What about birds and booze? I says to him. I thought he drew the line at that? And fucking curse words, Barney says, and he nods his head again, all solemn, like, you forgot those, he says. Fuck Como, I says to them, I’ve had enough of him already, I says, just for a joke. Hey you, Tommy says to me, fucking cool it. Then he stands up with a fag in his mouth and rubs the suntan lotion into his bare chest. Don’t take this too far, he says to me, you’re talking to a true believer here. Never forget that. Never underestimate the power of a true believer, he says. Then Barney gets up and starts singing in this mad vibrato style, singing about fucking rain falling, and flowers growing, and prayers being heard, up above, all this stuff. He has his head thrown back and his arms outstretched in those fucking torture trunks of his. Sure, you’re murdering that, Tommy says to him, sit the fuck back down. But Barney keeps up with the singing, even as he’s backing away from Tommy, who’s rounding on him. Tommy was the singer in the group, there was no question. He could have been on the London stage. Tommy takes a run at him. He rugby-tackles Barney and he decks him. They end up wrestling each other on the ground in front of the caravan with everybody watching, the both of them screaming and laughing, but really going at it. Two boys away on their holidays for the first time ever; I mind it like it was only yesterday.

*

Another thing I mind is the sizzlers, these big massive steaks they served still sizzling on a hot plate at the canteen in the caravan park that were the side of a cow, basically, and every day for dinner we had one of these guys each and nothing else until the guy what runs it says to us, don’t you guys eat your vegetables, and Tommy says to him, I spent my childhood stealing spuds from the grocer’s, he says, from here on out it’s steaks and nothing but, big lad.

*

But Mack was right when he said that the sketch was complicated, even if he didn’t realise quite how much. Tommy’s da, it turned out, had liberated half the stash himself. He had been sitting on it the whole time and over the years he had been digging into it and selling it to local clowns and to gangland headcases and to drug dealers. Anyone, basically, with a couple of quid to run together. As soon as he hears that Mack is asking after it, he comes clean to us, has Tommy’s ma leave the room – fuck only knows what she did with herself – and this big pale leprous hand comes floating out from behind this black curtain, this black curtain like hell’s gates opening right in front of us, and he makes us shake on it and promise that we would tell nobody while we figure out what the fuck story we’re going to come up with for this one. He was Tommy’s da, after all. And family is forever.