The Returners (2 page)
In spite of the wide variety of alcoholic beverages on offer, I don’t drink. I’ve got enough problems without turning into a drunken idiot like the ones you see stumbling out of the pub in the middle of the afternoon.
They sent me to a shrink a few months after Mum died. I think the school had something to do with it, or maybe the doctor, I don’t know. Dad didn’t want me to go, said shrinks put stupid ideas in your head, made you think about things best left alone, but they said I had to go anyway. The shrink said he thought I was paranoid. Dad told me that was another word for mad, said I needed to pull myself together, to move on, to just get on with it. He said I had to sort it out because if I didn’t . . . He didn’t finish that sentence but we both knew what he meant. He meant I’d end up in the river like Mum.
The shrink pretended he didn’t think I was mad. He kept asking about the freaks, only I could tell from his voice that he didn’t believe a word I said. Didn’t believe that they follow me, that they’re always there, that there are more of them all the time. He made a big deal about them turning up just after Mum died, like I invented them to keep me company or something. I mean, the man was an idiot. If I was going to invent people to keep me company, they’d be nothing like the freaks. Nothing at all, trust me.
It started with one or two. It happens, doesn’t it? You’re walking down the street or something and you see someone you think you recognise, and they look like they recognise you too, right? Only when you get nearer you realise you don’t know them. Or at least you can’t place them. And so you walk past them. It’s happened to us all, right?
Well, it happens to me all the time. Sometimes I think that every other person is looking at me, staring at me, that they know me, that they know something about me. The shrink thought I was delusional, I realised. He was probably right too. You can’t be completely sane if you see eyes staring at you all the time, haunted, sad-looking eyes boring into you, eyes that you recognise, that recognise you; except you don’t really recognise them because you don’t know them, you know you don’t – you’ve been through every person you’ve ever met in your life and they are none of them . . . You don’t have that unless you’re loop the loop.
That’s probably why Claire and I don’t see each other any more. She probably thinks
I’m
a freak.
I don’t blame her. Sometimes
I
think I’m a freak too.
g
I’m on my way home from the river, but I’ve got something in my shoe. A stone. Small one. I can’t be bothered to get rid of it – untying the laces, standing on one leg. The stone could have got into my sock. I’m not taking that off too. I’m on my way home anyway. It’ll be fine. I thrust my hands in my pockets. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a stone.
I see Claire on the other side of the river, without Yan this time. I’m pleased about that. Don’t know why, really. It’s no skin off my nose who she hangs out with. I don’t wave. Why would I? She hasn’t seen me anyway. She’s wearing one of the Tshirts she always wears when she’s not in school uniform. It’s black, with white writing on it.
We are all just people.
All just people. Well, duh. She started wearing Tshirts like that a couple of years ago. Ones with writing on them.
Humanity not Protectionism. No to Borders
. She’s probably got a whole wardrobe full of them. They’re pretty ridiculous, in my opinion. It’s like Dad says, you have to look out for yourself. Countries have to do the same. If someone’s stupid enough to wind up homeless, it doesn’t mean they can expect to move in with you. So why should foreigners think they should be able to move here, take our jobs, just because their countries have run out of money? It’s not like we’ve got any to spare. It’s not like there are enough jobs for everyone here anyway.
I keep walking. Even though the stone is just under my little toe. Hurts every time I put my right foot down. I curse under my breath, then surreptitiously give my foot a shake. I start walking again – now it’s under my big toe. Hurts even more.
It’s been an all right afternoon, actually – can of Coke, sitting on a bench by the river. No freaks, so far as I could tell. No one interrupting me or getting in my way.
I could have been working, of course. Doing my assignments, revising for my GCSEs. Could have. Should have, Dad would say. I didn’t, though. Not worried about it either.
Not
that
worried anyway. There’s always tomorrow. Or the next day. It’s not that I don’t like school, it’s just . . . OK, I don’t like it. I don’t like the teachers, don’t like the way people look at me, the way everyone hangs around in groups that I’m so not interested in being a part of but which make me feel . . . you know, kind of weird, like I don’t belong anywhere.
Not that I need to belong anywhere. I’m fine as I am.
I shuffle home, walking on the side of my foot to stop the stone digging in. It’s a pointy little thing, more like a nail. I stop again, bang the toe of my shoe into the ground. The stone moves – it’s between my big toe and second one now. Tolerable.
A man walks by. He slows down as he approaches me, looks at me, right at me. He looks familiar. He’s staring; I force myself not to look at him, to look down at the ground. Freaks, I mutter under my breath. Leave me alone.
My hands are still in my pockets.
You’re imagining it. It isn’t real
.
A mother walks past with a pram and a toddler. She doesn’t look at me. She’s engrossed in the small boy, a little smile on her face. He’s tottering towards the river and she lets him take a few steps before scooping him up in her arms. She puts him on her hip and continues to push the pram. She hasn’t even noticed I’m there. It makes me feel better. Mothers and babies always do – they’re consumed with each other, no time to notice me.
It throws me off guard, though. I miss the girl walking towards me. Actually, the girls always catch me off guard. I don’t suspect them, especially the pretty ones. Pitiful, isn’t it?
This one’s older than me – seventeen, maybe eighteen. Long legs, curly hair. She’s looking at me and I fall for it, I look back and I think maybe I know her from somewhere. School? Town? But of course I don’t. I realise it too late – she’s one of them.
She’s looking at me intently now and I realise that her eyes have that glazed, hollow look. I try to look away but once they’ve locked on to you it’s hard to break away and I feel like I’m falling, like she’s leading me somewhere, but where? I don’t know. And then she’s passing me and she’s still looking but I manage to keep going forward without looking back, kicking myself for letting her suck me in. Or for letting my subconscious suck me in. The shrink said I was imprinting my own desires and fears on to strangers. He said I was looking for my mother. He said I should try to meet more people, not spend so much time alone. He was full of shit. People were the
problem
, that much I knew. I needed to see less of them, not more.
I want to turn around, to look at the girl, to see if she’s still looking at me. It’s like an itch, like a mosquito bite that you want to scratch and it drives you crazy but you know that even touching it will just make it worse. I don’t turn. I know she’ll be looking. They always are. I walk faster. I look down at the ground. If I don’t think about her, then she won’t be real. I list football teams in my head, do the alphabet backwards. I start to run.
I asked Claire once if she saw them. A few years ago when we were still friends. She just looked at me and frowned. If you asked Claire a question that interested her, or that perplexed her, or that she just thought was downright weird, she never looked at you oddly, or took the piss. She always thought hard and then gave a measured response. She never made me feel like a prat.
‘Sometimes I see people I think I recognise but I’ve mistaken them for someone else,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘Often?’
She frowned again. ‘Maybe once every six months? I don’t know really.’
I digested this. ‘Do you notice people staring at me sometimes? Like really staring when they walk past me?’
She shook her head. ‘No, Will, I don’t. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.’
They’ve made me suspicious. The freaks, I mean. Whenever I meet someone new, I look at them aggressively. My dad’s sister, who I hadn’t seen for years, came to stay unexpectedly and no one warned me. When I got home and she walked towards me with her arms outstretched, I nearly ran out of the house.
I wish I wasn’t like that. I wish I was normal.
But what’s normal? Is anyone really normal?
I sigh; the stone’s back. Under the pad of my foot. I almost like the pain now – it takes my mind off the girl. Am I imagining it then? Do they really exist or is it just my mind playing tricks with me?
If I had the balls, I’d stop them, ask them what the hell they’re doing, staring at me. Tell them to take a running jump. I don’t have the balls, though. Anyway, if I am imagining it, I’ll end up ranting at someone who has no idea what I’m talking about. People already think I’m weird – if I started babbling at strangers I’d be put away. That would tip Dad over the edge. I honestly don’t know what he’d do.
I’m startled out of my rambling thoughts by something crossing my line of vision. Someone running. I stop instinctively and move back against the wall next to the pavement. I don’t know why; it’s like a reflex. I sometimes think I should join the army when I grow up. Or the secret service. I’ve kind of figured out how to blend into the background, how to keep myself hidden. You could call it prudence, or you could call it not wanting to get into any more trouble than is absolutely necessary. Claire used to call me Shadow Man. She used to tease me about it. Then, later, she said I was shifty. That was around the time she stopped smiling at me, stopped finding me at the end of school to walk home with.
But I’m not being shifty. I’m being cautious.
I edge along the wall to the corner. I’m only two streets away from our house. There’s a small parade of shops on the corner – I can see someone on the ground, with another man crouching over him. I think the one on the floor might be drunk, but I’m not sure. Something isn’t right about this. I can feel it in my bones.
I move closer. I narrow my eyes, try to focus. If I move, the person crouching might ask for my help. If I stay here, I won’t be noticed – I won’t have to do anything.
I frown, trying to work out what’s going on. And then I feel my stomach somersault. The man crouching isn’t a man at all. It’s Yan. I look at him suspiciously. His eyes are wide and he’s pulling at something. He’s crying out. He sounds weird, sounds scary.
I feel my heart beginning to pound in my chest. I can see what he’s pulling at now – it’s a knife. Yan’s staring at it in shock.
The man on the ground isn’t moving. I’m pretty sure he isn’t drunk after all. He looks like Mr Best. He’s got that green sweatshirt on he wears for work. A woman in a pink sari runs out of the shop, screaming. Mrs Rajkuma. I feel a weird feeling at the base of my spine – not pain, but not
not
pain, if you know what I mean. The body – it’s definitely Mr Best, the man who runs the post office in Mr Rajkuma’s store. Robber shop, Dad calls it. Open all hours and as expensive as Harrods. Yan is still holding the knife, still looking at it in horror; even from here I can see that it is stained deep red. Mrs Rajkuma is screaming and calling to her husband. Mr Rajkuma comes out of the store; he looks terrified.
‘He’s been stabbed,’ Yan cries out. ‘Someone call an ambulance.’
I realise with a jolt that he’s seen me, that he’s shouting at me. I freeze. He’s leaning over the body, holding Mr Best’s head. He’s breathing into his mouth.
I think about going to help, but know that I won’t. Shadow Man doesn’t get involved. Shadow Man isn’t brave.
‘Quick,’ Yan shouts. ‘He’s dying.’
I dig out my phone, but I needn’t have bothered. A police car turns up. Three policeman jump out and circle Yan, all pointing guns at his head.
‘Drop the weapon,’ a policeman shouts. Yan looks confused. He drops the knife.
‘You don’t understand,’ he shouts. ‘I just found him. It wasn’t me.’
An ambulance arrives; uniformed men and women jump out and put Mr Best on a stretcher, then they wheel him into the ambulance. Mrs Rajkuma is still wailing; a woman tries to comfort her.
The policemen grab Yan and bundle him into the car. He looks back at me. He mouths something. I think it’s ‘Please help’. I can feel the back of my neck prickling. Then it feels like it’s getting dark – from the edges of my vision inwards. Please help. I hear the words in my head, hear them rising, louder, more desperate. I shut my eyes. I need to find the wall, find something to hold on to. My back hits the wall. I’m OK. I take a few deep breaths. I open my eyes.
The car door is closed; it drives off. All that’s left is Mr Best’s blood on the pavement.
g
I don’t go home for a while. I can’t. I need to process what I’ve seen. I feel a bit sick, the kind of sick you feel when you realise you’ve done something really really stupid, or when you realise that you’ve been found out over something. That pit of the stomach sickness that eats away at you until you have to own up or something because otherwise it’ll consume you.
But I haven’t done anything stupid. There’s nothing to own up to. I just saw . . . Actually, I don’t want to think about what I saw. Don’t want to think about anything.
‘You’re late.’
Dad speaks the minute I open the door. I look at him for a second or two. I want to tell Dad what happened. I want to tell him so he can sort my head out for me, to make sense of it. But Dad doesn’t look like he’s in the mood.
‘Late for what?’ I say eventually. The television’s on. It’s the news. My eyes rest on it for a few seconds – there’s been a fire at a building housing eastern European workers. Steelworkers, the newsreader is saying. Foul play is suspected. She interviews a man in a suit who says that this kind of action is intolerable, that economic migrants are being scapegoated because of the recession. Then another man comes on, an angry-looking man, who says that the other man doesn’t understand the situation, doesn’t care about the working man, that this sort of thing will keep on happening until a new government is in place, one that will work to make Britain great again instead of letting us get walked over by anyone and everyone.
‘Where have you been?’
I don’t hear the question at first; I’m concentrating on the newsreader. Then Dad asks me again and I look up.
‘Nowhere.’
‘You’ve been at the river again? You know I don’t like you going there.’
‘Where else am I going to go?’
‘You could stay here and do some work. You could help out round here. Do something useful for a change.’
We stare at each other; we know this could go either way. A normal conversation or a big fight. It doesn’t take much these days. I’m not sure why. It’s probably my fault.
Me and Dad, we get on. But we’re not close. It’s not like it was when Mum was here. When she was still alive, there was more . . . I dunno, warmth. We did stuff together as a family. We laughed more. Me and Dad, we’re fine, but. I always feel like somehow I’m letting him down.
‘There’s some chicken in the oven.’ Dad sits back on the chair that’s been his position in the sitting room since Mum died. They used to sit on the sofa together, but looking at him now I can’t imagine it somehow.
No fight then. In some ways I’m disappointed. Sometimes it feels like we only really communicate with each other when we’re arguing.
‘Thanks.’
I go into the kitchen, take out a plate. It’s a ready-meal chicken kiev – I can smell the garlic. I boil some peas; there are chips in the oven too. I hear Dad come in behind me.
‘Everything all right?’
I shrug.
‘I’ve got Patrick coming over in a minute or so. Nasty business. Happened earlier this evening. Mr Best from the post office was stabbed.’
I turn my head slightly.
He shakes his head wearily. ‘And the government says curbing immigration isn’t the answer. What about protecting our own people from those foreign thugs? What about that? Like Patrick says, sometimes people need a shock to make them look around and see what’s happening.’
I look at him curiously. He doesn’t usually talk to me about this kind of stuff. Usually he just asks me about homework or tells me to stop doing whatever it is I’m doing. Him talking to me like this makes me feel older, like an adult, as if he respects me. I want him to carry on. I like it. I rack my brains for something to say.
‘I saw . . .’ I say, then stop when his head turns towards me.
‘Saw what, son?’
‘Nothing.’ Wrong thing to say. Why do I always do that?
He’s staring at me. ‘Nothing? You saw nothing? Come on, son. Out with it.’
I swallow with difficulty. I’m fenced in. I don’t have a choice. ‘I saw it,’ I say. ‘I was there.’
‘You were there? And you didn’t say anything before?’
I look down. ‘I didn’t . . . I mean, I . . .’
‘You saw who did it then?’ He’s not staring now; he’s looking at me closely, almost warily.
‘No. I saw Yan . . .’
‘Yan.’ Dad nods. ‘No surprise there.’
He looks away, picks a plate up off the counter.
‘No, he wasn’t . . .’ I start to say, but Dad isn’t listening any more.
‘Now he’s going to know what it feels like,’ he’s muttering to himself. ‘Now he’s going to find out.’
‘Yan?’ I ask uncertainly.
Dad looks as though he’s forgotten I was even there.
‘Not Yan,’ he says. ‘That man.’
He means Yan’s dad. I’m pretty sure he does anyway. They don’t get on. Actually, that’s the understatement of the year.
I sit down next to him and start to eat. The inside of the chicken kiev is too hot – it burns my mouth. I get up to pour myself a glass of water.
‘I think Yan was shouting for help,’ I say eventually. ‘He called for me to phone the police.’
Dad turns sharply. ‘After he’d seen you,’ he says. It’s a statement not a question. I nod. I take a gulp of water and feel the relief on my scalded tongue. ‘Of course he did,’ Dad says. ‘Oldest trick in the book. First witness to murder is almost always the guilty party.’
‘Mrs Rajkuma was there first,’ I say.
Dad’s eyes narrow. He’s not that big on the Rajkumas either but I don’t think even he thinks Mrs Rajkuma’s capable of murder.
I should drop it. I know I should. Why won’t I? ‘It looked . . . It looked like Yan was trying to give Mr Best mouth-to-mouth.’
Dad snorts. ‘I bet he was. Look, son, he had Mr Best’s money in his pockets. His fingerprints are all over the knife.’
I digest this for a second or two. ‘I’m not sure, Dad. It didn’t look like he’d done it.’
Dad’s fist comes down on the table hard. ‘You saw him there,’ he thunders. ‘Don’t you argue with me about things you know nothing about. They’ve got the evidence. It’s cut and dried. Patrick told me. That little punk is going to get what he deserves.’
I walk back to my stool. I catch Dad’s eye, hold his gaze for a few seconds. Then I nod.
Dad doesn’t move for a little while. Then his hand moves towards me, awkwardly, and attempts a sort of punch on my shoulder.
‘Me and you. We’re a team, aren’t we, son? We’re on the same side, right?’
I look at him curiously. Then I smile. ‘Sure,’ I nod. ‘We’re a team.’ I finish my chicken kiev and push the plate away.
It was two years before Mum died that Yan and his family moved next door. Patrick told Mum and Dad that it was a sign of the times that only people like them could afford to buy houses these days, but Mum told him to mind his own business and Dad didn’t say anything. But I could see Dad was wary of them. When Yan’s dad said hello to him on the street, he never looked him in the eye; he just kind of half waved and scooted indoors as quickly as he could.
But that didn’t bother me. There were now two boys who lived next door and they wanted to hang out with me. Yan was two years older than me and he had a little brother who was two years younger.
We played football in their garden a couple of times. Our gardens were side by side and only divided by an old wire fence with huge holes in it, so it was easy for me to go round there. Yan was much better than me, which wasn’t ideal, but he taught me some stuff – tricks, exercises. His little brother never said much. Shy, Yan said.
Then his dad invited us all round for supper. Dad didn’t want to go but Mum persuaded him. She was good at persuading him to do things. He’d start off all gruff, and Mum would tease him, then she’d ask him questions that he couldn’t really answer, like ‘Give me one good reason for not going. And don’t tell me you’ve got a headache – you haven’t’, and then she’d kiss him and tell him that without her he’d be the grumpiest man in the whole wide world and that he should live a little, that maybe he was nervous of saying yes in case he actually enjoyed himself.
It was a warm evening and we sat outside at a table covered in little candles, and ate spicy food in bowls and huge loaves of bread that didn’t taste anything like the bread we had at home. I remember it as if it was yesterday, even though I was only six. It felt like we were in another country; the house was the same as ours but it was completely different. I’d been round there once before when it was Mr and Mrs Daniels’ house, and then it had been like any other house only a bit more musty, as though no one had opened any windows or washed any clothes in a while. But now that Yan’s family lived there it smelt sweet and clean and warm all at once. His mother was really pretty too. Not as pretty as Mum, not the same kind of pretty. She was fatter, but in a nice way, and she had these dark eyes with really long eyelashes and lots of black make up all around them that made her look like a cat or something. She always leant down to my level when she spoke to me and it made me blush, made me want to grow up quickly so that she didn’t have to. We ate our meal, Yan’s mother showing us how to use our bread to dunk into the various bowls and then using our hands to put it straight in our mouths. And I barely dared to look at Dad, who always said that only savages ate with their hands and who made me use my knife and fork properly, not even just a fork because that was ‘American’. Mum winked at me and started to dunk, and then I did and it was delicious, not like anything we ever had at home, and it was spicy and made my cheeks glow. Eventually Dad had some too. And some beer. After a while he actually started to relax – he lost the frozen look off his face and started to talk a bit more normally, like he wasn’t counting the seconds until he could leave.
And then Yan’s dad spread out his hands and told Dad about the company he’d bought. For a ‘knock-down price’. ‘So many bargains to be had here,’ he said, his eyes twinkling. ‘It is the new land of opportunity.’
Dad didn’t say anything. I think he wanted to, but Mum gave him one of her looks.
‘And great that you did,’ she said quickly. ‘Otherwise it could have collapsed. Hundreds of people would have lost their jobs.’
‘Would have,’ Yan’s dad agreed. ‘Without a doubt.’
‘You did all right, though, didn’t you?’ Dad said, a hint of bitterness in his voice.
‘I did very all right.’ He didn’t notice the bitterness in Dad’s voice; he grinned at his good fortune. ‘Very happy.’
Then he told us that he was going to be sprucing up the house. Painting it. Redoing the fence, that sort of thing. Mum said that would be great. Said they’d been thinking about doing something to our house too. And then she was grinning too. She looked younger, suddenly, like a girl. I sort of liked it and sort of didn’t at the same time. She was giggly and flushed; she’d been drinking wine. I didn’t mind that – she always hugged me a lot when she’d been drinking wine. There was music playing softly in the background – a hypnotic rhythm, drums, and an instrument I’d never heard before. It made me feel light-headed. After we’d eaten, she stood up and started to move, just gently, her hips moving from side to side. And Yan’s dad got up and took her hand and then they were dancing in the garden, just like that. Dad was staring at Mum like he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then Yan’s mother asked him if he’d like to dance too. He just kind of shrank back and said no, he didn’t dance, thanks all the same. And she winked at me and asked if I wanted to dance instead. And I wanted to so much I was almost bursting, but I said no, because Dad had, because of what he might think, because of how stupid I might look.
Mum looked so happy. Looked as though she didn’t have a care in the world.
She sang that night when she put me to bed. Kissed me lots of times, all over my face until I pushed her away but only half-heartedly. I miss Mum. I wish I hadn’t pushed her away now.
Patrick arrives at eight o’clock. Dad shows him into the living room and pours him some whisky.
‘Go on then. Shouldn’t really, Harry,’ Patrick says, his eyes looking at him beadily. He always calls dad Harry, even though everyone knows he prefers Henry. And Dad never says anything, even though he’d go mad if anyone else called him that.
Patrick used to be a policeman. A senior one. But he isn’t one any more – he’s a politician now. He wears a little badge, with a white and red flag on it, and he always makes us go to rallies where he shouts things like
England for the English
, and
British Jobs for British Workers
.
He’s been a friend of Dad’s for years – they met through work. He used to wear a uniform, years ago. But that was when he was a policeman. He wears another uniform now, though – drab, grey suits and white shirts that stretch against his stomach. He opens his jacket when he sits down – he looks like he’s longing to open the top button of his trousers too. I don’t know why people don’t just buy bigger trousers. Or lose weight. Wearing clothes that are too small just makes you look like a bloater.
Patrick comes round whenever he wants to. Mum never liked him. She used to say he treated our house as if it was his own, bossing her about and helping himself to whatever was in the fridge. Dad would just shrug and say the house might as well be his; without Patrick’s help they’d have lost it.
