Somewhere Close to Happy: The heart-warming, laugh-out-loud debut of the year

by Lia Louis

  Priscilla nods. ‘I mean she didn’t want to, but I was nice Lizzie, I really was. I even made Becks wait a few houses down so it didn’t feel like an ambush or something, but as soon as I mentioned I was your friend, she just kept saying Roman was long gone and she knew nothing, so stop bringing trouble to her door. Trouble. I was standing there with an M&S all butter Madeira cake, for fuck’s sake. Trouble.’

  ‘You bought a cake?’

  Priscilla shrugs sheepishly, glass in hand. ‘I guess I was preparing for a best-case scenario. That she’d open the door, invite me in—’

  ‘But she didn’t?’

  ‘God, no.’ Priscilla shakes her head. ‘She was a cow, babe. Total cow. Slammed the door in my face after a minute or so, but …’ P leans forward. ‘Did you know Roman has a half-brother?’

  I can’t help but gasp. ‘No.’

  ‘Well he does. Matt.’

  ‘Matt?’ I shake my head. ‘He never mentioned—’

  ‘He wouldn’t have known back then,’ says Priscilla. ‘But he’s lovely. Bit nervous, but really lovely and really Welsh.’ Priscilla laughs, lightly. ‘I was turning away, door slammed in my face, and this guy comes out, and well, you’d never know because this guy – he looks nothing like Roman. Like, he looks like a foot, Lizzie. An actual human foot. But he says he’s Roman’s brother, Matt. Half-brother.’

  ‘Priscilla, I can’t actually digest the fact you went to her house let alone that there’s a half-brother.’

  Priscilla looks down into the drink in her hands. ‘He said Roman turned up three weeks after his dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Roman got a year with him. Matt says he’s sure it was Roman that kept him going so long.’

  My chest feels like it’s been wound tight, like a bobbin. ‘That’s … God, that’s terrible.’

  Priscilla nods. ‘He didn’t go into too much detail. Just said Roman had arrived in an absolute mess – had been living with some mate in London, that he’d got into some stuff—’

  ‘Stuff?’

  Priscilla shrugs. ‘Dunno,’ she says. ‘But he said he came at the right time. That he’d got his dad all wrong, that Frank had been trying to make contact for years, but Roman coming meant they’d worked through all that before it was too late. He said they were really close in the end, and Matt loved having him around. Big brother and all that.’ A waiter with a tray of food walks by our table, and I am grateful, for the first time in my life, that the plates of steaming food aren’t for us. I don’t want Priscilla to stop speaking. ‘Anyway, when he died, he left Matt a load of money to be released when he was eighteen, and … Roman got everything else. And he had loads, Lizzie. Garages, two houses, a business, a flat up north somewhere.’

  I can’t find the words. My mouth is just hanging open, and I’m staring at Priscilla. The image of Roman’s dad – a penniless, violent, imprisoned junkie, with no hope, no care – bursts, like a balloon in my mind. ‘Jesus, so that’s why—’

  ‘Robbing nut job,’ Priscilla nods. ‘Pam took him to court and everything. Matt says Roman was great throughout, tried to half it, because he didn’t want to accept it all. But she didn’t want to split it or allow Roman to have any of it, so the courts were involved. He won. But Matt says he still signed over half, gave them the house, and left. And that was it.’

  Relief and sadness wash over me. He’d have been barely twenty-one when faced with such things. But of course he still signed it over. Roman was kind and had a heart that was good. And he still is those things, that person I knew. But then what caused him to be so desperate that he had to go there? What pushed him into that? To Edgar Fields, to his dad. ‘Does he know why he left? Does he know where he is?’ I ask Priscilla, eagerly. ‘Are they in contact?’

  Priscilla inhales, her chest puffing up. Her eyes fix on mine. ‘He—’

  ‘Here we go, guys.’ A waitress stands at our table, two large white plates in her hands ‘Chicken wrap and chips, with a side salad?’ Priscilla nods with a quick smile, and the other plate, a mound of amber-coloured pasta is placed down in front of me. The waitress says something about sauces, tells us to enjoy our meals, and speeds off towards the bar.

  I wait for Priscilla to continue but she’s opening out her napkin and staring at the food in front of her. I haven’t moved.

  ‘So? Does Matt know where he is?’

  Priscilla looks up at me and rests her hands in her lap. ‘No,’ she says after a beat. ‘Pam made him promise that he wouldn’t see him anymore. He says he misses him every day. But they do talk, sometimes. Secretly. He calls Matt on his birthday, every year without fail, and sometimes on Frank’s anniversary.’

  ‘He must know where he is, then? Some sort of idea—’

  Priscilla lifts a shoulder to her ear and deflates. ‘He said he thinks Roman travels around a lot. He said he once called him and it must’ve been a payphone, as when he started to run out of call-time, a foreign recorded message came over the line. He didn’t recognise the language. He said numbers are usually withheld, and he thinks it’s for his mum’s benefit, ’cause Roman always calls their house phone, and—’

  ‘So, he’s never managed to get a number off him?’ I ask, eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe he lives abroad, then. He always wanted to live in—’

  ‘It’s not always withheld,’ says Priscilla, quickly. ‘Matt said when he called a couple of years ago, he did 1471 and there was a number. When Matt called him on it a few weeks later, a woman answered. She said he wasn’t there anymore, but she could give him the number to get a form if he wanted to visit him.’

  I stare at Priscilla. ‘What?’

  ‘We don’t know, babe,’ she says. ‘Matt said he didn’t understand, and asked her what she meant, and then she got really cagey. Said she’d get Roman to call him when he was back but he didn’t until months later, and when Matt asked him, he said the woman was someone he was seeing for a while, and he had no idea what she could’ve been on about.’

  Bile rises in my throat. A form. A visitor’s form. Prison. Re-offending, like Nick said. I can’t get my breath. Roman in prison. The two things together – him and the mere notion of prison – feels disorientating and unreal. No. How could he have been in prison? What would he have done? He would never hurt someone, he would never purposely do something criminal. Unless … he would. I knew him at seventeen and eighteen. I didn’t know him at twenty-seven, twenty-eight and twenty-nine. I don’t know him as a grown man.

  ‘Lizzie? Are you OK?’

  I shake my head. ‘A form,’ I say. ‘It’s just … say if he’s in jail, Priscilla? I went to … at the weekend, and—’ I swallow down the fuzzy ball forming in my throat, stifling my breath. ‘He could be in prison. Could’ve been—’

  ‘No,’ says Priscilla, hands shooting across the table. They land on mine and she squeezes tightly. ‘Liz, no. He isn’t in jail. Hey, deep breaths, yeah?’ Priscilla grabs my Coke bottle and straw. ‘Have some of this.’

  Priscilla watches me take a sip. The pub pulses and warps around me, and everything is suddenly too loud, too much. I close my eyes. He’d hold my shoulders, sometimes, when this happened when we were together, and I’d shut my eyes and listen to his voice. It helped more than most things did. He always anchored me back to earth, like nothing else could. Roman looked after me. He was the only reason I got up in the morning, walked against the grain of the crowds of kids on their way to school – normal school – and turned up at Grove House, as The Grove was officially known. ‘Special school’ as Auntie Shall called it more than once. ‘A day centre’ as my social worker called it, ‘for kids like you. With behavioural issues. Those, you know, struggling with mental health among other things.’

  That never felt right, either. I behaved just fine, my whole school life. It was my anxiety that began behaving on my behalf, like a drug that caused sporadic movements, making it hard to study, to listen, to get out of bed when the alarm went off without vomiting, without feeling as though the walls of every room arou
nd me were going to collapse. ‘The Grove’ is what we always called it, Roman and I. It never felt like a school, or a day centre, or like anywhere I’d ever been before. Looking back now, I’d call it a safe-haven. I’d call Roman the same, if a person can be such a thing.

  ‘All OK?’ whispers Priscilla.

  I nod. Tingles, like soft sunshine, creep up my spine and across my forehead, as the panic starts to pass.

  Priscilla straightens in her seat and picks up a chip. She holds one out to me. I take it and nibble the tip of it off.

  ‘Look, he isn’t in prison,’ says Priscilla, chewing slowly. ‘At least he wasn’t eleven weeks ago. Matt’s birthday. He called him again. And this time, he got the number.’

  My heart stops. Eleven weeks ago. That’s close. So close. And for a moment, it’s like only time is separating us; like this is a time machine movie and I’ve been missing him by years, and now we’re getting closer – now, we are only weeks apart.

  ‘Wow,’ is all I manage, breathlessly.

  ‘Sherlock reincarnated.’

  I open my mouth to reply as she holds out another chip. ‘Yes, I know he wasn’t fucking real.’

  Priscilla and I laugh – a hysterical burst; a release of adrenaline leftover from the unbearable electric panic that just raged beneath my skin. Priscilla pulls out her phone and holds it between us, the screen pointing towards her chest.

  ‘I’ve got the number.’

  ‘Really?’

  Priscilla grins now. ‘Liz, it’s a fucking local Hertford number.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And I Googled it – I was going to wait until I saw you and do it together but—’

  I can’t wait. I snatch the phone from Priscilla’s hand. She waits, watching me with wide eyes. But I am frozen, staring at the address on the screen, and the photo on the listing Google is giving me – the angular fifties building, metal framed windows; windows that look like they might rattle if there was a slight tremor, just like those on a rickety old bus.

  It’s The Grove. Roman was calling from The Grove.

  Chapter Thirteen

  3rd June 2004

  ‘Remember, guys, this Friday it’s Darren’s last day at the centre, so we’ll be having a special lunch. Just some nibbles, some—’

  ‘Vodka?’ grins a girl with a shock of white-blonde hair, adjusting the collar of her shirt which is buttoned to the neck. She sits like Nathan does, bent over, tartan-trousered legs open, elbows resting on her knees, her hands together in the middle.

  ‘No, Jade,’ says Ramesh with an amused eye roll. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to cope with Dr Pepper and some lemonade.’

  ‘Shame,’ Jade smirks. ‘Could do with getting pissed.’

  Everyone in the circle laughs. So does the guy from earlier, the one that was hunched over the railings, watching, smoking, when I was crying outside with Dad. He stands leaning against the pastel blue wall now, arms folded, hair falling over his eyes. He’s really tall. Six foot two, maybe three. His legs are super long. He looks at least nineteen. A youth worker, probably. My social worker said they have lots of volunteers.

  ‘Groups are up on the wall,’ carries on Ramesh, arm outstretched. ‘Group A have art with Cassie, Group B are with me. Thought we’d do some reading this morning. And as usual, guys, there will be one-on-ones all day. Times, again, are on the wall.’

  A couple of the kids nod. The rest don’t react, just listen. There must be about twenty of us. Nobody seems to be as nervous as me, but then some have barely lifted their gaze from the floor.

  ‘Matty and Martine are going to be around all day in the break room so you know where to find them if you need them—’ Ramesh stops, as someone utters something I don’t catch. I just hear the end of it – something that sounds like ‘this is bullshit’ from a large boy with ginger freckles opposite me. He eyes me for a second from hooded lids, from my feet up to my face. I want to be at home. I want to be with Hubble. I want to run away.

  ‘Ah, Sammy, come on guy,’ sighs Ramesh, hands clapping together, ‘we can do better than that this morning, can’t we? It’s a nice day, the sun’s shining …’

  ‘Yeah, well, I like it when it’s pissing down,’ says Sammy, sarcastically.

  ‘You’re only saying that now because you cut off all those gorgeous locks you had,’ says Ramesh, smiling. ‘I remember the panic before, nicking all our brollies, oh sir, oh sir, it’ll ruin me gel.’

  Some of the kids laugh. Sammy tries not to join in but smiles down at his lap, his cheeks blotching pink. I don’t laugh. I can’t. My eyes are fixed on the cowl-like brown carpet, and I’m trying to concentrate on keeping my heart beating. I’m trying not to lose it, to not jump up and cry, ‘I can’t do this,’ before running out of this place. Running and not stopping until I’m miles from anywhere. Because I don’t know how this place will help the way my school say it will. I don’t know how anything will.

  ‘OK then, guys,’ Ramesh says, loudly, clasping his hands together, ‘let’s have a good morning, yeah?’ He turns, shoving his hands into his jeans, as the group begins to disperse, everyone knowing exactly where they’re going and what the procedure is, and he spots me, here, shrinking on the chair.

  ‘Ah, um …’ Ramesh scans the room quickly, looking over his shoulder. ‘Hey, Mike, my man with the cracking locks.’ He puts his hand on the shoulder of a boy with long blond hair and a perfect centre parting who is rushing purposefully across the room, rucksack over his shoulder. He freezes, eyes wide with irritation. He has deep set dark eyes and a big nose. A strong nose, that’s what Priscilla would call it, if she were here. And god, I wish she was. So much, that it hurts me, like a fist squeezing my heart. I’m really scared. I’m scared without her, without a single face I recognise. I wonder what she’s doing right now, if she’s missing me in our maths lesson. I wonder if any of the other kids have noticed, if they’re talking about me, if they’re laughing that I’m here, at a school for weird kids, for ‘scummy kids’ as Auntie Shall said to Dad last night. I wonder if Priscilla will get used to me not going to school. OK, my attendance has been rubbish lately, but she might make new friends and forget all about me now I’m here all the time. I doubt I’ll be hard to forget. She’s probably relieved to be without me; cramping her style, embarrassing her …

  ‘This here is Lizzie,’ Ramesh continues, turning to me, as I stand from the chair. ‘She’s new. Do you think you could show her to the wall, show her where to go, tell her all the tricks of the trade—’

  ‘I can’t,’ says Mike, giving me a weak smile, that’s hardly there at all. ‘Gotta go with my social worker and Martine—’

  ‘Ah, course!’ says Ramesh. ‘You’re off to school today, aren’t you?’

  Michael gives a nod and a heavy shrug. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sorry, mate. Go on, you carry on.’

  Ramesh turns to me, as Mike trudges off, the chain on his baggy jeans jingling like shackles. ‘Left my brain at home,’ he smiles, gently. ‘OK there, Lizzie?’

  I nod. I lie. I feel sick to my stomach.

  ‘Right, well I was gonna pair you up, but it seems you’ll just have to tag along with me, I’m afraid. You’re in my set first, so—’

  ‘I’ll do it. Well. If you want someone with cracking locks.’ It’s the guy. The tall, smoking guy from outside. The one with the blue eyes. The one with the weird boots and scruffy hair. He stands about a metre away from us, shoulders square, bag over the left one, chest jutting out. ‘If you want,’ he says, smiling a little at Ramesh, and not looking at me. He has an accent. Northern. Manchester maybe.

  ‘Brilliant, thanks, mate,’ says Ramesh. ‘So, this is Lizzie.’

  The doorbell sounds at the entrance; a shrill bell-like chime. All three of us peer over our shoulders. A woman stands on the other side of the glass door with a black, leather bag and a beige mac with a belt at the waist.

  ‘Ah.’ Ramesh makes a start for the door. ‘Show Lizzie the wall, the rooms, where she’s go
t to go for lunch, the loos, that sort of thing. Think you’re in the same set today, actually. Lizzie, we’ll check in later, OK? Shout if you need anything at all …’ Ramesh trails off as he sprints to the door, giving a quick wave to the woman through the glass. Then there is an awkward moment of fizzing, thick silence between me and the boy with the eyes. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his black jeans, and he looks over his shoulder at Ramesh. He watches for longer than necessary. We both do, to delay speaking, I suppose. Then he turns to me and smiles. His lips are full and very pink for a boy. I find myself looking at them, unable to meet his eye, then I quickly look away.

  ‘Do you wanna hang that up?’ he says.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your jacket,’ he nods. ‘D’you wanna get rid of it? It’s hot in here. There’s a cloakroom.’

  ‘Oh,’ I swallow. ‘OK.’ I know there’s a cloakroom. Ramesh showed me on the way to his office this morning, but I was shaking so much, I couldn’t bear the thought of having it taken off me. It smelled of home. It smelled of the detergent Mum always used.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he says. ‘It’s by the wall, anyway.’ He says ‘the wall’ as if the name is amusing and he grins as he says it. He jerks his head, hands still stuffed in his pockets. ‘Over here.’

  I bend to pick up my bag from the floor and I notice my hands are striped with deep red grooves from how tightly I have been holding the cord at the waist of my coat. I loop my bag over my shoulder, and the boy raises his eyebrows, as if to say ‘ready?’ and we start walking. Neither of us says anything as we cross the floor to ‘the wall’, and I wonder if he’s regretting offering to help. He must be. I can’t speak. I don’t know what to say to him – to anyone here. I feel as though I have nothing in common with any of them, that they’ll realise that soon enough, and I’ll be lost here too. Just like I am at school. A broken brain in amongst a sea of functioning, normal ones.