The October Boys

by Adam Millard

  Pop goes the weasel.

  We were listening for Pop goes the weasel.

  Red-faced with anger, Karen placed herself between Luke and their daughter. “You don’t know what happened? I’ll tell you, shall I? You almost killed our daughter, Luke? If I hadn’t heard her choking and come to check everything was okay, you would have succeeded!”

  Luke only now realised his wife was naked. “I must have blacked out,” he explained. “I would never hurt you, Lydia.” He was talking directly to his frightened little girl now, appealing, hoping Lydia would explain that this was all some kind of fucked up misunderstanding. But Lydia was petrified, and seemingly glad that her mother was shielding her from further harm. Luke hated the idea his daughter was scared of him. He had never, in her eight years, laid a finger upon her, would never so much as raise his voice if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, and now that was all gone—spoiled—all that trust down the drain, for now he was the man who had tried to murder her in her bed, surrounded by her favourite things.

  “I want you out of this house right now!” Karen screamed. She was crying now, perhaps resigned to the fact that their marriage—the majority of which had been filled with happiness and love—was over in the blink of an eye. How could she remain with the man who had almost strangled their daughter? No amount of counselling could ever put that right.

  Luke decided to give it one last shot, for there was something there, something which told him his wife knew he would never cause Lydia harm. “Something happened up there, Karen,” he said. “I don’t know what, but one minute… she wasn’t Lydia.”

  Lydia was crying now, too. Luke felt like an absolute monster, a bastard, the worst father in the world.

  “Lydia, do you remember what happened? While we were listening for Pop goes the weasel? Do you remember?”

  “Stop it, Luke!” Karen said. “You don’t get to talk to her, not after what you just did up there.”

  “I would never hurt her, Karen,” Luke said. “You know that! You know I would never knowingly harm a hair on her head, so why don’t you believe me?” He was becoming frantic, the thought of checking into some seedy budget hotel at this time of night—or worse, sleeping in the car—made him feel physically sick.

  Karen wiped the tears from her eyes. “Just go,” she said, composed now. “I don’t… I don’t know what’s going on, Luke, but it’s best if you just leave, until…” She left that hanging, although Luke had a good idea of what it meant.

  Luke wanted to argue his case, but he knew it was no good. Whichever way he looked at it, he had tried to kill his little girl, his princess, and Karen had every right to want him as far away as possible.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. The only two words he could manage.

  He left the house, stopping only to grab the car keys from the hallway table.

  It wasn’t until he was sitting in a layby three miles away, staring at the rear end of an overnight UPS truck, that he began to cry.

  Pop goes the weasel.

  NINE

  October 25th, 2016

  Bromley, London

  The kitchen was chaos. Jayden and Justice were fighting over which one of them got to eat the last of the Cheerios; Joel and Oscar were wrestling over by the counter. A tiny black-and-white TV played the early morning BBC news, and from what Danielle could gather, there had been yet another atrocity committed in some foreign country. Nothing new there, then.

  While the kids wrestled and bickered and punched and tussled, Rebecca toiled away at the cooker. On the counter to her right, a stack of burnt toast looked precarious and not at all appetising. Just looking at it turned Danielle’s stomach, so she turned her gaze back to Jayden and Justice sitting across the table from her, tugging a cereal box back and forth as if it contained some valuable Pokémon card, or whatever it was the kids were into these days.

  “Knock it off, guys,” Danielle said, and even though there was a hint of playfulness in her tone, she meant it. “Why doesn’t one of you have chocolate pops? Huh?”

  Justice screwed his face up. “Ergh. Because they make the milk all chocolatey, and then it doesn’t taste right.”

  Danielle shrugged. “I thought all kids loved chocolate?” Or was that just another fallacy she had been led to believe. After all, what did she know? It wasn’t as if she had any kids of her own. It wasn’t as if she was a mother, or knew what kids liked and what they didn’t. Thanks to Tom, the selfish bastard, she was childless and growing older by the day. And he was showing no sign of capitulation. In fact, he was stubborner now than when she’d first met him.

  “I like chocolate when it tastes like chocolate,” Justice explained. “That stuff they coat the corn in? That ain’t chocolate. That’s the dust from Satan’s nutsack.”

  Unable to help it, Danielle burst out laughing. “Justice!” she said. “Oh my God!”

  From the cooker, and without turning away from the pan of steaming baked beans on the hob, Rebecca said, “Are you being rude again, Justice?”

  “Just telling it like it is, Mom,” Justice said.

  “He was just telling me about Satan’s balls,” Danielle said.

  “Snitch,” Justice replied with a tiny smirk.

  Rebecca, now buttering the burnt toast, said, “Justice knows all about Satan’s balls, don’t you, son?”

  At this, Jayden punched Justice in the arm, hard enough to make him drop his spoon. “That’s because Justice has had Satan’s balls on his chin.”

  “Jayden Lebbon!” Rebecca said, placing the toast and beans on the table. “I will not have that kind of talk at the breakfast table, understood?”

  Jayden nodded sheepishly, perhaps embarrassed he had been reproached in front of his Auntie Danielle. A few minutes later, though, they were all eating, all except for Danielle who really couldn’t stomach anything.

  “You have to eat,” Rebecca said, motioning to Danielle’s empty plate. “You think Tom’s over at your place right now, starving himself to death with worry?”

  “That’s exactly what he’s doing,” Danielle said. She knew Tom better than anyone, knew that last night he would have drunk himself into a blind stupor and fallen asleep on the sofa. There would be no breakfast for Tom, not unless it came in a brandy glass.

  “Are you and Uncle Tom going to get divorced?” Joel asked before forcing a whole slice of singed bread into his mouth.

  “Joel!” Rebecca said. “Grown-ups are talking. And don’t chew with your mouth open. It makes you look like a retard.”

  “It’s okay,” Danielle told Joel. “No, Uncle Tom and I aren’t going to get divorced. We’re just having a few problems at the moment, that’s all.” That’s all? As if it were nothing. As if Tom’s refusal to impregnate her was nothing; as if Tom’s constant nightmares and walking hallucinations were nothing.

  “Good,” Joel said, mouth finally empty. “I like Uncle Tom. He makes me laugh.”

  “He makes my blood boil,” Rebecca muttered under her breath. Only Danielle was meant to hear that gut-punch.

  “Uncle Tom is a very funny man,” Danielle said, sipping at her coffee, which was just a few shades above freezing. There had been a time, when she and Tom first got together, that everything that came out of his mouth was either a joke or a terrible pun. He always made her laugh, sometimes trying too hard to elicit some form of response from her, and she had loved him for it.

  Now, the jokes were few and far between; Tom was either too drunk to bother, or simply didn’t care whether his wife found him amusing.

  “I think I should call him.” Danielle added an extra sugar to her coffee and gave it a stir. If it was cold, it might as well be unhealthily sweet. The sugar, though, probably wouldn’t even dissolve. She would spoon it out at the end.

  “No,” Rebecca said, with some finality. “You do that, he’s going to think you’ve got nothing better to do than worry about his sorry ass.”

  “I don’t have anything better to do than worry about his sorry ass.
”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t need to know that.” Danielle crunched into her toast, sending black crumbs down onto her plate. With a mouth half full, she went on. “He’s an adult, sis. I know, it’s hard to believe it sometimes, but Tom can look after himself for a few days, or weeks, or however long it takes to get his shit together. If he’s drinking as much as you say he is, then it’s going to be better if you’re not around. I mean, I’m not being funny, or anything, but you know how to push his buttons, and that—”

  “Push his buttons?” Danielle didn’t know whether that was an insult or not. “What, like I get off on making him angry?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Rebecca said. “I just meant that your relationship is a little intense at times, and if you’re around him while he’s still got his head buried in the sand, it’s just going to make things worse.”

  Her sister had a point. And if anyone knew about toxic relationships it was Rebecca, whose ex-husband Warren—father to the four boys sitting at the table, and lord knows how many others sitting at countless tables across the country—had beat her seven shades from Sunday the last three years of their marriage. Danielle had never liked that sonofabitch, not since he’d cornered her in the bathroom during a Christmas party six years earlier.

  “I’m going to call him,” Danielle reiterated. There was no way she could go through the day without picking up the phone to at least make sure Tom hadn’t hanged himself from their faux chandelier. It would just be a courtesy call, she told herself. A quick check-in, and then she would forget about him, help Rebecca around the house, maybe go on the school-run with her, anything to keep busy.

  “At least wait until we’ve finished breakfast,” Rebecca said. To the boys, she said, “You lot don’t want to hear Aunty Danielle being all lovey-dovey with Uncle Tom, do you?”

  In unison, the four boys groaned and made disgusted noises. Danielle took that as a no.

  “It can wait,” Danielle said, her appetite returning slightly. “So, boys. Any of you got girlfriends at the moment?”

  “Justice has!” Jayden said suddenly. “I’ve seen them holding hands.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Justice calmly said. “Because I don’t have a girlfriend. Mom, tell Jayden to stop telling lies.”

  Rebecca shrugged and continued to eat toast. “Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “Unless her parents are Tories. Are her parents Tories?”

  “Her parents aren’t anything,” Justice said, “because she doesn’t exist.” He spooned cereal into his mouth and crunched. Danielle guessed it was to drown out the ridicule his older brother was piling upon him.

  “What was the name of that young lass you brought here last weekend?” Rebecca asked Jayden. “The one with all that glitter up her face?”

  “Glitter?” Danielle said, smirking.

  “Oh, you should have seen it, sis!” Rebecca said. “Looked like she’d fallen into a machine at the Christmas card factory.”

  Jayden clearly didn’t find the conversation amusing, for he sat there, shaking his head and huffing, the way teenage boys are wont to do when things aren’t going accordingly. “Her name is Lena,” he said, defensively, “and she’s just a friend. And anyway, she prefers girls.”

  Danielle couldn’t quite believe she was having this conversation with a boy barely out of nappies. “And how do you know that?”

  “She told me,” Jayden said. “She fancies Katie Guerlain from Science class, but I don’t think Katie swings that way.”

  With a shocked expression, Rebecca said, “Things are changing so fast. I mean, when your Aunty Danielle and me were your age, we were throwing sticks into the canal and making a damn good afternoon of it. Kids these days already know if they’re gay or lesbian or bi. If Aunty Danielle had put on a shirt, a tie, and a pair of trousers when we were kids—and I believe she did on several occasions—it was called dress-up. You do that nowadays, you’re transitioning.” She shook her head and sighed; Danielle couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I’ll be sure to pass that little story on to Lena when I see her in Science this afternoon,” Jayden said, rising from the table and transferring his empty bowl to the sink. Justice did the same. Joel and Oscar were manoeuvring matchbox vehicles across the table, oblivious to everything else going on around them.

  Just then, someone’s phone began to ring, and it was only after several seconds that Danielle realised it was hers. “Shit!” she said, fumbling for the phone in her pocket. What if it was Tom? What if Tom was contemplating doing something silly? What if she missed it, and he went ahead and killed himself? She would never be able to live with that; she was already regretting leaving him in the first place.

  “Just let it ring,” Rebecca said. “If it’s Tom, he’ll call back later. Remember, you’re trying to play it aloof.”

  “You’re trying to play it aloof,” Danielle said, finally wrestling the mobile phone from her pocket. “I’m trying to save my marriage by whatever means necessary.” She pushed the button to answer the call. “Hello?”

  It was Tom.

  It was Tom and he didn’t sound as if he had been drinking, but he was good at hiding it, had always been pretty high functioning when it came to alcohol.

  It was Tom and he was talking like he was going to do something, telling Danielle that he loved her and that, whatever happened, he wanted her to know that he was sorry. Sorry for everything. Sorry for being so goddamned stubborn. Sorry for drinking. Sorry for not treating her the way he should have.

  It was Tom and he was sorry.

  And then before Danielle knew it, Tom was gone, and she was listening to the monotone shrill of the dial-tone wondering what the hell had just happened.

  “Something’s wrong,” Danielle said, staring at the phone in her hand as if she had no clue how it got there.

  Now even Rebecca looked concerned. “What is it?” she said. “What did he say?”

  Danielle shook her head. “I don’t know, but he didn’t sound right.” She placed the phone down on the table. There was no way she could see this through, no way she could leave Tom alone while he was so vulnerable. “After we drop the kids off at school,” she said, “can we swing by the house, just to make sure…?”

  Make sure Tom wasn’t lying in the bathtub, the water pink with his blood, his arms slashed to the wrists, wide open and congealed with blood.

  “Sure,” Rebecca said. “He’s okay, though. You know that. Probably just feeling sorry for himself. It’s probably only just sunk in that you’re not there, and you’re not coming home any time soon.”

  “Maybe,” Danielle said.

  But that wasn’t it.

  She knew Tom; something terrible had happened or was about to.

  The next two hours—of Jayden and Justice and Joel and Oscar wrestling as they readied for school, wasting precious time, fighting over nothing in particular—were going to be the longest two hours of Danielle’s life.

  Please be okay, Tom, she thought.

  Please be okay.

  TEN

  October 25th, 2016

  Redbridge, London

  Tom showered and changed, brushed his teeth and applied a healthy dose of anti-perspirant. He felt a little better for doing so, but not much. The pins-behind-the-eyes beginning of a migraine made him want to crawl into bed, to pull the covers up over his eyes and wait for the pain to subside, but he knew he couldn’t do that.

  He had things to do.

  After smoking three cigarettes and finishing a percolator of coffee, he locked up and began the mile-and-a-half walk to Redbridge Central Library.

  It was a chilly morning; Tom’s breath crystallised in front of his face as he walked. But at least it wasn’t raining. The cold he could deal with; soaking wet clothes he could not.

  The morning crowd were out in force. Old men made their way to the local corner-shop for their daily fix of tabloid propaganda; health freaks jogged and cycled and walked preternaturally fast through the streets;
animal lovers waited patiently as their dogs cocked their legs or stooped to shit, small scented bags in hand ready to pick up after their beloved mutts. Shop shutters were noisily lifted as shopkeepers prepared for another day at the grindstone, while at the corner of Cowley Road, where Valentines Park’s gates yawned open like some portal to a magical place, workmen were dropping cones and cordoning off a whole strip of pavement ready to start work, laying new tarmac or whatever pointless job the taxpayer had funded this week.

  Cutting through the park, Tom thought back to his conversation with Danielle earlier that morning. Had he sounded desperate? Crazy? Had he come across as distracted? The last thing he’d wanted to do was worry her—had in fact called her up to reassure her everything was going to be okay—but now that he thought about it, he realised how the call might have sounded from her end.

  An elderly couple walking three Yorkshire terriers bade him good morning, and Tom countered with a smile and a grunt.

  Would the library even be open this early? He hadn’t really thought this through. The council were making cutbacks, getting rid of valuable resources in order to have enough cash in the kitty to make sure the MP’s and MEP’s got their annual rise come April. And the library was the first to suffer the council’s wrath. At first there had been only minor changes—not opening until ten on Fridays and Saturdays, closing at noon on Sundays, the closure of the DVD documentary section—but within six months the alterations had become wholesale. Staff were made redundant, positions were filled by volunteers (old ladies with nothing but spare time and whinging husbands at home) and there were a whole lot less literary events and a whole lot more sugarcraft classes.

  What if things had changed even further since Tom’s last visit? Maybe they opened at seven p.m. now on Thursdays, for half-an-hour, and only then the Gardening and Cooking sections? As Tom had washed and dressed that morning, it hadn’t occurred to him that the computer café would be off-limits for whatever reason, that he would be unable to do what he needed to.