How the Trouble Started Page 8

  ‘It’s after twelve,’ I told him, ‘it’s the middle of the night and I didn’t like the thought of you all alone in here. I thought you’d be frightened.’

  ‘I don’t like being by myself,’ he said.

  ‘Listen Jake, it’s important you don’t tell your mum I was here. I think she was upset at leaving you alone, and we don’t want to make it worse by letting her know I had to come and check up on you. We don’t want to upset her more, do we?’

  He nodded and I couldn’t think of anything else to say and we sat on the couch in silence for a while, and it was like a bad date in a film and I regretted coming.

  Eventually he asked, ‘Are we going to the haunted house?’

  I’d been stupid. I shouldn’t have come like this. I should have told him what I’d been planning. The idea was to make him feel better, not unsettle him more. I told him it was far too late for the haunted house.

  ‘We should get you back to bed,’ I told him.

  I pulled him up and we walked down the hall to the stairs. I had a good look around as he shuffled slowly along, and the house looked clean enough, as much as I could tell in the gloominess anyway, I had to give her credit for that. But there were no pictures or plants anywhere that I could see; there was nothing to make the place homely at all. It was brighter upstairs with the landing light and Jake’s bedroom light already on. His room was in more of a state than the rest of the house, but that was just young lads, I understood you couldn’t blame her for that. He climbed into bed and I sat down on the edge of his mattress and looked around the room. There wasn’t much to suggest it was a little boy’s room. If it wasn’t for the clothes scattered around you would’ve had a job to know at all; there were no toys or books anywhere. I didn’t notice the drawings until he’d snuggled himself up in bed. They were stuck above the bed and my heart slipped into my throat when I saw what he’d drawn in one of them. Pride of place in the middle of all of them was a drawing of me and Jake in the upstairs room of the haunted house. A big white ghost flying above us. I pointed and asked, ‘Is that one of us?’ Jake turned and looked and nodded and said, ‘In the haunted house.’ It was a mixture of feelings. I was pleased it was on his wall, that he’d thought about it enough to turn it into a picture, but it made me uneasy to see it in full view. ‘It’s brilliant that, Jake,’ I told him. ‘You’ve got a real talent there.’ He curled up in bed and hugged himself and said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Would you mind if I borrowed it for a few days so I can do a copy?’

  ‘You can have it. Are you staying?’

  ‘Shall I stay until you’re asleep?’

  He nodded and put his thumb in his mouth and was quiet and still in seconds. I didn’t know he was a thumb sucker. I waited with him until I was sure he was asleep, tucked him in a little better and took the drawing down off the wall. I rearranged the other pictures so there was no obvious gap, had one more look at Jake and left the room. I kept the landing light on and walked down the stairs to the dark ground floor, through the kitchen and let myself out of the back door. I was tired by then, but not too tired to check. I made my way home via the house on the Faraday Estate. There was still music playing and loud voices coming from inside. A man and a woman left by the front door and snuck around the back holding hands and giggling. I left them to it and dragged myself home. I didn’t get in until about two in the morning and I knew I’d be for it when Mum got hold of me, but I also knew that it didn’t really matter much.

  Trouble is worth facing down for something you believe in.

  17

  I should have been braver in the face of trouble once before. The whole thing still upsets me to this day and afterwards I decided I would always try to do the right thing, regardless of how much bother it could lead to. I’ve always loved animals but we were never allowed a pet. Mum said animals were mucky.

  ‘Cats aren’t,’ I told her, ‘cats are clean.’

  ‘Just because an animal has the instinct to bury its own mess doesn’t mean it’s clean Donald,’ she said. ‘Think about where they walk, what they get into, and then think of them prancing around the house on their filthy paws. And when you’re not there, jumping on your kitchen surfaces, sleeping on your pillows. Cats are sneaky creatures.’

  The closest I had to a pet was Mr Mole’s dog, Scruffy, who I used to walk sometimes, but even Scruffy wasn’t allowed in our house, so I knew a pet of my own was unlikely. But the day I found the kitten I thought for a silly few seconds that if I took him home and Mum saw him, she might be persuaded to let me keep him. She would, of course, have screamed at the sight and made me get it out of the house straight away, but this was before the trouble and before all hope was extinguished from our world. Maybe, I thought, she would see the kitten and her heart would melt. But I never managed to get the kitten to the house. I wasn’t alone when I found him; I was with Reece Aighton.

  It was a hot day and I’d been riding my bike on the waste ground behind the backs of the houses, wondering what to do for the rest of the afternoon, when Reece turned up. He lived in the new houses they’d built at the top of Hawthorne Road and was in the year above me at school. He never spoke to me at school but we occasionally bumped into each other at weekends, or in the holidays, and mucked around together for a bit before he would turn nasty and I would sneak off.

  He was rich. His dad drove a little silver sports car and in the summer they would zoom up the road with the top down, both of them wearing sunglasses, looking straight ahead, like they owned every house on the hill. Reece always had money in his pocket and that afternoon an ice-cream van had been round and he’d bought himself a ninety-nine and a can. We put our bikes down and were sat by the corner of one of the garages so he could eat his ice cream and drink his drink. We were throwing stones to see if we could hit a bin that was sitting at the side of one of the garages opposite. Reece was annoyed because I’d hit it twice and he hadn’t got close. He didn’t like to lose, especially not to someone like me. He finished eating and stood up as a sign that he was going to start taking the game seriously. But then I hit the bin for a third time and his patience snapped and he started throwing stones at me. They stung and I told him to stop, but he was treating it like it was part of the game and said that I was being a crybaby. I was about to pick up my bike and ride off when we heard a small crying sound coming from behind one of the garages. Reece put his stones in his pocket and we went to explore. By the time we got behind the garage the noise had stopped and we had a root round but couldn’t find anything. Just as we were about to give up and head off the crying started again, near to my feet, and I got down on my hands and knees and had a look through the long grass. I found a grey kitten about a foot away from the garage wall, sat like a tiny statue, his tail wrapped neatly around his feet. Reece was at my side quickly and leant forward to give the kitten a stroke but a sharp claw shot up and swiped at his hand before he made contact. Reece pulled his hand away and held it up to have a look. There was a small tear with little blots of blood bubbling through.

  ‘He’s vicious,’ he said.

  ‘Probably just scared,’ I said. ‘He must have lost his mum.’

  Reece peered down at him and said, ‘He doesn’t have a collar. Do you think he’s a wild cat?’

  There were sometimes feral cats that ventured from the fields into the back lane and ate food from the bins.

  ‘He must be,’ I said.

  Reece leant forward to try and stroke him again but this time the kitten got his claw in deep and Reece cried out in pain and took a swing with his foot. The kitten flew back and hit the wall of the garage and stayed put where he landed, looking stunned.

  ‘Don’t kick him!’ I said.

  ‘He needed to learn a lesson,’ Reece said, and shoved me over. I got myself up and looked at his face and saw that he was blinking away a tear. He looked as shocked as the kitten. He inspected his hand which had turned pinky-red around the edge of the new tear. He kicked the wall of the garage and
shouted something that wasn’t a word and I knew that things were going to get worse and it was time to leave. I started to walk away. I was hoping to get rid of Reece and then come back and check on the kitten, maybe even rescue him and take him home.

  ‘Let’s go. You should get home and get your hand cleaned up,’ I said. Reece held up his hand like he was showing me a stab wound.

  ‘I can’t let him get away with that,’ he said, ‘don’t be stupid Donald.’

  He threw a stone at me and then hit me on the arm. ‘He could attack anyone. Just think if he went for my little brother.’ I’d seen Reece’s little brother. A curly-haired four-year-old with a big head and thick arms and legs who would terrify the kitten more than the other way round. ‘He’ll be one of those gypsy cats anyway,’ he said, ‘and they carry diseases. I’ll probably have to have an injection for my hand. I might get admitted to hospital.’ He kicked the wall of the garage again. ‘We should put a stop to him before he attacks anyone else.’ He took a stone out of his pocket and threw it at the kitten. The kitten was trying to walk off, but was still dazed from the kick and was limping. ‘Go and get some stones,’ Reece told me. ‘You can’t leave me to do all the work. We need to stop him.’

  ‘He’s hurt. We should leave him. We’ll get into trouble.’ I could hear the whine in my voice and I knew that Reece would hear it too. He turned on me. ‘He’s hurt? I’m hurt! Is a dirty little gypsy cat more important to you than me?’ He hit me on my arm harder than before and rubbed a stone into my head until I cried out.

  ‘Go and get some stones,’ he said, his face close to mine, his breath sweet and cold.

  ‘I don’t think we should,’ I said.

  ‘Go and get some stones,’ he said, again. When I didn’t make a move Reece pushed me to the ground and we wrestled for a bit, but he was much stronger than I was. He pinned me down, his knees on my arms, his hands pushing my hands to the ground. He leant forward, brought up a glob of phlegm from the back of his throat, and spat it in my face. ‘Go and get some stones.’ I walked to the front of the garages, wiping my face clean with my sleeve as much as I could. My bike was lying on the ground. I looked up and saw the roof of my house and my bedroom window. I was ready to make a run for it when Reece appeared behind me. He pushed my arm up against my back until I thought it would snap and said, ‘Don’t make me tell everyone you were a pissy-pants coward Donald.’ He let go and I picked a handful of stones up from the gravel and followed him behind the garage. I was praying that the kitten had run off, but he hadn’t. Even then, when Reece threw the first stone as hard as he could, I was still thinking that I might be able to stop it.

  A few months later, after the little boy, when I was back at school, I heard a rumour about myself. Reece had told everyone what happened, but he changed the story, so that it was me who was intent on killing the kitten and him who had tried to stop it. He told them that I smashed the kitten’s head open with a big rock and then kicked it into a stream. I don’t think anyone would have believed him even a few days before, but when I came back to the school I was already a killer and the kids were happy to start believing anything about me. Within a couple of days I’d gone from being a normal little kid who didn’t know how to stand up to a bad lad, to a murderer and a kitten killer. A psycho killer.

  18

  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.