Heaven's Promise by Paolo Hewitt

Lineker,’ is all he would say and it dawned on me, myself and I that this must be the worst bit of a father’s job, when despite all the knowledge and experience that you have gathered up over the years with which to guide and protect your own children, they refuse to listen to you but, like everyone in those teen times, would actually prefer that you were not there.
    â€˜Where are you off to now, boys?’ Marissa asked before Papa could work up a steam of head and truly go into one in the manner that I have described before.
    â€˜We are off to check some new records,’ Brother P. replied.
    â€˜Ah, that’s nice. I like music.’
    It was the smart move on my compadre’s behalf because if there was one thing guaranteed to ward off at least some of my troubled spirits it had to be my dear friend music, and so we made with the ciao’s ciao’s and headed off to The Vinyl Market, a shop I often frequent when on the prowl for new tunes.
    For a Saturday morning the shop, when we reached, was surprisingly quiet which, I have to say, was something of a bonus for it meant that I got first crack at all the new releases before my contemporaries but Dillon, the only assistant who had managed to reach his post that morning by the look of things, was about to let me down on that score.
    â€˜Delivery has been held up until this afternoon,’ he nonchalantly told myself and my companion, as he donned his headphones for a day of manning the shop’s dex, playing new tunes and old to customers, ‘apparently there’s been some trouble at the airport.’
    Now, the one thing that has to be said in Dillon’s favour, and the reason that I have time for him, is that he does not follow the suit of so many other record shop numbers and try and pull a fast one on you by playing new tunes at the highest decibel there is, thus giving a false impression of its real worth.
    Back in the days, I was forever getting home and discovering that what had just sounded so brilliant in the shop an hour before, was actually, when you played it at home, all excited up, just another run of the mill tune. Dillon didn’t deal in such bad business which is why I frequented his premises because you get a little tired of feeling duped by people with smiling faces and an eye on your pocket.
    â€˜Come back then. Nicky will be in soon and she might have some new tunes downstairs.’
    In the shop’s basement, Nicky looked after the rap and swingbeat tunes and this, incidentally, was where I first met Dillon before he was promoted upstairs, following a St. Paul like conversion to the varied delights of House music, and it was here, I had noticed over my last few visits, that more and more people had started to congregate.
    â€˜Have you heard about this club tonight over Southside?’ Dillon enquired, pulling out a tune from its wrapper.
    â€˜It’s at some gym or other. Should be good, you know.’ He picked up one of the many flyers that decorate the counter and handed it over. I scanned the card, which had a smiley face printed in the top hand corner and all the facts and figures written beneath it, and then handed it back to Dillon, which was when I noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the tight red veins on his forehead and the overall glazed nature of his face.
    To be straight, Dillon has always come on to Brother P. and I as a serious space cadet, a man not averse to tampering with his brain cells on a regular basis. His cheeks are pale and sinking, and his actual eyes, when he brushes his long brown fringe of hair out of them, have a slightly manic hunted look about them. It was no shocker, then, that Dillon was the first bod I heard talking about the drug ecstasy, an item he referred to by its street name.
    â€˜You can get ‘E’ down there, you know,’ he said, placing the tune on the dex, although such info is of no use to either myself or Brother P. as we never