Blueeyedboy (51 page)

‘Please, Ma!’

In fiction, our hero would break down the door; or failing that, crash through the window to land unharmed on the ground below. In real life, the door is unbreakable – though, sadly,
blueeyedboy
is not, as a leap from the window would surely confirm, sprawling him in agony on to the icy concrete below.

No, he’s trapped. He knows that now. Whatever his Ma is planning, he thinks, he’s helpless to prevent it. He hears her downstairs; her steps in the hall; her shoes on the polished parquet floor. The rattle of keys. She’s going out.

‘Ma!’ There’s a desperate edge to his voice. ‘Ma! Don’t take the car!
Please!
’

She hardly ever takes the car. Still, today, he knows she will. The café’s only a few streets away, down at the corner of Mill Road and All Saints’; but Ma can be so impatient sometimes – and she knows that girl is expecting him, that Irish girl with all the tattoos, the one who has broken her little boy’s heart –

How did she know what he was planning? Perhaps it was his mobile phone, left on the hall table. How stupid of him to have left it there so invitingly. So easy to open his inbox; so easy to find the recent dialogue between her son and
Albertine
.

Albertine
, she thinks with a sneer. A rose by any other name. And she
knows
that it’s that Irish girl, already to blame for the death of one son, now daring to threaten the other. A wasp in a jar may have killed him, but Gloria knows that Nigel’s death would never have happened but for
Albertine
. Stupid, jealous Nigel, who first fell for that Irish girl and then, when he found out his brother had been following her, taking photographs, had first threatened, and then used his fists on poor, helpless
blueeyedboy
, so that Ma had had to take action at last, putting Nigel down like a rabid dog lest history repeat itself –

Dear Bethan (if I may),

I suppose you must have heard the news by now. Dr Peacock passed away the other night at the Mansion. Fell out of his wheelchair down the steps, leaving the bulk of his estate – last valued at three million pounds – to you. Congratulations. I suppose the old man felt he owed you something for the Emily White affair.

I have to say I’m surprised, though. Brendan never told me a thing. All that time he was working for Dr Peacock, and never thought to tell me about this. But maybe he mentioned something to you? After all, you’re such good friends.

I know our respective families have had our differences over the years. But now that you’re seeing both my sons, perhaps we can bury the hatchet. This business comes as a shock to us all. Especially if what I’ve heard is true; that they’re treating the death as suspicious.

Still, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that. These things blow over in time, as you know.

Yours sincerely,

Gloria.

Yes,
Ma
wrote the letter, of course. She has never flinched from her duty. Knowing that Nigel would open it; knowing that he would take the bait. And when Nigel came round that day, demanding to talk to
blueeyedboy
, she was the one who deflected him, who sent him away with a flea in his ear – or at least, with a wasp in a jar –

But now her only surviving son owes her a debt that cannot be repaid. He can never leave her now. He can never belong to anyone else. And if he
ever
tries to run – 394

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blueeyedboy
:
Comments, anyone? Anyone here?

8

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blueeyedboy
posting on
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Posted at
:
04.47 on Friday, February 22

Status
:
public

Mood
:
devious

Listening to
:
My Chemical Romance
: ‘Mama’

She ought to have seen it coming, of course. She ought to have known he would end up this way. But Gloria is no expert on child development. To her,
developing
is something he does in his darkroom, alone. She doesn’t like to think of it much. It’s like the nasty old Blue Book, she thinks, or the games he likes to play online with those invisible friends of his. She has looked into it once or twice, with the same faint dutiful distaste as when she used to wash his sheets, but only for his protection; because other people don’t understand that
blueeyedboy
is sensitive; that he is simply incapable of ever standing up for himself –

The thought makes her eyes mist over a little. For all her steely hard-headedness, Gloria can be strangely sentimental at times, and even in her anger, the thought of his helplessness touches her. It’s always been at these moments, she thinks, that she loves him best of all: when he’s sick, or in tears, or in pain; when everyone else is against him; when there’s no one to love him but her; when all the world thinks he’s guilty.

Of course,
she
knows he’s innocent. Well, of murder, anyway. What
else
he may be guilty of – what crimes of the imagination – is between
blueeyedboy
and his Ma, who has spent her whole life protecting him, even at her own cost. But that’s her son all over, she thinks: sitting in the nest she has built, like a fat and flightless cuckoo chick with his beak perpetually open.

No, he wasn’t her favourite. But he was always the luckiest of her three unlucky boys: a natural survivor in spite of his gift; a chip, she thinks, off the old block.

And a mother owes it to her son to protect him, no matter what. Sometimes he needs to be punished, she knows; but that’s between
blueeyedboy
and his Ma. No stranger raises a hand to him. No one – not his school, not the law – has the right to interfere. Hasn’t she always defended him? From bullies and thugs and predators?

Take Tricia Goldblum, the bitch who seduced her elder son – and caused the death of her youngest. It was a pleasure to take care of her. Easy, too: electrical fires are always so reliable.

Then Mrs White’s hippie friend, who thought she was better than they were. And Catherine White herself, of course, so easy to destabilize. And Jeff Jones from the estate, the man who fostered that Irish girl, and who some years later, in the pub, dared to raise a hand to her son. Then there was Eleanor Vine, the sneak, spying on Bren at the Mansion, and Graham Peacock, who cheated them, and for whom the boy had
feelings
–

He was the most rewarding of all. Tipped over in his wheelchair and left to die alone on the path, like a tortoise half-out of its shell. Afterwards, she went upstairs and relieved him of his T’ang figurine, the one with which he taunted her all those years ago, and which she carefully placed in her cabinet along with the rest of her china dogs. It isn’t stealing, she tells herself. The old man owed her
something
, after all, for all the trouble he has caused her son.

But in spite of everything she has done for him, what gratitude has
blueeyedboy
shown? Instead of supporting his mother, he has dared to transfer his affections to that Irish girl from the village, and worse, has tried to make her believe that
she
could have been his protector –

She’ll make him pay for that, she thinks. But first, to take care of business.

Now, from upstairs, she hears his voice, accompanied by a banging and slapping at the bedroom door. ‘Ma! Please! Open the
door
!’

‘Don’t be such a baby,’ she says. ‘When I get back,
then
we can talk.’

‘Ma,
please!
’

‘Don’t make me come in—’

The sounds from the bedroom cease abruptly.

‘That’s better,’ says Gloria. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about. Like your job at the hospital. And the way you’ve been lying to me. And what you’ve been up to with that girl. That Irish girl with all the tattoos.’

Behind the door, he stiffens. He can feel every hair stiffening. He knows what’s in the balance here, and in spite of himself he is afraid. Of course he is. Who wouldn’t be? He is caught inside the bottle trap, and the worst of it is, he
needs
to be caught; he needs this feeling of helplessness. But she’s there on the other side of the door like a trap-door spider poised to bite, and if any part of his plan goes wrong, if he has failed to compensate for any one of those minute variables, then –

If. If.

An ominous sound, tinged with the grey-green scent of trees and the dust that accumulates under his bed. It’s safe under the bed, he thinks; safe and dark and scentless. He listens as she puts on her boots, fumbles with the front-door key; locks the door behind her. The
crump
of her footsteps in the snow. The sound of the car door opening.

She takes the car, as he knew she would. His begging her not to do so now ensures her cooperation. He closes his eyes. She starts the car. The engine ratchets into life. It would be so ironic, he thinks, if she had an accident. It wouldn’t be his fault if she did. And then, at last, he would be
free
–

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blueeyedboy
:
Still no one here? Right, then. I guess that leaves me all on my own for Stage 4 . . .

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blueeyedboy
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Posted at
:
04.56 on Friday, February 22

Status
:
public

Mood
:
cautious

Listening to
:
The Rubettes
: ‘Sugar Baby Love’

I think you must have guessed by now that this is not an ordinary fic. My other fics are all accounts of things that have already happened – though whether they happened quite as I said is up to you to determine. But this little story is more in the way of being a work-in-progress. An ongoing project, if you like.
A breakthrough in concept
, as Clair might say. And like all conceptual work, it isn’t entirely without risk. In fact, I’m more or less convinced that it’s all about to end in tears.

Five minutes to drive to the Zebra. Five more to see to business. And after that –
Whoops! All gone!
– here comes the explosive finale.

I hope they’ll look after my orchids. They’re the only things in this house that I’ll miss. The rest can rot, for all I care, except for the china dogs, of course, for which I have special plans of my own.

But first of all, to get out of this room. The door is pinewood, and well-made. In a movie, perhaps, I could break it down. Real life demands a more reasoned approach. A multi-tool with a screwdriver, a file and a short-bladed penknife should help me deal with the hinges, after which I can make my exit unimpeded.

I take a last look at my orchids. I notice that the
Phalaenopsis
– otherwise known as the moth orchid – is in need of re-potting. I know exactly how she feels; I, who have lived for all these years in the same little, airless, toxic space. Time to explore new worlds, I think. Time now to leave the cocoon and to fly . . .

It occurs to me as I work on the door that I ought to be feeling better than this. My stomach is filled with butterflies. I’m even feeling a little sick. My iPod is packed in my travel bag; instead I turn on the radio. From the tinny speakers comes the bubblegum sound of the Rubettes singing ‘Sugar Baby Love’.

When I was a little boy, mistaking
baby
for
B.B
., I always assumed that those songs were for me; that even the folk on the radio
knew
that I was special, somehow. Today the music sounds ominous, a troubling falsetto sweeping across a fat layer of descending chords to a mystic accompaniment of
doop-shoowaddies
and
bop-shoowaddies
; and it tastes sour-sweet like acid drops, the ones that, when you were a child, you poked into the side of your mouth to make your tastebuds shudder and cramp, and if you weren’t careful, the tip of your tongue would slide over the boiled-sugar shell and snag on the sharp-edged bubbles there, and your mouth would fill with sweetness and blood, and
that
was the taste of childhood . . .

Nyaaa-haaaa-haaaa-ooooooooooooooh

Today there’s something sinister in those soaring, sustained vocals; something that tears at the insides like gravel in a silk purse. The word
sugar
is not sweet: it has a pink and gassy smell, like dentist’s anaesthetic, dizzy and intrusive, like something boring its way into my head. And I can almost see her there – right at this moment,
here
and
there
– and the Rubettes are playing at migraine volume in the Zebra’s tiny kitchen, and there’s a smell, a sickly-sweet, gassy smell that cuts through the scent of fresh coffee, but Ma doesn’t really notice that, because fifty years of Marlboros have long since shot her olfactory organs to hell, and only the scent of L’Heure Bleue cuts through, and she opens the door to the kitchen.