Being Billy

by Phil Earle

  Breathing deeply, I let my arm fall and the lamp slid to the ground.

  That was it.

  All the violence, all the fighting.

  Finished.

  I didn’t want it any more, didn’t want them to have to see it either, to grow up thinking it was the normal thing to do.

  Instead, I wiped the blood away from my mouth and risked a smile, although God knows what it must have looked like.

  ‘Louie? You still got that phone?’

  Louie nodded, his eyes still fearful.

  ‘Good. I need you to ring Ronnie. You know the number. Tell him I’m here and that he needs to come and collect us.’

  ‘Where are we going, Bill?’ Lizzie asked, her face flushed with tears.

  ‘Home for now,’ I replied, the words catching in my throat. ‘We’re going home.’

  CHAPTER 32

  The fallout was immediate and seemed to last for weeks. After enough time had passed, Ronnie always joked that they’d felt the tremors in France.

  At first, though, it was just plain terrifying.

  As we waited for the Colonel to arrive, I stood over Shaun, worrying that he’d break out of his stupor and have another go at the four of us. But although he’d moaned and rubbed at the bruises on his face, he made no attempt to do a runner.

  When Ronnie arrived, he wasn’t on his own. He burst in with half a dozen rozzers, like some kind of middle-aged SAS platoon. The officers were properly confused by the sight of me, a bloody-nosed version of the kid they were already looking for, and at first I thought they were going to slap cuffs on me. But then the Colonel took control and, to be fair to him, he was pretty awesome. In fact, you’d have thought he was the commanding officer the way he redirected the rozzers towards Shaun instead of me.

  It took them a few minutes to get him restrained and on his feet, and I could see the twins flinching further behind Annie as he lurched through the door, yelling some nonsense that he alone understood. It was only when the doors to the riot van closed and it tore away up the street that they dared to appear again, their faces stained with tears.

  The next few minutes were a whirl of sirens and people, as the room flooded with police, paramedics and social workers. Dawn arrived, looking like she’d stumbled into her own worst nightmare, and when she caught sight of Annie, still crumpled on the floor, I thought she’d need treatment herself.

  The paramedics were trying to help Annie, but were struggling to get past the twins, who were clinging to her. When they tried to prise them off, their cries increased and left Annie trying to bat the medics away.

  I leaned down, putting my arms around them both.

  ‘You need to let them have a look at Annie,’ I said softly. ‘She’ll be OK, but you need to give her a minute or two, right?’

  Reluctantly they followed me, though Lizzie refused to let her eyes leave her mum for a second.

  As I sat them on the settee, I checked them out for any obvious damage, relief washing over me as I realized that, apart from a small bruise on Louie’s cheek, they were both OK.

  The same couldn’t be said for Annie. She yelped as they touched her ribs and her breathing was short and troubled. It was obvious she was going to hospital, but the twins reacted badly when Dawn told them. Lizzie dashed back to her, clung desperately to her hand and refused to let go.

  ‘It’s all right, Lizzie,’ Dawn whispered. ‘I think it would be best if both you and Louie went to the hospital with Mum. We need to get you all checked over.’

  Once they’d wheeled Annie out to the ambulance, with the twins huddled on either side, attentions turned to me.

  ‘That’s some night you’ve had,’ said one of the rozzers, as a paramedic shone a light into my eyes. ‘We’re going to need you to come with us and explain what’s gone on. And I don’t mean just here either.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ interrupted Ronnie. ‘The lad’s gone through a lot and you can see how worried he is about the twins. Do us a favour, will you? Let him have the once-over at the hospital, make the sure the twins are OK. Then I’ll have him straight down to talk to you.’

  ‘We’ll need to see him the minute he’s finished. He’s a lot to fill us in on.’

  ‘I realize that. You have my word. He’ll be with you the second he’s done.’

  The journey to hospital was a quiet one.

  Although I knew there was nothing wrong with me, I was more than happy to go along for the ride. It bought me some time to think about what I’d say to the police, but more importantly it meant I could keep an eye on the twins.

  They were in a right state by the time we arrived. Annie’s injuries were worse than first thought. Something about internal bleeding, so they’d whipped her off sharpish for more tests, which left the twins alone with Dawn, who was struggling to keep them happy.

  After half an hour or so, we’d calmed them down enough to let a doctor take a look at them, and apart from their frazzled nerves there was nothing physical to report. Louie’s face was bruised, but there was no sign of concussion. The only scars he had would be in his head.

  I knew all about them and knew I’d let him down. That if I’d got there quicker, they could have been avoided.

  Once they’d been given the all clear, we were left with the next problem: how to get them home calmly without me? After all, there was no way the Colonel was going to break his word to the rozzers, and as for Annie, well, she wasn’t going anywhere, not that night.

  It killed me, it did. Seeing their reaction when they heard I had to go and see the police.

  Louie grabbed on to my waist, and when Ronnie tried to break his grip, he wailed and cried. He was so desperate to hang on to me that he even tried to bite the Colonel’s hands as he pulled him away. Lizzie was no calmer either. She fought Dawn with every ounce of strength she had until a couple of nurses carried her through reception and out to a waiting car. Her screams of ‘Billy’ bounced off every wall, making my ears ring with pain.

  They needed me. Now more than ever. And the only place I was heading was the police station. As Ron led me out to his car, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d see anything that night except for a cell.

  It felt like dawn by the time the rozzers got round to talking to me. It wasn’t of course, but they left me to stew for a couple of hours before ripping a strip off me.

  Ronnie sat beside me as we waited, prodding me into the details of what had gone on before arriving at Annie’s. What I’d done to land myself in so deep.

  He didn’t look shocked when I told him. Or angry either. He just looked old and tired, and for the second time in two days he looked human.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Bill.’ He sighed, rubbing at his eyes. ‘I just don’t understand what you thought you were doing, breaking in there. I can’t protect you when you do things like that. You know that, don’t you?’

  I nodded slowly, keeping my eyes on the floor. It felt like a week had passed since the confrontation at their place. I’d been so focused on getting to the twins quickly that it was only just dawning on me why I was here, and what I’d let myself in for.

  An hour later I was under no illusion. The rozzers had given it to me both barrels, reeling off a list of stuff I could be done for: breaking and entering, burglary, criminal damage, assault, car theft … By the time they’d finished, I reckoned they’d be ready to throw away the key.

  And that’s when Ron jumped in, but instead of giving me a kicking, he started defending me.

  Giving them the hard sell about everything I’d gone through. Not just about the twins leaving, but how I’d been abandoned by Annie, about the adoption breaking down, about the strides I’d taken to sort myself out.

  Gobsmacked, I was. Speechless. It was like he was talking about someone else, how he’d speak up for one of his boys. His precious, precious boys.

  By the time he finished, even the police seemed
to be wavering, but not enough to let me walk out with a smacked wrist as a warning.

  ‘We appreciate that Billy’s made progress recently, but let’s be frank, it’s not the first time we’ve had to speak to him about criminal damage. We have to look at the mess he’s created in the space of one evening. The upset he’s caused to a family. A family who offered him a chance in the past. You have to understand their point of view.’ All eyes fixed on me. ‘You can understand how they feel, can’t you, Billy?’

  I nodded, regardless of the emotions that flicked through my mind.

  ‘All I can say is that you can go home with Ronnie now, but we’ll be calling you back in as soon as we have a full statement from the Scotts. You’ve overstepped the mark, Billy, and this isn’t the sort of behaviour that can be shrugged off with yet another warning.’

  The journey home was even quieter than the one to the station.

  I knew there was no way Jan and Grant were going to let me off the hook this time and now we were on our own the Colonel seemed less forgiving than he had in front of the police.

  His angry silence said everything and it was a silence I didn’t dare break. So when my phone buzzed in my pocket I turned it off and continued to stew over the mess I’d created.

  The twins were home and safe. But it didn’t look like I would be there long enough to enjoy it.

  CHAPTER 33

  I felt like I’d been in a war when I woke the next morning. I don’t know what had crippled me more, the punches I’d taken from Shaun or the night’s sleep on the floor outside the twins’ room.

  Not that there’d been a lot of sleeping going on. The scummers had struggled to get the twins settled when they got back and when I went in to check on them I managed to wake them again. Can’t say that went down well with the Colonel. After giving me a stare that would shatter glass, he disappeared down to the study. God knows how much paperwork I’d created for him. A couple of pens’ worth at least.

  Eventually the twins had settled, but I just drifted in and out of fitful sleep, and dreams of sharing a cell with Shaun.

  Ronnie woke me by nine o’clock, plonking a steaming tea beside me.

  ‘I thought I’d better wake you up before one of the other kids did it themselves.’ His face was impassive, no sign of the ice thawing in his voice. ‘Get that down you, then jump in the shower. It might sort you out a bit.’

  He was right. I turned the water as hot as I could stand and let the spray batter me, easing out the tension that I’d been holding in my shoulders. Only when the tank was empty and the water ran cold did I get out, ready to face the mess that I thought would be waiting for me.

  As it turned out, no one said much to us that day. Ronnie spent most of it holed up in the office, and whenever I tried to grab a word with him, he shooed me away, the phone clamped between his shoulder and ear.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time he appeared and even then his focus was on the twins.

  ‘Right, grab your coats, you two. I thought you might want to go and see your mum at the hospital.’

  The twins bounded to the cloakroom, smiles pasted to their faces for the first time that day.

  ‘And you need to stay inside, Billy, you hear? Part of your bail depends on you being housebound, so I’d suggest you do as you’re told for once.’

  I didn’t fancy going out anyway. I mean, where was I going to go? It wasn’t as if I had anyone I wanted to go and see. Not any more.

  I spent the next hour balled up on my bed, trying to sleep, but when that didn’t happen, I switched on my phone instead, to be faced with the message I’d ignored the night before.

  It was from Daisy:

  Call me. I didn’t know. You must know that? I’m sorry, D

  I hit delete instinctively, though I couldn’t work out if I wiped it out of anger or embarrassment. What was she playing at? How could she claim to have been in the dark about Jan and Grant? How could she not have realized?

  I tried to replay our conversations back in my head. Tried to remember the number of times I’d talked about them. How many times had I mentioned them by name? I must have done. I just couldn’t remember when.

  I reckoned that by deleting the message I could put it out of my head. Forget about the doubts that were invading my thoughts. But Daisy wouldn’t let it go. The texts kept coming. Not every hour or anything, but a couple of times a day for the next three days:

  U have to believe me. I didn’t know. Y would I lie to u?

  But they didn’t stay so calm for long. Four or five messages in, they were more typically Daisy:

  What is yr problem? Doesn’t the truth matter 2 u? Sort it out and call me

  So what did I do?

  I bottled it and threw every spare thought I had into the twins.

  It was like we were living in limbo. I suppose we were all in shock as well.

  The twins in particular didn’t know their arses from their elbows and were twitchy whenever someone new came into view. You could hardly blame them.

  The Colonel came and went with his shifts, but spent a lot of time on the phone behind closed doors, or down the hospital with the twins. It wasn’t until five days on that he sat us down with Dawn, and my heart raced with anticipation as he told us what he’d been working on.

  ‘I’m so sorry, you know,’ he said, sighing sadly, ‘that you’ve had to go through the last few days. You didn’t deserve it and, in so many ways, it’s our fault. If we had any idea that Shaun was still around, then we’d have played it so differently.’

  The twins huddled closer to me, freaked by the mention of his name.

  ‘One thing we are sure of,’ he continued, ‘is that your mum didn’t play a part in him turning up like that. From the way she’s reacted to all this, that’s obvious. She’s taken it very hard, you know? She’d worked a long time to get herself straight, but she’s going to need a little bit of time again now, just to get herself back on track, and so we can monitor her.’

  ‘We can still see her, though, can’t we?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘Of course you can,’ soothed Dawn, taking over the reins. ‘Our plan is still,’ and at that moment she focused on me, her eyes a mixture of fear and regret, ‘to have the two of you back home with her. But, as Ronnie says, we can’t put a time on that. It could be a month or two, but it could be longer. Whenever it is, it will be when it’s right for your mum, but more importantly, when it’s right for you.’

  My heart sank, although it was only what I was expecting. I’d seen Annie’s face that night, the fear in her eyes, and although I knew she was still capable of putting on a front, she wasn’t that good an actress.

  Dawn rambled on for a bit about support and counselling, but didn’t mention anything to do with Jan and Grant in front of the twins, which was a relief.

  Neither Ronnie nor me had breathed a word of it to them, not with everything else they were dealing with. It wasn’t until she sent the twins off to watch some telly that the conversation turned to me.

  ‘Right, Bill,’ Ron said, shifting his weight forward in his chair. ‘We need to talk about your mess as well.’

  I held his gaze, knowing whatever was coming my way would be pretty much deserved.

  ‘What you did, Bill, at Jan and Grant’s, was unacceptable. You know that, don’t you?’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘Unacceptable to me, to them, but most importantly to the police. Regardless of whether you had a key or not, and believe me, I don’t want to know how you got it or even how many times you used it, you were breaking and entering. It’s not your house any more, Billy, do you understand me?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Which brings me on to their car. What in God’s name did you think you were doing? You’re fifteen years old. Do you realize what would’ve happened if you’d had a crash, hurt someone, killed someone even? You do realize just how much trouble you’re in, don’
t you?’

  ‘Course I do. And I’m sorry. I just lost the plot when I found Daisy …’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, Bill. Whatever your reason is, it can’t justify the way you behaved. Whatever it is that’s happened with Daisy, you need to deal with it, because, what I hear, she needs a friend right now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, my interest pricked. ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘No, of course I haven’t. But I have spoken to Jan and Grant. In fact, I’ve spoken to them more than my own wife these last few days.’

  ‘And what did they say? About Daisy?’

  The sight of her face as she smoothed out the photo of her dad was still fresh in my mind.

  ‘If you want to know about Daisy, then you’ll have to speak to her. What you need to be worrying about is the Scotts. Grant in particular.’

  ‘Is he still pissed off?’

  ‘That doesn’t even cover it, Billy. I mean, how did you feel when you saw Shaun in Annie’s house, when he had no right to be there?’

  I couldn’t look him in the eye as I understood what he meant.

  ‘You broke into his house, smashed up a room, assaulted his wife and stole his car. You’re lucky he’s not been round here himself.’

  ‘Maybe I should talk to him, then?’ I said, although the prospect filled me with fear.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Billy. Not after all the good work me and Dawn have been doing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As I said, we’ve been talking to him a lot, to the both of them. And we’ve managed to get him to drop the charges.’

  ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘It wasn’t easy. In fact, you’ve got Jan to thank more than us. She’s the one who talked Grant round.’

  I felt my entire body relax, although my head was spinning.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered. ‘How did you manage it?’