by Ruth Dugdall
“Hello, love.” Her name badge says SHIRL.
I think of Mum suddenly, this woman is about her age, and I wonder why she never smiled like that, why she was always in bed with a headache when a job would have helped her feed Adam and me. I can feel my face going red as I think about these things so I concentrate on placing my items on the black belt that moves them towards the woman: bread, milk, beans, coke.
“Do you need any help packing?” she says, and I don’t know what she means, then she laughs and I realise it’s a joke because I only bought a few things.
“Can I go and get something?” I say. “Something I forgot.”
Shirl looks behind me, where other customers with heaving trolleys wait in line. “Be quick,” she says, and I dash back to the fruit aisle and pick up the strange pointed fruit. I run back with it, and the man behind me, the one I followed coming in, glares at me as I hand it to Shirl.
“What’s it called?” I ask, hoping it’s okay that I don’t know.
“Star fruit,” she tells me. “But don’t ask me what it tastes like.”
She tells me how much I owe, and I take one of the notes from my pocket,
“Thanks, love.” No-one would smile at Humber Boy B or call him love, but she’s smiling at Ben, so I smile back. “Here’s your change.”
“Thank you,” I say, as she places it in my palm. I awkwardly pick up my food, lodging the milk into my elbow, but then she says, “Here,” and hands me a plastic bag. What an idiot I am, not knowing to ask for a bag. She opens it and takes the milk, then packs the bag for me and passes me the handles.
“See you later,” she says.
See you later. It’s nothing, just a saying I’ve heard on films or TV, but it’s friendly. My first trip out and I’ve done well. Back in my flat, I put the milk in the fridge and wonder whether apples go there too. I should have bought cereal. I’ll have to go back to the shop, maybe tomorrow. I line up my other purchases on the kitchen counter, labels facing forward, just like I used to organise my shower gels in prison. Lots of us collected them, because there wasn’t anything else and it was a pop of colour in an otherwise grey cell. Lemon or orange shower gel was the best because it was almost like having a bit of sun in that god-awful place. But now I have coke and beans and bread and a yellow fruit shaped like a star.
I’m Ben. I still don’t feel like Ben. Ben lives here, in this flat at the top of Wolsey block. Ben buys star fruit. I look at it like it’s a prize I won, but don’t know if I should peel it or not. The skin is thick and waxy and I bite it then spit it out. I can’t see how to peel it so I use my teeth to suck out the juice inside, which isn’t sweet like I expected but has a flat, dry taste. Ben decides that it’s delicious and when he next goes to the supermarket he will tell Shirl so, and see if she smiles at him again.
I walk around the flat, looking at my new home. You travel light in prison, so I don’t have many belongings and around me is everything I own in the world:
One grey jumper (well worn), burgundy jogging bottoms, cheap trainers, four pairs of ragged boxer shorts (more than my just my bottom has been in them).
It all goes in the bedroom, on top of the chest of drawers because it looks too bare if I put them inside.
There’s English literature coursework. That goes in the lounge, neatly on the table.
My CV and GCSE certificates. (Eight. An A star in English.) Also on the table, but maybe I’ll buy some Blu-tack and put them on the wall. Would that be showing off, or is that what normal people do?
There’s one photo of Mum and my brother at the aquarium on my tenth birthday. I’m ripped out of the picture, so there’s a gap where I stood in the middle, my mum smiling tightly, my brother draping his arms around the space where I was. This goes beside my bed, on the bedside table until I decide that my own face being removed is too much of a giveaway, so I place it inside the drawer.
Letters. Some from my mum. A few from Dad, but years apart. My dad, as absent to me as my face in that photograph, cut from my life. Three years he went without writing and when the letters started up again it was like he didn’t realise I hadn’t lived in Humberside for three years, so all he could ask is how Hull Rovers were doing in the Rugby league, as if I still cared, as if I could ever watch a match without thinking of Noah. Anyway, what do you say to a boy whose life consists of a building smaller than a school and a patch of stubble grass? No cinema, no McDonald’s. No trips to the zoo, no swimming. No parties. That’s it. All I knew was a concrete wall and bars. But I liked the part when he told me about his job, and where he was in the Atlantic, about the Black Sea and how cold it was and how numb his fingers felt even though he wore gloves to his elbows, how the waves got as high as a tower block. Then the letters stopped, and that was the end of my relationship with him. The only time I think of my dad is when I look in the mirror and see my white-blond hair, my pale skin. So unlike anyone else in my family.
Finally, Adam’s letters. The ones he wrote to me after he got released. The biggest pile, my most precious possession.
I put all the letters back into my duffel bag, and slide it under my bed because I know I shouldn’t really have them at all. They are dangerous, because they reveal that I am not Ben at all, I’m a fake.
9
The Day Of
“No school today! Jammy!”
Adam jumped onto Ben’s bed, one leg either side of his brother’s slumbering form, and bounced so hard his body rose from the mattress and the headboard banged hard against the wall. There was a replying bang from their mother’s room.
“Stop yer roaring! I’m trying ter sleep!”
Ben pulled the duvet higher so it covered his ears and rolled onto his side so he didn’t have to see Adam’s jubilant face or hear his yelps of joy.
Adam kicked his brother’s ribs, “Nah then, runt. I’ll get yer a stick of peppermint rock, No need to bawl.”
“Give over,” Ben muffled into the bedding as Adam landed on the floor with a thud and began to tug at clothes from their shared pile, trying to find something clean, something suitable for a day at the seaside.
“Mam!” he shouted at the wall, “I can’t go in me kegs. Where’s us shorts?” Mam didn’t answer, so he started muttering to himself.
Ben tried to return to sleep but Adam was noisy, cursing that his Hull Rovers T-shirt had sauce stains down the front, crowing that his dad said he could go to Peaseholm park, promising he’d swim naked in the sea if he couldn’t find his fucking shorts. Though the Hull Rovers top was in need of a wash, Adam pulled it on.
Finally, he left the room. Ben heard their mother’s door being opened and then the shocked wail.
“Dad? Where’s me dad?”
Ben removed the pillow from his head to listen, but their mother could not be heard. Adam was loud and accusing.
“Hasta been rowing again, even after all you said? And what’s this?” There was more banging, something being thrown to the floor, a bottle maybe. “You promised the social worker, Mam. You said you wouldn’t drink!”
There was a reply, a pleading female voice, then Adam spoke again, no longer angry. It was a quieter voice that Ben strained to hear through the partition wall. “This time he’s really gone, hasn’t he? He promised us, that if he did he’d take me too. But he lied.”
Ben placed the pillow over his head, not wishing to hear any more.
Adam’s dad had left many times previously, he had broken many promises. There was no reason why this day, this promise, should cut any deeper, but for some reason it did. Adam returned to the bedroom and pulled off his Rovers T-shirt and the shorts he had searched so hard to find. He lay in his pants on the bed, face down, and only his shaking body revealed that he was crying.
Ben watched, neither smug nor surprised. “Peaseholm park is lame anyway.”
There was a long silence, so Ben thought his brother hadn’t heard him until he mumbled into the mattress, “Nobbut the battleships are cool.”
Ben had t
o acknowledge that the battleships were a highlight, as he’d discovered when they all went to Scarborough last summer, a rare moment of family calm, just after Stuart’s last return and the departure of yet another social worker.
Stuart had taken them all for a mini-break to his static caravan, his home when he was not with their mother. It was crammed full with unusual glass smoking devises and replica guns that both boys had to solemnly promise not to touch. They eagerly agreed, glad to be by the beach, happy to be a family. They spent the day in the park, watching the battleships with their steamy funnels and bubbling motors, but the day had turned sour as the sun dimmed and the adults’ voices began to slur from too much beer. A caravan is a small space for four, and Mum and Stuart each had large personalities and loud voices, so it wasn’t long before the neighbours had rapped on the flimsy caravan door followed by the sound of a police siren. They had to cut the trip short and returned to Hull the next day in a car filled with adult rage and childish confusion, but Ben remembered the battleships with fondness.
Mum appeared in the doorway, wearing only an ‘I hate mornings’ long T-shirt and scratching her head. “I want you boys out of my hair today.” Ben noticed her mousy hair, which looked matted and crispy, and wanted to agree.
“I’ve got a headache so I’m going back to bed. Just be quiet. Okay?”
Both boys knew better than to argue but Adam’s anger was still driving him. “You need to give us some brass so we can get us some grub.”
Their mother looked shocked, then angry. “You mardy fucker! I just said I’m ill. Now get that miserable look off your face and leg it. When I was your age I was out all the time, not laying on my bed sulking. Get some bloody clothes on!”
And then she returned to her own room.
They heard her door slam closed and knew that would be the last they saw of her for a while.
“Fuck them, who needs Scarborough? We’re goin’ on us ‘-olidays, right here,” Adam said, sitting up and reaching again for his Rovers top. “Me and you.”
Ben felt an ache. He loved to be with Adam and knew his brother was hurting badly, but he couldn’t help him. He looked at his bedside clock, which was only approximately right. “Noah’ll be here any second. His mum’s gone up ta London for the strike, so we’re looking after him.”
Adam gave a snort. “Do I look like a babysitter?”
“Not you, our kid. Me and our mam said we’d have him. It’ll be a laugh. Noah and me will go scooting up the ten foot or we’ll knock a ball around the park.”
“Lame,” was Adam’s verdict.
“Then Mam will cook us summat, from the brass Noah’s mam gave her.”
“Like she’ll remember that. You saw the state of her,” said Adam. “We’ll look after him, you and me. Best we don’t bother our mam anymore. You know how she gets.”
Ben looked at Adam, wild eyes catching his brother’s anger. Their room was so stuffed with frustration and hurt that neither boy knew what to do with it. “What’ll we do? We don’t have any brass.”
“Maybe we can find us summat better to do than football. Like I said, this is us ‘-olidays. And I have an idea.”
10
Now
FACEBOOK: FIND HUMBER BOY B
Noah’s mum: I just had a call from a reporter with The Sun. Now HBB is out, the calls have started, dragging up the past, but this journalist seemed very sweet. She wanted to give me the chance to say what I think about him being free, and I said that it was a betrayal of my son’s memory and I would do anything in my power to change it.
I told her to get me in a room with him, that’s what I really want. For that, I’d go on TV, be interviewed for any magazine. I just want to look him in the eye and ask why he murdered my Noah.
The one question no-one in the courtroom ever asked. I’ve asked God, but he never answers either.
Silent Friend: That’s the only question that matters. I hope you get to ask him yourself one day.
11
Cate
“Neither brother told anyone that Noah was in the Humber River, they just ran home,” Cate says, shaking her head slowly. “If they’d only told someone, called 999, then it may have been okay.”
Paul winced. “I doubt it. River water can be icy and that boy dropped from a height.”
“But why didn’t they? I mean, an anonymous call. There’s a phone box on most bridges, there’s surely one on the Humber.”
Paul’s face had a look of disgust. “Evil bastards.”
“Come on, Paul, you know it’s not as simple as that. You’ve been a probation officer how many years?”
“More than I care to count.”
“And how many people have you met who you’d really call evil?”
Paul hesitated. “Not many. But this case isn’t exactly run of the mill.”
Cate looked at the pile of paperwork as if it was a haystack and she was tasked with finding the needle. “He was ten years old for God’s sake!”
“You can be evil at any age. You just better make bloody certain he’s cured now, or exorcised or whatever the opposite of being evil is, because I don’t want him doing anything like that in Suffolk.”
“Don’t fancy your mug shot in the Daily Mail?”
Paul smoothed down his red velveteen waistcoat and made for the door. “That I don’t, unless it’s a photo of me sipping Bollinger because I just won the EuroMillions,” he said, as he stepped into the corridor.
She looked up at her old friend.
“And not so close to retirement.”
He closed the door behind him, leaving Cate alone at her desk, contemplating the next witness statement in the case file, which was that given by Ben’s mother, Yvette. Paul was right, the best they could do for Ben was to keep him safely hidden. This was the highest profile case she’d worked, and her main priority was making sure no-one discovered who he really was. But her other priority was simpler, more primal than that: what had made a child kill another child? She needed to know, and so far the case file hadn’t revealed any trigger points.
There had been cases she’d heard of, everyone knew about Jamie Bulger, the grainy CCTV image of him being led from the shopping precinct, hand in hand with the boys who would kill him later that day. Ben’s case had also made the news. She remembered Humber Boys A and B, the image of them walking onto the bridge with Noah, their friend, who would soon be lost to the water below. In the file were photocopies of newspaper articles, some of which she’d read when they first came out eight years ago.
Cate, like most of the nation, had followed the case with morbid interest, both shocked and saddened as the details of the Humber brothers had been splashed across the papers. It wasn’t a surprise to her that the boys had come from a deprived background, the absence of a reliable father figure blah blah blah. But then it was, because that was so many people’s lives, so many people who turned out fine, and even those who didn’t rarely stooped to murder. What was it about Humber Boy B that made his life path veer so badly? What was it that made him lift his friend over the side of the Humber Bridge – not a split-second act, it was several feet high and even now he’s not tall – and tip him into the water below?
And then, another big question, how would she discover the answer to that question when the likelihood was that Ben didn’t even know it himself? If he ever had, it would be so deeply repressed by now that she may never find it.
The phone rang. Dot’s voice was even but quick and highly assessing.
“Cate? Your lad’s arrived. Still looks like he could run for the exit at any second.”
“Hi Ben. How are you enjoying life on the out? Feeling settled?”
“I’m getting there.”
Cate wondered if Ben knew about the Facebook page, Find Humber Boy B. The latest picture posted by Noah’s mum had been a scan of the artist’s sketch of Ben as he was during the trial. In it he had a swollen face, a bruised eye. He looked so damaged, so out of control, that the young man seated
before her seemed like an imposter.
“I’ll be honest with you, Ben, I’ve worked with people who’ve been in prison for years, but none who went there when they were ten. I can’t even imagine how strange everything must feel.”
She could see him silently weighing her up, wondering if she could really help him. He must have met so many professionals over the years, the whole gamut.
“I bought a star fruit,” he said, something that would be odd ordinarily, but she could see that for this young man such a purchase was a miracle of sorts.
“Good,” she smiled at him. “But go easy on the exotics until you get a job. Okay?”
“A job,” he said in wonder, then his eyes narrowed with suspicion that he was being mocked. “Who’ll employ me?”
“Plenty of people, actually.” Cate raised both eyebrows, acknowledging the irony that usually she had trouble placing offenders in work, but as Ben’s past had been erased he would be a cinch. The only question was his skill set. “You passed a lot of exams inside, very impressive. Of course you can’t work with children… ” He gave her a hurt look, as if this was a surprise. “But other than that you have lots of options. Where would you like to work?”
She could see him marvelling at the question, the many varieties of job jumping around his brain, too fast to control.
“I like animals,” he said, cautiously. “I worked with the horses at my last prison.”
“Okay. What else?”
“I also worked the laundry, but that gave me eczema.” He bit his lower lip and looked up shyly. “I’d really like to learn to cook.”
“Right, well, give me a bit of time, and I’ll see what’s available. I might start with the Community Punishment department, get you some unpaid work experience. If we can build your CV, just get you a few hours’ work each week until you get settled. How does that sound?”