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Saucers was about to say. He didn’t want to hear it. He turned his back to her, putting his hands over his ears like a child. A few minutes later he felt her hand on his shoulder. He turned round to see Saucers offering him a warm smile.
    ‘I know it’s hard Johnny and the last thing I want to do is upset you. I just care, babe. Care and worry about you.’
    Johnny felt no malice towards Saucers. She was one of the few people who knew the story; he trusted her. He knew she’d keep her mouth shut.
    Johnny closed his eyes, hoping to snatch a bit of extra sleep. This idea was short-lived, however, when a minute later the door was flung open. The booming sound of his father’s jovial voice made Johnny’s head feel as though it was being stamped on.
    ‘Now this is a sorry fucking sight, son.’
    Frankie Taylor stood in the doorway with a wide grin on his handsome suntanned face. He was aware his black Savile Row suit was fitting a bit too snugly around the top of his legs for his liking; a consequence of too many paellas from his recent fortnight at his villa in Marbella.
    Pulling at his trousers slightly, hoping to get a bit more slack on the thighs, Frankie took in, as he always did, his son’s impressive bedroom. It really was everything Frankie would have wished for as a child – but his mother had been too piss poor to even afford three square meals a day for him, let alone a half-decent house, so it gave him a feeling of satisfaction and immense pride to be able to provide what he’d never had for Johnny.
    Most people he knew with sons had already kicked them out or they’d left home on their own accord by the time they reached the age of twenty-five. But with the sixty-inch inbuilt flat screen TV, the custom-built
Goldmund chrome music system, the games consoles and the tabletop football with the tasteful drinks bar underneath, he knew there was no reason for his son ever to move out. And Frankie Taylor liked it that way.
    It made him feel safe knowing his family were under his roof and as long as he felt safe, Frankie was happy. Family was everything to him. He hadn’t known his father and he had a sneaking suspicion his mother hadn’t either. He didn’t hold that against her. What he did hold against her was her pitiful existence, her acceptance of her surroundings, her inability to provide for her family, and her refusal of ever attempting to raise a smile, even on Christmas Day. These were the things which fuelled Frankie’s bitter resentment of his childhood. He could recall her words as if he was hearing them now. ‘What’s there to bleeding smile about, Frankie? The only time I’ll be smiling is when I’m dead and gone from this miserable earth.’
    Even though his mother had been the most miserable bleeder he’d ever known and he’d resented his upbringing, it hadn’t stopped him loving her. He’d loved her like no one else.
    As a child he’d always worried about her, running home from school instead of playing with his friends to make sure she was alright. When his mother had gone on a night out, he hadn’t been able to settle until she’d come home. Always staying up waiting for her, making sure she’d got in from wherever it was she’d been. If she hadn’t arrived home by eleven, Frankie had gone looking for her. Usually finding her skewed up to the eyeballs on penny lagers, with her knickers round her ankles from one nameless encounter or another.
    He was only twelve when the butcher at the end of their street had found his mother keeled over at the bus stop after her heart had had enough of beating. What initially struck Frankie wasn’t sorrow but shame at the fact she’d been clutching onto a bag of scrap end meat. They’d needed to break her fingers to remove it from her grip.
    When he’d seen her lying on the mortuary slab the first thing he’d looked for was a smile, but all he’d seen was the same tight, pursed expression she’d had when she’d been living and