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attention.
    James does it.
    Like a shot-putter, he hefts the half-full glass, drawing it back level with his shoulder, ramming it at Hackwill’s eyes. The sunburst of blood and beer and scream stills the whole pub.
    A circle clears around James and Hackwill.
    James kicks Hackwill in the ribs, over and over, grunting ‘Fucker’ with each connection. Bones break.
    You are on the sidelines, watching. Nobody tries to break up the fight. No, this isn’t a fight. This is a beating. A punishment beating, they call it in Northern Ireland.
    James picks up a stool: not a balsawood prop from a Western, but a solidly made survivor of rowdy nights in the Lime Kiln. The stool doesn’t break, but Hackwill does.
    Max is on the phone, talking urgently.
    James knows now he is on a deadline. The law will soon be here. He lifts the stool and looks around. His eyes, wild with cold fury, meet yours.
    For a moment, you think he’s going to batter you. You want to protect your head with your arms. He knows what you’re thinking and is disgusted with you. Ever since the copse, he’s been disgusted with you.
    ‘Keith, you’re as yellow as fucking school custard.’
    James sees the one he is looking for: Reg Jessup, trying to make his way to the door. Someone stands in front of him, barring his way.
    Everybody remembers their school bully. No one ever forgives.
    Jessup is bowled across the pub towards James, a batsman wielding the sturdy stool. Jessup is thwacked across the face, losing teeth, and knocked down. James kneels by him and darts rapid punches into his face, opening old scabs on his knuckles.
    The police arrive. Two constables. A bloke younger than James, and Mary Yatman. You knew she’d gone into the police, but have never seen her in uniform.
    She hauls James upright. His rage vanished, he allows her to manhandle him. Limp, he gives no resistance as he is hustled out of the door.
    * * *
    Mary frees James into your care without charging him. You have explained – lied – that he has been upset since Dad’s death. You claim he’s under strain. The real reason Mary lets James off is that she hasn’t changed since school. She remembers Robert Hackwill. She was there that day, running away like you. And she admires James, understands in a way you don’t what he’s just done. As she sees the Marion brothers out of the police station at dawn, she smiles quietly. You remember the Scary Mary smile from Ash Grove; it’s all the more chilling for being on the face of a grown woman in uniform.
    James is quietly satisfied at a job well done. There’s an unbridgeable gulf between you. It’s been there ever since the copse. It’s too late to do anything about it. Your brother has grown into an unknowable alien, a force of inexplicable, vindictive nature. When you get home, he goes straight to his old room – with soldiers and tanks wallpaper and a life-size commando poster – and sleeps away the day, undisturbed. You can’t stop shaking and wish you could still have a crying fit. As ever, you can’t tell Mum what has happened.
    * * *
    In the Falklands, James is killed. You aren’t told the details, though the family are sent non-committal commendations and a medal. Reading between the lines, it seems James was off on his own somewhere, away from his unit, and picked a fight he couldn’t win. The letter his sergeant sends you refers to him as ‘a lone wolf’, which gives you a stab of guilt. You wonder if you taught him (by example) not to rely on anyone else; if it hadn’t been for that, he might not have always chosen to go off by himself, set his own goals, and try to get by without other people.
    * * *
    Two family funerals in six months. At a time when you thought you’d struck out on your own, working in London as a journalist on a magazine called
The Scam
, you are pulled back home. You spend most weekends in Sedgwater, with Mum. It is worst for her, you think. Dad died unexpectedly young, leaving her a fifty-year-old