“Yes!” someone exclaimed from the crowd. “Chicken curry.”
“Emmie,” Mamma Dot called, “Take some up for Suzy.”
“She’s asleep.”
“I promise you she won’t be. And she needs to eat for that little boy of theirs. You too, Sophie. Don’t let these men get in your way. Boys,” she shouted over the heavy drone of voices. “Let Reap’s woman get in.”
I opened my mouth to object. To tell her I really didn’t feel like eating, but the sea of leather cuts at the table parted, arms beckoning me towards them, a paper plate pushed into my hand. When I escaped the crush of bodies, Mamma Dot was watching me approvingly.
“Are you not getting anything?” I asked.
“I’ve eaten as I’ve cooked. Grief needs food, even when people don’t want to eat.”
I stared at her for a moment, at the sadness tucked away behind those eyes, at the way she watched protectively over the men in front of her. She’d seen more grief than one person should ever have to cope with, I realised then, because all this was well rehearsed and executed to perfection.
“Paper plates,” she said suddenly, her attention snapping back to me and from wherever her memories had just taken her. “Much easier to clean up after. And these clumsy boys just end up breaking decent ones.”
“What? No where?” Indie’s voice came from the corner of the kitchen. “You checked the clubhouse? His house?” A pause again. “Rang him? Fuck. Right, just get back here then.” Indie looked up from his phone, his eyes finding me. “Can’t find Reap. Not in his usual places.”
“Fuck,” Fury wiped his hands down his hoodie, leaving a trail of crumbs, and Mamma Dot rolled her eyes. “We can’t have him out there alone.”
“I know where he’ll be.” My voice sounded small and weak amongst these men, yet all conversations stopped.
“I’ll send someone.” Indie nodded.
“No. Let me go. I’ll bring him back.”
“Ok. Chaos. Carnage. Drive the doctor.”
“No. I need to go alone.”
Indie shook his head. “Doc, it’s the dead of night and a rival motorcycle club has already killed another of our guys. You aren’t going alone.”
I glanced at Mamma Dot, and she shook her head.
“Ok. You can drive me there. But I’ll approach him without you guys. You can sit in the car and watch. But you aren’t doing that bit with me.”
Indie watched me, and for a while I didn’t know whether he was going to agree, and then he nodded and the room shifted into action.
Chapter Thirty Three
Around me, the world changed. The night shifted as I sat beneath the Angel, its vast steel wings stretched wide against the dying dark behind me. But even the Angel of the North couldn’t quiet my head tonight. Tendrils of light over east, marbling through the clouds. Some might describe it as a silver lining. Hope after something negative. I could only see hopelessness. Regret. Defeat. There was nothing silver to me in the way it clawed through the night, creeping closer.
Right now, in the darkness, I could convince myself this was all a nightmare. That in a few minutes I’d wake up, and he was still here.
He’d been right there. Beside me. Laughing. Joking. Taking the piss, just like he always was. And then in a second. Gone. And I’d seen it all. I’d watched him leave. It didn’t make sense.
My mind kept dragging me backwards whether I wanted it to or not.
Magnet standing on the roof of a warehouse, on the ground below, a group of Notorious prospects surrounded him, his only weapon his own piss. Wet behind the ears took on a whole new meaning that night as he pissed all over them and their bikes. We all joked it had been the start of the last war: Magnet taking the piss.
Or convincing half the club it would be a ‘great fuckin’ idea’ to race dirt bikes through Chopwell Woods in the middle of January, only for Fury to end up waist deep in a freezing stream while the rest of us nearly died laughing.
And turning up at Durham prison every fucking month without fail while I was inside. Sometimes with cigarettes. Sometimes with contraband tucked into places I never asked about. Always with stories from the club and stupid gossip because he knew silence was the thing that killed you in there.
“Thought I’d remind you the world’s still spinning, you miserable bastard,” he’d said once through the scratched plastic screen while I sat there bruised and hollowed out from another beating.
And somehow, he always managed it. He was chaos. Noise. Hare-brained ideas and bad decisions wrapped up intattoos and laughter. The sort of man who could talk you into violence or stupidity with equal enthusiasm and somehow make both feel reasonable at the time.
