The Taming of Lilah May (8 page)

If I look back now at how Jay was then, I can almost chart the journey towards what happened, but at the time I just went along with whatever he did because I was his Liles, his baby sister, and I kind of adored him . . . when he wasn't pissing me off, as brothers do.

Later on, that boat holiday took on a sort of sad orange glow, as if it was the last time any of us were truly happy, as if we had been living in a protective bubble, and some big god with a sharp pin was hovering right above us, about to plunge it in.

It's six weeks after the holiday, and we're up in his bedroom with the door shut and his latest Manic Street Preachers album blaring out.

I'm lying on the bed watching Jay.

He's started straightening his hair over the last week or so. He's trying to make it look more like Richey from the Manics.

‘I think it looked OK curly,' I offer from where I'm staring up at the old glow stars on his ceiling. Mum stuck them up there when he was a little boy, and despite Jay's best efforts at scraping them off, they're still there.

After he disappeared, I spent hours lying in there in the dark looking up at the little moon-shaped lights.

Stupid.

Like a load of stick-on planets could give me any answers.

Jay pulls the irons down over a section of his fringe until it flops against his pale forehead, dead black and straight. He's started to dye his hair too. The dark-brown curls that turned coppery-red in the sun have been replaced by this dead black gloss, the colour of the old vinyl LPs that he collects at record fairs and sometimes plays on an ancient record player of Dad's. He's wearing tight black jeans, grey plimsolls and a black long-sleeved top.

‘Who asked you?' he says.

The tone of his voice catches me by surprise.

I sit upright and stare at him in the mirror.

‘Sorry,' I say. ‘I just liked your hair the way it was. But it's cool now too.'

Jay nods, unsmiling.

‘How's it going at school, Liles?' he says, and I blather on in that twelve-year-old way about homework and teachers and two girls who are trying to bully me, and he makes ‘hmm' noises from time to time, but I get the strangest feeling that he's just going through the motions. As if deep within him something's been switched off.

‘Well, let me know if you want me to come in and beat anyone up,' he says, like he always does. But this time it doesn't seem like so much of a joke.

I get up and make for the door.

‘Yeah,' I say. ‘I will. How are things at school with you?'

Jay catches my eye in the mirror and then looks away.

‘Most of them act like idiots,' is all he says, but I pick up on some hurt in his voice.

As I close the door, he whacks up the volume on his stereo and then starts to apply black eyeliner around the insides of his eyelids ready for band practice later.

I stand outside his bedroom door for a moment, feeling at a loss as to what to do next. I put my hand on the door handle as if to go back in, because I'd rather spend more time with Jay than talk to Dad about big cats for the rest of the evening, but something about the rawness of the music makes me stop.

It's the first time I feel it.

It's only a brief flash, but it cuts through all my childish thoughts and touches something deeper inside that throbs with shock, like a tongue running over a tooth that needs a filling.

It's loss, mixed with pain.

I shake my head to rid myself of the feeling.

I close myself up in my bedroom and write an English essay, but my heart's not really in it.

Jay's music stops at eight and he thunders downstairs and off to band rehearsal.

I watch him from behind my curtains.

His lanky, hunched figure walks with purpose down the road. He tosses his hair back every now and then before he becomes a little stick in the distance, but I watch for as long as I can.

Even after he's gone, I carry on staring down the street for a long time.

The house feels like the warmth's gone out of it when Jay's not around.

I go downstairs with a sigh and spend the evening talking to Dad, but I can't stop looking at the clock.

‘Are you late for something?' says Dad. ‘Because as far as I can remember, you're twelve, which means that the only thing left for you to do tonight is take a bath and go to bed. Right?'

In those days I hadn't yet come up with my Lilah-isms, so I just give him a mock-glare and then slope off upstairs.

Parents think they're so funny with all the
sarcasm stuff. As if they know everything in the world and they've got it all sorted out, and there's nothing that could ever happen that would shock or throw them off course, because they'd just carry on being those wise old parents.

But even they couldn't stop the bomb from going off in our house.

Sometimes I hate Jay for making me like this.

I don't want to go to school today. If I see Adam Carter, I still flush with embarrassment and guilt. He's always been really nice to me, and what do I do? I come over like some mad psycho-witch from hell.
Groo.

I feel really bad about upsetting everyone. But I can't seem to stop.

School's a bit of a nightmare.

Bindi seems distracted and not even all that interested in my problems.

Adam gives me a nice smile, but I reckon it's only a smile of pity, so I blush and turn away.

I get home to find Mum crying in the kitchen. Again.

Dad is in after tending to an injured lion, but he's got his throat bitten in the process and spends most of the evening disinfecting the wound with a big wad of cotton wool, while Mum tells him for the fifteen-millionth time how working with lions isn't really ideal if you want to live into happy old age and enjoy your pension.

‘Lazarus is just a big pussy cat, really,' Dad says. This throws Mum into a state of violent agitation and she starts snapping and roaring and pacing up and down on the kitchen lino, a bit like Lazarus himself.

‘I can't believe you just said that!' she yells.

‘Well, at least I'm here for Lilah when she gets home from school,' Dad fires back. ‘You're supposed be part-time, but I haven't noticed much difference. You're still never around.'

‘Oh right,' Mum snaps. ‘And I suppose you've never thought how difficult it is for me trying to entertain rooms full of kids when I'm so miserable that I'm starting to FRIGHTEN them now!'

They don't take a lot of notice when I came in all fired up with rage and in a boy-hating mood to beat all boy-hating moods.

Then Dad storms off to the pub. It's his once-weekly treat. He says it helps him let off steam about Jay.

Fine.

I don't need them fussing over me, anyway.

I'm used to being ignored.

‘So, are you going to see him again?' Bindi's hissing from behind her hand.

It's the next day and we're in Biology.

There's a diagram of a tapeworm on the whiteboard in front of us, and the teacher's pointing at various segments of its revolting body with a stick, like she's some weird white-coated orchestra conductor.

‘No I'm NOT,' I hiss back. ‘And stop asking me!
You're doing my head in.'

Bindi stares at me with her mouth open. We never have ‘words'.

‘Lilah,' the teacher is saying. ‘Perhaps, with your expert knowledge of tapeworms, you'd like to tell the class what I'm pointing at?'

The class titters at this.

I failed my last set of Biology exams after I drew a pair of glasses and a goofy grin on my tapeworm. The teachers were speechless when they marked it, apparently.

I got ten percent for that exam.

Big deal.

My brother's missing. I don't care that I graffitied all over a tapeworm.

What have tapeworms ever done for me?

‘I don't give a crap, Miss,' I say.

The class groans. There are some stares of disbelief.

Adam Carter's avoiding my eye, but I see him shake his head from side to side, as if in slow motion.

‘I've had it with you, May,' snaps the teacher. ‘You can stay in at break and help me clean up this classroom.'

I sink down in my chair and bury my head in my hands.

I wish I could stop getting in trouble.

I wish I could stop being angry all the time.

It's cost me my friendship with Adam Carter, and now it even looks like it could threaten my friendship with Bindi, judging by the surly expression on her pretty face.

Why did you have to go, Jay?
I scream inside my head.
Why?

I'm on a downwards spiral.

Even Dad can't really control me any more.

‘I find it ironic,' he says nearly every day. ‘I can tell a twenty-stone lion what to do, no problem. But can I tame my own fifteen-year-old-daughter?'

It's what he calls a ‘rhetorical question', so he's not actually inviting answers, but Mum's going to give him one, anyway.

‘No,' she says. ‘Our daughter is out of control.'

And even I can't argue with that.