We Can Be Heroes

by Catherine Bruton

  7. Did they ever have second thoughts?

  8. Did they hate my dad and all the people in the Twin Towers when they did it?

  9. Did they hate the kids like me who had dads and mums in the towers too?

  10. Did they make it to heaven or wherever they thought they’d get to? And, if not, did they ever regret what they did?

  Jed is going to stay all summer. Uncle Ian has to work and Jed can’t go to his mum for the holidays (‘for obvious reasons,’ says Jed, rolling his eyes) so I suppose Granny and Grandad have no choice but to say yes. Granny says it will be like having her two boys back again. Grandad says it will be ‘bloody noisy!’ and I think I agree with him.

  Jed and I are sharing a room, and within five minutes, Jed’s stuff is everywhere and he’s climbing all over the furniture. I can tell he isn’t impressed about having to stay. ‘I don’t see why I had to come here anyway. I could have looked after myself,’ he says. ‘I do it every day after school – sometimes Dad’s not back till well late.’

  ‘It’ll be fun,’ says Granny brightly.

  ‘I doubt it,’ says Jed, glaring out from under his hair. Then he says, ‘I’ll stay for a bit, but if it gets boring, I’m off. I’ve got my own key you know.’

  It turns out that Jed gets bored really quickly and isn’t into Granny’s idea of fun. Or mine. I suggest things to do, but he says they’re for little kids. Granny suggests things, but he says they’re for wrinklies. Grandad says it’s going to be a long summer.

  While Grandad is in the garden, Granny goes to make a phone call. When she comes back, she’s smiling. ‘I’ve made an appointment for you tomorrow, Jed,’ she says cheerfully. Jed looks up from our game of snakes and ladders. (Jed cheated – I’m pretty sure he knows I noticed too – but neither of us said anything.) ‘Perhaps we can do something nice on the way back,’ Granny suggests.

  ‘Whatever!’ says Jed.

  Then the doorbell rings and there is Priti wearing a bubblegum-pink ra-ra skirt and a T-shirt which says My imaginary friend did it.

  ‘You coming to play, Ben?’ she says.

  ‘I can’t. My cousin’s here.’

  ‘Who’s the kid?’ asks Jed, coming up behind me.

  ‘This is Priti,’ I say. ‘She lives across the road.’

  Jed takes one look at her and says, ‘So you’re the Asian invasion?’

  ‘Well spotted,’ says Priti. ‘You must be the hand-me-down cousin?’

  They stare at each other for a moment.

  Priti seems less impressed by Jed than I expected. ‘You can come too, I suppose,’ she says.

  ‘Why would I want to hang out with a pair of kids?’ says Jed.

  ‘Don’t then,’ says Priti. ‘You coming, Ben?’

  I look from one to the other.

  ‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘Jed’s just arrived.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she says. ‘But Shakeel’s gonna help us build a tree house in the garden.’

  I glance at Jed. ‘She’s OK,’ I say. ‘Even if she is a girl.’

  ‘Thanks a lot!’ says Priti.

  Jed tosses his hair back off his face and checks Priti out again, then shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘There’s nothing better to do here, I suppose.’

  I breathe a sigh of relief and off we go.

  * * *

  Granny insists on walking over with us to Priti’s house to make sure we’re not imposing. It’s Shakeel who opens the door.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Evans,’ he says. Then he glances at Priti. ‘I do hope my sister has not been causing you any trouble?’

  Priti grins at him and sticks out her tongue. He grins back.

  ‘No, no, quite the opposite,’ says Granny. ‘She’s been very kind to Ben, and to my other grandson, Jed.’ She puts a hand on Jed’s arm, but he shrugs it away. I see Shakeel take in the gesture. ‘Priti has very kindly invited them both over to play,’ Granny goes on, ‘but I just wanted to check with your parents that it wasn’t an imposition.’

  ‘I’m afraid my mother and father are both out at present,’ says Shakeel.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ says Granny. She seems uncertain suddenly.

  ‘But I know my parents will consider it no imposition whatsoever to have your grandsons here,’ Shakeel goes on. ‘And neither do I.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Shakeel.’ Granny smiles.

  ‘It will be our pleasure to have them.’

  Granny hesitates, glancing back to our house.

  ‘Perhaps your husband is not comfortable with this arrangement?’ asks Shakeel.

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ says Granny hurriedly, bright spots of colour appearing in her cheeks. ‘I was just concerned. Will there be someone around to look after them?’

  ‘I don’t need looking after,’ says Jed crossly.

  Shakeel smiles. ‘Be assured. My brother, sister or I will be here to supervise at all times.’

  ‘Well then, I’m sure the boys would love to come in and play, Shakeel,’ says Granny, smiling brightly. ‘Please just send them back if they are any trouble at all.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to look after me!’ Jed repeats.

  ‘Then it is agreed,’ says Shakeel with a smile. ‘Thank you, Mrs Evans. I know Priti is delighted to have the boys as playmates.’

  Jed is scowling at Shakeel, but Granny seems satisfied.

  ‘Just remember your pleases and thank yous,’ she says to us, before she heads back across the road.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll look after them!’ says Priti with the biggest grin I’ve ever seen. Ever. Jed looks furious.

  Priti’s house is laid out just like my grandparents’, but it doesn’t feel the same at all. I know that an old couple called the Moons used to live here, so the carpets and wallpaper are the sort old people choose, but the curtains and pictures and stuff have obviously been chosen by Priti’s mum and they are totally different – lots of bright colours, all shiny and silky.

  And there’s loads and loads of stuff everywhere. My granny likes it all neat with just one or two ornaments and some pictures in silver frames, but this house has tons of knick-knacks and more books than I’ve ever seen in my life, with weird titles like The Crescent and the Couch: Counselling the Modern Muslim and Listen to the Heron’s Voice: Gender, Feminism and Islam – even The Sheikh’s New Clothes: Psychoanalysis of the Suicide Bomber.

  There are photos of Priti and her brothers and sister over every available surface and pinned up on all the walls. Massive pictures, some of them in big gold frames. There’s even an oil painting of them all which must have been done when Priti was a baby. Jed laughs at it and even I can see that the artist wasn’t very good because it doesn’t really look that much like any of them. Priti just gives me a look like everything Jed does is my fault because I brought him along.

  ‘Where are your mum and dad anyway?’ asks Jed.

  ‘At work,’ says Priti.

  ‘So your brothers and sister have to look after you? That’s pretty lame.’

  ‘No lamer than your grandparents looking after you,’ says Priti, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘My dad’s job is pretty dangerous. There could be people after him – or me – so it’s not safe for me to be home alone.’

  ‘Yeah?’ says Priti, who doesn’t look like she believes him for a minute. ‘What does he do then?’

  ‘Can’t tell you,’ says Jed. ‘Don’t want to compromise his security.’

  ‘If you say so,’ says Priti, rolling her eyes. ‘Anyway, I basically get to do what I want. My siblings are not happy about the babysitting so they’re pretty hands-off. Zara’s the worst, she’s well mad about it, so she basically ignores me all day, but it’s Shakeel’s turn today and he’s cool. Well, he’s not – he’s a total geek, worse than you, Ben – but he lets me do cool stuff.’

  ‘What like?’ says Jed. ‘I thought you said we were building a tree house or something.’

  ‘We’ve got to wait till Shakeel’s finished tinkering around with his radios, or whatever h
e’s doing,’ says Priti.

  ‘How long will that be?’ says Jed, picking up a china dolphin and throwing it from hand to hand.

  ‘Impatient, isn’t he, your cousin?’ says Priti, looking at me.

  ‘Why don’t we hang out in the garden while we wait for him?’ I say, watching Jed pick up a crystal mermaid that looks as if it might be worth a lot of money.

  So we go outside and Jed starts kicking the grass and making loads of bits of mud fly up in the air and Priti starts making little holes by digging her wheelies into the turf, like it’s a competition as to who can make the biggest mess of the lawn (my grandad would HATE this!) and I just stand there feeling awkward. In the end, to break the silence, I say to Priti, ‘Tell Jed about the honour killing.’

  As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I regret it. Priti glares at me.

  ‘What honour killing?’ says Jed, kicking a lump of turf up into the air. I can tell he’s trying hard not to look like he’s interested.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ Priti asks. She looks at him with a hint of challenge in her voice and he looks right back. He’s all dressed in khaki and military fatigues and she’s in pink, but they both look pretty fierce.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Do I?’

  ‘Go on. Tell him,’ I say, although I don’t really know why I’m pushing it.

  So Priti tells Jed all about forced marriages and Zara’s boyfriend and the honour killing and, by the end, I can tell Jed is into it even though he pretends he’s heard it all before.

  ‘That’s why we need the tree house,’ says Priti, getting excited now and jumping from foot to foot in a little dance as she talks. ‘It’s going to be a lookout. From up here you can see the park and the house and who’s coming down the alleyway. We’ll have a secret signal or something.’

  Jed is already scaling the tree trunk to the makeshift platform that’s been erected there. ‘We can be lookouts,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, that’s the idea.’

  ‘Does that mean we get to see your sister, like, making out?’ he asks, grinning.

  ‘I hope not,’ says Priti.

  ‘Is she fit?’ he says, looking at me.

  I don’t answer.

  ‘No,’ says Priti putting her fingers in her mouth and pretending to vomit.

  ‘Shame,’ says Jed, who is now standing on the platform. ‘Hey, look at me!’

  He raises his arms in the air. ‘It’s too hot in here!’ he shrieks in an American accent. ‘I’m gonna die! I can’t stand it any more! I’ve gotta jump!’ Then he flings himself headlong off the platform, arms outstretched, wailing as he falls, ‘I’m the falling man!’ He lands with a thud on the floor and bursts out laughing.

  Priti glances at me, but I don’t say anything.

  Then Shakeel comes out so we start making the tree house. But afterwards, I can’t get the image out of my head – of my dad crying out like a baby and falling through the sky – just like Jed did.

  Shakeel does most of the work on the tree house. Me and Priti and Jed spend the time messing about, climbing up and down the trunk and getting in his way. When he gets fed up with hammering planks and answering questions (about tree houses – me; forced marriages – Jed; and when it’s going to be finished – Priti) Shakeel asks if we want to look at the radio he’s building.

  Priti groans and says it’s boring, but we haven’t got any better ideas so we all follow him inside. Up in his ultra neat-and-tidy bedroom, Shakeel has all this equipment – circuit boards and wires, cylinders, headphones, knobs, screws and even a soldering iron. He tries to explain to us how it works, but Priti isn’t listening – she’s probably heard it all before – and Jed just fiddles with everything. But I like listening to Shakeel talk. I don’t really understand it all, but it’s kind of cool hearing about radio waves and frequencies and all that.

  ‘Your dad used to build radios, didn’t he?’ Jed says, interrupting Shakeel and putting down a fragile-looking bit of equipment with a thud. I realise he’s talking to me.

  ‘Did he?’ Shakeel also turns to me. He looks really interested.

  I’d never heard this before, so I just say, ‘Yes.’

  ‘My dad says Uncle Andrew was always tinkering around with stuff like that,’ says Jed. ‘Bit sad, if you ask me. So what are you, like, building exactly?’ he asks Shakeel, picking up a circuit board and staring at it, even though Shakeel has spent the last ten minutes telling us exactly that.

  Shakeel explains it all over again. ‘This is a simple FM receiver, but I’d like to try my hand at a transmitter.’

  ‘What and then do like a pirate radio station or something?’ asks Jed.

  ‘That’s not really my style,’ says Shakeel, laughing. ‘I just like the challenge.’

  Jed nods. ‘You’re just not really cool enough, are you?’

  Priti starts to look offended, but doesn’t say anything. She probably realises there’s no point.

  ‘Guilty as charged!’ laughs Shakeel.

  When we get home, Gary has sent me a letter. Well, it’s really only a postcard with a picture of a pig wearing sunglasses on it. On the back, in Gary’s writing, it says, Missing you more than flying pigs, kid! Then there are three kisses. It doesn’t really make any sense, but it’s nice of him to send it anyway and I like the idea that it might have been posted in the box at the end of our road (Gary lives round the corner from us). Jed wants to look at it, but I don’t let him. I tuck it into the notepad where I make all my lists, but I can’t help feeling sad that even Gary has bothered to write me a card when my mum still hasn’t been in touch at all.

  There was this one time when I was sitting in the corner of the village hall, drawing cartoons while Mum was at one of her committee meetings, taking minutes and stuff, and this little kid came up and stared over my shoulder, checking out what I was drawing.

  ‘Draw one of me!’ she said. So I drew a cartoon of her as a princess, then as a fairy, then a mermaid and a cheerleader. I asked her what she was doing there and she pointed at a skinny, bald bloke in a leather jacket and said, ‘That’s my dad. He’s called Gary.’ I hadn’t seen him at any of the meetings before and she said that’s because he’d just moved to the village. After the meeting, he and my mum talked for ages and my mum laughed a lot. The little girl – whose name is Blythe – made me show him the pictures of her and he said, ‘These are really good!’

  A few meetings later, my mum and Gary were an item and I knew the names and costumes of every Disney princess. And I had a new four-year-old best friend.

  So that’s how my mum met Gary.

  THINGS ABOUT MY MUM I SHOULD HAVE PAID MORE ATTENTION TO

  1. She was getting all weird about cutlery again. She told me once – ages ago – that I mustn’t let her do this. It’s my job to lay the table and she said I should just lay whatever cutlery came to hand. But I could tell she was getting funny about it again. That she was finding it hard to eat if she didn’t have the knife with the ivory handle and the fork with the initials on the end. So I started laying those ones out for her every time and pretending it just came out like that. She didn’t say anything and neither did I. And she seemed to find it easier to eat that way, so I thought it would be OK.

  2. She started running. She’s not supposed to really, but she said it made her feel so great. So in control. And she always came back on such a high. But then she started running more and more, and she stopped looking like she was enjoying it. More like she was doing it to punish herself. I should have known that was a sign too.

  3. She was always wearing bright red lipstick. Sometimes even dark purples or raspberry reds with a dab of blusher on each cheek that made her look like she was hot and flustered. And too much mascara.

  4. She began forgetting things: my school trip letter, putting out the dustbins, wearing a coat. So I started doing a few things to make it easier for her, like the bins and making sure there was milk in, and doing my own letters for school. But when she realised, she g
ot upset and said I shouldn’t have to be doing all those things and that she’d let me down.

  5. She took up smoking. She didn’t think I knew because she always did it outside or when I wasn’t around, and when I asked her, she denied it. But I knew she was. Because of the smell mostly. And because she’s done this before. She’s done it all before. But it’s never been quite as bad as this time.

  ‘I don’t see why we have to go every time I come and stay.’

  Jed is arguing with Granny in the bathroom. I go upstairs to get my notebook and I can hear them, speaking in low voices behind the closed door. Grandad is downstairs, watching kids’ TV.

  ‘If you don’t want to go then I can ring up and cancel,’ I hear Granny saying.

  I imagine her standing next to the crocheted toilet-roll holder, looking nervous like she always does around Jed.

  ‘Whatever,’ says Jed. ‘It’s not like I’m bothered. Might as well get it over with.’

  I really want to stay and listen, but I figure I’m not meant to be hearing this.

  I’m turning to go when Granny’s voice rises slightly. ‘You know you can’t tell your father, or even your grandad,’ she says. ‘You know that, don’t you, Jed?’

  ‘My dad’s gonna be well mad if he finds out,’ I hear Jed say. I imagine him climbing over the bathtub and the toilet, leaving muddy footprints over Granny’s spotless enamel.

  ‘We don’t want to cause an upset,’ Granny goes on.

  ‘If he found out, I’d tell him I never really wanted to go,’ Jed says, louder now. I imagine him standing on top of the toilet, towering over Granny. ‘That you made me.’

  There’s a pause. I’m halfway down the stairs now but I stop because I don’t want them to hear me and think I was listening. And because part of me still sort of wants to know what’s going on.

  ‘Of course,’ says Granny. There’s a pause before she says, ‘And if you don’t want to go . . .’

  ‘Whatever,’ says Jed.

  Five minutes later, Jed comes downstairs. He flops down on the sofa and pretends to be engrossed in some babies’ TV programme about a family of pigs that Blythe likes, only he doesn’t look like he’s really watching.