When I Was Joe (7 page)

‘Why didn't you go to school?' she asks. I concentrate on Archie the Inventor who doesn't want to cross the road. ‘I'm OK, Ty. You didn't have to bunk off.'

‘I didn't bunk off. I phoned and said you were ill.'

‘Oh.'

We sit and watch
Balamory
, just like when I was four, except then it'd have been
Thomas the Tank Engine
and we'd have snuggled up together. Today we're as far apart as one small sofa will allow. Archie is being helped across the road by PC Plum, two grown men hand in hand. It's possibly the silliest piece of television I've ever seen, but there's something about it that makes me want to cry. I'm definitely cracking up. Then she says, ‘Ty, I called your gran last night. I know it was stupid.'

‘You
were
stupid. How was she?'

‘I didn't even get to speak to her. I just left a message.'

‘Oh, great. You put us at risk so you can worry Gran by telling her what a crap time you're having.' And how it's all my fault – but I don't say that bit.

‘Do you think we should tell Doug?'

I'd only spent all night thinking about this. ‘No point. He gave us the phones didn't he? So he gets the itemised bills. He'll know all about it.

‘Oh. I'm so sorry.'

‘Don't do it again.'

Then I go into the kitchen and I make us scrambled eggs for lunch and we sit and eat it without talking to each other. Afterwards I stand up, but her hand shoots
out and grabs my wrist. ‘Ow! Get off.'

Now we're both glaring. She says, ‘You've got to stop sulking and listen to me, Tyler, or I swear I'll go crazy.'

‘I don't have to do anything you tell me.'

She's shouting, ‘You bloody well do. Sit down and listen to me. If it wasn't for you running after Arron when he didn't want you, we wouldn't be here in the first place.'

He did want me, I think. I don't say so though. I sit. I listen. But I don't look at her.

‘This is really hard for both of us, Ty, but the main thing we've got going for us is that we've got each other. We can support each other through this. If we're fighting all the time, we've got nothing.'

Not true, I think. I am Joe, potential athlete. I have special training and an access card. I have a fan club of wannabe girlfriends and loads of boys on my team. It's you who's got nothing. Loser.

‘This is really hard for me, Ty. I'm only thirty-one. I've got my own dreams – getting my law degree, qualifying as a solicitor, meeting someone special, maybe even getting married, maybe even having a brother or sister for you. How am I going to do that if we're getting a new identity every six months or so? What kind of life are we going to have? You've got school to go to every day, but I just sit here wondering
if you're safe until you come home. If I go out, I spend the whole time looking behind me to see if anyone is following me.' Her voice is wavering, but she's managing not to cry.

‘I don't know what's happened to you. You've got so tall and you look so different. It's not just the dark hair and eyes, it's everything about you. You used to tell me everything, Ty, and now we don't talk at all.'

Did she expect I'd be ickle baby boy Ty forever? Does she really believe I've been telling her everything for the last few years? I'm too angry to feel sorry for her, but there's a little bit of me that doesn't want this fight to dig any deeper.

‘Get rid of your cigarettes,' I say. She looks shocked. ‘I'll cut down, I promise, but I don't think I can get rid of them just like that.'

‘Get rid of them, because if you don't I'll be thinking all day at school that you're going to burn the house down like you nearly did yesterday. ‘

She gets her bag and takes out the pack and throws it into the kitchen bin. Then, two seconds later, she plunges her hand into the bin and pulls it out. Pathetic.

‘I promise I'll only smoke outside,' she says.

‘Then you've got to go outside. You've got to go shopping and maybe find a job, or an exercise class, or a course or anything, Nicki. You can't sit in here
all day long.'

‘That's the first time you've called me Nicki for weeks,' she says, sounding happier.

‘It's not going to happen again.'

‘Oh yes it will.' She's smiling at me now.

‘Look, we have to do this properly. We have to be new people, not just pretend.'

‘How can we be new people when I have to dye your hair for you every two weeks? I don't want to be a new person. I'd worked bloody hard to get a life for us, move out of your gran's. I did that all on my own. For what?'

‘You ain't got no choice,' I say, because I know this will really wind her up. My mum is obsessed with speaking English like they do on television. She says it's my passport to a better life, and if she can do it, so can I. Of course, when she loses her temper she cusses me like a normal person, but it's never a good idea to point out that she's setting a bad example.

When I told her that Urdu and Portuguese are going to be my passports to a better life she threatened to stop me talking to Mr Patel and particularly to Maria at the tattoo parlour. She just doesn't get me sometimes.

She reacts just as I expect. ‘Speak proper English Ty, and don't be cheeky. Why did I send you to a good school like St Saviour's if you're going to talk like an ignorant chav?'

‘You shouldn't have bothered,' I reply. I wish she hadn't sent me to St Saviour's. It was an ordinary state school pretending it was a private school and it had the boys and parents to match.

She sighs. ‘Your dad went to St Saviour's, Ty, and I always said that you were going to go there, to get some of the advantages he had. He got a really good education there and went to university and you can still do all that. You don't have to be like me and ruin your life when you're just a teenager.'

‘Thank you very much,' I say extremely politely in fluent BBC-News-at-Ten. ‘It's nice to know that I ruined your life.'

‘You didn't ruin my life. I did, because I was an idiot. You can still make something of yours.'

‘So can you. You just have to get on with it.'

She rolls her eyes. ‘I know I've been a waste of space. Tell you what, Ty, would you come shopping with me at the weekend? If I get some new clothes, maybe I'll feel more positive. There's probably stuff you need as well. It'll be nice to do something together.'

I have no choice but to nod. I'm still angry but I can't deny that I do love her really. And I feel achingly sorry for her, and I miss her happiness so much.

But I also know enough about my school to know that everyone goes to the shopping centre on a Saturday
morning, and I'm sure no one goes with their mum. How can I get out of this? Joe Andrews is not about to commit social suicide if I can help it.

It's 6.30 am and I'm getting ready to go to school to use the fitness suite before lessons start when there's a knock at the door. Who the hell's here so early? I pull back the curtain in the living room to get a look, and see Doug – a crumpled, unshaven, surly-looking version of Doug. I open the door reluctantly and stand there clutching school bag and PE kit, ready to leave right away.

‘What do you want?' I ask. ‘Mum's asleep and I'm going to school.'

‘Bit keen, aren't you? It's only just got light.' I could say the same thing to him, except I can't be bothered. He gives a big yawn. ‘Your granny gave me a ring. She told me you'd been leaving messages on her phone. That's the kind of problem I have to drive through the night to sort out.'

‘It was Mum, not me, and it was one message.'

‘Well, your granny's scared witless.' I don't believe him. Nothing scares Gran. ‘I'm in charge of seeing that she's kept safe and sound too, and she's under strict instructions to let me know if anything happens to jeopardise anyone's safety. And unlike you and your mum, your granny knows what's what.'

‘Oh.' Doug's in charge of looking after Gran as well as us. I don't feel exceptionally confident here. ‘Well, what's going to happen? Are we in danger? Will we have to move?'

‘That is for me to discuss with your mum. Can you wake her up?'

‘No.' I say. I'm fed up with this. ‘You can, or you can wait. I'm going to school.'

I push past him and run down the path. I deserve at least one day making use of this prized access card, even if tomorrow I might be on my way to . . . where?

I put Doug out of my mind and have a fantastic training session in the gym. I plug myself into my music – the iPod that was Arron's present to me on my fourteenth birthday, the birthday that has now been removed from history – and I let the beat fill my head. I throw myself so thoroughly into the exercise and the music that I clean out all the worry and memories and fill up with a sort of excited joy.

By the time I'm done I'm soaked with sweat, and there's only ten minutes to get ready before registration. As soon as I enter the changing room I crash down from that training high. Carl and the rest of the under-fourteen football team greet me with noisy abuse. I don't feel great in the circumstances about stripping off and making for the showers, so I sit down, start rooting around in my kit bag and hope they will leave soon.

Carl's a burly guy with hair so short that you can see the pink skin of his scalp gleaming through the bristles. He's got Manchester-City-blue eyes fringed with stubby near-white eyelashes, and a fertile crop of spots. He's about the only boy in year eight that's taller than me and he's twice as broad. He looks more like a rugby player than a footballer, although apparently he's like a brick wall in defence and has been scouted for some Championship team's academy. If he was in a film, he'd be played by Shrek.

He thrusts his face next to mine. ‘You think you're so clever, don't you, getting your girlfriend to blag an access card for you?'

I'm not having this argument. ‘Look, mate, it's not my decision. If it were up to me, you could all have them.'

‘Nah, don't give me that. You think you're better than
us, coming here from London. Well, you better watch yourself, or you might find you don't look so clever after all, and all the girls won't think you're so great. We might have to reorganise that face of yours.'

God, this guy can't even come up with one decent insult. He can't even get the words right when he issues a threat.

The bell rings for registration – bugger – and they shuffle out. I dive in the showers and have the quickest wash ever, but I'm still buttoning my shirt with my tie flapping over my shoulders as I sprint to the classroom. Everyone else is filing down to assembly. Ashley Jenkins and her mates start whistling at me, but I just concentrate on the stupid buttons.

Our form tutor, Mr Hunt – you can imagine his nickname, and he does his best to live up to it – doesn't look pleased with me. ‘Good of you to turn up today, Joe,' he says, very sarcastic, ‘although we do prefer it when pupils get dressed before they come into the classroom.'

‘Sorry, sir.' I'm tying my tie and trying to do up my cuffs at the same time.

‘Can you explain yesterday's unauthorised absence? A domestic crisis I understand?'

If he knows, why is he asking? ‘Yes, sir.'

‘You don't have to call me sir, Joe; you're not in the cadet corps now.'

Eh? I can't be bothered with this. I have bigger worries than Mr Hunt understands, and I might not even be in his class by tomorrow. ‘Shall I go to assembly, sir, or would you like me to explain about how my mum was ill?' I say, sounding as bored as I dare.

‘Take a detention for turning up half-dressed and go to assembly,' he says, and I get there just in time to line up with my class, sitting down hurriedly next to mousey little Claire who goes pink when I lean over and whisper, ‘I never knew you were Ellie's sister.'

‘Silence!' shouts Mr Hunt, and we all sit catatonic while the head teacher lectures us about moral choices and how they are linked to school uniform. Making the right decisions becomes a habit, just like being smartly turned out – outward order, inner discipline – blah, blah, blah. It makes no sense to me at all.

At break, Brian in the next desk says, ‘Wait a minute, Joe,' and pulls some papers out of his bag. ‘It's the homework you missed from yesterday. I thought I'd better keep it for you. You have to do this and this by Monday, and on this one,' – he solemnly thumbs through a massive pile of Maths – ‘pages four, five and six by Wednesday.'

Of course I could be anywhere by then. But it's nice of him to have kept it for me. Not the sort of thing Arron would have thought of. In fact, Brian, now I come to think
of it, seems like an all-round good guy. Someone I can probably trust.

‘Thanks Bri, that's excellent, really helpful.' I stuff the papers in my bag. ‘Bri, can I ask your confidential advice about a few things?'

Brian's beaming. ‘Of course.'

‘Well . . . you know Carl and his lot? When they're trying to be threatening, what do you think they have in mind? Do I need to, you know, worry about them?'

Brian has no idea what I mean. I can see it in his innocent small-town, thirteen-year-old eyes. ‘He's a bit of a bully, but it's probably mostly talk,' he says. ‘He generally picks on people smaller than you.'

That sounds OK. I need to be sure though. ‘So I don't need to be, you know . . . prepared?' He gapes. I spell it out. ‘Weapons, blades, Bri. No one here uses them, do they?'

The penny drops. He shakes his head. ‘Wow . . . no, I don't think so.' He looks curious, and impressed. ‘Is that what you're used to?'

We're not going there. I change the subject, skilful as a Ronaldo step-over. ‘You know how everyone goes down the shopping centre on a Saturday morning?'