Blood Family

by Anne Fine

  So nothing happened. I was allowed to drift along, and not unhappily.

  Until the school library closed for nine weeks for the repair of the roof.

  I managed for a while, with Nicholas driving me to the library in town every now and again. (Alice had given up on reading and taken to boys instead.) But then one of his architectural projects went awry, and he was working all hours to stay on top of things.

  So there I was, early one weekend morning. No homework. Nothing to do. And nothing in the house I hadn’t read before or didn’t want to read at all.

  Natasha pounced. ‘Stop moping, Edward! You’re driving me insane. You have been wandering around for two whole hours. Can’t you do something useful? Bake a cake, cook supper or something?’

  ‘Not in the mood.’

  ‘How about mopping the conservatory? The floor’s a mess.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Well, what about your bedroom? That’s a real tip. Why don’t you go under that bed of yours and sort out all your grown-out-of toys and games, so I can take them to the charity shop.’

  ‘I promise you I’ll do it soon.’

  But I had pushed my luck, prowling so irritatingly around the house. ‘No, Edward. You can do it now. It’s that or mopping the floor.’

  So up I went, and tugged the whole mess out from where it had been shoved, behind the bed cover. Old toys and jigsaws. Plastic figures from crazes at school. Board games with missing pieces. Mud-encrusted football boots that can’t have fitted for years. A heap of comics, magazines and Alice’s tennis racquet, reluctantly lent to me and mislaid for so long they’d had to buy another.

  And, right behind all that, my old Life Story Box.

  At first I didn’t suppose I’d even look inside. I simply hauled it out to clear space under the bed before I made decisions about what to shove back. I started with Alice’s racquet, for fear of sparking everyone off again about the fact that I’d lost it in the first place. Then I began to put things into ‘Trash’ or ‘Treasure’ piles, just as Natasha did when she was clearing the conservatory or other rooms of all the stuff Alice and I left about. Naturally, when I got down to all the awkward things I couldn’t decide whether to chuck or save, I lost the will to carry on. Pushing aside that messy heap, I opened the box.

  Rescue! Escape from drudgery! A book!

  I had forgotten it was there because it had been in the box since almost before I could read. It had meant nothing to me. It did now! Who would have thought the stink of it could last so many years? I was thirteen. Yet, in an instant, I was back inside that flat, astonished to be able to turn the book the right way up with fingers whose ends weren’t bleeding raw, or stare at the silvery italic title without first tossing back my matted hair.

  The Devil Ruled the Roost.

  What had Rob muttered as he led me out? ‘Didn’t he just!’ And now, repeating the words under my breath exactly the way Rob had, it came to me for the first time that he’d had Harris in mind.

  So how long had it been?

  Six years! Bryce Harris might be out of prison now. If we met in the street, I’d know that it was him, but he would pass me by without a second glance – me in my smart school trousers and my fresh white shirt, with hair that had turned lighter in the sun as the years passed.

  He wouldn’t recognize my voice, of course, because he’d barely heard it.

  I was safe from him.

  Oh, but the smell of that book! It wasn’t just a sour, musty, clinging stench. It was a living memory of cold unhappiness, a grim reminder of all those endless hours of terrified waiting and gathering dread. The room blanched white. I tried to do what Linda taught me all those years ago – lower my head between my knees, breathe out as slowly as I could, and count to ten. Her comforting soft strictures now echoed through my mind. ‘Steady, my poppet! Steady! You’re safe now. He’ll never get to you again. Now, come on, Eddie. Get control. Breathe out. That’s right. Keep breathing. Slowly, slowly. There’s my own precious baby. There’s my boy . . .’

  Gradually the panic passed. I wiped the sweat off my face and picked up the book again. This time I opened it and read the first line. ‘Right from the very start, my life was strange.’

  Hooked.

  Scrambling to my feet, I went into Alice’s bedroom. On the shelf over her bed there sat a little spinney of tubes and bottles and sprays. I sniffed at them all. Some were so sickly I couldn’t think how she could put them anywhere near her hair or face or body. Some smelled quite nice, but didn’t seem quite strong enough for the job.

  So in the end I settled on Teen Flower, which claimed to be ‘eau-de-cologne for the fresh girl about town’. I chose it partly because I liked the smell of it and partly because the bottle’s fussy, flowery design meant Alice wouldn’t be able to tell how much of the stuff had gone. Smuggling it into the garden, I sprayed the cover of the book all over. Then I replaced the bottle exactly where it had stood before, and went back to my room to read.

  You’d think that story had been written for me.

  It was the strangest tale. Just like myself, this boy had spent his early life hidden away. His mother had been clever, persuading him that he was ill. She kept him in a small back room, away from any windows through which he might be seen.

  Like me, he had been rescued. Just the same way, in fact, after a neighbour caught a glimpse of him one day and started wondering. Like me he’d gone to a kind family where he’d felt safe and happy. Then they had moved him – found some peculiar uncle miles away and sent him off. That’s when the worst trouble began. I loved the book. The plot was stuffed with ancient secrets and lies. There was a constant threatening mood about the story. And all the time, the boy was wondering about those early years. About his mother. What had she been about, locking him up like that? How could she possibly have thought it was the best thing to do?

  And that’s what set me off. Oh, I read to the end. (I couldn’t stop. I had to know what happened.) But even as I flicked the pages past, I was distracted. And once I’d clapped the book shut at the end, the thoughts swept in. What was my mother doing, letting herself turn into Harris’s punchbag, derailing her life and mine? By the time we were rescued, even I recognized she had less chance than I did of doing something – anything – to save us. She had become a mess, incapable of making a simple plan to listen to Harris’s footsteps echo away down the stairs, unlock the door and take my hand to lead me down the stairs and out, into the sunlight.

  No one becomes a shivering bag of terror overnight.

  How did it happen? How could her need to stay with Harris have been more important than keeping me happy and safe? How stupid can you be when someone slams a fist into a cupboard door, or in your face, then says, ‘See what you made me do? That’s your fault, that is!’ Nobody with a forkful of brain has to believe the damage and the violence is their fault, and feel obliged to stay around to try to sort it out or make amends – try to do better in future – creep around like a mouse, pathetically desperate not to set off the furies.

  Great thugs like Harris don’t rule the entire world. There are police stations. There are refuges. There are people like Rob Reed.

  There was the door! Why didn’t we walk through it before he started locking it on the other side whenever he went out?

  Why didn’t we walk through it before he punched her stupid?

  And once the book had set me thinking, I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t understand. All of those times I’d sat in Eleanor Holdenbach’s room, watching the clock hand creep round as she’d run through her questions! Was this what she’d been trying to get a handle on in all those sessions? I hadn’t let her in. I’d acted stupid. No. Not acted stupid. I had been that way, not even understanding that there were feelings that I might have had and should have had. Feelings like disappointment, curiosity, mystification. Stronger than that! How about a sense of pure betrayal at realizing that I must, for my mother, have counted only as second best.

  All just a
shadow of the feelings I was having now. Like surging rage. What sort of mother doesn’t try to protect her son from someone like Bryce Harris?

  Or was she as stupid as me? Had she been reckoning that, just so long as his filthy fists and boots were landing only on her own soft flesh, and not on mine, that was protection enough?

  Alice

  I saw him in the mirror once. Just his reflection. I was walking past the living room to get my trainers out of the conservatory. I must have been in socks. He didn’t hear me, anyway. And he was standing staring at himself in the tall mirror.

  Just standing there, in his school uniform, gazing into his own eyes. I don’t know why I stopped to watch. Maybe because he spent so much time surreptitiously watching me, I thought it was fair play.

  Then suddenly he raised a hand to push his fringe back off his face. And then he smiled. It wasn’t a real smile. He was just seeing what his face looked like, the same way Jessica and I do when we are working out what comes out best in photos.

  He watched himself for a while, then let the smile drop.

  Just like that.

  I would have teased him, but he looked so horribly alone and sad. I just rushed past to find my shoes and get upstairs again, out of the way.

  Eddie

  My big mistake was letting Nicholas and Natasha sense that my attitude towards my mum had hardened horribly. They wouldn’t let me just be done with my old life. Nicholas said to me gently enough one day, ‘Edward, you don’t think this would be a good weekend to see your mother?’ (No doubt at Rob’s suggestion, he’d tried to switch to calling her Lucy all the time, but kept on slipping back into old habits.)

  I made a stab at pretending that I hadn’t heard. But he persisted. ‘It’s been three months now. And that’s too long – both for her and for you.’

  ‘Not for me,’ I said sourly.

  He put his arm round my shoulder. ‘You can’t pretend she isn’t there. Or that she’s not your mum. Or that she isn’t how she is.’ He gave me a little shake. ‘I know the visits can be pretty grim for you. And probably they do seem pointless, what with her being so away with the fairies. But seeing her does matter, so we ought to go.’

  I shook him off. ‘If you think it matters that much, then you go!’

  Now that was not like me. A look of deep concern came over his face, and then he called my bluff. ‘All right, I will. I’ll go this afternoon. I won’t stay more than half an hour because I need to get the car into the garage for tomorrow’s servicing. But I will go. And I’ll be leaving here straight after lunch.’

  So after lunch I hurled myself into the car at the last minute, as he was backing down the drive. I wouldn’t speak to him for the first half of the journey, and I was sullen for the rest. He must have been exasperated by the time we reached the home. But I went through with it – went through the swing doors, spoke as civilly as I could to Harry on reception, pretended to smile at my mother, admired the set of rag dolls she had made, said that I liked the new curtains in her room. I offered her one of the cakes that Nicholas had brought along with us, and nodded obediently as Nicholas listed whichever school and sporting achievements of mine he could dredge up from the last weeks.

  And it was over. We were in the car and starting on the journey home. ‘There!’ he said, maybe a shade too smugly. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it.’

  I lost my temper. ‘Yes, it was!’ I shouted at him. ‘I hate it! It’s pointless! Her brain’s so scrambled that she doesn’t even really know who I am. She certainly doesn’t care. She is more interested in her stupid rag dolls than anything at all to do with me. I don’t know why we have to bother to come!’

  He’d had enough as well. ‘Well, we just do! Until you’re old enough to make your own decisions.’

  Here was a big surprise. ‘How long will that be?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ I realized how upset Nicholas was when he swung the car out into the busy line of traffic in far too narrow a gap. ‘Ask Rob. When you’re fourteen? Sixteen? How should I know how long adoption orders keep us to the rules?’

  I stared. ‘We only keep on coming here because of some stupid rule?’

  ‘What did you think?’ he snapped. ‘That Natasha and I believe it’s a grand idea to drag you back here four times a year to be reminded of something that should never, ever have happened to you in the first place?’

  ‘Oh.’

  I sank back in the seat. I hadn’t realized.

  The ride back was as quiet as the journey there had been. But there was quite a different atmosphere inside the car. Companionable exhaustion. I think that I felt older, realizing what was going on and knowing one day, not so far away, I’d have a choice.

  So after that I wasn’t quite so difficult about the schedule – even when Lucy was moved out of the nursing home into what everyone else called ‘sheltered accommodation’, but seemed to me to be no more than a house full of weirdos. Along with them came a procession of ‘minders’ who always seemed to get first pick of any biscuits going begging, and who infuriated Natasha with their habit of cheerfully stepping over all the empty drink cans scattered around as if the messiness of those sad souls was nothing much to do with them.

  But they were patient and kind, and put a deal of effort into things they must have reckoned more important than being tidy. They never ever forgot a name – not even of the visitors, like me, who came so rarely. They celebrated all the inmates’ – sorry, clients’ – birthdays, and took them on day trips. They held a lot of special parties for things like Halloween and Bonfire Night, to which I got some strangely illustrated invitations done by the biggest weirdo of them all, who was called ‘Box’. (‘You ought to keep those clean and safe,’ Natasha told me. ‘I am serious. I think they could be very valuable one day.’)

  So off we went, once every twelve weeks, with no more arguments. I think that I was ticking off the visits in my mind. Nothing was said, but generally, I noticed, we stayed an hour and twenty minutes, which I put down to Nicholas reckoning that was the shortest decent amount of time a son could spend with his mother. A moment after that, he would be glancing casually at his watch and saying things like, ‘Lucy, I wonder if you’d mind if I snatched Eddie away now. There are a couple of things I really ought to do when I get back.’

  She’d smile. (She smiled at everything. Sometimes I thought that being away from Harris had been enough to make all of her days a simple joy. And sometimes I thought she was just simple.) Nicholas would move behind to give me a tiny push. I’d force myself to smile more warmly and move close to hug her. She would cling to me. Nicholas would wait a moment before prising me away. ‘So sorry, Lucy. Must take him from you. But we’ll see you soon.’

  With one or two closed doors, and one last nod at whichever minder was in the kitchen today, we would be out at last.

  Then one day Alice changed everything. As I was clambering resignedly into the car, she asked, ‘Can I come too?’

  I didn’t think she could have realized where Nicholas and I were going. ‘We’re off to see my mum.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Why would you want to come?’

  ‘Because she’s your mother, you dim bulb. And I’ve never met her.’ Through the car window she appealed to Nicholas. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, it’s nice that I want to meet someone from Edward’s family.’

  Nicholas was clearly stumped. ‘I suppose it’s up to Edward.’ He turned to me. ‘What do you think?’

  I shrugged, embarrassed to the core. I’d rather have been staked out as a meal for fire ants than have Alice meet my mother. But she had asked nicely enough, and it was hard to say no to what sounded like a reasonable request.

  So I said yes, and Alice dived into the car, not even arguing about her right to the front seat. (As I’d got bolder about ‘turns’, she’d changed the grounds of her demand, claiming that she got carsick.) Usually on the way to Ivy House I had to suffer Nicholas’s delicate remarks about how much these visits m
eant to Lucy, and how glad I’d be ‘later on’ that I had kept them up. (The first, I doubted. And the second I, no doubt correctly, took to mean ‘after her death’.)

  With Alice in the car, things were quite different. She started off complaining about some joker in her class at school. She interrupted herself to accuse Nicholas of gross hypocrisy for moaning about another driver using his mobile phone while he himself was speeding. Then she told several rather good jokes and, after that, began complaining about her school again.

  And we were there! I couldn’t quite believe it. I’d no idea the journey could seem so short.

  As ever, Nicholas was full of tact. ‘All right, Edward? Any second thoughts? Because I can easily wait in the garden with Alice.’

  The garden was often filled with weirdos anyhow. And they had been good jokes. So I said, ‘No. Alice can come.’

  So Alice came. And she was wonderful, friendly and easy-going with everyone. She shook hands with the minders. She gave the massive woman who grins at everyone as if they are her best friend a big hug. She had a really long chat with one of the most awkward of the loonies, agreeing he could probably use the power of his mind to fetch down planes. She stepped over Box’s naked spread-eagled legs with such calm grace that you’d have thought he’d sat himself down on the floor in that hallway simply to act as a doormat in case she wanted to wipe her feet, and not in order to draw some giant cobweb high on the wall.

  And when we found my mother, Alice actually made her laugh. I don’t know how she did it. Afterwards, I asked Nicholas more than once, ‘What did she say? You were there! What was it Alice said that set my mum off, not just carrying on with that weird smile, but really giggling?’ But he could not remember either. All we know is that we went in the room and within minutes my mother – my mother! – was flirting and giggling: flirting with Alice and giggling at her jokes and flip remarks. Except in my most early memories – and they were blurred – I couldn’t recall my mother seeming so much in the same world as everyone around her. When Nicholas said, ‘Hey, Alice! If we don’t get back on the road soon, you’re going to miss your tennis lesson,’ I was astonished.