Another Life (15 page)

‘What do you mean? You think they’re going to kill him?’

He sighs. ‘Don’t blame me. It’s not me that wants to kill him. But he’s annoyed someone with a lot of power and no morals. Ty will disappear, one way or another.
Hopefully on his own terms and still alive.’

‘But you don’t really care either way, do you?’

‘It’s not that I don’t care, Archie. It’s just that I can’t do anything. Ty made bad choices and he’s suffering the consequences. But he’s not my
responsibility. You are. I’m trying to make sure that you don’t get mixed up in something you don’t understand. You have to distance yourself from dangerous people, dangerous
situations. Believe me.’

Oh right. He just assumes that Ty’s the leader and I’m going to follow. Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad. He’s obviously never thought for a second that I might be
a good influence on Ty.

I don’t say one word for the rest of the journey, which almost kills me.

When we get there, Ty’s the first person we see. He’s sitting outside the hospital, huddled on a bench, Meg at his feet. She’s trembling, he’s stroking her fur. Normally
Meg greets me with a full-on, tail-wagging, leaping, barking round of applause. Today she looks at me mournfully and wags her tail only once.

‘Aah, Meg, what happened? What happened, girl? Aah . . . Archie’s here! I’m here! Everything’s OK!’

‘She was OK with me,’ says Ty.

‘I never said she wasn’t.’

‘She’s worried about Patrick. I couldn’t go in the ambulance with him, because of Meg. The police . . . the police. . .’ He can’t even finish the sentence.

My dad’s voice is actually quite kind. ‘Has anyone checked you over, Ty? Or have you been here with the dog all morning?’

Ty shrugs. ‘Helen came and she said she’d stay with Meg so I could see someone, but you have to wait for hours in casualty and I’m . . . I’m fine. And I thought she
should see if Grandpa was all right because I didn’t . . . I didn’t know . . . he wasn’t moving at all and there was loads of . . . of blood.’

‘I think the best thing we can do to help is to take you and the dog back home,’ says Dad, briskly. ‘I’ll just go and find Helen and talk to her, see how long Patrick
will be in and then we’ll get off. You’ll be OK. Don’t worry, he only has concussion.’

Ty’s eyes are blank and scary and staring at nothing. ‘There was blood. . .’

‘Yes, I’m sure there was,’ says Dad. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you two give Meg a bit of a walk before we get her in the car – give her a chance to do her
business before she messes up the Prius? I wonder if Helen’s got a blanket in her car?’ He looks at his Rolex. ‘See you back here in an hour, that should do it. Any idea which
ward I want, Ty?’

Ty stares at him blankly.

‘Never mind, I’ll find out,’ says Dad, and he’s gone.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘We can get some chips or something. You must be hungry.’

‘He’s dead,’ he says, in the same flat tone. ‘He’s dead. They’re all lying.’

‘He’s not dead! They said concussion. Not even concussion. Suspected concussion.’

‘Huh,’ says Ty. ‘They’re all liars.’

‘Come on, let’s go.’ I’m actually a bit worried about him. He seems super-freaked. Maybe I can cheer him up by telling him all about the Lily incident, otherwise known
(by Mum) as the Cheese-on-Toast Inferno.

‘I’m totally grounded,’ I finish, ‘and it’s so unfair because Lily came and apologised and said it was her fault.’

Lily’s official explanation was that she’d been feeling really ill and fluey, and had taken Night Nurse which made her forget all about the cheese on toast she’d left under our
grill. She was really embarrassed, couldn’t say sorry enough, and hoped that Mr and Mrs Stone would blame her and not Archie, who was completely innocent and actually slightly the injured
party.

Mr Stone and Ms Tyler weren’t buying any of it. They’d rung up Lily’s mum to tip her off that Lil was drinking or stoned or both.

‘Well, I’m very sorry about the burning cheese. . .’ said Lily’s mum – she’s a former supermodel who’s always known in our house as Mad Frieda –
‘but what can you do? They are wild, these children. We must let them find their own way, make their own mistakes.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mum. ‘Frieda, Lily could’ve set our house on fire.’

‘Yes, she is a very, very naughty girl. She reminds me of myself as a young girl in Stockholm. How I drove my mother crazy! But it all worked out in the end.’

‘Frieda, I’m pretty sure she was stoned.’

‘Well, I am certain you are correct, Penelope, but how can I stop her? She is nearly grown-up, she lives her own life. Ah, we parents, we just have to hope for the best. But you know, a
little cannabis never hurt anyone, in fact these children are so stressed, so many of these stupid exams, it is good they know how to relax. . .’

And so on – I was listening on the handheld – until Mum put down the phone and said, ‘No wonder Lily’s in such a state. You have to feel sorry for her.’

Then Dad said, ‘We can ban Archie from seeing her,’ and Mum said, ‘That’s so Victorian, David, and anyway, now they’re going to be at the same school. We’ll
just have to trust Archie.’

Dad grunted and said, ‘We’re all doomed,’ and I decided that the most sensible thing to do for a week or so was lots of highly-visible homework, no mention of Lily or Oscar,
and numerous demonstrations of what they call common sense, which mostly means using a plate when I’m eating biscuits so I don’t get crumbs everywhere, and remembering to put stuff in
the dishwasher.

I’ve even got my new bike out, and I’ve been experimenting with riding it to college. It only takes fifteen minutes – that’s half the time of the Tube. And there’s
something about cycling in London that I love – the thrill of danger in the bus lane, the joy of whizzing past BMWs and Range Rovers as they sit emasculated in traffic jams. I might even
consider going out with my dad one weekend, except officially I’m not speaking to him.

Anyway, I’m getting so into the boxing. I’m getting fitter and stronger and Kyle is developing a whole alternative life for himself.

Shannon, for example. She waits for me every week (that’s three times so far) and we go and eat a kebab in the park, and she asks me questions about myself, which I expertly dodge, and she
tells me about her mum and dad and brothers and sisters, and how she’s doing a BTEC in Health Studies at a school called Tollington (‘It’s a dump and everyone knows it,’)
and one day she might be a nurse. (‘That’s my dream, Kyle, but I don’t know if I can ever get the qualifications.’)

Spending time with Shannon and hanging out at the club has also got me some attention from the guys there. Shannon’s advice was to keep quiet about (supposedly) coming from the Cally, so I
try and not say much, just echo things that they say, even if they don’t make much sense to me. Mostly they leave me alone, but one guy – big, black, scary – came up and asked me
who I was and where I was from.

‘You’re not from round here, are you?’

‘Yeah, I am,’ I said. ‘I used to go to Tollington til I got excluded.’

‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘Yeah.’

He looked at me through his tiny eyes and then he said, ‘Sylvia reckons you look a bit like Ty. Ty Lewis. You know him? Related?’

Shit.

‘Who? Nah,’ I say.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Keep it that way.’ And he walked away.

This is the moment when I decide that I’m not telling Ty about my adventures at the boxing club, but the silence is getting awkward. Then I see a fish and chip shop.

‘What do you fancy?’ I say, digging a twenty pound note out of my pocket.

He looks confused.

‘Chips? Saveloy?’

‘Oh . . . I don’t know. . .’

‘I’ll chose,’ I say. ‘You stay here with Meg. I bet she’d like some yummy saveloy, wouldn’t you, Meg?’

It takes a bit of time in the shop, and when I come out Ty’s gone, disappeared. Jesus! Where is he?

I sprint up the street, around the corner, and there he is – walking fast, Meg jogging at his side. What the hell?

‘Oi!’ I yell.

He walks faster. I run after him. Meg pulls him back, whines for me.

‘What the hell? What about me? Where are you going?’

He’s got that blank stare again. He’s twitching his head as though he’s trying to look over his shulder.

‘I . . . I thought . . . I could find him. . .’ he says.

‘Find who?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shakes his head, fast and violent, like a dog that’s come out of a lake. ‘I thought. . .’

‘Stop thinking and eat,’ I say, shoving a bag of chips at him. ‘You’re probably hungry. When did you have breakfast?’

He thinks about it. ‘Last night.’

‘Last night?’

‘They bring it . . . with supper, at five.’

‘And you’re meant to wait until the morning to eat it?’

‘I suppose.’

I wave a chip at him. ‘Bet this is better than prison food. Was it disgusting? Can’t be worse than my last school. They made custard by squeezing the sixth-formers’
spots.’

I think he’s going to laugh, but he just stares over my shoulder and says, ‘Oh yeah, right.’

‘Ty, you are being weird,’ I say. ‘Stop it. And don’t wander off again.’

His eyes focus. For a moment he’s looking at me properly. ‘No. Sorry.’

‘Look, I know you’ve been through a lot, but it’ll be OK. Are you still thinking of going to Florida?’

He looks over his shoulder again. It’s like he thinks someone’s listening to us.

‘Maybe.’

‘Oh. That’d be great, wouldn’t it? Like a really new start.’

He jerks his head around again. ‘It’s best if I just disappear.’

‘You could go anywhere. Any country in the world. And you really like languages, don’t you?’

‘I dunno,’ he says. ‘I’ve kind of lost it, Archie. I can’t keep the words in my head any more.’

I don’t know what to say. Ty was always trying to talk in other languages, coming out with bits of Portuguese and Polish and whatever, all the time. He was dead keen to try and speak
French with Grandpa, which I found kind of embarrassing, as Ty had a really weird accent.

‘My teacher at school comes from
Cote d’Ivoire
,’ he said one day, which kind of explained it. Grandpa’s normally really strict about French pronunciation with me
– he’s always correcting my verbs and stuff – but he’d just sit and listen to Ty mangle complete sentences into Afro-French with a dopey, proud look on his face.

I tell you, Ty’s totally his favourite. It’s odd, considering that he’s only known him two minutes.

‘Go somewhere hot, and it’d be like being on holiday all the time and you can forget all about, you know, all the stuff that’s gone on.’

And Claire
, I think,
you can forget about Claire
, but I’m not brave enough to say it.

‘I can’t forget anything,’ he says. He’s constantly twitching – turning his head to look over his shoulder. I start timing the twitches – once, twice, three
times a minute. Then nothing, a pause, then twitch, twitch again. It’s really annoying.

‘You should try,’ I say, ‘because it’s all over now, isn’t it? You’ve been to . . . you know . . . and the police have got those bad guys. I know their trial
is coming up, but even so. You’re free. You can leave it behind you.’

He’s staring at the pavement, then – twitch, twitch – turns to me. ‘Archie, if someone hurt you really badly, you wouldn’t forget, would you?’

Uh-oh. What’s this about? Is he trying to get revenge for his gran dying? Who does he blame for that? Or has Claire been in touch?

‘I might,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t want to spend ages obsessing about stuff I can’t change.’

‘Yeah, but that’s you. Some people wouldn’t forget ever, would they? They’d just go on and on, hating that person and wanting to hurt them like they’d been
hurt.’

‘I suppose. . .’ I say cautiously.

‘And hating them and hating everything about them and wanting to hurt them like they’d hurt you?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t. . .’

‘And it goes on and on until you’ve made sure they’ll never hurt you again?’

I don’t like this. I really don’t like this. I don’t know what he’s getting at, but I don’t like the way his eyes are hard and glittery, and the set of his jaw, and
the way his hands have curled into fists, triceps bulging, body tensed.

I’m thinking about what Rio’s sister said. I’m thinking about Kenny Pritchard. I’m thinking that I don’t really know my cousin Ty very well at all.

So I say cautiously, ‘Look, Ty, this isn’t a good way to be feeling,’ and he twitches again – is he even aware he’s doing it? – and says, ‘You’re
right, that’s it. But what can I do?’

I shrug and say, ‘Just get on with it. Try and forget it,’ and he gives me a look like I’m the mad one.

Then I hear some music, and I smell the beautiful smell of frying onions and I see a fair. It’s just getting started for the afternoon.

And I have a brilliant idea.

C
ome on, Ty, ‘I say, ‘this’ll be great – just what you need. You can celebrate getting out.’

‘I don’t know. . .’

‘We can take turns on things,’ I say. ‘The other one can stand with Meg.’

‘I’m not . . . I don’t. . .’

‘It’ll be a blast.’

There’s a rickety-looking mini-rollercoaster, which could be fun. There’s something massively tall and fast called a Freak Out – we can hear distant screams coming from the
riders as they’re flung around in the air. Teacups and roundabouts, obviously, a ghost train and dodgems. I’m not too keen on the really fast fling-you-around rides because I once threw
up a little bit after I’d been on one. Mind you, I was only eleven and I’d eaten two hot dogs and some candy floss. So I’ll probably be OK.

‘What do you fancy?’ I say. I nod at the Freak Out. ‘How about this one?’

I’m kind of surprised when he says yes. The guy who runs it looks at Meg when we say only one of us is going to ride.

‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘I’ll watch the dog. I’ve not got many people yet. Both of you have a go.’

Oh well. I suppose statistically not many people actually die on these things. The iron bar comes over my head. I hope Ty won’t notice if I close my eyes. I’m slightly regretting
eating the whole saveloy.