by Kim Slater
I still didn’t feel like crying.
I looked at my mum, sitting on my bed. Snot was running down from her nose.
‘Want a game of Monopoly?’ I said.
She shook her head.
‘Snap?’
She smiled a bit but it still meant no.
I sat next to her again and touched the new dark red mark on her temple.
When I put my arms round her, she started to cry.
‘I’ve made such a mess of it all,’ she sobbed. ‘Dragged you into it and everything.’
She always said stuff like that after Tony had got mad.
‘I love you, Mum,’ I said. Then I got up quickly and started to pull on my trousers.
She stopped crying and looked up at me.
‘Oh, Kieran, I . . .’
She started to cry, harder than before. It’s hard to figure girls out.
When I was dressed I sat back down on the bed next to her. I didn’t want to hug her again but I put my hand on her shoulder. It meant I cared about her, like Miss Crane cared about her dog. It meant I needed her and she needed me.
I just wish Tony would hurt me every time, instead of her.
I got to school ten minutes before the bell.
I stood in my place in the far corner of the playground, under the monkey-puzzle tree. I like it there because I can see everything that’s happening but nobody notices me. Sometimes, I pretend the monkey-puzzle tree’s branches make me invisible.
I watched all the different-coloured faces, zapping about the playground like short bolts of lightning. I could see the puffs of breath in front of their faces as they shouted and screamed at each other.
I don’t like running around willy-nilly. I like to be quiet and still.
While I stood calmly, my brain was working like the inside of a watch. All the cogs were turning, bits were ticking.
My brain told me that the best way to get Grandma’s address was from the school office. This is what happens when you start to think like Albert Einstein.
There is a nice lady who works there. Her name is Lisa. The boss lady in the office is called Janet. She has glasses with thin, black frames and her hair is grey, like dry wire. Her face always looks like she’s chewing something nasty.
Once, I heard our Science teacher, Mr Jefferson, say that Janet was an old witch. He said it to Miss Crane in a low voice, while I was preparing copper sulphate crystals for an experiment, just after lunch.
It was important for me to ask the right office lady for the information. To increase my chances of success, I had to think about every possible outcome of my actions.
There was this murderer once on a crime programme I used to watch with Grandma. He wanted to commit the perfect crime. He thought about it for a long time before he did it. He tried to think of every possible outcome, just like me and Albert Einstein.
But he left a vital piece of evidence at the scene of the crime because he rushed it at the end. Instead of asking the old janitor to dispose of a bag of rubbish, he asked the cleaner. She was nosy and when he had gone, she went through the bag and found his bloodstained gloves. Big mistake.
The bell rang and everyone went in for registration. When I got to my class, Miss Crane was waiting for me, sitting next to my empty chair, like always.
‘That’s a nasty cut on your head, Kieran,’ she said.
‘I fell off my bike.’
She carried on looking at it until I turned my head away.
‘You know you can talk to me about anything that’s wrong, don’t you?’ she said. ‘I mean, anything at all.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But nothing is wrong.’
First lesson was Maths. Boring. Second lesson was Art. Brilliant.
Mrs Bentley brought over my seascape picture and unrolled it on the table. Art tables are the best. It doesn’t matter how big your work is, it always fits. It has slots to hold your paper and you can put it at a tilt, so it’s easier to get to the far bits. I wished I had one in my bedroom.
We were working with pastels, so I got to wear some thin, rubber disposable gloves like a pathologist.
Pastels have pigment in that can stain your hands. It’s hard to wash off. Sometimes it can stay on your hands for ages. If blood was like that, it would be much easier to find killers. The only way you can see blood when it has been cleaned up is by using UV light. ‘UV’ is short for ‘ultra-violet’.
UV light is the best. It can find bloodstains, even if the killer has tried to wash them away or has painted over them. What happens is that the blood absorbs all the light and doesn’t reflect it back. So the stains show up as black.
Forensic experts can take samples of the black stains and do scientific tests to prove if they are definitely blood. Then the police can catch the killer. Science is brilliant for finding hidden evidence from crimes.
I was creating a seascape like one of Lowry’s. In his Seascape 1960, he drew a view of the North Sea from the north-east coast. Lowry just used pencil on paper but Mrs Bentley said we had to use pastels, which was annoying.
I was using grey and plum pastels for my picture, even though most people make the sea bright blue in paintings. My sea looked massively lonely and miserable.
‘Bleak,’ said Miss Crane.
It felt like I was drawing the fizzy lump in the middle of my chest but it came out as the sea. The lump pressed against my heart when I thought about Mum’s bruises.
‘Interesting,’ said Mrs Bentley when she got round to my table. ‘Are we going to have some birds in that sky?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Perhaps we could have a little more differentiation between the sea and the sky?’
I liked Mrs Bentley, but not her paintings. They were all over the walls of the art room. She only did butterflies and flowers and they didn’t even look real. They were all in bright colours and the sun was always shining. They didn’t make me feel like anything inside.
Lowry is a much better Art teacher. All you have to do is look at his paintings and your worries go away. Everything outside the paintings seems small and you just know things are going to be OK. Lowry knew more about drawing and painting than Mrs Bentley ever will, even though she has letters after her name that mean she is an expert.
‘It’s supposed to be bleak,’ I said.
Mrs Bentley raised her eyebrows at Miss Crane and they did a secret smile at each other.
At the end of the class, Miss Crane helped me roll my seascape back up. Next lesson it would be finished.
‘You can take it home with you then, to show your mum,’ she said.
I pretended I hadn’t heard her.
After break, it was time for PE. I hate PE the most out of every subject we do at school. This is why:
1. PE teachers only like you if you’re good at sport.
2. Miss Crane doesn’t stay with me in PE – I have to do it on my own.
We did indoor football in the big gym because it was raining.
Craig Durham and Matthew Pounder are the best at sport. They are Mr Strachan’s favourites and they always get to choose their teams.
At the end of the choosing, there was just me and Thomas Brewer left. Thomas is so fat his trousers get holes in them where his wobbly thighs rub together. His mum buys him new ones but it always happens again.
It makes everybody in the class laugh. Apart from Thomas.
At lunchtime, I limped over to the school office.
I hadn’t really hurt my ankle but if you want people to believe something it’s important to act like it is true.
When I got to the hatch, there were two other people there waiting. The girl at the front was paying some dinner money in. I felt sick when the office lady came back with her change. It was the wire-haired boss woman, Janet.
My heart started to beat so hard I could feel it in my head and even in the ends of my fingers. I did a silent prayer that the sea noise wouldn’t start, because I can’t hear anything else when it does.
&nbs
p; The girl went away and the boy in front of me got served. He needed the register for Class 7R, which made her tut.
When I got to the front, the boss lady looked about seven feet tall, which is as tall as an American basketball player. Her glasses magnified her eyes nearly as well as my great-granddad’s binoculars.
‘For the second time, YES?’
The sea sound started. It whooshed in my ears, making me dizzy. I held on to the shelf at the hatch. I could see her wrinkly mouth moving but I couldn’t hear any of the words.
I think I said, ‘I feel sick.’
The office door opened and the other lady, Lisa, came out. She sat me down on one of the soft padded chairs in reception and waited quietly, until the sea sound went away.
‘Do you feel OK, Kieran?’
I nodded.
‘The old witch made the sea sound come in my head,’ I said.
Lisa’s face looked funny, like she was holding her breath against hiccups. Her lips actually seemed glued together.
She breathed and let her lips go. Then she smiled with teeth.
‘What is it you wanted, love?’
My heart was drumming again. Boom, boom, boom. Telling lies is bad.
‘I hurt my ankle in PE,’ I said. ‘Miss Crane sent me to get Grandma’s telephone number and address.’
Lisa frowned. ‘We usually ring from the office,’ she said. ‘Is your mum at work?’
It was all going wrong.
‘Mum is at work,’ I said. ‘Miss Crane said she needs to speak to my grandma about something else.’
Lisa looked at me. I kept my eyes looking straight ahead and tried not to blink. If you are a body language expert and someone looks to the right, it means they are making stuff up that hasn’t happened yet. If they blink too much, or scratch their ears or nose, it definitely means they are telling lies.
‘We’re not supposed to give any personal information out from the office,’ she said. ‘It’s to do with data protection. Miss Crane knows that.’
It wasn’t going to work.
‘I know Grandma’s number but it’s locked up inside my subconscious,’ I said.
Lisa smiled.
‘I’m sure you do,’ she said. ‘Wait here.’
She went back into the office.
A long time went by. Maybe she was ringing the staff room to speak to Miss Crane. She might have called the Spar shop and be talking to Mum. She couldn’t ring the home phone because Virgin Media had cut the line off until Tony paid the bill.
The old witch came to the window and glared at me. She slammed the hatch glass closed so hard, I thought it was going to break and cut her fingers off.
To get her back, I made up a picture in my head of her screaming with blood all over the hatch glass. All her fingers were cut off; two of them were on the floor in front of me but I didn’t pick them up. They still had short, dark-pink nails on them. She was holding up her hand while she screamed and there was only a thumb left on it.
‘Kieran? You OK?’
Lisa stood in front of me.
The hatch wasn’t broken; there were no fingers on the floor.
‘You don’t seem well,’ she said, and gave me a piece of paper. ‘There’s your grandma’s number, love. Tell Miss Crane to come and see me if she needs the address.’
There was a telephone box down the bottom of the estate.
I had a piggy bank in my bedroom. When I got back home, I was going to count the money. I hoped I had enough for a phone call to Grandma.
I walked home from school the long way, past the embankment. It had stopped raining and I could hear the moorhens and geese.
When I got round the corner, I stopped. There was a group of people standing right where I'd found Colin’s dead body.
The sky was grey; the water was grey. The people all had dark clothes on. They were standing in a little huddle.
It looked exactly like Lowry’s oil painting scene, The Funeral, except there was no church or gravestones in the background, just the river. I couldn’t see their faces or hear what they were saying, but the sadness dripped off them. It was sadness that Lowry painted, not the people’s faces. That’s how he made you feel it.
I walked nearer. Stopped. Walked nearer.
I pretended I was looking at the river until I was standing right next to them.
There were two ladies and three men. The ladies were crying and the men looked sad.
‘It’s just not good enough,’ said the man with the bald head. ‘They won’t tell us anything.’
‘They said they had nothing much to tell us,’ said one of the ladies. ‘That he probably just fell in.’
‘Did you want something, young man?’
One of the other men had seen me listening and staring.
Miss Crane has told me before that people don’t like it when you stare at them.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Do you live around here?’
His voice sounded posh.
‘I live on Maple Street,’ I said. ‘With my mum and Tony and Ryan.’
‘I see,’ said the man. He glanced at the others.
‘I found Jean’s friend dead in the river,’ I said.
The lady with the pink scarf let out a squeal and the bald man put his arm round her.
‘This is no time for storytelling,’ he said. His voice sounded like the teachers at school.
‘His name was Colin Kirk,’ I said. ‘He was a homeless man but he still wanted to live.’
‘Oh my God, he’s telling the truth,’ cried the other lady.
‘Can you tell us what happened from the beginning?’ asked the third man. He was quite young but his face looked old and tired.
I told them everything. I told them how Colin’s body just looked like rags in the water. I told them the police thought he was drunk and fell in. Then I told them that me and Jean thought he’d been murdered.
The ladies were crying worse than ever. I was worried I’d said something wrong.
‘Where might we find this Jean?’ the bald man asked.
‘She hasn’t got a home. Sometimes, she’s under the bridge.’
The bald man said something in the lady with the pink scarf’s ear and walked off down the embankment.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ the other lady said. ‘Thank you for telling us that – it’s more than the police have.’
‘Did you know Colin?’ I said.
‘I’m his sister,’ she said. ‘My name is Deirdre.’
She shook my hand, which I had practised doing with Miss Crane.
‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I said.
‘I’m Colin’s cousin,’ said the pink-scarf lady. ‘And the others are people who knew Colin and cared very much about him.’
‘Why couldn’t Colin live with you, if you cared about him?’
Deirdre looked at the other lady. She shifted from one foot to the other.
‘It’s not always that simple,’ she said. ‘Sometimes people don’t want to be helped. They just want to be left alone.’
I hoped Grandma didn’t want to be left alone. I hoped she would be glad when I rang her.
I looked down the embankment, towards the bridge. The bald man had disappeared.
When I looked again, he came out from under the bridge. Jean was with him.
When they got to us, Jean walked round the others and came and stood next to me. She smelt like a wet dog.
‘This is Jean,’ said the man to the others. ‘She knew Colin too.’
The others all said hello at the same time. I saw Deirdre looking at Jean’s dirty sandals.
Jean didn’t say hello back. It meant she wasn’t just letting them win.
The lady in the pink scarf said, ‘Is this exactly where Colin died?’
Jean and I both looked at the water. We nodded.
‘Then this is a good place to tell the story of Colin’s remarkable life and the wonderful man he was.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘At least two people round he
re will know he was more than a homeless pile of rags.’
The bald man coughed and looked at Jean.
‘No offence intended,’ he said.
‘Since Colin was a boy, the only thing he ever wanted to do was to join the fire brigade. He’d done nearly thirty years’ service before a terrible night in Nottingham, when one of the busiest pubs in town suffered an arson attack.’
‘He told me he’d been a fireman,’ said Jean.
The lady nodded. ‘They cleared the pub, got everyone out and took the injured to hospital. Meanwhile, the fire raged worse than ever, despite their efforts to put it out. The landlord had an illegal stash of industrial diesel in the back which had ignited and exploded.’
‘Nobody had thought about the flat upstairs,’ said the bald man. ‘By the time they remembered, the flames had engulfed the stairs. The landlord told the police there was a lady and her three small children in there.’
‘They had to send for a longer ladder to reach the flat from the back of the building. Colin realized the family would perish if they waited. So, despite his supervisor forbidding him to enter the burning building, Colin went in.’
‘Wicked,’ I said.
The lady looked at me with a twisty face. ‘He got the lady and two of her children out alive,’ she said. ‘The baby was already dead. Colin was a hero but he got terribly burned.’
‘It took the best part of a year for him to heal and, when he had, the fire brigade told him he was unfit for duty,’ said the bald man, looking into the murky depths of the river. ‘Saving that family cost Colin his career and his sanity.’
‘He went travelling,’ continued the lady in the scarf. ‘He was looking for something he was never going to find. He was haunted with guilt because he couldn’t save the baby.’
‘We hadn’t heard from him for three years,’ Deirdre said. ‘The police found my name and address in Colin’s bag and contacted me.’
‘It’s a sad end for a hero,’ the young man said.
Before they left, Deirdre gave Jean a piece of paper with her name and address on. The man gave her some paper money.