It would be as sweet and perfect and still as Ribena in a world without people. But people were always fizzing, like the chalky drink they kept giving him at their idea of bedtime. Or like the idiotic fly orbiting the bare light bulb on his ceiling, dragging his eyes with it in dizzying gyrations. Stopping that wasn’t a stupid thing to do. Better to have broken glass on the floor than all that anger in his ears. If you know where sharp things are, you can avoid them. Noise just filled your head with shards unless you found a way to defeat it. Why couldn’t Mum understand that? He was old enough and he did know better.
Of course his light had been on after bedtime. Without it, he couldn’t lie on his belly with his head projecting into space, seeing in the green and gold squares of his carpet the endless fields and hedgerows of his tranquil kingdom. Nor could he count his collection of cars, parked in good forecourt order between the radiator pipes. The dumper trucks and diggers squatted at the back, ready to deal with any plumbing crisis, with the police cars and ambulances at the front in case they needed to dash to an emergency. All were clean, their enamel free of chips and their decals whole and without scuffs. He could recite each one’s make and model and say whether it was die-cast or pat-pending. There was much peace to be had from this mantra.
The robotic dinosaur, with its blazing eyes and thrashing tail, seemed more alive than ever as it flew from his hand towards the bulb. It had been skulking under his bed, batteries removed and buried deep in the wardrobe, since Uncle Jimmy had given it to him for his ninth birthday weeks ago. The light found itself free from its glass cage and fled into darkness, to be recaptured seconds later when a light switch was flicked on in Mum’s room next door. The plasterboard between them vibrated to a soft but building crescendo of anger.
As his bedroom door opened, he glimpsed the dinosaur lying on its back with jaws agape, ringed by milky shards; a fifty-watt monster newly hatched and denied its first taste of household pest. For a second, both Mum and Uncle Jimmy were silhouettes onto which he could have painted better versions. There would be less grey in Mum’s curls, less sticky black paste in the corners of her eyes, her smiles would be real and just for him and there would be a yellow ring on her finger in place of yellow stains on her fingertips. As for Uncle Jimmy, he would just be erased, reduced to grey smudges and tiny pink strands of rubber, and Dad would be slotted into the space made for him. As they were much the same size, that should be easy.
Mum walked into his room, tried the light switch a few times to no effect, drew a long breath and fixed her gaze on him. In the glistening of her eyes and the faint trembling of her hands, he found a precious new knowledge: he had upset her. The distance between them had telescoped and he could hurt her more if he chose to. Perhaps this gift could also be left under the bed until he found a better use for it.
Uncle Jimmy lingered on the landing, chin pressed into his chest, studying his fingernails and gently swaying to some music only he could hear. Kevin felt a surge of nausea and tasted burning grit at the back of his throat as the image of Dad’s slippers, gently swaying above the staircase, filled his mind. The image blossomed: Dad’s slippers, with Dad’s purple-veined feet still snug inside them, cold and waxen, only the house breathing with a sound like taut leather slapping against wood. It felt so real that it could have happened.
“Kevin!”
The apparition was gone; there was no swinging ghoul, no noose, nothing to mar the new coat of emulsion applied by Uncle Jimmy to the banister. He wondered where he’d put the envelope when he’d taken it from his school blazer.
“Kevin!”
The exclamation jabbed him again. He’d been watching Mum’s mouth move without hearing. He tried to swing his legs onto the carpet but found himself tangled in the duvet.
“Don’t move, Kevin. There’s glass all over. What on earth were you doing?”
“Swatting a fly,” he mumbled into his collar, “a stupid fly. It was buzzing.”
“Well you shouldn’t even have your light on. And you’re old enough to know better.”
He allowed a smirk to curdle his face, raising his eyes to make sure Mum saw it. She dropped her hands into her dressing gown pockets and squared her shoulders, her eyes once more hard and without lustre. Uncle Jimmy had disappeared and a clattering could be heard from the under-stairs cupboard.
“We used to talk to each other, you and me.” He held his mouth shut and felt the silence thicken.
“The specialist said we must talk to each other. Do you remember? If we don’t get things out, they just go nasty and get worse than they were to start with.”
Mum left a space for him to flow into. He found his favourite poster and focussed on the upturned, alien eyes on Spiderman’s mask as he flung himself from the Empire State Building into a space beyond the jostling masses hundreds of feet below.
“So, what is it? You smash things up to get me in here and then you won’t talk to me.”
“I can’t talk to you any more,” he mumbled into his collar.
“What did you say?”
“Excuse me,” Uncle Jimmy whispered as he squeezed past Mum with eyebrows raised and a grin glued to his face. “Don’t mind me, guys,” he added as he stooped to brush up the glass into a dustpan.
“I asked you a question, Kevin.”
“It’s nothing.” He drew the duvet tightly around his shoulders and heard something land with a soft slap on the carpet. Uncle Jimmy’s brushing stopped and he felt the searchlight of Mum’s anger leave his face.
“What’s that, Jim?” she said.
“You’re a dark horse, aren’t you, Kevin.” He was standing, clutching the letter, idiotic grin still in place, like a pools winner with a fake cheque. “Master Kevin Carter, no less, all neatly typed and everything.”
Kevin sprang to his feet, shoulders back and chin cocked high as he’d seen the upper school kids do when they wanted to win a fight without the risk of trading punches. The effect was diminished when the soggy mattress bounced him gently against the wall.
“That’s my personal private property and it’s top secret and sensitive and it’s none of your business so give it back and give it back right now.” His knuckles clenched with embarrassment at the whining note in his voice.
Uncle Jimmy recoiled without fear, hands raised in surrender, eager to leave the stage to the main protagonists; he then hissed and sank backwards onto a beanbag, flushing as he raised a foot to show a white sliver embedded in its sole.
Kevin swallowed his anger, fearing he could no more understand or control it than he could drive Dad’s car or use Uncle Jimmy’s angle grinder. Mum had unfolded the letter and was reading it. He knew it so well, every line, punctuation mark, crossing-out and smudge, that he could track her progress by the movement of her eyes. Even in the weak light trickling in from the landing, he could see the colour drain from her face. She seemed oblivious to the rich and varied swear-words leaking from between Uncle Jimmy’s teeth, and Kevin was less inclined than usual to store them for future use.
She looked up once, scanning Kevin’s face without seeming to notice Uncle Jimmy limping from the room. She then stared at the pages in her hands as if she could will the words to uncouple and re-order themselves into a different and finer truth. At last she sighed, folded the pages precisely, replaced them in the envelope and slid it inside her dressing gown pocket.
“Kevin, I don’t know where to start. He’s got you to punish me, hasn’t he?”
“That’s my personal, private letter.” His eyes prickled and grew wet. “I’m not allowed to blame you. He said so.”
She softened for a second and opened her arms as if to embrace him. Then she checked herself and tucked her hands into her belt.
“Right now, Kevin, you can blame me. Just do one thing for me and stay awake for a bit, ok? Just don’t step on that glass.”
Kevin nodded, pouting and sullen, wanting to ignite his anger but realising he’d just agreed to a ceasefire. Mum left the room and he hunkered down beneath his duvet, hugging his knees and straining to hear what was being said downstairs but catching only the odd stray sibilant. The light from the cordless phone charger on the landing blinked furiously as he tried to form a sentence around the words “son”, “solicitor”, “sabotage” and “this instant”.
Then silence filled the house, marred only by the uneven rhythm of Uncle Jimmy dragging his lacerated foot from kitchen to lounge and back again when the kettle whistled for him.
A car stopped on the driveway and gravel peppered the front door. The engine died with an asthmatic wheeze, the handbrake was ratcheted hard and a door was slammed. Raised voices filled the hallway, an incoherent fugue, his mum and two men. A rustling of paper restored the silence then feet mounted the stairs, leaden and deliberate, to a hissed command from Mum: “Just do it!”
Dad filled his vision again, this time real, alive and bereft of spectral power. Tousled hair, eyes squinting in the half-light, the beginnings of a double chin picked out by a half-grown beard. The letter was crumpled in his hand like a bird snatched from the air and crushed. No noose, dressing gown, slippers or bulging veins; just a paint-spattered tracksuit, last year’s trainers and a tang of stale beer. Kevin felt his heart balloon in his chest and he choked back bile. This wasn’t the Dad who’d left him; this was someone else, someone who should have died as promised.
Dad cleared his throat, opened out the letter and spoke in a headlong rush. He must have been apologising for the lies, for making Kevin think he’d kill himself rather than live without him. Kevin didn’t listen. He brought to mind the words of the letter he’d memorised:
“Dearest Kevin, by the time you read this I may be gone forever cause I cannot live with what they have done and I fear they have put so many things between us that I can’t be the dad I want so hard to be. We were such a happy family at one time and I wanted to work hard and make it all work out but no-one had let me. It’s not anyone’s fault but your mum didn’t want to work at it and she’s got a new man already which is fine but what about you and me, eh. I just need you to know that I’ve tried everything to be a good dad like paying solicitors and such like and not breaking the court order which should not ever have been made anyway. I know he isn’t me but Jimmy will just have to do, does he take you to football? I just want you to think good thoughts about your old dad and how we used to be a lovely little family before all this but I suppose we can’t get it back now what with me gone forever. I know it is not right and fair but I can’t stand it like this no more and I’m going to end my life with a rope round my neck cause it’s the right thing and you are all free then. Don’t you worry, I won’t feel anything. Don’t blame anyone, specially not your mum. Love, Dad.”
As Kevin finished reciting it to himself, Dad finished mouthing his new lies and Kevin was glad he hadn’t heard a word. Dad clutched the letter in both hands and stared at the carpet. There was an impatient snort from the landing. Dad had to say more and then Mum and maybe Uncle Jimmy would be in to talk to him about trust and responsibility and being honest with one another.
Let them come. There would be words and plans and tears. He could nod, sigh, dab his eye and lie. Perhaps there’d be noise, neighbours banging on the wall and another visit from the irritated policemen. Then they’d leave him to think and sleep would be a long time coming, and the next day and countless days after that would be like fever-dreams, stumbled through with disbelieving eyes and a head full of shadows. Kids grow up so quickly these days, he’d heard someone say on the bus. He would choose to believe that, and then one day very soon he’d be rid of them all.
