‘Keep your mouth shut,’ Hawkie growled.
He turned back inside the shed and I went over to the door to watch him.
‘I don’t see why little kids should suffer just cause your dad can’t be arsed to do his job any more.’ Hawkie was shoving all the Christmas presents he could find into grey mail sacks. It was obvious which ones they were – anything wrapped in brown paper, oddly shaped, plastered with bright stamps. There were quite a few. They didn’t weigh much though, and Hawkie seemed to have plenty of sacks. They were all almost full already. I took out my torch and switched it on, shone it into the darker corners.
‘Bloody waste of space, he is,’ Hawkie said. He gathered up fistfuls of sacks and barged past me. He could carry a lot. He took them down the passageway, out through the gate, and I heard the metal doors of the van open and the sacks going in. The ones left over I picked up, wanting to help, but he was back already intercepting me in the passageway.
He snatched them out of my hand. The torch got snatched too but he didn’t seem to notice that. You could see he was mad and furious as hell.
‘Do you know how much fucking shit he’s caused me?’ he said. ‘Do you know how long I’ve been trying to cover for him?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.’
Hawkie said some more swear words about Dad and then he turned to go.
‘Can I have my torch back?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘My torch – can I have it back?’
Hawkie looked at his fist, at the clutch of bags there and the torch in among them. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks.’
He sort of paused then and looked at me almost like he was seeing me for the first time. ‘How old are you now, Aidan? Thirteen? Fourteen?’
‘Fourteen,’ I said. ‘And a half.’
‘You poor bastard.’
He didn’t say it nasty or mean but in a sad sort of way, like he really meant it. That didn’t make me feel so great. He put the bags down.
‘If you see your dad, tell him this. But you never heard it from me, right? Seven o’clock tomorrow morning, you’re going to be getting a little visit. Two of the top guys from Royal Mail, investigators. They’re bringing the police with them. Right here.’
‘How do you know that?’ I breathed.
‘It doesn’t matter how I know. And you didn’t hear it from me, OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Aidan, they’re coming for the mail and they’re going to arrest your dad, do you understand me?’
‘I understand,’ I whispered.
‘I tried my best, but with some people …’ Hawkie picked up the fistful of bags. ‘Well, there’s no rest for Santa’s little elves, is there?’
‘No,’ I said.
He reached out his free hand and shook mine. ‘Good luck, mate.’
He carried the bags out through the gate, put them in the back of the Royal Mail van, and sped away.
Chapter 38
I stood there in the darkening passageway with only torchlight for company and it was like the sick feeling, the twisting inside-out feeling, had exploded up into my chest. For a moment I thought it might even shut down the invincible heart for good. All the mail I’d delivered. The mail Daniel had delivered. It meant nothing now, precisely nothing. A total waste. I limped over to the square of grass at the back of our house and scooped up a few handfuls of mail, flung them inside the shed. But then I stopped because what was the point? My arms and legs didn’t seem to be working properly anyway, they felt heavy and misshapen somehow, dragging, dragging.
Now, finally, it was going to happen. The knock on the door I’d been dreading all that time.
Focus, focus, try to think of a plan. Or anything at all, anything positive.
Good luck. Why had Hawkie said that? In fact, why had he warned me at all?
So I could do something about it.
What if there was some way of making the post disappear, before tomorrow morning? That way there’d be NO EVIDENCE. I thought about burning it, making a bonfire in the garden, feeding the mail into the flames until all of it was gone forever. But no, that wouldn’t work. It’d take hours and some of it might not burn at all. Besides, the neighbours would see and get curious. And then, even if I could burn everything, there’d still be the mountains of ash to get rid of and the scorch marks on the lawn to explain.
What about dumping it, in some wood somewhere, or at the bottom of a river? But no, that wouldn’t work either. The only woods I knew were full of dog-walkers, and a river – well, how would I make it sink? Even if I bagged up the mail securely enough, it would take more than a few stones to weigh it all down. It would take whole paving slabs. Lots of them. Where was I going to get those from? And how would I move them? On the rusting racer? No chance.
And anyway, even supposing I could do all that, there was mail in there – mail at my feet – that mattered. It wasn’t all broadband offers and holiday brochures. What about the other Annie Fraser-Howes out there, waiting for the things they really really needed?
No. Getting rid of it – even if it was practical, I couldn’t do anything like that.
Good luck.
Maybe if Dad handed himself in, owned up before they came for him, he could avoid jail somehow. Avoid a custodial sentence. That happens sometimes, doesn’t it?
No. Fourteen months that man in Birmingham, Matthew Greenwood, got for doing the exact same thing.
We will always prosecute anybody who abuses their position of trust in our organisation.
What then? Good luck. It was almost like Hawkie was trying to give me a head start.
Then I knew.
I fished my house key out of my pocket and went inside. It felt like stepping into a giant refrigerator. I turned on the lights, looked at the red bill from the gas company still tucked under the fruit bowl, at the shrivelled apple, brown and rotten and starting to liquefy, at the cold coagulating swamp in the kitchen sink. The place smelled disgusting, like the bins at the back of school before they get emptied.
The clock on the microwave said 15.11.
Move fast now and no hanging around.
I raced upstairs, gathered jeans and jumpers, anything thick I could find, stuffed them into a bag, found a pair of shoes that were the nearest things I had to boots and laced them tight. Collected up my toothbrush and deodorant, dropped those in the bag too. What else, what else? There had to be other things, other things I’d need through these coldest nights of the year.
‘Aidan?’ I heard someone call. ‘Aidan?’
I glanced out of a window, saw two figures standing uncertainly on the front path. Daniel and Haxforth. I ran down, showed them into the lounge. The dusty shelves, the dictionary, the sofa where Dad watched Premier League. Curtains closed, closed all winter. It could all go to hell now.
‘We waited but you didn’t come …’ Daniel said. ‘I saw the van drive away.’
‘Don’t get comfortable,’ I said. ‘We’re not stopping.’
I told him about Hawkie and what he’d told me.
‘You’re kidding,’ Daniel whispered. ‘You don’t mean you’re really going to …?’
Yes, I thought. I really do mean that. They can’t take me into care if they can’t find me. There’s nothing for me here any more. So what I’ll do is, I’ll go with Haxforth, help him find his brother, see if there’s anything for me there. That’d be a nice thing to do, a helpful and positive thing, and maybe from doing that one good and positive thing other good and positive things would follow, like people are always telling you they do. But even if nothing like that happened, I still wouldn’t turn back. I’d go on somewhere else. Haxforth had done it, hadn’t he? He’d gone from place to place, owning nothing, knowing nothing, only how to steal and survive. And he’d lived long enough.
Anyway, I was leaving Maresfield Crescent forever, right now, and that was final.
I went over to the mantelpiece, to the wedding pictu
re in its frame. Taking it out, wanting a keepsake, I saw something else tucked beneath, another photo. Us as a family in the sun. Eating ice creams, sitting on a beach, I didn’t know where. Dad brown and bare-chested, me wearing a superhero T-shirt, still a little kid. Mum smiling. Just smiling. No confusion in her eyes. I’d never seen her look so happy and uncomplicated. Best picture ever. Why hadn’t I seen this before?
I put it carefully inside the flattest part of my leaving-home bag.
‘Come on,’ I said, opening the front door. ‘We’re going.’
Daniel rubbed his hands warm and adjusted the zip on his coat but Haxforth, perched on the brown sofa, stayed where he was. ‘Do you have any water?’ he said. ‘It’s not for me, it’s for Old Beautiful.’
Oh Christ, I thought. He’d taken the swallow out of the overcoat pocket, was holding it like one of those doves they release at Olympic ceremonies and other things like that, only it looked more like a bird of World Disease than World Peace.
‘Quickly then,’ I said. ‘Just don’t let go of it, whatever you do.’
‘Don’t worry. I won’t let him fly until we reach Shuttle Hill.’
I ran into the kitchen for a bowl of water, feeling desperate, wanting to get out, wanting to put miles between me and Maresfield Crescent, but then I saw an old plastic lunchbox up on a shelf, a big deep thing with a clip-down lid, so I grabbed that too and stabbed some holes in it with one of the sharp knives we’d hidden from Mum, thinking it’d be a more secure place to keep Old Beautiful than a frayed overcoat pocket. Back in the lounge Daniel was asking Haxforth how far, exactly, this Shuttle Hill place was.
‘Oh … a few miles …’
‘How many though?’
Haxforth shrugged. I gave him the water and the plastic lunchbox, showed him how the clips worked. Old Beautiful’s head bobbed out from between his two clutching hands, drinking and bathing its pustuled face.
‘Well, how are we going to get there? Bus, or—’
‘Walk.’
‘Walk?’ said Daniel. ‘In this cold? Are you mad? Anyway, it’ll be pitch black in a couple of hours. As soon as we leave town we won’t be able to see a thing.’
‘Full moon,’ Haxforth said. ‘High around midnight.’ His eyes looked at us like moons themselves – those eyes that seemed to say everything and nothing all at the same time.
‘But it’ll take all night …’
‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘I’ll walk it. Come on, Daniel.’ I shot him a look. I knew he was thinking about his mum, about what’d happen if he wasn’t home by the time she got back from her day in court. I knew too that he didn’t want to mention any of that because of my situation. ‘Look, can’t we debate this outside? Anywhere except here?’
Too late. Out on the Crescent I heard a car doing a quick sloppy parking manoeuvre. A door slammed. Footsteps blasted through the clicking closing gate. Dad stood Satan-faced in the passageway.
It knew what’d happened at Tredegar House, this nightmare face.
It said, forget about opening up any Lines of Communication.
Go straight to Apocalypse Now.
Chapter 39
I tried to get the door shut but already he had a foot wedged inside, was trying at the same time to grab me. The best and only thing to do was get out of the way. I turned, tried to turn and make it into the kitchen where at least I could get the table between us if things got too bad but somehow he had me pinned and twisting back by the arm.
‘Dad, you’re hurting me …’
‘You stupid – you piece of—’
‘Dad!’
He shoved me hard then and the arm of my coat rode up as I put my hands out to stop the fall and some part of me grazed the edge of the kitchen door and there was a smear of blood left on the woodwork but it wasn’t too bad. Half running half crawling I made it into the kitchen and around the protecting bulk of the table. Dad was right behind me and snatching. He hadn’t even glanced into the lounge, hadn’t seen Daniel or Haxforth. Christ only knew what’d happen when he did.
‘Where have you been?’ I shouted, hoping that’d distract him somehow.
‘Never you mind! I’ve just come from there and the nurses told me everything.’
‘I wanted to see her. You never take me – only that one time – so I went on my own!’
‘It wasn’t you on your own though, was it? There was some other bloke with you, some old bloke. That’s what they told me. And he had some bird thing that attacked her … What was it Aidan, some sick game? Some weird kind of bet?’
His breath was really fast and jaggedy and he grabbed at me again but missed this time.
‘I wanted to see her, I wanted to help …’
‘Wanted to help? Do you know how upset she was after that visit? One of the male nurses had to restrain her, did you know that?’
My throat tightened. I tried to swallow, couldn’t. Oh god oh Jesus. There was a pricking round my eyes, tears threatening again. I couldn’t explain, how could I tell him about the dead apple tree and how it came back to life, and all the things Haxforth had said about people who hear voices inside their heads? How could I, when I didn’t even understand it myself?
I didn’t move and neither did he. The kitchen table between us. He looked a state. There were thick black rings around his eyes despite all the sleeping tablets, his chin was unshaved, his trousers were flecked with dried mud below the knees.
‘You know the deal with those places?’ he said. ‘What nobody tells you? Once you’re in there you have to get out fast, before it becomes the only place you can handle. There’s people – years they’ve been in there. It’s like some nightmare conveyor belt, once you’re on you can’t get off. And they were going to let her out. She was doing OK, on some new drugs that seemed to be helping, but now you’ve gone and sent her mental again and god knows what’ll happen …’
I didn’t speak. My face was starting to feel pretty wet and snot-mangled.
‘Stop snivelling,’ Dad said, and that was OK, I didn’t mind him telling me that because it meant he might be calming down a bit. But then he did the worst thing he could possibly’ve done. He turned around and glanced into the lounge and saw Daniel and Haxforth sitting there, side by side now on the brown sofa with the closed plastic lunchbox between them.
For a moment it was like he was too stunned to move. He couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him. Then he tore off his coat and stepped straight-backed towards Haxforth, the menace level turned up full and extreme.
‘Is this him? Is this the bloke with the bird, who you took to see Mum?’
‘Dad …’
‘I don’t believe this.’
His clenched fists were the colour of snow.
I darted under the table and ran between Haxforth and the advancing figure of Dad. I knew he was going to snap Haxforth in half or at least try to and I couldn’t bear that. It didn’t matter if Dad hit me but if he hit Haxforth then he’d be no better than Christy, and I knew he was, deep down I knew he was, even if he hadn’t shown it for a while.
‘And who the fuck’s this little toerag? What the hell’s been going on here?’
Daniel was trying to make himself as small as possible and I thought, Here you go, Daniel, this is what it’s like to have your father around, they’re not all wonderful you know.
Violence hung in the air, a gaping dragon-mouth ready to shred and annihilate. It was seconds away and I knew then that I had to do something to push this Dad away and bring back the real one, the Dad from before, and I had to do it right there and then because he was about to cross over into some other place, some permanent place that’d only ever be filled with shadow and anger.
It was what I should’ve done right at the start of all this.
I slammed through the front door, leaving it wide and open to the winter’s afternoon, ran down the passageway and into the garden where the light was going already and I scooped up an armful of mail and I ran back inside and threw it righ
t at Dad’s face.
And I said, as Haxforth himself had said to me once, ‘You want to know what’s going on? That’s what’s going on.’
Then I ran outside again and grabbed another concertina of mail and I threw that in his face too, all the red rubber bands and the bright Christmas stamps and I did it again and again and he wasn’t stopping me and I was super-shaky and trembling and in the dusk I saw some blood which’d dripped down from the graze on my arm but it didn’t hurt or anything.
Dimly I was aware of the people inside the house swapping places. Now Daniel and Haxforth were standing, backed against a wall, and it was Dad sitting slumped on the brown sofa. Funny, I was shouting something too that whole time but I’ve no idea what. I’d always thought it’d be Dad going crazy when the secret came out. Instead he was the silent one and it was me screaming my head off.
I stopped when the floor of the lounge was covered because by then I’d made my point.
‘I was going to deliver it,’ Dad said quietly.
‘No, you weren’t. I’ve been delivering it. And him, he’s helped.’ I pointed at Daniel. ‘Not any more though.’
Then I said about Hawkie, and the cops and the Royal Mail investigators who’d be arriving at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, and how they were going to arrest him.
Dad put his head in his hands. All the aggression was gone. It was just knocked clean away. I saw him take in the bag I’d packed, notice for the first time how thickly I was wrapped against the winter. His face’d gone as white as a fridge-front. I never saw anyone change as fast as that. It was like all the air inside’d been sucked out. His eyes went down to the floor and his hands shifted a little to cover them over.
I kicked a shower of post towards him. ‘Where have you even been?’
‘Just around,’ he mumbled. ‘In the car. Driving places.’
‘All night?’
Only silence, for an answer. I supposed that meant Yes.
‘How could she come home anyway with all this here?’
Why I Went Back Page 15