Читать книгу It’s About Love - Steven Camden, Steven Camden - Страница 14

“She is so fit!”

Tommy’s voice is almost angry as he speaks, the smoke flowing out of his mouth like exhaust fumes. We’re standing outside the pub. He shakes his head. “I swear down, your brother, man. Lucky bastard.”

I cut him a look.

“What? I’m just saying, prison or no prison, Donna’s amazing. I’d … man, I don’t even know what I’d do.”

“Shut up, Tom.”

He’s right though. Donna would look sexy dressed as a chicken, and Marc was lucky to be with her. I rub my arms and feel my biceps tighten. Tommy takes another drag of his cigarette and the pair of us watch a wide smoke ring float up in front of us.

“Will you have a party? I mean, when he comes out?” he says, and I see a shot of me, wearing a shiny party hat, limp party blower hanging from my mouth, staring out.

“He’ll probably be even more hench, eh?” says Tommy, holding his thin arms in front of himself like a gorilla. I shrug. “No idea.”

“Course he will.” Tommy grabs my shoulders. “He’ll get a shock when he sees you though, eh? People’s champion.” He shakes me back and forth, like I just won a title fight. I shrug him off and then a car moves past and I recognise the driver.

“Noah?”

I watch the car drive past the chippy and turn up Barns Road.

“Who’s Noah?” Tommy’s squinting at me, and I’m not sure if it really was him, or if I just thought it was.

“Who’s Noah, Luke?”

“In the car. I thought I saw someone, from college.”

“Round here?”

“I dunno, probably wasn’t him. He’s a teacher.” I feel myself shiver from the cold as I try to picture Noah standing at the front of the class, but all I see is Leia, pointing her gun fingers.

Tommy snorts and spits a greeny. “No teachers round here, Lukey.”

I stare along the empty road and try to imagine where Leia is right now, what she’s doing.

“What’s your favourite film, Tom?” I turn to him. His shoulders are up by his ears, trying to hide from the cold.

“Dunno,” he says. “Don’t really have a favourite.”

“I know it depends on the mood and that, but if you had to say one, like now, what would you pick?”

And I watch him think, picturing shelves of DVDs stretching out either side of him, like Neo choosing weapons in The Matrix.

“Die Hard II.”

“What?”

“Die Hard II. Die Harder.” He’s smiling proudly.

I frown. “Die Hard II? That’s your favourite film?”

Tommy nods. “Right now, yeah.”

“What about the first one?”

Tommy lifts his hand like he was expecting me to ask.

“Number two is the same but with aeroplanes, so it’s better. The bit when he lights up the runway with the petrol from the plane and it blows up … that is so sick!”

I picture the scene, Bruce Willis lying bloodied on the snowy runway, throwing his lighter and watching the trail of flames jump up into the air, making the plane full of bad guys explode.

So many of our favourite things are passed down. It’s the younger brother template. The first Die Hard films were made years before we were even born, but through older brothers and our dads, we’ve taken them on as our own. We have that in common.

Tommy mimes flicking a cigarette – “Yippee Kayaaaay!” – then pulls open the door. Noise from inside spills out over us and, just for a second, I get the feeling we’re being watched.

Dad was actually on TV.

He never went to drama school or anything. He was in town with Uncle Chris and some agent spotted him. He was training to be a mechanic.

I know the story well.

Straight away, the agent got him a walk-on part in a science fiction series called Babylon 5. He told Dad it would be his big break. They flew him to California to film it and everything.

‘Big Alien Pilot’ was his character. His scene happened in the space station bar. He starts a fight with one of the main characters and gets beaten up, even though he’s twice the size of the other guy. We used to sit around as a family and watch it on video, Dad doing live commentary from the sofa. I reckon I’ve seen it a hundred times.

When you’re seven and you watch your dad on TV in blue skin make-up, a pair of prosthetic horns and a leather waistcoat, looking bigger than everyone else, it’s pretty cool. That’s my dad! type thing.

Then, as you get older and you start paying more attention to the ‘what if’ expression on your dad’s face as he watches, and you can feel your big brother and your mum doing the same, the magic kind of wears off.

Dad said they wanted him to come back as a different alien and get beaten up again and it turned out that would be all he’d ever get to do. The agent told him he could make a good living playing ‘the heavy’, but that nobody wrote decent parts for big men. Dad said he didn’t want to spend his life pretending to be monsters and bodyguards, so he came back, and finished training as a mechanic.

A year later, a nineteen-year-old student nurse having trouble with her first car came into the garage where Dad worked. Dad started checking it over and noticed that the girl wouldn’t stop staring at him. He tried to ignore it and went under the car. As he lay on his back, he realised that the girl was lying down on the floor next to the back wheel, just so she could see him.

Turned out she was a huge Babylon 5 fan and knew every scene from every episode. She also had a thing for big men.

Less than a year later, a giant and a pregnant nurse were married, and a month after that, Marc was born.

By the time I arrived Marc was nearly four. Four years of being the only child and then a baby shows up, crying and needing help with everything.

Mum always used to tell people that Marc’s first word was ‘ball’ and that mine was ‘Dad’. Kinda messed up that there are moments that end up defining your character before you even have a choice.

Marc’s face.

Blank expression, but he’s blinking. His hair’s shaved. Mouth closed. Thick neck. Strong jaw. His Adam’s apple moves as he swallows. Skin is perfectly smooth.

Then there’s something on his left cheek, a dot underneath his left eye. It’s red. And it’s turning into a line.

Like someone is drawing it. Like he’s being cut with an invisible scalpel.

The cut grows, curving up towards his eye, splitting skin. But there’s no blood. Just a clean red line. His expression shows no sign of pain.

His left eye closes as the cut crosses over it on to his forehead. It reaches half way up and then stops.

His fingertips dig under the skin at the bottom of the line and he pulls.

The skin comes away from his face, like wrapping paper, but there’s no blood, just more skin underneath that’s a shade lighter and it’s someone else’s eyes. It’s a younger face. Skin perfectly smooth.

It’s my face.

It’s me.