I went through to the kitchen and kicked open the back door before the stuff got to me too. I went out and shoved my find under the hedge, where I could easily pick it up later. I had a thought then, and ran back into the kitchen. Under the sink was a big bottle, the leftover cyanide. I took it, though Christ knows what all I can of thought I’d need it for. I hid it in the same spot of privet as the dead butterfly. I heard noises in the house and backed away from the hedge quick as. I could see the butterfly cage from where I was stood and knew it wouldn’t take much of them gases to do for the delicate boggers. I walked over and looked at them one last time. Then I opened the cage and let them go.
There wasn’t many butterflies left in the cage, and a couple were dead already. But them as could fluttered straight off. They wouldn’t have long, I knew that. Summer was over.
TWO
Morpho Pelaides, that butterfly was called. It said so on the paper underneath where it were pinned. It said it’d been collected from the Peruvian Rainforest by Dr T. Ivanovich in 1965. I didn’t know whether that was my dead neighbour or her long-dead husband, cause she’d told me ladies could be doctors too. I called the butterfly Morph for short, like the Plasticine man on the telly who changed from shape to shape. I knew the butterfly had as well. Mrs Ivanovich’d showed it me, let me touch a caterpillar and a pupae. Not a butterfly though, you couldn’t touch them or they’d crumble in your hand. ‘They dry out, see,’ she told me. I couldn’t believe this when I looked at Morph. He glistened. He looked like summat you could use to cut skin. He was my lifeline. Whenever I felt crap or worried I’d look at Morph and feel better, remember there was other places away from my house on the close.
It wasn’t that long after Mrs I had died when another old woman turned up at our door. Well, she did have grey hair and false teeth, but looking back she couldn’t of been much more than forty. People aged much quicker back then I reckon. She was my mommar, Mam told me, which meant she was her mam. Mam made me kiss this lady I didn’t really know and told me that Mommar used to take me for drives when I was little, to get me off to sleep, before Jon was born. And it came back to me a bit, the darkness outside, the chugger chug of an old engine, the constant pattern of streetlamps as we passed them, beating a lullaby against my half-closed eyes. I could remember the car too, this bright thing my mam called the Orange on account of its colour. I looked behind the old lady expecting to see it and she laughed.
‘Yer mam put paid to the car, ducky,’ she said. And I don’t know to this day if that meant she crashed it or sold it to fund her habit or what all happened. I could remember a big row though, voices raised loud and slamming doors, and I guessed it were all connected to why Mommar’d been away. She was back now though, and that was definitely a good thing.
Things were all right for a while after that. Mommar was strict as owt, made me sit at the table for my dinner and eat with my mouth closed and say ‘Mam and I’ instead of ‘Mam and me’. But I adored her all the same. I loved Mam more, course. But I didn’t know her, not really, knew nowt about what kind of person she was. Having Mommar round to help look after us brought Mam back to life somehow. She was only about twenty-one, and now she had time to look after her-sen she looked like summat off the telly, with all this long blonde hair and smudged brown make-up round her eyes. She wore clothes what shimmered in the wildest colours, vivid fuchsia, and emerald and this blood and gore red what I loved the most. She flitted round the house, and in and out my life, like she was a butterfly. She used to go down to London. She’d be gone for what seemed for ever in kiddie time, and come back with new clothes and perfume so’s she smelled of flowers. And these fags what she rolled up. When she smoked them they smelled sweet as the perfume and made me feel happy, cept my mommar used to shout, and flap round at the smoke, shooing me out the room with the other hand. My mommar took care of me, but my mam, well, she took my breath away.
My mommar was a lovechild, as she was fond of telling people when she got the chance. My great-gran’s carelessness with contraception set the tone for my family history. There isn’t one gell related to me, at least what I know of, who hasn’t got pregnant by accident. Course, when I was little I didn’t have a clue what it all meant. When I asked her what a lovechild was she smirked, and said it meant her dad loved her mam a little bit too much. She said we were two of a kind, me and her, I was a lovechild too. But I couldn’t work it out. If my dad loved my mam more than he should of, how comes he wasn’t round no more? How comes whenever I asked anyone owt about him they shushed me and changed the subject?
My mommar’s face puckered up when she took out her teeth and she had to suck on bars of chocolate to eat them. I’d watch when she did this, fascinated with how she could manage not to wolf the whole bar down the way I would of. She was from Eastwood, mining country, and had a broader accent than my mam or me. She wore tan tights and squeezed bread before she bought it to check it were fresh. And she was tough. I saw her take on lads twice her own size, more than once. There’s that saying about not suffering fools gladly, but my mommar didn’t suffer them at all. I guess I take after her that way, cept she never would of harmed a fly, and that’s a big difference. She was the kind of woman who, if she got asked the time in the street, would say summat like, ‘It’s about nar, if yer got a watch, but seen as you an’t you wun’t know, wud yer?’ All this was great, when she was on your side. But it were terrifying to be a kid round her when you knew you’d done summat wrong. And my mam, she was always getting done by Mommar over one thing or another. Taking a fiver out her purse without asking. Being out all night. And summat else. I didn’t know what, not back then, cause when it came up in their rows Mommar backed off, and said she wouldn’t talk about ‘that thing’ in front of ‘the babies’, which was me and Jon of course.
Mommar took a dislike to this young couple what moved in next-door-but-one cause she thought they were a bit up themselves. It were the way they acted when they moved in set her against them. They came in this huge van and I was fascinated, the way you are at that age. I stood and watched with my mouth hung open as they brought in these big leather sofas and polished up wardrobes and chests of drawers and stuff like that. It wasn’t owt like the furniture we had in our house. But the woman came out and shooed me off, like I was a dog making a nuisance of me-sen. My mommar wasn’t having none of that. She’d been watching me from the window, the way she often did, and came flying out and down the stuck-up cow’s garden path. She knocked dead loud on the front door. No one came at first, so she knocked again. ‘Come-ere, Kerrie-Ann,’ she called over. I didn’t want to do no such thing, but knew better than to cross my mommar. She grabbed me by the hand and yanked me to her side. The door opened with a jerk, as if whoever was behind it was mad someone’d had the cheek to knock. The woman appeared.
‘What?’ she spat at us. She was seventeen, maybes eighteen, just a gell really. No match for someone like my mommar.
‘See this here?’ Mommar said, pointing at me. The woman stared all gormless at the pair on us. ‘This here’s a lickle gell, not some stray what’s weeing on yer lawn. She’s called Kerrie-Ann and I’d appreciate it if yer could remember that.’
‘I were just—’
‘You were just nothink. I see yer do owt like that again and I’ll tan yer hide, I don’t care how big yer are.’
With that, my mommar turned and pulled me after her. I watched the woman as I was dragged off down the path. She looked like she was about to bust into tears. I tried to smile at her but she pushed the door hard shut.
We had our little rituals like every bogger else. My life was quite normal back then, see, you wouldn’t of expected it’d go the way it did. Thursday was giro day, and we’d all go down the shops at Coleby like a lot of the families on our estate. Some of them made these huge long lines down the road, a great queue of similar-looking people, and I used to get a clout for staring at them. There was just the four on us, sometimes three on the days when my mam was away or couldn�
��t be arsed to come. I stood on this strip of plastic at the front of the pram. My brother would giggle at me all the way, blowing bubbles out his chubby lips. He was a happy, smiley sod by then, had this cheeky wet grin plastered on his face the whole time.
When we got there, we always went to the same shops in the same order. The post office first, to cash the giros. The supermarket was next door, and we’d nip in and get bread and milk. There was these giraffe and elephant things outside, them rides what you put money in, and I’d nearly always whinge and moan for a go on one and once in a while I’d get my way. The giraffe was my favourite cause I could grab hold of its neck as it moved back and forward. They never did go as fast as I would of liked though. Then we’d go in the bakers, where the adults had a sausage roll each and I got an iced bun if I’d been good and wanted one. More often though, I wanted to go next door to the sweet shop to get a l0p mix, or a lucky bag, or one of them kayli tubes with a liquorice stick. I’d chew and dawdle all the way home, while the two women nagged at me to walk faster or climb up on the buggy board. I couldn’t of been happier.
It were that year I started school. I should of started a year before, but my mam hadn’t got round to organising it. My mommar wasn’t having none of that, though, and got me enrolled at the Catholic school down the road. She was Catholic, see, and said St Teresa’s was a better place to go than anywhere else. All’s I really knew about it were when she dressed me up in this brown pinafore and made me eat cereal one morning. I didn’t want to get up cause Mam was still in bed, and I pulled a right mardy when she tried to get me out the door. But, like I said, my mommar wasn’t one to be messed with. She gave me a right clout and dragged me off through the estate and onto Aspley Lane.
It were autumn and there was brown leaves all round where they’d fell off the big trees. I wouldn’t look at my mommar cause she’d took me away from my mam so I crunched my way through looking at my feet. I noticed my shoes and tights were the same colour as the leaves and soon that had me so interested I stopped being in a mardy and was talking to my mommar about what’d happen when I got to school.
I got there to find this place where the chairs and tables, even the toilets, were all built at just the right height for me. I walked round fascinated. There was water and sand and a Wendy House to play in, with a toy iron and cooker and all that kind of thing. I was well impressed. There was this woman there, tall as a witch and with this silver hair in a mist round her head. She spoke to my mommar and I heard her going on about how much time I’d missed and the catching up I’d have to do.
Then Mommar left me there. I wasn’t impressed about that, not one bit. I curled up in a ball on the carpet and wouldn’t move nowhere. The teacher kept trying to come near me and I just screamed my head off. When she tried grabbing me I bit her on the hand. They couldn’t ring my mam or my mommar ner nowt cause we didn’t have a phone them days, so they just put me in this room on my own till I calmed down.
By then I was dying to play in the sand or the water. But when I was allowed back in the teacher said I had to do some writing. She asked me if I could read and write and I said yes, cause Mrs Ivanovich’d taught me all about letters and words and that, going on about it being a ‘crying shame’ that my mam hadn’t sorted out school. She asked me to write a sentence, ‘My name is Kerrie-Ann’, and I showed her, printing each letter separate and neat as I could. She took one look at what I’d wrote and took it off the table, ripped it into bits.
‘That doesn’t say anything,’ she said, and then said summat about printing and joining up, and how I’d done it the wrong way.
This was proper confusing for me. Mrs Ivanovich who knew everything in the world, she’d told me this was how to write and now this woman what I didn’t know from Adam was telling me it were wrong. I stood up, pushed over my chair and screamed, and shook my leg, and didn’t stop till they sent someone to get me out the room. They went and got my mommar then, and she took me away, but not without giving the teacher earache about what’d gone off.
‘Our Kerrie-Ann’s no bad kid,’ she told the woman with the posh voice and the cloud of hair. ‘It must of been summat what you did.’ That was the great thing about my mommar, always on my side no matter what. Even if it did feel like she might pull my arm out the socket on the way back to our house.
After that I went to the local school on Beechdale Road, where most of the kids from the estate went. I liked that cause I made a load of friends who lived near where I did and we’d call for each other to play. There was these gells called Trace and Jaqui what I was best friends with, and they’d often come round to mine cause there was this park in the middle of the close with swings and a slide, and this bit of grass to play football. It were a good place to live that way.
It wasn’t long after that when Uncle Dave started coming over regular to see my mam. He’d bring sweets for me and Jon, and take my mam upstairs for what he called ‘a special cuddle’. My mommar couldn’t stand him, wouldn’t be in the same room as he was and went out visiting or to bingo when he came over. She kept telling me ‘he’s a bad-un’ and ‘this’ll all end in tears’ and other stuff like that, but Mam seemed happy enough and Dave was all right to us as well.
It were the hottest summer in the world and the grass’d charred with the sun. There’d been this plague of ladybirds, landing all over you and flipping from place to place that way they do. It looks more like they’re jumping than flying, but if you look careful it’s wings they use, hidden under that red and black armour what they have. Kids got all funny when the bugs landed on them, said the boggers stung, but I’ve never known a ladybird bite no one. There was this one day there was so many it were like a red carpet on the pavement. All summer I played on the park and made daisy chains with my friends. And when it finally rained we all ran outside for a shower, let it soak us right through. It were warm rain, and we stood there till our hair stuck to our faces and our clothes were sodden. My mommar told me off, reckoned I’d catch my death of cold but my mam just laughed at her. ‘It’s eighty degrees in the shade,’ she said. Then my lovely, smiley mam gave me this huge great hug and I clung to her, clamped me-sen on. She spun me round and round and I thought I’d explode with happiness.
Then one day my mommar left us, just as quick as she’d come into our lives. Said she was going out to the shops but she’d been gone ages. I went outside to look for her and waited till it got dark but there was no sign at all.
I ran back to the house and through the door. My mam was sat on the sofa. I tried to climb up and cuddle her. ‘Yer hurting me, Kez,’ she said, pushing me off.
My mommar didn’t come back the next day. Or the next day, or the one after that. I missed her a bit but I loved my mam so it were all right. You don’t understand that stuff when you’re a kid. My mam said she’d gone to a nice place where it were sunny all the time, which might make you wonder if she’d died but I know now she hadn’t. I don’t blame her for running off, not given what my mam was on with, but what I don’t get is why she never took us. How could she leave us babies when she knew what my mam was like?
As soon as Mommar was gone, Uncle Dave moved in. He sat in the front room most of the time, drinking beer from a can and watching this portable telly he’d brought with him. He didn’t care much what me and Jon did so long as we didn’t disturb his programmes. Jon was up and walking by then, and saying a load of cute things the way toddlers do. I loved playing with him. This was a good job an-all cause my mam lost interest in both on us. Just sat there with Dave, or up in her room, eyes misted over and zombified.
Dave was the first in a long line of uncles what came to stay with us. He wasn’t the worst by any means. Course, he wasn’t really my mam’s brother or owt like that. None of them were. I guess she was knocking them off, but that wasn’t the main role they played in her life neither.
My mam only had one love by then and it came out of blood-red flowers what grow where it’s hot.
THREE
A
fter everything what I’ve took over the years my head’s a mess, and sometimes it’s hard to put stuff in order the way it happened. It helps to have Jon to measure it against cause I knew him his entire life. When I look back, I often think ‘well that was when Jon was just walking’ or ‘when Jon started school’ and stuff like that. But the best times I remember about Jon are them years when he changed from a baby to a boy.
He was clever, was Jon, I’d been right about that when I saw him first born. He was only a bit more than one when he started to be able to say stuff what made sense, and you could have little conversations with him. Find out what he wanted. Tell him what was good and naughty and check he got it. That kind of thing. I used to help him paint. I could of sat with him all day and night helping him make pictures and listening to him explaining what the different bits were. But my mam’d never let me. She always moaned about the mess we made and told me to clear off from under her feet. I wasn’t allowed to take Jon to play out cause he was too little, so Mam just shoved him in front of the telly for a few hours while I was gone and ignored the poor bogger.
The Killing Jar Page 2