Page 29 of Dead Serious Case 4 Professor Prometheus Plume

“What?”

“You haven’t really said much about them except they were pretty mad when you came out so publicly after Sam was attacked,” I reply. “I just want you to know you can talk to me.”

He lets out a small huff of a laugh. “It’s all a bit messy to be honest.”

I shrug. “Aren’t most families?”

“My dad’s name is Brian,” he begins, “and my mum is Shirley. They married when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two.”

“He was a coal miner, wasn’t he?” I ask. I sort of remember him mentioning it back when we first met.

He nods. “Seventh generation. My two oldest brothers joined him as soon as they turned sixteen, but it didn’t last long. When they closed the colliery and put all the miners out of work, we moved to Leeds.”

“Tell me about your siblings.” I adjust my seat belt a bit so I can turn in my seat, then tuck one leg under me.

“Well, there’s eight of us.” Danny chuckles.

“Your poor mother.” I shake my head. “It sounds crazy to me. Being an only child, I’d have loved to have had just one sibling. You have a whole… litter.”

“Believe me, it wasn’t that much fun growing up in a tiny little three-bed council house and having to share a bedroom with my three older brothers. There wasn’t a lot of money, so I always had someone else’s hand-me-downs. I learned not to be precious about possessions because nothing really belonged to me.”

“What are their names?” I ask curiously. “Your siblings.”

“Derek’s the oldest, then there’s Gareth, Euan, my sister Ellen, then Mark, Jack, and Cecelia. I’m the youngest.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” he scoffs. “You can imagine the chaos in our house. It was fun most of the time though. I didn’t really see much of my older brothers as there was quite a gap between us by the time I came along. They stuck really close to my dad, especially Derek. He’s always been Dad’s shadow. Ellen, my oldest sister, was always prickly and stuck to herself, so I was closer to Mark and Jack, but most of all to Cecelia, who I always called Leigh.”

“I’m glad you had someone to be close to.” I smile warmly. “What’s she like?”

“Leigh?”

“Yeah.”

“Funny, kind. There’s a real warmth to her. She’s fierce when it comes to the ones she loves. She punched more than one kid for teasing me when I first started school.”

“You got teased?”

“Yeah,” he snorts. “I was that awkward, gangly kid with arms and legs too long for his body. My hair was like a haystack most of the time and I had a hideous overbite and wonky front teeth before I got my braces.”

“Oh my god, I so badly need to see pictures of baby Danny.”

He chuckles again and shakes his head, sobering slightly. “I don’t have any. My parents have the photos of us as kids.”

“So Leigh was your favourite, huh?”

“She was the black sheep of the family for a while until I stole her crown.”

“Ah, a couple of misfits. No wonder you got on so well. Was she a bit of a rebel?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Not even slightly. She was sweet and well behaved, got good grades at school.”

“How come she reached black sheep status then?” I ask curiously.

“She accidentally got pregnant at sixteen,” he says with a sigh. “I can still remember the night my parents found out. Of course Derek had to have his say, backed up as usual by Gareth and Euan. They all ganged up on her, like it was all her fault. She told me later that it was just a boy she’d liked. They were both virgins and the whole thing was just awkward fumbling, but with the way Dad and our brothers went on, you’d have thought she’d slept her way across Yorkshire.”

“That’s awful.” I frown. “What happened to her and the baby?”