The Family Firm

Chapter 8

Frankie looked at herself in the mirror and sighed out her frustrations. She was an attractive woman, could still pass for twenty-five if she wanted, even without the plastic surgeries and breast augmentation. Her features were softer than her brother's, fairer in almost all respects; her eyes were silvery blue, her hair sandy brown (though she rarely wore it naturally), and she was petite and short in stature, only around 5'2 and seven-and-a-half stone—half Freddie's size in any case. She took pride in her appearance, which was why it was so shocking to look at herself in that state; hair a mess, eyes red and puffy, face splotchy from the crying.

She couldn't look like this when Fred showed up. Her mother Beth often liked to remind her that a woman's looks were all she had, and even then a good-looking woman's use dried up quickly, because she only stayed good looking for so long—living on borrowed time, so to speak.

At thirty-two, Frankie was starting to feel the reality of it hitting her hard. There were times that she thought her mother was only projecting her own age onto her, which she still believed but at the same time the older she got, the greater the fear in her grew. She had ambitions, certainly, and she'd never been anyone's housewife (she'd only been married two-and-a-half years, she didn't have much choice), but having raised her son almost single-handedly for the past sixteen years, she had to put aside the things she wanted to for the responsibilities she was tied down with.

She loved her Junior, and God bless him, she wouldn't change a thing. But he was running her to the end of her tether and she wasn't sure how much longer she could hold together.

That's where the Dexedrine came in handy. That or the pain pills, whatever she could get her hands on. Her magic pills, she called them, what helped her compose herself just enough that she could sort things out.

Without even thinking about it, she plucked the familiar bottle from the mirror cabinet with trembling hands and dumped two into her hand, swallowing them with a gulp of water from the tap. It was probably a placebo effect she reasoned, but the moment she did so she felt the stress already begin to drift away from her body.

The rest of the pieces of herself slowly started fitting themselves together again. Now that her hands were steady, she fixed her hair and re-applied her make-up, and was satisfied when she finally looked composed.

'Junior,' she called into the other room, clearing her throat to make sure her voice was steady. 'Your uncle's coming over, so get ready.'

Junior inspected his bloodied knuckles and sighed. He should have known his mum wasn't going to understand, then again he hadn't really thought of the consequences, hadn't thought the headmaster had the balls to expel him. He wasn't about to rely on his uncle or their family's reputation to get him out of trouble, but he was annoyed with the fact that their good name hadn't been enough to keep something like this from happening.

His dear old mum had insisted, in between clipping his ears and shouting at him, that kids like Vinny Smith weren't worth ruining the only chance people like them had of getting out of their life and making a name for themselves, a name that normally only had the chance of being followed by a series of numbers. But Junior insisted the opposite; that he was worth it, was worth showing that the Evanses weren't people to be fucked around with, weren't people you slagged off. If only she could understand that.

His uncle would, though. His uncle Fred understood everything. His mum liked to say they shared the same brain waves, which both annoyed her and warmed her heart in the same breath. They thought in the same ways, made the same decisions, and came to the same conclusions about things. It was because of this similarity that Junior was so fond of him.

Freddie had been there for as long as he could remember. Ever since his dad Donny fucked off, Fred had taken the role of his father figure without question. Perhaps it was always meant to be that way; his mum named him after the man after all. Of course that had been one of the many reasons his piss-head father had chosen to fight with Frankie about, so in the end it was a good thing he'd run off back home. They didn't need him anyway, she always reassured Junior. They were Evanses, they were tough. And Freddie had taken care of them through the whole lot of it, even when he'd been banged up.