Someone Else's Son (12 page)

Denningham College treats everybody the same. You are all equal
.

During his school years, Max grew and matured and developed a strong bond with the Thing. It sat right there on his shoulder, watching him when he sobbed at night, criticising him when he was a fool, egging him on when he was shy, holding him back when he wanted to have a go. It interfered in every aspect of his life so that when he reached puberty, Max’s school sent a letter home informing his mother that he talked to someone. Someone that wasn’t there.

Carrie Kent had her secretary book him an appointment with a top Harley Street psychologist.

‘And has this
thing
always been with you, Max?’

Max liked the way the woman said
thing
just like he did – as if it was real, yet unnameable. A thing not to be messed with, to be spoken of carefully. This thing was powerful. It ruled his life, didn’t it?

‘Sure.’ Max was twelve. He was clever but never got good grades. ‘Always.’

‘And does this
thing
have a name?’

Now she was being silly. ‘It’s not a person. Of course it doesn’t have a name.’

‘But you talk to it as if it’s a real person?’

Max shrugged. He kicked his foot against the corner of the woman’s desk. Was she a doctor? He didn’t know. He stared at his mother, sitting next to him, keeping silent, knotting her fingers round and round in an annoying tumbling dance. He wished she’d go away. He didn’t feel comfortable talking about the Thing in front of her, and worse, he’d been told to get a haircut before he came back to school. He would have to ask his mother, but he could already see her staring at her watch, rolling her eyes, instructing her driver to take him to some poncy salon full of women while she raced back to the studio.

‘No one else to talk to, is there?’ He felt his mother’s frown bring the mood in the dismal room down even further. She had a knack of doing that. A certain way of commanding everyone around her. If Max did it, he’d be called spoilt and moody. When his mother did it, she got famous.

‘How come, Max? Don’t you enjoy school?’

‘It’s all right.’ Max stuffed a hand into his pocket. He felt a packet of Polos, or what was left of them. Probably only about three, all warm from his leg. He salivated a little. The Thing told him to eat one so he did. His mother sighed. The other woman smiled and shook her head when he offered her one. Then she wrote something down on the pad resting on her knee. She had nice knees, Max thought, like Miss Riley at school. The other kids were mean to her, too.

‘What I’m trying to say is, wouldn’t it be better to talk to real boys your own age rather than this thing, rather than talking to yourself?’

There was a big silence. Max felt as if he could have fitted his entire life into the void that swallowed up the room. She actually believed he was talking to himself. What was he going to answer? He had no idea. The Thing sometimes surprised him, made him say stuff that either got his head kicked in during free time after supper or, more likely, meant he took to the dorm early, feigning illness, just to sleep, just to escape the great weight of everything.

The void didn’t get filled. Instead, the psychologist put down her pad and pen and turned to Max’s mother.

‘I think your son’s depressed, Mrs Kent.’ She spoke in a low voice.

That was it. Her diagnosis. Depression.

At twelve, Max knew exactly what that was.

‘Well. Thank you, doctor,’ Max’s mother said. Now they could get on with life again.

Max turned his head slowly round to his mother. She looked relieved – the way her eyes narrowed as if there was a smile beneath them. Well, there was, but not a smile of pleasure. More a smile of, what next? A smile thanking God that it wasn’t terminal, that she could just send him back to school with a packet of pills and a few sessions with a counsellor and she’d never hear anything more about the whole annoying incident. That’s what the Thing told him, anyway.

Max took the remaining Polo from his pocket. He crunched it slowly, not taking his eyes off his mother.

Max had no problem carrying the large box. The happiness in his heart, the grin on his face pretty much made it float weightless in his arms.

‘
I won, oh yeah. Knew it. Just knew it
.’

The side of the box cut into his skinny arms, but he didn’t care. This one rocked. This was the best yet. This one, thinking about it, had been
easy
. ‘It’s all about the purpose,’ he muttered. He thought of Dayna’s face when she opened it; thought about helping her lug it home after he’d surprised her with it at the shed when they met later. He could meet her family, maybe stay for tea. He’d do it all properly, make sure it was OK with her folks. They could use the computer too . . .

He stopped.

Up ahead was a group of four lads loitering at the head of the alley he wanted to take to get to the railway. He squinted, recognising one of them. He had a crew cut and was sometimes at school. Max knew they’d clocked him by the way they suddenly fell into formation and moved forwards. Shit.

Max glanced to his right. There was a shop. He started to cross the road, unable to see round the box very well.

‘Oi!’ one of the gang yelled.

The thud thud of trainers on tarmac fell into rhythm with his heart.

‘Oi, fuckhead.’ There was a hand on his shoulder just as he reached the middle of the road. ‘What you got there?’

He was surrounded. Four kids about his age, one on each side of him, gave him no choice but to follow them back across the road and down towards the alley. The rear fences of a street of council houses formed one boundary of the narrow short cut. A mix of iron railings topped with spirals of barbed wire, kicked-in wooden slatted fences, palettes and junk, old settees and cars made an assortment of endings to the depressing patches of garden behind.

Max took all this in as he was frog-marched further down the alley. He’d never noticed the houses before as he’d dashed to his hut, eager to escape from the world. A world that really didn’t understand him. But now, trapped, hedged in by four thugs who stank of booze and menace, time slowed painfully. He knew he was going to feel every kick, every jab, every cruel word as they relished taking what they believed was theirs – his soul.

‘I said, what the fuck is it?’ The hood was pulled over the youth’s head. His shoulders were narrow, hunched beneath his clothes – a naturally aggressive pose as well as helping to conceal his face from the dozens of cameras that had already tracked their movements round the neighbourhood.

‘Just a box.’ Max’s voice failed him and went high-pitched. The four youths laughed. The computer’s brand and logo was printed on all sides.

‘I’m pissin’ myself, man.’

Then the kick in the back. A line of pain passed through his kidneys and spiralled down to his groin. He doubled over and the box slid from his arms, down his knees and on to the ground. His feet prevented a hard landing. It was a present for Dayna.

The box was yanked from him. They kicked and punched him some more before ripping it open.

‘Don’t. It’s mine,’ Max said, straightening up, trying to block out the pain. ‘Just leave it, will you?’

They ignored him and pulled out the polystyrene. Their eyes bulged as they hoisted the sleek machine from its housing. Max smelt new plastic as polythene bags of cables and instructions and discs fell on to the dirt. The flat screen monitor slipped from its packaging and tumbled back into the box.

‘Shove it in and let’s go,’ one grunted. Yeah, they were all thinking. Let’s fucking get it shifted down the pub. Two of them picked up the overflowing box. Max received another kick and got a streak of phlegm spewed down his jacket. ‘Fuckhead freaking motherfucker . . .’ and they strode off, trying to maintain their usual gait while scarpering with the loot.

Max stared after them. His body hurt. His head was worse still. How would he tell her? What would he give her now? Max began to shake. His fingers itched and burnt. The anger, the shame, the frustration, the stupidity, the inevitability boiled his insides until all he could do was run and run. His feet stumbled and scuffed up the dirt, his clothes snagged and tore as he ducked under the wire cordoning off the railway land, and the pain messed with his brain until he finally made it to his shed. His hands fumbled to get the lock off. He charged inside, bolting the door behind him.

Max fell down on to the car seat. He wept. He hated himself for it. When she came, he wouldn’t answer the door. He’d promised her a surprise and had let her down. The only thing for it, that voice in his head told him firmly, was to pretend that he didn’t exist.

 

Dayna didn’t understand. The padlock was open and hooked through the bolt on the outside, but the door seemed locked from the inside. It wouldn’t budge even when she pressed the toe of her shoe against the wood. She’d knocked of course, but Max wasn’t in there. She checked her phone. One thirty, as they’d agreed. She’d raced out of English, knowing he’d already be down here. She keyed in a short text message:
where r u?
She finished with an X but deleted it before sending.

A kind of beetle thing crawled across her ankle as she sat waiting on the bit of raised scrubby grass next to the shed. The autumn sun flickered through a tree, making it the nicest spot to sit in the otherwise grim landscape. All she could see was litter, junk and greyness. The blue arch that miraculously held up entire trains as they clattered overhead appeared slightly beautiful when she thought of all the Victorian hands that had held every one of those bricks.

All dead now, she thought, feeling like one of the Railway Children. She cowered as a low rumbling turned into a deafening roar as a train shook the earth. Every cell in her body tingled and she whooped and cried out and screamed
hellooo
because no one could hear her, not above that din. She was free to yell out her deepest secrets when a train came, she thought, as her mind settled down after the flurry of wind and noise. Free to spill my guts as long as I can’t hear it myself.

No text back from Max. She stood up and kicked the side of the hut. She had no idea why Max wanted to meet her here. He could have just seen her in the canteen, couldn’t he?

My hut. 1.30 tomoz. b there
.

The text had come in late last night. She was lying in bed. It made her feel wrong, reading his words in her nightie, lying beneath her duvet struggling to get to sleep when there was so much din downstairs from her mother and Kev arguing.

She decided to send another text, asking where the hell he was and, seconds later, she heard a shrill text alert coming from the hut. As she made her way closer, a second alert sounded.

‘Max, you stupid twat, open the door.’

It took a moment, but there was rattling and then Max was standing there, looking gaunt in the shadows.

‘Have you been crying?’

Max shrugged and Dayna pushed past him. She saw a lighted joint balanced on the edge of the car seat.

‘Mind?’ She picked it up and drew in. She felt her brain loosen from her body within seconds. She liked that bit. What she didn’t like was being stoned; out of control. ‘You’ll set the fucking place on fire if you leave it there.’ She dropped down on to the scorched plastic seat. Her heart missed a couple of beats, as it usually did when she got her first hit of the day.

‘So what have you been crying about?’ Dayna pulled out a book from her bag. She held it out to Max. ‘
The Great Gatsby
. I like them when they’re new. It’s the untouched and the unknown. And the smell.’ She opened the pages and breathed in deeply. ‘Mmmm.’ Then she drew on the spliff again before handing it back to Max. He took it but not the book. ‘It’s yours. I said I’d give it to you. He gave them out in the lesson. Where were you?’ Dayna set the book carefully on top of an electric grill box. ‘Lean and mean,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye.

‘Have it if you want.’ Max smoked. ‘Have the lot.’ He fell down into a squat. ‘Would your mum like it?’

‘No.’ Dayna hugged her knees and let out an odd chuckle. ‘She only does tins. Tinned tomatoes on toast. Tinned pies. Really. We have pie from a tin. Tinned fruit and tinned cream stuff that tastes like spunk.’

Max dropped down further and sat semi-cross-legged with one knee stuck in the air. He rested his forearm on it, spliff dangling between his thumb and first finger. ‘How d’you know what that’s like?’ Beneath the red eyes, which, Dayna now realised, could be from the dope and not tears, a loose smile formed. It was one of those smiles that took its time coming, she thought, usually from embarrassment. Or was it disgust? she wondered.

She shrugged coyly. ‘Just a guess.’ She pulled out a can of Coke from her bag, cracked the pull, swigged and then handed it to Max. ‘So what did you want me to come here for?’

Max stared so intently at her and for so long that she began to feel uncomfortable. Maybe he was going to say he liked her or ask her out or something, instead of sitting in a stupid hut. She could do with telling her stepdad that she had a proper date. A boyfriend. She liked the sound of that. A boyfriend.

‘Well?’ Dayna prised the can from his hand. She stood and looked at all Max’s boxes. Dozens of them. ‘Won’t someone nick them?’ Hairdryers, straighteners, blenders, coffee machines, heaters, a bike helmet, the grill, a toaster, a sledge, a massive furry toy that could be a camel or a bear, an art set . . . she couldn’t see to the bottom of the pile but there were some very large boxes there.

‘Yeah,’ Max replied.

‘Yeah what?’ Dayna got a Christmassy sugar rush from looking at all the new stuff – nearly as exciting as sniffing a new book.

‘Yeah, I was crying.’

Dayna turned. ‘Why?’ She set the Coke down and reached out for his arms. They were very thin.

Max shrugged as if admitting that he’d been crying meant he’d failed. She sensed he didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Do you want to, like, go to the cinema or something? Or we could just go . . . go to a library.’