Grow

by Luke Palmer

  And as quickly as it came, the anger goes again. It’s as if someone opened the window and sucked all the rage out into the growing twilight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.

  ‘Me too, love. Me too. And I’m sorry to you, Dana.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For having nothing suitable for you in my wardrobe. I’ve not been shopping in years. Maybe we could go together one day.’ She offers us both a watery smile as we pull into the driveway. ‘Maybe if I can’t get to know my son, I can get to know his girlfriend.’

  I’m about to protest again about the ‘girlfriend’ label before Dana has to, but I’m interrupted.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Milton, I’d like that very much.’

  ‘And I keep telling you he’s got a name you know, Mr Walters. Could you please just call him Martin from now on?’

  And my stomach hits the floor.

  *

  His first name’s Peter. PMW are the initials on the timetable. But he’s known by his middle name. Martin. It takes Mum more than a little convincing from both me and Dana to turn the car around and head back to the police station.

  While we’re on the way, everything settles in my head. It all starts to make sense. All those comments about my dad after I’d asked him to stop. Him reading the newspaper while I was in the room. What was it Ahmed had said? A pretty good lever to pull. He’d been pulling on it subtly since I’d first gone back to school.

  And that first Thursday session, the conversation we’d had – they’d had – in front of me. How it had all sounded so natural at the time. But it had been planned. Of course it had. And it explained why Alan and Vince treated him differently from any other teacher.

  And the fact that he’d been in my house, had sat at our table. My skin won’t stop crawling. We’re stuck in traffic – shoppers coming home – and I keep re-seeing Mum touching him on the arm. Where else had she touched him? I can’t think about it.

  ‘Did you know?’ I ask Dana outside the station as we wait for Mum to park the car.

  ‘No idea. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Alan and Vince—’

  ‘Alan and Vince? They know. Definitely. The way they are with him.’

  I think about it. The language they use, the way Carl commanded that room at the Crown. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’

  The woman behind the glass screen is surprised to see us again, but buzzes us straight through. We find Sargant Prangle at her desk. She unfixes her eyes from her computer screen and blinks a few times before realising we’re standing in front of her.

  ‘We need to tell you something else,’ I say.

  Mum did tell him about the websites, she admits when we’re back in the room with Sargant Prangle and the tape recorder again. Or she didn’t tell him so much as ask advice ‘for a friend’ and he’d worked it out. But of course he’d already known. And before that, he knew about how I’d got the bruise on my face.

  I feel a little uncomfortable listening as Mum recounts the details of their meetings. The first few times they’d bumped into each other at the supermarket, the flirtatious coffees and text messages. Like earlier, I try to turn my mind off, to focus on other things.

  He’d waited for a catalyst, struck me while I was most vulnerable. Maybe he and Carl had even planned the punch at the party. It seems like years ago now. Hard to believe it’s not even been six months. Then he, ‘Martin’, had set himself up as some kind of confidante, had invaded my home, pretended to offer some kind of support when all along he’d been calling the shots. It was probably him who’d told Alan where I lived, had given him the textbook to drop off. Him who wanted to know about where Dana was yesterday. And it was him who had ordered me to smash that shop window.

  Perhaps Mum is picking up on my thoughts. She grows more and more incandescent with rage as she talks more and more about the interest Martin had shown in me, how he’d always ask after me and who I was seeing. He seemed, she says, far more interested in me than in her.

  ‘This can, of course, only be taken as speculation,’ the Sargant says when Mum’s finished. ‘We’ll follow it up, of course. But all we have is a first name to go on here. That’s the only common factor.’

  But it was him. It is him behind this plan, this savage and inhuman plan. And the way that Carl spoke at that meeting, the way he controlled the room. He could only have learnt that from Mr Walters; it had his stamp all over it.

  Back on the road home again, Mum is still furious. At herself, mostly. ‘I can’t believe I could have been so stupid. What was I thinking?’

  Dana does a good job of calming her. She knows about men, about what they’re capable of saying, of doing. Mum talks to her as if there isn’t a gap of thirty years between them.

  That evening, we put the fire on, order take away and wrap ourselves in blankets in front of the TV, trying to make the world no bigger than our living room. We flick between re-runs of old TV shows and a couple of films to avoid the advert breaks. At one point, the old show that Mum and I used to watch together is on, and we switch across just in time to hear ‘it is what it is.’ I look at Mum, she looks at me, and despite the day it’s been and all it’s held, we start laughing.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Dana smiles.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I’ll explain another time.’

  There’s warmth in this little nest we’ve created – our own, unbreachable corner of the universe – that I know won’t last. Can’t last. We’re all nervous; we laugh too loudly, or jump on the back of each other’s comments too quickly. We’re trying to pretend we’re not, but we are. Even so, I feel a lightness this evening that I haven’t felt for years. Or maybe I’ve never felt it, not even before Dad died. The only way I can describe it is that it’s like after you’ve been swimming in a cold sea on a hot day; as if your skin has been scrubbed clean, or has re-grown, brand new. And in that moment when the sun hits your skin and you can feel your body just drinking the warmth in, and as your foot hovers above the dry sand at the tideline, and you know you’re about to get its grains all over your foot and your legs and everywhere else, you feel a moment of being … I don’t know … clean, maybe. Perfectly clean.

  *

  ‘Right kids, I’ll leave you to it,’ says Mum at about half past nine, reluctantly unwrapping herself from the blankets and picking up the tottering pile of plates and foil cartons. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘’Night,’ we reply.

  We listen as she bustles around in the kitchen, and to her footfall on the stairs.

  ‘So you are my girlfriend, then?’

  ‘If you like. You don’t have to ask me or anything. People don’t really do that anymore.’

  ‘No.’ I’m trying to sound informed, well-versed in the ways of the modern relationship.

  ‘Are you going to kiss me then?’

  And I do. I lean over and I do. Her lips taste sweet, somehow metallic and a little sharp. It’s like putting a battery on your tongue. We do it again and again.

  SIXTY SIX

  That night, while I’m lying on the sofa, covered in blankets, while Dana is asleep upstairs, I dream of Dad’s tree again. The ants have gone, and so has the little plastic sheath, and the whole tree is green. Not just the leaves, but the bark as well. Grandad told me years ago how to check if something is still alive in the middle of winter; you scratch a little bark off with your thumb, and if there’s green underneath, it’s good and healthy. I don’t remember much else when I wake up except this luminous, totally green tree.

  I hear footsteps on the stairs and assume it’s Mum. Then I hear the catch on the front door.

  I run into the hall to find Dana putting on her shoes in the open doorway.

  ‘What are you doing? The police said to—’

  ‘I know. But I plugged my phone in. It went flat last night. And Carl’s been calling, and messaging me. He says the police were at his house last night but he got away. He was bragging at first. Then he started getting angry that he couldn’t find me. The
n he worked it out. He knows it was me that told them. And then he sent this really late last night.’

  She thrusts her phone at me. There’s a picture of a woman sitting on a sofa. Vince is on one side of her, Carl is on the other. Each holds a knife their hand.

  ‘I have to go, Josh. I can’t leave my mum like that. Whatever she might be, she’s still my mum.’

  ‘I’m calling the police.’

  ‘No. Don’t. He said if the police come he’ll do it. He’ll do to her what he was going to do to Ahmed.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Fine, but hurry up.’

  I hurtle upstairs and scramble into some clothes. Mum appears at her bedroom door as I’m pulling my coat on.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Dana’s mum. He’s got her. She’s—’

  ‘Wait, Josh. You’re supposed to stay here. That’s what you were told. If you know where this Carl person is, you should tell the—’

  ‘We can’t. He’ll kill her.’

  ‘Stop! You don’t just throw yourself into the mouth of these things. That man is…’

  But we’ve already closed the door.

  We run until we have to stop running, our legs heavy and lungs burning. Mum’s right, this thing is a mouth. I thought – last night – that I was out of it, but it’s still got us in its jaws, chewing on us. Above the houses, the first smear of dirty pink light is hitting the undersides of the clouds.

  From down the street, we see Carl’s car parked outside Dana’s. We edge closer and soon make out the shape of a body in the driver’s seat. It’s Alan. Asleep.

  ‘This way.’ Dana pulls me down a side alley that leads behind the row of terraced houses.

  At her back gate, I help her onto the top of a wheely bin and she peers carefully above the wall.

  ‘I can’t see anyone. There’s no lights on either. There’s a security light on the back wall, but it only comes on if the kitchen light’s on.’ She whispers.

  As delicately as I can, I lift the latch on the back gate and ease it open. There’s a creak and a groan from the rusting hinges, and we slip through into the garden.

  About twenty yards from the back door, a yellowish glow starts flickering through the kitchen window like an eyelid fluttering. Half a second later, the whole garden fills with a flood of dazzling white light. There’s slight movement inside, and in a second, beneath the glare, the back door opens. Vince stands there, looking like he’s just woken up, bare toes poking through holes in his socks. It doesn’t take him long to regain his senses though.

  ‘Carl! It’s them!’

  Vince is after us as we spin round and sprint for the gate and back into the alleyway. I’m following Dana, who pulls the half-full bin sideways as she passes. I just slip through as it tumbles, but there’s a huge crash as Vince collides with it. It barely seems to break his stride and he’s just a few feet behind us when he stops, suddenly, swearing. I chance the quickest look back and see him hopping on one bare foot, pulling something out of the bottom of the other.

  Back on the road, neither of us turn when we hear the shouts, or the engine start up, or the squeal of tyres on tarmac. Dana darts across the road, running wildly, me following, and we sprint down another alleyway which links one street to the next. It has bollards at both ends. A screech of brakes, then the engine guns again as Carl seeks another way around.

  When she hears this, Dana pulls up. I run into the back of her and we fall. I manage to get an arm around Dana as we go down, roll her on top of me so I land first. I hit the pavement hard.

  ‘Other way, now,’ Dana gasps. ‘Back past my house. There’s a path to the main road. Quick, before he works it out.’ Of course, she knows exactly what she’s doing. And I thought I was rescuing her.

  We get to our feet and run back the way we came, clinging to each other. The front door of Dana’s house hangs open. Dana sprints through it. I stop next to the still form of Alan, lying face down on the pavement outside, against the fence. He groans, trying to raise himself. There’s blood coming from one side of his head and a smear of it on the concrete fencepost he’s reaching for to pull himself up. Carl must have dragged him out of the car and thrown him pretty hard.

  Groggily, he notices me. He’s not going to put up much of a fight, but when his hand emerges from his pocket with his phone, I pluck it from him without difficulty. I put it in my pocket.

  I’m about to follow Dana inside when I hear the sirens. Faint, some way off, but growing louder. But even closer, the sound of Carl’s engine, growing louder again. I crouch by Alan’s ear.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  He nods, feebly.

  ‘And Dana’s mum?’

  ‘Inside. She’s fine,’ he croaks.

  Dana is running back outside now, shouting. ‘She’s OK. Fuck’s sake, Josh, Come on!’

  As the note from Carl’s engine rises and falls again, getting steadily louder, we run for the path that leads to the main road. I can’t stay with Alan – poor, clueless Alan, whose first crime was loving his brother and seeing him as a god. Carl must be only seconds away as we emerge from the footpath onto the main road. Crossing it, in the growing light of the morning, the building site stands silhouetted against the sky. We run towards it.

  Above the sirens – and much, much closer – we hear the furious engine of Carl’s car at our backs. We run. He must have worked out what we’d do. As Carl rounds the road’s sweeping curve, the noise is almost deafening. He revs even harder as he mounts the pavement behind us.

  We throw ourselves through a gap in the building site’s metal fencing a second before Carl’s car would have hit us. Getting to our feet as quickly as possible, we set off across the churned ground. Carl is outside the car now, which has slid to a halt about fifty yards past the gap we came through, and he’s shouting at us. The sirens are almost on top of him, and as I look over my shoulder I see two police cars stop either side of him as he starts to climb the fence. He’s over before they get to him, and I give my full attention back to following Dana around the deep tracks and deeper puddles.

  The sirens continue. And there’s a new sound; the low thud of rotor blades. A flash of the helicopter’s searchlight reflects in the dirty water at my feet.

  In through the gaping front door of one of the new houses, into the darkness of its shell-like rooms, and out through the back into more mud we run. I force myself to get ahead of Dana and start to lead her towards a rack of scaffolding that looks familiar. I don’t need to look back to know that Carl is gaining on us, each shout and insult louder than his last. As we squeeze down what looks like an impossible gap between two houses, a gap that I’m certain has narrowed since last time I was here, clogged up with bits of brick and roof tile underfoot, we emerge into the space I was hoping to find, the wooden hoarding rising tall in front of us.

  ‘It’s a dead end,’ Dana gasps, trying to catch a breath.

  ‘No it’s not. Wait.’

  I grab at the wooden boards and try to prize them open, but they’re not shifting. The gap I crawled through a few months ago has been nailed shut. There’s a short length of iron rod poking out of a small pile of rubble. I grab it and start working away at the corner of the hoarding. Dana gets the idea, and she takes the rod while I get my hands behind the wood again and start to heave against the nails. With a sharp pop, the wood is free, and there’s the hole again, just big enough to get through.

  Carl’s shouts are getting even closer. He’s inside the gap between the houses.

  Dana goes first as I hold the wood back. I throw the iron rod through after her and wedge myself under the panel. But the angles are all wrong. Every time I move forward I pull the wooden boards closed on myself, and Dana can’t get enough weight behind it from her side to keep it open. My shoulders and most of my torso are through, but my waist is stuck. I roll onto my back, pounding away at the wooden board as it pins me down, stuck against the waistband of my jeans.

  Squirmi
ng against the slick mud, I manage to get one leg out. I put all of my strength into it, pushing against the wood which moans but won’t release me. Then I feel strong hands on my other leg, pulling me back. Carl’s voice seething, incoherent, like a slavering dog.

  Panic rising in me, I push again as hard as I can and with a splintering groan the wood suddenly splits and the corner of the board snaps off. My leg, behind the board, carries on and connects with a part of Carl, knocking him backwards. He lets go.

  I scramble to my feet inside the walls of the garden, ready to follow Dana towards the door she’s already gone through. My hand is on the lock when the iron rod smashes against the wall next to me, ricocheting back against my face. I fall to the ground, a searing pain across my forehead and down one cheek. Carl’s boot connects with my stomach, then he bends to pick up the iron rod again. I have a sudden sensation of floating. And then the pain comes.

  Scrambling along the wall, I raise my arm against the iron rod as Carl thrashes down with it. His first blow I manage to block, my forearm against his wrist, but the second strike catches me on the elbow and the world explodes into showers of sparks and white flashes.

  ‘Stop!’

  It’s Dana’s voice. She didn’t go through the door after all. She’s standing against the wooden hoarding. Carl must have gone straight past her, chasing me.

  Slowly, Carl rounds on her, the iron rod grasped in his fist.

  ‘You.’ His voice is animal, wild.

  ‘Leave him alone.’ Dana edges along the wall towards the big, red bush. The bush with the well behind it. I pull myself to my feet.