Being Billy

by Phil Earle

  ‘But that’s not your fault, Bill, to be confused by it all.’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t handle it well, did I? The harder they tried, the harder I pushed back. It was like I had to test their commitment, had to show them that I wasn’t worth it. When they gave me choices about what I wanted to do or eat, I wouldn’t answer, sometimes to test them, but sometimes because I just didn’t know what to say. I’d gone from having no choices at all to too many, and sometimes my head couldn’t keep up.’

  ‘Is that why things broke down with them?’

  I cringed at the thought. If only it had been that simple.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Then what was the problem?’

  I chewed the inside of my cheek, knowing she was pushing me into dangerous territory.

  ‘Come on, Bill, you can tell me. You know that.’

  My body tensed at the suggestion.

  ‘You don’t want to know. Trust me.’

  ‘I do trust you, you idiot. That’s why I spend so much time with you. And let’s face it, it’s not because of your money, is it?’

  I knew what she was trying to do, but raising a smile wasn’t going to make it any easier and in the end, after another painful silence, she went on.

  ‘Look, Bill. I know you’ve told me loads lately, and I really love that you’ve wanted to. I know as well that I haven’t told you much, about me and that. But that’s not because I don’t trust you, it’s just that stuff has happened to me in the past, stuff that I’m still trying to get my head around. What I’m trying to say is that, for a long time, I blamed myself completely for what happened to me. I couldn’t accept that it could be anyone else’s fault but mine. So I bottled it up and wouldn’t talk about it, and that’s when things got worse, believe me.’

  ‘But I did something terrible, Daisy …’

  ‘Listen, there’s nothing you can say that would shock me. Believe me. For a long time I thought I was responsible for my mum and dad dying. Do you hear me, Billy? That it was my fault. And it wasn’t until I took a risk and told someone that I started to even understand that maybe it wasn’t.’

  ‘Jesus, Daisy, I had no idea.’

  ‘Why would you? It’s like with Ronnie, we all have stuff going on, all have things we have to deal with. The important thing is to not push it down or ignore it. You’ve got to deal with it or you’ll never move on, believe me. Whatever it is you did, or think you did, I can handle it. Trust me.’

  ‘I nearly killed him,’ I blurted, before I could stop myself. ‘My foster dad. I tried to kill him.’

  As the words poured out of my mouth, I couldn’t take my eyes off her reaction. I was looking for any emotion, any twitch of the mouth or loss of eye contact that told me I’d gone too far.

  But there was nothing, just the same girl looking me in the eye, as hers glistened.

  ‘What happened? It’s OK. I’m still here, aren’t I?’

  ‘I’d been there about five or six months and it’d been difficult, but I was trying, you know? Every now and then I’d get lairy and key a car or something, but they knew about those things before I moved in. They knew what they were buying into. But I was starting to feel like it was home, that maybe they were happy with me. I had this amazing room … you should’ve seen it. It wasn’t huge or anything, but it had a TV, stereo and the comfiest bed ever. I could sleep properly there and I’ve never done that, not that I can remember, anyway. I used to close my eyes and the next thing I knew, bang, it was morning. It was amazing.’

  ‘Sounds it,’ she replied, her eyes still holding mine.

  ‘The couple were pretty sound as well. Bit stuck in their ways, but decent, you know? Every Wednesday night he’d go out to the pub, him and a couple of mates. Anyway, one night he went out as usual, so me and my foster mum sat in the lounge to watch a film. She’d made us popcorn and given me this huge glass of Coke as well. Don’t know how much of the film I saw, though, because I fell asleep on the settee.’

  I paused for a second or two, unsure of how I could go on without it sounding awful.

  ‘It’s all right, Bill, honest it is. You can tell me.’

  ‘I don’t really know what happened next. I remember some of it, but not very clearly, just kind of images and voices. He must have come home a couple of hours later and found us both asleep. Her in the chair and me on the settee. So he leaned over me and tried to carry me upstairs to bed, and that’s when it happened.’

  ‘What happened, Bill?’

  I couldn’t look her in the eye any longer.

  ‘I went for him, didn’t I? I mean, one minute I was asleep and the next minute there was someone leaning over me, stinking of whisky. I just freaked. Next thing I knew, we were both on the carpet, and I was whacking him again and again with this empty glass. I don’t know how many times I did it, but it must have been a few, because the glass had broken and there was blood everywhere, all over me, all over him. With that, she woke up and pulled me away.’

  I ran my hands through my hair and closed my eyes, terrified by what I’d just said, at how it must have sounded.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it, though, Daisy. I didn’t. I didn’t know it was him. I thought it was …’

  ‘Who?’ she whispered. ‘Who did you think it was?’

  ‘I thought it was Shaun. Mum’s boyfriend. He used to disappear for days at a time. Mum would freak out and hit the sauce, and leave me to fend for myself. Most nights I’d just fall asleep next to her on the settee, and that’s where he’d find me when he finally showed up, full to the brim of whisky.’

  ‘Jesus, Billy. What did he do to you?’

  ‘You know. He’d just take his frustrations out on me. It didn’t always last long, usually because he was too battered, but some nights, when he really had the devil in him, and if he was sober enough to get to his belt, well, it wasn’t so good.’

  Daisy shuffled closer to me and pushed her hands into mine.

  ‘No wonder you reacted like you did. You can see that, can’t you? It wasn’t your fault, Billy.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, though, does it? That was it, game over. I put him in hospital and within two hours the police were shoving all my stuff into bin liners. An hour after that and I was in Ronnie’s car, on my way back home.’

  ‘Did you see them again? The couple, I mean?’

  ‘Oh aye, the scummers organized for us to meet a couple of weeks later. Not at their house, though. I wasn’t allowed anywhere near that. We met at this centre, in this mad room. It was like something out of the loony bin, all soft furniture and rounded edges. Like they were worried I was going to go at them again. They did the whole routine about how it wasn’t working, how it was as much to do with them as me. Bollocks. I wasn’t the one with the caved-in face, was I?’

  ‘And that was it, over?’

  ‘Apart from Christmas and birthday cards, yeah. Not that he sends them. It’s always her. Not that I blame him.’

  ‘No, you just blame yourself.’

  ‘What else can I do, Daisy? I was the one going mental, not him.’

  ‘With good reason, Bill. Listen, you need to talk to someone about this. Someone who can help you with it.’

  ‘What can they do? It happened. It’s too late to change that now.’

  ‘I know it is. But it’s not too late to change how you feel about it. They can put it in perspective for you. Make you see that it’s not your fault.’

  I blew out of my mouth slowly, exhausted by finally letting it all out.

  ‘You know what I want, Daisy? What I want more than anything?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I just want to sleep. Sleep like I did while I lived there, that’s all.’

  She pulled my head on to her shoulder and wrapped her arms around me, squeezing so gently that she must have thought I was going to break.

  CHAPTER 29

 
The last thing I needed was something else to think about, but as I stood outside Jan and Grant’s, I was left with a difficult choice.

  The car was still missing from the driveway and all the lights in the house were off. But where was the tactical light in the hallway?

  I didn’t know what to make of it, and with my head still banging from a combination of minesweeping and my earlier confession to Daisy, I was incapable of making a decision.

  We’d spent the rest of the day together, trawling round town, checking out some DVDs she wanted to buy, just to kill a bit of time until the pubs got busy. I’d wandered after her, trying to concentrate on what she was saying, although my mind was elsewhere.

  Letting Shaun out of my head felt dangerous, like he was watching us from the shadows. It certainly hadn’t helped to talk to Daisy about him. If anything, I felt worse: bruised and raw, anything but calm.

  The trip to the pubs helped, though, and like before Daisy was in top minesweeping form. It was a roasting afternoon, which meant the beer gardens were all bursting, making it easier for us to go unnoticed. We’d spent until early evening trawling from boozer to boozer, lifting whatever we could, and the lager had certainly taken the edge off my anxiety.

  But now, two hours after we’d said goodbye, the sun had disappeared, the beer fog had lifted and the fear had begun to pinch away at me again. There was no way I wanted to go home and sit in an empty room, so I’d slowly made my way to my old house, to find no one there.

  My hand shook with nerves as I searched for the door key. I desperately wanted to be inside, wanted the reassurance of my old room, the comfort of my old bed, even if it was only for a minute or two. I scanned up and down the street, checking that they hadn’t parked their old Escort somewhere else, but there was no sign of it.

  For some reason, I still dithered, uneasy at the lack of light warning off burglars.

  I winced as I weighed up the options. It was risky and I knew it, but my need was so great that I scampered up the driveway and slid the key into the door before I could change my mind.

  I crept along the hallway, craning my head around the kitchen and dining-room doors to find them both dark. I thought about taking my trainers off, but with the threat of being rumbled still in my head, I left them on and made for the stairs.

  The house smelt amazing. Oldfield always had a whiff of school or hospital about it, something antiseptic, whereas here you could smell the food in the kitchen, the laundry hung over the radiators to dry.

  After checking the bathroom and their bedroom, I headed for my old room, and paused a moment before easing open the door and searching for the bedside lamp behind it.

  I flicked the switch and for a moment I thought I must have wandered into the wrong place. It looked all wrong. The pale walls and bedspread from my last visit were gone. Instead I was looking at violet-painted walls, covered with obscure-looking posters and photos.

  Sickness forced its way up past my gut as I scoured the room. The bed was covered with a purple duvet and a dozen cushions were piled against the headboard. My old TV and stereo were there, but so was a DVD player, and beside it an untidy pile of films. I rifled through them, as if the answers to the room would be found in the titles. But of course they offered nothing.

  My mind was racing, throwing up reasons for the room to look like it did. Perhaps Jan and Grant had split up and she was sleeping in here, or maybe they were skint and had taken in a lodger. But as much as I desperately wanted it to be true, I knew that it wasn’t. Someone had moved in, but it wasn’t an adult, and my heart stopped as the truth dawned on me.

  I’d been replaced.

  As the truth hit, I lost all sense of secrecy and started tossing things around the room. There had to be something in here that told me who had moved in. Maybe it was someone from school or, worse still, one of the other ex-lifers from Oldfield? Whoever it was, I had to find out, find a way of making their life hell for moving in on my patch.

  And then I spotted something on the windowsill.

  It was a camera. The type you could use for filming as well as taking pictures.

  The shaking in my hand got worse as I picked it up. With the other hand, I grabbed at the discs stacked behind it, my eyes scouring the words that were scrawled upon their spines: ‘Dad – Xmas 2007’, ‘The Lakes – 2006’.

  And then the case that stopped my heart dead: ‘Louie and Lizzie – life-story book’.

  I think I laughed when I read it. At the ridiculousness that that case could possibly be in here. It wasn’t until I’d rammed the disc into the camera and hit Play that I stopped laughing. As there, on the viewfinder screen, was me, sat in the twins’ room.

  I let out a cry as I hurled the camera against the wall, but by the time the shattered pieces hit the bed, the tears were beginning to mix with anger.

  I ran over to the wall by the bed, where a load of photos were stuck to the wall. And it was there that I knew for sure.

  Because in every photo there was Daisy.

  Smiling down at me.

  By the time I’d reached the tenth photo, she was no longer smiling, she was laughing, and by the dozenth, she may as well have been flicking me the Vs. My hand grabbed them one by one, ripping them down and tossing them to the floor.

  As I pulled the final photo down, I stared at Daisy and the man in it, as they stood arm in arm. Daisy looked different, so happy, but the man, who I guessed was her dad, wore the expression I saw so often on her face. He looked distracted and there was an unmistakable look of sadness scratched in his eyes.

  I screwed the photo into a ball, unable to feel any sympathy for her or her family.

  All those months she had sat there on the bench, listening to me, as I told her everything there was to know about my life, and all that time she’d been living here. Not with friends, like she’d said, but here. Sleeping in my bed, taking my parents further and further away from me. I thought back to what we’d talked about earlier that day. I’d told her about what I’d done to Grant, so I must have mentioned their names, she must have known who I was talking about.

  So why didn’t she say anything?

  How could she have spent the rest of the day talking nonsense and drinking with me, when she knew that she’d moved in on the people who had promised me everything?

  I smashed my foot into the bedside cabinet, reducing it to shards of wood, and tipped over the bed, scattering the cushions to each corner of the room.

  It was only as I ground the larger pieces of camera into the carpet that I heard the door slam below. I suppose I should have been scared, but getting out was the last thing on my mind. After everything that had gone on, all the talking and the promises of being there for me, she was just like the rest of them. In fact, she was worse. She’d known what this place meant, but she’d taken it anyway.

  So what point was there in running? Instead I walked to the top of the landing and stepped slowly down the stairs.

  There they were, the happy family, slipping their shoes off at the front door.

  Jan saw me first and mouthed my name like she had seen a ghost.

  Grant’s head snapped upwards as he heard her gasp, and for a second I thought that he was going to run full pelt up the stairs to tackle me. Were it not for Daisy, I think he would have done.

  It took her a second to realize what was going on, so I continued down the stairs, throwing the balled-up photo of her dad at her feet.

  ‘Billy?’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’

  I saw Grant stiffen beside her as she said my name, while Jan’s hands flew to her mouth in surprise.

  ‘You know each other?’ Jan cried. ‘Daisy? How do you know Billy?’

  ‘School,’ Daisy whispered, unable to force out another word, which gave me my opportunity to jump in.

  ‘Well, this is lovely, isn’t it? You must introduce me to your friends, Daisy.’

 
I paused, just long enough for the bitterness to reach my voice. ‘Tell you what, don’t bother. We already know each other.’

  Daisy’s eyes flicked to Jan and Grant, as if she were trying to understand what was going on.

  As if she didn’t know.

  ‘So how long have they promised you can stay, then?’ I spat. ‘Oh, don’t tell me. They’re going to adopt you? Well, they’ve certainly done a nice job with your room. I could barely recognize it. Much posher than they had it for me anyway.’

  ‘Billy?’ Daisy wailed as she threw further looks at the two adults. Christ, she was some actress. ‘I didn’t know. How could I know they were …’

  ‘Give it a rest. Do you think I’m stupid or something? You must have been laughing your tits off these last few months. So why did you do it, eh? What kind of nutcase are you?’

  ‘That’s ENOUGH, Billy,’ roared Grant, as he stepped between the two of us. ‘If anyone’s acting like a nutter it’s you. What do you think you’re doing here? How did you even get in?’

  I threw the key at him, which bounced off his shoulder. I saw his temper flare and braced myself for his attack, which would have come had Jan not grabbed his arm.

  ‘Do you know what?’ he yelled, his face volcanic red. ‘We should’ve known it was you. Whenever Daisy’s come in from seeing this “friend” of hers, stinking of booze, we should’ve known!’

  ‘Aye, that’s right. It’s been me leading her astray. Me who’s got her smoking and nicking pints off tables in pubs. Because I’m bad news, I am. Damaged goods. You had it right all along, didn’t you?’

  ‘Billy?’ It was Jan’s turn to have a go. ‘We’ve never called you damaged goods, you know that. When things broke down, it was just as hard for us. You have to believe that.’

  ‘Course it was. Must have been awful for you to stay here in your comfy home. I don’t know how you coped, I really don’t.’

  ‘We didn’t, Billy. Can’t you see that? But we had no choice. You put Grant in hospital. He had dozens of stitches in his face. If the glass had been six inches lower, you could have killed him!’