arms and locked them around the shoulders of the men either side of him, protecting the boy.
‘It’s the Earnshaw kid. We gotta get him outta here.’
If Ray could hear them, so too could the police. That wasn’t good. Ray started chanting, and the men around him joined in as the bus inched forward towards the gate. They were going to lose this one, but Ray’s mind was elsewhere. He believed in this strike. He believed in the union. The violence he’d seen on the lines wasn’t his way. And now the boy he had raised as his own had crossed a line equally as important as the picket. Mick might not be his flesh and blood, but he’d promised to look after him, like he’d promised the lads on his shift he’d look after them. And a promise was still a promise.
And it wasn’t done yet. He’s seen the look in that policeman’s eyes. He’d been lucky to escape with just a scratch on his neck.
He wasn’t about to forget.
Mick sucked the last of the beer out of the can, then crushed the thin metal between his hands. As he did, the front door crashed open.
‘Mick?’
He said nothing. He carefully placed the crushed can on the kitchen table and got to his feet. He could hear the anger in his father’s voice and his hands curled into fists.
‘What the bloody hell were you thinking?’ Ray stormed as he walked into the kitchen. ‘A nail gun? For fuck’s sake, boy. You could have killed one of them.’
‘Would have served them right,’ Mick muttered. ‘Anyway, I didn’t do it.’
With surprising speed, Ray took a step closer and cuffed Mick around the side of the head. It wasn’t a hard blow, not enough to set his head spinning. It was the kind of blow a father gave a child, not even a proper man-to-man punch.
‘I said, I didn’t do it.’ Mick drew himself up. ‘Dunno who did, but I’m glad they did. I wish they’d killed one of them cops.’
Mick wasn’t sure what he wanted to see in his father’s face. What reaction he wanted to provoke. Just something to show that his father gave a shit about what happened to him.
‘You’re an idiot.’ Ray’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘Kill a pig and the whole bloody lot of them will be down on us like the wrath of God.’
‘That don’t scare me.’
‘Well, it should,’ Ray said. ‘Right now I don’t care if they lock you up and throw away the key, but I’m not having anyone saying it were the Earnshaws that sent this whole place up in flames.’
‘I tell you, I didn’t do anything.’
‘I saw you carrying the nail gun.’
Mick hesitated, tempted to lie. A sound in the doorway caught his attention. Cathy had come into the room. She was staring at him, her eyes wide open. And behind her, Heathcliff stood, his lips twitching as if trying to keep a grin off his face.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Mick said again. ‘Well, I had the gun, but I didn’t use it. Someone pulled it out of my hand. Haven’t seen it since. I swear.’
His father leaned on the table and coughed a long, hacking cough. Mick looked across the room again at Heathcliff.
‘It were him,’ Mick said. ‘That Heathcliff. It were him that did it.’
His father’s open palm caught the back of his head again, this time hard enough to snap his jaws together. He tasted warm blood from his bitten tongue.
‘That’s right. Try and blame a child. Coward. You haven’t even got the courage to stand up for what you did.’ Ray Earnshaw shook his head. ‘You’re no son of mine.’
Silence fell over the kitchen. Mick frowned. That was just his father’s anger talking, wasn’t it? Okay, they’d not always been close, but…
Two short, sharp honks from a car horn fell into the silence in the kitchen.
‘That’s it,’ said Ray. ‘Pete from the mine is outside waiting for you. He’s got a cousin in the building trade in Manchester. Get a few things and get in that car.’
‘What?’
‘I want you gone before anyone has the chance to ask questions. And they will. Get in that car and get out of here. I don’t want to see your face again.’
Mick stared at his father, but Ray turned away. He walked through into the kitchen, and slammed the door behind him. Mick knew he had no choice. Brushing past Cathy and Heathcliff, he took the steps two at a time to his room. He grabbed a sports bag and thrust some clothes into it. A couple of minutes later he was back down the stairs. He looked into the back room, but his father wasn’t there. Only Cathy and Heathcliff stood watching him silently.
Heathcliff’s eyes were shining. Heathcliff was to blame for this. For everything. Life had been shit since that brat arrived.
‘This doesn’t end here.’ Mick directed the words at Heathcliff in a voice that was all the more dangerous for being soft. ‘Just you wait.’
One of these days, Mick was going to get his own back.
He turned and walked out the front door.
February, 1985
‘Godless heathens,’ Father Joseph muttered as a white police van swept past. He pulled his heavy black coat tighter against the bitter February winds. The hem of his cassock was damp with the rain as it flapped around his ankles, but at least the snow was gone.
The mid-morning light was dim and dreary, and his stomach was rumbling as he closed the church gate behind him and set out along the road into the town. His Ash Wednesday fast was two days away. To be followed by forty days of Lent. Father Joseph observed the fast with passion. But there was nothing in the canon law to say he couldn’t have one good meal before Lent started. God knew he’d been hungry more than once in this past year.
Father Joseph turned the corner into the high street. It was deserted. All the men were down the picket line. Most of the women too. Those that weren’t stayed home. There was no money to spend, so no reason to come up the shops. The pub was empty too. For a long time, the pub had stayed open. It was a place for the men to cheer themselves on with strong words and talk about their upcoming victory. Then it had become a place to meet and console themselves. Now, there was no money for beer.
Father Joseph could have gone into the pub for a shot of the whisky he so enjoyed. The church always had money, and not all of his stipend had gone into the pool to feed the mine families. But he didn’t want to get aggro from some parishioner who didn’t understand that his situation was rightly different to theirs.
And he did have that one last bottle stashed back at the rectory, jealously guarded and eked out for almost a year of this cursed strike. There was one shot left. Perhaps tonight…
The sound of laughter caused him to stop and turn.
A few yards behind him, two figures darted out from behind
