Blood Family (21 page)

I knew he’d give me a ride home. I could see Linda was very tempted to come along. But I think she decided in the end that Alan would have a better chance of getting something out of me if he and I were travelling alone.

Down at the garden gate she gave me an enormous hug, and then she told me something.

‘You know that television man of yours? That Mr Perkins? Well, Alan went online and found one of his programmes. Just out of curiosity, you understand.’ She found my hand and squeezed it. ‘Because we missed you.’

I couldn’t help but ask. ‘What did you think?’

She smiled. ‘I loved it. He was very sweet and fatherly. I wish they’d showed the programmes here, not just in Canada. They would have been a hit. The songs too. Though I must admit they do stick in the brain and drive you mad.’ She started singing the one about growing up to do anything we wanted.

To pass the last sticky moments while Alan was bringing round the car, I prompted her when she got stuck.

You just can’t tell with people Eddie’s age. What’s for the best?

If he’d been four, or eight, or even twelve, I wouldn’t have given it a thought. The moment Alan drove off with him, I would have snatched up the phone. ‘Natasha? Nicholas? I ought to tell you Eddie bunked off school and came to us. And he seemed rather upset. Rattled. Distracted. Horribly unhappy. He couldn’t sit still and barely smiled. Is something wrong?’

But teenagers are so
mercurial
. One minute they act forty, the next minute
three
. You can’t judge much from a short visit and, for all we knew, the boy was being truthful when he said it was the first time he’d played truant. It was a year of constant, stressful school exams. And he had always chewed his nails until they bled.

I paced around the phone for quite a while, wondering what to do. I even phoned Rob Reed’s old number, but it didn’t work. (I didn’t fancy ringing any of the new lot. Eddie had been adopted now for years, and they would just have given me one of their lectures about ‘letting go’.)

So in the end I told myself not to betray his trust. And I tried to console myself that, if he was in trouble, my darling, darling Eddie would have the confidence and the good sense just to come back to us.

Alan got me home in time – well, only a little late. And no one at the school had rung to tell them that I wasn’t there. I got away with it.

I suppose I could have taken the chance to settle down and start afresh, but I got irritated by the way they treated me that week. Nicholas did as good a job as any Gestapo officer of searching my room. He found the bottle tucked away under the shed. And when the restaurant at Valentine House charged his card that hefty whack for our No-Show, he made it clear I wouldn’t get a penny of my allowance until I’d paid him back.

Natasha was worse, though. Clearly humiliated by the way I’d got away with so much for so long, she started checking on me about everything.

‘You
did
go swimming, didn’t you? I mean, your shorts are damp, but they don’t smell of chlorine.’

‘How come you’ve got no homework? Mrs Miller made it crystal-clear that this is a crucial year.’

‘Nicholas told me that he drove past your school at half past three, but didn’t see you.’

I’d fight back. ‘Probably because there are about
four hundred
of us pouring out of there. We’re all in the same uniform, and he might just have kept one eye on the road.’

She took against my tone. ‘No, Mister Clever Dick. He’d parked right by the gates. He said that he was hoping to give you a lift.’

I told her sullenly, ‘He must have been at least half an hour early, waiting to pounce, if he found anywhere to park near the school gates.’

She made me feel as childish as I must have sounded. I hated being watched. She studied me as if I were some specimen in a jar. She’d swung from over-credulous to ludicrously suspicious. It was quite obvious she didn’t believe a word I said. She was so
hostile
. Even Alice thought that, and she herself had given me a good few days of the curled lip and cold response.

But in the end she started sticking up for me. ‘Leave him alone, Natasha! He’s grounded. Isn’t that enough? There’s no need to be picking on him all the time. He’s said he’s sorry.’

Actually, I hadn’t. I’d hung my head, and I’d admitted things, and I had claimed that I’d turn over a new leaf. But I had never said that I was sorry.

I wasn’t, either. I was in a sweat, missing the constant swigging that took the edge off things. I went to school all that next week, and realized, in my stone-cold sober state, how far behind I’d fallen and how much I had to do to catch up with the rest – even some of the thickies.

Even Justin.

That hurt. The only thing that ever gave me any confidence was hearing people saying I was bright and did so well at schoolwork. Now that prop had been snatched away. And it seemed so unfair because the rest of them were hardly angels. I’d hear them in the cloakroom,
bragging about how many tinnies they had downed last night, how off their faces they’d been, how they’d been ‘smashed’ or ‘mortal’. I couldn’t understand how they could binge like that, and come in looking pale as grubs and acting ratty and dull, but then next day, like Alice, they’d be bright as buttons again and concentrating on the work as if the mere idea of this stuff being in the world had faded from their minds.

I couldn’t be like that. I thought about it all the time. How I was missing it, how I could lay my hands on some. When Jessica invited me back to her house along with Arif and Trish to see her brand-new puppy, I made an excuse at first. (I always made excuses.) Then I remember thinking,
Perhaps her family has a drinks cabinet
. I actually
thought
that. In break, I pounced upon a couple of grubby plastic bags blowing around the bike shed, so I’d be ready.

And then I tagged along. Jessica didn’t ask what made me change my mind. And while the three of them were letting the frenetic little fur ball tumble all over their feet and Trish was shrieking at the sharpness of its teeth, I slid away, reckoning that I could claim that I thought any door I might have been caught opening led to a lavatory.

I was in luck. They kept their bottles on a pantry shelf. I lifted off two full ones at the back. Vodka and gin. I stowed them in my school bag and left it lying by the door. Then I went back.

‘You found it?’ Jessica asked.

For one heart-stopping moment, I wondered if she meant their stash of spirits rather than their loo. But still I managed to nod.

‘Good. Sometimes there’s trouble with the flush.’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘You were lucky, then.’

And off the conversation went, on to the usual stuff about the times the girls had found themselves staring at something that wouldn’t flush away, and how embarrassing it was. Arif pitched in with some disgusting story about a coat hanger and a giant turd, and they were giggling and pushing him. ‘Shut
up
, Arif! Shut up!’

‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘You know I’m grounded still. If I’m not back by four fifteen, Natasha will go wild.’

‘Poor Eddie! Just for getting sozzled
once
.’

Is that what I had told them? I must have lied to
everyone
. I still faked coughing fits and went round the cloakrooms, pocketing anything that I could find to trade for booze money. I watched myself with Nicholas and Natasha because I knew that they were watching me, and even leaving money about to test me. Once or twice I even nicked a pound or two from Valentina, sneaking the purse out of her bag while she was busy cleaning. (She soon stopped leaving that about.) Now and again I dragged my plastic bucket out from where I stashed it, under next door’s hedge, and started washing cars again – until in desperation one day I sold my bike,
pretending to Natasha and Nicholas that it had been stolen.

‘Really? Where had you left it, Edward?’

‘Down at the river. I was with Arif. But I had locked it, and we were only a short way away. If anyone had cut the chain, I would have heard.’

‘You’re telling us that someone came along, lifted it up and carried it away silently on their shoulders?’

I gave them one of my almighty scowls. ‘All that I’m saying is, it’s
gone
.’

There followed one of those great pauses designed to remind me that I was no longer trusted. And then Natasha said, ‘We don’t see anything of Arif these days, do we? I mean, you
talk
about him quite a bit. But he no longer comes this way home with you, or calls by to pick you up.’

It was quite clear what she meant: ‘I don’t believe a word you say about being with Arif. We think you use his name to hide what you are really doing.’

Oh, they weren’t daft. But still, they couldn’t watch me every minute of the day, or keep me grounded for ever. And sometimes I had money. Each time I had enough, I’d lay my hands on yet another bottle. But now I wouldn’t take the risk of hiding them about. I’d work my way through them in one fast session.

The rows we had got more and more frequent, and very much nastier. ‘We will not have you coming in this house in this disgusting state! Look at you! You can barely stand!’

‘Leave me alone! It’s
my
life!’

‘Not while you live under our roof! How you behave is our business too!’

‘Oh, back off, both of you! Leave me
alone
!’

And, pushing past them, I would stagger to the stairs and drag myself up to my room. Sometimes I’d rushed the drinking so much I was sick. Once I lashed out at Nicholas, and he nearly punched me back. Another time, after we had been screaming at one another about some sin of mine, Natasha lost it utterly and screamed, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ! I wish to God—’

She broke off before saying it. But we both heard it ringing round the room. ‘I wish to God we’d never adopted you!’ It was another reminder that I came from bad stock. That my blood family were foul and nasty ne’er-do-wells.

Right then, I’d think, I might as well not worry. Being like this is pretty well in my stars. And Nicholas and Natasha can’t boss me around for ever. Soon I’ll be old enough to do what I please. I found my ears were pricking up when, in maths lessons, Mrs Pugh gave people who were mucking about her regular ticking off: ‘You won’t always
have
to be here, you know. A good number of the people in this class are almost old enough to get a job out there in the big world, sweeping hair cuttings off the floor or stacking supermarket shelves. So if you’re not willing to
apply
yourselves . . .’

It suddenly sounded very real. And relevant. Not that much longer and I’d reach the magic age.

I could leave school.

And home.

There wasn’t simply one last straw. It was a host of things, all piled on one another. In one short morning I did worse than Justin in three tests in a row. That was a shock. I think I’d thought that, just by turning up at school and sitting through it, my work would soon bounce back. I came home in the foulest mood and found a note from Nicholas on the kitchen table:
Eddie, back from site at six. Please smarten up for going out for supper
.

That’s all I need
, I thought. An evening out. The two of them asking me endlessly about my day in school with Alice sitting all relaxed because she’d finished all the exams that mattered.

I heard Natasha’s car door slam. Knowing that if I could make it to my room I wouldn’t have to go through all the questioning twice, I made for the stairs, getting there as the door opened.

Speeding up, I stumbled on Alice’s school bag.

I kicked it. Hard. Before it even skidded off across the parquet floor, I’d heard the tell-tale sound of something breaking.

Alice spun round from where she’d been standing in the kitchen doorway, talking to someone on the phone. ‘Eddie, you
pig
! You’ve gone and smashed my present from Melissa!’

Of course. The reason we were going out. First I
forget the day she finishes her last exam. Then I forget her birthday. And she’d stuck up for me so many times. She made excuses for me. She’d been
brilliant
.

Guilt makes you fight back harder than you should. ‘Your fault! You shouldn’t have left it in the way like that.’

Alice was outraged. ‘You bloody
booted
it! I
saw
you. You’re a little shit!’

Natasha was in the house now. ‘Alice! You watch your language!’

Alice spun round. ‘It’s Edward’s fault! He keeps behaving like an
animal
!’ She turned to look me in the eye. ‘Acting as if he has some
beast
inside him!’

Oh, didn’t Alice know how to boot back! That word ‘beast’. So well-chosen.

Fine!
I remember thinking.
You brought Bryce Harris into this, so I will act like him
.

I lifted up my foot and smirked at her, and then I brought it down –
crunch
– on the rest of what was in her bag.

Alice turned white with rage. ‘You nasty, nasty little piece of work! You creepy shit! Why don’t you piss off out of this house, and go back where you belong! Nobody wants you here. You’re spoiling everything for everyone. And we all
hate
you.’

Natasha stepped in. ‘Alice! You take that back at once!’

She wouldn’t. She was burning up with fury. ‘No! No, I won’t! You two won’t say so, but it’s
true
. He’s ruining
this house with all his sulks and tempers. He leaves revolting messes in the lavatory when he throws up. I don’t know how poor Valentina stands it. He’s crap at school. He’s got no friends. He tells lies all the time. Justin’s mates say he even steals from people’s bags and pockets. He certainly lifts things from shops! He’s rude and vile and horrible and
smelly
.’