Stockholm Syndrome 2- 17 Black and 29 Red (2 page)

"No, we did it ourselves. Well. Mostly me since Bev got, you know."

Pip holds his breath for as long as he can manage, letting the warm smoke calm him then blowing it straight up in the air. He's still holding his lighter, the novelty revolver that shoots a little flame out the barrel when you pull the trigger. He wonders what he'd do if the gun took real bullets. Nothing, he realises lamely, and draws on his cigarette again, trying to ignore his dad's eyes.

"Nice lighter," Phil says after a minute. He sounds just as awkward as Pip did, fumbling for words. "Where's it from?"

"Don't know. Someone gave it me for Christmas." And suddenly, horrifyingly, he can feel the corners of his mouth turning down, a wobble in his chin he just can't stop.
Don't
, he tells himself fiercely.
Just don't
. He can remember so clearly that second Christmas he and Lindsay had together, their first where they woke up in an empty house, just the two of them, and opened presents that were immediately returned to boxes ready for their move to France. They went back to bed after that for hours and hours, moving carefully not just because Lindsay's shoulder still hurt him but because they were wearing paper hats from crackers and it was like an unspoken challenge, the first to lose the hat loses the game. He'd settled Lindsay comfy against the pillows, riding him carefully with the hat drooping down over his eye and making them both laugh, and he remembers now something Lindsay said to him that day, drowsy and quiet just as they were dropping off in the early afternoon.
I love how shameless you are
. He'd smiled at that, smirked really, stretched all languid like a cat and said
Yeah, I bet you do
and Lindsay said
No, you're not getting it, I love how you drop all your stupid pretensions around me. It's the only time you don't care if you look an idiot
. Pip briefly considered being hurt that Lindsay thought he was a stupid pretentious idiot, but he was too tired so he ducked under Lindsay's arm and emerged somewhere near his chest, squirming up to press a kiss against his prickly face and letting that speak for him instead.

"What?"

 

"I said it was a Christmas present."

 

"I heard what you said. What's wrong?"

 

"I'm... it's my... me and my... fuck."

 

He stops again. There aren't words, especially not to his
dad
.

 

"You know I know you're a queer," Phil says suddenly, and Pip closes his eyes and concentrates on finishing his cigarette.

 

"Sorry."

 

"It's alright."

 

"Is it?"

 

"It'll have to be, won't it?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"You're still my kid."

"Yeah," Pip says again, very quietly - not sarcastically, not like he doesn't believe it. More like he's trying the idea on for size, trying to get used to it again. He stamps the half-burned cigarette dead and goes over to sit on the stone steps leading from the patio up to the raised lawn, folding his arms on top of his knees again and resting his forehead on them. He feels tired and out of place. More than tired, he feels
drained
, as if he needs recharging like his lifeless phone. He can hear his dad's footsteps and feel his presence there beside him when Phil sits down, but he can't get up the energy to move and look at him.

"What happened to you?" Phil says after a moment. He's speaking very quietly as well. The back door's still half-open, maybe he doesn't want the words to be heard inside. Pip starts when he feels a touch on his wrist and he does look up at his dad then, but he makes himself settle. Phil's touching the scar he's had on his left wrist bone for a few years now, a deep rope burn he got one time Lindsay was too drunk to be careful and he was too drunk to feel it biting into his skin and making him bleed. He felt it well enough later, when it went all disgusting and infected.

"I got tied up too tight." It's not a lie.

"Was that the people who...?" He drops the sentence and leaves it hanging, as if he really doesn't want to have to say it, but Pip says nothing so Phil takes a slow breath in and out and finishes. "When you got kidnapped."

"Yeah." It's still not a lie.

 

"What
happened
?"

"I really don't wanna talk about it." And that's not a lie, either. They sit there in silence for a while, then Phil puts his hand on Pip's back, high up right near his neck. The tiny sensible part of him knows it's meant to be comforting or like some awkward manly show of awkward manly love but he has to make a real concentrated effort not to go all stiff and hostile about it. It's just habit, even if it's unfair. He did mean what he said in that stupid letter, written out on a whim while he was wandering round the big empty house waiting for Olly and the kids to come back, but after spending so long going out of his way to make his hatred obvious it's difficult letting that go.

"Your mum was going out of her mind. She wanted to get the police in but I wouldn't let her. I seen films, I weren't taking them chances."

 

"It's a bit different from
films
."

 

"Are you ever gonna tell me what happened?"

 

"I said I don't wanna talk about it."

 

"Alright. So are you ever gonna tell me what happened with your..."

 

"Boyfriend?"

 

"Mm."

 

"It ain't a dirty word, you're allowed to say it. Don't make
you
a queer, just acknowledging that I'm one."

 

"Be a bit fucking difficult
not
to."

He'd actually felt the need to tell them, back when he was sixteen and all the mess happened with Olly. It was at dinner one night; his mum was three-quarters down a bottle of wine already, his dad was in a shit mood about something, and Pip was having trouble eating because it felt like all the food was sticking in his throat, so he just pushed it round his plate for a bit while he gathered his courage then made himself say all in one panicked rushing breath, "I've gotta tell you something, I'm gay." His dad just looked at him stonily and said, "Philip, we ain't idiots." That was that.

"We just had lots of fights," he says. He doesn't want to explain it again, it's like sticking a knife back into a healing stab wound to see if it still fits. "I was making him miserable. So I went. That's it." "Yeah, well. He's too old for you anyway."

"Like I need your advice on who bums me." That makes Phil move his hand away from Pip's neck and struggle for words again, which is good because now there's a bit of space between them Pip can breathe more easily.

"Ain't he like my age?"

 

"Uh, NO. He's younger than Mum. A bit."

 

"Still too old, you want someone your own age."

 

"I don't want no one. People my age are dicks."

 

"Well, ain't that what you want?"

 

He whips his head up to stare at his dad, mostly horrified but suddenly very nearly laughing. "Did you just make a
joke
?"

Phil just shrugs, not really looking at him, still obviously searching for the right thing to say. He finally settles on, "I don't wanna fight with you no more." Simple, to the point, then nothing else and he sits there with his eyebrows slightly raised like he's waiting for a reaction, but Pip can't find the right words either so he has to go on. "I know we ain't been very good friends," he says, slow and awkward. He was never ever any good at heart-tohearts, only shouting and thumping when he didn't get his way. "You're right, you
was
a nasty little shit. It's like you pushed me on purpose."

"I did."

 

"Why?"

 

"Don't know."

 

"But I wasn't very nice either."

 

"Not really."

 

"I ain't very good with my temper."

 

"I noticed."

 

"I'm trying."

 

"Right."

 

"I could've broke your neck fifteen times already today but I never."

 

"Thanks?"

 

"Cos you shouldn't talk to your mum like that."

 

"I know."

 

"So why do you?"

"Don't know." Pip pulls a face at himself, realising he's slipped back into the moody awkwardness of his teens. "Sorry. I'm glad she ain't drinking no more."

"Me too."

They're sitting on the top step and Pip falls down backwards so he's lying half on the step and half on the neatly-trimmed lawn. It's nice out now, nothing like the drizzle and chills of the last few days. Everything's blue and green, pale spring sky and dark leaves overhead where trees surround the house like sentinels. Tipping his head back a bit lets him see the old treehouse that's still there in one of them; looking forward at the house, he can see the back windows of his old bedroom. He claimed that one immediately when his parents brought him to see the place before they settled on buying it - it wasn't as big as the room they thought he'd want and it didn't have the ensuite bathroom, but it had a black wrought-iron balcony at the front and he fell in love, even if Olly pissed himself laughing about it when he came round to help unpack boxes.

"The baby ain't having my Juliet balcony."

 

"Are you moving back in?"

 

"No. It's still mine."

 

"You can if you want."

 

"Yeeaah, I don't think that's a very good idea."

 

"Probably not. But just so you know. If you ever need. You can. Or anything. If you ever need
anything
-"

"-then I'll work for it myself, thanks. I ain't taking stuff off people no more, I feel like a whore." Then he feels stupid because his mum appeared in the doorway just as he was saying 'whore', too late for him to stop. He sits back up a bit, propping himself up on his elbows, and tries on a smile. He's got no idea whether it looks like it's supposed to. It feels clumsy and like it doesn't fit his face, but maybe it's okay because she smiles back. It makes her look pretty. She's not been pretty for a long time. He can vaguely remember being very little and thinking she was the most beautiful thing in the world, but that was before she lost the plot a bit and fell into a wine bottle and started shouting at him all the time and only giving him a cuddle when she was plastered and reeking of drink.

"Aren't you coming back inside?"

 

"It's nice out. You come out here."

She takes the steps carefully and Pip has to hold her hand to steady her when she sits down at his other side. She doesn't let go after so neither does he, not even when her breathing starts to sound wet and trembly and she presses her face against his shoulder to hide her eyes. It's like a strange, stilted parody of happy families, dad and mum and son and baby all sitting together out in the garden on a nice sunny day.

He wonders whether it's ever going to stop feeling like that, whether anything is ever going to feel real again.

 

He wonders what Lindsay's doing right now, and makes himself stop.
3.
oly can u cum 2 hospital

 

im at work m8 wots up? u ok??

 

mums havin bb n we cant get hold of dad aint answrin fone HELP

 

calm down it wont happen 4 ages yet ok?

 

ITS HAPENIN NOW WE R IN CAB CUM QUICK MEET THERE

 

Y AINT U TXT BACK??

 

OLLY U BASTARD ANSWR UR FONE

 

AINT WATCHIN MUMS FANNY SICK OUT A BB ON MY OWN

 

SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS fuckin hell ok im on my way

Of course it
doesn't
happen for ages. They're there four hours before anything even really changes, and he'd managed to get hold of his dad ten minutes after he sent his last text to Olly so he feels a bit stupid about panicking so much.

"Dunno why you even
looked
at a girl again after the first time," he says to Olly outside the door, shuffling around impatiently with his hands shoved in his back pockets so he can't bite all his fingernails off. "Don't you feel bad making them hurt so much?"

"It's worth it after. Course, I can say that, I ain't the one doing it."

They have to move out of the way when the door opens but nobody comes out, it's just one of the nurses. "Philip? Your mum says can you come inside. She wants you there."

"Can Olly come?"

 

"Hey, I don't wanna see your mum giving birth."

 

"Neither do I!"

 

"I'll wait out here, alright?"

 

"Ohgod."

He finds out very soon that there are things nobody tells you about childbirth, like accidental shitting and the stench of fluids that belong on the inside and how
primal
it all is. How can people walk on the moon and know how to clone animals but still have to go through all this writhing screaming uncivilised ordeal? It's even more terrifying than when Lindsay got shot, and again he doesn't know what to do. He sits there beside the bed, stunned and helpless, and wishes he'd stayed at Lindsay's just one week more and put up with all the coldness because then he would have missed it.

It's different after, when the drama is over and everybody's cleaned up and Olly's gone home to sleep for a couple of hours before it's time for the school run. Pip's knackered too, but he can't leave yet. Everything's peaceful now. His mum is holding this tiny pink scrap of sleeping baby with miniscule fingernails and fine blonde hair that won't lie flat. It's hard to remember how awful it was while it was happening, like you can never remember pain after the bruise has faded, only that it was there.

"She's a fucking ugly little thing, ain't she?" he whispers. He doesn't want to wake her up, he doesn't want her to start crying or anything. He just wants to look at her for a while and get used to it all.

"She's not as ugly as you were. You were like a little mutant."

 

"Shut up! I seen photos when I was a baby, I was gorgeous."

 

"Not for the first week. I kept expecting people to send condolences cards instead of congratulations."

 

He doesn't want to wake her but he can't help touching her, brushing a fingertip very gently across her head. "Was it that traumatic when it was me?"

"Worse. I thought I was dying. Of course, I was very young." Older than Olly when his two oldest were born, but not by much. He's always known that's the main reason his grandad hated his dad so much, some raging fatherly instinct that wouldn't let him get on with the rough kid off some scummy East End estate who'd knocked up his daughter a month before her sixteenth birthday. Pip can't even imagine it. He always chipped in with the babysitting any time Olly needed a break, and he's always got on better with children than with most adults, but actually having a baby you're not allowed to give back is a concept from another world and he can't fit his head around it.