Chapter Text
Liam had been sat at the kitchen table looking at the same phone number for twenty minutes. Every so often the phone screen would dim, and he’d tap to brighten it again. Sometimes he’d take a sip of his tea, although it was going cold faster than he was drinking it.
Filthy weather out. Dark like the end of days—or at least the end of this one, though it was only just half three—and absolutely pouring down. Best kind of day for staying in, having a drink, watching something mad on Netflix, having another drink. That was Debbie’s plan once she finished rattling about the kitchen, and his, too. Not a day for excitement or adventures, no. Not a day to expect your life to turn a corner.
Then again, maybe what he hoped would happen next was only possible at the end of days.
The phone rang twice, plenty long enough for Liam to imagine it going to voicemail. Didn’t matter whether he left a message or not; either way he’d find the number failed to connect the next time he tried. It’d happened before, only he’d promised Mam even more earnestly this time around that he’d save the number only for emergencies.
This was an emergency, wasn’t it? Just not his. Mam might even agree.
“Hello,” said Noel, low and gruff.
It was a voice that had every expectation of being disappointed, and Liam wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t. “Hiya, Noel.”
Noel’s sigh was audible over the phone: the quick, sharp inhale and the soft exhale. Instead of hanging up as he’d done the one other time Liam had got this far—years ago, back when Beady Eye was still in business and Liam had been flying high, or high enough anyway, and all he’d really wanted was to hear his brother’s voice—instead of that, Noel said, “I suppose Mam told you the news. You called to gloat, then?”
There’d been some gloating, sure. Noel and the witch were no more? Liam had gloated a whole five minutes, joy growing big and bright like a bubble inside his chest and then popping all at once, because it was a grim, gray day, and now Noel was alone.
“Called to say hello,” Liam said.
“I’m sure,” Noel said. He didn’t end the call, though. He didn’t ask how Liam had got his number yet again. He didn’t say anything at all.
“How’re the kids?”
Noel scoffed. “You haven’t called to ask about my fucking kids.”
“It’s pissing down over here,” Liam said. “Ain’t fit for man nor monkey. It raining where you are?”
“Yes, I am also in London, congratulations on cunningly sleuthing my location,” Noel said.
“Not weather to be alone in, man. You should come over.”
“Just like that,” said Noel mildly, which Liam knew better than to trust. “I’m a free man now, so you figure we might as well pick up right—right where we left off.”
Liam’s pulse picked up, at any rate—not so much at the words themselves as at the funny wobble in Noel’s voice. None of that, now. “Nah, man. Debbie’s here. I reckon she’ll keep the fisticuffs to a minimum.” Noel hadn’t been talking about a fight, but that was easier to think about than the other thing. “Won’t you, love?”
Debbie, who’d spent the last half hour not asking him what he was staring at on his phone and the last two minutes very conspicuously not listening in, looked up from the sink. “What’s that?”
“My brother wants to come over. I told him you’d keep the peace.”
Debbie’s eyebrows rose. “Your brother.”
“Not Paul, the other one. The little one,” Liam added for Noel’s benefit, before he could think better of it. Shit. Very delicate negotiation, this. Every word another step on the high wire, and any moment a stray breeze might send him toppling. “So you’re coming over, right,” he told Noel. “Have a drink with us, yeah? Meet the cats.”
“Meet your cats,” Noel repeated in mild disbelief, but he didn’t say no. For a few moments there they sat, two old geezers on opposite ends of a mobile signal, listening to that weird staticky silence of no one saying anything. At last, Noel broke it. “Another time.”
“Right. Sure.” No more than Liam had expected. That’s what he told himself. “Probably busy with all your—” Liam paused, reaching for something that’d be funny but not ruffle Noel’s feathers, something true but not sharp, something that—well, that likely didn’t exist. “—with your lawyers,” he finished weakly.
“Christ, don’t fucking remind me.”
After another pause—what felt like a long one, waiting for Noel to hang up at any moment—Liam said, “So, you going to tell me about the kids or what? What’s Anais up to these days?”
There was a funny little laugh at the other end of the line, barely more than a breath. A thousand of those laughs, Liam had heard over the years; twenty thousand, maybe. Lots of them he’d felt the heat of, directly on his bare skin. “Who fucking knows,” Noel said. “She’s told me ten times, but I can’t figure it out. Putting your picture on the internet for money, how fucking dodgy is that? I don’t fucking care if you’ve got all your clothes on.”
“Kids these days,” Liam said sagely. He settled back in his chair and sipped on his cold tea, and he let Noel’s voice wash over him like waves on the beach: a sound so ever-present all the years of his life that he couldn’t have imagined missing it until it was gone.