Blood Family (15 page)

His head popped through. ‘Hurt yourself?’

I pointed. ‘What
is
that? Is it an old TV and
video
player?’

I saw him blush. ‘It was for you,’ he said. ‘When you first came, I thought that you might want to play those ancient tapes of yours. That’s why it’s here.’

Would I have wanted to watch them anyway? Or was it just because I’d felt so close to Mr Perkins all through supper?

‘So can we get it down?’

‘What,
now
?’

‘Why not? I’m up here. You’re down there.’

Already I was pushing it towards the hatch. I watched him wondering whether or not to argue. Then, with a sigh, he pulled the ladder back to form a better angle and we slid it down.

‘It might not work,’ he warned.

‘I’ll put it in my room,’ I said. ‘Out of the way.’

We both knew what that meant: somewhere the sheer boxiness of it would not annoy Natasha.

On the floor of my cupboard.

The moment Nicholas had gone after saying goodnight, Alice was in my doorway. ‘What was all
that
about?’

‘All what?’

‘You know.’ She shut the door behind her. ‘All of that crap about a yarn factory. Justin told me that your lot went to look at some manky old bones.’

That startled me. ‘So how come you know Justin?’

She brushed my question aside. ‘Never mind that. How come you told them all that rubbish at supper?’

‘It didn’t
matter
,’ I said defensively. ‘Neither of them was listening anyway.’

‘Who would?’ She snorted with contempt. ‘Spindles and shuttles and twists and vat lots and stuff.’

‘
Dye
lots.’

‘Who cares?’ She dropped down on the rug in front of me, and spun the measuring tape that I’d been fiddling with away across the floor, out of my reach. ‘Why were you telling all those stupid lies? Justin says you’ve been acting weird all day. He says you fainted at the university, and didn’t even hear when people got at you on the way home.’

‘Got at me?’ (I was baffled.)

‘Teased you because you’ll grow into someone so ugly not even you can look at yourself without collapsing.’

‘I didn’t even
hear
them.’

‘That’s what he said. He said you were pale as a grub, and on a different planet. He said—’ She broke off. ‘Edward, are you
crying
?’

I suppose I must have been.

She shuffled nearer. ‘God,
sorry
, Eddie. I didn’t mean to come in here and upset you. I just wanted to know what happened. You know – why you were so odd at supper.’

That frightened me. ‘Do you think that they noticed?’

Alice shrugged. ‘Not sure. But you’ll be down before they see you again.’

‘Down?’

‘From whatever you took.’

‘I haven’t taken anything.’

She grinned. ‘Oh, yes, and pigs can fly.’

‘No, really.’

Now she was getting ratty. ‘Come off it, Ed! You should have
seen
yourself. Eyes glittering, with all that rubbish about wool and wefts and warps and stuff tumbling out of your mouth at five hundred miles an hour. I am amazed they didn’t notice. You were dead lucky that Natasha wasn’t listening, and Nicholas was half asleep.’ She leaned in closer. ‘Come on, Ed. I thought that we were
mates
. Somebody must have given you
something
. So tell me.’

‘Nobody gave me anything! I just saw Harris!’

‘Harris?’

‘You know.’ Already I could feel myself shrivelling on the rug. ‘Bryce Harris! That man who lived with us – me and my mum.’

‘Oh,
him
! The Beast!’

‘The Beast?’

‘That’s what we called him – well, that’s what
I
called him.’ She saw my baffled look. ‘They had to
warn
me,’ she explained. ‘Before you came. They had to explain a bit about the mean stuff that had happened to you in your life, in case you acted weird.’ She laid her fingers on mine, but only to stop me picking threads out of the rug. ‘I don’t know if they ever said he was called Harris. I know it was definitely me who called him the Beast because I remember Nicholas nodding and saying, “That’s about it.” And the name sort of stuck.’

‘I never heard you say it.’

She said with scorn, ‘Why would you? I certainly knew better than to mention him in front of
you
.’ She waited for a moment, then she said, ‘Why, is he out?’

‘Of prison? How should I know?’

‘You said you
saw
him.’

And again I did. The image swooped at me. ‘No!’ I almost shouted. (Later she told me I was flapping my hands in front of me, as if to brush moths away.) ‘I saw his
face
.’

‘Sssh! Keep it down!’

But I’d collapsed into a flood of tears and snivelling.
She dug a heap of tissues out of the box on my shelf and sat cross-legged, waiting for me to stop my sobbing long enough to tell her what had happened. As soon as she had understood, she tried to comfort me. ‘That doesn’t mean that Harris is your
dad
! He might simply be some uncle or cousin, or even someone who just happens to look a bit like you’ll look when you’re older.’

I must have given her a look of utter disbelief because she pressed on hotly, ‘What’s wrong with that? Everyone tells me I look like Natasha.’

‘No, they don’t. Only Mrs Joy. And Nicholas says that she only says it because she’s about a hundred years old and thinks it’s a way of being nice, and making you feel better about being adopted.’

She hit back. ‘All right. So maybe Harris
is
your real dad. You can see why your mother gave you a different name and made you think he wasn’t.’

But perhaps she hadn’t. When I tried thinking about it, I had no idea how I first came to be so sure that Harris was not my father. I couldn’t remember anything said by my mum, or snarled by Harris, about my being anyone else’s child.

Alice gave up on watching me struggle to remember. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Next time we visit, I can have a go at asking Lucy for you.’

I didn’t bother to respond. After all, both of us knew my mother couldn’t even say for sure if she took sugar in her tea.

She took a different tack. ‘Or you could ask Natasha and Nicholas if you can have one of those DNA tests.’

Through my brain rushed one terrifying scene after another. A mix-up with letters so Harris saw my new name and address. Harris phoning the health centre and somehow finding out my own appointment time.

Basically, Harris finding me.

All that I said to Alice was, ‘I think I’d rather not know.’

She shrugged, ‘Well, even if he
is
your dad, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be anything like him. Look at me! My mother never told me anything about my father. For all I know he was a serial
axe
murderer or something. Having a rotten mum or dad is not the worst thing in the world. Hundreds of people must have them.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Millions, actually. All over the world.’

I must have been crying again by then, because she jumped to her feet. ‘Wait here! Don’t move! I’m going to fetch you something to cheer you up.’

‘What?’

But she was gone, across the landing, back to her own room.

It can’t have been more than a minute before she was back. And as she scuttled through my door again, holding her school bag, she asked me, ‘What have you got to block it?’

‘Block what?’

‘The
door
, dummy!’ Already she was looking in my cupboard. ‘This’ll do.’ Dragging out the big square box
I’d pushed in there less than an hour before, she rammed it up against the door.

‘You sit on it,’ she ordered.

‘Why?’

‘Safer.’ Out of her pocket, she pulled a twist of paper. ‘Here, have one of these. It’ll make you feel better.’

The truth is that I didn’t clock what she was giving me. The only thing I recognized was the bright can she pulled out of her bag and offered me so I could wash the pill down. It was one of those shiny ring-pull affairs they sell at corner shops and railway stations: bright, chirpy alcoholic drinks with cheerful Friday-night names like Whisky Kick, Vodka Fizz and Gin Whirl.

I’d had a sip of almost every gin and tonic Nicholas had ever poured for himself, and sometimes more if he had left the room. (Natasha hardly ever drank. She said she’d seen enough pools of vomit on her expensive glossy marquee floors to put her off booze for life.) I’d never had a proper drink all to myself. I must have glugged it down because even Alice warned, ‘Hey! Steady on!’ and, as I found out later, she had been throwing these things back for ages – since she fell in with one of Justin’s brothers at a friend’s party.

I gave her back the empty can so she could stow it out of sight, away in the bottom of her school bag.

‘Better?’

I nodded. ‘Nice warm feeling. Tingly toes.’

‘That’s not the Tequila Tang. That is the bluey kicking in.’

‘The bluey?’

‘What I gave you.’

‘That pill? I thought that was an aspirin.’

‘Eddie, you’re such a
nerd
.’

Now I was grinning too. We shared a silly conversation about my yarn about the yarn factory. (I thought that was a
hoot
.) And then it started. It was the weirdest feeling, as if each muscle in my face was part of a giant cobweb, throbbing pleasantly behind a shell of warm skin. Even as I was liking that, the warmth spread down. I hadn’t realized that my stomach was a knot until it loosened. You would have thought someone had opened a trap door in my heels, and all the misery and upset was dropping through to leave room for this warmth and light and happiness to take its place, all through my body. Somehow the two of us changed places, Alice and I, and she was sitting on the box to guard the door, and I was back on the rug, feeling myself spin in the gentlest of cradles, with strangely glimmering colours sheeting through my brain, while what had been the usual boring drumming of rain against the window panes had turned into the sound of magical bells.

‘Edward, don’t drop off in your clothes!’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re practically
asleep
.’

‘Am I?’ I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself staring at the ceiling, and not the wall. ‘How long have I been lying down?’

‘Ages. Natasha will be back. I’d better go.’

‘Thanks for the—’ I’d no idea what it was called. ‘Thanks for the stuff.’

Alice gave me the most beautiful smile. ‘You’re welcome.’ Behind her skin and hair and all those colours she rubbed around her eyes, I saw her as she must have been when she was four or five years old, open to anything, ready to clown around, eager and keen.

‘You look so
young
,’ I told her, filled with wonder.

‘I
am
young.’

It really mattered that she understood. ‘No, Alice, I am
serious
. You suddenly look about
five
. All glowing, like a happy angel.’

She blew a kiss at me – not anything soppy, just a friendly gesture. ‘Have a good trip!’ she said. ‘Be happy, Edward.’

She pushed the video box aside, and shimmered out.

It was a pretty primitive machine. Plug in. Switch on. Self-tune. I’d lost my sense of time, but still it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes before the clicking and the whirring stopped.

I didn’t want to miss a single moment, so I leaned forward to rewind. The machine chugged back to the start, and I pressed Play. The picture settled and the jaunty music that I knew so well burst out upon the room. I stabbed the volume button till it was much quieter. I didn’t need it loud. The tune swam in my head.

I don’t know what I’d thought would happen. Perhaps I’d feared I would fall straight back into being that pale child who Rob found cowering against the wall. Perhaps I’d thought I’d sit with a smirk on my face, astonished that even my much younger self could have been so entranced by some old duffer in a cardigan with leather buttons.

What I’d not reckoned on was this third child. This
stranger
who, as Mr Perkins backed in through the door, shaking the drops from his umbrella and turning to catch my eyes with his warm, fatherly smile, whispered to him so happily, ‘Hi, Mr Perkins.’

I actually heard myself say it. I felt myself shunt closer across the rug, till Mr Perkins was so near to me he almost blurred. I felt myself mouthing the words I knew by heart. ‘
Hello. My, it’s so cold and rainy out there today! But we’re warm and cosy in here. So shall we sing our song together?
’

And we did.

It was the trip to the pet show. Even before he told us I knew that, the way that if you’ve listened to a set of songs often enough in the same order, what’s coming
next is always ringing in your brain before the first chords start. He filled the kettle and fed Sooty-Sue as usual, all the while talking to us about responsibility – about not pestering our parents to give us living creatures we wouldn’t be able to keep well and happy. ‘A pet should never be one person’s present,’ he told us gravely. ‘They have to be a wanted member of the whole family. They are a lot of work, and need a good deal of attention. So everyone in the household has to agree.’

Then we went off to see the children who showed us their pets. I hadn’t forgotten any. I still knew all their names, even before he introduced us again. Then, when they’d showed us how they cleaned out a rabbit hutch, or fetched hay for their pony, or made a hibernation box so that their tortoise would be warm and safe through the winter, he drew us in. ‘See? These children here have learned all sorts of skills to keep their pets happy and well. And we can also be good at looking after all the animals we meet, even if it is only being kind to the cat next door, or remembering to take a carrot to the horse we pass on our Sunday walk.’

He smiled. ‘Let’s sing our song about learning to do things, shall we?’

I sang along with him, the way I always had.