Boy in the Tower (3 page)

She was hurt. One of her eyes was so swollen that it wasn’t able to open properly and the other was bruised and half open. There was a violent purple bump on her forehead. A weeping gash cut across her cheek. It looked like a wicked gaping smile.

‘What happened? What happened?’ I said but Mum didn’t answer me. Her face creased as she sobbed harder, and the cut on her face looked like it was crying too.

‘Mummy?’ I said, although I didn’t know what I was asking until the words were on my lips: ‘Who did this?’

‘Oh, Ade,’ Mum was whispering under her breath. ‘Oh, Ade, oh, Ade.’

I started crying then too, even though I wished myself not to. I wished I had rang up the police and an ambulance. I wished I’d got something to make Mum’s face feel better. I wished I was able to do something other than howl into Mum’s shoulder as she rocked us both back and forth, trying to make us forget she was so badly injured. But for all my wishing, I let myself huddle down into her lap and cry desperate tears for what had happened.

We fell asleep like that, locked together, but when I woke up, Mum was gone from the bedroom and the room was dark.

‘Mum?’ My voice sounded very small and alone in the dim light.

‘I’m . . .’ Mum’s voice sounded hoarse and sore. ‘I’m in here.’

She was sitting on the sofa in the darkness. I felt glad that there were no lights on so I wouldn’t have to look at her poor mangled face, and then I felt ashamed of myself.

‘Mum!’ I cried out like she had been lost to me, and I climbed into her lap once more and buried my face into the soft fabric of her jacket. It struck me then that she hadn’t even taken her coat off all this time.

‘It’s all right, Ade. It’s all right. Go back to sleep,’ Mum said. And I did.

I knew that something bad had happened but I couldn’t ask Mum what it was. I tried to. I really did. But I couldn’t force the words out of my mouth.

I felt scared. Scared wondering why Mum had been so terribly hurt. Scared that it would happen again. Perhaps that was one of the reasons I didn’t mind doing the shopping: at least if I did it, I knew nothing bad would happen to Mum. She was safe if she was at home.

I didn’t tell anybody about what had happened, not even Gaia. I didn’t want it to be real, and if I didn’t tell anyone then that stopped it becoming more real, didn’t it? I think Mum felt the same, and that’s why she didn’t tell the police or go to hospital.

Mum did start to get better, in some ways. Her face started healing straight away. It went very purple and then a sort of blue and after that it was very yellowy. You could still see the scar on her cheek but it stopped looking painful. I thought things would go back to how they were before, back when Mum used to tell me funny things that had happened at the shop she worked in. She was always so good at describing customers, it felt like they appeared right in front of me. Or when she would open the fridge and then slam it back shut again and say, ‘Ade, let’s get out of here,’ and we’d go to McDonald’s for a treat.

But instead Mum retreated into herself, locking herself away from the outside world.

Gaia somehow seemed to understand all this, without me even having to say it. ‘Maybe your mum’s got something wrong with her,’ she said gently, cutting through my memories.

I screwed up my face when she said this, so I knew she tried to stop herself from saying the next words on her mind, but they came tumbling out anyway: ‘Maybe she should see a doctor?’

It was only in a whisper, but I heard it.

A doctor. Someone to make Mum better again. It seemed like a good idea. Her face had mended itself but there was damage on the inside, wounds I couldn’t see, that needed healing as well.

When I came home from school that day I went straight into her bedroom and said in a loud voice, ‘Mum, I’m home.’ She stirred in her sleep and then gave a sort of shrug that buried her body deeper into the bedclothes.

‘Wake up, Mum,’ I said. ‘I’m home. I’m home.’

There was a stale smell in Mum’s bedroom. It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but neither was it clean or fresh. An image of Mum, ready for work, appeared in my mind. Her clothes were neat and they smelled nice, like flowers, and what I think clouds might smell like.

‘Ade,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Be a good boy and go and play in the sitting room, will you? I’m so, so tired. I’ve got to sleep some more. Then I’ll come out, OK?’

‘You’re always tired all the time,’ I said. ‘Mum, do you think you should go and see someone?’

‘Someone? What do you mean?’ Mum’s voice sounded sharp, like the screech of a violin.

‘Someone . . . like a doctor,’ I said.

‘I’m just tired, Ade. I have to sleep,’ she said. ‘That will make me feel better. A doctor can’t help me.’ Just saying those few words seemed to make her more tired.

‘They might, Mum.’

In answer, Mum rolled away from me. I walked round to the side of the bed she was facing. She wasn’t even asleep. She was just staring at the wall. Maybe all this time I’d thought she was sleeping when she wasn’t. She was just staring at the walls, unmoving.

‘Mum,’ I said, but her face remained expressionless. ‘Mum!’ I insisted, but she didn’t even flinch. ‘Get up. You have to! You have to go to work!’ Again I thought of Mum dressed up all nicely, like she used to be.

At first I thought she hadn’t heard me but then I saw round, swollen tears roll down her cheeks.

‘I can’t, Ade. I can’t go out there.’

‘But what about your job?’

‘I told them I’m not going back. It happened . . . it happened . . .’ Mum’s breathing was quickening as though she couldn’t get enough air. ‘It happened just by the shop.’

‘What did, Mum?’ I said. ‘What happened?’ I’d not dared to ask her that again since the night I’d come home to find her bleeding and injured.

‘They were there,’ she said simply, and she rolled over, away from me, and her shoulders shook with her sobs. I put my hand on her and felt the vibrations up my arm, all her pain racking her body. After a long time she was still and I trod softly out of the room and left her to sleep.

Before she started crying, I’d felt cross with her and I hated it. Part of me knew she couldn’t help it but another voice had whispered into my ear:
Is she trying to get better? Why won’t she try to get up?

But now, I only felt achingly sad and alone.

I switched the television on and turned the volume up high so Mum would hear it through the walls. We used to watch television together all the time. She’d watch my programmes and I’d watch some of hers too. She used to really like cookery shows so I flicked through the channels to see if I could find one. If she couldn’t see it, she could at least hear what they were cooking.

There was nothing like that on, though, so I put on the news. They were talking about an old abandoned pub that had fallen down. I recognized the pub straight away. It was right by my tower. I walked right past it to go to one of the bigger shops. It was one of those tall, old-fashioned pubs but it had been empty for a while and its windows had been boarded up. Last time I’d walked past I’d noticed that plants had started growing out from in between the bricks. They had grey-green leaves and purple flowers that clumped together to look a bit like an ice-cream cone.

It was reported as just one of those strange, bizarre happenings that no one could explain. Someone or other was cross because they had just bought it and had big plans for it. And now it was just a pile of rubble.

Then the newsreaders started talking about something different and I realized how loud the voices from the television were and I felt bad that I had turned up the volume so high in the first place. I pressed the
down
button on the remote control and made the voices get quieter and quieter until they disappeared altogether.

Then I sat in silence, just watching the pictures, trying to work out what people were saying by how their lips moved, like Gaia could.

But I couldn’t understand them.

I didn’t give up trying to talk Mum into getting help.

The next day she was up and tried to give me a shopping list but I wouldn’t take it unless she came with me.

‘Come on, Ade,’ she said when I refused to put out my hand for the fluttering piece of paper. ‘The bread’s gone green. You don’t want to eat green bread, do you? I know I don’t.’

‘Why don’t we go together and we could go to the doctor’s afterwards?’ I asked.

Mum didn’t say anything. She just started taking little gasps of air and tried not to look at me. But she did catch my eye as she took those little, painful breaths, and in that tiny moment I could tell that she was blaming me for making her breathe like that because I’d asked her to go with me. I snatched the list from her hand and ran out of the flat and went down in the lift and across the road to get the food. It was only when I’d gotten all the way to the shop that I realized I’d forgotten to bring any money with me.

‘I’m sorry, Ade,’ Mum said as soon as I came back in. She was still standing in exactly the same position as when I’d left, as if she’d been frozen the whole time I was away. ‘I know this can’t be fun for you.’

I didn’t say anything but just reached up to the jam jar where we kept our money and took out a five-pound note that had been folded tightly in half again and again until it was only a little square.

I couldn’t look Mum in the eye. I felt like I’d failed her and it was an unbearable feeling, a pressure that had settled over my chest and wouldn’t let up.

‘Let’s go together. It’s a good idea,’ she said.

I looked up at her sharply. She looked like she might start crying but she was also nodding a little, as if to say,
Yes, yes, I can do this
.

‘Are you sure, Mum?’ I couldn’t believe it. I felt too glad even to smile.

Mum gave me another of her funny nods. She stood up a little unsteadily and, holding my hand, she walked towards the front door.

Every step was an effort and I was reminded of the way a snail moves, those tiny movements propelling it forward bit by bit. I felt so happy as she took those few shuffling steps past our front door but also daunted by the task that lay ahead. The shops and the doctor’s surgery seemed very far away. It was as if we had just begun to climb a mountain and we couldn’t see the top because it was surrounded by thick, white clouds.

We’d made it as far as the lifts when she started doing the funny breathing again. Her hand tightened around mine and I tried to give her a reassuring squeeze back but I don’t think she felt it, she was holding on so tightly.

‘I can’t do it, Ade. I’m sorry, I can’t.’

As she turned back to our flat, her eyes met mine for the briefest moment, and again they seemed to say,
Don’t make me do this, this is hurting me
.

And just like that I was standing on my own in the corridor with the sound of our front door slamming, echoing in the emptiness.

I did the shopping and I almost made it home without crying, apart from when the woman in the shop put a lollipop in my bag along with the bread and milk and said, ‘Looks like you need one, love.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You’re welcome, honey,’ she said, and I shocked myself when my eyes filled with tears.

I quickly ran out, leaving the whole five-pound note on the counter without waiting for my change just so I wouldn’t have to talk to the kind woman any more.

I walked past the old pub that had fallen down. It was a pile of bricks but I could just about make out the sign that was sticking out of the bricks. It had a picture of a man’s face on it. I’d forgotten that had even happened, I had been so worried about Mum.

When I finally got home, Mum was back in bed. I didn’t go in to check on her. I wanted to believe that she was sleeping, not lying awake in the dark, waiting for the morning to come.

I knew what I needed to do to make it easier for Mum, so I went back to doing all the things I did before.

Before I tried to make Mum come outside with me, I’d got really good at being quiet when I arrived home from school so I didn’t wake her. I called it the Silence Game.

I had all sorts of tactics. One of the things I did was leave the hat off our whistling kettle when I boiled water for tea. Another was tiptoeing around the flat as quietly as I could, before I realized that I made a lot less noise if I just walked very carefully and slowly and spread my weight over the soles of my feet. That way I could stop any floorboards creaking.

I also made sure that I didn’t flush the toilet after I’d used it. I know that sounds a little bit disgusting but I just put the lid down straight away and it wasn’t too bad. Then Mum flushed it when she got up.

Sometimes I would get a surprise and find something lying around that meant Mum must have left the flat that day. It didn’t happen often but enough to make me excited every day that I might find a clue that she had managed to go outside. Once it was just that her shoes were a little bit wet on their soles. I used to check the bottoms of her shoes every day, you see. Sometimes it was something that was left out, that had not been there before. You would not believe how happy I felt when a single orange appeared on our sofa one day. Or how fantastically pleased I was when I found a newspaper sitting on the kitchen table. The time gaps in between finding things like that were getting longer and longer but it still gave me a lot of hope.

Then there were the precious few days when Mum really would surprise me. She would be awake when I came home from school. Sometimes she had even washed her face and put lipstick on. Then she would blow me away by casually producing something that hadn’t come from any of my shopping trips, and that she couldn’t even have bought from one of the shops close to the flat.

The day she presented me with a bowl of chocolate ice cream set my mind racing. I knew she must have gone to the supermarket, because it was the only place you could get this particular flavour, which had bits of chocolate brownie and swirls of caramel in it. It was our favourite. Before Mum got hurt, we used to eat it all the time. ‘Too much of the time!’ Mum would laugh, in the old days, before patting the rounds of our bellies.