Where the Moon Isn't (2 page)

‘I don’t know Mum. Sorry about the other day. Sorry about everything.’

‘It’s forgotten sweetheart, really.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise. Let’s go and fly that kite, shall we?’

‘I don’t feel like it.’

‘You’re not watching telly, Matt.’

‘I’m in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek.’

‘You’re hiding?’

‘No. I’m seeking. I should do that really.’

But the other children had got bored of waiting to be found, and had broken off into smaller groups, and other games. I didn’t feel like playing anyway. So I wandered around for a bit, and I found myself back at the place where the girl had been. Only she wasn’t there any more. There was just the small mound of earth, now carefully decorated with a few picked buttercups and daisies, and – to mark the spot – two sticks, placed neatly in a cross.

I felt very sad. And I feel a bit sad even thinking about it. Anyway, I have to go. Jeanette from Art Group’s doing her nervous bird impression; fluttering around at the top of the corridor, trying to catch my attention.

That paper-mache won’t make itself.

I have to go.

family portraits

The next thing I knew Mum was turning up the volume of the radio, so I wouldn’t hear her crying.

It was stupid. I could hear her. I was sitting right behind her in the car and she was crying really loudly. So was Dad for that matter. He was crying and driving at the same time. I honestly didn’t know if I was crying too, but I figured that I probably was. It seemed like I should be anyway. So I touched my cheeks, but it turned out they were dry. I wasn’t crying at all.

This is what people mean when they talk about being numb, isn’t it? I was too numb to cry, you sometimes hear people say on the TV. Like on daytime chat shows or whatever. I couldn’t even feel anything, they explain. I was just completely numb. And the people in the audience nod sympathetically, like they’ve all been there, they all know exactly how this feels. I reckon it was like that, but at the time I felt very guilty about it. I buried my head in my hands, so that if Mum or Dad turned around, they would think I was crying with them.

They didn’t turn around. I never felt the reassuring squeeze of a hand on my leg, they never said it would be okay. Nobody whispered, Shhh, shhh.

I knew then – I was totally alone.

It was a strange thing to find out that way.

On the radio the DJ was introducing some new song in this really chipper voice, like it was the best song ever recorded and it made his life complete to be able to introduce it. But none of this made any sense to me. I couldn’t understand why the DJ was so happy when something so terrible had happened. That was my first proper thought. It was the thing that I remember thinking as I sort of woke up. And this is the best way that I can describe it, even though I hadn’t really been asleep.

Memories were falling away, like a dream when we first open our eyes. It was a lot like that. I could only make out the edges – night-time, running, the police were there somewhere.

And Simon was dead.

      My brother was dead.

I couldn’t hold onto any of it though. I wouldn’t get to hold it again for a very long time.

I can’t talk about it yet either. I have one chance to get this right. I need to be careful. To unfold everything neatly, so that I know how to fold it away again if it all gets too much. And everyone knows, the best way to fold something neatly is to follow the folds that are already there.

My grandmother (Mum’s mum, the one we call Nanny Noo) reads books by Danielle Steel and Catherine Cookson, and whenever she gets a new one the first thing she does is flip straight to the back to read the last page.

She always does that.

I went to stay with her for a bit. Just for the first week or so. It was a very sad week, and probably the most lonely of my life. I don’t think it is even possible to feel more lonely, even if you didn’t have your granddad and your Nanny Noo to keep you company.

You’ve probably never met my granddad, but if you have then you will know that he is a keen gardener. Only he doesn’t have a garden. That’s kind of funny if you think about it. But it isn’t that funny because he rents a small allotment a short drive from their flat, where he is able to grow vegetables and a few herbs like rosemary and some others that I always forget.

That week we spent ages there. Sometimes I would help with the weeding, or sometimes I would sit at the edge of his patch of allotment and play Donkey Kong on my Game Boy Color, so long as I kept the volume turned down. Mostly though, I would just wander about lifting stones to look at insects. I liked ants the best. Simon and I always used to look for ants’ nests in our own garden. He thought they were brilliant, and he pleaded with our mum to let him have an Ant Farm in his room. He usually got his way. But not that time.

Granddad helped me lift the bigger paving slabs so I could see the nests. The moment a slab was lifted the ants would go mental, scurrying around passing secret messages to each other and carrying their tiny white and yellow eggs underground to safety.

Within a couple of minutes the surface would be completely deserted, except for maybe a few woodlice wandering clumsily through to see what all the fuss was about. Occasionally I’d poke a twig down one of the little holes, and in an instant a dozen soldier ants would be back out on the offensive, prepared to give their lives for the colony. Not that I ever hurt them. I only wanted to watch.

After Granddad had finished weeding or pulling up vegetables or planting new ones, we’d carefully place back the slab and head home for our tea. I don’t remember us ever talking. I know we must have done. But what words we shared have escaped from my memory completely, like ants down a hole.

Nanny Noo made nice food. She is one of those people who tries to feed you the moment you walk through the door, and doesn’t stop trying to feed you until the moment you leave. She might even make you a quick ham sandwich for your journey.

It is a nice way to be. I think people who are generous with food have a goodness about them. But that week or so that I stayed with them was very difficult because I had no appetite. I felt sick a lot of the time, and once or twice I actually was sick. This was difficult for Nanny Noo too, because if she couldn’t solve a problem through the stomach – like with a bowl of soup or a roasted chicken or a slice of Battenberg – she felt out of her depth. One time I spied her standing in the kitchen, hunched over the untouched dishes and sobbing.

Bedtimes were hardest. I was staying in the spare room, which never gets properly dark because there is a street lamp outside the window and the curtains are thin. I would lie awake each night for ages and ages, staring through the gloom, wishing that I could just go home, and wondering if I ever would.

‘Can I sleep in here tonight, Nanny?’

She didn’t stir, so I walked in slowly and lifted the corner of her quilt. Nanny Noo has one of those electric blankets on account of her cold bones. It was a warm night though, so it wasn’t plugged in, and next thing I knew I was letting out a quiet yelp as my bare foot pressed down onto the upturned plug.

‘Sweetheart?’

‘Are you awake, Nanny?’

‘Shhh, you’ll wake up Granddad.’

She lifted the quilt and I climbed in beside her, ‘I stood on the plug,’ I said. ‘I hurt my foot a bit.’

I could feel the warmth of Nanny’s breath against my ear. I could hear Granddad’s rhythmic snoring.

‘I can’t remember anything,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I did.’

At least I wanted to say that. It was all I could think about, and I desperately wanted to say it, but that isn’t the same thing. I could feel Nanny’s breath against my ear. ‘You stood on the plug, my poor angel. You hurt your foot.’

When I went home it was just Mum and Dad and me. On our first evening together the three of us sank onto the big green couch, which is how it always was because Simon preferred to sit cross-legged on the carpet – his face right up close to the television.

That was sort of our family portrait. It’s not the kind of thing you think you would miss. Maybe you don’t even notice it all those thousands of times, sitting between your mum and dad on the big green couch with your big brother on the carpet getting in the way of the telly. Maybe you don’t even notice that.

But you notice it when he isn’t there any more. You notice so many of the places where he isn’t, and you hear so many of the things he doesn’t say.

I do.

I hear them all the time.

Mum switched on the television for the start of EastEnders. This was like a ritual. We even videoed it if we weren’t going to be home. It was funny because Simon had a huge crush on Bianca. We all used to tease him about it and tell him that Ricky would beat him up. It was only for fun. He used to laugh out loud, rolling about on the carpet. He had the sort of laugh people call infectious. Whenever he laughed it made everything that bit better.

I don’t know if you watch EastEnders, or even if you do, I don’t suppose you’ll remember an episode from so long ago. But this one stayed with me. I remember sitting on the couch and watching as all the lies and deceit about Bianca sleeping with her mum’s boyfriend and a whole load of other stuff finally came to its bitter conclusion. This was the episode when Bianca left Walford.

We didn’t speak for a long time after that. We didn’t even move. Other programmes started and ended well into the night. This was our new family portrait – the three of us, sitting side by side, staring at the space where Simon used to be.

PLEASE STOP READING OVER MY SHOULDER

She keeps reading over my shoulder. It is hard enough to concentrate in this place without people reading over your shoulder.

I had to put that in big letters to drive the message home. It worked, but now I feel bad about it. It was the student social worker who was looking over my shoulder, the young one with the minty breath and big gold earrings. She’s really nice.

Anyway, now she’s skipped away down the corridor, acting bright and breezy. But I know that I’ve embarrassed her because people only skip like that, and act all bright and breezy, when they’re embarrassed. We don’t need to skip when we’re not embarrassed – we can just walk.

It’s good to be able to use this computer though. I had a teaching session on it with the occupational therapist. His name’s Steve, and I don’t suppose I’ll mention him again. But he was satisfied I knew not to try to eat the keyboard, or whatever it is they worry about. So he said it’s okay for me to use it for my writing. Except he still didn’t give me a password, so I have to ask each time, and we only get forty minutes. It’s like that here, forty minutes for this, and ten minutes for that. But I am sorry about embarrassing that student social worker. I really am. I hate stuff like that.

kicking and wailing

I had no right to attend my brother’s funeral. But I did attend. I wore a white polyester shirt that itched like mad around the collar, and a black clip-on tie. The church echoed whenever anyone coughed. And afterwards there were scones with cream and jam. And that is all I can remember.

But now I should slow down a bit. I tend to rush when I’m nervous. I do it when I’m speaking too, which is weird because you tend to think it’s just those small tightly wound men who speak quickly. I’m about six feet tall and might even still be growing. I’m nineteen, so maybe not. I’m definitely growing outwards though. I’m way fatter than I should be. We can blame the medication for that – it’s a common side effect.

Anyway, I speak too quickly. I rush through words I find uncomfortable, and I’m doing that now.

I need to slow down because I want to explain how my world slowed down. I also need to talk about how life has a shape and a size, and how it can be made to fit into something small – like a house.

But the first thing I want to say is how quiet everything got. That was the first thing I noticed. It was as though somebody had come along and turned the volume to just above mute, and now everyone felt a need to talk in whispers. Not just Mum and Dad, but people who came to visit us too – like something terrible was asleep in the corner of the room and nobody dared be the one to wake it.

I’m talking about relatives here, people like my aunties and grandparents. My parents were never the sort to have loads of friends. I had a few. But they were at school. That was the other thing that happened. I think I might be rushing again, but I’ll just tell you quickly about how I stopped going to school, because it’s important, and because it is an actual thing that happened. Most of life isn’t anything. Most of life is just the passing of time, and we’re even asleep for a fair chunk of that.

When I’m heavily medicated I sleep for up to eighteen hours a day. During these times I am far more interested in my dreams than in reality, because they take up so much more of my time. If I’m having nice dreams, I consider life to be pretty good. When the medication isn’t working properly – or if I decide not to take it – I spend more time awake. But then my dreams have a way of following me.