by Gary Kittle
‘Family! You mean us? You and me?’
‘Yes. You and me, Brad.’
‘Don’t make me laugh!’
Chris tightened his grip on the boy’s arm, determined not to let himself be sidetracked.
‘We’ve not been a family since you got shot of Mum!’ Bradley was fighting back the tears. ‘She was your victim and now I’m a prisoner!’
‘I’ve told you already, it wasn’t like that. It was…’
‘Tell that to the judge!’ Bradley screamed back.
‘What?’
‘You can’t get away with it!’ the boy blubbered.
A squirming red-faced twelve year-old glared up at him, sweat glistening on his forehead. Chris slackened his grip, concerned about leaving finger marks. He would keep him off school, if that was what it took; but he was determined to get to the truth.
‘Tell me what the hell you’ve done, Brad!’
‘Why should I? You don’t care about me!’
‘Bradley, who cooks your food, washes your clothes, pays the…’
‘You’re just looking out for yourself! That’s what Mum used to say all the time!’
Bringing Tess into the argument was as good as her standing there in person and badmouthing him. ‘Bradley! This is serious! Some bloke’s been harassing me and….’ But did he really want to disclose the true extent of his vulnerability as a man? He pulled Bradley closer to him, giving him a shake for good measure. ‘This isn’t some game, boy!’
‘Let go. You’re hurting my arm.’ But Chris knew it was not physical pain that was making his son uncomfortable.
Chris sucked in a breath and bellowed into the boy’s face: ‘Some bloke has been sending me creepy emails about things you’ve been telling his son. And I strongly suspect that the boy concerned is this special needs kid, Gordon. But as your father I want to hear it from your lips. I want the truth, Brad. And I want it now!’’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t… Ow!’ A cry of genuine pain.
Chris let go of the boy’s arm, knowing there would now be marks he would struggle to explain away. He channeled his anger into his voice and leaning into Bradley’s face he roared: ‘This bloke’s a nutter! We could be in serious danger. Now! Tell! Me! The! Truth!’
‘I’ll report you! I’ll report you!’
‘For what?’ Chris laughed, noticing the tears starting to spill from the boy’s eyes. Tess had been just the same, holding out on him, playing him for a fool. But he’d always got the better of her, hadn’t he? What chance did a twelve year old have?
‘I know what’s happened, Dad! I’ll tell them everything!’
‘Like you’ve already blubbered ‘everything’ to Gordon and his psycho dad?’ Chris let his fingers grasp his son’s arms again like the talons of an eagle, lifting him up onto his toes, not caring about the consequences. Nothing else mattered except getting Bradley to confess. The way things were going he could end up being hospitalized by this Moore nutter and Bradley would be taken into care anyway.
‘The summerhouse…’ Bradley moaned, struggling to escape.
A chill ran over Chris’ skin. ‘Summerhouse? What about the bloody summerhouse?’
‘I know what you’ve got in there!’ And with a strong twist of his body Bradley shook himself free, his father’s nails tearing at his white shirt sleeves.
Just like that final email. Oh, Bradley! Only when the front door slammed did Chris realise that his son had escaped. Round two to the twelve year old. He stared at his empty, outstretched hands and felt horribly alone. Chris wandered into the hall and slumped down onto the bottom stair.
‘What the hell is going on here?’
Chapter Twelve
Bradley’s words came out as a growl: ‘Call yourself a mate?’
Gordon peaked mouse-like from beneath his greasy hair. ‘Course,’ he muttered.
‘Well, ‘mates’ are supposed to keep secrets!’
‘Oh,’ was Gordon’s lackluster reply.
Bradley shoved him further inside the railway hut, anger spurting through his veins.
‘You don’t understand, Brad…’
Bradley squared up to Gordon’s sweating face and jabbed his forefinger into Gordon’s chest. ‘I told you something no one else knows and what was the first thing you did?’
‘It wasn’t the first thing….’
Bradley pushed Gordon backwards again, harder still: ‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘No, Brad. Honestly! But you really don’t understand…’
Bradley launched himself forward, propelling Gordon up against the back wall and grabbing his shirt collar. Tiny flecks of spittle rained down on Gordon gaping mouth. His top shirt button suddenly flipped through the air, narrowly missing Brad’s eye. ‘Say that again and I swear I’ll…’
Gordon pushed Bradley away with surprising force, his cheeks flushing with excitement. ‘I didn’t want to tell him. Honestly I didn’t! But he made me, Brad. He made me!’
Gordon started sniveling, his full sail now dangling. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Brad. It’s my dad, see… He… He…’ Then the tears began in earnest, a full scale storm at sea.
Bradley looked closely at Gordon’s shabby clothes and decrepit shoes, his revolting skin and hunched shoulders, and felt the welcome heat of contempt.
Gordon got out a question, one word at a time, like mayday in Morse code. ‘But how did you find out?’
Bradley slammed him back against the wall. ‘How the hell do you think, Mr. Special Needs?’
‘I don’t get it.’
This must be his Tuesday after school look, Bradley decided, the look he was damned to wear for the rest of his life. But that was no excuse for dropping him into such hot water.
‘Your old man is trying to blackmail mine with what I told you!’
‘You mean…’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. And my Dad’s blaming me for the whole thing! So thanks a bundle, mate!’
The tears had passed as quickly as they had arrived. ‘Brad, I’m sorry. Really I am,’ Gordon whispered. ‘Is your dad all right?’
‘Not really. What’s your old man after, anyway? Is it just cash? Is that what he does for a living, then: take money with menaces?’
‘No. He’s a postman...’ Gordon’s head sank. ‘Or rather he was.’
‘Don’t tell me, he got caught stealing cheques out of envelopes!’
‘You have to believe me, Brad. He forced it out of me!’
‘Well I don’t believe you. How would he know to ask?’
Gordon’s voice became defiant again: ‘My dad’s not the sort of bloke you say no to. That’s why Mum left. That’s why my step-mum and the girls will leave eventually.’
Bradley watched as Gordon’s boldness again dissolved into tears. He remembered his father’s bruises, his limping and hobbling about over the last few days. He looked up at the picture hanging on the wall, those cold eyes boring into his. ‘Is he – you know - violent?’
‘Like I said,’ Gordon sniffed, ‘he’s not the sort of bloke you say no to. As long as I remember that, I’m OK.’ He let out a shuddering sigh. ‘Your dad should remember that, too.’
Bradley turned away. ‘It was still our secret, Gordon!’
‘I suppose that’s it, then? You don’t want to see me again.’
‘Are you kidding?’
Gordon looked up, hopeful again. ‘So you… you believe me?’
‘What I believe is that you’re a Grade A turd and that even if this mess wasn’t your fault, you’re still the only one that can get me out of it.’
It was hard not to burst out laughing as he played his indignant role for Gordon. Mr. Smith, his English teacher, was always banging on about increasing his vocabulary. Well, here was a good one, Smithy: gullible. Gullible Gordon. With a final growl of feigned outrage, Bradley realised his plan was going off better than he could have dreamed of.
Chapter Thirteen
B
radley squeezed his eyes shut, desperate to hold back his tears for another night. This was always the time when he missed her the most, though she had not read him a story or tucked him in since his pre-school years. Maybe it was just the ghost of those things that plucked at his heartstrings? Thinking back he realised that Tess had never been a ‘hands on’ mother, as such. In fact, sometimes she ignored him for hours, chatting to her friends or rushing off to the hairdressers.
Bradley turned over. No wonder she couldn’t give him as much attention as he wanted with that beast of a father breathing down her neck all the time. ‘Controlling’ was the word she’s thrown back at him. Well, you’re not in control now, are you, Daddy? Bradley smirked to himself.
A great weight rested on his chest and he felt himself sinking down into the bed, not so much drifting off to sleep as being sucked unwillingly into it. When he finally opened his eyes again it was not to the lightly cracked bedroom ceiling but the dusty glass panes of the summerhouse. The grass beneath his bare feet was icy cold. The door was unlocked and slightly ajar. He saw his trembling hand reach out for the handle. But he could not stop himself, for in his – dream, trance, hallucination? – he heard weeping: a deep, desperate sobbing that drew him forward.
His fingers settled on the brass handle, its cold surface jabbing through his wrist like an electric shock. He pulled the door open wider, the sobbing instantly louder, and inched himself slowly into the darkened interior. Please let me wake up…
Inside there was gloom and dust and the smell of old carpets and weed-killer. But the sound of weeping grew louder. His breath clouded the space before him and there she was, as he knew she would be: a hunched, dark-haired figure facing the opposite wall. In the weeks since her disappearance she seemed to have grown smaller, the best part of her vitality lost forever like grapes left on the vine. Bradley tried to look away, to free himself from the nightmare, but couldn’t. There was something else in the summerhouse that he couldn’t identify, something bad. The tears welled behind his eyes, making the scene smear before him like sun cream on sunglasses.
Why didn’t she get up, run away, fight back? Before whatever it was hiding in the shadows could reach out and take her from him forever? His mother’s weeping intensified, fear mixing with her misery like sour milk in cold tea. He caught the glint of pale sunlight on metal from the periphery of his vision. He tried to cry out a warning, but instead all he could do was watch as the kitchen knife ate up the space between its fierce tip and his mother’s back. Run! Get away! If she could only have fought back against this brute, this ogre… left with a hastily packed suitcase, as he had claimed. But instead she just sat there, crying, powerless as the knife advanced. Wake me up! Wake me up! Wake me up!
The lava of hatred rose within him. He stared at the knife, leaned forward to examine its surface with macabre fascination, the tip set to spear the vulnerable back below. His hand shook with terror and fury, the tremor so harsh that he had to concentrate on gripping the knife’s handle…
His eyes traced the length of the kitchen knife to the trembling hand in a white school shirt that held it. ‘You’ve done me proud, boy!’ a familiar voice chuckled.
Suddenly there was no air in the summerhouse, the door behind him locked, its edges sealed with rust and grime. He caught a whiff of something rotten coming from the faded planked floor below his feet. Bradley, is that you? The bloodied knife clattered against the wood but there were dark stains there already where his mother had breathed her last. He was alone again; the weeping a haunting memory. ‘Brad!’ What had he done? He heard his father’s voice chuckling from the shadows, taunting him: Proud! Dead Proud!
‘Bradley!’ the strident voice wrenched him back into his room.
He looked around, dazed and sweating, the flush of relief draining his body of energy. He felt the warm sting of tears on his cheeks. He turned to face his bedroom door, a door without locks or bolts or chains; cheap, flimsy, accessible... He sucked air into a tight chest. This was the real nightmare.
‘Bradley, come downstairs please. We need to talk.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘This has gone far enough!’ Chris barked at Bradley standing in the doorway. Good. Start strongly. Establish control.
‘I called Child Line.’
‘What..?’ Draw a line in the sand. ‘No you didn’t!’
Bradley puffed out his chest. ‘Yes I did!’
‘And told them what, exactly?’
‘What you did…’
Chris sighed. This was getting ridiculous, but logically Child Line would have to act on the call. ‘Listen, Brad,’ he began, ‘I need to come clean.’
‘You mean, turn yourself in?’ gasped Bradley.
Give me strength. ‘No, Brad. What I did was regrettable, but I had my reasons…’
Bradley’s face bleached with shock; and his legs actually wobbled as if they were about to collapse beneath him.
‘Brad, you’re blowing this all out of proportion. You need to let me explain. Now please come and sit down.’
Chris took a step forward, only for Bradley to slink back through the still open door to the hall. The front door was within easy reach, and Chris doubted if he could get to it quickly enough if the boy bolted. Bradley’s lips trembled, his eyes bulged. ‘How… How can you say that? No one has the right to do what you did. She’s my mum!’
Chris recalled an argument with Tess the weekend before she left, an argument their son was certain to have heard. There was the usual gamut of shouting, finger pointing and flushed cheeks, charges and counterclaims. Chris remembered how furious Tess had made him feel, remembered his fists coming up, not to hit, but to let her know just how far she had crossed the line. ‘Don’t!’ she had screamed, and burst into tears. But there was something else, something else she’d said, even more significant. Chris strained to recall what it was, but his unconscious denied him.
‘Listen, Brad, it wasn’t like that.’ But you wanted her to think it might be if she didn’t back down, didn’t you? ‘Your mother and I hadn’t been getting on for so long; things just couldn’t go on that way anymore.’
‘So you took matters into your own hands?’ Bradley wailed. ‘You… You got rid of her!’
His memory squirmed but still would not speak up. ‘No, Brad. She left us! You and me. Alone. She made a choice.’ Chris didn’t want to poison the boy against his mother; but neither could he accept that she was blameless. All right, so he had said things he shouldn’t have, bellowed and posed like a bull a little. It wasn’t called the ‘heat of the moment’ for nothing. But to lay all the responsibility at his door was surely unreasonable. ‘And that’s why we have to stick together until she decides what she wants to do.’ Although of course she might already have done just that in one of those letters.
But Bradley was backing steadily into the hall, shaking his head and crying. For the first time Chris was seriously worried about his son’s mental health. This was more than just grief and anger, blended with a dash of adolescent hormones.
‘Bradley, stay where you are, please. We have to talk this through.’ But Bradley kept inching backwards, his eyes wide with alarm, tears running down his young face.
‘Or else what?’ Bradley shouted. ‘I’ll end up like Mum?’
But his ‘Mummy’ was either at her sister’s in Islington, a small hotel on the coast or the spare bedroom of a friend from work. Again Chris experienced that unsettling feeling that he and his son still weren’t talking about the same thing exactly. I need to read those letters, find out where she is. All right, so maybe she should have phoned, but his pride in hiding those letters in the summerhouse had fast become his Achilles’ heel.
Bradley let his head sink into his chest and sobbed wildly.
‘Bradley, please…’ Chris took a stride towards him, instantly regretting it.
‘No!’ Bradley screeched, and in a heartbeat he was fleeing for the front door. Chris sprung forward in pursuit, his achi
ng spine sending shafts of pain into his brain, but Bradley was so much faster than him. The door slammed shut, narrowly missing the outstretched fingers of his right hand. ‘Shit!’ He heard Brad’s receding sobs, the rattle of the gate latch and the still small feet pounding away down the pavement, but made no attempt to follow. The sense of defeat robbed him of the little strength he’d had. He scrunched his eyes closed and waited for the throbbing pulse in his brain to die down.
It was only when he opened his eyes again that he noticed a small rectangular card poking through his letterbox. How long..? He held his breath a second, and walked across the hall, let his fingers grasp the hand delivered card and pulled it free. It was a plain white card with a short message on one side only. No envelope, no stamp, no signature. But then there was no doubt in his mind who the card was from. It certainly wasn’t Tess’s handwriting. A random memory jumped into his thoughts. Or else what? Bradley had screamed. I’ll end up like Mum?
The memory persisted, metamorphosing into an older, more elusive one. Chris stared at the message and tried to imagine the face of its author; a grinning face chewing on a dark secret he thought he could use for blackmail. And not anything to do with a mother’s letters, but something far juicier.
‘Bloody hell, Bradley.’ He thought back over the last few weeks, pictured his son’s cryptic words and actions, the fear and anger in both. ‘Oh, bloody hell! No!’ Something Tess had said during that last blazing row, a phrase voiced metaphorically in between screams and bursts of sobbing, choked sobbing
They must have been the last words Bradley heard her say: ‘You’re suffocating me.’
Chris reached for his coat – not just because Bradley was in a state, but because ‘he’ might be out there too. Chris stuffed the card in his pocket and lurched towards the door.
No envelope, no stamp, no signature. And on the card itself four inoffensive words:
I’ll be in touch.
Chapter Fifteen
He’d hidden behind a tree until his father came storming out of the house, then let himself back into the house. His text message demanded Gordon’s presence immediately, and here he was banging frantically on the front door. Bradley kept quiet, prolonging the other boy’s ordeal. It was only what he deserved, after all. More knocking and the doorbell rang a third time; then silence.
Bradley, smirking, counted to ten then swept the door open. Light splashed down the path, spotlighting Gordon with his hand on the gate latch. An expression of wretched despair fell across his face as he sloped back toward the house. ‘I… I got your text.’