Blood Family Read online

  ‘Really? Where had you left it, Edward?’

  ‘Down at the river. I was with Arif. But I had locked it, and we were only a short way away. If anyone had cut the chain, I would have heard.’

  ‘You’re telling us that someone came along, lifted it up and carried it away silently on their shoulders?’

  I gave them one of my almighty scowls. ‘All that I’m saying is, it’s gone.’

  There followed one of those great pauses designed to remind me that I was no longer trusted. And then Natasha said, ‘We don’t see anything of Arif these days, do we? I mean, you talk about him quite a bit. But he no longer comes this way home with you, or calls by to pick you up.’

  It was quite clear what she meant: ‘I don’t believe a word you say about being with Arif. We think you use his name to hide what you are really doing.’

  Oh, they weren’t daft. But still, they couldn’t watch me every minute of the day, or keep me grounded for ever. And sometimes I had money. Each time I had enough, I’d lay my hands on yet another bottle. But now I wouldn’t take the risk of hiding them about. I’d work my way through them in one fast session.

  The rows we had got more and more frequent, and very much nastier. ‘We will not have you coming in this house in this disgusting state! Look at you! You can barely stand!’

  ‘Leave me alone! It’s my life!’

  ‘Not while you live under our roof! How you behave is our business too!’

  ‘Oh, back off, both of you! Leave me alone!’

  And, pushing past them, I would stagger to the stairs and drag myself up to my room. Sometimes I’d rushed the drinking so much I was sick. Once I lashed out at Nicholas, and he nearly punched me back. Another time, after we had been screaming at one another about some sin of mine, Natasha lost it utterly and screamed, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ! I wish to God—’

  She broke off before saying it. But we both heard it ringing round the room. ‘I wish to God we’d never adopted you!’ It was another reminder that I came from bad stock. That my blood family were foul and nasty ne’er-do-wells.

  Right then, I’d think, I might as well not worry. Being like this is pretty well in my stars. And Nicholas and Natasha can’t boss me around for ever. Soon I’ll be old enough to do what I please. I found my ears were pricking up when, in maths lessons, Mrs Pugh gave people who were mucking about her regular ticking off: ‘You won’t always have to be here, you know. A good number of the people in this class are almost old enough to get a job out there in the big world, sweeping hair cuttings off the floor or stacking supermarket shelves. So if you’re not willing to apply yourselves . . .’

  It suddenly sounded very real. And relevant. Not that much longer and I’d reach the magic age.

  I could leave school.

  And home.

  There wasn’t simply one last straw. It was a host of things, all piled on one another. In one short morning I did worse than Justin in three tests in a row. That was a shock. I think I’d thought that, just by turning up at school and sitting through it, my work would soon bounce back. I came home in the foulest mood and found a note from Nicholas on the kitchen table: Eddie, back from site at six. Please smarten up for going out for supper.

  That’s all I need, I thought. An evening out. The two of them asking me endlessly about my day in school with Alice sitting all relaxed because she’d finished all the exams that mattered.

  I heard Natasha’s car door slam. Knowing that if I could make it to my room I wouldn’t have to go through all the questioning twice, I made for the stairs, getting there as the door opened.

  Speeding up, I stumbled on Alice’s school bag.

  I kicked it. Hard. Before it even skidded off across the parquet floor, I’d heard the tell-tale sound of something breaking.

  Alice spun round from where she’d been standing in the kitchen doorway, talking to someone on the phone. ‘Eddie, you pig! You’ve gone and smashed my present from Melissa!’

  Of course. The reason we were going out. First I forget the day she finishes her last exam. Then I forget her birthday. And she’d stuck up for me so many times. She made excuses for me. She’d been brilliant.

  Guilt makes you fight back harder than you should. ‘Your fault! You shouldn’t have left it in the way like that.’

  Alice was outraged. ‘You bloody booted it! I saw you. You’re a little shit!’

  Natasha was in the house now. ‘Alice! You watch your language!’

  Alice spun round. ‘It’s Edward’s fault! He keeps behaving like an animal!’ She turned to look me in the eye. ‘Acting as if he has some beast inside him!’

  Oh, didn’t Alice know how to boot back! That word ‘beast’. So well-chosen.

  Fine! I remember thinking. You brought Bryce Harris into this, so I will act like him.

  I lifted up my foot and smirked at her, and then I brought it down – crunch – on the rest of what was in her bag.

  Alice turned white with rage. ‘You nasty, nasty little piece of work! You creepy shit! Why don’t you piss off out of this house, and go back where you belong! Nobody wants you here. You’re spoiling everything for everyone. And we all hate you.’

  Natasha stepped in. ‘Alice! You take that back at once!’

  She wouldn’t. She was burning up with fury. ‘No! No, I won’t! You two won’t say so, but it’s true. He’s ruining this house with all his sulks and tempers. He leaves revolting messes in the lavatory when he throws up. I don’t know how poor Valentina stands it. He’s crap at school. He’s got no friends. He tells lies all the time. Justin’s mates say he even steals from people’s bags and pockets. He certainly lifts things from shops! He’s rude and vile and horrible and smelly.’

  I didn’t think she knew all that. I was dead shaken. But I expect I slapped on some infuriating smile. I know I said, ‘Excuse me. I am off to take a shower – since I’m so smelly.’

  Alice burst into tears, and I ran up the stairs, away from the whole boiling mess.

  I waited. But Natasha never came. I couldn’t believe that. After all those things that Alice said! Each minute that passed, I felt more like a worm.

  I was quite sure Natasha would come up to talk to me. I knew that she’d be absolutely furious. (It can’t be nice to learn that someone in your family is known outside for a thief.) But Alice had announced that the whole house would be better off without me.

  Worse. That they hated me.

  Surely Natasha would come up and say it wasn’t true.

  But then I heard her going into Alice’s room. That really riled me. Yes, it was Alice’s birthday. But, so what? I’d never even tasted birthday cake till I was eight years old. Alice was eighteen! You’d think she could have managed to get over one cracked present by herself. I knew if I’d said half so many vile things about her in all those months when she was being such a pain, nobody would have come into my room to comfort me first. Nobody would have rushed to sympathize with me about some stupid ruined birthday gift.

  But then it struck me that, although Natasha had been sharp with her – ‘Alice! You take that back!’ – she hadn’t said it wasn’t true.

  Maybe it was.

  I waited. But she never came.

  Alice

  I felt so awful. I was the only one who knew how much the idea of Bryce Harris haunted him. Nicholas and Natasha knew about the face Stefania showed him on her computer screen. But only I knew the idea of being like his father was driving Eddie mad. (If you have been adopted, you don’t go on too much about your thoughts and worries to do with your ‘real’ parents. It seems ungrateful and rude.)

  So I let Eddie down. I’d actually seen the look of horror on his face after he stamped on the bag. He might as well have howled, ‘Oh, please God! Don’t let me have done that! That is what Harris would have done!’ So only I knew how much I had rubbed it in when I used that word, ‘beast’.

  I should have simply rushed across and thrown my arms round him. ‘It doesn’t matter, Eddie! It’s just stuff
.’

  But I was angry with him. I said all those things . . .

  Oh, I felt awful. And then he wouldn’t let me in his room, and I felt worse.

  Eddie

  I left that night.

  Nicholas banged on the bedroom door when he came home, but I refused to answer. I was busy packing.

  I thought it through. A couple of T-shirts. Jacket. Spare socks and pants. My thickest woollies. Knife. Torch. You would have thought that I was off on a school camping trip, not planning to go away for ever from where I wasn’t wanted.

  While Nicholas and Natasha were talking in the living room – no doubt about my sins – I went into their closet to snaffle the money belt Nicholas had worn all through our holiday in Italy (even though, when he left his watch on the beach, at least four people had called after him, and one great tub of lard had actually prised himself up from his towel to chase us and hand it over).

  I was barely back before Alice rushed up the stairs and started banging on my door. ‘Edward! Oh, come on, Eddie! Let me in.’

  I didn’t answer. She kept knocking for a while, then went back down to report. I didn’t pack much else. Everything useful, like my birth certificate, was locked in Nicholas’s safe. But I did want to make the point that I was never coming back, so I took most of the Mr Perkins tapes out of my old Life Story Box and jammed them into the backpack, along with my copy of The Devil Ruled the Roost.

  I sat on my bed and waited. Nicholas came upstairs and tried my door once or twice. ‘I’m leaving you some supper here outside.’ And, ‘Edward, it’s getting late. I think perhaps we’d better talk about all this tomorrow morning.’

  An hour after they had shut their door, I pulled the supper in and scoffed the lot. Then I crept down to steal some raisins and chocolate from the kitchen cupboard.

  There on the bottom shelf I saw Natasha’s purse. She’d clearly shoved it in there in a hurry, once the fuss started. I must have rooted through more thoroughly than usual because, in a side pocket that I’d never noticed before, I found a faded scrap of paper. I owe Patricia Ness £39.72.

  Who’d write a note about a silly amount like that? No one. You would write £40, even if it were true. And I had never heard Natasha mention any Patricia.

  Patricia Ness? Pin Number.

  Bingo!

  I took the bank and credit cards, picked up my backpack and slid out of the house. I was in luck. The pin worked on three of the cards. I walked away from the machine with such thick wads of notes I had to spread them all round the money belt.

  I didn’t want to let myself be tempted into trying any of the cards again. I knew, if I did that, they almost certainly wouldn’t work and I would have to think of Natasha phoning up the bank and either admitting to them that her own son was a rotten thief, or telling them some lie in hopes that I’d come back and pick up life again.

  I didn’t want to have to imagine either. I snapped the cards in pieces and tossed them in the nearest skip.

  And then I left.

  IV

  Natasha

  When Alice shouted all that stuff at Edward, my heart turned over. I felt as if a thunderclap was ringing in my ears. I couldn’t think.

  Was it because I felt that way myself? Or feared I did? Lord, what a question!

  It’s always possible. I had been doubtful about adopting, yes. Who wouldn’t be? I’d always wanted to have a family, but can’t pretend I didn’t think that they’d be really mine – by blood, I mean. I wasn’t into doing good by other people’s children. But Nicholas had been quite devastated by the words the doctor said: ‘No chance at all. I’m sorry.’

  I sometimes wondered if, left to myself, I wouldn’t have simply cried myself to sleep for a few weeks, and then gone back to building up the business. But, though he tried to hide it valiantly, and comfort me, I couldn’t help but notice that Nicholas had gone all quiet, as if some plug had been pulled out of his life plan. You should have heard the music that he played continually through those first weeks. ‘Music to cut your throat by’, I’d have called it, if I hadn’t been trying so hard to pretend I hadn’t noticed, just to keep poor Nicholas from feeling even worse.

  And then, I felt so guilty. I know! I know! But inasmuch as there is any meaning to the word in things like this, it was my ‘fault’ in that it was my body, not his, that had let us down. And neither of us had a clue when we got married. We had agreed we’d have a family, and that was that.

  Nicholas wasn’t the sort to hear the bad news and say, ‘Sorry, Natasha, but I can’t imagine a life without my own children. So I’m off.’

  Which left me stuck.

  And then I saw the corner of that booklet tucked away between some of his sheaths of plans. He’d either picked it off the rack at the Health Centre or sent away for it. It didn’t matter. I felt obliged to ask, ‘Nicholas, have you been thinking about adoption?’

  And we were off.

  I couldn’t spoil our chances in the interviews by being totally honest. I must have said all the right things. I do remember it was understood by Nicholas and myself that he would do the lion’s share. And he did too. He never grumbled (though in a quarrel once he did say that he got the feeling I’d rather be outside the house earning the money to pay for things for the children than take them with me to the shops to actually buy them).

  Mostly, things worked out fine. Nicholas had what he had wanted most, and so did I. I found both children far, far easier to love than I had feared – first out of pity, of course; but then from something so much stronger.

  I’d make the very same decision again.

  Yes. Yes, I would.

  Eddie

  I look back now and reckon that if I hadn’t hitched to visit Linda and Alan only that short time before, then I might not have run so far away. I might have simply gone to them. I would have told them about Alice rubbing my nose in it, reminding me I was blood family to the Beast. They would have understood. They would have phoned Natasha and Nicholas, suggesting I took a few days to calm down again. They might have even put me straight about the drinking. Things might have come out right.

  But I felt, stupidly, that I’d tried that. I thought I’d look pathetic – babyish – if I went back so soon.

  This time, I thought, I had to shift for myself.

  So I went north. That was pure accident because, when I looked at the station departure board, I saw the first train going out was heading off that way. I wasn’t daft. I bought a ticket only as far as the next town. Then I got off and, after switching jackets in a lavatory cubicle and pulling on a woollen hat I’d nicked from a bike basket, I went to the machine there and bought another ticket, heading somewhere else.

  In the next place, I took the hat off but pulled up my hood, and tagged behind a gang of boys my age, all buying tickets to somewhere called Cold Ash Halt. I bought one too, hoping that anyone scanning security camera images afterwards, in search of me, would simply think that I was one of their group.

  Cold Ash is where I spent the night, curled with my vodka and sandwiches in a back doorway at the end of a deserted side street. I’d had so much to drink I had to count Natasha’s money several times before I got the same result twice in a row. I knew I was quite safe, spreading the notes in front of me in separate piles, over and over. The place was such a one-eyed hole they had no cameras about. If I’d stayed long enough, I probably would have seen the locals pointing excitedly at aeroplanes. But first thing next morning, after dumping a few of the Mr Perkins tapes into a litter bin to make room for more bottles, I was back to the station and away.

  To the first major city.

  Manchester.

  Things are so strange in big cities. I hadn’t realized. Most of the people on the streets walk past as if you were invisible. Then somebody turns up acting as if the two of you have been best friends for years.

  That’s how I met Barry, mooching about in front of a vegetable stall. As I walked past, he stuck out an arm to stop me.

&nbs
p; ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘What’s that weird purple thing?’

  I looked at where he was pointing. ‘That? That’s an aubergine,’ and added, only because I knew, ‘Some people call it an eggplant.’

  He snorted. ‘Eggplant? Why would you call it an eggplant? It’s nothing like an egg!’

  He had weird bulgy eyes and the most clumsy way of walking I’d ever seen. But somehow we just fell in step.

  ‘What’s in the backpack?’ he asked.

  ‘Just stuff.’

  ‘Clothes and things? Why, are you going to your dad’s?’

  I hid the bolt of shock and just said, ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘Fed up with Mum. Going to Dad’s to get as fed up there?’

  I caught on. ‘Is that how things are for you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not any more. Now I just stay at Mum’s and I don’t bother with the other house. Dad’s Mandy is a witch.’ We reached the corner. ‘I go up this way,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come along?’

  He saw my anxious look. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Come meet my mum. She will be glad to know a real professor.’

  ‘What?’

  He grinned. ‘You know. Whatever you said about those purple things. Auber – auber—’ He gave up trying to remember. ‘Eggplants! Mum likes it when I bring home clever mates.’

  I’m sure if I’d picked up some stranger three years older on the street and brought him home, Natasha would have raised one very frosty eyebrow. Barry’s mum was different. For one thing, she was unbelievably young, with slinky, sexy clothes and bright dyed hair. Her name was Jaz (short for Jasmine) and I thought that she must have left school and had Barry when she was only about twelve until he told me she was thirty-six.