We Own the Sky

by Luke Allnutt

  “Oh, Mr. Barnes is the previous owner,” he says. “They left about two years ago. Him and his little one.”

  Him and his little one. I think about those words. Him and his little one.

  “Ah, okay,” I say, thinking about Nev and Josh driving away, in a car packed full of suitcases and garbage bags full of shoes. “And you don’t have a forwarding address?”

  “We don’t, I’m afraid. It was a quick sale, and he kept saying he would send one, but he never did. I do have an email address for him, if that helps.”

  “No, it’s fine, I have that.”

  “Okay,” he says, looking confused and suddenly wary of the stranger standing on his doorstep.

  “And you don’t have any idea where he’s gone?”

  The man thinks for a moment, still weighing up the situation. “I think he moved to the Reeves property, as unlikely as it sounds. It’s on the edge of town.”

  “Reeves as in R e e v e s.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Thank you, you’ve been very kind. I might have a look around there.”

  He stares at me again, still unsure what to make of me. “Well, it’s a big place. And not the sort of place you’d want to look around. Or take your car,” he says, nodding at the Audi.

  I laugh. “Ah, I see, well, thanks anyway. I might have a rethink.”

  “Yes, quite,” he says. “Look, could you do me a favor? We have all this mail piling up for Mr. Barnes. It sounds like you’ve got a better chance of giving it to him than we have. Would you take it?”

  “Yes, of course. I’d be happy to.”

  He disappears for a minute or two, and I stand awkwardly on the doorstep. Then he comes back with four large shopping bags full of letters. “Here you go,” he says. “Evidently your friend was a very popular chap.”

  * * *

  I put the bags of letters in the trunk and then, with the man still watching me from his door, drive back to the main road. Along the main street, most of the shops are boarded up. All that are left are a few Indian takeouts, minicab companies, a shabby office advertising “no win, no fee” legal services.

  I pull in to the parking lot of a pub, a little one-story building in between two taller row houses. There is fire damage up one wall and in the row of houses, the pub looks like a broken, blackened tooth. I sit there for a while, drumming on the steering wheel, looking at the map on my phone.

  As I’m thinking what to do, there is a knock on the window. Standing next to the car are two scrawny children sharing a can of superstrength lager.

  “Want any bangs, mister?” says the smaller boy, as the window rolls down.

  “No,” I answer, not even knowing what bangs are.

  “You some fuckin’ pedo then, parked here?”

  “Fuck off,” I say.

  “So what you doing here, pedo?” The older kid starts sniggering and they fist-bump and pass their can back and forth.

  “I’m looking for someone actually. Can you help?”

  “Why the fuck should we help you?” the older boy says, spitting on the ground.

  “I’ll pay,” I say.

  “How much?”

  “Twenty quid.”

  “Fuck off, ya twat. I can get that in five seconds selling these wraps.”

  “Fifty.”

  The boys look at each other, eyeing each other up under their baseball caps.

  “Okay. Give us the money then.”

  I hold a fifty-pound note just out of their reach. “I’m looking for someone called Nev Barnes. Do you know him?”

  “Might do.”

  “Don’t play silly buggers. Either you do or you don’t.”

  “Believe it or not, pal, but I do actually,” the younger boy says, “but I won’t tell you unless you give us money first.”

  I look him up and down. “Come on then,” I say, handing the cash over, but the boys just stand there, smiling at each other, lighting fresh cigarettes.

  The younger boy leans in through the car window, and he smells of cigarettes and cheap body spray. “I’ll tell you what, pal,” he says, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “I will definitely tell you, because I know Nev, I do. His kid goes to my school. Moved here a couple of years ago.”

  His kid. Him and his little one. My hands are shaking so I hold on to the steering wheel.

  “You see those lads over there?” He points to some older boys on BMXs across the road, and I nod. “Right, if you don’t give me another one of them fifties, I’m gonna tell those lads you just offered me fifty quid for a BJ.”

  He smiles a sweet cherubic smile, as if he is having his picture taken at school, and I know that I am being had, but I don’t see how I have any choice, so I take out another note and press it into his palm.

  He smiles and puts the money loosely into his pocket. “You’re very close actually, pal,” he says. “Just around the corner. It’s got a red fence, and there’s an old Fiesta in the drive.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Fuck off, you posh nob,” he says, and they walk away laughing, swigging from their can.

  The boy was right. I was about thirty seconds away, a vast rectangle of grass, surrounded on all sides by run-down row houses. On the grass, there are piles of rubbish, large industrial containers and a bonfire surrounded by a black halo. In the corner of the green, there is a bricked-off section with patches of paler concrete, where the slide and climbing frames used to stand.

  I can see Nev’s house, the Fiesta in the drive, the broken red fence, a St. George’s Cross hanging from his neighbor’s window. As I’m parking the car, some children who were playing football on the green stop and stare at me, scoping me out. I stare back, puffing myself up, so they might think I’m the debt collector, someone not to be messed with. And then, just as I am about to turn away and go through Nev’s gate, I see him.

  I know instantly that it is Josh. He is playing football and his blond hair flows behind him, as he ducks and weaves and spins, head and shoulders above the rest. He looks out of place in the group, hunched under their hoodies, pinching drags between goals. I cannot stop watching as he rounds three players and then fakes out the goalkeeper before effortlessly sliding the ball between two gas cans.

  I have looked at his photos enough times to know the exact color of his hair, the shape of his slightly rounded shoulders. Even though he has grown, I recognize his shy smile, how his hair flops over his face as he walks back to his teammates.

  I have seen that smile before. A photo of Nev and Josh standing next to the Angel of the North. I have to stop myself, but I want to walk up to him, to see and touch this miracle boy. I want to hold his face in my hands, to feel the warm flush of his skin. I wave to him, but he doesn’t see me, doesn’t wave back.

  The gate to Nev’s house is broken and needs to be lifted off the ground before it will open. I ring the doorbell and wait. Next to the door, there are some children’s shoes, trainers and blue rain boots, mud encrusted on the soles. Him and his little one.

  I recognize the man who opens the door. It is definitely the Nev I have spoken to, who I have seen in the photos and videos, but it is not the Nev I remember. His face is drawn, unshaved, his body gaunt, like a malnourished alcoholic. His jeans hang loosely off his hips, and there are holes in the elbows of his gray Fruit of the Loom sweatshirt. He seems thinner, older, like a man in his seventies wearing the clothes he wore when he was young. His lips are dry and chapped, and he swipes specks of dandruff from his shoulders.

  “Hello, can I help?”

  His accent is thick, much thicker than I remember when we spoke on the phone. I notice his eyes flicker over my shoulder, toward the kids on the green.

  “Nev?”

  He pauses, and I think I see a flash of fear in his eyes.

  “Yes, can I help you, mate?
” Maaate. Long Lancashire vowels, a reminder that I was far from home.

  “It’s Rob, Jack’s dad,” I say brightly. His face does not change, and I am not sure he remembers me. “Would you mind if we talked for a few minutes?”

  Nev looks me up and down. The porch smells a little musty, like a greenhouse, and in the corner there are stacks of free newspapers and a crumpled delivery cart.

  “All right then,” Nev says, holding the door open.

  Inside, the house is immaculate, a little oasis from the street outside. A worn but clean sofa, a fireplace and a mantelpiece, without a speck of dust. There are children’s books neatly piled in the corner, and through the doors to the kitchen I can see a child’s painting stuck to the fridge.

  I sit down on the sofa and Nev takes a small hard chair in the corner. For a moment we don’t speak. Behind him on a shelf there is a collection of marble-white figurines of angels and galloping horses. They are arranged in perfect symmetry, like a silent ceramic army.

  “I don’t remember you... I don’t think so, I don’t think I do,” Nev says. He looks diminutive in the corner, forlorn, like a man captured on film by a pedophile hunter.

  “It’s okay. I know you wrote to lots of people. We spoke on the phone once a couple of years ago and exchanged emails. My son was Jack.”

  Nothing, not even a flash of recognition. I know he wrote to lots of people. But we had exchanged so many messages. I told him everything, about Jack’s treatment, my relationship with Anna. And now it seems like I am talking to a different person.

  “We went to Prague for treatment, but my wife didn’t want to continue,” I say, hoping it would jog his memory. “Jack died not long after we came back.”

  “Oh, very sorry about that,” Nev says, but it is as if he is somewhere else, listening to a different conversation. His words were choppy, sputtered out. “How did you know where to find the house like?”

  “Just asked around,” I say, and Nev starts to speak but there is a shout from outside as something, a football I think, hits one of the front windows. Nev does not move in his chair, as if it has happened many times before.

  “Is that Josh out there playing football?” I ask. “The blond boy.”

  Nev’s eyes dart to the window, and then he sits back in his chair. He does not speak for a moment, and it is as if the words are difficult for him to say, as if he is trying to overcome a stutter. On the coffee table, I can see some cheaply made flyers. Nev Barnes. No Job Too Small. Painting, Gardening, Odd Jobs. Call: 01632 532676.

  “No, that’s not him,” he says after a while. “I think I know the one you mean, though. The lanky lad.”

  I think about the boy outside, slotting the ball between the gas cans, sweeping his long blond hair out of his face. It was Josh; I was sure it was Josh.

  Nev is motionless. One of the angels holds his attention for a moment, as if he notices that it has a speck of dust on its wing.

  Suddenly, he stands up from his seat and takes a few paces toward me, and he is on edge now, tapping his legs with his hands, a red rash spreading across his neck.

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude like, but what can I help you with? I... I’m very sorry about your son, but I... I... I’m not sure I can help you with anything.”

  “So where’s Josh then?” I say, and I didn’t mean it to but it sounds like a threat.

  Nev walks toward me again, as if he wants to show me the door, but I don’t budge, stay sitting in my seat. He is getting more agitated, pacing back and forth across the living room.

  “I don’t know why you’ve come here,” he says, and he is wringing his hands together, as if he is squeezing water out of wet clothes.

  “I just want to know what happened to Josh,” I say, looking him in the eye.

  “What happened to Josh?” Nev says, clicking his fingers and cracking his knuckles. “Why are you asking about my son?” He is standing over me, and he smells of stale sweat. “I think it’s time that you leave now.”

  I stand up to face him. He seems smaller now, and I am nearly a head taller than him. “Where is Josh then, at school?”

  He looks at me and then looks away. “That’s right, yes, at school, the lad’s at school,” he says, and he doesn’t sound as if he even believes it himself.

  “You’re lying, Nev. I know you’re lying.”

  “Lying, what are you even saying now. I’m telling you, mate, he’s at school, just around the corner, and he’ll be home soon, doing his homework. Or he’ll be out there playing football with them lads...always have to call him in for his dinner because he’s football mad, my Josh...”

  Nev doesn’t look well. He is not pacing anymore but standing still, holding on to the mantelpiece for support. He is shaking and his eyes are glassy, as if he’s had some kind of fit.

  “Are you okay?” I say, touching his arm. “Perhaps you should sit down.” I help him back to his chair, and he sinks into the cushions, trying to catch his breath.

  “My Josh died five year ago,” he says suddenly and then looks away at the wall.

  I say nothing and Nev shakes his head. “He never got better, did he, poor lad. He died out there, over in Prague.” He sits forward in his seat, turns away from the angels and toward me. “He also went to the clinic, Dr. Sladkovsky’s clinic, for treatment but it didn’t work for him either. I didn’t understand it, like. I read all those testimonials about all them little boys and girls that got better. Did nothing for our Josh, though, in the end.”

  “What... I don’t... So why, why did you say that he was alive, that he got better?” I say, the skin prickling on my neck.

  Nev shrugs, and I notice that he is frantically tapping his left leg on the carpet.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “All your letters, your photos of Josh. We were on the phone and I heard him. I remember you asking him to take his shoes off, and I could hear the cartoons in the background. And the video of you two dressed up as Batman and Robin. I just don’t understand. So who was that in all the pictures?”

  Nev slumps even farther down in his chair. “The younger ones, that were my Josh. They were taken when he was over there at the clinic and around that time. But the older ones that you see, they were his cousin Tim. Same age. Everyone used to think they were brothers. It’s my sister’s little boy.”

  I swallow to try to shift something, thick like dust, in my throat. The sympathy I had for Nev a moment ago is now gone.

  “So you made his cousin pretend to be Josh?”

  “No, nothing like that. He knew what happened to Josh of course, and that I was involved with all these cancer groups. So when we dressed up and did all our silly videos, he thought he was just helping the little sick kiddies. To be frank with you, he liked it. Happy to help, to be honest. Look, I’m not very good at saying this, but, well, I... I am sorry, I really am,” Nev says.

  “You’re sorry?” I say, sitting forward on the edge of the sofa. “Have you been watching the news recently? Have you seen what this man has done? To children, to families, to people like me. And you just sit here like it’s nothing to do with you, like you’re innocent in all of this.”

  “I have, yes, and I promise to God, I didn’t know all that. I believed in it, I really did. Because when my Josh started going there, and he had his first treatments, they showed us all these numbers and they said it was working. These proteins, GML and that CB-11, they said it were a sign of the tumor dying. And so we kept going with the treatments, round after round. But it was expensive, you see, and we don’t have much, so I borrowed money from everyone I could and then that ran out and I had to remortgage the house.”

  Nev sniffed and wiped his nose with his finger. “After twelve treatments, Dr. Sladkovsky said it was working, but we needed to continue. I... I didn’t know how I was going to pay for it, but I signed up for four more rounds, like, and then three mor
e. Who wouldn’t, right? When it’s your only son, that’s what you gotta do, right? And then they kept telling me he was getting better. It’s working, it’s working, they kept saying, it’s working. I really thought my Josh was getting better. Because he looked completely different, he really did. He was brighter and had color in his cheeks, and all the things that were wrong with him before, like his speech, his walking, they all got better. Like a new little lad. Night and day compared to how he was on that chemotherapy...”

  Nev’s forehead is glistening with sweat and he wipes his hands on his trousers. “I’d seen it with my wife, you see, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again to my Josh.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yeah. She had cancer a few years before Josh. It was very quick.” Nev swallows and takes a deep breath. “Yeah, we were walking out on the moors one weekend—she were a big walker, my Lesley—and all of a sudden, she had this terrible pain and had to go to the emergency room. And that was it. Cancer of pancreas. They said she had nine months, but she only lasted three.” Nev nods at the angels and winged horses. “These were hers. She collected them like.”

  The room is silent. Just the sound of children playing and police sirens in the distance.

  “That was why I went to Prague, if I’m frank with you, why I spent everything I had. It all went on the clinic—the savings, the house, money from friends. Because I couldn’t bear to see my Josh go through what my Lesley went through.”

  I think of something someone wrote on Hope’s Place. That we were victims in all this. Victims. Just following our own paths. Doing what was best for our kids, what any parent would do.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “About your wife. But it doesn’t explain why you kept promoting the treatments when you knew they didn’t work.”

  “I... I didn’t know that at the beginning, to be honest. I started promoting the clinic, talking about it on the forums when I thought Josh were getting better. They were telling me it was working, and I believed them. I was convinced by it. I wanted to shout it out from the rooftops, like. I started talking up the clinic because I really—honest to God, Rob—wanted to help the other kids.”