Don't Breathe

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Phones!’ the one in charge barked. ‘On the desks now!’

  Harley slid his iPhone out of his pocket and watched with amusement as his classmates fumbled in bags and jackets, their terror making them clumsy as they grabbed for their own devices.

  Miss Frith laid her crappy looking Chinese knock-off on her desk and then glared at the boss. ‘You can’t keep us here. The police will be on their way as soon as somebody realises what’s going on.’ Her voice was trembling and she kept looking at the door and then back to the man in charge. ‘Who the hell are you and what do you want?’

  Despite her obvious fear she had some balls, Harley thought. Nobody else was asking questions or making threats.

  The boss smiled at her, his thick lips curving upwards, filling the gap in his ski mask with a huge grin. ‘Feisty. I like that.’

  Miss Frith backed away as he took a step towards her.

  ‘Who are we? Maybe you already know. Maybe we’re here for you.’

  He took another step and the teacher turned pale. She wasn’t surprised by the statement, didn’t dispute it, she looked like she might actually believe him.

  ‘We’re the Three Musketeers. Or maybe the Three Stooges.’

  A snigger from the man next to the window.

  ‘Oh, you like that? You can be Mo, then.’ He was about to say something else when there was a tap on the door. Harley watched as the eyes of all his classmates were drawn away from the man, some of them daring to look hopeful. The one in charge turned the key and ushered another black-clad figure inside. They had a short, whispered conversation, the one in charge nodding his satisfaction.

  ‘And here’s Curly,’ he said to the class, locking the door behind the new arrival. ‘Which makes me Larry.’

  His smile grew even wider.

  ‘So, Mo, let’s get all these phones collected, shall we?’

  ‘Mo’ shrugged. ‘Get one of the kids to do it. Might as well make themselves useful.’

  Harley expected ‘Larry’ to explode faced with such insubordination but he simply reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out a crumpled Sainsbury’s carrier bag.

  ‘Here. One of you put all the phones in here.’

  Everybody was looking at the desks, or their hands, or the window, anywhere but at ‘Larry’.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Harley stood up and walked to the front of the room, his hand extended for the bag.

  ‘Good lad,’ the boss said approvingly, and Harley found himself grinning at the man as though they were co-conspirators. Was this what it was like to be somebody? Could Harley win this man’s approval and maybe get his name known? It was worth a thought; anything was better than being sent off to university in some poncey southern town.

  Harley grabbed the bag, trying not to appear overeager, and approached the front row of desks. Two girls slid their mobiles over without protest and he dropped them into the bottom of the bag, noticing Julia wince as her lovely new Samsung clattered against whatever piece of crap Macy had given him.

  ‘Next,’ he said, moving along to the second row.

  Boys this time and all their faces were filled with a tentative reluctance.

  ‘No way,’ Tom Cleaver hissed placing his hand over his phone.

  ‘Leave it, Tom,’ Annie Bainbridge said. ‘Just give him the phone. It’s not worth it.’

  ‘Why are you helping them?’ Tom asked. ‘Being a good little boy? Playing gangster? Bet this is like careers day for you, eh, Morton?’

  Harley lunged at him and was gratified to see the other boy flinch back. The suddenness of the action had made Tom forget his phone for a second and Harley grabbed it triumphantly, dropping it in with the others from at least a foot above the top of the bag. It landed with a satisfying crack.

  ‘Bastard!’ Tom stood up, knocking his chair backwards but, before he could grab Harley, Annie Bainbridge grabbed his wrist.

  ‘Leave it, Tom, he’s not worth it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Harley sneered. ‘Get your girlfriend to stick up for you.’

  ‘Fuck off, Morton,’ Tom growled, sitting back in his seat.

  Harley sneered at him before twisting the top of the carrier bag into a knot and holding it up. ‘Got them all.’

  ‘Nice one,’ Larry responded. He grabbed the bag and thrust it at Miss Frith.

  ‘Lock these in that filing cabinet and give me the key.’

  Harley watched carefully as the teacher did exactly as instructed. There was something about her manner that seemed a bit odd. Obviously she was frightened, but she didn’t seem as confused as his classmates. What did she know? Did she think that this had something to do with her sad, pathetic little life? Stupid cow. As if men like this would be bothered about somebody like her.

  He walked to the back of the class and sat back down. He needed to work out how to swing the situation to his advantage; to show that he wasn’t like the other kids in the class. He needed to stand out.

  Tom Cleaver leaned back on his chair and scowled at him. ‘Enjoy that, did you? Feel like a hard man now?’

  Harley ignored him.

  ‘I said…’

  ‘I heard what you said. I just can’t be bothered with you.’

  Cleaver’s scowl deepened. ‘You’ve just put us all in more danger. When we get out of here, I’m coming after you, you little shit, so you’d better watch your back.’

  Harley couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Tom Cleaver was threatening him? ‘You know what, Cleaver? Let’s do it now. Think you’re so tough? Prove it!’ He stood up and leaned over to get in the other boy’s face. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Hey. Pack it in!’ Curly ordered. ‘We don’t have time for your hysterics.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Larry held up his hand. ‘This might be fun. We’re going to be here for a while and I could do with a bit of entertainment. Go on then, lads. Ding! Ding! Round one.’

  Harley stared at the man. The ski mask made it impossible to read his facial expression. Was he taking the piss? And, if he wasn’t, what the hell was going on? ‘I’m not kidding,’ Harley said, turning back to Tom. ‘I’ll fucking have you, right here, right now.’

  Annie Bainbridge leapt to her feet and positioned herself between Tom and Harley. ‘Leave it, knobhead. You’re just making things worse.’

  For a second, Harley thought about hitting her. Why should she get away with talking to him like that just because she was a girl? If she’d been a lad, he’d have decked her already. But she was off limits. Always had been. Even when they’d been going out, he’d barely been allowed to touch her. And now she was all over Tom Cleaver, with his rich daddy and his nearly new car.

  ‘Don’t think I won’t hurt you,’ Harley warned her. ‘If I have to go through you to get to him I will.’

  A chorus of ‘Ooohs’ from the men in black. They were definitely taking the piss. He had to show them that he was serious, that he wasn’t a little kid.

  The rest of the class were silent, watching the action but too scared to do anything. Even Miss Frith seemed to be paralysed. Harley liked that. All the attention was on him now and he knew exactly how to keep it that way. ‘I said, get out of my way,’ he growled at Annie.

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or this!’ Harley reached into the pocket of his jeans and grabbed the penknife that he’d been carrying for the past few weeks. He’d told himself that it was for protection, but he knew that he’d just been hoping to make himself a bit more interesting, a bit more dangerous. Now was a real chance to prove himself. He quickly flicked open the blade with his thumbnail. ‘So, is it you or him? To be honest I’m not bothered either way.’

  Annie had gone pale, her eyes fixed on the knife. Harley felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room and he was standing in a vacuum where anything could happen.

  ‘I think you’ve proved your point, son,’ Larry said. ‘Give me the knife before somebody gets hurt.’ He took a step towards the back of the room, his hand stretched out.


  ‘No,’ Harley whispered. ‘This is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Morton,’ Tom Cleaver said, standing up and knocking Annie out of the way. ‘Your beef’s with me, not her – but we both know this isn’t the time or the place.’ He looked so reasonable, standing there with his hands outstretched. So sure of himself. So entitled. So Harley stabbed him.

  Before

  Harley had stared at the piece of paper and then up at his mother who was unable to meet his eyes, her own magnified by unshed tears. Why hadn’t she told him before now? Why wait until he was eighteen?

  ‘So, who is he? Are you still in touch?’

  His mother shook her head, the sun catching the threads of grey that had started to weave their way through her dark bob. ‘I’ve had nothing to do with him since I discovered I was pregnant with you.’

  ‘Does he know about me?’ Harley felt nauseous. How could his life just have tilted on its axis so dramatically? He’d never really been happy, not since he was a little kid, but who was, really? All his friends complained about their lives and went on and on about how they were going to get away from Cumbria and do something interesting. As he’d got older the ones who’d wanted to be famous sportsmen and pop stars had lowered their sights and, after GCSEs, many of them had gone on to do vocational courses at Carlisle College. He’d gone to Fellbeck, choosing A-levels that might get him onto a university course hundreds of miles away from this shithole, and from his mum and dad. Well, the man he’d thought was his dad. Until he’d asked for his birth certificate so he could apply for his driving licence – a year later than all his friends thanks to his fake dad’s stupid rules.

  He read the name again – Gerald Montrose.

  ‘You knew I’d find out eventually,’ Harley said to his mum, who’d slumped opposite him at the kitchen table. ‘Couldn’t you have just have them put “unknown” in the father column?’

  He could see that she was hurt by this – he’d basically called her a slag – but he couldn’t understand why she’d put this man’s name on the birth certificate when he obviously wanted nothing to do with her, or her son.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ his mum was saying. ‘I knew who your dad was, there wasn’t anybody else in my life…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But there was somebody else in his.’

  Harley watched as his mum dabbed at her eyes with a screwed-up tissue. He felt no sympathy. He felt nothing but rage. ‘So, you had an affair with a married man?’

  She looked up at him, her grey eyes pleading for understanding, snot and tears mingling on her face, making her make-up run. ‘It wasn’t like that. You make it sound so dirty. I didn’t know he was married. When I found out, I stopped seeing him. But, by then, I was pregnant with you. I met your dad a couple of months later and we ended up getting married.’

  ‘So, Dad – Tony – knows he’s not my father?’

  ‘He’s a good man. He’s always known. I’d never have lied to him.’

  ‘But you lied to me. Both of you. And to my real dad. He doesn’t know about me, does he?’

  Harley’s mum shook her head.

  ‘Does he still live round here?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He’d already taken his phone out of his pocket and launched the browser. A quick search told him everything that he needed to know – Gerald Montrose was a property developer and self-made millionaire; his real dad was worth a fortune. And Harley felt like he deserved his share.

  Montrose Holdings was based on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Maryport in a new, two-storey building. If it was meant to impress potential clients, Harley thought, it certainly looked the part. Constructed of blue-painted steel and darkened glass, it stood out from the Portakabins and 1980s prefabs like an artefact from another, more developed, civilisation. Harley could picture himself working there, turning up in the mornings in his brand-new BMW and ordering people around for a couple of hours before a long lunch with an important client and then a meeting with the boss, his dad.

  Harley scanned the building from his vantage point atop the wall that surrounded the estate, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gerald Montrose. He’d only had a couple of days to adjust to his mum’s revelation and there was no way that he could think of the man as ‘Dad’. He had the same difficulty when he tried ‘Gerald’ – the name sounded like something out of one of the plays he’d been forced to study for GCSE, set in the early twentieth century. A few online references suggested that Montrose was usually known as ‘Gerry’, but this felt much too informal and familiar; somehow it felt worse than thinking about him as ‘Dad’.

  Harley hadn’t seen anybody enter or leave the space-age building, but there was a new Mercedes parked at the front which suggested that somebody important was inside. He wanted to wait until much later, surely the man would have to leave the office at some point, but he’d promised his friend Jibreel that they’d work through their physics assignments together. Not that there’d be much work – ‘working on their assignment’ was code for smoking weed and talking shit for a few hours. He’d begun to feel a bit guilty about this when he’d started year thirteen but, since his mum’s confession, he didn’t care about his marks or his final grades. He’d get a job with Montrose and that would be him set for life.

  Stalking the man didn’t seem like the best way to start their relationship, though, so Harley reluctantly headed to Jibreel’s house, trying to decide on a different approach. He’d thought about posing as a client, but he didn’t think an eighteen-year-old would really be in the market for a new house in the Lakes, so he opted for something much simpler. Work experience.

  ‘Could I speak to Gerald Montrose?’ Harley asked, the next day, his hand trembling as he held the phone.

  The woman at the other end sounded amused as she said, ‘May I ask what this is about?’

  ‘I… er… I want to do work experience with the company.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll put you through to HR–’

  ‘No!’ Harley realised that he was panicking. ‘I really need to speak to Mr Montrose.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’

  The woman was stonewalling him. Harley considered putting the phone down but stopped himself just in time. His own life had been blown apart by what his mother had told him so why should he protect this man that had got another woman pregnant when he was already married?

  ‘I need to talk to Mr Montrose about a personal matter.’

  ‘I thought you said–’

  ‘Please tell him that Lois Cartwright’s son would like to speak to him. It’s about my eighteenth birthday.’

  Silence at the other end of the phone but the line hadn’t gone dead. Harley waited and he heard the ringing tone again – the woman had put him through to somebody else.

  ‘Who is this?’ A man’s voice at the other end of the phone barked the question, clearly used to getting answers.

  ‘My name’s Harley Morton. I’m Lois’s son and I think you’re my dad.’ The words tumbled out so quickly that Harley wasn’t sure that he was making sense.

  ‘Bullshit!’

  This time the line was dead.

  ‘You do know who this man is?’ Jibreel asked when Harley finally gave in and decided to confide in his friend.

  ‘Apart from being my biological dad, no clue.’

  ‘He’s a gangster.’

  Harley laughed. ‘He’s a property developer. You’ve been watching too much TV. He does old houses up and sells them on.’

  ‘Really?’ Jibreel was looking at him as though he’d just landed from another planet. ‘You haven’t heard of him?’

  ‘Not until my mum told me about him. Who the fuck is he?’

  ‘Okay.’ Jibreel dragged Harley into an empty classroom, closing the door firmly behind him. ‘If you want to borrow money and couldn’t get it from the bank, where would you go?’

  Harley shrugged.

  ‘Come on, Harley. You can’t go
to the bank, none of the payday lenders will look at you, what would you do?’

  ‘I’d ask you,’ Harley joked.

  Jibreel scowled at him. ‘You’re not even trying.’

  ‘Okay. If I was desperate, I’d ask around and probably have to go to a loan shark.’

  Jibreel nodded. ‘That’s what Gerry Montrose does. He lends money to people and breaks their legs if they can’t pay him back. And he has a group of “employees” who’re supposedly dealing dodgy fags, booze and probably a lot more. He’s not somebody you mess with.’

  Harley thought about the abruptness with which Montrose had dismissed him. He shouldn’t have told the man his mother’s name; he might be putting her in danger. Oddly, the thought didn’t bother him as much as he’d expected. He was still furious about her deception, but could he honestly say he wouldn’t care if Montrose decided to confront his mum? Maybe.

  ‘And his blood is in your veins,’ Jibreel was saying. ‘You might turn out just like him. You know what they say, like father like son.’

  Harley punched him in the face.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Jibreel gasped, doubling over and cupping his nose in his hands.

  ‘He’s not my dad! And it’s none of your business!’ Harley threw the door open and stomped off down the corridor, anger and confusion making him oblivious to the frightened stares of year seven students who pressed themselves against the banks of lockers as he approached. He stopped at the door to reception where he’d been intending to sign himself out and go home for the rest of the day. What was the point? If he went home, he’d just spend his time online trying to find out if what Jibreel had said was true and if he stayed in school, he’d just end up getting angry with somebody and getting kicked out.