Humber Boy B (11 page)

That was when they used to get me. The new kid who wanted to mark himself out as tough, the gang leader who sniffed out my weakness, prisoners who knew enough to see that I don’t fit in any box that says ‘burglar’ or ‘junkie’ or even ‘nonce’. They knew I was none of those things, but they didn’t know what I was, so they got me, in the shower, when the staff were turning a blind eye, when the sound of the water hitting the tiles covered up my cries. “Tell us what you did, freak. Tell us before we drown you like the rat you are.”

At least I don’t have to worry about that any more.

But when I was crumpled on the shower floor, blood leaking from my ear or nose, I knew someone would come to help. Eventually. Even if it was a prison officer who was well aware of who I was and let me know that, they still had to escort me to the medical wing, they still had to keep me alive.

Who will protect me now I’m free?

I’m an easy target. I’m small, skinny and pale. ‘My fine-boned prince’ Mum would say when she was happy or just ‘runt’ when she wasn’t. My smallness was something she enjoyed more when I was little, but when I failed to grow and Stuart pointed out how weak I was, how Adam was so much stronger, she changed her mind. I’ve always been small, the other lads in prison thought I was a wimp, the lads who pushed weights in the prison gym and did sit-ups each night when we were locked in our cells, calling to each other breathlessly as they counted to a hundred before changing to squats. But they were wrong. I’m not a wimp. I may be skinny, but I’m more lethal than any other boy I met in prison.

Dangerous. That’s why the judge had me locked away for so long, even though at ten I was only just legally responsible. That’s why I have to be Ben, because the real me is so feared, so wanted, that even to keep my first name was a risk. Someone in the Home Office changed my name when I was still ten and, entering my first secure unit, I was re-named by some civil servant who’d never met me, but my shiny new name didn’t keep me safe. For six years I was ghosted from secure unit to secure unit, up and down the country, then for two years I did a tour of the YOIs. If I couldn’t hide in the prison system, when I was surrounded by scum, how can I hide in the open, among decent people? They may call this freedom but it feels like a bigger prison with more to fear.

After I’ve eaten a handful of cornflakes, with no milk because I ran out yesterday and forgot to buy some, and from the packet because I still don’t have any bowls or spoons, I decide to walk.

My feet take me towards the bridge. It’s not my bridge, this is the Orwell not the Humber, but it still makes my heart flip like a fish in a bucket, it’s so huge and beautiful. Perfect in its concrete-footed steadiness, the even arches and straight, straight lines. From down here at the water’s edge I can only see the tops of lorries magically moving down the bridge, like a remote control truck I had when I was a kid. Who got me that toy? Not Mum, certainly not Stuart. Could have been my dad, on one of his fleeting visits when he was docked in Hull and Stuart wasn’t around. Before. Those lorries could be remote control, red lorry, yellow lorry, green. Spaced perfectly.

Can’t see cars, not from down by the river, just Maersk and P&O and Quality. Only words over concrete. The blue sky around it, fluffy clouds like grazing sheep under a perfect disc of white, the sun seemingly bumping the only grey cloud in the sky.

The footpath is closed, which is a shame because it looks like it leads down to the water’s edge: Danger Men Working. But there are no men here, unless you count me, there’s only a single barrier, a foot maybe two high, and that sign. Adam would never be stopped by a sign, he was fearless. If I’d been more like him, things would have turned out differently. I walk around it and go down to the water anyway, finding it isn’t so hard to ignore the warning.

The river is full, rippling in the middle with a band of stillness before each bank, so I know a boat must have recently passed, the water is still settling. I can see all this, but I can also see another bridge and hear shouting, Noah and Adam’s voices as clear as if they were next to me, so I squeeze my eyes and come back to Ipswich and this moment and being Ben.

I need to put my feet in the water.

On the other bank, to the left, a line of red brick houses, crumbling, they must be way older than the bridge, they must have seen the river being the main route through, the docks in the distance with cranes reaching into liners carrying cargo. Now their view must be red lorry, yellow lorry, Bartrums and China Shipping. Dock lorries, from Felixstowe port to the rest of the UK, onwards to the rest of the world. This bridge allows all this travel but those houses just have to watch. Do they like it, the activity, the signs of life, or do they curse the sound of lorries and sight of the concrete bridge ripping across the sky?

A head appears, a man’s face. I turn to go, thinking it’s a builder and I’ll be told off for ignoring his sign. Then I see he’s wearing waders and carrying a fishing rod and walking towards the water. He too is ignoring the sign because he wants to fish. My mind flips back, I can’t help it, to Roger Palmer. When I saw him in the courtroom he was a different man from the one I’d known in the classroom, like he’d been shrunk and all the colour had bled from him. The court trial was so long, six whole weeks, so tedious and stuffy. Boring, even though my freedom was at stake.

By the end of those six weeks, through the tedious repetition of facts, the struggle to keep awake, came the sharp realisation that what happened on the bridge didn’t just change three lives, Noah’s and Adam’s and mine, it changed other people’s lives too. And Roger Palmer’s was one of them.

That man can’t be Roger Palmer. My mind is playing tricks again, like it did when I thought the boy with the orange rucksack looked like Adam. It’s like my brain hasn’t caught on to the fact that my life has begun again. This is a different bridge, but I won’t ever go to any bridge now without thinking about that red trainer going over the side, then the boy following.

When I arrive back at the flat I see I have a letter.

In the lobby are mail boxes, one for each flat and I wouldn’t have even bothered checking but I could see the corner of an envelope caught in the flap. I use my key to open the box and there it is, a small white envelope handwritten to my new name, at my new address. It’s Adam’s handwriting, so I know that my card to Mum arrived, because that’s the only way he could know my address.

I feel the thin paper between my fingers and the serrated edge, this page was ripped from a jotter, the biro-ink smudged on the page and I can detect the faint whiff of Lynx body spray. Even when he was fourteen Adam was vain, always thinking about what to wear. He can’t have changed.

We shouldn’t have any contact, Cate made that clear, it’s a condition of my parole. A breach, and I could be hauled back to prison. Many people would cheer if I was back behind bars. I can’t give them any excuse. The past puts me at risk, but he’s my brother, my family.

I gently peel open the envelope.

Hey Bro
.

How’s life, then? Must be weird, being able to walk about and that. They’ve sent you miles – I didn’t even know where Ipswich was until I looked it up yesterday on us computer. New start for you, our kid
.

Mam got your card. She can’t write just now, give her a chance to get used to it, okay? But she’s fine, no worries
.

Summat to make you smile. I’ve got a girl. SHE KNOWS. She started writing to me, a few years back. Really sweet letters. And then she wanted to visit us and that’s rare, right, so I thought why not? I was so nervous I couldn’t sit still, but she was lovely. Pretty. And she kissed us when she left
.

We’re thinking of moving in together. Seems like my luck is changing. Hope yours is too
.

Anyway, I know where you are now so I might just come and see you one day. I’ve missed you, bro
.

I check the postmark on the letter and see it was sent second class, two days ago, from Hull. Just that word mixes me up inside, and part of it is that he’s there and I can’t be. He’s seen Mum, but she won’t even write to me. Adam’s given me no details, how could he when a letter could get lost, fall into the wrong hands. But even this isn’t my main thought, the one that goes round and round is whether Mum knows that Adam has written to me. Does she care?

I read the letter again, this time zoning in on the fact that Adam has a girlfriend, and SHE KNOWS. The capitals are so he doesn’t have to spell it out, but can she really know everything? Is it possible, that a girl can know about Noah’s death and still want to be involved? Not be put off at all? Could I get a girlfriend too, someone who knows about my past and still wants to be with me? But then I remember that she’s with Adam, not me. Adam wasn’t convicted of murder. A girl may want him, but they’d never want me – how could they when my own mother doesn’t?

I put the letter back in its envelope and go to my bedroom, yanking the bag from under the bed. This letter has to be put away along with the others, the ones I received during my eight years in prison. Inside the bag is one letter that I can’t even stand to look at, but I know it by heart. My mum sent it, just days after the trial, and I was stupid enough to open it. The letter is worn thin by my fingers, the ink has rubbed in places under the pad of my thumbs and the folds are floppy and torn from all those times I read and re-read it, looking for one word of comfort or pity or even forgiveness.

I’ll say it for you and save you the trouble – I’m a crap mum. There. Said and done so let’s be straight with each other. Nowt you do from now on can hurt me anyway – I’m your mam so the blame was always gonna be put on us. Is that what you wanted?

Okay, so I admit it. I never loved you. I was rubbish at love because no-one loved me much either. Make you feel better, does it? I doubt it
.

I try to not torture myself with the rest of the letter, though I can never bring myself to bin it, and even folded away the letter is still being read in my head. I was ten years old, had just been locked away for murder, and the letter exploded something inside me like a bomb, shocking me with its brutal honesty. Mum hated me. Even though she’d sat through the trial and heard all the evidence she still thought that what happened on the bridge was all my fault.

It wasn’t my fault, Noah climbed over the railing himself.

Thinking about concrete and steel, the forever strength of the Humber Bridge, is so much more preferable to remembering Noah’s face, the broken skin of his lower lip, which was puffed and bloody over his chin, dripping red down his front, splattering his T-shirt. Who would have known a lip could bleed like that?

And now, this letter from Adam.

Adam, who stuttered in court. Whose father pointed at me, and said I led his son astray.

“I’m Ben,” I tell myself. “This is my new life. I have no brother.”

25

The Day Of

Mrs Patel felt herself stiffen when she saw the three boys outside her shop. She knew about the teacher’s strike, it was why her daughter Nazma was upstairs doing her maths homework, rather than sitting in class where she should be. These teachers did not seem to understand that teaching was a privileged occupation, and she found their demands for extra money vulgar. Why wasn’t six weeks holiday each summer enough? She hadn’t had a holiday in twenty-three years.

Through the window she recognised all three, two of them brothers and the third boy – the smallest – who would often come in with his mum. Polite boy, well-raised. The brothers she felt sorry for, though the oldest one made her nervous too. He was edging towards adulthood.

The bell rang as the door nudged open and in they came, bringing their vinegary sweat and old socks smell with them. They positioned themselves along the sweet counter, the eldest boy nearest to her at the till smelling heavily of deodorant and dressed in the sports top of the local team, then his brother with the white hair, finally the young one who hadn’t looked at her once although when he came with his mother she always made him say hello. They thought she was a fool, pretending to be browsing the wares, when really they were looking for the chance to steal. Other shops had signs, not allowing children in groups, but Mrs Patel didn’t like to do such things. She preferred to hope for better.

“Hello, Mrs Patel.”

To be fair, the eldest boy always greeted her this way, and he had a nice smile even though he looked in need of a wash. She nodded, and waited by the till for him to hand her whatever chocolate bar he wanted, but the two younger boys were shuffling nearer to the smaller sweets, the ones that cost just a few pence each and were easier to slide into pockets. It was taking the eldest boy a long time to decide which chocolate bar he wanted, though her selection never changed and he had visited the shop hundreds of times. Finally, he chose a tube of Rolos and gave her the money. He then led the other boys from the shop.

She walked from behind the till to the window and watched them go. Once outside, they began to run. She turned to face the empty place on the alcohol shelf, where the half-bottle of peach schnapps had been. It was cheap and strong, it would probably make them sick. She wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but she enjoyed this thought as she went to the stock room to replace the stolen bottle, the mental image of the three of them on all fours like dogs, vomiting into the grass. Then she placed another bottle in the empty space and returned to her position behind the till, thinking no more about it.

26

Now

FACEBOOK: FIND HUMBER BOY B

Sue:
I saw a man today who looks like the boy in the photo you posted, but older. He was a right thug, roaring at his poor kid on the beach today at Scarborough. He had a tattoo on his neck.

Noah’s mum:
Thanks, Sue, but it can’t be him. Parole Board say he’s not allowed in Humberside. But please spread the word and we’ll find him somewhere. At least when he was behind bars, I knew where he was. I’d sacrifice a great deal to have him back there again.