How the Trouble Started (9 page)

It was the early hours by the time I got back from the Faraday Estate and Sunday started with Mum shouting me awake, accusing me of drink and drugs and anything else she could think of through the fog of her fury. I tried not to respond but she was in no mood to have a one-sided fight and I rose to the occasion and we shouted until we ran out of voice and argument. We were both left empty, exhausted and trembling. She didn’t have the energy to slam my door properly when it was over. I spent the rest of the day in my room, lying on the bed, ignoring books and homework, worrying about Jake.

Monday I went to find him on his walk home from school. I caught him on Pickup Street, by the entrance to the park. ‘Did she come back?’ He pulled up short, surprised. I’d jumped in too fast, no explanation. I needed to calm down. Sometimes I’ve got so lost in what’s going on in my head that I forget that not everyone is thinking the same thing. I fell into step with him and we had a chat about his day at school instead. He was in a good mood. The football lads had decided that Harry wasn’t one of them after all and had sent him back to Jake with his new ginger spikes flattened down and his shiny trainers all scuffed up, so it was back to the two of them hanging around by the tree, chatting and messing around. And best of all, Harry hadn’t told Jake that his breath stank or that his clothes were rubbish since his return. I was pleased for Jake, I was, but I couldn’t help thinking what a little bastard Harry was to treat someone the way he’d treated Jake – turning his back on Jake for the football lads one minute and then crawling back the next, when they’d had enough of him. But I didn’t say anything, it was just good to see Jake a little happier, more like his old self. When Jake had finished telling me about Harry, I tried again.

‘So did your mum come back in the end then on Sunday?’ I asked him.

‘She came back. She took me out for tea,’ he said.

‘What time did she get back?’

‘About lunchtime and then she went to bed. When she got up she said she was starving and we went out for tea. I had a burger.’

I didn’t say anything for a while and then Jake said, ‘It’s OK. I don’t mind.’

I knew he was lying then. I could see the little man in him pushing to get out, trying to show himself as brave. I was proud of him but I wasn’t fooled.

‘It’s not right Jake. You shouldn’t be left alone, you know. You’re still a little lad.’

He was quiet for a while. ‘I don’t like being alone. I don’t mind in the day, but at night when it’s dark, I hear noises. I don’t like that. I leave the light on in my room but I still know that it’s dark everywhere else and then I get scared about what’s out in the dark.’

‘Well, at night it’s easy to be scared by things that wouldn’t be scary in the daytime,’ I told him. ‘If you hear a bump during the day you don’t even think about it, but at night it becomes something else, doesn’t it?’ I said. I tried to make him laugh. ‘It becomes the monster on the other side of the door.’ I made a face and did an impression of a monster lumbering along, but I didn’t get a smile.

‘At night I think about that man who shot the 
woman
 through the floorboards in the haunted house, and I think that he’s downstairs in my house. I think that he’s going to come and shoot me. When my mum isn’t there I sometimes turn all the lights on in every room, but I’m still scared. If I’m upstairs I think he’s downstairs and if I’m downstairs I hear noises upstairs, and then I think he’s up there waiting for me.’

I’d been stupid. That was my fault.

I put my arm around his shoulder and said, ‘You’re a brave lad you know.’

We were getting close to his street and it was time I left. I asked him if he wanted to meet in the library or at the playground on Saturday, and we agreed on the playground. We set a time and I headed off home, thinking what to do about Jake as I went.

When I got back Mum was still in a black mood and her festering infected the house and filled the rooms with anger and frustration. She was fed up when I was in the house too much; she was fed up when I wasn’t there enough. I usually found it a tricky balance to maintain, but lately I hadn’t bothered to try and make it balance at all. She was in the type of mood where you could do no right. Even if you just sat there and said nothing you would do it in a way that would rile her. When she’s like that there’s nothing to be done. A bird singing in a tree in the backyard will get the door slammed on it. A neighbour whistling in their bedroom two doors down will be cursed. In the past I’ve tolerated these moods, tiptoed around them, tried to help ease them on their way, but I didn’t have the patience any more. I was fed up with her acting as if she was the only person in the world who ever felt sad and lonely and frustrated and desperate. And with all the thinking I needed to do I was in no mood for her. She started as soon as I walked in through the front door, so I was out of the back door five seconds later. Her voice was silenced by the slammed door, but it was only silenced for a second before the door swung open and bellowed threats of retribution hit the back of my head. I walked as fast as I could away from the house without turning round. I didn’t care what she had to say; she could save it for Thursday night and put it all in her fucking notebook. I had to get out, I had to think and I couldn’t think whilst she was stewing away in the corner of the back room. All of a sudden I knew what I needed. It hit me like a snowball in the face. I needed to see Fiona.

The quarry was deserted. No sign of her. Just when I needed to see her the most. That saying:
a watched pot never boils
is rubbish because a watched pot boils in the same time as an ignored pot, but they should write a saying about never bumping into someone when you want to, because that’s something that’s true. I decided to go and knock on her door. It was something I hadn’t done for years, but I really wanted to see her. I walked down into the quarry and up and out of the far side, across the field, over the fence, and was on the top of Salthill Road in five minutes. There were about sixty houses stretching out in front of me in a line. All ex-council, all exactly the same, and I couldn’t remember what number she lived at. I wandered down the street and struck lucky – the union jack was still hanging in the front garden, battered and worn, like it had seen service. Fiona’s dad had put it up years ago when an Asian family moved into the house next door, and it had stayed there since, even after the Asian family had long moved on. It was in a sorry state now – the white had stained to grey and the red had faded to a light pink and smudged its way out of the shape of a cross. I had second thoughts stood outside the house. Their place never looked welcoming and I wasn’t keen on her dad or her brothers, but I did want to see Fiona. I knocked and immediately started saying to myself:
Please let it be Fiona, please let it be Fiona, please let it be Fiona
, but it was her younger brother, Tyler, who opened the door. He looked me up and down and took a bite from a piece of bread. ‘Yeah?’ he said and chewed. It had been years since he’d last seen me and he didn’t have a clue who I was. I asked if Fiona was in and he smiled an open-mouthed smile, the bread looking like mashed potato in his mouth. ‘You dirty bastard,’ he said. He bellowed for Fiona before disappearing back into the front room, the door slamming behind him. I heard Fiona swear from somewhere in the house and a few seconds later she was stomping down the stairs. She reached the bottom and told me to stay where I was and vanished behind a door. She appeared a moment later with her big jacket on, pulled the door closed behind her and we set off walking. I got a good look at her as she’d come down the stairs and it was one of the few days when she wasn’t wearing any make-up, and I thought she looked tired. But out in the daylight, with the sun shining on us, she looked more beautiful than I’d ever seen her. I had a lump in my throat at the sight of her. She was wearing a pair of jeans, a red and blue checked shirt and her big jacket. She looked so perfect that I wanted to build a brick wall around her so nothing bad could ever touch her. We walked through the late afternoon sun and although it was still warm, she huddled into her jacket and wrapped her arms around herself. I had the thought then that no matter what happened in my life, I would always remember this moment, walking away from Fiona’s house with her looking as 
beautiful
 as she did, and the sun on our backs and the town still and quiet, like God had pressed the pause button and we were the only people it hadn’t paused. I asked her if she was OK and she said she was, ‘but you get rid of one dickhead brother and the younger one steps into his shoes immediately.’ I told her I was sorry but she shrugged my apology away. ‘How come you aren’t a massive prick anyway 
Donald
? You’re a bloke, you’re the right age. Why aren’t you trying to grab my arse and getting drunk and fighting and being a dick?’ I told her the truth: ‘My mum would explode.’ She laughed and linked her arm through mine.

We walked down Waddington Road, heading away from town and towards the river. After the road bends left it bends right and you end up looking down onto the Hoddale as it runs its way past the fringes of the town and further out of the valley. To see it below, nestling between the fields, you wouldn’t believe it was running water. It looked like a country road winding along down there, and even as we got closer it was running so slowly it hardly looked like it was moving at all. After we’d climbed over the stile at the bottom of the hill and walked a few feet alongside the river Fiona said, ‘Come on Donald. What’s up? What’s bothering you?’

Just then a car shot over the narrow bridge behind us, its engine straining hard, the tyres squealing as it rounded the corner. The noise made us jump and we turned to see the car speed off, its back end swinging from side to side. A woman was stood on the bridge with her daughter, the car must have gone right past them. The little girl was howling and pushing her face into her mum’s skirt. You could see the woman was shaken too, but she was trying to encourage the girl off the bridge, to where the road widened and the pavement started. The girl wouldn’t let go of the skirt and the woman had to tear her hands away, so she could pick her up and carry her off the bridge. When I could see they were safely on the pavement I moved to the edge of the river, picked up some stones and started throwing them as hard as I could into the 
water
.

‘Are you OK Donald?’ Fiona had followed me and was stood behind me. I nodded but carried on throwing stones.

‘You seem a little wired,’ she said.

I did feel wired. That was the right word for it. I felt taut. Tight. Too much energy and nothing to do with it. I felt like I could run right back to Clifton. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t run a step. I felt like every moment was the moment three seconds before you’re sick when you’re confused and in pain and want to escape your body. I wanted to tell her about the little boy in Clifton. I want to tell her that I killed a little boy and that I wasn’t even that bothered for a while afterwards because I didn’t mean to do it, and I was told he would be in heaven and that seemed all right to me at the time. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t a bad person because I didn’t shake and cry and wail when I’d found out he’d died. I just didn’t know what I’d done. I hadn’t a clue what I’d done. And then we disappeared and Mum would never let it be mentioned so it was never mentioned. But now the silence made me want to scream until my throat tore. I wanted her to know that it would feel good to walk through the middle of town screaming: I KILLED A LITTLE BOY, I KILLED A LITTLE BOY, over and over until everyone knew and there was nobody left to tell. And I wanted to tell her about Jake. I wanted to talk about Jake. A great little lad and nobody cared. Nobody saw what was going on. But what I really wanted her to understand was how it feels to live like you’re living in a diving bell, where you’re trapped and can’t move and things are only going to get tighter and smaller for as long as you’re alive until you’re the smallest Russian doll in a set of a hundred Russian dolls buried deep in a box in the back garden of a house where nobody has ever lived. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t feel well and hadn’t done for a long time. I stopped walking. I told her I wanted to go home. She looked at me but didn’t say anything and we turned and started walking back towards the bridge and Waddington Road. When we reached her house Fiona took my hands and said, ‘Donald, if you need someone to talk to, come and see me. I know things aren’t always easy for you, but whenever you need to, come and talk to me.’ She put her arms around me and hugged me and I hugged her back and the feel and the smell of her was the best thing that had happened to me for years. I blinked back tears and a moment later she was behind a closed door.

I didn’t go home. I went back into town and walked to Gillygate Primary. I walked up to the railings and looked onto the yard. Without any of the children tearing around it looked like a place I’d never seen before. I tried to picture them: Jake and Harry over by the tree, the football lads over the 
other
 side and the little girls skipping around it all. But it was impossible to imagine so much life in such a silent space and the emptiness of it made me feel worse so I left. I walked to Jake’s street and had a peer at his house, but I couldn’t see any sign of life there either. I did a circuit of the town and ended up back at the quarry and now my body was tired but my brain still wasn’t slowing. I lay down under a tree and watched the empty quarry and thought about Jake. And then I started thinking about the little boy back in Clifton.

He was two and a half years old. He lived with his mum and dad at the bottom of Hawthorne Road, number five. We lived at the top, number seventy-five. His mum and dad have split up since it happened – that’s common after losing a child, very few relationships survive something like that. But divorce is common anyway these days so who knows what would have happened without the tragedy. They loved him very much – I did know that. I used to see them in the park in Clifton, pushing him on the swings, or they would be sliding him down the small slide, one of them letting him go from the top, the other catching him at the bottom, making him squeal with excitement. We’d never spoken before it happened and we didn’t speak afterwards. I thought they might come and see me, to get my side of the story, but they must have got a version of that from the police. And then, of course, there was the trouble in their garden at midnight. They weren’t going to come after that.