Black London 05 - Soul Trade

would.
    “Not like he ever made an effort to look me up after he took off,” Wendy sighed at last. “Broke my heart one day when I went ’round to his flat and he was just gone. His mum was stoned off her arse, as usual, and I didn’t hear from him for near ten years.”
    “That’s Jack now, too,” Pete said, feeling herself soften toward Wendy just a bit. “Good at flash, not big on follow-through.”

    Wendy sucked on her fag and gave Pete a wry smile. “That’s us.” She gestured at a shabby photo in filmy glass sitting on her end table next to the ashtray. Pete extended her hand.
    “May I?”
    Wendy nodded, and Pete ran her thumb over the glass to clear the dust away. Jack, young and skinny, stood next to Wendy on the stoop of her council flat. They couldn’t have been more than twelve, Wendy’s hairin an eighties perm that looked like it could support its own weather system, and Jack slouched in a shirt and tie that both had clearly been borrowed from someone who was much larger and a fan of bold paisley prints.
    “What was the occasion?” she asked Wendy.
    “I had a part in the school play,” Wendy murmured. “ The Music Man. Jack and his da came to see me, since me mum was always at work.”
    Pete focused on the tall figure standing behind Jack and Wendy. Wendy squinted at her through the smoke from her fag. “What?”
    “Nothing.” Pete swallowed the dozen questions that exploded into her brain. “Jack never said much about his dad. I always thought he was dead.”
    Wendy shrugged. “Probably is, now. Showed up once in a blue moon, threw cash around, left. Never gave a fuck one way or the otherwhat poor Jackie was actually going through at home.”
    Before Pete could contemplate the photo any further, Jack returned from the loo, swiping his hands across his jeans. “Everything all right, then?” he asked, darting a look between Pete and Wendy.
    “Tip-top,” Wendy said, stubbing out her cigarette. “I’ll just go down and get something for tea, yeah?”
    She left, and Jack paced the flat, foursteps to each wall, until he finally scrubbed a hand over his face. “I can’t take this,” he muttered, heading for the door.
    Pete ran after him, nearly falling down the broken front steps. “You can’t just go running about Manchester by yourself,” she said. “Not after what happened at the train station.”
    Jack ignored her, walking for a good minute in silence. “You’d think it’d be easier,” he sighedat last.
    “What?” Pete asked, though she knew.
    “Coming back here,” Jack said. “I haven’t been back to Manchester since I was fifteen, Pete. I didn’t even come back for me mum’s funeral.”
    “I wouldn’t worry over it,” Pete said quietly. They walked another block, until they stopped in front of a flat, same as all the other flats in the row, with empty windows peering into a sad, floral-paperedsitting room.
    “I wouldn’t have ever come back if I had it my way,” Jack said. “But I’d do it for you, no question.”
    Pete opened her mouth, then shut it again. What the hell did you say to that? Jack might be the sort of fuckwit who’d look up an ex-girlfriend and expect everything to go swimmingly, but he had never left her. Never let her down, never done anything less than all he could to protecther. Even at the cost of his sanity and almost his life.
    “I know,” she said at last, reaching for his hand, but Jack wasn’t beside her any longer.
    “This is it,” he said, stopping at the semi-detached on the corner. “Good old number seven. Every time the council was ready to kick my mum out for fighting and keeping her shady boyfriends here on the sly, she’d cry and make me come with her to thehearing, look sad and skinny and pathetic.”
    Pete thought back to the photo, to the small dark-haired boy who held only the barest hints of the Jack she knew. She would have felt sorry for that boy. She did feel sorry for that boy.
    Jack conjured a cigarette and lit it, blowing smoke at the darkened windows. “Can’t believe we ended up spending fourteen years here. No wonder my dad bolted as soonas he saw an opening.”
    “You ever see him after you lit out?” Pete asked cautiously. “Your dad?”
    “Never since the day I packed a kit and shut the door behind me,” Jack said. “He crops up, he’s asking for a kick in both the teeth and the arse.”
    “Fair enough,” Pete said. He didn’t want to talk about it, and that was his choice. The