The Girl Who Just Appeared

by Jonathan Harvey

  In the evening Ma goes. I’ve put some spuds out in kitchen. Peel em for us will you. Fancy doing a roast tomorrow.

  On a Monday?

  There’s no law against doing a roast on a Monday Darren.

  No I know.

  Well then. Stop going on like an arl woman. Yer are. Yer like an arl woman.

  I say nothing.

  As darkness fall Ma goes to work and the banging starts.

  Lucy come over but I couldn’t concentrate coz of the noise outside. So she went. She weren’t very happy bout it have to say.

  I put telly on but it’s worse tonight and I switch it off and go to my room. Kneel on bed and pull the blind up on the window.

  I don’t halve get a shock when I see the sky. Pink. Dark red. And thick black smoke swirling overhead. To the right when I squeeze my head round I see the buildings like sillooettes. Above them flames of fire. Orange. Purple. Green even. Like a fucking rainbow. Must be the tire factry by Parly Street. There’s a petrol station there too.

  I have to go and look. Mi not be safe to stay in. What if this building goes up an all?

  The streets are busy. At the end of Hope Street I get the biggest shock. The Rialto is on fire and suddenly it explodes like there’s a bomb in it.

  Kids run past with shopping trolley full of bottles of booze and some shoes.

  Black lad runs past with face red with blood. Runs so fast the force of the wind round him near nocks me over.

  Round the corner the shops are on fire. Lit up. Yellow flames pushing out. Further down I see a row of burning cars. On their sides. Blocking the street. A wall of cars.

  From nowhere a line of bizzies came and stormed into a gang of lads, knocking them to the ground with their trunchons and shields.

  On the other side of me the bizzies tried same thing but that side there was more people and they ran at them an knocked them to the ground.

  A milk float come flying down the road with no one driving it. Went straight at the bizzies which got a cheer. I ran cross the wasteland, dint no where I was going now. Further into it or trying to get home. Warnt really thinking. Then I seen it.

  I seen Richie.

  Lying on the wasteland tryina put his hands over his face as this bizzy was hammering him with his trunchon.

  Richie’s screaming.

  An then I notice who the bizzy is. It’s ____.

  An I just seen red and ran straight in.

  Get off him you cunt get off him thats my mate get off him ____ you fucking basterd!

  And he looks round and pushes me away. Not like he’s hitting me but just to get him off him as I started tryina hit him. An while he was working out who I was an realizing it was me Richie seen his chance and got up and legged it. And suddenly a load of other bizzies appeared and ran towards us only ____ screams at them to leave me alone.

  He’s me son. He goes. And the bizzies looked weird and ran away.

  I freeze.

  What did he say? I look at him.

  He looks at me. Hisses. What you fucking waiting for Daz. Get fucking home now. NOW.

  I leg it.

  I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t stop but I can’t breathe.

  This must be what the war was like.

  Is like I’ve stepped into the end of the world. Is like I’ve actchally stepped into hell.

  Can’t sleep when I get in. I goes downstairs and knock but there’s no reply. Just wanted to check Richie was ok. But I know he must’ve been because he ran off when I seen ____.

  I go and sit on the couch. Noise still going outside but as the hours pass it dies down.

  But am not thinking about out there now. Am thinking about in here. In my head. Am thinking about what ____ said.

  He’s my son.

  Am shaking like a shitting dog.

  He can’t be my dad can he? ____. No. No way. He can’t be my dad or else why did I go with him all those times in his car? If I was his son how could he do that? He wouldn’t. Nah he was just saying it to get other bizzies to fuck off.

  And when I think that I stop shaking.

  But then I think. He knows Ma. Him and Ma go way back. She always said is coz he like protected her but he told me they done it. Loadsa times. What if he done it and that’s how she had me?

  But then I remember she wasn’t earning when she had me. That came later. When she had me she was the cabaray singer. Her name was Penny Lane. She sang in the clubs in Liverpool. She was gonna be famous but then she fell pregnant with me and it all went tits up. That’s why she hate me. She blame me. Every day I remind her what might have been.

  ____ is a bizzy.

  She only knows bizzies from earning. From earning round here. From standing on street corners waiting to get plucked n stuffed. ____ offered protection and she took it up. Loads of whores get cut. Smantha was right. No one care for whores. But Ma done all right for herself. And she says that down to ____. Well, she says that in her better moods. Rest of the time he’s an arlarse and worse.

  Am shaking again.

  I know what’ll calm me.

  I go to bathroom and shut the door and lock it.

  I know what to do.

  Am shaking now but for different reason. Am shaking now coz am excited.

  I kneel down in front of the basin and open the door of the little cubbard. Behind the spare bog rolls n cloths I find a small clump of faded pink bog roll. I pull it out. I stay kneeling and open it in the parm of my hand. Like am opening a precious Christmas present. But right now this is better than every present put together.

  I expect it to shine. To dazzle me. To glint in the light. But it don’t. It’s dull from under use. Almost black. I stand up and run it under the hot tap. Like that’s gonna make a differents. Takes a while for the water to run hot and as it does I see the light outside is getting lighter. The sun is coming up.

  I dry it carefully with a flannel. Slowly. Then rest the flannel on the side of the sink and rest the blade on that.

  I takes a towel from the radiator and place it on floor.

  I step back and pull my T-shirt off. Then kick my trainers off. Socks. Then down my jeans. I stand there in my undies for a bit then eventchally pull them off too. Now I don’t look. Now I just close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Open them again. Breathe out. No. Still not feeling calmer. My shaky hand reach out and take it from the flannel. I kneel down. Bow my head like in church or something. Deep breath. Eyes shut. I dig it into me and immediate its piercing me and hurting but is beautiful too. I feel the warm blood trickle down my leg and onto the towel.

  It’s nice.

  I feel calm.

  Out with the blood and the panic goes to.

  Blood comes easier than tears tonight.

  Calm. The noise has stopped. A seagull sings. ____ is not my Dad.

  I remember I said I’d peel the spuds.

  I bring Ma’s record player through to the kitchen and put one of Ma’s records on. Only soft like coz it’s six in the morning and everyone else will be in their beds. I stand at the drainer and start peeling the spuds. I wander how Rob has been getting on with his Dad now that his Dad’s wife has gone to Portsmouth to see her sister with the cancer. I bet they got on like a house on fire.

  I don’t know where that saying came from house on fire but now I’ve seen houses on fire tonight I think it’s a bit sick and I don’t understand it. Who on earth come up with that? Houses on fire don’t get on they destroy. Nah. Something not right there if you ask me.

  I was just thinking Ma must be having a good night when I heard a key in the door. Then footsteps in the front room.

  Hiya Ma am in here. Am doing the spuds for tomorrow. Couldn’t sleep.

  I slice the side of another spud and put the peel in the sink and the spud in the pan on the drainer.

  Ma don’t say nothing. And when she come into the kitchen I get a smell. And I imediatley know. It’s not Ma.

  I think you owe me an apology Daz.

  I put down th
e peeler. Am shaking again. I don’t turn to look at him. I can’t.

  Look at me Daz.

  I can’t. I don’t say it I just can’t.

  Daz.

  I don’t wanna look at you. I say after a bit.

  Why not lad? Don’t you fancy us?

  I shake my head.

  You do fancy us.

  I do nothing.

  You do.

  I say nothing.

  Why did you say you was my Dad?

  You could do a lot worse than me lad.

  Why?

  Aren’t you gonna offer me a drink?

  Like am on automatic pilots I go the cubbard and then pore him a whiskey. Can’t even look at him. Go back to the drainer and turn my back on him again.

  Yer didn’t think I was serious did you? He goes.

  No. Course not.

  Yer think I’d fuck me own son?

  No.

  You dirty bastard.

  And then he jumps towards me and pushes me into the drainer an starts rubbing hisself against me arse an I feel sick and I feel scared but the worst of it is I start responding and I hate myself for it. He reaches round and grabs it.

  Fuck off ____.

  Well what’s this then?

  Nothing.

  Fuck off it’s mine that. I own it.

  Why? Why does my body always let me down? Why does it do shit I don’t want it to do? Be a way I don’t want it to be?

  He rips my PJ bottoms down with his left hand as he slaps it with his right.

  And without thinking I lift the pan with the spuds in and I spin round and punch the pan through the air like I’m serving in tennis and I hit it straight over the side of his head. I hear a really loud crunch. He immeidately goes backwards and falls on the floor and there’s another crunch.

  There’s water and spuds everywhere.

  Ma’s favourite pan is still in my hand.

  He is lying there with his eyes open staring at the ceiling.

  I have to put the pan down. It’s so heavy. It makes a big bang as I drop it onto the drainer.

  I look back again. The shakes have come back.

  ____?

  But he is just lying there with his eyes open. Staring up.

  I slowly kneel down. I need to see if he is breathing. But am scared coz I think this is a windup and at any minute he will jump up and leather me. But he don’t move and I edge closer. I lean in next to his face. I can’t hear nothing. I stand back up and I just don’t know what to do.

  The record is still playing. It has hit a scratch. I should go and tap the record player but I can’t actchally move.

  Which is when I hear another key in the door and then Ma coming in.

  She comes into the kitchen and her eyes go wide. Jaw near hits the floor. She calmly puts her bag on the side. Looks at ____. Then looks at me.

  Fuckinell Darren. What’ve you done?

  Woody came over. Never met him before. Brought two mates with him. All speaking quietly work out what to do. Ma had called him from the box round corner. No one seemed that bothered he was dead. Ma told me to go in my room. When I come out later Woody and his mates had gone and ____ had gone. The rug in the living room had gone too. Ma had finished peeling the spuds. I didn’t know what to say.

  You owe me one. She goes. Not even looking at me.

  He touched us. I goes.

  You owe me one. She said again. Making sure I got the message.

  Just then the doorbell goes. We both freeze. I look to Ma. She looks to me.

  Well go and get it.

  I shit meself going down them stairs. Convinced it would be bizzies askin where ____ was. My heart beating in my chest. Like it would explode like the Rialto. I come down the stairs. The door to Richie’s flat is a bit open. I half expect to see a load of bizzies in there going What you done to ____. But I don’t. I can hear their telly though. I hear Margret Thatcher. Just hear her voice.

  She goes: Those poor shopkeepers.

  I get to the front door. Take a deep breath. Open.

  Smantha’s standing there.

  And relax.

  Hiya Darren.

  Hiya Smantha.

  Then I didn’t say nothing coz of the relief. But she doesn’t look that happy. In fact she looks dead uncomfortable.

  She goes. I got something to tell you.

  HOLLY

  SEVEN

  It was an odd sensation, walking onto a deserted beach yet seeing several naked men, ten metres or so away from each other, legs slightly apart, staring at the incoming tide. Had I not heard all about the statues from Iggy and just wandered unknowingly onto the beach, I would have been unnerved. The statues were bronze, mildew green, proud, faceless, and poor Michael was petrified of them. Who were these human beings who didn’t move, flinch or breathe? He danced around the first one we passed, growling and baring his teeth – something I’d never seen him do before. I yanked him away with the lead and broke into a trot to put some distance between him and the iron man.

  The wind hit my face with brisk, hard slaps and I was grateful for them. They were the caffeine facial my body craved, as I’d slept so poorly the night before. Thoughts and questions had quickly become obsessions. I could not get the boy from the diary out of my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about him and his life and his family and what had happened to him. I couldn’t stop thinking full stop. About him and today and Francesca and Rose and the beach, and today. It was all about today. Today I was finally going to meet my mother.

  At around two I had had to put the diary down. There was more to read, but if I’d carried on, I’d never have slept – that was my rationale – and I didn’t want to be exhausted today of all days. I wanted to know what happened next to him. I had fallen asleep with ease, but the sleep was fitful and I’d woken frequently, unable to get him out of my head. Each time I’d been tempted to put the light on and read some more, but I decided sleep, elusive though it was, was more important.

  Each time I woke, I’d become increasingly niggled. My niggle started as a glowing magic bean that then grew and grew till it became a massive neon beanstalk, lighting up my head, the flat, flashing and flashing so much I’m surprised the whole of Liverpool hadn’t been lit up. And it was telling me, the boy in the diary, Darren. He must have lived in the flat I was born in. And if he was caught up in the Toxteth riots, that meant he was living there in 1981. (Thank you, internet search engine.) And if he was living there then, he was living there not long before I was born. Which meant he was my brother. Francesca was his mother. His ‘ma’. She had been desperate to have a baby, it seemed, as a way out, possibly, of her ‘career’.

  No wonder I had been unable to sleep properly. I had just discovered that my mother was a prostitute. And, on top of that, a not very nice prostitute. I felt for Darren. I liked him. I had so many things I wanted to ask him. I wanted to put my arm round him and tell him that everything was going to be OK. How ridiculous was that? Here I was, thirty-odd years later, wanting to reach out to him. He would be in his forties now, no longer the little boy, that’s for sure. But could he really be my brother?

  And could I really tell him that everything was going to be OK? For all I knew, nothing had been OK. For all I knew, he could well be dead by now.

  I wanted to tell him that killing the unnamed person, well, it wasn’t his fault. Well, it was, but he was provoked.

  Had I really found my brother’s diary under the floorboards? Had it really lain there for thirty years unnoticed, unread, untouched? And why did Darren leave it there when he left? Why on earth would you choose to leave a diary lying around that contained such . . . such incendiary information in it, that he had killed someone?

  Well, I would ask Francesca. I would ask her today and we would sort it out and I would check that Darren was still alive and was happy and sane and . . .

  A wave of nausea hit me. My mother was not a nice person – that much was clear. And judging by how she’d treated Darren, I’d had a lucky es
cape being shipped out to Ted and Jean. No wonder Francesca had rejected me; she didn’t appear to have a maternal bone in her body. So much for the romantic notion of the poor naive girl who couldn’t cope. Francesca probably didn’t want to cope.

  I had to face facts. My mum was a bitch.

  But then, maybe it wasn’t her. Oh, the constant toing and froing in my head was exhausting. But addictive. She was living in the flat a year before I was born. She had been pregnant and lost the baby, so maybe she fell pregnant again shortly after.

  Or maybe this family moved out and Francesca moved in. My mind started playing tricks with me. I couldn’t remember whether anyone in the diary had ever referred to Darren’s ma as anything other than ‘ma’. Had he at any point called her Francesca? I knew that I had known the night before, but now I just couldn’t remember.

  Years ago I had placed my name on the Adoption Contact Register. If my mum had ever tried to trace me, she would be on it too. She wasn’t. And her name had never appeared on it.

  Oh yes. Bitch.

  I wanted to know how Rob was. I wanted to think that he had gone to the Wirral and was living with his father. I wanted to know that both those boys had escaped. Maybe I was being harsh; maybe I was overanalysing because I was so shocked that my mother was not some Doris Day, apple-pie-wielding Sindy doll.

  Unless Sindy was a street-walking prostitute.

  She had to be my mum. She had to have lived in that flat when I was in her tummy. Darren had been to the flat below him and used a payphone. I had seen that payphone when I had gone to Jax’s for teacups of gin. She was living in Richie’s flat and I was in Ma, Darren and Rob’s. It was the most peculiar feeling, having had a tantalizing glimpse into someone else’s life. Someone who was my own flesh and blood, I thought.

  Or maybe they had moved out soon after he kept the diary and Francesca Boyle moved in.

  And if she was my mother, who might that make my father? I’d not given him much thought at all before. Now I wondered if he was some anonymous punter – great, my dad was the sort of man who drove around red-light districts picking up women off street corners – or was he one of her gangster-type boyfriends, one of the ones who had helped conceal the dead body? Which made me some kind of Holly Soprano. It didn’t bear thinking about.