Monkey Wrench by Liza Cody

cheesed off with people the last person you want to see is my ma.
    So I turned round and went home to Ramses and Lineker. They may not like me much but at least I know where I am with them. And they do what I tell them, if I shout loud enough, which is more than you can say for friggin’ people. Like those five slags and Crystal when they tottered into my gym all tiddly and turned the place arse over elbow. Not understanding or caring how my gym works.
    â€˜Right,’ I shouted at Ramses. ‘You sit there and shut up.’ And I fetched his brush and started to shine him up. I worked on his coat starting at the neck, brushing his hair up the wrong way, inspecting the parting of bluish skin, searching for scabs and fleas. Then, starting at the tail, if he’d had a tail, I brushed all the hair flat again, bit by bit, along all his hard muscles. Afterwards I washed his face and ears with a wet cloth getting into all the folds and crannies of his massive ugly head, feeling that stony scar around his neck, and feeling, all the while, his stony little eyes on me. He sat absolutely still, but he watched me, and while I was searching him for fleas, he was searching me for weakness. He’s waiting, always waiting, for a time when I’m not ready for him.
    He’ll die waiting, because I’m always fucking ready.
    And then Lineker, slimmer, faster, with his long lean snout and his short hard coat which shines up like the paint work on a brand new motor. ‘Keep still, shark face,’ I growled, because he’s not like Ramses. He’s got a smaller head and a smaller brain and he doesn’t concentrate like Ramses does. But he polishes up lovely.
    They are the tools of my trade, those two, and anyone’ll tell you, you got to keep the tools of your trade in good nick. Ramses and Lineker are in fighting nick. And so am I.
    â€˜But only as long as you stay ready,’ Ramses said, in my head, watching me with his stony little eyes.
    Now, the thing about elbows is that when they are hurt they really hurt. My elbow had swollen up again. It must have been the weights. I hadn’t noticed at the time, but now I did.
    In the Static I put some water on to heat. First, I made tea because you have to get your priorities right in this life. Then I sat down, resting my elbow in a bowl of hot water, and studied the bruising where Gypsy Jo hammered on me with her feet.
    â€˜Hot water,’ Harsh says. ‘You want all the veins and capillaries to open wide. You want increased circulation. You want your blood to feed an injury. You want your blood to take away the poisons.’
    Which made me think about Dawn who was kicked to death. It’d take more than a bowl of hot water to tweak up her circulation now.
    One time, my ma took a bit of a kicking, and she had black and blue all up her legs. So she limped away to the off-licence for a couple of bottles to ease her pain and soothe her freaky boyfriend. Only when she got home the boyfriend had scarpered so she sat down and eased her pain all by herself. But while she drank she smoked, and while she smoked she drank. Things being how they are with smoking and drinking, the time soon came when she nodded off and dropped her ciggy down the side of the sofa, where it continued to smoulder. The ciggy smouldered, and then the sofa smouldered, and the cushion smouldered. And very soon my ma’s frock started to smoulder too.
    How do I know this? Well, I smelled it. That’s how. From inside the cupboard under the stairs, which is where my ma used to put my sister and me whenever she wanted to fuck or fight or both. She put us in the cupboard under the stairs and turned the key in the lock and did whatever it was she didn’t want us to see.
    It was dark in the cupboard. They don’t build windows in cupboards. We didn’t know what time it was. We’d been in there a long time. Simone was asleep. She always used to sleep aftershe’d