Stand by Me

by S. D. Robertson

‘Do we have to, Daddy?’ Hannah, the elder sister, protested. ‘It’s not dark yet and there’s no school tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. You might not have school, but I have work – and I need to get you over to your mummy first thing. I can’t be returning two sleepy moles to her now, can I?’

  ‘Can’t we skip a shower?’

  Jamie pulled her over to him and sniffed her hair. ‘Yuck! You smell like a barbecued sausage. What about you, Emily?’

  The younger daughter smelled her own hair and, blowing a raspberry, replied: ‘I smell like a burger.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Jamie said, scooping them up, one in each arm. ‘It’s a bathroom emergency.’

  He carried them, wriggling and giggling, into the house and up the stairs, leaving Elliot in the garden with Lisa, Mike and Ben. Chloe had disappeared earlier to visit her friend Holly, who only lived a couple of streets away from her uncle.

  ‘He makes a good dad, doesn’t he?’ Elliot said to Lisa. ‘What happened between him and the girls’ mum?’

  ‘He blew it. Cheated on her with a friend of hers.’

  ‘Ouch. Were they married?’

  ‘No. They used to live together, though. The girls were still tiny at the time of the breakup. Jamie claimed they were getting all the attention and he felt pushed out. Not very original.’

  ‘They were always arguing,’ Mike piped up. ‘You wouldn’t believe the shouting and screaming that went on.’

  ‘Is Jamie still into his football?’ Elliot asked. ‘I remember he was mad on it as a boy.’

  Lisa pulled a face. ‘He still supports Liverpool, but he hasn’t played for years. Dad pushed him so hard as a kid, I think he ruined it for him. He got his hopes up about playing professionally when it was never realistic.’

  Lisa’s phone buzzed with a text message. ‘It’s from Mum,’ she announced. ‘She says hi, El, and sends her love. She’s gutted to have missed you.’

  ‘That’s nice. Is she having a good holiday?’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ Ben asked, looking up from his phone for the first time in a good while.

  ‘Budapest. Next stop Bratislava.’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘Bratislava being the capital of?’ Mike asked him.

  ‘Slovakia.’

  ‘And Budapest?’

  Ben sighed. ‘Hungary. What is this: summer school?’

  ‘I’m just checking if you’ve being paying attention in Geography. Well done, son.’

  Ben threw his dad an unconvincing smile before returning to staring at his mobile. ‘I think I’m going to head home,’ he announced soon after.

  ‘Okay, love,’ Lisa replied. ‘Have you got your key with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Elliot feigned a yawn. ‘Do you know what? I think I might head back to the hotel too. I’m feeling bushed all of a sudden. Must be jet lag still. Do you mind if I walk with you, Ben?’

  ‘If you like.’

  Lisa placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder. ‘Maybe we should go too.’

  ‘I thought you promised to read a bedtime story to the girls, love.’

  ‘That’s true. Best hang on.’

  Elliot breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  Ten minutes later, goodbyes and thank yous out of the way, Elliot and Ben hit the pavement. Jamie’s house was right on the other side of Aldham from Lisa’s, which gave them several minutes to chat. It was exactly the kind of opening that Elliot had been looking for with Ben.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked the teenager.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Have you got some credit on your phone again now? I saw you using it earlier.’

  ‘Yeah, but I was mainly on Uncle Jamie’s Wi-Fi.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Don’t you have a mobile? I’ve never seen you with one.’

  ‘Um, no. Not at the moment. I usually do, but—’

  ‘Seriously? How’s that possible with your job? Don’t people need to get hold of you?’

  Elliot thought on his feet. ‘I’m at the hotel, aren’t I? They can contact me there or leave a message. It gets tiring when people can contact you all the time. I guess I needed a break.’

  ‘But I thought you were here on business.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Elliot said, backtracking. ‘I do have a mobile, of course, but I’ve switched it off and left it in the safe at the hotel.’

  ‘Were you working earlier?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Elliot decided it was time to change the subject. ‘So have your mum and dad been okay today? No indication that they know anything about yesterday?’

  Ben stopped walking and eyeballed him. ‘Why? Have you said anything?’

  ‘No, of course not. I told you I wouldn’t. Parents can sometimes – I don’t know – sense things. That’s all I meant. Come on. Let’s keep going.’

  ‘Right. Sorry.’

  ‘How about that Sandie woman? Have you heard anything more from her?’

  ‘What?’ Ben threw him a perplexed glance. ‘How do you mean? I only met her for the first time yesterday. It’s not like we exchanged details.’

  ‘No, of course. Never mind. She was just a bit … unusual, wasn’t she?’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  Elliot paused for a moment, the clomping of their shoes on the pavement the only sound as they walked on. Then he added: ‘I know at your age it sometimes feels like you have to deal with everything yourself; that your parents won’t understand. But you’d be surprised. It’s not healthy to have too many secrets.’

  Elliot looked over at his companion as they crossed the road, but Ben kept his eyes firmly on the ground and lips sealed. Nodding at a passing dog walker, Elliot chewed the corner of his mouth before continuing: ‘I knew a boy once who had this big secret he didn’t think he could share with anyone. He thought his family and friends would judge him for it; that it would colour their view of him.

  ‘But keeping that secret – holding it in and living a lie – was harder than he figured. It was like a gradual build-up of pressure inside his head, until one day it was unbearable; it had to come out. And do you know what? Once he told people, it was fine. Those that loved him didn’t care. They accepted him for who he was. And the handful of people who did care weren’t worth bothering with.

  ‘He told me afterwards how great the relief felt to not have that secret hanging over him any more. And he wished he hadn’t punished himself for so long by holding it in.’

  Elliot stopped talking and looked over again at Ben. His face had turned several shades paler and remained pointed firmly down at the ground as they continued to walk in the direction of his house.

  Elliot wondered if he’d gone too far with his clunky story about a fictional friend, but it was the best method of addressing the issue – or at least skirting around it – that he’d been able to come up with in the time available. He hadn’t predicted this opportunity to chat with Ben emerging as soon as tonight, so without having settled on a final approach, he’d more or less had to wing it. It wasn’t like he had any real experience of dealing with kids. Not since being one himself.

  ‘What do you think about that, Ben?’

  There was a long pause and then: ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Any idea why I might have told you that story?’

  Another pause. ‘Not really.’

  They were on the main road now, where the buses to and from Manchester ran. Ben had upped his walking pace. He was striding ahead, so Elliot almost had to jog to keep up. Meanwhile, they were fast approaching the point where their paths would diverge as Ben went home and he continued to the hotel. Part of him wished he could use one of his new-found abilities to get through to the teenager, rather than having to rely on traditional powers of persuasion. But this didn’t work that way.

  Elliot reached forward and placed a hand on Ben’s arm.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Ben spat, twisting around and coming to a sudden
halt; shooting daggers at him. ‘Why are you touching me?’

  ‘I was trying to get you to slow down. I want to talk to you about something.’

  ‘Well don’t! I’ve no idea what you’re on about. It sounds like you’re trying to groom me or something.’

  ‘Calm down,’ Elliot said, noticing a middle-aged couple on the other side of the road staring at them. ‘I know what actually happened to you in Manchester yesterday. Not the story you made up, but the truth. I want to talk to you about it. I want to help.’

  Ben’s jaw dropped. He gaped at him for a moment, eyes stretched, and then tore across the road without another word. He narrowly avoided a passing car, its horn blaring, and disappeared down a ginnel.

  Elliot found himself rooted to the spot, horrified at the near miss he’d witnessed – and arguably caused. He shook his head and cast his eyes up to the vast emptiness of the sky.

  ‘I wish someone would tell me how this works,’ he said under his breath eventually, once it was steady again. ‘A sign pointing me in the right direction or whatever. Anything. Clearly I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.’

  CHAPTER 25

  THEN

  Saturday, 25 June 1994

  ‘Happy birthday, sleepyhead,’ Wendy said, waking him with a kiss on the forehead. ‘How does it feel to be fourteen?’

  ‘What?’ Elliot groaned. ‘It feels like the middle of the night.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ She walked to the window and threw open the curtains, soaking the room with sunlight. ‘Glorious! It’s only your birthday once a year. You shouldn’t waste a minute.’

  Elliot stole a look at his alarm clock and, shuddering, pulled the covers over his head. ‘What on earth, Mum? It’s not even seven o’clock. Surely a guy is allowed a lie-in on his birthday.’

  ‘Not this year, love. A little bird tells me you might have a visitor in a few minutes.’

  ‘A visitor? Who on earth would come to see me so ridiculously early?’

  ‘Someone who feels bad about not being able to come to your party later.’

  He let a little light into his cocoon, wincing at the brightness. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep. She’ll be here at seven. I thought you’d appreciate a warning.’

  Sure enough, by the time Elliot had thrown on some clothes and splashed his face with water, he heard the doorbell. And when he came down to the kitchen, Lisa and Wendy were chatting away.

  ‘There he is,’ Lisa said, beaming a big smile at him. She was dressed in her emerald Queen Anne’s tracksuit, with her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. ‘Sorry to get you up so early on your birthday, El. I feel awful not being able to make your party this afternoon. You know I’d be there if I could.’

  ‘It’s fine. I told you that yesterday. I understand.’

  Lisa, whose speed on the hockey pitch had caught the eye of the athletics coach, was due to compete in the one- and two-hundred-metre running races at an interschool competition in Birmingham that afternoon. Hence she wasn’t able to make his birthday do – ten-pin bowling with a group of school friends.

  Had she been able to come, Lisa would have been the only girl, but that had never bothered her. It had been that way in previous years and, if anything, had always worked to Elliot’s advantage, raising his kudos with the other boys, who were only too happy to spend time in her company. The fact she was going out with hard nut Sean Ferguson at the moment would have probably increased her desirability to them, although it was still something Elliot struggled to comprehend or accept. He felt the relationship had driven a wedge between them; not least because of the fact it had altered Lisa’s stance on their one-time shared enemy Samo, who she’d now started talking to on the bus, since he was one of her boyfriend’s mates.

  Elliot still remembered the ferocious look in Lisa’s eyes when, two years earlier, she had sworn to make Samo pay for bog-washing her friend. And so she had. The ace up her sleeve had been the fact that she was friendly with a girl he’d been out with and had dumped unceremoniously shortly beforehand. Catherine, a fellow hockey player from Samo’s year, had been only too happy to share some of his secrets with Lisa as a way to get her own back for the way he’d treated her.

  After speaking to Catherine on Saturday morning, Lisa had gone shopping. She’d discovered that Samo, the supposed big hard man, was terrified of spiders, so she’d bought a realistic-looking fake. On the bus home the following Monday afternoon, she surreptitiously placed it on the seat next to him and, much to her and Elliot’s delight, it worked a treat. Upon spotting it, Samo jumped to his feet and shrieked like a little girl, sending everyone on the lower deck into hysterics.

  Then, as Elliot watched open-mouthed, Lisa struck while the iron was hot. She jumped to her feet and, facing Samo, declared in a loud voice, so everyone could hear: ‘In case you were wondering who did that, it was me. It was to get you back for what you did last week to my friend Elliot, who had no idea what I was planning, by the way.

  ‘Now let me make something clear: if you ever lay one of your bully hands on him again or attack him with one of your pathetic insults, there’s plenty more where that came from. I’ve been chatting to your ex-girlfriend, Catherine, and she told me some very interesting things about you, I’ll say. Unless you want them shared with the rest of the bus – and spread around both of our schools – I’d suggest that you and your cronies steer well clear. Capeesh?’

  Elliot couldn’t quite believe what he was witnessing. Lisa’s performance was a tour de force, right down to the Italian-American slang at the end, which she later admitted to stealing from a movie. And the best thing of all was that everyone clapped afterwards. Well, everyone apart from Samo, who was left speechless for once, his face resembling a giant tomato. Even the driver, who’d been turning his head every so often to watch the spectacle, joined in. It was something else.

  ‘You’re incredible,’ Elliot told Lisa afterwards. ‘There you go, saving me again. How can I ever repay you?’

  ‘You don’t need to repay me, El.’ She landed a playful punch on his arm. ‘That’s what friends are for.’

  ‘One day I will, if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Smiling at the memory, Elliot recalled how Samo had left him alone from that moment forward. No more calling him ‘freak’ or ‘E.T’; no more bog-washes; no more bullying, full stop.

  The only disappointing thing was that Lisa had never told Elliot the details of Samo’s embarrassing secrets. Apparently she’d promised Catherine, who also stood to be left red-faced by them, that she wouldn’t. It had been one huge bluff, which in Lisa’s hands had been transformed into a magnificent slice of revenge.

  So how had they gone from there to here? Elliot wouldn’t go so far as to say that Lisa and Samo were now friends. But why even pass the time of day with him? It wasn’t like he’d really changed in the two years since then. He might have left Elliot alone, but he was still a bully to lots of other boys. He was still an idiot. But so was Lisa’s boyfriend.

  ‘Happy birthday, El,’ she said, walking over to him in the kitchen and planting a kiss on his cheek before handing him an envelope and a small wrapped parcel.

  ‘Great, thanks.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ his mum urged.

  So he did. He started with the card, which contained a message reiterating Lisa’s apology for not being able to attend his party. Then he moved on to the present and found, to his surprise, that it was a CD of the new Blur album, Parklife. ‘Wow. Thank you,’ he said, looking it over at length in a bid to hide his confusion. Lisa knew that neither he nor Wendy had a CD player. So why on earth had she bought this for him?

  When he eventually looked up, he was faced with two big grins.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, although by that point he’d already guessed. He didn’t dare to say it, in case he was wrong; his heart skipped a beat when his mum suggested opening her present next. ‘It’s in the lounge,’ she said. ‘Go ahead.’

  He darted th
rough the house, the others at his heels, and found a large brown box with a red bow around it sitting on the sofa. ‘It was too big to wrap,’ Wendy said, looking every bit as excited as he felt. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not.’ He was already busy tearing it open. To his absolute delight, he found an all-in-one hi-fi with a double cassette deck, radio, separate speakers and – best of all – a CD player.

  ‘Thanks so much, Mum,’ he said, giving her a big hug and kiss.

  ‘You like it, then?’ she asked, eyes twinkling and a grin from ear to ear.

  ‘Are you kidding? I love it.’ Looking over at Lisa, he added: ‘And you knew? I can’t believe you kept that from me.’

  Lisa shrugged, flashing him another smile. ‘Sorry, El. What can I say? Wendy swore me to secrecy.’

  ‘Lisa was great. She was my chief technology consultant. Without her assistance, I don’t think I’d have had a clue. You know what I’m like with these things.’

  ‘Well, thanks so much, both of you. I’m over the moon. Is it for down here or—’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s your present. It belongs in your room. I’m fine with my antique stereo and my LPs down here.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  Lisa had had a CD player in her room for some time, but Elliot had never dared to ask for one. He knew money was tight at home, so he’d made do with his old tape player. He realised that buying this for him on top of forking out for his bowling party must have been a stretch for his mum – and he massively appreciated it.

  Lisa wasn’t able to stay for long, as she had to get to Queen Anne’s in time to catch the coach for Birmingham. Elliot waited until she’d left to tell his mum how much her generosity meant to him.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she replied. ‘You’re my only son. Nothing makes me happier than spoiling you.’

  He was glad to see his mum so cheery. She’d been a bit down for the last couple of weeks after recently splitting up with the man she’d been seeing from the hospital, Dr Nesbit. While they’d been an item, she’d encouraged Elliot to call him by his first name, Alistair. However, he’d never felt comfortable doing so. He’d found him aloof and hard to talk to.