When We Were Young

by Richard Roper

  Mum would sit down and take off her apron. “Oh, love, yes, of course!” she’d beam, eyes full of pride, slipping out to call Dad with the good news.

  I should have known better when Darren asked me to go in to the cricket pavilion to get the football. When I teetered on the edge of the door, realizing that something wasn’t quite right about this, he shoved me inside and padlocked the door shut. The boys hammered on the dusty window, laughing and whooping. I felt the air swoosh near my head as what I thought was a bird flew past. But when it landed on a beam and splayed its wings, I realized that it was a bat. I threw myself to the floor and crawled under a bench, shaking with fear. The boys watched on jubilantly until eventually they got bored. After they’d gone, I yelled for help until my throat burned. But nobody came. I’d been trying not to think about how badly I needed the toilet, but eventually the pressure on my bladder got too much. I felt the hot trickle between my legs and began to snivel. When the janitor, Mr. Marstens, finally unlocked the door, I didn’t stop running until I was out past the school and into town.

  When I got home, I was desperate to hide that anything was wrong, but as soon as Mum asked me brightly how my day had been, I couldn’t hold back my tears. I only began to feel better later when Alice skipped over and presented me with a drawing she’d done of the two of us, with a caption she’d written underneath—“Theo, my brother, the bravest idiot I know”—which made me laugh and cry at the same time.

  If I thought the pavilion was a one-off, then I was mistaken. I became Darren’s go-to target all the way through year seven and into year eight. At first I tried fighting back, but he seemed to relish that even more, because it gave him an excuse to hit me harder. So in the end my tactic was to ball myself up like a hedgehog, waiting for it all to be over. I would hear people walking past, barely stopping their conversations. That was what hurt the most. Maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough not to be so weird. Maybe I deserved it.

  Then, one lunchtime, Darren sportingly told me in advance that if he saw me again during the next hour, he was going to make me cry. I decided I wasn’t going to take any chances. Rather than spending lunchtime out in the sunshine with everyone else, I holed up in the boys’ toilets in the music block. I was safe, but I found the whole thing so shameful—sitting there eating my packed lunch in a toilet cubicle, listening to someone murdering “Smoke on the Water” on an out-of-tune guitar next door. My Walkman was on its last legs by then. It only played the tape if the deck itself was secured shut with two thick elastic bands, but it still did the job. I listened to Blackadder with one headphone, leaving my other ear free to listen for anyone approaching. It was inevitably at the moment I began to relax when Darren and his goons decided to explore the music block.

  “Where’s Theodore got to, then?” I heard Darren say as they bundled their way into the bathroom.

  There was the sound of aggressive pissing. The roar of the hand driers made me jump, and, to my horror, I felt my Walkman slip from my sweaty hand and clatter to the floor. The sound had been drowned out by the drier, but one of the batteries had come free and was rolling toward the cubicle door. I scrabbled to grab it, but it was too late.

  “Look!”

  “Where’d that come from?”

  I shrank back, trying to work out which was the most likely point of attack.

  “Who’s in there? Is that you, Theodore?”

  I heard the adjacent cubicle door bang open, and a moment later a face appeared above the door.

  “Oh my god, it is!”

  I looked wildly around for something to defend myself with. But all I had was my Walkman, and I really didn’t want to damage that.

  It had gone momentarily quiet outside the cubicle. But then, chaos. I was being pelted from above and under the door by water-soaked paper towels and handfuls of liquid soap. I threw my arms over my head and assumed the brace position. My attackers’ voices got louder as they egged each other on, like hyenas consumed by bloodlust. During a brief respite, I managed to pull my blazer up over my head, though I couldn’t stop the cold soap trickling down my back. But then, as soon as the attack began, it had stopped. There was another voice. One I didn’t recognize, quiet and calm.

  “I said what are you doing?”

  “And I said piss off.”

  The response was meant to sound aggressive, but it was too hesitant. Darren was clearly wary.

  “I don’t think you should be doing that to whoever’s in there.”

  “Whatever.”

  I heard feet shuffling. Some quiet sniggering. To my relief, it sounded like they’d all left, but then someone knocked on the cubicle door.

  I got to my feet. My hands were shaking. My eyes stung from the soap. But whatever was waiting for me outside, I felt resigned to it. I just wanted to get it over with. I pulled open the door, determined to stare Darren down before he attacked. But he was gone, taking his gang with him. Instead, standing at the sink was a tall, wiry boy I hadn’t seen before. He didn’t react when he saw the state I was in, as if he’d barely registered that I was covered head to toe in a gloopy soap paste.

  “You all right?” he asked, passing me a wedge of dry towels.

  “Yeah. Fine,” I said, pressing the coarse paper to my face, holding it there for a moment to hide my tears. Whether they were from relief at the ordeal being over or just because the boy had been kind to me, I wasn’t sure. But by the time he’d introduced himself as Joel, and asked if I was sure I was okay in a way that made me feel like I was a normal person, I felt that strange, ungraspable feeling that steals over you when you realize the ground has shifted under your feet and that everything is about to change.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Joel

  I could count the times I’d been back to my childhood home on the fingers of one hand. Admittedly, one of those times had ended up with me staying for months, but I had been in too much of a state to remember much of it. The memories that lingered were only unpleasant ones.

  I paid the cabbie who’d driven me from the station, and crossed the road, hanging back in the porch. I could see Mum through the living room window, hunched over her laptop. There were dull rings under her eyes, like she hadn’t had a proper sleep in days. She frowned and started looking around for something, lifting a magazine, shifting a stack of papers.

  I smiled. It was her glasses she was after. “They’re on your head,” I muttered. “Like they always are.”

  I shrank back as I felt a dangerous stirring of sadness. I should have come back here more often, no matter how difficult it was. I shouldn’t have taken Mum for granted all these years. I clenched my fists and tried to shake myself out of it. On no account was I going to let Mum see me upset.

  I rang the doorbell. As Mum opened the door I painted a smile onto my face.

  “Darling!”

  “Hello, Mum.”

  She pulled me into a hug. It felt like I had to stoop a little more than usual. It startled me how thin she felt. Was that all the worrying?

  “Something smells nice,” I said. I realized I couldn’t remember the last thing I’d had to eat. I was starving.

  “I’m making a curry,” Mum said, ushering me into the hall. “Chock-full of turmeric. Brilliant cure-all, apparently. You have been taking the capsules I’ve been sending, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, that’s what those are,” I said, hanging my coat up. “I thought they were worming tablets for the cat.”

  Mum pretended I hadn’t said anything. She took my jacket from the hook I’d hung it on and moved it six inches over to another identical hook.

  “What about the other things I emailed you about? Did you have any thoughts on milk thistle yet?”

  “Only that he was my least favorite dwarf in Lord of the Rings.”

  “Joel, I really think—”

  “Hey, come on, Mum.” I took her gently by the arms. “
Let’s not talk about that stuff, eh? Let’s just have a nice, relaxing evening.”

  “I suppose,” Mum sighed.

  “Excellent,” I said. “Now. Quick question. Are my old walking boots here?”

  “They’re in the cupboard under the stairs,” Mum said. She went off into the kitchen at the sound of a pan boiling over. “What on earth do you need those for?”

  “I’m walking the Thames Path,” I said, bracing for Mum’s reaction. Sure enough, I heard her drop something that clattered onto the floor. When I came into the kitchen, she was staring at me as if I’d gone completely mad.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said. “It’s two hundred miles.”

  “Not quite that, and it’s basically flat the entire way.”

  “Yes, for two hundred miles. And what does Amber think of all this?”

  “She, um . . .”

  I pretended to be distracted by something the other side of the room. Walking over to the fridge, I bent down to inspect the photo of me and Mum in the garden when I was a little boy. My hair was a white blond back then. I couldn’t remember how old I was before the color changed.

  “Joel,” Mum pressed.

  “Oh, you know . . .” I waved my hand airily. “How old was I in this picture, by the way?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Mum said. Then I heard her let out a little gasp. “Joel, please tell me you’ve told Amber about . . . everything.”

  I straightened up. “Well, not exactly. Not yet.”

  “So when you said you were going to tell her as soon as you got off the phone to me, you were just lying, were you?”

  I scratched at the back of my head, feeling like a teenager, as if I’d been caught red-handed stealing a beer from the fridge. “I’ll tell her when the time’s right.”

  Mum looked like she was going to say something else, but she turned back to her cooking and began chopping away, taking her worries out on some coriander. I crossed the kitchen and put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. After a moment she stopped chopping and put her arms around me.

  Remember this moment, I thought. Remember how much love there is in this hug; remember how the windows are fogged with steam; remember the daffodils in the wonky clay vase you made on that school trip.

  * * *

  I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. How often as a kid had I stared at this ceiling, feeling anger and sadness boiling inside me as I listened to Mum and Dad—and then, after the divorce, Mum and Mike—arguing downstairs? At times, everything would bubble over and I wouldn’t be able to take it anymore. As time went on, I had learned to deal with the pain by hurting myself in a different way. It had started with me scraping my fists along the rough wall, progressing to punching it as hard as I needed to until the pain drowned everything out. It had been my shameful secret for a long time.

  Now, as I ran my fingers over the familiar bumps and grooves, I thought back to the moment at the end of my first year at Hescott High School when Mum and Dad sat me down and told me they were divorcing. Even as a twelve-year-old, I could sense the forced show of civility as they held hands at the kitchen table and Dad told me he was going to be moving out for a while. A fortnight later, that had been upgraded slightly, to “moving to Australia.”

  “For how long?” I’d asked him.

  “Well, mate,” he said, clearing his throat, “sort of, permanently. But you’ll have to come out and visit, you know, when you’re a bit older.”

  “But, but . . .” I tried uselessly to stop my whimpering, which I knew he hated. “It’s not fair,” I moaned.

  “Now listen,” Dad said sharply. “Life’s not fair. Stop crying, okay. You’re not a girl. You’re the man of the house now. Your mum’s going to rely on you.”

  I didn’t understand what he was asking of me. He was the one who was leaving.

  For the last two weeks of school, it had felt like a great weight was pressing down on my chest. All I wanted to do was kick and punch at something, or someone. On the last day of term, we were allowed to bring in games and watch films instead of doing lessons. I sat at the back of the classroom ignoring everyone, watching the clock tick closer toward 3:30 when I could finally get out of the stifling room. But once I thought of how I’d be spending the summer without Dad, the rage overwhelmed me, and the next thing I knew I’d grabbed a stapler from my desk and hurled it as hard as I could across the room, where it skimmed off the wall directly into Oscar Tate’s face. If my grades had been better, I might have got away with it. But given the threat of legal action by Oscar’s parents, Mum was informed that it would be best if I were to find a new school to join the following term.

  I think about that moment a lot, and how it changed the course of my life. If I’d made it to 3:30 p.m. without exploding, then I wouldn’t have been kicked out of school. I’d never have met Theo. I’d never have met Amber . . .

  Lying on my old bed, now, I felt the familiar, overwhelming need to punch the wall just like I used to, to let out the pain at the unfairness of it all, to release the anger. A sudden pang of nausea made me sit up in bed. I had to take slow, deep breaths until it passed. These episodes had been happening more and more. And the thing was, it was only going to get worse.

  I turned the light on and reached for my jeans, pulling out the crumpled letter. The page had ripped slightly at the top, just below the National Health Service logo. I couldn’t remember doing that. I don’t know why, but it made me cross to have caused the tear. I began to read the letter yet again:

  Dear Mr. Thompson,

  Re: Test results

  Following your diagnosis, we are referring you to the hepatology department.

  I stopped. What was the point? The same words were there every time I read it, in black and white, sending me spiraling back to the moment I’d first known something was wrong.

  I’d not felt anything other than unusually tired the day I’d suddenly had to run out of a Tooth rehearsal to vomit. I’d assumed it was just a bug, but when I lifted my head from the bowl, I saw blood. What I remember most about the doctor who’d examined me and then sent me for tests was how entirely humorless he was. I wasn’t exactly expecting him to start cracking jokes, but he wore the expression of a man who thought smiling and laughter were things you should grow out of. Given that I’d taken against him somewhat, when he sat me down and told me what was wrong, I’d felt quite pleased to be able to set him straight.

  “Ah, but that can’t be right,” I’d said. “I’ve not had a drink for five years.”

  “That, unfortunately, is the problem with liver disease,” the doctor replied. “Often, as in your case, there are no symptoms at all until it is at a very advanced stage. Your, er, lifestyle, has been the contributing factor, but you also mentioned an incident when you were younger when you injured yourself falling down the stairs?”

  “What about it?” I said, doing my best to hold the memory at bay.

  “Your records show that you incurred a laceration, and bile duct inflammation. That is consistent with where the problem lies today. Your bile ducts never fully recovered, and, along with alcohol abuse, that has led to primary biliary cirrhosis.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, what do we do then? Is it medication, or . . . ?”

  The doctor had breathed out heavily through his nose. Then he’d wheeled his chair around his desk so that he was closer to me. I could smell coffee on his breath. I noticed that he had two pens in his top pocket but one was missing its lid. I wondered if I should tell him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but things are too advanced for that. You are in urgent need of a liver transplant. We shall put you down as a priority on the waiting list. That is very much plan A, but I’m afraid, given the severity of the cirrhosis, time is not on your side.”

  The doctor had explained more about “plan A” and gone on to talk about a �
�plan B,” but I’d already zoned out. I was picturing Amber’s face, seeing her eyes go glassy with tears. The thought of her reacting to the news had made me feel faint, and suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath, and before I knew it, I was gasping for air and the doctor was rushing to find me water.

  A small consolation was that Amber was away with work. When the letter arrived the next day, I took it to Hampstead Heath, where I sat on a bench, trying to make sense of it all. I stayed there for hours, watching people coming and going. It seemed unfathomable that people were still carrying on like normal. Surely the world was about to grind to a halt: The birds would stop singing. Car engines would cut out. The people dotted around the Heath were about to stop what they were doing and turn as one to face me—waiting for me to stand up on the bench and confirm that the news was true: I was ill, and I wasn’t getting better. I whispered the words out loud, like a guilty secret, and tried my hardest not to cry.

  Later, back home, I sat at my kitchen table and laid my head on my arms, staring into middle distance. Eventually my eyes had focused on the red light of the oven clock. I watched the static display, waiting for it to change. It was at the point where I thought it must be broken when it finally flicked over from 5:31 to 5:32. Was that how long a minute lasted? It felt like an age. Time seemed to have taken on an unreal quality now I knew my own was limited. I had an acute awareness of every second slipping past—each one wasted as I failed to do something that proved I was still alive. I jumped to my feet, inertia giving way to urgency, and began searching the house for pen and paper. I found a pen under a coffee table in the living room, but the only thing I had to write on was the back of the letter. It felt appropriate, somehow, to be planning how to best use the time I had left on the other side of the words condemning me to my fate. I’m not done yet, I thought, and at the top of the page I wrote the words: