‘Hi,’ he said. He looked round. ‘Where’s Mum?’ It was at that moment that his heart started beating like a terrible drum, as if it knew everything already.
‘Nick,’ said Jen, and stopped.
The well-dressed little woman stood up and held out her hand.
‘Ah’m Mrs Batts. Baaatty Batts,’ she said in a long, slow, northern accent, stretching out her ‘a’s so far, it was almost funny. She sounded like a sheep. Nick smiled at Jen, but she shot him such a ghastly look the smile faded on his face. Mrs Batts smiled back, thinking he was enjoying her feeble joke. Nick nodded at her and looked around.
‘Where’s Mum?’ he said again.
What could Jen say? She’s at the morgue, Nick. She’s gone to Heaven. She’s with those she loves.
That certainly wasn’t true. The only two people Muriel had loved were standing right there in that room.
So she just blurted it out.
‘She’s dead, Nick. I came round and found her,’ she said, and burst into floods of messy, snotty tears. She took a step towards him, but Batty Batts got in between them and took her in her arms. Jen didn’t hug her back but stood there weeping helplessly with one hand on her face and the other hanging by her side, while the little woman stood and patted her. Nick just stood there and watched.
‘Ah’m soo sorry, Nick, Ah’m soooo, soooo sorry,’ intoned Mrs Batts over her shoulder.
Jen’s tears proved the truth of it, but he couldn’t believe it. He wanted to run around calling for her - people didn’t just die! But the word dead was so final, it froze him to the spot.
‘What happened?’ he said.
‘.. .an accident,’ blubbed Jenny.
‘How?’ he begged. Jenny shook her head, and Mrs Batts looked at him and shook her head too, as if to say, Now isn’t the time, as if it were some adult thing, something too personal to say to him, even though of all the people on earth, he was the one with the right to know.
‘It’ll take a whiiiile for it to sink in,’ said Batty Batts to Jen, glancing at Nick. She let Jen go and both of them sat down. Nick stood there, not knowing what to do, until Jenny pulled herself together, got up and gave him a big hug.
‘It’s mad, Nick, it’s just mad, isn’t it?’ she whispered. She squeezed him tightly and then went off to make some tea while Batty Batts patted the sofa next to her.
‘Nooow then, Nick,’ she said. ‘This must be a terrible shock fer you.’
Nick sat down next to her. ‘She was all right this momin’,’ he said.
‘Death aaalways comes as a surprise,’ bleated Mrs Batts, shaking her head. ‘Our loved ones aaalways leave us before we’re ready.’ She laid her hand briefly on his arm and pursed her lips. Nick nodded. There was nothing he could say. He had no idea if anything she said was true. This was his first experience of death.
‘Nick, Ah knoo this might not seem the time, but we’re all very concerned about your future,’ went on Mrs Batts in her long drawn-out way, glancing at him. ‘And Ah doo need t’ ask yer a few questions. Ah need to knoo something about yer wider family. Can yer tell me anything about your faarther?’
Nick shook his head. He hadn’t heard anything about his dad for years, didn’t even know where he lived. Mrs Batts began to go through a list of possible relatives. Grandparents? He had a gran in Australia. Did she have an address? Not as far as he knew, they hadn’t heard from her in years. His mum fell out with both her parents years ago. Her dad was ead, he thought.
‘They were ’orrible,’ said Nick. ‘She wouldn’t want them ’ere, anyway.’
‘At where, Nick?’ asked Mrs Batts.
‘The funeral,’ said Nick.
She glanced at him warily. ‘Oo noo, this isn’t about the funeral. This is about your future, Nick,’ she intoned. Nick stared at her. Something about the way she was looking at him made him realise what this was all about.
He was on his own. He was fourteen years old. Who was going to look after him now?
Answer: no one. He knew it at once. Muriel had always said they only had each other.
Batty Batts carried on. Aunts and uncles? His mum had been an only child.
‘I think Mum still has an uncle somewhere,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Batty Batts looked expectantly at him, her pen poised over her notepad. She looked so eager, Nick felt almost sorry for her.
‘I never met him. Mum ’asn’t seen him for years.’
‘Is that the pie man, that one?’ asked Jenny, popping her head through the door.
‘Yeah, think so,’ said Nick.
‘Pies?’ enquired Mrs Batts.
‘Maggie’s Pies and Pasties. You know.’ Nick shrugged. ‘Gran’s brother. I don’t think Mum ever even met ’im. He ran away from ’ome when he was small. She always ’ated her family. So do I,’ said Nick. Not that he’d ever met any of them, but out of solidarity with his mum.
Batty Batts looked surprised. ‘Next a kin. There must be some next a kin. There must be someone who’ll take care of yer.’
‘I’m not livin’ with anyone.’
Mrs Batts pulled a rueful face. ‘There must be someone,’ she repeated.
Jen appeared at the doorway with the tea. ‘I told you, she was on her own, just her and Nick, wasn’t it, Nick?’ she said, coming in. ‘And me,’ she added, glancing reassuringly at Nick. Batty put her notebook down.
‘Well. That’s not taken for granted like next a kin, you see. Ah. Tea,’ she said brightly.
‘Tea, Nick?’
‘Where’s my mum now?' he asked abruptly.
The two women glanced at each other. ‘Well. She’ll be at morgue, now, Nicholas,’ said Mrs Batts.
‘But what happened?' Suddenly he needed to know.
Mrs Batts put her hand on Jenny’s knee to stop her saying anything, and looked straight at him. ‘There’ll be an autopsy. There’s always an autopsy in case a sudden death. They’ll have the answers, Ah expect.’
‘Was it a stroke or a heart attack or somethin’, was it?’
‘...we’d better wait for the results before we speculate.’
Jen stood over them with the teapot. Nick looked appealingly at her. She ought to tell him, she knew she ought to - get it over with for him. But she couldn’t. It had been something no one else knew, just her and Muriel for so long, she couldn’t break the habit of secrecy in front of one of the kids.
‘How many sugars?’
‘Two.’ He stood up suddenly. ‘Where was she?’ he demanded.
Jen nodded across the room. ‘On the rug. There.’
He walked over to the place, conscious of the two women watching him. He eyed them sideways and they turned away and started talking between themselves. He bent down and touched the rug.
Here. She died here. She lay here, dead.
‘The fire was on,’ said Jen. ‘Maybe she was feeling cold.’
There were no stains on the rug.
‘It wasn’t...was she...’ he began. He didn’t know anything about death of any kind. ‘Did it hurt?’ he asked.
Jen shook her head. ‘She looked very peaceful,’ she said. ‘She didn’t suffer.’ Suddenly, Jenny had to suppress hysterical giggles. Suffer! ‘Hope you enjoyed it, babe. The biggest hit of all,’ she thought to herself.
Nick got down on the rug. Behind him, Jen and Batty Batts got up and left the room. He could hear them talking in low voices in the kitchen. He thought about his dead mother lying there. He thought about their cross words that morning and about her dancing across the floor to Boy George. He tried to squeeze out a tear for her, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t real yet. He wanted to go into the kitchen to Mrs Batts and Jen and shake the answers out of them - how, why, when? What for? He wanted to ask to see the body, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that either. Was it sick to want to see your mother dead?
So he just knelt there, and looked at the fire, and waited to see what was going to happen next.
A few hours later, Nick found himself standing in the
sitting room of Jen’s little house in Middleton. He hadn’t been there for years, since he was a kid, and now he felt too big for it, like some kind of outsize freak, with his grief on his head like a great tall dunce’s cap. The boy with no parents. Jen’s two kids sat eating their Weetabix in their jim-jams and watching telly. Grace, the oldest at nine years old, studiously ignored him. That suited him. The last thing he wanted was any conversation. He knew exactly what she’d want to ask.
‘What’s it like to have no mother?’ she’d say. It was a question Nick would have liked to ask as well. So far -he could tell you this without fear of contradiction - so far, it was crap.
The little boy didn’t look curious. He looked scared. Jen bent down to him.
‘What’s he want?’ he asked in a loud whisper.
‘He doesn’t want anything,’ whispered Jenny back. ‘He’s just going to stay for a bit, that’s all.’
‘How long’s he staying for?’ asked little Joe.
‘I don’t know. Eat your Weetabix, Joe, and don’t stare.’
Joe was only five, but he’d already had enough of great big blokes coming round his house getting upset. Jen’s choice of boyfriends was famously hopeless. Nick wasn’t exactly helping, bless him, sitting there staring at the TV, with a face like he’d seen a ghost, not saying a word.
As soon as the kids were fed, Jen chivvied them upstairs early amid wails of protest with the promise of extra stories. Nick could do with a bit of time to himself down there. He hadn’t had a second on his own since he’d found out. Give him a chance to get his head round the fact that poor Muriel was gone forever.
‘You’re having my bed tonight,’ said Jen when she came down after over an hour of stories later. ‘I’m not having you sleeping on the couch. There’s no room with Joe and I can’t put you in with Grace, can I?’ she smiled. ‘A girl that age needs a bit of privacy.’ She sat down next to him. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. She pulled a handful of damp tissues from her sleeve and began to weep. Nicholas stared at her, watching the tears that should have been his.
‘What’s going to ’appen to me?’ he said.
‘Like I said, you can stay here as long as you like,’ said Jen.
‘There’s no room.’
‘We’ll make room. The Social’ll find out about your dad or your granddad... ’
‘I don’t know them,’ exclaimed Nick. He jumped up. ‘I can’t live with people I don’t know.’
‘We’ll see. The important thing is, you can stay here for as long as it takes. For as long as possible, as far as I’m concerned,’ she added.
Nick sat down. He began to leak tears. ‘What’s possible?’ he asked. ‘What’s that?’
Jenny put her arms gently around him. ‘Oh, Nick, darling, don’t. You don’t have to worry about that now. You know me and Muriel, we were like that, two peas in a pod. We always shared everything. You’re staying here, OK, Nick? OK, darling?’
Nick tried to relax in her arms. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
She nodded and let him go. ‘Right, that’s that, then. Now, I’m starved, I bet you are. Fish and chips, what about it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shall you go or shall I? I’ll go, will I? You can babysit. See? I’ve got it made - a live-in baby-sitter! I never had it so good.’
‘Yeah, right.’
Jen went out for fish and chips and they sat together on the sofa eating them. He was starving - he finished all his and most of her chips as well. As they ate, he asked her again about what had happened.
She was dreading this - having to tell him that his mum had died of a heroin overdose. She’d put her foot in it right at the start by telling him it was an accident. It had just blurted out of her. She was always such a gob. She thought he was bound to want to know what she meant by that, but as luck would have it, it seemed as if he’d forgotten and only remembered the social worker saying about the autopsy.
‘What do you suppose ’appened?’ he asked her, popping chips in his mouth. ‘She was too young for an ’eart attack, wern’t she?’
Jen didn’t flicker. It was another chance to tell, but she still couldn’t bring herself to do it. Poor thing, she thought, he’s got enough on his plate for today. Tomorrow was soon enough to find out his mum had been using in secret all these years, and died like a junkie with a needle in her arm.
‘Whatever happened, she was too young,’ she said.
‘She was just lying there, was she? Just fell down dead?’ She looked into his eyes to see if there was a hint of doubt there, but he was just chomping on his chips, trustful as the day was long.
No. She didn’t want to tell him now. It was too soon.
‘I don’t know, Nick,’ she said firmly. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’
Let him down, gently. And her. She needed letting down gently as well. Boy, oh boy, she thought. What a mess. What a big, enormous fucking great mess.
3
Back Home
Nick slept a deep, seamless, dreamless sleep that night in Jenny’s bed, which was cleaner, warmer, bigger, and far more comfortable than anything he could remember. When Jen crept in to see him at eight in the morning, he was stretched out with one hairy leg sticking out from the covers, an arm flung up, his head to one side, the very picture of relaxation. She stood in the doorway holding a mug of tea, admiring him. He’d been a kid only yesterday and now look - like a young prince. Maybe he was in his dreams.
She didn’t want to wake him up now to all his sorrows. She closed the door and tiptoed out. Let him sleep. He’d been plunged into a world of shit, and he hadn’t hit the bottom yet, not by a long way.
She had an appointment with Mrs Batts at two, to discuss the options. What was to be done with Nick? Jen had insisted the day before that of course, he would stay with her for as long as he needed to.
‘Don’t be too quick abaht it,’ Mrs Batts had advised. ‘You have a young family of your own t’ think of. There aare other options, even if his dad and grandfather don’t want to commit.’
‘What, you mean adoption?’
‘Well, that’s unlikely at his aage,’ she drawled. ‘But some of the Children’s Homes are very good these days. Times have changed a lot since Oliver Twist. They provide a safe ’ome, discipline, people his own age, good food. They’d keep him busy. Keep his mind off things. Ah’ve been thinking about Meadow Hill.’ Mrs Batts dusted her skirt with a professional air of satisfaction. ‘Tony Creal, the deputy head, is an inspiraational figure to many of the boys there, particularly for those whose faarthers haven’t been all that much in evidence, like our Nick. A wuunderful man. Very dedicated. He has a huuge amount of experience dealing with difficult young people.’
‘Difficult?’ said Jenny. She knew Nick was a handful, but difficult? In the mouth of Mrs Batts, it sounded so official.
She looked kindly at Jenny and smiled. ‘Ah speak from experience. Teenagers are a nightmare. Nick seems like a nice boy, but Ah wouldn’t wish even a nice teenager onto a young family like yours.’
It was so, so tempting! She and Muriel had always promised each other they’d look after the other’s kids if anything happened, but Jenny had to admit, if Nick did happen to prefer a home, it would be handy. There wasn’t a lot of room in her house - that might be sorted out, of course, especially if the Social paid up - but there was still little Joe to worry about. The way he’d been looking at Nick yesterday, you’d have thought Nick was going to eat him.
It was her own fault. The usual. A bloke. All her troubles came from blokes. How come all the lovely ones turned out to be shitbags? No matter how hard she tried to discover someone who liked gardening, say, or cooking, or just conversation, they always turned out to have a secret vice. Weeks would go by and then she’d be woken up at three in the morning with some vile drunk banging on her door, who just the day before had only wanted to stroke her hand and read passages of his favourite books to her. Or she’d discover works in the bathroom cabinet,
or bottles of vodka in the attic, or a bag of cocaine the size of Bolivia in her handbag just as they were going through customs on the way back from their holiday in Spain.
The last one, Bob, had been particularly lovely. All he had to do was smile and her insides turned to custard. He was funny, generous and kind. A chippie, a good one, he could get work whenever he wanted. He’d even played with the kids at first. But he did that thing, he got drunk, started to feel sorry for himself, and then he got angry.
You wouldn’t know it was the same man. One minute he was weeping beer fumes into her arms, the next he was smashing the place up. Bang! - down with the kitchen cupboards. Wallop! - over with the TV. The first time it happened, she was so scared, she’d run upstairs to hide with the kids, which had been a stupid thing to do, because of course he’d followed her up into the room and started up there. The kids screaming, her trying to calm everyone down and not knowing who was going to get it next - her, the kids or the window.
The next day he’d been so mortified she’d forgiven him. It had gone on for six months before she banished him. He’d begged, wept, raged, come banging at the door in the middle of the night, and once, he even turned up at school and tried to pick up the kids, the bastard. Then he’d found someone else and vanished overnight. By then, little Joe was wetting the bed, bullying other kids at school, whingeing, fighting and lying.
It was into this unsteady emotional construction that Nick had arrived to add his own see-saw heart. Nick was a charming, likeable lad in deep trouble through no fault of his own. On the other hand, he was also a rampant, raging, hormonal, skiving, lying, recently orphaned and frequently furious teenager. There was trouble ahead, how could it be otherwise? Especially once he found out what had really happened...
The next morning, it was a wet bed for Joe, the first for weeks.
Jen hurried Joe and Grace through breakfast while she got herself ready. She worked part time at a community centre, doing a bit of secretarial, a bit of organisational and a bit of drugs counselling. She was going to study and get qualifications in a few years’ time so she could do more counselling and project work, earn some decent money. Like Muriel...