Blood Family (3 page)

He didn’t speak. But he would answer questions, so it was clear his brain still worked. Mostly he shook his head, or nodded. But when an answer was necessary, as when I asked him, ‘Can you tell me your name?’ he shot a look at his minder – that nice, tubby, half-bald chap called Rob – and then came out with it all right. ‘Eddie.’

I ran my eyes over his clothing. The shirt was huge and close to clean. But I couldn’t even tell what he was wearing
over his arse because it was such a rag. So I just said, ‘Well, Eddie, I’m afraid we have to take this shirt away from you now.’

Rob muttered, ‘He won’t be sorry about that,’ so drily that I guessed the shirt must have belonged to this Bryce Harris bloke that they’d arrested.

I eased off Eddie’s clothes. That’s when I thought I’d see real damage. These household bullies aren’t daft. They often concentrate on places no one sees. But there were no marks on his trunk or buttocks. Rob Reed stretched out a hand to stroke his head while I did all the private checks that children hate – especially the kids who think they know what’s coming after. Eddie did shrink from my touch. But I would guess that could be simple modesty. And I must say that I saw nothing on his body anywhere to lead me to assume he’d been abused that way.

He didn’t even have nits.

We did take photographs, although I couldn’t see them helping in any court case.

‘No paperwork, I suppose?’ I asked when we’d gone through the tests. ‘No medical card or name of a family doctor, or anything?’

‘Fat chance,’ said Rob. ‘They will send someone in tomorrow to take a better look. But I’m not hopeful. The place was a tip.’

‘If you find nothing, then we’ll have to start his shots again.’ I made a note. ‘He may have had his first few
before his mum took up with Sunshine.’ I spoke directly to the child. ‘Eddie, do you remember a doctor or a nurse ever giving you any injections? Sticking a needle in your arm and telling you that it would only hurt a tiny bit and it would soon be over?’

Either he didn’t understand or didn’t answer. He was staring at the polished floor. So I said, ‘Never mind,’ and peeled off my protective gloves. ‘I think that’s it for now.’

I wrapped the boy in one of our little furry dressing gowns so he could be taken along to the unit for something to eat and a bath while one of the hospital volunteers looked him out some fresh clothes. But at the door Rob stopped and looked back enquiringly. I shrugged. We do try not to talk about these children over their heads as though they were dead or unconscious. But Rob’s a good man and he takes his job to heart, so I did want him to know that, so far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t see for himself. A few old bruises. That was it. I only wish that all the kids that poor man’s brought in here had been so lucky.

Mind you, it’s not my job to check the damage to the poor child’s mind and sense of self.

That often never heals at all.

When we came out again, the sun was so bright that it hurt my eyes, and I kept blinking. Rob Reed noticed that. (He noticed everything.) ‘If that keeps up,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have to take you to have your eyes checked right away.’

That seemed to make him think of something else. ‘Ten-minute break in the park?’ He grinned. ‘Might as well seize the chance to start on the sunbathing.’

He stopped the car. ‘Don’t move,’ he said, surprising me because I hadn’t thought of it. ‘I’m coming round to let you out the other side.’ I could see why. The cars went whizzing by so fast they made me dizzy.

He took my hand and led me over lumpy grass. ‘Sit facing this way.’ He put me with my back to the sun. And when I felt my head and neck get hotter, I thought it was because the nurse who’d put me in the bath and cut my finger- and toenails must have done something odd to my hair when she was washing it. The things I didn’t know back then, or put together wrong!

But I knew one thing. ‘Shouldn’t I have sun cream on?’

Rob raised an eyebrow – just a tiny bit; but if there’s one thing I had learned, it was to read a face. I put my head down and picked at the grass.

It was a bit of time before he said, ‘You think you should?’

It just popped out. ‘Well, Mr Perkins said you
always
should.’

‘Who’s Mr Perkins?’

I recognized the over-casual voice. Seeing my mum with Harris had taught me well enough how one tiny thing let drop could be drawn out, and then blown up and up till even she believed she’d earned the kicking. So I said nothing, hoping he would let it go. But he persisted. ‘Who’s Mr Perkins, Eddie?’

Well
now
, of course, I know full well what he was probably thinking. So it is almost a laugh to think I felt so nervous about answering, ‘You know. On telly.’

‘On telly?’

‘Yes. His show.’

‘I’ve never seen it.’

And of course he hadn’t. Those tapes were thirty years old. I don’t know who had left them in that cupboard, but there they were, in piles of unmarked boxes. Mum and I put on the first tape one day when I was very young. Harris was still bad-tempered from the move, and he’d slammed out. Mum made me cocoa because I was upset from all his shouting. ‘Maybe it’s a film,’ she said.

But it was Mr Perkins. Episodes of some old telly show. He came in, singing a song about feeling good because it was a new day, and there were all these things that we could do together.

While he was singing, he was taking off his jacket. It always started like that. Then he’d switch on the kettle and tip food into the cat’s dish. (‘Here you are, Sooty-Sue! My, weren’t you hungry!’) He’d show us what he’d been making out of toilet-roll holders and glue, or paper and string and some old plastic flowerpot, or something. Mr Perkins could use
anything
. And after that, we all went on a visit. Each show was different, but it was always interesting things. Mr Perkins would take us along to the fire station, or a farm, or a pizza parlour. (‘Off we go. Jump on the bus with me.’) We met a lady who shoed horses, and someone who drew cartoons. We saw how oranges were picked by huge machines with arms, and visited hospitals, and learned how they made spaghetti in a factory. Sometimes I worried that we would run out of people and places to visit, but we never did. And everywhere Mr Perkins took us, he asked a hundred questions. ‘Why do you do it
that
way?’ ‘Do you ever get scared?’ ‘Is it difficult?’ ‘Have you ever burned yourself by mistake?’ ‘How long does it take to cook?’

He never ran out of questions. Sometimes he’d turn to us. ‘Do
you
ever help with the cooking?’ ‘Have
you
ever had bad sunburn?’ (That’s how I knew about the cream.)
I’d always answer, even if I had my mouth stuffed full of pie or cheese. But in the end we’d say goodbye to whoever it was we had been visiting that day, and wave, and he would take us back to his house. Then he would sing another song about how we could grow up to do anything we wanted – anything at all. All it would take was for us to want to do that thing enough.

When we had finished watching that first time, Mum rubbed the tear stains off her cheek and pressed a button so the tape slid out. She put it back in the box. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we put it safely back in the cupboard, out of sight, so we can watch it again some other day?’

I think, even back then, I must have known she meant, ‘away from Bryce’. (She called him Bryce. And it was only after the hammerings on the door began practically every night – ‘Where’s Harris?’ ‘Harris, you bastard! Open up! You owe me money!’ ‘I know you’re in there, Harris!’ – that Mum got frightened and weird in her head, and then stopped talking, and I almost forgot his name used to be Bryce.)

I put the tape in the box. I was so proud to work out
that it had to go in facing the right way before the plastic case would shut. Mum put the box back on the pile in the cupboard and dropped one of her blouses on top. I suppose she thought, if Harris saw the tapes, he would record his own stuff over them. And even after Harris brought home his brand-new telly with the DVD, I kept them carefully in there and only played them on the old machine when he was out. I don’t think Harris even realized that the box he dumped his six-packs on so they would be in reach still actually worked. If you’re the sort of person who hasn’t moved the body of your own dog out of the flat in weeks, why would you notice some out-of-date machine still gathering dust in the corner?

It was the first time we’d sat down to chat, there in the park that day. He looked all washed and clean. That nurse had done a brilliant job with Eddie’s hair, disguising the bit he’d hacked away at the front by making the whole cut shorter. Not elfin. It was too much of a mop for that. But cute. (If I had a bit more hair, I’d go to her instead of to Luigi.) They’d put Eddie in a pair of grey trousers and a plain white shirt. I swear that, sitting there in dappled sunlight, we must have looked just like a normal little boy and his grandpa, chatting about nothing.

Except that Eddie kept craning round to look at
everything. A bird pecking the scruffy grass; something that rustled in the leaves above us; a toddler on a bike, over towards the swings. The raucous melody that came from the ice-cream van confused him till I told him what it was. (I doubt if any ice-cream vendor in this town is daft enough to take a van near to those flats.) Even the daisies amazed him.

He just sat quietly and stared. He was a serious little boy, and very wary. Like all too many of the kids I see, he startled far too easily. I’d tried the old tests that we’re not supposed to use these days – slammed the car door behind him, raised my hand suddenly – that sort of thing. And, sure enough, each time the boy went rigid.

Still, there was something inside him that didn’t seem to have been crushed. Of course, we didn’t know how long his mum had been in that pathetic state. (With luck, not too much of the last four years.) But it was obvious we could do
something
with him.

That’s why I chose the Radletts for that first night. They are the best on our No Notice list. I left young Eddie picking at the grass just like a curious toddler and, pulling out my phone, strolled out of hearing. ‘Linda? Can I bring you another small gift tonight?’

‘Oh, God!’ she said. ‘We’ve only just got shot of Gary.’

‘I know. But this one’s special.’

‘Oh, aren’t they all?’

We shared a cynical laugh. And then I said, ‘So that’s OK, then, is it?’

‘I really ought to speak to Alan. He’s still quite frayed. And he’s not finished fixing the gate after young Gary’s fond farewell.’

‘This boy is nothing like Gary.’

‘He’d better not be.’ There was a pause. ‘So can you tell me anything?’

‘Later. By then I’ll know a little more.’

She sighed. ‘When should we expect him?’

I looked at my watch. Though I was starving it was only five. ‘I’ll take him back to the office now to try to get a few things straight. Then we’ll come round. Say around six or seven?’

‘We’ll be here.’

Rob kept his eye on me all through his phone call. Then he came back. ‘Ready to go?’

We got in the car again. I can remember being really surprised because the ride went bumpy. At first I thought it was just holes in the road but then I heard him muttering, ‘Bloody speed humps!’

The car drew up outside another building with glass doors, just like the hospital. Rob nodded at the man behind the desk, then steered me through some swing doors and along a corridor. Most of the people who passed us coming the other way nodded, but nobody
stopped to talk. He tried a couple of doors, poking his head inside as soon as he’d knocked, only to end up muttering, ‘Sorry,’ and closing the door again.

Finally he came across an empty room and we went in. It had a brick-red carpet and armchairs, and there were toys on a low table and more in a heap in the corner. There was a mirror all along the wall and as Rob propelled me past it, to a chair, I thought a boy was walking in beside us. I didn’t recognize the sideways glimpse of me.

Rob picked up the phone on the table and punched a number. I didn’t understand what he said to the person at the other end, but someone else came in soon after that and sat down in the chair between us.

‘Eddie,’ he told me, ‘this is Sue. She’s a police officer, but she’s a really good friend, and she is going to listen to what we talk about. She might have one or two questions of her own that she might want me to ask. And she’s going to record what we are saying on this little machine.’

I hadn’t noticed the machine. It was so small I’d taken it for some fancy silver cigarette packet left on the table.

‘Just so we can remember things. Is that all right?’ said Sue.

I didn’t know if that was all right, did I? I didn’t look at her. I just sat tight.

Then suddenly it was questions, questions, questions. What I thought strangest was how much they knew, but still kept asking about. They certainly seemed to know a
lot about Harris, and they knew things I didn’t know about my mum. Rob told me someone said she’d once worked in a dress shop and asked me if she’d ever mentioned that. (I suppose they hoped I would remember its name so they could track down when she left. I couldn’t help.)

They asked about who shopped, who cooked, who paid the bills. I probably looked blank at all their questions. I mean, I knew Mum used to do the shopping. But after she fell down the wall that time, and Harris couldn’t get her standing, not even after he’d calmed down, he had to do the shopping himself. He’d bring the things he fancied back in a box and dump it on the table. Sometimes he’d eat it, but a lot of the time he bought food for himself when he was out. He often came back smelling of curry or pizza. I never knew if he might want the things out of the box to eat himself so I left most of it, just to be safe. But I did know the things that Harris didn’t like so much, so I fed Mum on those till she was able to hold the spoon herself again, without too much spilling. So how was I to know the answer to the questions that they asked? Who did the shopping and cooking? Everything was so mixed up.