Wreckage Read Online Free PDF Page A

prozzies, fuck no. Thank Christ I can still get the women.
    Ah yeh, I’ve got undreds of fuckin nippers, me. Thousands of em round ere, in this area, like. So many that I can’t remember em, not even one. None of the little fuckers, ah no.
    DARREN’S VICTIMS: NUMBER 17
    They did a wonderful job, those surgeons.
Wonderful
job. It took a while, a lot of time in theatre, but they really sorted it out; just a bit of scarring around the left eye, and a small curl to my top lip which Claire says sometimes makes me look like a young Elvis. She’s been brilliant, Claire has, never once flagged in her support in the three years since it happened. And the counsellors, too, especially that Dr Brierly; she’s been superb. Absolutely superb. If it wasn’t for her then I don’t think I’d be able to look in the mirror, still, even with this amazing work the surgeons have done. Honestly, she’s been an angel; so understanding, so supportive. All of them, Claire and Dr Brierly and the surgeons, they don’t realise what they’ve done for me, how they’ve stopped me being so afraid. Restored my faith in humanity, they have. Helped me to understand that there’s
not
danger everywhere. That not everybody wishes to cause me pain.
    But it’s the boy, tho. Steven. My son. I fear that it’ll never be the same between me and him again. I know he finds it difficult now to look at my face for any length of time, I mean sometimes when we’re sharing a joke or something he’ll suddenly stop laughing and look away and fall silent and I know he’s remembering, he’s reliving that night and that thug and that glass . And it pains me, I mean it genuinely causes a pain in my heart because I can imagine what Steven is remembering at those times, it’s as if I can see it again through his eyes, I can see myself, my own face so terribly, traumatically wounded and the blood and that psychopath over me … Did I beg? I don’t recall. Oh God, I hope I didn’t beg. Maybe one day I’ll be able to ask Steven about it but when that day will come God only knows. He’s also had counselling, Steven has, and on the surface he seems to have adjusted well but it’s the little things, the small ways in which he’s changed his life; I mean he used to
love
football, he was Blackburn Rovers mad, but then he found out that Graeme Souness used to be connected to Liverpool and then he took all his posters down, stopped wearing his strip, his Sega World Cup Football game went in the bin … everything. He wouldn’t support England in the World Cup because of the Liverpool players so he switched to the Republic of Ireland, because of Damien Duff, but then he asked me why there were so many Liverpool flags among the crowd and I told him of the big Irish Catholic population in that city and so then he switched to Brazil. Must be so confusing for the poor little tyke. Neither of us watched the final, nor even the Brazil–England game, and Dr Brierly said that I shouldn’t push football completely out of my life, I shouldn’t let the attack change my life in such fundamental ways, but football, especially Rovers and Liverpool, obviously sets off the unpleasant memories, the horrors … Steven, tho, he can’t even watch
Brookside
any more. He used to love it, it used to make him laugh, he used to do mock-Scouse accents and find it funny. But not any more. I’m the same; that accent. It makes my palms sweat, now, whenever I hear it. It makes my heart thud. Once it made me hyperventilate and Claire had to call an ambulance, she thought I was having a heart attack. And all because a
Red Dwarf
rerun came on the telly.
    And yes, I know it’s stupid, I know this reaction is ridiculous and irrational. It was just that one man, that one psychopath … just my bad luck that I happened to bump into that unhinged and unhappy individual that night. And, God knows, there are people like him in every town and city across Britain, even down the road in Blackburn, drinking