I lower the wheelbarrow of rubble to the ground, push up my hard hat and wipe the sweat from my brow. I take a look around. I don’t think I’ve spoken to a single person on site all day. They’re all at least half my age and they know about as much English as I know Romanian or Polish.
I can smell my own body odour through my T-shirt and it’s unpleasant. I’m sure when I was doing this kind of labouring on the Youth Training Scheme back in the 1980s I wouldn’t get as exhausted as I am now. I guess I feel old because I am old. This is a young man’s game. My lower back aches, the burning finger of arthritis jabs at my shoulder, and I can’t even self-medicate because I’m still out of pills. The foreman says lunch is at 1 p.m. today while we wait for the cement mixer to arrive, so that’s when I’ll drive into town and pick up a six-pack of beer and some Ibuprofen to keep in the cool box at the back of the van. My only saving grace is that the pain in my stomach has eased off since breakfast.
I should be grateful for any work I’m offered. It’s cash in hand and there isn’t much else coming my way. I’ve spent my working life providing for family and I’m too proud to sign on and claim benefits. So I have no choice but to suck it up and earn as much as I can before the cancer gets me. I’ve been slipping Finn cash here and there as he’s struggling to support the two households relying on him. I
still feel no guilt at throwing him under a bus driven by tabloid journalists. Of course I haven’t told Debbie what I did or about the £7,000 the reporter paid me for the tip-off. That’s rainy-day money, and something tells me it won’t be long before the heavens open upon us again soon.
I look up and, as if by thinking about my son, I’ve summoned him. Finn stands twenty feet away from me, beckoning me over. What’s he doing here? He can’t have good news. When I reach him, he updates me about the two bodies recently found in his garden.
‘Kenneth and Moira Kilgour,’ Finn says. ‘Did you know who they were going to be?’
‘I had an idea,’ I admit. ‘I came across their names in some old paperwork.’
‘Goodwin reckons they lived in the house until the mid- 1970s before they disappeared.’
‘Sounds about right. I don’t think they were the only ones to end up like that.’
Finn looks panicked. ‘In that house?’
‘No, elsewhere. Other houses around the country. It’s what they did.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. It was a long time ago.’
He rubs his face with his hands and paces in circles before returning to me. ‘And is any of this going to come back on us?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘But is it possible?’ ‘In theory, yes.’
‘When is this going to end, Dad?’ Finn doesn’t sound angry, just exhausted. I want to reach out and put my hand on his shoulder, but I hold back. That’s not what he and I do. Instead, I shrug.
I don’t tell him I have a plan and how, if pushed, it’s the only way I can see that will keep him and his mum safe. Because that’s all I’ve ever wanted. No matter what
happens to me, I must protect them from the aftermath of the inevitable explosion.
