Nobody Real

“Just to sleep.”

Smell the booze on her breath. See the hope in her eyes. Smile.

“Course you can.”

We hug again and she speaks into my chest. “I missed you, Thor.”

Squeeze.

“I missed you too, Blue.”

And I have. Truly.

So maybe I’m only half a liar.

“Bad dream?”

Blue on her side, smiling at me with sleepy eyes. I realise I’m gripping twisted duvet in my paws and let go. Breathe out. “I’m OK.”

She strokes the fur on my shoulder. “Let’s go out by the river,” she says, covering her mouth with her other hand, worried about morning breath. “We could take some food. Drop rocks into the water, remember?”

I do remember. Her skimming stones. Me shot-putting boulders. But I want you.

“I have to work.”

Her hand leaves my fur. “It’s Saturday, Thor.”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying it has to mean anything. Just two friends hanging out by the river. It’ll be fun.”

Sit up.

“It’s not that, Blue. I have to put in braces on the side walls, so I don’t damage the buildings either side.”

“But it’s the weekend.”

“I know. The removals guys have to come first thing Monday and, if the braces aren’t in place, we can’t do the clearing.”

She’s scowling.

“I’m serious,” I say. “It’s not like a castle. It’s not all just mindless smashing up, you know. There is some skill involved. I’m not just some animal.”

She smiles and touches my shoulder again. “I like you, animal.”

I am a liar. Say something true.

“I’ll cook later; you could come over?”

“You’ll cook?”

“OK, I’ll get Rocco’s. How long since we had chicken?”

“Too long.”

“Exactly. Say, nine?”

She nods. I get out of bed, part of me wishing I could step out of my skin and leave the me she wants there with her.

She deserves more than I really am.

Dad looks like a scarecrow trying to defuse a nuclear bomb.

I think I’ve seen him behind the till maybe three times since he bought the place.

Customer service isn’t his calling.

A woman and her little nursery-age daughter are in the children’s corner, looking at picture books. The old crooked man who’s in love with Diane is browsing classic fiction.

“Marcie, thank God!” says Dad, holding his head. “This thing hates me.”

I step behind the counter. The old monitor screen is showing “system error”.

“What did you do, Dad?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything. It’s this piece of shit!”

He slaps the side of the monitor. The woman in the children’s corner gives us evils.

“Easy, old man. It’s not a problem. I showed you, remember?”

“I remember a simpler time, Mars, that’s what I remember.”

I push the keys and the blue stock search screen comes back up. Dad groans. He’s still in his dressing gown. “You’re a genius.”

“No, Dad, you’re a caveman. Why are you even down here? Where’s Diane?”

On cue, something bangs upstairs. Dad points up.

“Yeah. I’d better … You’re good here, right?”

I nod. He goes upstairs.

The little girl lifts up the Marvel Encyclopedia. “Look, Mummy!”

The woman shakes her head. “No, Rosie, I said a proper book.”

The girl puts the book back, frowning as she drags her feet over to where her mum is crouched in front of books for toddlers. Don’t worry, Rosie, superheroes will still be there when you’re old enough to choose.

Muffled shouts bleed through the ceiling. Another lovers’ tiff.

I load up Roy Ayers on to the turntable and sit on the stool behind the till. Crackle. Chants. Bongos. I turn it down to background level. Saturdays are the best days. Full of possibility.

Blank pages, waiting to be scribbled on.

I imagine the counter is the control desk for a spaceship, the two front windows either side of the door my navigation screens. I’m the captain. I could go anywhere in the universe.

Where am I going? My mind’s blank. Just a month ago my head was so full of stuff.

Stanley Milgram’s (1963) obedience experiments. John Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis. The Loop of Henle and kidney function. The ambiguity of Iago’s motivations.

All of it crammed in, facts and quotes and dates, loaded up, ready to regurgitate under exam conditions. Where is it all now? In a box tucked on to a shelf in the warehouse of my brain? Saved to the cloud?

I close my eyes and picture a pile of rubbish as big as a house, rough and jagged edges sticking out, but, instead of broken pieces of furniture and antique crap, it’s just words, different-sized letters and sentences piled up on top of each other, a massive dark scribbled jumble of everything I’ve ever been taught. And I’m standing on the pavement in front of it, my hand reaching out, holding a lighter.

Think of Cara. Want to tell her. I reach into my bag for my phone and find my sketchbook. I don’t remember putting it in here. Haven’t taken it out of the house for ages.

You.

You put it in.

Someone stomps down the stairs and the moment is gone.

Diane’s carrying a large navy-blue backpacker rucksack. Her face is flushed thunder.

I push my sketchbook out of sight.

The old man turns round, smiling, like he senses her presence. He’s wearing a full suit, eager to impress. Diane doesn’t even acknowledge him as she stomps over to me and drops her bag.

“Excuse me, Marcie,” she says, taking the red strongbox from the shelf under the till.

“Are you OK?” I say, like a child.

She bangs the box on to the counter, then tips over the old mug that holds the pens, fishing the key from a puddle of paperclips and drawing pins.

“I’m going to stay with my parents.”

She opens the box and counts out a stack of notes. “Just what I’m owed,” she says. I nod.

She gives me a sympathetic look, blows hair from her face, then waves her hand around like an untied balloon that’s just been let go.

“Alton Towers has got nothing on that man, Marcie.”

I glance at the door to upstairs. Why isn’t he trying to stop her leaving? Did he give up?

“A rollercoaster’s only fun because you know you’re getting off at some point, right?” she says, folding the notes into her hip pocket. “Nobody wants a rollercoaster forever.”

I’m supposed to say something. I can feel the old man watching from the shelves.

“When are you coming back?” I say.

Then she hugs me.

It’s the first time she’s ever done it and it’s not the reserved, polite embrace I’d imagined it would be. It’s the kind of firm, animal hug of an older sister who’s going travelling and knows you’ll be getting all the grief she would have got from your parents.

When she lets me go, we’re both on the verge of tears.

“I’m sorry, Marcie.” She picks up her bag and wipes her nose with her sleeve. “Oh, a guy phoned up and ordered a couple of books this morning. I don’t remember his name, but it’s on the system. He’s picking them up on Tuesday.”

“OK.”

Diane looks at the doorway to the stairs.

“Look after him, OK? He needs you.”

And there’s another space for me to speak. But I don’t.

I don’t say, Him? I can’t even look after myself, Diane.

I don’t say, My head is playing games with me right now.

I don’t say, Please stay. He’s been so much calmer since you’ve been around.

I don’t say anything. I don’t even nod.

I just watch her leave and, as the shop door closes, I catch the broken look in the old man’s eyes, like a young Bruce Wayne in that Gotham City alleyway.

Quiet with Dad has its own quality.

It’s not like the painful tumbleweed wasteland it is with other people.

Growing up, I got used to him wandering off with a thought midway through a sentence and not looking back. Some new story idea that immediately superseded anything in the real world.

Sitting quietly with him while he stared out of the window, chewing over an idea, was as normal as watching TV.

This is different.

Watching him from the sofa, chin resting on his hands, he doesn’t seem like he’s lost in some plot point or character he’s trying to grow. This feels like the stilted silence of a man digesting what has just happened. That thick silence that leaks out through the cracks of a mistake.

If there’s one thing I think I’ve learned in my nearly eighteen years on this planet, it’s that there is no situation the wrong words can’t make worse. So I just sit with that double negative in my lap, staring across at the dormant fireplace.

Resting on the mantelpiece, in a cheap glass frame, is an A3, eight-panel, black-and-white comic strip. The first three panels are a creature that might be a bear, looking left, then right, then up. In the fourth panel, the bear looks at us and a speech bubble says, “Where Squirrel?” Five is him shrugging, six is him standing up, and in seven he turns around and half a squirrel is sticking out of his bum. Panel eight says “Lost Squirrel” by Marcie Baker. Age 7.

I laugh without meaning to. Dad looks over.

“Sorry,” I say, covering my mouth.

“Don’t be,” he says, and the ten-ton mood lifts just enough for me to slip a question underneath.

“Will you call her?”

Dad looks at his hands.

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”

“Dad?”

“Orwell. She’s made her choice, Mars.”

“What, and that’s it?”

He shrugs. “It is what it is.”

He glances at me, then goes back to the window. I swallow my frustration and just watch as the invisible elephant clomps into the room and plonks itself down in front of the fire, the word “MUM” painted in dripping red letters on its arse. I could say something. I want to.

But every sentence I run through in my head feels pointless.

Watching Dad like this, it’s easy to remember he’s a younger brother. The kind of boy who’d get escorted around by an older sister like Coral, taken to the playground, told not to wander off and pretty much left to his own devices. A boy who’d happily spend an entire afternoon inspecting leaves.

“Circles, Mars,” he says after a while, stubbing out his cigarette. “What has happened will happen again.”

“Bullshit.”

You’re standing where the elephant was, bear arms folded in front of the fireplace.

“Tell him that’s bullshit.” You’re gesturing at me like a sports coach giving a pep talk.

“Go on.”

I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut, willing you away.

“I’m not leaving till you tell him,” you say.

I open my eyes.

“Do it.”

“Dad—”

“Amor fati, Mars,” says Dad, starting on a new roll-up. “Amor fati.”

“Do it, Marcie!”

“Bullshit!”

You smile. I stand up. Dad drops his tobacco.

“The pitiful fortune-cookie lines I can just about handle, Dad, but when you start with the Latin … Get up.”

“What?”

“Tell him again.”

“I said, get up! Get your shoes on: we’re going out.”

I walk over to him. Dad looks almost scared.

“I don’t want to go out, Mars.”

“I don’t care what you want, Karl, we need air. This place stinks of self-pity.”

I take his jacket off the hook next to the kitchen door and throw it at him.

“Yes!” you say. “Go on, Marcie!”

And I feel good. Better than good. I look at Dad.

“Come on. We’re leaving.”

You’re eleven.

It’s the night before secondary school starts.

You’re sitting at Coral’s kitchen table with her and Dad. He’s now living in a bedsit nearer town. Coral’s made curried goat and rice and peas. Dad compliments the food for the twenty-fifth time. Coral ignores him. She looks at you and asks what you have to say. The windows are all open, but there’s still the faint smell of burnt polyester from the sofa.

You picture the green flames dancing as the paisley cushions ignited.

The light flickering in my smile.

You say you’re sorry. That you were conducting a science experiment and it got out of control.

Coral stares at Dad.

Dad stares at his food.

You slide your hand into your pocket under the table and feel the smooth envelope, its edges worn almost furry from being held.

Coral tells your dad to say something. That it’s getting ridiculous.

Your dad forces a smile and says a movie studio offered to buy the rights to Dark Corners. Coral asks how much. Dad says it doesn’t matter: a book is a book, and a film is a film, they’re not having it.

He raises his pineapple punch and says, “Screw Hollywood.”

Coral looks at you, and rolls her eyes.

“Thank you,” says Dad as we walk back down the high street.

It’s nearly six and everything is closed. A couple of hours’ walking quietly through the park is as good as any therapy session.

I drop my used wet wipe in the bin outside the British Heart Foundation shop, belly full of chicken and chips.

“No problem.”

We reach the shop and Dad starts patting his pockets.

“Maybe I should get a dog, with the park right there and everything?”

“Yeah? And who’ll be the one who ends up walking him?” I say.

He fingers his bunch of keys for the right one. “Not you. You’ll be gone.”

“Dad …”

“Don’t worry. I can handle myself.” He holds up the shop door key proudly. “See?”

There’s a sadness in his smile.

“Shall I come in for a bit?” I say. “I could wash up?”

“I’ll be fine, Mars. Tell Coral I said hi.”

He opens the door.

“I could come over tomorrow, cook you dinner?”

He shakes his head. “No need, Mars. You enjoy your Sunday off.”

“I’ll come on Monday then, help with the shop?”

I watch the realisation that Diane is gone sucker-punch him in the ribs. “Yeah. That’d be great.”

He hands me his keys.

“OK then, call me if you need me, Dad, yeah?”

He nods an autopilot nod and closes the door.

You’ll be gone.

I watch him through the glass. He looks older from behind, his body fading into shadow as he walks to the stairs.

Coral’s wearing eyeliner.

“Oh, hey! I just sent you a message,” she says, pointing back at the house. I can smell perfume.

“You look nice,” I say.

She looks down at her outfit – navy-blue trouser suit, shimmery white top. “You think? Not too much?”

“Not at all. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Nobody special. Dom from work, you remember him? He came to my work birthday meal?”

She brushes fluff from her arm. The light dances in her perfectly cropped Lego hair.

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