In the end, a whole year on, she pretty much gave up on me. See what I mean about adults? That’s what they do. She told me that she couldn’t help me to deal with the past if I wouldn’t talk to her about it, but that there was still one trick we could use to stop the nightmares.
We? I was the one waking up screaming, wasn’t I?
The counsellor’s idea was that I take my bad memories one by one and fold them up like so much dirty washing. I had to pack each one in its own little box, a box with a tight lid that I could jam on nice and hard. If I wanted to be extra sure, I could tie a bit of rope round each box, or add a padlock, whatever. Then I had to carry the boxes, one by one, to the furthest corner of my mind, a place I’d never normally go to, and leave them there. It wouldn’t matter if the boxes got dusty, or covered in cobwebs, because I would never need the stuff inside them again.
I looked at her like she was crazy. There were no heaps of dirty washing, no boxes, no rope, no padlocks. ‘It’s make-believe,’ she told me. ‘Like a game, in your mind. You want the nightmares to go away, don’t you?’ I said that I did. ‘Then try it, Mouse. Please?’
I tried. I packed each sad, bad memory up and put the lid on tight, and carried the boxes to the furthest corner of my mind, and what d’you know? The nightmares stopped. As long as I kept the past boxed up, it left me alone.
Until now.
I am seven years old. It’s three weeks since my dad left for India with his girlfriend, Storm. I’m staying with a woman called Tess and her family, in the Lake District. Tess is a friend of Storm, but she’s OK.
Today is Finn’s birthday – Finn, Tess’s son, my idea of a cool, kind elder brother. I have a sister too here – not a real sister, but real enough. Dizzy, Storm’s daughter. She’s been dumped here too. She knows how I feel, what it’s like to wait for a phone call, a letter, a postcard that never comes.
We’re having a bonfire for Finn’s birthday. I want to do something special for him, something cool, but when I mention juggling with fire, the way Dad does, they shake their heads. Fire is dangerous, they tell me. I’m not scared of fire, but still, I promise. Instead of the juggling, I practise riding Finn’s BMX. I set up the ramps until I can swoop down the hill, hammer up the ramps and fly into the air, right over the top of the bonfire they’re building for later. I can do it so well that I build in a wheelspin too.
That night, as the fire is blazing, I stick sparklers all round the back-wheel rim of the BMX and light them quickly. I pedal down the hill, up the ramp and into the air above the blazing bonfire before anyone even knows what I’m doing. ‘Look at me!’ I yell.
It’s a perfect jump, but as I spin the front wheel I feel the pull of a branch in the spokes, and the BMX falters. The back wheel falls towards the flames, and I twist my body sideways, shoving the handlebars away from me, leaping away from the blaze.
And then it’s too late, because my throat is full of soft, hot smoke and the flames are all around me, cloaking me in gold, licking and sizzling and burning, burning, burning.
Somebody’s screaming, and I sit bolt upright, drenched in sweat and shivering. My breath is coming in great, gasping gulps, and I know that the voice echoing through my head is my own. Lucky is whining and nuzzling my neck, and Mum rushes in, bleary-eyed, her hair sticking up in clumps. ‘Mouse, love,’ she whispers, putting her arms round me. ‘It’s OK. Just a dream.’
We sit for a while in the darkness, until I stop shivering and my breathing slows. Mum keeps an arm round my shoulder, strokes my hand, and Lucky presses his worried face against mine, and slowly I come back to the present.
I’m here, on the Eden Estate, in a small, scruffy bedroom with my mum and my dog, and the past is over and done with, long gone. ‘It seemed so real,’ I whisper. ‘I could feel the flames, smell the smoke …’
Mum sniffs and frowns, and I realize that I can still smell the smoke. I jump out of bed in my T-shirt and pyjama trousers and together we run through the darkened flat. Mum drags open the front door, looks out along the corridor, but everything is quiet. Then we notice Lucky, standing at the balcony door, scratching at the woodwork, whining, scrabbling.
‘No way …’ Mum whispers.
But you don’t stand up to the dealers on the Eden Estate, not even creeps like Scully. You don’t upset them. Turn one of them in, even if he deserved it, and you’ll be punished – big time. The dealers are getting their revenge for what happened to Scully.
The night is filled with the smell of petrol and a dark, choking smoke that sticks to your lungs, clogs up your nostrils. And down in the courtyard the Phoenix is more than a smudge of colour in the darkness, it’s a whole blaze of bright, burning flames, dancing, roaring, flying up in the air like tiny firebirds.
Mum leans on the balcony rail, tears streaming down her face, and Lucky leans against her, whining softly. In the distance I can hear sirens, but they stay far-off and distant, like a broken promise, as we watch the Phoenix burn.
You can shower off the stink of smoke, but anger’s not so easy to wash away. Dealers torched the Phoenix last night, because Mum, Luke and Julie dared to call the police instead of letting Scully and his mates walk all over them. They should have known better than to fight back, and now they’re being punished for it – along with everyone who needs the Phoenix.
We smelt the petrol on the air, saw shadowy figures running through the darkness below, but the dealers are smart. By the time the police get round to interviewing them, they’ll have alibis, witnesses ready to swear they were nowhere near here last night. The locals won’t speak out against them – they wouldn’t dare. Drug dealers run the Eden Estate, everyone knows that. You cannot fight them, no matter how angry you may feel, because they’re bigger, stronger, angrier than you.
I pour myself a bowl of cornflakes, open a can of dog food for Lucky, but I can’t shake the sad, heavy feeling that invades my blood like a poison.
Mum is talking to Julie in the living room, their conversation going round and round in circles. They want to get the Phoenix up and running again, but although the place was insured, it seems that there’ll be enquiries. It could be months before there’s a payout. ‘We don’t have months, Magi!’ Julie is saying. ‘Our clients need us. If we go under, so do they!’
‘We won’t go under,’ Mum says quietly. ‘We’ll fight back.’
I just about choke on my cornflakes. ‘Mum!’ I chip in, alarmed. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, OK?’
‘Is it stupid to speak out?’ she asks. ‘Is it stupid to say something is wrong? Besides, there are other ways to fight back.’
‘What ways?’
‘Quiet ways,’ she tells me.
I listen to Mum and Julie, and slowly I come up with some quiet ways of my own.
Outside, the air is still heavy with smoke and defeat. The Phoenix is a mess of charred beams, a thick, dark soup of stinking ash and embers. The fruit trees that lined the fence have shrunk to bony black skeletons, the flowers and vegetables frazzled to nothing. The chain-link fence survives, collapsed and curled and melted, clinging to the blackened stubs of fence posts. I can’t stand to look at it.
Lucky trots ahead, on a lead made from plastic washing line, his nose twitching. We walk past Skylark Rise, round to the back of Eagle Heights where Jake’s workshop is, and when I see that the rickety doors are open, I cross over and go inside.
Jake is at the back of the workshop, fitting tinted glass windows to the now black four-wheel drive. ‘All right, Mouse?’ he says. ‘If you’re looking for Fitz, he hasn’t been in today.’
‘OK,’ I tell him. ‘I wasn’t looking for Fitz especially – just had to get out of the flat, y’know?’
‘Yeah, I can imagine,’ Jake says. ‘Bad business, about the Phoenix. Your mum OK?’ Jake has a soft spot for Mum.
‘She’s not great,’ I say.
‘Suppose not.’ Jake sighs, stepping back to survey one shiny black-tinted window. ‘Make us a couple of coffees, will you?’
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I click on the kettle, spoon Nescafé, sugar and powdered milk into mugs. Jake takes a long look at Lucky, who is sniffing his way around the edges of the workshop, tail twitching happily. ‘You kept hold of the dog then,’ he says. ‘Lucky for you Frank’s off the scene for a while. It’s not a good idea to go against people like that, Mouse. They make their own rules, you know that.’
‘Like burning down the Phoenix?’
Jake sips his coffee. ‘That wasn’t Scully,’ he says. ‘Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ I agree. ‘It was his mates.’
‘Be careful what you’re saying,’ Jake tells me. ‘It could have been an accident. There’s no proof, no evidence –’
‘C’mon, Jake, you know it was deliberate,’ I say. ‘Everyone knows. It was a revenge attack, because Mum, Luke and Julie dared to call the police on Scully. What were they meant to do, let the creep push drugs on those ex-addicts, right under their noses?’
‘I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it’s the way things work around here,’ Jake says. ‘You don’t rock the boat.’
‘What if you do?’
Jake chucks an arm round my shoulder, and for a moment I feel safe, protected, like nothing too bad could happen.
‘You know the score, Mouse,’ he says. ‘It may not be fair, but it’s the way things are on the Eden Estate. Let it go, OK? You don’t want to go stirring up a load more trouble, do you? Keep your mouth shut. Keep out of trouble.’
‘Is that what you do?’ I ask.
‘It’s what I have to do.’
I work all afternoon, helping Jake to fit the tinted windows in the posh four-wheel drive, peeling off masking tape, vacuuming the inside. I try not to think about the ‘businessmen’ who own the car, or why they want the colour and the windows and the plates changed. I guess I just don’t want to know. Jake gives me a tenner and a bagful of half-used spray cans, and I help him lock up. ‘Thanks, Jake,’ I say.
‘Just remember,’ he says as I whistle for Lucky. ‘Remember what I said.’
‘I’ll remember.’
I’ll keep my mouth shut, keep out of trouble. The problem is, trouble has a way of finding me.
Next day, I walk Lucky right off the estate and along the quiet, tree-lined streets that lead to Cat’s house. I want to breathe air that doesn’t smell of smoke, walk pavements that are littered with fallen leaves, not rusting Coke cans and broken glass. In these streets, people don’t burn things down just because you do something they don’t like.
I walk along Cat’s road, looking at the shiny paintwork, the bay windows glinting in the sun. I could be any boy, any place, walking his dog. A man is clipping his privet hedge with electric clippers, so neatly you could balance a mug of tea on top and not spill a single bit.
‘Morning,’ he says as I pass.
By the time Lucky and I have walked up and down four times, the hedge-clipping man is giving us dodgy looks like we might be axe-murderers or hedge vandals. I hesitate by Cat’s gate, unsure.
Maybe her mum is at home. She wasn’t too impressed with me last time, and now she probably knows I live on the Eden Estate, where drugs and violence and trouble are normal, the way hedge-clipping is around here. To get past her, I’d need to turn up with a bunch of flowers and a character reference from my head teacher that says I am a nice, respectable boy with good spelling, great prospects and absolutely no tendencies to spray-paint walls in the middle of the night.
An upstairs window creaks open, and Cat leans out.
‘You coming in then?’ she wants to know. ‘Gonna stand there all day?’
‘I’m in a hurry,’ I shout back. ‘Just passing by, can’t stop.’
‘Whatever,’ she says, raising one perfect eyebrow. ‘You’ve been “just passing by” four times in the past ten minutes!’
‘These streets all look the same,’ I huff.
‘Yeah, right. Hang on, I’m coming down …’
I sit on the doorstep with Lucky. His tail beats back and forth through the air like a windscreen wiper. Cat grins, opening the door wide. She looks amazing, in a stripy sweater-dress and big black boots, her hair in a bandana. ‘Yup. You’re in a real hurry, I can see that,’ she says.
‘Well,’ I say carelessly. ‘I mean, I didn’t call specially, or anything.’
‘Sure you didn’t.’
We sit together on the squashy settee, sipping Cokes while Lucky slides his nose into the top of the cream enamel swing-bin and snaffles a bit of cheese rind. French stuff, I bet. He’ll be digging out the olives next.
‘I heard about the fire,’ she says. ‘I’m really sorry.’
Last night’s paper lies on the kitchen table. Phoenix in Flames, the headline blares. I lean over, slowly reading the rest.
Police and fire services were called out at three this morning when a day centre for recovering drug addicts caught fire on the notorious Eden Estate. The Phoenix, yesterday the scene of a dramatic arrest, burnt to the ground before fire services reached the scene. Streets leading into the estate had been blocked with torched and stolen cars, in what may have been a deliberate attempt to prolong the blaze.
Petrol cans found near the scene suggest that the blaze was arson. Although nobody was hurt in the fire, locals feel it is unlikely that the Phoenix can rise from the ashes this time.
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ Cat is saying. ‘I wanted to see you, speak to you, but Mum and Dad were practically standing guard …’
‘The estate’s not such a great place to be right now. You’re better off staying away.’
‘Is that what you want?’ Cat asks.
‘It’s not what I want,’ I say, frowning. ‘It’s probably what you should do, though. I’m just telling you.’
‘I don’t like being told what to do,’ Cat says. ‘By anybody.’
We sip our Cokes in silence.
‘Who’d do that, anyway?’ Cat wants to know. ‘Burn down a place that’s trying to help people?’
I laugh. ‘Drug dealers run the whole estate, Cat – Scully’s mates. We’re not meant to fight back.’
‘D’you think the police will find them?’
‘Probably not,’ I admit. ‘No proof. Nobody’s gonna grass up the dealers – they’re too scared.’
‘That’s terrible!’
I shrug. ‘Tell me about it.’ My eyes flicker up to the framed photo on the far wall, some old wrinkly black guy with smiley eyes and a dodgy print shirt.
‘That your grandad?’
‘It’s Nelson Mandela,’ Cat says, rolling her eyes.
‘Yeah?’ The name sounds familiar. I think there’s a community centre named after him, maybe, or a primary school.
‘He’s only one of the greatest freedom fighters that ever lived!’ Cat exclaims. ‘He stood up for the black people of South Africa, fought so everybody there could be treated as equal. He had courage and determination. He’s a hero!’
‘OK. What happened to him?’
‘He ended up being President of South Africa!’
I frown, and my brain struggles to remember. ‘He’s not the guy who got stuck in a prison way out on some island for twenty-seven years, is he?’
Cat looks shifty. ‘I never said that being a hero was easy. I expect old Nelson thought it was worth it in the end.’
‘You don’t get many heroes on the Eden Estate,’ I tell her.
‘There must be something we can do to get people fighting back,’ Cat insists.
‘You sound just like Mum – she’s got all these ideas for getting the Phoenix back in business, for fighting back in a quiet way …’
‘Well,’ Cat says. ‘At least she’s doing something!’
‘Oh, I’m doing something too.’
Cat’s lips twitch into a grin. ‘Yeah? What’s that then? A graffiti protest?’
I shrug. ‘It’s what I do best, isn’t it? As Mum says, there’s more than one way to fight back, and sometimes the quiet ways are the most effective. I’ve got i
t all planned out.’
Cat snakes an arm along the back of the settee, and I feel her fingertips moving softly over the nape of my neck. Suddenly every nerve ending in my body is tingling, and my breathing seems kind of shallow, as if I’m holding my breath.
‘D’you ever take someone with you, when you go out tagging?’ she asks.
‘Not … not usually,’ I say. ‘It’s easier on your own. Faster, safer.’
‘Maybe,’ Cat says. ‘Wouldn’t it help if you had someone to keep a lookout, though? Watch your back?’
‘Your mum’s not exactly crazy about me,’ I say. ‘I don’t reckon she’ll let you sneak out at three in the morning to go to the Eden Estate.’
‘But if I could?’ Cat pushes. ‘If I could get away, would you take me?’
No, my head tells me. Cat is trouble, and trouble is something I have more than enough of already. It’s the last thing you need on a graffiti hit, especially on the estate. Looking out for yourself is hard enough – I don’t need the hassle of looking out for someone else.
‘Maybe,’ I hear myself say. ‘You any good at spelling?’
‘Brilliant,’ Cat tells me. ‘Top of the class.’
That figures. ‘Well, my spelling’s not so good,’ I tell her. ‘Maybe you could help out. Wear a hat, gloves, scarf, dark clothes. And running shoes.’
I get up abruptly, walk across the kitchen, away from those soft, smooth fingertips on the nape of my neck, making my senses go crazy.
‘OK,’ Cat breathes, her eyes all lit up. ‘I’ll be there. I’ll say I’m sleeping over at a mate’s – someone nice and respectable. No problem.’
‘It’s not a game, Cat,’ I say, and I’m not just talking about the graffiti.
She laughs, green eyes dancing. Lucky has jumped up on to the settee beside her, and her long tawny fingers are stroking his fur now. ‘Oh, Mouse,’ she says. ‘Of course it’s a game. Don’t you know that? Everything is.’
Cat stands on the doorstep of the little, ivy-covered house and waves as her mum drives away. She chats for a minute to a pretty Asian girl, then her friend closes the door gently and Cat turns back towards the street. Lucky and I slip out from the shadows and Cat just about jumps out of her skin.
Lucky Star Page 6