‘He did the horses a lot,’ I said. ‘He was always getting Mum’s wages off her for the betting shop.’
Grandma shook her head.
‘Unbelievable. He’s even more of a fool than I thought he was. But the main thing is he won’t be back here in a hurry. He’ll be keeping his head right down with that lot after him.’
‘Grandma,’ I said, ‘you are totally, totally brilliant. You are the most brilliant person I’ve ever met in my whole life. Except for Dad.’
She put her spoon down and pulled me into a hug that nearly crushed me to bits. I wasn’t bargaining for that. I thought my spine would snap.
When she let me go, I was breathless, as if all the air had been squeezed out of me.
‘What did Dad say?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ she said, picking up her spoon again and turning back to the cooker. ‘That wasn’t Danny. You pressed the wrong number. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t ask. I don’t know what they thought of my side of the conversation.’
Mum had to go to the hospital today to have a scan. It’s half-term, and Kieran was helping out in his uncle’s shop, so I went with her.
We passed Kieran’s uncle’s shop in the bus. I could see someone that might have been him, carrying boxes through from the back, but I wasn’t sure.
‘Does your uncle pay you any money when you help him?’ I’d asked Kieran, that night when he came round to our place and Grandma had cooked us a slap-up fried chicken with chips and salad on the side.
‘No, but he gives me stuff,’ Kieran had said, cramming another chunk of chicken into his mouth. ‘It was a radio last time. He said he’d give me a watch next. I’ll ask if you can help too, if you like.’
He’d forgotten, but I didn’t mind. I wanted to go to the hospital with Mum.
‘You’ll see the baby on the scan,’ Grandma told me. ‘Its arms and legs and everything.’
When we got off the bus, and walked in through the big double gate, I turned right automatically, going towards the only part I knew, the doors with Accident and Emergency written over them.
‘Not that way,’ Mum said, not meeting my eye. ‘The antenatal is round the side.’
This part of the hospital was nicer. There are only hard plastic chairs in Accident and Emergency and the nurses are all in a hurry, and there are people shouting and getting angry, and asking you questions that you aren’t supposed to answer.
But in the antenatal there are padded chairs to sit on while you wait, and a tea machine in the corner.
When Mum went in for her scan they let me go in too.
It’s quite dark in here. The doctor sits in front of a screen.
‘On the bed, please,’ she says to Mum.
Mum’s wearing a hospital gown, and the doctor pulls it up so her stomach’s bare. It sticks out a good bit now. I wouldn’t like looking at it normally. It might be embarrassing. But it’s different in the hospital.
‘What’s your name?’ the doctor says to me.
‘Jake.’
‘Sit there, Jake, and watch the screen if you want to see the baby.’
Mum gasps when she squeezes something out of a tube on to her.
‘Does it hurt?’ I ask.
‘No. Just cold.’
I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, and Mum’s right there next to me, so in case she’s scared too, I take hold of her hand.
The doctor’s running something over her stomach.
‘Watch the screen,’ she says again.
Darkness and light are moving about, and I can’t tell what anything’s supposed to be. It’s like looking into a pool with water bubbling about.
‘What’s that round thing?’ I say. ‘Is that her head?’
The doctor looks up at me, surprised.
‘Why do you think it’s a girl?’
Mum laughs, and the image on the screen jumps.
‘He says “she” all the time. He keeps doing it. Reckons he knows.’
The doctor smiles and turns back to the screen, but I’ve seen the look on her face.
I’m right. It is a girl.
I can see more of her now.
‘That’s an arm, see?’ the doctor says.
My fingers have tightened round Mum’s hand, and she squeezes them back.
It’s like magic, seeing the baby, watching her move.
‘Did you see me like this?’ I ask Mum.
‘Yes. Scared me stiff, I can tell you. That’s when I knew it was for real.’
‘Did anyone else see me?’
She snorts.
‘Like who?’
‘There’s the left foot,’ says the doctor.
I can’t really make it out. I can’t make anything much out, to be honest. It’s all just shadows. But I don’t need to look any more. I’ve seen her already, the little girl, with her dark hair and long pale face.
You won’t have a dad either, I say to her in my head. Better not, though, when your dad’s Steve.
The patterns of light and darkness move around on the screen. She’s in there somewhere. The baby.
She’ll have Mum and Grandma anyway. And my dad, a bit, sometimes. And she’ll always have me. Always.
Kieran and I go around together all the time at school. We don’t always go at the same time in the mornings, because it’s not easy getting the timing right. Either he sleeps in and he’s late, or I do, and I am.
But we always come home from school together. We get off the bus and walk over the railway bridge, and if a train’s coming we can feel it rumble under our feet. Then we turn right and go down the lane.
He doesn’t ask me about Dad, or anything, or about home, except to wonder if he can come round again next time Grandma cooks us a meal. I don’t tell him much either. There’s not a lot to tell.
Dad called me up all the time to start with. Once a day at least. More sometimes. We didn’t always have a lot to talk about. He doesn’t call so often now.
He’s been back from Lancashire four times so far. He comes round to the flat straight off, and he and I go out and do stuff together. Sometimes I think I’ve known him all my life, and it feels like we’re normal. A normal bit of family. Sometimes I get scared, in a panic inside, like I’m playing a part in a film and I’ll get the lines wrong and be found out.
Mostly it’s OK. Sometimes it’s brilliant. Every now and then I feel upset, to be honest.
He did get me those rollerblades. For a surprise, he said. I didn’t like that. I’ve had enough surprises to last me for ever. I don’t care if I never get another.
I thought, If I can’t do rollerblading he’ll get fed up with me. He’ll think I’m a wimp. He’ll be disappointed, him having been a soldier and all.
Kieran grabbed them off me and had a go. It was a laugh. He doesn’t mind looking daft and taking risks, falling about and crashing into things.
I tried a bit. I wobbled around in the lane, but I had to force myself. I could feel my stomach knotting up. I was frightened of falling over. I was afraid of pain.
Mum came past and saw me.
‘Is that supposed to be fun?’ she said. ‘You look scared to death.’
‘I am. I don’t want to hurt myself.’
‘Take them off,’ she said. ‘Give them here.’
I sat down on the kerb and handed them over to her.
‘Men,’ she said, and she sounded just like Grandma. ‘They never think.’
I didn’t see the rollerblades again. She must have had words with Dad because the next time he came down he said, ‘Don’t know what I was thinking of. Sorry, old son. Look, is there anything you want instead?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
You don’t have to buy me, I thought. I’m not for sale. I only want to be with you. Spend time together. Just get my confidence up so I know how to be your son.
I was coming home from school with Kieran today, same as usual, and when we passed my old hiding place, we looked at each other, I don’t know w
hy, then, without saying a word, we dived through the hole in the fence, me in the lead, Kieran behind.
No one had been there, I could tell. There was a quietness in the place and the grass and weeds had grown. Kieran and I went right on, through the space between the concrete blocks and out the other side, to the bank above the railway line.
‘Did you come here often, before?’ Kieran asked me. ‘On your own?’
‘Yes, loads of times,’ I said.
Then I tried to reckon it up in my head. Why had I said that? I hadn’t been here often. Hardly at all.
But things had happened in my secret place. I’d run here to be safe. I’d thought about my dream house. I’d nearly gone under a train, just down there, below the bank, and the baby had saved me. And then Kieran had come.
‘I used to imagine things,’ I said to Kieran, ‘like planning my dream house in the future, where I’d really like to live.’
‘I’m going to have a swimming pool in mine,’ Kieran said, ‘like in Beverly Hills. And a games room full of computers and stuff.’
He went on talking, about all the cars he’d have in his garage, and the football pitch out the back.
I tried to think about my dream house. I wanted to make up a different kind of place, to plan it, and be in it, and walk around in it in my head, like I used to with the old one.
There was a blank in my mind. I could only see the blue walls of my new-old bedroom, and the poster of the chimpanzee that Dad had given me, and the soft red cushions of the sofa in our sitting room.
‘And I’d have a cinema in the basement,’ Kieran was saying, ‘with a popcorn machine so you could have as much as you liked without paying.’
I shut my eyes. All that remained of the old dream house were the silver and golden apples among the dark green leaves. They were twisting and turning, twisting and turning on their stems, shooting off sparks of light.
‘It’s boring here,’ Kieran said. ‘Let’s go out into the lane and play football.’
‘OK,’ I said, and I followed him up, back between the blocks where the spider’s web had been, and out into the lane.
The bushes closed over the hole in the fence once we’d gone through, and when I looked back I couldn’t make out where my secret place had been.
About the Author
Elizabeth Laird is the multi-award-winning author of several much-loved children’s books. She has been shortlisted for the prestigious Carnegie Medal six times. She lives in Britain now, but still likes to travel as much as she can.
Books by Elizabeth Laird published by Macmillan Children’s Books
Welcome to Nowhere
Dindy and the Elephant
The Fastest Boy in the World
The Prince Who Walked with Lions
The Witching Hour
Lost Riders
Crusade
Oranges in No Man’s Land
Paradise End
Secrets of the Fearless
A Little Piece of Ground
The Garbage King
Jake’s Tower
Red Sky in the Morning
Kiss the Dust
For Jane Fior
First published 2001 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2017 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2017 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-47790-1
Copyright © Elizabeth Laird 2001
Cover images © Shutterstock
The right of Elizabeth Laird to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Phototypeset by Intype Libra Ltd
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