did not end happily. I was what’s known as a “feisty child”. In the end the state agreed I was best off with the Jesuit Brothers.’
‘Who’re they?’
‘The Jesuits? A venerable religious order. Monks.’
‘Monks?’
‘Real live monks. They ran the orphanage. Oh, you had your usual quota of humourless bigots, but a fair share of fierce good educators. Lots of us got through university on scholarships alone. We were fed, clothed, cared for. Santy visited, come Christmas. Parties every birthday. Clover compared to growing up in a shanty town in Bangladesh or Mombasa or Lima or five hundred other locations I could name. We learned how to improvise, how to look out for ourselves, what not to take for granted. All handy business skills. Why mope around going, like, “Woe is me!”?’
‘Don’t you ever want to meet your real parents?’
‘Not a lad to beat around the bush, are you?’ Danny folded his arms behind his head. ‘Parents. Irish law’s a little murky on this one, but my biological mother’s people live up in Sligo. They own a posh hotel or some such. One time, I’d’ve been around your age, I took it into my head to run off to find her. I got as far as Limerick bus station.’
‘What happened there?’
‘Thunder, lightning, hailstones, fireballs. Biggest storm in years. My connecting bus was held up by a collapsed bridge. When the sun came out again, so did my sense of reality. So I scuttled back to the Jesuits.’
‘Did you get into trouble?’
‘The Jesuits ran an orphanage, not a prison camp.’
‘So…that was that?’
‘Yup. For now.’ Danny balanced his fork on his thumb. ‘What we – orphans, I mean – miss, or lack, or want, or need, are photographs of people who look like you. That never goes away. One fine day, I’ll make it up to Sligo to see if I can take some. With a telephoto lens, if my nerve gives out. But these great big life…“issues”…won’t be hurried. Ripeness, young Jason, is all. Scampi butty?’
‘No thanks.’ While Danny’d been talking, a decision’d made itself. ‘Will you help me buy one of those stunt kites?’
Greenland trainees’d colonized the whole lounge of the Hotel Excalibur. They’d changed out of their suits into herring-bone trousers and baggy shirts. As Danny and I walked in, they smirked our way. I knew why. Looking after their boss’s son was a creep’s job. One called out, ‘Daniel the Spaniel!’ and grinned the exact grin Ross Wilcox’s got. ‘Coming to inspect the nocturnal birds of Dorset?’
‘Wiggsy,’ Danny lobbed back, ‘you’re a drunken sot and a reprobate and you cheat at squash. Why would anyone want to be seen dead in public with yourself?’
The guy looked delighted.
‘Want to say hello,’ Danny turned to me, ‘to the Young Greenlanders?’
That’d be hell. ‘Is it okay if I just go upstairs and wait for Dad there?’
‘Don’t blame you in the least. I’ll tell him where you are.’ Then Danny shook hands with me, like I was a colleague. ‘Thanks for your company. See you in the morning?’
‘Sure.’
‘Enjoy your film.’
I got the key and bounded upstairs instead of waiting for the lift. In my head I listened to the Vangelis music for Chariots of Fire to flush away Wiggsy and the Greenlanders. Not Danny, though. Danny’s ace.
The alarm radio said 7:15 but no sign of Dad yet. Chariots of Fire began at 7:30, said the poster. I’d memorized the route to the cinema to impress Dad. Seven twenty-five came. Dad doesn’t forget appointments. He’d be coming. We’d miss the adverts and Coming Soons, but a lady with a torch’d show us our seats for the film. Seven twenty-eight. Should I go downstairs and remind him? I decided not to, in case we missed each other. Then it’d all be my fault for not sticking to the plan. Seven thirty. We’d have to spend some time working out who was who but the film’d still be watchable. At 7:35 Dad’s footsteps came thumping down the corridor outside. ‘Right!’ he’d burst in. ‘Off we go!’
The footsteps thumped past our door. They didn’t come back.
The eggy daffodils on the wallpaper’d fossilized to slag-heap grey as the day ended. I hadn’t turned on the light. Witchy laughter leaked into the room and music welled up from pubs all around Lyme Regis. TV’d’ve been pretty good ’cause it was Saturday night but Dad’d’ve felt guiltier if he’d found me in silence. I wondered what Sally from the amusement arcade’d be doing now. Being kissed. A boy’d be stroking those