by Ben Brooks
Dad spits and sighs, running a hand through his hair. I mentally zoom out of the house. I keep zooming until the earth goes blue and shrinks and is gone.
43
(witness duly sworn)
COURT: Please be seated. Would you state your full name and spell your surname?
ALLISON: Etgar Allison. A-L-L-L. Wait. Not three. Two Ls. Can I start again? A-L-L-I-S-O-N.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR TAYLOR
Q. Mr Allison, how old are you?
A. Fifteen.
Q. What school do you attend?
A. St Catherine’s.
Q. Do you like it there?
A. It’s okay. What? I don’t know. It’s fine. Six out of ten.
Q. What were you doing on the evening of April 6th?
A. Nothing. I was at home. I think I watched Titanic. And a programme about fish. And I walked Amundsen, that’s my dog. He’s a mastiff and he’s sort of grey and sort of the colour of sand. That doesn’t matter.
Q. Had you been drinking at all?
A. I had some wine I think and maybe cider. Also, I think I watched cat videos on YouTube and ate Chinese food. That’s for the question before, I just remembered.
Q. Did you visit a website called adultchatlife?
A. Oh, I did that. I forgot. Yes. I did.
Q. And what happened on that website?
A. People were talking about having sex with animals, specifically frogs. They were watching that video of the chimpanzee raping the frog’s mouth. I made a joke about it, then Macy gave me her gmail and said we should chat.
Q. What did she say you should chat about?
A. She just said chat. She didn’t say anything weird or about sex. She just wanted to talk. Just talking.
Q. And what did you talk about?
A. I don’t remember. She didn’t do anything. I don’t know. We talked about bicycles and gardening and sewing. Just that. We talked about that.
Q. You talked about sewing?
A. Sewing buttons.
Q. How long did you talk for?
A. I don’t know. A normal amount. Not a suspicious amount. Just normal. Nothing bad. She didn’t do anything. No one did anything.
Q. On how many occasions did you talk?
A. I don’t know.
Q. Was age ever discussed?
A. No. We never said our ages. She isn’t a paedophile. She’s just a woman and that’s it.
Q. Were pictures ever exchanged?
A.Yes. Dog macros mostly. And some photoshopped stills from the second and third Harry Potter films.
Q. Did you ever send the defendant pictures of yourself?
A. No.
Q. Did the defendant ever send you pictures of herself?
A. No.
Q. Were you ever asked for pictures of yourself?
A. No. She never asked for that. She never asked for anything.
Q. Where were you on the evening of April 11th?
A. I was in London. I know what question is next. Yes. I was in London with Macy. We had dinner together, then walked around, then she left and I stayed at a hotel. We talked about sewing mostly. She never showed me her vag or touched my bum. She never touched me here or here or here. We talked. That’s it. Talking. People are allowed to talk to other people. That’s a rule. If you don’t let people talk to other people then they become mentally ill and homicidal and do things that they should actually be in prison for.
Q. What was the name of the hotel at which you stayed?
A. She can’t go to jail, she shouldn’t go to jail. She never did anything. I don’t remember the name of the hotel. It was biscuits colour. That doesn’t matter. It was stupid. The waiter.
Q. Did you stay in the hotel alone?
A. He hit her. He hit her because I don’t know and he never even talked to her and didn’t touch the kids and he’s a horrible piece of shit. He should be in prison not Macy. She should be in a tree house. Let her go now. Please.
44
My eyes sting from tears and webs of snot are leaking from my nostrils, covering my mouth. It’s over. Dad comes to me, crouches a little and picks me up the way a groom picks up a bride on their wedding day. I don’t think I look capable of walking. He carries me out of the room and down the corridor. People holding stacks of paper spin to watch us pass.
The sky outside is dark with wide banks of black cloud. Heavy weather. I think about Nan and Uncle Sawicka. I try to imagine what kind of thing she would say. I think she would say the words nonsense and Jesus. Uncle Sawicka was twenty years younger but they never got arrested, because they hid in a grey corner of the planet where it perpetually rains and people spontaneously die in bathtubs. We should have done that. We should have never come out of the bed tent.
Dad lowers me onto the passenger seat. He climbs into the driver’s seat, presses his head against the steering wheel, sits up straight and starts the car.
We stop at Tesco to pick up a box of Carling, then the KFC drive-through for a family-size bucket of chicken. I think we’re going home but we aren’t. We follow thin roads into the hills off the motorway. Squares of yellow light from converted barns mark the way. Clusters of sheep back away from their fences. We pass several bouquets of flowers placed at a sharp bend, and I think about Amundsen’s rat, and I think about the abortions, and I think about Alice’s mum.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Wait and see.’
Where we go is a wide, deep ledge, high on the hill, with parking space for several cars. The entire city is visible. A web of distant, orange smudges. One of them is Alice, alone in her room, talking to people who aren’t me on the Internet. One of them is Aslam, sitting on a sofa with Amy’s feet in his hands. One of them is Amundsen, trying to swat a moth with his paw.
Dad opens a beer and passes it to me.
‘Did I do okay?’ I say.
‘You tried.’
‘I didn’t seem like a victim, did I?’
He opens one for himself. ‘No.’
‘Apart from at the end.’
‘Maybe a little at the end.’
‘It’s not going to work. They have the pictures and the chats and Macy’s story won’t be the same as mine.’ ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘I know.’
‘Is it over?’
‘I don’t know.’
I feel anxious from Dad not knowing what words to say. He can always pick words out, unless we’re on the phone. I want him to talk and lay out a plan that leads us somewhere warm and without police.
‘Is Mum okay?’
‘She’ll be okay. She just doesn’t like to think of you having a penis.’
‘Dad.’
‘I’m still surprised you’re not gay.’
‘I went out with Alice for three years.’
‘I know, but I always thought she’d kind of forced you to do it.’
I tip the beer back until it’s empty. Dad passes me another. ‘I don’t really understand,’ I say. ‘I feel stupid.’
‘You’re not stupid,’ Dad says. ‘But you can’t always kiss who you want to kiss.’
‘And I’m going to be her dick tattoo.’
‘Wonderful.’
I press my face against the window. I think about my life randomly intersecting with other lives, tiny people bouncing off tiny people. It’s too much.
Two cars pull up. ‘Dad,’ I say. ‘Look.’ We both look at the car. Two men are standing at its open window, trousers midway down, proffering their dicks. A woman with dyed scarlet hair is giving blowjobs to the dicks. One of her legs is hanging out, flapping with the beat of her head.
‘What on earth,’ Dad says.
‘You took me dogging,’ I say.
‘I did not take you dogging.’
‘I think one of them’s coming over. Are you going to give him a handjob?’
‘No,’ Dad says. ‘I am not.’ He puts the car into reverse and backs quickly out of the parking space. A tre
e branch snags the rear bumper. Dad swears. I laugh.
45
Me, Aslam, Sam and Amy are celebrating nothing in the trees by the cathedral. It’s full dark and we’re sitting crosslegged in a square, drinking vodka and trying to not talk about Macy. To avoid her, we have already discussed whether the weight of a T. rex would sink a cruise liner, how many words the average human knows, and whether or not the singularity is imminent.
‘I think it’s already happened,’ Aslam says. He brushes pine needles off his thighs and lights a cigarette. ‘Think about it. Google.’
‘Google isn’t sentient.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘Is I, Robot the singularity?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you think if it happens, computers will keep us as pets?’
‘No.’
‘Definitely yes.’
I lie on my back, roll a cigarette and light it. There aren’t any stars. There are faint streetlight smudges and spotlights aimed at the cathedral walls. An ambulance somewhere moans.
‘How do you tell if you have TB?’
‘You don’t.’
‘So how do people know if they have it?’
‘I mean you, specifically, don’t.’
‘I might do.’
A team of taller boys walk up from past the benches. I think, we’re going to be punched again. I think, it’s okay, I’m good at it now. I decide to not move. I decide to remain motionless on the dirt, even if they begin trampling me, even if they crack my ribs and stamp holes through my lungs.
‘Hey,’ one of the boys says. ‘Is it true you got raped by that paedo teacher?’
I don’t say anything.
‘What if it is?’ Aslam says.
‘Is it?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘He had his back doors smashed in,’ Aslam says. He turns to me and does a tiny thumbs up. ‘Which means bumming.’
The boys do laughs. ‘Gaylords,’ one says. Amy stands up, finds an empty wine bottle and smashes it against a tree trunk.
‘Go away,’ she says. She points the glass at them and does an I am serious and unhinged face.
‘Jesus,’ one says. They mutter and leave.
‘Let’s go,’ Aslam says.
‘Fine.’
We leave the grounds and take Eltham Avenue up towards the bungalows. Amy sings loudly and dances and her breath makes balls of white smoke in the air. I kick chunks of gravel along the path. I’m tired and I feel quiet.
‘People are such fucking dicks,’ Aslam says. ‘People can fuck off.’ Amy crouches by the hood of a pristine white Mercedes, pulls off the badge and throws it into the air. Aslam kicks it back up before it hits the ground. I pull one off the boot and toss it over the car.
We walk in the middle of the road, over a speed bump, past the infant school, stopping at each Mercedes. For a reason I don’t know, Mercedes badges are the only badges to easily come off.
‘Okay,’ Aslam says, gripping the vodka bottle like a rounders bat. ‘Were there really photographers?’ He knocks a (Y) into the sky.
‘Yeah. Dad and him wrestled.’
‘I like your dad.’
‘Me too.’
‘Go again.’ He misses the next one. ‘Again.’
I pitch another badge and he hits it over my head. And another. It ricochets loudly off the second-floor window of a house guarded by several garden gnomes.
‘She’s going to prison,’ Aslam says.
‘I know.’
‘We can break her out,’ Amy says. ‘We can hide her in a laundry wagon and wheel her home.’
‘Yeah,’ Aslam says. ‘You can get new identities and move to Australia. Do another one.’ I throw another badge at him. He smacks it away. ‘She can get plastic surgery to change her face. Implants and shit.’
‘You can make money from the Internet.’
‘You can build a house out of driftwood.’
‘Or live on a boat.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘We can’t.’
Aslam flings the vodka bottle at a wall and it shatters.
I want to keep going.
I want to run through the entire neighbourhood, smashing windows and lighting fires and pissing through letterboxes until the police arrive to pepper-spray me in the face and drive me away. I want to make deep scratches in the legs of the police officers. I want to headbutt them and jam my elbows into their eyes. I want to bounce myself from cell wall to cell wall until I pass out and wake up thirty hours later with mild concussion on a day which isn’t today.
I’m sixteen and eating stale cornflakes in the garden. Mum lifts up the teapot, fills my Forever Friends mug and sets it back down. It’s hot. I haven’t been going to school. They said I could stay at home until the verdict came through, so I’ve watched every series of House and put on half a stone.
‘Eat up,’ Mum says.
‘I am,’ I say. ‘Fat.’
‘You’re not fat. Stop saying that. You’re growing.’
The weight is mostly on my cheeks and belly. Alaska is distended now and almost hanging over my belt. It’s okay, though. I know what this part is. This is the part where the main character stays on the sofa, eating pizza while wearing jogging bottoms, masturbating a lot and not answering the phone.
She plucks a green insect off her forearm. ‘I love you.’
‘I know.’
Eventually, the next part will begin. Something will happen that causes staccato violin music to start playing, and I will lace up my trainers, drink a Lucozade and run, stiffly at first, then quickly and with wild arms.
The conservatory doors open and Dad appears. He is doing an I don’t want to show what’s in my head face. He walks until he is standing behind me, puts his hands on my shoulders and squeezes.
‘Massage,’ I say. He starts to press his thumbs into the space between my shoulder blades. ‘Happy ending,’ I say. Dad reaches over me, towards my crotch, and I jump and fall onto the patio.
‘Pete,’ Mum says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Jesus, Pete.’ His hands hook under my armpits and lift me up and lower me back into the chair. I take a sip of tea. Dad fits his left fingers through his right fingers.
‘No jail,’ he says. ‘They want her to go to a psychiatric hospital and she won’t be allowed to work with children again.’
Nothing happens. Amundsen noses open the door and pads out to us. I prop my feet up on his back. I close my eyes. I think I might start to dissolve soon.
Acknowledgments
I forgot to do acknowledgments last time and I’m sorry. Hi everyone. Thank you for being nice to me: Mum, Clive, Beth. Nan, Grampy. Sam, Lisa. Buse, Millie. Crispin, Dan. Jon. Jan, Diana, Alice, Lino. Barcelona. Team Pop Serial. Francis, Jamie, Canongate. You are all 10/10s.
