Alice and the Fly (17 page)

Ours?

‘Merry Christmas, Mum,’ Mum said.

Nan stared at the cross.

‘Have you had a nice day?’

Nan stared at the cross.

‘We went to church this morning, the whole family. We really enjoyed it.’

Nan stared at the cross.

Last Christmas, as Nan was staring at her cross, she started mouthing a couple of words, over and over. It took us the whole visit to work out what she was mouthing. At first Mum though it was ‘pyjamas’ and told Nan she was already wearing pyjamas, but then my father realised it was ‘praise Jesus’. He was made up when he realised – we all were. We couldn’t stop smiling at how clever he was.

We all sat there, smiling, as Nan praised Jesus.

Nan didn’t start with religion till Herb died. That was when she began to change. Mum said she’d have been better off dying beside him that night, but I don’t know if that’s true. Nan and I had some of our happiest times in those final couple of years. It was me who found her that afternoon. It was back when I was living with her. Nan was meant to be picking me up from school and I thought it odd, her not being there at the gate when we finished, but she always baked on Fridays and baking made her absentminded. It was only when I got back to the house and found the milk still on the step, the paper still in the letterbox, Mr Saunders pacing the porch, crying to be fed, that I knew there was something seriously wrong.

I went round to the alley and climbed over the wall into the yard. I got in through the kitchen window. There’s a way to jiggle the lock so it falls right out. I called to Nan and she called right back to me and she sounded frightened, more frightened than I’d ever heard her.

I tried my best to lift Herb off the bed but he was so stiff and cold and unmovable. I phoned an ambulance. After that we waited. At first I sat on the floor. I told Nan about my day at school. This was during the Andrew Wilt period and I knew that the best way to take Nan’s mind off things was to talk about our chess games. It was only when Nan started crying that I climbed into bed with her, forcing myself between her and Herb. She couldn’t get over him, that was the problem. Her side of the bed was against the wall and Herb always slept on top of the duvet. Nan held me to her chest so I couldn’t see her tears but I still felt them, running down the back of my neck.

Like that we waited for the ambulance.

By the time we arrived home the rain had stopped. Mum served the turkey. Nobody ate much. Mum picked but I didn’t see her actually eat any. Each time she caught me looking she smiled and I smiled back and carried on eating, trying my best to finish as much as possible. She didn’t ask if I’d taken my medication. At one point a piece of turkey slipped from my fork, splashing gravy onto my new Christmas jumper, but Mum didn’t even look, she just kept smiling down at her plate. Elvis crooned from the living room. The Sampsons’ inflatable Santa grinned from across the street. My father ate using only his right hand, his left hand cradling the rim of his Scotch glass. He stared at the tablecloth, at the spot where he’d usually place his inframammary infection photos. The only sound was the clinking of cutlery.

After dinner Sarah went to her bedroom. My father went to his study. It was just Mum and I sitting in the lounge, at opposite ends of the couch. We watched BBC News 24. The only news was that it was Christmas. They cut to a shot of a reporter, supposedly in the North Pole, supposedly interviewing the real Father Christmas.

I waited till Mum began to snore, then retrieved my coat and your present. I took some turkey, too, and a little leftover Christmas pudding, for Scraps, and headed off down the carriageway to the Pitt.

I stopped off at the canal on the way, to see the ducks. I figured people probably don’t bother taking bread on Christmas Day and it’s only fair that they eat too. I could give them Scraps’ Christmas pudding. He wouldn’t mind – he’d still have the turkey.

The canal had melted in the rain. It had formed those little white islands again. Only today the ducks were nowhere to be seen. I walked up and down for a full fifteen minutes but I couldn’t find a single one of them. Then it struck me: the ducks have left. They’ve given up on Skipdale. They’ve flown south, where it’s warmer. They’ve finally seen sense and got the hell out of here.

I followed the carriageway down the Social De-cline. I couldn’t stop smiling about the ducks, the thought of them, off somewhere warm. Pitt families go all out with Christmas decorations. The boarded-up houses were still in darkness but those inhabited were bright enough to compensate. There were flashing lights, nativity scenes, ‘Santa Stop Here’ signs. Five different houses had one of Artie Sampson’s inflatable Father Christmases. Even your father had made the effort. The front of your house was lit by a string of electric-blue lights, pinned along the gutter. A nodding Rudolph grinned from his dashboard.

I crossed Crossgrove to your back hedge. I scanned the field for your brother but he was nowhere to be seen. I slipped in through the hedge gap. I took the turkey from my pocket. It was only as I knelt to the missing-plank gap that I realised Scraps was missing, his chain lying limp on the shed floor. Your living room was brighter than usual due to the Christmas tree, twinkling its various light-sequences. Scraps was laid out in front of the fire. You were kneeling beside him, rubbing his belly. Your father was on the couch in his usual position, sipping from what looked like (though from a distance it was hard to verify) a snowman-shaped mug.

I crawled up into the shed anyway. Where else would I go? It was especially cold tonight – Scraps must give off more heat than I gave him credit for. I dragged the toolkit over to the window and sat, forehead against the glass. You were wearing your dressing gown. Sunglasses. Your hair was tied up, covered in small squares of tinfoil. You were stroking the side of Scraps’ head, eyes fixed on the TV. Your father had freed his hair from its ponytail. It flowed down the back of the couch, right to the floor. Occasionally you’d turn to your father and say something. Occasionally he’d turn back. Occasionally you’d both burst out laughing.

I hadn’t expected this. You and your father and Scraps, together in the living room. Me, out here, alone. This was new.

After a while I began to sense
Them
. I could feel
Them
, glaring down from the tops of the shelves, the dark corners. I unhooked the nail gun and held it on my lap. It helped. I realised it wasn’t fear I was feeling, it was anger. There was an anger in me. I don’t know if I was angry at you or your father or Scraps or
Them
, but the anger was there. This was also new.

I took the turkey and the Christmas pudding from my pocket. I placed them over in Scraps’ corner. I figured he’d find them, eventually. Then I took out your present:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. I fixed the ribbon, brushed off a few scattered pudding crumbs. I tried to think of somewhere I could leave it for you, somewhere only you would go. I couldn’t think of anywhere, so I just held it on my lap, next to the nail gun.

Soon I could hear
Them
. They hissed from the shelves at the back. I shut my eyes but I could still sense
Them
, crawling through the darkness. I held the nail gun out in front of me and squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked, cracking like a whip, spitting a glittering nail into the far wall of the shed. A warning shot. I fired again. The hissing ceased, the crack of the wood emphasising the silence.

I shot out a few more nails, just to be sure.

Then I placed my cheek against the glass. I concentrated on you. Nobody moved, neither you, nor your father, nor Scraps, nor I. I found that if I closed my left eye I couldn’t even see your father. He’d disappear into the darkness. Gone in the blink of an eye. I kept my left eye shut for a while.

Then I must have shut my right eye.

I don’t know how long I slept but next thing the door was creaking open, cracking as it struck the corner of the toolkit. Next thing someone was stoop-stumbling into the shed. From the snorting and grunting and the gagging whiskey smell, I knew it wasn’t you.

My cheek was frozen to the glass, frosted by my breath. I knew the door must be partly obscuring me but to what extent I’d no idea. I was sure any second he would notice me, perched there in the corner. He creaked over to the back, where Scraps usually lies. As my eyes adjusted I noticed Scraps still inside the house, laid out in front of the fire. You were beside him, sleeping.

I peeled my cheek from the window, as quietly as possible. Your father was hunched, rummaging through the jars and rusted tins that layer the shed’s shelves. He was grunting, shaking his head, hair dancing down his back. He dislodged a paint tin, which rolled across the floor, clinking against the toolkit between my knees.

There was a square patch of ceiling, silver-lit by moonlight. As your father rummaged one of
Them
scurried out, its shadow stretched limb-long. Your father gasped. He’d caught his arm on a nail in the wall. He examined the small patch of nails, plucked one from the wall and held it to the moonlight. I realised I was still clutching the nail gun. He dropped the nail and turned back to the shelves, reached to the back, dislodging something, a bottle, holding it up to the light to examine its quarter of amber liquid. He unscrewed the lid and sniffed its open neck.

Another one of
Them
crept out, joining the one of
Them
in the centre of the ceiling, their merging shadows creating a new, indefinable, stretched-out silhouette. Your father took a swig from his bottle. He swilled and he swallowed. He sighed. He took another swig. Another one of
Them
crawled out. Another. Another.

Then your father noticed something on the floor. He knelt, the old boards creaking with his weight. He lifted something and examined it in the moonlight. The piece of turkey I’d left for Scraps. He sniffed it, took another swig, never taking his eyes from the turkey. My shaking began to rattle the metal-flapped lid of the toolkit. I lifted the nail gun from my lap. I didn’t know whether to aim at your father or at
Them
. All I could hear was their mass hissing.

More of
Them
were creeping from the shadows.

Your father took another swig.

I dropped the nail gun and scrambled to the door. The toolkit tipped, its contents spilling over the floorboards. Your father cried out, his bottle shattering as I leapt the stairs. I slipped on the grass, twisted my ankle. I stumbled down the side to the hedge and tore out across the field. It was raining. Your father shouted – slurred shouts, contradictory:

‘Come back here, you little shit … You’d better run …’

I did run. I ran through the estate, up past the Rat and Dog. I ran till I reached the church, till my legs and my lungs couldn’t take any more. I leant on the church wall. The rain was heavy. My ankle ached. I was shaking all over. Beads of rain dripped from the hood of my parka.

I breathed, slow deep breaths to keep the vomit down. After a few minutes my stomach had settled and the pounding in my head had stopped and I began to make out singing. It was hard to hear through the hiss of the rain, but it was there. Delicate. Choir-like. ‘Silent Night’.

The church sign said:

CHRISTMAS CHOIR SERVICE

ALL WELCOME

Rain rippled the puddles around me. I hugged myself through my coat. Your father’s words rang out over the choir music:

‘You’d better run …’

And I knew he was right. We have to run. We have to leave, like the ducks. It’s simple, really.

I waited for the song to finish, then limped back up to the carriageway. As I reached the canal bridge I checked my pocket and realised I’d left your present in the shed.

Sarah didn’t go to bed last night. She danced right through till morning.

Thud – thud – thud – thud – thud – thud – thud – thud – thud – thud – thud.

At 05:32 I gave up trying to sleep and hobbled down to the kitchen. I ate a bowl of Waitrose Maple Triple Nut Muesli. I checked Mum’s Colombian Supremo but there were only a few beans left so I microwaved a half-drunk mug from last night instead, being sure to wipe Mum’s lipstick from the rim. I wanted to be alert for the Christmas Dance Fantastical. Sarah said everyone would be at the Christmas Dance Fantastical. This meant you would be at the Christmas Dance Fantastical. The coffee was very bitter. I added milk and sugar but it made little difference. Coffee’s a taste that lingers.

Mum was at the foot of the couch, sprawled across the carpet. BBC News 24 looped the same old snow footage. The rolling news bar said: SNOW WARNING! … SNOW TO RETURN WITHIN ONE WEEK! … The television was muted, the only sound the dull thud of Sarah’s dancing. Occasionally she’d leap across her room and the upside-down Christmas tree would shudder, its baubles clinking above me.

I sat cross-legged on the couch, next to Mum’s sleeping head. Sarah’s music didn’t cut out till 08:02. It ended mid-song, leaving a buzz of silence. Mum sat up and wiped her chin. She climbed to her feet, shuffled out to the kitchen and popped the lid from her coffee tin. She sighed. It was most likely Sarah who’d used all the beans, in her morning coffee-shots. The kettle hissed. There was the familiar rattle of the grinder and Mum returned with a steaming mug and perched on the couch beside me. She sipped.

The snow footage looped again and again. Kids still sliding down the hill on their bin bags. That green-hatted woman ever-slipping on the ice, never catching the wall as she fell, people passing by without ever stopping to help.

The rolling news bar said: … TEMPERATURES REACH RECORD LOW ACROSS EUROPE …

At 8:33 Sarah thundered down the stairs. She was wearing her Christmas Dance Fantastical leotard. She said she was late for dress rehearsal. Mum asked what time the Fantastical started and Sarah told her it was 19:30, like it said on the tickets. Mum told her to take a coat but Sarah said it was good to be cold, the colder she was the more she’d dance and the more she’d dance the more practice she’d get and after all practice makes perfect. She took a few bottles of Hi-Wizz Vitamin Energy Shake from the fridge and hurried out the door.