Lolito (19 page)

‘Get down,’ Mum says. ‘Get away. He’ll see you.’

‘But I want to watch.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Please.’

‘Put these on,’ she says, passing me Dad’s oversized tortoiseshell reading glasses from the arm of the chair. ‘So he doesn’t recognise you.’ I put the glasses on, not feeling particularly disguised, and now being partially blind. I didn’t know Dad’s eyes were so broken. The world has become a sequence of patches and blotches.

‘What are you doing?’ the dad blur says. ‘I’ve got a dog.’ He points at Amundsen, who lies down in the flowerbed and rolls over, crushing a row of limp petunias.

‘My petunias,’ Mum says.

Amundsen nibbles at soil. The journalist blur lifts his camera and another flash happens and the dad blur jerks forward. Both blurs fall to the ground. I take off the glasses. Dad and the journalist are wrestling like excited dogs. Dad is sitting on the journalist’s face, tugging the
camera from his hands. The journalist is slapping Dad around the back of his head and flailing and pedalling the air. Amundsen is watching quietly, like a child in an aquarium.

I have never seen Dad fight and I expected it to be more impressive. I’m not disappointed, just surprised. I expected hard, swinging punches, and spit, and knuckles webbed with teeth. I think, maybe the reason he’s sad that I’m scared isn’t because he doesn’t understand it.

‘Help,’ he shouts. ‘Help me.’ The journalist has started biting.

‘Etgar, no,’ Mum says.

‘Sorry, Mum.’

I put on trainers and run out. The camera falls from of the journalist’s hands after I apply pressure to his wrists with my thumbs, the way the book says to. Dad climbs off and straightens himself. We face the journalist.

‘That’s mine,’ he says. I slide out the memory card and put it in my mouth.

‘Here.’ I hand the camera back.

‘Don’t come again,’ Dad says.

‘We have a dog,’ I say.

The journalist looks deflated and unsure. He doesn’t say anything. He hangs the camera on his neck and walks quickly back to his car. Dad puts a hand on each of my shoulders. He does an
I’m not going to say anything
look, but it’s calm and pleased, like a just-elected president.

Inside, Mum is walking in tight circles. ‘What are we going to do?’ she says. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘It isn’t okay. What’s okay? What the fuck are we going to do?’

‘Calm down,’ Dad says. ‘What we’re going to do is make more tea.’

‘And stop swearing,’ I say.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mum says. ‘I’m sorry to both of you. I just don’t know what to do.’

‘I think we should do
Countdown
,’ I say. ‘Should I get paper?’

‘Get paper. I don’t know. Let’s do
Countdown
.’ The phone starts to ring. Mum kneels down and unplugs it. She also unplugs the electric doorbell, turns off her computer and, inexplicably, takes her red beret off the coat stand and places it on her head. Dad puts three teabags into three mugs and adds water.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I prod Mum’s knee with my right hand. It is supposed to look sympathetic, but I can’t commit, and it looks random and unnatural.

‘I know,’ Mum says.

Mum wins the first numbers round. Dad wins every letters round. He could be in dictionary corner if he wanted to. He also gets the
Countdown
conundrum within two seconds of it appearing on the screen. The
Countdown
conundrum is this:

P U L L A M A I D

‘I don’t like the new one,’ Dad says. He points at Rachel Riley. Rachel Riley smiles broadly and waves goodbye. ‘She’s too young. What happened to Carol?’ ‘She moved,’ I say. ‘To
Loose Women.
She’s the head one sometimes and Andrea is the head one other times.’

‘Do you watch a lot of
Loose Women
?’

‘Pete.’

‘What?’

‘Just don’t.’ Mum gathers our mugs and carries them through to the kitchen. She turns on the tap. Dad flicks through channels, settling on a period drama in which three women are drinking tea in the grounds of a large country house. Mum comes back to announce that she’s ready for bed. I think she may be severely disappointed in me. There’s a chance that she will have another child, to raise closely and carefully, until he’s a well-liked politician or a private dentist.

‘Night,’ she says.

‘Night,’ Dad says.

‘Night,’ I say.

We watch the period drama in silence. Macy’s sitting in my head, on the floor of a damp prison cell, about to be stabbed repeatedly with ersatz knives. She’s blaming me for pulling her life apart like wet toilet paper. She’s missing her children and her belly is making dial-up sounds.

‘Dad?’ I say.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you believe me that it wasn’t her fault?’

‘I do.’

‘Is there something we can do? She can’t go to prison because of me. She didn’t do anything. We both did something. Not something wrong.’

He turns the TV off. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he says. ‘We can try and think of a plan.’

41

I’m in bed, eating Cookies &Cream Häagen-Dazs and singing to Blink-182. It’s two in the morning and my plan is to keep eating until I go into sudden cardiac arrest and am rendered comatose. When I wake up, Macy will be free and Antarctica will be gone.

My phone rings. It’s Aslam.

‘This is so fucked up,’ he says. ‘Dad’s going nuts. A journalist tried to interview me about you. Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

‘They wanted to interview you?’

‘Yeah, but I said no. So they interviewed Hannah Reid.’

‘Who?’ I push my spoon into the tub and dig out another curl of ice cream. I wonder what the fatal dose of ice cream is and if I would be able to achieve it.

‘The girl we went to her party. The one with Aaron Mathews. Where he punched you.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Wait, I’m making a cigarette.’ I hear muffled fumbling and the click of a safety lighter. He inhales. ‘She said she was your best friend. She said that you were totally heartbroken and hadn’t stopped crying since it all started.’

‘She’s making me sound gay.’

‘Really fucking gay, man. We need to do something. If you want, I can agree to the interview and tell them that you’ve gone around punching everyone in the face.’ I think, this is almost true. I don’t know if he’s being passive-aggressive. ‘Punching who?’

‘Just random people.’

‘Don’t tell them that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine. Will you tell me what happened? I kind of don’t understand. There was just all that stuff in the papers.

I’m holding one now.’

‘It’s boring.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘It’s boring. I don’t know. Last week, when I was being weird because of Alice, I started talking to a woman on the Internet.’

I hear the crack of a newspaper being straightened. ‘And you sent her porns of yourself.’

‘I did not send her porns of myself.’

‘That’s what it says here.’

‘Do you want me to tell you?’

‘Fine. Yes.’

‘We started talking and I liked her a lot. She was like funny and stuff, and she made sense to me or something. She was fit too.’

‘Yeah, she looks okay. Solid seven.’

‘Then she told me she was going to London for a business trip, and I’d told her I lived there, so she wanted to meet. I used the money Nan left me to book a hotel and I got a train there.’

‘Yeah, for two nights of . . . what’s debauchery?’

‘I’m going to stop if you keep reading that.’ The word
debauchery
hangs in my head. I wonder if I’m debauched or if Macy is. I definitely don’t feel debauched. I feel lost and quietly panicked.

‘Fine.’

‘So we stayed in a hotel for two nights, and it was good, and I felt better and I didn’t want to go. But I had to go because my parents were getting back. And Macy went home. But her husband was waiting for her at home with the police. She left without saying anything, left her children and stuff, and her husband found pictures of me, and our chats.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Really fuck.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s going to happen now?’

‘We go to court. She could go to prison.’

‘For that? Why?’

‘As a paedophile.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘I know.’

‘That can’t happen.’

‘It’s the law.’

‘So is “don’t smoke weed”.’

‘I know.’

‘You got groomed by a paedo.’

‘Fuck off.’

I hear computer keys being tapped. I imagine his recent search history goes; Etgar Allison, Etgar Allison raped, watch
Wonder Showzen
online. ‘The papers are all on her side, I think. Or the comments on the
Daily Mail
site were.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Guess not. What are you doing? Do you want a beer?’

‘I’m eating ice cream and watching films. Really this time. Also there might still be a photographer outside our house. Can we go on Friday?’

‘Okay. I can’t believe everyone cares so much.’

‘Me neither.’

‘And I can’t believe you fucked a head teacher.’

‘She wasn’t our head teacher.’

‘Yeah, but still.’

‘I know.’

‘I hope it gets better.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Bye, mate.’

‘Bye.’ I push my face into the near-empty ice cream tub and lick the bottom. Amundsen nudges open the door. He waits at the foot of the bed until I ask him up and he lies next to me and we climb under the duvet. I think to myself, see you in the morning.

42

We eat pizza for breakfast because there still isn’t any other food in the house. I’m in Dad’s funeral suit and Dad’s in a blue work shirt. Mum’s in her dressing gown. I pull pieces of pepperoni off my pizza and sip Nesquik tea. Mum sighs, fingers her fringe and pushes her plate away.

‘You two should brush your teeth,’ she says.

‘Okay.’

Standing side by side in the bathroom mirror, foaming at our mouths, we look smaller than I thought we would look. It doesn’t feel like there are butterflies in my stomach, it feels like there is vomit in it. I need to keep Macy out of prison. I can’t be her dick tattoo.

Dad spits and sighs, running a hand through his hair. I mentally zoom out of the house. I keep zooming until the earth goes blue and shrinks and is gone.

43

(witness duly sworn)

COURT: Please be seated. Would you state your full name and spell your surname?

ALLISON: Etgar Allison. A-L-L-L. Wait. Not three. Two Ls. Can I start again? A-L-L-I-S-O-N.

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR TAYLOR

Q. Mr Allison, how old are you?

A. Fifteen.

Q. What school do you attend?

A. St Catherine’s.

Q. Do you like it there?

A. It’s okay. What? I don’t know. It’s fine. Six out of ten.

Q. What were you doing on the evening of April 6th?

A. Nothing. I was at home. I think I watched
Titanic.
And a programme about fish. And I walked Amundsen, that’s my dog. He’s a mastiff and he’s sort of grey and sort of the colour of sand. That doesn’t matter.

Q. Had you been drinking at all?

A. I had some wine I think and maybe cider. Also, I think I watched cat videos on YouTube and ate Chinese food. That’s for the question before, I just remembered.

Q. Did you visit a website called adultchatlife?

A. Oh, I did that. I forgot. Yes. I did.

Q. And what happened on that website?

A. People were talking about having sex with animals, specifically frogs. They were watching that video of the chimpanzee raping the frog’s mouth. I made a joke about it, then Macy gave me her gmail and said we should chat.

Q. What did she say you should chat about?

A. She just said chat. She didn’t say anything weird or about sex. She just wanted to talk. Just talking.

Q. And what did you talk about?

A. I don’t remember. She didn’t do anything. I don’t know. We talked about bicycles and gardening and sewing. Just that. We talked about that.

Q. You talked about sewing?

A. Sewing buttons.

Q. How long did you talk for?

A. I don’t know. A normal amount. Not a suspicious amount. Just normal. Nothing bad. She didn’t do anything. No one did anything.

Q. On how many occasions did you talk?

A. I don’t know.

Q. Was age ever discussed?

A. No. We never said our ages. She isn’t a paedophile. She’s just a woman and that’s it.

Q. Were pictures ever exchanged?

A.Yes. Dog macros mostly. And some photoshopped stills from the second and third Harry Potter films.

Q. Did you ever send the defendant pictures of yourself?

A. No.

Q. Did the defendant ever send you pictures of herself?

A. No.

Q. Were you ever asked for pictures of yourself?

A. No. She never asked for that. She never asked for anything.

Q. Where were you on the evening of April 11th?

A. I was in London. I know what question is next. Yes. I was in London with Macy. We had dinner together, then walked around, then she left and I stayed at a hotel. We talked about sewing mostly. She never showed me her vag or touched my bum. She never touched me here or here or here. We talked. That’s it. Talking. People are allowed to talk to other people. That’s a rule. If you don’t let people talk to other people then they become mentally ill and homicidal and do things that they should actually be in prison for.