There’s no reply so as I step out onto the street into the warm evening I text Ollie: Cinema or something? I have money.
FORTY-SEVEN
YES, he texts back. Come here first?
I get the bus to his house. I am noticing weird details: the scratches on the windows and the lining of the woman’s coat in front of me, like I can only concentrate on little things. I need to get my hair cut. One of my flip-flops is nearly broken.
They’ve made me a liar as well, is one of the things in my head. All the times I’ve had to explain my family to people and I’ve said, My mother died when I was three and then I went to live with my brother. And in fact that sentence should go the other way around.
When I get to Ollie’s house he is halfway out the door – he tells me he has to take the dog out, quickly, so he leaves me sitting alone in his living room. No one’s home. In the empty house I have the sudden thought that maybe Ollie is lying too: maybe his mum has gone as well. Maybe he lives here alone and nobody knows.
Danny texts me. Forgot to ask what time you’ll be home x, it says. I send a reply. Don’t know. This will worry him.
Everything worries him.
Ollie’s sketchbook is lying open on the coffee table and I pick it up. You’d think his art might be all black paint and death images, but it’s actually really pretty. Intricate little sketches of leaves and birds and beetles that he’s coloured in strange, unexpected pinks and yellows and oranges. It’s hard to tell if he’s used ink or paint or crayon or what and I trace my finger over one of the pictures, trying to feel the texture of the colours – and then I hear the front door open and I close the sketchbook, put it back on the table. A woman wearing work clothes walks into the room and we both startle when we see each other.
I start trying to explain who I am, and she interrupts and says, ‘Fine. Where’s Ollie?’
‘He took Brandy out. Your dog. The dog. He’s walking her round the block. He’ll be back in a minute.’
She nods, putting her handbag on the coffee table. Not knowing what to do I stand up, awkwardly, and say, ‘I guess he didn’t know that you’d be home soon.’
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Oh. I’m Alena. Kennedy.’
‘You’re the one lives with her brother.’
‘Yes.’
She nods again, and then walks through to the kitchen and I hear cupboards opening and the clink of ice. She comes back out with a glass in her hand. ‘It’s good of you to be friends with Ollie.’ She looks exhausted, I think. Even her clothes look tired. She looks older than she probably is. She doesn’t smile at all.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yeah. We have a lot of classes together. So.’
She takes a long drink, emptying the glass and then goes back into the kitchen and refills it. I sit down again and try to start discreetly texting Ollie to tell him to come back but she walks back in and says, ‘He’s been a miserable little sod since his brother went travelling.’ She sits down in one of the wicker chairs opposite the sofa. ‘And that dog. Sick to death of it.’
I don’t know how to respond. ‘I didn’t know Aaron had gone travelling,’ I say, which to me means backpacking around Thailand and not leaving town after getting busted for dealing pot to teenagers.
‘He’s gone travelling,’ she says, and for a moment we look at each other and I can see that she knows that I know this isn’t true and it’s like she’s daring me to contradict her.
Parents are all such liars, I think.
‘He’s gone travelling,’ she repeats. ‘It was a good idea for him. Aaron’s very ambitious. Very bright. He wants to see the world. But now Ollie just mopes around, hangs about like bad weather. So I thought at least he’s finally found a friend or two to put up with him.’
I try to nod, politely. She finishes her second drink, seems to relax a little. I get the idea that she might offer me a drink and I wonder what I’d say. ‘So you’re the one lives with her brother.’
‘Yes.’
‘I remember him at your year eight parents’ evening. Year seven, something like that. Everyone was pointing him out.’
My skin prickles. I don’t like this idea, my brother at my school without me there, people talking about him. He hates parents’ evenings but he always goes to them. Nick too, usually. They wear ties.
‘Ollie’s had this idea he’d go and live with his brother. Aaron was always talking about a flat and Ollie had this idea Aaron was going take him with him. Aaron’s obviously scuppered that plan, taking off.’ She gives me a long look. ‘I expect Ollie’s jealous of you.’
I stare at her. This has obviously been some sort of national announcement that I’ve missed, that Ollie is jealous of me, and it still seems ridiculous, so I say, ‘I really doubt that.’
She does smile, then, bright and brittle. ‘I expect he is. I expect it all seems very glamorous to him.’
And I am sick of this, remembering Danny saying that I’d find Lynn Wallace glamorous: this stupid word they use when they want to make us sound childish and naive and like we aren’t equipped to see the world correctly; Oh, it’s because we think it’s glamorous – turning anything new or bright or interesting into some cheap trick we’ve fallen for. Like we are really that easily impressed.
‘I really doubt that,’ I say again.
Then again: maybe he is messed up enough to be jealous of me. But not because my brother is glamorous. I see it for a moment, through Ollie’s eyes: it’s just that my brother hasn’t abandoned me, whereas Ollie’s been ditched by pretty much his entire family and the last one standing doesn’t seem to like him very much.
Danny never abandoned me. This is true. And he had at least two chances.
I hear Brandy barking right outside the door and I know Ollie’s home, so when I hear the front door open I stand up and get my bag and say, ‘By the way, Ollie’s a really amazing artist, you should be really proud,’ just as he walks in to the room.
They both look surprised, so I say, feeling my blood rising, ‘And Aaron’s a drug-dealing sociopath from what I remember.’ Then I turn and walk out, pushing past Ollie and bending, very quickly, to scratch Brandy’s ears on my way to the door.
I have to stand outside for five minutes waiting for Ollie, who eventually comes out with his arms spread like, What the hell?
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, not particularly sorry, but with my heart still thumping, a little exhilarated. ‘She was telling me how great Aaron is.’
‘So?’
‘So I just think you’re a much better person than he is, and you should both know that.’
For a minute I think he’ll be angry but he just shakes his head, slowly, and says, ‘You’ve lost it.’
‘Maybe,’ I say. I don’t feel like I’ve lost it. I feel like I’ve found the right words for a change. ‘It’s true, though.’
And he stares at me, not looking pissed off, just a little stunned, like I’ve introduced him to an idea he’s never heard before.
The film Ollie wants to see is called The Last Atrocity. It’s the final film in the Atrocity trilogy. I haven’t seen the first two. It doesn’t matter. There’s noise and blood and explosions and all the sound and light clears my brain out, wakes me up.
‘Can I tell you something?’ I say, as the credits are rolling and Ollie’s still staring rapt at the screen as he scrapes the bottom of a box of popcorn for the last bits.
‘Huh?’
‘I found something out today.’
He turns to me. ‘What?’
The house lights go up and the music gets turned down. The cinema’s almost empty so we can stay in our seats without having to get up to let anyone out.
‘When I was born,’ I say, and then I have to lower my voice, realising how quiet it’s gone. I say it all, in a rush. ‘When I was born, my mum was in prison. She hit a policeman in the face at an anti-war protest.’
Ollie’s eyebrows go up and his mouth drops open a little bit, clearly impressed.
‘I never lived with her at all,’ I say. ‘I’ve lived with Danny the whole time. She died almost as soon as she got out of prison.’
That’s it. The whole story. It took Danny twelve years to get it out but I can tell it in five sentences.
I feel light-headed for a moment, almost giddy, maybe just from the sugar in the popcorn.
‘Are you serious?’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow,’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
‘How’d you find out?’
‘Danny told me. This evening.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So it really wasn’t your fault, then.’
‘What?’
‘That you don’t remember her.’
And something turns over inside me, then, like a stone in the dirt, and on the other side of it is the truth of this, that it isn’t my fault after all.
‘No,’ I say, ‘It’s not,’ and I’m about to say, It’s Danny’s fault for lying to me, but of course this isn’t true either.
It’s her fault, I suppose. She did this to both of us.
It’s late when I get home, and Danny is waiting up. He’s sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop. The flat is dark apart from the lamp in the corner and the blue light from the computer screen.
‘Hey, kid,’ he says, gently.
‘Hey.’
He picks something up. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Fixed your keyring.’ He holds it out to me.
I pause for a moment, and then go and take it. I turn it over in my hand. He’s removed the broken link and reattached the chain so you can’t even see where it snapped.
‘What film did you see?’
‘The Last Atrocity.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Any good?’
‘Pretty good.’
‘What was the first atrocity?’
‘It didn’t really say.’
‘Who’d you go with?’
‘Ollie.’
‘Ollie who likes art.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You didn’t have any dinner,’ he says. ‘Nick made stir-fry. We saved you some. Are you hungry?’
I realise that I am.
I sit down. He gets a bowl out of the fridge, takes the foil off the top, microwaves it and puts it down in front of me with a fork.
‘Did she really make you soup,’ I say. ‘The day before she went to prison. So you’d have something to eat.’
He sits down again. ‘Yes.’
The food is too hot to eat and I poke at it with my fork, waiting for it to cool.
‘I know you’re probably angry with me,’ Danny says.
I don’t answer.
‘It’s OK if you are.’
I don’t answer.
‘There’s something I forgot to say,’ Danny says. ‘The main thing I meant to say earlier. I forgot to say it. I think I might have told you that story wrong.’
‘What?’ Honestly I’m not sure I want to hear anything else. I’m tired. I feel like I could sleep for days.
‘It’s just that there’s something I want to make clear to you,’ he says. ‘Which I obviously should have told you earlier but I always just assumed you already knew.’
‘All right,’ I say. I sit and wait.
‘It’s just that I know I say things sometimes that I shouldn’t say, especially lately, and I act as though – I act as though I didn’t, but I did have a choice. I did have a choice, Alena. Nobody ever forced me to do anything. People were fighting over you. I did have a choice about whether or not I took you, and I wanted to, I really wanted to and so did Nick, and it was literally the best thing we ever did, ever. I’ve never once regretted it for even, like, a second. So. I just wanted to make sure you know that.’
My face feels hot.
‘That’s all,’ he says.
‘Literally the best thing ever?’ I say.
‘Literally.’
‘And you still think that even now?’
‘Yes. God, yes, of course, Lena. Yes. Jesus.’
‘Even though you never got to go back to university.’
‘Yes.’
‘Or hang out in Soho bars with Nick.’
He smiles, a little bit. ‘I could still hang out in Soho bars with Nick.’
‘You could still go back to university.’
He shakes his head like he can’t think about this. Then he says, ‘I keep trying – I swear to god, I’ve tried really hard not to screw this up, every day. I promised I would always – but there’s so much stuff, there’s so much – school, and the dentist, and sign this bit of paper and clothes that fit and crossing the road, and whole books about, like, your emotional development. And then you do this crazy thing with Will and Mike and my job and I’m thinking, What is this about? Is this like your political awakening or is this because me and Nick have screwed up or is this just because you hate me for something or what?’
‘I don’t hate you,’ I say.
‘And then I’m thinking, when I’m talking to you, Is she turning into this grown-up person I don’t even know? Does she have enough friends? Is she using humour as a defence mechanism? Is she trying to defend herself from this awful unloving world and you’re never going to be happy, you’re going to buy a gun or write angry poetry—’
‘I would never—’
‘It’s just that the world is this randomly violent place and you’re supposed to be my responsibility. And everyone in my life wants to start the revolution or something. It’s different now than when you were little.’ He looks at me. ‘I don’t want you to be like her,’ he says. ‘I don’t want you to be like Nick. I want you to be safe.’
‘I am safe,’ I say.
We look at each other for a long time, until it feels weird. Then he says: ‘I miss her a lot. I really miss her a lot. That’s why I can’t talk about her. It’s not because – it’s not just because of what I told you earlier. It’s because I miss her. I wish she was still here.’
I wish that as well but not in the same way he does. I will never miss her in the same way he does.
‘I have this dream all the time,’ he says. ‘I’ve had it for years and years. Where she’s standing outside the flat and she’s knocking at the door and she’s calling for me, she’s saying, Danny, Danny, and I’m inside but I can’t find the key. The door’s locked and I can’t find the key to open it, and I know that if I can’t find it she’s going to go again. And I’m always shouting to her, I’m saying, Mum, please, wait, I’m looking for the key. But I can never find it.’
‘That sounds horrible.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Am I ever in the dream?’
‘No. In my dream about you you’re swimming in the sea and I’m on this boat, and you’re waving at me and I’m telling you to swim back to the boat because there’s this massive storm—’
‘Danny,’ I say. ‘Did it hurt her feelings that I cried when I was taken to visit her?’
He blinks a few times. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No. She understood. It didn’t hurt her feelings.’
I can see that he’s lying. I guess he doesn’t know how to stop.
We don’t say anything else. He waits up with me until I finish eating.
PART SIX
FORTY-EIGHT
Teagan’s just got a third piercing in her left ear. It’s red – still inflamed and raw-looking round the silver stud. Any day now a teacher will make her take it out.
She keeps touching it, carefully, as we sit on the steps outside the music block, our jumpers tied round our waists and our legs stretched out in the sun. It’s got hot early this year.
It’s Friday, a week after Danny told me everything. Teagan called me that same night: it was nearly one a.m. and she was on the landline in her kitchen, whispering.
‘Are you OK?’ she said, after I told her the story. I was whispering too, lying in my dark bedroom.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just feel sad right now.’
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‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I feel sad for everybody in that story.’
To us it’s a story, I thought. To Danny it’s something that actually happened.
We’ve talked about it a lot, now. All week, every breaktime, turning it over till we’ve looked at every possible angle. Right now, Teagan is musing over whether it’s ever OK to hit a policeman in the face with a glass bottle.
‘No,’ I tell her, because I’ve been thinking about this too. ‘I don’t think it ever is.’
‘What if instead of a policeman, it’s Jacob Carlisle and he’s trying to close down the coffee shop.’
I make a face. ‘No. Even then.’
‘But you have to stand up for what’s right.’
‘Not by smashing someone’s face in. Anyway, she didn’t do it on purpose. It was an accident.’
Or she said it was an accident. She told Danny it was. But you would say that, wouldn’t you? I’d like to ask her: Was it really? Or were you so angry in that second – so furious about everything – that you did something you regretted for ever but you still meant to do it in that second?
I wish I could ask her. I could say, That policeman is probably still walking around with his scarred face. How does that make you feel?
Teagan sighs, and fiddles with her ear stud again, wincing. ‘I never used to feel this boring,’ she says. ‘With my normal mum and dad and their dinner parties.’
‘Since when do your parents have dinner parties?’
‘I don’t know. They talk about it sometimes. You know what I mean.’
I look at our feet, next to each other on the step. We are wearing the same shoes, flat black sandals with ankle straps. They don’t really fit the school regulations but no one’s noticed yet. We brought them separately, last spring, and turned up after half-term with no idea that we had the same shoes.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I suppose I know what you mean.’
‘Not that boring is completely bad,’ says Teagan. ‘I mean, I’m obviously glad my brother isn’t Aaron Cohen.’
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