work yesterday.’
    I could see his eye on the clock, wondering about his own job. I sucked on another Park Drive and the thought that Colin had never really cared about Thomas, due to the fact that he missed the first two years of his life, that they never really gelled, flashed through my mind. He wanted to go to work when I was so worried about our son.
    ‘You go on, Col. I’ll go out and look for him. He might be back later. He might have got himself a girl.’
    I rose out of the grey haze and stepped out of the ash circle around me. The spell was broken and I pushed myself into