Things started off well in my first year at Raithswaite High though, maybe because everyone was new and people were making more of an effort. There were three of us for a while, and we were almost like a gang for a few months. Me, Lewis Johnson and Nathan Pierce. Lewis was a reader, like me, and I’d see him in the library at lunch. We were in the same year and the only two lads from that year in the library all the time and gradually we became friends. A couple of months into the term Nathan turned up in Raithswaite and wandered into the library on his first day and found us. The three of us knocked around together straight away. We even got out and about at lunchtime and started seeing what else the school had to offer. It worked well at first, but gradually I started to feel like a spare part, the weak link. Lewis and Nathan lived on the same estate as each other, and it was on the other side of town to me. They spent weekends and holidays together, staying for tea and sleepovers at each other’s houses. They swapped games and music and I hadn’t got a clue what they were talking about some of the time. I never felt quite comfortable with the two of them together is the truth. They got on so well, they shared a sense of humour, laughed in all the right places, and I was sometimes slow to catch on, slow to recover from a vanishing. I upset the rhythm. And if it was a bad day, or days, and I was thinking about the little boy, I knew I wasn’t much fun to be around, I knew I didn’t contribute much. But there were other things too. Their clothes were always brand new and everything they owned was expensive – little names or logos on the left breast, nothing flash, just enough to let you know it cost money, and it was obvious that cash was knocking around in a way that it wasn’t in my house. Most of my clothes have always come from the market or the shops in the precinct. And I’m not complaining, cheap clothes never bothered me, but when Mum said you couldn’t tell the difference between the clothes I wore and the ones from proper shops I knew that was untrue. Market clothes you can tell a mile off.
I only went round to theirs once. It was all planned. A big Saturday. We were having lunch at Lewis’s and tea at Nathan’s. Their houses were detached new builds on opposite sides of the same estate. You could hardly tell them apart from the outside and they even smelt the same on the inside. I’d never been surrounded by so many new things before, and I’d never been in houses where everything matched, where everything fitted exactly into the space it sat. It was the same in the lads’ bedrooms, everything new and in its place. They told me that they’d got to choose their own furniture and the colour of the walls. I remember being up in Nathan’s room and seeing a shelf of books, all the spines facing out into the room, bright and unbroken. I pulled a couple down and opened them up and there wasn’t a library marking in sight. In both houses you had to take your trainers off and leave them by the front door. I didn’t know that happened and there were holes in my socks where my toenails poked through. Nobody said anything, but I hated being there with my disintegrating socks and my crappy old trainers sat next to their trainers by the front door. Even their mums made me feel out of place. They were bright and friendly, coming back from the shops with bags full of expensive things, handing out treats like it was Christmas. It was the most embarrassing at Nathan’s when we had tea. His mum and dad sat with us and we were having spaghetti Bolognese. They had a glass of wine each, we all had big glasses of Coke, with ice and lemon, like we were at a restaurant. I’d never had spaghetti Bolognese before, it wasn’t the kind of thing Mum would cook, and it tasted nice, but I couldn’t work out how you were supposed to eat the long spaghetti. They all seemed experts at swizzling it around their forks, but I didn’t have the knack. When Nathan’s dad saw me struggling he said, ‘Tricky isn’t it Donald? Do what I do and cut the slippery sods up like this.’ He started chopping up his spaghetti, and it was kind of him to pretend like that, but it made me feel more stupid, not even being able to eat like they could. After tea when I stepped onto the thick carpet I wanted to sink and keep sinking down until I was gone. All day I felt like I was an actor on stage, an actor who didn’t know what play he was in, never mind know his lines. It was a relief when Nathan’s dad eventually drove me home at the end of the day. Me, Nathan and Lewis started seeing less of each other after that. I spent more time back in the library, and they came to visit me there less, and we reached a mutual understanding about the end of the gang without anyone saying anything or anyone getting too upset. Since then there hasn’t really been anyone other than Fiona. Looking back over the last four or five years, I don’t know what I’ve been doing with my time other than sitting in a silent house with my silent mum, trying not to think about what happened in Clifton and disappearing to places I’ve invented in my head. It was good to have Jake.
15
Mum has grown into her silence over the years and only breaks out from it when the hush has built to a point where it has to escape. All the quiet gathers itself together and explodes from her in an inevitable screaming and shouting rage. Anything can set it off – a bill that is bigger than expected, a plate that falls and smashes from the draining board. Something small will be the kindling, but the explosion won’t trigger until I provide the spark. I might have ripped the badge from my school blazer, I might have forgotten to wash up a cup, or I could have washed the cup and left the tea towel in the wrong place. She will quickly pounce on the offence and then there is nothing to be done other than stand back and wait until she rages herself out. Anything said during one of these rampages will only prolong the episode, any words offered will be used as fuel and turned against you. The only thing to be done is to stand back and wait. After the eruption she will take herself off to her room and I won’t see her until the next day, when she will be back to quiet and sad, and looking at me like I’ve stolen money from her purse. It wasn’t always the case. I remember in Clifton she would sometimes sing along to the radio, she would sometimes have the radio on quite loud. These days the radio only ever mutters quietly – grumpy men discussing news, politics and economics endlessly all day, or she tunes it to a classical station playing gloomy string music and turns the volume down until it sounds like a group of old men, whispering sadly into their beards. I think she’s keeping everything quiet so she will hear fresh trouble approaching. So she will know what I’ve been up to this time before the police knock at the door.
On Thursday nights she writes in her notebook. Thursday nights are the most silent of our silent nights. She boils up a pot of tea, opens a fresh white page and pushes the pen down into the paper. She writes the date in the top left-hand corner of the new page and then relentlessly fills four sheets with closely packed text, hardly pausing for thought. I’m not allowed to see what’s written on those pages, and I’ve no idea where she keeps the journal hidden. I’m dying to know what words she has discovered in herself because I can’t imagine what she has to say every week. Mum is unhappy, I know, but it doesn’t take an hour to write I am sad. I hate Raithswaite. Donald ruined my life. The only thing that can disrupt the flow of words is noise. The clock ticks too loud for her on writing night. People in the towns over the other side of Denple Hill turn the pages of their books too loudly for her on writing night. Once I got accused of breathing too noisily. Thursday nights I stay in my room and try not to provoke her.
It was a Thursday night when I saw the back of Fiona’s head down in the quarry, moving amongst the trees and bushes. It was a relief to have an excuse to get out of the house and I was with her in a few minutes. She unplugged herself from her headphones when she saw me and we fell into step together. We chatted about school and then there was a pause and I was about to ask how her brother was getting on in prison, but she got in a split second quicker.
‘I’ve seen you Donald. You and that little lad. I’ve seen you a couple of times now, coming and going about the place.’
Guilt tingled my scalp and rushed to the end of each fingertip and I didn’t know why. I nodded, like I was agreeing with a point she was making, but I didn’t know what to say.
‘So who is he
Donald?’ she asked.
On the second ‘d’ of ‘Donald’ a handbrake was released and from nowhere a lie started coming out of my mouth that was so convincing I believed it as I was creating it. Jake Dodd was a lad I had got to know through Raithswaite Library reading clubs. There were two groups. Ours, the teenage group, had each been given a kid to mentor from the younger group. We were supposed to encourage them to read books they wouldn’t normally read, to stretch themselves. I’d been assigned to Jake and got friendly with him and his mum and she asked me to watch him sometimes when she had to be off doing other stuff. It was so convincing and boring an explanation that I knew Fiona was believing it as I was telling her. I finished and she told me I deserved a medal. We carried on walking through the quarry and she described visiting her brother at the prison.
‘It stank Donald. All those teenage boys in their orange sweaters with nobody to keep clean for. I tried not to touch anything but I still had to have a shower when I got home.’
‘I bet they liked the look of you,’ I said. My body and brain was still fizzing from the question about Jake, and I said it without thinking, but Fiona stopped walking suddenly and said, ‘Some of them didn’t even pretend Donald. They just stared. And when I stared back they didn’t even blink. One lad spotted me as I came in, and he watched me walk all the way across the room and sit down opposite my brother. He never took his eyes off me. I don’t like being stared at at the best of times but that was horrible. The thing is you don’t know what they’re in there for. You don’t know what they’ve done.’
She shuddered as we walked on and put her arm through mine. It was the first time we’d ever really touched and it felt very grown-up. I knew it didn’t mean anything, but it felt good. Later on that night, as I lay in bed, I thought that maybe I wouldn’t go and see Jake on Saturday as usual. I would try and stay away from the school too. Let the little ones play by themselves for a while, they would be OK. And Jake would be fine without me checking up on him. I would plan a vanishing instead. I would go to the library and get the Times Atlas out and start to look for suitable destinations.
But come Saturday lunchtime there I was, sat on the bench at the playground waiting for him. I couldn’t let him down like that. The thought of him turning up and being left by himself with the afternoon to get through made me too sad. And it was a good job I was there. He walked into the playground, looked up to find me, and I saw it straight away – a shiny lump above his right eye, as big as an Adam’s apple, as purple as a plum. We didn’t walk up to the house like we normally did; he looked too tired for walking, so we stayed on the bench at the playground. He said that Harry had done it. Smacked him one in a fight, so Jake had smacked him one back, and then they went for each other and had both ended up in trouble. ‘What were you fighting about anyway?’ I asked him. Jake said he didn’t know. They were just fighting. He yawned heavily and there were dark patches under his eyes that weren’t bruises.
‘You tired Jake?’
‘Yeah, I don’t sleep so well when Mum goes out.’
‘You don’t like being alone?’
‘I don’t mind in the day, but not at night much, when she doesn’t come back.’
‘She doesn’t come back all night?’
‘Sometimes she doesn’t. It’s OK. We spoke about it. She’s always got her phone.’
She’s always got her phone. I didn’t know what to say.
‘How long has she been staying out all night Jake?’
‘Steve doesn’t come around any more. It started after that. At first she stayed in her room all the time but then she started going out. Mainly Fridays and Saturdays. Sometimes Thursdays too.’
I was angry but I knew to keep quiet. When I was calm enough to speak normally I asked Jake if she would be out that night.
‘She always goes to the Social on a Saturday,’ Jake said.
‘The Social on Wellgate?’ He nodded that was the place. We didn’t stay out too long that afternoon. I sent Jake home early and told him to get some rest. He should try and sleep if he wasn’t going to be sleeping later.
16
The Social on Wellgate is slipped between a shoe shop and a florist. It has a narrow, brown-tiled front and a dark corridor that leads to the unknown. Pubs are frowned on in our house and I can’t remember an occasion when Mum or I have ever been in one. A few pubs around town have shut up recently, they have grey grilles over the windows, but the ones in the centre are still open and ready for action. I settled myself out of the way, high up on the stone steps of Parrot’s Dentists where I could see up to the Red Lion and the Wagon, across to the Social, and down to the Dog, the Castle, and Romero’s fast food place. I’d brought a book with me because I knew it was going to be a long night, but I’d only been there twenty minutes or so before the drinkers began to appear, the street started getting busy and I had to put the book away. There was evidently a one-way system in place for drinking in Raithswaite and everyone travelled in a downward direction. The general order was Red Lion, Wagon, Social, Dog and then the Castle. I watched people moving in packs from pub to pub, chatting and pushing each other along. There were the smokers to watch too, coming in and out, borrowing lights, falling into conversation, groups merging together and slowly dissolving before growing again. I had to watch closely to make sure I didn’t miss Jake’s mum, but I was enjoying myself, it was fun to watch all this toing and froing in my town centre on a Saturday night. I gulped it down. This is what people did at the weekend, I understood. They didn’t all sit in with their library books and classical radio turned so low it sounded like an orchestra playing in a cave over the other side of a hill. They didn’t glower at the closed curtains when people shouted to each other in loud voices in the street. They were the loud voices in the street. It looked good fun to my eyes. Some of the women were spectacular in their shiny dresses and heels with their hair, big, smooth and glossy, almost sparkling. You could see the confidence a mile off as they strode their way along, bright shoes pointing forward. I enjoyed myself sitting up there, watching the night happen around me.
I’d been on the steps about an hour before I saw Jake’s mum making her way down the road. She was alone and unlike most people she bypassed the first two pubs and headed straight to the Social. She had on a dress and a pair of heels and there was colour on her cheeks, a redness to her lips, but there was none of the glamour or glitz of the other women to her. She was wearing the uniform, but it didn’t work like it should. Her skinniness let her down. Her flesh seemed limited to the amount that would just about cover her bones, and it made her look pinched and mean. There was nothing luxurious about her at all, not like the other women, who laughed and linked arms with each other and looked at men and didn’t care when they were spotted looking. Those women seemed to be having the time of their lives, like it was a Hollywood night out, not Raithswaite on a Saturday. Jake’s mum walked with her handbag clutched to her front, her eyes down to the pavement, glancing up only when she needed to, taking tight little steps through the town. And whilst I’m one to sympathise with the underdogs of the world, with the people in their cheap clothes, I couldn’t do it this time. All I could think of was Jake, at home, chips in his tummy, probably already in bed, lying under the sheets thinking about ghosts and ghouls and the terrors of the night.
I kept my watch on the Social front door and people came and went but Jake’s mum wasn’t one of them. At half eleven people started oozing out of the narrow entrance in a steady stream, looking for taxis, heading off down the road or joining the growing crowd at Romero’s. Town was shutting up and I had no idea where she’d got to. It wasn’t until the street was much quieter and Romero’s was down to its last few customers, and I was thinking that I must have missed her surely, that I saw her again. She came out of the Social with a huge man, a ponytailed man in a black shirt. He turned, pulled down a shutter over the entrance and locked a padlock. They walked back up Wellgate together, up towards the library and the square, and I
followed. She nestled herself in towards him, he dropped one of his bulky arms around her tiny shoulder and I thought it must feel as heavy as wet rope. They walked slowly, in no rush to get anywhere, her looking up at him like he was the Blackpool illuminations, eyes wide, her lips smiling. I trailed them all the way to the wrong side of town and a house on the Faraday Estate. I thought about Jake, alone in the dark little house on Fox Street. I waited across the road for twenty minutes and when other people started turning up with cans and bottles, and music started seeping out from the house, I knew that nobody would be leaving any time soon.
I didn’t want to scare him but I could think of no way of getting to him that would scare him less. I picked the smaller stones, but he still looked terrified when he pulled back the curtain and peered down into the backyard. I dropped the rest of the stones to the ground and waved for him to come down. A minute later he opened the back door wide enough for me to squeeze through. There was a warm fuzziness to him and he looked slow on his feet and I knew I’d woken him up. I followed him through to the front room and we sat down. He reached for the light switch but I told him he’d better leave it. He looked at me blankly and I realised he might have thought he was dreaming. ‘I was walking through town,’ I told him, ‘and I saw your mum coming the opposite way, and I didn’t like the thought of you all alone so I thought I’d better pop in and check you were all right.’
‘You saw my mum?’
‘Yeah, she was out in town. I don’t think she’ll be coming back for a while.’
‘Is it still night time?’ he asked, and I was annoyed at myself for being as inconsiderate as his mum.
How the Trouble Started Page 7