January (2 page)

Kitkat suddenly realised that Chris had been speaking for a while. ‘. . . Clarkey made a fortune by selling this crate of fireworks he got off some bloke. I got the biggest one –
it’s called the Bucking Bronco. Absolute monster. I’m saving it.’

‘What for?’ Kitkat answered without thinking. He was on autopilot, reaching for his bag of food.

‘Dunno, I’ll let it off when people least expect it.’

Kitkat put the brown paper bag on his lap. ‘How about during the daytime? They wouldn’t expect it then.’

‘Hmm . . . good thinking.’

It
wasn’t
good thinking, it was supposed to be a joke, but Kitkat should’ve known that Chris didn’t have an ear for such things. He wondered if he should point out that
he was only kidding but instead unruffled the top of the bag. The vague glow of the street lights barely pierced the darkness inside the car. Kitkat reached into the bag expecting his fingers to
settle on his chicken burger but, instead, there was a carrier bag. He pulled it out, fingers gripping the contents inside.

‘Whatcha got?’ Chris asked.

Kitkat didn’t reply, eyes searching through the gloom as he reached inside the bag and emerged with a wad of notes. The money was rolled tightly into a circle, bound together by an elastic
band. He ran his fingers along the textured surface of the cash, mind battling with confusion.

‘Whoa,’ Chris said, reaching across and taking the bag from Kitkat’s lap. Before he could protest, Chris had delved inside and removed four further bundles of money. One of the
elastic bands pinged into the windscreen, sending the notes cascading into Chris’s bucket of chicken. Kitkat snatched the bag back, tipping it upside down and emptying more rolls of money
into his lap. Chris was fumbling to separate the cash from his food, grease-stained fingers slathering across the sprinkling of ten-and twenty-pound notes. Kitkat said nothing, counting the bundles
back into the bag. There were sixteen, plus the four Chris had taken. He held onto one and unwrapped the band gently, unfurling the notes.

Chris was trying to re-bundle the money, the excitement clear in his voice: ‘Did all this come from TFC?’

Kitkat counted the notes onto his knee. There was a mixture of tens and twenties, some crumpled, some crisp. Chris finally went quiet as Kitkat tallied them out loud and then repeated himself
until he was certain he had two hundred and fifty quid’s worth.

‘Wow,’ Chris said, trying to count on his fingers, ‘we’ve got, what, a hundred grand . . . ?’

‘Five thousand,’ Kitkat corrected him. He dropped the wad of money into the carrier bag and held it out towards Chris.

‘What?’ the other man said.

‘Put the money back.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s not ours.’

Chris scowled, scrabbling on his lap before dropping the money back inside the bag. Kitkat scrunched it down and put it back underneath his legs on the floor. There was an awkward silence,
punctuated only by Chris clucking his tongue into the top of his mouth.

Kitkat took a breath, the stink of fast food hitting the back of his throat and making him feel slightly sick. ‘They must’ve given us the takings by accident,’ he said, not
really believing it.

‘Do you reckon anyone noticed?’

Kitkat breathed deeply a second time, already thinking himself out of his own idea. There was no way a fast-food chain kept their takings in a carrier bag concealed within a brown paper bag.
Plus there were too many big notes. From what he’d seen, there were no fivers and definitely no coins. Plus, five thousand was a precise amount; no business would take such an exact figure
over the course of a day. This was something else.

Chris was talking so quickly that his words blended into one: ‘Clarkey’s got this mate who’s selling a go-kart. Not one of those little ones, a proper racing thing. He was
talking about buying it so he could enter the national championships. Reckoned that’s where F1 scouts find their drivers. We could spend the money on that . . .’

Kitkat thought about the way the spiky-haired server at the drive-thru had looked at him. There’d been something there, as if he
meant
to give Kitkat the money.

Except that they didn’t know each other.

Was it mistaken identity? Did Kitkat look like another person to whom the money actually belonged? And, if so, what sort of dodgy business was going on where he would be collecting five grand
from a drive-thru window at midnight?

‘What shall we do with it?’ Chris asked.

Kitkat finally turned to face his passenger.
‘We?’

There was a smear of yellowy-brown grease around Chris’s mouth. ‘Yeah, er . . .’

‘
I
don’t know what
I’m
going to do with it yet. I’ll probably return it.’

Chris seemed outraged by the idea: ‘What if it’s like a Happy Meal thing?’

‘What, instead of a toy with your meal, you get five grand in used notes?’

Chris shrugged. ‘I dunno . . . maybe. You can’t return it, though. It’s not as if anyone’s going to miss it.’

‘You don’t think someone’s going to miss five thousand?’

‘Er . . .’ Chris returned to his bucket of chicken, adding: ‘I’m only saying, like . . .’

Kitkat’s fingers hovered on the key in the ignition. He could return to the fast-food place and give the bag back to the server who’d given it to him and yet . . .

‘I’m going to hang onto it,’ Kitkat said, removing the keys.

Chris nodded enthusiastically. ‘P’raps we can meet up for a beer tomorrow and decide what to do with it? I’ll have a word with Clarkey and . . .’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t talk to anyone about it. Not your brother or your mum and
definitely
not Clarkey or your other mates.’

‘All right, all right . . .’ Chris reached for the door handle, spreading a smear of grease across the plastic. ‘I’ll text you, yeah, and we’ll sort something
out?’

Kitkat grasped the bag and leant against the headrest.

‘Yeah . . .’

The flat was empty as Kitkat pushed his front door closed and headed along the hallway. If his dad had been home he’d have been snoring in front of the television, but
the only sound was the vague echo of fireworks farting into the air on the next estate over. Kitkat leant against the doorframe of the living room peering into the darkness, wondering in which
boozer his father had ended up celebrating the new year.

As if it mattered.

He turned and edged towards his bedroom, peering cautiously towards the kitchen beyond just in case his dad was home. With no sign of movement, he entered his room and sat on the bed, running
through the events of the evening. The carrier bag weighed heavily in his hands.

Five grand.

It was definitely somebody else’s money but, through whatever twist of fate, it had ended up in his hands. He’d been without a job since leaving school, bumming around the estate and
doing odd jobs here and there. The last thing he wanted was to end up like Chris Green, nicking lead from roofs and fantasising over get-rich schemes that’d never come off. He wanted a proper
job, something that would earn him money to get out of living with his dad on this hellhole estate. Now he had five thousand, enough to get his own flat somewhere nicer. Enough to buy a suit or
something else he could use for interviews. If Chris had ended up with the money, it’d be gone on mad plots hatched with his idiot mate, Clarkey. Kitkat wasn’t stupid. If he was going
to keep the money –
if
– he was going to do something sensible with it.

He peered into the carrier bag at the rolled-up bundles of notes and then reached underneath his bed, hauling out his old school rucksack and emptying the cash into it. As he stifled a yawn,
Kitkat stuffed the pack into the space between his bed and the simmering radiator. He sat staring at the crumpled bag, possibilities and consequences filling his mind before a cavalcade of
eye-watering yawns replaced them.

Whatever he decided to do, it was going to have to wait until morning.

Kitkat was woken by the throbbing of the stump where his finger used to be. It was always like this when he spent any amount of time in the cold. He always felt ridiculous
wearing gloves with one flapping finger, so he wore none and pretended he didn’t feel the chill. If he’d known how to use a needle and thread, he’d have customised a pair of
woollen gloves but, instead, the biting Manchester winters were left to blitz his missing digit.

He pushed himself up in bed, hearing a clatter from the kitchen as he rubbed at the space between his little finger and middle one. It took a moment for the cloud of sleep to clear but then he
remembered the money. There was five thousand pounds lying a few centimetres from his head, waiting to be returned.

Or spent.

Kitkat yawned, glancing at the bag that was stuffed where he’d left it. He headed into the hallway with a stretch and another yawn, then tried to click his bedroom door closed quietly. The
creak of the floorboards gave him away. The kitchen door was open and his father turned away from the cooker, thrusting a spatula in the air. Given that he would have been in the pub until the
early hours, Kitkat’s dad looked surprisingly alert. He was dressed and shaven, his short greying hair glistening from a recent shower. He offered a chirpy wink.

‘Happy New Year! What did you get up to?’

Kitkat swallowed a yawn and shrugged. ‘Not much.’ He turned in a circle, glancing towards the front door. It was locked, the chain in place, nothing smashed. If whoever the money
belonged to knew he had it, they’d not come knocking.

‘I’m doing fried potatoes and tomatoes if you want some?’

The memory of Chris’s chicken made Kitkat’s stomach turn. The last thing he wanted was food. ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘Eleven. I figured I’d let you sleep. Do you want something to eat?’

‘Not really.’

Kitkat mumbled something apologetic and headed for the bathroom. It smelled of shower gel and the walls were speckled with condensation. He sat on the toilet with his eyes closed, listening to
the sound of the cooker. The flat’s walls were so thin that they offered next to no privacy from room to room. That was another reason to use the money wisely and get his own place. If he did
ever get a girlfriend, he could hardly bring her back here.

After flushing, Kitkat hurried across the hall to his bedroom, scooping up his phone from the floor where it had been charging. He had three text messages, all predictably from Chris and along
the same lines.

‘Lunch at HH?’

‘Meet @ 1?’

‘HH yeh?’

The Hare and Hound was the pub closest to where they lived. It was an utter hole and had been shut down twice in the previous eighteen months because of drug-dealing landlords. Somehow it kept
reopening in a slightly lower state of repair than when it had closed. There was barely an evening that passed without someone trying to kick off, yet the prices kept the locals returning.
Unsurprisingly, it was Chris’s boozer of choice. He was drawn to trouble like a Member of Parliament to an expenses form.

As Kitkat stared at his phone, wondering how to reply, it buzzed again.

‘Shall I invite Clarkey?’

Kitkat thumbed the screen, angrily tapping out the message. ‘NO CLARKEY – CU at 1
.
’

If Chris was a liability, then his mate, Clarkey, was a bigger one. Together, they were a walking disaster zone. The last thing Kitkat wanted was the pair of them plotting how best to spend five
thousand pounds.

Kitkat put on his jeans and hoody from the previous evening, peered at the money that was bundled in the bottom of his backpack, and then looped the straps over his shoulders. He peeped around
the kitchen door to where his father was sitting at the dining table, leafing through the racing pages of a red-top as he picked at the mound of potato, sausage and tomato on his plate.

‘You off out?’ Kitkat’s father asked.

‘For a bit.’

His dad nodded towards the stove. ‘There are a couple of sausages going if you want any.’

Kitkat shook his head. ‘Maybe later.’

The slop of the mud ate into what was left of the grass on the courtyard outside Kitkat’s flat. The sagging Christmas tree in the centre was leaning even further to the
side, hours away from toppling over entirely. Aside from a distant hum of traffic, everything was silent as a fluttering supermarket carrier bag drifted on the breeze, before entangling itself with
the tree’s branches like the cheapest of decorations. Everyone had got so lashed the previous evening that no one was likely to emerge before lunch.

Kitkat bustled along the row of flats, heading to the parking spaces, where his car remained untouched. The front was rimmed by crusty brown rust that was slowly beginning to overtake green as
the vehicle’s main colour. It was a good job he knew the bloke who did the MOT, else there was no way it would have passed. Kitkat peered through the windows, wondering if anyone had left him
a message asking for the money back, but there was nothing other than the smears of grease across the passenger seat and dashboard.

Chris Sodding Bastarding Arseholing Green.

With an hour and a half to kill before he went to the Hare and Hound, Kitkat had only one destination in mind. He thrust his hands into his pockets and set off, pacing sharply along the frosty,
crumbling pavements in the vague direction of Manchester city centre. The wind was bitter, slicing through the material of his clothes and boring into his stump. He wrapped his remaining fingers
around the gap, squeezing tightly and trying to pretend it wasn’t hurting.

Soon, Kitkat crossed the Bridgewater Canal and then the River Irwell, barely seeing a soul until he reached the outskirts of the retail park. The red, white and blue lights still blazed from the
Tennessee Fried Chicken restaurant as they had probably done all night. He pressed the button at the pedestrian crossing, but headed across without waiting for the green man to flash. There was no
traffic anyway.

He wasn’t sure what he expected – there was hardly going to be a ‘Where’s our money?’ sign in the front window – but it was as if nothing had happened. Kitkat
watched through the large panes at the front as the uniformed staff bustled behind the counter. There were three vehicles in the car park and a dozen or so people inside, but no sign of the server
from the previous night – though it would have been quite the shift length if he was still on. No police, no signs, nothing. All was normal. Happy New Year: here’s five grand.