‘I found this, Mum.’
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she said, tucking the fiver away in her purse. ‘They don’t need to know.’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s grown-up business,’ she said, putting her finger to her lips to say keep out of it. ‘And where have you been?’
I thought I was going to say something to make her not listen and forget, but what came out was, ‘I was hiding in the bomb site with Brian.’
‘Why were you doing that?’
‘Because you don’t want us to be together and his mum can’t take care of me,’ I said. ‘She’s looking after his uncle, he’s got holes in his hands.’
She looked at me close up. I couldn’t remember which one was her glass eye, the one that was more grey, or the one that was grey-green and blue, because they were both glassy and moved over my face in the same way.
‘And how’s Brian?’ she said.
‘Why don’t you like him?’
‘You like him, that’s good enough for me.’
‘He told me to give it back.’
She gave me a look like lots of questions at once. ‘Go and be with him, but don’t go to his house.’
‘Why not?’
‘They don’t want you there,’ she said. ‘They’ve got things to hide.’
‘His mummy likes me.’
‘Yes, I know. They love you.’
My chest swelled up but I felt out of breath and confused. They didn’t want me and they loved me. I shook my question back at her in my face – what should I do?
‘Wait until his father goes away,’ she said. ‘And don’t tell yours.’
‘What’s that fuckin’ black cunt – ?’
We thought his uncle was asleep upstairs, but he was sat in the front room with the curtains closed, bandages on his hands and a black nose where he got beaten up. He stood up and chucked his drink at us, we rushed back to the front door and got out on to the street.
Brian’s mum and dad had gone out but gave him a key to let himself in. The baby was asleep in her pram at the bottom of the stairs, and woke up as his uncle hopped out after us to the front door. We could hear her crying as he shouted after us running down to the corner. He was fatter and shorter than Brian’s dad, and had that voice street traders used that rang out round the corner, ‘...come ’ere ... fuckin’... bloody ... kill yer!’
‘Sorry,’ I said, wiping beer off my face with my shirt. My shirt had got wet as well.
He only had a bit on him, but wasn’t wiping it off because he was thinking with his tongue between his lips. ‘It’s all right.’
‘Is your sister all right?’ I said.
He looked at me and frowned. ‘They’ve gone down ... to see a policeman down the pub. They’ll be back in a minute.’
We’d gone in his house to see the bags and boxes packed up and get out the Johnny Seven gun he wanted to give me, because even though it’d lost all its ammunition it still made noises when you fired it.
‘Shall we run and get ’em?’
He shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he said, ‘my mum’s trying to sort it out.’ He looked down at the ground and it was like there was a lump on his shoulders where he was bent over.
I touched his arm.
‘We haven’t got enough money to run,’ he said. ‘And I’m in school. It’s my dad who wants to go, he says the council want us out anyway, and my mum says we don’t have nowhere else to go.’
‘Is your dad like that?’ I said. ‘Like his brother?’
He got his knuckle and wiped some beer out his eye. Then I saw it wasn’t beer, he was crying and forcing it back.
‘He’s my dad,’ he said. ‘I love him.’
I put my head down. We walked on and sat up on a wall at the back of the London City Mission. We got turned away from there when we turned up at Christmas together and they said we hadn’t come to Sunday school so we couldn’t have any toys they were giving out. We used to climb up on the roof instead which was slanted and roll over, but we weren’t going to be doing any more climbing. We didn’t do anything for a bit, we just sat there.
‘It’s not like you and me,’ he said. ‘They’re grown-ups. My uncle’s scared they’re gonna come back and get him. He blames my dad for not giving them the money and my dad says he hasn’t got it. My mum doesn’t know what to do.’
‘Is your dad going away?’ I said.
Brian looked up at me like I wasn’t on his side. I felt caught out and couldn’t look at him because I wanted his dad to go and leave us alone even though my mum said to wait.
He shook his head, ‘I don’t want him to.’
‘What’s gonna happen?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve got to look after my mum.’ We looked at each other. We were losing everything. And we couldn’t stop it. ‘I can’t stay with you,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘I’ve got to go back.’ His eyes were like grey submarines going down black into water and there wasn’t any room there for me. He jumped off the wall on to his feet and gave my legs a hug. I didn’t get down – I hung my head and watched him walk off down the road and round the corner.
‘Your friend Brian’s gone,’ my mum said, taking her coat off and putting her bag down. She was coming in from her early cleaning job and putting her arm round me. She smelt wrong, like she’d been sweating and it was stale. I had my spoon in my mouth from a bowl of cereal. It tasted like cardboard and metal. I took it out and didn’t say anything. I didn’t think I was going to be able to eat again. My throat felt like it was closing up. I felt my bottom lip go over my top one to keep it warm, and just nodded.
Busola looked across in a scowl. ‘You can cry if you want,’ she said. ‘But don’t think you’re special just cos your cornflakes go soggy.’
‘Shut up,’ my mum said.
‘No,’ she said.
My mum picked up a cornflake and threw it at her.
‘See?’ Busola said. ‘He doesn’t even care about me and you don’t, either.’
‘I saw them on the way to work,’ my mum said. ‘It was still dark and his mother’s sorry they couldn’t say goodbye. They had to load up this morning and go. She’s not sure if they’ll be coming back.’
‘Where have they gone?’ Busola said.
‘Will you eat your cornflakes?’ my mum said to her.
She put a spoonful in her mouth and chewed, looking at me. I sneezed over my bowl, which brought the tears to the back of my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry in case I flooded everything. I started shaking and my mum held me tighter, saying, ‘It’s for the best.’
‘He’s not coming back,’ said Busola. ‘What’s good about that?’
‘Sometimes I could murder you,’ my mum said.
I passed his house on the way to school. The net curtains were up but it was empty. I came back and it was dark. No one said anything at school. A teacher came up after a few days and said, ‘Do you know where Brian’s gone?’ I shook my head. No one said anything in the playground. It was like playing on my own and being deaf. I didn’t want to know what anyone said. I sat under the arches in the playground and watched everyone playing out in the sun.
After a while I passed his house and it was like only I knew anyone ever lived there. It was like a bomb had hit it and everyone had gone, and it was just the walls standing. It was dark and it felt dead, but I still had to get up and walk past it on my way to school and come back, past all the bomb sites where people used to live but no one knew who they were any more. My dad gave me some money to spend on comics and on a model aeroplane with a pot of glue and a pot of grey paint. I left the plane out to dry on newspaper in the backyard and Manus accidentally trod on it and threw it in the bin. I got it out and tried to piece it back together with the glue, thinking maybe I could cry about that. It didn’t work and I threw it away myself.
I was in the bathroom, trying to get the glue and the grey paint off my fingers, and think why things I made always got broken. I squinted at the flecks of paint on my nails in the running water, and made them go grey-blue in the light coming from the window. I thought about his eyes. We were up in the big tree, climbing out on to weaker branches that dipped under our weight. He had his knee over one branch and was holding on to the one above while he looked at me and put a finger to his lips and pointed down to his mum asleep on the grass beside the baby. I couldn’t remember the baby’s face, and I couldn’t move because my shorts were caught on a twig. He put his foot on my branch and pressed down to release me. I got my knee up and joined him and we hung for a moment breathing in the air through the leaves. It was going to rain, you could hear it spatter the leaves at the top, his mum was going to wake up, there was wind in the branches of the tree, they were moving, and I was feeling it was going to be a long way to fall.