No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (the best electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

‘Of course not,’ said Max, and shrugged him off.

‘Maxine?’

‘It’s Maxwell. It’s my grandmother’s maiden name.’

Finn hooted. ‘Ooh, classic! A maiden name for our fair maiden!’

‘Okay, Max, let’s get a table,’ said Bram, and scooped up the crisp packets. ‘How about that one by the wall over there?’ A small table with only three seats.

‘Mind if we join you?’ said Finn.

‘Oh, not at all, son,’ said David heartily. ‘It’s my idea of a grand night out, babysitting a bunch of wee pricks with delusions of fucking adequacy.’ And as he left them in his wake, David shot a look at Bram, as if to say Watch and learn, Bram, watch and learn.

The kids gravitated to the open smokers’ door, and David started talking about his time on ‘the rigs’, when, as a young man, he’d worked on the North Sea oil rigs and made a packet of money with which to start up his building firm.

‘Health and safety in those days wasn’t the best, but this guy Steve, he was all about health and safety, never went anywhere without his hard hat, not even to the toilet. It was a standing joke with the lads, and he used to get ribbed about it all the time.’

Max was nodding along, smiling, knowing something good was coming.

‘This one day, Steve’s standing right under the heavy-lift crane boom when out of nowhere, bang! It drops to the platform – ten tonnes of steel falling from a height of eighty metres. Metal fatigue. The lad never stood a chance. When we got it off him he was strawberry jam with a yellow hard hat floating on top. Hard hat was intact, like.’ David chuckled.

Max’s smile was frozen in place. Then he gave a small chuckle just like David’s.

‘What a terrible thing to happen,’ Bram managed. ‘No wonder you’re so health and safety conscious on your building sites.’

As David launched into a much more acceptable but excruciatingly dull discussion of building regs, Bram excused himself to go to the toilet. He took his time, looking at the row of old photographs in the corridor showing the Inverluie as it used to be in the early 1900s, totally charming, with some smart men in suits standing outside and a couple of beautifully dressed women in long Edwardian coats. The age of elegance. If they could only see it now.

In the gloom of the dusty corridor, it was easy to imagine the building itself in mourning for those better times. Buildings, he was sure, absorbed happiness, were imprinted with the memories of their previous inhabitants. That was one of the reasons why he never wanted to go back and see his grandparents’ house in Amsterdam. He had a feeling that something of them would still be there, that some lingering essence left behind would be aware of Bram walking along the street towards the house, only for him to walk on past. Kirsty thought this was mad, and he knew, objectively, that he was just projecting his own feelings onto the bricks and mortar. But still. He imagined Opa and Oma, waiting behind the door to welcome him, and Bram walking on past.

He hoped the people in these photos weren’t still lingering here. He patted the wall in sympathy and made his way back down the corridor, aware, now, of an increase in noise level.

He opened the door to the bar.

A cluster of young men were standing in a circle. Willie, coming out from behind the bar, shouted something at him, but the noise level was so high, with all the lads whooping and yelling, that Bram couldn’t make out the words.

And then he saw that in the middle of the circle were Finn and Max.

Max had his shirt pulled up almost over his head, and as he twisted and pushed Finn away, Bram saw that his face was bleeding. That the flesh around his left eye was starting to swell up.

‘No! No, no, no!’ Bram shouted, pushing his way through the whooping crowd.

David was standing inside the circle, shouting instructions: ‘Are you a man or a mouse, Max? Get in after him! Right on the nose, lad, right on the nose!’

Max, breathing hard, launched himself at Finn, fists flailing wildly. Finn’s head snapped back and he staggered, and David shouted, ‘Yesss!’

And Bram couldn’t help himself, internally, echo the sentiment: Yesss!

Two of the other youths caught Finn, as Bram and Willie forced their way into the circle between the two boys.

‘Out!’ Willie growled. ‘Anyone under the age of twenty, out now!’ He pointed at Finn, now hunched over dabbing at his nose, and shouted at his friends: ‘Get that wee animal out of here! He’s barred!’

Bram wanted to take Max’s face in his hands and scrutinise it – he needed to know what damage that little bastard had done – but David already had an arm around his grandson and was guiding him out of the bar. Bram followed, in time to hear Max say, ‘I got him, Grandad! I think his nose is bleeding!’ He turned, trying to look back into the bar.

‘Aye, that was a cracker, son,’ said David, slapping Max’s back, all proud grandfather.

And the worst of it was, Bram felt his own lips move in a smile. Proud father? Surely not? But he couldn’t pretend to himself that he wasn’t feeling a little warm glow of satisfaction at how pleased David was with Max. David wasn’t exactly big on positive grandparenting, and Max was lapping it up.

In the car park, Bram found himself checking over his shoulder, almost expecting a baying mob to come pounding after them. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, fishing out his car key and zapping the doors open.

‘Did you see, Dad?’ Max’s battered face was alight.

Bram could only nod. Once they were in the car with the doors locked, he twisted in his seat to look at Max. ‘Maybe we’d better take you to get checked out at A&E.’

Max laughed. ‘I’m fine. Just a few bruises.’

‘The