by Martina Cole
‘Go and wake him up, then, you rotten old sod. You know how much he likes his kip.’
‘Have you done him his boiled egg and soldiers?’
She turned from the draining board where she was cutting the bread and butter into thin strips.
‘’Course I have. He would do ’is crust if they weren’t waiting for him!’
Joe laughed with her. They were happy these days and it was mostly because of that little child. Maggie’s postnatal depression had meant they had been privileged to be a very big part of his little life, and they were grateful for that.
‘Go and get him, Joe, and I’ll make him his cup of tea. He loves his cuppa in the morning does our little man.’
Lena watched as her husband raced off to wake their grandson. She would have let him sleep, he loved his Sooty and Sweep, bless him.
Little Freddie sat with his father and ate his cereal. Freddie watched as his son shoved the Coco Pops into his mouth with no manners whatsoever. He was too busy watching Mighty Morphing Power Rangers on Sky. Jackie was pretending to drink black tea, which he knew was sherry, because the smell was overpowering, and the house reminded him of a fucking rubbish tip. There were overflowing ashtrays, the curtains were half drawn as they were most of the time, and the feel of decay was everywhere. He had spent fortunes on this drum and it was still like a fucking squat.
An advert came on the TV and there was a lovely family, with lovely kids. They were being urged to borrow money, but as they sat there, eating toast and jam and being nice to each other, he knew that other than the poncing to pay off debts they shouldn’t have had anyway, that was probably how Maggie and Jimmy acted first thing in the morning.
Jimmy Junior probably had egg on toast, or fresh fruit, they drank tea from a teapot and Jimmy probably read a paper that had been delivered by a smiling paper boy.
As he looked around his own home, he was suddenly pleased his Rox had got out of it all. He had seen her drum, it was clean and tidy and decorated to death.
She would pore over catalogues for hours just to find the right cushion, or the right blind. And he knew that if Maggie had not been in her life she would not have known about anything like that. Would never have realised that people like them were just as entitled as everyone else to have a nice home, a nice life.
Jackie cared about nothing, except maybe the drink and then him, and then Little Freddie, in that order. But Maggie and her fussy ways also angered him, and his daughters’ utter adoration of her irritated him. He felt that she and Jimmy were living his life and it was this which made him so bitter.
‘Eat properly, shut your fucking mouth!’
Little Freddie stared for long seconds at his father and then did as he was asked.
Jackie was still sitting on the sofa in her grubby dressing gown. She was smoking a cigarette and drinking her sherry out of a chipped white cup.
It took all his willpower not to kick off there and then, and smash her face in.
Joe was staring down at his grandchild and the tears were running down his face. This could not be happening, this could not he true, he had to be in a nightmare. His heart was pounding in his breast, and he was sure it would stop at any second. Wanted it to stop completely, so he would die and this scene would he wiped from his memory.
He was panting. He had wondered, briefly, if it was the child breathing so heavily, wondered if it was the child making this awful wheezing noise but he knew that this child had not taken a breath for a long time.
His little face, when he had pulled the quilt back and seen it, had been the single most terrifying thing he had ever experienced.
He was so small, so small and so stiff and he was all wrong. He was lying all wrong, and they had slept in the room next door all night, and this little child had been dead. They had not gone in to tuck him in because he was such a light sleeper and as Jackie had been round causing ructions, they had left him. Left him alone, and he was dead.
He had tiptoed in and seen the little lump in the bed and then closed the door on him, his little grandson, the light of his life, and the reason his Lena got up in the morning.
Why hadn’t he gone to him then? Looked at him properly and made sure the child was all right?
He was clutching his chest, and he felt the pain in his fingers.
‘Hurry up, your egg’s getting cold! What are you two doing?’
It was Lena’s voice that finally made him move. Lena’s happy voice, Lena, the woman he had hurt so much over the years and who he knew he could never be without. It was her, and the thought of her seeing this, that made him move at last.
Joe left the room and shut the door behind him.
She was in the hallway when he walked outside and she saw the tears on his face. ‘What’s going on, where’s me boy?’ Her voice was harsh, high and she was looking concerned, frightened.
He was shaking his head.
‘What’s wrong, you stupid old fucker, where is me little man, me little fella?’
He could feel the fear coming off her in waves, hear it in her voice.
‘Let me see him, get out of my way...’
He was holding her now, struggling with her, making her stay outside, stopping her seeing what he had seen. The sight would kill her, he knew it would.
She was staring into his eyes now, and he was holding her by the forearms, afraid to let her go in case she went into the room, the mausoleum that was now holding the body of their dead grandchild.
‘You’re frightening me, Joe, stop it. Let me see me boy, please, Joe . . . Please . . .’
She was crying now, she was almost hysterical, and still he could not answer her. She was begging him, begging him to tell her everything was OK, and he couldn’t.
How did you tell someone you loved about something like this?
Where the fuck did you even start?
Freddie sat beside Jimmy and watched his cousin’s grief. It was so awful to witness another man’s complete desolation. And he was feeling the same way. He was feeling the loss as acutely as Jimmy but he couldn’t tell him that.
They had been together in the car and he was taking stick about being a granddad and they were laughing together, like they used to before. Then the call had come, and he had watched in amazement as Jimmy had swerved the car across the road before dropping the mobile, parking, and then starting to cry.
‘What on earth has happened?’
He had for a few moments hoped that Ozzy was dead, that Ozzy had been wiped out but he also knew that that happening would not cause this kind of grief. It had to be Maggie, and he thought that she might have crashed her car, that fucking flash Merc she swanned around in. Or, at the least, that she had experienced an accident of some sort.
Freddie had nearly passed out, when after what seemed an age, Jimmy had turned to him and said brokenly, ‘It’s Jimmy, my little Jimmy. He died, Freddie, he died last night.’
Then he had cried, loudly and painfully and he had punched the steering wheel, and then he had cried again and Freddie had sat beside him in shock and wondered what on earth could have killed a dear little boy like that.
And he was a dear little child, and he had used that child to destroy his mother and now he was dead. That dear little Jimmy, with the bright smile and the funny little ways, was dead.
The world had gone fucking mad.
Lena and Joe felt guilty, and as the hospital room filled up with the family they felt even worse. He had died in their care, he had died while they had slept in the room next door. How were they ever going to get over that, how would they ever sleep again? Know another happy day without that little boy beside them?
Maybe they could have helped him, maybe they could have avoided it happening if they had only checked on him.
Maggie was sitting there, and she had not said a word. Rox was holding her hand and trying to comfort her as best she could.
Dianna was crying with Kimberley, all the time shaking their heads in disbelief.
Jackie was smoking outside. The hospital was all no smoking, and as always, she put her own needs first. She was watching the world go by, and every now and then she took a nip from the bottle of vodka she had placed in her large shopping bag.
A nurse walked into the visitors room and said quietly, ‘Can I get you some more tea?’
Lena nodded. Tea gave you something to do, it made you move, made you respond, and she knew that as they were sitting there, Jimmy was on his way and she didn’t want to face him, or his parents.
Jimmy’s parents. As usual they had forgotten about them. Jimmy was more their family than his own. Since Freddie Senior’s death, no one really saw them any more, least of all Jimmy.
‘Has anyone phoned Jimmy’s family?’
No one answered.
She sighed. They would know soon enough, why break their hearts before you had to?
Freddie and Jimmy were walking into the hospital when Jackie called out to her husband. He squeezed Jimmy’s arm and walked over to his wife.
She walked him away from the busy doorway of the A and E and lit a cigarette. He saw she was pissed, but for once this didn’t bother him. He was still in shock about the child dying.
This was his child, his boy, not Jimmy’s, his, and he was dead. The thought had been careering around his head for what seemed like years and was in reality only minutes.
Jackie was really crying, sobbing, and he couldn’t be angry with her. ‘Ain’t it terrible, Fred? How lucky are we, eh? Our Little Freddie might be a fucker, but imagine if he died.’
She was crying loudly, and she was in pain and he knew how she felt, so he instinctively held her to him. Even Freddie knew she was crying this time with just cause. They clung together for the first time in years.
‘My poor Maggie, she looks like a fucking corpse herself. What a thing to have to go through! What a thing to have to live with!’
‘What happened, Jack, do they know yet?’
Jackie looked up at her husband and said, her voice cracking, ‘Don’t you know, Freddie?’
He shook his head. ‘No, what happened?’
‘He put a plastic bag over his head, and he suffocated.’
Glenford arrived at the hospital and went straight to Jimmy. He pulled him into his embrace and Jimmy broke down crying. It was strange watching the little man holding on to Jimmy. Jimmy was huge, and his shaking shoulders just made it look all the more outrageous.
Glenford was crying with him and as Maggie watched she envied them that closeness, because Jimmy deserved that comfort. Unlike her, Jimmy had nothing on his conscience where that little boy was concerned.
Nobody else in the room did. But she was eaten up with guilt, seeing him, seeing him so small and so vulnerable and knowing he was never going to open his eyes and smile and laugh, never going to hug her again. The guilt was too much for her to bear.
All the time she had tolerated him, because she had kept a secret that she had felt was like a lead weight inside her chest. And now it was all over, and instead of relief, which is what she had yearned for all those years, she felt a deep and agonising hatred for herself.
Her poor mother and father had aged in hours. She saw the way her mother kept picking at her sodden tissues, how her eyes kept darting around the room as she waited for someone to accuse her over what had happened, and she knew that the poor woman blamed herself.
The same woman who had loved Jimmy Junior when his own mother had been incapable of it, who had shouted and argued with her, called her unnatural, and who had tried to make his short little life as bearable as she could, knowing that his own mother found it impossible to care for him.
And Jackie, Jackie kept on and on about her Rox having a baby, and how when God closed one door another one opened. The stupid drunken bitch had four kids and she cared for none of them, not really. She was like all drunks, she only cared about herself and how she felt and what she wanted. Her life was about her and Freddie, and she had spent years trying to gain the love of a man who despised her.
Freddie had destroyed her and he had destroyed her sister and she knew he had enjoyed every second of it.
She wondered, then, if he was feeling the loss of the little boy he had used as a weapon against her. Wondered if he was feeling remorse about all the years he had caused her so much heartache. She hoped that bastard never knew another happy day, she hoped all his kids died and he had to sit in a hospital knowing their lifeless bodies were feet away and he could never again touch them or love them.
But where was Freddie now, anyway? He had not been in this place and why would she expect any different? She wanted to kill him, scratch his eyes out, make him pay for the way he had caused her to feel about a child of her own body.
A child who was now dead and gone to her. Now she would never be able to make up to him for the first years of his life, when even feeding him had been anathema to her. But she had loved him, she had just been frightened of him and what he could cause if the truth of his conception had ever come out.
Now she would shout it from the roof tops and take the consequences with a light heart if he was only still with her.
Jimmy knelt in front of her and she put her head on his shoulder and finally cried, really cried. And once it started she couldn’t make it stop. She could hear herself screaming but it sounded like someone else, as if someone else had taken over her body because that shrieking couldn’t be coming from her, surely?
And when the doctor finally slipped the needle into her arm, she was so thankful for the oblivion she knew would come that she hoped to God she never woke up again.
Why would her little son put a bag over his head? Why would he do something like that and what on earth would possess him to want to do something like that?
Those were her last conscious thoughts.
Jimmy and Glenford sat in the darkened room and watched as Maggie’s chest rose and fell softly. She looked so peaceful that he envied her.
He had held his little boy in his arms for long minutes and kissed his little forehead, and Glenford had cried with him, and they had both sat there in absolute shock and horror at what had befallen him and his family.
Glenford had not tried to talk, he had sat beside Jimmy and he had just been there. It was all he could do now, be there for the man he had come to love and respect as a friend and as a brother over the last fifteen years. But he had wondered over and over again why Freddie wasn’t here with them, why Freddie had left the hospital and not come back?
The one time in his life he would have laid money on Freddie Jackson doing the right thing, and he had been wrong.
Jimmy needed him now, more than he had ever needed anyone in his life. Even a selfish shite like Freddie had to at least understand that much. And Jimmy had not even asked for him, it was as if he knew that Freddie would not be there. It was weird, as if Freddie not showing up was expected, even.
This was a sad and deeply odd day and Glenford prayed to God that he never had to experience anything even remotely like it in his own lifetime.
Little Freddie was on his game console when the front door opened. He didn’t hear it, he was too busy killing the characters on the TV screen.
He was enjoying having the house to himself. He had not bothered to go to school as was usual. He was suspended again anyway, so he had popped round to his mates, who were also suspended, and relished telling them his news, and then he had come back and gone straight on his new game.
He hated the smell of the carpet, but he was used to it, though every now and again the stink of cigarettes from the overflowing ashtray near him made him wrinkle up his nose. He had a bowl of treats, and a large glass of orange juice that he had laced liberally with his mother’s stash of vodka. She was buying it by the case these days off a geezer who lived nearby, and who did the Frog run to Calais once a month for drink and fags.
He was happy, relaxed and he was pleased with himself.
On his way home from his friends’ he had pin
ched a few goodies from the local Indian shop. The man there was new and Little Freddie was always nice and polite to him. He had no idea the lad was smiling away while robbing him blind.
People were such fucking marks. His dad had always said that and it was true. People never expected you to be bad, they expected you to be like them. Nice and friendly and talkative, they wanted you to care about them, care about their feelings and their fucking boring lives.
But who wanted to be like them?
Who wanted to be fucking no necks all their lives?
Fear was a useful tool, and he had seen that over and over again in his young life. His father ruled everyone around him through fear, and it was a dangerous weapon. Kids at school had learned about fear sooner rather than later, he had seen to that, and it had taken him a long way in his little life.
He took anything he wanted from them, and they gave it gladly.
He was his father’s son, and he was proud of that, but only because he admired the way his father used everyone around him. How his name had guaranteed this boy a pass from almost everything he had ever done.
He looked up then and saw his father in the doorway. As they looked into each other’s eyes, Freddie Junior knew that he was in deep shit.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jimmy had told Glenford to go home, but Glenford was going nowhere. He was staying outside the room where Jimmy was sitting with his wife, trying to make sense of the day’s events.
He felt as if he was on guard, was looking out for Jimmy, but he didn’t know why he should feel that, or even what he was supposed to be looking out for. He had this mission come over him, and it was to take care of Jimmy.
There was something he was not telling anyone, and Glenford could feel that inside himself. Glenford felt sure that whatever Jimmy was holding back was so explosive that, if he let it go, it would reverberate through the whole of their world. But if he needed to let it go, then he would be waiting here for his friend.