Pa slammed the car boot harder than he needed to. Mo hugged that crinkly leather bag she carried everywhere, it used to be her mum’s, held it close like any minute a man might snatch it off her. Pa held her door open. She wouldn’t get in. She turned, instead, and screamed, there in our street,
‘We Can’t Leave Harry!’
Air whooshed out of me like I’d taken one of those upper cuts to the solar plexus Otis taught me.
‘I’ll be fine, Mo. Honest, Mo.’
‘Harry! Are You Sure?’
Was I sure? Ten days in rainy Scotland with Mad Mo and Shrinking Pa. Or ten days with Joan and Otis, a fit black real-life fire-fighter picking me up from school every day. Was I sure?
‘Mo, we’ll look after him.’ said Joan. ‘Otis’ll kill me if I let Harry go.’
We all tensed up.
Otis’ll kill me.
You don’t realise people talk like that until your little brother disappears.
* * *
Once, I started an experiment, planned to make a bar-chart, maybe discover the violentest day of the week.
Day one, 7.15am:
‘Point that at me and you’re fuckin dead meat.’
A little girl said that down in the square. I wrote it in one of the notebooks Mo gave me when she chucked her work things out.
Assembly:
‘I’ll fuckin kill ya.’
One of the infants to Parimal. I don’t know what Parimal had done. A few kids felt that way about him.
First lesson:
‘I could murder a Mars Bar.’
Piggy.
I wrote it down and drew a line:
‘9.25am, experiment cancelled.’
H. Pickles, Scientist.
It was just too depressing.
I glanced at Mo to check the damage. Dark-eyed and angry. Head too big for her body. It was all right. That’s how she looked these days.
Pa stood behind her, twisting his hands like he was squeezing out the dishcloth.
‘Time to go.’
‘Harry! Are You Sure?’
Joan pressed a hand on my shoulder, took it away sharpish.
‘You and Dom have got some serious work to do, Mo. It’s the best thing for Harry.’
They were going with all their troubles to the Isle of Mull, because grown-ups believe that being somewhere wet and beautiful can do you good.
Mo squeezed my head in both her hands, kissed me with hard, dry lips, then fell into Joan’s arms. Pa threw his arms around me, rammed my nose into his chest and crunched my ribs. They’d best not do any cuddling on this holiday. They didn’t know their own strength.
They were all packed up, waved off and rolling away when Shy Geoffrey gangled out of his house, waving some papers. Geoffrey was richer than he looked. He had a whole entire extra house just for the holidays. That’s where they were off to.
For one horrid moment I thought he was going to say it had fallen off a cliff or something and they’d have to stay at home. But it was all right, he’d only found an extra map. He leaned into Pa’s window, mumbling about routes. I could almost hear Pa asking politely if he had any breakables and would he mind if some of them were accidentally broken.
Geoffrey scooted inside. Mo stuck her head out the window, a pinched, panicky look on her face. Pa made one sad toot on the horn, and they were off.
I did what I hoped was the right sort of wave.
In my mind they were in Scotland already, screeching round hairpin bends. Pa, squeezing the wheel, snaps,
‘How could you, Mo?’
She screams, ‘I’m thirty-nine!’
He turns towards her.
‘Say that again and I’ll –’
The Volvo slides off the road, mows down trees, flips up and rolls. Rolls, rolls, down the ravine. At the bottom it stops.
Then,
Bang! Bedang! Bang!
My whole class comes to the funeral. Miss Bliss has never seen a boy so brave. At the reception there’s Tizer and Mars Bars, all the sweets that come in black. I make a fantastic orphan, the only one in our school. My boy rating soars. Joan has babies. Three, maybe four. We get a dog and a television.
Back in the house, Joan said, ‘You’ve perked up a bit.’
Otis took me to Basecuts on the Portobello Road and told a man with a four-centimetre nail through his eyebrow to do whatever he wanted, ‘but nothing too radical, all right, mate?’
‘I Paulo,’ said the man.
He was completely bald and wore his trousers open at the top. Calvin Kleins showing. His T-shirt was so thin I saw his, you know, nipples. He ran his fingers through my hair and reached a knot.
He said, ‘Iz Problem,’ clicked his fingers at the thin girl sweeping up, and walked off.
I looked at Otis. He wheeled his chair in closer.
‘The thing is, Harry, trust the professionals. If Paulo’s house was on fire I wouldn’t want him telling me how to put it out. So I’m not gonna tell him how to cut my hair, now, am I?’
‘But it’s not your hair, Otis.’ He wasn’t having a haircut.
* * *
Paulo did a good job, actually. I could see from my reflection in Starbucks.
‘We need to get you kitted out, mate. Call it an early birthday present. Can I be honest with you?’
‘My birthday’s not for weeks.’
‘Your clothes, mate, they’re a disaster.’
In Starbucks window, a skinny boy, sad face on him, faded tracksuit bottoms squeezing his nuts, way sad trainers pinching his toes. Woolly school jumper, Barbados T-shirt he wore every day. If bag ladies had kids they’d look like this.
‘I’m gonna tell you about clothes, Harry.’
We took high stools looking out on the street. Otis set down two café lattes, extra chocolate for me, no cinnamon, lots of froth.
‘You don’t say, I’m gonna dress like Otis or I’m gonna dress like David Beckham or, God forbid, I’m gonna dress like Dominic. The trick is, look around you, see what you like, see what suits Harry. The clothes, you see, is an expression of yourself.’
I looked at him, really looked at him, seemed like the first time I really had. The cloth on him was heavy, the black really black. He had on close-fitting trousers, not too tight, with a belt, a buckle on it, not flashy, just strong, cool and, well, Otis. His jersey showed off his muscles, the neck on it dipped down into the small dark pit under his Adam’s apple. On top of that he had a long-sleeved tan shirt, hanging open. I touched it. Leathery stuff that’s soft and warm.
A dressed-up black woman shimmied past a table on the street. Her head swivelled round and through the window came a look so hot it burned my cheek.
‘Now, look,’ he said.
People out there must have had clothes on before. I hadn’t noticed.
I saw a redheaded woman in a slinky skin-tight blouse and trousers with the waist at her hips, high-heeled boots that seemed to be made out of snakes.
I saw purple flares and furry white jackets.
Market traders in old woolly jumpers, don’t-fuck-with-me scars on their faces.
Old ladies in surgical shoes, towing shopping trolleys.
Big-school black boys in baggy trousers, the crotch at their knees.
A baby, stripy hat on it, trailing bobbles and bells.
A white man lying across Ladbrokes doorway, fast asleep, blanket on top of him, his hand reaching out to the beer can he’d spilt, fizzy mess on the pavement. I felt sad and panicky. He was the only one I could point to and whisper,
‘Otis. That’s how I feel.’
He sipped his coffee, came up with a creamy moustache that cheered me a bit. He patted it with a napkin, checked his reflection in the sugar shaker.
‘It may be how you feel right now, but it’s not what you are, not how you want to be. Dress how you want to be, man. First thing, start looking, start thinking. You’ve started already. Good man, Harry. Well done. Today we buy one outfit, keep it simple. You wear it, you like it, you think what might go with it. Sometimes you make a mistake. No worries. You should see the mistakes in my wardrobe.’
He should keep his voice down. I looked around me, hoped those Japanese tourists sipping espressos couldn’t speak English.
I whispered, ‘Otis, isn’t it a bit, well, you know, gay?’
‘You’re right in a way, mate. You don’t talk to the girls about it. You don’t say, me and my mate had a thirty pound haircut, sat in Starbucks drinking café latte, checking out threads. And there’s men who don’t get it. You only have to look at them. Don’t talk about it. Just do it. And women like it. Believe me, the women like it.’
‘But, Otis, I’m not even ten.’ I didn’t want dressed-up women with big bazongers burning red marks on my face.
‘And you’re gonna be a ten year old who feels happy in his clothes, that’s all Harry. It’s nuffink to get hung up about. You put the work in, you do the looking, you do the buying, then you put your clothes on and fuhgedabardid, get on with your life.’
We bought everything, even pants. Soft boxers were the thing to wear, Otis said, close to home, on a quiet bit of the street where no-one was about.
‘Just so’s you know, Harry, and this is man’s talk. I never wear the same boxers or T-shirt two days running. Next to your skin? In the washbin. Shower every morning, every night. Working out? Shower straight after. The kit? In the wash. All of it. Don’t want sweaty kit hangin around. Some men think it’s macho, but you know what?’
Was Otis normal?
‘That’s all they got hangin around.’
We reached the square. Otis opened the gate.
‘That teacher of yours,’ he said softly, ‘Miss Paradise?’
I thought of Miss Bliss, how she liked men who cried, of Otis and the secret and the way women looked at him, of Joan, just a minute away, most likely frying plantains for me.
‘She’s got a moustache, Otis. Creaky knees.’
‘What?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Thought I might ask your Miss Heaven if she’d like to bring the class down the station. Whadya think?’
‘Emanuela Balisciano. We call her Miss Bliss. It’s a brilliant idea.’
Otis and Joan had decided to give me a serious makeover. They didn’t say so, but I knew what they were up to. The best bits were watching videos with Otis – the boxing greats, you know, Ali, Foreman, the Rumble in the Jungle, and going to see Tottenham play live in the actual White Hart Lane stadium. Sol Campbell was brilliant! Scored a blinder! The worst bits were eating fish and doing press-ups, which Otis said Sol Campbell did a lot of.
Otis wanted to see how come I was crap at football. We went down the park for a kick-around.
One, two minutes in, he said,
‘You can’t kick straight –’
‘I know that.’
‘Let me finish, Harry. You can’t kick straight. When d’you get those boots?’
‘Before, you know.’
‘Long time before?’
It was hard to remember before.
‘Tell me when it hurts.’
‘Jesus, Otis!’
‘Less of your blasphemy. You can’t kick straight, mate, cos your boots is too small.’
So they got me some new ones and we worked on technique. Seemed Otis and Joan could fix anything.
‘Joan, do you think they’ll be better?’
It was all I could think about, Mo and Pa jumping out of the car, bursting into the house, weighed down only by presents for me.
She stopped chopping onions, wiped her hands on a dishcloth.
‘We shouldn’t expect much, H. The thing is, honey, sometimes pain brings people together and sometimes it tears them apart. They’ve had a little holiday, that’s all.’
‘But one day they’ll get over it.’
She sat down, pulled her chair close. If I’d moved my hand a bit I could have touched her giant belly. She went quiet, like grown-ups do before they tell you something horrid.
Otis, shiny-wet and laughing, burst in, a towel round him. He backed out sharpish, leaving wet footprints and the smell of that coconut stuff he slopped on his hair.
Joan said, ‘Harry, they will never get over it.’
His hair went tight and springy when he washed it and it felt completely dry.
‘Harry,’ Joan said in a slow sad whisper like she didn’t want herself to hear. ‘This is important, Harry. I said they will never get over it.’
I watched Otis’s footprints dry and fade.
‘Nor will you and nor will we. We’ve lost Daniel and we will never ever get over it.’
I felt a dark rainy night, a black motorway, engine noise, the taste of petrol in my mouth. I’d be ancient – I mean, like, forty – stuck in the car, telling it to crash, but it wouldn’t crash. It would go on and on.
‘It won’t always be this hard,’ Joan was saying. ‘The pain of it will lessen, we’ll feel it less often, have more easy days between.’
She took my hands. Hers smelt of onion.
‘Eventually this awful pain will become, I don’t know, something that’s there, that isn’t our fault, we didn’t do something wrong, Harry. But it never goes away. It’s always there, part of our landscape. It’s part of your landscape, Harry.’
She seemed to be offering me some kind of rescue that did not involve drowning. I didn’t understand it, not all of it, not then.
‘But, Joan, we can’t just, I mean, we’ve got to –’
‘Do something?’
‘Yes! Yes!’
‘Harry, we’re doing it, now. We’re just starting, we’re just beginning to –’
‘To what?’
‘Harry, love, we’re learning to grieve. That’s your mission, our mission, all of us, now, we have to learn how to grieve.’
I checked Otis’s footprints. The balls of his feet were all that was left. I could still smell the coconut, though.
‘Joan, do you still cry about Daniel?’
‘Every day, H. Every day.’
As if to prove it, tears started on the rims of her eyes, fattened up and spilled down her face.
‘You don’t think he’s coming back, do you, Auntie Joan?’
‘I don’t think he is,’ she said.
We sat there til Otis’s footprints had completely disappeared.
I whispered, ‘Joan, I see Daniel.’
‘What, Harry?’
‘I see Daniel. I mean, not him exactly. Boys, girls too, just like him. Everywhere. Grown-ups, sometimes. Then, I look again and see they’re not like him at all.’
For all I didn’t want to frighten her, I’d got going now and found I couldn’t stop.
‘Things, as well, Joan. Things, like yesterday I saw him hiding by the wall next to the church but it wasn’t him. It wasn’t. Joan …’ I choked back tears. ‘It was the bin bags.’
‘Yes,’ she said, as if I hadn’t just owned up to her that I was mad as Mo. ‘It happens, love. That’s how it is. We’re looking for Daniel. In our hearts, Harry, we’ll always be looking for Daniel.’
‘You see him too?’
‘Of course, love. Mo and Dom and Otis too. All of us. Everyone. All over the world, in fact. It happens to everyone who’s lost someone they love.’
Really, truly? In Italy, Japan and Pakistan and Wakkatoo, all over the world, boys, like me, looking for the Daniel they’d lost? Seeing him, not seeing him at all?
It helped a bit, made me feel not so alone. Like backing Spurs. Or eating fish same time as Sol, most likely. Or being a boxer, me, Otis, Pa and Muhammad Ali.
Joan wiped my tears off with her oniony thumb, then light flashed out of her, she yanked my hand and pulled her jumper up.
‘Feel this,’ she said, and pressed my hand into her belly. ‘Feel this, the baby’s moving.’
So?
I felt … nothing.
‘Press harder. You can’t hurt it. Relax your hand and press harder.’
If it mattered so much to her I’d go along with it. As long as it didn’t mean touching her titties.
Nothing happened. Not a thing. And then a feeling, quick and shy but real, like the twitch of my line when the mackerel takes the hook. Made me laugh. Laugh out loud.
‘That’s your cousin,’ she said, and I knew it was true.