The If Game (13 page)

He didn't know how to go on.

Dad said, ‘I knew you'd have to know some time.'

‘What? What happened? She isn't dead, is she?'

‘She's not dead. She's in prison.'

‘What really happened? Did she . . .' He couldn't bring himself to say, ‘Kill someone'.

‘It was her stepfather. He'd always been bad to her. That's why she ran away.'

‘Didn't she have a real dad?'

‘Went off when she was little. This was a guy her mum brought home.'

‘And he was bad to her?'

‘First he started on her sister, then her. So she got out. Thought she'd got right away.'

‘Hadn't she?'

‘Didn't see him for years. Then, one day, he turned up where we were living.'

We? ‘Were you there, Dad?'

‘Not the day she saw him. At work, wasn't I?'

‘You'd married her?'

‘Long time before that. You were four. Nearly.'

‘Me?'

‘You.'

Everything was changing. Had changed. The red and yellow squares of the floor covering were not the colour they had been that morning. The food on his plate was monstrous. He couldn't think that he had ever wanted to eat it. Sound was different. The scrape of Dad's knife on the plate, the tick of the clock, the swish of the passing car, were all strange. He was living in a foreign world. He was an alien, he didn't belong here.

‘How'd he know where she was?'

‘No idea.'

‘Was that when she . . . did it?'

‘Not then. He started following her. Then she thought he was going to start on the kid.'

‘Start?'

‘He was making up to you. Giving you sweets and that. So you'd go to him when you saw him in the street. Or the park.'

‘What for? What did he want?'

‘To get his own back on her. For getting him thrown out by her mum. And telling on him.'

‘She killed him?'

‘They said manslaughter. But she had a knife ready next time he came round, so it could have been murder. That's the law. So she got sent down. Twelve years. Should be less with the remission. Say eight.'

‘Where?'

‘Women's prison. Other side of Redwoods.'

‘When . . . when it happened. Where was it?'

‘Place called Oakland. Near London.'

‘You were living there?'

‘Was then. Left directly after. Came here.'

Stephen thought. He asked, ‘Did you change our name?'

‘Didn't have to. It's a common enough name. Like Smith.'

That was a relief. He didn't want to discover that his name wasn't his own. There were enough other changes he had learned about in the last twenty-four hours.

There were too many questions he ought to ask and couldn't. They sat at the table, neither of them eating or speaking. Outside the sky was darkening. There was a line of pale yellowish light along the western horizon. The rest of the sky was grey.

‘She's alive,' Stephen said at last.

‘I felt bad letting you think she was dead. But I didn't know how to tell you.'

‘Will I ever see her?'

‘I'm not taking you to visit her in prison.'

‘But . . . will she ever come out?'

‘Some time she will.'

‘Will she come here?'

His dad said heavily, ‘Who knows?' and there was another long silence.

He wanted to know so much that his dad wouldn't want to tell him. What was she really like? What had her stepfather done to her? What had she thought he would do to him, Stephen? What had Dad felt about the whole thing? Had they been happy, married to each other? Did his dad want her back now? When she came out of prison, where would she go? What was he, Stephen, supposed to feel about her? A mother he'd never had. A mother he couldn't remember. A woman who had killed. A murderess.

‘You shouldn't worry about it,' his dad said.

Stephen felt like shouting at him. ‘What do you expect me to do? Be pleased? Go round telling everyone, “My mum's in prison because she killed someone.”?' But he didn't speak.

‘You haven't eaten anything,' Dad said.

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘Mug of tea?'

‘No. Thanks.'

Another silence.

‘I'm going to bed,' Stephen said.

‘Think you'll sleep?'

He didn't think he would be able to, but all he said was, ‘Might do.'

He was leaving the room, had almost shut the door behind him, when he heard Dad's voice. ‘Stephen!'

‘What?'

‘Your mum.'

‘What?'

‘She did what anyone might've done. He was a real bastard.'

Stephen went to his bed. But he did not sleep until the small hours of the next morning.

It was a relief, the next day, to have to go to school. Although at first he felt more than ever a stranger among his friends, as if he was invisibly locked away from them and from everything they thought and talked about, the feeling didn't last. There was too much to do, too much that demanded his attention. For quite long periods he could almost forget his problems, and feel as he had before, the same as his friends.

He knew that Dad was anxious about him. He could almost feel Dad's eyes on him when they were sitting in the same room, over meals, or watching television. For the first few days he was on edge whenever they were together, fearing that Dad was going to start again talking about
that.
But he didn't. The subject seemed to be closed. Stephen certainly wasn't going to re-open it. Luckily, he had recovered some appetite and could manage to eat enough to satisfy his father. They were living together in what looked exactly the same way as they had before. But Stephen knew that his dad knew that he knew that everything now was different.

A week went by. He was sleeping better, though he still sometimes had disturbing dreams. He couldn't always remember them when he woke up, but he knew that they were not agreeable. He wondered how long this state of affairs would go on. Would Dad ever tell him the whole of the story? What would he, Stephen, feel if Dad suddenly said, ‘Your mum's coming home tomorrow?' It must happen some time. But he didn't know when. Dad had
said that she'd got eight years in prison, with remission, whatever that was. He, Stephen, had been nearly four when she'd been sent there. Now he was twelve, the date of her release must be quite near. He did not want it ever to arrive.

He felt bad about this. Any normal boy, surely, would be longing to see his mum, even if he couldn't remember her? And he couldn't remember her as a person. The figure in the red dress that he'd always thought must have been his mum could have been any woman of about the right age. He had no idea what she was really like. When he'd thought about her before he'd been told the truth, he'd imagined her like the mothers of his friends. He had built up a picture, from those ordinary, friendly women, making her taller than Mrs Betts, prettier than Mike's mum, speaking better than Dan's mum, cleverer than Mrs Richards at school.

What he hadn't added to the figure he'd created was his own mum's history. This new mum was someone with a temper, someone who had been badly used, had run away from home and her own mother. Had killed someone. There were moments which horrified him, when he was proud of what she'd done. As if the deed had made her a sort of heroine. There were other moments when he was ashamed and angry with her. She shouldn't have put him in this position. She should have been ordinary, like the others. She should have been there for him. She shouldn't have left him to live with Dad, who spoke so little and who never showed his feelings. Dad, as far as he could remember, had never hugged him, almost never said anything affectionate. They had lived not like father and son, but like two strangers who just happened to be under the same roof. Dad had looked after him, had provided food and clothes and things like his toys when he was little and his bike and entertainments. But it had all
seemed as if Dad did these things because he knew that that was what fathers did, not because he wanted to. If Stephen had ever used the word, which he didn't, even to himself, he would have said that what he missed was what Dad did not appear to be able to give him. Something like affection.

The days went on apparently just as usual. Stephen went to school, sat in class, sometimes learning, sometimes not, played football, did his homework, watched the telly, did all the things he had always done. But with a difference. Nothing was really the same. If he'd been able to pretend that they were during the day, the nights would have denied it. He dreamed now every night, anxious dreams in which he couldn't get to some place in time, he hadn't done his school work for some examination, or he had to make some extraordinary effort, jumping over a gulf, running a distance, climbing a rockface, and he couldn't bring himself to start. There were near nightmares too, when he had committed some crime which would soon be discovered, or an unknown danger was lurking in familiar but now terrifying places. The worst took place in his own home. Behind a door which should have been well known and unthreatening, was a figure which must not be set free. He was in the passage, trying to lock the door. The key wouldn't go into the lock, then, when at last he'd got it in, it wouldn't turn. He saw the door handle moved from the other side, it turned and the door groaned as it began to open.

‘You all right?' his dad asked one morning at breakfast after one of these troubled nights.

‘All right,' was all that Stephen would say. But he wasn't.

He knew he was bottling things up. That was why they came to attack him at night. But there was no one he could talk to. He did once get as far as saying to Dad, ‘About
my mum. How much longer . . . ?' but Dad said, ‘I'll tell you when you need to know,' and left the room. Stephen knew that there was no hope there. He had even wondered whether to try talking to Aunt Alice. But he knew that wouldn't be any use. He couldn't possibly tell any of his friends. There was no one he could trust even to listen. The secret had to remain locked up inside himself.

At one point he even thought of Miss Oddie. Why? He had no idea. But once the thought had come into his head, it returned again and again. Sitting in her kitchen, peeling potatoes, he might almost have been able to speak. She wouldn't have interrupted. He thought she wouldn't have been shocked. He wished he could go back to Martelsea to try the experiment. But when he played the imaginary scene over in his head, he knew he couldn't. Ring her front door bell—what would he say? ‘I've come to tell you something I can't tell anyone else. My mum is alive and she's in prison. She killed someone.'

Impossible.

It was November. Days were short, the sun was cool, trees were turning copper and gold, the pavements were slippery with leaves. On a Saturday, when he was sitting in the kitchen struggling with an essay, the doorbell rang. When he answered it he saw Alex.

She said, ‘Hi!'

‘Hi!'

‘Haven't seen you for ages.'

‘I didn't know you were here.'

‘Haven't been till this weekend.'

They stood looking at each other.

‘Can I come in?' she asked.

He led the way to the kitchen.

‘I haven't been here before. Is that your homework?'

‘I've got to write about the best and the worst books I've ever read.'

‘That'd be fun. What are they?'

‘The worst was some soppy thing about a dog that learned to talk.'

I've read that one. I hated it. But it wasn't my worst. What's your best?'

‘Haven't decided yet. What was your worst?'

‘I'll think.' He thought she looked funny, standing there in a bright bar of sunlight which slanted across the room.

She said, ‘I think it was a book about a girl called Angela who went round being good. Everything that happened to her, she always said wasn't too bad because of something or other. Like if it rained when she was out for the day, she used to say how lovely for the flowers. Things like that.'

‘Ugh!'

‘That's what I thought. And then her mum died, and she said it was really a good thing because her mum would be living with the angels and wouldn't be in pain any more.'

‘Was she in pain? When she was alive, I mean?'

‘I can't remember. I didn't read it properly, it was too stupid. I suppose she was, or horrible Angela wouldn't have said it.'

The conversation seemed to Stephen to be becoming dangerous. He said, ‘Would you like some tea?'

‘What about your homework?'

‘I've got time.'

He made the mugs of tea. He was surprised to find that he was pleased to see Alex. If he'd been asked before she appeared, he'd have said he never wanted to see her again.

‘Biscuit?'

‘Please.'

‘We've only got digestive. Unless there's a custard cream underneath.'

There was, but only one. They bickered agreeably about who should have it, and finally shared it.

‘You've given me the bigger half.'

‘There's no such thing as a bigger half.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘If it's a half, it's half. It can't be bigger than the other half or it wouldn't be a half, would it?' When she laughed, her eyes screwed up. He rather liked the way she looked. Japanesey.

‘Have you had any more of those key adventures?'

‘Had one.' But he wasn't going to tell her about it.

‘What happened?'

‘Nothing much. Saw some people playing tennis.'

‘That all? But you've still got the keys?'

‘Yes.'

She said seriously, ‘If there was something you wanted to know about that's going on in that other life, you might be able to get to where it is and see what it's like.'

He thought at once about his mother. Meeting her.