When I Wasn't Watching (15 page)

They faced each other over breakfast like opposing armies, the area occupied by the sugar bowl and cereal boxes forming a no-man's-land between them. Mother and son.

Ricky barely remembered anything past getting to Tyler's and having a cup filled with vodka and Red Bull – more vodka than Red Bull, going by the turpentine smell that the cup emitted – pushed into his eager hand. Then the three of them laughing and giggling at porn clips and a YouTube film showing a dog running into a wall. Mitzi letting him put his hand inside her Hello Kitty thong when Tyler was skinning up, and then staggering home.

Shouting in his mum's face, calling her names she had always drummed into him never to use against any female. Throwing up and falling into bed. A jumbled mixture of hot, shameful images that churned inside him along with the contents of his stomach. Only one image stood out, like a cool breeze amidst the rest: Jack, reaching out for him, wide-eyed with love and adoration for his big brother.

That was how Jack had always appeared to him in the months following his death, with that same hero worship he had gazed upon Ricky with while he was alive. No matter how much Ricky expected – even wanted, in some kind of twisted, guilty way – Jack to look reproachful or sad, his little face scrunched up with tears. The way he had looked the last time Ricky had seen him in life, when he had told him no, he couldn't play, and sent him outside to his death.

Ricky wanted to tell his mum he had seen his brother again, but for a whole host of reasons he couldn't. Because it would upset her again, because she would start thinking he was seeing things and send him to see the mental doctor again, and because it would upset her. As much as part of him still wanted to upset her for going off with DI Winston, Ricky was well aware he had already done and said enough.

Even so, he wasn't about to apologise.

‘Do I need to drive you to school today, or can I trust you to get yourself there?' Lucy broke the silence, her voice cold and sarcastic, making Ricky wince. A movement that, although tiny, sent a stab of pain through his throbbing forehead.

‘Yeah,' he mumbled, not looking up.

‘Well, I'll be phoning to check.'

Ricky bristled.

‘Aren't you even going to say anything?' he asked, finally looking up at her. She raised an eyebrow.

‘About what? Your coming in late, your playing truant, your getting drunk, or the vile things you said to me, after I had been worrying myself sick all evening about where the hell you were?' Her voice became more shrill as she spoke and Ricky shrank back into his chair, but stood his ground.

‘About you running around with that copper.'

Lucy blushed, but if Ricky had thought he would shame her out of chastising him, he was wrong.

‘No, because I'm an adult and I don't have to discuss everything I do with you. You, on the other hand are still a child – obviously more so than I realised – and you are grounded until further notice.'

Ricky stared and went to protest, but the look on her face stopped him. Mum was usually a bit of a pushover – though admittedly he had never given her as much reason to be angry with him before – but he sensed there would be no getting around her right now. He stood up, grabbed his bag and left without saying anything else, the loud slam of the front door behind him making his feelings quite clear.

Lucy left it twenty minutes before phoning to check he was indeed at school and then, satisfied, got herself ready for work, replaying last night in her mind as she had done all morning, after waking while it was still only half-light from a fitful sleep punctuated by vague nightmares. Every time she remembered Ricky's words to her it was like a physical blow. In a way she thought she should perhaps have discussed Matt with him; she had always wanted to be one of those mothers that was open with her children. But his words had put a barrier between them she didn't know how to cross.

She couldn't see Matt again, that much was obvious. And yet she wanted to, with every fibre of her being. She had asked him to give her time and he had done so; she hadn't heard from him at all since he had left yesterday afternoon after the showdown with Ethan.

Ethan. God, what was happening to them all? To her, her son, her ex-husband? Prince's release had set free something that clearly wasn't going back into its cage any time soon.

Although she had dropped the subject with Matt, although she had dismissed it to herself as a futile cause, she still burned to know where he was. The not-knowing, the knowledge that her son's killer was free and living back in the everyday world, had left her feeling ungrounded. The familiar, safe life she had constructed around herself and Ricky threatened by the fact of his freedom.

As for the reassurances she had given Matt; that even if she knew where he was she wouldn't necessarily want to do anything, it would just help her to give a name to his location, she knew deep down that it was lies. Lucy had never been a violent person – at least until yesterday – and had never so much as spanked her children, but she knew with a cold certainty what she would do if she ever got her hands on the young man who had butchered her baby while he was still only little more than a child himself.

She would kill him.

He was going to kill him. Ricky bared his teeth at the older boy like a wild animal as his tormentor sneered at him.

‘Bit of alright ain't she, your mum? Great legs. Wouldn't mind them wrapped around my neck.'

His mates sniggered and elbowed each other, a small crowd of pupils forming around the small table in the school Snack Bar where Ricky sat with his mate Anil. Or at least Anil was supposed to be a mate, but he wasn't making any effort to help Ricky; rather he was staring down at his chips as if thoroughly absorbed in them and completely oblivious to his friend's plight. The boy who tormented him, Luke something, was in Year Eleven, a year above them, popular, good-looking and either liked or feared by his peers. Ricky wasn't going to get any back-up from the group of hangers on avidly watching to see what was going to happen. He wished Tyler was here. He would show them.

‘Fuck off,' Ricky said through gritted teeth. He wasn't in the mood for this. His hangover had reached epic proportions, he had been given a week's worth of detentions and put on Report Card for yesterday's truancy and to top it all off he was grounded and his mum probably hated him.

Luke however had a nose for weakness and had no intention of letting such an easy target escape before he had wrung every last drop of fun he could out of him. Holding up the picture of Lucy he stuck his tongue out and waggled it suggestively just millimetres away from the paper, grinning at Ricky as he did so.

‘Reckon I'd like to have a go on her as well. What you sayin', lads, shall we pop round and see her at lunch? Bet she could take us all on. Dirty bitch.'

He looked at Ricky with a mean triumph shining in his piggy little eyes. Ricky stood up with a resigned sigh that Luke took to mean he was making himself scarce.

‘Aw, poor baby look, he's getting upset. Going to run home to Mummy are we? Except she's not there is she, she's out shagging. Bet she wishes you'd get murdered as well, snivelling little twat.'

The laughter at that last comment was more subdued and decidedly nervous. All eyes turned to Ricky, gauging his reaction. Ricky stepped towards the older, taller boy and sighed again. He knew the way school politics worked and if he didn't stick up for himself now he would be taunted about this for weeks. Unaware of any danger, Luke continued to grin at him.

The punch nearly knocked the older boy off his feet, sending him sprawling back into his friends, who jumped out of the way and let him fall unceremoniously on his backside. There was a shocked silence.

Luke raised a hand to his face in obvious shock, that turned to rage when he saw the blood on his hand from his now bust lip. Ricky had stepped back, looking at his still clenched fist as if he didn't quite understand what it had just done. Luke snarled up at him.

‘You little prick.'

It was only then that Ricky saw red. Only then that everything else seemed to fade into the background except the sneering boy in front of him, and his whole focus spiralled down onto Luke's face and wiping that sneer away. Obliterating it. As he crouched over him, hitting him again and again, he could barely feel the arms and hands now grabbing and pulling at him and the screams and raised voices calling his name. It wasn't just Luke he hit out at, it was Matt, and Terry Prince, and Ethan, and perhaps even partly himself, swinging wildly until he wasn't even connecting with his target any more and the tears were pouring down his cheeks so that he could barely see and as he was dragged away he fought against the arms holding him, his breath coming in pants.

‘Calm down, boy, calm down.'

The teacher who had hold of him dragged him outside and Ricky took large, grateful gulps of the crisp air. A crowd of fascinated faces pressed up against the café windows and he saw Luke being led away by another teacher, pressing a wad of tissue to his bleeding face. His energy spent he slumped in the teacher's arms, and only then did the man release him, regarding him not so much with anger as with concern.

He was led to the headmaster's office in a daze, barely aware that he was still crying. His first thought as he was roughly pushed into a chair in front of the head was that he wanted his mum. That was quickly followed by the realisation that when she found out about this, he was probably going to be grounded for the rest of his life.

‘I'm really worried about him; I know he's under a lot of pressure, but this is not my son.'

Matt put an arm around Lucy. She had called him as he came off shift and hearing the distress in her voice he had been round as quickly as he could manage, still in his work suit and tie. She sank into his arms gratefully but held herself a little rigidly as though she was scared to fully relax, or perhaps she was just on hyper-alert for the next catastrophe about to impact on her life.

‘I know you don't want to hear this; but honestly, it's quite normal. The amount of fights I got into at school, for one reason or another. Just be glad the other boy's parents aren't pressing charges. From what you've said it sounds as if he was asking for it anyway.' Perhaps not the right opinion for an officer of the law to hold, but as far as Matt was concerned, boys were boys and bullies needed to be stood up to. Lucy just shook her head.

‘But he went too far; the teacher said it was like he just blacked out. He came in drunk last night too, and the things he said.' She didn't elaborate but looked embarrassed, but Matt would hazard a good guess as to the nature of the things Ricky would have said to her while drunk. He had been worried about the boy's reaction himself. Even under normal circumstances no teenage boy wanted to consider the fact that their mother might actually have a sex life. Too often Matt had been made all too aware of his own mother's attempts to fill the gap left by his father's death; an endless stream of ‘uncles' who were all only too happy to assist Maria Winston to drink herself to death.

‘He'll come round, Lucy. Look, it's not my area, but it might be worth thinking about counselling. For both of you.'

‘He's had counselling, Matt. When he kept “seeing” Jack. It's not as if I haven't tried to help him.' She sounded affronted that he was questioning her, but Matt shook his head.

‘I was thinking more from a Victims of Violent Crime angle. I know it was a long time ago but given recent circumstances you would still be eligible. I could have a word with Family Liaison.'

Lucy pulled out of his arms, looking annoyed.

‘I had quite enough of all that at the time; I don't see how dragging it all up again would help either of us. If those idiots hadn't released him, none of this would be happening now.' She glared at Matt as if he had something to do with the Parole Board's decision, even knowing that was blatantly unfair. Matt let it go. Hell, she needed someone to blame, why not him? After all if he hadn't taken her to bed this wouldn't have happened either. Funny how life did that to you; you made your choices in a certain moment, and perhaps you weighed up the likely consequences or perhaps, due to impulsiveness or intoxication or sheer self-destructiveness, you didn't. Either way, there were always consequences you couldn't have anticipated, couldn't have planned for. Or perhaps people just had a tendency to become conveniently blind when it came to things they didn't want to foresee.

‘I don't know if sending him to my mother's was the best idea. I feel like I'm abandoning him,' Lucy confessed, twisting her hands in her lap. Matt caught at them, stretching them out palms up, rubbing the pads of his thumbs in small circles in the fleshy centres. It was a surprisingly sensual touch that calmed her, grounded her somehow. She let her breath out in a long sigh, willing herself to relax. The truth was, as much as it pained her to admit it, Ricky didn't seem to want to be anywhere near her right now. Her mother's offer to have him for a few days during his suspension from school had come at the right time, and she hoped her mother would be a stabilising influence on him. Still the guilt was there that he wasn't here, with her.

‘Give him time to calm down,' Danielle had advised her, and although her mother hadn't uttered a word about the pictures of her and Matt in the paper, Lucy caught the disapproval in her opaque gaze, heard the edge of it in her voice. Even she thought Lucy had no right to be dating at a time like this and Lucy, as much as she had levelled the same accusation at herself, had felt a flare of indignation. Was she expected to be on her own forever? To spend the rest of her life locked in the prison of grief while the whole world carried on without her? The only moments of peace she had felt for years had been in those dreamy hours after making love to Matt, after she had left him and was able to bask in the memories of his body on hers. It was strange, she thought, that she seemed more able to appreciate him and the effect he had on her after the fact, as if his very presence somehow stopped her from processing what was actually happening.