Free Runaway by Peter May Page A

– for many of the things he had done, but most of all for those he had not.
    His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Ricky’s Micra in the car park below. The boy swung it through a three-point turn, then glanced up towards Jack’s window as he sat idling on the tarmac. Jack gave him a small wave and wondered what on earth he was leading his grandson into. But as he took his walking stick from the stand in the hall and lifted his holdall, he thought that anything would be better for him than sitting in a darkened room playing computer games.
    And as for himself? What the hell? After sixty-seven years it was time to start living.
    He hurried down the stairs and out into the car park. Ricky looked pale and nervous behind the window of the driver’s door. Jack glanced back towards the top floor of the flats, and saw Fiona watching him from her window.
    But by the time he had thrown his bag into the boot and turned to wave, she was gone. And the empty space she’d left behind her seemed big enough to swallow him.
     
    Just as fifty years before, they sat outside Dave’s house with the engine running, Ricky drumming his fingers nervously on the wheel, exactly as Jeff had done. But five minutes after the appointed time, there was still no sign of Dave.
    Finally Jack said, ‘Turn her off, son. I think we’d better go in and look for him.’
    The house had undergone several facelifts in the half-century that had passed. The front garden wasn’t much, but the grass was neatly cut, and there were rose bushes in the flower beds. Gone was the rotten old boat on the drive, to be replaced by a Vauxhall Corsa. A new garage built on to the side of the house had a bedroom extension above it.
    As they approached the front door, they heard voices raised in anger coming from inside. The door itself was an elaborate construction of wrought iron and glass, a pretentious adornment to the mean little semi that it opened into.
    ‘Maybe we’d be better waiting in the car,’ Ricky whispered nervously.
    Jack cast him a look. ‘Not so brave without a semi-automatic in your hands, eh?’
    He knocked on the door, but the sound of his knuckles on the glass was overwhelmed by the shouting on the other side of it. He tried the handle and pushed the door open. As it swung into the hall it interrupted the squalid scene of domestic disharmony that was unravelling there.
    Dave’s daughter-in-law stood at the foot of the stairs, shouting at the two men in her life to ‘ Stop! ’
    Dave had been a big man in his day, but Donnie was bigger. He had the lapels of his father’s coat grasped in huge fists. Dave was almost lifted off his feet and banged up against the wall. Donnie’s face was inches from his father’s as he shouted at him, spittle gathering on wet lips. Jack could see a large bruise on Dave’s cheekbone, below the eye. A small canvas rucksack leaned against the wall by the front door.
    It was as if someone had pressed a pause button and frozen the action, and then all heads turned towards the door. The silence that accompanied the moment seemed endless.
    Until broken by Donnie. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
    Jack’s voice sounded oddly calm and, as a result, carried a strangely threatening note. ‘I want you to let your father go, and treat him with a little respect.’
    Almost in spite of himself, Donnie released his father’s lapels and turned his anger on Jack. ‘Respect? He’s a drunk and a thief, and gets all the respect he deserves. And anyway, it’s none of your fucking business.’
    ‘Yes, it is.’
    Steel in Jack’s voice now as Ricky moved almost imperceptibly to put his grandfather between Donnie and himself and watch the unfolding scene from over his shoulder.
    ‘What is it with you people? I stood in this very house more than fifty years ago and watched your grandfather punch and kick his own son. And I stood by and did nothing about it, because I was too young and too scared. All these years on, and