by Kevin Brooks
It felt damn scary.
14
‘What’s Tanga Tans got to do with you?’ Mason said harshly.
‘I’m only asking—’
‘I asked you a question, Travis,’ he interrupted, his eyes fixed on mine. ‘Don’t make me ask you again.’
I glanced briefly at Jaydie. She wasn’t smiling any more either. I didn’t understand what was going on here – why had the mere mention of Tanga Tans caused such a reaction? – but I guessed the only way to find out was to answer Mason’s question and then see what he had to say. So, taking a deep breath to gather myself, I began telling Mason and Jaydie about Delaney & Co’s investigation into the tanning salon.
Mason didn’t say a word while I was explaining the situation, he just sat there listening intently, his face emotionless, his eyes cold and still. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. When I’d finished telling him everything, he still didn’t say or do anything for a while, he just carried on sitting there staring at me. It was a really uncomfortable and confusing situation. Eventually – after what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a minute – he took a breath, let out a long sigh, and said, ‘Who’s your client?’
‘I’m sorry, Mase, you know I can’t tell you that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Client confidentiality.’
He nodded. ‘Why did you come to me about this? What do you want from me?’
‘I just thought you might know something about Dee Dee’s connection with the salon, that’s all. I mean, it’s not important or anything . . .’ I leaned forward and looked at him, trying to get through to the Mason I knew, the Mason who was my friend. ‘Listen, Mase,’ I said, ‘I’m really sorry if I’ve offended you in any way, OK? If I’ve crossed some kind of barrier here, just tell me, and I promise I won’t say another word about it.’
His face remained cold and blank.
‘Come on, Mason,’ I sighed. ‘Talk to me, for God’s sake. Don’t just sit there—’
‘Tell your grandad to drop the case,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Tell him to drop it.’
I was beginning to lose patience now. I just couldn’t understand why he was acting like this. I turned to Jaydie.
‘Can you tell me what’s going on here?’ I asked her.
‘It’s complicated, Trav. It’s not just—’
‘Shut up, Jay,’ Mason told her. ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with him.’
‘Don’t tell me to shut up,’ she said, glaring angrily at her brother. ‘If I want to talk to Travis about it, I will. It’s just as much about me as it is about you.’
Mason’s face softened slightly. ‘I know it is.’
‘You can’t keep running away from it, Mase.’
‘I’m not running away from anything. I’m just . . .’
‘What?’ Jaydie said bitterly. ‘You’re just what?’
As the two of them sat there scowling at each other, I decided it was probably best if I left. There was obviously something serious going on here, some kind of family thing, and I didn’t want to get caught up in the middle of it. But then, just as I was about to get up, a key rattled in the front door, and when the door swung open and a dark-haired woman let herself in, everything suddenly made sense.
‘Hey, Mum,’ Jaydie said. ‘This is Travis.’
‘Hello, Travis,’ the woman said. ‘Nice to finally meet you.’
‘Hi, Mrs Yusuf,’ I muttered, trying not to stare at her.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘call me Lisa.’
I just nodded.
Lisa.
Mrs Yusuf – Mason and Jaydie’s mum – was Lisa from Tanga Tans.
15
Now that his mum was back, Mason’s demeanour changed from streetwise tough guy to caring and protective son, and although it was obvious that his mum didn’t have any problems with me being there, Mason couldn’t get me out of the flat fast enough.
‘Please don’t go on my account, Travis,’ she said as Mason bundled me towards the door.
‘He’s got to get going, Mum,’ Mason told her.
‘Oh, well,’ she said, taking off her coat, ‘maybe next time you can stay a bit longer.’
‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ I said.
As Mason opened the door and ushered me out, he leaned in close and whispered in my ear, ‘Please leave this alone, Travis, OK? I’m asking you as a friend. If me and Jaydie mean anything to you, stay away from Tanga Tans.’
I’d never heard him sound so desperate before, and as I looked into his eyes I saw something that until then I’d never have believed. He was frightened. Not for himself, but for someone else. He was frightened for his mum.
‘Listen, Mason—’ I started to say.
‘Lenny will see you off the estate,’ he said, and without another word he shut the door.
I’d left my bike in the corridor outside the flat, and as I looked over at it now I saw Big Lenny standing beside it. He nodded at me. I stood there for a moment, wondering if I should go back in and try talking to Mason again, but as Lenny wheeled my bike over to me, I decided it was best to leave it for now and give myself time to think things through.
‘All right?’ Lenny said to me in his big deep voice.
I looked up at him. He passed me my bike.
‘Stay close,’ he said simply.
He walked off along the corridor, and – with a confused heart – I followed him.
We’d just reached the edge of the square surrounding the block of flats, and were about to head off into a narrow street, when I heard someone calling out my name. I turned round and saw Jaydie hurrying out of the block towards us. She wasn’t wearing a coat or a jacket, and all she had on her feet was a pair of clog-style slippers. As she ran towards me, she kept glancing over her shoulder, looking back at the window of her flat. It was pretty obvious that she’d slipped out without telling Mason.
Lenny had stopped at the sound of her voice and was just standing there scanning the square, looking out for any sign of trouble. If he was conflicted in any way about seeing Jaydie, he didn’t show it.
Jaydie slowed down as she approached us, and I could see her breath misting in the cold night air. She looked back at the flats again, then turned to me.
‘I need to talk to you, Trav,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want Mason to see us.’ She took me by the arm and started guiding me over towards a little playground area at the edge of the square. Lenny started to follow us. ‘Do you mind giving us a minute, Len?’ Jaydie said to him.
He looked at her for a moment, then nodded.
As Jaydie led me over to a bench near the swings, Lenny positioned himself so that he was still in sight of us but far enough away to be out of earshot.
‘How old is he?’ I asked Jaydie as we sat down.
‘Who – Lenny?’ She shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know. Seventeen, maybe. Eighteen.’
‘Does he go to school or have a job or anything?’
‘Mason looks after him,’ she said, as if that was all there was to it. She shivered and rubbed her bare arms.
I took off my jacket and put it round her shoulders.
‘My hero,’ she said, smiling at me.
‘I’m not exactly Mason’s hero at the moment, am I?’
‘Don’t take it personally, Trav. He thinks the world of you. He’s just trying to look after Mum, that’s all.’
‘Is she in trouble?’
Jaydie sighed. ‘It depends what you mean by trouble.’
Like a lot of kids on the Slade estate, Jaydie had never known her father. He’d walked out on her mum and Mason a month before Jaydie was born, and no one had seen or heard from him since.
‘Mason never mentions him at all,’ Jaydie told me, ‘but Mum occasionally talks to me about him. It’s funny really. I mean, considering what he did to her, you wouldn’t expect her to have anything good to say about him. But although she quite often ends up crying her eyes out when s
he’s telling me stuff about him, it sometimes makes her really happy too. From what she’s told me, he sounds like one of those men who never really grow up – you know, they just carry on being kids all their lives, and all they ever think about is themselves . . .’ Jaydie paused for a moment, waiting for a group of kids to pass by. Once they’d gone, she continued. ‘Anyway, Mum’s always done all right bringing us up on her own, but a couple of years ago she went through a bit of a bad patch and it really messed her up. It started when she lost her job, and then a really good friend of hers got caught up in some stupid gang thing and ended up getting stabbed . . .’ Jaydie shook her head. ‘Mum took it really hard, and she just . . . well, she used to have a lot of problems with drugs when she was younger, but she sorted herself out when she was pregnant with Mason, and she hadn’t touched anything since. But when her friend was killed and she lost her job, she just kind of fell back into it again. It was pretty bad for a while, and without Mason’s help it might have got even worse. Mase was brilliant, Travis. I mean, he was only about thirteen when all this was going on, but he took control of everything – looking after me, helping Mum get off the drugs, sorting out all the bills and shopping and stuff. It was amazing really. He never complained about anything, never blamed Mum for getting herself into a mess, he just got stuck in and did what had to be done.’
‘Did your mum get off the drugs again?’ I asked.
Jaydie nodded. ‘She’s been clean ever since. The trouble was, because she didn’t have a job at the time, there wasn’t much cash coming in, and once she’d run out of stuff to sell or hock to get the money to pay for her drugs, she started borrowing from a loan shark. By the time Mason found out about it, she owed thousands. Mason couldn’t believe it. That was the only time I’ve ever seen him lose his temper with her. It wasn’t even the fact that she’d spent so much money on drugs that made him angry, it was that she hadn’t come to him for it. But by then it was already too late.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you know how illegal money-lending works?’
‘Not really,’ I admitted. ‘But I don’t suppose it’s like borrowing from a bank.’
‘Not unless your bank has like a 10,000% interest rate,’ Jaydie said ruefully. ‘Mum’s first loan was for a hundred pounds. A week later, when she hadn’t paid it back, she owed just over three hundred. So then she borrowed another five hundred to pay off the three hundred and have another two hundred for drugs, and after that she just carried on borrowing more and more. By the time Mason found out what she’d been doing, she owed almost ten thousand pounds, and even Mason couldn’t help her out with that kind of money.’ Jaydie looked at me. ‘Another difference between a loan shark and a bank is that if you get behind with your payments to the loan shark, you don’t just get a phone call or a sternly worded reminder, you get a couple of bone-headed psychopaths hammering on your door, threatening to set their pitbulls on you.’
I just looked at her for a moment, unable to think of anything meaningful to say.
I’ve always known that life on the Slade is a world away from the life I know, but it never ceases to amaze me just how different it is. Whether or not my awareness of the way other people live makes any difference to the way I try to live, I’m not really sure. But it certainly helps to put things into perspective. Before I knew Mason and Jaydie, for example, I used to worry about all kinds of stupid little things – something some kid at school had said about me, whether I’d bought the right trainers or not, what people were saying about me on Facebook. These days though, when I find myself worrying about stuff like that, I just try to remind myself how lucky I am. You think you’ve got problems?I tell myself. Well, imagine what it’s like living on the Slade. Imagine what it’s like to walk home every day wondering if you’re going to get stabbed or shot. Now that’s a problem. It doesn’t always work, of course. Just because you know there are bigger problems in the world than yours, that doesn’t necessarily make yours any easier to deal with. But sometimes it helps.
‘Are you all right, Trav?’ Jaydie said.
‘Yeah, sorry . . . I was just thinking about something.’ I looked at her. ‘So what happened to your mum? I mean, what did she do about all the money she owed?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. She’s still paying it off, and that’s why Mason got so uptight with you about Tanga Tans.’
16
Although Jaydie didn’t know for sure why Dee Dee had taken over her mum’s debt, she was fairly sure that Mason had something to do with it.
‘When I asked Mase if he’d made some kind of deal with Dee Dee,’ she told me, ‘he didn’t actually say that he had, but he didn’t deny it either.’
‘What kind of deal are you talking about?’ I asked.
‘Well, I don’t really know the details, but basically Dee Dee took over Mum’s loan – he probably paid it off at a huge discount – and in return Mum agreed to run Tanga Tans for him.’
‘Does Dee Dee own the salon?’
‘I don’t know if he owns it officially. I mean, the ownership’s probably in someone else’s name. But, yeah, it’s his business.’
‘Does your mum know anything about running a tanning salon? Is she trained or anything?’
‘No.’
‘Does she get paid for working there?’
‘Yeah, but Dee Dee keeps most of it to pay off her debt. With what’s left after he’s taken his share, plus her benefit money, we’ve just about got enough to live on.’
‘How long’s it going to take to pay off the debt?’
‘As long as Dee Dee says.’
It was clear now why Mason had reacted the way he did. If Jakes and Mortimer went ahead with their client’s compensation claim against Tanga Tans, Mason’s mum was going to be in a whole lot of trouble. Even if the claim wasn’t successful, it was bound to come out that Lisa Yusuf wasn’t qualified to run a tanning salon, or even legally employed, so at the very least she’d lose her job, and she’d still be in debt to Dee Dee. And if Dee Dee ended up paying compensation, or even losing his business, Lisa wasn’t going to be his favourite person, to say the least.
No wonder Mason wanted Delaney & Co to drop the case.
‘Why didn’t Mason tell me about this himself?’ I asked Jaydie.
‘I think he’s just really mixed up about it. He wants to look after Mum, and he thinks he can do it all on his own. He’s too proud to admit he needs help. I’m not sure he knows what to do about Dee Dee either. He knows Dee Dee’s taking advantage of Mum and treating her like dirt, but he also knows that if it wasn’t for Dee Dee, Mum might have ended up in even worse trouble. And now there’s all this gang stuff going on too.’ She looked at me. ‘Did Mase tell you about that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you know he’s committed himself to Dee Dee’s side in this merger thing?’
I nodded. ‘The question is, how far does that commitment go?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, now that Mason knows about the investigation into Tanga Tans, it puts him in a really difficult position, doesn’t it? I mean, what does he do? Tell your mum about it? Tell Dee Dee? Don’t tell anyone? Whatever he does, I can’t see it having a happy ending.’
‘Couldn’t you ask your grandad to drop the case?’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference. We’ve already done our part of the job, the rest of it is up to Jakes and Mortimer and their client. If they want to go ahead with the claim, there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘Can’t you at least try?’ Jaydie asked. ‘I mean, if it all starts going wrong for Mum again . . .’
Her voice trailed off, and I could see she was struggling to keep her emotions under control.
‘I’m sorry, Jaydie,’ I said quietly. ‘If there was anything I could do to help, anything at all, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second. But I honestly can’t think of anything . . .’
‘It’s all right,’ she muttered. ‘It’s not your fault, is it
?’
‘Look, I’ll talk to my grandad, OK? He’ll probably say the same as me, but you never know . . . maybe he can talk to the solicitors or something. I doubt if it’ll do any good, but it’s worth a try.’
‘Thanks, Trav,’ she said, smiling sadly. She glanced over at the flats. ‘I’d better be getting back before Mason starts wondering where I am.’ She got to her feet, took off my jacket and gave it back to me, then leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Call me soon, OK?’
I nodded.
She started heading back to the flats.
‘Does Mason like Dee Dee?’ I said to her.
She stopped and turned round. ‘What?’
‘Does Mason actually like Dee Dee?’
The look she gave me was the look of a kindly teacher trying to explain something blatantly obvious to a very naive and dim-witted kid. ‘You don’t like or dislike people like Dee Dee,’ she said. ‘They are what they are, and that’s all there is to it. You don’t feel anything about them at all.’
17
Nan and Grandad’s house is a nice old three-bedroomed place on Long Barton Road, the main road between Kell Cross and Barton. I still really miss my old house in Kell Cross. I was born and raised there, and it holds all kinds of special memories for me, but it’s been sold now – it’s become someone else’s home – and I try not to think about it too much any more. And besides, I pretty much think of Nan and Grandad’s place as my home now.
When I got back that night, Granny Nora was upstairs in her room as usual, and Nan and Grandad were watching TV in the front room.
‘How’s Granny today?’ I asked Nan. ‘Is her arthritis still really bad?’
‘No, she’s a lot better now,’ Nan said. ‘She’s been asking about you actually. Something about a story she was going to tell you?’
There was a question in Nan’s voice – what story is this then? – but I pretended not to hear it, and Nan didn’t push it any further. She was trying her best to be OK, but I knew she was still a long way from being her usual bright and chirpy self, and it was clear from her attitude towards Grandad – polite but distant – that she hadn’t forgiven him yet.