“Huh?”
Reg’s frown deepened, and he sat on the end of Charlie’s bed. “I’ve had an email from the school this evening. Apparently you and Leo were disruptive in your art class, and then you were missing all afternoon. And this was after Leo was caught leaving the premises at lunchtime. I hope you have a good explanation, young man, because I am very disappointed in you right now.”
Charlie gulped. Reg’s disappointment was awful and hung around the house like a grey cloud until the offender did something to make him proud again. “Um—”
Reg held up his hand. “And don’t even think about feeding me the story you did your mother earlier. Telling fibs like that was extremely irresponsible, Charlie. You know how important it is that we know what’s going on with Leo. Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie.”
“But you were economical with the truth?”
Charlie couldn’t deny it. “I didn’t tell Mum about lunchtime because I didn’t want to get Leo in trouble. And I brought him home early because he was upset and he’d hurt his arm.”
“You didn’t come home early. Mum said you were on time. Where were you all afternoon?”
“Under the bridge. Leo was upset, and I helped him wash his arm. Dad, he wouldn’t have let anyone else do it—you know that—and I didn’t want him to go off on his own.”
Reg said nothing for a long moment, his pale gaze as inscrutable as it always was when Charlie was in trouble, and then he sighed, weary and deep, and Charlie felt almost as bad for him as he had for Leo. “All right, son. Thank you for telling me the truth. I appreciate that, but you have to know how serious this is, okay? One of the conditions of us taking Leo was that he had to settle into school as quickly as possible. Mum and I can handle whatever he throws our way, but we can’t tolerate any disruption to your education. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying that you’ll send him away,” Charlie said sullenly.
“It would be an absolute last resort, son, but we’d do it if his behaviour had a detrimental effect on you. Is that clear?”
“Yes.” There was nothing else Charlie could say. Mum and Dad hated sending kids away, but he had no doubt that they’d do it to protect the family they already had. “Um, Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to tell Leo I told you about him being upset?”
Reg’s stern expression wilted briefly, and he shook his head. “No. I’m going to tell him what the school told me in the email, and then give him the same warning I’ve given you. It’s only fair that he knows where he stands, Charlie. We can’t give him everything, but we can give him that.”
With one last pointed frown, Reg left the room. Despite the anxious disquiet in Charlie’s belly, sleep came quickly, the darkness closing in like a warm blanket, and it was the early hours of the morning before Leo’s distress woke him.
He shot upright, his heart in his mouth. He’d grown used to Leo’s nighttime muttering—they both slept with their doors open—and Lila’s wandering, but tonight, like the very first night, Leo’s low cry cut Charlie to the bone.
He scrambled out of bed, crossed the landing, and dashed into Leo’s room, catching him as he began to flail. “Shh, Leo. It’s okay.”
Leo’s eyes snapped open. He met Charlie’s gaze for a brief, heart-stopping second before his expression grew vacant and he was lost again. Charlie crouched by the bed, hand wrapped tight around Leo’s wrist. He pressed his thumb into the pulse point and counted Leo’s racing heartbeat. “Come on, Leo. Wake up if it’s too bad. It’s not real, I promise.”
But as he whispered the words, Charlie’s eyes were drawn up Leo’s arm to the fresh bandage, and suddenly his mind was filled with an image of mangled skin and blood . . . of flames, smoke, and smouldering flesh. Leo’s flesh.
Charlie’s knees went weak. He fell back, still gripping Leo’s wrist, and pressed his face into his knees. “It’s not real, I promise.” What a load of bollocks. Of course it was real . . . real to Leo, and trapped in his sleep, scarred and alone, he’d never be free of it.
Andy Poulton eased his car into a parking space. “You look more impressed than Charlie did when I brought him last year.”
I’ll say. Wembley. Bloody hell. Leo gazed around. He’d been on a school trip to Swindon Town FC once, but he’d never seen anything like the huge national stadium. It almost took away the discomfort of being stuck in a car with Reg’s eldest son.
Almost, though oddly enough, despite his imposing size, Andy didn’t seem to trigger the monster in Leo’s belly—the one that made his palms sweat and his lips go numb. Perhaps Andy was playing nice, because, so far, Leo had somehow managed to behave like a normal person.
“Charlie doesn’t like football,” Leo said to fill the awkward silence that Andy didn’t seem to have noticed.
Andy snorted. “Ain’t that the truth. I dragged him kicking and screaming to a Champions League game last year. Little twerp fell asleep.”
The image made Leo feel like smiling, but an unwelcome recollection dampened his humour: a few nights’ old hazy memory of waking to find Charlie asleep on the bedroom floor, curled up far closer to Leo’s bed than he ever ventured when Leo was awake.
They got out of the car and made their way into the stadium.
“So, who are you supporting?” Andy asked. “Arsenal or City?”
“Hmm?” Leo glanced at Andy’s red football shirt. “Better be the Gunners, hadn’t it? If we’re sitting at their end and all.”
Andy shrugged like it didn’t matter, and as they found their seats, Leo kind of agreed. A year ago, he’d have given anything to be at a Premiership game like this, dreamed of it, but now the building roar of the crowd felt like it was drawing the breath from his lungs.
He sat down in the plastic seat Andy directed him to and thought of Charlie again. Thought of his shrewd, kind eyes, and the smooth brown skin of his back . . . the back Leo seemed to open his eyes to every morning as Charlie got dressed in plain sight of the reflection in Leo’s window. His pulse quickened. Damn. Thinking of Charlie was usually as good as the doctor’s fuzzy pills. It calmed Leo down. Helped him sleep. But Charlie’s back—
“So how are you settling in at Casa Poulton?”
Leo jumped. He hadn’t noticed Andy dropping into the seat beside him, which was odd, because the bloke was massive. “‘Casa Poulton’?”
“Yeah, Ma and Pa’s, like. Getting on okay?”
“Fine.” Leo shrugged and fixed his gaze on the giant screen at the Gunners’ end of the pitch. He’d been asked that question a lot recently—by teachers, doctors, social workers—and his answer was always the same, because it was the answer they wanted to hear, the answer that meant they could go on their way, convinced they’d filled their quota of good deeds. Not that Reg seemed particularly satisfied with how his latest project was panning out. “We won’t tolerate any disruption to Charlie . . .”
Yeah, yeah. Like Leo had asked him to bunk off school. Glad he did, though, aren’t you?
Leo shuddered, his arm tingling as he recalled Charlie cleaning it, trying to soothe the burn with far more than the cool water. Charlie was good, not like Leo. And Reg clearly knew it too.
Andy nudged Leo. “You there, mate?”
“Huh?”
Andy grinned. “Away with the bloody fairies. You teenagers are all the same. I was saying that it isn’t anything to be ashamed of to find it tough to settle down. I’ve seen enough of you kids go through that house to know it takes time. What’s it been, a month? Two? I reckon you’ve got a ways to go yet.”
Wanker. But Leo couldn’t deny it. In the month they’d been in Heyton, Lila had become more settled with every day that passed, creeping into Leo’s bed less and less, but Leo? Not even close.
His pocket vibrated. He pulled out the phone Kate had given him last weekend, and on the screen was a text from Reg: Lila bathed and ready for bed. Reading Goldilocks with Kate.
L
eo scowled. This was Reg’s latest trick since he’d come to Leo’s room and given him his first strike—using Lila to get to him. Bastard.
“So,” Andy said, reminding Leo that he hadn’t answered him. “How’s it all going? Has Fliss thrown her biker boots at your head yet?”
Leo sniggered before he caught himself. “Not me. She chucked olive oil at Charlie last night, though.”
“Sounds about right.” Andy craned his neck as the emcee announced the players to the pitch. “Don’t be scared of her though. Her bark’s worse than her bite.”
“I’m not scared of Fliss.” How could Leo be when she was so kind to Lila? If Kate was out when Leo left for school, he always took Lila to Fliss’s room. “She’s nice.”
Andy shot him a disbelieving stare. “How have you worked that out so quick? Takes most folk years to see through that chip on her shoulder.”
Leo shrugged. “She’s good to Lila and me.”
“She’s a great girl,” Andy agreed. “She just doesn’t want anyone to know it. Bloody hell, look . . . it’s about to start.”
Leo followed Andy’s gaze to the pitch and saw the teams were in position with the referee about to blow his whistle. The biggest football match he’d probably ever see was about to kick off and . . . he didn’t care. It’s like I’m dead inside. And if it weren’t for the tremor in his hands, and the sweat dripping down his back, he’d have thought he was.
The game passed in a blur of flashing lights and suffocating noise. Andy bought Leo a pasty at halftime, but Leo hid it under his seat. Recently, Kate’s shepherd’s pie was the only thing that didn’t burn a hole in his belly and make him feel like he’d swallowed a bottle of acid.
Out of nowhere, Andy thumped Leo’s back. “Three nil. Good game, eh? Did you see van Persie’s goal? That’s gonna be on Match of the Day, for sure.”
Leo nodded and tried to find a response coherent enough to satisfy the eager grin on Andy’s face, because despite being obviously Team Reg, he was proving hard to hate. “Yeah, it was good.”
Andy shook his head. “‘Good’? Bloody teenagers. What’s happened to you all? My mum couldn’t shut me up when I was your age. Come on. Let’s fight our way back to the car.”
And a fight it was. The exit routes were crammed with chanting fans, shoulder to shoulder, elbows jostling with every step. Leo feared he might puke, until Andy got behind him and caged him within his massive arms.
Outside, fresh air hit Leo like a truck. He bent double and sucked it in until his chest ached from the effort. Andy squeezed his shoulder. His touch wasn’t magic like Charlie’s, but Leo felt no urge to shake him off.
“Better?” Andy asked. “Can get a little stuffy in there, can’t it?”
Leo nodded. He wanted a smoke, and was sure he’d smelt tobacco on Andy earlier, but common sense told him that asking for a fag would be more trouble than it was worth. “What are we doing now?”
“Going home, via McDonald’s, if that’s all right with you. I’m bloody starved.”
Leo didn’t see how, given the huge pie and chips Andy had put away during the match, but he shrugged. Despite missing Charlie’s quiet presence, he had no desire to return to the house anytime soon. Nights there were long and dark, even with the lamp he’d pinched from Charlie’s room. “Okay.”
Andy drove them out of London and stopped at a service station on the M25. McDonald’s was closed for refurbishment, so he parked up at KFC, went inside, and came back with enough chicken to feed a small army.
Leo picked at his food, relieved Andy hadn’t made him go into the restaurant, and a comfortable silence enveloped them.
Comfortable?
Really?
Leo turned the word over in his mind, testing it, but it fit. The only other time he could recall the feeling recently was when he’d played Xbox in the cellar with Charlie—quiet evenings spent side by side on the battered sofa bed, shoulder to shoulder, battling it out with zombies and flamethrowers.
“I was thinking of taking Lila to Legoland next weekend. Do you think she’d like that?”
Leo glanced up at Andy. “Lila? Why? What’s she to you?”
“My little sister, for the time being.” Andy fixed Leo with a steady gaze. “Listen, I know it’s taken a while for me to take you out, but that’s only because social services muck about so much with their paperwork. If I’d had my way, we’d have done this weeks ago.”
“What’s it got to do with social services?”
“I needed to be approved before I was allowed to drive you and Lila around, be alone with you, stuff like that. You know the rules.” Leo was mystified. Andy frowned, then something seemed to click. “Shit, I keep forgetting you’re not one of those kids who’s been in the system for years. This is all new to you, eh?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Andy shrugged. “Hopefully, you’ll never need to. Okay, let me put it like this: Dad and Kate have been taking kids like you for as long as I can remember, but it’s something we all do really, as a family. So the way I see it, I’ve got two extra siblings to take care of for a while.”
“‘Take care of’?”
“Yep. I’m your big brother, like it or not, and for you that means football, bowling, and, ’cause you’re a teenager and shit, the occasional sneaky pint. Just don’t tell Ma.”
Leo didn’t know what to say. A sneaky pint sounded awesome, but the rest of it? The bloke was taking the piss. He had to be, right? “Did you take Charlie out when he was Lila’s age?”
“Sometimes, not to the football, though. He’s always been a nerd, so we spent a lot of time at the cinema, in silence, ’cause the little squirt didn’t talk until he was about eight.”
Leo tied a knot in an extra-long chip and rubbed the oozing grease between his fingers. “He didn’t talk?”
“Nope. Never said a word. They reckoned he’d been taught to be quiet at the orphanage. Seen and not heard, maybe? Didn’t stop him crying all night when he was a baby, though.”
Leo’s chest hurt. He couldn’t picture Charlie as a toddler, alone and unwanted on the other side of the world. It didn’t make any sense. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want Charlie?
I want Charlie.
Later that night, Leo let himself into the silent Poulton house. He checked on Lila, then took a shower and redressed his arm. The small tear he’d sustained from vaulting the school fence had healed, and he could look at it now without retching.
Didn’t stop him pulling a hoodie over his T-shirt, though. Hiding the bandage meant he could pretend it wasn’t there until morning came and it was time to face it all over again.
On his way back to his bedroom, he peeked through Charlie’s open door and found Charlie asleep, facedown on a sketchpad, still clutching a pen. Leo wondered absently what he’d been drawing, but Charlie’s cheek obscured the page.
Leo crept into the room and pried the pen from Charlie’s slack fingers. He set it on the bedside table, then hovered, suddenly transfixed by Charlie’s slender wrist.
I want to hold it.
The notion made Leo’s head swim, and he let the thought grow and morph into a vision of him reaching out and closing his hand around Charlie’s arm, feeling the warmth of his skin and the steady beat of his pulse. Then he pictured sliding his fingers lower to twine with Charlie’s, because Charlie’s hands were magic. Leo felt them on him every time he closed his eyes. Every time darkness flickered in his fractured subconscious and threatened to pull him under. Charlie had touched him that way only once—or twice, maybe; Leo wasn’t sure—but even long after Charlie had let him go, Leo’s skin had smouldered with the best kind of heat. A heat that healed every hurt Leo had ever known.
Would it feel like that for Charlie? If Leo touched him too?
Would it fuck.
Leo retreated to his own room and crawled into bed. The room swallowed him up, but with the curtains half open and the lamp glowing its soft light, he didn’t fee
l as suffocated as he sometimes did. Didn’t feel the need to knock on Kate’s door for a pill to help him drift. Instead he closed his eyes and pictured Charlie asleep, imagined the rise and fall of his chest, and the flutter of his eyelids as he dreamed.
A week later, Charlie pulled on a clean T-shirt, hyperaware—as he’d become every time they were in the same room—of Leo watching him.
“Are you going out?” Leo asked.
His tone suggested he didn’t care much for the answer, so Charlie shrugged and rummaged in a drawer for a hoodie to ward off the stiff breeze rattling the windows.
“Where are you going?”
Charlie glanced around. Leo was on Charlie’s bed, stretched out, his good arm behind his head. See? He doesn’t give a crap. But Charlie paused anyway. Leo had a way of staring at him that made him forget what he was doing. Made him forget everything except the vortex of his stormy gaze. “I’m meeting Jess and Lucy at the park.”
“The wicked witches?”
Charlie rolled his eyes. Despite Jess’s and Lucy’s best efforts to befriend Leo, he’d ignored them as much as he seemed to ignore everyone that wasn’t Charlie or Wayne knobhead Murphy. “You’ve met the rest of the girls in our year, mate. They’re the bloody witches.”
Leo scowled—like he always did when Charlie forgot himself and called him mate—but Charlie couldn’t be arsed to placate him. It had been a long week, and Leo’s moods had begun to grate on him. Is it really so hard to be civil?
“Anyway.” Charlie stamped into his scuffed Converse and drifted to the open door. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”
“Whatever.”
Leo rolled off the bed and squeezed around Charlie. Their shoulders brushed, their legs, their hands, and Charlie shuddered, a barely there tremble that tickled his nerves. Leo glanced back. Did he feel it too? By his blank stare, probably not, but then the apathy melted from Leo’s face and he let loose one of his elusive grins.
“Can I come to the park with you?”
They walked into town in near silence. Leo wasn’t much of a talker, and Charlie was still reeling from the scene in the bedroom—that imagined encounter that made him feel warm all over. Damn Leo and his hypnotic eyes. Why does he have to look at me like that?
Finding Home Page 7
