The Sky Is Dead (13 page)

“Christmas is a time for loving each other. Presents are secondary.”

I shuffle from foot to foot. “But….”

Mary squeezes my shoulder. “You have no reason to feel bad. We have bought you small gifts. Things you need, that’s all.” She looks at me closely. “Do you want to go home?”

I nod. Suddenly the crowd and the decorations, the music and the fake Christmas spirit—everything’s getting just a bit much. I need to go home and hide, like I used to under the bush in the park. The temptation to run back to the park is overwhelming.

Mary takes my arm as if she knows what’s running through my head. “Come on, sweetheart, I think we could do with a cuppa at home.”

I swallow hard and let her take me home, because I know if I think too much, I’ll be gone.

Chapter Eleven

A
T
HOME
I wrap my hands around a mug as Mary bustles around. She’s very quiet and leaves me to my thoughts, which I appreciate.

“I want to change my name,” I say suddenly.

“What?”

“I want to change my name. I don’t want to be Danny anymore.”

“All right.” She sits down at the table and looks at me expectantly. “What do you want to be called instead?”

“David Miles.” I’ve been thinking about it since my birthday.

“That’s a nice name. Any middle name?”

I shake my head. “Just that.” It’s close enough to my name that people might remember it.

“We can do this legally if you want, but we can start calling you David now.”

“Please.” I love Mary for not questioning it. My dad would have gone ballistic at any thought of changing my name. Mind you, if he hadn’t thrown me out, I would never have had to change my name.

“Well, David, once we’ve had the tea, you can watch TV, then we’ll go out for a meal.”

I nod. I need a break before I face the world again.

Christmas Day

M
Y
HEART
is pounding in my chest and sweat is prickling my palms as I approach the shelter on Christmas Day. It’s been several months since I’ve been there. Being in hospital and then at Mary’s, I’ve had no reason to go for my regular meals. Mary and Sylvia flank me as we walk in the door. I wonder if it’s to give me support or to keep me from running away. Maybe a bit of both.

“Dan-David. It’s really good to see you again.” Ben comes toward me with a look of pleasure on his face.

“Ben. It’s good to see you too.” He doesn’t hug me or touch me. It occurs to me the only time he’s touched me was when I got stabbed. He held my hand and didn’t let go until the ambulance arrived. I still feel uncomfortable with much physical contact. Mary and Sylvia are wonderful and tactile, but sometimes even their touches are too much.

“Do you want to help with the spuds, David?” Ben asked.

I’m daunted by the amount of potatoes that need peeling, but Sylvia soon comes in to help me. Five minutes later, a man I don’t recognize comes and sits down next to me.

“Hi, my name’s Jack. Ben suggested you might need help.” He has a soft American accent.

I look at him carefully. He doesn’t look like a user, so I assume he’s a volunteer, and he confirms that when he says his stepsister and stepmother are on their way in to help.

“My name’s… David.” I don’t stumble exactly but I have to think about it.

“Jack Cooper.”

I nod as I reach for another potato. “You said that already.”

He flushes, and I feel oddly guilty for embarrassing him. “I forgot. I’ve got the attention span of a gnat.”

“You work here?” I ask.

“No, it’s my first time.”

I have a decision to make. I can either tell him who I am or make a fresh start. Jack doesn’t know me from Adam. Danny is a homeless bum; David is a young man with potential. “This is my first time as well.” I can feel Sylvia’s gaze on me, but she doesn’t contradict my lie.

“You’ll enjoy today, Jack,” she says easily.

He beams at her. He’s got a huge smile, and I feel the world slide out from underneath me. I recognize that smile. I used to see it every day as he came toward me. Jack might have an American accent, but his name is Harry. He doesn’t look anything like my Harry, but I’m sure I’m right. His brown hair is cropped short with a spiky top, and his green eyes…. I can’t look too closely, but he seems to be wearing blue contact lenses. It’s him, though, I know it.

“I’m sure I will. We’re just over here for a couple of weeks and thought we’d do something useful.”

I frown. “You’re from America?” I mean, I knew he wasn’t from America.

Jack shakes his head. “Yes and no. I lived here until just over a year ago. I moved to America when my mum died. I had to go and live with my dad.”

“Your mum died?” Well, that explains why he disappeared from my life, although not the suddenness.

“Yeah.” Jack looks away from me and I wonder if he’s trying not to cry. “Car accident on the way home from work.”

“I’m sorry.” I mean it. I feel sad at the thought of that lovely lady dying. She’d been so kind to me.

He looks miserable for a moment, and I want to give him a hug. “Me too. One minute I had a home and a boyfriend, and the next I was living in North Carolina and listening to Pastor Charlie thundering about faggots for an hour and a half every Sunday.”

I winced. “That must have been hard.”

“Yeah,” he says shortly. He carries on with peeling the potatoes, and for a moment there is silence.

“Why does your dad live in America?”

“He’s American. He met my mum when she worked in America. After they divorced, she brought me to England and he stayed in America and got remarried.”

I had forgotten that detail about him. I remembered he spent his holidays in America, but not why.

“So what happened to your boyfriend?” I ask, making my voice casual. Too casual, perhaps, because Sylvia is looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

“I didn’t see him again, and I couldn’t contact him to tell him what happened.”

“Couldn’t you ring him?”

“He didn’t have a phone.”

Jack looks up at the derisive noise I make.

“Not everyone is lucky enough to have a good home,” he says defensively, “And my dad took me to my gran’s.”

I want to say he could have left a fucking
note
, but he’d lost his mum, and probably hadn’t even thought about it.

“You have a strong accent for someone who’s only been there a year,” Sylvia says.

“I lived there for ten years before we moved to England,” Jack says as he chops a potato. “I can switch between the accents depending on where I am. It saved me getting teased at school. I guess I didn’t think about it this visit. No arsehole… revolting kids calling me names.”

And suddenly I’m listening to my Harry. I drop the potato in shock at the sweet tones of my boy.

“That’s quite a change,” Sylvia says.

“I change my name and my accent. I’m Harry over here and Jack in America. Jonathan Henry, really.”

Sylvia frowns. “Isn’t that confusing?”

“Yeah, but I can’t be Harry in America. God, all the Prince Harry jokes. And I was Jack before, but when I went to school here, there were four Jacks in the class already, so I became Harry.”

“How are we doing?” Ben interrupts the explanation.

“Nearly done,” Sylvia says cheerfully.

Ben nudges her shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re doing the potatoes.”

“And why’s that?” she asks indignantly.

“You? In the kitchen? I thought hell would have to freeze over first.”

I look at Sylvia curiously. “You don’t cook?” It suddenly occurs to me I’ve never actually seen her cook. Mary cooks. I cook with Mary’s supervision. But Sylvia has never cooked. I thought it was because Sylvia worked long enough hours. It didn’t occur to me she couldn’t cook. “Is that why Mary is teaching me to cook?”

Sylvia chuckles and Ben rolls his eyes.

“Mary teaches everyone to cook. She failed with Sylvia so she’s determined that everyone else who comes through her doors will learn to cook.”

“I burn everything,” Sylvia confides.

“Or gives us food poisoning. Do you remember the chicken?” Ben says.

Sylvia bursts out laughing, and for a moment I am envious of their shared history.

Jack looks at me curiously. “So you live with Mary and Sylvia? And Ben lived there too?”

“Mary has a flat she rents out,” Ben says easily, and I nod in agreement.

“Oh. Cool. I’m going to be renting at college.”

“You’re going to college?” I ask.

“In the fall. Stanford. I want to be a lawyer.”

“Wow.” I’m impressed. Then it hits me. He’s going back to America. “You’re not coming back?”

Jack shakes his head. “There’s nothing for me here. Most of my relatives live in America, and I didn’t really have any friends here.”

“What about your old boyfriend?” I ask, trying not to sound aggressive.

Jack takes the last potato and stares at it. “I hope I see him before I go. I might… I hope I see him today. He might not want to see me again.”

“Was he homeless?” Sylvia asks gently.

At Jack’s nod, Ben squeezes his shoulder. “We get all sorts in here on Christmas Day. What’s his name?”

“Danny. His name was Danny. He used to live in the Rec.”

I feel Sylvia’s and Ben’s eyes pinning me where I sit, but I keep my eyes on the potato I’m peeling.

“Do you know him?” Jack asks, and I can hear the hope in his voice.

“I know him,” Ben admits, “but we haven’t seen him for a while. Last I heard he was in hospital.”

Jack drops the potato he was peeling. “In hospital. What for?”

“I don’t know.” Of course Ben knew, but he wasn’t going to tell Jack. This way, he had let the boy down gently and not given away too many secrets.

“Probably pneumonia. Danny was prone to that.” Jack drops the last potato in the saucepan of water.

I swallow hard at the realization he remembers something like that.

“All done. Excellent. Sylvia, that’s your kitchen duties done. You boys can help me cook.”

I groan loudly. Jack laughs and the subject is changed.

For the next couple of hours, Ben works us too hard to talk much. As the users stream in, men and women and a few children, we’re kept busy dealing with their needs. I was on tenterhooks that someone would recognize me and give me away with a simple
Danny
, but for some reason, introducing myself as David is enough. The new clothes, short hair, and no scraggly beard is enough for people to see David, not Danny.

Ben and I cook dinner, with Jack as our slave. At least that’s what Ben says. In reality, Ben does the cooking, I do what he tells me, and Jack, well, Jack spends a lot of time staring at me.

“He likes you,” Ben says quietly as Jack takes in a tray of roast potatoes.

“Huh?”

“Don’t give me that. He likes you. Are you going to tell him you’re Danny?”

I shake my head. “Danny is dead.”

“You think he won’t find out one day?” Ben looks disapproving. He scowls at me as he dishes up the rest of the potatoes.

“Jack’s going back to America after Christmas. I’m never going to see him again.”

“Then don’t you owe it to him to be honest? Give him some closure on his first love?”

Something digs into the palm of my hand. I look down to discover I’m holding on to a fork the wrong way and the tines are digging in. I discovered the spokes were called tines when I got a lecture from Mary on the correct cutlery to use. Seriously? I’m twenty years old and need a lecture on knives and forks?

Back to the problem at hand.

“If I tell him, then Danny never dies. He’ll always view me with pity, just like the rest of you do.”

“I don’t pity you.”

“Yes, you do.”

“
I
don’t pity you. I’m one of Mary’s kids, remember?”

I look at Ben, startled, the echo of a conversation coming back to me. “You tried to tell me about Mary before, didn’t you?”

He nods, but there’s no chance to talk anymore because Jack comes back in for more potatoes. He obviously picks up on the tension, because he hangs about by the door.

“Is everything all right?” he asks.

Ben huffs out a breath and hands him another large covered serving dish of roasties. “It’s fine. Da….” I wait for him to blow my cover. I can see him thinking about it. “David and I will bring in the rest.”

Jack leaves after casting one last look at me.

“You need to tell him,” Ben says insistently.

“There’s no need. I won’t see him again.”

“Then there’s no reason not to tell him.”

I shake my head. “Leave it. He’s just met David. He doesn’t need to meet that loser, Danny.”

“You were never a loser,” Ben says quietly.

“Yes, I was… I am.”

“One day this will come back to bite you on the arse,” Ben warns.

I shrug it off. He’s worrying for nothing.

There’s about a hundred people at the first sitting. I know Ben expects more later, and he’s kept back food for them. We make sure all the users—Ben calls them clients and scolds me when I call them anything different—are fed, then we sit down. Jack sits next to me, pressed up tight. Occasionally he brushes his hand over my thigh. It’s something I’m going to have to deal with soon, but not with his family sitting there.

Partway through, Santa Claus comes in with gifts for everyone. Sylvia told me last night that a local company had coughed up enough to provide a simple present for everyone and a little more for the kids. The looks on some of their faces, adult and child, is enough.

Many leave after the meal, the volume of people and noise too much for them. I watch Ben as he speaks to each and every one of them. Ben had always been there for me, even when I hadn’t wanted his help. I’d seen it as interference then. God, I’d been a stupid moron.

I retreat to the kitchen to clear up. Even with the dishwashers there’s a lot to do. I can’t pinpoint the moment when I know Jack’s watching me. It’s like a gradual feeling.

“Going to help me or just laze around?” I ask as I stack the plates by the sink.

“I’ll help.”