Authors: Nick Green
Cat Kin
Published by
Strident Publishing Ltd
22 Strathwhillan Drive
The Orchard, Hairmyres
East Kilbride G75 8GT
Tel: +44 (0)1355 220588
[email protected]
www.stridentpublishing.co.uk
First published by Faber and Faber, 2007
This edition by Strident Publishing Limited, 2010
Text © Nick Green, 2007
Illustrations © Lawrence Mann, 2010
The author has asserted his moral right under the Design, Patents and copyright Act, 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-905537-16-7
eISBN 978-1-905-537-73-0
Typeset in Bembo
Designed by Sallie Moffat
When Ben got home from school he found something good, something bad, and something worse. The bad thing was that he had lost his front door key. The good thing was that he
didn’t need it, because the door was already open. The worse thing was, it was not merely open but smashed off its hinges.
Ben felt sick. He stood in the lobby until the silence convinced him that whoever had done this was not inside the flat. He went in and turned automatically to shut the door. Unable even to do
this, he wandered in a daze to the fridge and got himself an orange squash. He was sitting on the sofa sucking the glass when he heard Mum’s feet in the corridor. A very loud swear word
echoed off the bare plaster walls.
‘Ben! Are you okay? Ben!’
‘Mum.’ He stood up as she ran into the lounge.
‘What did—’ Mum was silent for about thirty seconds, her lips pressed white. Then she exploded like Vesuvius.
‘How dare you? How dare you? Who do you think you are?’
She went on in this fashion until Ben heard himself stammering, ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
Her eyes nailed him. ‘What? Sorry? Why are
you
saying sorry?’
Ben didn’t know. He shook his head. Tears were fighting to get out and it was taking all his strength to stop them. Mum balled her fists and glared at the splintered door.
‘Stanford. Damn Stanford!’ She used a string of words Ben never even thought she knew. ‘I can smell him all over this. It stinks of him!’
She dealt the ruined door a kick.
‘Mum.’ Ben looked at his hands. He was
wringing
them. Up till now he’d only ever done that to his swimming things. ‘Mum, sit down. I’ll put the kettle
on.’
‘That’s it. That really is it. I’m calling the police. He’s had it now. They’ll pin it on him even if he was fifty miles away.’
Ben filled the kettle, all he could do, while she paced the lounge like a caged animal. He noticed that, although she was shaking the telephone as if it were a weapon, she was not dialling. He
poured hot water onto the teabags and heard the phone slam down. Then the bathroom door slamming shut. Then the sound of Mum crying while trying to make no sound at all.
She was not going to call the police. Because, of course, they had just found out what happened when you did.
Ben could barely recall the lost golden age (really just a couple of months ago) when Stanford had been merely a word on a letter, and not a name to place alongside Hitler and
Satan. That first letter had gone into the bin since it obviously didn’t apply to them.
Dear valued tenant
, blah blah.
We regret to inform you that the tenancy period of your
flat is due to expire subject to Clause 18c of your agreement. We must therefore request that you terminate your occupancy by 30th August
and so on. With these jaw-breaking phrases it seemed
to be saying that the tenants in the block had to move out. But Mum wasn’t a tenant. She and Dad had bought this flat from the landlord, Stanford and Associates, four years previously. So
that was all right.
Ben forgot about it until another letter hit the mat one frosty Saturday morning. It was from Stanford and Associates. It offered to buy the flat back for a certain price. Mum spluttered into
her grapefruit juice.
‘Are they mad? We
paid
thirty thousand more than that!’ She laughed as if it were a joke and tore the letter up, then ranted about it morning and night until Ben learned to
tune out. He had other things, like his homework, his sadistic French teacher and the brand-new pinball machine at the arcade to worry about. A short while later Mum got a phone call Ben
didn’t hear, except for her very loud ‘No thank you!’ at the end.
Then the aggro started. Someone’s burglar alarm went off all weekend, driving them bananas. Mum finally went looking for it, found it belonged to the nearby derelict factory and used the
bread-knife to cut its cable. Some days later, piles of rubbish began collecting in their tiny garden. Eventually Ben spotted a bunch of teenage boys dumping bin-bags over their wall and peeing on
the flowerbed. He raised his phone to video them and they scarpered.
One evening Ben took a phone message from a Mr John Stanford. He wanted to stop by and ‘discuss the sale’. Somehow he booked himself in for the Friday. Mum flipped at first but
decided, in the end, that if this guy had trouble hearing the word No then he could come round and read her lips.
John Stanford was tall with sandy blond hair. He wore a smart suit. His smile was bright, revealing hidden wrinkles in his young-seeming face. Following him into the flat came a tree-trunk of a
man (‘This is Toby,’) not at all suited to his name. Stanford laughed and joked about the weather and shook Ben’s hand. He asked Mum if she wanted a cup of tea. Taken by surprise,
Mum said yes. Stanford sent Toby into the kitchen. Mum looked on, flummoxed, as this huge stranger made tea in her kitchen with her cups. He didn’t know where anything was, either, so there
was much banging of cupboards. When she said, ‘I’ll do it,’ Stanford seemed not to hear.