He looked at me as if I was the first person who had spoken to him ever in his whole life. ‘What?’
‘I said, how are you finding it? You’re new, yeah?’
He nodded and said, ‘It’s OK.’
‘What’s your objective?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What’s your objective? I’ve been at this since I was six. Did it so that no one on the street could scare me, intimidate me, you know. Just wondered what you were getting out of it?’
‘Same, I guess.’
‘Self-defence?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Kind of. I was mugged.’
‘Oh my God,’ I said, ‘when?’
‘Like, a few weeks ago.’
‘Shit. That’s bad.’ I glanced down at the small boys on the floor and said, ‘Sorry.’ Then to Josh: ‘Did they hurt you?’
He shrugged. ‘No. Not really. I didn’t put up much of a fight, so, you know.’
I did know. I really, really did know. ‘Any idea who it was?’
‘No. Just a white guy, with a hood.’
‘Scary,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. Then he picked up his bag and left without saying goodbye.
He never came back again.
One night at around the same time I first saw Josh at the dojo, I got home and found my granddad flopped in the armchair; his skin looked grey. I said, ‘Granddad, are you OK?’
He said, ‘I think so. I’m not sure.’ He said he had indigestion, so I got him some Rennies. He rubbed his chest a lot and grimaced.
Aaron got home an hour after me and called an ambulance.
Shortly after that I was in a squeaky plastic chair at the Royal Free holding my granddad’s hand and telling him that everything was going to be all right.
But it wasn’t.
It was all wrong.
Granddad spent three days on the ward having various tests. He was finally diagnosed with angina and then, after more tests and more scans, with coronary artery disease. He was sent home with a long list of new ways in which to live his life, things he should be eating, medicines he needed to take. I could tell he had no intention of doing any of it. He’d lost his wife and his daughter, he’d been in pain for years, he had no social life and no job and now I was nearly grown, nearly an adult, he could not see the point in changing everything just so he could be around in twenty years’ time still being a problem for us all to deal with.
So he pushed away all the healthy food that Aaron bought and cooked for him and he left the pills sitting on the table next to his chair and he refused to go out for nice walks with me and then, before we’d even really started trying to save his life, he had a massive heart attack and died. He was only fifty-nine when he passed away. Sounds so much younger than sixty when you’re talking about dying.
So, there I was. No mum, no dad, no grandparents, just two uncles and two little cousins. Not enough.
I couldn’t get out of bed for a week after Granddad’s funeral. I felt hollow, like you could just blow me away or crush me under your thumb.
For the first time in my school career, I fell behind with my coursework.
Aaron went to talk to my teachers and they sent this woman over, something to do with safeguarding or pastoral care or whatever; I’d never seen her before in my life. She was grumpy with a face like a lump of pastry – it’s not like the movies y’know, where Sandra Bullock or someone like that comes over and turns your life around – and she sat on the other side of our little dining table from me, both of us with our fingers wrapped around blue mugs of tea made by Aaron, and she said stuff to me and there were words, a lot of words, and she meant well and she was nice and all, but the minute she left I just went straight back to bed.
