The Wild Heart by David Menon Page A

to carry out his plan’.
         ‘ Fuck Irvine. I’ll see to the Judas and then do whatever Irvine wants. I mean, Derek, what the fuck have I got to lose?’
     
         Ian and Mark were in the bath together. Ian leaned back between Mark’s open legs and groaned with pleasure as Mark gently massaged his shoulders with some baby oil.
         ‘ Ooh a man could get well used to being pampered like this’ said Ian.
         ‘ Your shoulders are all hard, big man. You had a bad day?’
         ‘ You could say that’ said Ian.
         ‘ Tell me about it?’ 
         ‘ I’m a man down’ said Ian, his eyes closed, revelling in his lover’s touch. ‘ Kevin rang in sick last Tuesday morning and the others were making noises today about having to work twice as hard without him. I don’t blame them. It’s a big job we’ve got on’.
         ‘ So what are you going to do?’ Mark asked.
         ‘ I’ll have to ring him tomorrow and see when he’s coming back and depending on what he says I might have to get a casual in to cover’.
         ‘ And you don’t like doing that?’
         ‘ Well no but … you see, it’s very unusual for Kevin to be sick. I’ve never known it before to tell you the truth and he’s been with me for ten years’.
         ‘ Everybody gets sick sometime’.
         ‘ They do but … no, not Kevin’.
         ‘ Do you think he might be swinging the leg?’
         ‘ No’ said Ian, although it had crossed his mind ‘ Well, I don’t know’.
         ‘ What?’
         ‘ Just something that’s nagging away at the back of my mind about Kevin. It’s probably nothing. It’s just that he’s been acting a bit odd lately’.
         ‘ How do you mean?’
         ‘ Like he had something to hide’.
         ‘ And he’s never let you down before?’
         ‘ No. I suppose there’s always a first time’.
         ‘ Do you think he might’ve run off with another woman? You know, making a clean break and all that. People do’
         ‘ Do they?’
         ‘ Well you read about it. They even think that some people who were missing after 9/11 actually survived but walked away so that they could get out of whatever situation their life was in at the time. They think they’ve gone off somewhere else and started again with a new identity’.
         Ian felt like somebody had walked over his grave. ‘ It takes a lot of guts to do that’.
         ‘ Hey? You sound like you know’.
         ‘ Me?’ said Ian, shaken by the realisation of just how close the conversation was getting. ‘ No, I was just … well you know, thinking aloud’.
     
         Natalie Patterson had been brought up to be a good girl. She was always polite to ladies and gentlemen. She never left the table before her plate was clean and she always asked if she could. She always got up from her seat to let an elderly person sit down on the bus. She always respected her elders and never gave her parents any cheek. She went to Sunday school and was a member of the school choir. She could’ve been a professional singer. Her music teacher said her voice had the sort of range he’d rarely heard before and he’d been desperate for her to develop her talent. But that wasn’t going to happen. Her Uncle put paid to that.
         She had three younger siblings, all boys. She was especially close to the eldest one, Jack, who was only a year younger than her. She missed him so much. He was at university in Birmingham and she rang him when she could because she couldn’t let him ring her. It wasn’t allowed. Jack had been the only one who’d believed her and was still the only one who did. That made him the only one in the world she could rely on. 
         Natalie and her brothers grew up in North Down, the wealthiest part of Northern Ireland and known as being divided between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-yachts’. Their father