This Is Not Forgiveness Read online

  Kids need heroes – especially ones who will be growing up without a dad. Maybe I wanted one, too.

  It weren’t like that in real life.

  Truth was he could be a right bastard. OK one minute and next he’d be off on one. Short Fuse.

  When he come home – it was like Christmas and birthday rolled together – presents and everything. All good. But after a bit he’d get edgy – restless – then he’d start drinking. If Ma said anything – he’d clip her one and go out and not come back for hours – sometimes days.

  One time he bought me a Buzz Lightyear – two days later he’d stomped on old Buzz. Getting On His Nerves. Me? Buzz? Could have been either one of us. He bought me another one but it weren’t the same.

  You never knew where you were with him. I learnt to wait for the sun to come out and I learnt to keep out of the way.

  Now I can see how it was with him. He didn’t mean to be harsh. Just couldn’t help it. I’ve seen it in other guys – seen it in myself.

  Mum told us Dad’s death was an accident. Killed in training using live rounds. She’s always stuck to that story. Truth was he topped himself. Grandpa told me when he’d had one too many whiskies and his marbles were sliding. Went like this:

  HIM: You got the look of him.

  ME: Oh, who’s that?

  HIM: Yer dad.

  Then nothing. No point prompting you just had to go with him – following the riffs of his mind.

  HIM: He were a nasty piece of work. Treated yer mum like dirt. It were worse after that do in Suez.

  ME: He weren’t in Suez, Grandpa.

  HIM: He were out there somewhere.

  ME: It was the Gulf War.

  HIM: Same difference, int it?

  ME: He had Gulf War Syndrome.

  HIM: Syndrome my arse. We seen far worse than them lot and didn’t behave like that.

  ME: Could’ve been post-traumatic stress disorder – that’s what they say I’ve got.

  HIM: Yeah but you been in some real fighting not fannying about in Germany and Northern Ireland.

  ME: Northern Ireland was no picnic.

  HIM: Not when I were there maybe with the paras – but they was just peacekeeping – never did nothing. He were a coward, lad. Took the coward’s way out.

  ME: How do you mean? His death was an accident.

  HIM: Accident with live rounds – that’s what they always say to cover it up. He topped hisself pure and simple. I’m off to bed.

  Fighting – killing – does damage. Grandpa says it’s the coward’s way out but I don’t agree. I bet even he’s thought about it. I’ve been tempted and I know I ain’t the only one.

  No mistakes with a gun in your mouth. That’s no cry for help – just a mess for someone to clear up.

  No one gets away free – not me – not Dad – not Grandpa. He can say what he likes. He don’t do terms like syndrome – disorder – but they’re just names for things he’d rather not talk about. I bet he gave Gran a hard time sometimes. He had his black moods when they all had to tiptoe round him – Mum told me. He’s always preferred his mates or why was he forever down the Legion? He’s always liked a drink or three. Sometimes even your mates are too much and you have to be on your own. He knows that – else why’d he spend so much time down the allotment and going fishing?

  Death is the end of the road – the ultimate destination where you can be alone. Maybe that’s what Dad figured out – it was the only place left to go.

  Jamie still don’t know what really happened to Dad. I told her not to tell him.

  We talked all night. In her own way she’s as fucked as I am. I told her things I’ve never told no one. I never felt that close to anyone – not even Bryn or the other guys. Sure, you’d die for them – them for you – that’s a given – but you never talk about deep stuff – personal stuff – about your dad and from when you were a kid and that, for fear of looking weak and them taking the piss.

  She makes me feel real – it’s painful – like blood pumping back into a limb that’s been kept immobile but she makes me feel like I’m coming alive.

  She says she don’t do love. I don’t neither – but she’s the nearest I’ve got to it.

  Chapter 22

  She doesn’t say anything about where we are going. I might as well be blindfolded. I catch the sweetish scent of alcohol on her breath as we wait on the bridge for the temporary lights to change.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘Might have been.’

  ‘You shouldn’t drink and drive.’

  ‘No shit!’ She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me.’

  I settle back in my seat and hope we don’t have far to go. Nothing happens. There are no police sirens. She drives more carefully, if anything, but I’m relieved when she takes the turning into the Meadow Crofts development and I know we are going to her place.

  She has a bottle ready on a tray, together with lime and salt.

  ‘I don’t like tequila,’ I say.

  ‘It’s not tequila,’ she says. ‘It’s mescal.’ She shows me the scorpion in the bottom of the bottle, shaking it, making it float about, like it’s swimming in there. ‘It is the best and only the best is good enough. Drink up.’

  We are sitting on the floor in the living room. I pass on the next round but she pours herself another. And another. She puts down the bottle, nearly missing the edge of the smoked-glass table. She did have a bit of a head start, but she seems to be getting really pissed. More than I’ve ever seen her. Mescal is strong stuff. She doesn’t slur her words. The way she speaks, all her movements become slower, more deliberate, and she’s very careful, like she doesn’t like to lose control. She never talks about her past, other boys, the men she’s had. She rarely talks about herself at all. The less she says, the more I want to know about her. I decide now’s my opportunity.

  I go into the kitchen to get a beer, play for time, think about how to approach her.

  The fridge is stacked with champagne bottles and the table is covered with shopping bags, the glossy, expensive kind, like she’s just come back from a spending spree.

  I turn to find her standing in the doorway.

  ‘That one is for you.’ She points to a dark green bag, marked Ralph Lauren. ‘It’s a shirt to replace the one you spilt ketchup down. I had to guess the size.’

  I take the shirt out of the packing. It’s a pink and white striped button down. Not what I’d wear normally, but I’m touched that she thought of me.

  ‘Hey, thanks!’

  ‘Try it on.’

  ‘Now?’ I follow her back into the lounge.

  ‘Of course, now. No point in buying things if you aren’t going to wear them.’

  I do as she says. It fits perfectly.

  ‘Let me see,’ she says, moving me round like I’m a mannequin. ‘Looks good.’

  ‘How come you can afford all this?’ I ask her as I finish buttoning the shirt.

  ‘She left me money and Trevor gave me more. Plus I’ve got a credit card.’

  ‘What about your dad? Do you ever see him?’

  ‘My dad, my real dad, the one who is not called Trevor? No. I don’t see him because he’s dead. He shot himself,’ she says after a pause. ‘We have that much in common.’

  I choke on my beer. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said. He’s dead.’

  ‘No, not that.’ I put the bottle down. ‘What you said about my dad. Having that in common. My dad was killed in an accident. He was a soldier, out on exercise. They were using live rounds. It was an accident,’ I repeat. ‘What makes you think it wasn’t?’

  ‘I dunno. I just thought. . .’ Her eyes are unfocused, distracted. All that mescal is getting to her. ‘Maybe it was something Martha said –’

  ‘But it’s not true, so why should she say it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She tips the bottle. ‘Almost empty.’

  She gets up to go and get more, but I pull her back
down again.

  ‘No.’ I take the bottle from her. ‘Not until you tell me. How do you know?’

  She pulls away and goes to the kitchen.

  She comes back with another bottle ‘Want some?’ I shake my head. ‘Please yourself.’ She pours herself a shot and knocks it back. ‘Dead’s dead. You just have to accept it. My dad went out one day and never came back. He got into the car, drove to a wood and shot himself.’

  She’s quiet, staring into space, as if revisiting that time, going back to that place.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ I say into the silence. ‘A terrible thing to happen but that’s not what happened to my dad. His was an accident.’

  ‘Oh,’ she looks at me, eyes heavy. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s what I was told.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Not very old. Three.’

  ‘There!’ She sits up. ‘You’ve got it right there. They lied to you. They’d have lied to me, too, if I hadn’t been old enough to see through it. People don’t like the truth. They translate it into something easier for everyone to accept.’

  My turn to be quiet. Everything I’d ever believed. Everything I’d ever been told. She’s rocking my world. I reach for the mescal bottle and take a swig. Little things come together in my mind. A word here, a word there. Hushed conversations I wasn’t supposed to hear. The more I think about it, the more I know what she is saying is true.

  Just when I think it can’t get worse, it does.

  ‘But how do you know?’ I ask. ‘When it’s something I didn’t know myself. How do you know?’ It can’t be from Martha. I’m pretty sure she knows as much as I do.

  ‘It was Rob,’ she says it quickly, as if she wants to get this over. ‘Rob told me.’

  ‘But how . . .’

  ‘There’s something you ought to know.’

  Then she tells me what really happened at Martha’s party.

  I leave in the cold, early morning. I don’t know if it’s the mescal, or what she’s told me, but my face feels stiff, like a mask. I feel disarticulated, as if my arms and legs don’t belong to my body. I can’t feel my feet but I manage to put one in front of the other. I’ve got plenty to think about on the long walk home.

  Chapter 23

  ‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.’

  Attrib. Emma Goldman

  I don’t know if Emma G really said it, but I hope she did.

  He’s right. I shouldn’t drink. Never mind the driving bit. I can’t keep track of what I’m saying. Why did I tell him about his dad? I promised Rob I wouldn’t. It just slipped out. I certainly shouldn’t drink mescal; it acts like a truth drug. I was wrecked and reckless, or I never would have told him. Or what happened at Martha’s birthday. Despite reports to the contrary, I’m not that much of a bitch.

  He’s perceptive. He knew I’d been lying about the party. He just didn’t know why. Of course I remember.

  I felt out of place. Had done all night. I was new to the school. My friendship with Martha had happened quickly (she’s like that, given to sudden enthusiasms for people) and developed with an intensity that bewildered me. I should have been more wary. I was nearly a year younger than her, even though we were in the same year group. Her friends didn’t like me for taking her away from them and I didn’t really fit in.

  It was all dependent on Martha. If she’d been on my side, it would have been OK, but she wasn’t. That’s the other thing about her, she can turn for no reason. All it takes is some slight, real or imagined, and she’s not your friend any more. Bad time for it to happen. During the evening, I felt her turning against me, siding with the others. As soon as they saw this, they were on me like a pack of dogs. From my choice of pizza topping, to the clothes I was wearing, everything I did, everything I said, was wrong and open to ridicule. Martha didn’t join in – she just sat back and watched, enjoying the power she had over them – and me. I’d have gone, but I didn’t want them to know how much they were getting to me and I didn’t want to upset her mum who’d gone to a lot of trouble. I escaped to her bedroom, joining the ones who’d had too much of the spiked Fanta. I figured I’d rather be puked on than take the outpouring of vitriol down in the living room. I’d just stay there. Wait it out.

  It looked like it was going to be a long night. One, two, three o’clock in the morning. I heard Martha’s mum go down and have a word, turn off the TV. I pretended to be asleep as Martha came in to claim her bed. The others had to find somewhere to crash on the floor. I couldn’t sleep. The more I thought about it, the worse it got. It wasn’t just the stuffiness that got me, the proximity of bodies. It was their hostility. The room was crowded, but there was a cordon sanitaire around me. The latecomers had stumbled in, whispering, giggling, taking exaggerated care not to set their sleeping bags near to me. I felt trapped. My sleeping bag binding round me like a nylon coffin. I was choking back tears as I lay there, eyes open, with the darkness beginning to take on substance, weighing down on me, clogging my nose and mouth like black cotton wool. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to disturb the others, but I knew I couldn’t stay there. I had to get up.

  It was easier than I thought. Once I was standing, the panic left me. The darkness seemed less total. I could see a path through the bodies to the door. As soon as I was out of the room, I began to feel better. The air was cool. There was light from the street outside. I remembered where the bathroom was. Second door on the right. I crept down the corridor, not wanting to wake any of the family.

  I didn’t know what the time was, but I guessed it must be getting towards morning. I thought everybody but me was asleep, but a light showed from the room at the end of the hall. I don’t know why I did it, but I glided past the bathroom and went to look through the crack in the door.

  Rob was lying on the bed. I don’t know how old he was. Seventeen? Eighteen? He was back from his first tour. He was more man than boy now. It was a hot night and there was a sheen over his skin; the muscles showed: curved and shadowed, like sculpture. He was wearing briefs, but he might as well have been naked. I was transfixed.

  He must have heard me – sensed me, anyway. He didn’t say anything but he got off the bed. I just stood there as he padded over and opened the door. He invited me into his room.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’

  I didn’t say anything. I just stood there.

  ‘Me neither. It’s the heat. Want some of this?’ He offered me cider that he had down by the side of the bed. I shook my head.

  ‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Have you been crying?’ He wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb. ‘Come here.’

  He put his arms round me. He’d just had a shower. His hair was still wet. He smelt of mint and marshmallow. His skin felt smooth. He kissed me then. His mouth hard on mine. I’d never even been kissed before, not like this, anyway – by someone who knew what he was doing. Before I knew it, we were on the bed. He pushed my hair back from my face and smiled. Then he peeled off my top. I didn’t even try to stop him. I was curious. Curious to know all the things I’d heard hinted at, whispered about. If I was a novice, he was not. The most surprising thing was I liked it. The kissing and caressing made me feel things that I had never felt before, made me feel special and powerful. In the way that girls calculated such things then, I went from zero to ten.

  Afterwards, he asked me if I was all right.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Fine.’

  It was my first time. I didn’t want him to know that, but I’m sure he guessed. I just lay there next to him. I remember feeling released. I’d done it. I didn’t need to wonder what it was like any more. I had to get out of the room without anyone knowing. The worst thing, the very worst thing, would be for them all to know what had happened.

  I slid off the bed and left him, let myself out quietly, still worried about waking people. As soon as I was out of the room, the shock of what had happened hit
me like a cold blast of air. I had to steady myself against the wall. Above all else, above every other consideration, I did not want anyone to know.

  Fat chance of that. Martha saw me. She was waiting for me when I came out of his room. I could see in her eyes that she knew. I went to push past her. She put her arm up to stop me.

  ‘Don’t think you can go back there like nothing has happened.’ She hissed the words close to my ear. ‘Get out, you little slag.’

  She threw my stuff down the stairs by way of encouragement and I left, walking through the night. Martha’s mum must have phoned mine. She drove out and found me.

  She was annoyed.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? What made you walk out like that?’

  I wasn’t going to tell her, so I said nothing.

  In the face of my silence, she filled the air between us with complaints, about me. I wasn’t normal, how could I be? What was I doing, walking out of somebody’s house in the middle of the night? What would people think? That girl’s poor mother must have been beside herself. You hear such terrible stories. I was so selfish. Never thought about anyone else. Never thought about consequences. No wonder I didn’t have any friends. Didn’t I have anything to say?

  I shook my head and stared out of the window.

  I took after my father; he’d always been a loner. Always the same. The silent treatment. Didn’t I have a tongue in my head? If I wasn’t careful, I’d be going the same way. He’d ruined her life. She wasn’t about to let me do the same. Didn’t I want her to be happy? Why didn’t I think about her for a change?

  As if I ever had the chance to do anything else.

  Didn’t I want some security for both of us? Didn’t I want us to be part of a proper family? I could see where this was going. She was talking about Trevor. They weren’t married then.