928 Miles from Home

by Kim Slater

  He’s living in a dream world.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s a nice idea, but people like us don’t get to do stuff like that.’

  ‘People like us?’

  ‘Ordinary working-class people who live in places like this.’ I sweep my hand around to take in the flat, the street, the entire grimy estate.

  ‘I think you will find people like us can achieve a lot of things, Calum,’ he says. ‘All we have to do is believe it is so.’

  I’ve had enough of his funny ideas now, so I scowl and shrug, and he gets the message and finally shuts up and leaves.

  But then I can’t stop thinking about Barry Hines and how he must’ve had an idea for a book that he eventually wrote. A book that then became Kes, probably the best film I have ever seen.

  I have a good idea for a play about ordinary people. It’s just the belief in my writing ability that is missing.

  I sit for a while, misery burning at my insides like acid. There has to be something I can do to stop feeling this helpless. Suddenly life is something that happens to everyone else while I sit here festering in the armchair.

  I look down at my legs. They look the same as they ever did in my tracky bottoms, but it feels like somebody else’s limbs have been stuck into my hip sockets. One bangs and thumps with pain, the other feels weak and useless. But then, I suppose, looking on the bright side, my legs didn’t let me down. They hung on in there and now they’re trying to heal and get back to being useful. The least I can do is try and help them along.

  I shuffle to the end of my chair cushion, which feels like old Chopin battering them all over again. Then I reach across, stretching my arm to the limit until I touch one of my crutches that’s leaning against the settee.

  Slowly and painfully I wriggle, until I manage to grasp the crutch. I use it to hook the other one and pull it over to me. I have them both now, in my lap. I sit for a couple of minutes trying to get my breath back and cool down a bit before the real torture begins: trying to stand up.

  I push down on the crutches, trying to lever myself up from the chair. Apart from giving me more excruciating stabbing pains in my thigh, it has no effect.

  I try propping the crutches up against my seat, grasping the arms of the chair and using the strength in my arms to get me to a standing position. I grab one crutch and then the other.

  It takes me a good five minutes to get them both in place under each arm, but I do it.

  I haven’t got the energy or the pain threshold to take a single step forward, but I’m standing.

  At last, I’m standing on my own two feet again.

  I’m tetchy from the moment I wake up.

  No, I tell Sergei, I don’t want breakfast.

  No, I don’t want a shower or a clean set of clothes. I’ll wear my old tracky bottoms and the ripped T-shirt again.

  ‘What have you got planned for today then?’ I ask him.

  I’m trying to sound casual but I think I might sound nervous and unusually inquisitive.

  ‘Just the usual things.’ He looks at me. ‘We could build a model together this morning, if you wish?’

  My heart blips. What if he doesn’t go out as planned?

  ‘What about this afternoon?’ I suggest.

  ‘This morning is better,’ Sergei replies. ‘Later, I have to go out for a short time.’

  It looks like everything’s going to plan, after all. Later today Amelia will find out what it is Sergei is up to, where it is he’s going every afternoon. And if it turns out he is responsible for the vandalism at the centre, well, then . . . I’ll have to tell Dad. And Dad will have a duty to tell Shaz and the police. That’s the unavoidable truth.

  And then . . . well, I’m not sure. I haven’t really thought what might happen after that.

  Sergei and Angie might get deported. The authorities could send them back to Poland, I suppose. Back to a potentially dangerous situation with Sergei’s violent father. That might happen anyway, depending on what happens with Brexit.

  I don’t really want to think about all the stuff that could happen in the future.

  I squeeze my eyes closed and try to get my thoughts in line again.

  If Sergei is the culprit, if he’s damaging the centre, he will have to face the consequences. That’s the way stuff works here. It will be nobody else’s fault but his own. Everything will go back to normal for me and Dad. I’ll get my bedroom back and all my space.

  Sergei will take his buildings with him, except for The Shard. He can’t take that because he’s already given it to me as a gift. My mind fills with memories of life before Sergei and Angie came to live here.

  The cool silence that hit me like an invisible wall the second I got in after school. Dad’s constant and unchanging expression: mouth down-turned, cheeks sagging, permanent frown. He’d come home from working away all week, heavy on his feet, fast asleep by nine o’clock in front of the TV.

  He hasn’t been like that at all since the Zurakowskis arrived. Dad seems more alive, more energized, somehow. He’s always laughing and he’s not staying away from home as much.

  But Sergei misses Poland, he’s said so. He has also said, many times, how much he misses his grandad and his school friends. If I focus on that, the heaviness in my heart might start to fade.

  Sergei suggests building another model together, but I say I feel too tired.

  I can’t concentrate on anything, even my screenplay. I keep thinking about what Amelia will discover when she follows him this afternoon.

  Beans on toast for lunch, then Sergei seems to be in the kitchen for ages, cleaning up. At last he comes into the room with his jacket on.

  ‘Is there anything you need, Calum?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m good.’

  ‘OK, I am going out for a while. I will see you soon.’

  ‘See you later,’ I call.

  Soon as the back door closes behind him, I text Amelia.

  He’s just left. Where are you?

  Amelia’s reply is instant.

  Corner of next street. Over and out. A

  Very funny. Amelia seems to be treating this as a bit of a joke, and it isn’t.

  After that, I don’t hear anything. At all.

  I try and read through the first scene of my screenplay, but after the third time of reading the first couple of lines, I give up. I don’t feel anything when I read it . . . It needs to feel – I don’t know – more real. I grab my crutches and manage to stand up again, but I’m still unable to take even a step forward without collapsing down in the chair.

  I bite each one of my nails in turn, and I close my eyes to try and take a nap, but of course that proves impossible.

  Then I get a text.

  On my way back to yours. A

  I send three texts back asking stuff like: Did Sergei go to the centre? Where is he now? How long will you be?

  Amelia ignores them all.

  I have no option but to sit and wait.

  I scratch at a mark on the tweedy material that covers the armchair. I go through the first scene of the screenplay again. I bite my already severely bitten fingernails. I look out of the window at the roofs of the houses on the opposite side of the road.

  After the longest thirty minutes in history, the back door opens.

  ‘It’s only me,’ calls Amelia.

  This is it. This is where I get to find out what Sergei is up to, where I have to break the bad news to Dad, and then Shaz, and finally to the police. There’ll be no more Sergei and Angie in the flat, just me and Dad again.

  ‘Hello?!’ Amelia waves her hand in front of my face. ‘Earth to Planet Brooks?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I was just thinking.’

  She sighs and sits down on the settee.

  ‘So . . .’ I start to babble. ‘Did he go to the centre? Is Sergei breaking the windows?’

  Amelia looks at me but her face is blank.

  ‘Just tell me,’ I snap. ‘What’s he up to?’

  ‘I don’t know,’
Amelia replies.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? Did you follow him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘No.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I even managed to get the same bus as him without being spotted. I’m good at this stuff.’

  ‘The bus?’

  The centre is only five minutes’ walk from here. Where could Sergei be going that involves a bus ride?

  Amelia twists and untwists her fingers.

  ‘I followed him to the Victoria Centre bus station. It was easy to stay hidden cos there were loads of people waiting for the buses. Sergei got on one and went straight upstairs so I sat downstairs, right at the back.’

  ‘Go on,’ I urge her.

  ‘We were only on the bus about ten minutes when he comes back downstairs. Luckily a few people got off at his stop so I just stayed well behind them. The schedule screen on the bus said we were in Sherwood.’

  ‘Sherwood?’

  ‘Can you stop repeating everything I say?’ Amelia snaps.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Sherwood wasn’t far from here, but it’s not a place I ever have reason to go to.

  ‘So, he walks up this hill on the main street and I stay well behind. There are lots of shops and people around so it’s not hard to stay hidden.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I murmur. I’m trying not to rush her but I wish she’d stop dragging the story out.

  ‘He turns into Perry Road. It’s a really long road and there are fewer people about here so I have to hang right back. But he doesn’t turn around.’

  Perry Road. It sounds familiar for some reason, but I’ve never been there.

  I stay quiet.

  ‘Then, at the end of Perry Road, he takes a turn and just disappears.’

  ‘You lost him?’ I feel a rush of blood to my head.

  ‘Calm down, Calum; I didn’t lose him!’ She scowls at me. ‘But I can’t see where he’s gone at first because I’m hanging back, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, course, sorry,’ I mumble.

  ‘Anyway, when I catch up I see what this place is. I see Sergei pressing a buzzer and waiting at the big gates to be let in.’

  ‘Did you manage to follow him in?’ I envisage a big house with electric gates. Who does Sergei know who lives in a place like that? He’s never mentioned anyone, but I know there are people around who have made an awful lot of money through criminal activities. Maybe it was the head of some crime syndicate that’s come over here from Eastern Europe.

  ‘No. I couldn’t follow him,’ Amelia says slowly.

  I throw my hands up in frustration.

  ‘I couldn’t follow him in because he went into the prison,’ Amelia whispers. ‘They opened the doors for him and he walked right in there.’

  ‘Nottingham Prison?’ My mouth falls open. ‘Why on earth would he be going there?’

  ‘Going where?’ A voice from the doorway makes us both jump.

  ‘Sergei!’ Amelia exclaims, and stands up. Then she sits down again. All her confidence has evaporated.

  ‘The back door was wide open,’ he says. ‘You two look very worried. What has happened?’

  Amelia and I look at each other.

  ‘I’d better get going . . .’ Amelia stands up.

  ‘No – don’t go,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve got to; I told Ma I’d only be an hour. She needs me to look after Spike while she goes up to the boatyard for some spares.’

  And in a flash Amelia has gone.

  I look at Sergei. The ordinary boy who turns out to have a secret life of crime.

  ‘Why are you looking at me in this way, Calum?’ He frowns. ‘As if you have not seen me before . . . as if I am a stranger.’

  I shake my head, not knowing where to start.

  ‘Is Amelia upset about something?’ Sergei looks concerned. ‘I hope she is OK.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s fine,’ I say, glaring at him. ‘She’s just had a bit of a shock. A big shock, actually.’

  Sergei sits down and stares at me.

  ‘You also look as if you have had a bit of a shock, my friend.’

  ‘Sergei, you can lose the act now. I know where you’ve been going,’ I say, keeping my voice calm and level. ‘I know you’ve been to the prison today and I’m assuming that’s where you’ve been going in the afternoons. There’s no point in denying it.’

  The colour drains from his face in an instant, and then flushes back into his cheeks in the form of two little round hot spots.

  ‘Amelia. She has followed me,’ he growls.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ I say, hoping I sound more confident than I feel. ‘She had to because you wouldn’t tell me where you were going and I thought it was you who’d been . . .’

  He opens his eyes wide.

  ‘Well, I thought you might have been going to the centre.’

  His whole face seems to darken.

  ‘You thought I was the one causing the damage there?’ He whispers the words, his features squeezing together as if he can’t quite get his head around this fact.

  ‘No, but . . . I didn’t know, did I? Because you wouldn’t tell me—’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you where I am going, Calum. It does not mean I am causing the vandal damage.’

  I want to correct him to say ‘vandalism’, but from the way he’s looking at me, and the fact I can’t even move on my own yet, I decide against it.

  ‘And I found the plan you’d drawn of the centre. Why would you do that?’

  ‘I wondered if you would prefer a building of the Expressions centre instead of The Shard for your birthday, Calum. It was a silly idea but I thought it would encourage you to enter the competition.’ He looks deflated. ‘I showed your father my plan to see if he could help me to build it, but he said you loved The Shard more.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. And I mean it. ‘But why are you going to the prison? Who do you know there?’

  For a second he frowns harder, and I think he’s going to tell me to mind my own business. But then he kind of shrinks a bit and sits with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  ‘Sergei?’ I say gently, and he looks up, tears streaking his pale cheeks.

  ‘It is my brother Janusz,’ he says softly. ‘He is stuck inside the prison. He has been there a while.’

  I’m speechless with shock. I stay quiet and let Sergei tell me in his own time.

  ‘He came to England a year ago, just before myself and Mama. He had left our little house in search of a better life,’ Sergei explains, looking at his hands. ‘He got a job on a building site and made some friends. One night in the pub some youths set upon his English friend, Robert. They said Robert had been staring at one of their girlfriends.’

  His breathing gets faster, more shallow, but I stay quiet.

  ‘Janusz tried to defend his friend but they would not listen. When one of the men tried to hit Robert with a baseball bat from behind, Janusz pushed him hard, out of the way. The man fell and hit his head on the corner of the metal counter. The police came in a big van and took Janusz away.’

  I can’t think what to say.

  ‘Janusz got convicted of assault and the court gave him a two-year prison sentence. But the English men who attacked Robert stayed free. I ask you, Calum, where is the justice in that?’

  ‘I-it doesn’t sound like there’s any justice in it at all,’ I stammer, trying to process everything he’s saying.

  A crawling sensation starts on my scalp. Does Dad know about Janusz?

  I think about the day I heard Sergei and his mum whispering in Polish to each other in the kitchen. What if she has kept it from Dad for some reason?

  ‘I visit him three times during the week, and Mama goes each weekend. It is making her very sad.’

  ‘Has she told my dad?’ I ask him. ‘About what happened to Janusz?’

  His face goes a bit red and he doesn’t answer for a few seconds.

  ‘She is going to tell him very soon. It w
ould have been done by now, but of course then Dziadek fell ill and Mama had to go—’

  ‘She should’ve told Dad before that,’ I say. ‘Before you both moved in. He’s got a right to know about something so serious.’

  The crawling sensation has covered my arms and reached my hands now, and I scratch madly at my fingers. Angie seems to really like Dad, but what if she hasn’t said anything about Janusz because she just needed a place to stay that’s near to Nottingham Prison? Then I remember Dad’s dodgy dealings in counterfeit handbags and how he told Sergei and me not to mention his ‘last’ work trip abroad to her.

  ‘I beg you not to say anything to your father until Mama returns, Calum,’ Sergei says anxiously. He stands up and shakes his hands like they’re wet and he’s trying to air-dry them. ‘She cares very much for your father and she would not want to make him angry.’

  ‘He probably will be angry,’ I say, scowling at Sergei. ‘I mean, wouldn’t you be? It’s not nice, being lied to.’

  I expect him to shrink back at my words but he grows bolder and scowls back.

  ‘It is not nice being accused of doing the vandal damage, either,’ he snaps. ‘It is not nice that you think this of me, Calum. Why do you never trust anyone to be a good person? Why do you always expect the worst of them, especially if they come from a different country?’

  I open my mouth to shout back at him but I don’t actually have anything I can say to defend myself. Angie herself has shown me nothing but kindness, and yet in seconds I have managed to think the worst of her.

  I can’t feel angry at Sergei’s words because he’s surprised me into realizing something that’s true: I just don’t trust people.

  Mum’s face drifts into my mind. I can’t remember her much because I was so young back then. But I know she left me, and she left Dad, too.

  You should be able to trust your own mum when you’re so small. Trust that she’ll be there forever, no matter what.

  If your mum can leave you all alone, who is left to trust?

  My face feels hot and my leg is banging with pain as if it’s punishing me for being such an idiot. I look at the carpet in front of me and wish it was quicksand so it could just swallow me whole.