by Anne Fine
So, when I overheard that cleaner saying, ‘No need to bother with that one today,’ as he passed Eddie’s room, I panicked.
Eddie was doing nothing in the telly room. I shut the door behind me. ‘I reckon you’re on standby. Want to give me your address?’
There was a little embarrassed pause. Then, ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry, but I’m not going to tell you.’
I gave him a bit of a look.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘Honestly I am. But I want this to last.’
‘But I’ll be clear too, by the time that I get out.’
You could tell from his face that he’d been warned: Watch out for Tiffany. This isn’t her first visit. (Translation: Probably won’t be her last.)
We get a lecture on Free Will. I’ve heard it three times now. It basically says that there’s a disagreement as to whether human beings make their own choices or not. But Harriet says that anyone who ends up here has more of a problem than other people about this. Habit has got us into one big mess, and we’ll have to use habit to keep us out of it in future.
And that means stopping making certain choices. Instead, you simply follow rules that help you kick the habits you no longer want, and stick to ones you do.
I didn’t argue with him. I just said, ‘I’ll be so bored without you. Can you at least leave me that weird old book of yours?’
Would you believe it? He said no to that.
Eddie
They try to bolster you up before you leave. ‘Remember,’ Dr Ross said. ‘It’s always HALT. It’s HALT for life for you now, Eddie. All day and every day.’
HALT’s one of their catchphrases. It stands for ‘Never get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.’ That’s when you crack and just don’t care about breaking the rules.
It’s hard to kick a habit. Keeping a habit off is even worse. The first night I was home, I thought about drink all the time. They tried to make it easy. When Alice dumped her book bag down on the side cabinet, the door swung open and I saw that they had cleared out every bottle. Only the mixers like the ginger ale were left. If Nicholas still had his gin and tonic every night, he didn’t drink it anywhere near me. And every evening, one or another of them claimed to want me to go with them to see this film, or join them on a walk, or help them clear out the loft or the garage.
Everyone kept me busy. Natasha even hired a private tutor to bring me up to speed before the term began. I rather liked that. I found it soothing, sitting beside fat, comforting Mrs Maurdeff while she droned on about ‘appropriate language for the task’, and ticked me off for writing ‘going off on one’ when I meant ‘losing my temper’. Stuff like that. I was reminded of all those years ago when I sat at the kitchen table with Linda folding her hand round mine to make me hold the pencil right, or pointing to the words in Frog and Toad.
But Alice helped the most. She didn’t know it, and I wasn’t going to tell her. But that idea she’d put into my head all those long months ago became a life-saver. Back then she’d yelled, ‘You act as if you have some beast inside you!’ And she had meant it. That’s why I got so mad.
But it was true. I do have something of Bryce Harris deep inside, just as I have the look of him stamped on my face. He’s my blood family, after all.
So I have learned a different way to use that. Whenever I need another, stronger reason for stopping wanting what I want, I think of him.
I think of him inside me. I even conjure up his voice. He used to roar and threaten way back then, when I was little. But now he’s taken more to wheedling. ‘Go on. You could have just one drink. No one will notice. It won’t set you off. You’ve studied hard all day. You’ve earned it. Just one won’t hurt. I don’t believe you’re telling me you’re never going to have a drink again! Not even one? What sort of life is that?’
And I take my revenge. I answer back. I think of that bit of me that’s come down from him and always will be him. The Beast. (I even call it that.) I like to think of it inside me, desperate to spend the day a different way – in pubs, one drink after another, then staggering home to sprawl among more beer cans.
I even stand in front of mirrors now and look him straight in the face. My face. I practically enjoy tormenting him.
‘Just one,’ I hear him tempt.
‘No, thanks,’ I say. ‘Not having one to suit you.’
(Or, ‘I don’t drink.’ Or, ‘Get your own stuff. I’m not helping you.’)
I like to feel him shrivelling up inside me, longing for alcohol, miserable, bored, aching for me to crack. The beast inside. He has a million reasons why I should buy one little bottle, just in case.
If he keeps on, I tell him, ‘No. This is you wanting to have a drink, not me. And you’re not having it.’
I’ve no idea if the real Harris is alive, or where he is. It matters less and less.
Not that the rest of it gets any easier. It’s just I get more used to dealing with it. I can believe now that I can walk past a supermarket or a corner shop, and not go in. They told us in the clinic that different habits train your brain to go down different paths. They promised us that saying no over and over will gradually shift from being one huge effort that can leave you shaking to being easy.
Almost automatic.
‘No thanks. I don’t.’
I cannot wait for that day. Except, of course, I might miss bullying the beast because I feel I’m sticking up for Mum in standing up to him the way she never could. I’m guessing Harriet was right. Mum’s luck was worse than mine. I’ve got a life ahead. She took one knock too many, and there’s nothing left. I go to visit her, and I amuse myself by telling her about my friends. Poor Lucy can’t keep any of their names straight in her head. She doesn’t even try. She smiles and nods. I smile and nod back, and we talk of cake and colours. And that works.
Natasha asked me if I wanted to invite my mother to the big dinner she arranged at Valentine House the night we celebrated my exam results. (I’d done so well, they made a thing of it.) But I said no. Everyone else came. Linda and Alan. Alice. They even raked up Rob. All people who had helped along the way.
Linda got squiffy and a little tearful towards the end. She said it was a shame that Mr Perkins couldn’t be there too – that he had done the most. She wanted me to sing one of his songs with her. ‘People sing “Happy Birthday” in restaurants,’ she kept on saying. ‘Why shouldn’t we sing “Happy Days”?’
She tried quite hard to wheedle me into it. But I was firm. I didn’t want to go along with the idea. (For all I knew, someone else celebrating in that restaurant might have been going off to study the same course as me.) But I did squeeze her hand the way she used to squeeze mine. And we did hum it quietly together.
I looked across the table and saw Natasha smiling.
She raised her glass to me.
And I raised my glass back.
About the Author
Anne Fine is one of our most distinguished writers for children. She has written over fifty highly acclaimed books and has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and both the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and the Carnegie Medal twice over. Anne was appointed the Children’s Laureate from 2001-3, and her work has been translated into over forty languages. In 2003 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an OBE. Anne lives in County Durham.
Also by Anne Fine
Published by Corgi Books:
The Book Of The Banshee • The Granny Project
On The Summerhouse Steps • The Road Of Bones • Round Behind The Ice House
The Devil Walks • The Stone Menagerie • Up On Cloud Nine
Published by Corgi Yearling Books:
Bad Dreams • Charm School • Frozen Billy
The More The Merrier • Eating Things On Sticks • Trouble in Toadpool
A Shame to Miss . . .
Three Collections Of Poetry
Perfect Poems For Young Readers • Ideal Poems For Middle Readers
Other books by Anne Fine
For junior readers:
The Angel Of Nitshill Road • Anneli The Art-Hater
Bill’s New Frock • The Chicken Gave It To Me • The Country Pancake
Crummy Mummy And Me • Genie, Genie, Genie
How To Write Really Badly • Ivan The Terrible
The Killer Cat’s Birthday Bash • The Killer Cat Runs Away
Loudmouth Louis • A Pack Of Liars • Stories Of Jamie And Angus
For young people:
Flour Babies • Goggle-Eyes • Madame Doubtfire
Step By Wicked Step • The Tulip Touch • Very Different
For adult readers:
All Bones And Lies • Fly In The Ointment • The Killjoy
Raking The Ashes • Taking The Devil’s Advice
Telling Liddy • Our Precious Lulu • In Cold Domain
www.annefine.co.uk
BLOOD FAMILY
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 15785 3
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
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This ebook edition published 2013
Text copyright © Anne Fine, 2013
First published in Great Britain by Doubleday, 2013
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