A Boy Called Hope

by Lara Williamson

  My dad is heartless. I will forget him. It’s nothing less than he deserves.

  From now on, I’m going to get on with my own life. And I’m going to help Mum get on with hers. She is broken-hearted without Big Dave and if she’s sad, I’m sad. So Operation Reichenbach is…um…right ’n’ back. Part of this is our fault, mine and Grace’s. She set his house on fire and I helped her do it without even realizing. Together we’ve split Big Dave and Mum up over a stupid pink dressing gown. But I’m going to put everything right. If there is a glimmer of hope, no matter how small, that Mum and Big Dave are meant to be together, then I want to help them take it. (This time I’m going to believe Big Dave is innocent until proven guilty.)

  Later that evening, I march up Big Dave’s pathway full of bravado, but as I press the bell it ebbs away. What if Caroline 1973 answers? What will I say to her? She might cut me with her razor-sharp hair or set her zebra raincoat on me. This seemed like a brilliant idea when I was sitting in my bedroom and now I’m not so sure.

  The door flies open before I can run away.

  “Dan?”

  “Christopher?”

  “Dan?”

  “What are you doing here?” I stare at him.

  “I live here.” Christopher stares at me.

  “But Big D-D-Dave lives here,” I stammer.

  “Yeah, and he’s my dad.” Christopher blinks away his surprise. “Do you want to see him about a car repair?”

  Big Dave appears in the hallway. “I don’t think this is about a car, Kit. Dan, come in. I think we should talk.”

  I walk into the house, trying to process the fact that Big Dave just called Christopher – my friend Christopher – Kit. Wasn’t Kit supposed to be Big Dave’s five-year-old son? Wasn’t he the child in that photo? None of it makes sense, but I follow them inside, where I can smell burned toast and burned curtains (probably courtesy of Grace).

  “We were just making dinner,” says Big Dave. “Do you want some?”

  “Er, no,” I reply. “It’s Thursday. Microwave chips night.”

  “Oh right,” says Big Dave, wiping his hands on his jeans, before moving a cardboard box and sitting on the sofa. “To be honest, we were only having beans on toast. But if you change your mind about joining us, we’ve got some burned toast with your name on it. Anyway, find a space and sit down. What can I do for you?”

  Footsteps come down the hall towards the living room. Caroline 1973 walks in and extends her hand. “It’s lovely to meet one of Kit’s friends.” I recognize her from the kiss on the doorstep.

  Christopher says, “Aunty Yvonne, this is Dan from my class at school.”

  “You’re not Caroline 1973?” I mutter. “You’re not Big Dave’s wife?”

  She clamps her hand to her mouth to stop herself from laughing. “I’m his sister. Who on earth is Caroline 1973?”

  Big Dave looks down at his bicep and traces the tattoo with his finger. “I know. Caroline 1973 is the name on my arm. It’s my favourite song by Status Quo and the year it was released. I got the tattoo years ago. Caroline wasn’t my wife. Caz was. I’ve no idea who the real Caroline was. I think you’d have to ask Francis Rossi and Bob Young. They wrote the song.”

  “I’ve already told you my mum is called Catriona,” says Christopher, “and I said she was somewhere in Scotland. Mum and Dad aren’t together.”

  In the end I manage to splutter, “I think I’ve made a horrible mistake.”

  Big Dave turns his broad face to mine and tells me not to worry. But guilty thoughts are tiptoeing through my head. I allowed myself to get mixed up about all this because I don’t trust people the way I used to. Look at what Dad did – I trusted him and he let me down. It was easy for Grace to persuade me that Big Dave would do the same. I let myself be convinced he was cheating on Mum. Instead, it’s me who has let Big Dave down.

  Christopher looks at his dad and asks if I’m his girlfriend’s son. “Is this the new brother you mentioned?”

  “It is,” says Big Dave. “Kit, meet Dan. Dan, meet Kit.”

  Christopher bursts out laughing. “This is totally ridiculous and ace at the same time.”

  “You get Ninja Grace thrown in for free,” I say, “and remember my dog from tae kwon do? Well, you get to share him too.”

  “I wonder what he’ll make of Boo?”

  “I bet Boo makes him puke,” I say. “Everything makes my dog sick.”

  “Would we be sharing a room if we move to your house?” Christopher looks at Big Dave, who looks at me. I nod, because even though there isn’t enough room to swing a kitten it would be fun to share with Christopher.

  “If Dan says it’s okay, then it’s okay,” says Big Dave.

  It turns out this whole thing was such a mess that it rivalled the supermassive black hole. For a start, Christopher never talked about his new school or his classmates to his dad. And he never wanted to discuss his dad’s girlfriend and her family. “Every time I mentioned your mum, Kit went la-la-la and stuck his fingers in his ears,” Big Dave tells me.

  “I did not,” replies Christopher.

  “And I tried to bring him with me on a Tuesday evening for dinner.”

  “But I was at tae kwon do.”

  “It wasn’t just about tae kwon do, you weren’t ready to meet them and that’s okay. Some things just can’t be rushed,” says Big Dave.

  “Like gobstoppers,” I reply, before adding, “but you knew we were at the same school, right?”

  Big Dave says that he did but he didn’t put two and two together because there are three Year Six classes at Our Lady of the Portal and Kit never mentioned me. What’s more, when Big Dave talked about Kit to me, I didn’t seem to recognize the name. In the end, he simply thought we didn’t know each other, but then he saw us at the Amandine Hotel together and it was obvious we were best mates. “By that stage your mum and me weren’t getting on, so I slipped in and out again quietly,” says Big Dave. “I thought everything was complicated enough.”

  To be honest, I’m not much of a Sherlock Holmes after all, because I didn’t realize that Kit was another name for Christopher. And I didn’t know Caz was short for Catriona.

  “But now we know it was all a big misunderstanding, you’ll come and live with us, right?” I say.

  “I’m not sure,” Big Dave says. “I thought you and Grace didn’t want me in your house. After the fire incident and this whole business about the pink dressing gown…”

  “Yes,” replies Yvonne. “The dressing gown you’re talking about is mine. I thought I’d lost it. I’d like it back, please.”

  Big Dave tells her that he doesn’t mind buying her another one, but I promise Yvonne she’ll have her own dressing gown back and a bottle of Poison. She grins and says she can live without the perfume. This is a result, because I think it’s probably very expensive and I’ve only got three pound coins and two tiddlywinks counters in my money box.

  “Big Dave,” I say, “I’ve got a bright idea…”

  Who knew fairy lights had a life of their own? Christopher is trying to get them twisted and taped onto the living room wall, while I’m trying to get the second strand of fairy lights off the Christmas tree. Meanwhile, Grace is spraying the room with a musky body spray that is likely to suffocate us before Mum gets home.

  The fairy lights fall onto Christopher’s head and he swats them away and then tries to put them back onto the wallpaper with a wodge of sticky tape. “Do you think it’ll work?”

  Half the Christmas tree comes away as I untangle my set of lights. Baubles skitter across the floor and pine needles fall into soft pyramids. Charles Scallybones gives them a sniff, presumably wondering if they’re dinner, but when I tell him “No”, he moves onto chewing the tassels on Grace’s handbag instead.

  “We don’t have long. An hour tops. Mum’s shift at Aladdin’s finishes soon,” says Grace, giving the room another spritz.

  I wind my fairy lights around Christopher’s and tape them to the wall. “Come
on, plug these lights in and let’s see if they work.”

  Grace switches off the main lights and flicks on the fairy lights. “Incredible,” she says, clapping her hands. “How romantic. I can’t believe my little brother thought of this.” She flicks all the lights off again and we stand in darkness.

  When we hear the key turn in the lock, we all dive into the corner of the living room, except Big Dave, who is frankly too big to go anywhere. Christopher and I have our guitars and Grace has promised she will sing. Earlier, I offered her a pound and my tiddlywinks counters if she didn’t sing, but she refused and said she has the voice of a mermaid.(I suppose she has a point, because when she opens her mouth it usually sounds like she’s warbling underwater.) For a second, none of us speaks. In fact, the silence is as thick as Grace’s make-up – until Mum sets down her bags and yells, “What the heck is going on here? It is pitch-black in this house. We can afford light bulbs, you know. And why does it smell like an explosion in a perfume factory?”

  As Mum enters the living room, Grace hits the switch on the fairy lights and the living room wall flashes with a twisted D and V inside a big heart. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” exclaims Mum, staring up at the flashing fairy lights taped to the wall.

  I think we can safely say she’s surprised.

  Big Dave reaches out his arms and pulls Mum in for a hug and tells her how much he loves her and how he’s here to stay. Meanwhile, Christopher and I start playing “Over the Rainbow” on our guitars. We know it doesn’t exactly fit in with the Christmas theme, but then you can’t have everything. Grace is attempting to sing and the dog has moved on to eating some stray pretzels that I accidentally tramped into the carpet yesterday.

  “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” asks Mum, pulling away from Big Dave. “What is all this in aid of?”

  I set down my guitar. “Mum, you deserve happiness and Big Dave can give you that.”

  She raises an eyebrow and then grins. “Isn’t that what I said to you, without the Big Dave bit?”

  “Yes, and it’s what I’m saying to you too.” I walk over and stand between Mum and Big Dave. “You two are meant to be together because…um…”

  “We love each other?” Mum smiles.

  “Nope, because you’re having Little Dave and he’s going to need a dad. And you keep forgetting to make my lunch and I’ve got to share Jo’s. I don’t like eating green sludge.”

  “And you must be…?” Mum turns her attention to Christopher.

  “Kit.”

  “I thought so. I’m so happy to meet you in the flesh, Kit. Ever since we spoke on the phone, I’ve wanted to meet you.” Mum is glowing with such happiness that it’s like she borrowed my golden ectoplasm.

  Everything has worked out just how I planned (except for the bit when Charles Scallybones brings up pretzels on the sofa cushions and Mum tells us the baby is kicking and makes us feel her belly until she realizes it’s just wind). Grace gives Big Dave back Yvonne’s dressing gown and says she’s sorry she thought it belonged to his wife. This in itself is a feat of gargantuan proportions, because Ninja Grace never says sorry for anything. Then Grace admits she quite likes Big Dave. Big Dave smiles and asks if she’d like him to teach her to drive. Suddenly she loves Big Dave.

  Christopher and I leave Mum and Big Dave to talk about the future, which translates into discussing how to take the sticky tape off without ripping the wallpaper. We take Charles Scallybones for a walk through Paradise estate and down past The Frying Squad, where two people are snogging in the alleyway. The boy looks up for a second before going back to kissing the chops off the girl. I swear I recognize him, but in the half-light of the alleyway I can’t be sure.

  “Walk a bit faster,” urges Christopher. “Even the abominable snowman would freeze in this weather.”

  I tear my eyes away from the boy and catch up with Christopher and Charles Scallybones. When we take the turning onto the scrubby land, I tell Christopher I’m so happy he’s my brother. “You can borrow my mum now.”

  “And you can borrow my dad,” replies Christopher.

  I think about it for a second before responding. “Thank you, but I’ve still got my own dad.”

  “Well,” says Christopher, kicking up frozen clods of earth, “it’s up to you. I’m happy to borrow your mum, because mine doesn’t even write to me.”

  I feel like a fraud. My dad has written to me, but it’s not a letter I’d want to show anyone. Although it still hurts, I read somewhere that if you let something go it will come back to you. So this is my new tactic in regard to Dad. Let him go and eventually he’ll come back. Why didn’t I think of it before?

  We walk over the wastelands of Paradise, two boys about to start a new adventure and one dog eating discarded fast-food cartons.

  Ever since we did our guitar performance, school has been ace. I’ve signed a million autographs (okay, two) and one of those was on a plaster cast on the leg of a girl in Year Four. She said she wasn’t really allowed to have it signed but when I was famous it would be worth something. (Only then she added the cast will be whipped off soon and she couldn’t help it if I ended up in the hospital bin.) Christopher got asked for his autograph too and he did this amazing lightning flash instead of a dot over his “i”. So I asked him if I could autograph his stomach and when he pulled up his shirt I drew my “a” around his belly button and then chuckled all the way to class. There’s nothing like permanent marker to give you a laugh on a Monday morning.

  Jo is our official groupie. When I tell Christopher Jo likes him now that he is a rock star and they could pair up, he tells me he’s off girls – apparently they’re too much like hard work. “Anyway, there’s no way I could compete with saints even if I wanted to,” he tells me, before running off to play football, weaving around a star-struck Jo, and firing the ball between the goalposts.

  We’ve signed a deal with Kevin to be our agent/bodyguard. We’ve said that if he lines up all our fans, we’ll sign autographs for fifty pence. Kevin then gets ten pence commission per customer. Unfortunately, we only make one pound in the whole deal and Kevin takes his twenty pence commission and then takes the other eighty pence which he says is his retainer fee plus tax. As for his bodyguarding duties, well, they don’t amount to much more than him chatting up any girls who head in our direction.

  It’s not just at school where things have changed. Big Dave, Christopher and Boo have moved into 10 Paradise Parade. Christopher and Boo are in my bedroom and Charles Scallybones is equally fascinated and horrified by the furry creature that keeps running around on a wheel but never gets anywhere. From time to time he thinks about eating Boo’s food but ends up furious at not being able to get his teeth through the cage bars.

  By Christmas Day we’re one big happy family, plus Ninja Grace, who hasn’t said a thing all morning. (Not that anyone is complaining.) Mum says we’re going to have the best Christmas ever. At lunchtime she spreads the table with a white tablecloth and puts fake tea lights on top. We’re not allowed to have real candles since Grace burned down Big Dave’s bedroom. We’re also not allowed to talk about it. It is referred to as the-incident-that-cannot-be-mentioned.

  When Mum asks Grace to put out the cutlery, Grace says, “Yeessshh,” and then Mum asks if Grace has sneaked some of the Christmas sherry. “No,” Grace says, placing knives and forks on the table. “It wooks wotten.” Mum stares at her and then shoves a spoon in a bowl of steaming sprouts. There are so many they could create enough wind to work the turbines in the fields beyond the Paradise estate. When Big Dave sits down, he says sprouts are the devil’s food but he’ll eat them and be damned.

  “I wussed to fink they were fairwy cabbwages,” says Grace.

  Big Dave’s jaw drops open, which isn’t pleasant since there’s clearly a squashed fairy cabbage on his tongue. Grace goes red and passes a bowl of roast potatoes in his direction. Big Dave says they’re also the devil’s food and it’s his duty to eat them to protect us all from their dastar
dly deliciousness. He proceeds to pop one in his mouth. Steam bursts from his pursed lips and he has to quench his mouth with a whole can of beer, downed in one.

  After lunch, Mum brings out the snowy-peaked Christmas cake. I make a mental note to encourage Mum to give Grace the piece with the reindeer on top.

  In our house it’s traditional to open our presents after dinner. What’s not traditional is Grace opening her mouth to thank Mum for the perfume and Mum screaming, “Why, in God’s name, is there a chunk of sprout still stuck to your tongue?” It isn’t a sprout. It is a stud. Grace looks wounded (more wounded than having her tongue stabbed with a needle and a silver ball inserted). She says she got it done on Christmas Eve as a treat to herself. Mum says she needs a lie-down as a treat to herself and we’ll have to open the rest of our presents without her.

  Mum has bought me a new mobile phone and when Grace offers to put some more of her glittery stickers on it I offer to get a magnet and see what effect it has on metal tongue studs. That shuts her up. Well, that and the swollen tongue. Christopher gets a huge new hamster wheel, which is like the London Eye for rodents. Big Dave bought me a new book on Sherlock Holmes and a sky lantern set and tells me I can make my own super-duper deluxe version now. Grace gets an envelope from Big Dave and looks disappointed until she realizes there’s a piece of paper inside offering her ten driving lessons. That’s when I wonder if I should have given Big Dave an envelope offering him trauma counselling instead of a book on repairing cars for idiots. He thought it was hilarious – the book, that is – but it wasn’t meant to be a joke. It was all I could find in the bookshop for the amount of money I had. Signing autographs doesn’t pay much these days.