When I Wasn't Watching

by Kelly, Michelle

  ‘She does look good doesn’t she?’ Mitzi was admiring the picture of his mum climbing into the taxi, her skirt nearly up to her knickers and her hair loose around her shoulders. The image made Ricky feel sick. He knew what Tyler would say when he saw it, the words he would use about her, his mum, and he wanted to punch something. Instead he fisted the newspaper into a tight ball and threw it into the corner of Mitzi’s bedroom.

  He was glad he hadn’t gone to school. It was already changing, the way people were looking at him, and treating him, as if he was an object of both fascination and pity. He felt like an outsider at that posh school as it was. Why his mum had ever decided to send him there he didn’t know. Right then he felt a white hot sliver of hatred for his mum that as much as it repulsed him was also strangely freeing, bringing with it a sense of unfamiliar autonomy.

  He certainly didn’t feel guilty about playing truant any more, that was for certain.

  With Mitzi’s parents at work they had spent the day intermittently kissing and smoking in her bedroom, which was a sickeningly girly hybrid of pink frills and soft toys combined with the newer trappings of her teenage status – wall to wall posters of various boy bands, clothes and make-up strewn carelessly around and a Playboy Bunny bedspread. There was way too much pink. Until she had gone downstairs and seen the day’s paper on the counter she had, for once, left the subject of his family alone. He had no wish to listen to her opinions on it now, that way she had of making him feel partly responsible, so he pulled her towards him and started nibbling on her neck, a hand snaking up her ribcage underneath her top. He sighed with frustration when she wriggled away.

  His shyness of just a few days before had quickly been forgotten and he was impatient to explore the rest of Mitzi’s body; to close the gap between himself and Tyler. All those lectures his mum had given him this past year on respecting girls, that he had listened to so attentively, rang hollow in his memory now. Loads of respect she had for herself, sneaking off to meet some copper she had known five minutes, lying to Ricky about where she was going like she was the teenager and he the adult. His face burned as he thought about it, remembered how Matt had took him home and even then Ricky had seen him eyeing up his mum, then forgotten when she had revealed who Matt was. Which made it all worse in a way. The police were supposed to help people. Tyler was right; they were pigs.

  ‘My parents will be back soon.’ Mitzi said, sitting up and adjusting her clothes. Ricky eyed her. He ought to go home before Mum started wondering where he was or found out he hadn’t been at school, but why should he? She clearly didn’t care about his feelings.

  ‘Let’s go round Tyler’s,’ he suggested, ‘we can get some beers, and some weed, and maybe go back to that house.’ They should get their use out of their new haunt before it got pulled down. Mitzi looked excited, no doubt pleased that he had suggested spending more time with her.

  ‘I’m your girlfriend now right?’ she asked, out of the blue, her big eyes wide. Surprised, Ricky considered her question. Girlfriend. He rolled the word around in his mind and decided he liked it. Few of the stuck-up kids in his class at school had girlfriends.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose.’ He shrugged, as if he wasn’t bothered either way, and Mitzi snuggled up to him looking content. Ricky looked down at the top of her head, at the fresh pink of her scalp showing next to a strip of mousy brown roots and realised her hair was coloured. He had wanted to bleach his hair a few months ago after his favourite rapper had done the same to his, but his mum wouldn’t hear of it. ‘You’re too young,’ she had told him, looking bemused. Well, now that he had a girlfriend, maybe now he would do whatever he wanted.

  A few hours later as he staggered home on the verge of vomiting up the six cans of lager Tyler had given him, along with some new weed he had described as ‘killer’ that was certainly living up to its name, he didn’t feel so sure of himself. He struggled to focus as the figure of Lucy reared up in front of him like an avenging angel.

  ‘Where the hell have you been, it’s nearly half eleven? Look at the state of you!’ In his befuddled state he caught the note of hysteria in her voice and a sense of guilt nagged at him, but then he remembered the newspaper and shrugged, aiming for a cocky expression, even though all he really wanted to do was curl up in his bed and die and have his mother comfort him as she always had when he was ill.

  ‘I texted you,’ he said. He had; he had sent her a message letting her know he was with his girlfriend and Tyler, and then turned his phone off before she could call demanding to know why he hadn’t come straight in from school and reminding him he had a curfew. Tyler didn’t have a curfew; even Mitzi was allowed out until eleven.

  ‘You’re a hypocrite,’ he said, his voice slurred.

  ‘You haven’t even been to school have you?’ she demanded, and Ricky hung his head. Earlier he had worked out a very good reason why he hadn’t been to school, but right now couldn’t quite remember what that reason had been.

  ‘How could you?’ The hurt in her voice reached Ricky even through his drunkenness. ‘You know you need to tell me where you are at all times.’ She didn’t voice the reason why that was so paramount, but it hung unspoken between them, as it always did. Because of Jack.

  ‘I’m not a little kid!’ He was angry now, his voice sounding too loud even to his own ears, causing Lucy to step back away from him, shock evident in her face. A small voice in Ricky’s head, the part that remained sober, warned him that he was about to go too far, but he didn’t heed it. Instead he felt a wave of contempt for the woman in front of him, her eyes filled with tears now and her hair messy around her face where she would have been running her hands through it as she always did when agitated.

  ‘I hate you,’ he said, and Lucy reeled back as if he had slapped her. ‘You don’t care about Jack or me. I saw you in that picture with that bloke. You’re a slut.’

  The words seemed to hang in the air between them, echoing in the silence that now filled the room. Just for a second his mum’s face seemed to crumple, a look of anguish that Ricky would remember in the morning and that would cut through him like a whip, but in an instant it was gone and she had resumed her composure. Her face was hard and pressed in, her lips a thin line. It was the face that meant ‘you’re in trouble’ and for all his new-found bravado Ricky felt a pang of remorse.

  When Lucy spoke each word dropped heavily into that waiting silence.

  ‘Get. To. Bed. Now.’

  Feeling drained and still needing to throw up Ricky turned and shuffled upstairs. He wanted to cry.

  After vomiting in the pristine basin in the little wash room that adjoined his bedroom he crept into bed and fell asleep, his head whirling with images of Mitzi and Tyler, of the front page of the newspaper and of that look of anguish on his mum’s face.

  He didn’t dream of Jack, which had been happening a lot again recently, but later when he woke to see Lucy walking quietly out of his room and looked up to see the glass of water she had left for him on the bedside table, he thought he saw him. A flash of light blond hair, a dimpled smile and the touch of a small, cold hand on his brow. A moment of comfort, then he was gone.

  Ricky went back to sleep with a sob, pulling the covers over his head to block out the world.

  A few dozen miles away a noise woke ‘John’ – he hated this new name – with a start. He lay in the dark, his heart beating too fast in his chest, attempting to subdue his breath as his senses searched for the source of the interruption. But the night was silent save for the low hum of cars passing on the street outside, accompanied by the sweep of their headlights across his far wall, illuminating for a few seconds each time the sparse bedroom he now slept in. It wasn’t so very different from his old jail cell really, although it was at least warmer. He had few possessions, had left everything behind. Even his very identity.

  ‘You can’t tell anyone who you are,’ they had informed him, for his own good of course, but also as a caveat of his freedom. If this half-existence qua
lified as freedom, prevented from ever reaching out to his old friends, to his long-suffering mother, and even from visiting the city he knew as home. They pretended they cared about him, the authorities, that they were doing their best to make everything as comfortable as possible for him, but he knew the truth. He was a liability, and would remain one for the rest of his life.

  Lights tracked their familiar path across the far wall along with another low drone that signified a passing engine. Then stopped and flickered off abruptly. A car door slammed outside his house, sounding so loud in the near silence it could have been in the very room with him. John felt himself break out into a cold sweat even as he told himself it would only be his neighbours returning from somewhere.

  The thought failed to comfort him as he looked at the digital clock next to his pillow and registered the digits that flashed red repeatedly at him. Where were his elderly neighbours likely to be returning from at three-thirty in the morning?

  Even though he was expecting it – or perhaps precisely because he was expecting it – the loud crash that shattered the calm of the night terrified him so that he opened his mouth to scream, then stuffed his fist inside it, biting down so hard there would be teeth marks still on his knuckles in the morning. He had very quickly learned in prison that screaming usually had the opposite effect of bringing help.

  Shaking uncontrollably, he had to force himself past the inertia that terror had wrapped around his limbs, swinging his legs over the bed, ears straining for any further noise. What if they were in the house?

  The sound of the engine starting up again made him jump and this time a thin, high-pitched squeal escaped from his mouth. The car moved away and, praying whoever it was had indeed gone, John crept downstairs, all his senses on hyper-alert, ready to bolt.

  The brick lay in the middle of his front room, having narrowly missed the old-fashioned television that had been supplied for him, surrounded by shards of broken glass that twinkled in the moonlight almost merrily; mocking him.

  John sat down slowly on the threadbare settee as the knowledge sunk in and placed his head in his hands. It couldn’t be a coincidence; this was a warning.

  They had found him.

  ***

  It wasn’t long before he saw the man again, standing in his usual spot, watching him play. Just watching him, as he always did, with that sad expression on his face. Remembering he had decided to ask him to join him, the boy went over to the garden gate and smiled at him.

  ‘Do you want to play?’ he asked the man, who looked surprised, then nodded, looking around him warily before walking over and crouching down so he could see him through the gaps in the gate.

  The boy pointed proudly at the new swing.

  ‘I got a new swing.’

  The man smiled at that, a wide grin that made him look nice, happy, and he was pleased that he had made him look happy. Then he heard Mummy, calling him from inside and the man straightened up, looking, he thought, scared. That was silly. Mummy wasn’t scary.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ his new friend said, then went on hurriedly as he started to cry, ‘I’ll come back soon I promise.’

  That cheered the boy up and he waved bye. Then the man said something before he hurried away that made him think.

  ‘Don’t tell your mummy or I won’t be able to come and see you. It’s a secret.’

  He felt a bit unsure about that. He had to tell Mummy the truth, she always said it was very important to tell the truth. And yet, having a secret made him feel important, because he had never had a secret before.

  He really wanted to see the man again too.

  Chapter Eight

  Tuesday

  They faced each other over breakfast like opposing armies, the area occupied by the sugar bowl and cereal boxes forming a no-man’s-land between them. Mother and son.

  Ricky barely remembered anything past getting to Tyler’s and having a cup filled with vodka and Red Bull – more vodka than Red Bull, going by the turpentine smell that the cup emitted – pushed into his eager hand. Then the three of them laughing and giggling at porn clips and a YouTube film showing a dog running into a wall. Mitzi letting him put his hand inside her Hello Kitty thong when Tyler was skinning up, and then staggering home.

  Shouting in his mum’s face, calling her names she had always drummed into him never to use against any female. Throwing up and falling into bed. A jumbled mixture of hot, shameful images that churned inside him along with the contents of his stomach. Only one image stood out, like a cool breeze amidst the rest: Jack, reaching out for him, wide-eyed with love and adoration for his big brother.

  That was how Jack had always appeared to him in the months following his death, with that same hero worship he had gazed upon Ricky with while he was alive. No matter how much Ricky expected – even wanted, in some kind of twisted, guilty way – Jack to look reproachful or sad, his little face scrunched up with tears. The way he had looked the last time Ricky had seen him in life, when he had told him no, he couldn’t play, and sent him outside to his death.

  Ricky wanted to tell his mum he had seen his brother again, but for a whole host of reasons he couldn’t. Because it would upset her again, because she would start thinking he was seeing things and send him to see the mental doctor again, and because it would upset her. As much as part of him still wanted to upset her for going off with DI Winston, Ricky was well aware he had already done and said enough.

  Even so, he wasn’t about to apologise.

  ‘Do I need to drive you to school today, or can I trust you to get yourself there?’ Lucy broke the silence, her voice cold and sarcastic, making Ricky wince. A movement that, although tiny, sent a stab of pain through his throbbing forehead.

  ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled, not looking up.

  ‘Well, I’ll be phoning to check.’

  Ricky bristled.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to say anything?’ he asked, finally looking up at her. She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘About what? Your coming in late, your playing truant, your getting drunk, or the vile things you said to me, after I had been worrying myself sick all evening about where the hell you were?’ Her voice became more shrill as she spoke and Ricky shrank back into his chair, but stood his ground.

  ‘About you running around with that copper.’

  Lucy blushed, but if Ricky had thought he would shame her out of chastising him, he was wrong.

  ‘No, because I’m an adult and I don’t have to discuss everything I do with you. You, on the other hand are still a child – obviously more so than I realised – and you are grounded until further notice.’

  Ricky stared and went to protest, but the look on her face stopped him. Mum was usually a bit of a pushover – though admittedly he had never given her as much reason to be angry with him before – but he sensed there would be no getting around her right now. He stood up, grabbed his bag and left without saying anything else, the loud slam of the front door behind him making his feelings quite clear.

  Lucy left it twenty minutes before phoning to check he was indeed at school and then, satisfied, got herself ready for work, replaying last night in her mind as she had done all morning, after waking while it was still only half-light from a fitful sleep punctuated by vague nightmares. Every time she remembered Ricky’s words to her it was like a physical blow. In a way she thought she should perhaps have discussed Matt with him; she had always wanted to be one of those mothers that was open with her children. But his words had put a barrier between them she didn’t know how to cross.

  She couldn’t see Matt again, that much was obvious. And yet she wanted to, with every fibre of her being. She had asked him to give her time and he had done so; she hadn’t heard from him at all since he had left yesterday afternoon after the showdown with Ethan.

  Ethan. God, what was happening to them all? To her, her son, her ex-husband? Prince’s release had set free something that clearly wasn’t going back into its cage any time soon.

  Although
she had dropped the subject with Matt, although she had dismissed it to herself as a futile cause, she still burned to know where he was. The not-knowing, the knowledge that her son’s killer was free and living back in the everyday world, had left her feeling ungrounded. The familiar, safe life she had constructed around herself and Ricky threatened by the fact of his freedom.

  As for the reassurances she had given Matt; that even if she knew where he was she wouldn’t necessarily want to do anything, it would just help her to give a name to his location, she knew deep down that it was lies. Lucy had never been a violent person – at least until yesterday – and had never so much as spanked her children, but she knew with a cold certainty what she would do if she ever got her hands on the young man who had butchered her baby while he was still only little more than a child himself.

  She would kill him.

  He was going to kill him. Ricky bared his teeth at the older boy like a wild animal as his tormentor sneered at him.

  ‘Bit of alright ain’t she, your mum? Great legs. Wouldn’t mind them wrapped around my neck.’

  His mates sniggered and elbowed each other, a small crowd of pupils forming around the small table in the school Snack Bar where Ricky sat with his mate Anil. Or at least Anil was supposed to be a mate, but he wasn’t making any effort to help Ricky; rather he was staring down at his chips as if thoroughly absorbed in them and completely oblivious to his friend’s plight. The boy who tormented him, Luke something, was in Year Eleven, a year above them, popular, good-looking and either liked or feared by his peers. Ricky wasn’t going to get any back-up from the group of hangers on avidly watching to see what was going to happen. He wished Tyler was here. He would show them.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Ricky said through gritted teeth. He wasn’t in the mood for this. His hangover had reached epic proportions, he had been given a week’s worth of detentions and put on Report Card for yesterday’s truancy and to top it all off he was grounded and his mum probably hated him.