Blood Ties

by Sophie McKenzie

  ‘Do not raise your voice at me!’ Mum shrieked.

  We glared at each other. Then Mum took a wine glass out of the cupboard above her head and set it on the counter. ‘I’m getting a migraine,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’

  ‘Right.’ I rolled my eyes. Mum was always getting migraines.

  Mum slammed her hand down on the counter next to the wine glass. ‘That’s enough, Theodore. There’s clearly only one punishment that you’re going to take seriously. From now on Roy comes into school with you and waits outside the classroom during every lesson.’

  ‘No,’ I gasped. No way could I handle Roy following me everywhere I went at school. I’d have even less freedom than I had now.

  ‘You can’t do that, Mum.’

  Mum’s lips narrowed into a line. ‘Watch me,’ she said. ‘I’m going to speak to school tomorrow morning and insist.’

  Fury surged up from the depths of my being. Less than an hour ago I’d climbed a huge tree, scaled a glass-strewn wall and risked a massive jump onto the ground. I’d been powerful. Unbeatable. Invincible.

  ‘No!’ I yelled. I strode right up to Mum so my face was centimetres from hers. ‘NO.’

  Mum started. And for a moment, for one tiny moment, I saw fear in her eyes.

  The feeling of power I’d had earlier on, climbing the tree, flooded back. ‘I don’t need Roy. I can look after myself,’ I yelled. ‘You’re just imagining there’s a threat.’

  ‘No,’ Mum gasped. ‘No, Theodore. I’m not.’

  I suddenly saw how badly she needed me to believe what she was saying. I drew myself up. I was powerful. I could do whatever I liked, whenever, wherever and however I wanted.

  I turned and strode out of the room. I ran up to my room, went straight to my desk and took out the fifty quid I’d saved up. I tore off my school jacket and tie and grabbed a jumper from a pile of clothes on the floor. I headed to the door as Mum appeared in the doorway.

  She put her arm out. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Leaving.’ I pushed the arm out of my way, then raced down the stairs, my heart pounding.

  ‘No. Theodore.’ I could hear the panic rising in Mum’s voice. Then she yelled out: ‘ROY.’

  He shot out into the hall so quickly that I knew he must have been listening. This made me even more furious. How dare he be here. How dare he interfere in my life.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ I yelled.

  Roy shook his head.

  I barged past him. He blocked me with his shoulder. I ducked, tried to dart round his other side.

  He grabbed my arm and pushed me back. ‘You sodding little brat.’

  Something snapped inside my head, like a firework exploding. Before I could even think, my hand was a fist and my fist was driving forward, hard, into Roy’s face.

  Contact. My hand stung. My whole arm jarred with the pain of it. Roy staggered backwards, clutching his jaw. His eyes widened. And then he grabbed me round my throat and pinned me against the wall.

  Blood pounded in my ears. All I could see was Roy’s furious face. All I could hear was my own voice, spitting out swearwords.

  And then, dimly, I became aware of Mum shouting beside us.

  ‘Stop it, stop it.’

  Roy let go of my throat. He stepped back, panting. Mum moved across and whispered furiously in his ear.

  I bent over, my breath all jagged. My hands were shaking. A door slammed. I looked up. Roy had disappeared back into his own room.

  Mum stared at me. Again, I could see the fear in her eyes.

  I took a step to the front door. The powerful feeling surged through me. Nothing could stop me leaving now. Not Mum. Not Roy.

  Nothing.

  I reached out for the door handle. Twisted it. Pulled open the door. I looked over my shoulder. ‘Bye, Mum.’

  ‘Please, Theodore.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

  When I was younger this would’ve really got to me. Back then all I wanted was to look after her. To do what my dad would’ve done if he’d been alive. But now . . . now I was sick of her trying to manipulate me.

  I turned back to the front door. I had a bit of money. Enough to find somewhere to sleep tonight. I’d go into town. Get a job.

  I took a step outside.

  ‘Please.’

  Something in Mum’s voice made me look round again. Tears were streaming down her face. For the first time since I’d got home doubt crept into my mind. And guilt.

  I didn’t want to hurt her. If I was honest, I didn’t want to go away either.

  All I wanted was the truth.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Just tell me why I need a bodyguard.’

  There was a long pause. Right up until that moment I thought she was making it up. That me needing a bodyguard was based on some stupid imaginary fear of hers that came out of the same place as her endless migraines.

  Then she nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Come inside and sit down. I’ll tell you everything I can.’

  4

  Rachel

  GODDESS STILL SAFE IN HEAVEN. RICHARD.

  I had to read the text twice before I took it in. I’d been so sure it was going to be some toxic message from Jemima that it took a full minute before I realised it wasn’t. I checked the caller I.D. – a number I didn’t recognise. So, no one on my contact list.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Just some random message. A wrong number. Nothing that made any sense.

  I almost skipped down to my piano lesson.

  The lesson itself wasn’t too bad. My fingers wouldn’t move like they’re supposed to, and the more they wouldn’t move, the more embarrassed I got. Still, Miss Vykovski was really nice and we ended up having a laugh. So I was in a good mood when Mum called me for supper. Mum likes it when we eat together, though Dad doesn’t often get home in time. He manages a cosmetic surgery clinic in central London. I reckon that’s why Mum married him, to be honest, so he could get her free treatments.

  ‘Richard!’ Mum yelled up the stairs as I scurried past her to the dining room. ‘Richard. It’s on the table!’

  I stopped, a spoonful of salad leaves midway between the bowl and my plate. Richard. My dad had the same name as on the text. It hadn’t occurred to me the message could be from him. No, that didn’t make sense – we’d been speaking just seconds before I received it. Anyway, why would my dad send me some weird text about goddesses in heaven? The name had to be a coincidence. Plus, surely he’d sign off Dad. Which also proved the message couldn’t be from him – his number is logged on my mobile under Dad. So, if he’d called me, that name would have shown up.

  Still.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ I said as he sat down. ‘I just got this weird text.’

  ‘Mmmn,’ Dad said, helping himself to a slice of chicken breast. ‘Nothing X-rated, I hope.’

  ‘Just weird,’ I said. ‘It—’

  ‘How was piano, sweetie?’ Mum bustled in, a bowl of potato salad in her hand.

  ‘Fine.’ I reached for the potatoes.

  Mum gave a little cough. ‘Are you sure you want to do that, sweetie?’

  I stared up at her blankly.

  ‘Carbs weigh very heavy on the stomach overnight,’ she smiled. ‘I’m just saying.’

  My mind flashed back to Jemima’s comment about my double-satellite-dish bum. I swallowed, torn between knowing Mum was right and really, really wanting the food.

  ‘Oh, let her eat a sodding potato.’ Dad rolled his eyes at me and grinned.

  ‘I’m not stopping her,’ Mum snapped. She set the bowl down on the table. ‘I’m just pointing out the consequences.’

  The consequences: being fat. Being ugly.

  This was about Rebecca too. That was what Mum was really saying. Rebecca didn’t eat too much potato salad. Ever. She had a marvellous figure, sweetie.

  I gritted my teeth and hauled as many potatoes as I could onto my plate.

  ‘So tell me about that text, Ro?’ I could hear the kindness in Dad’s voice.
It just made me feel worse.

  I shook my head and stuffed a potato into my mouth.

  Dad sighed, then started chatting to Mum about his day. Dad does that a lot – acts like a big cushion protecting me from Mum. I kept my head down, shovelling in one potato after another. After a couple of minutes I stopped. Now I’d made myself even fatter. I felt so miserable that, for a second, I seriously thought about going upstairs and making myself sick. Some of the girls at school have done that. Cassie Jones swears by it. Eat what you like then just chuck it up before it makes you fat.

  She calls it: Having your cake and hurling it.

  Cassie Jones is stupid though. I know that making yourself sick over and over is a majorly bad idea. It’s bad for your body, bad for your heart, bad for your teeth even.

  It’s bad for your head, too.

  And my head’s screwed up enough as it is.

  Anyway, I hate how it feels when you vomit. Maybe that’s the real truth. I’m just too scared to stick two fingers down my throat and feel that acid burn up into my mouth. Ugh.

  ‘Ro?’ Dad’s voice was insistent. ‘Ro, earth to Ro!’

  I jerked back into the real world. Mum had vanished into the kitchen. Dad was smiling at me.

  I tried to smile back. Dad doesn’t realise I know it, but he calls me Ro when he’s trying to make me feel better about something. Trouble is, I’m sure that’s what he used to call Rebecca, too.

  ‘Hey, Ro,’ he said. ‘You were saying something before Mum came in?’

  ‘It wasn’t anything major,’ I said. ‘Just a text. A wrong number. It said something about a goddess being in heaven. From some guy with the same name as you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dad paused for just a second too long. ‘Well, that is weird,’ he said.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘What?’ He smiled at me, but his eyes were all wary.

  Mum bustled back in. ‘Homework, Rachel, sweetie.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got loads of paperwork to check over.’ Dad stood up so abruptly he knocked his chair and had to steady it to stop it from falling over.

  He left. I helped Mum carry the plates and stuff out to the kitchen. She was chattering away about her tennis again, but I wasn’t listening.

  Why had Dad acted strange like that? Was I being paranoid or had he practically run away from me just then?

  A few minutes later he was back, holding a bundle of papers, completely normal again. ‘Hey, Ro?’ He kissed my forehead. ‘Give us a shout if you need any help with your homework.’

  He wandered through to the living room and switched on the T V.

  I trudged upstairs. Back in my room I pulled out my phone.

  Dad knew something about the message, I was sure. But if he’d sent it to me by mistake, why not just say so?

  My heart beat faster. Was I imagining this whole thing? Before I could think about it any more, I pulled my mobile out of my pocket and scrolled through to the last logged message. I clicked on the number and pressed call.

  I wandered out to the landing. Dad was downstairs, through two open doors. If his phone rang I was sure I’d hear it from here.

  Nothing.

  I turned to go back into my room. And then I caught it. A faint, muffled ringtone.

  It was coming from across the landing.

  From Dad’s study.

  5

  Theo

  It took Mum several glasses of wine to get going. But when she did, I felt like asking for a glass myself.

  ‘There are people who . . .’ She hesitated. ‘. . . People who might harm you.’

  ‘Why?’ I frowned. I’d heard all this before and it didn’t make sense. ‘What people? Why would anyone want to harm me?’

  Mum took a deep breath. ‘People from a long time ago. From when you were born.’

  ‘Is it to do with Dad?’ I stared at her. I didn’t know much about my dad. Just that he’d been a soldier. Killed abroad before I was born. Before he and Mum had even known each other that long. I knew his name – James Lawson. In fact, I’d often wished I was called Lawson, instead of Mum’s name, ‘Glassman’. And I had a photograph. Nothing else. Mum said he had no family.

  Mum nodded. ‘Some of the things I told you about your dad weren’t true.’ She leaned back against the kitchen counter. ‘What things?’ My heart thudded. I don’t know why it mattered so much. It wasn’t like I knew a lot about the guy. Just that he’d been a soldier, killed abroad before I was born. Maybe that was it. Maybe I didn’t want to have what little I did know taken away from me.

  ‘He was a soldier, but not in any conventional army. He was a scientist. A geneticist.’ Mum looked down at the floor.

  I stared at her. Not a soldier? All my life I’d pictured him in some British Army camouflage uniform. With a gun and a determined face.

  A hero.

  And now the hero was a man in a lab, wearing a white coat.

  ‘A scientist?’ My voice sounded hollow and small.

  ‘A geneticist,’ Mum repeated. ‘He worked for a fertility clinic, researching ways of manipulating genes so that people who wanted children and who couldn’t have them were able to. He saw himself as a soldier. Fighting bigots who thought his work was unethical. Immoral.’

  ‘What’s so bad about helping people to have kids?’

  ‘Some people just think it’s wrong. Especially when it involves messing about with embryos outside the womb and people’s genes and stuff.’

  ‘Okay . . . but . . . but you said he was shot abroad, being a soldier.’

  Mum touched my arm. ‘He was,’ she said, softly. ‘He knew people were after him and his colleagues, but he didn’t take the threats seriously until you came along. Then he got worried. He tried to hide you, tried to organise security . . . but the clinic he worked at was firebombed a couple of weeks after you were born. That changed everything. He was listed as dead, but he got away. Then . . .’ She looked away, her voice all shaky. ‘Then, later, they found him . . . people from this organisation. It’s those people who . . . who would take you . . . hurt you, if they found you.’ She poured herself another glass of wine. Her hand was trembling so much some of the wine splashed onto the counter.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered. There were so many things I didn’t understand it was hard to know where to begin.

  Mum picked up her glass and drew me across the kitchen and onto the couch. I sat down, trying to absorb what she was saying. My dad had been a scientist. Some organisation had killed him because they thought his work was immoral.

  ‘But why would the people who hated Dad want to hurt me?’

  ‘Because you’re your father’s weak point. His only family. The one way people can get to him.’

  ‘Get to him?’ I frowned. With a sick feeling I wondered if she was actually mentally ill. You know, suffering from paranoid delusions or something. ‘How can anyone “get” to him now? He’s dead.’

  Mum just sat there, looking into my eyes. And slowly the truth dawned on me.

  She nodded. ‘That’s right, Theodore. Your dad’s alive. In hiding still, but very, very much alive.’

  6

  Rachel

  I opened Dad’s study door. The muffled ringing grew louder. I looked round the room. The sound was coming from Dad’s desk in the corner of the room.

  I walked over, my heart racing.

  The ringing stopped as I reached the filing drawers under the desk. I reached for my phone and dialled the number again.

  Ring, ring. The sound started again.

  I sank to the floor in front of the drawers. They were shut. Locked. The message had come from Dad. From a phone he kept hidden in a filing cabinet.

  ‘Rachel?’

  I spun round.

  Dad was standing in the doorway, a look of guilty confusion on his face.

  We stared at each other for a second. The ringing stopped again. Silence filled the room.

  ‘That message,’ he said. ‘The one on your phone. It wasn’t for you.’


  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Dad sighed. He rubbed his chin. ‘I sent a text to you by mistake, that’s all. It was a work thing. Nothing mysterious.’

  I scrambled to my feet. ‘What have goddesses in heaven got to do with your work? And why do you have a separate phone, anyway?’

  ‘I told you, it’s work. It’s a work phone.’ Dad’s face was red. ‘The message was just code for something. A work thing. Honest, Ro.’

  He was lying. I was sure of it.

  ‘Right.’ I didn’t know what to do. ‘Fine.’

  I walked out and went to my room. Dad started to follow me, but then must have thought better of it. He went downstairs. I lay on my bed, thinking. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe it was just some work project after all, some coded message he’d texted me by mistake – though why, I couldn’t imagine. Dad works in the cosmetic surgery business. It’s not exactly MI5. But he’d still lied to me before, when he pretended not to recognise the message he’d sent.

  I turned over and buried my face in my pillow. Mum was one thing, but I couldn’t handle it if Dad was going to start being weird with me too.

  I pushed down the sob that rose up from my chest. I wouldn’t think about it, that was all. I’d pretend it had never happened.

  It was only a stupid text anyway.

  Meaningless.

  7

  Theo

  I was tired the next morning. I’d hardly slept, my mind full of what Mum had told me. Trying to take it in.

  My dad was still alive.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  About him.

  I got out the picture of him Mum had given me years ago. I’d looked at it so often the edges were curling and the colour faded. I stared at the smiling face, the dark blue eyes, the dimpled chin. Not for the first time I wished I looked more like him. James Lawson – a scientist, not a soldier.

  Well, that kind of made sense. I’d always liked science, especially when we did experiments. Maybe I was more like him than I’d thought. And my dad was no ordinary scientist . . . even if he wasn’t a proper soldier, he was still brave. A hunted man.