Hanging in the Mist

by Lancett, Peter;

  She just shrugged again and shook her head. “Sorry babes,” she slurred. “I must have forgot.”

  “These things happen lad,” bastard number one chipped in at this point. “Yer should have reminded us.”

  Something about that stopped the screams in me throat. Yeah, bastard number one was right. I should never have had faith in either of em. Never. I looked down at that form right then. She hadn’t even signed it.

  “You didn’t even fucking sign it,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Do I have to sign it? Gimme a pen …”

  She’s too far gone to even shout at.

  “I’ll never get a chance like this again. I’d paid for it as well. You know how much I hate doing cleaning down at that place.”

  “Hey, that’s a good job, that,” bastard number one chips in. “Nice perks. See if you can get some steak again on Saturday. They won’t notice a few steaks out of all that lot.”

  Like he’s ever done a day’s work anywhere. Much less worked at some disgusting stinking place like the abattoir. I just looked down at him saying that, and the anger just drained out of me. All I felt right then was pity. And I could feel right away that it was wrong. You shouldn’t have to feel pity for your mum and dad like that. But they disgusted me. And I realised that they had for a long time.

  “You bastards have never done anything for me,” I said all calm, like. “All I asked you to do was sign a form. I’ve got the money to buy the wrench I needed – I bloody knew better than to believe you when you said that you’d get me one. And all the other tools I’ve already got.”

  A look on his face stops me even though I’ve got tons more to say.

  “What have you done?” I ask. He just looks down at the filthy little bag on the bed between them and right then I know. I just know.

  “We had to babes,” she cries out, all plaintive. “We was desperate.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I turned and shot out of that room. And when I burst into me own room, the one I’m in now, I didn’t even have to look. But I did look. I slid to the floor and lifted that loose hanging duvet and there was nothing under the bed. The red metal toolbox was gone. Did I cry? Well I don’t suppose it matters much if you know now, so yeah, I cried. I sobbed for a few seconds, and could have killed meself for not putting the toolbox away in the locked cupboard where I keep most of me stuff. I’d just been lazy, and now it was all gone. Everything. Gone.

  I rushed back into their room and they were swapping that fizzling glass pipe between them like I’d never even been there at all. I swiped it out of their hands and it smashed against the walls.

  “Hey,” bastard number one called out, but I turned on him and even through me tears he must have seen the anger in me, cos he just backed away.

  “Oh don’t be like that, babes. We’ll make it up to you …” She said more but I didn’t listen, just tipped over her bedside table and smashed the lamp standing on it. It was all I could think to do. I was supposed to be helping Kyle with his car next day. Now I wouldn’t even be able to do that. Christ, the bastards.

  Yeah, that was a great Friday, two weeks ago. And me hand is tight and sweaty gripping this recorder as I remember it. I’d better not squeeze too hard. It’s only plastic and I don’t want to break it. Ha ha.

  I’m still standing on me wobbly computer chair, but me balance is better now. I’m looking down to that space under me bed though. It’s still empty. And that’s how I feel inside.

  CHAPTER 3

  It’s funny, the way that even though I’m standing on this chair, the frame of the bunk bed is still higher than me. I can put me hand on the frame and lean against it a bit. I still can’t believe it, the way they got us the bunk bed. We never got presents or anything, hardly even at Christmas or on our birthdays. So it was amazing when they got us this. We really needed it as well. And even though we had to put it together ourselves – well it was me who did it, mostly – it was still a brilliant surprise. I still don’t know where it come from or how much it cost, or even if they paid for it at all. But I didn’t care then and I still don’t.

  There used to be two grotty beds stuffed into this room with not much space left for anything else. Me and me sister used to share this room right up until she left and got a flat of her own. She got one off the council, just after the baby came, one in that tower block I can see way across the estate. I was glad as hell as well, cos I’d had to sleep on the settee after she had the baby. I couldn’t share the room no more.

  I can’t see her actual flat from here, even though I can see the block it’s in, cos it’s on the other side, overlooking the dual carriageway. I’ve been over there and you can’t hear the traffic. But you can sit and watch it. You wouldn’t hear the traffic anyway, cos her baby is screaming all the time. It never shuts up. I’ve sat and held it and sometimes for a minute it will lie back and gurgle and smile. But it’s never long before it’s screaming and puking. Or it’s done something worse. Me sister says she’s dead happy having a place of her own. She’s only seventeen but she doesn’t look like she did before the baby came. She’s still a lot heavier and she looks dead tired all the time. And most of the time she’s just slopping around in grey track pants and baggy tee shirts and that, and slippers. Still, she gets help from Social Services and that. They come around twice a week. Still a lot for a seventeen year old girl to have to deal with though. I couldn’t do it. And she’s all on her own and that. There’s no father of the baby around helping her or giving her money. She says she doesn’t even know who the father is. When she told me that, I didn’t ask anything else. I didn’t want to think about what she might have been up to.

  One thing is for sure, it was getting cramped sharing our bedroom until the council gave her that flat. We’d been sharing it all of our lives. I used to get embarrassed, getting dressed and undressed. I’d wait until she was out of the room or something, or if I went to bed after her, I’d make sure all the lights were out before I got undressed, or if she had her reading light on when she was going through old celeb magazines and that, I’d get in bed and get undressed under the covers. She never cared though. She would just strip off and get changed as often as she liked and she never seemed embarrassed. She probably got that off our cracked-up mum and dad.

  I’d never tell her this, but I have to say I’m not surprised that she ended up getting knocked up. Counting back, it must have been when she went on that holiday to Spain last year. From what her and her mates were saying when they got back, it sounds like they was on the piss all the time from the moment they got there. And they’d been shagging everything that moved and took the slightest interest. Anyway, that’s how the holiday sounds, the way they tell it. So like I say, no wonder …

  I like looking out of the window at this time of day. It’s dark, but it’s not quite night. I can see the street lights on below, and I can see car headlights and stuff, and I can still make out people on the green between the blocks of flats and in front of the shops and that. And in the tower blocks, some of the flats have lights on and some are still dark. You can see this blue flicker from some of the others where there is a telly playing but no lights on.

  It’s kind of eerie staring out of the window at this time of day, especially at this time of year when it’s got dark dead early and it’s cold outside. I mean, you can’t hear anything from up here and through the double glazing anyway, but you just know that it’s sort of quiet down there. Maybe if there’s wind blowing, you’d hear that down there, but it’s quiet in a way that it never is in the summer, like. In the summer, people are not in any kind of hurry to get where they’re going. They’re probably just outside for the hell of it, cos it’s warm and everything. And kids are out playing late as well. But at this time of year, everybody seems wrapped up in heavy clothes and if they’re out at all, they’re always hurrying to be someplace. Someplace warm. And I think it’s that, the way that everyone wants to be somewhere and not caring about the outdoors at all, is w
hat makes it feel quiet. I know, I know, Old Duckworth, the nerd-geek who teaches science at school, would probably say it’s all in me head, that, or give me some kind of bloody stupid explanation that would be dead boring or something. But I don’t care. I think it seems quieter now because of what I just said. And Duckworth isn’t here. So fuck him.

  There’s Kyle’s green Vauxhall Corsa, just pulling into the estate. I can see the green glow from underneath from the LEDs. I’ll never have a car like that. And now Kyle’s stopping outside the shops and getting out. He’s probably going to get some chips or something for his tea. I’ve seen him go to the chippie loads of times from up here. Yep, there he goes, into the chippie. It’d be great to just jump in his car now, while he isn’t looking, and take it for a burn down the dual carriageway. What a blast that would be. And get it back before he came out of the chippie so he never knew it had even gone. But there’s loads of reasons that could never happen. Kyle would kill me if he ever found out. And he’d know right away when his car started, with that big air filter and that phat exhaust giving it that deep growl. And you’d never even get it started anyway, cos there’s an immobiliser that he had fitted by the blokes who do that where he works. These are just daydreams, little stories I make up in me head when I’m looking out of the window. It’s dead boring living here, so you have to. And anyway, I’d never do anything like that to Kyle, even if I could and even if I thought I could get away with it. I still think he’s solid, even after everything that’s happened. Which I will be talking about, only later on.

  I’ve already said how me crack whore mother had fucked up me chance to go on this mechanics course. Well, that afternoon after I’d smashed up their bedroom a bit and left them strung out and shouting at me to come back and how they’d make it up to me and everything, I just stormed out of the flat, slamming all the doors, probably hoping that I’d break something if I’m honest.

  I stopped crying when I was in the lift going down. And I wiped the tears away. I didn’t have much idea what I wanted to do, but I found meself at the bus stop, and when the next bus came I got on it and went to the town centre. While I was on the bus, I kept asking meself how they could do that to me. I mean, selling me tools like that, me socket set, me screwdrivers, me spanners. I’d paid for all them meself, so they had no business touching them. And just for filthy crap to get zonked out with.

  But then you know, that’s just like them. It’s the crap that comes first with them. It even comes before me and me sister and it always has. Weed, smack, blues, Es, coke, whatever – they had to be doing something. Even if that meant me and me sister going without. It’s been like that our whole lives.

  Actually, me very first ever memory, the farthest back that I can remember, is when I would have been five. I can’t remember it all, what happened and that, but what I do remember is me and me sister standing outside on the landing outside our flat, with the wind blowing through a broken window at the end, and it’s the middle of the night – so me sister tells me. And I’m crying and wailing and screaming and me sister is holding me hand and trying to get me to calm down and that. And our next door neighbour comes out to see what all the racket is about. Mrs Newton her name was and she was this big West Indian woman and her family was from Jamaica. Anyway, she came out asking what all the noise was about. And me sister said that me mum and dad were out and hadn’t come home and that we were scared. Me sister has told me that this was something she made up. The truth was, the bastards were zonked out in their bedroom and they’d been on a three day bender, with people coming and going all the time, and they’d been skulking alone doing fuck knows what in their bedroom and just leaving us to fend for ourselves. Even at seven, me sister had had the brains to make up a story and not tell Mrs Newton the truth. She’s definitely got the brains out of all of us.

  I can remember Mrs Newton taking us in and she made us warm milk and she had these Jamaican ginger biscuits, which I still like and nick from the corner shop every now and then, and then she made me have a bath, cos apparently I was filthy. Like I say, mum and dad hadn’t paid any attention to us whatsoever for over three days. Me sister was filthy as well, so Mrs Newton gave her a bath too. I don’t remember much more of it, but I can remember lying on Mrs Newton’s settee, wrapped up in a blanket, with me sister lying the opposite way, and Mrs Newton leaning over me and stroking me forehead and singing this Jamaican song with a dead soft voice.

  I still sometimes think about Mrs Newton. She lived in that flat next to us right up until she died, about two years ago now. Her husband had left her ages before and her kids had all grown up and got married and got places of their own. So she died all alone. Her daughter found her when she came round to visit one Saturday. She let herself in with her key and found her mum sitting dead in her armchair with the telly still on. A heart attack it was, or at least that’s what I heard. But whatever it was, it made me cry. She’d always been dead kind to me, and there had been loads of times when me and me sister had gone to sit in her flat and watched the telly with her when we were little and when bastard number one and bastard number two had gone out and left us on our own. I think I probably loved her.

  Anyway, like I was saying, I went into the town, and I just walked around for a while. Even then, it was starting to get dark and I was cold and everything, cos I hadn’t got a coat on. So I just went into the shops, not really looking at stuff or anything, just enjoying how clean it all was and how warm it was. And I think that cos there were just normal looking people in them it seemed to feel more comfortable. It didn’t cheer me up exactly, but I wasn’t feeling as upset as I had been. I was still dead angry though. And I kept thinking about smacking the pair of them up and kicking them and laying into them. It’s amazing how many times you can play a scene like that in your head.

  In one big department store I saw these dead soft big scarves and I thought how me sister would like one. I hung around there for a few minutes and I was thinking about whether I could nick one for her. But I thought better of it. I’ve said before how the big stores have cameras and detectives and that. And really, I didn’t feel up to it so it was like I would have been bound to get caught. So I went out again and it was nearly properly dark now.

  Down the street was this big HMV shop where they sell DVDs and CDs and computer games and that. I always go in there and look. And I like it that they play music dead loud in there. It’s not always stuff that I like, but I think that playing stuff dead loud like they do makes the place feel exciting and it gives you a lift. So anyway, that’s where I went.

  The place was pretty full and there were people and pushchairs in the aisles so you had to squeeze to get past sometimes. I started off, looking at the DVDs. I start at the beginning usually and go through all of them. I never get tired of that for some reason, even though I’ve done it hundreds of times. And it’s funny how I seem to pick out the same covers all the time, and read the back of them like I’ve never seen them before. Old films like Terminator 2 which I’ve seen loads of times as well, and Hellraiser and that. I love those kinds of films – sci-fi and horror. I like films like that with loads of effects and loads of action. And I like films where there’s lots of good fighting and violence and that.

  Down at the bottom end of the shop, when I got there, I saw some kids that I knew from school. They didn’t live on the same estate as me, but they lived on the council estate not far from me, all of them. There was five of them, Dave Martins, Josh Roberts, Danny Harrigan, Carrie Edwards and Lindsay Crocker. No surprise, they were all dressed in black and they’d got loads of make up on and that, cos they’re Goths. They were looking at CDs and I got talking to them, cos I know them pretty well, even though I’m not a Goth or anything meself. Josh Roberts is in me class at school. He’d been there that afternoon when I’d run out of the class. Obviously we had to talk about what had happened, and I told them about how bastard number two had fucked up me chance of going on the course.

  “So you can’t go
on it at all?” Lindsay asked me. If she hadn’t got that stupid black lipstick on and that big heavy black jacket with chains all over it, and black nail varnish, and them big heavy black boots that look like Frankenstein should be wearing them, I reckon she’d look alright. I might even fancy her.

  Well I told them how it was too late now, and I couldn’t go, and how the two bastards had sold me tools and stuff anyway, and they were pretty cool about it and said how it was dead shitty and that. And while it didn’t make up for anything, I did feel a bit better talking to them. And for a while we stood at the back of HMV, looking at the covers of CDs – bands I’d never even heard of like ‘My Dying Bride’, and ‘My Arms, Your Hearse’ and weird stuff like that – and talking about the shitty things that had happened to us all.

  Then Lindsay says to me, “We’re going over to Letisha’s place in a bit. You fancy coming?”

  She looks at the others and Josh says “Yeah, you should come along. We’re just going to hang out and play music. Do some smoke …”

  He grins as he says that last bit. Thing is, because of living with bastard number one and bastard number two all me life, I’ve never been interested in doing any of that stuff. You know that I’m not a goody two-shoes or anything feeble like that, but I just see how they are half the time and I don’t want to be anything like them. But I don’t want to go home right now either. So I said “yeah, what the fuck . .?” And off we went.

  CHAPTER 4