by Sarah Butler
At quarter past two his phone bleeped with a message and he fumbled it out of his pocket.
Spoke 2 Shelia (psychic) 2day. Iain’s doing just fine! Ur nan sends her luv. Looking 4ward 2 the big bday bash! Alan.
Stick cupped his hand around the screen. He didn’t want anyone sitting near enough to read it to think that he was a nutjob too.
Iain’s doing just fine! He read the line again, then glanced up at the people milling across Piccadilly Gardens in shorts and T-shirts and sandals. It struck him that they must all know someone who was dead too.
Iain’s doing just fine! Is he? Are you? Stick fixed his eyes on the jumping fountains, the sun reflecting off the water as it leapt across the concrete. He wondered what Shelia looked like – if she was into floaty clothes and bangles and crystal balls, or maybe she wore a suit, had her hair cut short and her lips painted bright red. He shoved his phone back into his pocket, rested his chin on his hands and looked for J.
She didn’t come. He waited until half past. Quarter to three. She wasn’t going to come and he didn’t have her phone number, or know where she lived. So that was that, as his nan would say. Move on.
At three, Stick stood and walked down Market Street, turned onto Spring Gardens and changed his euros back into pounds at the post office. He put the crisp banknotes and handful of change into his pocket and went to TK Maxx, where he chose the least girly writing paper he could find – creamy A5 sheets with zebra print around the edges. He stood in the queue, his eyes roaming the store, but she wasn’t there either.
No harm in it, he told himself, sitting on the bus back up Rochdale Road. No harm in trying. Except he hated writing. Except she’d never read it. But fuck it.
Dear J,
He crossed out Dear.
I waited in Piccadilly Gardens today.
Which sounded like he was pissed off with her rather than the other way round. He scrunched up the paper and took another sheet.
J, I’m sorry. You were being nice and I was being a cunt.
He reached for another piece of paper.
J, I’m sorry. You were being nice and I was being an idiot. I went to court and Owen Lee wasn’t even there, he was in prison and they had a camera and then a screen in the court so I didn’t properly see him. The trial’s not until February but I thought it would start then and I felt like I was going to explode, if you know what I mean.
I’m sorry, he wrote again and then stared at the zebra stripes and his shitty handwriting, all cramped up and spiky-edged. My mum always says ‘sorry isn’t good enough’ but I can’t think what else to say, except I’m an idiot, but you know that.
Stick
He wrote his phone number underneath, then reread the note and added:
PS. I like your hair blue.
He folded the sheet in half, stuck it into an envelope with a picture of a zebra’s face on the back flap and wrote J on the front. It looked lost in the middle of the paper so he drew a circle around it and then another circle around that.
Back at the wasteground, he picked up half a brick, stood on the back of the ripped leather chair and hauled himself onto the window ledge. There was a smear of cigarette ash in the mortar between two of the bricks, which was probably from weeks ago but it made him feel better all the same. He put the envelope over the ash and put the brick on top of it, making sure the J was visible.
Think you’re fucking Romeo, is what Mac would say. Think you’re some kind of romantic. Stick looked at the envelope and without warning the noise was back in his head, his skin hot, his heart leaping in his chest. He made himself jump down onto the chair and get out of there, before he ripped up the letter, before he smashed anything else, before he fucked up more than he already had.
16
The letter stayed there a whole week. Stick kept going back to check, and each time the envelope was softer, grubbier, still unread. And then the weekend after he’d left it, it disappeared.
Stick climbed up onto the window ledge to make sure. No letter. It meant nothing, he told himself. Some scumbag had probably found it and would start texting him porn any minute. Or a bird had picked it up in its beak and dropped it somewhere. Stick straddled his legs over the sill and peered left then right but couldn’t see the envelope. And then he saw the piece of glass sat on top of the half-brick. Not just any piece of glass, but one of those that has been smoothed off by the sea, all the sharp edges gone, the surface scuffed by sand into a pale, opaque green.
He was going soft in the head. But still he pocketed the glass, and when he got home he put it on the table in his room next to the writing paper with the zebra pattern, and then he picked it up and held it in his left hand as he wrote another letter.
J. Thanks for the present. If it was you. If not, ignore that.
He nearly screwed the paper up again, but then he opened his left hand and looked at the glass, which had turned darker with the sweat from his palm, and carried on.
It made me think about the sea. You said you liked the sea? I want to invite you to Blackpool, for my birthday. Will you come? Saturday, 10 a.m., Piccadilly station, outside Thorntons. I’ll pay. Stick.
He folded the paper in half, wrote J on an envelope and circled it twice, then unfolded the paper and wrote:
PS. It’s my 18th. I’m not a loser with no mates, but I was going to be in Spain, with Mac. He’s 18 three days after me. We’d got big plans. Not big big plans. Beer and beaches and nightclubs, that kind of thing. Anyway, we’re getting Chinese at mine Saturday night. You could come (my nan’s boyfriend is mental – be warned).
Mac had been desperate to turn eighteen. Responsibility, respect, he’d say, puffing out his chest. No more fake ID cards and staring down bar staff, and people thinking they can pay you shit-all for working as hard as anyone else. Stick couldn’t help thinking he’d rather be back at school. Not that he liked school – he didn’t – but at least it was pretty straightforward. At least you didn’t have to make decisions the whole time.
He left the letter in the same place as before and then hung around for a bit, but J didn’t show. He wandered over to the brick shed and looked at the smashed-in metal boxes. Two of the fans still turned lazily. He’d managed to damage the third so it stayed stuck in one position.
Stick rubbed at his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping – spent the nights lying in bed staring at the crack across his bedroom ceiling, and the dust on the light shade, and the cobweb in the corner that swayed sometimes as if someone was blowing it. As soon as he closed his eyes he’d start thinking about Mac – blood staining his shirt; or Owen Lee sitting at the table, his eyes blank; or J holding her shoulder, her eyes tearing up.
When he got back home the house smelt of chocolate cake. His mum was at the sink, washing out the mixing bowl.
‘I thought I’d make two,’ she said. ‘And then you can take one over to Iain’s mother. What do you think?’
Stick shrugged.
‘It’s nice to keep in touch with her, love. That kind of thing’s important. And chocolate cake’s comforting, don’t you think?’ She lifted the bowl onto the draining board and turned round. ‘Are you at your dad’s tomorrow?’
Stick pulled a face. ‘Might not go.’
‘Has he talked to you about—’ She narrowed her eyes like she was trying to read his mind.
‘I’m not selling double glazing.’
‘I thought it was a great offer. Training. A decent salary. Local.’
He was supposed to be in Spain, working in a bar, getting a tan. He was supposed to be enjoying himself.
‘You could try it out,’ she said.
Stick shook his head. He waited for the lecture – you’re eighteen next week; you need to have a plan; you can’t just mooch around here for the rest of your life; most people don’t get an opportunity like that; look what’s happening in Greece, Kieran, you should count yourself lucky – but it didn’t come. Instead his mum took two chocolate sponges out of the oven, stuck a knife in each
to check they were done and turned them onto a metal cooling rack.
‘Did you make the appointment?’ Stick asked.
His mum tipped icing sugar into a sieve and shook it over a clean bowl, the sugar coming down in fine white drifts.
‘With the GP?’ Stick said.
‘Oh.’ She laughed, like that would make his question go away.
‘Mum?’
‘I haven’t had a moment, love. I’ll do it. I will.’ She dropped a spoonful of butter into the bowl and started stirring it into the icing sugar. ‘These’ll be cool enough to ice in a minute. Will you drop one round? Give her my love?’
Stick turned and went up to his room without saying anything. He opened the drawer in the narrow desk he used to do his homework on and pulled out the roll of banknotes he’d changed at the post office. A hundred was a good amount, he reckoned, counting out five twenties and putting the rest back.
Stick’s mum put the cake in a cardboard box, told him to hold it at the bottom and watch where he was walking. Outside, the little kid from next door was wandering about in his pants, chewing on a piece of toast, but there was no one else around. Stick walked slowly. The cake smelt good. The sun was warm on his face. Stick thought about Alan’s text message. Iain’s doing just fine! He imagined ringing Mrs McKinley’s doorbell and Mac answering, grabbing the cake out of Stick’s hands and running off to cut himself a massive slice.
Mrs McKinley answered the door. She didn’t look good – her eyes bloodshot, her hair greasy. She was in a tracksuit that was too big for her. It might even have been one of Mac’s.
‘Kieran!’ She held her arms out wide. He could smell the booze on her breath when she leaned in to kiss him.
‘Cake,’ he said. ‘Mum made it.’
Mrs McKinley stared into the box.
‘You said everyone kept bringing food, I know. But—’
‘That’s lovely.’ She looked up at him. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’
Stick followed her into the flat. It looked like someone had broken in and turned the place over – the living room covered with Mac’s stuff: clothes and shoes, DVDs and Xbox games, wires and headphones. Two black dumb-bells sat on the black leather armchair – I’m going to get fit, Stick Man, Mac had said; it had lasted a week if that. Five phone chargers. Who needed five phone chargers?
‘That boy had so much stuff. You wouldn’t believe.’ Mac’s ma waved her arm around the room, shaking her head. ‘I can’t stand it,’ she said. ‘Everywhere. He’s everywhere.’ Her voice cracked as she spoke. ‘I thought—’
After the fire, two guys had come round and repainted Sophie’s room, a tiny box room next to Stick’s with a narrow window looking out over the school car park. The insurance paid for it. Pale creamy walls. A new white carpet. But the smell of smoke was still there, under the smell of new paint. And there was the faintest of smudges in the corner above the window which no one ever mentioned, or painted over. They got a new bed, wardrobe and bedside cabinet on the insurance too. After the men had finished, Stick and his mum and dad went upstairs and stood in the room, which smelt of paint and carpet and plastic wrapping and smoke, and said nothing.
Weeks later Stick had wandered in, bored after school one day, and found a photo of Sophie in a large silver frame propped on the bedside table, loads of her stuff piled around it. Her toy dog, black with smoke; her shoes; a coat button; hat; dummy; the bracelet their nan had given her when she was born. He’d stood and stared at his sister and then gone downstairs and asked his mum what happened to people when they died, and she stared at him and shook her head and said, ‘I don’t know, love. I’m sorry, I don’t know.’
Mac’s ma stood with her arms loose by her sides, crying. ‘It’s so quiet these days,’ she said. ‘With Iain not— There’s just that dog upstairs. Barking fit to drive you mad.’
‘Do you want a slice of cake, Mrs McKinley?’ Stick asked.
‘I need a drink,’ she said.
‘Tea? I can make tea?’
‘A proper drink.’ She looked at him, wild-eyed. ‘Would you get me one? Just a nip of vodka. It’s in the fridge.’
Stick escaped to the kitchen, put the cake on the side and poured out two large measures of vodka. As he went back into the cluttered living room, he thought of Sophie’s room and all the things lined up on the bedside table. They weren’t there any more and he couldn’t remember when they had gone. He hadn’t asked and his mum hadn’t said anything. Maybe she’d just decided: enough. Maybe she still had everything, in a box under her bed. Maybe it was the same with not going to the graveyard – she didn’t want to look at it any more.
‘What would he think of me?’ Mrs McKinley held the glass up towards the window as if there might be something to see in it other than vodka. ‘Drinking in the afternoon.’
‘He drank in the afternoon,’ Stick said, and she almost smiled – he saw it, the smallest twitch of her lips.
‘I did his room.’ She let out a little hiccup and pushed her fingertips against her lips like she’d said something wrong.
‘What do you mean, did?’ Stick moved towards the hallway. Mrs McKinley didn’t try to stop him; she just stood holding her glass, staring at nothing.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he heard the noise he made when he opened the door.
The room was empty.
Not just clear shelves and a bare wardrobe. It was no-shelves, no-wardrobe, no-fucking-carpet empty. A grubby square of a room. The window had been stripped of its curtains. The ceiling felt too low and the bare lightbulb too small. The floor was hardboard, the glue which had stuck the carpet down splashed in big, dirty globs across it. It made him think of J’s place near the prison – the floor warped with rain and underneath it all those neat blocks of wood too bloated to fit together any more.
When he went back through, she wouldn’t look at him.
‘Where’s the furniture?’ he said. ‘Mrs McKinley? The furniture?’
‘They’ll take it away,’ she said, her voice brittle.
‘Who are they?’ Stick couldn’t stop his voice from shaking.
She waved one hand as though it didn’t really matter, then looked up. ‘I did give you his shoes?’
Stick nodded, and she smiled as though everything was as it should be. The dog upstairs started barking. Yap yap yap, pause, yap yap yap, pause.
‘Is this because you’re broke?’ he said, as calmly as he could.
She frowned.
‘You’re skint and so you’re selling his stuff ?’
She shook her head.
‘I’m going to put it back. I’m putting it back, Mrs McKinley. He’s not been dead two minutes. You can’t do this.’ It was like he’d drunk three cans of Red Bull – the energy fizzing through his body. He couldn’t stand still.
Everything had been piled into her bedroom: the wardrobe; chest of drawers; black-and-silver TV stand; the bed dismantled and propped against the wall. The carpet had been sliced into strips, rolled up and shoved into bin bags.
He dragged the bags back into Mac’s room, pulled out the carpet and unrolled the pieces one by one. It was like a jigsaw, except that nothing quite fitted together and he ended up with patches of wood showing and bits of carpet overlaid on top of each other.
He’d replaced the bed and the TV stand and had his arms around the wardrobe, walking it down the corridor, when he saw Mrs McKinley standing in the doorway to the living room.
‘I took the carpet up,’ she said, and rubbed her fingertips together. ‘All those spiky bits round by the skirting boards.’ The dog was still barking. ‘And the dust, coming up when I pulled it.’ She kept on rubbing her fingers. ‘It’s heavy, carpet.’
‘I’m putting this back,’ he said, pointing at the wardrobe. ‘I’m going to put everything back.’
She shrugged, like she didn’t care either way, and wandered into the living room. Stick put everything back the way it used to be. Bed by the window, TV against the wall, wardrobe in the corne
r opposite the door. He was sweating by the time he’d finished.
When he went back into the living room, Mrs McKinley was perched on the edge of the sofa, her glass and the vodka bottle on the coffee table in front of her, next to a pile of old schoolbooks and a toy plastic giraffe. Stick took the twentypound notes out of his pocket.
‘I brought this for you.’ He held out the money and Mrs McKinley looked at it like it was still in euros, or some other currency she’d never seen before. ‘It was for the trip,’ Stick said. ‘I thought you might— Well, I don’t need it now, do I? Go on. Take it.’
She kept shaking her head, kept saying, ‘No, no, I can’t do that. No.’ And then she started picking up things of Mac’s – stuffed toys and Xbox games and old T-shirts, and saying, ‘You must take something. You must take whatever you want. There’s so much stuff.’ And it was Stick’s turn to say, ‘No, no, I can’t. I’ve really got to go, Mrs McKinley.’
Before he went, Stick walked down the corridor and stood by Mac’s bedroom door. It looked nothing like Mac’s bedroom, just looked like a shit, square room with shit IKEA furniture and a slashed-up carpet. It looked like no one lived there. Stick put the twenty-pound notes in a neat pile on the pillow and left.
17
Mac would think he was an idiot, leaving messages under bricks and then standing outside Thorntons at Piccadilly station like a spare part, twenty minutes early, on his own birthday, waiting for some crazy blue-haired girl who wasn’t going to turn up. He’d shaved, even though he didn’t much need to; sprayed on half a can of deodorant.
After ten minutes he went into Thorntons and bought J one of those chocolate mice, with the peppermint insides, its face long and sleek underneath the plastic wrapping. As he came out he saw her, at the far end of the station, and felt his stomach twist. Her hair was pink again, tied up in a ponytail, and she had a black canvas rucksack slung over her shoulder. Stick put the chocolate mouse in his pocket and left his hand in there. He stared at the floor, at the departure boards, at the people sitting on the benches and coming up the elevators – anywhere, so she didn’t see him waiting for her, so he didn’t look too keen.