JP

They say if bad shit happens to you when you’re a kid, your memories are more vivid.

It’s true.

Not all mine are bad. It’s funny that it’s this one in particular that fills my head while I sit here thinking about what just happened.

What I did.

I don’t know what time of the year it was. I think it was hot – sunny, anyway. Mum was taking me to the seaside. That was a big deal. We lived in a tower block in East London and I’d only ever seen the sea on the box.

We got on a train at Victoria. It was crowded – office workers legging it to East Sussex for the weekend – but we got a seat, anyway, because she had me. I sat on her lap, almost five, all limbs and sharp angles.

‘Where’re we going?’ I asked.

‘Away,’ she said.

I wondered why Dad wasn’t coming. I knew enough not to ask. Sometimes Mum and Dad would fight and she would scream a lot and hit him. Then she’d have to go away for a little while. I guess I thought that maybe this was one of those times and she was taking me with her.

I watched through the window as the city disappeared and was replaced with suburban housing estates, then fields. I slept at some point and then we changed trains and were there.

I was tickled pink with the golden sand of the East Sussex coast and ran around barefoot, whooping as I kicked the soft surface up into the air. I wanted to go in the water but she hadn’t brought any togs for me. I wondered why anybody would go to the beach and not bring a swimsuit.

Mum seemed more nervous and worried than usual. I thought she went away on these trips to ‘get well’. That’s what I’d overheard Dad say to our neighbour this one time. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t enjoying herself with me. We were on our holidays; it was the best day ever, in my head.

But she kept clutching her stomach and whispering things to herself about babies and everything being better this time.

As the hours wore by she seemed to relax a little, the corners of her mouth turning up as I raced at the waves with my trousers rolled up almost to my bum.

‘Let’s go get supper,’ she called. ‘You must be starving, John Paul.’

We walked along the pier and she bought us fish and chips – the tastiest I’d ever had.

‘Wha’ are those men doing?’ I asked.

‘We’ll have a look, shall we?’ she said, and brought me over to the fishermen who sat at the end of the pier.

‘All right, lad?’ The first man we arrived beside had perched his bum on a fold-out chair like I’d seen in the allotments beside the playground. He’d a bucket beside him, a flask of tea, and was smoking Benson and Hedges. He held his rod in one hand the line disappearing into the water beneath us.

‘Wha’ are you doing?’ I said, nosiness overcoming shyness.

He smiled up at my mother.

‘London?’

She stared at him, frightened. Her grip tightened on my hand.

‘Why would you say that?’ she asked.

He shrugged.

‘Just the accent, missus. Sorry. No harm meant.’

‘Oh. Of course. Yes.’ Mum’s hand relaxed a little. ‘Sorry.’

‘What’s your name, lad?’

‘JP. My mum is called Betty. Two Ts.’

She clicked her tongue in annoyance, her hand squeezing mine, hurting me. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.

He looked up at her and then back to me.

‘You don’t get out of the city much, eh, son?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, see that fish you’re munching on? I probably caught that for you.’

‘How?’ I said. I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t know a fish was a living thing, but I was that innocent you could have told me they lived in trees.

‘The fish are in the sea,’ he laughed. ‘I’m fishing with this line. Look in the bucket there.’

I peeked into his metal bucket and saw three or four small dead slippery things staring back at me; blank black eyes.

‘You got them out of the sea?’ I asked. ‘You’ve loads.’

His mouth twitched. His rod wobbled a little and he gripped it with both hands.

‘Well, they’re not out of the shop. That’s only a dozzle.’

‘A wha’?’

‘A small few. I’ll need to catch a few more before I go home, but it looks like I’m about to get another one. Do you want to help me?’

‘Can I? Can I?’ I was jumping up and down with excitement.

Mum hesitated before relenting.

‘Go on, then.’

The old man let me sit on his lap and wrap my hands around the rod while he reeled and released, reeled and released, slowly drawing in his catch.

When the fish appeared into view, it was wriggling and leaping about on the line.

‘It’s alive!’ I said, astonished.

‘Of course it’s alive. I’d have to fling him back in if he was dead. He’d be no use to anybody.’

‘But the ones in the bucket are dead.’

‘You miss nothing. They are indeed. Let’s put that to rights.’

He set me down off his lap and grabbed the body of the fish. It was then I could see how it was stuck on the end of his line. A nasty silver hook had pierced its mouth; a speckle of blood gleamed on its surface. Before I could say anything, the man unhooked the fish and whacked its head on the edge of the bucket then flung it in.

I let out a cry.

‘It’s all right, lad,’ the man said. ‘He’s dead now. He didn’t feel nothing. Bloomin’ ’ell, the colour of you. I’m not sure you have a fisherman there after all, missus.’

Mum kissed the top of my head.

‘He’s just young, isn’t that it, John Paul? He doesn’t like to see God’s creatures harmed.’

The man started to thread a squirming worm on to the end of his hook and I turned my head in distaste.

I didn’t know how anybody could hurt another living thing. I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I wasn’t a typical little boy. I didn’t delight in pulling the wings off dragonflies or scaring girls with spiders. Not even five, but I’d already seen too much by way of violence.

The next morning the nurse from the clinic and two policemen came to our B&B. They told Mum we had to go home and that she’d need to be minded for the next few months, for the baby’s sake. I didn’t know what the nurse was talking about. I wasn’t a baby.

It was years before I realized what had happened that day. Before I knew what Mum was.

Why, all these years later, am I sitting in this cell thinking about that day?

Maybe because I’m wondering if there’s a lot more of my fucking crazy mum in me than I’d ever realized.