Guilty One (30 page)

Home.
He smacked the can hard and it rose in a glinting, sun-captured arc for at least ten metres before falling soundlessly into the long grass.
Home.
Daniel found it and kicked it again. It flew upwards and he waited for it to fall before catching it on the side of his foot and then sending it flying again, down the hill towards Flynn Farm and Minnie, who would have mashed banana sandwiches waiting for him.

It was her predictability that he loved first. She had a gift of showing him her world and then repeating it day after day. Things happened when she said they would happen. She said that she would adopt him and she did. The judge’s face had twisted in disbelief at the papers before him and Daniel’s stomach had sunk, but sure enough he had decided in their favour and he had been made Minnie’s son, just as she had promised.

Daniel looked at
her differently now. He already loved her heavy body and the soft masses of her, but now he regarded her as having a new power. He trusted her. She was able to achieve the things she desired; they were within her reach. Even Daniel’s fate she held in her grasp. When he thought of her, he would think of Blitz’s ruff in her fist, as she held him back, opening the door to strangers while he barked.

Daniel slowed to a walk. His breath was uneven. He took a deep breath and enjoyed the smell of warm summer grass. The sky was blue and so cloudless that he felt dizzied by its infinity.

He was aware of voices and then footsteps behind. He glanced over his shoulder and saw it was the three older boys who had chinned him before. He knew their names now: Liam, Peter and Matt. They were in the year above him at school.

He felt tension creep into his muscles. He walked as if he was unaware of the boys, but exaggerated his stride and the swing of his shoulders. He could hear their conversation, although he guessed they were twenty feet behind him. They were talking about the football, but then they fell silent and Daniel felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He tried to listen for their movements.

‘How’s the old witch, Danny, eh?’ one called. ‘She taught ye any spells yet, like?’

The voice was close.

Daniel ignored them, feeling the tension run from his shoulders down his spine. He pressed his teeth together and made fists with his hands.

‘Fat witch like her. Like to see her trying to fly, like.’

Daniel glanced over his shoulder again, and saw one of the boys mimicking a broomstick flight before he crashed and tumbled on to the grass.
They all laughed then: dirty laughs. The voices were full-throated and deep; newly broken voices oscillating in derision.

Daniel spun to face them. As soon as he turned, the boys squared up, feet spread apart and hands out of their pockets.

There was a pause, so that all Daniel heard was the rush in his ears.

‘You got a problem?’ It was Peter who spoke, jaw askew, eyes narrowed, willing Daniel to start something.

‘Shut up about her, right!’

‘Or you’ll what?’

‘Chin ye, like.’

‘Yeah, you and whose army?’

It was like before. Daniel charged at the boy, and hit him in the stomach with his head. He was bigger than Daniel still. He felt the older boy’s fist pound his ribs and inhaled with the pain. He could hear the other two jeering, calling:
Batter him, Pete. Batter him.

Daniel remembered fighting his mother’s boyfriend, the one who had pulled him off the floor by his hair. He felt rage snap, quick and bright and exquisite through his body. The jolt was strengthening, cleansing. He hit Peter and he went down and then he kicked him in the face until he turned away.

The other boys turned on Daniel then, but he was taut from the attack and he did not feel their fists against his arms and chest. He hit Matt on the nose and felt the crack reverberate against his knuckle and then kicked Liam in the balls.

Daniel staggered away from them. His fist was stinging and he looked down and saw the knuckle cut, but when he touched it, he realised it
was only Matt’s blood. He spun round on the Dandy to face them one more time.

‘Another word about her, an’ y’re dead.’

The word
dead
came out of his mouth like a bullet. It echoed across the open Dandy. Birds scattered in its wake.

The boys, felled in the long grass, said nothing. Daniel walked away from them, still canny, but exaggerating his swagger all the same. There was a breeze and all the blades of grass bent towards him, as if in veneration.

Daniel knew that the boys might retaliate, but he felt good about himself as he walked towards the farm. His steps were light. They would think twice before slagging her again. She was his mother now; he would stand up for her.

When Daniel arrived at the farm, it was still. The hens were strutting and pecking, but quiet, and the kids were stealing a lick from the udder that would be denied them at nightfall. The daisies in the grass braced themselves against the wind.

Minnie was defrosting the freezer. Daniel went for a pee as soon as he came home. He washed his hand and looked in the mirror. He held up his T-shirt to look at his ribs. He had not a scratch. She would not guess that he had defended her earlier, fought for her and won.

He could not help squaring his shoulders as he walked into the kitchen.

She was in her wellies, hammering a wooden spatula against the impacted ice in the freezer.

‘Mother of God, is that the time already?’ she said when he walked in. ‘Sure and I thought it was just gone two. You’ll be wanting your
sandwiches and I haven’t even got them ready.’

Daniel wiped his nose and his forehead on his sleeve and waited as she pressed banana slices on to fresh white bread and poured him a glass of orange squash. He downed the juice and ate half his sandwich before he spoke to her.

‘What you doin’ that for?’ he asked, pointing at the open, weeping freezer.

‘It’s like all things in life, Danny. Every now and then you need to get out the hammer and start all over again.’

Daniel was not sure what she meant. He started on the other half of his banana sandwich. The windows were open and the manure smell from the adjacent farm crept in. Minnie downed her tea in a gulp and then picked up the hammer and the spatula. She hacked against the ice in loud, hard thuds.

‘I got an A in my history test today,’ he shouted at her. She stopped her assault on the freezer long enough to wink at him.

‘Clever you. I told you. You’re far too smart. You try even a little bit and you’ll knock them all into next week … I told you so.’

Blitz slunk into the next room to escape the noise of the battery. Ice slid across the kitchen floor, quiet and watery as repentance.

Daniel finished his sandwich and sat back in his chair, licking his fingers. He was aware of Minnie looking at him, hammer in hand. She wiped her brow with her bared forearm and put her tools to rest in the freezer. She sat down beside Daniel and laid a heavy red hand on his thigh.

‘What?’ said Daniel, wiping his nose with his sleeve.

‘I spoke to Tricia.’

The kitchen, strung
with beads of light and toast smells and warmth, was suddenly taut as the strings of a violin. In the hall, the dog rested his nose on his paws. Daniel waited with his spine straight. Minnie still had her heavy hand on his leg. She began to rub his knee. He felt the friction of it, the warmth through his school trousers.

‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Danny. God knows I want to spare you more heartbreak, but you asked me to find out.’

‘What is it? Is she in hospital again?’

‘There’s never a right time, so I’m just going to tell you. I found out today.’

Minnie bit her lip.

‘She is, isn’t she? She’s sick again.’

‘It was worse this time, pet.’ She looked at him without blinking, as if he would know without her having to say.

‘What?’

‘Darlin’, your mum died.’

The world was at once very quiet and very noisy. Everything seemed to stop and Daniel felt the pause, the hush. There was a ringing in his ears. It was like earlier, before the fight. It was as if he lost equilibrium for a moment or two. The noise in his ears made him distrust what he had heard and yet the dread that he could taste in his throat – sour, black – meant that he could not bear to hear it repeated.

Daniel stood up from the table, and felt at once Minnie’s warm hands on his shoulders.

‘It’s all right, love,’ she said. ‘Don’t run from this. I’ll always be here for you.’

*

In later years, when
Daniel remembered these words, they would always make him run faster.

It was a shock, but a strange joy. He felt the jolt of it, as if shaken or punched, but then the smart and the strange thrill. His heart pounded, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, his eyes were wide and dry.

Dead?

Air lapped in his mouth as if his throat was cut.

Dead.

He looked down and saw Minnie’s hand on his arm; her warm fingers so much surer than his own mother’s hands. They were strong, like a rope he could trust enough to leap off a rock, knowing it would hold him – poised in space and time – and take the weight as gravity pulled him down.

Dead.

Danny curled into Minnie. She didn’t ask it of him. She didn’t pull him into her, but he curled into her nonetheless, as a leaf curls in autumn, because its energy is spent.

‘There,’ she said. ‘There, there, my love, my precious child. You don’t feel like it, but you’re free – you’re free now.’

He didn’t feel free, but he felt unattached and the fear of that made him press into Minnie again, for the first time really giving himself to her: asking her to love him.

Later, she made him a cup of tea, and he was full of questions.

‘How did she die?’

‘It was another overdose, love. A big one.’

He held the mug of tea in two hands and sipped it.

‘Can I go to see her? Will she be buried somewhere?’

‘No, love, it
was a cremation. But you still have your necklace and you can think about her any time you like.’

‘I should have been with her. I could’ve got the ambulance. I always get the ambulance to come in time.’

‘It’s not your fault, Danny.’

‘It was because she was on her own.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

The thought of leaving Brampton came to him, of hitching a ride to Newcastle like before, but now that she was gone there was no point. Minnie was his mam now and he would try to make good.

23

The prosecution
were
now clearly trying to depict Sebastian as an evil child. The witness list for the day included neighbours of the Crolls, children from Sebastian’s school and his teacher. Out of the presence of the jury, Irene objected to the line of questioning as an attempt to elicit irrelevant evidence of bad character, but the judge allowed some leeway, particularly to do with Sebastian’s reputation as a violent bully, seeing as it related to the offence.

Sebastian was alert today and focused on the trial. There had been no doodling, no swinging of his legs. His father was no longer in court. Daniel had spoken to Charlotte, who said that Kenneth had been called overseas but would return in a few days. Charlotte seemed overwrought: all tendon and sunken eyes and trembling fingertips. She was terrified to go outside for a cigarette, she told Daniel, in case she was set upon by the journalists. She couldn’t bear the lies that people were writing about her son. Daniel had squeezed her elbow and told her to stay calm.
It’ll get worse before it’s our turn,
he told her.
You’d better prepare yourself.

*

‘The Crown calls Mrs Gillian Hodge.’

Daniel watched her make her way to the witness box. The journalists in the gallery all scribbled furiously as she raised her right hand and swore to tell the truth. She was neighbour to both the Crolls and the Stokeses and the mother of two young girls. Daniel had spoken to Irene about her at the chambers party. Her voice was clear and strong, her gestures confident and composed. She was professional yet maternal, with honest bright eyes and straight, prominent teeth. Daniel clasped his hands and waited, almost dreading her evidence. He felt Sebastian’s small hand on his thigh and leaned down so that his ear was nearer to the boy’s mouth.

‘She hates me,’ was all he said.

‘Just relax,’ said Daniel, almost to himself.

Gordon Jones swished his robe aside and assumed his stance by the lectern.

‘Mrs Hodge, could you tell us how you know the Crolls and their son, Sebastian?’

‘I’m their neighbour, also neighbour to Madeline and Paul Stokes. I’m right between the two.’

Daniel listened to her carefully. Her London-public-school voice was assertive and she almost didn’t need the microphone in front of her.

‘And their children,’ Jones prompted, ‘would you say you know them well?’

‘My children used to play with both Ben and Sebastian, so I know the parents and their children well.’

When she said,
and their children,
Madeline turned distinctly towards Sebastian. Daniel straightened his spine as he felt her stern stare.

‘You
have two daughters, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how old are they’

‘One is eight and the other twelve.’

‘Your younger daughter is the same age as Ben Stokes?’

‘Yes, they were in the same class at school.’ Gillian’s large bright eyes sought out Madeline Stokes, who hung her head. Gillian cleared her throat.

‘And your older daughter … a similar age to Sebastian?’

‘Yes, she’s older, but doesn’t play with the boys so much. My youngest is the tomboy. She liked playing with Ben …’

‘Did you encounter any problems when your daughter played with either of the boys who lived near you?’

‘Well, like I said, Poppy, my youngest, really did get on well with little Ben, but often Sebastian would try to join in, or else he would want to play with Poppy even when Ben wasn’t there.’

‘Was this in any way problematic?’