The train pulled away. Standing on the other side of the station was his twin. He’d got there first, been waiting a while. The open-air station was flanked by willows; the drooping branches half-concealed the pair from on-lookers. Not that there was likely anyone around, he thought, here, in the middle of nowhere really. The leaves were beginning to golden, the type of orange that made Harry nostalgic for school starting up again, for seeing old friends, getting new teachers to rattle up. Long time ago now. Harry waved at Flo with broad, goofy swings of the arm, the daft way he knew would get a laugh. The Saturday sun had nearly quit. He was illuminated by Platform A’s one, lonely lamp. She was only partially visible under the light of Platform B. Still, he knew her every feature, could guess the expression on her face at being back. 

They were separated by just a narrow void of rusty tracks. He’d been staring at the tracks before Flo’s train had pulled in, thinking about how the lines ran parallel, before going off their own ways outside the station. He watched her as she pulled her headphones (knock-off Apple, he’d been teasing her last week) out her ears, winding them around her phone. Looking at her was like briefly catching your reflection in a surface you didn’t realise was reflective. Even now, he sometimes felt a lurching shock at their similarities. Both swoopingly tall. Dark, unmanageable hair, the eyebrows to go with. Nose sticking out off the face, sharp and thin. They could thank Mum for that one. He’d often been told that he was the beautiful twin, as if they should ever be compared. Looking across at her, half-hidden by the dying dusk light, he couldn’t see it. He’d never seen it. Flo crossed the bridge, not rushing even after he’d been waiting for her. She paused at the top. He craned his neck up as she looked down at him, her sweeping hair concealing her face from him. He beckoned for her to get a move on.

‘Take your time,’ Harry bear-hugged her when she finally, leisurely got to Platform A, ‘my train got in half an hour ago.’ 

‘The problem with twins,’ Flo mocked a lofty tone of philosophy, ‘is that one will always arrive first.’

He rolled his eyes, ‘it’s stupid. We both come up from London. We’d get to travel together, if you’d just get the high-speed train. For once.’

‘It’s your prerogative as first born to arrive places first. Besides, with what money would I pay for–?’ She stopped herself. Harry knew the conversation was threatening on sore land. They dropped it. This was not why they were here.  

Outside the station, unruly moss was growing over the ‘ENTRANCE’; it now read ‘TRANCE’. He’d not noticed that the last time they’d came back. Which was, when? Three months ago, ish. Same reason that time as now. Dad. They got into the only waiting taxi, knocking on the window to wake the driver. Old guy, probably been waiting at this station for jobs all his life. Harry covered the fare (fifteen quid, keep the change mate). Flo didn’t offer. He didn’t ask.

‘Nearly home,’ Harry said as the taxi took the final turn into the street of their childhood. A familiar row of small, stout houses appeared, each looking like it’d been copied and pasted from the last by a lazy architect. 

‘Home,’ she replied. Looking in the passenger mirror, he saw her raise her eyebrows at him, contorting her lips into a sarcastic smile.

The taxi pulled up. They got out, standing at the beginning of the path, looking down it the way you look down the beach to the waves; knowing there’s a whole lot going on down there. There’d be no need to knock, no need to fetch keys. Mum was standing in the doorway, waiting. The yellow light of home poured out into evening. They walked towards her. She was not nearly as tall as them (they could thank Dad for that one; their height, her stooping). But yet, she had a way of filling the air around her, filling whichever room she was in. She was thin, more so than when they’d last been home. She watched them, turning her lips up in her half-smile way, leaning against the door frame, her arms folded across her chest. As the twins reached the door, her boyfriend side-stepped out of the darkness, into the frame.

‘Evenin’, kids,’ Stan said. 

Harry watched Flo move to the doorway, wondering if the gentleman-like thing to do would’ve been to go first, as if they were stepping into the lion’s den, and he should be leading the way. Flo bent slightly to kiss Mum. She brushed her cheek against Stan’s bristles, an unavoidable courtesy, his bullish face blocking the doorway. Harry saw his lips slap wetly together, close to her ear. He watched Flo’s shoulders recoil into her neck. The motion was so small he could’ve missed it, had he not seen it often before. Stan held out a hand to him. Harry left it hanging there, a fatty piece of meat on show at the butchers. He kissed Mum, her soft skin loose against her cheekbones. As he crossed the threshold, Stan slapped his shoulder. From the narrow hall, he could hear the kettle murmuring in the kitchen. 

‘Peppermint for Flo, coffee, black for our Stanley,’ Mum placed each mug reverently on the table before its recipient, ‘builders, two sugars, for Squirrel.’

No point Harry mentioning that he no longer took sugar in his tea, that he hadn’t for years. That it was too sweet for him, like drinking syrup. He’d told her before, plenty of times. 

‘Mum. Please. Not Squirrel. Please,’ Harry shot his sister a look. Exasperation. 

Squirrel. Harry’d earned himself that nickname aged thirteen. He’d knocked his front two teeth out, falling off the Science Block. Rescuing a football, scoring lad points. Grown up, the money to sort his teeth out had been nothing to him; pennies, in the grand long scheme. He’d endured those dodgy NHS caps, off-colour and noticeably too long, until he was twenty-one, until he could afford to do something about them. His Mum’d found his mate’s nickname for him hilarious, got her in stitches. He’d got rid of the teeth, but back here, where history is inescapable, the name had stuck.   

‘Sorry Squirrel, Harry, sorry love,’ she joined the table, ‘and blackberry for me.’ 

‘How is he, then?’ Asked Flo, ‘and where is he?’

‘No how am I? No how is Stanley? No niceties round my table?’ Mum stood up abruptly, squealing the chair legs against the linoleum. She placed her mug heavily down on the table. The table, the beautiful, knotted oak centre piece of the shabby kitchen, had been a wedding gift to her from Dad’s Dad. It was her pride. She immediately sat back down. ‘Just, how is he? Just, how is your Dad?’ 

Harry could see that already she had turned, like day-old milk curdling. It had not taken long this time.

‘He’s at the pub, then.’ Harry answered Flo’s question, knowing. 

‘Well I’m fine. Thank you very much. And Stanley’s fine too. We’ve been cleaning and tidying all of today, looking forward to having you back.’

Stan was nodding in support, though Harry knew he’d not the foggiest where the hoover was kept. Harry looked about the kitchen, the heart of Mum’s house, where so much and so little had happened over the years. The wallpaper looked like it was probably, once, yellow and pink roses. Fashionable, Harry supposed, when it’d been put up, long before they had moved in. It had faded now into half-hearted swirls, the colours surrendering their individuality, bleeding murkily into one another. Ceramic cats (house, wild, the lot) sat atop the windowsill. They were everywhere, had massed in numbers over the years. These ones, the ones on the windowsill, he knew were her second most favourite, after the one’s in her bedroom. He looked at a small ceramic tabby, it’s paw raised, turned to make it look like it were having a chat with the miniature jaguar next to it. He used to be enamoured with these little cats, as a kid, spending a day every now and then counting them. As he’d grown older, they’d embarrassed him. He’d rarely brought mate’s back home. But that wasn’t just the cats’ fault. To the left of the windowsill, a picture of him and Flo had been tacked to the door of the mugs’ cupboard. Blackpool, age five. Matching stripes- Mum used to love doing that, matching them. He couldn’t remember the day, but the picture had been in the kitchen so long he sometimes felt as if he did. Beneath the photo, dirty pans sat self-consciously on the counter, hiding their contents with grimy lids. An attempt at recycling had been made near the fridge; empty beer cans, wine bottles and cat food tins were mounded precariously.

Harry returned his attention to the table.   

‘Mum. Someone needs to tell us what’s happened to Dad. Either you, or Dad, can tell us,’ he spread his fingers diplomatically out on the table, aware of having to be the politician in the room. He softened his face, ‘but we’d rather hear it from you.’

‘Yeah, reliable sources, the pair,’ muttered Flo. 

Harry looked from woman to woman, waiting for the fall-out. Seeming not to have heard anything, Mum slurped at her mug. Her lips reddened at the scalding tea. Something else she was good at ignoring. She nodded a few times, looked in to the mug as if for assistance, then began, ‘we get a call yesterday and of course, it’s the hospital. It’s either the hospital or The Belt and Rein. No one ever calls here for niceties any longer, do they Stanley?’ Stan shook his head gravely. ‘It was not a nicety, no. It was A & E. He was in again, wasn’t he?’ 

‘He was,’ confirmed Stan.

‘The girl on the other end, she says to me, “are you the wife of Mr. Barnabas Craid?” and I say back to her, “No hello? No how are you?” and she says to me “sorry madame but this is a serious matter” and so I say back to her “niceties are a serious matter!”’

Harry and Flo looked at one another. In their private, twinnish way, Harry felt Flo imploring him to say something. To cut through Mum’s babble the way only he could. 

‘Mum, please. Get on with it.’ His tone was solid and measured, but he slid a chocolate digestive, her favourite, along the table towards her, encouragingly. ‘What happened to Dad?’

‘She says again “are you the wife of Mr. Barnabas Craid?” like I hadn’t heard her the first time, and to that I said, “well only by law missy and not by anything more.”’

‘Only by law.’ Stan was nodding again, like a plastic dog on a dashboard. 

‘And then she says that “Mr Craid” has taken a “very serious fall” and they are running some scans on him. And that he would be in overnight at the least.’ She used her fingers, red from the mug and birdishly claw-like, to form quotation marks in the air around Dad’s name, around the serious fall. She was suspect of hospitals, of anything to do with Dad.  

‘Overnight, at the least?’ Flo interrupted.

‘Well it’s all serious this and serious that with this girl from the hospital,’ Mum continued, ‘so I says to her, “well if he’s in there with you, at least he’s not here with us!” But she didn’t laugh, did she, which I thought was rude.’

‘Though it’s no laughing matter, really, having him here all the time babe. Is it babe?’ Stan switched from nodding his jowly face to shaking it. ‘Always finishing the last of the milk and he never buys any more. And even worst he leaves the empty carton in the fridge. No laughing matter at all.’

‘He’s still in hospital?’ Flo asked. ‘And it’s taken you this long to tell us? We’ve been sat here drinking tea whilst Dad’s in hospital?’ 

Mum took another mouthful of tea, looking resolutely across the table at her boyfriend, not turning to face them, to face her children. She wrapped her fingers around her mug like a prayer. Harry noticed how the skin on her hands had become more translucent since they were last back, the blue veins bulging against the skin. 

‘He’s not in hospital, he’s gone to pub,’ Harry repeated. ‘He’s in The Belt and Rein, I’d put money on it.’

‘Where your Dad is’s no business of mine,’ Mum relished in calling him your Dad, the emphasis heavy on your, as if the twins’d had some choice in him being theirs. She then conceded, ‘but yes, The Belt. Straight out of hospital he went, I suppose. Some time this morning. Probably. Didn’t come back here, anyway.’

‘The Belt’d charge him rent if he had any money, right babe?’ Stan laughed barkingly. Their mother joined him with a vague giggle. 

‘You let him go to The Belt and drink himself silly after he’s been in hospital all night?’ Flo asked her. Harry watched as red flushed up his twin’s chest, her neck, taking her ears last, as it always did when she was angry, when she was forced into confrontation. She hated this, he knew. The rare times Flo showed her anger, she reminded him of a cat backed into a corner, hair all up and on edge. He’d advised her countless times; it was easier in this house to adopt his laissez-faire approach.

Flo continued to stare at Mum.

‘I’m not your Dad’s keeper,’ Mum continued to stare at Stan.  

‘As good as,’ said Harry. She would not look at him either. ‘You’ve not been together for god knows how many years but you’re still letting him sponge off you, you’re still putting him up, letting him roll in from The Belt drunk up to his eyeballs.’

Stan sat up in his chair, blowing out his chest like an animal ready to charge. 

‘Alright Squirrel, that’s enough. Look at her now. Look what you did,’ he pointed at Mum as if she weren’t in the room. She was staring bleakly into the final dregs of her tea, the bag left in, squishy at the bottom of the mug. In her eyes, forced or otherwise, tears teamed together. ‘Your Mum is too good-natured, too full of the very best niceties of human nature to let that down-and-out useless asshole sleep any which where or end up, well, you know where again.’ 

Stan drained the last of his coffee in one swig, sitting back in his chair, apparently satisfied that the conversation had been concluded. He smiled like a placid baboon from one person to the next. A pause followed, the silence of which was filled with the swallowing of lukewarm drinks. 

‘So you made us travel all this way, when I’ve got a huge day at work on Monday –’ Harry began.

‘All this way and thirty-eight pounds–’ Flo interrupted.

‘Sixty-six pounds for me!’ Guilt bleated momentarily against Harry’s chest for pointing this out, knowing Flo would have been hurt by it, caught in the cross-fire. ‘To check on Dad after his “serious fall,”’ Harry mimicked Mum’s air quotations, ‘and he’s in The Belt. Of course, he’s in The bloody Belt.’

‘You couldn’t have travelled all this way and sixty-six pounds to see me, no! That’s much too far for Mum, isn’t it?’ Mum spat.

The conversation spiralled round, as it so often did in this kitchen. Spiralled as the cups went cold, the kettle having to be boiled again. Spiralled as Mum passive-aggressively cleared the mugs from the table, placing them next to rather than in the sink. Spiralled until Harry stood up and announced he was going to the pub. He looked at Flo, knowing she hated the usual crowd at The Crowne. Knowing she wouldn’t want to stay here, alone, either. Silently, she cocked her head towards the door. 

‘Like father, like son,’ Stan muttered as Harry was leaving the room, not quietly enough for it to go unheard. 

Harry slammed the kitchen door behind him. He felt the immediate, hot embarrassment of an adult who’s acted like their kid selves. He lurched back in time past so many slammed doors; aged seventeen, fourteen, eleven, younger. He sat on the stairs to tie his shoelaces, pressing his chest down hard against his long legs, trying to squash out this feeling. Flo- the thought of her brought a guilt which expanded out from his chest to sit doggedly in his stomach. Guilt about his twin, for the second time that evening. He imagined how her evening would go. Imagined her in her childhood bedroom, pulling the single duvet of the single bed up around her neck. The posters would be faded, their unstuck corners long-unnoticed. A pile of second-hand textbooks would be sat haphazardly atop a wardrobe, their covers obscured by dust (she, unlike him, had left some evidence of school in her room. The education stuff, anyway). But aside from dust and fade, the room would be otherwise untouched by time. Everything in that room would be exactly as it always had been; boxy walls, arguments brewing up through the floor, no friend in this town to escape to the pub with. 

He closed the front door behind him.

It was past closing time at The Crowne. Five hours ago, Harry had arrived into the very heart of it all. The pub had been buzzing, full; a couple of lads had cheered when he’d walked in. Friends had got in the pints. He sunbathed in that feeling of being known. The place was brimming, as he’d known it would be, with old class friends, once-upon-a-time football teammates, friends he knew through friends, friends he knew through girls. People who’d never had the desire, drive or reason to leave. Barmaids had remembered his order, or at least what he used to drink. He’d allowed them to doe-eye him over the counter, hadn’t bothered to correct them on what he usually drank nowadays, down in London. 

This was a place where nothing had changed. 

Everyone except Harry had piled out now, back to their missus’ place or their Mum’s. He was stood in the empty men’s, the urinals and the floor stinking after the long night. He blearily surveyed himself in the mirror. Face flushed, hair messier even than usual, eyes red-brimmed. He was thankful for the grimy layer of dirt over the glass which concealed him from himself. His vision blurred as he staggered past the mirror, causing two Harry’s to swim uncomfortably before him in the mirror. These two selves sparked a memory to elbow itself unbidden into Harry’s mind. 

He is a child, brushing his teeth on a red plastic stool. Dad appears behind him in the mirror. 

‘Look at those gnashers, boy! Beautiful!’ Dad bares his own teeth. They are standing side by side, teeth showcased in the mirror, one set frothy with toothpaste, the other yellowing, tea and fag stained, two silver fillings like a pirate. The boy and the man, both with scruffy dark hair, teeth bared, are not so easily distinguishable. 

The memory launched out of him as he caught his foot on a scraggy, upturned bit of carpet in the doorway of the pub; he stumbled out into the cobbled street. Plumb Lane. Pub Lane, the locals called it. Six pubs, a chippy, a curry house and a Chinese. There was not much else going for the small town, it was widely accepted. A town flanked by fields, cottages and farms. Then further in, small clumps of 80’s council estates, the mortar flaking, each estate no more than seven roads deep. Huge new-builds full of expensive furniture and empty air, custom-built for city types wanting to settle down somewhere greener or commute somewhere less green, were built precariously close to the estates. The town reached its jumbled apex in a tight knot of staples; cafes, churches, charity shops, corner shops. At its heart, Pub Lane. The locals were proud of Pub Lane; a whole lane for escaping the wife, for post-footie drinks, post-work wine, for shared amnesia. Harry had strolled and stumbled countless times down Pub Lane, moving along it from childhood to manhood like Zallinger’s March of Progress. The Crowne was at one end. The Belt and Rein, Dad’s pub, at the other.

Dad would be there now, Harry knew, sponging a pint. The Belt didn’t really have an out-by, known for its exclusive, unfriendly lock-ins, its barmaids too lazy to wake the men who fell asleep on the sofas. Dad’d be there, surrounded by the men he’d grown up with; the men whose fathers’ fathers had arrived one day in the town and had never thought to leave. Harry looked around himself. Nobody. A few revellers were left further down, passing between the last pubs still allowing entry. Only one place left for him now, without a jacket, without a mate or an easy way home. The chippy. 

Inside Steve’s Plaice, Harry waited for a chicken ‘n’ chips combo. He leaned against the counter, watching Steve carve doner meat from the great hanging skewer. The meat revolved gloriously, like a hulking chandelier. Compared to the darkness of The Crowne, the light in here was sterile. Harry was seeing down a Coke, hoping it would sober him for the walk home. The bell over the door chimed. A familiar hand touched his shoulder. Perhaps because of the many pints he’d sunk, perhaps because he’d spent the night with familiar hands all over him, welcoming him back, he did not turn around immediately. He swallowed his mouthful. In the moment between swallowing and turning, the hand said, ‘Harry?’

Turning, Harry rocked slightly then laid his palm on the cool surface of the counter, stabilising himself. He squinted at the man then widened his eyes, neither of which helped him recall how, or if, he knew the man stood before him.  

‘I’ve not seen you in–,’ the man paused, ‘but then, I’m not back here much either. Anymore,’ he smiled. ‘We both got out.’ 

He was wearing a well-fitting white shirt, unscuffed brogues. Expensive looking. People don’t normally bother with nice shirts down Pub Lane, Harry thought, glancing down at his own tee-shirt. A favourite chosen for his night back, inky blue, the collar crisp. But still a tee-shirt. Harry looked back at the man. He was fair; his beard was so precisely trimmed it oozed to Harry the words anal, obsessive. It was thick, rising high up his cheekbones. That, paired with his large, owl-eye glasses, gave Harry the impression of a man who doesn’t want their face seen too much. Despite this, Harry supposed, he’d probably be thought of as having something quite beautiful about him. The smile that the man had been wearing easily was faltering now into a frown.  

‘Harry?’ 

Harry realised he’d not said a word, was simply staring at the man. There was, possibly, something about this man that was familiar to him. Harry felt, perhaps, the most minute recess of recognition. Maybe it was in the angle of cheekbone, now obscured by glasses lens. Or the way he said ‘Harry’, as if the name had flitted between his teeth many times before, so often it could almost have been the man’s own. Did he know him? Through the film of beer, trying to guess at a connection was like recalling a dream dreamt years before. No. Never seen the bloke. Then it hit him, through the heady haze of beers. Anyone down Pub Lane calling him Harry couldn’t know him well. If at all. Here, you couldn’t wash off a nickname like Squirrel. It was on you for life, like a mole or a scar.

‘Sorry mate. Not a clue who you are. You’ve got me muddled, I reckon,’ he said assuredly, but the words still slurred, spilling out of his mouth. He went to slap the stranger’s shoulder but missed, his palm landing in the middle of the man’s chest. The two men stood for an instant, feet away from the chip-fryer, one’s hand resting on the other’s chest. 

‘What the–?’ The man stepped back, Harry’s hand falling limply between them. ‘How can you not remember?’

‘How can I not remember? Mate, I remember all sorts. I remember everything. Just try me on everything I can remember–,’

‘One extra-large chicken ‘n’ chips combo, extra mayo, extra BBQ. Harry.’

Harry grabbed the box sheepishly.  

‘Okay, you got me, m’name’s Harry,’ said Harry, holding his hands up, trying his old school-boy charm, ‘but I’m not whichever Harry you think I am- not your Harry.’

Inexplicably to Harry, this was apparently the final blow, the knock-out. The man turned sharply, away from Harry. Away from Steve, who had been watching the interaction over the counter with the vague disinterest of somebody who watches interactions like this on, Harry presumed, an at least once-nightly basis. He walked out of the chippy. Not turning back, the words vaulting more into the night than into the chippy, he said, ‘fuck you, Squirrel.’ 

The bell chimed, the door slammed, he was gone. Harry watched through the window as the slight man crossed the street. Harry swayed on the spot again, causing his reflection in the window to blur queasily with the image of the man through the window. Three friends of the man approached him from the less-lit end of Pub Lane, must’ve seen him coming out of the Steve’s Plaice. Harry watched as the friends moved close to him, close to his face. Greetings were exchanged between the men, mouths moving, wordless to Harry. It looked like there was laughter, reunion.

Two of the friends walked around the man, standing behind him. The man did not turn to look over his shoulder, focusing on the bloke who was speaking, facing him. One pushed him in the back. He fell into the arms of the man who’d been speaking. It seemed almost intimate. Harry tried to focus his vision. Focus, Harry. They shoved the man back and forth between them, his body swaying almost gracefully as it was barged, weightlessly doll-like, between the three. 

Harry turned to Steve, knowing he’d seen countless fights flame up in front of his establishment, the effects of vodka and cheap meat sending drinkers into lip-licking rage. But Steve was in the back, scrolling Facebook most likely, waiting for the merry ring of the bell. Alone, Harry turned back to the window. The man was on the floor, cheek pressed against the cobbled stones. 

The men kicked. 

Head. Stomach. Legs. Back. 

Head.    

Harry stood watching, an inert goldfish in a tank. The chip box was warm in his hands, grease beginning to seep through. He’d witnessed fights down Pub Lane before. Been in a handful growing up. It’d happened, they’d all done it, pissed up and angry, feeling like they were behind some cause for once. He went to move. He wanted to move, he told himself. But he didn’t. 

One of the three looked up. He clocked Harry, paused. Words were passed, far away. Like colossal beetles in their hoodies, they dispersed. The man did not move. His face was a burst grape, disfigured reds and purples. He lay on the street, completely still, as if he were a part of the cobbled stones beneath him. Harry’d felt this before too; that he were a part of the street, of the cobbled stones. That he’d walked over them so many times, he could name each stone. He felt a lick of shame at remembering this feeling now, of all times.

After a time, the man uncurled himself slowly, rolling from his side on to his back. Something in this movement – was it because his glasses had come off in the fight? Or was it something more intrinsic to the movement itself?- crystallised in Harry what he thought he didn’t know. What he wanted not to know. He’d been allowing the drink to stoke his doubt, his denial. But looking at the man now, the remaining doubt slipped through his fingers, as if he were trying to seize at water. He’d assured himself that he didn’t recognise the man. That he had no clue. Never laid eyes on him. He’d believed it himself, maybe, for a bit. Watching the man lying alone in the street, Harry knew without doubt who it was. In realising this, something thick and acidic rose instantly to the back of his tongue, squatting threateningly in his throat. He swallowed it all down. 

 Harry opened the door softly, just ajar enough to squeeze through without the bell summoning Steve. He approached the man, bending down next to him. A rizzla, the sheddings of the night past, had got stuck to his left cheek. One half of the thin paper was soaked red. Harry peeled it off. The man opened his right eye; the left eye burst shut, blue. 

‘Are you okay? What happened mate? I was waxing lyrical with Steve in there, turned ‘round and you were all over the floor. You alright man?’

The man propped himself up on his elbows, then slowly managed to sit up. He bought his knees to his chest, a child in a school assembly. He tilted his head to the right, in the direction that two of the three men had headed.

‘Not the first time with those lot. Not recently, though.’

‘Which lot?’

‘Three empty-skulled fucking degenerates from school,’ the man’s voice threatened at anger, but he seemed to control it. He was examining his palm, picking out pieces of gravel from the red meshed graze. ‘Year above me. So, year below you. You’d probably recognise them.’

Harry shrugged, then stood up, ‘maybe. Did you go Hill Rise Secondary or Bancock?’ 

The man stood. If it hurt him, he did not show it. The pair stood facing one another, both only half under the streetlight which flickered pathetically above them. In the partial darkness, Harry could not see the man wholly; his eyes were obscured, his face disguised by the shadows casting off the old bricks around them. The half-face visible to Harry was steely with cold anger.