Chapter Text
The raw edge of the front door barked my shins, caught in the estate crosswinds, always bitter on the balconies. The sudden silence was deafening; I watched my breath condense into a white mist in the frigid atmosphere. The two bulging carrier bags were awkward to manoeuvre and I took a careful step over the mat, trying not to slip on the morning post. I dumped one of the bags and scooped up the letters, taking them together with the other bag into the kitchen. There were several brown envelopes with windows in them, three sporting red script. Wincing, I parked the shopping where I stood and separated the mail into two piles. I put the smaller one into my pocket and hastily stuffed the larger behind the fridge where it dislodged a further stack of very similar correspondence. I pushed both heaps together into a haphazard mash and thrust them back from whence they had come. Out of sight out of mind; I shivered in the deathly cold.
Ten minutes later found me throwing packets of pasta and tins of tomatoes into the cupboards, kettle rumbling in the background. Shopping away, I sat at the kitchen table, breathed in the steam from my tea and spread the letters I had retained out on the scratched Formica. There were three. The first, from my mother, I tucked back into my pocket to read later at my leisure. The second was junk mail disguised as bank correspondence; I breathed a sigh of relief and binned it. The third I turned over and over in my hands, feeling a stone sink into my stomach at the slimness of its contents. At once, I ripped away the top of the envelope and fumbled out the single sheet, biting my knuckle as I read:
“… for your submission but regret to inform you that we will not be publishing your manuscript as it does not meet our needs at the present time...”
I crumpled the letter cursing under my breath. That was the fifth this week, and these cheapskates hadn’t even bothered to send back the hard copy. I stirred my tea gloomily; I was so broke that replacing the printer ink was becoming an issue.
The rattle of a key in the front door drew me out of my pointless navel-gazing. Feet padded down the hallway and a blond head poked in through the door followed by the rest of Emma, my flatmate’s twelve year old daughter. I smiled affectionately and gestured to the teapot.
“Drink?” I asked. The young girl shook her head and sat down wearily at the table. I looked at her; her eyes were black-rimmed and her shoulders drooped.
“Bad day?” I asked. She nodded without speaking and shrugged her backpack onto the floor. She paused a moment then bent her head to root around in her bag, coming up with a creased exercise book which she tried ineffectually to flatten. She opened the book, rummaged for a pencil and began to read, her brow furrowed in concentration. I looked out into the empty hall and felt my face stiffen.
“Didn’t James come home with you?” I asked casually, collecting the washing up and taking it over to the sink. Emma shook her head, sucking the end of her pencil. I ran the hot water into the bowl. “Do you know where he went?” Another shake; I felt the faint stirrings of a headache.
“He’s with Shark,” Emma said suddenly. She looked up from her work; I narrowed my eyes.
“Do you mean Toby Greaves?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah,” she replied, “He’s horrible.” I agreed with her wholeheartedly; the Greaves clan were well-known in the area. Theft, muggings, burglary – you name it, they were into it. Toby Greaves, known affectionately as Shark, had come to the notice of Social Services and the local police when he was a mere child of five and had not looked back since. It was a few moments before I realised that Emma had stopped writing and there were tears leaking down her cheeks.
“Sweetie,” I said aghast. I knelt at her side. “What happened? Tell me, please.”
Emma kept shaking her head, crying quietly until finally she rubbed the tears away, swallowed and looked back up at me.
“They called me thick,” she told me in a small voice, “They said only stupid people have to have lessons in the lunch hour. They said idiots like me who can’t keep up and have to have extra teachers come in just for them are a waste of air.”
“They called you an idiot?” I repeated, horrified, “James said that?”
Emma shook her head vehemently. “No!” she protested. “It was Shark and that other boy, Seb Johnson. James was just – with them.”
“But he didn’t try to help you?” I replied, “He didn’t stop them bullying you? He let them carry on without objecting?”
“They weren’t bullying me,” Emma mumbled. She picked up her pencil. “They only knew about my extra lesson because I had to have it in the school hall today. Someone was in the sick room – they were throwing up; it was gross,” she said disgustedly. She looked up at me with a sigh.
“I’m never going to get better, am I? I’m always going to be thick,” she said with such an air of hopelessness that I had to swallow before attempting to frame an appropriate answer. As I did so, I heard the front door bang again and the whirlwind that is Jill Waring swept into the kitchen, stowing a pint of milk in the fridge and returning her house keys to her handbag, already talking nineteen to the dozen.
“And I told them I’d think about it,” she said, clearly continuing a conversation most of which I had not been witness to, “but although we could really do with the money, I don’t fancy the late hours in winter time when it gets dark.”
She ducked into the hall to hang her coat on the peg, bestowed an absent-minded kiss and an affectionate ruffle to her daughter’s hair and went over to test the teapot. Clearly deciding its contents were still warm enough, she poured herself a cup.
“Trouble is,” she told me over the steaming liquid, “Chapman thinks we’ve all got cars or buses that go right past our front doors. He forgets that I’ve got a quarter-mile walk through Meadowbrook to get here. It’s that or a mile round trip to avoid it, there’s no other way – I told him so, but he still keeps on at me.”
“Jill,” I began firmly, finally catching on, “is your boss still trying to make you work longer hours? Even after the mugging? Has he no heart?”
“It’s made of stone,” Jill responded, opening the fridge to peer at the contents, “and he thinks that once the physical wounds heal, it’s all in the past.” She sniffed suspiciously and closed the door.
“Clearly he’s never had first-hand experience,” I replied darkly, thinking of the hospital treatment for the cuts and bruises to her face, the shock and lasting trauma. The fallout on the estate had also been, shall we say, considerable.
Jill gave a weary smile. “He’s just trying to make a living, Lesley,” she replied, “and if I had people queuing up to take this job – people who’d put in all the hours he wanted at the times he wanted – I think I’d be aiming to replace me too. Women with children are always a bad risk in any kind of business, you know that.”
Indeed I did. I got to my feet briskly.
“Right,” I said, “burgers, chips and beans for dinner tonight, so we’d better get on with it. I think Emma could do with a bit of help on the homework front, Jill; I’ll take care of the food.”
Jill made a wry face at the mention of burgers (for the second time that week) but she knew only too well the state of our finances. She plodded painfully through Emma’s English corrections with her while I assembled the supper and slid a fourth portion onto a covered plate to await James’ appearance, whenever that might be. We ate our food at the kitchen table, intermittently talking over the remainder of Emma’s homework until she retired to the room she shared with Jill to finish it and, no doubt, to boot up Jill’s laptop in order to Skype her friends.
Jill and I lingered over our chips more for the conversation than out of any real enthusiasm for the food. I made some instant coffee and reluctantly related the substance of Emma’s confession. Jill leaned her head in her hands.
“I can’t really blame them,” she admitted. “I’m angry – of course I am, but I’m not exactly surprised.”
She reached out to close the kitchen door for the flimsy sound proofing it provided and lowered her voice.
“The special needs provision at that school just gets worse and worse,” she said, “and Emma needs so much more if she’s going to get anything in the way of GCSEs or, God help us, A levels.”
“She’s bright, Jill,” I protested.
Jill sighed. “I know it, you know it,” she replied, “but if she doesn’t know her alphabet, no one else is going to care.” Her face crumpled around the edges in a way I hadn’t seen for a long time.
I frowned. “Jill?” I queried.
She flapped her hands a bit and tried to smile. “It’s okay,” she said, “I’m just a bit weepy today.”
I looked steadily at her, eyebrows raised and eyes widened in encouragement. She looked down at the floor and rubbed her hands over her knees.
“It’s Dave’s birthday: he would have been thirty-five,” she said finally.
“Oh, Jill,” I said. I reached out a hand and laid it on her arm.
She shook her head, keeping her eyes hidden. “It’s alright,” she said, “I just started remembering his last birthday – he was in Afghanistan and he managed to call Emma before she went to school. She was thrilled; talked about nothing else all day apparently.”
Jill looked up at me, her eyes misty. “He’d have liked to go out in a blaze of glory,” she said wistfully, “You know – saving a village from a bomb or some children from a landmine; he was like that. Instead, he gets a stupid drunk driver.”
“And you and Emma get a crap deal and end up sharing a dive with James and me on the most notorious housing estate in the East End,” I added. Jill smiled wearily.
“There are worse places,” she protested weakly.
“Oh, yeah?” I replied, “Okay, name one!”
Jill just sighed and got up to clear the dishes. “Don’t worry about me,” she said, still not looking up as she scraped the leavings into the compost caddy, “It’s been two years and I’m just feeling a bit sensitive today. I’ll be alright in a minute.”
Translation: nothing’s ever going to be right again.
The front door sounded again and both our heads jerked towards it.
“James!” I called immediately. His footsteps turned into his bedroom and I heard the door close decisively. I got up from the table.
“James!” I repeated more firmly, deepening the shriek lines on my face. I strode down the hallway and opened his bedroom door.
“Go away,” he told me, planting a foot in front of it, preventing me from entering. “I don’t want you in here.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to put up with it, aren’t you?” I told him, forcing the door open. He gave way reluctantly and I crossed the threshold.
James was tall for a thirteen year old, thin and lanky with long limbs and huge dark eyes. Puberty hit him early at nine and his voice had settled into a husky baritone by the time he changed schools. Although they were in the same academic year, he towered over dainty, petite Emma, looming like some giant praying mantis over a tiny lacewing. His long legs ensured that his centre of gravity was high and together with his frankly enormous feet, he looked and moved like the harvest spiders I remembered from my childhood, covering the barns and outhouses with their silk nets in early autumn, creeping into the larder and the utility room until mum put them out.
“What do you want?”
His overlong hair made him look like a dandelion, sticking out every which way and obscuring his eyes with messy curls despite my continuous attempts to make him cut it. His school, of course, had more pressing issues like arson and drug peddling in the playground to bother with minor infractions against the uniform code.
“Your dinner is in the oven,” I began. He shook his head.
“Not hungry,” he told me, turning away to boot up his desktop.
“James, I haven’t finished,” I told him. I put a hand on his arm; he wrenched free and backed off with a look of such ferocity that I shrank back instinctively.
“James?” I said uncertainly. He clenched his fists and the light died in his eyes.
“Sorry,” he muttered, “Look, mum; I need to do some homework, alright?”
I felt my head jerk upright. “Since when have you ever brought work home?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “Since Mr Morrison gave me a Saturday detention,” he replied.
I stared. “What for?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “Being me, I suppose.” James looked up and I was once again struck by his eyes; they reminded me partly of my own in the mirror of a morning and partly of… I shivered.
“Mum, please let’s not go through this again,” James told me with a weariness far too adult for his young years. “They don’t understand – they think I can’t do the work. They think I’m like Emma, they don’t realise how bored I am.”
He stared at me. “I don’t think you realise how bored I am either,” he said resentfully.
“James,” I began, but he cut in.
“They’re just so slow,” he complained.
I frowned, not understanding. “Your friends are slow?” I asked.
James gave me a poisonous look. “The teachers,” he replied. “Oh, they’re not stupid like Emma is…”
“James!” I was appalled.
“Well, she is,” he insisted mutinously. “I’m fed up with having to babysit her. The other kids laugh at me – it’s embarrassing.”
“They also bully her,” I replied with some heat, “and that’s just plain wrong.”
“And I’m supposed to protect her, is that it?” he replied angrily. “Mum, you don’t understand how things work at that school. If I try to intervene, I’ll get beaten up. At least this way all that happens is a bit of name-calling.”
“That’s how it starts, yes,” I replied worriedly, “James, who are these boys?”
He set his mouth in a thin line and shook his head.
“You know I’ll just ask Emma, don’t you?” I told him.
He gave me a flat look. “Ask away,” he said, “at least it won’t have come from me.”
“How will they know?” I asked in a gentler tone. A flash of real fear glimmered in his dark eyes, gone almost before I could see it.
“Don’t,” he said simply. I sighed.
“James, it’s not just you,” I told him. “Emma’s really upset tonight. She knows she’s below par academically – her dyslexia means that reading, writing in complete sentences and grammar are all very difficult…”
“Spare me the spiel, I’ve heard it all before,” James interrupted.
“Don’t speak to me like that!” I shot back, worry and anxiety making my tone sharp.
James turned away. “If you don’t mind, Mum,” he said, “I’ve got some kindergarten maths and a pedestrian project on the development of industry in the German Ruhr to complete before the end of the day if I want to escape yet another pointless detention.”
I sighed inaudibly. “Don’t let your dinner get all dried up,” I said in a subdued tone. “Is the desktop booting up now?”
James snorted derisively. “Of course it’s booting,” he said loftily, “I made a workaround, but how long it’ll hold up is another question entirely.”
“I wish we could afford you a new one,” I said wistfully.
“I could use your laptop?” he suggested.
“Don’t you dare!” I shot back before catching the faint glint of triumph in his eyes.
I sighed again. “Just – leave my computer out of it, won’t you?” I told him. “The last thing I want is to lose several years’ work because you decide to reformat the hard drive. It matters, James, even if no one wants to publish me.”
James turned and laid an awkward hand on my shoulder. “Something’ll turn up, mum,” he said quietly, “It always does in the end.”
“Where did you get your streak of optimism from?” I sighed, “Not from me, that’s for sure."
“I must have got it from my father then,” he replied. I stared at the back of his head as he brought up Word and Excel simultaneously. He turned round at my silence.
“Well, it stands to reason,” he said defensively, his blue eyes wide and guileless.
“James,” I began through gritted teeth, “you know the score, I’ve told you…”
He was nodding vigorously. “Yes, I know,” he said, “ships in the night, and all that.” God, but he sounded at least a jaded thirty when he said that.
He looked at me. “Don’t you think it might be time to look him up again?” he asked.