Hot Blooded (12 page)

She came back to me and looked me in the eyes.

"Did you? Tell me a story about it. Tell me about something you did here."

I led her closer to the north side of the roof, the side with the best view, and pulled her down beside me at the edge. The wind was blowing pretty hard, as it always did up there.

"You want a story?"

"Yeah. It doesn't have to be exciting or funny, I just want a normal story of a normal day. Tell me what you did here on a regular day."

She leaned her head against my shoulder and I wrapped an arm around her.

"Alright. A normal story of a normal day. Well, my best mate - Nigel - used to live in this tower."

"Nigel? Ha, that's such a British name."

"Is it?"

"Yeah. Was Nigel very pale and scrawny and interested in model railroads?"

"No," I replied, shaking my head and chuckling, "Nigel was huge and bald at fifteen and he would probably have been more interested in chucking model railroads off the roof than playing with them. Now stop interrupting."

She smiled at my playful admonishment. "Sorry, Callum, I'll stop."

"Well. We didn't used to go to school much. We'd leave in the morning, check in and then leave again ten minutes later to come back here. Nigel used to sell hash so we'd stop by his supplier's house on the way back and pick it up. It was wrapped in tinfoil, like sweets. Then we'd stop at the off-license-"

"How old were you?"

"Twelve, thirteen, around that age I guess. Feral little troublemakers we were."

"And they sold you alcohol?"

"Of course they did. If they didn't we'd trash the place."

Lily examined the expression on my face, trying to determine whether or not I was joking. "Really?"

"Yes, really. I was a total fucking nightmare when I was that age - we both were. Anyway. We'd stop at the offie, get some cheap, strong lager and sneak back here around the back of the tower so his mum wouldn't spot us. Then we'd come up here and get completely fucked. Some of the older people who lived here used to get groceries delivered and we would steal them - the eggs, the fruit and veg, and try to hit the chimneys on that building over there." I pointed to tower block D.

"Goddamn, Callum, you stole groceries from old people?"

"Yeah. You think thirteen year old boys give a shit about anything except amusing themselves? Maybe the nice ones do, but we didn't. We used to get so high we could barely stand up and just spend hours lobbing eggs and tomatoes and pissing over the edge of the building."

"Didn't anyone try to stop you?"

"Oh, they tried. I had my first Anti-Social Behaviour Order by the time I was twelve. I'm not having you on, Lily, I was a right little shit. And it's not like the coppers gave a single fuck. When they could be bothered to come out, which wasn't often, usually the worst that would happen would be a ticking off, at least when I was that young. The ASBO made it more difficult but mostly it just made me a lot more wily about getting caught. We had a police scanner and we'd just take off the minute anyone called them. If they did catch us later we'd flat out deny the whole thing, tell them it must have been other kids. They knew we were full of shit but like I said, they couldn't really be bothered. They didn't have the resources to spend all their time chasing a bunch of little punk kids around the streets of Streatham all day."

"Your poor mother."

"Oh, don't worry about my mum. I do feel bad about worrying her, but she mostly assumed the police had it in for me and I was a 'good boy.'"

"Ah, yes, I forgot you were a big mummy's boy," she teased, nudging me with her elbow.

I shrugged. "Maybe. I'm not going to lie, I'm close to my mum. She raised us alone and it wasn't easy for her. I try to take care of her as much as I can these days. She deserves it, doesn't she, for putting up with me?"

Lily hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "And your dad? He wasn't around?"

"Nope. Don't know much about the man, to be honest."

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to."

"It's no problem, Lily, it's just that I really don't know anything about him. My mother never wanted to talk about him and I respect that. I don't even know if he's still alive. He obviously wasn't much of a man, was he? To leave a woman and children behind? I can't say I've ever wished he was in my life, not after a start like that. My mum really did everything, she's the one who deserves all the credit for bringing up two boys on her own."

I looked down at Lily as she stared out at the city lights below us, her long eyelashes nearly brushing her cheek every time she blinked.

"OK," she said, sensing that I didn't want to talk about my absent father. "Now I want to hear a real story. I mean, a specific story. Tell me what happened to Nigel? Do you still hang out with him?"

Nigel. I ran my fingers along the rough concrete we were sitting on and thought about my ex best mate. I didn't think about Nigel much anymore. When I did, all I could feel was a cold acceptance of his fate. It couldn't have turned out any differently for him, so I generally didn't see any point in rehashing it all in my mind. But Lily wanted to know, and I'd never really talked to anyone about it.

"OK," I said, slowly, "I'll tell you about Nigel. But I'm warning you it's not a pleasant tale. Are you sure you want to hear it?"

Lily nodded her head yes. "I can handle unpleasant tales."

I wondered if she was telling the truth. Because I had a lot of unpleasant tales to tell and part of me was worried she was going to judge me for them. I was used to being judged for everything - for my accent and my clothes, the way I walked and the car I drove. But something in me wanted to tell Lily about the awful stuff. It was all part of me, part of what made me, and mostly, I wanted her to know who I was. Who I really was, not just who I appeared to be on the surface. She slipped her fingers through mine as I sat beside her trying to think of how to tell the story of Nigel, and I knew at that moment that it would be OK. That I could tell her the truth.

"Alright, well, Nigel," I started. "Nigel had issues. When we were really young, his dad used to beat the shit out of him on an almost daily basis. It ended when he was around twelve, because his dad was a little rat of a man and Nigel just got huge all of a sudden. I mean really, truly a gigantic kid. He was the biggest in our year - actually not just in our year but the years above us, too."

I could see my friend at twelve in my mind's eye as I told Lily the story. The dull malevolence in his eyes when he spotted something - or someone - he thought he could wreck. Also, the surprising weakness that would come out when he'd had too much lager and would end up sobbing about what an asshole his dad was, curled in a ball on top of the very tower block where Lily and I were sitting. I kept going.

"He went from being bullied to being the bully in the space of less than six months. I think the power went to his head a little. He had anger issues, too. That combination - a twelve year old brain in a body much bigger than he had any right to be, and the ability to get properly enraged by the tiniest slights- it wasn't a good combination, yeah? I was the only one who wasn't too afraid to spend time with him. I don't know why he never went for me, but he didn't."

"Maybe he respected you?"

"Maybe. I don't know, Lily. I don't think Nigel respected anyone, including himself. He never knew when to draw the line. Like, this one time at school some kid was acting like a prick. Anyone else would have given him a smack and left it there but Nigel almost beat him to death. He was in the hospital for three weeks and Nigel got expelled. Which was bad because he was totally unable to be alone with himself."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he could never just be...still. I couldn't be still either, but for me it was about fun, doing dumb shit, amusing ourselves. Nigel always seemed to be running away from things - well, from himself. When he was alone he'd just go nuts - screaming, wrecking shit. He was using smack by the time we were fifteen."

Lily's eyes widened. "Smack? You mean heroin? Damn, Callum. That's crazy."

I felt her fingers tighten around mine and she didn't have to say it. She didn't have to say that she was glad the same thing hadn't happened to me, because I could feel it all in that little squeeze.

"Where were his parents? Were they around - or did they care?"

"Oh, his parents didn't care. In fact I think they preferred him on smack because it made him docile - when he was high, anyway. Both his parents were just total alcoholic fuckups. It's not rare. I'd say most of the people who lived here fit that category, actually, and I don't say that with any judgment intended, because this place was a shithole and I totally understand why drinking yourself into oblivion was seen as an option."

I could feel Lily looking at me but I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon, scared that if I looked back she'd see it on my face how much the story, one I'd thought long-buried, was affecting me.

"So what happened?" She asked."To Nigel?"

"What do you think happened?" I replied, clearing my throat quickly."He OD’ed when we were sixteen. In the stairwell of this building actually. Everyone knew it was going to happen - even he knew - and no one seemed to be able to do anything."

I could feel her beside me, thinking about what to say. She was just about to do just that when I cut her off.

"Shit, I'm sorry, Lily. That was a bit much, wasn't it? I-"

She shut me up with a gentle kiss, just below my left ear.

"It's OK, Callum. I want to hear your stories. Even the bad ones. I've got some of my own, you know. I'm just - I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm sorry it happened to Nigel. It's fucking horrible."

I exhaled. "It is, isn't it? But I don't know at what point in his life intervention would have stopped it from happening. Eight? Four? Younger? He had a shit life and he couldn't deal with it. It's no more complicated than that."

We were quiet for a few moments. Memories of Nigel came flooding back.

"You know what I do remember?" I said, focusing on some point in the distance.

"What?"

"This is going to sound really strange, but I remember the smack really cleared up his skin."

I turned, briefly, towards Lily. She was nodding, just a little, encouraging me to go on. Her eyes were full of tenderness, and I knew that if I kept looking at her I was going to start blubbering - or something equally ridiculous. So I turned away again and kept talking.

"Yeah. It's such a fucked-up thing to remember but it did - it cleared up his skin completely. Before he started using he was covered in spots all the time. The heroin made him look like a zombie - perfectly clear skin with huge, dark circles under his eyes and track marks all over his arms and legs and any-fucking-where he could find a vein. I don't know, I just remember realizing at some point that he was dying and that it was going to be soon."

"Did you try to stop him? Did you try to help him clean up?"

"Sure. I mean, I told him he was killing himself, but he already knew it. His death was officially marked as accidental but it wasn't - it was just a slow, covert suicide instead of a fast, obvious one."

Lily pulled away and turned her body so she was facing me.

"Do you miss him?"

"I don't know," I told her, managing, finally, to meet her gaze."Even when we were little, I always knew how it was going to end for him. I mean, I didn't know specifics but it was just - it was all just so inevitable. So when it did happen, I guess I wasn't shocked. I feel bad for the life he lived and the fact that no one who maybe could have done something at an earlier point did anything about it. But mostly Nigel dying just made me determined not to waste my own life. I know that's a cliché, and I don't mean it made me want to earn a billion quid or reach for the stars or any of that bullshit. It just made me determined not to let outside forces decide who I was, or what I wanted."

Lily reached up, then, and put her cold, soft fingertips on my cheek.

"I'm sorry, Callum. About Nigel. And you - I'm sorry you lost your friend."

It was so simple, what she said. And yet no one had ever said it to me before. When Nigel died, no one had talked about it, except in whispered conversations between adults that I wasn't privy to. To my utter shock, I watched the cityscape in front of me start to blur. Jesus fucking Christ, I was trying to get her into my bed and there I was sitting on top of a tower block trying not to bawl? Part of me expected her to run off, but she didn't.

"Fuck. I don't know why I'm doing this," I said awkwardly, rubbing my forehead with my fingers the way Gazza did when he was stressed out.

"It's OK to miss him, Callum. It's OK."

Lily was like an angel. Her presence was one of utterly sweet, feminine warmth and acceptance as she sat beside me on the edge of the roof of tower block E. I always thought it took sledgehammers to break down walls. Maybe what it really took was kind words and her soft little touches.

"I just," I started, swallowing and steadying the wobble in my voice, "I just never felt like anyone really cared that he was dead. It felt like everyone was secretly relieved. Even his own parents!"