Kate knows when I don’t want to talk; she’s very good that way. She also knows that if I do want to talk to anyone, it will be to her.
“So will Mike be in when you get home?” she asked, gathering up all the food packaging and piling it back onto the tray. Mike is her brother and my dad.
“He said he’ll be back around ten,” I said.
Kate frowned. “Do you want to come home with me for a while? Mum’s working tonight and I’ve got to put the kids to bed.”
“Um, no thanks.” I knew what would happen if I went round. Anytime I try to help Kate get Grant and Julie upstairs, they end up saying, “You can’t tell me what to do. I’m your uncle (or aunt).” Then they try to force me to give them horsey rides around the back room. I’ve tried telling them nephews don’t normally give rides to their aunts and uncles, but they never listen. They don’t see why they shouldn’t have everything their own way.
We’d just stood up from the table when Julie and Grant burst through the doors.
“There you are!” Grant cried, flinging himself at Kate. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Mum says you’ve to come home now!”
Julie spotted me tipping our rubbish into the bin.
“Aw, it’s not fair. You two got chips and we only had stew. I’m going to tell Mum!”
I bought them a bag of chips and a drink each just to keep them quiet and walked with them to the bottom of their street, which was just around the corner from McDonald’s. Grant and Julie ran off to tell their mum about the chips.
“I’d better go,” said Kate. “Mum needs to be out by seven. Will you be OK?”
“Yeah, I feel fine now,” I said. “I might call down tomorrow afternoon.”
“Oh, sorry, I won’t be in. I’m going bowling with Heartbeat.” Heartbeat was the club she went to at the church across the road.
“Right then, I’ll see you Sunday. Your mum’s asked me and Dad to come for dinner.”
“Good,” called Kate, disappearing up the street. “And thanks again for the McDonald’s!”
I crossed the road and set out on the ten-minute walk towards my own house, passing the church where Kate, Dean, Grant and Julie went to different clubs. A couple of years ago, I’d asked if I could go to Heartbeat with Kate on Saturday evenings, but my mum had said no. She didn’t explain why, just went all tight-lipped and strange for a while – even stranger than usual, I mean. I knew we weren’t religious, but I hadn’t realised Mum felt that strongly about not going to church. Then Dad told me it was because it was the church her dad used to be the minister of. I’d never seen my grandparents on Mum’s side. All I knew was that Mum had fallen out with them years ago, before I was born. I’d always thought it had been because they hadn’t liked Mum marrying Dad – they didn’t think he was good enough for her or something. But after Mum left, before he’d started drinking so much, Dad kept trying to work out where things had gone wrong and he told me what had really happened.
“I think your mum expected her parents to disapprove of me,” he said. “We both nearly dropped dead with shock when they said they were fine about us getting married. If I’d had a daughter, I wouldn’t have wanted her to marry someone as wild as I was then.”
“Like, how wild?” I asked.
“Let’s just say I had quite a reputation.” Dad gave a quick grin. “We’d met at the club her dad ran on Friday nights for older teenagers. I only went along with some mates to cause trouble, but one night I met your mum and suddenly found myself wanting to impress her. I think she only went out with me to shock her parents, to get their attention. Well, if they were shocked, they didn’t show it – they were the sort of people who treated everybody as if they were, I dunno, kind of special. Only maybe they needed to show their daughter she was more special than everyone else. They wanted us to wait to get married, of course, until Caroline had finished her A levels and university. I was happy enough about this. It would give me time to get a decent job and save up some money for a house. But after her mum and dad took it so calmly, Caroline went a bit crazy. She made me agree to run away there and then and get married in Scotland. Then, when we got back home, she said she didn’t want any more to do with them.”
“But didn’t they try to see her?” I asked.
“Oh yes. We’d had to move in with my family and for the first year they called at the door all the time, but your mum refused to talk to them. Then, after you were born and we’d moved into our own house, they used to write and send presents, but she sent them all back.”
I’d always known my mum could act a bit weird but I would never have thought she could be like that.
“I tried talking to her,” Dad went on. “I wanted her to get together with them to try and patch things up, but it made your mum so mad I had to stop. Soon afterwards, her dad retired. (He and her mum had been quite old when she was born – maybe that was part of the problem.) They moved away from here to live in the country.”
“Do you think that was what made Mum so sad, falling out with them?” I asked.
“Oh, I dunno, Jack,” Dad sighed. “I’ve spent these last 13 years trying to work out why she was unhappy. The thing with her parents was part of it, but I think it was mainly that she didn’t really love me – not nearly as much as I loved her, anyway. Probably she only stuck around as long as she did because of you, and maybe because leaving would have been like admitting to her mum and dad she’d made a mistake.”
“But that didn’t stop her leaving in the end,” I said, fighting the tears that were attacking the back of my eyes.
“No it did not, son,” Dad agreed sadly. “It did not.”
I walked slowly on up the road towards home. The houses on our street were nicer than the one Kate and her family lived in – semi-detached with small gardens at the front and back. Dad had worked hard to get qualified and he earned quite a bit of money as an electrician. We’d moved from our first house to this house about five years ago because he’d thought it would make Mum happier. It was summer, and when the weather was good, she was outside most of the day, reading and doing a bit of gardening. Then winter came and she’d taken to her bed again. That was where I remember her spending most of her time, reading – to herself or to me – and crying a lot.
When I was a kid, I’d found it really hard coming home from school, never knowing if Mum would be downstairs getting tea ready or up in bed. As I got older, Dad and I worked out some easy meals I could make myself, like microwave dinners or pizza. Sometimes I got really hacked off about having to sort out my own food when most of my mates were going home to a nice meal. But that evening, as I turned my key in the lock and stepped into the dark hall, I would’ve given anything for Mum to be up in her room, waiting for me to bring her a cup of tea and tell her about my day.
I flicked on the light, picked up the day’s letters from the doormat (bills and junk mail – nothing from London, as usual) and went into the kitchen, hoping Mary Poppins would have paid a surprise visit. But it was just as Dad and I had left it that morning. Amucky butter knife lay on top of the crumbs on the breadboard, last night’s dirty dishes were still in the sink and empty beer cans overflowed from the rubbish bin. I rinsed a glass, filled it with water and got out of there as fast as I could. We could sort out the mess in the morning. Leaving the hall light on for Dad, I went upstairs to my room. I took The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe out of my school bag and set it on my bedside table. Then, even though it was early, I changed into my T-shirt and boxers, pulled out a letter from under my pillow and got into bed. This was the letter Mum had slipped under my door the night she’d left. It was beginning to fall apart from being folded and unfolded so many times, but for about the hundredth time I took it from its envelope and read:
Dear Jack,
I’m writing this to try and make you understand that I have to go away for a while, but that it’s got nothing to do with you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened in my life, but I’ve made a real mess o
f things. I need to get away from here to try and sort out where I’ve gone wrong. You may not hear from me for a while, but when I get settled, I’ll write and tell you where I am and I hope you’ll write back. But I’ll understand if you don’t. Just remember that I’ll always love you and be thinking about you.
All my love,
Mum.
The letter had been written at the end of September. It was now January and she still hadn’t let me know where she was. At the beginning of last summer Mum had stunned us by announcing she’d got a job in an office in town. She’d left the house every morning all dressed up and seemed a lot happier and more sure of herself. Then, just as I thought we were turning into a normal family, she upped and left. She’d left Dad a note telling him a job had come up with a branch of the same firm in London and that she had to go. She didn’t want him to contact her – she said she needed time to think things through. But I hadn’t thought she meant as long as this.
Fed up with turning the whole thing over and over in my mind, I put the letter back under my pillow and picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As I read through to the end, I slowly realised I’d heard the story before. It must have been one of the books Mum had read to me on winter evenings when I was snuggled up in bed beside her. As I put the book down, I noticed it was half past ten. I couldn’t believe it! Dad had promised he’d be home half an hour ago.
I got out of bed, took my mobile from my blazer pocket and tried his number. His phone was switched off. I went to the loo, got back into bed and lay there with the light on, my heart and sore head thumping. Just after midnight the front door slammed and Dad crashed upstairs. Relieved, I called out, wanting to tell him about my accident, but he mustn’t have heard me. I switched off the light and finally managed to fall asleep.
Chapter 3
I’m on a beach with my mum and dad. The sand scorches the soles of my feet as I race Dad up from the water. We flop down on our towels on either side of Mum, laughing. She smiles as she sets down her book, and her eyes are a sparkle of blue, just like the sea.
The alarm on my mobile detonated under my pillow, blasting me out of my dream. Sleepily, I reached for my shirt from the tangle of uniform on the floor beside the bed. I always dress under my duvet on cold winter mornings. I was halfway through doing up my buttons when I remembered it was Saturday. Why on earth had I wanted to wake up early on a dark Saturday morning in January? The events of yesterday suddenly came back to me and my hand flew to my forehead. The bump had gone down a good bit from last night, but when I dragged myself out of bed and looked in the mirror I saw that Kate had been right. The yellowy-purplish bruise stretched from my eyebrow up to the roots of my hair. I wasn’t a pretty sight.
I remembered the reason I’d set my alarm was so I could get down to the library early, before my mates were up. Reading novels was one thing; they were used to me doing that. But it wouldn’t do a lot for my street cred if they found out I was thinking about my project already. I shrugged off my shirt and got dressed in jeans and a hoody. I decided to skip breakfast as I couldn’t face the kitchen. There was always the chance Dad would’ve tidied it up by the time I got home.
I hurried down the road towards the library, blowing on my hands to try to warm them up. I thought back to the dream I’d been having just before I woke – of the hot sun and a sea you could plunge into without freezing to death. I must have been remembering the only foreign holiday we’d been on, when I was 9. We’d flown to Majorca and for the first couple of days the weather had been perfect. After that it had rained non-stop for the rest of the week and we’d all been really down in the dumps, not just Mum.
This morning was cold – dull and grey, with a wind that cut you in two. I felt it had been winter for ever, a bit like in Narnia, the country through the wardrobe, in the book I’d just read. Before Aslan the great lion arrived, it was always winter and never Christmas. Christmas hadn’t really happened in our house either this winter. Dad hadn’t bothered to get the decorations down from the attic, so it was left to me to drag down the green plastic tree, cover it with some tinsel and the only string of lights that still worked. We hardly got any cards. With Mum gone people must have thought they couldn’t wish us Happy Christmas. That was the time I’d missed Mum most because though she hated winter, she loved Christmas and would always have been up and about for a couple of weeks beforehand, decorating the house and wrapping presents.
A few days before Christmas, a parcel had arrived, addressed to me in Mum’s writing. I ripped it open, hoping for a letter from Mum to say how we could contact her or, even better, telling us she’d be coming home for Christmas. But all there was inside the big brown envelope was a present wrapped in Christmas paper, with a gift tag which just said, “To Jack, Love Mum”.
I had to open it there and then to check she hadn’t slipped in a note along with the PlayStation game she’d sent me. So all I had to unwrap on Christmas morning was Dad’s present to me. It was a really awesome present – a mobile phone with a camera and MP3 player, but he’d given me the money a few days before and asked me to buy it myself. I’d even ended up wrapping it myself, so when Dad handed me the box from under the Christmas tree, it was hard to feel excited. I could tell he wasn’t too rapt by the Bryan Adams CD I’d bought him, but we both put on our pleased faces though we knew we weren’t kidding each other.
We’d gone round to Kate’s for Christmas dinner, but the house was so crowded and noisy with the younger kids fighting over their toys, that we’d got away as soon as we could. I guessed Dad felt as glad as I did that Christmas was nearly over and we didn’t have to pretend any more.
The shutters were still down when I reached the library, so I thought I’d take a closer look at the CS Lewis sculpture I’d been stupid enough to walk into. On the back of the bronze wardrobe was the head of a lion in 3D – Aslan, of course. Underneath this, a lot of words stood out. When I started to read them, I realised they were actually a letter CS Lewis had written to someone called Ann, who must have asked him what the Narnia stories meant. I was a bit surprised by what he told her.
Seemingly, Aslan, being killed by the Witch in Edmund’s place and coming alive again, was like Jesus dying on the cross for human beings and then rising from the dead. I hadn’t realised The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had another meaning, I just thought it was an exciting story. It put me off a bit. Kate believed in God and Jesus and all that stuff. She told me she was praying for me and Dad, and for Mum to come home. A lot of good it was doing. If God was real, then he couldn’t care very much about my family. I thought of me waiting and waiting for the letter or phone call from Mum that never came, and waiting up late last night for Dad to roll in drunk, and started to feel very sorry for myself.
A rattle of metal shutters told me the library was about to open. Mrs Armstrong would be in there, waiting for me to arrive so we could look for books for my project. Maybe she’d even picked out some stuff already. I stepped back behind the sculpture, out of sight of the library windows. I wasn’t so sure any more I wanted to do a project on someone who had to go and spoil a good story with hidden meanings. OK, Mrs Armstrong was expecting me, but I quite liked the thought of a grown-up waiting for me and wondering where I’d got to for a change.
By the time the doors of the library finally opened, I’d crossed the road and was heading up towards the shopping centre, where I bought some Coke and crisps for breakfast and spent the rest of the morning looking at PlayStation games.
As I left the centre, I met my gran, aka Eileen, who’d just knocked off her shift at Tesco.
“Jack, love, Kate told me about your head,” she said, setting down her load of grocery bags and peering at my forehead. “How do you feel today?”
“Better,” I said, but I was only talking about my bruise.
“Oh, that’s good. We’re eating about one tomorrow. Is that OK with you and Mike?”
“Yeah, fine thanks. See you then.” Normally I would have offe
red to help her carry her shopping home, but today I just couldn’t be bothered. Anyway, a couple of days ago Dad had talked about going for a drive down the coast in the afternoon.
When I reached our house, there was a light on in the front room. Good, Dad must be up. Hopefully he’d made a start on the kitchen. As I was about to put my key in the lock, Dad opened it from the inside.
“Jack, mate,” he said, pulling on his coat. “Where’ve you been? I’m just on my way to meet Len and Brian down the pub. Len’s playing in a darts match this afternoon.”
“I thought we were going for a drive!” I threw open the kitchen door to reveal an even worse mess than the night before. “And you haven’t done the flippin’ dishes!”
“I know. I slept in. Just you leave the mess and I’ll tidy it up when I get home.” Dad was trying to edge out the front door.
“You always say that and you never do!” I yelled at him. “And why are you going back to the pub so soon? You came in two hours later than you said you’d be last night. You just can’t keep away from it!”
Now it was Dad’s turn to yell. “I’m not going to be preached at by my own son!” he shouted. “There’s little enough makes me happy these days. And Len’s counting on my support. I can’t let him down.”
“But what about me?” My voice died away as the door slammed behind him. What was the point? It looked as if I’d be looking after myself from now on. Mum was gone and I couldn’t rely on Dad anymore. He hadn’t even noticed my bruise.
Fed up, I stomped upstairs and began to pick dirty washing off the bedroom floors. I’d have to get my uniform washed and dried before Monday morning. I was just coming down with the laundry basket when the doorbell rang.
“Hello, Jack, dear, I thought maybe you and your dad could use this casserole.”
It was Mrs King, our next door neighbour. She and my mum had been quite friendly since they’d spoken to one another over the garden fence the summer we’d moved in. Any time Mum went next door to visit her she’d always come back looking more cheerful, which had made me Mrs King’s biggest fan.
Jack and the Wardrobe Page 2
