by Sibel Hodge
‘Good. Now you can wait in here until the others come back from school.’
I sat on the bed when he left and glanced around me in the spartan, unwelcoming dormitory with grey walls. At the window nearest my bed was a thick ledge big enough to sit on, and I whiled away the lonely hours looking out the window, worrying what this place was going to be like. Worrying about the other kids. About when someone would adopt me. How I was going to survive another six years until they let me out of the care system.
It was getting dark when I heard footsteps on the stairs outside the dormitory. Then I heard an adult shout, ‘Oi, you! Stop running! How many times have I told you!’
There was a yelp and the sound of something hard hitting the floor or the wall.
‘No, please!’ a tiny, scared voice cried.
The door burst open, and a tall, wiry man with greasy black hair, ruddy cheeks, and spiteful eyes dragged a boy into the room by his ear, the boy’s legs hardly touching the floor. The man’s face was sweaty as he pushed the boy towards a bed in the middle of the room.
‘No dinner for you. You can get into your pyjamas and stay in here for the rest of the day. I won’t stand for any running or back-chatting,’ the man said, breathing hard with his exertion.
A few other boys filed in, silently took their places next to their beds, and began changing out of their school uniforms into some clothes piled neatly on top of the thin, measly blanket. They didn’t dare look at the boy trying desperately not to cry.
I sank back into the window seat, hoping the man wouldn’t notice me there, wanting to turn my eyes away but unable to at the same time.
The man folded his arms, his eyes flashing darkly as he made sure the boy stripped completely. ‘Jump up and down with your hands on your head,’ he ordered.
The boy closed his eyes. Tears and snot streamed silently down his face. He placed his hands on his head and started jumping.
‘Everyone look at Billy!’ The man glanced around the room, a wicked smile turning up the corners of his mouth. ‘What a pathetic excuse for a boy!’ he mocked, before catching sight of me and glaring. ‘Who are you?’
‘J-Jamie, sir,’ I whispered.
He cupped a hand to his ear. ‘What? I can’t hear you. Speak up.’
‘Jamie, sir,’ I said, louder.
‘Well, Jamie, what do you think of Billy here?’
I didn’t understand the question. I’d never met Billy, so how did I know how to answer? And I was pretty sure he didn’t want me to tell him that I thought Billy was in pain and humiliated and upset. He could see that perfectly well himself.
‘Answer me when I speak to you!’ the man yelled across the room. One of the other kids flinched as he pulled on his trousers.
I bit my lip. If I gave the wrong answer, I’d end up like poor Billy. ‘Um…’
‘Come on. Spit it out!’
Billy carried on, jumping up and down, naked, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
‘I…I don’t know, sir.’
‘Look at Billy, everyone,’ the man said slowly. ‘Not good for much, are you, Billy?’ Billy didn’t answer. I didn’t know whether the man was expecting an answer. ‘Are you?’ he yelled in Billy’s ear.
‘N-no, sir,’ Billy stuttered.
‘I can’t hear you!’ the man said in a sing-song voice.
‘No, sir,’ Billy said.
‘Say it then!’
‘I’m not…good for m-m-much,’ Billy said.
The man glared. ‘Idiots! The lot of you. What did I do to deserve such a bunch of degenerate lowlifes?’ He ordered Billy to stop jumping and told him to put his pyjamas on and get to bed. Then he gave me one last look as he walked towards the door, pointing a finger in my direction. ‘I’m watching you, boy. You’re in my house now, and you’d better behave.’
I nodded frantically.
He slammed the door shut behind him, and the other kids exhaled with obvious relief.
‘Billy, you okay?’ a tall, skinny boy whispered from where he stood at the next bed to Billy’s.
Billy grabbed his pyjama bottoms and hurriedly pulled them on before clutching his blond head in his hands, his shoulders heaving up and down.
‘Billy?’ the skinny guy said again.
‘Leave me alone!’ Billy got under his thin sheet and blanket and turned on his side, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, still clutching his head.
A boy approached me at the window seat. He was also blond, with huge brown eyes and very long eyelashes. ‘Hi. I’m Dave.’
‘Jamie,’ I said.
‘Where did you come from?’
‘Denby Hall.’
He turned to look at some of the other boys. ‘Oi, come over here and meet Jamie.’
I was introduced to the others. The skinny boy who’d asked Billy if he was okay was called Trevor. The other boy with a mop of curly light brown hair was called Sean.
‘What’s this place like?’ I asked.
Sean didn’t answer. Instead he asked a question of his own. ‘Are your mum and dad still alive? You got any family?’
‘No,’ I replied and noticed a furtive glance pass between them.
‘They’re worse to the ones with no family left. They know there’s no one we can complain to,’ Dave said.
‘Who was that man?’ I asked.
‘Mr Scholes. He’s the deputy here. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of him or Barker. They’re nasty,’ Dave said.
The others agreed.
Some more boys filed in and got changed, then a bell rang.
‘It’s dinner time,’ Trevor said to me. ‘Well, they call it dinner, but it’s disgusting.’
They headed out of the room, and I went with them. In the refectory, I followed what they did, taking a plate from a hatch at the end of the room and holding it out to the cook, a sour-faced man with a tattoo of an eagle on his forearm. He dished some sort of stew onto it, and I took a seat in between Dave and Trevor at one of the long tables. Sean sat opposite. I stared at the watery brown mess on my plate. Potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and some kind of gristly-looking meat on the bone floating around.
‘If you don’t eat it, they’ll just serve it back to you for breakfast,’ Dave whispered.
I picked up a fork and started eating, trying to chew the gristle and swallow it without breathing. Scholes came in and wandered up and down the tables, his hands clasped behind his back, watching us with those cold eyes.
I kept my head down. I heard a clatter of something hitting the wooden floor, and Scholes strode towards Sean, who’d dropped his fork.
‘Pick it up!’ Scholes yelled.
Sean bent down quickly and retrieved the fork. ‘Sorry, sir.’
‘If you want to eat off the floor, that can be arranged.’ Scholes tipped Sean’s dinner onto the floor and pointed at it. ‘Go on.’ He sneered.
Sean looked at the food. He looked back at Scholes, his eyes wide and blinking.
‘I’m not going to tell you again!’
Sean picked up a chunk of potato and put it in his mouth, grimacing.
‘Not with your hands. Lick it up!’
I looked back down at my plate and concentrated hard on swallowing my own food. A little while later I risked another glance at Sean, who was being made to lick the floor like a dog.
‘What are you looking at?’ Scholes said to me. ‘Do you want some of this, too?’
‘No, sir.’ I averted my gaze, shovelling food in my mouth before he could throw it on the floor.
He made Sean eat up every dirty scrap and then told him to get a mop and bucket and clean it up. The rest of us were ordered outside into the grounds for our free time. I stayed with Trevor and Dave, who filled me in on the rules of the place. No talking, no laughing, no running, no answering back. Try not to be left alone at any time. Try not to draw attention to yourself.
After free time, another bell rang, and it was bedtime. I got undressed and placed my clothes on the chair next to my bed. A pair o
f tatty, thin pyjamas were underneath my pillow, and I quickly stripped and put them on before cleaning my teeth under the watchful eyes of Barker. We were then ordered to bed.
‘No talking and go straight to sleep,’ Barker said before turning off the lights and closing the door.
I lay there, my stomach churning with anxiety, freezing cold. I listened to the soft snores of others, the creak of the metal beds as people turned in their sleep, unable to escape my worries and sink into oblivion. It must’ve been hours later when I heard the door open. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I saw a figure creep across the room. It was Scholes. I kept my eyes partially closed, watching through my lashes to make it seem as if I was asleep.
He crept over to one of the beds across from me and put a hand over the mouth of one of the boys I’d met briefly, pressing the boy’s head into the pillow with his elbow. I heard a muffled sob as the boy was pulled out of bed and dragged across the floor, his heels scuffing against the wooden boards. And then they were gone.
The next morning, the bed was empty. I never saw the boy again.
MAYA
Chapter 5
It took all my strength to get through the seconds. Somehow they merged into minutes and hours and days. Life was going on around me—birds singing, neighbours leaving their houses, dogs barking, but I was frozen inside. I wandered the house late at night, never settling in one place, picking up Jamie’s things or reminders of our time together. Things we’d bought each other. Snippets of our life flashing into my head, all stabbing reminders that our home was now filled with torturous silence where once there was fun and laughter.
Alcohol became my friend and my tormenter. I drank to numb the agony, to sleep, to make the world go away. But then it would rip me restlessly from slumber a few hours later with a sinking sensation, and the raw pain hit me as he disappeared from my life all over again.
Jamie was gone. Forever.
The phone rang, but I couldn’t answer it. People left messages I couldn’t bear to listen to. Ava offered for me to stay with her, but I wanted to be here, close to him. I wore his clothes, used his deodorant and aftershave and toothbrush, as if somehow that could bring him back to life. Soon I would no longer be able to smell him or sense his presence, and I wanted to grasp on to it for as long as I could. Instead, Ava would spend hours at my house. Jamie’s house. Trying to get me to eat, to sleep, to talk.
After Ava had left one afternoon for a health visitor’s appointment for Jackson, the house was silent once more. I was alone again. I’d have to get used to being alone now.
The phone rang. I waited until it had finished before picking up. An automated female voice told me I had fifty-seven messages. I deleted all of them, then my fingers hovered over the numbers for a while before I called my parents.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ I told Mum hoarsely when she picked up.
She let out a cross between a wail and a gasp. ‘Oh, love, I’m so sorry. It’s the most awful thing. I’ve been calling you. I left messages. How are you bearing up?’
‘I don’t know.’ I sat on the cold floor, my knees hugging into my chest. ‘I…’ My eyes smarted with tears. ‘It’s just really hard. I’m trying to work out how to get through this.’
‘Do you want me to come back? I could stay with you for a bit. I feel so useless being here.’
‘No. It’s okay. I need to be alone at the moment. And besides, Dad needs you.’
‘I could get a friend to come in and check on him. Do him some food and whatnot.’
‘No, really. Don’t worry about me.’
‘How can I not?’
‘Ava’s helping me.’
‘Yes, I know. She’s been keeping me in the loop.’
‘But she’s got enough on her plate with Jackson. Especially since Craig’s not due home for a month.’ Ava’s husband worked away on the oil rigs, one month on, one month off. I’d always admired how Ava coped with that. It was like having a part-time relationship. I would’ve missed Jamie too much if he’d still been in the army. A twinge of irrational jealousy burned inside. Now I’d settle for a part-time relationship over this.
Mum sobbed on the other end of the line. ‘It’s just awful. I can’t believe it. Did you know he was depressed?’
‘He wasn’t depressed,’ I snapped.
‘Oh, love, he must’ve been. What other reason could there be for him ha—doing it?’ She couldn’t say the word. I didn’t want to say it either.
‘He wasn’t,’ I said forcefully, wiping at the tears spilling down my cheeks. ‘I knew him. He was happy. He wasn’t depressed.’
She blew her nose. ‘But we never really know people, do we? We don’t know what goes on in someone else’s head. Some people hide it well.’
‘I just want to know why, Mum. Why did he do it? I keep thinking I should’ve seen it coming. I should’ve seen something. Some clue. But there was nothing. We were in love. He had everything to live for.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t think you can second-guess depression. People do desperate things sometimes.’
‘But he wasn’t depressed!’ I shouted, wiping my nose on the cuff of Jamie’s hoodie I wore. ‘Don’t you think I would’ve noticed that?’
‘All right, calm down, love. I know it’s hard to deal with.’ There was another silent pause. ‘When’s the funeral?’
‘In a few days. Ava’s been arranging it for me. I can’t…I couldn’t…’
‘I’ll come back for that.’
‘How are you going to do that? You’re scared of flying, and you can’t drive. And Dad certainly can’t drive at the moment.’ I spat out the words then took a deep breath, running my hand through my hair, feeling guilty. It wasn’t her fault.
She ignored my outburst and said gently, ‘I don’t know. I’ll think of something.’
‘Like what?’
‘I want to be there for you. I feel helpless over here, knowing you’re going through something like this.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s normal to get angry.’
‘It’s not normal for your boyfriend to kill himself, though, is it?’
‘Maybe I’m not saying the right things. It’s difficult to know what to say.’
‘There are no right things to say,’ I said, an overwhelming tiredness sinking into my bones, as if they were going to crumble. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got an appointment with Jamie’s lawyer about his will. I’ll ring you again.’ I hung up before she could say anything else. I felt terrible for being bitter, but I couldn’t control my emotions.
Bundling myself up in my parka, I fumbled with the buttons so hard I ripped one away from the fabric. It fell off and bounced to the floor. I ignored it and headed outside, desperately needing fresh air.
It was a short walk into town to Jamie’s lawyer’s office. My legs were heavy weights, dragging an unwilling body up the hill. The wind whipped my unwashed, greasy hair around my face. It flew into my eyes, making them sting. Or maybe it was the tears again. Ava had offered to go with me, but I’d said no. She was already doing so much for me. I had to get used to doing some things on my own. I had to try to be strong again.
St Peter’s Street was busy with the regular market. Crowds of people browsing or wandering from one stall to the next got in my way, jostling me. I wanted to barge into them. Scream at them for being so inconsiderate. How dare they shop when Jamie was dead! How fucking dare they!
Outside the lawyer’s office, I rested a hand on the brick façade of the building to steady myself. After one final glance back the way I’d come, I stepped inside.
I was led into the office of Graham Dunn, who was younger than I’d thought he’d be, probably only thirty-five, then I wondered why I was even thinking about his age. What the hell did that matter?
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ After shaking my hand, he sat behind his neat desk.
I wanted to laugh. Tell him he didn’t even know Jamie as I did so what was h
e sorry for, but I mumbled the standard ‘Thank you’ instead and wiped my clammy palms on the knees of my jeans.
‘I know this must be very difficult for you, but these matters have to be sorted out.’ He reached for a slim green file without waiting for my response and took out some paperwork. ‘Are you happy for me to read the will to you now?’
Happy? Are you joking? I nodded, balling my hands into fists, biting down hard on my bottom lip.
He recited words, legal jargon that hit me like a scalpel drawing blood. Executor. Probate. Deceased. Bequeathed. At the end he summarised everything for me, nice and neatly.
‘So, basically, Jamie left you his house, which was mortgage-free, along with all his possessions, including the contents of his bank accounts. Everything seems pretty straightforward. It shouldn’t be too lengthy to sort matters out. I’ve prepared a letter for you stating your legal position as next of kin, in case you need this when sorting out any of his affairs. Do you have any questions for me?’
I couldn’t think straight. Too many things were going round in my head. Too many emotions threatening to drown me. Jamie had had the will drawn up six months ago, around the time I’d moved in with him. Had he known then that he was going to kill himself? Had he thought being so organised about it would make things ‘straightforward’ for me? And if he had, why had he ever suggested us living together?
I stuffed the letter in my bag, thanked him for his time, and he said he’d be in touch in due course. Back on the street, I found that the crowds had increased. Someone’s shoulder bumped into me as I pushed my way through, making me trip. I stumbled forwards, falling to my knees with a bang. A searing pain shot through my kneecaps. My eyes watered.
‘Hey, are you all right, love?’ An elderly man perusing the stall next to where I landed helped me up by my elbow.
I blinked back tears and looked down at my scuffed jeans. ‘I’m fine. Thanks,’ I said, torn between wanting to cry and scream.
I hurried off down the road and was almost at the end of St Peter’s Street when I saw him.
He was tall, with sandy hair, that familiar width to his shoulders through the jacket he wore. Swimmer’s shoulders.
