What You Left Behind (11 page)

“The police said it was suicide,” Jo reiterated matter-of-factly. When Stella tipped the last of the chips into her mouth, she mouthed,
They found a note
.

Lorraine’s curiosity was still not sated. “Gil said the other person on Dean’s bike was wearing a helmet. I want to know what he meant by that. And anyone planning a road trip across America on a Harley doesn’t sound very suicidal to me.”

When no one bothered to reply, Lorraine went up to the bar to order their food. As she stood and waited in line, she couldn’t help a final look at the Hawkeswell table as they tucked into dessert. Gil was sitting down again, but this time he was on the bench seat next to Sonia. He had a plate of untouched apple pie in front of him.

Sonia looked up, and this time she gave a fragile smile. Lorraine offered a quick flick of a wave in return, and watched as Gil shifted closer, taking hold of Sonia’s hand and pressing it under his chin for comfort. He was rocking gently, oblivious to being observed, as he put his head down on her slender shoulder. Sonia stroked his hair.

On the other side of the table, Tony and Lana tucked into their puddings. Lana showed her father something on her phone, causing Tony to play-punch her arm. Then they each laughed loudly.

A normal family, Lorraine thought, drumming her fingers on the menu she was holding. Just a normal family out for dinner.

9

Lana is crying. It makes me want to smash the window and burst into her room and chase away her sadness and everything that’s horrid. But I can’t. They would tell me off. So I watch her from the flat roof, peeking in through her window, sending her bits of my heart as she lies on her bed, staring at the wall. Her shoulders bounce up and down. Mine do that when I laugh but she has snot and tears collecting at her mouth so I know she’s sad. I’ve seen her cry before, although she keeps it a secret.

I like secrets.

Her room is like a princess’s. Pink and cream and tidy. Not like mine. If I get a girlfriend, I’d like her room to be like this. Not that I would go into it, because that would be wrong. Tony keeps reminding
me that it’s bad to go in ladies’ bedrooms and I have put it on my list of things not to do. There is a big list of those.

So clambering up the trellis and onto the flat roof and looking through the window of Lana’s room isn’t actually breaking the rules because I’m not inside. All the same, Tony would be really cross if he found me again. It makes my heart go funny to think about it.

Then I hear Lana’s telephone ringing through the slightly open window.

“Hello?”

I have a phone. It’s Lana’s old one and is really special and even though the screen is cracked it still works. I keep it in my pocket. My hand dives in there. It’s safe. Tony would be cross if I lost it.

“Tonight?” Lana says, turning away to sniff. She holds a tissue to her nose. “For fuck’s sake, be careful.” Then she is silent, listening to the other person.

I wonder if I should phone Lana and talk to her. Sometimes I do. Hello, I say to her. How are you today? And she replies that she’s OK, thanks, even though I know she’s not. We like to chat on the phone. I like phoning people but I didn’t call the police when Dean died because Tony had taken my phone away for a whole week as punishment for spying through the windows. He said next time I did something bad he would take my pencils away too so I just keep it all in my head now.

“OK,” Lana says. “I already told you a thousand times, I don’t know for certain. It was really quick. I just feel so wretched and miserable. Let me know. Yeah, OK. Bye.”

It’s hard to see things very well with only one eye peeking above the sill, but when Lana is finished on the phone she stands up and pulls her T-shirt off over her head. She is wearing a white bra and her skin looks butter-icing soft. I bite my teeth together as my one eye lets me have a little look. It’s OK to do this, I think, because it’s Lana and it’s only the one eye and I’m not actually in her room. She
turns round just as her bra falls to the floor and then she disappears into her bathroom. I clap my hands together a little bit, not too loudly, and when I hear the shower begin to flow I climb down off the roof.

I go back to the tack room. I like it in here. It’s my house. When Tony and I were little we used to play in here and get scared. Tony says it will do me good to live in here and then he made it nice for me with a kitchen and a sofa and a bed upstairs. I try to keep it clean and tidy, but sometimes Sonia has to help me sort it out.

“What you need,” she tells me, “is a wife, young Gil.”

That makes me grin. I would like a wife but have to get a girlfriend before I can do that. I would like to go on a date with someone. I can’t ask people like Lana out on a date because she is my niece. Tony says her friends are too young to go on a date with me, even though they are nice and pretty like Lana. I have to find someone my own age because that is the right way to do things. We could go for a picnic or go to the cinema. I wouldn’t hold hands on the first date. I have looked for a girlfriend in the New Hope shelter. There are sometimes nice ones staying there.

I put the television on and decide to do some drawing. I like drawing and keep my art things in a huge plastic storage box under the steps that lead up to my loft. Things don’t always want to be tidy in it. Sometimes it’s in a jumble, like now. When I open the lid of the tub, I see the plastic thing that I found after the crash happened. I had to keep it secret so I hid it in here. No one knows I’ve got it. I don’t know what to do with it. I’m scared it was stealing and Tony says that stealing’s wrong.

Then I have a special idea.

10

Freddie listened to their happy banter, the thoughtless clattering as they came in through the front door, and the slightly tipsy laughs of his mother and aunt as they reminisced about sneaking in late as teenagers. He felt the burning in his gut, the familiar rush of his heart.

Soon it would be him sneaking out.

He stared at his computer screen—all he seemed to do these days. The vitriol blurred into a mash of hatred, today’s new comments blending in with the old. He reckoned part of him was going numb, not caring what they did anymore. How could he feel any worse?

He allowed his head to drop forward onto the desk, letting out a sigh he felt he’d been holding all his life.

Someone was coming. He heard fast footsteps on the old wooden stairs, followed by slightly slower ones. “Night, night,” he heard his mum say to Stella. Then there was a tap on his door, before it opened. Freddie sat up and switched screens to a music website. He casually looked up from his computer, forcing a halfhearted smile.

“Hi, darling,” she said. “You missed a great meal at the pub.”

Freddie shrugged. “Oh,” he said. He managed a glance at her, noticed the sideways tip of her head, the little frown at the top of her nose.

“Lana was there,” she said hopefully.

Freddie nodded. Once, he would have been interested to know the details. Now, he was just relieved that he’d got out of going to the stupid pub.

“Freddie …” His mum let out a little sigh.

“Yeah?” Freddie tapped a pen on his desk.

“Nothing. Night.” She shut the door quietly.

He heard her footsteps retreat, slower now, mirroring the ache he knew she carried inside. The low mumbles of his aunt’s and mum’s voices in the kitchen below filled his head as he went back to the other website, tormenting himself, going over and over all the crap.

He glanced at his watch. Not long now.

C
URSING EVERY STAIR
, every floorboard, every door handle and hinge, he crept from his bedroom. After each seemingly deafening sound he paused, held his breath in the darkness to see if anyone had stirred. He guided himself through the house he knew so well by memory and the faint silver haze of moonlight coming through the small windows. Everyone stayed asleep.

One cautious step after another led him to the kitchen back door. The gravel in the yard seemed to crunch louder than ever, making him think he’d wake the whole village. He’d put on his dark sweatshirt,
even though he knew it was a sticky night, and pulled up the hood to hide his distinctive hair.

He’d had the good sense to get his bike out of the garage earlier, leave it propped in the gap behind the shed. The lanes seemed silvery, ghostly, as he pedaled hard, leaving Radcote behind him. He panted along the deserted road, his heart feeling as if it might stop completely from fear. What if someone saw him? What if he got caught and had to explain everything? But he kept going, the empty pack on his back slapping against his ribs as he cycled onward.

Blackdown Woods was about fifteen minutes away on a bike, but he’d forgotten the couple of hills that could delay him. Sweat began to soak into his top as he struggled up the inclines. What if Lenny grew impatient and didn’t wait? He might get twitchy, think it was a setup, and leave. Freddie pedaled harder, wishing he’d brought some water.

He passed the remains of the small floral shrine at the site where Dean had killed himself. He’d not really known him, just seen him around at the shelter when Lana was working there. Lenny had been mates with him, though, each of them sharing the same desolate future with New Hope being their
only
hope.

It scared him that he understood why Dean had done it.

The woods spanned a broad crescent of countryside south of Radcote, bordering the mainline railway to London. His mum had often told him stories of how she and Aunty Lorraine had played down there, taken picnics to the woods, made dens and campfires right next to the tracks, even though they’d been warned not to. He’d always kept out of the woods when he was younger. He knew the bad kids from school went down there, threw stuff onto the tracks, daubed graffiti on the metal fence on the other side of the line. There was an old workers’ hut, long since disused, where they went to smoke pot, take drugs, get pissed. He’d discovered it a couple of years ago, when he was out walking their old Airedale, Ringo. He wondered if that had been the start, when he’d spotted them at it,
beating that other kid. He’d turned a blind eye, never said a word, but it was soon after that the shit had started.

It was where Lenny had said they should meet. The old hut in the woods.