Blood Family (26 page)

‘She’s never going to see it, Eddie.’

‘Then what’s the point?’

‘It’s therapeutic. You can be honest. You’ll find that, once you start, it will be difficult to stop. It’s harder than you think to write down lies.’

That caught his interest. ‘Really? Why?’

‘Not sure,’ I said. ‘But that is true. Try it. You’ll see.’

The three of us – Tod, me and Eddie – were in Eddie’s room. Jean-Pierre had gone back home the week before, and no one else had been put in there yet. I was scrunched up against the skirting board, pretending to smoke, and we were breaking the rules by talking about Glasgow. Well, Tod was breaking the rules by telling us a story I had heard before about a mate of his scraping at sandstone walls with a nail file to get a powder he could fold in wraps and fob off as ‘best golden brown’ to make some money for his own next hit.

Eddie and I were breaking the rules by listening.

Then, in the waste bin, I saw this crumpled letter with the words
pathetic
and
faintest idea what love’s supposed to mean
.

I just assumed that he’d been giving some secret girlfriend the flick, and I was interested. You see, I’d rather hoped he fancied me. (I certainly liked him.)

OK, so I admit, I sneaked the letter out of the bin into my pocket. It was a rotten thing to do, and I wished I hadn’t later when I read it through. It was the nastiest letter I have ever read. So cold. So
angry
. He blamed this mum of his for
everything
. He called her weak and stupid. He said that he had spent years living in terror of
bumping into Harris and that was her fault.
Everything
was her fault. He said he’d seen plenty of mothers managing on their own with babies and small children – even addict mothers. And all of them had done a better job than she had. He even said he thought that weakness like hers was a sin.

He said that. Honestly. He said it was a
sin
.

He said he didn’t think that he could forgive her. Ever.

I asked him how writing the letter went. (He hadn’t brought it with him.)

He said he found it interesting. ‘I spewed out quite a lot of stuff. Not what I thought I’d write at all.’ He made a rueful face. ‘It wasn’t very nice.’

‘No harm done,’ I reminded him. ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

‘No!’ he said sharply. He studied his feet in sullen fashion for a while, then added, ‘It was too awful. It was so awful that I threw it away.’

‘Oh, well,’ I said. ‘How do you feel now?’

‘Better,’ he admitted. ‘I thought about the things I wrote for quite a time. I think the letter was a little hard on her.’ He studied his torn nails. ‘I mean, if you judged me by what I did in Glasgow . . .’

He’d mentioned this so often. ‘Stealing that blind woman’s purse?’

‘And kicking that kid for his chips.’ His face contorted in the familiar way. ‘Well, if you judged me just by that, you’d think that I was loathsome. Absolutely
loathsome
.’

‘And you are not.’

‘No. No, I’m not.’ He leaned towards me. ‘But, you see, Nicholas came to fetch me. In the middle of the night.’ He waved a hand at the walls. ‘And Natasha’s paying for this. And this place costs a
fortune
.’

‘It does indeed.’

‘And Alice sends stuff every day – chocolates and postcards and chewing gum. She even sends cartoons cut out of magazines.’

There was a long, long silence.

Then he whispered, ‘I
try
to think that there was no one for my mum. No one at all. Then I could think she never had a chance.’ The tears streamed down his face. ‘But it’s not
true
, is it? I mean, there’s always
someone
. And she should have turned to them to keep me safe.’

I wasn’t going to argue. I sat quietly.

He wiped both palms across his face. ‘I’m fine with hating Harris. I know now that he was my proper father and I was only kidding myself with all that Mr Perkins stuff—’

‘Not kidding yourself, Eddie.
Protecting
yourself. And very sensibly and very well.’

He brushed the interruption aside. ‘Anyhow, I hate
him and I hope he’s dead. I have no problem with that. I owe him nothing. Nothing at all!’

The tears kept coming. He kept wiping them away.

‘But my mum’s
different
. She didn’t
start
like that. Like that first time that we watched Mr Perkins. I can remember she was
different
.’

He finished with a strangled sob.

We sat in silence for a little while. Then he spoke up again.

‘You know that place I stayed in when I first went to Manchester—’

I glanced down at my notes. ‘Barry and Jasmine?’

‘Yes.
She
managed it all right. Jaz worried about
her
son, so she just kicked me out. No argument. Just
out
.’

Young people have to get through life. Sometimes you have to take a punt with a suggestion that might help.

‘You’ve never wondered if your mum was horribly unlucky? That maybe she got punched too hard too soon to make a sensible decision?’

‘You mean, she might have been already thinking we should leave? Planning it, even?’

‘It’s very possible.’

‘And then, before she took the chance, he knocked her stupid?’

‘The man did clearly pack a boxer’s punch.’

He thought about it for a while. ‘And after that – well, there was no one there to help – except for me.’

‘You were too young to do a thing. A child that age simply assumes that’s how life
is
.’

‘You’re saying maybe if she’d had someone who’d put out for her – like I had family?’

‘Think of it this way, Eddie. Suppose you
hadn’t
had family?’

I left him to think this one through. And then he said it. ‘Maybe I would have ended up as drunk and vile as Harris.’

‘That certainly seems to be where you were headed . . .’

His voice shook. ‘Kicking kids . . . snatching blind people’s stuff because they’re easy meat.’ Suddenly his eyes met mine. ‘But that’s not me!’

‘I know it’s not.’

‘And I’m to try and think that wasn’t her?’

‘You said yourself, “She didn’t start like that”.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, she didn’t. Or she would never have remembered some of the words from the song.’

Seeing my puzzled look, he shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

There was no time in any case to set off down another path. So I just said, ‘Well, Eddie, if you can feel a bit of sympathy for your mum, can’t you forgive yourself?’

He told me bitterly, ‘That’s different. I had a working
brain
. And choices.’

‘Not at the time,’ I reminded him. ‘That’s what addiction
means
. But you will get on top of yourself again.’

‘On top of myself!’ He snorted. ‘Sounds like a bloody mountain climb!’

I nearly said it. Yes, Eddie. Except it’s harder, and takes far, far longer.

I still had panic attacks. They’d push my head between my knees and I would use the trick that Linda taught me all those years ago – breathe out as slowly as I could, and count to ten. Her comforting soft strictures would echo through my mind. ‘
Steady, my poppet! Steady! You’re safe now. He’ll never get to you again. Now, come on, Eddie. Keep breathing. Slowly, slowly. There’s my own precious baby. There’s my boy
. . .’

One day when Dr Ross came round, I had a moan. ‘I still can’t concentrate. My brain’s a
fug
.’

‘How long have you been with us?’ She glanced at my notes. ‘Four weeks.’ She tapped her pencil on her teeth and studied me a while. ‘All right. I’m going to lower the dose. But if the staff report you’re getting irritable or agitated, I shall increase it again.’

I tried to make a joke of it. ‘Can I still bite my fingernails?’

She snorted. ‘God! Are they no better?’

I stuck my hands out. She inspected what was left of my nails and shuddered. ‘A
disgusting
habit. You
might as well be shovelling germs into your mouth.’

Then we both laughed because we realized I was only there because I had been shovelling something fifty times worse into my mouth for months.

It was a while before I could read again. But when I could, I felt much better. I ploughed my way through
Sherlock Holmes
, and all the other books lying around the unit. Finally I started on the ones Natasha wanted me to read before I filled in the form. I was relieved to find I’d made as good a stab at choosing from the jacket covers as I would have from reading them all through.

It made me feel a little braver about what was coming.

And then, one day, I woke up happy.

I wasn’t even thinking about anything.

I was just
happy
.

I told you that I really liked him. I liked him a
lot
.

I’d spent time in the unit twice before, so knew that when they think you’re ready to go, they tell your parents but they don’t tell you. You’re chucked out really fast, before you’ve had the time to make arrangements to meet anyone. (It’s in the rules that you give up your mobile even before you come, and never get that number back.)

So, when I overheard that cleaner saying, ‘No need to
bother with that one today,’ as he passed Eddie’s room, I panicked.

Eddie was doing nothing in the telly room. I shut the door behind me. ‘I reckon you’re on standby. Want to give me your address?’

There was a little embarrassed pause. Then, ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry, but I’m not going to tell you.’

I gave him a bit of a look.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘Honestly I am. But I want this to last.’

‘But I’ll be clear too, by the time that I get out.’

You could tell from his face that he’d been warned:
Watch out for Tiffany. This isn’t her first visit
. (Translation: Probably won’t be her last.)

We get a lecture on Free Will. I’ve heard it three times now. It basically says that there’s a disagreement as to whether human beings make their own choices or not. But Harriet says that anyone who ends up here has more of a problem than other people about this. Habit has got us into one big mess, and we’ll have to use habit to keep us out of it in future.

And that means stopping making certain choices. Instead, you simply follow rules that help you kick the habits you no longer want, and stick to ones you do.

I didn’t argue with him. I just said, ‘I’ll be so
bored
without you. Can you at least leave me that weird old book of yours?’

Would you believe it? He said no to that.

They try to bolster you up before you leave. ‘Remember,’ Dr Ross said. ‘It’s always HALT. It’s HALT for life for you now, Eddie. All day and every day.’

HALT’s one of their catchphrases. It stands for ‘Never get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.’ That’s when you crack and just don’t care about breaking the rules.

It’s hard to kick a habit. Keeping a habit off is even worse. The first night I was home, I thought about drink all the time. They tried to make it easy. When Alice dumped her book bag down on the side cabinet, the door swung open and I saw that they had cleared out every bottle. Only the mixers like the ginger ale were left. If Nicholas still had his gin and tonic every night, he didn’t drink it anywhere near me. And every evening, one or another of them claimed to want me to go with them to see this film, or join them on a walk, or help them clear out the loft or the garage.

Everyone kept me busy. Natasha even hired a private tutor to bring me up to speed before the term began. I rather liked that. I found it soothing, sitting beside fat, comforting Mrs Maurdeff while she droned on about ‘appropriate language for the task’, and ticked me off for writing ‘going off on one’ when I meant ‘losing my temper’. Stuff like that. I was reminded of all those years ago when I sat at the kitchen table with Linda folding her
hand round mine to make me hold the pencil right, or pointing to the words in
Frog and Toad
.

But Alice helped the most. She didn’t know it, and I wasn’t going to tell her. But that idea she’d put into my head all those long months ago became a life-saver. Back then she’d yelled, ‘You act as if you have some
beast
inside you!’ And she had meant it. That’s why I got so mad.

But it was true. I do have something of Bryce Harris deep inside, just as I have the look of him stamped on my face. He’s my blood family, after all.

So I have learned a different way to use that. Whenever I need another, stronger reason for stopping wanting what I want, I think of him.

I think of him inside me. I even conjure up his voice. He used to roar and threaten way back then, when I was little. But now he’s taken more to wheedling. ‘Go on. You could have just one drink. No one will notice. It won’t set you off. You’ve studied hard all day. You’ve
earned
it. Just one won’t hurt. I don’t believe you’re telling me you’re never going to have a drink again! Not even
one
? What sort of life is
that
?’

And I take my revenge. I answer back. I think of that bit of me that’s come down from him and always will be him. The Beast. (I even call it that.) I like to think of it inside me, desperate to spend the day a different way – in pubs, one drink after another, then
staggering home to sprawl among more beer cans.

I even stand in front of mirrors now and look him straight in the face.
My
face. I practically enjoy tormenting him.

‘Just one,’ I hear him tempt.

‘No, thanks,’ I say. ‘Not having one to suit you.’

(Or, ‘I don’t drink.’ Or, ‘Get your own stuff. I’m not helping you.’)

I like to feel him shrivelling up inside me, longing for alcohol, miserable, bored,
aching
for me to crack. The beast inside. He has a million reasons why I should buy one little bottle, just in case.

If he keeps on, I tell him, ‘No. This is
you
wanting to have a drink, not
me
. And you’re not having it.’

I’ve no idea if the real Harris is alive, or where he is. It matters less and less.