30

 

Dear World, we stay in all day.  Joe sleeps for hours.  When he finally emerges, he looks even worse, if that is possible.  My mum sees him shuffle into the kitchen, and she can’t help herself, the first thing she does is wrap her arms around him.  I get up and make him tea and toast, which he barely touches.  The whole time he can’t stop shivering, even though it is a gorgeous summer day.  I try to talk to him.  I try to get him talking, but he just sits in silence all day, with his head in his hand.  My mum asks him when he has to go to court and he says he doesn’t know.  He sits there all day, with shiny eyes, but does not cry again.  Eventually my mum gets up with a sigh and announces that she is going to speak to Lorraine.  Joe barely looks at her.

When she is gone my phone rings so I answer it.  “Hiya!” Marianne yells down the phone at me, hurting my ear.  I roll my eyes at Joe, still sat in the kitchen. I am not in the right mood to talk to her or deal with her.  She must be calling on her landline, I think.  If her mobile had come up, I would not have answered it.

“Hi Marianne, you okay?”

“Yes, more than okay, I am great!  My parents have buggered off again, so got the place to myself!  I was thinking about another party!”

I can’t believe what I am hearing, so I sort of slump against the wall and groan inwardly.  “Oh I don’t know,” I tell her.  “I’m not sure about that.”

“Well I mean a smaller one obviously,” she goes on breathlessly. “I wouldn’t have the time to contact everyone for a big one.  I was thinking you and Joe, Josh and Ryan, Leon and Travis, maybe a few more?  Anyone they want to bring!”

“It’s probably not the best time, that’s all,” I try to tell her.  I can tell by the look on Joe’s face that he does not want me to tell her about his arrest.

“Why not?  What else you doing?  What you up to then?”  She sounds sort of hyper, I think, like she is bouncing around the room while she speaks to me.

“Um,” I say, while I try to think fast, try to think of excuses.  “It’s just I got family stuff on, you know.  Stuff to do.  I think I’m busy all weekend really.”

There is silence from her end.  I wait for her to fill it but she does not.  I breathe out slowly and imagine her standing still, her eyes filling with rage towards me.  “Marianne?  You there?”

“Yes.  Yes. I am here.  Okay then fine.  I could come over to you?  Have a girly sleepover?”

Oh Christ, I think desperately.  Why does she have to call now?  Why does she have to be like this right now?  “I’m really sorry Marianne,” I say this firmly.  “I really can’t this weekend.  I’ll call you on Monday, okay?”

“Okay.  Fine then.”

“Don’t be like that…”

“Like what?  No, it’s fine.  Fine.  Bye.”  That’s it.  She hangs up.  I roll my eyes again look at Joe.

“Well that pissed her off,” I shrug at him in exasperation.  He nods very slightly.  “Shall I make us some lunch then?”  He looks down.  I lean against the doorframe and try to think of inspiring and encouraging things to say.  But there are none.  He has been arrested for suspected drug dealing.  I have no idea what is going to happen to him, but in the long run it does not look good, does it?

So I fiddle around making us cups of coffee, and looking through the cupboards to see what we can eat for lunch.  Not eating does not even enter my mind, though I am not sure why.  It does not seem quite so important, that’s all.  Joe does.  I am grilling some bacon for bacon sandwiches, when my mum hurries back in through the front door and slams her handbag down on the hall table.  Joe and I both look up at her with wide, expectant eyes.  “Well,” she says, placing her hands on her hips and taking us both in.  “I have good news and bad news.”

“Good first,” I say quickly.  “I think we need it.”

“Okay,” she nods. “Well the police were unable to track down the other guy on the bridge, so they have no real evidence to charge Joe with intent to supply.  Your mum spoke to them this morning,” she looks at Joe and says.  “They are charging you with possession.  You’ll still go to court, but at your age, with no previous convictions, you are more than likely to receive a fine, and maybe some community service.”

I look at Joe in amazement.  He looks confused.  He pulls at his sore bottom lip with his thumb and finger and frowns at my mum.  He has not brushed his hair and it is all over the place.  “That’s brilliant isn’t it Joe?” I prompt him eagerly. “That’s much less serious!”  He nods, considering it.

“I guess so.”

“What was the bad news?” I ask my mum.  She sighs and folds her arms, and then I see her sniff and peer around me to take in the bacon under the grill.  A confused look crosses her face and then she smiles ever so slightly.

“Oh,” she says, “the bad news comes from Mick.  He does not want you back.  Well, not yet.  Your mum is working on him.”

“Well that’s not bad news!” I laugh.  “That’s good news!  You wouldn’t go back there anyway, would you Joe?”

“Lou,” my mum says softly.  “It will be in Joe’s best interests to make things right again with his family.  But anyway, for now, he can stay here.  I am sure Mick will calm down and change his mind soon enough.”

I lean forward and punch Joe softly in the shoulder.  “Not so bad then?” I ask him.  He manages a small smile and nods at me.

“Are you making bacon sandwiches?” my mum enquires, trying to peer past me again.

“Yep.  Joe’s favourite.”

“Any spare for me?”

“I think we can stretch to it,” I say with a grin.

Five minutes later the three of us are gathered around the kitchen table, sinking our teeth into warm bacon sandwiches, smeared with tomato sauce.  I think, this is crazy, but nothing in my life has ever tasted as good as this does.  My mum tries not to look at me too much, and she certainly holds her tongue about me eating lunch, but I can feel it in the air around her, I can feel how happy she is, how relieved she is.  I tell myself in a new calm voice I had no idea existed within me, that I can go for a nice run later.  I’ve missed my runs.  I can go for a nice run, and as long as I do that regularly, I’ll never get as fat as I was, will I?  As long as I am sensible.  I wonder if I tell myself this enough, will I start to really believe it?

 

Joe and I return to my room after lunch.  He seems a bit brighter, but is still not exactly talkative.  He flicks through my CD collection, and tosses each one aside with increasing disgust.  “You are stuck in the sixties!” he tells me irately.  “You weren’t even born then, but you’re stuck in the sixties!”

“I like it.  I like all that stuff.”

“We could go back to mine and get my music.”

“Oh.  I don’t know.  Maybe not.”

Joe runs his fingers back through his hair.  “It’s okay,” he says, but his voice sounds unsure to me.  “Mum and Mick will be at work.”

“What about Leon and Travis?”

He shrugs at me.  “What about them?”

“Have you decided what to do?”

“Nothing.  I just want my music Lou.  I want to get my music and my money.  You know for the drums.  I can’t leave it there.”

I had forgotten about his money.  I had totally forgotten.  I make a growling noise and cover my mouth with my hands for a moment, while I look at his pleading eyes and try to work out what to do.  I don’t want to go over there, no fucking way.  But I can see his point.  “Okay,” I say eventually.  “I’ll come with you.  And we’ll tell mum what we’re doing.  I’m so impressed with her at the moment, I think she deserves my honesty.”

Joe frowns and smiles at me at the same time.  “How sweet.”

“Fuck off.”

“It is though.  I’m glad.  And you ate lunch!  You ate bacon.”

“I’ll say it again.  Fuck off.”

Joe snorts and I see a small amount of light return to his eyes.  “Wasn’t really much fun collapsing all over the place then?” he goads me.  I narrow my eyes and stand in front of him.

“I’m going to smack you in your sore lip in a minute if you don’t shut up.”

He slaps my shoulder.  “Chill out Carling.  I’m just joking.”  I push him towards the bedroom door.

“Come on, if we’re doing this let’s get it over with.  I am all kinds of scared right now.”

“Me too.”

We find mum in the back garden.  She is on her knees, weeding her flowerbeds.  Gremlin is lying next to her, panting in the sun.  “Mum, is it okay if we go to Joe’s house to get more of his stuff?” I ask her, holding up a hand to shield my eyes from the glaring sun.  Mum sits back on her feet and looks at us worriedly.

“Oh I don’t know guys.”

“He needs his stuff,” I point out.  “His clothes and stuff.  Toothbrush. His breath stinks you know.”

Joe elbows me.  “Oi!”

“Sorry.  But it does.  We’ll be super quick mum.  In and out.  Mick and Lorraine will be at work, won’t they?”

“I think so,” she sighs.  “But if their cars are there, I want you to turn around and come straight back, do you hear?  I’ll go over there later for Joe’s stuff.”

“Okay, we will,” I promise.  “See you in a bit.”

We pile back into the house, and as we head down the hallway my phone rings again in my pocket.  “Fuck’s sake,” I curse under my breath and snatch it up.  “Hello?”

“Lou, it’s me again.”

I mouth ‘Marianne’ at Joe and he rolls his eyes in sympathy and shoves his hands into his pockets while he waits.  “Hi Marianne.”

“I was just wondering if you wanted to come over?”

“Um, I can’t, remember?  I said I was busy all weekend.”

“Busy with Joe?”

“No.  Well yes actually, but look, it’s a long story, loads has happened, and I can’t tell you over the phone so…”

“I see.”

“No, it’s not like that, it’s just actually he’s sort of staying with us at the moment,” I make apologetic faces at Joe as I see his expression darkening.  “I can’t go into it on the phone.  He’s got family problems.”

“So you lied earlier?”

“No, I said family stuff didn’t I?”

“You said your family.”

“Oh Marianne, what does it matter?” I snap at her.  “Look Joe needs me at the moment, and I’ll explain it all when I see you, so…”

“Doesn’t matter,” she snaps back at me, and hangs up the phone.

“Oh Jesus Christ, what is her problem?” I cry at Joe, who just shrugs carelessly in return.  “She’s all pissed off with me!”

“She’s a nutter, I told you.  Forget about it.”

“Why did she call back?  For God’s sake, I told her I was busy.”

“Nutter,” Joe says again.  “Come on let’s go.  I’m getting all jumpy.”

“Okay, okay.”

 

The August sun pounds down on us when we step outside.  It seems to bounce off the pavements, making them too bright to look straight at.  Every car we pass seems to fire spiky rays of startling sunlight into our brains.  We look down and walk on.  Joe falls silent again, and I suppose I cannot blame him.  His whole life has been turned upside down, one way or another.  Even if he escapes jail and is allowed home, I know things will never be the same for him again.  He looks increasingly sombre as we head towards his house.  We go the long way around without even discussing it.  Neither of us relishes the thought of passing the shop while Lorraine is at work.

We get to his road and look around.  There are no cars in front of the house.  It looks like no one is home.  “Wonder where the brats are?” I ask quietly.

“Neighbours have had them lately,” Joe shrugs.

“Have you got a key to get in?”

“No.  Mick took it off me.”

“So how do we get in then brainiac?”

“Around the back,” he says, and walks off.  I follow him around to the back alley and we walk down it, stepping over bags of rubbish and broken bikes and old TV sets.  The back gate is open.  He strides up to the back door and just walks in.

“Unlocked?” I ask, shaking my head.

“Broken,” he corrects me, and shows me the floppy door handle.  “It won’t lock.”

“Handy for us.”

“Yep.”

We stand in the kitchen for a few awkward moments, looking around us.  I feel like it is a strange and hostile place, all of a sudden, instead of one I have known since a baby.  I am guessing Joe feels sort of the same.  He certainly does not seem comfortable or at ease in the slightest.  He rubs one arm up and down, shivers, and then heads for the lounge.  “Come on then,” he says.  “We’ve got to be quick about it.”

We pound up the stairs and into his room.  It’s a complete wreck.  It looks like Mick has thrown a massive tantrum in here.  Joe swallows as he looks around at it all.  His posters have all been torn down and screwed up.  His clothes are out of the wardrobe and scattered across the floor.  It is creepy and shocking, and I want to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.  I find his school rucksack on the floor and start to fill it quickly with clothes.  Joe snaps himself out of his daze, grabs a holdall from the top of the wardrobe and kneels down on the floor, scooping up armfuls of his belongings and throwing them in.  “Your money?” I say to him at one point, and he looks up and yanks open the top drawer of his bedside table.  He grabs all the socks and boxers and hurls them into the holdall, and then holds up one bulging sock and smiles at me.

“It’s okay.  Look.”

“Good.  Come on, hurry up.”

We crawl around the floor, grabbing everything we can salvage.  His CD collection is half the size it used to be, as he hadn’t managed to replace any of the ones Mick smashed that day, but he packs them all in and zips up the holdall.  He is breathless and his forehead gleams with sweat.  I am still packing up, having found his schoolbooks under his bed, but he stand up suddenly and stares down at the floor, breathing quickly.  “What are you doing?” I ask him.

“Just want to check something,” he replies and walks out of the room.

“Joe!” I call after him impatiently, but I do not follow.  I carry on packing his rucksack until I cannot squeeze any more in.  I do the zip half the way up, and push my hair back out of my face.  I feel my heart drumming quickly in a kind of panic, but I don’t understand why.  Just then Joe marches back into the room, his hair hanging over his eyes, and his hands full.  I look at him in confusion.  And then I yelp.  “Joe!  What the fuck!”  He is holding two bags of cocaine.  Just like the bags we found that day in his brothers wardrobe. Christ how I wish we had never taken them.  Christ, how I wish I had never opened that wardrobe door…. He raises his head to stare at me, his mouth hanging open in awe.

“They’ve got more!” he practically screams at me.  “They’ve got a fucking load more!”

I climb to my feet.  I grab both of the bags we have filled.  I want to cry.  “Joe,” I say in desperation.  “Just put it back, put it back now!”

“They’ve got more!” he says again, his eyes wide in wonder and disbelief.  “It was all gone, and now they’ve got more!”

“Joe,” I beg him, “it doesn’t matter, leave them to it, let’s just go!  Just put it back and we can go!”

He shakes his head at me.  I watch anger clouding his eyes.  He keeps shaking his head and staring at the bags.  “I can’t believe they got more.”

“Joe! Just put it back, I am begging you!  It doesn’t matter!”

“It does fucking matter!” he roars at me then, and his face is so dark, and his mouth twists in rage and grief.  “They lied to me the whole time!”

“What do you mean?”

“That they nicked it, that they found it in a car they robbed.  That the amount they had was it.  Just one load.  It was gone.” He shakes his head, utterly confused, yet filling steadily with rage.  “It was gone Lou!  So what the hell is this?  Where the fuck did this come from?  There’s loads in there!  They’ve got more!”

I walk forward and grip his arm with my hand.  “Joe,” I say to him.  “Just put it back.  Put it back right now.  We have to get out of here.  Just leave them to it.”

“No,” he says, pulling away from me and scraping back his hair.  “No fucking way.  They lied to me!”

“They’re always lying!”

“They lied to me about all of it!”

“Joe please, just put it back and lets go.  I’m going!”  I try to shock him by grabbing the bags and bundling past him.  I head for the stairs.  “Come on!” I call back at him.  He storms past the stairs and into the bathroom.  I am confused.  “Joe what are you doing?”

“Flushing it!” he yells back, kicking the bathroom door open.

“What?  Are you insane?”  I drop the bags again and run after him.  He is kneeling down in front of the toilet.  He is tearing a hole in one of the bags.  I am terrified and overwhelmed and desperate to be out of there.  “You can’t do that!” I hiss over his shoulder.  “Are you crazy?”

“I’m putting an end to it,” he says.  He starts to pour out the first bag.  I stare in horror as Leon’s drugs pour in a neat white stream into the toilet bowl.

“Oh my god Joe, they will kill you,” I say breathlessly.  I try to stop him.  I try to pull his arm back but he pulls away.

“I’m ending it,” he says again.  “I’m getting rid of it all.”

“Joe they’ll kill you.  They will fucking kill you!  You can’t do this!”

“You should be helping me!” he cries back at me, tossing back his hair long enough to glare angrily at me.  “You’ve had enough of them too!  Look what they’ve done to us!  They’ve lied to us and lied to us.  They’ve had us running all over the estate with this fucking shit and I’ve had enough.  So I’m ending it.  I’m getting rid of all of it.”

There is nothing I can do but stand and watch.  He flushes the toilet and the first bag is gone.  I have no idea how much money he has just flushed down the loo, but it is sort of horrifying and mesmerising at the same time.  My stomach feels sick to the core.  I can barely breathe.  “Hurry up,” I beg him, nearly in tears.  “Don’t do all of them Joe.  Let’s just go!”  He ignores me and tears open the next bag.  When that one is all gone, he gets up and stomps back into his brother’s room.  I stare down at the bubbling toilet.  I chew my nails.  He comes back and kneels down again and starts digging a hole into another bag.

“Drug dealers,” he is snarling to himself.  “They lied.  They never found it.  It was never a one off.  They’re drug dealers, and that’s it.  They lied, they lied, they lied to me.  They’ve ruined my fucking life. I can’t even live here anymore, because of them!”

I don’t know what to say, so I keep quiet.  I only know I have never been so terrified in my entire life.  But all that changes when I hear the front door opening.  My eyes grow wider and wider.  Joe does not hear.  He keeps flushing the drugs.  I listen again.  Was I imagining it?  Oh my shitting God.  The front door.  The front door.  The front door!

“Joe,” I put my hand on his shoulder.  My hand is shaking so much it looks like a blur.  Joe jerks to his feet when he hears the footsteps on the stairs.  He has half a bag of cocaine in one hand, and as he stands next to the toilet and stares in terror at the landing, the rest of the bag empties slowly into the toilet bowl, and that is how Leon finds us, when he arrives at the top of the stairs.

29

 

Dear World, I spend the rest of the evening sending frantic texts to Joe and to my mother, and neither of them get back to me. Later on, up in my room, I am dozing in and out of restless sleep, when I suddenly sit bolt upright in my bed, tangled in my duvet and sweating profusely.  My door has opened a creak, and there is a shadow peering in.  “Lou, are you asleep?”  It is my mother.  I throw back the duvet and leap out of bed, running to the door to tear it open.  Joe is standing just behind her.  He looks awful.  He is trying not to cry.  “Joe is going to stay with us for a few days,” my mum informs me in hushed tones.  “Until everything settles down again at home.  Can you make him up a bed on the floor if I grab the blankets?”

“Course,” I say.  I grab his arm and pull him in.  I have never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life.  My mum gives us a sort of withering, concerned look before hurrying off to get blankets from the airing cupboard.  Joe hovers in the middle of my room.  I want to throw my arms around him, but I don’t want my mum to catch me, so I don’t.  I just stare at him.  He is wearing the same Radiohead t-shirt he had on days ago, with a checked shirt on top.  Most of the buttons are undone, except for two in the middle.  The cuffs are undone as well.  There are mud and grass stains on the knees of his jeans, and a smear of dirt under his chin.  He folds his arms around himself and shivers, and stares at the floor.  He looks thoroughly beaten and disgusted with himself.  I search for the anger and the pride he had that morning he got into my bed with me, but can see no trace of it.  I look at his face as my mum goes back and forth dumping piles of blankets inside the door.  His bottom lip is cut and swollen, and there is another thin trail of blood coming from his ear.

Finally my mother stops fussing, and stands in the doorway releasing a massive sigh.  “I hope you two understand how much trust I am putting in you by letting you stay in here,” she tells us sternly and we nod at her.  “I am putting trust in you when neither of you has done anything lately to deserve it.”

I want to tell her we are just bloody friends, and can everyone stop assuming that we want to get into each other’s knickers constantly, but I bite my tongue and just look at her apologetically.  “Things are too tense at home for Joe to stay there,” mum looks at me and says.  I wonder if I can detect something in her eyes.  Something she is trying to tell me.  She does not take her eyes off of me.  “So I intervened and brought him here.  Putting my friendship with Lorraine at risk in the process,” she adds angrily, as if this is somehow our fault.  I just nod again.

“Okay mum.”

She finally turns to go.  “Get some sleep,” she sighs.  “We’ll all talk in the morning.”

When the door is closed, I look at Joe.  “Sit down,” I tell him, nodding at my bed.  “I’ll make these up for you.”  He moves slowly, unsurely and sits on the edge of my bed, while I wrestle with the blankets on the floor.  “Are you okay?” I look up and ask him gently.  “Why are you bleeding?”

“Had a fight,” he croaks, staring at nothing.  “Me and Mick.”

“While my mum was there?”

“Yeah,” he nods.  “She stopped him.”

“Jesus Christ Joe.  What the hell happened tonight? I had a little visit from your brothers, once my mum had shot off to your house!”

“Oh.  What did they say?  I haven’t seen them yet.”

I stop making the bed up and frown at him.  “You haven’t seen them?  So much for them sorting things out for you!  That was what they said!  They made me promise to keep my mouth shut while they sorted things.  Fucking shitting scumbag liars.”

Joe says nothing.  He is sitting on the bed with his hands hanging limply between his knees.  He looks like he is maybe in shock or something, but how would I know?  I shuffle forward on my knees until I am right in front of him.  He is just breathing very fast.  He looks so pale.  His eyes are full of tears, and as I pick up one of his hands and hold it gently between mine, the tears line up and fall one by one.  I watch them skidding down his white cheeks, over his cheekbones, and down to his chin.  “What happened?” I ask him.  He sniffs loudly.

“Don’t know.  Police suddenly appeared when I was up on the bridge with the bloke.  They must have followed me.  They must have seen me before!”

My eyes grow huge.  “What?”

“Was so scary,” he whispers.  I hold his hand tighter and rub it between mine.

“Oh, Joe. How much did you have on you?”

“Just one of them little bags Leon makes up.  Twenty quid’s worth.”

“Shit. This is bad.”

He lifts his other hand and wipes the tears away, but fresh ones line up to take their place almost instantly.  He nods miserably.  “Was so horrible Lou,” he whispers croakily.  “They put handcuffs on me and everything.  I was so scared.”

“Oh fuckinghell mate.  What’s going to happen?”

“Got to go to court,” he shrugs and sniffs again.  “They questioned me for ages.  Wanted to know who I was running for.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t say?”

Joe just stares at me for a long, torturous moment.  Then he drops his head into both of his hands and I watch his shoulders shake as he sobs into them.  He shakes his head at me.  I get up and sit next to him on the bed and slide my arm around his trembling shoulders.  “Oh Joe,” I murmur, resting my head against his other shoulder for a moment.  “You idiot.  You are such an idiot.  Why didn’t you say?  You have to say.  You can’t take the rap for them, you just can’t!”

“I need to talk to them first,” he sobs.

“But why?  I told you what they said already.” I lift my head to stare at him.  I keep rubbing his other shoulder with my hand, pressing his body into mine.  “They said it was okay for you to take the rap, because they’ve both got previous and they’d get sent down, but you won’t.  That’s what they think Joe.  They’re quite happy to let you take all the blame.”

“I won’t go to jail will I?” he asks suddenly, turning his tear stained face to mine.  I swallow and fight the urge I have to wipe his tears away with my thumb.

“God knows Joe!  How would we know? I have no idea!  Did they get you a solicitor or something?”

He nods, frowning in confusion.  “The duty one.”

“And?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I can’t remember…” Joe covers his face with his hands again.  I hug him close.

“What happened with your mum and Mick?”  I ask quietly.  I feel his entire body shudder next to mine then.  I feel the tremor of pain and shock and disgust twist right through him as he relives the memory.

“Just…” he shakes his head very slowly, staring through his fingers.  “Just…really…fucking mental.”

“Well my mum must have thought so, to bring you back here.”

“They packed all my stuff,” he says through his fingers.  His voice sounds hollow, shocked to the core, devoid of emotion or belief.  “They packed it all up and chucked it out the door.”

“Oh my god! Joe!”  I put both my arms around him now. I wrap them right around and hold him so tight while he shudders and sobs.  I kiss the top of his head, and then the side of his face, and I taste his salty tears, as he must have tasted mine that night in his bed.  “Joe, oh Joe.  The bastards.  All of them.  Fuck them!  They don’t deserve you Joe.  They never have.  You can just live here with us then.  Mum will adopt you.  They don’t deserve you!”  I keep my arms around him and rock with him back and forth.  “Don’t you worry,” I tell him, and plant another firm kiss on the side of his head.  “Everything will be okay.  We’ll tell the truth Joe, that’s what we have to do.  We have to tell my mum the truth, about everything.  Fuck Leon and Travis.  Let them get arrested.  It’s their bloody mess.”

“I don’t know,” he murmurs then, lowering his hands and sniffing loudly.

“In the morning,” I tell him.  “Sleep on it.  You can’t take the rap for them Joe, you just can’t.”

“Why not?” he asks, looking into my eyes and lifting his shoulders in a tired shrug.  “I don’t even care.  I won’t have anything to do with any of them after this.  But I won’t be a grass.”

“Oh Joe, no.”

He gets up then and rolls his head on his neck, then shakes out his arms and legs.  His jeans are getting too small I notice then.  Creeping up his ankles.  He drops down and gathers the blankets around him.  He looks exhausted.  He looks broken.  I want to kill them all.  I want to steal his perfect goodness away from them, and make it mine, keep it all for me.  They never saw it, never nurtured it.  They don’t deserve him.  That is all I keep thinking.  They don’t deserve him.  He is a good apple among a rotting bunch of fetid cancerous bad ones.  I watch him crawl in among the blankets, and I watch the sobs that still shake him as he tries to control himself.  Finally he lays his head on the pillow and stares nakedly up at me.  I want to cry.

“Thanks Lou,” he says hoarsely.

“I hope you got a few good ones in with Mick,” I reply with raised eyebrows.  He does not even smile.  He just closes his eyes.  I get back under my covers and let him go.  I seem to lie there for ages, just listening to him breathing.

At some point during what is left of the night, I hear him crying silently under his blankets, and I just cannot bear it.  I get out of bed and slip in beside him.  I pull his head into my chest and stroke his hair, and rub his back, while he just lets it all out.  Neither of us speaks.

 

In the morning, I untangle myself from Joe and get to my feet.  He just sleeps on.  I look at my bedroom door, slightly panicked, while memories of the last time we were caught together in bed career through my mind.  I lean down and cover him up and sneak quietly out of the room.  I know that my mother is going to be in the kitchen, sat at the table with her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea, and a tea towel lying on her lap, or maybe on the table next to her cup.  I know that she is going to look at me in that way, the way she always does lately.  Like she does not recognise me anymore.  I know that she is going to want to know what I know.  I know that Joe will not grass his brothers up, but I have not yet decided if I will or not.

I creep in, feeling sheepish and young.  She just looks at me, and I can’t decide if it is disappointment or pity that I see the most etched on her face.  Maybe a good deal of both?  I slip into a chair at the table.  “Joe’s still asleep,” I say, not looking at her.  She drums her fingers gently against the teacup.

“Do you want some breakfast?”

“Yes please.”

“Egg and soldiers?  Used to be your favourite once.  When you were a little girl.”  There is a note of terrible sadness in her voice that I can barely stand.  I force myself to look at her long enough to smile and nod in recognition, but that is all I can manage.  She slides out from the table and puts a small saucepan of water onto the hob to boil.

“How long can he stay?” I ask her back.  I watch her sigh.

“As long as he needs to, I suppose,” she replies.  “I’m just going to have to be careful not to get involved, if you know what I mean.  Not take sides.”

I am not sure what she means.  “Sides?”

“Yes.  His side or theirs, I mean.”

I still don’t know what she means.  I watch her turn the grill on, and slap a slice of wholemeal bread under it.  “Mum, what happened at their house?  I mean, why did you bring Joe back?”

She turns to face me, and folds her arms across her breasts. “Look,” she says slowly, and I can tell that she is thinking in her head, trying to work out the best way to say something.  “I don’t know what all this drug dealing business is about.  I didn’t ask Joe, and I don’t plan to right now.  I only know he has always been a lovely, decent boy, and I can only suppose the older two have roped him into something unsavoury?”  There is an undeniable question mark at the end of her sentence, but I pretend not to pick up on it, and just stare up at her expectantly.  “Anyway,” she goes on.  “That’s none of my business, because at the end of the day it’s for the police and the courts to decide what’s gone on.  But I cannot justify, or make excuses for the way I saw….” She breaks off now, swallows, coughs, and then turns her back to check the toast and the boiling water.

“Saw?” I question, prompting her.

“The way I saw the adults in that house treat him last night,” she finishes, and on the last word I hear her voice crack, and I see her lift one hand and drag it across her eyes.  I watch her trying to compose herself.

“You mean, like the stuff I tried to tell you?”

“I suppose so yes.  They just totally lost control.  They were wild.  Like animals.  I kept telling them to calm down, calm down, leave it till the morning, let him go to bed, that sort of thing.  They packed up all his stuff from his room and started throwing it out of the door.”

“They’ve got vicious tempers,” I say morosely.  Mum shakes back her hair and stands over the hob, watching my egg as it bounces around it the pan.

“Well, I just didn’t like what I saw,” she says.  “And I know Lorraine is my friend.  My very old friend.  And she has always been tough on her boys.  Lord knows, the older two needed it, but Joe…” she trails off again, shaking her head slightly, as if she just can’t fathom any of it.  “He was just so pale, and frightened and so sorry, he was so sorry.  He just kept saying sorry, sorry, over and over.  They wouldn’t even let him speak.  I found myself stood in front of him Lou.  I had to shield him.  I had to get him out of there.”

“You did the right thing mum,” I say then, and get up from the table.  “They don’t deserve him.  I know he’s in trouble, but it really isn’t all his fault you know.”

“Well if you know anything Lou….” She turns and looks me in the eye.

“I need to speak to Joe.”

“Then I have to trust you’ll do the right thing,” she says, her eyes burning into mine.  I feel such a wave of compassion and gratitude for her then, that it actually overwhelms me.  I sort of stumble into her arms, and slide mine around her body, and end up with my face pushed up against her breasts.

“I’ll do the right thing,” I tell her.  “Because you did.  Thanks mum.”

I feel her playing with my hair, like she used to do when I was small.  She wraps it around her fingers, and then unwinds it again.  She presses her head down onto mine and breathes in.  “You kids,” I hear her mumble. “It still takes my breath away you know, when I see how quickly you’ve grown. You know what parenthood is Lou?  It’s not enough time.  Not enough time to hold your children near.”  She kisses me twice on the head. “One minute it’s all changing nappies, and rocking you to sleep, and holding your little hand, and then, in a blink of an eye….”

I squeeze her tight.  In my head, I can just see her at Joe’s house, scared and confused, standing in front of him, trying to tell Mick to calm down.  I squeeze her again.  “I love you mum,” I say.  “I love you so much.”

27

 

 

Dear World, well it would seem that you never really know anyone that well, do you?  They don’t know me, and I don’t know them.  He can fuck off.  He has the nerve to shout at me and make me feel bad!  I am not the one dealing drugs for my brother.  I am just trying to be a decent human being, who does not run away from things the whole time.  How easy would it have been to avoid Marianne and refuse to see or speak to her again?  How easy it would be to vilify her and fear her, and bitch about her to the Stick Insects.  Harder to listen to her, to try to understand her, to try to be a friend.  Fucking Joe, I think, I rage as I head home alone, wobbling all over the pavement at one point and shouting at myself inwardly, for fucks sake walk straight, you are not that drunk!

It’s not the drink, my nagging little friend in my brain tells me smugly.  It’s the lack of food.  You used to be able to drink way more than that and still walk straight!

Yeah, so fucking what?  Who bloody cares?  Not me.

Why am I so angry with him?  Why am I so angry?

I realise how relieved I had been to hear him say the deliveries were over, that he had stood up for himself and said no for once.  I had felt so proud of him.  His courage, his nerve, had forced me out of my bed.  That was it.  I had done it for him.  I had started to feel like a miserable self-pitying puke lying there like that, when he had bigger stuff to deal with.  Oh Joe, I think desperately, why did you cave in again?  Because it’s not just one more time, and we both know that surely?  One more time leads to one more time.  One more time leads to a lifetime of being Leon’s errand boy, Leon’s scapegoat.  One more time leads to other favours, other crimes, can’t he see that?  Is that what he wants?  To be like them?  I kick at the dead grass on our front lawn.  Damn it!

Why do people let you down so much, I wonder?  One minute you feel so proud of them, so inspired by them, and the next minute they reveal their true weakness in spectacular style.  They just crumble.  I am thinking of mum and Les, and dad and his shitty sneaky little life, and me.  Me.

Me.  Christ, I am letting everyone down every day, and here I go again.  I start to feel incredibly nauseous as I approach the front door.  My headache has accelerated into a mind spin of pain.  I gag, then swallow, gag then swallow.  I watch my own hand reach out for the doorknob.  I feel the metal in my grip, and then I am falling forward, I am tumbling in, I am sinking down.  What a shock.

 

I come around to my mum panicking like a madwoman.  She is practically slapping my face, trying to wake me up.  When she sees my eyes open, she looks visibly relieved and starts to try to pull me in through the door, so that she can close it.  I can manage a crawl, to help her, but my head feels like play dough and every movement is a little kids fists pummelling and twisting it.  I wonder where Les is.  I hope he didn’t see me go down.

“Jesus Christ!  Jesus Christ that is it!” my mother is shrieking at me.  She manages to get my feet past the door, shoves them up towards my arse, and then finally slams the door shut.  I guess she didn’t want to let the neighbours see me like that.  Fair enough.  “What the hell is wrong with you, as if I don’t know?” she continues to squawk, as I heave myself into a sitting position in the hallway, with my back against the wall.

“Why are you asking if you already know?” I wonder out loud.  She looks apoplectic now.  She kneels next to me, hands splayed on her denim skirt, cheeks flushed with rage, and eyes brimming with tears.

“Don’t you dare start being cheeky!” she cries at me.  “You’ve been out drinking haven’t you?  Look at the state of you.  Right that is it, I warned you.  I am not wasting another second of my breath trying to get through to you.” She stands up abruptly and heads for the table in the hall, where the phone is.  I watch her angrily snatch it up and start to dial.

“Mum they won’t be open now,” I say quietly from the floor.  She slams the phone back down and kicks the wall.  “Mum calm down.  I’m okay.”

“I’m phoning the doctor first thing in the morning!” she turns on me, waving a finger my way.  “I am not taking no for an answer!  I will drag you there if I have to!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I tell her, and climb slowly to my feet.  “I’ll go.  I’ve had enough of my head hurting anyway.”

This seems to both surprise and placate her.  She still looks like she would like to kill me, so I head for the stairs, and she does not try to stop me.  “I’ll go to bed,” I say meekly over my shoulder.  I feel like such an idiot, if I am honest.

“First thing in the morning,” she repeats to me.  “I’ll knock on your door.  I mean it Lou.  I cannot cope with this worry any more.”

“I said fine,” I say, and go into my room and close the door.  I hit the bed and don’t get any time to think about any of it.  I am asleep within seconds.

 

As promised mum wakes me up and hauls me to the doctors the next morning.  We walk there in silence, and we occupy the waiting room in silence.  I try to busy myself with a magazine, but they only seem to cater for the very young, (toddler bricks and baby books) or the very old (fishing and home makeover magazines.)  I give up and just sit and wait with my hands in my lap, trying not to look at my mum.  When my name is called, I go in alone, though I have a horrible feeling that my mother has already briefed the doctor.  She has that sympathetic yet patronising sort of smile ready for me.  The sort that says oh silly little you, what have you been doing to yourself eh?  I find myself slumped in a blue plastic chair, waiting to be grilled.

Doctor Fielding is plump and grey-haired and has been my doctor since I was born.  I almost expect her to say ‘my haven’t you grown?’ when she opens her mouth, but instead she looks over her glasses at me with concern.  “Now then Louise, your mum tells me she is very worried about you.  She says you’ve been on a diet, is that right?”

“Yes,” I nod at her politely.  She has that elder lady quality about her.  She also sounds rather posh, and I am tempted to call her maam or something.

“So how much weight do you think you have lost?”

“I think it’s about two stone,” I say with a guilty shrug.  I can’t help it.  She is peering at me over her glasses; she is making me feel like I have done something wrong.

“Shall we get you on the scales and see what you weigh now then?” she asks brightly, speaking to me as if I am five.

“Okay.”

She nods over to the big weighing scales parked next to the door.  I slip off my shoes and climb on.  I feel awful.  I feel so small and stupid and childlike.  Doctor Fielding has a look, writes a note and then motions for me to stand against the door where there is a chart to measure height.  Again, she makes a note and then nods for me to return to my chair.   “Okay,” she says breezily, glancing down at her notes, before reaching for her keyboard and tapping out a few keys.  “At five foot two, we would expect you to weigh somewhere in the region of seven stone, eleven pounds and nine stone, eleven pounds, and be healthy.”

“I was about ten and a half stone once!” I say quickly, and she looks at me with a patient smile.

“Well, you weigh seven stone two today Louise.  And that is too low.”  She gives me that smile again.  The one she presented when she called me from the waiting room.  She looks sympathetic and patronising at the same time.

“Oh,” I say.

“Your mum is right to be concerned.  That is not enough for your height, or your age.  Don’t forget you may still have more growing to do!”

“Oh.”

“Yes, and losing weight by cutting calories and increasing exercise is all very fine, but you have to be sensible about it.  Do you eat breakfast?”

“Yes.”  This is a half lie.  I eat breakfast sometimes.

“What do you normally have?”

“Apples,” I shrug, gazing around the room and wondering how much longer she is going to keep me here.  “Yoghurts, that kind of thing.”

She is looking at her computer screen.  “And what about lunch?”

“Um, I don’t know…just whatever.  Toast or something.”  I shrug again.

“Your mum seems to think you are skipping meals a lot, is that true?”

Ah here we go, I think.  Now she’s getting to it.  Now she’s going to stop skirting around the issue.  I think carefully for a moment as she looks back at me, one hand paused above the keyboard, and the other in her lap.  I wonder whether I ought to lie, and see if she buys it.  What can she do?  Get out a lie detector or something?  How does she know what I do or don’t eat?  How does anyone?  I also wonder if I should tell her the truth, and see what she does with that.  I am curious.  So I nod at her hesitantly and she instantly frowns at me.  “You seem like a smart young lady,” she says.  “You must know skipping meals is not a healthy thing to do.”  I just shrug at her.  I don’t know what else she expects me to say.  She starts rifling through a bunch of leaflets she has already on her desk.

“Can I have something for my headaches?” I ask her then.  I don’t want anyone to forget about my headaches.

“You’re getting headaches and passing out because you are not consuming enough calories, Louise,” she tells me rather sharply, and fixes me with a disapproving glare.  “You don’t need anything prescribed for your headaches.  You just need to eat three sensible, healthy meals a day.”

“Oh,” I say, and look at my hands.

“Are you worried about putting on weight?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Louise, I want you to take these leaflets and these diet sheets with you.  They document what a young girl your age should be consuming in terms of calories, and nutrition.  You do realise that if you continue the way you are, your periods may stop?  Your hair may fall out?  You may have to stay in hospital?”

I just stare at her in confusion and feel tears threatening to come.  Hospital?  I know she is probably trying to scare me, but for fucks sake!  I swallow, and try to hold myself together in front of her.  I feel angry with her then.  How dare she try to freak me out and scare me?

“You need to put on at least nine pounds for me to be less worried,” she goes on, and she is not even looking at me now, she is looking at the screen and typing again.  “So I am going to leave those with you, and make an appointment for you to come back in two weeks, so we can see how you are getting on.  How does that sound to you?”

I stare at her.  I want to say that sounds fucking horrible you mean old witch.  That sounds like fucking torture!  That sounds like I have no fucking choice and makes me want to kick you in the eye!  I scrape back my chair and stand up nodding, so that she doesn’t see the tears in my eyes.  They are tears of rage, I swear to you World.  She pokes the leaflets at me so I take them.  She scribbles on an appointment card and gives me that as well.  “You are not unlike a lot of other young girls I see in here,” Doctor Fielding sees fit to tell me then.  “We understand the pressures to lose weight, and look a certain way.  But there is healthy, and there is dangerous, and I am afraid you are heading for the dangerous side Louise.  I don’t want to see you get thinner and thinner and end up in hospital.  You don’t really want that to happen either do you?”  I shake my head.  I cannot speak.  “It’s a slippery road, you see,” she goes on. “You know I am talking about anorexia, don’t you?  This is how it starts.  People try to lose weight, and when they do they get hooked on it.  They can’t stop.  Eventually they are not even in control anymore, the disease is.  I don’t need to tell you it’s a killer, do I?”  I shake my head again, staring desperately at the door.  “Can you send your mum in please?” she asks me.  “I need to talk to her as well.  I am going to suggest you arrange to see a counsellor as well.”

“What?”

“A counsellor.  Eating problems are not simply physical problems Louise.  They are emotional, and psychological ones.  A counsellor or therapist can help you understand why you feel the need to starve yourself.”

I am staring at her open-mouthed.  I am gawping at her.  “Because I was fat!” I try to tell her, panicking.  “That’s why I started it!  I won’t do it anymore.  I’ll put nine pounds on, I will!”

“Louise, it is very worrying to see how quickly you have lost this much weight,” she says this from her chair, her plump hands folded neatly on her lap. “I am concerned that you have already slipped quite far into a possible eating disorder.”

I am outraged. I am gob smacked.  “Seriously?”

“Yes,” she nods twice.  “I am very serious.  Now send in your mother for me please.”

I don’t have any other choice.  I have to go back into the waiting room and tell my mum it’s her turn.  She just barges past me with this tight look on her face.  She makes me feel like I have done all of this on purpose just to wind her up, just to give her some more grey hairs, or something.  I sit back down and twist my hands together in my lap, and think about running out and running off, hiding somewhere, disappearing.  There is a little kid on the floor, a little boy playing with the bricks.  He is banging on brick on top of another, again and again and again.  His mother is watching him with quiet adoration, and gives me a wet smile when I look up and glare at her.  I feel like saying, you would have got a clip round the ear for that in your day.  But I don’t.  I get up and walk outside and wait for my mum.

When she comes out, she is by no means impressed.  I was right about feeling she is angry with me about all of this.  It is as if she thinks I have led myself down this road deliberately to hurt her, to make her worry.  “She thinks you have an eating disorder,” she snaps this at me as we start to walk home.  She is walking fast in her little black-heeled shoes.  I am trying to keep up, clutching the stupid leaflets in one hand.

“She didn’t say that,” I attempt to correct her.  “She said possible.  Like borderline.”

“That’s not what she said to me!”

“Oh.”

I think I don’t want to have this conversation with you.  I don’t want you anywhere near me in fact.  “She’s going to arrange a counsellor,” she goes on, and I feel my chest tighten involuntarily.  I want to scream.  “She thinks you need to talk to someone about your weight loss issues.”

“I don’t have weight loss issues!” I yell at her.

She wipes a tear from her eye.  I don’t care.  “She says you are very underweight for your height.”

“I know!  I know all that!  She wants nine pounds!  She can have bloody nine pounds!”  I am aware I am shouting and waving my hands about, but I can’t seem to stop.  “I’ll give her bloody nine pounds!” I shout.  “When we get in, just you wait, I’ll show you!  How much crap have you got in there?  Crisps?  Chocolate?  Doughnuts?  Give them to me; I’ll eat them all!  I’ll get her bloody nine pounds in no time!”

“Lou, please….”

“I’ll even round it up!  I’ll make it ten pounds!”

“Lou, listen to me, stop that shouting, you have to realise how serious this is, how worried we all are! We are just trying to do what is best for you!”

“Don’t worry,” I sneer at her.  I hate her.  “Don’t you worry mum, I don’t want you to worry so I’ll eat all that shit and put on bloody ten fat pounds all right?  I’ll do better than that if it makes you happy!  I’ll stop jogging and I’ll sit in front of the TV all day and do nothing but eat!  I’ll get really fat again!  Fat as a whale!  How would you all like that then?  You would all love that, wouldn’t you?  None of you cared when I was a big fat pig did you?  None of you worried then!”

I run off.  I run off before I can see her tears or hear her whimper of a voice, or listen to another word she can say.  I run off because all of it is true.  They are right, and I am right.  I run off.  I just keep running.