Someone Else's Son (49 page)

‘What did it feel like, eh, having it ripped out of you?’ He was strutting about, pacing up and down the length of the wall, panting like an animal, his head bobbing, his fists clenching.

‘Max . . . please . . .’ Then she remembered seeing them. Four or five? They were in her peripheral vision, skirting round the wire fence that separated school from street. She glanced at them then back at Max.

‘There were a few of them. I dunno. Max and I were arguing when I caught sight of them,’ she said clearly to Carrie. It was a clever shift back to what everyone wanted to know.

‘Who?’ Carrie asked. There were tears in her eyes. She’d had to sit back down in the chair. She sipped water.

‘The gang. They were stalking about. Looking for trouble.’

‘Did you see what they were wearing?’

‘Usual stuff. Trackies. Trainers. Hoodies.’

‘Did you recognise any of them?’ Carrie leant forward. Dayna could almost smell the desperation on her. She suddenly felt as if it was her show and Carrie was the guest.

She turned to the camera. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said vaguely, narrowing her eyes. It was easy to bring back – she’d been doing it all week. Going over and over those minutes that seemed stretched into days.

‘Max,’ she remembered saying, trying to warn him with a nod of her head towards the gang. ‘Behind you.’

Max had turned, momentarily released from his rage, but picking it up again when he spun back round to Dayna. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the youths.

‘You want to know something?’ he said. He was up close now, crushing her legs against the wall as he stood squarely in front of her.

Dayna shrugged, glanced behind him again. They were almost through the gates. They’d clocked them; were staring in their direction. ‘Sure.’ She didn’t like the way Max was behaving. She felt threatened. He hitched his bag up and patted it with his hand. She knew what he kept in there.

‘I’m not scared any more.’

‘That’s good, Max.’ Dayna played along. It had been a mistake to confront him. She had to accept that it was over. She’d get her exams and get out of school in a couple of months. She picked up a chip and was about to put it in her mouth when Max grabbed the tray from her and hurled it across the tarmac. Chips sprayed everywhere. There was a lone slow clap from the gang by the school gates. One of them laughed and let out a lazy cheer.

‘What you fucking staring at?’ Max called out to them.

‘Max, don’t,’ Dayna said urgently. ‘Calm down. Let’s have a smoke.’ Her fingers trembled as she lit the joint. ‘Here.’ She passed it to him. He succumbed to temptation and sat on the wall next to her, squinting through the smoke at the gang. They were shoving each other around.
Yeah, you go to fucking school, man
, she heard one say.

‘It was, like, really really scary,’ Dayna told Carrie. ‘All of them out there and just us. We were trying to act normal. To go back into the school building, we had to walk past them. We should have got out as soon as I saw them. It’s all my fault.’ She could see Carrie thinking it through. Despite this, the woman kept the show going. She stated facts and figures about knife crime that year so far. How many teens had been stabbed in London alone. How many arrests were made. Dayna could hardly believe it. Then she told the audience that they’d be back after the commercial break.

Suddenly, Carrie’s face was in hers. She yanked her earpiece out. A woman was brushing at the star’s make-up, another fixing her hair. She batted them away.

‘What do you mean . . . the
baby
?’

Dayna didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Guilt was stuck in her throat. Silence would get her through the break. She stared emptily at Carrie before turning and walking back to the chair. She sat and sipped water, listening to frantic conversations between producers and camera crew and loads of other people all rushing about. She heard Carrie’s voice among it all, saying
why, why, why
over and over. Someone asked her if she wanted to continue with the show and she flipped out.
Thirty seconds
, she heard. More commotion and then silence. A countdown. Carrie stood centre stage.

‘Welcome back to this week’s
Reality Check
. I’m talking to Dayna Ray, friend of my son, Max, who was fatally stabbed last week. I’m appealing to you, my viewers, to phone the police hotline number on your screen if you can help in any way. It might be that you live close to Milton Park School and saw a group of youths hanging around on the morning of the twenty-fourth of April. Or perhaps your son has been acting strangely or you found blood on his clothes. Did you overhear your teenager talking to his mates on the phone about the incident? Or perhaps you were involved yourself. Whatever the connection and however small, I implore you to call in. The information you give will be strictly confidential and you don’t have to reveal your name. But before we return to our guest, I want to show you a short film about knife crime in London.’

Everyone was motionless as the film also played for the benefit of those in the studio. Carrie stood proud and watched as images of her son flashed past to the most emotional music Dayna had ever heard. Other teenagers’ faces – black, white, Asian – scrolled across the screen. All killed. All stabbed. All within the last year. There was footage of the school, of forensics doing their work, and even a picture of Max’s bedroom. His leftover life. The film ended.

‘Now.’ Carrie took a deep breath. ‘Back to Dayna.’ She glared at her as she strode to the chairs. She sat down and, once her face was visible to the cameras again, she lost the stern look. ‘At what point did you realise there was going to be trouble with the gang, Dayna? It must have been terrifying for you.’ She’d obviously decided to lay off asking about the baby for the time being.

‘Like I said, we were just smoking, sitting on the wall. I’d calmed Max down a bit. Then those lads came in the school grounds and began yelling things. Two of them had quite dark messy hair. It was sticking out from their hoods. One had terrible spots and the other had these horrid eyes. So scary. Max had told me how he wasn’t going to give in to them any more. How he wasn’t going to be scared. I was proud of him for that.’

At this, Dayna saw Carrie’s face soften and her eyes shut for a moment. Dayna closed her eyes for a moment, too.

‘Oi, fuckhead,’ one of the gang called out. They were still hanging around the school gates, smoking, and one had a can of something.

‘Hey, ow!’ she said as Max bent her arm. ‘What you do that for?’

‘Murderer,’ he said venomously, ignoring the calls from the gang.

‘Stop . . . but you told me . . . no!’

Max pulled her off the wall, their arms tangled, Dayna trying to wrestle free from Max’s vice-like grip. He’d gone mad. The joint was hanging from his mouth as he yelled abuse at her. Then there was cheering and clapping as three of the gang approached, drawn inside the gates by the scuffle, always up for a bit of trouble. The others had wandered off, bored. Dayna couldn’t recall who she was more scared of, Max or them.

‘Please, oh please stop . . .’ She began to cry. This wasn’t right. She wanted to talk to him, to reason with him, to make him understand what had happened. This was all so unfair. She’d not been given a chance. It should have been so simple but his eyes were scalding red and his teeth were chomping on the spliff like a monster.

Then she was on the ground, jolted and stunned. The tarmac grazed her palms. She stared up at him.

‘I thought we were a thing, you and me. I thought you . . . thought you loved me.’ Max was shaking, ripping off the bag that was slung diagonally across his body, pulling at his clothes, his hair. Had he taken something? This wasn’t the Max she knew.

‘Look, man, da skinny bastard’s got one on ’im.’ There was laughter. It fuelled Max’s rage further.

It was slow motion. The world, fuzzy-edged. Unreal. Some crazy time slip.

Max reached into his bag.

‘It was awful,’ Dayna said to Carrie. She had to be careful. She had to get this right. She was on television. She thought of Max and prayed for his soul. The lights in the studio were so bright.

‘What do you mean, Dayna?’ Carrie asked.

‘The gang, they’d surrounded him. One of the youths pulled out a knife.’

‘Oh God,’ she heard Carrie whisper. ‘Then what happened?’

Total silence in the studio.

‘There was shouting. They were calling Max names, really winding him up. Max got so mad I thought he was going to explode.’ Dayna’s stomach cramped with grief as she remembered. She leant forward and sobbed. It was all going wrong. She didn’t care that she was on television. Didn’t care who saw her or what she said. She didn’t care about her story, either, because she was so confused and her insides hurt and it was nearly killing her that Max had died without knowing the truth.

It was all her fault.

‘Oh please, no, don’t,’ she’d said. She tried to stand up again but Max pushed her back down with his foot pressed on her belly.

Then she saw it, glinting in his fist. The knife, drawn from his bag, pointing right at her.

‘No . . .’ she’d screamed, rolling sideways away from the blade. The youths formed a shroud around them, shouting out, always up for trouble. Somehow, she found her feet and backed away. Max followed her, the knife in his outstretched hand leading him on.

‘Hey, easy, man,’ one of the gang called out. ‘Someone gonna get hurt with that thing.’

Max ignored them. He ignored Dayna, too, as she tried to spit out what she’d wanted to tell him. But his eyes were wide and staring, all of the soft velvet warmth they contained dried up and hardened. Max had had enough.

There was a hand on her back, stroking her. ‘It’s OK, love. Take your time. So the gang had surrounded you and Max. Did the boy threaten Max with the knife? What did he say? Can you remember what he looked like?’

Dayna lifted her head. There were tissues on the table so she reached out and took one as if she was just in someone’s living room, not live on television. If she thought too hard about that, she’d be sick. She blew her nose. ‘It, like, all goes fuzzy from there. This crazy stuff happened . . .’

Dayna had heard about the arrest from that detective, Jess; about how Warren Lane was taken in by the cops but then released again. Everyone knew Warren. He was a right loser. He’d been locked up loads before. He’d nicked cars, done some dealing, robbed the post office. And everyone said he was stupid to boot. Or was he so stupid, Dayna thought, as she remembered his face in the group of lads that awful morning.

He’d run away from more foster families than he could count and it was no secret he’d been living rough. The only time he bothered to come to school was when he needed a free meal or to use the showers and loos. Dayna knew it was him there that morning. His hood was up, shrouding his face, but it was Warren Lane all right. She also knew what he was up to by getting arrested. That wasn’t any secret either. Get busted and get locked up. It was a roof over his head and free food for the next decade or two. Kids like him preferred it inside.

Should she tell them it was him?

In a flash, she caught Max’s wrist in her hand as it came down towards her. She never once believed he was going to stab her. He wouldn’t, would he?

‘Max just wasn’t himself,’ she told Carrie. She could say that much. She cried some more and Carrie waited patiently.

Dayna screamed and scratched Max’s face with her free hand. It gave him a moment’s lucidity – the look of hatred transforming into a frown as he briefly wondered where he was, what he was doing, why the hell he was wrestling with the girl he loved.

His hand unclenched. He dropped the knife. It bounced and clattered on the tarmac.

‘Hey, man, just cool it, yeah? Someone gonna get hurt.’ Warren Lane stepped forward and picked up the knife. ‘Nice,’ he said, fingering the handle and running his thumb across the blade. ‘You don’t wanna shank ya girl, man. Take it from me.’ Warren laughed and whipped the knife about, cutting at the air with speed. ‘The slammer ain’t no place for a skinny shit like you, man.’ He laughed again, his smoker’s voice making him sound ten years older than he really was. He lunged round at his mates, playfully stabbing at them. The other kids recoiled.

He turned to Dayna. ‘You better take this then, yeah?’ He held the knife out to her, handle first, as if he trusted her not to do anything stupid with it. ‘And look after dat boy of yours cos he got some crazy shit in him today.’

‘Max was really upset because, you know, about the baby and everything. He’d told me to get an abortion. I went to the hospital—’

‘An
abortion
?’ Carrie grabbed Dayna’s wrists and pulled her round so they were facing each other. Their eyes were inches apart. Dayna saw the same sorrow in Carrie’s eyes as there had been in Max’s.

‘You fucking killed our baby,’ he’d spat out. The knife was long, so very sharp, and Dayna held it in her fist, pointing down the length of her leg. ‘So tell me, what now? You fucking tell me what’s left.’ Spit was foaming on his lips. ‘I got nothing in my life. Not even you. Not even any damned baby that we didn’t want and now you’ve gone and killed it.’

‘I was so angry with him when he told me to get an abortion. As if it was all so disposable. As if
I
was disposable.’

Carrie relinquished her grip. Dayna knew she couldn’t be violent on television. But it was almost as if they weren’t on television any more. Things had got past that. They were in their own private hell, one hiding from the truth, one searching for it.

‘Max, just calm down,’ Dayna begged. The other kids were heckling him again. It was just what they did; programmed into them.

‘Don’t fucking tell me to calm down.’ The odd thing, she recalled, was that Max was entirely calm when he said this. For a second, in that beautiful moment before it happened, she’d believed she would be able to reason with him and tell him what she’d done and they could sit down again and talk and hug and forget about this shit of a drizzly morning. Hell, they could go down to the shed and do some competitions, have a smoke, eat some food.