Free Winterton Blue by Trezza Azzopardi Page A

there.
    Errol, said Manny, clutching the seatbelt across his chest, Which one was he?
    When we first moved round yours. Errol came to look for us. You took us to the hospital, remember?
    Manny stared out of the passenger window, nodding his head.
    Gary wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, he said, turning to look at Lewis, He’s soft as butter, that one.
    Thought you didn’t know him, said Lewis, his words tight in his throat, Only, sounds to me like you two could be mates.
    I told you to leave it, said Manny, You won’t heed a warning, that’s your trouble. Always has been, always will be.
    I see, said Lewis, That’s my trouble. So, what would you warn me to do now?
    Go home. Forget it. Get on with your life. That’s my warning, chief. Do you hear me?
    Loud and clear,
chief,
said Lewis, pulling up in front of Manny’s house, I believe this is you.
    As Manny stepped out of the van, Lewis wrenched the plastic skeleton off the mirror.
    Give that to your mate when you see him, he shouted, throwing it at Manny’s back, Tell him that’s
my
warning!

EIGHT
    Get on with your life, Manny had said. But this is his life, sitting on a wall in Clapham high street and staring at the window of the Café Salsa; this is his elastic, inescapable joke of a life. The buses come and go, blocking his view, unblocking it, and the people get on and new queues form around him, and still he sits on the low wall, hugging his kitbag. He had left Cardiff in rage and panic: he wasn’t thinking straight. Lewis shuts his eyes, trying to block out the street noise all around him, trying to think in a direct white line. A metal grind of gears fills the air, a man’s sudden swearing, a long blast on a car horn. Unbidden, an image swims into Lewis’s head: of the night they went to recce the house. There were himself and Carl in the front of the van, Barrett poking his head between the seats, and Carl, reaching down into the footwell. Lewis had kept his eyes on the road, but now, as the blackness clears from his vision, he sees Carl again, surreptitious, examining something in his hand, and talking, all the time talking, driving Lewis insane with his talk.
    He didn’t see what it was. It happened so fast, a blur of trees lit up white in the headlights, a sudden, dense blackness, and, finally, the heart-shaped lake appeared before him, opening out in a spill of cold moonlight.
    Biting on his lip, Lewis reaches into the side-pocket of his kitbag, feels beneath the split bag of beans for the black feltpouch where he keeps Wayne’s bracelet. He knows, without removing it, knows by its weightlessness, that it’s empty.

    He couldn’t have known, the first time he saw the bracelet—the first time he had ever coveted anything his brother had—that he would eventually be its keeper.
    His mother was late home from work again. Lewis was preparing their tea in the kitchen while Wayne watched
Top of the Pops
in the next room, letting out exaggerated boos and whistles whenever a band was featured that he didn’t like. Lewis had peeled and chipped a stack of potatoes, and was washing up when he tuned in to the sound of voices. In the living-room, his mother was kneeling on the floor next to the couch, while Wayne sat, hugging his knees, at the far end. He looked upset, but Lewis couldn’t see why, at first, because there was his mother, looking worn and lovely, holding out a silver bracelet and saying, Just like the one Mr. T wears, love. Look, the links are dead thick, aren’t they?
    He wears
gold,
said Wayne, staring at the television, And he don’t have crap written on it.
    Seeing Lewis in the doorway, his mother got up off her knees and handed him the bracelet. Lewis felt how heavy it was, and how cold.
    Smart, he said, reading the inscription. On the front plate,
Wayne
had been inscribed in a swirling flourish.
    Yeah, said Wayne, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice, Until