Adventures in LovE - part 23

Harry realises WHY he allowed Joey to sell the 1000 pills he ripped off and, in doing so, has a Road to Damascus moment about wife, Amber, and daughter, Lottie

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Cover: Paradisio Publishing

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what they knew -

this:

they would always be young

would always be kids in their hearts

the girls and boys of the Blackburn warehouse parties

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Chapter 40

Harry

Three minutes later

Harry was deep in the bottle of Johnnie Red. 

He had Schubert on the sound system. He watched the two-car caravan move along Wyresdale. He took a perch on the corner of Langthwaite and Little Fell behind a farmyard building where he could see Joey’s Fiat and Gerard’s Sierra, but they couldn’t see him. 

Rewind to 15 mins ago: as soon as Harry clocked Joey point the Fiat past Williamson Park he knew they headed for the Towers. It was young lovers stuff. Harry and Amber used to go there when they were kids. He smiled at the memory and watched two starlings flit across the horizon, turning in the sun before flitting off.

He laughed at the memory. Harry and Amber. Harold Blue and Amber Blue nee Cross. They met at a Bentham Hall dance; the disco put on by the local church. It was twee, it was sweet. Amber was a vicar’s daughter; her father gave services at St John the Baptist Church, the place dated to the Domesday Book and further: once fresh love gave way to mid-life “love” the joke was they were always doomed.

Except, no. Harold felt a new feeling about himself, them.

Amber and Harry.

This routine with the Es and running around Lancaster and Morecambe in secret, like a Columbian drug magnate. He got a moment of clarity, dialled the Schubert up and heard the music differently, saw himself differently. If self-realisation is what you search for then embrace it here and now. Understand who you are, what Lottie, your beautiful daughter, and Amber, your beautiful wife, mean to you.

Connecting with a part of himself he never knew existed until now.

The revelation about the thousand pills and Joey and Nancy ripping these off. Fooling Joey about not finding them in the Fiat’s wheel-arch outside Sett End and going to Gildersome and watching Joey sell them in the warehouse. 

Harry didn’t know why he did it at the time.

He thought he was ensuring fresh material for the book – imagine writing up Joey’s E-stealing act, imagine how the reader would love to see how that went down.

But, it ran deeper. He saw this - at last. 

Saw it clearer than anything Harry ever saw before. By allowing Joey to go sell the pills, by allowing him and Nancy to do what they did, he worked karma his way. A good start on redressing the wrongs of what he did to Amber and Lottie, what he did to himself. 

Yes: let Joey and Nancy go and forget the E wholesaling graft and move on. Return himself to himself by concentrating on Amber and Lottie rather than concentrating on himself. 

He got a warm glow. The Johnnie Red helped, the warm morning helped, Schubert’s strings helped, the way he thought about it all helped. He nipped whiskey and mind-mapped more. The concern was Gerard - the Gypsy was a good man but he could not control what Gerard might do to Joey and Nancy. And: what Joey and Nancy might do to get from under Gerard.

Things like this were never over until a character like Gerard ‘Frenchy’ Toces decided.

Harry started to see the plan of how he might get Gerard to decide it was over. Over in a good way for everyone.