Then she takes a closer look at my pale face and places her slim brown hand on my arm.
Bindi’s always been very kind and sensitive. She’s not even thirteen at this point in our friendship, but her big eyes are full of concern, just like an adult.
‘Spill,’ she says, as we perch on a low wall outside the school.
I tell her about last night and what I found Jay doing and the things I read on the internet, and her eyes widen with shock. For a moment she just stares at me, like I’m some weird freak in a circus or something, except I know that’s not why she’s doing it, and I can see a hundred little brain wheels cranking into motion as Bindi tries to work out what on earth she can say that’s going to help me.
In the end she says, ‘It’s kind of your decision, Lilah. I mean, he’s not my brother, so it’s not up to me to say what I would do.’
Oh.
I hoped she might be more helpful than that but I can see what she means.
‘Maybe you could try and talk to Jay again first?’ she says.
I’ve thought of that. Except that he scares me now.
My own brother scares me.
But I’m going to have to talk to him.
Soon.
It’s hard to find the right time to talk to Jay.
He’s hardly ever at home, and when he is, he’s usually sleeping off the late nights he has nearly all the time now.
Mum’s been down to his school to see the headmaster after they rang up and said that they hadn’t seen Jay in lessons for over a week, and there’s a huge scene at home with her screaming and him refusing to speak, and Dad banging on about how disappointed he is, and how the older child should set an example to the younger one. I hang my head and try not to catch Jay’s eye. I hate being referred to as the little kid in all this, because after what I’ve seen in his bedroom I’m not feeling much like the innocent little sister any more.
I don’t get to speak to him alone for almost a week, but then at last I get my chance because Mum and Dad decide that they need to go out to dinner alone and talk everything through, so they leave me in charge and head off to the local Indian.
I don’t much want to be in charge.
I want things to be like they used to, with Jay looking after me and not the other way round. I’m only twelve, and I feel kind of sick and scared about all this.
And as if I’m totally on my own.
Jay stays up in his room for most of the evening, but in the end even he has to eat and drink sometimes, so he comes downstairs ravenous and I grill him some cheese-on-toast and he sits slumped at the kitchen table, sucking in the strings of yellow Cheddar in a way that makes me feel a bit sick.
I put a mug of tea in front of him and he empties the sugar bowl into it and gulps it down.
Gross.
I wait until he’s finished, and then I take a deep slow breath.
‘Jay,’ I say. ‘You know what you were doing the other night up in your room?’
Jay gives a brief nod. He’s all wired up and shaky and can’t sit still. Any moment now, he’s going to bolt back upstairs. I have to be quick.
‘Well, I think you should tell Mum and Dad,’ I say. ‘They might be able to help you.’
Jay gives an abrupt snort of laughter and gets up so fast that his chair falls over onto the kitchen floor.
‘Get lost, Lilah,’ he says. ‘Like any of you bunch of losers can ever help me. They don’t even notice whether I’m here or not most of the time.’
I swallow back a big lump of pain in my throat as my brother leaves the kitchen and goes upstairs to bang his bedroom door.
About an hour later I hear him throwing up in the bathroom, and then he comes downstairs walking in a wonky line, and slams out of the front door without even looking at me.
I sit at the table watching the clock for the rest of the evening, and have my second experience of the anger that’s going to move into my life as a permanent guest.
It’s like something rising up from my guts and making my breathing faster and my face tighten into a scowl.
By the time I hear my parents’ key in the front door, I’m not the sweet little sister any longer.
I’m like a fired-up stick of rage-dynamite.
I’ve made my mind up.
I know what I have to do.
When I tell Mum and Dad about Jay and the drugs it feels like a relief for about, oh, thirty seconds.
‘You did the right thing telling us, Lilah,’ they say. Dad puts his arm around my shoulders and gives me a hug.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mum says. Her voice is firm. ‘We’ll get it sorted out. The main thing is that we know what we’re dealing with now.’
They pack me off to bed and I can hear the low hum of their voices in the kitchen as they discuss what they’re going to say when Jay comes home.
I’ve got an awful sick feeling.
It doesn’t feel right now, me telling Mum and Dad.
I wish I could rewind the whole afternoon and erase the words that came out of my mouth but it’s a bit late for that.
I try really hard to stay awake, but I’m tired, so I drift off to sleep, and by the time I wake up it’s the next morning and Jay’s obviously been home because there are loads of messy plates and cups and things in the kitchen. I wait until Mum comes downstairs and starts tidying up, and I say, ‘Did you talk to him about it?’ and she says, ‘Yes. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, actually. He seemed a bit quiet, but he was taking in everything that Dad and I said to him.’
Dad’s making toast and coffee to take up to Jay in bed.
‘He’s probably had to do a lot of thinking,’ he says. ‘He’ll be wanting something to eat.’
I pour cereal into a white bowl and fill it up to the brim with milk. I’ve got tennis practice before school and I’m wearing my new white and green plimsolls, and I think that maybe things are actually going to get better now that it’s all out in the open. I’m just about to pack my bag and head off to school when Dad comes bolting down the stairs, taking them three at a time.
He runs to the front door and out into the drive, staring up and down our street, and then he comes back inside, sits down at the kitchen table and buries his head in his big, lion-taming hands.
‘Jay’s bed hasn’t been slept in,’ he says. ‘He’s gone.’
Jay doesn’t come back at all that day.
Or the one after.
Or the one after that.
By then, my parents have already called the police and reported him missing.
I’m ashen with shock.
There’s a huge space in the house where he ought to be.
My brother.
Gone.
And it’s all because of me.
Four weeks after Jay goes missing, a television crew comes to our house.
They’re making a programme about missing teenagers and they got in touch with us to see if we’d like their help.
Mum and Dad clutch at anything, so of course they say yes.
I don’t say anything. Nobody asks me if I mind a television crew coming to the house. Nobody warns me that a teenage actor who looks a lot like Jay is going to take part in the reconstruction.
When I see him dressed up in Jay’s clothes my heart feels faint, and I have to reach out and prop myself up against the hall wall until I get my breath back.
The boy traces Jay’s last known movements, so he walks out of our house wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt and makes for the tube station, which is where Jay was last spotted by passers-by in the early hours of the morning he went missing. The passers-by are played by the actual people, and they’re a middle-aged couple puffed up with importance at being on television, and concerned with getting their performance just right. I want to scream at them that this isn’t some soap opera, it’s our real family life that’s happening, and we don’t want to be on the television, we just want the missing part of our family back. But I don’t say any of that, even though I’m wrecked wit
h anger all the time.
The camera crew hang around our kitchen and Mum makes them cups of tea.
Her eyes have purple shadows underneath them from broken night after broken night, and she’s stopped going to work and hired somebody else to take over her children’s parties.
Dad’s still going to the zoo, but he says his heart’s not in it and he rings home several times a day to see how Mum is, and employs a new member of zoo staff to take over a lot of his duties.
I carry on going to school like a robot, but I can’t take in a word of what’s going on and only Bindi can get through to me.
A lot of the other kids whisper and point at me, but I’m beyond caring.
Our house has become so sad, like a hard shell full of bits of stuff that don’t mean anything. The rooms feel cold and empty and just smell of furniture polish instead of spliffs and guitar-strings and trainers and junk food.
I watch the actor playing Jay as he does another take, walking out of our front door and down the street towards the tube station, and I wish harder than I’ve ever wished for anything in my life that it was really Jay and not some strange boy, and that I could run after him and grab him by the arm and say, ‘Sorry, I’m sorry, Jay, I didn’t mean to tell Mum and Dad and make you run away,’ and persuade him to turn around and walk back into the house. But I know that’s stupid, so I hang around the front garden with Dad, watching in silence and answering the odd question from the film crew. They carry on for the whole afternoon and I watch as the police talk to my parents while the filming drags on, and still I can only think of the one question that’s been haunting me day and night ever since he went.
When will Jay come home again?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Two years and two months after the day he went missing, the police reckon that they might have found Jay.
Dad’s holding my hand in the kitchen.
He talks in a very soft and steady voice, not like his usual loud bark. It’s the voice he uses when he has to climb into an enclosure of lions and break up a fight, or rescue a trapped cub, or give an injection.
Except that he doesn’t need to tame me on this particular day.
I’ve lost the power of speech and I’m the quietest I’ve ever been.
Even Benjie’s gone quiet and is huddled under my chair.
Behind the dark bulk of Dad’s head I can see Mum leaning on the banisters in the hall and hiding her face behind her hand. There’s a policewoman standing next to her with one hand on Mum’s elbow and she’s bent towards Mum in concern. I make out the words ‘tea’ and ‘sit down’ and ‘when you’re ready,’ but I can’t make any sense of it, because I feel as if a big part of my side has been ripped off and left all the inside bits of me hanging out.
Jay.
Jay.
I want Jay.
Dad’s stroking my hair, and he has big tears rolling down his face. I’ve almost never seen Dad cry. Even when Jay went missing the first time, he didn’t cry. He just went grey and aged about twenty years in five minutes and ever since then he’s not smiled or laughed in the way that he used to.
Mum’s been the one who cries.
She’s crying again now, like her heart is broken.
The policewoman comes into the kitchen and fills up the kettle, hunts for cups and mugs and gets milk out of the fridge.
‘We will need you to come and make an identification,’ she says to Dad, with an anxious look at me. ‘Your daughter should probably stay at home.’
‘It’s OK, I’m nearly sixteen,’ I say, out of habit. People always think I look younger than I am. They should see Bindi – she still looks about twelve.
At the thought of my best friend, I find a rush of tears coming up from somewhere and I reach in my pocket for my phone.
‘Can I call Bindi?’ I say.
Dad nods.
‘You’re not to come with us, Lilah,’ he says. ‘This is for me and Mum to do on our own.’
I’m too dazed to argue, so I just give him a nod back and then I go into the hallway and dial Bindi’s mobile, but it’s switched off, so I have to dial her landline instead.
‘Hello, love,’ says Reeta. ‘She’s just upstairs. Are you OK, Lilah? You sound very serious.’
I manage to squawk out a ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ and then there’s a pause, during which I can hear the blast of Asian Network getting nearer and nearer as Reeta moves upstairs with the phone, and then it’s turned down and Bindi’s soft voice comes onto the line. She already seems alarmed, because her mum’s obviously told her that I sound weird, and Bindi knows me really well so I don’t have to say all that much.
I just say, ‘They think they’ve found Jay. But it’s not good news. Can you come?’ and she throws the phone down and is already on her way by the time I go back downstairs again, to where the policewoman is leading Mum and Dad towards the front door.
Mum comes back just as they are about to go.
She gives me the fiercest hug she’s ever given me. It squeezes every bone and rib and muscle in my body and snatches my breath away.
‘We’ll ring you,’ she says. ‘Stay here with Bindi. Stay safe, Lilah.’ And they walk down the path behind the policewoman and get into the car in complete silence.
I watch them sitting stiff and upright in the back of the police car, not speaking, and then I listen to the sound of the car pulling away in the rain. The streets are all wet and shiny and there’s a smell of damp grass in the air.
No stars out tonight, and no moon.
Just the clouds, moving in silence across the streetlights.
I turn and walk back inside the house. It already looks and smells different.
With no Jay and now no Mum and Dad, it’s a building sucked clean of family and warmth. A shell.
I sit on the stairs in the hall in the dark and Benjie comes and huddles next to me. I bury my head in his warm fur and wrap my arms over both of us to make a warm, dark burrow of dog and girl.
Five minutes later, Bindi rings the bell.
It feels like the longest night ever.
Mum rings me to say they’ve arrived and that they’re going to be quite a while.
I don’t ask any questions. That’s because I don’t want to know the answers.
Instead, I let Bindi make me a mug of hot chocolate with loads of milk and sugar and we take it up to my room and sit on the bed for a while with the puppy, and she makes me tip all my jewellery out on the duvet and tries to make me laugh by putting it on and making silly comments. I sort of go along with it and even laugh a real laugh at one point, and then I’m tripped up with guilt for laughing when I know what Mum and Dad are going to have to do. I find that I’m shaking like I’ve got the flu, so Bindi just creeps over to my side of the bed and hugs me until I stop, which is about ten minutes later, when I’m exhausted and feel all cold and thin.
‘Don’t be nice to me,’ I growl, in a more Lilah-like way. ‘It might make me cry.’
Fat chance of that, but she knows what I mean.
Bindi switches Planet Rock on and finds some good heavy metal music, and demands that I show her how to head-bang so I do. For a moment it feels good to thrash about to the hard beat of the music, and a little part of me thinks that Jay might actually be watching me from somewhere and grinning at me, like he used to do before it all went wrong.
‘Yeah, Liles – you look so cool doing that, NOT,’ I hear in my head.
There’s a faint whiff of Jay in the bedroom for a moment. Sweat, spliffs, guitars and hair gel. Then it floats away as quickly as it came.
I start to shake again.
Bindi holds my hand.
I don’t know what makes me want to do this, but I take Bindi into Jay’s room later on.
The last time she came into his room was when he still lived at home, before he started going all weird. He used to be really nice to my mates and chat to them about school and music and silly stuff.
Now Bindi’s creeping about like a non-believe
r in a church, trying not to touch anything until I give her an exasperated shove.
‘He’s not exactly going to mind if you mess anything up, is he?’ I say, with a hint of my anger coming back.
Bindi is kind enough not to snap back at me. She picks up a pile of tatty old copies of NME magazine and leafs through them with a bemused look on her delicate face.
‘I’ve never heard of any of these bands,’ she says. ‘Why haven’t I?’
I grin.
‘’Cos you only listen to Asian music,’ I say. ‘Jay was really into his indie stuff. His band played loads of it. You know, like the stuff Adam Carter plays now.’
Bindi gives a slight jump when I say this. Or at least, I think she does. My mind’s all over the place. I might have imagined it.
She’s staring at me now with a look I can’t quite work out.
‘What?’ I say. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘If I say it,’ she says, ‘you’ll think I’m really mad. Or selfish.’
I smile.
‘You, selfish?’ I say. ‘Go on – just say it.’
‘Well,’ says Bindi. ‘I know this is a terrible time for your family. And I know you really miss Jay. But, the thing is – I’m kind of a bit jealous of you sometimes.’
I’m so surprised at this, that I nearly slide off the side of Jay’s bed.
‘Me?’ I say. ‘My life is totally rubbish. Why would you be jealous of me?’
Bindi sighs and looks around Jay’s bedroom.
‘This,’ she says. ‘Your own bedrooms. One each. I have to share with two of my sisters.’
I glance around at Jay’s posters. I’ve never really thought about it.
‘And,’ Bindi continues. I can feel her gathering pace. ‘And your mum and dad give you loads and loads of attention. There’s always one of them there for you to talk to.’
I give this a bit of thought.
‘It feels like they were never there for us,’ I say. ‘It’s part of why Jay went missing, I reckon. They were caught up in their jobs all the time.’
Bindi is shaking her head.
The Taming of Lilah May Page 8