Lloyd returns and blames his son’s death on Mum for not keeping a close enough eye on him. His words devastate her, and the last time we see Lloyd is days later, when he packs up his clothes and terminates their relationship. I can’t stop smiling. Callum’s exit is the gift that keeps on giving.
I attend Callum’s funeral alone as Mum can’t even leave her bed. Even as I watch his white coffin being carried into the church on the shoulders of pallbearers, I can’t pretend to feel remorse. Because every time Mum holds me tightly like she’s afraid to let go, I know what I did was right.
Chapter 75
Damon
My heart sinks the moment I recognise a familiar face in my next life event being spooled out for me by Fernandez-Jones’s tatty but still quite functional equipment. Because I remember who he is and what happened to him. The little boy my Mum carries so often is my baby brother. And he is the first person I ever killed.
I’m almost three years old when Mum and Dad bring him home from hospital. Their faces are exhausted, but delighted. I can smell the scent of fresh cotton as Bobby is carried into the living room. Dad asks me to be a little quieter in case I wake him up. He shows me how to use gentle hands when I stroke the velvety skin of my brother’s face.
Mum and Dad are still together when Bobby arrives. I don’t know if he creates ripples in their relationship or if he is here to paper over existing cracks. But if it’s the latter, it isn’t working. In the weeks that follow they are arguing more than ever. If it’s not in front of me, then it’s behind closed doors, but the flat is small so I can hear every fraught word.
I don’t think Bobby is the easiest of babies. Dad now sleeps on the sofa and my brother screams long into the night. There aremany appointments with health visitors, and I tag along for regular trips to the doctor’s surgery. But no one can diagnose what the problem is or how to solve it. He’s only, apparently, being a baby.
The more attention Bobby requires, the less I get. Something has to give.
It turns out to be Dad. He starts spending more and more time away from the flat, leaving Mum to cope alone.
I watch myself clinging on to his leg, understanding he is leaving, but not why. He tries to explain he’ll be staying with my grandmother but it’s only for a few days. He says he is putting me in charge of looking after Mum and my brother. Minutes later, his role in my life switches from regular fixture to bit-part player. He never spends another night under our roof. It’s me, Mum and a screaming baby who doesn’t know he’s responsible for tearing our family apart.
Later, Mum moves a then six-month-old Bobby from her bedroom into mine, and just like that, dosed up on the special tablets she gets from Florence who lives downstairs, she’s rendered herself deaf to his cries for attention. It’s left to me to try to soothe him back to sleep. I talk to him, show him my picture books, leave my soft toys in his cot and sing him songs I learn at nursery.
Dad has been stopping by, but Mum punishes him for abandoning us by not allowing him inside. I stand watching from behind a crack in the lounge door as they have furious rows on the doorstep in front of the neighbours.
My three-and-a-half-year-old’s logic suggests that if Bobby can sleep through the night, Mum will go back to her old self, she’ll be nicer to Dad, and he’ll move back in with us. None of this would be happening if Bobby behaved as well as I did.
So later that night, as Bobby shrieks in his cot, I take a blue chequered blanket he sleeps under and hold it over his face. I stroke his fine, blond hair and gently shush him as his little arms and legsflap, then I sing him ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ until he finally falls silent. My plan has worked. I’ve got him off to sleep. I grin as I place the blanket back over his little body, ready to go and tell Mum. I change my mind; she needs her rest. So I slip back into my own bed and wait until morning to inform her that she can call Dad and tell him to come home because I can make my brother sleep.
Only, before I have the opportunity, I awake to screams ringing throughout my bedroom. The next moments I witness happen fast and furious. Paramedics arrive; my distraught dad appears and a hysterical Mum blames herself for why Bobby won’t wake up. And while I understand that I am now the reason for this, something deep inside urges me to remain silent.
Sometimes I crawl into bed with Mum and she holds me for hours like I’m a teddy bear. I don’t complain. I need it as much as she does. When new visitors arrive, I see myself asking if they can show me their wrists. Then I put my fingers on them trying to find a pulse, mimicking what I saw the paramedics do with Bobby. Only when I’m happy I can feel one do I walk away and leave them.
But my closeness isn’t to last. Because this marks the first appearance of her friend Maud.
I know as an adult that my childhood actions came from a good place, even if their consequences were devastating. And I wonder if they’re the foundations that created the boy I became? Perhaps I learned from my brother’s death that to get what I want, I have to take control. Because it worked with Bobby and then Callum Baird. Though not so much later in life, with Melissa. It didn’t matter how much I loved her or wanted her to stay, she still left me. And it certainly didn’t work with Daisy Barber. I couldn’t control her.
That’s why I had to kill her instead.
Chapter 76
Damon
I first meet Daisy a few months after Callum’s death. She has joined the school midway through the September term. She tells me she recently moved to the area after her mum separated from her father. I am completely besotted, and she seems to like me too. I love everything about her, from her poker-straight, dark blonde hair, pushed back and held in place with an Alice band, to the way she smiles or glances at me with her piercing amber eyes, which makes a tingling sensation spread from my stomach to more intimate areas. And she smiles and glances at me a lot, much more than at the other boys in our year.
We might both be twelve but she has a maturity I lack. It doesn’t stop her from choosing to sit next to me in shared lessons and at lunchtimes. She doesn’t ask me before buying double portions from the school canteen when Mum is too distracted by Maud to remember to give me money for food. She invites me back to her house for tea and we play for hours. There are times when I try to pluck up the courage to kiss her, but I’m always too nervous to risk rejection. So I keep my feelings – and my lips – to myself.
I want our relationship to remain like this forever. Her and me, the best of friends. But life moves on and I watch as, to my dismay, so does Daisy. Her mum begins dating a work colleague, an older man who drives a brand-new Mercedes and has two mid-teen daughters of his own. Soon, Daisy starts spending more of her weeknights with them than me.
Her appearance is altering too. She starts wearing baby-pink lip gloss and a little eye make-up. Her T-shirts now expose her belly button and her skirts are creeping up above her knee. When we are together, she is barely off the brand-new iPhone her mum’s boyfriend bought her. She’s messaging and replying to names that flash across her screen, people I’ve never heard of. She is leaving me behind. That’s when my inherent possessiveness rises to the surface.
I do my best to try to prevent it. I even try to shoplift a pay-as-you-go phone from Tesco so I can join in with her text chats. But to my shame, I’m caught by a security woman and my furious mum has to come to the store to pick me up and apologise. I feel sick when I discover Daisy had a thirteenth birthday party she didn’t invite me to.
But I don’t want to give up on her. I ask her to join me at a family fun day at Archbishop’s Park, close to where she lives, to celebrate the forthcoming London 2012 Olympics. She apologises, saying she can’t because she’s poorly with ‘girl’s problems’, and I pretend to know what she means. Despite my disappointment, I go alone.
The familiar tingling sensation appears when I spot her amongst the crowd of thousands later that day. I assume she must have changed her mind and come to find me. I raise my hand above my head to wave, stopping short when I see she’s with a group of older girls and boys I don’t recognise, along with the daughters from her recently blended family.
Witnessing them all in this tight-knit group suddenly makes me self-conscious. They’re dressed in cool T-shirts and trainers, their hair is styled, and they carry portable speakers playing music. I am not like them. I’m angular and awkward, skinny and clad in clothes bought from Brixton Market. I know nothing of their world. So for much of the afternoon, I watch from afar as Daisy dances, laughs or yells in faux-terror as fairground rides spin her in different directions.
