Blood Family

by Anne Fine

  ‘But you can surely slip away and read?’

  ‘There’s not much slipping away.’ She puffed her cheeks out childishly, as if simply remembering had sent her back in time. ‘And every time people in my school left a book somewhere, either it vanished or some grim teacher made a scene.’

  ‘A scene? About a book? In a school?’

  ‘Oh, not about your reading it. About it being there. You know.’ She launched into an imitation of some fusspot teacher. ‘“Whose is this book, Marie? Who left this on the windowsill? Hermione, is it yours? Have you just left it lying about for someone else to pick up? No? Then, Clarissa! Was it you who left it here?” ’

  ‘It sounds quite horrible.’

  ‘I’m sure that things are far, far better now. But back in my day you were kept so busy that the only time you had to read was in the dorm before lights out.’ She scowled. ‘And even then somebody else had probably borrowed your hair.’

  ‘Borrowed your hair?’

  ‘To practise plaiting. So it was hard to keep your eyes steady on the words.’ She smiled at me. ‘I’d never have been able to even try to read that smelly book with tiny print that you’re forever stuck in.’

  ‘The Devil Ruled the Roost?’

  ‘It would have been impossible to even start.’

  ‘Except in holidays.’

  She gave a hollow laugh. And I had heard enough about the way Natasha’s school breaks had turned into running battles between her warring parents and their second families, to guess that escaping into books had not been easy then. Alice had confidently claimed that was the reason why Natasha wanted us – so she could have a second stab at living in a peaceful family.

  So maybe I can’t blame her for never noticing my drifting ways, my times of quite unnatural reverie, the hours I spent locked away.

  Or all the money vanishing from her purse and Nicholas’s wallet. ‘Don’t trouble Trouble till he troubles you,’ she always said. And after all, I was no longer wandering around the house at night. I slept much better and was worrying less. All that I had to do to calm myself was count the hours till I heard one or another of the family come out with what I had begun to equate with buzzers signalling the end of the school day. ‘I’m really bushed. I think I’m turning in now.’ Sometimes I did catch Alice watching with a quizzical look. But she was busy now – falling in love with boy after boy in headlong fashion, all of them somehow staying friends and rushing off whenever possible in some merry, ever-changing group that Nicholas began to call ‘Alice’s flock’.

  Alice

  He only ever dared to steal from me once. He slid a single note out of the money clip I kept in my desk drawer. I suppose he hoped I hadn’t counted it.

  Well, he was out of luck.

  I went downstairs to Nicholas’s office and took a couple of squares of plain white card. I cut out arrows – twenty-five of them. Then I went into Eddie’s room and took down one of the photos that Natasha had framed of Eddie looking thoughtful in the garden.

  I hung a mirror on the hook instead.

  I laid down arrows in a trail across the floor from the door, then stuck a few more running up the wall, to reach the mirror.

  Above the mirror I stuck another arrow, pointing down. I wrote in tiny print, so he would have to go up close to read it:

  Face of a thief.

  Not only did it work, it shook him up so much that he said sorry. It was quite obvious that he’d been crying.

  I felt so mean – using a mirror to torment poor Eddie with his own face. I know that I cried too. And then the two of us made up.

  Eddie

  That summer, Justin’s brother lost his usual source. ‘Try these instead.’

  ‘No thanks. I’ll stick with the reds.’

  Troy scowled. ‘You’ll have to find them somewhere else. I’ve not got any more.’

  Weakly I took the twist of paper he was offering me. ‘Same price?’

  ‘You’re lucky, Eddie. Even cheaper, these.’

  But I threw most of them away. I tried them only twice. Both times the dreams I had were vivid. Terrifying. Worse, they were unforgettable. I’d rather have had Harris haunting me than those vile crawling things that made their stinking home inside my brain. I swear that I could actually smell them.

  They wouldn’t go, not even when I forced myself to stay awake till morning.

  ‘God, Edward! You look terrible! You’re trembling, even. What on earth’s the matter?’

  Natasha took my wrist. ‘My Christ, your pulse is racing. And you’re thick with sweat. Quick, back to bed at once.’

  No thanks! Another vigil like the one I’d barely left behind? Those vicious voices with their grisly whispered threats? That feeling in my lungs that every bodily cell was being squeezed by devils, starving me of air, and I was going to choke? No, thanks!

  ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ll call the doctor.’

  ‘No!’

  And I was lucky. Natasha was in a hurry to leave for work. She left a note for Nicholas, who was already in his office, still in his dressing gown but busy on a call – something to do with vandalism overnight at one of his sites. The moment Natasha left the house with Alice, I snatched up the note. N – call surgery for E. Tell them important. She’d underlined that last word twice. I crumpled it into my pocket, and dropped on the sofa. Linda’s slow breathing trick took time to work. But it was a long phone call, and by the time that Nicholas came through to make his coffee, I had left the house.

  Everyone knew where to get those bright cans with even brighter names. Just half a mile away there was a shop run by a half-blind, worried-looking Sri Lankan woman. The secret was to count your coins, take off the tell-tale school jacket and stuff it out of sight inside your bag. You went into the shop and hung about till she was busy with another customer. Then you snatched up the cans you wanted and rushed across to dump your money on the counter just in front of her. You’d flash the stolen proof-of-age card in her face and use your gruffest voice to mutter, ‘That money is exactly right. Sorry, here comes my bus,’ as you were hurrying out.

  I’d done it! I had bought the card from Cerys months ago, mostly for form’s sake, just like everybody else. But up until I made it around the corner, safe, I’d never truly thought that anyone in my school year could get away with it.

  And yet I had. I doubled back along the alley, then over to the park, to the old bandstand. Slipping beneath the pock-marked Keep Out barrier, I picked my way up the five rotting steps.

  And I was lucky. There were no tramps in there sleeping it off. No other truants hiding from nosy adults. I settled back against the mildewed panelling and drew my legs in tight to keep them out of sight of anyone strolling by.

  Three silver cans, each claiming more than two units of alcohol, four hundred calories, a load of grams of sugar, citric acid, sodium saccharin and God knows what else. I slugged them back in no time, proud to have thought of such a sensible way to calm my racing pulse and frayed nerves. There’d be no more red pills. Or blueys. No more pills at all. No. I was done with drugs that made my thoughts no longer mine, my nights a living terror, my dreams so painfully vivid that splinters of them had the strength to haunt me over and over, even in company, even in daylight.

  I sat there for a good half-hour or so. And then I scrambled to my feet, brushed the damp grime off my grey trousers and I went to school.

  That’s how it started – cheerfully enough. I was so busy telling myself how smart I was to pack in downing all Troy’s offerings, I never thought to look ahead. I felt much safer with drink. I found it warming. It took the edge off worries, and I could concentrate enough in school. (Everyone was dead pleased that I passed my exams so well and was accepted into first year sixth.) I even found it easier to make friends – and not just with the boys who used their elder brothers’ proof-of-age cards to buy alcohol that they’d sell on to me.

  With girls as well.

  Alice began reporting
back. ‘Melissa says her sister fancies you.’

  ‘The one in Mr Goldman’s class? With the fair hair? Really?’

  ‘Yes, I was astonished too.’

  I gave her an affectionate punch. ‘Seriously, though? Does she?’

  ‘She told Melissa that she thinks you’re sweet.’

  ‘Sweet?’

  ‘Yes.’ Alice grinned. ‘She doesn’t know you very well, does she? I told Melissa I’d be more than happy to point out your many flaws.’

  ‘Thanks, Alice!’

  But she and I were getting on better and better. Whenever Alice wasn’t busy with the flock, she worked hard. She had set her sights on university, and since two of her subjects were the hardest ones – physics and maths – her homework often took her hours.

  That’s why she had begun to skip coming along on visits to my mother.

  To start with, I cashed in on this, making excuses when Nicholas raised the topic. ‘Alice says that she’s pushed for time. We thought we’d make it next weekend instead.’

  ‘You said that last week. And the week before.’

  I shrugged. ‘Oh, well. Lucy won’t notice.’

  ‘Edward, there’s more than one reason to visit a vulnerable person. One of the things that keeps care workers up to scratch is knowing that their clients have people who come often enough to notice if there’s something wrong.’

  Now I was getting ratty. ‘You’re telling me it’s my job to look after her? She didn’t look after me! And now I’m old enough, I don’t have to go at all.’

  ‘All that I’m saying is that you should give the matter some thought before you just stop going.’

  ‘I told you. Alice and I will go next week.’

  And yet we didn’t. Not that week, nor the week after. The Sunday after that, Nicholas pulled the old trick. ‘Edward, I’m visiting a site quite near to Lucy’s place this afternoon. I thought of dropping in. It’s up to you whether you come or not. But I’ll be leaving here straight after lunch.’

  ‘This is the last time,’ I remember muttering to myself as I got in the car. It seemed too childish to sulk the way I usually did when I felt people were pushing me around. But I was smarting.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ asked Nicholas, dropping all pretence of wanting to see Lucy himself. ‘Come to the site with me, then call in together afterwards? Or be dropped off and picked up?’

  ‘Dropped off and picked up.’

  Nicholas tried to console me. ‘Good plan. We’ll get home quicker that way.’ He didn’t know that I had no intention of going in. I’d tucked a book into the bag beside the cake he’d taken from the freezer, and I intended to find some quiet place to sit and read until I saw his car draw up again.

  ‘About an hour, then?’ were Nicholas’s last words.

  I nodded, making a show of setting off unwillingly up the short driveway. I waited till he’d driven off, then slipped across the lawn into the narrow shrubbery and round to the garden at the back. There was a clump of laurels behind the table where the residents ate on warmer days. That’s where I went. I knew the sun wouldn’t reach me, but I could stay reading in there until I had to head back to the gate. And I’d be out of the breeze.

  Better than going inside and having to meet them all.

  Except they suddenly came out. I heard the back door scrape, and then their voices as they trooped across the lawn. One of the minders must have been herding them because, before I could sneak off, the first two or three had taken seats around the wooden table. There was a bit of fussing till someone who was claiming that he was ‘allergic’ got a place out of the sun, and someone else had swapped her wobbly chair for something better.

  But then they started on some sort of lesson. Or maybe it was therapy. How should I know? All I could hear was each of them being encouraged to sing some song they knew, some song that brought back happy memories.

  I’m used to Nicholas’s music pounding through the house for hours on end, so I just blocked my ears. Each time I turned a page I caught a snatch of song or conversation. One of the men had a deep, rasping voice, and sang a sad soft ballad I actually knew and liked about someone going away with no word of farewell. But most of the songs and the singers were rubbish, and I kept reading.

  Then, even as I had my fingers pressed in place, something got through.

  The first I realized was that I had somehow, without even noticing, shifted myself into a sitting position and was rocking back and forth. The print that I was reading had blurred to nothing. I felt very strange.

  I took my fingers out of my ears. For just a moment I didn’t recognize the tune. Then came the chorus.

  ‘Happy days, and happy ways

  I hope you know how glad I am

  To see you here with me today

  We’re going to have great fun.’

  My mother’s voice. Thin, reedy and uncertain. Not how she used to sing it along with me and Mr Perkins.

  But still, her voice.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ said the minder. ‘That’s very cheerful. Is there any more?’

  There was, of course. Already it was ringing in my head, the verse about making, not breaking, and sharing a dream. But clearly that was long gone from my mother’s brain because, almost at once, someone else muscled in. ‘If Lucy’s finished, then it’s my turn now.’

  I don’t remember any more. I know I forced myself back through the laurels till I reached the fence, then worked my way around. I left the cake at the side door and hurried to the street.

  When Nicholas showed up, he was appalled. ‘What on earth’s happened to you? You look all red and lumpy!’

  I shrugged. ‘Just nettle stings.’

  ‘Nettle stings. On your face? But how?’ He peered at me more closely. ‘Edward? Have you been crying?’

  There wasn’t any point denying it. I’d barely stopped.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ He pulled me in the car. ‘God, I am sorry! We’ve been brutes, pushing you into this. But if this is the way it’s going to get you, maybe you’re right. It’s time to take a break from seeing Lucy.’

  I started crying again, of course, when he said that. I was in such a mess. I didn’t want to see my mother. But I did. The thing is that I didn’t want to see my mother like that. All stupid. Not my mother. Not even able to sing a simple song she’d heard a million times. My favourite song for years. (Pretty well the only one I knew back in those days, of course, but that was not the point.) I didn’t want to come and spend a boring, hateful hour with this dumb Lucy who was nothing to do with me because the punch bag Harris made of her was not my mother.

  What I wanted was my mum. My first mum, who had known the song, the whole song, and who sang it properly.

  They couldn’t do a thing with me. I cried for hours. I think that Nicholas even tried to get in touch with Rob at one point, but there was no reply. He’d been retired for months in any case. And what would he have known? In the end, I so wanted them to go away, I forced myself to stop my sobbing and pretend I’d fallen asleep. Natasha slid a fresh, dry pillow under my head, and once she’d sat for a while, trying to make sure that I wasn’t faking, she finally went back to Nicholas, who’d taken the first shift then gone to bed.

  As soon as I was sure that they were both asleep, I crept downstairs.

  Gin doesn’t only come in silver cans, as something bright and fizzy. You can slug it back from bottles too. I’ve no idea how much I drank that night. I know I had a good few inches, mixed with orange from the fridge. And then I poured some more into a mug and took that back upstairs. I drank the lot – so much I was surprised I wasn’t sick as well as dizzy.

  Then I fell asleep.

  That’s how it started getting out of hand.

  Alice

  I blame myself. I should have realized. You see, I’m not like Eddie. I can take or leave it. I got in with that crowd. Some of them dropped tabs. Some of them drank a bit. A few did both. And quite a lot did neither.

  I had a lot of fu
n. It never occurred to me that I was giving Eddie something that would steer him off the path the way it did. I had no problem myself. I spent a few months acting a bit wild, and then I saw that telly programme. There was that girl in her third year of university and I just wanted to be her.

  I started working. That was that. I still went out some nights, but I knew what I wanted more than getting wasted, and I made a space for it.

  People like Eddie – well, they’re not like that.

  Eddie

  The thing is, you don’t notice. It happens gradually, the fact that so much of your energy is going into getting drink, then trying to disguise from everyone the fact you’ve drunk it. There is Natasha, telling you about some major accident she’s driven past, with blue lights flashing, helicopters overhead and police cars all over. Only a few weeks ago, you would have been agog, keen to hear every detail, ghoulish questions pouring out of you. ‘Did you see any bodies?’ ‘Do you think that anyone was dead?’

  Now you’re just nodding away and trying to look interested. But all your real attention is on her purse at the end of the table. How much is in it? How long since she took the money out of the machine? Is it safe to assume that she’s lost track by now, and if she digs in there to pay the window cleaner or to buy some aspirin, she won’t be puzzled to find herself more short of cash than she thought. Maybe start counting back. Let’s see. Twenty to Sarah for that extra cleaning. Another forty spent on photographic paper. Alice’s lunch money. But where’s the rest? I know I took three hundred out only two days ago.

  Where has it gone?

  I had to take great care. It took a deal of effort to recall how many notes I’d slid out yesterday and the day before. By then, of course, I’d found far cheaper ways of buying stuff. There was this really ropey shop down by the railway station. You’d walk around a bit to check that all the deadbeats hanging about outside smelled really bad or reeked of alcohol. (The rest were said to be narks.) Then you would sidle in. I’d settled on a brand that was, quite literally, as cheap as chips, with some ferocious-sounding Russian name I never really mastered. (I only had to point.)