With a laugh I do, and whooping in triumph, my eight-year-old brother grabs the ball and runs back to his mates, yelling, ‘I got it off him, I got it off him! Did you see?’
I slam into the relative cool of the house and sag back against the front door to catch my breath, brushing the damp hair off my forehead. Straightening up, I pick my way down the hallway, my feet automatically nudging aside the assortment of discarded blazers, book bags and school shoes that litter the narrow corridor. In the kitchen I find Willa up on the counter, trying to reach a box of Cheerios from the cupboard. She freezes when she sees me, one hand on the box, her blue eyes wide with guilt beneath her fringe. ‘Maya forgot my snack today!’
I lunge towards her with a growl, grabbing her round the waist with one arm and swinging her upside down as she squeals with a mixture of terror and delight, her long golden hair fanning out beneath her. Then I dump her unceremoniously onto a kitchen chair and slap down the cereal box, milk bottle, bowl and spoon.
‘Half a bowlful, no more,’ I warn her with a raised finger. ‘We’re having an early dinner tonight – I’ve got a ton of homework to do.’
‘When?’ Willa sounds unconvinced, scattering sugarcoated hoops across the chipped oak table that is the centrepiece of our messy kitchen. Despite the revised set of House Rules that Maya taped to the fridge door, it is clear that Tiffin hasn’t touched the overflowing bins in days, that Kit hasn’t even begun washing the breakfast dishes piled up in the sink, and that Willa has once again mislaid her miniature broom and has only succeeded in adding to the crumbs littering the floor.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I ask.
‘Getting ready.’
I empty my lungs with a sigh and leave the kitchen, taking the narrow wooden stairs two at a time, ignoring Mum’s greeting, searching for the only person I really feel like talking to. But when I spot the open door to her empty room, I remember that she is stuck at some afterschool thing tonight and my chest deflates. Instead I return to the familiar sound of Magic FM blasting out of the open bathroom door.
My mother is leaning over the basin towards the smeared, cracked mirror, putting the finishing touches to her mascara and brushing invisible lint off the front of her tight silver dress. The air is thick with the stench of hairspray and perfume. As she sees me appear behind her reflection, her brightly painted lips lift and part in a smile of apparent delight. ‘Hey, beautiful boy!’
She turns down the radio, swings round to face me and holds out an arm for a kiss. Without moving from the doorway, I kiss the air, an involuntary scowl etched between my brows.
She begins to laugh. ‘Look at you – back in your uniform and almost as scruffy as the kiddies! You need a haircut, sweetie. Oh dear, what’s with the stormy look?’
I sag against the doorframe, trailing my blazer on the floor. ‘It’s the third time this week, Mum,’ I protest wearily.
‘I know, I know, but I couldn’t possibly miss this. Davey finally signed the contract for the new restaurant and wants to go out and celebrate!’ She opens her mouth in an exclamation of delight and, when my expression fails to thaw, swiftly changes the subject. ‘How was your day, sweetie pie?’
I manage a wry smile. ‘Great, Mum. As usual.’
‘Wonderful!’ she exclaims, choosing to ignore the sarcasm in my voice. If there’s one thing my mother excels at, it’s minding her own business. ‘Only a year now – not even that – and you’ll be free of school and all that silliness.’ Her smile broadens. ‘And soon you’ll finally turn eighteen and really will be the man of the house!’
I lean my head back against the doorjamb. The man of the house. She’s been calling me that since I was twelve, ever since Dad left.
Turning back to the mirror, she presses her breasts together beneath the top of her low-cut dress. ‘How do I look? I got paid today and treated myself to a shopping spree.’ She flashes me a mischievous grin as if we were conspirators in this little extravagance. ‘Look at these gold sandals. Aren’t they darling?’
I am unable to return the smile. I wonder how much of her monthly wage has already been spent. Retail therapy has been an addiction for years now. Mum is desperate to cling onto her youth, a time when her beauty turned heads in the street, but her looks are rapidly fading, face prematurely aged by years of hard living.
‘You look great,’ I answer robotically.
Her smile fades a little. ‘Lochan, come on, don’t be like this. I need your help tonight. Dave is taking me somewhere really special – you know the place that’s just opened on Stratton Road opposite the cinema?’
‘OK, OK. It’s fine, have fun.’ With considerable effort I erase the frown and manage to keep the resentment out of my voice. There is nothing particularly wrong with Dave. Of the long string of men my mother has been involved with ever since Dad left her for one of his colleagues, Dave has been the most benign. Nine years her junior and the owner of the restaurant where she now works as head waitress, he is currently separated from his wife. But like each of Mum’s flings, he appears to possess the same strange power all men have over her, the ability to transform her into a giggling, flirting, fawning girl, desperate to spend her hard-earned cash on unnecessary presents for her ‘man’ and tight-fitting, revealing outfits for herself. Tonight it is barely five o’clock and already her face is flushed with anticipation as she tarts herself up for this dinner, no doubt having spent the last hour fretting over what to wear. Pulling back her freshly highlighted blonde perm, she is now experimenting with some exotic hairdo and asking me to fasten her fake diamond necklace – a present from Dave – that she swears is real. Her curvy figure barely fits into a dress her sixteen-year-old daughter wouldn’t be seen dead in, and the comment ‘mutton dressed as lamb’, regularly overheard from neighbours’ front gardens, echoes in my ears.
I close my bedroom door behind me and lean against it for a few moments, relishing this small patch of carpet that is my own. It never used to be a bedroom, just a small storage room with a bare window, but I managed to squeeze a camp bed in here three years ago when I realized that sharing a bunk bed with siblings had some serious drawbacks. It is one of the few places where I can be completely alone: no pupils with knowing eyes and mocking smirks; no teachers firing questions at me; no shouting, jostling bodies. And there is still a small oasis of time before our mother goes out on her date and dinner has to get underway and the arguments over food and homework and bedtime begin.
I drop my bag and blazer on the floor, kick off my shoes and sit down on the bed with my back against the wall, knees drawn up in front of me. My usually tidy space bears all the frantic signs of a slept-through alarm: clock knocked to the floor, bed unmade, chair covered with discarded clothes, floor littered with books and papers, spilled from the piles on my desk. The flaking walls are bare save for a small snapshot of the seven of us, taken during our final annual holiday in Blackpool two months before Dad left. Willa, still a baby, is on Mum’s lap, Tiffin’s face is smeared with chocolate ice cream, Kit is hanging upside down off the bench, and Maya is trying to yank him back up. The only faces clearly visible are Dad’s and mine – we have our arms slung across each other’s shoulders, grinning broadly at the camera. I rarely look at the photo, despite having rescued it from Mum’s bonfire. But I like the feel of it being close by: a reminder that those happier times were not simply a figment of my imagination.
CHAPTER TWO
Maya
My key jams in the lock again. I curse, then kick the door in my usual manner. The moment I step out of the late afternoon sunshine and into the darkened hallway, I sense that things are already a little wild. Predictably the front room is a tip – crisp packets, book bags, school letters and abandoned homework strewn across the carpet. Kit is eating Cheerios straight from the box, trying to throw the odd one across the room into Willa’s open mouth.
‘Maya, Maya, look what Kit can do!’ Willa calls excitedly to me as I shed my blazer and tie in the doorway. ‘He can get them into my
mouth all the way from over there!’
Despite the mess of cereal trampled into the carpet, I can’t help smiling. My little sister is the cutest five-year-old in history. Her dimpled cheeks, flushed pink with exertion, are still gently rounded with baby chubbiness, her face lit with a soft innocence. Since losing her front teeth she has taken to poking the tip of her tongue through the gap when she smiles. Her waist-length hair hangs down her back, straight and fine like gold silk, the colour matched by the tiny studs in her ears. Beneath an overgrown fringe, her large eyes wear a permanently startled look, the colour of deep water. She has exchanged her uniform for a flowery pink summer dress, her current favourite, and is hopping from foot to foot, delighted by her teenage brother’s antics.
I turn to Kit with a grin. ‘Looks like the two of you have been having a very productive afternoon. I hope you remember where we keep the vacuum cleaner.’
Kit responds by throwing a handful of cereal in Willa’s direction. For a moment I think he is just going to ignore me, but then he declares, ‘It’s not a game, it’s target practice. Mum won’t care – she’s out with Lover Boy again tonight, and by the time she makes it home she’ll be too wasted to notice.’
I open my mouth to object to Kit’s choice of words, but Willa is egging him on, and seeing that he is neither sulking nor arguing, I decide to let it pass, and collapse on the couch. My thirteen-year-old brother has changed in recent months: a summer growth spurt has accentuated his already skinny frame, his sandy hair has been cut short to show off the fake diamond stud in his ear and his hazel eyes have hardened. Something has shifted in his manner too. The child is still there but buried beneath an unfamiliar toughness: the change around the eyes, the defiant set of the jaw, the harsh, mirthless laugh all give him an alien, jagged edge. Yet during brief, genuine moments like these, when he is just having fun, the mask slips a little and I see my kid brother again.
‘Is Lochan doing dinner tonight?’ I ask.
‘Obviously.’
‘Dinner . . .’ Willa’s hand flies to her mouth in alarm. ‘Lochie said one last warning.’
‘He was bluffing—’ Kit tries to forestall her, but she is off down the corridor to the kitchen at a gallop, always anxious to please. I sit up on the couch, yawning, and Kit starts flicking cereal at my forehead.
‘Watch it. That’s all we’ve got for the morning and I don’t see you eating it off the floor.’ I stand up. ‘Come on. Let’s go see what Lochan’s cooked up.’
‘Fucking pasta – what else does he ever make?’ Kit tosses the open cereal box onto the armchair, spilling half its contents across the cushions, his good mood evaporating in a heartbeat.
‘Well, perhaps you could start learning how to cook. Then we could all three take turns.’
Kit shoots me a condescending look and stalks ahead of me into the kitchen.
‘Out, Tiffin. I said, get the ball out of the room.’ Lochan has a boiling saucepan in one hand and is trying to manhandle Tiffin through the door with the other.
‘Goal!’ Tiffin yells, shooting the ball under the table. I catch it, toss it into the corridor and grab Tiffin as he tries to dive past me.
‘Help, help, she’s strangling me!’ he yells, miming asphyxiation.
I manoeuvre him onto his chair. ‘Sit!’
At the sight of food he complies, grabbing his knife and fork and beating out a drum roll on the table. Willa laughs and picks up her cutlery to copy.
‘Don’t . . .’ I warn her.
Her smile fades, and for a moment she looks chastened. I feel a pang of guilt. Willa is loving and biddable, whereas Tiffin is always bursting with energy and mischief. As a consequence she is always witnessing her brother get away with murder. Moving quickly round the kitchen, I set out the plates, pour the water, return the cooking ingredients to their respective homes.
‘OK, tuck in, everyone.’ Lochan has dished up. Four plates, one pink Barbie bowl. Pasta with cheese, pasta with cheese and sauce, pasta with sauce but no cheese, broccoli – which neither Kit nor Tiffin will touch – craftily hidden round the sides.
‘Hello, you.’ I catch his sleeve before he heads back to the cooker, and smile. ‘You OK?’
‘I’ve been home two hours and they’ve already gone crazy.’ He shoots me a look of exaggerated despair and I laugh.
‘Mum left already?’
He nods. ‘Did you remember the milk?’
‘Yeah, but we need to do a proper shop.’
‘I’ll go after school tomorrow.’ Lochan spins round in time to catch Tiffin leaping for the door. ‘Oi!’
‘I’m done, I’m done! I’m not hungry any more!’
‘Tiffin, would you just sit down at the table like a normal person and eat your meal?’ Lochan’s voice begins to rise.
‘But Ben and Jamie are only allowed out for another half-hour!’ Tiffin yells in protest, his face scarlet beneath his mop of tow-coloured hair.
‘It’s six-thirty! You’re not going back outside tonight!’
Tiffin throws himself back into his chair in fury, arms folded, knees drawn up. ‘That’s so not fair! I hate you!’
Lochan wisely ignores Tiffin’s antics and instead turns his attention to Willa, who has given up trying to use a fork and is eating the spaghetti with her fingers, tilting back her head and sucking in each strand from the bottom. ‘Look,’ Lochan shows her. ‘You wind it round like this . . .’
‘But it keeps falling off!’
‘Just try a bit at a time.’
‘I can’t,’ she moans. ‘Lochie, cut it up for me?’
‘Willa, you need to learn—’
‘But fingers is easier!’
Kit’s place remains empty as he works his way round the kitchen, opening and slamming cupboard doors.
‘Let me save you some time – the only food we’ve got left is on the table,’ Lochan says, picking up his fork. ‘And I haven’t put any arsenic in it, so it’s unlikely to kill you.’
‘Great, so she’s forgotten to leave us any money for Asda again? Well, of course, it’s all right for her – Lover Boy’s taking her to the Ritz.’
‘His name’s Dave,’ Lochan points out from behind a forkful of food. ‘Calling him that doesn’t make you sound in any way cool.’
Swallowing my mouthful, I manage to catch Lochan’s eye and give a barely perceptible shake of the head. I sense Kit is gearing up for an argument, and Lochan, usually so adept at sidestepping confrontation, looks tired and on edge and seems to be steering blindly for a head-on collision tonight.
Kit slams the last cupboard with such force that everyone jumps. ‘What makes you think I’m trying to sound cool? I’m not the one stuck in an apron because his mother is too busy spreading her legs for—’
Lochan is out of his chair in a flash. I lunge for him and miss. He launches himself at Kit and grabs him by the collar, slamming him up against the fridge. ‘You speak like that in front of the little ones again and I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’ Kit has his older brother’s hand round his throat, and despite the cocky smirk, I recognize a glimmer of fear in his eyes. Lochan has never threatened him physically before, but in recent months their relationship has deteriorated. Kit has begun to resent Lochan more and more deeply for reasons I struggle to understand. Yet, despite his initial shock, he somehow manages to retain the upper hand with the mocking expression, the look of condescension for the brother nearly five years his senior.
Suddenly Lochan seems to realize what he is doing. He lets go of Kit and springs back, stunned by his own outburst.
Kit straightens up, a slow sneer creeping onto his lips. ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Gutless. Just like at school.’
He has gone too far. Tiffin is silent, munching slowly, his eyes wary. Willa is gazing anxiously at Lochan, tugging nervously at her ear, her meal forgotten. Lochan is staring at the now empty doorway through which Kit has just departed. He wipes his hands on his jeans and takes a long, steadying breath before tu
rning round to face Tiffin and Willa. ‘Hey, come on, guys, let’s finish up.’ His voice quavers with false cheer.
Tiffin eyes him dubiously. ‘Were you gonna punch him?’
‘No!’ Lochan looks deeply shocked. ‘No, of course not, Tiff. I’d never hurt Kit. I’d never hurt any of you. Jeez!’
Tiffin returns to his meal, unconvinced. Willa says nothing, solemnly sucking each finger clean, silent resentment radiating from her eyes.
Lochan doesn’t return to his seat. Instead he appears at a loss, chewing the corner of his lip, his face working. I lean back in my chair and reach for his arm. ‘He was just trying to wind you up as usual . . .’
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he takes another deep breath before glancing at me and saying, ‘D’you mind finishing this up?’
‘Course not.’
‘Thanks.’ He forces a reassuring smile before leaving the room. Moments later I hear his bedroom door close.
I manage to persuade Tiffin and Willa to finish their food, and then put Lochan’s barely touched plate in the fridge. Kit can have the stale bread on the counter for all I care. I give Willa a bath and force a protesting Tiffin to take a shower. After vacuuming the front room, I decide that an early bedtime would do them no harm and studiously ignore Tiffin’s furious protests about the lingering evening sunlight. As I kiss them in their bunks, Willa puts her arms round my neck and holds me close for a moment.
‘Why does Kit hate Lochie?’ she whispers.
I draw back a little in order to look into her eyes. ‘Sweetheart, Kit doesn’t hate Lochie,’ I say carefully. ‘Kit’s just in a bad mood these days.’
Her deep blue eyes flood with relief. ‘So they love each other really?’
‘Of course they do. And everybody loves you.’ I kiss her again on the forehead. ‘Nighty-night.’
I confiscate Tiffin’s Gameboy and leave the two of them listening to an audio book, then make my way down to the far end of the corridor, where a ladder leads up to the box-sized attic, and shout up at Kit to turn the music down. Last year, after one pitiful complaint after another about having to share a room with his younger siblings, Kit was helped by Lochan to clear the previously unused tiny attic of all the junk left there by former owners. Even though the space is too small to stand up in properly, it is Kit’s lair, the private den in which he spends most of his time when at home, its sloping walls painted black and plastered with rockchicks, the dry, creaking floorboards covered with a Persian rug Lochan unearthed from some charity shop. Cut off from the rest of the house by a steep ladder that Tiffin and Willa have been strictly forbidden to climb, it is the perfect hideaway for someone like Kit. The music fades to a monotonous bass thud as I finally close the door to my room and start my homework.