by Kim Slater
In the end, I manage to get to the living room using one crutch and leaning heavily against Sergei.
He pushes open the door with his free arm and I see that the room is dim. The curtains are still closed.
Then I see it, standing next to my chair.
Tall and sleek and lit up from the inside.
‘For you, my friend,’ Sergei says. ‘This model is one I make for your very special day.’
It’s a perfect replica of The Shard.
I ask Sergei not to open the curtains for a while, and we sit in the semi-gloom and look at the model that must have taken him hours to build. For me.
‘Thanks, Sergei,’ I say for the third time. ‘The Shard is my favourite London landmark.’
‘I know this,’ he says. ‘Now a little of The Shard belongs to you.’
I sit quiet and still, feeling the dull ache that ticks constantly backwards and forwards from my hip into my thigh and calf.
I listen to the noises of the street outside the window. Car engines and children laughing. I can faintly hear Mr Baxter coughing downstairs.
Sergei sits quietly staring at The Shard, but I don’t think he’s really looking at it. Last night his mum rang to say his grandad was very ill but still putting up a fight. After the call Sergei went into the bedroom and when he came out his eyes looked sore.
‘It must be hard,’ I say. ‘Being stuck here when you’d rather be somewhere else.’
‘It is very difficult,’ he says quietly. ‘Nothing feels – how do you say – like things you are used to?’
‘Familiar?’ I suggest.
‘That is it. Nothing in my life is familiar. There is just strangeness and trying to keep out of everyone’s way who do not want us here.’
I swallow hard and nod.
‘Is it so wrong to want a better life, Calum?’
‘Course not,’ I say.
‘Things were not good at home, but things are not good here. It is not the new life Mama talked about.’
‘Give it time,’ I say. ‘Things can change.’
I look at The Shard and imagine I am standing right at the very top of that last jagged slice, the bit that sits closest to the clouds. If I look up I can see the sky, if I look down I can see the Thames snaking its way through London town, past the buildings that must look like Lego models from this far up.
One day I will do it. I will stand at the top of The Shard, as far up as I can go, and I’ll look down on all of London.
I’ve told myself this before, but somehow today feels different.
Today, I really believe I can do it.
I put on one of my favourite action movies, but I can tell Sergei is restless.
‘Sometimes it is difficult to understand what is being said,’ he complains. ‘It makes watching the film very hard work when English is not your first language.’
I suppose I can understand that. The actors use a lot of slang and they speak really fast, too.
We have tinned tomato soup and bread for lunch, and when I hear Sergei washing the dishes in the kitchen, I pick up my notebook and pen.
I’m making slow progress but I’m getting on quite well with my screenplay. I’m thinking about stuff that happens on the estate and some of the people that live around here and feel stuck. I need to think of a place they would go and what they would do, if they believed they could achieve it.
Maybe Sergei fancies building something this afternoon. After seeing The Shard, I wouldn’t mind watching how he does it, without falling asleep like last time.
At that moment he comes back in, wiping his wet hands on a tea-towel.
‘Do you need anything else, Calum?’
‘No, I’m good, ta,’ I say, biting the end of my pen.
‘I have to go out,’ he says. ‘I will be back soon.’
‘Oh yeah, where are you off to?’
He half turns away from me and I can almost see the cogs whirring in his head.
‘Nowhere important,’ he murmurs. ‘See you soon, yes?’
‘You’re always just going out for a couple of hours,’ I say. ‘Where is it you’re going?’
‘Here and there.’ He shrugs. ‘I do not have to report to you. You are not my teacher, Calum.’
‘Sorry I asked.’ I fold my arms in a huff.
My ribs still feel bruised from the accident, and folding my arms presses on to the sorest places, but I bite down on my tongue and don’t let on it’s hurting.
He walks past me and grabs his jacket off the chair. As he pushes an arm into his sleeve, a folded-up piece of paper drops at my feet, but he doesn’t notice.
I open my mouth to tell him and then decide against it. He’s acting like a prat, so why should I help him out? I slide my free foot to the side and cover up the paper. Hopefully it’s something important that he needs. It will serve him right to lose it.
Sergei hangs back a moment and looks as though he might say something else, but then thinks better of it and walks out of the room without speaking to me again. I hear him open and close the back door.
Where is he going that’s such a big secret? It’s so frustrating that I can’t follow him. I reach down, my eyes watering with the effort of stretching through the stabbing pain that starts up in my hips.
It’s agonizingly slow, but finally my fingers close on the paper and I sit back up and unfold it. At first glance it looks like some kind of hand-drawn plan – pencilled lines and boxes.
It’s not until I fully unfold the paper that I realize what I’m looking at.
It’s a floor plan of the Expressions community centre.
I snap awake, and look down to find my notebook and pen lying discarded in my lap.
I must have fallen fast asleep in my chair.
The back door rattles and opens, and I hear laughter and voices.
‘Hello?’ I call out.
Sergei appears in the doorway holding a large white box. I reach down with my hand and push the hand-drawn plan of the centre he dropped further down the gap between the seat cushion and the chair.
‘So, how is the birthday boy?’ Sergei turns and grins at someone who is standing just out of sight behind the door. Whoever it is lets out a snorting laugh. ‘I have another surprise gift for you, Calum.’
He steps aside and the concealed person does a star jump into his place.
‘Ta-dah!’
It is Amelia.
I’m surprised how pleased I am to see her, so at first I smile.
And then I remember I can’t move, I’ve not showered for the last three days, and the flat is in even more of a mess than usual. And it looks like the beaming Sergei in front of me is involved in some way with the theft and damage at Expressions. So I frown.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nice welcome,’ Amelia barks. ‘Cheers for that.’
‘I didn’t mean . . .’ I look at Sergei. ‘How come you’ve contacted Amelia?’
As far as I know, they’ve only met that once, at the community centre.
‘I thought this would be a nice birthday surprise for you, Calum.’ Sergei looks pleased with himself. ‘You talk all the time about Amelia and My Fair Lady, and Amelia’s hair, her eyes . . .’
‘Yes, yes, all right, I get the picture.’
Sergei’s making me sound a proper loser. As if I’ve been mooning over Amelia – I might’ve mentioned her once or twice in passing but . . .
‘Aww, Calum, I didn’t know you cared.’ Amelia’s face lights up in a mischievous grin. She rushes over and sits on the arm of my chair, and plants a kiss on my cheek. ‘Happy birthday, matey.’
‘Thanks.’ I fan my burning cheeks with my hand.
‘Sorry, I haven’t got you a card.’ She pulls a sad face.
‘’S’all right,’ I say with a shrug.
That’s the least of my worries. I brush bits of fluff off my legs. I bet my hair is sticking up all over the place.
‘I got you something even better than a card.’ She beckons Sergei into th
e room and takes the white box from him. ‘Happy birthday, Calum.’
She places the box lightly on my aching knees and I open it.
Inside is a chocolate cake decorated with silver stars. Two unlit candles sit on the top in the shape of numbers: a one and a five.
I can’t remember ever having a proper birthday cake like this. It’s not the sort of thing that would occur to Dad. And Mum’s been gone for so many birthdays now, I don’t know if she ever got me one.
‘Thanks, Amelia,’ I say over-brightly, to try and cover up the sudden prickle in my eyes. ‘It’s great, really great.’
‘Me and Spike helped Ma make it this morning,’ she beams, lifting the cake carefully out of the box. ‘I made the stars from marzipan and Spike hand-painted them with proper food colouring.’
Sergei produces a tray and Amelia lowers the cake on to it.
They light the candles, then – and this is the worst bit – they sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me while my cheeks burn and Amelia takes photos on her phone despite my yells of disapproval about how scruffy I look.
‘And finally,’ Amelia announces, ‘I got you this!’
She produces a DVD case and thrusts it in my hands.
‘Billy Elliot. I’ve heard of this film,’ I say doubtfully. The boy on the cover is jumping in mid-air with a pair of ballet shoes around his neck. I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but I’m not into dancing.
‘It’s a musical now, too. Ma took me and Spike to see it last year and we loved it.’
‘What is this film about?’ Sergei asks.
‘Ballet dancing, I think.’ I keep my voice level.
‘It is and it isn’t about dancing.’ Amelia shrugs. ‘It’s set in the 1984 miners’ strike and it’s about a boy who follows his dream. Everybody loves it because we all have dreams – Billy’s just happens to be dancing.’
I read the blurb and find it’s set in Northumberland and Newcastle. It sounds like Billy has a battle on his hands to follow his dream, despite his bullying older brother and his bad-tempered dad trying to stop him. I can see a connection with Kes; it seems to have that authentic, real-life feel to it that I discussed with Freya.
‘Thanks, Amelia,’ I say. ‘I’ll definitely watch it.’
Sergei disappears into the kitchen to get a knife and plates. When I’m certain he’s out of hearing range, I whisper to Amelia.
‘Write down your phone number for me before you go. I need you to do something.’
Her face lights up. ‘Ooh, sounds exciting. What is it?’
I glance at the doorway but I can still hear Sergei rooting around in the cutlery drawer.
‘Sergei’s up to something.’ I frown. ‘I need you to follow him tomorrow afternoon, see where he goes.’
We don’t get the chance to talk any more because Sergei stays in the room all the time. But later, after Amelia has left, I manage, through a series of texts, to convince her to hang around the end of our street early tomorrow afternoon to follow Sergei.
Or at least I think I’ve convinced her, until I get another text:
I’ve decided I don’t want to do this. I like Sergei, it feels mean. A
My heart sinks. I’m not strong enough yet after the accident to follow Sergei, and there’s nobody else I can ask.
Then, right on cue, Sergei puts his head around the door and announces he’s going to take a bath.
Perfect.
It seems forever listening to the water running, until I finally hear him close the bathroom door.
I dial Amelia’s number.
‘You have to do it,’ I hiss down the phone.
‘Actually, I don’t have to do anything,’ she replies coolly.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘This is important.’
‘Why? It’s none of your business if Sergei wants to go out somewhere without telling you what he’s up to.’
‘I think he might be the one damaging the community centre on the estate,’ I tell her. ‘There’s been loads of vandalism there lately and it seems to be happening when Sergei goes missing for the afternoon.’
There: I said it. The line goes quiet.
‘I don’t know for sure,’ I add. ‘That’s why I need your help.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Amelia says slowly. ‘Sergei wouldn’t do anything like that.’
‘How do you know? You only just met him.’
‘I’m a good judge of people,’ she says. ‘I don’t think for a minute he’s the sort of person who would—’
‘I found something he dropped, OK? It was a plan of the centre he’d sketched. Why would he do that?’
She sighs, and I imagine her shaking her head and her bunched black curls straining to escape from the spotted red ribbons.
‘If the vandalism continues, the centre could close,’ I tell her.
‘And that would be the end of the screenwriting competition,’ Amelia remarks.
‘It’s not just that,’ I say. But that’s part of it.
I instruct Amelia to hang back when she’s shadowing Sergei. ‘Don’t get too close.’
‘D’ya think I’m thick or something?’ she snaps. ‘You didn’t see me that day I followed you to the Arboretum after school, did you?’
‘What?’
She followed me?
‘You’ve been snooping on me?’
‘Don’t get excited; you’re not that interesting,’ she answers. ‘Me and Mum were cycling past the end of the road when we saw you turn into the Arboretum, that’s all. I wanted to come and say hi but we had to get back to the boat for Spike.’
Amelia was full of surprises.
I don’t know how I manage to convince her, but in the end Amelia reluctantly agrees to follow Sergei the next day.
I sit in my chair, the excitement seeming to slightly dull the aching waves travelling up and down my leg. My bruised ribs are throbbing, too. Later, when Sergei gets out of the bath, it will be time for my painkillers, and I’m counting the minutes.
But in the meantime, I think about what might happen tomorrow.
I’ve seen someone suspicious twice now at the centre.
As I told Shaz, the centre manager, both times there had been a lone figure lurking around the side where the bins are.
I can’t think of why Sergei would be interested in stealing or vandalizing the place, but that’s beside the point. Maybe he’s bored, or jealous of me entering the screenwriting competition . . . Who knows?
One thing that’s certain: he keeps mysteriously disappearing off somewhere, and then we hear that the centre has been vandalized again.
Then he doesn’t turn up at the school gates and I get run over outside the centre.
Surely that’s too much of a coincidence?
‘That feels much better.’ Sergei walks over to my chair, his hair still damp from the bath. ‘There is nothing quite as good as a long soaking in the bath, yes?’
‘Yeah.’
Especially if you’re hot and dusty from breaking windows.
‘Here are your tablets, Calum. I hope you are not in too much pain.’
‘Thanks.’ I take the tablets and wash them both down with a gulp of water.
‘Mama has rung to say Dziadek is a little better today. Good news, yes?’
‘Very good news,’ I agree. ‘I’m glad.’
‘Are you hungry? I can make you a snack if you would like?’
‘Nah, I’m fine, thanks.’
‘A hot drink, perhaps?’
I wish he’d stop being so nice. Tomorrow I might have to shop him to the police.
‘What did you get up to when you went out earlier today, then?’ I ask him. Obviously he saw Amelia, but he was gone a few hours before returning to the flat with her.
‘Ah . . . you know. This and that, I think you say.’ Annoyingly non-committal, as usual. ‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I ran a couple of laps around the park, went down the gym. Just the usual.’
‘Ha! I think you are tricking
with me, Calum.’ He grins.
‘There’s no fooling you,’ I remark drily.
‘I mean to say, have you been reading your book and writing your screenplay for the community centre competition?’
‘I might have.’ I narrow my eyes at him. ‘Why are you suddenly so interested?’
Sergei sighs and holds out his hands, palms up.
‘It seems I am saying the wrong thing. I am just trying to make tiny talk, that is all.’
‘Small talk,’ I correct him. ‘Not tiny talk.’
‘Ah yes, of course.’ He grins again. ‘I hope you have had a nice birthday even though your father is not here, Calum.’
‘Yeah, thanks. I have.’
Despite my suspicions, I mean it. Just a few days ago, I hated the thought of sharing the flat with Sergei and his mum. I’d got so used to always being on my own when Dad was working, and I longed for it to just be the two of us again.
But I’ve found that having other people around isn’t all bad. I smile to myself, thinking about Amelia, and her chocolate cake and film gifts.
I look over at The Shard and wonder how many hours Sergei must’ve spent building it. That funny birthday card that’s way too young for me and how he went to the trouble to find Amelia and bring her here to surprise me.
I shift about a bit in my seat but it’s inside that I feel most uncomfortable. The way I’ve treated people.
‘It is amazing, isn’t it, that whatever you can see, it began as an idea in someone’s mind,’ Sergei says, staring at The Shard. ‘The cars outside, the books we read, the clothes we wear, and all the buildings we live in – they all began life as an idea.’
‘Suppose so.’ I shrug. I’d never thought about it, but now he comes to mention it, my screenplay is beginning to grow from an idea.
‘I think it is an amazing thing,’ Sergei says, looking around the room. ‘Everything I can see here was once only an idea. When you realize this fact, it frees you up to do anything you like, Calum.’
‘Does it?’ I yawn.
‘Yes. Because you are realizing that an idea is the important first stage to creating something. Think about it. Your writing idea may one day become a film that lots of people come to watch and enjoy. Perhaps one day I may build my own skyscraper, one that towers above the city of Warsaw and is even higher than The Shard.’