Jake's Tower

by Elizabeth Laird

  He won’t go for her, I thought. He won’t dare, and a bubble of confidence started growing in my chest.

  ‘Get him out here, then,’ said Steve. ‘Send Danny out. Is he scared, or what?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ I said, the bubble growing bigger. ‘My dad’s up north.’

  ‘Your what?’ The scorn in his eyes almost scorched me. The bubble burst and I stepped back.

  ‘He is my dad,’ I managed to say. ‘Mrs Judd knows it now. She knows she’s my grandma.’

  He spat on the path.

  ‘She can keep you. Good riddance.’

  I’d made things worse, I could see that. He was tensing himself up again as if he was going to push past her. Mrs Judd crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the doorpost.

  ‘GBH,’ she said. ‘Assault and battery. On a minor. It counts as child abuse. Quite a long sentence, I should think.’

  Steve eyes seemed to bulge as he stared at her.

  ‘Where’s Danny?’ His voice grated as if his throat was lined with sandpaper.

  ‘Up north, like Jake said. He doesn’t know they’re here. He’s not going to like what you’ve done to his son.’

  ‘Ha!’ Steve stabbed a finger towards her. ‘You think Danny gives a monkey’s? Pushed off, didn’t he, the minute the kid was born, so he wouldn’t have to do the maintenance. His son! Not even a fiver in the post at Christmas.’

  I shut my eyes. This was the dark place in my mind where I didn’t want to go. The thought I’d been trying not to think. It felt like a dagger in my ribs.

  Mrs Judd was flummoxed too. She hesitated. Steve saw it, and took hold of Mum’s arm. He was trying to yank her off the doorstep.

  ‘You’re coming with me.’

  She’d always done what he said before. I was dead scared she’d do it again. I caught her other hand and pulled at it.

  ‘No, Mum. You can’t. Please, Mum. Don’t.’

  She shook us both off.

  ‘Get out. Just get out! You come back here again and I’ll do you for child abuse, like she said.’

  Mrs Judd nodded, as if she was satisfied. If she’d been someone else, without standards, she’d have shown him two fingers. She began to shut the door.

  ‘You can’t do this, Marie!’ Steve shouted. He’d dropped all his loud talk and sounded in a panic. ‘It’s my baby. You’re going to have my baby!’

  ‘Jake,’ Mrs Judd said to me over her shoulder. ‘I’m not standing for harassment at my own front door a minute longer. Dial 999 and get the police. I’m pressing charges on you, Steven Barlow, unless you get off my premises this instant and leave us in peace.’

  She shut the door. I dodged past her and Mum and ran upstairs to look out of my bedroom window, though I didn’t pull the nets back because I didn’t want him to see me. He was standing at the gate, looking up at the house, his face murderous. If he’d had a bazooka in his hand he’d have blown us all sky high, then and there. But he didn’t. He just went off down the road.

  I sat down on the bed. I was shaking, as if I’d just escaped from certain death. I needed something to do, and anyway, I wanted to know if Mrs Judd had dialled 999, so I went back to the top of the stairs. Mrs Judd seemed to have forgotten about the police. She was standing right in front of Mum, who was leaning against the front door with her hands behind her back.

  ‘Now then, Marie,’ Mrs Judd was saying. ‘What’s all this about a baby?’

  I didn’t hang around to hear what happened next. I was afraid there’d be a bit of a ding dong, and that’s what I hate.

  Loud voices. People shouting. Anger.

  I went back into his bedroom (my room now) and I shut the door.

  We did it, I thought, and I punched the air with my hand. We saw him off!

  I’d got into a bit of a habit, since I’d been at Mrs Judd’s, of talking to the photo of my dad, the one of him in the shadows, behind the tank. I looked at it now. I was going to tell him about what we’d done. Instead I heard myself saying, ‘You ducked out. You never even sent me a fiver at Christmas.’

  It was horrible. I couldn’t understand myself. I’d never been angry with my dad before, but now I was. Really, really angry.

  ‘You left us,’ I said. ‘You didn’t care. You let Steve beat me up, on and on, beating me up. You never came to see if I was OK. You never sent a fiver at Christmas.’

  I could feel the tears pricking inside my eyelids, but I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  ‘We don’t need you now anyway,’ I told the picture. ‘We’re going to get shot of Steve and get out of here. Find a place of our own. We’re better off without anyone, Mum and me.’

  But I didn’t mean that. I didn’t want to be without Mrs Judd again. It wasn’t only that she was our protector, sort of, or that we were living in her house. I’d got used to her. I’d started to really like her.

  ‘Your mum’s worth ten of you,’ I told my dad.

  I stopped then. I didn’t want to go on and say worse things. I didn’t want to lose the good feeling I’d always had, deep inside myself, that I’d find him one day and he’d make everything right for me.

  ‘The jury’s out on you,’ I told him. ‘For now.’

  I didn’t want to stay in the room any longer. I opened the door and listened. They were in the kitchen, talking. Their voices sounded quiet and normal. I went downstairs and into the kitchen.

  ‘Like I said, Marie, you should have trusted me,’ Mrs Judd was saying. ‘You didn’t really think I’d throw you out, did you? And put that fag out. It’s bad for the baby.’

  Mum looked up at me as I came in. She looked half relieved, half trapped, like a little kid who’s been caught out doing something dangerous and is secretly glad to be rescued.

  ‘You knew about all this, I suppose?’ Mrs Judd frowned at me.

  ‘Yes. She said not to tell.’ A bit of the anger I’d felt upstairs seemed to be coming out again, I didn’t know why. ‘Why should she? We won’t be here when it’s born. We’ll be sorted out by then.’

  Mrs Judd looked hurt.

  ‘Oh, pardon me. It’s none of my business. Suit yourselves.’

  I felt sorry.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ I began.

  She turned her back on us and started filling the kettle at the sink.

  I bit my lip and exchanged a look with Mum.

  ‘Look, Doreen,’ Mum said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘It’s just that you’ve done a lot for us, you know?’

  Mrs Judd plugged the kettle in, turned round and wagged a finger at her.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Nothing. I’ve done nothing! Every bruise on that child’s body’ – she nodded in my direction – ‘is a reproach. It keeps me awake at night thinking about what he’s suffered. I can’t make it up to you, but you might at least let me try.’

  Mum did something awful then. She put her arms on the table, put her head down on them and burst into tears.

  Mrs Judd sat down beside her and started shoving tissues into her hands.

  ‘Silly girl,’ she said. ‘Now let’s get this straight. How far gone are you? Have you started at the antenatal? Take off those high-heeled shoes, for God’s sake, or your ankles will blow up like balloons.’

  That was enough for me. I left them to it. Went out and closed the door, and switched on the telly in the front room. So much had happened it was doing my head in and I knew it would take a couple of soaps and a quiz show to calm me down.

  I don’t know why Kieran likes going round with me. There are loads of people at school who are really popular, and a lot more fun than me. He could have been best mates with any of them.

  I haven’t been much of a one for friends up to now. Friends make things complicated. You have to tell things to friends. They want to come to your house, and look through your stuff, and show you all theirs.

  But Kieran’s different. He came that day, when I’d nearly topped myself, and I’d seen the baby
on the train, and everything in the world was suddenly precious and beautiful. He’d been like a present.

  ‘Hello, puff-face,’ he said. He was hanging round the door to the cloakroom as if he was waiting for me. ‘Your eyes have gone down a bit today, though. And your nose. I won’t be able to call you that much longer.’

  ‘Kieran! You on for football?’ Greg called out. He was jumping up and down on the edge of the sports field, keeping the ball in the air with his feet and knees.

  ‘In a minute,’ Kieran called back. He turned to me again. ‘When are you coming back to our base? There’s stuff we could do there. I’ve been thinking.’

  Our base, I thought. He called it ours. I didn’t mind. I quite liked it. But the place seemed long ago and miles away now. As if I’d moved into another life.

  The ball came whizzing at him before I’d thought of an answer. He whammed it back to Greg.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I’m staying with my grandma. She’s on the other side, past the bus station. Up Sunnybrook Road.’

  He looked surprised.

  ‘It’s posh up there. How long are you staying? Have your mum and dad gone away?’

  I took a deep breath. This was getting dangerous. I wasn’t used to telling people things, especially people at school.

  ‘My dad’s up north.’

  I stopped. He didn’t say anything. I could see he was waiting for me to go on.

  Friends don’t keep secrets, I told myself. Not big ones.

  ‘Me and my mum,’ I said, feeling almost breathless, as if I’d been running a race, ‘we’ve moved in with my dad’s mum. My mum and my stepdad have split up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He didn’t sound impressed.

  ‘Was it because of the bike that he duffed you up?’

  ‘Who said anyone duffed me up?’

  ‘Jake, I’m not thick. I saw him. That day. I saw you hide too. You looked like you’d just busted out from Death Row.’

  That made me laugh.

  ‘I had. That’s just where I’d busted out from.’

  I wanted to tell him things then, about Mum, and Steve, and Mrs Judd and the baby. Even about my dad. I would have done, too, if Greg hadn’t come up again and gone on about playing football. And then the bell went, and there was registration, and I just slipped back into the person I always am at school, the quiet one who does what he’s told and never gets into trouble, the one who slips unnoticed down the corridor, the one who never listens to a word the teachers say (if only they knew), but stares out of the window or up at the ceiling and keeps his thoughts to himself.

  I always change for PE in the darkest corner of the cloakroom. That way, no one will see me without my clothes on. There won’t be any tricky questions. No sympathy. No prying. Nobody being nosy.

  Mr Grossmith doesn’t usually bother with us while we’re changing. He only comes in when he thinks we’re taking too long, and he blows his whistle and yells out, ‘Come on, you lot. Move it. We haven’t got all day.’

  But this time he was right there, in the cloakroom, standing in my corner. I looked round for somewhere else to go, but it was awkward. There was nowhere even halfway private. I went as far away from the window as I could, and got my football shirt and shorts out of my bag, so they’d be all ready, and I looked round, and I couldn’t see Mr Grossmith. So I whipped my school shirt off and picked my football shirt up.

  Mr Grossmith must have come up without me seeing him, because he was suddenly standing right there beside me.

  ‘Turn round, Jake,’ he said.

  I didn’t have any choice. I had to.

  He looked at my back for what felt like ages. Then he said, in a different voice, ‘You’re excused PE today. Go along to the library. I’ll come and see you at the end of the lesson.’

  I don’t think anyone else saw my back, except for Kieran. I know he did because there was a funny look in his eyes when I’d put my school shirt on again, as if he was sympathetic but embarrassed at the same time.

  ‘Lucky you,’ was all he said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a nice little skive in the library. See you at break. I’ve got an extra Mars bar in my bag if you’re interested.’

  It was quiet in the library. I fetched a magazine off the rack, and sat behind a bookshelf, and flipped through the pages. Mrs McLeish came in at one point. I saw her between the shelves. She seemed to be looking for someone. I kept still, and she didn’t notice me. She went out and I had the place to myself again.

  I needed to think. I didn’t know what I was going to say to Mr Grossmith. He was on to me, I could tell. What if I told him the truth, and he got the social workers in, and they took me away? But why would they do that, now I wasn’t living with Steve any more?

  The thing was, Mum had conditioned me for so long, not to let on about anything to anyone, that it was like a habit. An instinct. She’d never said as much, not in so many words, but I knew what she thought.

  Keep your head down. Don’t say a word. They’ll say they’re trying to help you, but all you’ll get is trouble.

  Now, though, it was time for me to think it all out for myself.

  GBH, Mrs Judd had said. Child abuse. Prison.

  Steve in prison. I felt a prickle of shame at the thought, but a dark joy too. I could do that to him. I could stand up for myself and shop him. I could get him put away, and then I’d be safe and free.

  What if he did end up inside, though? He wouldn’t be in for long. What would he do to me when he got out?

  I was still sitting there, turning the pages of the magazine, not seeing a thing, when Mr Grossmith touched my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him coming.

  He sat down beside me. He had that concerned look, that busybody, I-know-what’s-best-for-you look that made me shrink away from him like a tortoise pulling its head back into its shell.

  ‘Those are very nasty injuries on your back, Jake.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Like I told Mrs McLeish, I fell off my bike.’

  ‘Maybe you did, but that’s not how you got those bruises.’

  I was still leafing through the magazine. He took it out of my hands and pushed it to the far side of the table.

  ‘Who did it, Jake? Who beat you up?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I shall have to report this.’

  I was starting to feel trapped.

  ‘Why? It’s no one’s business. I’m all right, sir, really I am.’

  ‘It is our business. Your welfare is our business. Are you being bullied at school? Is that it? Are you scared that if you tell they’ll go for you again?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No one goes for me at school. They leave me alone.’

  ‘Mrs McLeish says you’ve moved in with your grandma. Why did you do that, Jake? Why did you and your mum leave home?’

  I felt my face go red. Things were slipping out of my control.

  Interfering cow, I thought. Why doesn’t she keep things to herself?

  ‘That was your stepfather who met you after school yesterday, wasn’t it?’

  Mr Grossmith’s voice was soft.

  ‘What if it was, sir?’

  ‘Mrs McLeish said you’d told her he’d gone away.’

  ‘Must have come back then.’

  ‘Jake.’ Mr Grossmith put his hand flat down on the table, then lifted it to scratch his head. ‘I can’t make you tell me things you don’t want to, but like I said, I have to report this. It’s a legal requirement.’

  ‘You mean you’ll get the Social in even if I don’t say anything?’

  ‘Don’t say it like that. They’re only there to help you. We all are.’

  I heard the library door open and close, then I saw Kieran. He’d guessed exactly which corner of the library I’d be sitting in. He’d come straight to me. Mr Grossmith had his back to him, and he didn’t see him coming.

  ‘You OK, Jake?’ Kieran said over Mr Grossmith’s head. He didn’t care about teachers. They never bothered him. ‘I didn’t know
you’d hurt your back till I saw it. I thought it was only your ugly mug. Is he OK, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Kieran. Go away.’ Mr Grossmith didn’t even turn round.

  ‘He’s my mate,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind him being here.’

  ‘It’s amazing how hurt you get in a bicycle accident,’ Kieran said. I could see he was trying to help me. He was guessing what I wanted him to say. ‘He smashed his bike into a tree.’

  ‘There wasn’t a bicycle, was there, Jake? There wasn’t a tree, either.’ Mr Grossmith’s voice was as smooth as silk.

  ‘There was, sir,’ Kieran butted in eagerly. ‘Jake told me. He—’

  I suddenly felt very, very tired.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t a bicycle and there wasn’t a tree. It was Steve. My stepfather. He beat me up.’

  I saw, in one quick glance, that Kieran was watching me with a worried look on his face, but then I was looking down at Mr Grossmith’s hands, and he was turning a pencil round and round, waiting for me to go on. The light glanced off it and I felt almost hypnotized.

  ‘Why?’ Mr Grossmith prompted me. ‘Why did he beat you up, Jake?’

  ‘We went to the zoo, him and me and my mum. A monkey peed on him and I laughed.’

  I could see Kieran jerk, as if he was going to laugh too, but he didn’t.

  ‘It wasn’t the first time he’d gone for you, was it?’ said Mr Grossmith.

  I shut my eyes and shook my head as awful memories, one after the other, of pain and terror surged up into my mind. I was suddenly scared I would cry.

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘It won’t be the last time, either,’ I said, ‘if he hears I’ve grassed him up. Especially if my mum goes back to him. Don’t tell anyone, please, sir.’

  But I knew he would, and I didn’t care any more. Later on, when Mum found out, she’d give me stick for it, maybe.

  Only maybe she won’t, I thought, remembering how she’d stood up to Steve on the doorstep last night.

  Anyway, whatever might happen now, the secret was out. I’d shopped him. I’d done it. I might regret it later on, but right now I felt almost dizzy with relief, and the sweet smell of triumph filled my nostrils.