Read Online The Gospel of Us by Owen Sheers - Free Book Online Page A

didn’t want to come at first. But you did in the end. You came inside, you came home with me. Come on love, let’s go home is it?’
    He shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’m with my friends. I can’t leave them.’
    She bit her lip, looking hard at him, as if her sadness was becoming anger. Then she pushed that photograph she’d been carrying into his hand.
    ‘What about her? You remember her, don’t you?’
    He looked down at the photo. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, still looking at it. ‘Who is she?
    ‘She’s your daughter.’
    And there it was. The ripple. She saw it, and so did I. A flicker of another man. A man who remembered. She grabbed his arm with her other hand too, holding on.
    ‘That’s your favourite photo of her. You remember that day. Down on the beach we were. She’d just come out the sea, all wet she was, and she came running up the beach calling at you, “Daddy, daddy!” And you picked her up, and you threw her in the air. And then I took this photo. As you were drying her off. You remember that? Look at her now. Look at her.’
    And he did. Looked like I’d never seen someone look before. The whole club was still having a party, people getting back in their seats for the second half, the band warming up on stage, but he was somewhere else. He was on a beach again. A beach he remembered, drying a little girl he loved, a girl who was his daughter from a life he’d once lived.
    When he lifted his head there was nothing but sadness in his eyes. Sadness and determination.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, handing the photograph back to her. ‘I have to go now.’
    But she wasn’t going to let him off that easy. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘No, you keep it. You keep it now.’
    And then it was her who left him. Left him standing there in the middle of the dance floor, staring down at that photo.
    If Kev the MC hadn’t drawn our attention to it, most of us would have missed what happened next. I’d gone back to the bar. Word had got round that The Band were on soon. Still here, still burning they were, and there was no way I was going to miss them for a second time that day.
    Kev had come on to introduce them when his eye was caught by something else.
    ‘Hey! Hey People! Look!’ he said, pointing up at the wall behind me. ‘Some bugger’s left it recording!’
    I turned round and saw he was pointing at the big screen, the one we watch Six Nations matches on. I took a step back to get a better view. It was the Teacher again, with Joanne. They’d gone intoanother room in the club and must have thought they were on their own. But they weren’t, because a cameraman from one of the TV crews must have gone in before them, then set down his camera while he went off for a piss. So now there they were, the Teacher and Joanne, being broadcast to the whole club without their knowledge.
    ‘Shhh,’ Kev said, playing it for laughs. ‘If we’re quiet, maybe we’ll see a bit of action!’
    He needn’t have shhh’d us because there was no sound on the feed. But we didn’t need sound. At least I didn’t, not to get an idea of what was happening in there.
    The Teacher was asking her something. Again and again, explaining himself to her. But whatever it was Joanne was having none of it. She looked like she did on the slip the day before, when she was strapped with explosives. Scared, tearful, shaking and shaking her head. But the Teacher wouldn’t let up. We saw him place his hands on her shoulders, saw her put her hand over her mouth, saw the tears come sliding down her cheeks. There’d been some laughingat first, but not now. The whole club was deadly quiet, watching this silent movie being played out before us.
    Eventually he must have got through to her, because her shaking head became a nodding head. Yes, she seemed to be saying. I understand. I’ll do this.
    And then he kissed her. On the cheek, long and close, like a kiss of life. Or death.
     
    Fair enough old Kev had a job on his hands to