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top of my troubles with Bobby, Geordie Cartwright and the Drop like I needed a frontal lobotomy. But he’s my brother and he is, and always will be, a fucking hero. Nothing can change that.
    It had been a long night. I contemplated phoning Laura but to be honest, right then, I didn’t need the grief I’d get from her. She’d have fallen asleep in front of the television by now, blissfully unaware of the fact that her boyfriend was already a dead man walking.

FIVE
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    W hen he woke up in the morning, Danny wandered in and found me still lying on his couch and said, ‘eeh young’un,’ like it was all suddenly coming back to him, ‘I’m sorry. I was off me tits.’ Then he scratched his crotch, offered me a cup of tea, which I declined because he still hadn’t got any milk, or teabags for that matter, and then he thought for a while and said, ‘do you think I should send that lass some flowers? To say sorry like?’
    ‘No Danny,’ I told him firmly, ‘I don’t.’
    Laura went a bit nuts when I finally called her in the morning and I got a lengthy version of the time-honoured where-the-fuck-have–you-been speech that lasses have been delivering to their men folk since Moses first went out on the lash.
    I felt a bit bad, particularly after I’d called her a stupid bitch for forgetting to put my name on the booking. She had clearly not grasped the seriousness of the situation she’d put me in but then how could she?
    ‘Look I’m sorry, I am, but it got so late there didn’t seem any point in phoning or texting you. I’d have woken you up.’
    ‘Woken me up? Do you think I sleep when you’re not here? I was worried sick David.’
    I had to bite my tongue so as not to say ‘well, why the fuck didn’t you call me then?’, because I realised this would just escalate things. Laura was spoiling for a fight and it was a bit sad how we had got right back into our old, bickering habits again just 24 hours after such a wonderful holiday. It was, however, the least of my worries right now.
    ‘Look it’s complicated alright? It’s not as if I was out having a few drinks with the boys. I’ve got a problem.’
    ‘What kind of problem?’ this is the type of stupid question I wouldn’t have expected from Laura and I didn’t say anything, just exhaled wearily down the phone at her. ‘Alright, okay, I know you can’t tell me,’ she moaned.
    ‘You don’t want me to tell you, believe me. It’s not about shutting you out, not letting you in, not trusting you or any of that utter bollocks, it’s just that I cannot tell you.’
    ‘Okay, okay,’ she said making the two words sound like the absolute opposite of their meaning, ‘it’s fine,’ another lie. The word ‘fine’ never means fine to a woman. ‘I’ll see you back at the flat,’ and she hung up on me before I could say anything else.
    ‘Bitch,’ I hissed into the phone even though, or perhaps because, I knew she couldn’t hear me. Christ, where was the girl’s imagination? She knew the circles I moved in. The very fact that I even bothered to tell her there was a problem should have alerted those highly-educated brain cells of hers that I was in deep, deep shit. Women come home every night and go through their entire day, telling their men every trivial bloody problem they’ve encountered, so they can get some weird kind of catharsis from reliving the whole damned thing. Men aren’t like that. We like to switch off and forget our troubles, so me saying ‘Laura, I’ve got a problem’ is like watching a drowning man frantically waving with both hands. It’s a sign I thought she might have picked up on.
    I bought my bro a fry-up in a greasy spoon near the station. Then I gave him a few quid and left him to it, knowing he’d mooch round the pubs for a few hours and hoping he’d keep out of trouble. Then I phoned Sharp.
    He picked me up outside the Royal Station Hotel and I quickly climbed