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  “I know.” She reads some more, and I wish I hadn’t bothered saying anything, because she manages to make me feel like some stupid year seven again.

  “You have a lot of nice things in your home.” Her eyes automatically fall to our new Harrods tea service, which has gold swirls on it (probably real gold).

  “It was a present from Tammy,” says Bill.

  “Gary’s girlfriend?”

  He nods, turns to me, and pulls his confused face.

  “Did she also buy all the toys for Jack?”

  “She bought him some,” I say. I really don’t like the way she’s talking to us. I mean, we buy Jack toys all the time.

  “Even though you and she have only just started going out?”

  “We like each other.” I ignore Bill, who’s elbowing me to keep quiet.

  “I’m just saying she seems to have spent a lot of money...”

  I don’t let her finish. I know where this is going. “Are you saying I’m not good enough for her?”

  “No,” she says stiffly. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

  “Then what are you saying?” I don’t understand what she’s getting at. Maureen said she’d be asking questions about who takes Jack to school, how we make sure he’s never left on his own, if we get on with the neighbours, and how Grace’s friends like Sue and Jen still keep in touch and help out from time to time. Stuff like that.

  “You were arrested last week,” she tells me.

  Her words smack me right in the mouth. That bloody lawyer of Tammy’s said no one would ever know. He said he’d make sure things were hushed up so it wouldn’t look bad with Social Services. Bastard! I was right not to trust him... unless she’s talking about me ticket dodging. “I jumped the bloody ticket barrier. So what?”

  “The police statement says you were caught in possession of a sapphire necklace.”

  Maureen looks like she’s about to fall off her perch. I guess that means Mrs Parker doesn’t tell Maureen as much as Maureen thinks she does. We’re screwed.

  “That was Tammy’s necklace,” I tell her. “And if you check your records, you’ll see I wasn’t charged or nothing. It was a mistake. A misunderstanding.”

  “Did you make her take the necklace?”

  “What?”

  “Did you make Tamara give you her sapphire necklace?”

  “No!” The more stupid questions she asks, the more I lose it. “What would I want with a sapphire necklace?”

  “So you could sell it, of course.”

  She’s lucky she isn’t a bloke, I can tell you. “NO,” I snarl, barely keeping it together. “I did not ask Tammy to steal her necklace for me so I could sell it!”

  “You’re very agitated.”

  “That’s ’cos you’re accusing me of something I didn’t do.”

  “Gary, leave it.” Bill elbows me in the ribs to shut me up. “You’re making things worse.”

  “How exactly?”

  “Just shut up!” he snaps.

  “Do you argue like this in front of Jack?” she asks.

  I say No, Bill says Sometimes, two different answers. Neither is the right answer to her question. Guess that means we’re up to our necks in shit.

  “I think you do,” she says, her voice sounding strained. “In fact, the hospital staff said they were forced to break up a very heated argument between the pair of you on at least one occasion.”

  “Oh, give us a break, why don’t you?” This is going all wrong. She’s making us out to be a right couple of low-life bastards. “We were both worried about Jack. Things got out of hand. Even you must say things you don’t mean when you’re upset.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever threatened to kill someone,” she tells us.

  When I see Maureen bury her face in her hands, I know we’ve got nothing to lose. Once again, Bill goes all quiet, rolls over and dies, and just waits for bloody Social Services to take Jack away from us. I don’t blame him. I really don’t. He’s been left alone to cope all year, and I’ve been no bloody help. I just make matters worse. I’m probably not helping now, but I don’t know any other way to make her see things from our side.

  “No, I don’t suppose you have,” I tell her, tell her straight. “Then again, I don’t suppose you lost both your parents when you were still at school or got abandoned by your mum, beaten up by your dad, and left to rot in some kids’ home. Me and Bill have been through all that, and we still got through school, look after Jack, and keep this place going and everything else.”

  She opens her mouth to say something, but I haven’t finished with her yet.

  “The last year was hell!” I tell her. “We’ve had to cope with Jack bedwetting, not being able to sleep, getting picked on at school because he misses his mum! That’s why I taught him to fight, stand up to bullies like that! You know nothing of the crap we’ve had to deal with. Nothing! Jack stays here, with us in this house, like Grace wanted. And if you even think of taking him away from us, we’ll bloody fight you for him!”

  I have to get out of there after that. I am so wound up I think my head is going to explode. I think I mumble something about going to put the kettle on, manage to keep my cool until I make it out back, and walk straight past Tammy, who is drawing with Jack. I somehow make it into the alley before I let rip, because I know then I’ve blown it, and there is no going back.

  I do what I always do when it all gets too much: I kick and smash anything in my way, which happens to be next door’s rubbish. And like any junkie when the high is over, I come crashing back down.

  God, I hate myself. Pacing up and down, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, I try to push the tears back inside. All I had to do was keep my temper and my big mouth shut. But no, I had to go off on one. That’s been my problem all along, why I get punched so many times when I’m wasted. I like telling people what’s what, and I don’t care who they are. Thing is, I might have given that old battle-axe something to think about, but the only one who’s going to end up getting hurt is Jack.

  Shit! I pull my hands away as I become conscious of being watched and find Tammy and Jack peering nervously around the door post, both white as next door’s sheets, as they wonder what the hell I’m going to do next.

  “Go back inside.” I really don’t mean to snap. They’re the last people in the world I want to hurt, but I’m all over the place, and I don’t want them to see me cry. Jack may not know what’s going on, but Tammy does.

  “Gary?” Tammy’s scared. I can hear it in her voice. I feel like an even bigger shit.

  “What?” When I see her standing there like something out of those glossy magazines with her arms round Jack, I can’t believe she’s mine. Her smile, the way her cheeks dimple, it’s almost strong enough to halt the urge to kill myself – but not quite.

  “Jack’s drawn you a picture,” she says. “Do you want to see?”

  I nod and, wiping my hand across my eyes, I crouch down in front of him and try to make him my mate again. “What you got there, Jacky?”

  He hands me a crayon drawing of three crude stick figures – two big, one small, two with yellow hair, one with a shock of blue spikes – standing inside a square, which is how Jack draws our house. “That’s you,” he says, pointing to the blue hair. “I ran out of black.”

  “I better dye my hair blue then.” I sniff, managing to find him a smile.

  “Do you want to do some drawing with me?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” It’s probably going to be the last time I ever will, and I haven’t got the heart to say no to him.

  “You okay?” Tammy asks as we walk back into the yard.

  I nod and sit down on the paving slabs next to Jack. “I’ll draw and you can colour in?”

  “Okay.” Grinning, he lies alongside me.

  “I’ll go back inside,” Tammy tells me. “See if they want any more tea.”

  “Thanks.” Still scared I might make even more of a twat of myself by crying, I focus on the blan
k sheet of paper. “What do you want me to draw?”

  “A cat.”

  “Sure.” I can do cats.

  “And a dog and a parrot.”

  “A parrot?”

  “I like parrots – they can talk.”

  “Anything you want, mate.”

  Jack likes drawing almost as much as I do. Bill’s more your outdoor type – football, rugby, cricket – he’s always trying to get Jack to do more sport. But Jack would rather draw Bill kicking a ball than kick a ball with his big brother, even though every person he draws ends up looking like a lollipop with legs.

  The sun beating down on our backs, I try to teach him how to draw a proper cat, using Sooty (next door’s cat) as a model, who is looking down on us from the dividing wall.

  “Look at him, Jack, he’s got a long, thin body and a round tummy.” I point up at the cat and then down at the page, where I’ve drawn half of Noah’s Ark. “And his tail is in the shape of an S. See – can you see what I’m doing?”

  I am so focused teaching Jack, I never realised I had an audience.

  “Gary?”

  I squint up into the sun and see her standing next to Tammy, all righteous and stuck up with her fancy suit and handbag, the old battle-axe from Social Services. “What now?”

  “Could you take Jack inside, Tammy?” Mrs Parker smiles. “I’d like a word with Gary alone.”

  I groan. Jack goes off happy as you like with Tammy, and I return to my drawing.

  “That was quite some speech,” she tells me.

  I shrug and finish off the cat. I’d apologise if I thought it would do any good, but it’s all too late for that. “What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “What’s there to talk about?”

  “Seems you were quite the hero the other week,” she says.

  “Umm...” I just can’t be bothered.

  “Tammy explained how you came to her rescue. I think I can understand now why she was so keen to try and help.”

  I don’t say anything; I just want to die. Now Tammy’s going to get into trouble for seeing me, and they’re still going to take Jack away.

  “It’s sometimes very hard to do the right thing,” she continues.

  Here it comes, the bit about Jack being better off with a mother and father.

  “Which is why I’ll be recommending that your brother William should remain as Jack’s legal guardian.”

  I drop the crayon and look up at her. “Come again?”

  “Jack can stay with you.” She smiles. “But I want you both to attend counselling sessions, and we’ll be doing more regular assessments. Any more trouble with the police, reports of you drinking and fighting, then I’ll have to reconsider my position.”

  “There won’t be,” I tell her.

  “Good.” Sitting down in a blue-and-white stripy deck chair, she places her handbag on the ground and leans forward. “The first year is always the worst.”

  “What?”

  “The first year after they die,” she explains. “There’s the first Christmas without them, first New Year, first birthday, first summer holiday. How long’s it been?”

  I look away and take a deep breath as she forces the memories to the surface. Last Christmas was awful. Sue, Grace’s friend, invited us round for lunch. Bill got upset when Sue gave him a DVD of her and Grace in a school play, and me, I downed a bottle of vodka, got smashed, and ended up crying my eyes out under a bus shelter after Sue’s boyfriend threw me out. “One more birthday to go.”

  She nods. “After that it will get better. I promise.”

  “And how do you know?”

  “More than you can possibly imagine.” She hands me a tissue from her bag. “I lost my parents when I was twelve, and my older sister raised me.”

  Her words throw me, and everything stops, even the tears bubbling to the surface. She’s posh. Not as posh as Tammy, but I guess even posh kids can end up as orphans.

  “It wasn’t easy,” she continues. “Not for either of us. She had to deal with her own grief and mine, and back then there wasn’t all this help. She had to rely on friends and determination, but do you know what?”

  I shake my head, still too choked up to talk.

  “I don’t ever look back on my childhood and remember my parents dying; I remember enjoying life with my sister. I remember going to the seaside, her helping me get ready for my first dance, and being her bridesmaid when she got married. Gary, I remember all the good times.”

  “I don’t think we’ve had any good times yet.”

  “One more birthday,” she says. “Whose is it?”

  “Mine,” I tell her.

  “After that, it will get better.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so,” she says, standing up. “And I also know if you and William do half as good a job as my sister did raising me, Jack will be one very happy little boy.”

  I follow her back inside. When I woke up this morning, I felt great, better than I had in a long time. Then it all started to go wrong like it usually does and I wanted to die, and now it’s all sorted – and I mean everything sorted – and I really should be feeling great. But I don’t. I guess part of me just can’t believe everything really is going to be all right.

  “You okay?” Tammy asks. Like Bill and Maureen, she can’t work out why I haven’t got a big grin on my face like Bill.

  “Yeah.” I wish I could explain what’s going on inside my head, but I don’t really understand myself. There was always something to worry about even when Grace was alive. I was worrying about screwing up at school, paranoid I’d never get a girlfriend, worrying about how to dump the girlfriend I didn’t want, terrified what people would say about my pictures, and in the back of my mind I was always shitting myself worrying I was going to end up like my dad.

  But that don’t matter anymore. The truth is I can get a job stacking shelves anywhere, I’ve still got a place at uni, and we can’t be doing all bad looking after Jack because he’s staying put with us. My life really isn’t that bad. It’s pretty good, in fact. I mean, how many blokes like me get to date a hot babe who can just go out and buy half of Harrods when she feels like it?

  I give Tammy a hug because she doesn’t look convinced and bury my face in her hair so she can put me back together. Perhaps I don’t have to wait until my birthday to start living again. Perhaps today will be the day we all stop looking back. I’ve got a feeling it is. I also know if there is a God and Grace can see what’s going on, then she’s got to be pretty happy right now, and if she’s happy, then there’s no reason in the world for us not to be.

  Friday 12:30 p.m.

  Tammy

  Bill has the biggest grin ever when he comes in after showing Maureen and Mrs Parker out. “We’ve got to celebrate,” he says, giving Jack a hug. “What do you want to do?”

  I don’t think Jack really knows what has happened. He just thinks Maureen and the nice woman from the Social Services came round for tea; he has no idea he was that close to being taken away from his brothers. But he also isn’t one to miss out on a treat. “Can we go for pizza?”

  “Course we can,” Bill laughs, looking across at me and Gary. “You coming?”

  Gary nods. “Too right.”

  “Can we have ice cream after?” Jack asks.

  “Anything you want,” Bill says, pulling on his trainers.

  “What about the fair?”

  “Fair too.” Gary glances at Bill. “How much money you got?”

  Bill pulls some crumpled notes and a few coins from his pocket. “Twenty, you?”

  Gary doesn’t even bother checking his wallet before looking at me. “Got any money?”

  “A bit,” I tease, opening up my purse and taking out a small bundle of £20 notes. “Will this be enough?”

  They both at me like I’m mad until I start laughing – I had them going for a bit.

  Gary picks me up and kisses me on the lips. “That’s millionaire money for where
we want to go! Come on. Time I showed you where Bill and I hang out.”

  We end up at this big old pub which has a kind of family restaurant in it where you can help yourself to as much salad as you like with your meals, and they have a big kids’ play area filled with brightly coloured foam balls.

  It is packed. Gary seems to know everyone here. He pulls me through the crowds, introducing me to guys he plays soccer with, mates from school, neighbours. There are so many of them I can’t remember all their names, but they’re all cool in a way my friends never could be, especially this guy Pete with cropped brown hair and a goatee beard, who plays bass in some band, and his sister Kate, who has pink streaks in her long blond hair and has a daughter a bit younger than Jack.

  We buy food for everyone, and we all squash around one big table and spend the afternoon tucking into pizza, drinking, and talking, watching the music videos playing on a big screen in the corner, and occasionally slipping out into the car park so Gary can have a smoke.

  “Back in a minute.” Getting out his cigarettes, Gary leaves me with Kate and this girl called Ruth, who looks like a hippy in a long flowing skirt, bare feet, and beaded brown hair.

  “So,” says Ruth, eyeing me up and down “How long you and Gary been together?”

  “Not long.” I don’t know why, but I feel embarrassed telling her.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t let him out of my sight.” She’s much older than me, twenty or more, and seems rather full of herself. I don’t like her. She’s like Rachael with attitude.

  “Why?”

  “Because he hits on anything in a skirt!”

  “Ignore her,” Kate says, talking directly to Ruth. “Ruth’s just jealous ’cos she’s had a crush on Gary forever!”

  Ruth scowls and, picking up her pint, wonders over to Bill, who’s playing pool, and starts to flirt with him by cheering him on and brushing up against him whilst he’s waiting for his turn.

  “Bitch,” Kate mumbles.

  “Are you and Bill –?”

  “I wish.” She lets out a long sigh and turns to face me. “But I don’t think he’s interested in a single mum on the dole.”