Lottery Boy (30 page)

Jo’s dad picked them up from the cemetery and made promises to the man. He said it in that quick, funny voice of his. He didn’t make a big fuss about Jo getting into trouble and helping Bully out; all he made a fuss about was Bully coming back for something to eat. But Bully couldn’t go through that whole show again. So even though he was hungry, Jo’s dad drove him straight home in his new second-hand van.

“Are you really
sure
, Bully?” said Jo on the way there. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back and have something with us? You can stop the night if you like? Can’t he, Dad?”

But Bully shook his head, didn’t want them stopping anywhere near his flat either, and so they dropped him off right at the edge of the estate.

“Next time, eh, boy?” said Jo’s dad, in that voice of his that made it sound as if the words really did mean something and he wasn’t just being nice about it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bully said, making his promises quick to get out of the van, saying that he would bring Jack with him next time too.

He walked off into the estate. He kept looking back, waiting for the van to drive off. As he passed one of the blocks, he caught sight of what looked like a blurry old Davey with his hood up, shuffling and limping about by the bins in the basement. You didn’t usually get them this far out of town, and he wondered if perhaps he was just living here, on the estate. He crossed the grass and a couple of loud boys playing a game of football went quiet while they eyed him up and Bully didn’t waste any more time getting back to his own flat.

He was ready for a mouthful when he opened the door but it was nice and quiet for a change because everyone was still out. Phil had left Jack shut in the kitchen and when Bully opened the door, she hopped round him, sniffing at his ankles for the old and new smells. He felt a strange shudder of relief go through him. It had felt weird today being on his own without her and he realized that he had missed her and he was glad she was there, waiting for him to return. He’d been thinking that he shouldn’t have left her. The ideas in his head had been ganging up on him on the way back, saying that Phil
might
have got rid of her or done something worse while he was out.

But, no, here she was. All in one piece. And he didn’t push her away like he’d been doing for the last few weeks but got down on his hands and knees. He looked at her. And she sat right down on her one back leg and looked up at him, her Monkey Dog tail swishing on the linoleum floor.

“I know,” he said. “I know…”

Bully ran the tap to get a cold drink of water. He listened to it splashing the sides of the stainless-steel sink before he drank it straight from the tap. Then he went to Cortnie’s bedroom and found some black pens. He went back to the lounge and took out some of the begging letters he’d hidden under the couch and flicked through them until he found one with almost a blank page.

He was going to do something that he had never done outside of school in his life. He was going to write a letter. Because Phil was
right
. Camelot had decided to pay up but they were holding on to the money for him and his sister, putting it
in trust
until they were eighteen. So he had his half of the money. He just didn’t have it for close to
five
years
. It would be sitting somewhere in a big, big bank, waiting for him until then. The thing was, he knew he could not wait in the flat that long. He didn’t have it in him. Not all that time with Phil and
her
and
it
. Even if sometimes they did all go out.

But he didn’t want Jo thinking he wasn’t grateful about the
risotto
. And he knew she would be upset and even angry with him if he phoned her up and told her what he was going to do, so he was putting it in a letter. And it was better than telling her on the internet because if he posted the letter tomorrow it would take
days
to get there and he’d be gone by then, back to the streets. Sending a letter with bad news was like planting a bomb. You didn’t want to be around when it blew up.

It took him a good five minutes or so to get the words right because he had to cross quite a few wrong ones out. Finally he found an old used envelope and crossed out the flat’s address on the front and put Jo’s on the back. All he needed was a new stamp.

As he was finishing up, the letter box started flapping. He froze and put his finger to his lips to
shh
Jack. And she went like stone, just like the hound at the cemetery. He was thinking it was maybe a moneylender and he didn’t want to have to go explaining Phil’s debt was nothing to do with him and his half of the money. Not with the darkness outside, getting ready…

There was more
flap, flapping
… And then his old name slipping in through the letter box, following along after him, tracking him down.

“Bully…”

He woke to the day, as always, surrounded by rubbish. Black bin liners leaking from their ripped corners right next to where he was sleeping. Old stuff and clothes everywhere. And books, piled up and flapping open. He kind of liked it that way though, being surrounded by all this mess.

“Brad… Brad… Bradley…”

“What?”

“You know what… Come on… Breakfast…” Rosie shouting up the stairs and then going back down to the kitchen.

He didn’t want to get up. He’d been to school
every
day this week. And it was Wednesday and he deserved a lie-in, didn’t he?

Jack did a hop round at the end of the bed. She gave his toes a lick and settled back down. She was getting heavier and Bully was pretty sure it wasn’t just the extra food. She did a dog sigh that was almost exactly the same as a human one except it was just a little bit sadder because there were no words to go with it.

“All right for you,” he said. “I never get a day off in this place.” He sighed himself and then his head started rolling about, the insides of it thinking of getting back to sleep but already, despite himself, caught up in the new day.

He looked over at the empty window, full of blue sky. He put his glasses on and his skateboard underneath it sharpened up. He was supposed to wear them all day but he usually just put them on when he wanted to look at something specific, like a face in the distance or a number plate.

Rosie and John had bought him the skateboard a couple of weeks ago. Rosie had said Alex could teach him some tricks when he came home from
uni
. He’d said no, because he didn’t want to scratch it. He liked waking up and seeing it there, propped up in the corner of his room, the newness still shining through the plastic. And he looked at it now. It wasn’t the one he’d have bought but he loved it because someone had bought it for him.

“I suppose you want feedin’ and cleanin’…” He sighed again and this time he got up. He reached out for his striped green tie, still in a leftover noose from yesterday, and put it on. And now except for his shoes he was wearing his whole school uniform. It saved time in the mornings.

He walked slowly down the stairs so his socks didn’t slip on the smooth wood. He didn’t see why Rosie wouldn’t get carpet. He would buy them some, proper thick stuff like you got in pubs, when his money turned up. He would be eighteen, Alex’s age, by then. It was a time so far in the future that he could only think of it as a science-fiction film.

He went through into the kitchen. Rosie was skating around a little yellow lake of dog wee, trying to make toast.

Bully pretended he hadn’t seen the dog wee, though he knew Rosie was waiting for him to clean it up because it was
his
dog. She stopped what she was doing when he came in to look at him. But it wasn’t about the dog wee.

“You woke up in that uniform, didn’t you?” He didn’t know how she could tell, he was even tucked in and everything.

“No…” he lied reflexively, but then added: “Not all of it.” And he pointed to the tie.

“Bradley,” she said. “What are we going to do with you? Eh?” But she didn’t say it like a real question because they’d taken him on.

It wasn’t legal yet exactly. Phil didn’t want him, didn’t need him now. He’d been happy to see the back of him when he got back from Emma’s mum’s place to find Jo and her dad patiently waiting there, watching
Mighty Ships
on the TV with Bully.

But though he’d moved in that night, they still had to go through the
process
. And that would take a while longer. Everything took a while in this new world of his.

He’d thought it was going to be like a holiday, that first night when him and Jacky had come back in the van to this big, posh house with next to nothing. But it hadn’t felt like that at all. The next day had felt a bit like being in prison. Every day the same thing: get up at the same time, go to school, eat your food at the table and don’t wear your clothes to bed. The list was long. And knowing he had to be here for years and years, waiting to get what was his.

And that had really worked him up at first.

“Errgh,” said Jo, coming into the kitchen with lipstick on and eating a KitKat. “You do know there’s dog wee all over the floor?” They both looked at her because, yes, they did know.

“No shit,” said Bully.

Rosie didn’t tell him off because she knew he was trying to cut down on his swearing, like people did with smoking.

“I was only saying,” Jo said. “I’m off now anyway.”

“What about your breakfast?” said Rosie. And Jo just waved the KitKat. She was at college now and Bully wished she was still at his new school, on the other side of the hill.

He followed her to the front door, lolloping along after her like a greyhound because he was getting taller now. She turned back to look at him. “Brads? Are my lips smudged?” He shook his head. He had his suspicions that she had a boyfriend now in this college place.

“How does it feel to be rich and famous?” She said it like a joke sometimes when she left the house because he wasn’t rich, not yet anyway.

“Yeah, great,” he said.

“See you later, alligator,” she said. She picked up her bag. It was leather and all worn out. And though he knew she liked it like that, he was still going to buy her a new one. When he got his money or maybe even before then if he wandered into a shop with a bunch of receipts and helped himself to one, or got a paper round and saved up. He was in two minds about it.

He went back to the kitchen and mopped up the dog wee with kitchen roll.

He washed his hands before he poured his cereal out because Rosie was still there.

“You off in a minute?” she said.

“Yeah, yeah…”

“You’re going to go, aren’t you, today?”

“Yeah?” he said, doing his surprised voice, like why would he not go to school on a Wednesday? As if that was the weirdest thing in the world
not
to do.

“Bradley. You will go, won’t you? Mrs Avery can walk Jacky later because you don’t have time now… What?” she said because he was smiling out the corner of his mouth.

He had a feeling Jacky was getting heavier because she was pregnant. Because she’d been hanging out with Mrs Avery’s poodle
a lot
. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that because both Mrs Avery and her dog were proper
posh
and spoke like it too. He reminded himself, though, that poodles had originally been bred as hunting dogs.

Ten minutes later, Rosie left to go to work. When he heard the door go, he said, “Go get your lead! Go on, girl.” He
just
about had time to walk Jacky himself if he went into tutor group late.

He ran up Swain’s Lane to the little circle of shops at the top of the village. He let Jacky chase a pigeon on the green, watched the pigeon just walk off, like it wasn’t bothered by this three-legged dog.

A woman in black was waving at him. He squinted and nodded back. A lot of them were getting to know him up here now; he was the boy with the three-legged dog. And reminded of that, he stood and waited for her do a wee.

While he waited for Jacky he put on his glasses to scope out the village and immediately clocked the black Peugeot circling the green very slowly.
You can never be too careful…
But it was all right, it was Mr Douglas the newsagent, delivering the late papers by hand. He knew the plates, knew
all
the plates around the village. And the last three letters of Mr Douglas’s were OES, which were the initials of the
Old English Sheepdog Society
. (Mr Douglas had not realized his plates were personalized until Bully had pointed it out to him.) He would, he decided, get a paper round and earn the money for Jo’s bag, just in case he got caught nicking it and they took it off him in the cells. And also because he knew that nicking it would make her sad.

“Oh, Jacky, Jesus… No! You’re pissing all wrong!” he said because she was trying to cock her leg like she used to, in fact like she was a
boy
dog, because bitches were never supposed to do that. And it was the leg that wasn’t there… He looked round but nobody had seen her go down.

“Come on. We got to get back. You’re making me
late
.”

When he got back the post was on the mat and he kicked it over with his foot, trying to see who the letters were from without picking them up or even touching them. So far he’d had nothing addressed to him here and he liked it that way.