My Name Is Leon

by Kit de Waal

‘I don’t know what it is about you, Carol. Even with snot on your face you’re a proper beautiful bird but you’ve got a brain like a rusty motor.’

Lots and lots of words, most of them bad, come into his mouth and Leon has to swallow them down as usual.

So he sits close to his mum because he belongs to her and she belongs to him.

‘Are you from America?’ Leon asks. ‘I’ve been called some bad things in my time. That’s one of the worst. I am an Irishman, child.

‘Just you and me, Mo.’

And, deep in his brain, he can hear something screaming and wailing, the new realization that Maureen is just like everyone else.

He can feel the fear in the air, between him and the two men. Between him and the rest of the world.