An extract from:

Rest in Peace, Mickey Snook

………………An uninspiring purpose built old peoples home, complete with dingy patterned brown carpets and hand rails along endless corridors. He was their first resident and Jack, a solid, rough man, rumoured to be ex-SAS, took Mickey in hand.

It was the longest period of his adult life that wasn’t scrambled with drugs or tortured by delusions.
The two of them renovated the place. Every time I drove out he showed me hen sheds he’d built, or a vegetable patch newly dug over. He and Jack spent weeks restoring a boat:
‘We’re going to sail to France.’ He said.

Mickey’s brother Sean had a reputation too. He was hard, with long greasy hair, the same dark features. He looked as if he’d emerged from examining the underside of a car. He’d done time for violent offences and had his own problems, often too paranoid to leave his flat. He promised their mother, who’d died of cancer, that he’d look after Mickey.
Sean found his duties as Mickey’s brother onerous. He once bought him, filthy and deluded, by the scruff of the neck, to the in-patient unit with the words;
‘If you don’t fucking sort him out, I’ll kill him……………………..

Kathryn Ford

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