Free Humber Boy B by Ruth Dugdall Page B

peaceful and calm, how can it be a crap-hole? I think he sees how upset I feel and then he says, more softly, “If you like fish it’s different. Me, the only fish I like come battered with chips.” Then he shrugs. “But it pays the bills, so I shouldn’t complain.”
    Not for me, though. This job is voluntary, to get work experience that Cate said is important for my CV. Leon seems to realise his gaff.
    “One thing, Ben. I know you’re here as part of your Community Service or whatever they call it now, so you’ve done something wrong. I just want to say this: your probation officer never told me what you done and I never asked. As far as I’m concerned, you’re here on work experience and as long as you keep making tea this good you and me will get on just dandy. Okay?”

17
    The Day Of
    The damned sun was still making its way into the room, even though Yvette had pegged the curtains together and piled two pillows over her head, which was throbbing like a swollen toe. She hadn’t even drunk that much, though the vodka bottle was empty. It was mostly Stuart, and spirits always made him angry. He shouldn’t have bought the bottle anyway, that money was meant to buy food. She had a splitting headache, but not ’cos of booze. It was stress, she probably had a brain tumour. Damn that man. Fuck him. Leaving again, just like he always did. Letting Adam down, pissing off just when she’d started to think that this time he’d stay for keeps.
    She hadn’t seen it coming. Stuart had talked about quitting the trawlers so he could be here more often. He was trying to get in at Smith and Nephew’s, knew a bloke who knew a bloke. But instead he was gone again, with his duffel bag and his all-weather kit. He couldn’t give up the sea, but he could give her up.
    It was over. So he said.
    He’d said it was her drinking, he said it was the way she couldn’t get her act together, then he’d said it was Ben. And that was the part that really stuck with her, the reason she thought most likely. He couldn’t live with ‘that kid’ and when she asked what he meant he’d said something about a ‘constant reminder’.
    Yvette occasionally looked into Ben’s face and remembered that time when Stuart had been gone too long and she was lonely, grateful for a little bit of kindness from a man who was indebted to her, but mostly she just saw Ben. Her kid, her son, no-one else’s. For ten years, Stuart had never let it go, not that it was the only time she’d had another man but here was the evidence, walking around their home. It was why Stuart hated Ben, not that the kid could help where he came from.
    A moment of defiance, maybe it was high time that Stuart pissed off. Good riddance! Why should Ben have to put up with a step-dad like that? They were better off on their own, the three of them . Then the anger was gone and she simply felt defeated.
    How would she cope without him? When he came home, there was brass and there was food.
    If only she could get some damned sleep, get rid of the headache, the world would feel a whole lot better when she woke, but Adam was in the bedroom next door, roaring about T-shirts and getting ready for a day-trip that wasn’t going to happen. He’d find out soon enough. She groaned and slid deeper under the covers, putting off the moment, but then the bedroom door was flung open and she knew the moment had found her anyway.
    Adam looked around the room.
    “Where’s me dad?”
    She could hear in his voice that it had taken just a second for him to know Stuart was gone again. Doing what he always did when the going got tough.
    “Gone. On the Icelandic boat.”
    Adam’s face was drained of colour, his lower lip trembled, and she knew as well as if she felt it herself that the disappointment was crushing. And she couldn’t find the words to comfort him, she couldn’t say anything, her son looked so broken hearted. Instead she just opened her arms, her fingers beckoning him, desperate to