Almost True (20 page)

‘Was there writing on it?'

My whole body is shuddering. It must be something to do with eating after being hungry for so long. I rock from side to side.

He slides off his chair and squeezes under the table next to me. His arm is around my shoulders. I can smell the coffee on his breath. My mum smells like that when she's drunk coffee. I try to inch away, but I'm not in total control of my movements right now.

‘Ty,' he says. ‘Was that it? It's OK. It was just a joke.
It doesn't mean anything.'

Christ.
Option c) – he is a warped headcase. I
hate
him. If I wasn't feeling so crap, I'd kill him. I'd tear him apart. But all I can do is jerk away from him, kicking out with my legs and crashing my head against the table top.
Jesus!
My skull shatters like a smashed china bowl and I let out a howl of agony.

‘Oh God. . .' he says, ‘Look, come out, let me see what you've done.' He basically drags me out from under the table. I'm holding my broken head and I can feel big, fat baby tears on my face, but that's the least of my worries, given that I'm probably going to need brain surgery.

He's looking in the fridge again. ‘Jesus . . . we don't have frozen peas or anything useful . . . ice, maybe.' He sticks a lumpy tea towel on my head and I yowl with pain again. An ice cube slides down my nose. ‘Bugger,' says my dad. ‘I'm sorry. I'm not very good at this.'

He can say that again. I'm trying very hard to stop snivelling, but it's not so easy. His fingers lightly touch my head. ‘You've got a lump like an egg there,' he says, and I'm shaking again. I was sure the bone was broken . . . sure . . . certain . . . but I was wrong. I can't even trust the messages I get from my own body.

‘Look,' he says, ‘Look. It's OK.' And he's sticking the whole egg box in front of my nose. I stare at it.

Every egg has writing on it. Someone's used a black
felt tip. One says
if you
. Another says
Danny
. The third egg says
take my.
The last one has an exclamation mark. My dad reaches over to the table and picks up the remaining egg. He puts it in the box. The writing on it says
stuff.

‘What did yours say?' he asks.

‘Umm. . .' I'm still trying to sort out what's going on.

‘
I'll kill you
? Something like that?'

‘
You're dead
.'

‘Oh Ty. I'm so sorry.' There's the hint of a smile on his smug stupid face.

‘You wrote it?'

‘No, look, it's to me.
Danny, if you take my stuff you're dead!
It's a joke. I'm away a lot and when I'm back I don't buy much food and the girls I live with get pissed off when I eat theirs. Look.' He opens up the fridge and pulls out some grapes. There's a post-it note stuck on them.
Mess with my grapes and I'll cut off your balls.
My dad pulls a grape off the bunch and sticks it in his mouth. He grins at me, holding it between his white teeth, then swallows it. 'See how brave I am.'

I can't help it. I smile. The tears are drying up, thank God. It's such a frigging relief to have eliminated options a) to d) that it doesn't really matter if he lives with total psychopaths.

‘Who are they? These girls?'

‘One's called Tess and one's called Lucy,' he says, munching away at the grapes. He offers them to me. I take one, and then another one. They're really sweet and they don't have pips.

I'm kind of reeling from the news that my dad lives with two girls. There's a phrase for that. I'm trying to remember it. ‘Threesome' is what the
News of the World
would say, but I'm thinking of something French . . . something I read in a magazine once.
Playboy
magazine actually. You don't grow up over a newsagent without learning a bit about the world. ‘You have a
ménage a trois
?'

He laughs. ‘Christ. Where'd you get that from . . . no, don't tell me. . . No, we're just flatmates. Or actually, because this is my flat, I am the landlord and they are my lodgers.'

‘So you don't actually sleep with them?' I might as well get things straight.

He starts nibbling his thumbnail. ‘Umm. Well. Tess and I have a sort of . . . you know . . . on and off. Off mostly. Off at the moment.'

‘Oh, right. And Lucy?'

He's looking really shifty. ‘Oh. Well. Once. Or twice. But . . . ummm . . . you don't want to be mentioning that to anyone. I mean . . . errr . . . Tess doesn't really know about Lucy at all and Lucy isn't fully aware . . . ummmm . . .
of the extent of . . . all the times with Tess.'

‘I get it,' I say. He does have a
ménage a trois.
It's just that the other two don't realise. And they pay him. I'm not sure if I'm impressed or not. He must be a good liar, that's for sure.

He stands up, and hands me a bit of kitchen towel to clean the egg off my hand. ‘Come on. Let's go upstairs.'

My head feels a bit better. I follow him, as he shows me the living room – big leather sofas and a huge flat screen telly, totally cool – then upstairs to the sleek silver and white bathroom. It's like something out of the interiors magazines that mum used to borrow sometimes from Mr Patel's shop. They'd give her stupid ideas like painting the bathroom pink, or putting up a bead curtain to separate the kitchen bit of the living room.

He waves his hand at two closed doors. ‘That's Tess's room and that's Lucy's. They're both at work. Tess is in television and Lucy's a trainee chef. That's where I went. I was just checking they weren't here. They both work long hours, funny rotas, so probably they won't be back for ages. My bedroom's over there.' Another closed door.

Then we go up another flight of stairs – this flat goes on forever – and into a massive room, with a window either side and a wall of photos in between. From one side you can see Alexandra Palace, and all the streets
snaking up the hill. From the other . . .
wow
. . . the whole City of London. The Gherkin. Canary Wharf, blinking like a Christmas tree with a star on top. Skyscrapers shining in a brown-ish haze. I could look out of this window for hours.

‘Like it?' he asks.

‘Umm . . . yeah . . . cool. . .' I say. I look at the photo wall. It's like a patchwork of people, not framed this time, but pinned up, jostling each other for space. I pick out a few famous faces . . . Lily Allen, Cheryl Cole, Kylie. . . Claire had some pictures like these up on her wall, I remember, which looked like they'd been pulled out of magazines. But these are glossy prints. Why would a man have a wall like this?

‘Do you like it?' he asks again. ‘This is what I do. I don't know why you thought I was a lawyer like my dad.'

What he does is stick pictures of Cheryl Cole on the wall? I'm completely confused. But then he pulls a big camera out of a black bag and I get it. He
takes
these pictures. He's a photographer. A photographer who takes pictures of celebrities. And I don't mean one of those paparazzi guys either. These are arty pictures taken in a studio. Lily, Duffy and the rest of them are smiling, pouting, posing for my dad.

Forget sports lawyers. I have the coolest dad ever.
It's so unfair. If I'd known about this when I was at St Saviour's I could've been king of that school. Imagine being able to name-drop Kylie, Alesha Dixon, Leona Lewis. OK, I am a bit impressed, I have to admit.

He picks up his camera and points it at me. ‘Hmm. . .' he says. ‘I think you might photograph quite well. Interesting features – even with a black eye. You might want to think about modelling. It's a good way of making money. Can you dance? I think Lily's looking for boys for her next video.'

‘I'm trying to keep a low profile,' I point out, and he scratches his head and says, ‘Oh yes . . . sorry. I wasn't thinking. I'm a bit dazed just having you here, to be honest. I've imagined this so often, showing you my home . . . my work. . .'

I remember the mean way my mum said, ‘They've bought you.' She must've worried for years that I'd meet my dad and his family and I'd want things that she couldn't give me. She's been struggling to pay the rent while he's living in a palace on the hill.

‘This flat must've cost you a fortune,' I say.

‘Well . . . I saw it as an investment. . .' He's got that shifty look again.

‘My mum never had any money, but every penny she had she spent on me,' I say. It's nearly true. He doesn't need to know that she treated herself to hair extensions
and nights out at the pub and her clothes came from Top Shop while mine came from down the market. It's the general principle that counts.

‘You know Nicki wouldn't let me near you,' he says. ‘She wouldn't take anything from me. I've put money away in an account for you. I thought you could have it on youreighteenth birthday, but it's there for you now, if you want.'

‘I'm not for sale,' I snap, and he says, ‘I didn't mean that.'

I haven't thought about my mum for ages. Christ. She must be really worried. Serves her right, I think, but at the same time I don't like imagining how she'll be going bonkers . . . crying. . . And there's my gran, she'll be worrying too . . . and Patrick and Helen. And then there's Claire.

‘Does she even know you've found me?' I ask, and he says, ‘I should call her, shouldn't I? She gave me Nathan's number and address, that's how I found you. We agreed she'd call your girlfriend's family and I'd do London. I've been to see your old landlord, Mr Patel, and I talked to quite a lot of people in the local shops . . . there was a pretty girl in the tattoo parlour, very concerned about you . . . and I went to your boxing club and asked there.'

Jesus. She's been trying to get him killed. She sent
him straight to the people who want me dead, to the boxing club which is full of Jukes's men. My mother is a ruthless woman. God, she hates him. What on earth did he do to her?

He pulls out a mobile. She answers right away. I can hear her squawking at the other end. He can hardly get a word in.

‘I've found him,' he says eventually. ‘He's safe. A bit battered, but fine. He just needs some peace and quiet.'

Quack, quack, quack. My dad mouths,
Do you want to talk to her?
And I shake my head quickly.

‘Look, Nicki. . .' Quack, snap, crackle, crackle.

‘Nicki, shut up for one minute. I'm keeping him with me for a bit. I don't care what you want. Just let him recover. I need to talk to him. I'll call you tomorrow. Tell you what we've decided.'

Blimey! I've never heard anyone dare to talk to my mum like that. There's a noise at the other end of the line like a volcano erupting. And then he switches his phone off.

He looks a bit sad. ‘What a woman. . .' he says. ‘She really hates me, doesn't she? Mind you, it means . . . she's not indifferent, is she? She still cares. There's a thin line between love and hate. Pretenders. Before your time. Almost before mine, but one of my sisters liked them.'

‘What, Archie's mum?'

‘Yes, my oldest sister Pen. It was her who rang me, told me that you were with my parents. Of course, they hadn't bothered.'

He's kidding himself if he thinks my mum could ever forgive him. It's all very well, his massive flat and his cool job and his
ménage a trois
and his celebrity mates. Ultimately he's a guy who beats women.

‘My mum does not love you,' I say, ‘She really, really hates you and she always will. It's your own fault. You hurt her.'

‘I had to,' he says.

‘What?' I can hardly believe my ears. ‘You . . . you hit her! You hurt her! You put her in hospital! Jesus . . . what
are
you?'

I'd like to hit him, but I've done enough fighting for today. It's enough to shout and cuss at him.

His mouth drops open. His eyes are wide. He puts his hand on his forehead.

‘Is that what she told you?'

‘Not just my mum. Patrick too.'

‘My father? My
father
told you I hit Nicki? Jesus. I'd believe a lot of him, but not that. Lying bastard.'

I have a moment of doubt. After all, Mum never actually told me what happened. And Patrick didn't quite give me all the facts.

‘Ummm. . .' I say, but he's opened a cupboard and is pulling out a leather bag.

‘I'm going out,' he says, ‘You stay here. No running away – understand me?'

His voice is cold and harsh. It gives me a jolt to hear it. I kind of prefer the way he usually speaks.

‘Understand me?' he asks again, face grim, eyes furious, and I nod. He shoves the leather bag into my arms.

‘Take a look at that while I'm gone,' he says. ‘When I get back, we can talk about what you've found.'

And he walks out of the room and I hear the door click behind him. My dad has locked me in.

I drop his stupid bag and slam my body hard against the door, again and again. It rattles and shakes, but I can't bust the lock. All I'm doing is killing my shoulder. After the fourth try I give up. I fall back onto the floor and get my breath back.

How could he do this to me? Is he going to keep me prisoner? It's inhumane . . . probably not even legal. When my mum hears about this she'll get the police onto him.
Jesus.

There's a computer on a desk in the corner and I switch it on, but . . . bugger . . . it's completely password-protected. I think about smashing the monitor. I resist the temptation.

There's a packet of cigarettes on the desk – so much for giving up – and a lighter. I start flicking the lighter,
passing my finger through the flame. I could burn all his photos on his stupid wall. I could make a frigging bonfire with his bloody bag. I could burn this whole poncey flat down to the ground . . . and why stop there? Burn the whole city. The Great Fire of London Part Two.