Straight Back (2 page)

“Don’t you speak to me like that, young lady.”

“Well, I’m not in the mood for a lecture either, Gran, so save your breath.”

Joan stood up and raised her finger to Sheridan. “Your mother has been too soft on you, Sheridan, for far too long. I know you’ve been through a hard time but so has everyone else in the family and you’re no different.”

“Gran, you’ve gone as soft as everyone else around here. Am I the only one who can see that Arif doesn’t belong in this family, in this house or even in this country?”

“And why do you think that, Sheridan?”

“Because he isn’t white and English like us and he’s given me a half-breed brown brother that I absolutely refuse to love.”

“He’s also a good man who mended you mother’s broken heart.”

“Oh, here we go again,” said Sheridan. “You’re going to start bad mouthing my dad.”

Joan saw red and had to stop herself from smacking Sheridan’s face. “Well, yes, it might help to go over some of the things your precious dad did to destroy this family. He took your mum out to one of the swankiest restaurants in Manchester only to tell her that he’d lost all their money and, once the meal was paid for, that was it. He left you all the very next morning to go and run a health spa in the south of Spain with the woman he’d been having an affair with behind your mother’s back. Do you ever hear from him? No. Does he ever ring you or email you? No. And that’s all because he, basically, doesn’t give a damn about you.”

“That’s not true.”

“Were you listening just then? You’re deluding yourself, Sheridan. Your dad was a total failure as both a husband and a parent.”

“You’re a liar!”

Joan recoiled in shock at the ferociousness of Sheridan’s verbal attack. “I’ve already asked you to watch what you say to me, Sheridan.”

“My dad wouldn’t have just abandoned me and our Paige like you’re all making out he did! You just want to make him out to be a really bad person and you’re all liars.”

It broke Joan’s heart to see her granddaughter cry. Sheridan had been a real daddy’s girl. She’d idolised her father, Joan’s ex-son-in-law, Brian, and could never believe anything bad about him, despite the obvious truths. She wished he could see the damage and the heartbreak he’d left behind.  

“Sheridan, if your dad is seen as a bad person then he’s done it all by himself.”

“And why are you happy for your daughter to be with a dirty Arab?”

“Sheridan, where did you get your prejudice from? Neither your mum, nor your dad for that matter, brought you up that way. Arif is taking good care of your mum and he wants to take care of you too, if you’d let him.”

“I don’t want to even look at him.”

“A bit difficult that when you’re living in the same house.”

“I wish he’d just go away and leave us alone.”

“If you only knew what Arif had to run from in Iraq ….”

“Well, tough! Okay? He can run right back there for all I care. There’s too many like him in our country and we need to send them all back.”

Joan kept having to remind herself that her granddaughter was only fifteen years old. She spoke like she had all the emotional baggage and resentments of someone much older. She was so unlike her sister, Paige, who was only two years younger but had an older and more mature head on her shoulders. When their father, Brian, had declared himself bankrupt and gone off to Spain leaving the family with no money, Joan’s daughter, Ellie, had been forced to uproot her two daughters from their home and from their lives and move them into temporary accommodation provided by a housing trust in the Ancoats area of Manchester. It had been two years since then and they were still there. The neighbourhood wasn’t brilliant and it wasn’t what they were used to but there were some good people around and Ellie had managed to make some good friends and so had Sheridan’s sister, Paige. Sheridan, however, had remained obstinately opposed to doing anything positive to at least try and settle down.  

“Mum drove Dad away,” said Sheridan between sobs.

Joan was beside herself with frustration. “That’s not true, Sheridan.”

“It is true.”

“But it isn’t true, Sheridan. One day, you’ll have to accept that he deliberately hid money away that belonged to his family, meaning you, and used it to start his new life in Spain.”

“You mean I’ve got to listen to lies from you and Mum. Well, I won’t do that, Gran. I will not do it!”

“Sheridan, I really don’t know what to say to you any more.”

“You don’t have to say anything because I will never accept a darkie as my stepfather and I’ll never accept that half-caste bastard as my brother!”

Joan couldn’t stop herself this time and slapped her one. “Now, I’m sorry, but you deserved that, Sheridan. Tariq is your flesh and blood! He’ll be looking to you, his big sister, to help take care of him and there’s so much for you to be proud of, if you’ll only open your heart and let both Arif and Tariq in. I’m scared, Sheridan, because I just don’t know you anymore. What happened to the little girl who used to come and stay the weekend with me and bring her colouring books and I’d plait her hair? That little girl would never have been so horrible to a defenceless little baby, especially when he was her little brother. If your granddad could see the way you’re acting now, it would break his heart.”

“Finished?”

“What?”

“Because I’ve had enough and I’m going out,” said Sheridan, as she made for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“As far away from this joke of a family as I can get.”

“Sheridan, stay and let’s talk,” Joan pleaded. “Sheridan!”

“I don’t want to, therefore I won’t.” 

Sheridan left her grandmother reeling and stormed out of the house. It had all been so easy at the old house with the old life that had been so cruelly ripped away from her. All anybody goes on about now is how happy her mum is with her brown boyfriend, Arif, and how happy they all were for her. But were they mad? Didn’t any of them see what Sheridan saw? The stupid, foreign bastard came out with words in English that Sheridan had never even heard before. What was his problem? Why did he have to talk like English was a language that Sheridan didn’t understand?  She’d always been dead set against her mum going to work at that refugee centre. She’d told her she’d be mixing with all the dregs from the rest of the world who’d thrown themselves at Britain because we were such a bloody soft touch but she wouldn’t listen. She’d said she’d wanted to help people. She should have started with her own family.  

There was a large expanse of waste ground behind where she lived and Sheridan loved to wander across it, to be alone with her thoughts and right away from everybody. She felt safer with all that open space around her than she did in the tightly-knit streets around where she now had to live. She knew that some of the other kids in the neighbourhood hated her but she couldn’t care less. They could all go to hell. They were all losers who’d do nothing with their lives except have babies with dead-loss, idiotic men. Well, they were welcome to it. Sheridan was determined never to have kids and, as soon as she could save up enough money, she was going to Spain to be with her dad whether her mum liked it or not.

She didn’t know then that she was being followed.

She looked up ahead as she was walking parallel to the elevated electrified train lines heading for Manchester Piccadilly station a couple of miles away. She was going to get on one of those trains one day. She was going to get a one-way ticket and never come back to this dump. She could see the big Hilton Hotel that towered over everything else in the city centre. She could see one of the other big posh hotels in the city that was right next to the station. Posh people with loads of money stayed in places like that. She knew that because, once upon a time, her own family had been amongst them. That was before Dad lost the business but it can’t have been all his fault. She’d never accept that.

She got to the main road and, on the other side, was a petrol station with a kind of mini-supermarket attached to it. She had some money and she thought she’d get some crisps and chocolate that she could eat in her room later so she wouldn’t have to join the rest of them at the table for tea. How can you have a proper conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language properly and when there’s a half-caste bastard baby who grabs everybody’s attention and keeps crying all the time? She hated the way her sister, Paige, had accepted the whole situation and the way she liked to play mini-mum to that brown bastard, Tariq. What the hell was she thinking? Didn’t she want their dad to come back? How could he come back now that brown bastard was here? How could life ever get back to normal again?

The road was a dual carriageway and she managed to get across by running and then jumping over the central reservation. She walked across the forecourt and into the shop. She chose two large bags of crisps, three chocolate bars, and a Pot Noodle just in case she got really hungry. When she took them to the counter, her arms sort of collapsed and all her stuff scattered across the small space. The man behind the counter lifted up a carrier bag and began to put her things in it. Sheridan didn’t like this at all.

“Oi, that’s my stuff!”

“Yes, and I’m helping you by putting it in a bag.”

“Sorry?” she questioned. The man was another darkie just like Arif. Why don’t they all go back to where the fuck they came from?

“Didn’t you hear what I said to you?”

“I heard but you’re not speaking proper English so I couldn’t understand.”

The shop assistant took a deep breath. “I said that I was helping you by putting your things away in a bag. That’s all.”

“And, you see, I still can’t understand because you’re not speaking English!”

Sam Jackson was standing behind Sheridan, waiting to pay for the petrol he’d just filled his car up with. This girl in front of him was being so bloody rude to the guy behind the counter and Sam hated that. He had to intervene.  

“Look, love,” said Sam. “I understood this gentlemen perfectly well. He was trying to help you and you’re being rude.”

Sheridan was incensed. “What the fuck has it got to do with you?”

“Don’t use language like that to me.”

“I’ll do what I fucking well like!”

“Oh, come back and talk to me when you’ve grown up.”

“I beg your pardon?”

If there was one thing Sam couldn’t stand, it was teenagers like this girl talking to adults with absolutely no respect. He especially didn’t like the racist overtones in her abhorrent behaviour and despite, the fact that the guy behind the counter was gesturing for him to say no more and that it was okay, it wasn’t okay as far as Sam was concerned and he’d continue to stand up for the guy.

“But you can start now by apologising to the gentleman.”

“No way! Why are you standing up for him? You’re a white person. He’s just a stupid Paki who shouldn’t be here.”

“How is somebody as young as you so full of hate?”

“How is somebody like you not sticking up for your own race?”

“You’re out of control. Somebody should sort you out.”

“Really? Well, somebody should stab you.”

“That’s your answer to everything is it?”

“No. But it’s my answer to you.”

Sheridan always carried a knife with her whenever she went out. It was for protection. This time, however, she was going to use it to teach this stupid bastard that he should stick up for his own race of white people. She took the knife out of the inside pocket of her jacket and lunged it at Sam whose attention had been taken by a conversation with the guy behind the counter. He didn’t even see the knife coming until it was too late and it penetrated just below his heart. He immediately went into shock. The guy behind the counter pressed the alarm button under the counter and then came running round to try and help Sam. He looked angrily at Sheridan and said “The police are coming you stupid, horrible, girl.”

“You made me do it!” Sheridan screamed. “It was your stupid fault!”

She ran onto the petrol station forecourt and that’s when she first saw the car as it came screeching round from the back. She stopped dead in her tracks as the car moved out in front of her and the window on the driver’s side rolled down.   

“Sheridan, get in!”

Sheridan squinted her eyes in the late afternoon sunshine. Could it really be him? “Where the fuck did you spring from?”

“Never mind that. Just get in!”

Sheridan looked down at all the blood on her clothes and started to cry. “I think I’ve killed somebody.”

“Sheridan, I know, I saw it all happen. Now we’ve got to get you out of here before the police arrive so, for God’s sake, get in! Trust me, I can get you out of this but we’ve got to leave now before it’s too late.”

Sheridan ran round and jumped into the car on the passenger side. He then sped off down the main road towards the city centre. “There,” he said. “Immediate danger over. I was watching you as you came across the wasteland. I wanted to protect you and step in if you got into any trouble. Good job I did, eh?”

“Did I really kill him?” she cried hysterically. “Oh, God I can’t go to prison! I can’t! I can’t!”