Almost True (22 page)

My dad comes charging into the room, Tess following him. ‘Oh good. . .' he says, ‘You're OK.' He obviously thought I'd run away again. I ignore him.

Tess spots the remains of the cake.

‘Oh my God!' she says. ‘What has he done?'

I scoop a stray bit of icing onto my finger, stick it in my mouth and suck it. I'm gazing at her. Staring, actually. Looking her up and down. Like Arron would sometimes look at girls we met on the tube.

She meets my eyes for a bit, and then she says, ‘Danny. A word.'

‘Look, I'll give Lucy the money for a new cake,' says my dad. He's watching me too, and chewing his thumbnail. ‘We're going to have to leave here for a while, Tess, and maybe you and Lucy should find somewhere else to stay temporarily. There's a bit of a situation. . .' He trails off. He scratches his head. He looks at me.

I don't want Tess thinking I'm some scared little boy who needs protecting from imaginary attackers. Anyway, Danny probably just gave his number to Sylvia, the boxing club admin lady, who'd have lost it within five minutes.

‘It's OK,' I say, ‘I musta got it wrong. We don't gotta leave. There ain't no problem.' My mum would go
beserk if she heard me talk in gangsta like that. My dad and Tess don't even blink.

So I add, ‘If yo' bitch is cool wid dat.'

Tess flounces out of the kitchen. My dad gives me a look . . . a bit of a confused look . . . and follows her. I'm laughing inside. He has no idea. He'll let me get away with anything.

She doesn't bother to whisper. ‘Are you planning to move him in here?' she says, ‘Your long-lost little hoodie? Because I'm not happy about sharing my home with a foul-mouthed thug.'

‘C'mon, Tess, he's my son. I'm spending time with him for the first time since he was two.'

‘Well he's
certainly
not a baby any more,' she says, and then her voice goes a bit squeaky. ‘Why didn't you tell me about him? I didn't think you had secrets from me . . . oh . . . Danny…'

I squint through the almost-closed door. My dad has his arms around her and they're having a very long and complicated kiss. He's undone her tight ponytail and is stroking her blonde hair. She's hugging him close to her.

My dad is like a bomb disposal specialist for humans. Amazing skill! It also appears that he's a talented kisser. Tess has her eyes closed behind her specs, and she's pressing up against him, sighing, ‘Danny,
oh Danny . . . you should've told me . . . you must have been hurting so much. . .'

It goes on and on for a bit like this, and then I think I'd better interrupt before she drags him to her lair.

I cough a fake cough. And then it turns into a real coughing fit and I hack and wheeze at full volume for about ten minutes. When I recover they've come back into the kitchen again.

‘Do you think he's got TB?' says Tess. She gets me a drink of water. ‘Apparently these Victorian diseases have come back among the homeless.'

‘He's not exactly homeless,' says my dad. ‘He has several people fighting for the joy of having him live with them.'

‘Oh,' says Tess. ‘I suppose you're one of them.'

‘Of course,' he says. ‘Look, maybe we should stay here tonight. We can get a takeaway, have a chat, you can get a good sleep, and then we'll take off in the morning.'

I'm not sure. It would be safer to leave. But then I imagine his phone number scrumpled up in Sylvia's waste paper bin. I really want to stay. I'm exhausted, and this is my time with my dad. It's so unfair if it gets taken away from me.

And I really don't want him to think I'm paranoid – and I really don't want to actually be paranoid.

‘What about her?' I ask, giving Tess one last
glowering stare. She says, ‘You know, actually he does look a bit like you, Danny.'

‘I'm sure Tess won't mind . . . you'll give us some space, won't you?' he says. She doesn't look too happy, but says, ‘Of course. Whatever you need. I was going to the gym anyway.'

My dad pulls out a bunch of menus and we order curry. Tess disappears and my dad cleans up the cake. ‘You shouldn't really call women bitches,' he says, and I shrug and say, ‘I didn't like how she talked to me,' and he says, ‘Yes, you made that perfectly clear.' He sweeps cake crumbs into a dustpan and says, ‘I didn't know Lucy had made it especially for someone. But I'm sure she'll understand. She's a great cook, she can whip one up in no time.'

Then the food arrives and we take it upstairs to his amazing room, and we eat it looking out of the window. It's dark now, and fireworks are bursting out all over London. The display at Alexandra Palace is fantastic. I remember going there with my mum once, standing in the crowds, wet and cold, looking up at the sky. This is better.

The curry is really good and my dad opens a can of beer and gives it to me. I've never really liked the taste and my mum wouldn't be too happy, so I just take some little sips and love that I'm fifteen and drinking beer
and watching fireworks with my dad. With my
dad
. Oh my God.

Maybe it's the beer, and maybe it's because I feel just about safe, and maybe it's because I've always loved fireworks, but suddenly I'm flying rocket-high. The dancing stars give me hope. Fire makes beauty as well as danger. Maybe I can tame the fire inside, even make it into something special, something amazing.

As long as it doesn't get snuffed out altogether.

For a while we just eat in silence, and then he says, ‘That stuff with Tess . . . you must think I'm a . . . I'm a. . .' He trails off.

‘You're a player,' I say, quickly.

He scratches his head, ‘No . . . that's not what I mean. . .'

What
does
he mean?

‘I don't want you to think it's a good thing, to do . . . what I do. . .' he says.

I can sort of see what he's getting at. But it's kind of interesting that there's no male equivalent of the word ‘tart'.

He laughs and says, ‘I know I'll be sorry later. I never think these things through.'

‘Oh. Umm. I'm a bit like that.' Oh God. Why did I say that? Now he's going to think I'm like him, shagging every girl in sight.

‘Yes,' he says, mopping up some chutney with the last of the peshwari nan. ‘We need to talk about that.'

What does he mean?

‘When you looked in the bag, how much did you read?' he asks. ‘Did you get to the medical file?'

Medical file? ‘No . . . there was a letter, but I didn't read much. I looked at some pictures of you . . . and my mum.'

‘You looked happy,' I want to say, ‘so happy that I can't imagine why you would have left me for so long.' But I can't say the words. What if there was something I did? What could I have done when I was so little?

He takes a big gulp of his beer. ‘Look. The details don't matter. I went to university. Nicki brought you to Manchester so we could all live together. It was great at first, but we were all jammed together in a tiny little flat and I had a lot of studying to do. Money was tight. It wasn't easy. Then your mum had to go into hospital. I couldn't manage to look after you, so I asked my parents to have you for a while. That was basically it.'

He rattles through this so fast that I don't have time to ask any questions.

‘But then . . . what happened? Why is she so angry with you?'

‘You'll have to ask her,' he says. He's got that cold, distant voice back again. ‘But I certainly didn't hit her.'

‘But—'

‘She came out of hospital and decided she didn't want to be with me any more and that's the end of the story.'

It's not even the beginning of the story. I don't know what to do. He obviously has decided he doesn't want to talk to me. My good mood fizzles, dies, comes crashing back down to earth. I stare out of the window and watch green stars and golden sparkles and try not to care too much.

Maybe I'll never know what happened in the past. Maybe it's the price I have to pay for getting to know him now. Perhaps it's something so dreadful that it would destroy me to find out. That's why he's kept away for so long. To protect me – but from what?

Then he says, ‘That's history. What matters is now. I want to hear about your life now. I've missed so much.' And he asks me all about what films I like and what music, and we talk about football and running, and my favourite and worst school subjects, and why we both hated St Saviour's.

I tell him a bit about going into witness protection, and about going out with Ashley and finding Claire. And he asks really good questions and the scared, sad, sick feeling goes away.

And then he says, ‘Tell me about Arron. He was your
best friend in London, wasn't he?'

I hunch my shoulders. ‘What d'you know about Arron?'

‘Well, Nicki gave me his number and address and told me Arron's family might have heard from you. She said he was your best friend. And I know he was mixed up with the crime that you witnessed, and I know he's on remand right now. But I don't know what he's like. I don't know why you were friends.'

‘He . . . he looked out for me. He was bigger, he knew more stuff because he had an older brother. He had lots of friends and that meant so did I. I kind of needed Arron, I didn't feel great doing stuff by myself,' I say. My voice is a bit shaky.

‘Did you have a lot in common?'

‘Sort of. He could be a laugh. But just recently . . . we didn't get on so well.'

I'm not going to tell him how Arron teased me . . . said I was gay, a girl . . . tried to get me to fight. I'm not going to tell him how Arron lied to me, how he was plotting to get me mugging people, dealing drugs. It makes me look weak and stupid – tricked – and that's not what I want my dad to see.

‘I see,' he says. He puts down his beer can. ‘You weren't getting on so well. So tell me. Was that why you stabbed him?'

My mouth drops open and a bit of chicken jalfrezi falls out. His voice was so calm that I can't quite believe he said what he said. Maybe he didn't really say it. Maybe I was just imagining it . . . the voice of conscience, kind of thing. . .

‘Why did you stab Arron?' he asks again.

‘I . . . I . . . who said that? Nathan?'

‘No, Ty, not Nathan,' he says. He's leaning forward,

looking at me. I make myself busy scraping the last dregs of dhal out of the pot.

‘You told me,' he says.

‘
What
?' My mind is racing, here and there, trying to work out what he's going on about . . . it makes no sense. . . We hardly even spoke at Helen and Patrick's house.

‘In the hospital. You started saying, “Go away, go away”. I thought you meant me – you wanted me to go away. Then you were raving . . . talking to someone who wasn't there. “Shut up,” you said, “Shut up about me stabbing Arron.” I've been trying to talk to you about it ever since, but you kept avoiding me. I assumed that was why you wouldn't talk to me, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe you were just avoiding me anyway.'

‘It was all wrong at their house. I was ill and I didn't want to meet you like that.'

‘Ty. Don't try and change the subject.'

I can't look at him. My mind is whirling around. It all comes down to this: truth or lie?

‘I can't . . . I can't talk about it.'

‘Talk about it,' he says. How does he keep his voice so steady? My mum would be screaming at me by now if she thought I'd stabbed someone. Maybe it's because he doesn't really care.

Slowly I nod. I'm staring out of the window. He clears the leftover food, the empty pots and the dirty plates out of the way and comes and sits down on the window seat behind me. I can't see him, but he's so close, I can feel his breath on my neck. He's not touching me, but if I wanted to I could lean on him.

I don't want to.

I say it as fast as I can, ‘It was after . . . after Rio was
killed. They were fighting and I ran off to call for help. I was watching . . . I wasn't fighting . . . they didn't even know I was there.'

‘Why didn't you use your mobile to call for help?' he asks, ‘Why did you run off?'

‘It wouldn't work. It needed topping up.'

‘Who's “they”?'

‘Arron – he was there with Jukes and Mikey. They were telling him what to do. And they were pushing Rio, pushed him on the knife . . . then they were fighting in the mud.'

I hate thinking about this. I hate my dad for making me talk about this. I'm trying to move away from him, leaning forward.

‘And you went to get help?'

‘I could see blood. I thought Arron was hurt, I stopped a bus, got them to call an ambulance.'

‘And then what?'

‘I ran back. I was worried about Arron. He shouldn't have been doing it . . . doing the mugging. He asked me to do it. But I said no. So I thought maybe it was kind of my fault if he was hurt.'

‘Why did he ask you to do it? Did you mug people a lot?'

I shake my head. ‘No, I didn't. I never did . . . I think I know why he asked me. But I'm not sure.'

He waits, and then he realises that I'm not going to tell him any more about that.

‘OK. And then what happened?'

‘I got back, and Arron was there with Rio. The others had run away. And Rio was dead and I knew I had to get away but if I left Arron then he might . . . he would . . . get arrested. And I didn't want that. And it was kind of my fault because I'd called the ambulance. So I shouted at him to run with me, to run away. But he wouldn't.'

‘Why not?'

I'm almost crying now, my voice is jerky; my nose running with slimy snot. ‘I don't know why not. I was shouting at him. . . It was like he wanted to get caught, like he didn't care.'