Fifteen Days Without a Head

by Dave Cousins

  My Nanna used to say that a mistake didn’t have to be a mistake—not if you learned from it. So I made myself a promise. Next time, if there was a next time, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Next time I would decide what was best for me and Jay—and nobody was going to split us up again.

  Which means I can’t let anybody know that Mum’s not here—not even Jay. I don’t trust him to keep his mouth shut. I’ll tell him she’s doing extra shifts at work or something. Until she comes back, we have to carry on like normal, and make everyone think that Mum is still here.

  How hard can it be?

  I find the wig in a plastic bag at the bottom of Mum’s wardrobe. Thick, chestnut red, and curly. I remember the morning I came down to breakfast and discovered that Mum had shaved all her hair off. She cried for two whole days, then went out and bought the wig. It was almost exactly the same as her real hair, and she wore it all the time for about six months, until her hair grew back.

  I pull it on now, tucking my own dull brown curls under the itchy cap, but I still look nothing like her. Maybe some lipstick would help? I sift through the tubes on Mum’s dressing table and pick one called Vampire’s Kiss. It tastes funny and I get loads on my teeth. I frown into the gloom of Mum’s mirror at the boy with the blood-smeared lips and curly red wig. This is never going to work.

  But I have to try. I have to make everything look normal—the same as always. And every morning Nelly watches Mum leave the building on her way to work—except yesterday. If Nelly doesn’t see Mum today, she’s going to get even more suspicious.

  I pick up Mum’s cleaning overall and put it on, then look back at the figure reflected in the mirror.

  I wonder—will Nelly see Mum? Or me, dressed up like a pantomime dame?

  I wedge the bedroom window open and check Jay is still asleep, then walk down the hall and out before I change my mind. I close the door quietly, then remember that Mum always slams it—but I can’t risk waking Jay. Besides, I’m terrified somebody is going to come out of one of the other flats. But it’s six in the morning, the only person likely to be up is Nosy Nelly, and that’s the whole point. I wonder why she bothers though. I mean, what’s she got to get up for? All she does is sit in her flat all day, spying on people. She never goes out anywhere, and she’s got no friends that I’ve ever seen. Maybe that’s why she’s so miserable.

  Down the stairs and through the glass door into the lobby. I let this one bang behind me, and the noise booms off the walls like a football in a dustbin. The tiles on the floor hum with an orange glow from the streetlamp outside. I focus on the exit, forcing myself not to look as I walk past Nelly’s flat. I make a bet—if I can hold my breath until I get outside, then this is going to work.

  My head feels like a balloon; I can hear blood pumping through my ears with each footstep. When I reach the front door, I pull instead of push, and have to press the release button again. Finally I’m outside, gulping in the cool, early morning air. I walk down the steps, careful to keep my face turned away from the windows of Nelly’s flat. I can feel her watching me all the way.

  But who is she seeing?

  Me, or Mum?

  I go as far as the end of the street then double back, ducking down the service road behind the shops. Nelly mustn’t see me going back in, so I use the fire-escape. I’ve got one leg through the bedroom window when I notice Jay, sitting up in bed, staring at me.

  ‘What you doing?’

  For a second I freeze, straddling the ledge—then I see his eyes and realize he’s still asleep. Jay does this a lot, usually in the middle of the night. You can have a whole conversation with him and he won’t remember anything about it in the morning.

  I close the window and go over to his bed. He looks at me and frowns, and I remember I’m still dressed up like Mum.

  ‘It’s not time to get up yet,’ I tell him, trying to make my voice sound like hers.

  Jay shivers for a moment, then lies back down and screws his eyes shut. I kneel next to the bed and stroke his hair, and after a few minutes his breathing is steady. I stand up quietly and slip out of the room.

  It’s still early, but my brain is buzzing too much to go back to bed. I get dressed for school, then switch on the TV. There’s nothing much on, so I watch three episodes of Pingu, then fall asleep. When I wake up, Jay is sitting next to me.

  I tell him that Mum came back late last night and now she’s gone to work. I don’t want him to tell anyone that she’s not here.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I saw her.’

  ‘What?’ Something kicks me in the chest from the inside.

  ‘I saw her before she went,’ says Jay. ‘You were still asleep.’

  My mind spools—did Mum come back while I was asleep here? Or earlier, before I went out?

  ‘She was in our room,’ he says, ‘sitting in the window.’

  Then I realize he’s talking about me.

  I breathe out and allow myself a grin. It looks like my Dawn Deception might have worked better than I expected. I just hope Nosy Nelly was as easily fooled.

  After school the House of Fun is strangely quiet.

  ‘They’re just watching the end of …’ Angie frowns at the DVD case. ‘Alien Space Monkey Pirates II.’ She pulls a face. ‘I don’t normally encourage television, but Robert brought it round especially, so I couldn’t really say no.’

  A burst of the Alien Space Monkey Pirates theme floats from the living room, and suddenly I’m nine again—I can taste ice-cream on my tongue and hear Mum laughing in the seat beside me.

  She took me to see Alien Space Monkey Pirates, the first film, as a special treat. We went to the big multiplex cinema in town. I’d never seen anything like it. They had the names of the films in lights over the doors, and inside, next to the ticket booths, giant cardboard cut-outs of the characters. I liked the one called Grissom best. He didn’t say much, but he was tough and brave—always there to get the others out of trouble.

  I got a Grissom action figure for Christmas that year, a present from Greg—when he was still just Mum’s boyfriend, before he became Jay’s dad. I liked Greg then—he was good fun and Mum was happy. But when he left and Mum got depressed and started drinking again, I blamed him. I hated him for abandoning us. And every time I played with Grissom, I remembered that Greg had bought him for me, so I started to hate Grissom too.

  So I killed him.

  Grissom—not Greg.

  I pretended he was on a daring mission that went wrong—and threw him out of my bedroom window. He landed in the road outside our house and just lay there looking up at me. A car came and ran over him, but he didn’t break. I felt really bad because I didn’t hate Grissom, I loved him. But I felt so angry at Greg, I had to do something, destroy something—even if it made me feel bad. I could have gone down and fetched Grissom back, but I didn’t. I made myself stay there and watch as more cars came and then a lorry, and when the lorry passed over, Grissom was gone, just like that.

  I cried then, even though it was only a toy. Because it felt like something had died, like a big hole had opened up inside me, a hole I didn’t know how to close up again.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ Angie is frowning at me, her head tilted to one side.

  ‘Yeah … I’m fine.’

  ‘I don’t know how much longer there is to go … but you might as well have a drink.’ She thrusts a glass of milk into my hand before I can refuse. ‘Mum OK?’

  I almost choke. ‘Fine, yeah.’

  ‘Jolly good! I only ask because she normally comes on a Friday … to settle up for the week.’ Angie punctuates the sentence with a little cough and I feel like the floor has just vanished from beneath me.

  The money!

  I forgot about the money!

  ‘Mum didn’t give me the envelope. Sorry! She’s … she couldn’t come today.’

  I’m starting to sweat—I’m a vampire again, Angie advancing towards me with a wooden stake in her hand.

  ‘She must have
forgotten—I’ll bring it round tomorrow.’ I shrug.

  Sometimes a shrug just fits. Sometimes you can get away with stuff when you’re a fifteen-year-old boy, if you just pretend you’re useless. Angie expects me to be clueless, so I don’t disappoint her, and I get away with it—for now.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry!’ Angie waves her hands. ‘No rush, you can bring it next week.’

  Next week.

  Mum will be back by then, so there’s nothing to worry about.

  Jay tells me the entire story of Alien Space Monkey Pirates II on the way home. He’s impressed by how much I know about them and can’t believe they existed when I was small. I tell Jay about my Grissom, but not what happened to him.

  We stop at the newsagent in the Parade and I buy Jay the Pokémon cards I promised him.

  ‘Are we going to the phone box again tonight?’ he asks, eyeing the box of trading cards.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Do you want me to be quiet again?’

  I sigh and dig into my pocket for another coin. It’s the last of the change from Mum’s dressing table. I hope there’s some more money back at the flat. We need to buy something proper to eat. Jay will throw a fit if I try to give him toast again tonight.

  The china piggybank feels reassuringly heavy when I get it down from on top of the fridge. I prise the rubber bung from its belly and spill the contents onto the kitchen table.

  ‘Wow!’ says Jay. ‘We’re rich!’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Mum puts all her loose change in here, so it’s mostly copper, but there are a few bits of silver: tens, twenties, even a fifty. I spread the pile with my hand.

  ‘You want to help me count it?’

  ‘OK,’ says Jay, then he frowns. ‘This is Mum’s money—not yours!’

  ‘It’s OK. She said we could use some. To buy something to eat. She said she might be working late again tonight. So we’ve got to have dinner on our own.’

  I let Jay make towers with the copper, while I count the silver.

  ‘Why does Mum put her money in a pig?’ Jay half closes one eye and balances another penny onto an already precarious stack.

  ‘Nanna used to collect them. D’you remember Nanna?’

  Jay screws up his face, then shakes his head.

  ‘She had loads of them, all different colours, on shelves in her kitchen. She used to let you play with them when you were little.’

  Jay stops what he’s doing and looks at me. ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Well … when Nanna died, Mum brought them to our house.’

  ‘Really?’ For a moment his face brightens, then he frowns. ‘No she didn’t. I haven’t seen any pigs. Where are they?’

  ‘We haven’t got them any more. Just this one.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mum got rid of them, I think.’

  I don’t tell him about the night I woke up and thought someone was breaking into the house. How I lay there holding my breath, too scared to move, listening to the crashing and banging downstairs—and then the other noise. It took me ages to realize what it was, because burglars don’t usually start crying in the middle of a robbery.

  I don’t tell Jay how I crept halfway down the stairs until I could see Mum, on her hands and knees in the front room, surrounded by a sea of smashed china pigs. I knew she’d done it, but I didn’t know why, and I was afraid to go down.

  Next morning I found her sitting at the kitchen table. She looked pale and tired, and her eyes were red from crying. There were white bandages around her hands and both wrists, and the table was covered with bits of broken pig. She was trying to glue them back together.

  ‘Look what I did to Nanna’s pigs,’ she said, trying to smile.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I looked at the pieces of china on the table. There were some quite big bits—complete heads with smiling faces, a rear end with a curly tail, or a trotter sticking out of a curve of fat belly. When I looked back at Mum she was crying silently, her body shaking and tears streaming down her face.

  Jay was playing on the floor, oblivious. I didn’t know what to do. When I was little, and I cried, Mum used to put me on her lap and give me a cuddle, and it made me feel better. That way round it made sense, but I couldn’t put her on my lap could I? I couldn’t just walk over and put my arms round her. I was thirteen, it felt too weird.

  I said I’d help her mend the pigs, because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just stand there gawping.

  That made her cry even more, but at least she was smiling at the same time.

  Out of all those pigs, and there must have been fifty or more, we only managed to put one back together. An ugly, cross-eyed blue thing with a pink spotted bow-tie. We christened it Humpty.

  I look at the pig now, sitting on the kitchen table, the glue running in ugly brown seams across its body—a Frankenstein’s Monster of a piggy bank. Mum was so happy that we managed to put it back together. Of all the things she’s sold or smashed since, she’s never touched the pig.

  There’s more money in Humpty than I thought—over six pounds, and I haven’t counted the copper yet. We go down to SavaShoppa in the Parade and buy bread, cereal, and milk for breakfast, and a pizza for dinner. I’m so hungry I eat too much, too quickly. I spend the next half an hour burping so loudly that Jay falls off the settee laughing.

  It’s past the hour that Mum should be home, but I hardly notice. Right now, I’ve got other things on my mind. I get the phonecards from under my mattress, and tell Jay it’s time to go.

  ‘Sorry, Daniel my friend, but that’s the WRONG answer!’

  Not again! I’m struggling tonight. I’ve already had one lucky guess. Maybe this is it. I knew my luck would run out eventually. All I can do now is hope that tonight’s challenger is rubbish and I get another chance.

  Baz is introducing him …

  ‘WHO have we got on line two?’

  ‘All right, Baz, it’s Mac here!’

  ‘Mac?’ says Baz. ‘Now, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but would you by any chance be a SCOTSMAN?’

  Mac chuckles, ‘Aye!’

  ‘We’re being INVADED!’ says Baz. ‘TWO SCOTSMEN—head to head! It’s like that film—you know, the one with Sean Connery and the big sword—THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!’

  ‘Highlander,’ says Mac.

  ‘That’s it!’

  The significance of this hits me like a bucket of iced water—just before Baz says, ‘Mac, meet Daniel Roach, your FELLOW COUNTRYMAN and our reigning Baz’s Bedtime Bonanza champ!’

  ‘All right, Dan,’ says Mac. ‘Where you from?’

  My mouth goes dry, which is lucky, because I think I was about to say Scotland. ‘Kilmarnock,’ I croak. ‘Like Johnnie Walker.’ My heart thunders in my ears. It’s something Mr Buchan said once. I haven’t got a clue what it means. I don’t know why I just said it.

  ‘Ah right. I’ve got an uncle in Longpark.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Where’s Longpark?

  ‘Where are YOU from, Mac?’ says Baz.

  ‘Glasgow.’

  ‘Ah!’ says Baz. ‘Rangers or Celtic?’

  ‘Rangers!’

  ‘Are you a FOOTBALLING man, Daniel? Do you follow the MIGHTY Killie?’

  Who?

  ‘No, I’m not really into football.’

  ‘NOT into football? Are you SURE you’re Scottish?’

  What does he mean? Can he tell my accent is fake? Next to the real thing, I sound as false as Baz doing his terrible Highlander impression.

  ‘If I was from Killie, I wouldn’t be into football either,’ says Mac, laughing.

  ‘Ooh, now THERE’S a gauntlet being slapped down if I ever heard one!’ says Baz, cackling with delight. ‘Right, gentlemen, let the GAMES commence! And remember … THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!’

  Mac’s questions are so easy Jay could answer them! They’re doing this deliberately! I’m too close to winning, they want me off the show.

  Then Mac gets one wrong. Which mea
ns a Baz’s Bedtime Bonanza shoot-out.

  Baz can hardly contain himself. ‘It’s like TWO men in kilts, standing atop a rugged hillside, WIELDING mighty claymores!’ There’s movie soundtrack music playing in the background now; I’m guessing it’s from Highlander.

  ‘Gentlemen, let me remind you of the rules,’ says Baz. ‘As our reigning champion, Daniel goes first. If he answers correctly, he wins, simple as that. BUT … if Daniel gets it wrong … then Mac is in play. If Mac gets HIS question right—it’s all over. There can BE only one …

  ‘Gentlemen. SCOTSMEN! Are you ready? DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I lie.

  ‘Right,’ says Mac.

  ‘Daniel,’ says Baz.‘Which one of the following revolving weather systems is the smallest? Is it, A: typhoon? B: hurricane? Or C: tornado? I’ll read that again …’

  Baz can read it as many times as he likes, I don’t know the answer. I’m shivering and sweating at the same time. The phone box is full of my stink.

  Think, Laurence. Concentrate.

  Typhoon—that sounds big, but so does tornado. I don’t know—hurricane? That doesn’t sound so bad. But then …

  ‘Daniel,’ says Baz, ‘I need to push you for an answer.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘B: Hurricane.’ It’s a one-in-three chance. I could be lucky.

  A sound effect of clashing swords fills my ears, making me jump.

  ‘There can be only one,’ says Baz, in a strangely calm voice. ‘Daniel, my friend, I’m afraid a TORNADO is the smallest revolving weather system.’

  I’ve blown it. If Mac gets this one right, I’m out.

  I lean my head against the cool glass of the phone box, and watch Jay attacking a tree with a stick. There are three trees in a line along the pavement. Jay swings his stick like a sword, reeling around, running from one tree to another, fighting a battle in his head. It must be good being six—spending half your life in another world where reality can’t get you.

  Baz asks Mac his next question.

  ‘Fuzzy Logic was the debut album for which of the following? A: Super Furry Animals? B: Arctic Monkeys? Or C: Frank Zappa?’

  ‘Ah, it’s not Frank,’ says Mac.