A week before the Freaky Fitzer fight fiasco we were sitting on the footpath watching other kids playing football on the green. I was a Man U supporter, Johnny J was a Liverpool man. We were arguing about who was the better team. Then out of nowhere he turned to me.
‘I overheard Ma and Uncle Ted talking last night,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘And …’ He stopped talking for a moment or two. He put his hands in his corkscrew curls and shook his head like he was shaking them out. I knew it meant he needed a minute, so I just looked out at the kids playing football.
‘Auntie Alison thinks I should live with her.’fn1
I got such a fright I jumped up. ‘What?’ I shouted. ‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘She lives in England!’
‘I know,’ he whispered.
‘Ah no,’ I said. ‘No, no, no.’ I really wasn’t taking it well at all.
‘It will be OK. I won’t have to go. My mam won’t let that happen,’ he said, trying to comfort me.
‘What did Uncle Ted say?’ I almost screeched.
‘Nothing. He just got real quiet.’
‘Ah no,’ I wailed. ‘Well, you can’t go!’ I said. ‘And that’s it.’ Then I started crying so much that green snot rolled from my nose to my chin and I coughed till I nearly choked. It was embarrassing and more than a little shocking.
Johnny J knew I didn’t cope well with change.fn2
‘Don’t start wetting the bed again,’ he said.
‘We agreed we’d never talk about it,’ I mumbled.
And all of a sudden he looked like he was going to cry, and he NEVER cried. ‘I can’t leave my mam, Jeremy. I don’t want to live in England.’
‘Well, that’s good, because you’re not going anywhere,’ I said, and I really believed it. I COULD NOT LOSE MY BEST FRIEND!
He didn’t bring it up again and neither did I. Instead we put our efforts into fundraising to send Mrs Tulsi to America. From then on I noticed him talking to Charlie more. I didn’t know why and I didn’t like it.
Charlie Eastman’s mother was a district nurse. She visited sick people in their homes and helped them with their medication. She started visiting with Mrs Tulsi the year before. In the beginning Charlie would sit on the wall outside alone, waiting for her. Then one day Johnny J joined her. The next day was when she started following us around on her bike.
Charlie had three older brothers, Louis, Sean and Ben. Ben was still in school but the others were finished and working in the local paper factory. They all had red hair, and Louis, the oldest, had a mad red beard. I knew them because they were all huge fellas and brilliant at hurling. Mrs Eastman was a redhead too, and so was Declan Eastman, her husband and the children’s father. You could spot the orange hue of Eastmans from a mile away, and still Charlie had a way of creeping up on me that made me anxious.
Walker Brown spent a lot of time being anxious. He said it was because of the asthma attacks. He always had to have an inhaler on hand because if he didn’t he could die. At least that’s what he said. Mam said that breathing into a brown bag would work just as well, but then Mam believed that flat 7Up could cure every disease on earth, so she wasn’t exactly reliable when it came to that sort of thing.
If Mam was bossy, Walker’s mother was like a sergeant major. Sheila Brown walked around the place in tight trousers, high leather boots, shirts and blazers. She wore her hair in a tight bun, and when she gave you a certain look, it was hard not to poo in your pants. Her husband Denis drove a security van for the bank. Johnny J always joked that he must be really well paid or must’ve robbed a few quid every time he was in the van because Walker and his family lived in a fancy house and Denis Brown was the only one we knew who travelled to Italy for the matches. When I told my dad that Denis Brown was in Italy, he shook his head and said, ‘I never thought I’d envy that man,’ before he took himself to bed for a lie-down.
Walker had three sisters, April, May and June (I kid you not). They were triplets and they were eighteen and living in a flat in London. Walker had been what my mam described as a surprise. Rich said surprise was code for unwanted, before telling me I was also a surprise! I once asked Walker if he liked having three sisters. He said he hated it.
‘Girls are evil,’ he said. ‘Fact.’
Walker really wished he was an only child too. ‘Genius kids thrive without siblings. If it weren’t for April, May and stupid June, I could be an astronaut by now.’ He was ten when he said that and he really believed it.
Even though my brother made my life hell, and Sumo was sometimes lonely, and Walker’s sisters held him back, we were all lucky. Every time we witnessed Johnny J holding his sick mother’s hand, sitting in the back of an ambulance with the doors closing on them, we were reminded of how lucky we really were.
So not only was Johnny J’s horrible Auntie Alison threatening to steal him away to England, now his mam was giving up chemo! This was worse than bad. I sat on my front wall after Dad and Mr Lucey had gone inside, thinking, until the sky threatened rain and my mam threatened to murder me if I didn’t get in for my dinner.
Over dinner Rich talked about his stupid boy band. Dad read the newspaper and my mam pretended to listen, but it was obvious her mind was somewhere else.
‘Numbnutbutt, did you hear what I said?’ Rich asked.
‘I don’t care what you said.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t care that you don’t care what I said. We’re nearly ready to gig any day now.’
‘No, you’re not – you’re terrible.’
‘What would you know?’ he said.
‘I have ears.’
My dad laughed. Rich punched me in the arm.
‘Ouch,’ I shouted.
‘How terrible?’ Rich asked, poised to give me another dig, and then all of a sudden my mam started bawling. It was terrifying. She and Mrs Tulsi were friends. She knew.
Rich stopped talking. Dad stopped reading his newspaper. He just placed his hand on hers and nobody spoke. She sobbed and mumbled, ‘I’m sorry,’ and sobbed some more. It must have only been seconds but it felt like hours.
‘Why don’t you boys eat your dinner in front of the telly tonight?’ Dad said.
We were up and gone before he’d finished the sentence. We didn’t speak, we just sat with our food on our laps listening to grown men talk about football. As soon as we were finished we disappeared into the safety of our own rooms.
I kept a walkie-talkie by my bedroom window. Johnny J had given me one of a set his uncle had bought him a year earlier. The reception was bad but we made it work. I picked it up, opened my window and sat on the window ledge and pressed the button.
‘Number One Buddy, this is Brown Bear. Come in. Over.’
There was nothing.
‘Number One Buddy, this is Brown Bear. Please come in. Over?’
Still nothing.
‘Number One Buddy, this is Brown Bear. It’s going to be OK. We’ll fix it. Over.’ Then I saw the window open and he leaned out and stared right at me.
‘Promise? Over,’ he said, and I nodded.
‘Promise. Over,’ I said.
I went to bed that night worried. Every conversation I’d had and heard that day spun around in my head. The kids in the park booing and hissing and the sound of everyone crying. I was terrified that Johnny J would have to move to England to live with his auntie and I couldn’t stop thinking about my promise. It’s going to be OK. We’ll fix it. But how?
Then I remembered what Mr Lucey had said to my dad about the World Cup. He said the whole country would shut down for the Ireland games, but Rolands’ Garage was staying open and the granny would be minding the shop for the match! And that was it. That was the moment I decided that if we were going to save Mrs Tulsi’s life and I was going to keep my best friend living four doors down from me, we had to rob Rolands’ Garage during the Ireland v Egypt match. Every other person in the country would be otherwise occupied. It was our big chance and I knew it was a mad idea, but it was the only one I had.