Lottery Boy (20 page)

For the second time in three days Bully woke up to find a girl staring at him. And though this one was older, just like his half-sister she screamed when she saw Jack.

Bully jumped up, fell off the bed. By the time he was on his feet the girl was gone and a man was in the doorway.

“What you doing here, boy?”

The man looked like someone he knew. He didn’t know who. Then he realized that this was the man in the photo, the dad. He was still confused. He had a feeling that he’d slept through most of the day. Had
lost
a day. He was angry with himself. He was already
in
today and racing through it. It was like breaking into a note. Once you did that, it was as good as gone.

“I’m—” He was about to say
going
but experience had taught him it was always best to just
go
and he made a bolt for the door. The man surprised him by getting out his way, then shutting the door after him. Bully was halfway down the stairs before he realized Jack was still in the bedroom.

“Let ’er out!” He could hear Jack throwing herself at the door, pawing, barking, desperate.

“Why you here, boy? Tell me and I’ll let it
out
.”

Bully felt for his penknife without thinking about it, moving back up the stairs, anger boiling and rocking him about as if he were a cheap kettle.

“John! Just let him go, OK?” A woman downstairs – the mum – the girl next to her, long hair tied up in a messy knot.

Bully fumbled with the blade but he couldn’t get it open because he’d ripped his nails the other night and the edge of the big blade was too greasy and wet.

“OK, don’t be
silly
. Put that away, boy,” the man said quietly, like he was trying to be a teacher. Bully, though, didn’t like being called a boy.

“John, he’s got a knife!” Bully looked back down and the mum and the boy were there now, the boy older
and
bigger than him, in jeans and a T-shirt, looking like his mum had bought him in a shop.

It was the girl, though, who began to move up the stairs. It unnerved him, that did, a girl coming towards him, and he waved his unopened knife at her as if to say no, he wasn’t going to give it to her. And he retreated further, back towards the dad.

“Jo! Stay
there
, Jo.
Alex
, give me the phone!”

“My battery’s gone!”

“Go and get the landline then!”

“Gimmie my dog back,” said Bully. He was on the landing now, near enough to kick the man. “Give me my
effing
dog back
now
.”

“Calm down, boy. Look, just
calm
down
, boy,” the man said and Bully saw his fear and it scared him, like seeing a face suddenly flash up against a window. Bully looked down at his hand to see why the man was scared and now, magically, the blade was out. He couldn’t remember doing it but he couldn’t put it back now.

“Give
me
—” he said, but then his anger boiled dry and he felt hot and empty and he remembered for the hundredth time that he’d lost his mum’s card and he’d never hear her voice again. His mouth twisted and something like a sneeze worked up behind his eyes and too late he realized he was going to cry.

After the man let Jack out and Bully stopped crying and Jack stopped snapping and barking and growling, the dad held out his hand. For the knife, Bully thought, but he went for the other hand, his right hand, to shake it.

“The name’s
John
,” he said in a quick, funny voice that sounded foreign. The way he said words was as if they meant something extra to him.

They sat him down with a cup of tea. Bully was starving. They let him put the sugar in, smiling a little wider with each spoonful. The mum was called Rosie. Bully thought she looked a bit old to be a mum, her hair running out of colour, the curls just hanging on at the ends. She said that they’d just got back from abroad, visiting some girl called
Siena
in Italy.

“Sorry,” she said, looking around the kitchen. “Sorry it’s such a
mess
. We left in a bit of rush.” And he realized they were apologizing to him for the state of the place.

How old was he, they wanted to know. He lied automatically and said sixteen. The boy, Alex, sniffed, didn’t think so.
Was he homeless?
He gave a nod, though he called it sleeping out.
How long?
He wouldn’t tell them, didn’t want them knowing how many days in case it was too many and they went and told the Feds.
What had happened to him?
He’d lost his spot, he said, and his shoes and his coat. He left out Janks and the dead man and said nothing about his numbers coming up.
Did he want to phone anyone, his mum and dad, to tell them he was OK?
He just shrugged at that one because it wasn’t that he didn’t want to, just that he couldn’t.

The mum finished up by saying that he
must
stay for something to eat. He didn’t say no and didn’t say yes until they had him sat down at a table eating
risotto
. It looked like thick sick. Except for meaty burps, he’d never swallowed any sort of puke before, but it tasted the right side of cheesy. He finished it quick, to get going, but they kept asking him questions and talking. And he didn’t know how they ever finished their food, all the talking they did. It was very tiring having to look up all the time when you were eating.

“You can stay the night, Bully, if you’d like to,” the dad said while Alex, the boy, was stacking the plates up, and Bully could see his face go solid like what was left of the
risotto
.

Bully had heard the boy going on to his dad earlier:
I don’t care what you say, Dad… He broke in
…
totally wrecked Mum’s lime tree … and why was my skateboard in Jo’s room? You can’t trust him … you should definitely get the police in, just in case he’s done something…

Bully didn’t like him. Things he couldn’t put into words – not just his size and strength or the clothes he wore, but the way he held himself, the way he moved about, as if he owned the place.

“Yeah, OK then,” he said in the end about sleeping, because even though he had slept all day he was still very tired and heavy and his body ached, and it was better than some shed. And if he got up early he still had
two
days.

The mum ran him a bath and put clothes out and said she would wash his.

“It’s just some stuff that doesn’t fit Alex any more.” It was a T-shirt and a coat that said
Superdry
on it and a pair of jeans and a pair of trainers,
Adidas
ones that were way too big until the mum got him some more socks to make them fit.

“They’ll do you for now,” she said.

“You can have ’em back,” he said.

“No, no. They’re yours to keep.”

He didn’t say anything, but when he got his winnings he’d get a pair of Reeboks. Box fresh. And more than just one pair. He’d get a pile of them, like they had in the shops. No, what he would do … he’d
buy
the shop. He’d buy
all
the shops so he didn’t have to go shopping. Either that or do it all on the internet.

The mum did his bath with bubbles in. Before he got in, he caught himself in the big long mirror – this skinny kid, all the cuts and bruises – and it frightened him, like he was changing into someone else. And he was glad of the bubbles in the bath.

“You look like you’ve freshened up,” the mum said when she saw him downstairs. “Are you OK?” His nose kept twitching with the smell around him coming and going because of his cold and he realized it was
him
, right under his nose, the clean clothes on his back. “Would you like something else to eat or anything to drink?” He shook his head but she was still staring at him, at his head. The rubber bands had snapped when the snapback yanked his ponytail and his hair was all over his face now.

“Is there anything I can do? What about – would you like me to tidy up your hair for you? Just the ends?”

“Mum,”
the girl said. “That’s so
random
.”

“Why, what’s wrong with that? I used to do yours when you were little – younger,” she corrected, seeing Bully’s face begin to fall.

“You never did Alex’s!”

“Well, he was always fussier than you.”

Bully liked that idea that Alex was fussy about his hair. Only girls were fussy about their hair. Phil used to shave his whenever it got too long, right down to nothing so that it looked like someone had dotted his head in full stops. His mum went mad every time Phil did it but he said he was only saving them money.

“His hair’s cool like that, anyway. A lot of boys have it like that now, Mum.”

“S’all right,” Bully said. He liked this idea, that it was “cool” to have long hair, but he’d been thinking if she cut his hair and he wore his new clothes it would be like a disguise for getting
north
. So he nodded again. She got him to sit on a chair in the kitchen and put a towel round his neck and Jo sat at the table and watched, said she would make sure her mum didn’t do anything too drastic.

The mum was right up in his face and he saw she wasn’t pretty like his mum. She had wrinkles all the time, even when she wasn’t talking, and her hair was
very
crinkly and her eyebrows looked like they were fighting for space on her face, but she talked to him nice, not like some people did to kids and dogs.

“When was the last time you had it cut then? If you don’t mind me asking?” she asked him.

“Dunno,” he said, though he did.

“Was it when you were at home?” He nodded, would go along with that.

“Is home a long way away?” He nodded. It was
miles
away.

“And do you want to go back?”

He shook his head and he heard a loud
snip
.

“Mum!” said Jo.

“It’s all right. It’s fine. Go and get me the mirror and I’ll just even it up a bit…” She pulled a concentrating face for a minute, and the wrinkles started joining up, and then she asked, “Why don’t you want to go home? Is it something you can tell me?”

“No,” he said, not wanting to shake his head in case she cut his ear off. And it wasn’t something he could tell her. It would take a lot of haircuts to do that. Not to explain everything – that would take just a few snips – but to let himself do the telling – that would take a while.

Jack let out a short sharp bark, jealous of all this attention Bully was getting.

“Oi, shut it,” he said. Jack sat back down, her bowed front legs still slightly raised, as if to catch any affection that might fall her way.

“He’s well trained, isn’t he?” the mum said and Bully felt his heart go, and he wanted to tell her then, surprising himself. But the girl, back with the mirror, started talking.

“I didn’t mean to scream earlier on. It was just that your dog – he looked a bit scary. What’s he called?”

“Jack. He’s not a he dog, though,” he confided, seeing as she was a girl herself. “She’s a she dog, a bitch.”

“Oh, right,” she said, laughing like people did, who didn’t know about dogs and thought it was just rude to call a girl a bitch.

“So why did you call her Jack then?” asked the mum.

“I dunno,” he said, though he did.

“So, what sort of dog is Jack then? A pit bull?” said the girl.

He couldn’t speak. He was shocked by what she’d said.

“She’s not a
pit bull
. She’s
nothing
like a pit bull. She’s a Staffy, a Staffy cross!”

“Oh right, sorry. I don’t know much about dogs. Those kind of dogs all look sort of the same to me, but yours is really
nice
,” she said. And that just about saved her in his eyes. And then the mum said of course not, of course Jack wasn’t the
same
as any other dog. And what a lovely dog she was, and they didn’t say anything more about different breeds after that.

They had a TV after all. And Bully was amazed at just how small and old and fat it was. He wasn’t surprised they hid it in a cupboard. He would be embarrassed too if he had a TV like that.

The news came on. London. A shot of the guns and the war museum made his eyes go wide.

“That’s the Imperial War Museum,” said Alex. The interviewer man with the microphone was standing in the park giving an update. He didn’t say anything about Janks, just an
unidentified male
killed some time between Saturday night and early Sunday morning. The news finished without anyone really noticing because of all the talking they were doing, the whole family. They all talked. The mum was the worst, words Bully couldn’t even say, let alone understand.

“Shut up, Dad,” said Jo when he complained about her changing channels. Bully looked to see if this might earn her a back-hander but it didn’t.

“Where would you like to sleep tonight?” the mum asked him when the TV went
off
. “There’s the spare bedroom in the loft but it’s a bit of a mess up there, or you can sleep on the sofa if you like. It’s up to you.”

“Down ’ere then,” he said. He could maybe put the tiny TV back on. Better than nothing.

“Jo, go upstairs to the attic and get the sleeping bag, will you?”

“D’you want to come up?” Jo said, turning back to him on the stairs. And he didn’t say anything but followed her up.