Jack chased a cat. Bully told her off; they were on manoeuvres and you didn’t chase cats, you kept your head down.
Three gardens in from the lane he found a tap on the outside wall of a house. There weren’t any lights on inside, just a glow coming in from next door but he still ducked down as low as he could while he assessed the situation. And Jack was taking it more seriously, waiting, invisible in the long grass.
He turned the tap on as quietly as he could but it still squeaked when no water came out. He twisted it backwards and forwards and he felt like screaming and crying. And then he calmed down and thought about why there were no lights on and no water on in this house; why somebody might have turned the lights and the water off.
He peered through the kitchen blinds into the darkness. He wondered how long they’d been gone for, weeks by the look of the grass and all the flowers in the pots, growing mad. He thought about picking one of the pots up and chucking it through the window but that would make a lot of noise, and that sort of smashing always woke everyone up on his estate. Then he remembered that people who lived in houses sometimes left keys outside, in case they couldn’t get back in, and he went looking under the doormat and feeling round the window frame. He even lifted up all the pots to look underneath them with his lighter but there was no key.
It began to rain then, just wetting the air, nothing heavy, but he went and sat under the little porch, too tired to move off just yet. A dog next door started yapping. Something big and fluffy, he could tell. He warned Jack not to bark back and then he thought again about breaking in. He picked up the pot on the step under the porch. It didn’t have anything much in it, just a couple of twigs like the pigeon had in its beak on the poster in crustie town.
Why did these people have all these flowers and plants in pots when they already had a garden? It made him angry again and he liked the feeling of it, taking the edge off just how tired he was.
He weighed the pot in his hand. He would chance it, throw it through the kitchen window and hope the neighbours were bad neighbours and wouldn’t bother to come looking. He got ready, and then as an afterthought, he pulled the twigs off the pot and the whole lot came out, roots and everything. And just before he lobbed it, he heard a clink on the patio. He got down on his knees and saw what looked like little golden teeth shining in the dirt.
When he unlocked the back door with the key he thought it was a squat for a minute. That he’d got it wrong. There was washing-up crusting in the sink and the bin stank worse than his bins and the kitchen was just a mess. But the electric was on when he opened the fridge and he left it that way for a bit of light.
Nothing much in there that he recognized as food. There was hard butter and some jars of funny-looking jam. The cupboards weren’t much better. He found something in a yellow bottle called cordial and a loaf of dried-out bread. He thought the cordial might be wine but it just tasted sweet, and he drank it neat and then buttered the end of the stale loaf of bread under his arm, and ate it the way a rat might, gnawing at the end. Then he defrosted some meat for Jack. And while the microwave was whirring, he had a look round the rest of the house.
When he found the shutters were closed on the front windows he turned the lights on. He wasn’t impressed. It was a right mess in here too: clothes draped on sofas and hanging off doors. The state of the place was bad. And all the walls were white like they’d just been given the keys to the place by the council, and there were no proper carpets anywhere. There were some paintings on the walls that brightened it up a bit but they were rubbish. The best one was a naked lady with lovely wavy hair stuck inside a big seashell, but the rest of them weren’t of anything: worse than Cortnie used to do with her felt tips.
He fed Jack and then went upstairs. He flicked another light on. He had never climbed upstairs inside a house before. All the stairs between the floors in the tower block were on the outside. It was a strange feeling and he clung on to the banister that wound up the wooden hill like he was in a fairy tale, pictures of a mum, a dad and two kids on the wall. Lots of books upstairs, all different sizes and colours, one room just full of them, no bed or nothing, just books, a desk and a chair. Bully preferred magazines but he didn’t mind books as long as they were interesting ones with real stuff in and not full of stories. What he didn’t understand, though, was why people kept them for so long after they’d read them.
When Bully went into the first kid’s room he could tell from the clothes and the sort of school books that the boy was older than him. He had a look in the wardrobe, kicked a few things about and then he saw a skateboard propped up in the corner. He took that and a laptop into the next room, the girl’s room. The bed was messier than the boy’s, clothes all over it, and he felt comfortable sleeping somewhere that didn’t seem looked after. He lay down on the bed, Jack next to him, getting used to laying on beds now because she’d never been allowed to back at the flat.
Something else he couldn’t work out … spending all that money … on books … and not a single telly in the house. And as he began to drift off to sleep he tried to imagine a place where there was no TV in the bottom of a deep dark cave without electricity, because even in prison they gave you something to watch.
For the second time in three days Bully woke up to find a girl staring at him. And though this one was older, just like his half-sister she screamed when she saw Jack.
Bully jumped up, fell off the bed. By the time he was on his feet the girl was gone and a man was in the doorway.
“What you doing here, boy?”
The man looked like someone he knew. He didn’t know who. Then he realized that this was the man in the photo, the dad. He was still confused. He had a feeling that he’d slept through most of the day. Had lost a day. He was angry with himself. He was already in today and racing through it. It was like breaking into a note. Once you did that, it was as good as gone.
“I’m—” He was about to say going but experience had taught him it was always best to just go and he made a bolt for the door. The man surprised him by getting out his way, then shutting the door after him. Bully was halfway down the stairs before he realized Jack was still in the bedroom.
“Let ’er out!” He could hear Jack throwing herself at the door, pawing, barking, desperate.
“Why you here, boy? Tell me and I’ll let it out.”
Bully felt for his penknife without thinking about it, moving back up the stairs, anger boiling and rocking him about as if he were a cheap kettle.
“John! Just let him go, OK?” A woman downstairs – the mum – the girl next to her, long hair tied up in a messy knot.
Bully fumbled with the blade but he couldn’t get it open because he’d ripped his nails the other night and the edge of the big blade was too greasy and wet.
“OK, don’t be silly. Put that away, boy,” the man said quietly, like he was trying to be a teacher. Bully, though, didn’t like being called a boy.
“John, he’s got a knife!” Bully looked back down and the mum and the boy were there now, the boy older and bigger than him, in jeans and a T-shirt, looking like his mum had bought him in a shop.
It was the girl, though, who began to move up the stairs. It unnerved him, that did, a girl coming towards him, and he waved his unopened knife at her as if to say no, he wasn’t going to give it to her. And he retreated further, back towards the dad.
“Jo! Stay there, Jo. Alex, give me the phone!”
“My battery’s gone!”
“Go and get the landline then!”
“Gimmie my dog back,” said Bully. He was on the landing now, near enough to kick the man. “Give me my effing dog back now.”
“Calm down, boy. Look, just calm down, boy,” the man said and Bully saw his fear and it scared him, like seeing a face suddenly flash up against a window. Bully looked down at his hand to see why the man was scared and now, magically, the blade was out. He couldn’t remember doing it but he couldn’t put it back now.
“Give me—”
he said, but then his anger boiled dry and he felt hot and empty and he remembered for the hundredth time that he’d lost his mum’s card and he’d never hear her voice again. His mouth twisted and something like a sneeze worked up behind his eyes and too late he realized he was going to cry.
After the man let Jack out and Bully stopped crying and Jack stopped snapping and barking and growling, the dad held out his hand. For the knife, Bully thought, but he went for the other hand, his right hand, to shake it.
“The name’s John,” he said in a quick, funny voice that sounded foreign. The way he said words was as if they meant something extra to him.
They sat him down with a cup of tea. Bully was starving. They let him put the sugar in, smiling a little wider with each spoonful. The mum was called Rosie. Bully thought she looked a bit old to be a mum, her hair running out of colour, the curls just hanging on at the ends. She said that they’d just got back from abroad, visiting some girl called Siena in Italy.
“Sorry,” she said, looking around the kitchen. “Sorry it’s such a mess. We left in a bit of rush.” And he realized they were apologizing to him for the state of the place.
How old was he, they wanted to know. He lied automatically and said sixteen. The boy, Alex, sniffed, didn’t think so. Was he homeless? He gave a nod, though he called it sleeping out. How long? He wouldn’t tell them, didn’t want them knowing how many days in case it was too many and they went and told the Feds. What had happened to him? He’d lost his spot, he said, and his shoes and his coat. He left out Janks and the dead man and said nothing about his numbers coming up. Did he want to phone anyone, his mum and dad, to tell them he was OK? He just shrugged at that one because it wasn’t that he didn’t want to, just that he couldn’t.
The mum finished up by saying that he must stay for something to eat. He didn’t say no and didn’t say yes until they had him sat down at a table eating risotto. It looked like thick sick. Except for meaty burps, he’d never swallowed any sort of puke before, but it tasted the right side of cheesy. He finished it quick, to get going, but they kept asking him questions and talking. And he didn’t know how they ever finished their food, all the talking they did. It was very tiring having to look up all the time when you were eating.
“You can stay the night, Bully, if you’d like to,” the dad said while Alex, the boy, was stacking the plates up, and Bully could see his face go solid like what was left of the risotto.
Bully had heard the boy going on to his dad earlier: I don’t care what you say, Dad… He broke in … totally wrecked Mum’s lime tree … and why was my skateboard in Jo’s room? You can’t trust him … you should definitely get the police in, just in case he’s done something…
Bully didn’t like him. Things he couldn’t put into words – not just his size and strength or the clothes he wore, but the way he held himself, the way he moved about, as if he owned the place.
“Yeah, OK then,” he said in the end about sleeping, because even though he had slept all day he was still very tired and heavy and his body ached, and it was better than some shed. And if he got up early he still had two days.
The mum ran him a bath and put clothes out and said she would wash his.
“It’s just some stuff that doesn’t fit Alex any more.” It was a T-shirt and a coat that said Superdry on it and a pair of jeans and a pair of trainers, Adidas ones that were way too big until the mum got him some more socks to make them fit.
“They’ll do you for now,” she said.
“You can have ’em back,” he said.
“No, no. They’re yours to keep.”
He didn’t say anything, but when he got his winnings he’d get a pair of Reeboks. Box fresh. And more than just one pair. He’d get a pile of them, like they had in the shops. No, what he would do … he’d buy the shop. He’d buy all the shops so he didn’t have to go shopping. Either that or do it all on the internet.
The mum did his bath with bubbles in. Before he got in, he caught himself in the big long mirror – this skinny kid, all the cuts and bruises – and it frightened him, like he was changing into someone else. And he was glad of the bubbles in the bath.
“You look like you’ve freshened up,” the mum said when she saw him downstairs. “Are you OK?” His nose kept twitching with the smell around him coming and going because of his cold and he realized it was him, right under his nose, the clean clothes on his back. “Would you like something else to eat or anything to drink?” He shook his head but she was still staring at him, at his head. The rubber bands had snapped when the snapback yanked his ponytail and his hair was all over his face now.
“Is there anything I can do? What about – would you like me to tidy up your hair for you? Just the ends?”
“Mum,” the girl said. “That’s so random.”
“Why, what’s wrong with that? I used to do yours when you were little – younger,” she corrected, seeing Bully’s face begin to fall.
“You never did Alex’s!”
“Well, he was always fussier than you.”
Bully liked that idea that Alex was fussy about his hair. Only girls were fussy about their hair. Phil used to shave his whenever it got too long, right down to nothing so that it looked like someone had dotted his head in full stops. His mum went mad every time Phil did it but he said he was only saving them money.
“His hair’s cool like that, anyway. A lot of boys have it like that now, Mum.”
“S’all right,” Bully said. He liked this idea, that it was “cool” to have long hair, but he’d been thinking if she cut his hair and he wore his new clothes it would be like a disguise for getting north. So he nodded again. She got him to sit on a chair in the kitchen and put a towel round his neck and Jo sat at the table and watched, said she would make sure her mum didn’t do anything too drastic.
The mum was right up in his face and he saw she wasn’t pretty like his mum. She had wrinkles all the time, even when she wasn’t talking, and her hair was very crinkly and her eyebrows looked like they were fighting for space on her face, but she talked to him nice, not like some people did to kids and dogs.
“When was the last time you had it cut then? If you don’t mind me asking?” she asked him.
“Dunno,” he said, though he did.
“Was it when you were at home?” He nodded, would go along with that.
“Is home a long way away?” He nodded. It was miles away.
“And do you want to go back?”
He shook his head and he heard a loud snip.
“Mum!” said Jo.
“It’s all right. It’s fine. Go and get me the mirror and I’ll just even it up a bit…” She pulled a concentrating face for a minute, and the wrinkles started joining up, and then she asked, “Why don’t you want to go home? Is it something you can tell me?”
“No,” he said, not wanting to shake his head in case she cut his ear off. And it wasn’t something he could tell her. It would take a lot of haircuts to do that. Not to explain everything – that would take just a few snips – but to let himself do the telling – that would take a while.
Jack let out a short sharp bark, jealous of all this attention Bully was getting.
“Oi, shut it,” he said. Jack sat back down, her bowed front legs still slightly raised, as if to catch any affection that might fall her way.
“He’s well trained, isn’t he?” the mum said and Bully felt his heart go, and he wanted to tell her then, surprising himself. But the girl, back with the mirror, started talking.
“I didn’t mean to scream earlier on. It was just that your dog – he looked a bit scary. What’s he called?”
“Jack. He’s not a he dog, though,” he confided, seeing as she was a girl herself. “She’s a she dog, a bitch.”
“Oh, right,” she said, laughing like people did, who didn’t know about dogs and thought it was just rude to call a girl a bitch.
“So why did you call her Jack then?” asked the mum.
“I dunno,”
he said, though he did.
“So, what sort of dog is Jack then? A pit bull?” said the girl.
He couldn’t speak. He was shocked by what she’d said.
“She’s not a pit bull. She’s nothing like a pit bull. She’s a Staffy, a Staffy cross!”
“Oh right, sorry. I don’t know much about dogs. Those kind of dogs all look sort of the same to me, but yours is really nice,” she said. And that just about saved her in his eyes. And then the mum said of course not, of course Jack wasn’t the same as any other dog. And what a lovely dog she was, and they didn’t say anything more about different breeds after that.
They had a TV after all. And Bully was amazed at just how small and old and fat it was. He wasn’t surprised they hid it in a cupboard. He would be embarrassed too if he had a TV like that.
The news came on. London. A shot of the guns and the war museum made his eyes go wide.
“That’s the Imperial War Museum,” said Alex. The interviewer man with the microphone was standing in the park giving an update. He didn’t say anything about Janks, just an unidentified male killed some time between Saturday night and early Sunday morning. The news finished without anyone really noticing because of all the talking they were doing, the whole family. They all talked. The mum was the worst, words Bully couldn’t even say, let alone understand.
“Shut up, Dad,” said Jo when he complained about her changing channels. Bully looked to see if this might earn her a back-hander but it didn’t.
“Where would you like to sleep tonight?” the mum asked him when the TV went off. “There’s the spare bedroom in the loft but it’s a bit of a mess up there, or you can sleep on the sofa if you like. It’s up to you.”
Lottery Boy Page 13