Almost True (19 page)

I'm back in the living room. I'm sitting on the sofa. I'm sweating and moaning . . . I can hear myself almost crying. This is it. I'm going to die.

And then I remember Nathan unlocking the balcony door when he dragged out the busted TV – and he didn't lock it again. I leap to the door, pushing the curtain aside, fumbling to get it open. It works! I was right! I pull the curtain behind me and step out into the winter sunshine.

There's a dryer hung with wet washing, and the telly, and loads of plants and a ladder – but not a ladder that's long enough to get me anywhere. I'll just have to climb down to the balcony below. From there, maybe I can jump . . . maybe it'll be OK. . .

The barrier is half-wall, half-railings. The railings will be better for climbing – maybe I can grip them as I climb. I swing my left leg over. And then I look down.

Christ. It's a long way. I close my eyes, then open them again. It doesn't look any better. It doesn't look
any more possible. I swing my right leg experimentally. And I'm hit by a fit of shaking and all-over sweating that leaves me wet through like I've been thrown in a swimming pool.

My hands are sliding off the railing. My teeth are chattering. I can't get a grip . . . I can't do this. But I can't get off the railings either. I'm stuck. If I sway backwards I'll fall. If I swing forwards I'm trapped. And I can hear voices on the other side of the curtain.

Jesus. I'll have to go for it. I sneak another look down, towards the balcony I'm aiming for. It's about fifty miles away. What was I thinking? But maybe if I slide down the railings . . . and then swing. . . I must be crazy . . . but I'm pulling my right leg up to pull it over the railings too.

A clutch of girls with prams are watching me. ‘Don't do it!' one of them yells. She's pulling out a mobile. They're all shouting now. ‘Stop! Help! You'll kill yourself!'

I try and speed up, but my body is against me. It won't obey my orders. My foot sticks at the top of the railings. I'm balanced, shaking, about to fall . . . eyes screwed tight shut . . . waiting for a shot . . . waiting to feel myself drop.

And then I hear a noise and I open my eyes. And I see the curtains push back, and the balcony door open.

I'm struggling to release my foot. I lurch backwards. My hands scrabble on the railings. There's a gasp from the watching girls, a scream. . . Nathan bursts onto the balcony, yelling, ‘No!'

I'm falling. . .

And somehow, someone grabs my shoulders, pulling me forwards.

I'm gripped tight. I smell leather and smoke. Someone in a biker jacket is pulling me towards him. I'm wriggling to get free, thrashing and twisting. . . 'Got him,' says a man's voice, ‘Grab him . . . pull him. . .'

Someone's holding me round the waist and I'm shaking, to scared to open my eyes. Waiting for the blow. Waiting to die.

But then my legs slither back onto the balcony side
of the railings and I topple forward, pushing against the biker jacket, and we tumble together onto the balcony floor. We're sprawled among the pot plants, covered with damp underpants, and this time I recognise the voice. ‘It's OK. Stay calm. It's OK.'

It's my dad.

I'm taking huge gulps of air, trying hard to do what he says, stay calm, calm down, it's OK, stay calm, stay calm. I don't feel very calm. His arms wrap around me. ‘It's OK,' he says into my hair. ‘Everything's going to be fine.' His voice is soft and steady. His jacket is smooth and cold against my cheek. Gradually I stop shaking. My breath steadies.

Slowly, carefully, we separate. We stand up. He moves between me and the railings. He holds on to my arm as we walk back into the flat.

‘Jesus, man,' says Nathan, ‘I thought you were gonna throw yourself off. What the hell were you doing?'

I shake my head. I'm not sure I'm up to speaking right now.

‘This is your dad, innit?' says Nathan, ‘The sports lawyer. . . I went downstairs to check him out, check he was who he said he was. He looks just like you. Ty's told us a lot about you,' he adds. My dad looks a bit startled.

‘It is . . . it is him,' I say. ‘I thought . . . I thought it was them. Jukes's dad. I was trying to climb down.'

‘Ty, man, you gotta stop thinkin',' says Nathan. ‘You get it wrong every time.'

I duck my head down, chin to chest. My dad thanks Nathan for all his help, asks if I've got any stuff with me and agrees, yes, things do get very busy for him in the transfer season.

Then he hands me a motorcycle helmet, says, ‘Put it on,' and we're out in the open, out in the daylight. Anyone could see us . . . but the helmets are protection and disguise. A great idea.

We walk down the stairs and my dad goes around a corner and there's a huge silver bike. He gestures to me to get on behind him. And then we're weaving in and out of traffic, driving past our old flat, climbing up and out of Hackney, racing faster and faster . . . up past the Emirates Stadium . . . up past Finsbury Park station.

I'm clinging on to him as tight as I can and I don't know if I'm scared or excited, happy or sad. The speed is all that matters. Air whacks my body, my nose is running, my eyes streaming. My hands are blue with cold, and I'm sure that any minute they'll go numb and I'll lose my grip and fall off. It's brilliant . . . like the best rollercoaster ever. . . I wonder if my dad would ever let me borrow it. I'm kind of disappointed when he pulls in to a street of red-brick houses, slows and stops.

‘Here we are,' he says, taking off his helmet and
wheeling the bike into the front garden of a massive house. My head is spinning. Does he live here? What's a loser like him doing in a house like this? You have to be a total millionaire to own a house this size in London. Maybe my dad is really rich . . . maybe he's . . . oh my God, who has bikes like these in London? He's a drug dealer . . . my dad's a drug dealer.

And then I decide that I'm going to stop jumping to conclusions and I'd better keep quiet and wait and see.

‘Keep the helmet on,' he says, ‘Just until we get inside.' And he opens up the front door, which leads to a hallway and two more doors, and the one my dad opens is obviously to a flat, because there's a staircase. So he's not necessarily a total millionaire after all. Phew. Unless he's only a small-time drug dealer.

It's a really nice flat. I can tell as soon as we get up the stairs. The floors are polished boards, and the walls are unusual colours – blues and greys and kind of sludgey brown. . . It looks better than you'd think. . . And there are some really cool black and white photos framed on the wall – singers, musicians mostly, some faces I know, lots I don't.

He chucks his jacket and helmet on the floor, and I can't help noticing that there's a bright pink coat hanging on a coat hook. And a purple one next to it. And there's a vase of yellow flowers on a little table. So either my
dad's married, or he lives with a girlfriend or he's some combination of gay and transvestite. I can't think of any other possibilities.

‘You can take it off now, ' he says, and I realise that I must look like an astronaut exploring an alien planet. I kind of wish I could keep the helmet on.

He opens the door to a large, bright kitchen. The cupboards are shiny maroon. The counter top is stainless steel. There's a big pale wood table and another vase of flowers – huge fluffy purple ones mixed with massive white things with orange middles. These are serious flowers, not the sort you pick up from Tesco. Of course I'm not impressed by girly stuff like flowers and top quality iPod docks and shiny coffee machines.

My dad has lit a cigarette, although, like Archie, he smokes it with his hand sticking out of an open window.

‘I'm trying to give up,' he says. ‘Do you smoke? Help yourself.'

I give him one of my gran's looks. ‘Oh, sorry,' he says. ‘I suppose I'm meant to be giving you a lecture on the dangers of smoking, aren't I? You'll have to bear with me for a bit . . . let me get used to saying the right sort of thing. . .' His voice trails off, and he stubs out the cigarette, half-smoked, and throws it out of the window, which is not a very good example to set, but I don't say anything.

I don't know what to do. I shuffle my feet a bit and he says, ‘Why don't you sit down? I'll put the kettle on. Do you drink coffee?'

‘Tea,' I say, and I sit down at the table and look at the flowers and wonder who put them there. I'm almost certain it wasn't my dad. He's such a mess himself – under the biker jacket are ripped jeans and a baggy black jumper – that I can't imagine him poncing around arranging flowers. He sees where I'm looking. ‘Grateful client,' he says, and fills the kettle at the sink. It doesn't sound like drugs to me. But I can't quite think what sort of client thanks a scruffy guy with a bunch of posh flowers. Weird.

In fact, the only sort of people I can think of who talked about clients were the tattoo artists at the parlour where I had my cleaning job and the massage girls next door. He can't be a nail technician. Can he? Hmmm. . . OK. I'm going to wait and see. My judgement isn't always very good.

He puts a cup of tea in front of me – I have to ask for sugar – and he says, ‘You look terrible. Have you been in a fight?' I almost start laughing – I've not really done much else recently – but I hold it back and put my head down and mumble, ‘Yeah . . . a bit. . . .'

‘A bit? You've got a black eye, and your face is cut. What happened?'

I sneak a glimpse at him. He looks really worried, really concerned. But this is the guy who put my mum in hospital. This is someone who hits women. There must be a whole other side to him, a scary violent side. Like when I was Joe. Like when I stabbed Arron, punched Carl, bullied Claire.

I remember Claire's face when I gripped her wrists that day. Sometimes I just hate myself so much.

He's still waiting for an answer. His hand reaches out towards my face. I pull away. ‘It's OK. I just got hit by someone.'

‘By that boy? Nathan?'

‘Umm . . . no, not really. . .'

‘He said . . . he said you've changed a lot.'

‘Yeah. Well. A lot's happened.'

‘You'll have to tell me . . . I want to ask you. . .' he says. He's looking a bit nervous. I'm not giving him any encouragement. I drink my tea – it's nice to have a hot drink – and ignore him.

He gets up and opens the fridge. It's one of those giant American ones. There's all sorts of interesting stuff in there. Black olives and blue cheese and purple salad.

‘You must be starving,' he says. ‘Why don't I make you something to eat? Then we can talk.'

Eating sounds good. Talking not.

He starts pulling stuff out of the fridge. Crusty
white bread. Organic unsalted butter. Eggs. Tomatoes. ‘I'm just going to check something,' he says. ‘I'll be back in a minute.'

He goes out of the room. I drink my tea. An egg rolls across the table towards me. I put out my hand to stop it. It's cold from the fridge.

Then I jump backwards, my hand crunching the egg flat. My chair crashes to the ground.

On the egg was writing.

It said,
You're dead
.

I want to run. I'm looking from side to side, panic rising inside me, looking for a way out.

But what if I run and then someone kills my dad?

I crawl under the table, roll up into a ball and think as quickly as I can. My fingers are slimy with egg. It reminds me of . . . OK, let's not go there right now. . .

I make a list of possibilities:

a) I have gone mad. I am hallucinating again. Any minute now Alistair will appear, juggling eggs and laughing his head off.

b) Someone has broken into the flat and left a death threat for my dad (potential drug dealer) or me. On an egg. In the fridge. Where are they now? What sort of a nutter writes on an egg? How would they even know where to find me?

c) My dad is a sicko headcase and this is his idea of a wind-up. For some reason, this is the scariest thought so far and I pass swiftly on to

d) I am dead. I did actually fall off the balcony and the whole motorcycle thing was me going to heaven . . . except I'm pretty certain I won't get in there . . . but maybe going to a Catholic school gets you extra points. . . The Death Egg was God's way of breaking the news. It's symbolic, like an Easter egg, except not chocolate.

For a moment I'm convinced this must be it, but surely you'd feel something if you died. You'd realise. Wouldn't you? What did Alistair feel? And Rio? What if they didn't even know?

Anyway, I think once in church they said something about eggs meaning life, not death. Life. I'm almost certain.

My dad comes back into the kitchen. ‘Ty?' he says. And then he spots me. He ducks down and I can see his upside-down face pretending that I'm not doing anything weird. ‘Oh. What are you . . . are you all right?'

I look away and he says, ‘Umm . . . shall I just give you a minute?'

His legs walk from the table to the sink and back again. I hear a swoosh as he cleans the eggy mess off the table. He makes himself a coffee. He cuts some bread.
Then he puts a plate with bread and cheese and tomatoes under the table, next to me. He doesn't say anything. I grab some bread and stuff it in my mouth. I'm starving – but it's rough against the roof of my mouth and I feel vomit rise in my throat.

My dad sits at the table. His legs are right by me. I could reach out and grab them. Obviously I don't want to.

‘Ty,' he says, in his soft calm voice. ‘Did something scare you?'

I have a stabbing pain in my throat. I lean my head on my knees.

‘Was it something to do with the smashed egg?'

I can hear a little yelping sound. Maybe he has a puppy. I look around and then I realise that it was me. Shit. How embarrassing. I stick my arm over my face.