Boys Don't Cry (24 page)

So what should I do about Logan?

In the end I decided to just let it go. Logan needed sorting – but I wouldn’t be the one to do it. To tell the truth, what I needed now was to be there for my daughter and my brother. They both needed me more than I needed revenge.

When I finally reached home, all I wanted to do was
collapse into bed and sleep without dreaming. Even though I tried to tiptoe into my bedroom, for some reason Emma stirred in her cot and woke up immediately. I groaned inwardly as she pulled herself upright. Tonight I could really do without Emma’s teeth giving her grief.

‘Go back to sleep, Emma.’ I tried to get her to lie down again but she wasn’t having it. I sighed. ‘Emma, please go back to sleep.’

Emma held out her arms to be picked up. I gave in. Anything for a quiet life. I sat on my bed, holding Emma as she rested her head against my shoulder contentedly. I envied her so much. The world made far more sense to her than it did to me.

‘Dada . . .’ said Emma.

I froze momentarily. ‘What did you say?’ I whispered, holding her up so we were at eye-level.

‘Dada,’ she repeated.

‘Who’s your daddy?’ I asked, then laughed as I realized what I’d said.

Emma pressed a finger against my cheek. ‘Dada . . .’

I jumped up, taking Emma with me and ran for Dad’s room. Switching on his light, I headed over to his bed.

‘Dad! Dad!’

Dad sat bolt upright, blinking away, his eyes still glazed. ‘What’s the matter? Is something wrong with Emma?’

‘Listen to this,’ I told him. ‘Say it again, Emma.’

Emma said nothing. His frown deepening, Dad looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

‘Who am I, Emma? Tell Grandad who I am,’ I coaxed.

‘Dada!’ Emma giggled and I laughed out loud. She’d
said it again. She really did mean it! I spun Emma around, lifting her high above my head and laughing up at her as she chortled down at me.

‘Did you hear that, Dad? She said “Dada”.’

‘That’s great. Well done, Emma. Now bugger off, Dante. It’s one o’clock in the morning,’ said Dad, falling back onto his pillows, his eyes closed, his whole expression pained.

‘Dad, could you watch your mouth in front of Emma, please?’

Dad opened his eyes to glare at me. ‘Dante. Go. Away.’

‘But, Dad . . .’

The glare turned into a frost-ridden, laser scowl. He wasn’t mucking around! I left his bedroom, still grinning.

‘That’s right, Emma,’ I told my daughter as I put her back in her cot. ‘I’m your daddy. And Daddy loves you very, very much.’

I wasn’t the only one worried about Adam. They had unwired his jaw and the bandages were long gone but my brother was nowhere to be seen. He still wouldn’t leave his bedroom and he barely spoke. When Adam did eat – at Dad’s insistence or at my nagging – it was always alone in his room. He very rarely went downstairs, and once his outpatient appointments at the hospital were over, he never left the house. Adam’s friends – male and female – came round our house to visit, but he refused to see any of them. After two or three times of the same thing happening, they stopped calling.

The left side of Adam’s face was almost back to normal, but the right side looked like he’d suffered a stroke or something. His right eye still drooped noticeably and he only had about fifty per cent of the vision he used to have in it. There was a scar on his right temple and the skin over his right cheek was mottled and lined with scars where he’d needed a number of stitches to reassemble his cheek. The stitches had long since been removed but the scars were taking their time to fade.

And Adam insisted that he didn’t want to see Emma and he wouldn’t let her see him.

He’d emerged from his living stupor exactly twice in as many months and that was because Emma tried to enter his room. Both times he screamed for me to come and get her whilst yelling at her to get out. And all of this was done with his back to Emma. Both times he’d made her cry her eyes out, which I must admit pissed me off, but I managed to restrain myself. Just.

‘There’s no need to shout at her like that,’ I told him. ‘She only wanted to be with her uncle. She misses you.’

‘You should thank me,’ said Adam, his back still towards us. ‘At least this way she won’t have nightmares about my face. Could you take her and go, please?’

When Emma finally stopped crying, I tried to explain. ‘Emma, your uncle isn’t well at the moment.’ I carefully picked my way through the words. ‘Something happened to his face and now his face isn’t the same and his heart is hurting and he doesn’t want anyone to see him like that.’

Emma sighed, probably with more patience and understanding than I was feeling at that precise moment.

Poor Adam . . .

I racked my brains for some way to help my brother, for some way to get the real Adam back, but I just couldn’t think of a way to do it.

We did get some good news. After my confrontation with Josh, a police officer came to our house two days later to tell us that Josh had turned himself in and that he was going to be charged with Grievous Bodily Harm under Section 18, which she was at pains to explain was a more
serious charge than Grievous Bodily Harm under Section 20. I had to take their word for that. I passed the news on to Adam but he didn’t bat an eyelid. I had to say it twice before I was even sure he’d heard me. There was no reaction at all.

My brother was broken and I had no idea how to fix him.

I still couldn’t find a suitable job and Dad was working overtime as often as possible just to make ends meet. I’d finally given in and signed up for Jobseeker’s Allowance. I really hated doing it, but Emma needed nappies and clothes and food and it wasn’t fair for Dad to have to do everything by himself. Adam stayed in his room, Dad was tired all the time and I felt like the scrounger that woman in the shop a few months earlier had said I was. If it wasn’t for Emma there would’ve been precious little laughter in our house.

Winter came and went with no change. Adam wouldn’t even come downstairs to share Christmas dinner with us. Dad and I put on a show for Emma, putting up the Christmas tree and wrapping her presents to place under it and stuff like that, but to be honest Christmas was a big fail in our house. On the odd night when Emma woke me up with her crying because of her now emerging top teeth and I had to rock her back to sleep, I could hear Adam pacing back and forth in his room. And once or twice I’d swear I could hear him crying.

After the Christmas break, Dad insisted that Adam needed to go back to school.

‘I can’t. I’m not ready,’ said Adam.

‘Son, if you carry on like this, you’ll never be ready,’ said Dad.

‘I’m not ready,’ Adam repeated.

And that was that.

In the end, Dad was so worried, he called out our GP.

‘D’you think I should tell him that Doctor Planter is on her way to see him?’ Dad asked me.

I shook my head. ‘He’d only tell you to cancel her or he’d phone the surgery and do it himself,’ I replied. ‘Wait till she arrives and then tell him.’

Dad nodded, deciding to take my advice.

It was almost an hour before Dr Planter finally arrived.

‘Dante, run upstairs and tell your brother the doctor is here,’ said Dad, giving me a meaningful look.

I thought Adam would hit the roof when I told him. Actually, I think I would’ve welcomed that. But to my surprise, he didn’t. He considered for a few moments.

‘I’ll see her, but only if I can see her alone,’ Adam said.

I went to the top of the stairs. ‘Doctor Planter, would you mind coming up, please?’

As the doctor was entering Adam’s room, I shook my head at Dad. ‘Adam wants to see her alone.’

Dad frowned, but he didn’t argue. When at last the doctor emerged from Adam’s room, Dad and I were waiting on the landing, ready to pounce.

‘How is he? Is he going to be OK?’ Dad launched in. ‘He can’t go on like this.’

Dr Planter shook her head. ‘In my opinion Adam isn’t ready, physically or emotionally, to go back to school yet,’ she informed us with a frown. ‘He’s not sleeping at all and
as a result is suffering from mental exhaustion, so I’m going to prescribe some sleeping pills.’

‘Is that safe?’ Dad looked worried. ‘Isn’t he a bit young for sleeping pills?’

‘Well, it’s certainly not a long-term solution. The tablets I’m prescribing are for short-term use only. Adam feels that if he could just sleep properly at night, he would greatly improve – and I’m inclined to agree. I’m only going to prescribe enough for two weeks, no more than that, but they should help him get back into a regular sleeping pattern. I’d like to see him again in a fortnight. OK? If he isn’t making progress by then, I think some counselling might help.’

Dad nodded his agreement, though he wasn’t entirely happy.

‘Mr Bridgeman, I know Adam isn’t keen on us doctors, but I really feel this is one of those occasions when you need to make him see sense,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry, I hear you,’ Dad replied. ‘It’s my fault. I should’ve called you out much earlier than this.’

Dr Planter wrote out a prescription for Adam’s medication and headed off. And that was that. I don’t know what I’d been expecting – a cure, some kind of instant miracle? Either way, I didn’t get it. I stared at Adam’s closed bedroom door and it felt like there was a whole ocean between us, rather than just a door.

My brother was slipping away from me and I had no idea how to stop it.

‘I’ll keep the pills and give Adam one to take each night,’ said Dad once the doctor had left. ‘That way we’ll
all know where we are and there’ll be no chance of Adam taking two in one night by mistake. You know what your brother is like with tablets.’

I did indeed. And it was a measure of just how much my brother knew he needed help that he’d even agreed to take the pills in the first place.

Was that a good sign? Or was I merely clutching at straws?

I chose to believe it was the former.

There it is again, the knocking at my door. Dad or Dante? It doesn’t really matter. I don’t want to see either of them. Why can’t they get that through their heads? I don’t want to see anyone or speak to anyone. And I don’t want anyone to see me. I’m so tired. Bone tired. Maybe the sleeping pills Dr Planter suggested will help. I hope so. I can’t go on like this. I need to do something to get my life back. Everything I look at through my right eye is a blur and I have no peripheral vision in it any more. And even though all the mirrors in the house have been silenced, my fingers and my bedroom window still tell me the truth: my face is a mess.

Mr Marber, my surgeon at the hospital, tried to tell me that I was lucky. If I hadn’t been at the hospital when my subdural haematoma decided to make its presence felt, I might’ve died. That’s what he told me, I might’ve died. Was that his attempt to show me that getting beaten up had a silver lining? If so, he failed miserably. Here I am in my room and the future stretches out before me like some kind of relentless desert.

This is my life.

A life I’m too scarred and too scared to let anyone see. I tried to live my life out loud. What I have now isn’t even a whisper.

It’s silence.

After a fortnight, Adam insisted that the sleeping pills had done the trick and he didn’t need anything else. He point-blank refused to go and see our GP about any further help and he still didn’t leave his room.

So we carried on as before.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Veronica made an appointment to ‘discuss’ Emma’s future with Dad and me. And this time the visit was official. So that was another day Dad had to take off work.

On the day of her threatened visit, Dad warned me, ‘Dante, don’t get snotty and for God’s sake don’t lose your temper. OK?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I know you. You’ll let her say what she likes about you but if she says something you resent about Emma, you’ll flare up. Don’t! Remember that you’re doing this for Emma’s sake, so just suck it up,’ said Dad.

I nodded. Dad was right. I couldn’t afford to be on anything but my best behaviour. Veronica arrived at our house at around two thirty and Dad escorted her into the sitting room.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Dad. ‘Tea? Coffee?’

‘No, thanks. I’m fine,’ said Veronica.

Outside the rain lashed at the windows. The view was wet and grey, a greyness which leeched by degrees into the sitting room.

‘Where’s Emma today?’ Veronica asked the question with a saccharine smile.

‘She’s having her afternoon nap at the moment,’ I replied.

‘Well, we won’t disturb her for the time being but I’d really like to see her before I leave.’ The fake smile didn’t wobble for a second.

‘No problem.’ I exchanged Veronica’s smile with one of my own, equally as false. The last time I’d spoken to Collette, I hadn’t been terribly kind. I didn’t doubt for a second that Collette had passed on every word I’d said.

Dad indicated the sofa. Veronica headed for the armchair and sat down. After exchanging a glance, Dad and I sat down next to each other on the sofa. Veronica asked to see Emma’s medical book which I was happy to hand over because all of my daughter’s vaccinations were up-to-date. The polite conversation that followed was interlaced with questions. Amongst other things, she asked me whether I was collecting child benefit for Emma. I wasn’t. I had assumed that wherever she was, Melanie was still getting that money. To my surprise, Veronica told me what steps I needed to take to make sure that I got Emma’s child-benefit money instead of Melanie. And she gave me advice about getting Emma’s birth certificate amended so that my name was also on it. That way I’d get full parental
responsibilities and rights under the law. And I needed to pull my finger out for that one because it was best to do it before Emma was two. After that it got far more complicated. Getting my name on the birth certificate would also make it easier to claim child benefit for Emma, but to be honest I didn’t want to draw too much official attention to myself. And I certainly didn’t want to live my life from handout to handout. It was bad enough that I’d had to jump through hoops to collect Jobseeker’s Allowance. I needed to find a decent job to support Emma and me. The last thing I wanted was to hop on the benefit merry-go-round. Too much pride, I guess, like Dad.