‘No.’
‘But who—’
‘It was three drunk guys coming home from the pub on the corner. They said something to Nick and he couldn’t just leave it alone, he couldn’t just walk away. He had to stand up for himself, and so they punched him in the face, and they hit his head against a wall and pulled his shoulder out of its socket and then when he was lying on the ground they stamped on the same shoulder and shattered it. And if you think I should have told you all of that when you were seven years old then I’m sorry, but I didn’t. We were trying to protect you.’
There’s a weird taste in the back of my mouth like I’m going to be sick. I swallow it back. ‘And what,’ I say, hating myself for the way my voice is shaking, ‘You just now decided you don’t want to protect me any more?’
He looks back at the road, shaking his head again. ‘Alena,’ he says, but he doesn’t say anything after that.
I wonder if tomorrow I should tell the school counsellor that I think I’m living in a hostile home environment. We all had to have an interview with her when we first started at the school, and she talked very gently and spoke to us as if she’d known us for ever. ‘Now, Alena,’ she said. ‘Is everything all right at home? How do you get on with your parents?’ I could see she had a form in front of her that told her who my parents were.
I probably sounded defensive when I told her that I got on with them great and that there were no problems and that I wasn’t sure this meeting was necessary.
She said, ‘You were very young when you lost your mother,’ and I said, ‘I don’t remember it.’ As if that made it OK.
If she was here, I think, but I don’t know what to think after that. For years and years I hardly thought about her at all and now that’s all I can think sometimes. If she was here.
FORTY-TWO
I come out of my room when Nick gets home later in the evening. It’s nearly eight o’clock. Danny is working on his laptop and the kitchen smells of something burning.
I am not supposed to tell Nick that I know he was beaten up until Danny talks to him about it. I hope Danny never talks to him about it. I’d rather pretend not to know.
‘Have you been at the shop this whole time?’ I say to Nick. I am in my pyjamas already, and I’ve washed my hair so it’s hanging damp round my shoulders.
‘I had to wait for someone to come and fix the door,’ he says. He hangs up his jacket and stops and stares at it for a few seconds like he’s too tired to move any further. Then he crosses the room and drops his keys on the counter. He picks an apple out of the fruit bowl, turns it round in his hand a few times but doesn’t eat it. ‘Just to warn you, Danny, there’s three massive crates of coffee in the back of the car.’
‘So what else is new?’ says Danny.
‘Is there any hot chocolate in the car?’ I say. The shop gets this powdered hot chocolate with bits of mint in it, and it’s good and sometimes Nick will bring some home.
Nick looks at me blankly for a moment. ‘No. All that stuff’s still in the basement.’
‘I’m looking at the insurance policy again,’ says Danny. ‘We might have a better claim if we try and—’
‘I really don’t have the energy, OK,’ Nick says. ‘Stuff like this keeps happening and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Why even bother?’ He puts the apple back in the bowl and leans on the counter next to Danny, rubbing his temples.
I sit on the back of the sofa. What’s burning is something in the oven.
‘Something’s burning,’ I say.
‘What are you talking about?’ Danny says.
‘Whatever you’re cooking. I think it’s burning.’
Nick says: ‘I’m talking about the fact that I work at that place seventy hours a week and get nothing in return except for it getting trashed now and again and the police lecturing me about security gates.’
I say, ‘Can’t anyone else smell that?’
Danny says, ‘I burned a lasagne about half an hour ago. It’s in the bin. The oven’s off. It’s fine.’
‘Then what are we having for dinner?’
‘Nothing. Dinner’s in the bin. We’ll all starve.’
‘We can eat dried coffee grounds if you want,’ says Nick.
Danny frowns. ‘Look, if we write to the insurance company and tell them—’
‘No,’ says Nick. ‘I’m done. I don’t want to. I’m sick of it. I’m going to close it down.’
I hear myself make an indignant sort of gasping sound, and they both look up at me and I say, in a voice that comes out too high: ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Yes, I can,’ says Nick.
‘You actually can’t,’ says Danny. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed the coffee shop is our only source of income.’
‘I had noticed, funnily enough. And given that most weeks the coffee shop is barely breaking even, maybe it’s not the most sustainable—’
‘Oh, I’m glad you’ve finally noticed that,’ says Danny.
‘We literally can’t afford to fix it up. All right? So what do you want me to do? You’re not working, we’re about two months from the rent going up. Have you seen this letter Alena’s got from school about a class trip to Mongolia or some godforsaken place—’
‘It’s Russia,’ I say. ‘It’s to Russia. It’s to learn about Catherine the Great. It’s not till next year.’
‘Well, wherever.’ Nick breaks off, glances in my direction, and then gives Danny a pointed look. ‘We can talk about this later.’
‘You can talk about it in front of me,’ I say.
‘I don’t want to talk about it any more today. I’m tired. It’s been a really long day. I’m tired.’
‘You can’t close it down. You can’t. Please. That’s not fair.’
‘It’s not fair?’ says Nick, incredulously. ‘Not fair to who?’
‘I don’t know. But you can’t. Nick, please.’
Nick is shaking his head. ‘I had to write a cheque for two hundred pounds this evening to get the door temporarily secured. Two hundred pounds. For the door. So what do you want me to do? Do you mind not eating for the rest of the month? Do you mind if we sell the car? Do you mind if I get rid of Zahra?’
‘I don’t mind if you sell the car.’
‘Who the hell did you get that charged you two hundred pounds?’ says Danny. ‘Did they replace it with a door made of gold?’
Nick glares at him and starts banging round the kitchen making a drink.
I have never once in my life heard Nick talk about money. Danny does, but I never pay any attention because Danny is just worried about everything, all the time. So if Nick is angry with us and angry about writing cheques, I know that this is bad, bad, bad. And I think why it’s different from the last time the shop got broken into, and I think it’s because Danny doesn’t have a job. And then, as I’m thinking that, Nick says, as he’s cracking ice into a glass: ‘And maybe if you hadn’t gone snooping round other people’s emails and getting Danny fired, Lena, by the way, maybe he’d have found another job by now and we’d all be in a better position to deal with this.’
He’s not looking at me. I can feel my wet hair making the back of my t-shirt wet and I feel cold.
Danny says, quietly, ‘All right, that’s enough.’
‘I don’t even want to go on the Russia trip,’ I say. ‘I just brought the letter home because I had to. I never even said I wanted to go.’
Nick says, in a dull voice: ‘If you want to go, you should be able to go.’
‘I don’t want to go.’
Danny looks distracted. ‘Are they really going to take a class of fifteen-year-olds to Russia? Is that safe?’
‘It’s not till the end of next year,’ I say. ‘I’ll be sixteen. Nearly seventeen.’
Nick knocks back his drink and makes a face. ‘God. Now I feel really old,’ he says.
And he looks it, too. They both do. They both look tired and old and unhappy even though they’re not, really. They’re not that o
ld.
And I know, then, that I have made them this way. Their lives are not supposed to be like this. And they know it too.
FORTY-THREE
By the time I’ve decided that I should call my aunt, I’m already out of bed and looking for her phone number. It’s written on each of the Christmas cards she’s sent me. It’s the middle of the night and everything is silent. I have been lying awake for hours and hours and hours.
It takes ages to find it because I’m trying to be quiet and because I thought the cards were all tucked inside the Collins Encyclopaedia of Family Health 1978 that I keep on top of the wardrobe, and that I sometimes use as a place to save letters and cards. And then every time I get the cards out I also learn about lupus or childhood asthma or something. But the cards aren’t there. So then I have to tear my room apart until I finally find them in the shoebox under my bed, where I keep the ribbons that I save from birthday and Christmas presents. And then I check my mobile but I know I don’t have enough credit to call somewhere like Australia. So I will have to use the landline, which doesn’t work from my bedroom. So I tiptoe into the living room and sit on the sofa in the dark, and listen carefully to the silence for a while, to make sure that everybody’s asleep, and then I dial the number and pretend that my hands aren’t shaking a little bit.
It’s been twelve years since she’s seen me so we either have a lot to talk about or nothing at all.
When my mother’s sister answers, she says ‘Hello-oh’ in a sing-song voice, London with a hint of Aussie, and I say, even though I’m sure that it’s her, I say, ‘Can I speak to Niamh Kennedy, please?’
She is silent for a moment. I must sound very British. Very far away. She says: ‘This is Niamh. Who is this?’
I say: ‘This is Alena.’ And then, stupidly: ‘Alena. In London.’ I clear my throat. ‘Kennedy. Your niece.’
There’s a sort of gasp that makes the line crackle, and then a little high-pitched squeak, and then a man’s voice in the background saying ‘Who is it?’
‘Alena,’ says Niamh.
I say, ‘Yes, Alena.’
‘Alena.’
‘Yeah.’
She says, ‘Alena, yes, Alena, of course, of course it’s you, sweetheart, of course it is.’
‘I’m just calling—’ I say. But I can’t finish the sentence because my voice breaks on the last word and I have to put my hand over my mouth or I will cry. That thing when you don’t know that you’re going to start crying but it just happens. Because of things. Because of everything. I screw my eyes shut and that makes a tear spill out and then another one. And she goes, ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, what is it, has something happened, what is it, where are you, it must be the middle of the night, Alena, sweetheart, Alena, I’m so glad you’ve called us.’
And even as she’s talking to me, even as she’s being so nice, I think why have you never called me, if you care so much?
She says, ‘Alena, Alena, what is it? Alena, I’m so glad you’ve called. What is it, sweetheart?’
I try again. ‘I’m just calling—’ I say, but my voice breaks again and I can’t finish the sentence, and she says, ‘What can we do, what’s happened, we can call the police for you Alena, we can call the police.’
And I say: ‘What?’
She says: ‘Has you brother done something to you? Where are you? Has he done something to you? Has something happened?’
And then I take a breath and wipe my eyes with my sleeve and see my stupid face in the dark mirror above the TV. And I say: ‘What?’
She says: ‘I knew something like this would happen one day. I knew this call would come.’
I say: ‘What?’
She says: ‘What do you need to tell us? It’s OK, Alena, sweetheart. What do you need to tell us? You’re so far away. It’s going to be OK. What can we do? What has he done?’
‘No, it’s just – I’m just calling because—’
I don’t know why I’m calling. I had thought that I might say to her: I don’t think my brother wants me here any more. I had thought that she might say: Of course he does. But I know, abruptly, that this is not what she will say, and whatever she will say, I don’t want to hear.
She says: ‘Just what? What is it? Alena, talk to me. I’m your family. What’s going on? What has he done?’
But before I can answer, Nick and Danny’s bedroom door is opening and Danny is coming out rubbing his eyes saying, ‘Lena, it’s the middle of the night, who the hell are you—’ And Niamh is saying, ‘Is that him? Is that him? Alena, do you need to get away? Are you safe?’ And I’m thinking, OK, Danny was right all along, she really is a basket-case, and Danny is frowning at my tear-stained face, and I say, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I should have called.’
Her voice gets loud and a little hysterical, which means that Danny can hear her perfectly well when she says, ‘You’ve done the right thing, Alena, we can get you away, you’ve done the right thing, let me talk to him, let me talk to him right now, we can get you away, we can call the police.’
At the sound of her voice Danny’s expression is so aghast that it would be funny if I didn’t have the feeling that I was right in the middle of making a huge mistake.
I say, to anyone who’s listening, ‘Actually, actually, I’m sorry, I’m not sure I should have called,’ and Danny says, voice like stone: ‘Give the phone to me.’
‘That’s him, isn’t it?’ says Niamh, and I realise, from her perspective, he probably does sound vaguely threatening: but the idea that I might be in danger from him, that she thinks she might need to call the police – that would be funny, too, if anything was funny right now.
‘You don’t need to call the police,’ I say. ‘I’m fine. I’m really fine.’
Danny says, ‘Oh my god. Seriously?’ He is holding out his hand for the phone, while I sit cross-legged on the sofa, clutching it with a sweaty hand, Niamh’s voice in my ear like a siren. I’m not crying any more.
‘Let me talk to him, then. Let me talk to him. Where are you? What time is it? Let me talk to him.’
I hold the phone out. ‘It’s Niamh,’ I say, ‘It’s Mum’s sister. I called Niamh,’ and he gives me a no kidding look. ‘She wants to talk to you.’
He takes the phone and he says: ‘This is Danny.’ Pause. ‘Yeah, it’s the middle of the night.’ Pause. ‘I don’t know why she’s crying.’ Pause. ‘I don’t know why. I’m about to ask her.’ Pause. ‘No, I’m not threatening her, Jesus, Niamh, how can you possibly—’
‘He’s not threatening me,’ I say, loudly, and Danny glares at me: quite threateningly, as it happens.
‘You can talk to her any time you want, but right now it’s the middle of the night and whatever it is I think it should wait—’ He breaks off. She says something. ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘I think that’s the most spectacularly offensive thing you’ve said to me in my life and the bar was already set pretty high on that—’
Nick stumbles out of their room, then, and switches on the light and we all squint and shield our eyes and I can hear Niamh saying, ‘I’ve been waiting for this call for twelve years, I’ve been waiting for this whole charade—’ and then Danny just hangs up and throws the phone onto the sofa like it’s a grenade.
Nick looks at us both. He says: ‘What now?’
Ollie told me a while ago that when his brother lived at home and used to get in trouble a lot, the police would sometimes turn up at their door and ask where he was – ask if they could come in, ask when they’d last seen him. And his mother would block the doorway and not let them in, or she’d accuse them of harassment, or she’d threaten to set the dogs on them, even though their only dog is Brandy who is not exactly what you’d call menacing.
We are in the middle of a stand-off when they come to our door: Danny is standing there running his hand back and forth over his hair and saying, ‘Why now? Why tonight? Why did you suddenly feel like you needed to—’, and I’m saying, ‘What’s wrong with her? Why did she think I was in da
nger? She didn’t even let me say anything—’, and Nick is saying, ‘Do you know how much it costs to call Australia? Did you look it up?’ which, admittedly, I didn’t. Then Nick says he’s going to make some tea, and Danny just stands there shaking his head and looking bewildered, and I’m thinking maybe I should just ask if I can still go and stay with Gerry and Marie in Essex.
The kettle takes a long time to boil and the minutes are ticking by in silence and then there’s a knock at the door and I think we must have woken up Mrs Segal next door, but Nick and Danny give each other a sudden, serious look, like they know.
There are two police officers, and they stand in the doorway and say that they are here because a lady in Australia has just called them and said that there is a girl who might be in danger. I am the girl.
I expect Nick and Danny to say, ‘This is ridiculous, this is outrageous, no you can’t come in,’ but they don’t. They are quiet, and polite, and while I stand there saying, ‘I’m not, I’m not in danger,’ Danny says, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry, this is a mistake, I’m sorry, come in.’
The policewoman, whose name is Louise, has to take me outside to sit in her car so that I can talk safely. The policeman, whose name is Simon, stays and talks to Nick and Danny in the flat.
In the car, Louise says: ‘Right, Alena, I want you to know that nobody is going to make you go back upstairs if you don’t want to.’
Louise is nice. You can tell she’s specially trained. She uses my name a lot. I am sitting in the front of a police car in my pink elephant pyjama bottoms and my Converse trainers and my coat. I say, ‘This is a really, really horrible mistake. He’s my brother. He’s my guardian. He has all the documents. He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t do anything to me.’
‘And what about Nick?’
Like Nick would ever hurt anybody. ‘Nick’s a vegetarian,’ I say. ‘He won’t even drink non-organic milk. Please. This is, like – this is just a huge mistake. We can go back upstairs. Seriously. This is a total mistake.’
She says: ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m fifteen.’
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