DCI Hanlon was not the only person with family on their mind. Fuller too lay on his bed, a bottle of vodka on the table beside it, thinking about the past. He’d got to Oxford like Laura, but by a very different route.
He was sixteen when he did his A levels, nearly two years younger than everyone else in his class. Big’s career at the BBC had crashed and burned. Uncle Phil, steadily climbing the corporate ladder, had ditched her for younger meat.
Big was axed from TV. She’d been judged by the Corporation as too old and unattractive to be in the public eye. The flat in central London was now gone and Monica Fuller spent most of her days and nights drowning her sorrows at The Queen’s Head pub round the corner from their new flat in Acton, in a far from glamorous part of West London. She told the regulars that she was involved in community dance projects. They didn’t care. Nobody who drank there cared about anything any more. To be a regular at the Queen’s was to be a card-carrying failure. It was a truly terrible pub.
Gideon Fuller’s academic career was beginning to unfurl like a triumphant banner.
When they left central London, he had left the private school where he’d been a scholarship student and had wound up at the local comprehensive. Learning moved at a more sedate pace there. Fuller, through a mix of streaming, and a headmaster worried that the new kid whose public-school accent marked him out so dramatically might come to an unpleasant end, was fast-tracked.
Fuller, lost in unhappy memories of the past, poured himself another vodka. He picked away at the recollections of the past like a scab. His eyes narrowed. He was remembering his last day at home. His ability to recall events was amazingly good. He must have relived this event thousands of times. His free hand held Vulture gently. Vulture had been there too.
It must have been in August, twenty years ago. The results had come in the post, which would have been nine thirty a.m. There were two letters, one for him, one for Big, as he had come to think of her.
He remembered holding the envelope that contained the key to his future. He knew he had done well, but how well remained to be seen. He had opened the buff envelope with his name on, four grade As. If he passed the Oxford University entrance exam which he was signed up for in the autumn (and he knew he would – fish swim, birds fly, I pass exams, thought Gideon), he’d be in and away from all this mess. That was the expression he used to himself, mess. Gideon never swore. He didn’t want to be like Big, with her foul mouth, and he would never drink for the same reason.
He showed Vulture his results. Vulture was delighted for him. He waggled his neck and his beak jumped up and down with excitement. Gideon felt a surge of happiness. It was an unusual feeling and one he had learned to associate with achievement, with things, not people.
Things make you happy; people just hurt you. It was an axiom.
In the present day, his phone started ringing. Fuller ignored it. He was reliving his past in every excruciating detail. His memories were startlingly vivid and detailed.
As if on cue, Monica Fuller’s bedroom door had opened. ‘Morning, Mum,’ he said. His mother gave him a look of
angry disgust.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ she demanded. Big was still drunk from the night before, but only too aware of how bedraggled she was looking. She’d slept in the clothes she’d been wearing and a residual smell of The Queen’s Head, the ghost of Christmas Past, lingered on the fabric. She noticed Gideon wrinkle his nose slightly and a wave of anger against her prissy, goody-goody son surged through her. Who did he think he was to judge her, the little bastard. She badly wanted to hurt him. Let him share her pain. Do you think it’s fun being me, she thought, does it look like I’m having a laugh? She took a cigarette from the packet on the table and lit one. She knew he hated smoking.
She snatched the letter from him, holding it at arm’s length so she could focus, one eye half closed against the smoke rising from the cigarette in her mouth, and read through it. Well, no joy there. Her lips curled. Academic results, big deal, what use are they in the real world?
She opened the other letter. It was from his drama and dance teacher at the stage academy Big sent him to. It was disastrous, an unambiguous demolition of Big’s hopes to see Gideon in the West End. It might as well have said, Two Left Feet and can’t act. She knew, deep down, that he was not cut out for life as an actor but she was unwilling to let go of her dreams. There was no place in life for her as an academic’s mother. There was, however, a role for her as a stage mother; indeed she might build a second career on its back. She could be an agent or maybe get a choreographic role. She knew he could act, she knew he could dance, it was in his genes. He’d just chosen not to. She was furious, and still very drunk.
‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘And after all the sacrifices I made for you. You ungrateful little bastard.’
Gideon stared at the floor in misery. ‘You didn’t even try, did you?’
‘I promise I’ll learn to dance, Mummy. I’ll make you proud of me.’ He wasn’t sixteen any more. He was ten. His mother snorted in derision. Vulture was still sitting on the kitchen table. Big’s eyes alighted on it.
‘God, you’ve still got that horrible thing,’ she said, picking Vulture up.
‘Give him to me,’ said Gideon. Big laughed, gratified by his obvious distress. Got your attention now, haven’t I? she thought. It felt good.
‘Playing with toys at your age, you little poof,’ she said.
Then it happened. She took her cigarette out of her mouth and stubbed it out in Vulture’s left eye. There was a hiss, a plume of thin smoke and a smell of burning rubber.
‘Give him to me,’ repeated Gideon.
If Big hadn’t still been half-cut from her three a.m. session she would have noticed the change in his voice. Big sneered. She had noticed there was a deep cut in the rubber where the wing of the bird joined the body. With one brutal, downward motion, she tore the wing off the bird and threw Vulture out through the open kitchen window of the second-floor flat. The wing followed.
She turned to look at her son in triumph and was sent flying, as Gideon’s open palm slammed into her cheek. Her glasses flew off and Gideon stamped on them as if he was crushing a venomous insect. He looked at her cowering from him. His hand hurt; God knows what her cheek must have felt like. He felt the triumph spreading through his body as he saw her pain.
Big was no coward, nor was she a stranger to being knocked around by men, but this unexpected attack seemed to paralyse her. She steadied herself on the table and Gideon slapped her again. It felt even better. Big whimpered. He liked that. In fact, it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.
Then he grabbed hold of her throat with his right hand and squeezed. Now he could see the pain and terror in her eyes. How do you like it? he thought. Sixteen years I’ve had of this, you drunk old bitch. Now it’s payback time.
He increased the pressure on her throat and her bloodshot, slightly yellow eyes bulged. If I keep going, thought Gideon, she’ll die. It was a tempting thought. He pushed her away roughly and his mother staggered across the kitchen.
‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Get out. When you come back I’ll be gone and don’t even think of looking for me.’
‘Fine,’ hissed his mother. ‘That’s just fine by me.’ And with as much dignity as she could muster, she left the flat in her stockinged feet.
It wasn’t the first time she had done the walk of shame, but usually, of course, it was homeward bound. Ten a.m, walking to the pub through the streets of Acton, half-dressed and without shoes or money was a first. As she rounded the corner her nose started bleeding. A woman passer-by stared at her in a concerned way.
‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ snarled Monica.
Gideon packed a sports bag with his best second-hand clothes. It didn’t take long. Then he picked up his school ruck- sack, much heavier. He’d need that. He closed the door of the flat behind him and went down the stairs, then out of the rear door to the service road where he found Vulture lying on the tarmac. His sightless eye was a puckered socket, but the good one still looked at Gideon with unstinting affection.
Gideon picked him up, kissed him and said, ‘I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to you again.’ He couldn’t see Vulture’s wing anywhere. He put the bird inside his shirt and walked off to the Tube station. He had nowhere to go.
The first night he climbed over the railings into Holland Park in central London, near Notting Hill, and slept under a bush. He was woken up at seven a.m. by an angry parks employee and told never to be found there again. The second night found him on Hampstead Heath. He was cold, shivering and very hungry. A man came up to him and asked if he was OK. Fine, said Gideon. Do you want to come home with me, said the man. Gideon nodded.
He knew there would be a price to pay, but it would be worth it.
The first time the pain was intense, agonizing, but he got used to it and it was better than being at home.
Anything was.
In October he passed his entrance exam to Oxford.
He was on his way.