by Linda Green
‘You’re not giving me any choice.’
‘I can’t believe you’re actually going to go through with this. Not after what happened on Wednesday. You saw how upset he was.’
‘I don’t want to do it, Hannah. I’m still hoping you’ll see sense and change your mind.’
‘What and be blackmailed by you into sending our son to do his SATs against his will, in a school where he clearly isn’t safe.’
I have heard about blackmail before and I know it’s serious. You can get sent to prison for it. I am still mad at Dad for all of this, but I don’t think I want him to go to prison.
‘You’re twisting things again, Hannah.’
‘I don’t think so. Finn told me today that the only way the bullying will stop is if he starts acting like the rest of them.’
‘Well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘It’s a survival tactic, that’s all. You won’t let him hit them back, so maybe if he blended in a bit more, they’d leave him alone.’
Mum does something that sounds like a cross between a laugh and a snort.
‘So basically, you’re forcing me to choose between watching my son disappear to save himself being bullied at school, or having you tell the court I’m an unfit mother so you can take him away from me permanently.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’
‘Am I? I don’t think so.’
There is a silence for a moment. I imagine Mum standing there trying not to cry. I want to go out there and give her a hug but I think it will make things worse if they realise I have been listening to all of this, so I just stay quiet. When Mum finally speaks, her voice is so soft, I can barely hear it.
‘I don’t understand how you could do this to him,’ she says. ‘How the man I married could do this to our precious boy.’
There is a noise that sounds a bit like a dog whimpering, then I hear footsteps across the tiles in the hall and above me up the stairs (the downstairs loo used to be a cupboard under the stairs, like the one Harry Potter lived in, but they had it turned into a toilet when we moved here). I stay in the toilet for a long time before I flush and creep back upstairs.
*
When Mum calls me down for tea, our plates have been put on trays and she tells me I can take it through to the front room and watch TV. I am never usually allowed to sit on the sofa and eat my tea while watching TV (it’s another thing that makes me weird, as all the other kids at school do it, even Lottie).
I want to give Mum a hug, but her face makes me think she might break in half if I do that.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask instead.
‘He’s in the study. He’s got some work to do. He’s already had his.’
I know this is a lie, but I nod anyway, pick up my tray and follow her through to the living room.
‘Can we watch Love Your Garden?’ I ask. We have this week’s episode recorded and I haven’t seen it yet.
She nods and does a little smile. We sit down and I pick up the remote and put the TV on. As soon as I see Alan Titchmarsh, I feel a bit better. I hope Mum does too. Alan Titchmarsh is better than antiseptic when you’re hurt, because he doesn’t even sting when you put him on. We eat our tea in silence while watching. My favourite bit is where they build a little bridge over the pond. At the end, when the old lady who nursed her husband until he died and now spends all her time helping others opens her eyes and sees the garden, she bursts into tears and can’t speak. When I glance at Mum, she is crying too.
‘It’s a lovely garden, isn’t it?’ I say, stroking her on the soft bit on her arm.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It is.’
*
I wait until Mum is having a bath later and I can hear Dad watching the news on TV before creeping into the kitchen. Mum’s bag is still exactly where she left it when we came in from school. I stick my hand in and find the letter straight away. I don’t understand why grown-ups are so rubbish at hiding things. They are the same with Christmas presents. Nearly everyone in my class finds their presents before Christmas Day because their mum or dad hide them in the same place every year. Even squirrels know to hide their acorns in different places to stop them getting found. Humans ought to be ruled by squirrels really, because they know more about hiding things. I think I would like to live in the world ruled by squirrels because, unlike grown-ups, I am good at hiding things.
I take out the letter and lay it on the kitchen table to read it. There are a lot of long words that I don’t understand, and it keeps mentioning Child Arrangement Orders and then says, ‘I have been informed by your husband’s solicitor that his client will be applying for full residency and for a Prohibited Steps Order to prevent you from making future decisions relating to the child’s education without his consent.’
He is actually going to do this. He is going to ask the court for me to live with him all the time, even though I told him I didn’t want to. I don’t understand why Dad is doing this because he has a proper job in an office in Leeds, so he can’t look after me all the time and, even if he could, I don’t think he would be very good at it because he doesn’t know how to have fun like Mum does and he doesn’t know where everything is.
And then I get to the end of the letter and I see it. The thing that must have upset Mum earlier. A date for the divorce proceedings to be heard. Thursday 18 July. We have PE on Thursdays. I’ve always said it’s a bad day.
I still have the letter in my hand when Dad comes into the kitchen. I look up at him, he looks down at his feet.
‘I said I don’t want to live with you,’ I say.
‘Finn, please, let me try to explain,’ says Dad, stepping towards me.
‘There’s nothing to explain. You just need to stop it and stop making Mum cry and go back to having happy voices again.’
Dad shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid it’s not that easy,’ he says.
‘Well you tell me that when things aren’t easy, you just have to try harder.’
Dad’s face looks like I’ve stood on his toe and it really hurt. I am not going to say sorry though, because I meant it. I drop the letter on the table and run upstairs.
When I get to my room, I get out Alan Titchmarsh’s book on perennials and start reading. It is hard to concentrate, though, and when I am on page twelve, I hear the water draining out of the bath. I don’t want to tell Mum that I read the letter and what I said to Dad, because I think she is sad enough already and that is why she had a very long bath. I have a bath twice a week to keep clean and because Mum tells me to. Mum has a shower every day, but she still has very long baths sometimes and no one tells her to, and I don’t think she does it to keep clean. I think she has one when she is sad because when she comes out, she always smells of the oils that she uses to try to make people happy. I don’t think they last very long, though, otherwise, she wouldn’t need so many baths.
*
I wake up. It is dark. I wonder for a second if Mum’s crying has woken me again, but it is perfectly quiet. A moment later I realise that I woke up because I feel sick. Worse than that, I am actually going to be sick. I sit up in bed and my feet somehow find my slippers in the dark. I stand up and start to hurry to the bathroom. I’ve only got as far as the landing when the vomit overtakes my legs. I throw up right outside the spare room. It is still coming out of my mouth when Mum opens her door.
‘Oh, Finn, love,’ she says. She puts her arms round me, even though I am covered in sick. I start crying. I hate the taste of sick in my mouth. I hate even thinking about the way it has come up through my body. And most of all I hate it in my hair. And somehow it is in my hair, even though I was sick downwards, not upwards. It’s like vomit hasn’t learnt the laws of gravity.
‘Let’s go and get you cleaned up,’ Mum says. She says it in her mum voice. The warm and gentle one that is like the
softest towel wrapping itself round you. She leads me to the bathroom, unbuttons my pyjama top and peels it off. Some of the sick nearly falls off but she catches it with her hand. I don’t know how mums can do things like that and not mind. I could never be a mum. I would run away screaming if my kid was sick. She lets me hold her shoulders while I step out of my pyjama bottoms and she puts them in the bath with the top.
She runs some water into the beaker on the sink and hands it to me.
‘Swish your mouth out with this,’ she says.
I do it and spit into the sink. She hands me my toothbrush with the toothpaste already on it. I brush hard and spit and repeat until I can’t taste it any longer.
‘It’s in my hair,’ I say, with a little sob. ‘I can feel it in my hair.’
‘I know, that’s why we’re going to give you a very quick shower,’ she says. I don’t know why she is saying we because Dad isn’t here. Dad has never cleaned up my sick as far as I can remember. I have no idea what will happen if I am sick when I am living with him. Maybe I will have to clean myself up.
Mum turns the shower on and gets it to the right temperature and I step inside. I’ve been showering on my own since I was nine, but Mum doesn’t move, and I don’t protest. She keeps the door open a little and takes the shower attachment and rinses all the sick out of my hair first, before putting it back on the wall. Then she takes the shampoo bottle and squirts some into her hand and starts lathering it on my head. It feels nice, the way her fingers massage my scalp. I shut my eyes, partly to keep the shampoo out and partly because it’s nice to think about nothing else apart from Mum massaging my head. I think I can hear her singing and humming while she is doing it but when I open my eyes for a second, I see that she is not singing or humming, so it must just have been a memory. A nice one, though.
When she has finished and has rinsed it off, I step out the shower and she wraps me in a soft towel. I don’t have to do anything; she rubs me dry, like a human version of one of those drying machines you can pay for at the swimming pool.
‘There,’ she says, when she has finished. ‘We’ll give your hair a quick whizz with the dryer, then we’ll get you to bed.’
She guides me around the sick on the landing and back into my room. She hands me the hairdryer while she gets some clean pyjamas out for me. I step into the trousers, suddenly feeling sleepy again, and she buttons up the top for me, turns back the duvet and lays it down over me once I’m inside.
‘I want you to get back to sleep now,’ she says, sitting on the edge of the bed and stroking my head.
‘I don’t want to live with Dad,’ I say.
‘You won’t have to. I won’t let that happen.’
‘Have you secretly been learning kick-boxing?’ I ask.
Mum does a little smile. ‘No but I’m going to sort it all out. I’ve got a plan, and everything will be fine. I love you.’
She kisses me on the forehead, turns off my light and shuts the door quietly behind her. I lie there, warm and clean and tired, and listen to the sound of her crying softly to herself as she scrubs the carpet on the landing. Wondering what her plan might be and hoping it doesn’t involve yoga.
BEFORE 10
10
Kaz
When I arrive at the psychiatric unit the next morning, I’m told that Terry’s been taken to Nightingale ward. It means he’s not in a good way, I know that. He’s been in there every other time when he’s first been admitted. You don’t go home from Nightingale or Swallow, though. You have to be well enough to be in Kingfisher or Goldfinch before they’ll consider letting you out.
Terry looks like he hasn’t had any sleep either when they show me to his room. He is sitting in the chair next to the bed and looks to have aged about ten years overnight. I try to give him a reassuring smile, but he stares straight through me.
‘Hello, love,’ I say, putting the holdall down on the floor. ‘I’ve brought you some more clothes as I didn’t have time to grab much last night.’
Terry looks at the bag then back at me.
‘I can’t find my torch,’ he says.
‘I know. Police are looking after it for you.’
‘I want it back. I need to keep checking.’
‘I’ll bring it back when they’re finished with it,’ I reply.
‘Are you working for them now?’ he asks.
I sigh. I know I need to keep him onside but it’s not easy.
I walk over to the window. ‘At least you’ve got a better view, this time,’ I say, looking out at the square of grass and flower borders below.
‘I liked looking at car park,’ says Terry.
I manage a smile. The boy who could name pretty much any vehicle he saw had never got tired of looking at cars. I turn back to Terry.
‘When you see doctor later, you need to tell them about how you’ve been feeling.’
‘How have I been feeling?’ asks Terry.
I sigh and walk back over to him. ‘You’ve got in a bit of a state. About rats and that.’
‘Screaming girls and chocolate twirls,’ he replies. He does remember, although I am not convinced that he understands.
I crouch down in front of him, so he can’t avoid looking at me.
‘They were screaming because of what you did, Terry.’
‘I were saving them from rats.’
I shake my head. ‘No, you weren’t. There were no rats, Terry.’
‘You’re only saying that because you’re one of them, now. Matthew says you’ve crossed to dark side. You don’t give a toss about me.’
I feel the muscles in my neck tense. I put my face closer to his. ‘You slid under cubicle door when a twelve-year-old girl were in there. You scared fucking life out of her and her friends. That’s why they were screaming.’
I stand up and head back to the window, still shaking my head. It is quiet for a long time. I know I shouldn’t have snapped. I know it was not his fault. I know he doesn’t really hate me. I know all of these things, but sometimes it is so bloody hard to keep myself together.
I turn round. Terry is frowning. I am not stupid enough to think he is questioning what happened. He never does that until he starts to get well again. What he doesn’t understand is why I got angry with him. I go back over and put my hand on his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I know you had a scary day. It’s just that I did too. That’s why I lost it. I hate that I can’t help you. It’s like I’ve been given a really hard test and I don’t know the answers. Sometimes I can’t even understand the questions.’
Terry sits for a moment and then says, ‘If you’re at home having your tea and there’s no one else around, do you and your husband use serviettes sometimes, always, never or occasionally?’
I shut my eyes for a second. We haven’t had Mr & Mrs for ages. Not since they announced that Derek Batey had died. I lean over and kiss Terry on the forehead.
‘Never. Who the fuck has serviettes in their house anyway?’ I say.
*
I walk into town to the job centre after I’ve left Terry. I haven’t bothered calling because there’s no local number to call and I don’t want to go through the whole palaver with some stranger in a call centre who won’t know what I’m going on about or who Terry is. Anyway, I want to see Denise. I want to tell her what really happened before she hears a different story from the firm.
There are lots of people waiting when I get inside. I look around and spot Denise at her desk, talking to a young lad in a denim jacket.
A woman with the clipboard comes up to me.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asks.
‘I had one Friday but I couldn’t make it, so I’ve had to come today instead.’
‘And did you phone us to let us know?’
‘No, I couldn’t. It were a family emergency and then you
were closed.’
‘But you haven’t made a new appointment for today?’
‘No. I just came as soon as I could.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not how it works,’ she says. They all have this superior tone in their voice, these people with a little bit of power. They know it all right and they like to lord it over you with the whole, ‘I’m better than you’ thing. It makes me want to tell them that they could lose their job at any moment and then they’d be just like the rest of us. Maybe if that happened to them, they’d have a bit more human decency about them.
‘And I’m afraid I couldn’t help it. If you ask her,’ I say, pointing to Denise, ‘she’ll tell you that she sent my brother out to work, even though he has schizophrenia, and I told her he couldn’t cope with it and she wouldn’t listen and that is why I was at a police station on Friday afternoon instead of here and why I’ve just come from visiting him in psychiatric unit.’
The woman pulls a face like there’s a bad smell in here.
‘What’s your name?’ she asks.
‘Kaz Allen and Terry Allen’s my brother. If you have a word with your Denise, she’ll be able to tell you all about him.’
I watch the woman go over to Denise and speak in her ear. They both glance over at me before the woman with the clipboard returns.
‘She’ll try to fit you in between appointments but it may be quite a wait.’
‘That’s OK. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got no job to go to.’
I plonk myself down on one of the purple chairs. I wonder how much they spent doing this place out. We got two chairs for a tenner off some old boy who put a card in the corner shop window. Nothing wrong with them. Except that they’re grubby beige, not designer fucking purple.
I’m almost nodding off sitting there, an hour or so later, when I hear my name called. I go over to Denise and sit down.
‘Have you heard what’s happened?’ I ask.
‘I had a call from your brother’s employer first thing this morning,’ she says, not looking me in the eye.