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The whole thing with Mrs Mack started on one of those days when Mum had taken to bed. I came in from school and could tell straight away that she was home, but that something was wrong. There was a stillness, a kind of hesitation in the atmosphere, like the house was waiting for me.
Her bedroom door was closed. I popped my head in and could see the mound of her in the bed, smell the sweetish smell of her bedroom, a mix of smoke, the air freshener on the side, and a uric tang from the damp patch on the ceiling.
Afternoon light was bleeding through the thin orange curtains, highlighting crumpled tissues on the floor next to the bed and an empty can of beer.
This was the sort of detail Anya would never have been able to understand. A gulf of distance so large would open up between her and what she thought my mum was, that I wouldn’t be able to face trying to explain. So, there was only so much I told her about it.
As for the other stuff …
If I could just keep her away from the darkness, you see, and in the light where she belonged, maybe we really had a chance long term. Maybe I would stop feeling that she was an incredible gift I only had on loan.
That day I had been desperate to speak to Mum after school. We’d been given a letter in History about a trip to the Imperial War Museum and it was going to cost parents ten pounds. Museums weren’t free then, so I’d never been, and being a bit obsessed with old war movies, had always wanted to go and see all the tanks and guns. Mum was on benefits and I knew that ten pounds was a lot, but it seemed reasonable to me that we could spare this when it was for school. Especially if Mum could afford a can of Stella when it suited her.
I wandered into the living room and booted a cushion covered in a greasy sort of green taffeta across the room with as much savagery as I could muster. It knocked down a dusty cactus that sat in a knitted pot-cover on the table by Mum’s chair. I glared at it for a moment, then prowled into the kitchen.
Rooting in the fridge, I saw Mum hadn’t got to the shops like she’d said she would. I knew that I’d be trying to find enough change in her purse for some chips again. I was always starving then, right in the middle of a pre-pubescent growth spurt. My knees were like knots in pieces of string, my elongated thigh muscles giving me almost constant pain. I found the crust of a loaf, and slathered on the last of the peanut butter, before folding the whole thing into my mouth at once. It was never enough. Hunger felt like something living inside me, a growling beast that nagged and heckled.
I wandered out to the front of the flats, not knowing what I wanted to do, but feeling like the whole place was wrapping itself round me and squeezing air from my lungs.
Mrs Mack had a series of little pots outside her house, along with a ceramic toadstool and a Smurf holding a fishing rod. I looked down at it, with its annoying blue face, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d slammed my toe into it so hard it went clattering down the length of the path running in front of the houses. My toe hurt through my trainer and, before I could run off, her front door was open, and she was peering out at me.
‘What was that?’ she said. I stared back at her, too numb to speak.
She regarded me through her horn-rimmed glasses like I was a specimen in a jar and said, ‘What are you doing, lurking out there anyway?’
‘Not lurking,’ I managed to grunt. Then, ‘Going to get chips.’ I didn’t know why I added that. It was the first thing that came into my head. I didn’t even have the money for any chips.
She looked at me for a few moments more. ‘I’ve made a cottage pie,’ she said. ‘Do you like cottage pie?’
I shrugged. It wasn’t so much confusion about my feelings on cottage pie (I was hazy on exactly what it was). Guilt at what I’d done, coupled with the horror that she would notice it any second, was stoppering my throat like a wad of cotton wool. My cheeks throbbed with heat and I stared down at my shuffling feet, willing time to move on so I was anywhere but here.
‘Come on,’ she said, opening the door up wider. ‘You’re like a string bean. You need something better than chips inside you.’
I hesitated for a moment, calculating how I might be able to hide the evidence of my Smurf-destruction, and reasoned it would be easier to keep her distracted for a while.
I went into her hallway and the smell of cooking meat immediately flooded my mouth with longing. I had to swallow to stop myself drooling like a dog.
It turned out that I liked cottage pie very much indeed, along with pudding thrillingly steamed in a tin and served with thick custard for afters. I liked the biscuit tin with the picture of the Scottish Highlands on the cover (I only knew that because she told me) and I liked the proper Ribena, gloopy and sweet, that she had instead of Value blackcurrant squash we sometimes had.
I don’t know why that day was different to the others.
But she should never have invited me in.
IRENE (#u46b24a53-b552-5625-ba96-a036c6ddda74)
Irene’s hands trembled as she checked inside her handbag for her purse. It would involve a bus ride to get to Michael’s flat and she got anxious about travelling anywhere on her own lately. But she needed to know what was going on.
She thought about ringing Linda. She still had her number.
The shameful truth was that she was a little frightened of Linda, with her screechy laugh and her sharp tongue. No wonder she and Michael hadn’t lasted, although Irene wasn’t naïve enough to think that her eldest son had been blameless in the marriage.
It was drizzly outside, and Irene felt a strong desire to turn straight back as she began to walk down the street. Everything felt so loud after being on her own for the last couple of weeks – roaring traffic and the jarring sound of human voices.
When the boys were little, and scared about something, she used to say to them, ‘Just put one foot in front of the other,’ and that’s what she did now, making her way to the bus stop and joining a small queue of people there. A young woman with a pram was jiggling it backwards and forwards in an attempt to distract a baby that was emitting hiccupy sounds of misery. The woman’s eyes had lilac smudges beneath them and her long red hair was greasy at the roots. Irene gave her a sympathetic smile and the woman looked surprised for a moment, almost as though she felt caught out in her thoughts, then she rewarded Irene with a returned smile.
‘How old?’ Irene said, peering into the pram and seeing a baby so tiny it still bore the wrinkled, shocked look of the newly hatched.
‘Three weeks,’ said the woman quietly. Irene looked up to see her eyes were now brimming with tears.
She patted the hand that was holding the handle of the pram and said, ‘It will get so much easier. I promise you that, sweetheart,’ and the woman nodded her thanks and lowered her eyes.
Climbing onto the bus, Irene felt a stab of guilt at what she had said. If only sleepless nights were the hardest bit of parenting. She hadn’t expected to be worrying herself sick in the wee small hours about her children when it had been thirty-four years since she had given birth.
When, twenty minutes later, she arrived at the street where Michael was renting the attic room, she looked up and down for his car. But there was no sign of it.
That didn’t mean anything in itself, she told herself, as she got to the terraced house where he lived. He might just be out.
Her stomach turned over as she pictured him lying on an unmade bed with an empty bottle of pills next to him. It would be so unlike him to do something like that though, wouldn’t it? He had never been the one to take drugs. Not after his brother.
But life hadn’t been especially kind to him lately. Breaking up with Linda had really cut him up, however much he’d claimed he was ‘better off without her’.
Irene was glad they didn’t have any children of their own, even though she would have loved grandchildren. It would have made the break-up even harder on everyone.
Gathering herself, Irene went to the front door and located the buzzer for the top flat. There was no name, just ‘Top flat’. It wasn’t the sort of place anyone would put down roots. When Michael got made redundant from the print company he’d worked with for many years, he’d been given a small pay-out, which was keeping him afloat. When she’d asked him about getting a new job, he told his mother he was ‘assessing his options’. He was forty, but that wasn’t very old these days, was it? Forty felt like nothing much now, not to Irene, anyway.
There was no reply from the top flat. Irene pressed the buzzer again and then got a shock as the front door was suddenly flung open. A young black man with a woolly hat and a beard, a cigarette halfway to his mouth, seemed as surprised to see her and for a moment they both stared at each other.
‘You going in?’ he said after a moment and Irene blurted out, ‘Do you know Michael? He lives in the top flat?’
The man scrunched his brow for a minute then recognition dawned. ‘That fat ginger bloke?’
Irene bristled, but forced herself to remain polite.
‘He’s my son,’ she said. It was answer enough for the other man who avoided her direct gaze then and said, ‘Not for a while. Ask Rowan on the second floor. She usually knows what’s going on.’
Irene thanked him stiffly and, as he bounded down the steps behind her with an air of gratitude to be getting away, she came into the cramped hallway. There were two bicycles to one side, and on the other an ornate and old-fashioned wooden sideboard with a speckled mirror. It was covered in a sea of post and fast-food flyers and, looking around awkwardly, Irene began to rifle through, separating the letters from the flyers.
She quickly found one, then two letters addressed to Michael, but on closer inspection, they looked like junk mail. She put them back.
The steps were steep, and covered with a treacherously rucked carpet, so she climbed slowly but was still a little out of breath when she got to the top floor. She took a moment to collect herself, then rapped on the door to Michael’s flat. She waited, then did it again, but there was no response.
‘Michael? Love?’ she called out, hating how quivery she sounded. Nothing happened.
Reluctantly, she walked back down the stairs and found herself hesitating on the second floor.
She felt silly knocking on doors and speaking to strangers about her business, but, in for a penny, in for a pound, she guessed.
Some very strange sounds were emanating from inside the flat there. It sounded like someone was giving birth, having an argument and playing the drums at the same time.
Irene steeled herself once again and knocked gently on the door. Nothing happened for a moment and so she did it again with more confidence this time. The music, if that’s what you could call it, abruptly stopped.
The door opened, and a very overweight woman peered blearily out at Irene. She was somewhere in middle age, with hair in pale-coloured dreadlocks held back by a red scarf. Her skin bore the look of a lifelong smoker and there was a sweetish smell that even Irene recognized wafting out of the flat. It no doubt explained the slightly unfocused look in her eyes.
‘Can I help you, darling?’ she said in a surprisingly high-pitched, girlish voice.
‘I’m looking for my son, Michael,’ said Irene. Suddenly she found she was close to tears. Her knees were hurting, and she was gasping for a hot drink. All she wanted was for someone to say, ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Michael’s fine.’
The woman looked at her and something Irene couldn’t place passed across her face. Maybe something had happened between her and Michael. Irene couldn’t help herself immediately hoping he had used protection and then being disgusted with herself for even thinking like this.
‘I haven’t seen him in two weeks,’ said the woman, frowning now. ‘He hasn’t been answering any of my messages.’
‘Oh.’ Irene felt herself sagging and leaned a hand against the doorframe.
She hadn’t wanted it to be anything other than a silly old bat with too much time on her hands worrying about nothing. But this strange person now looked as worried as Irene felt.
‘Look, you’d better come in,’ said the other woman.
ELLIOTT (#ulink_82ea06be-182f-502c-aa49-382eef3274ae)
It was probably thinking about all that childhood stuff earlier, but when I got to the school playground, my eyes seemed to fix on Tyler Bennett straight away.
Tyler was one of those kids it was very hard to like, even though I wasn’t meant to say that. He was a three-foot-high block of truculence, with a sulky face and the ability to be ever the wronged party in a dispute.
He was standing now just inside the school gates with a mutinous expression, clearly waiting for someone. The bell was just about to go so I wandered over to him. He greeted me with the sort of look dogs give when they suspect someone is about to take their bone away.
‘Alright, Tyler?’ I said. ‘What are you doing? Bell’s about to go.’
He ignored me and peered out of the gate, little brow so scrunched his eyes almost disappeared.
‘Are you waiting for something?’ The bell rang out clearly.
‘C’mon, mate, time to go in.’ I touched his shoulder and he reacted as though he had been hit, pulling his arm away violently.
‘Woah!’ I said, taking a step back. At that exact moment, as if conjured up from nowhere, a huge, bullet-headed man appeared at the gate, brandishing Tyler’s school bag and breathing heavily.
‘What are you doing?’ said the man, presumably young Tyler’s progenitor.
‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said reasonably, because I’d met plenty of parents like this one. ‘I was just telling Tyler the bell’s gone.’
‘Did you touch him just then?’
I stared at the man for a second. ‘I tapped him lightly on the shoulder in a friendly way,’ I said, my face entirely straight. ‘Because the bell had gone.’
‘That true, Ty?’
Tyler shrugged. After an agonizing moment’s pause he added, ‘S’pose,’ and I was ridiculously grateful to the little sod for not making this worse just for sport.
‘Right,’ said the man. ‘Well, he was waiting for me, wasn’t he?’ He moved closer to his son, as though making a point, before handing the bag to Tyler, whose gaze was flitting between us in wide-eyed fascination. The man’s eyes narrowed further and he said, ‘Wait, do I know you?’
‘I’m a teacher at your son’s school, so I imagine you may recognize me,’ I said, giving the man a broad smile. His type hated that. You can really wrong-foot aggressive people with a bit of sunshine. I should have stopped there, but my annoying weekend, a residual irritation with Anya for abandoning me, and the toxic swill of my thoughts earlier all conspired against me. Before I turned away, I found myself muttering, ‘You have an excellent day, now.’
The man’s cheeks darkened. It was unnerving to see aggression painted even more boldly on his face.
‘You’ve got a real attitude, do you know that?’ he said, his voice a low rumble that got me in the gut, just as it was intended to.
‘I can assure you I haven’t, Mr, uh …’ My brain flailed for Tyler’s surname before it came to me. ‘Mr Bennett. I’m just trying to do my job and get your son in for the start of the new term.’
The man was frowning now, staring hard at my face, and then a malicious grin broke out over his.
‘I know who you are,’ he said.
I formed my mouth into a pleasant smile. ‘Well, as I said, I work here.’
‘Nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not from here.’
Did he? I couldn’t think how. His accent was a little more London than the local one, but I still didn’t know him.
‘I don’t think so, Mr Bennett,’ I said. He made a snorting sound, then muttered something under his breath. All I caught was, ‘for you …’
‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.
Bennett did a sort of ‘nya nya’ thing, then shook his head and walked off without saying anything else to his son. Tyler’s thumb had snuck into his mouth during this exchange, something I hadn’t noticed him do before. I attempted a friendly smile.
‘Come on, buddy,’ I said. ‘I’m no happier than you are that the holidays are over. Let’s go in.’
As I got to the building I turned, and my heart seemed to jolt out of its place. Bennett was standing across the road, staring right at me.
ELLIOTT (#ulink_9e14e792-37dd-5332-accd-412ab88a4c87)
I felt on edge all morning after that encounter. I’d dealt with aggressive parents before, as I said, but there was something about him that had really chilled me. There had been the hint of a smile there, like he’d been contemplating actions further down the line that he would enjoy very much, and I wouldn’t. And why did he think he knew me?
At breaktime I looked out for Clare, Tyler’s class teacher. I wanted to know whether she had ever been on the other end of the Tyler paterfamilias’s displeasure.
She wasn’t about – maybe on playground duty. I went to make myself a coffee. There was a sink full of dirty mugs. With a sigh I cleaned one as best I could with hot water and something that had once been a dish scourer, then decided to be the bigger person and do the lot. I was up to my elbows in suds when Zoe appeared next to me.
‘You’re really good at that,’ she said in an earnest-sounding voice. ‘Would you like to be our Sink Monitor this week?’
I mouthed, ‘Piss off,’ at her and threw a bit of foam. She laughed and flicked it away.
‘So …’ I said after a moment. I grinned and waggled my eyebrows.
Her cheeks flushed.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Tell me all about Tabitha then,’ I said, nudging her in the side. She looked down, failing to hide the way her eyes instantly lit up.
‘What do you want to know exactly?’ she said, getting out one of the clean cups and reaching into her handbag for one of her horrible green teabags that tasted of garden mulch.
