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As his older brother, I felt so Plus, I’d just wrapped a Viking show filmed in the Wicklow Mountains and was between jobs, so I had a few months to spare

Aunt Tricia,our mother’s loss as best as we could Our other brothers had their own lives to live Patrick enty and lived in Israel at a Kibbutz Noel, three years younger than me, had moved into a flat with his friends in the city center, and Jim and Liaraduated university and spent tooto worry about Eoin

“What’s up, Eoin?” I asked hi in like this

“I got a phone call about Da I knohere he is”

“Wonderful,” I said, without enthusiasm

I should have known

Our dad would never be accused of being a good parent Originally from Scotland, he seeuides, drinking, shooting up, and shagging anything he could find

It was a wonder he had lived as long as he had, leading er was indestructible

“You’re not co

“Don’t see a need Da is old enough to look after himself He’ll never learn to stand on his oo feet, stu hi”

“But—”

I could tell he was going to cry Eoin had just turned eighteen, but he was still my little brother, and with the state our father had been in uardian this whole time

I suspected he saw me as more of a dad than the man who actually fathered him

Our h hell at the hands of our father, was a shell of herself by the tiy to raise him

I rubbed my hands up and down my face

“You really want to go get him, don’t you?”

“I do,” he said, nodding, the tears already beginning to flow

“Co my phone and car keys

My reluctance to go looking for our father was at least partly a matter of self-preservation The Troubles – that period of constant conflict in Northern Ireland – were long over, at least in our neck of the woods, but, like all major cities, there were soht, and we just happened to occupy one

Andersonstown, or Andytown, as it was known locally, was a suburb in west Belfast that was located at the foot of the Black Mountain It was largely a working-class area filled with good people, but it was also a bastion for junkies and petty criht

Most local boys got their first scars by the time they were twelve My brothers and I were no exception Our aunt Tricia and our mother had tended to more than a few black eyes, busted lips, and stab wounds over the years