Mum has grown into her silence over the years and only breaks out from it when the hush has built to a point where it has to escape. All the quiet gathers itself together and explodes from her in an inevitable screaming and shouting rage. Anything can set it off – a bill that is bigger than expected, a plate that falls and smashes from the draining board. Something small will be the kindling, but the explosion won’t trigger until I provide the spark. I might have ripped the badge from my school blazer, I might have forgotten to wash up a cup, or I could have washed the cup and left the tea towel in the wrong place. She will quickly pounce on the offence and then there is nothing to be done other than stand back and wait until she rages herself out. Anything said during one of these rampages will only prolong the episode, any words offered will be used as fuel and turned against you. The only thing to be done is to stand back and wait. After the eruption she will take herself off to her room and I won’t see her until the next day, when she will be back to quiet and sad, and looking at me like I’ve stolen money from her purse. It wasn’t always the case. I remember in Clifton she would sometimes sing along to the radio, she would sometimes have the radio on quite loud. These days the radio only ever mutters quietly – grumpy men discussing news, politics and economics endlessly all day, or she tunes it to a classical station playing gloomy string music and turns the volume down until it sounds like a group of old men, whispering sadly into their beards. I think she’s keeping everything quiet so she will hear fresh trouble approaching. So she will know what I’ve been up to this time before the police knock at the door.
On Thursday nights she writes in her notebook. Thursday nights are the most silent of our silent nights. She boils up a pot of tea, opens a fresh white page and pushes the pen down into the paper. She writes the date in the top left-hand corner of the new page and then relentlessly fills four sheets with closely packed text, hardly pausing for thought. I’m not allowed to see what’s written on those pages, and I’ve no idea where she keeps the journal hidden. I’m dying to know what words she has discovered in herself because I can’t imagine what she has to say every week. Mum is unhappy, I know, but it doesn’t take an hour to write I am sad. I hate Raithswaite. Donald ruined my life. The only thing that can disrupt the flow of words is noise. The clock ticks too loud for her on writing night. People in the towns over the other side of Denple Hill turn the pages of their books too loudly for her on writing night. Once I got accused of breathing too noisily. Thursday nights I stay in my room and try not to provoke her.
It was a Thursday night when I saw the back of Fiona’s head down in the quarry, moving amongst the trees and bushes. It was a relief to have an excuse to get out of the house and I was with her in a few minutes. She unplugged herself from her headphones when she saw me and we fell into step together. We chatted about school and then there was a pause and I was about to ask how her brother was getting on in prison, but she got in a split second quicker.
‘I’ve seen you Donald. You and that little lad. I’ve seen you a couple of times now, coming and going about the place.’
Guilt tingled my scalp and rushed to the end of each fingertip and I didn’t know why. I nodded, like I was agreeing with a point she was making, but I didn’t know what to say.
‘So who is he Donald?’ she asked.
On the second ‘d’ of ‘Donald’ a handbrake was released and from nowhere a lie started coming out of my mouth that was so convincing I believed it as I was creating it. Jake Dodd was a lad I had got to know through Raithswaite Library reading clubs. There were two groups. Ours, the teenage group, had each been given a kid to mentor from the younger group. We were supposed to encourage them to read books they wouldn’t normally read, to stretch themselves. I’d been assigned to Jake and got friendly with him and his mum and she asked me to watch him sometimes when she had to be off doing other stuff. It was so convincing and boring an explanation that I knew Fiona was believing it as I was telling her. I finished and she told me I deserved a medal. We carried on walking through the quarry and she described visiting her brother at the prison.
‘It stank Donald. All those teenage boys in their orange sweaters with nobody to keep clean for. I tried not to touch anything but I still had to have a shower when I got home.’
‘I bet they liked the look of you,’ I said. My body and brain was still fizzing from the question about Jake, and I said it without thinking, but Fiona stopped walking suddenly and said, ‘Some of them didn’t even pretend Donald. They just stared. And when I stared back they didn’t even blink. One lad spotted me as I came in, and he watched me walk all the way across the room and sit down opposite my brother. He never took his eyes off me. I don’t like being stared at at the best of times but that was horrible. The thing is you don’t know what they’re in there for. You don’t know what they’ve done.’
She shuddered as we walked on and put her arm through mine. It was the first time we’d ever really touched and it felt very grown-up. I knew it didn’t mean anything, but it felt good. Later on that night, as I lay in bed, I thought that maybe I wouldn’t go and see Jake on Saturday as usual. I would try and stay away from the school too. Let the little ones play by themselves for a while, they would be OK. And Jake would be fine without me checking up on him. I would plan a vanishing instead. I would go to the library and get the Times Atlas out and start to look for suitable destinations.
But come Saturday lunchtime there I was, sat on the bench at the playground waiting for him. I couldn’t let him down like that. The thought of him turning up and being left by himself with the afternoon to get through made me too sad. And it was a good job I was there. He walked into the playground, looked up to find me, and I saw it straight away – a shiny lump above his right eye, as big as an Adam’s apple, as purple as a plum. We didn’t walk up to the house like we normally did; he looked too tired for walking, so we stayed on the bench at the playground. He said that Harry had done it. Smacked him one in a fight, so Jake had smacked him one back, and then they went for each other and had both ended up in trouble. ‘What were you fighting about anyway?’ I asked him. Jake said he didn’t know. They were just fighting. He yawned heavily and there were dark patches under his eyes that weren’t bruises.
‘You tired Jake?’
‘Yeah, I don’t sleep so well when Mum goes out.’
‘You don’t like being alone?’
‘I don’t mind in the day, but not at night much, when she doesn’t come back.’
‘She doesn’t come back all night?’
‘Sometimes she doesn’t. It’s OK. We spoke about it. She’s always got her phone.’
She’s always got her phone. I didn’t know what to say.
‘How long has she been staying out all night Jake?’
‘Steve doesn’t come around any more. It started after that. At first she stayed in her room all the time but then she started going out. Mainly Fridays and Saturdays. Sometimes Thursdays too.’
I was angry but I knew to keep quiet. When I was calm enough to speak normally I asked Jake if she would be out that night.
‘She always goes to the Social on a Saturday,’ Jake said.
‘The Social on Wellgate?’ He nodded that was the place. We didn’t stay out too long that afternoon. I sent Jake home early and told him to get some rest. He should try and sleep if he wasn’t going to be sleeping later.