by Luke Palmer
Before the dull thud of the cyclist’s body striking the red car’s tailgate, before the sound of tinkling glass, before the slow tick of the bike’s still-spinning wheel coming to a stop in the seconds afterwards – before all of these things, there is the worst sound of all: the crack as Jamie’s leg breaks.
FORTY ONE
I imagine car doors opened and people shouted and telephone calls were made.
But I wasn’t there to hear them.
I imagine a crowd of students gathered around the screaming form of Jamie in the road.
But I wasn’t there to see them either.
I was running.
I still am.
As I run, I think I imagine the insistent siren of an ambulance.
But I’m not sure.
None of this feels real anymore. Or maybe it’s the opposite; that everything is suddenly far too real.
*
I get home and up to my bedroom, shutting the door and heading straight to my desk. My laptop. When they come, they might take it away. They might see what’s inside.
Without hesitating, I pick it up and go as fast as I can on shaking legs out into the garden, towards the shed. Inside, I put the laptop on the floor and rummage behind the beer stack for a brick.
I wince at the sound of the heavy brick meeting the laptop’s aluminium shell. But I raise it again, bringing it down hard. The glass smashes and the computer bends up at the edges. Shards of screen and a few keys leak out where the laptop no longer closes properly.
I hit it again. And again. And again.
But what if it’s not enough? What if they can reconstruct what’s here?
Grabbing my bag, I stuff the blistered and crumpled machine inside.
Ten minutes later, I’m standing under the hedge, the wrong side of the locked door. I try to climb the wall again, using the branches of the hedge to help. But I’m panicking. It takes a few attempts to get started, and I take the skin off a few knuckles against the wall. After a few deep breaths I try again and manage it. Then I’m pulling myself onto the top of the wall, looking down at what must be a three-metre drop into the garden.
I go backwards, holding onto the top of the wall and easing myself down until my arms are stretched. It’s still a metre to the floor.
I land in a flowerbed, on the soft soil that Dana and I turned over on Friday.
Only three days ago.
I slash through the bush in the corner and there it is, the well, still visible in the early evening light. I have to move a few half-rotten planks, the wood crumbling in my fists as I pull at them, the nails at the ends soon giving up and slipping from the wood with a damp screech. I make a big enough hole to post the remains of the laptop through, and I let it go, listening for the crash as it hits the bottom. There’s a second sound as all the bits of screen and keys and circuit boards land just after. It is a sound like rain.
I sit for I don’t know how long, breathing heavily, clutching my school bag to my chest.
Soon, I’m vaguely aware of a lump in the bottom of the bag. I reach in, past the schoolbooks, my pencil case. My hand lands on a rustling ball of brown paper. Inside, a dozen brown spheres that look like onions.
Grandad’s bulbs.
FORTY TWO
When I get back to the house a few hours later, I’m not surprised by the police car that’s parked next to Mum’s in the driveway, or the voices coming from the sitting room stop as I let myself in.
Mum comes into the hallway. She’s been crying. More than usual. She gives me a look which is part pleased-to-see-you, part are-you-ok, and part something else which I don’t recognise. She steps back and points, weakly, towards the sitting room. ‘There’s someone to see you.’
‘I know,’ I say as I walk past her and, as I do, she puts her hand out to stop me, placing it very gently on my cheek. I smile, weakly.
On the sofa, and taking up most of it with her yellow jacket, bulky vest and an assortment of things around her waist, is a police officer. She stands as I come in.
‘Hello Josh.’
‘Hi.’
‘I think you know why I’m here.’
I nod. ‘Is he OK? Jamie?’
‘Yes, he’ll be fine. He’ll stay in hospital overnight, but he’ll be out in the morning.’
I swallow. ‘What about the other one? The boy on the bike?’
The police officer looks at the floor for a second. ‘In hospital as well. We’ll let you know if there’s a change. But it doesn’t look good. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.’
A pause. A long one. I can hear Mum breathing.
‘Why don’t you sit down, Josh?’ The police officer points to the easy chair in the window.
I notice as I round the room that there are three cups on the coffee table, only one of them still full. Cold.
I sit. The police officer pulls a notebook from a pocket of her vest.
‘Jamie says you weren’t right today. That you seemed angry. Want to tell me what’s going on?’
I sit in silence.
‘OK, why don’t you talk me through the incident. You were on your way home, and…’
‘I pushed him.’ I say, bluntly. ‘I wanted to hit him but I pushed him instead, and he fell backwards and then the bike came along.’
‘Why did you push him, Josh?’
‘I wanted him to leave me alone.’
‘Was he threatening you in any way?’
‘No. He was…’ I trail off, aware of how ridiculous it sounds.
‘He was what?’
‘He was … being nice. I didn’t want him to be nice to me.’
The police officer steals a look at Mum, hovering in the doorway.
‘Well, Josh,’ Mum speaks. ‘It seems that Jamie is still being nice, despite what his parents want. And despite what another witness says. He says that he pushed you first, and that you were playing around and it was an accident.’
I don’t look up, but feel my cheeks burning.
‘Is that right, Josh?’ The police officer asks, her pencil poised above her notepad.
‘Yeah,’ I manage, hoarsely. ‘If that’s what he said, that’s what happened.’
‘The lucky thing for you, Josh, is that Jamie doesn’t want to take this any further. He’s happy to see this as an accident. Which means the school won’t be taking it any further either. However, the fact is that your actions directly caused an injury – quite a serious one – to a cyclist. Whatever the two of you were up to, it was reckless and dangerous. It can’t happen again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?’
I almost whisper, ‘Yes.’
‘We’re going to need to speak to you again, at the station. We need to be absolutely certain of what happened before we can take the next steps, if there are any, and as you fled the scene – which doesn’t look good at all, by the way – we need your statement quickly. Is that clear?’
Again, a whisper, ‘Yes.’
‘Mrs Milton, do you think you’d be able to bring Josh along tomorrow, at about 10, so we can get his statement? You’ll need to be there with him, I’m afraid. Sorry if it’s inconvenient.’
Mum’s voice is barely louder than mine, ‘That’s fine.’
There are a few more exchanges, mostly about where to park and who to ask for at the front desk. When Mum lets the police officer out, I rush upstairs and close my bedroom door. A few minutes later, I hear Mum do the same.
FORTY THREE
The police station is cold – not just the air temperature, but the seats and the cramped reception area and the looks on the faces of the people who walk in and out as we sit in the foyer. It’s not really a foyer, just a few plastic chairs and a table covered in ripped magazines wedged into the small space in front of a glass screen. After a few minutes, an officer behind the screen tells us to come through the door. We’re taken through to an even colder, even smaller waiting room. The police officers’ faces behind their desk are cold as well. So is the tea in the vending machine.
Mum and I don’t speak while we sit in the cold chairs, drinking our cold tea, and when the officer from yesterday comes in and greets us it shakes us both from a kind of cold-induced stupor.
We’re taken through to another small, square room with greying tiles on every surface and a large sheet of one-way glass on the wall. The officer explains that the interview will be recorded and asks if I understand that I’m not under arrest or caution at this point, but if I want a lawyer I can have one.
I nod.
I tell the tape recorder what happened; that Jamie and I were mucking around on the way home and it got out of hand. And I say that it was very lucky that the woman driving the car was watching us so closely and that she stopped in time or it could have been much worse. I know that.
And I say about the cyclist not paying attention, and that he had his headphones in or was using his hands free to talk to someone or something. And that he didn’t brake before he hit Jamie’s leg, and that I think Jamie had been sitting in the road for about three seconds before he was hit, and that I might be wrong about the timings.
And the police officer says that the other reports they’ve had, including from the driver of the white BMW, all suggest the same, and that the cyclist was on the phone to his girlfriend while he was cycling along, and that he has now woken up in hospital and, despite a few nasty bruises, will probably be OK, and has said he was stupid for not wearing a helmet and that he hopes the driver of the red car doesn’t expect him to pay for the damaged lights.
The police officer finishes by repeating that this could have been a lot worse, and that we were all very lucky. She says lots of things about if the traffic wasn’t so slow, or if the cyclist wasn’t so lucky, or if Jamie and I hadn’t been so reckless – she uses that word a lot, reckless – then none of this would have happened.
And with a sigh, shared with Mum, she says I can go.
Unless, she adds, there’s anything else I want to tell her.
At this point my heart hammers in my chest, desperate to shout out the truth about what I know. The officer sits on the other side of the desk, looking at me somehow as if she already has a pretty good idea. Maybe she even knows who Martin is. My heart is telling me that this is the place to do it, and the time, but I swallow those thoughts down hard, unable to erase the sight of Carl’s fierce eyes, his snake-like, threatening voice, the way that voice has wormed its way inside my head.
And, perhaps, because I know – in another part of me that seems to have stopped working – that the plan needs to go ahead and it’s just me that’s the problem.
So, with one last searching look from the police officer, we leave the police station and head home. Or at least I think we’re going home. But we don’t. Mum pulls out onto the main road and starts driving in the opposite direction. Away from home. Away from school.
It takes at least ten minutes to realise where we’re going. To realise that we’ve started following the red ‘H’ signs at every roundabout.
When I do work it out, my heart hammers at my chest all over again.
FORTY FOUR
Jamie is in his own room on the children’s ward. When we go in, he’s lying back on a big pile of pillows, watching morning television. Any other situation, and I’d make a joke about the teddy bears on his pillow cases, or the multi-coloured butterflies painted up the walls. His left leg, encased in a blue cast, is propped up on still more teddy-bear pillows. He turns his head as we enter.
‘He’s still a bit sluggish after the operation, aren’t you, Jamie?’ says the nurse as she lets us in.
Jamie gives a half-smile – to the nurse and Mum, not to me – and goes back to looking at the TV.
‘I’ll be outside, Josh. You need to do this,’ Mum whispers as the door closes slowly behind me on its sterile hinges.
For a few seconds, we maintain the silence, both staring at the familiar TV studio and the overly smiling presenters.
‘Jamie, I—’
‘Don’t.’
I take a step closer to the bed. ‘Does it hurt?’ And when there’s no response, ‘Stupid question. Sorry.’
‘That’s a start.’
‘I don’t know what was going on yesterday. I was … out of it. I wasn’t myself.’
‘And who is that, exactly?’ Jamie’s eyes level on me now. ‘Just who are you, Josh? Because I’m not sure that I really know anymore. One minute you’re back to your old self, you’re talking again, for the first time since … I don’t know when.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I feel like I’m being told off by a parent. There’s something reassuring about it.
‘And then the next minute you’re hanging around with that Alan guy and his psycho brother. They’re pricks, Josh. Nasty, violent, racist thugs. Do you know what they’ve been doing to Ahmed?’
‘No.’
‘Spitting at him in the corridor, stealing his stuff when we’re in PE. Not big stuff, just little annoying things like school books or the top of his drink bottle. It’s obviously them. And the names they call him. They’re unrepeatable.’
It feels like a heavy weight is rising up through my stomach. Like a bucket being pulled from a deep well. There’s a sucking vacuum of air behind it, trying to pull it back down, but it’s coming, slowly. And I want it to come. I want it to rise up that shaft, back towards daylight. I know the words they’re using to Ahmed. And as I talk to Jamie, and the bucket rises, I want to tell him that I hate them too. Each time I hear them it’s like a bite taken out of me. Not from my flesh or anywhere like that, but somewhere deeper. And those words aren’t even directed at me. I can’t even imagine how they make Ahmed feel.
‘They keep asking Ahmed what’s in his backpack, like they’re expecting him to say it’s a bomb or something.’ Jamie stops short. Gives me a strange look, like he wants me to confirm that my dad’s murderer’s backpack looked nothing like Ahmed’s.
How would I know?
He carries on, his voice dropping, more sympathetic. ‘And none of the teachers that overhear it know what to do at all. They just stand there looking disappointed or say something like “that’s enough”. And the spray paint on his house a few months ago. Did you know about that? That was almost definitely them, even though they were wearing masks.’ Jamie’s spitting his words out now. ‘They’re cowards. They don’t go to their own lessons any more, just seem to wait around for him. But I get the feeling this is just the start of it.’
I can’t speak, the words sticking in my throat. The bucket’s getting closer. I can almost see the shimmer on the water, reflecting the sky.
‘And then you, the other week, facing him down that morning. It was like you were on their side, Josh. You’re not like that. I don’t know what poison they’re feeding you, but you need to stop.’
‘I know,’ I manage, eventually. The water is just a trickle, but it will have to do. For now.
‘Or someone’s going to get hurt.’ Jamie smiles a little at his own joke, intended or not.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that.’
‘It wasn’t you. Not entirely anyway. It was that guy on the bike that broke my leg. No more goals from the corner flag for a while at least.’
I make a limp attempt at a laugh. We stare at the screen together. The presenters have stopped smiling and are looking seriously straight down the camera lens. Images of a dusty, bombed-out city, smoking in the heat of the sun. The caption reads ‘Aleppo, Syria’.
‘You know, his dad died out there. Ahmed’s, I mean.’
‘What?’
‘Ahmed’s dad. He worked for some kind of charity or something. Legal stuff I think, or maybe medical. Really important, apparently, so they didn’t get out when the fighting started – there were too many people they were helping, or maybe they thought it wouldn’t last. Ahmed said that one day his dad didn’t come home. Nor did a bunch of other guys he worked with. There was no word from any of them for a week, and his mum tried all the hospitals, or what was left of them. Ahmed’s par
ents had made a pact where if that happened, to either of them, then the other would get out, run away. They’d explained all this to Ahmed. Can you imagine that? Being a little kid and your parents sit you down and explain that they might not come home one day?’
I can tell that Jamie knows he’s close to the line with me. He’s looking at me, gauging my response as my mind flashes back to that that last, warm Sunday evening with Dad, the joke about a last-minute holiday. If it were possible to know the future, would I have wanted to know my life was about to change, violently and irrevocably? Would I have wanted to know that he wasn’t coming back? Or am I luckier than Ahmed that our tragedy dropped out of a clear blue sky rather than one already full of smoke and falling bombs?
‘So that’s what they did, Ahmed and his mum. Ahmed won’t talk about it, the journey, except he said that they were in a refugee camp in Turkey for a while. And I haven’t pushed him. It took them a while, months I think, but they managed to get to the UK and claimed asylum. I think it was pretty hard on them.’
More silence, me dumbstruck. I know that feeling, how every direction you’ve ever known is suddenly taken away from you and you don’t even know up from down. I can’t imagine trying to get somewhere, to save yourselves, whilst carrying that grief.
Jamie’s picking at the top of his cast. ‘They still don’t know where Ahmed’s dad is.’
I think about that for a moment. No one to bury. No body to mourn.
We look again at the screen, the camera panning across the skyline of what used to be a modern city. People used to go there on holiday. Now it’s just piles of rubble and burnt-out cars where the parks and plazas used to be. So much destruction. So much ruin. So many images to zoom in on, looking for a single pixel.