Max Kowalski Didn't Mean It

by Susie Day

  Ripley crawled into Max’s arms, cuddling Potato between them.

  ‘Where’s he gone, Max?’ she whispered into his neck. ‘When’s he coming back?’

  Max thought about what Dad would do if he was here, which was daft because if he was then he wouldn’t have to do anything. But what Dad would do would be to take everyone off somewhere different, as a distraction. Like an Anti-Reflection Room, so that the last thing you had time to do was think. The day of Mum’s funeral they’d come home and played Twister and Buckaroo and KerPlunk, all day, and they’d laughed and laughed. And this wasn’t the same, definitely; it definitely completely wasn’t. But it still seemed like a good idea.

  So Max took them to Fallowfield again.

  Max took Ripley to the pet shop. It was massive, and smelled of straw and oats and the outdoors. It made Max’s nose itch.

  Ripley went straight to the back, where they kept the rabbits. There were three perfect snowy-white ones, babies, all quivery in one pen. In the pen next door, there was another one, by itself: fat and squat with one flopped-over ear, and splotchy brown fur.

  ‘That one,’ said Ripley, inevitably, pointing at the squat splotchy rabbit. ‘Cos it’s a bit crap. I bet it’s been here ages. I bet no one else wants it.’

  They looked at hutches too, but the cheapest one to go indoors was thirty pounds. Ripley blinked at the price, tracing it with her finger and crinkling her twenty-pound note between her fingers.

  Max groaned.

  ‘I’ll pay the extra,’ he said. ‘We can’t have a rabbit without a hutch, right?’

  Ripley sniffed. ‘It’s OK. I bet we don’t need a hutch. We could just give it a box to sleep in. Or the bottom of a cupboard. The rest of the time it could just run about.’

  But it turned out you couldn’t just buy a rabbit anyway, not without an adult to say you were allowed.

  ‘Bye bye, Blueberry Muffins,’ said Ripley sadly, waving as they left.

  Denny’s Sporting Goods was next door. Max pressed his face up against the window, and stared at the pure white trainers. They were reduced again: fifty pounds now.

  ‘You can’t have my money,’ said Ripley. ‘I’m not as nice as you.’

  They met the twins in the car park.

  Thelma had bought a rubber in the shape of a flamingo. ‘Llamas are so over. Everyone likes flamingos now.’

  Louise had bought a large notebook with a bumpy green cover, like leather, or dragon-skin.

  Dad wasn’t back when they got home.

  He wasn’t back for tea. Max made fish fingers and oven chips and beans.

  He wasn’t back when Ripley went to bed, or the twins.

  ‘He’ll be at work now,’ said Max. ‘It’s like any other night.’

  Max stayed up watching the TV on volume twenty-three, just because.

  Then he went to sleep in his bunk, because it wasn’t different from any other night, because Dad was always at work by now, and maybe he’d just done a double shift, and he definitely hadn’t been hit by a car and killed instantly, definitely not.

  Max was having a dream about Disneyland, and there being a huge accident where a rollercoaster fell to bits in the middle of a ride, and everyone was shouting ‘He did it!’ and pointing at Max, even though he was waiting innocently in the queue to go on it like everyone else – when a hand covered his mouth.

  ‘Max. Wake up, Max,’ whispered a voice in the darkness.

  ‘Dad,’ whispered Max against the palm of the hand.

  ‘Shhh.’

  The hand disappeared. Max lifted his head, blinking, as the image of Dad’s face slowly grew clearer.

  ‘Where –?’

  Dad held a finger to Max’s lips.

  ‘Quiet, Max. Listen up. There’s a bit of trouble. I need you to hold the fort for a few days.’

  I did, thought Max. I made fish fingers and oven chips and beans, and we didn’t even buy a rabbit.

  ‘Step up, Max. Take care of the girls, just till I’m back.’

  He tucked something under Max’s pillow.

  Then he touched Max on the top of his head, nodded, and vanished.

  Max went back to sleep, because Dad was probably just a weird extra bit of a dream.

  But in the morning, he felt a knotty lump under his pillow, and there it was.

  A roll of twenty-pound notes, tied with an elastic band.

  4

  ‘How much is there?’ asked Thelma, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

  They were all gathered in the front room on Sunday morning, staring at the scattered twenties on the coffee table.

  ‘Two hundred quid,’ said Max.

  Earlier, when his hand had touched the roll of notes, firmly coiled in their rubber band, it had all rushed back. Not a dream after all: Dad was OK, and Max was in charge, and now they were rich.

  ‘Where’s he gone, though?’ asked Louise, frowning.

  ‘It’s a secret, dummy,’ said Ripley.

  ‘He doesn’t have to keep it a secret from us,’ said Louise, her frown getting deeper.

  Max reckoned she had a point, but he rolled his eyes anyway. ‘It’s just a few days, right? That’s what he said. It’ll be fine.’

  He furled the notes back up into a tight bundle and slipped them into his pocket.

  Then he went round to see Elis Evans.

  ‘There’s fresh paint up there,’ said Elis Evans’s mum. ‘So no accidents today, right, Max?’

  ‘I’ll be dead careful,’ said Max, putting his old trainers in the porch.

  Upstairs, Elis Evans was sitting by a bright blue wall in a room that smelled of paint, gluing two pieces of wood together.

  ‘I’m building a swift box,’ he said. ‘To replace their natural habitat.’

  Max had been going to tell Elis Evans about Dad, and how he was in charge now. But now he was here, in the freshly painted bedroom a world away from Nice Jackie’s boxes, it seemed like a secret he should keep.

  He let Elis Evans talk instead, about how birds liked pastry much more than bread, and how you could be a hunting-eagle trainer at their age if you grew up in Mongolia. Then Max got bored and threw one of Elis Evans’s model birds to see if it would fly, which it could, right into the fresh blue paintwork. Its wing left a thin deep scratch of white.

  Elis Evans said his bed would probably go there anyway, so it didn’t matter.

  Even Elis Evans’s mum seemed to like him more than usual today.

  ‘You take this back for the girls, will you?’ she said as he left, pressing a tin into his hand, weighty with cake. ‘Give them my love. They’d be welcome round for tea, you know. If they’d like.’

  That was just how it was when you were rich, Max reckoned. The minute you didn’t need it, people just handed you stuff.

  He carried the cake tin slung under one arm, one hand in his pocket on the bundle of notes. He could get more fish fingers on the way back: posh ones. He could buy Ripley that rabbit. And flamingo junk for Thelma, and dragon books for Louise. He could buy anything.

  He had to walk past Denny’s Sporting Goods on the way.

  There were the pure white trainers in the window.

  Final Reduction: £49.

  Max pressed his hands against the window, and felt a longing worse than ever. Before, he was never going to have those trainers; not really, like he wasn’t ever going to wake up in a world where people called Max didn’t have to go to school. Some stuff was just fantasy. But now there was money in his pocket, and he could, he really could, he could just walk in there and –

  He should try them on, at least.

  The man at the counter looked surprised. ‘In the window? Oh yeah. Those are last year’s, you know that? Model Five comes out next week … we’ll have them for ninety-nine pounds, one week only …’

  Max shook his head. These were the ones he wanted.

  He wanted them even more once they were on his feet. His old trainers were grey and bent, and there was a worn place in the right one whe
re you could feel the pavement. These were like gloves, so white they almost glowed, and with a springiness under his feet like he was on the moon.

  ‘That is the final reduction,’ said the man, as Max fingered the price tag.

  ‘I’ll take them,’ said Max breathlessly. ‘Don’t put them back in the box. I’ll wear them now.’

  Max let the man put his sad grey trainers in the bin, and practically floated all the way home.

  Until he arrived to find the front door wide open, and a police officer in the hallway.

  5

  Max felt all his breath leave his body. Police meant bad news: the bad news, the worst news.

  Dad.

  He sagged against the wall. But Thelma ran into the hallway, and he could see from her furious face behind the officer that this was a different kind of bad.

  ‘They just came in, Max!’ she said, frightened as well as angry. ‘And now they’re turning over all our stuff!’

  ‘Good afternoon – Max, is it?’ said the officer. She had long dark hair twirled into a knobbly knot at the base of her neck, and a wide but unfriendly smile. ‘I’m PC Farhi. We didn’t just come in, actually – we knocked, and your little sister opened the door. Very sweet of her. So we thought we’d have a look round, while we’re here.’

  There was a thump in the bedroom followed by an anguished wail from Louise. When Max pushed his way in, there was another police officer, pulling all the Dragonslayer Chronicles books out from under Louise’s bunk and shaking them by the cover.

  ‘It’s your dad we’d like to talk to really, Max,’ said PC Farhi, in a honey-sweet voice. ‘Piotr Kowalski?’

  Pee-yot-er, she said it, when it was just Peter, in Polish. Just Big Pete.

  ‘He’s in a bit of trouble, see. Just tell us where we can find him and we’ll leave right now.’

  Max felt cool fresh sweat across his back.

  But he pushed the panic down, out of sight. He pulled his shoulders back, trying to look taller.

  ‘You can leave right now anyway,’ Max said. ‘Unless you’ve got a search warrant?’

  It was what they said on TV, when they had something to hide.

  PC Farhi narrowed her eyes. ‘Chip off the old block, aren’t you?’

  Max nodded. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Reckon we’ll be seeing each other again then, kid. Come on, PC Draper, time to go!’

  The officer dropped the book she was holding on to the floor, to another wail from Louise.

  Max followed them to the door, and closed it with a hard bang to make sure they were on the other side. Then he rested his head against it, just for a moment.

  ‘Oh, Max,’ sniffed Louise. ‘That was just – they were just –’

  ‘Meanies,’ said Ripley, her face stained with tears.

  ‘You were brilliant, though,’ said Thelma. ‘Search warrant? Brilliant.’

  Max didn’t feel brilliant. He felt sick. With relief that they hadn’t asked him to turn out his pockets. With relief that it wasn’t – that. The other reason the police knocked at your door: there’s been an accident, you’d better come to the hospital, you’d better come now.

  Dad was fine. He was in a bit of trouble, but he’d sort it. He always did.

  ‘They won’t be back,’ said Max, with confidence. ‘It’s probably mistaken identity, innit.’

  ‘Wait. Have you got new trainers?’ asked Thelma.

  And suddenly Max wasn’t brilliant any more. Max was mean too, and sneaky, and, like, totally unfair.

  He promised them shopping at Fallowfield for whatever they wanted most in the world – except for a rabbit – and let them eat the whole cake from Mrs Evans’s tin, in thick crumby wedges.

  Max had forgotten the rest of the shopping, so they followed the cake up with delivery pizza: fat droopy slices, with no mushrooms because Max was in charge and what he said went. They’d still put little green herbs on it that he had to pick off. But it was all good. The girls were happy. He’d got rid of the police, for now at least. And Dad would be back soon.

  ‘I like being rich,’ said Thelma, with her mouth full.

  Max looked at his trainers.

  Yep. He could get used to it.

  6

  On Monday, Max put on his uniform and walked the girls to school as usual. Then came straight back home.

  This wasn’t a day for school. This was a day for staying home, on guard.

  Besides, Dad would probably be back today, and Max wanted to be the first to see him.

  He watched Mrs Gupta pass the window on her way to Sainsbury’s, pushing little Anil, who cried. Then he peeled a few notes off the bundle of twenties, wrapped the rest in an old sock, and buried it in the hard cold earth of her yucca plant. The police would never look there, and the earthworm wouldn’t mind.

  Maybe, if he left it there long enough, the money would grow. Tiny coins, that started as pennies and grew up to be pounds. Damp pale notes, unfurling like leaves. Like a bank, but natural.

  Then he went inside and sat in the dim of the morning with the curtains drawn, looking at Dad’s mobile phone.

  Dad could call it. He knew the number. Maybe he left it on purpose, so he could call it, and Max would answer, and he’d hear Dad say, ‘Big man! How’s it going? Well done. I’m picking up dinner on the way home.’

  Dad’s phone started ringing, and Max picked it up so fast he almost dropped it – but it wasn’t Dad. It was Paul, from the yard, wondering why Big Pete hadn’t turned up for his shift in the forklift that morning.

  ‘Off sick,’ said Max quickly, knowing that was what Dad would say if he’d messed up his shifts and needed time off to work at the club.

  Paul sounded unimpressed.

  ‘He needs to call that in. You tell him,’ he said, and hung up.

  Then Max called school, in a deep voice with his hand over the phone to muffle it, telling them Max was sick too.

  It was too quiet in the flat by himself.

  Max went out into the estate, Dad’s phone tucked in one pocket, cash in the other.

  The bright Christmas lights dappling Seaview Tower were cheerful: a reindeer, a snowflake, flashing reds and yellows in star shapes all across one balcony. There was an inflatable snowman tethered in one corner, its broad belly rippling in the wind.

  They should have one of those. He could buy one, now they were rich. They could cover the walkway in sparkling lights that twinkled like snow falling, and a tree, a real one, so tall you had to saw the top off like Elis Evans had one year.

  They were due a real Christmas. The first year after Mum, it had been too fresh, and the day had passed with stilted attempts at joy that stubbornly would not come when called. Last year, Dad had tried his best. But they were skint, and their thin stockings were filled with plastic toys that broke, and cherry liqueur chocolates that Dad had been given a crate of by a mate. Max could still remember the crack of the sugar crust inside and the burning too-ripe sweetness of cherry brandy: the same going down as when it came back up.

  This year would be different.

  He resisted the guy selling trees all wound up in red netting, and walked past the tinsel and lights in the big supermarket. But he went to the little shop on the corner and bought three chocolate Santas, because rich people didn’t have to wait for Christmas stockings for those.

  At home, he put some laundry in the machine, with a bit of washing-up liquid because there wasn’t any powder, and he didn’t want to go out again, just in case.

  Then he watched TV in fits and starts until it was time to pick up the girls from school.

  They were huddled in a hopeful clump in the yard, waiting.

  ‘Is he –?’ asked Louise, in a whisper.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Max, as if it was all as he’d expected.

  They had pizza for dinner again. Ripley fell asleep on the sofa with a slice still in her hand, and he carried her, snoring, into her bunk.

  Max wasn’t good at much. Every teacher he’d ever had
had made that pretty clear. But Max wasn’t bad at this. He was stepping up. He was being the big man, a chip off the old block; Big Pete Kowalski’s little twin. If Dad had been here to see it, that’s what he’d say.

  And he’d be back soon, to say it.

  He’d be back soon.

  7

  Dad didn’t come back on Tuesday.

  Max phoned school: off sick again, oh dear, then kept the mobile phone plugged in and fully charged as he stayed home from school waiting, all day.

  Max dipped into the sock buried deep and hopeful in the yucca plant pot, and bought fish fingers and oven chips and washing powder.

  Max told the girls it was fine, despite the uneasy but certain sense beneath his skin that it was not.

  ‘I don’t think this is OK, Max,’ whispered Louise on Wednesday morning, too worried even to read her book while eating her Krispies. ‘He’s missing. He’s definitely a missing person.’

  ‘What if he went in a hole and broke himself?’ said Ripley, her eyes big.

  ‘Why would he have gone in a hole?’ asked Thelma.

  ‘People go in holes,’ Ripley said seriously. ‘All the time.’

  She discovered her hair was in her breakfast bowl, and licked the ends.

  ‘He could live for two weeks without food, but only three days without water,’ said Louise, thoughtfully stirring her spoon. ‘Unless he’s injured, of course. Shock can be fatal.’

  ‘Shut up!’ yelled Max, grabbing her ponytail and pulling.

  Louise leaped up with a howl, spilling milk and bloated Krispies across the sofa and all over Ripley’s school socks.

  Ripley began to wail.

  ‘You shut up and all!’

  ‘No, you!’ shouted Thelma, pushing him in the shoulder.

  Max stumbled, then recovered and lunged at her, and they fought until Max pushed her hard – hard enough to fling her backwards. Her head hit the wall with a thump. She yelped, and slid to the floor, clutching at the back of her head.