Call Me Back Again

CHAPTER 10

"Good morning!"

Paul winced at the sound of Mike's voice. So loud. So bright. So grating... Not to mention that sound when he turned the newspaper to the next page. Annoying as fuck. Squinting against the piercing daylight, he found the largest mug they owned and filled it to the brim with black coffee, after which he collapsed at the breakfast table.

"Had fun, did you? Heard your conversation with the toilet bowl," Michael said cheerily, each syllable pounding into Paul's throbbing brain like a pickaxe. Was fratricide still something people frowned upon these days? Hoping the kid would show some mercy on a dying man, Paul slowly lowered his forehead onto his arms. Much darker. Much better. Still too much noise. "Sounded like you had a lot to get off your chest."

Without lifting his head from the safety of his forearm, Paul flashed his brother a two-fingered salute. He was right, but still. Also: nobody should laugh that hard at their own jokes. Especially when they weren't even funny. Paul wasn't amused, anyway. The whole thing had ceased to be amusing when he found himself stranded somewhere in Knowsley. Who the hell fell asleep on the bus anyway? Well, he had, obviously...

He'd managed to make it to their flat somewhere around half two by which time even Janeway couldn't be arsed to welcome him home anymore. Maybe her sleeping with Mike was for the better, though. Probably would've ended tripping over her anyway. You know, considering the state he was in. How he managed to reach the loo, Paul didn't know. All he knew was that he'd spent ages spewing up everything he had before he'd even taken off his shoes or jacket. At least, he still had those on when he'd woken up on the loo floor, sometime around five.

He hadn't taken them off then, either. Climbing up the stairs and walking twenty feet to his bed was all he could muster anyway. And now, something had died and was decomposing in his mouth, his head was being remodelled using heavy machinery, and it was his turn to clean the litter box. Apparently. Mike just said so, so Paul supposed it was probably true.

"It's your cat too, you know." The use of cold logic should be forbidden under certain circumstances. Particularly at those times when the mere thought of scooping up cat shit made Paul's stomach churn to the point of him having to press a hand to his mouth whilst praying he wouldn't throw up all over the kitchen table. And still, Mike was relentless. "She can't help it that you got monged out."

"Bugger off, Mike." He had enough of this abuse. Bloody kids and their lack of empathy... Dragging his half-empty mug of coffee along, Paul shuffled towards the stairs, hoping a hot bath might help. "I'll do it later."

"You made the paper."

Paul was back in the sitting room in the blink of an eye, and his head was instantly a lot clearer too. Funny how that worked. "What?"

"There's a whole extra section focusing on the festival, with loads of photies. You're in one of them." Smirking, Mike held up the insert, tauntingly moving it out of reach when Paul made a grab for it.

"Give that here," he growled, plopping back down in his chair when Mike surrendered the fight.

Sure enough, there he was, sat on the boot of that car, holding up one end of their flag with his left hand, whilst the other seemed to have disappeared behind John's back, whose arm was wrapped around Paul's middle in a rather intimate way. He and John were both laughing, but it was the adoring looks on both their faces that seemed to have caught the editor's eye, considering the caption. 'Blast from the past: in the macho Teddy Boy culture of the fifties, these lads would not have been able to show their love so openly.'

If he had to guess, Paul would think the snapshot was taken early on in the parade, when he hadn't grown tired of waving that flag yet. They'd eventually given up on that and draped it across the boot instead. The few lines underneath the photo left as little to the imagination as that image did, though it made him wonder why the girls hadn't been mentioned in the caption. They'd been much more hands-on than he and John had been, even if they were just waving to the audience in that particular shot. Still, he supposed it was good publicity for Petticoats, so Victor and Marvin wouldn't mind either way.