Almost True (32 page)

‘What didn't she say?' I never knew Helen could sound so bitter.

‘I don't understand,' he says. ‘I don't know how she found out. I'll talk to her. Find out. Tell her not to say anything to Ty. Nicki and I agreed it would be better if he never knew about . . . you know . . . when I had her sectioned.'

Sectioned. I've heard that word before. On
Casualty
or
Holby
or maybe
East Enders
. . .

‘Oh, Danny,' says Helen, ‘I think Ty . . . I think he might be. . .'

And she must have pointed to the laundry room door, because suddenly he's opening the door, looking at me like I'm a ghost.

‘Oh my God,' he says. ‘What did you hear?'

Sectioned. Mental Hospital. That's what it means. It means he put her in a loony bin. Jesus Christ. He put her away.

‘What did you do to her?' I ask slowly.

‘What?'

‘To my mum. What did you do to her?' Little fragments are coming back to me now. ‘The hospital. Patrick said . . . he said . . . she had to go in. . . She hates hospitals.' That's all I can think of. She hates doctors and hospitals. What happened to her? How could he?

‘She was ill,' he says. ‘Really ill. She needed treatment. She couldn't look after you. She was bad for you.'

What?
What is he saying? I clutch the hot iron. My voice is kind of choking in my throat. ‘You can't . . . you shouldn't. . .'

And I lift the iron up to my shoulder, so I can throw it bang smash into his face.

I hurl the iron at him with all my strength. But it's still plugged into the wall. It jerks, and for a horrible moment I think it's coming straight back at me. Then it falls to the ground. The plug tears from the socket and whips over my shoulder, whopping me in the face as it goes.

‘Ergh . . . oww. . .' I whimper, holding my jaw.

My dad's staring at me. Patrick looms behind him. ‘What's going on?' he barks. He must've come into the kitchen just in time to see my temper take over. Treacherous tears are gathering again, tickling my throat, prickling my eyelids. I dig my nails into my arm and bite my lip.

Then Helen pushes between the two men. ‘Let me talk to Ty,' she says. Her voice is calm and gentle. ‘Danny . . . Patrick. . . You go into the other room for a minute. Everything's all right now. Ty just needs a few minutes.'

They leave. ‘Ty—' says my dad and I raise my head and give him what I hope is a furious glare. But I don't know how well it worked because I'm just concentrating on keeping my mouth shut and not letting any embarrassing noises out. I can't read his face. He's not as obvious as my mum.

Then it's just me and Helen. I wish she'd go away. She asks, ‘Do you want to come and sit in the kitchen?' and I shake my head. My legs feel all shaky and I lean against the washing machine, and slowly slide down to the floor. So I'm sitting with my back to the dryer. My ears are full of the noise of the machines. I'm holding my jaw where the plug hit it. It's throbbing with pain.

She picks up the iron, and puts it away. She takes the shirt I've ironed and says, ‘You have done a good job.' She folds up the ironing board, and spots the scorch mark and says, ‘Never mind. It was an old one.' She's so kind. I wish she'd just tell me off and leave me alone.

Then she sits down next to me, on the cold tiled floor. I turn my head away. ‘Ty,' she says. ‘You know, I've been a teacher for the best part of forty years. There's not a lot that I don't know about people your age.'

I hunch my shoulders. I'm not in the mood to chat about Maths GCSE.

‘All my experience didn't help when it came to bringing up my son, though,' she adds. I have nothing
to say. I'm counting the folded towels stacked up beside me.

‘I remember Nicki when she was thirteen,' says Helen. ‘Sitting in the back row, pretending she wasn't paying attention, then getting full marks in every test. Full of energy, and pushing at every rule she could.'

It takes me a minute, but I get there. ‘D'you mean you taught my mum? She said . . . I thought . . . they were all nuns at her school.' Maybe Helen was a nun . . . but no, she couldn't
possibly
have been.

‘Not all,' she says. ‘For some subjects they brought in teachers from outside. Julie sent all the girls to my school, even though it was a bit out of the way for them. Actually, come to that, I taught Julie as well. I was newly qualified and she was in my O level class. I was her form teacher. That's how we knew each other. When she left school, I was looking for someone to help with my first baby, so she came to work for me. '

‘Oh,' I say. ‘Wow.' This is totally bizarre. How can one grandmother teach another one? Mr Lomax, who taught me Maths at St Saviour's and was completely obnoxious suddenly floats into my head. I swallow a nervous laugh.

‘Nicki was top of everything. An athletics star as well. I don't think I've ever met anyone so competitive.'

‘Oh, right.' She's got my attention, although I'm trying not to show it.

‘The whole family had a hard time when Mick – your grandpa, Ty – was ill. He had cancer and he couldn't work. Julie was run ragged, trying to earn money and care for him and the girls at the same time.'

He was my grandad, I think, not my grandpa. And I never even knew him, so it's a bit unfair that she did.

‘Nicki went a bit wild. She was always in trouble. The nuns thought she was a bad influence. First they suspended her. In the end they asked Julie to move her to a new school. I tried my best – argued for her – but to no avail. Julie was so upset. It was terrible timing. Mick died about a month later.'

My mum was excluded from school? I never ever knew that. When people talked about her getting into trouble, I always thought that I was the trouble she got into.

‘We went to the funeral. It was awful . . . three young girls without a father, poor Julie in floods of tears. We went back to the house for the wake. I was so sad for Julie – widowed before she turned forty.'

‘Oh.'

‘Then one day, a few months later, Danny didn't come home.'

‘Why?'

‘We didn't know. We were terribly worried. We called
all his friends. Danny had lots of friends, girls and boys. Especially girls. The phone was always ringing for him. But no one knew where he was.'

‘And he was . . . he was with my mum?'

‘No. I phoned Louise. She told me she hadn't seen him since her father had died. I was surprised, and I was worried. It wasn't like Danny to go off by himself.'

‘Oh.' The door creaks open and we both look up. Meg pushes into the room, tail waving, mouth smiling. She curls up on my feet with a huge doggy sigh. I wish Meg lived with me.

‘Then we got a call from the Whittington. The Whittington hospital. Danny had been found in Waterlow Park, unconscious. He'd been drinking. The hospital had him lying on a mattress on the floor, sleeping it off. That's how they treat drunks. He looked like a prisoner in a cell. It was grim. They kept him in for three days with alcohol poisoning.

‘We had absolutely no idea what had happened. Why he'd done it. He wouldn't talk to us about it. Patrick was furious – well, you can imagine. I suspected some girl trouble, but we hadn't realised that one girl was more important than all the rest. I mean, Danny was a normal teenage boy. He played the field. He never talked about anyone special.'

‘Oh,' I say. I don't seem to be able to come up
with anything else.

‘I used to call Julie quite often to see how she was getting on. And Julie was a good person to talk to – she knew my girls so well. I didn't really want to share this with my friends . . . it was difficult. . .'

I get it. She could tell my gran she had a problem with her son, but she couldn't tell her posh mates because they'd look down on her. Huh.

‘Julie told me that Nicki was pregnant. She was beside herself. No idea who the father was – Nicki wasn't saying. Julie hadn't realised she even had a boyfriend. An abortion was out of the question – Julie was so devout, is she still? – and Nicki was four months gone before she told anyone. It seems so ironic now – I was worrying about Danny, she was telling me about Nicki, and we had no idea . . . no idea at all.' She smiles at me, ‘You probably think we were a bit slow.

‘We thought perhaps Danny was anxious about his A levels. He'd floated through school really, underperformed in his GCSEs but achieved reasonable grades. He didn't seem to know what he wanted to do in life. Patrick sat him down, talked to him about universities. Maybe that was a mistake . . . maybe we should have suggested a gap year – but we were worried that he'd just float away from education, never make anything of his life.' She shakes her head and smiles. ‘We thought we could help.

‘The only idea in Danny's head seemed to be to get out of London. So he opted for Manchester, and said he'd study law. I don't think he was really interested. He was doing it because his father and two of his sisters had done so before him.'

She stops. She looks at me. ‘Don't do that, Ty darling. Don't let other people make choices for you. Work out what you want to do for yourself.'

She's obviously forgotten I might have my future decided for me by a judge and jury. ‘Then what happened?' I ask quickly, so she won't remember.

‘Danny disappeared again. One morning he wasn't there – he'd left the house during the night. I was frantic with worry. But then I got a phone call from Julie. Oh, Ty, I have never been so shocked. She told me that he'd turned up at her house. She thought he was there to see Louise, but he was begging to see Nicki. And they were reconciled, together, in love. Ty, we had no idea at all. Everything fell into place, but nothing seemed to make sense.

‘We went over to Julie's house. Danny and Nicki were defiant. They sat there, holding hands, telling us how they were going to be parents, get their own place. They were so young, Ty, it was pitiful. Nicki didn't look a day older than when I used to teach her. And Danny . . . Danny
was always the baby of our family. Three older sisters . . . no one ever took him seriously. It was . . . Patrick didn't react well, I'm sorry to say. And Julie was angry with Danny too. It wasn't easy.'

It all sounds like a complete and total and absolute
nightmare
. I'm imagining the whole thing and substituting Claire and her parents for Mum and Gran, with Mr Lomax floating around too. I'd rather die. My dad should've just run away as fast as he could. I actually feel quite sorry for both of them.

‘When you were born, there was really no question that Danny was your father,' she says. Obviously there had been quite a lot of questions beforehand. ‘You looked just like my daughter Marina when she was a baby. And a little like me, perhaps.'

Huh. I obviously looked like a total girl right from the start.

‘Huge blue eyes,' she says. I widen my eyes and show her. ‘No . . . Helen . . . my eyes are
green
.'

‘Children's eyes turn from blue to green very late,' she says. ‘Marina's eyes changed when she was seven. Anyway there was no question at all that Danny was the father. Nicki juggled school and the baby. We helped Julie out with some money so she could cut her hours and help care for you. Danny – to our surprise – got his head down and started studying hard for his A levels.
He spent a lot of time round at their house, but it wasn't easy. Julie was very hostile. Sometimes Nicki would bring you around to us, but she was always on edge – very touchy – taking offence at the slightest thing. She and Danny were fine one minute, having big rows the next. It wasn't the easiest time.'

My mum hasn't changed much.

‘Danny finished school. Nicki took her GCSEs. I don't know how she did it, but she managed to get some good grades. Nothing like she should have got, though, Ty, she had such high potential. They were spending a lot of time together. You were such a sweet baby – a really good boy. Everyone adored you. We didn't know what would happen if Danny got into university. We thought perhaps he'd take a year off, transfer to a London college. Then he got his grades. He got into Manchester. And they announced that they were going off together.

‘We were all horrified. Patrick tried to make Danny see sense – to persuade him that he should either go by himself or take a year off, earn some money, apply to a London university. But Danny can be so stubborn. He insisted. Nicki was desperate to escape from her mother, it turned out. Julie had been giving her a hard time. Danny was probably desperate to escape from us, who knows? They wanted to be together, they said, they wanted to be a family. He'd been in touch with the
university authorities, arranged that they could have a one-bedroom flat. There was no arguing with them. They went off to Manchester with you – Patrick drove them. There wasn't room for Julie or me in the car, because of all their stuff – the baby equipment. I remember that day so well – their excitement, how Patrick was. . . I sat down and cried when you all left, Ty. I just couldn't see how they were going to cope.'

I can hear voices. People in the kitchen. People moving around. Archie's voice saying, ‘Where's Ty? Where's he gone?' I don't want them to interrupt. I need to hear the next bit of Helen's story.

‘They didn't cope, did they?' I say, and then someone coughs. Someone's in the room with us. We both look up.

‘I'll take it from here,' says my dad.

‘Go away,' I say. Helen thinks I'm talking to her. ‘I'll leave you to it,' she says, and I have to hold onto her sleeve to stop her getting up.

‘No, you stay. You tell me more. I don't want him. He told me nothing. Nothing at all. You have to tell me the true story.'