“Nowt good’ll come of it, mark my words,” she had growled with her back to the city. “Muck and brass our Roger, muck and brass tha’ll never split the two.”
Roger hadn’t really understood and didn’t really believe that he was meant to. His mother had always been something of a mystery; her fondness for the accumulated residue of the steel factories and her sudden demise in the middle of the frozen food aisle of Tesco’s while selecting frozen peas. It was clear to Roger that some things simply weren’t meant to be explained, just accepted, like hailstones the size of golf balls in the middle of June. Like Irene; her laugh like a constipated hyena and her amazing toes. He fidgeted, the very thought of her rousing things that had no place to be roused in the back seat of a taxi.