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This Is Nowhere
This Is Nowhere
This Is Nowhere
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This Is Nowhere

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Jake Morgan has never been scared of dying. It's living he can't quite commit to. Homeless, jobless and aimless, he thinks he is happy. Then one night his estranged sister Gina calls him back to the home he ran away from as a teenager. Their father is suffering from dementia and she thinks it is about time Jake grew up. With nowhere else to go, and loan sharks on his back, Jake returns to the small village he grew up in. He goes back to help his father, but ends up being forced to face the question he ran from. What really happened to his mother who vanished in 1996? Jake decides it's time he had some answers, if only to stop himself constantly wondering what the point of his existence is. Will he be able to get Gina on side to uncover the truth? Will his confused father be able to help him work out what was wrong with his mother? And when he finds it, will Jake really be able to handle the truth? This Is Nowhere is a story about a family blown apart by untold truths. A mystery that must be solved in order for a fragile young man to find some meaning in life.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 9, 2017
ISBN9781386932574
This Is Nowhere
Author

Chantelle Atkins

Chantelle Atkins was born and raised in Dorset, England and still resides there now with her husband, four children, and multiple pets. She is addicted to reading, writing, and music and writes for both the young adult and adult genres. Her fiction is described as gritty, edgy and compelling. Her debut Young Adult novel The Mess Of Me deals with eating disorders, self-harm, fractured families and first love. Her second novel, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side follows the musical journey of a young boy attempting to escape his brutal home life and has now been developed into a 6 book series. She is also the author of This Is Nowhere and award-winning dystopian, The Tree Of Rebels, plus a collection of short stories related to her novels called Bird People and Other Stories. The award-winning Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature was released through Pict Publishing in October 2018. Emily's Baby  is her latest release and is the second in a YA trilogy.

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    This Is Nowhere - Chantelle Atkins

    1

    It was the flies that drew your attention. The flies, and then the smell. The smell was fast becoming a stench. He walked past the dead rabbit every day with the dogs at his side. At first they were keen to investigate; ears pricked and tails aloft, he'd had to drag them away from the furry bundle lying at the side of the lane. He hadn't paid much attention to it to begin with. He'd just pulled the dogs on each time.  No, you can't have it, you can't have it.  By the third day the dogs were no longer interested. The flies had staked their claim. Without the dogs pulling him, he could stop and ponder it. It was all intact. No blood, no tyre marks. Just there, just dead. He felt sad, because he knew that the dead rabbit would make his mother sad. She liked watching them in the evening when the dogs were indoors. They made her smile.

    This one wouldn't make her smile. Just lying there at the side of the road. It looked stiff now. He poked it with his shoe and it didn't move. He wondered if it was stuck there. The dogs pulled him on, interested in life, not death. Further down the lane, other lives buzzed on. Bees hovered in a drugged like state over the dead nettles. Fat wood pigeons cooed in the branches of the Oak trees. A friendly horse poked its head over the blackberry bushes. The dogs panted in the sun and walked on, and the rabbit lay back along the lane, dead. It was a funny thing, he thought, how the rabbit was dead and the other things were not.

    By the end of the week the flies were all over it, and the stench was strong. Sweet, thick and cloying, it was a smell like no other. He pinched his nostrils together every time he walked past. The eyes were gone. The ears were writhing with freshly hatched maggots. It had been squashed flat by a car. It was looking less and less like a rabbit. He wondered how it had died in the first place. He wondered if it had been in any pain. He didn't tell his mother about it, but he wanted to tell someone about it. So, he talked to the dogs in low cautious tones. They plodded along at his side, leads slack, tongues lolling.

    'Would have been better if you'd caught it,' he told them. 'Quicker. Nicer. You could have eaten it. Then it wouldn't still be lying there.' They glanced at him sideways, ears rolling backwards and forwards every time he spoke. He had seen them chase and kill rabbits and it was a magnificent thing. They were so fast, so powerful, they reminded him of forks of lightning, bam! When they ran, the earth shook beneath your feet. It was like a thunder storm building. They didn't always catch what they wanted. Sometimes they came back exhausted and empty mouthed. Sometimes they came back bleeding and limping.

    'They don't feel the pain, you see,' his mother would explain to him, as she smoothed her hands up and down their long limbs, searching for wounds. 'When they're running, they don't feel the pain. They just keep running. It only starts to hurt them when they stop.'

    By the start of the next week the shape of the rabbit was disappearing under a mass of fat white maggots. Its fur had nearly all gone. It was black, wet and slimy. Each time he walked pass, less and less of the rabbit remained. He would stand and stare at it for as long as he could hold his breath. The world that surrounded him was both noisy and silent. He sometimes felt so small, that he was sure he would disappear if he held his breath long enough. He would be gone, and the dogs would be stood there alone. The dogs and the Oak trees on either side, the nettles and the cow parsley and the blackberry bushes. All these things would still be there if he wasn't. The sign pinned to the tree on the left which said 'WE LIVE HERE' under the picture of two Rottweilers, the dirt and the dust and the gravel. The buzzard's screech, and the crow's wings, and the fleeting beauty of every butterfly. The swallows on the telephone wires, and the flick of the horses' tails, and the stain on the ground that was once a rabbit.

    2

    His sister called him in the middle of the night. She called him home. She never had before. No one had. She ripped him from a dream in which he was trying to build a fence in the middle of a moonlit field. The phone vibrated urgently under his chin. He lifted his head, utterly confused by the noise and the violent throb of the mobile leaping against his throat. It jumped and twitched, alive with one name and one name only. Gina. His lips recoiled over his teeth in horror and dismay. His eyes blinked again and again. Her name, where it shouldn’t be. It had been so long that he had forgotten she was still in there. He lifted a hand, felt it trembling to life, swollen with pins and needles. He wiped the dribble from his chin. He answered it in a dreamlike state, half of his mind still on that field, wielding a hammer.

    'Gina?' The word emerged like a sulky accusation, the sneered utterance of a thwarted child. The sound of it, the feel of it on his tongue, brought back recollections of all the other ways he had once spoken her name. Gina, growled and low, festering with resentment. GeeeeeNAAAAAA! An enormous and outraged thing bellowed out at no one, at nothing. What was she doing there, inside his phone?

    'Dad’s fallen.' Tight, quick, clipped. She didn’t want to waste breath or words on him. He had always wanted to run from her words. His ears refusing to soak them up or absorb them properly. His eyes were always rolling away from her, up into his head, into dreams. He sat up now, slowly, rigidly, bones cracking and jutting into place, one hand roaming through his thick dark hair searching for something to hang onto. There was the familiar, uneasy feeling that he was falling.

    He resented the sound of her voice in his room. He could do nothing but hang his head down to his chest and wait. He had no words for her until she had moved them both forward. He waited for the inevitable click of her tongue and he pictured her face in his head, doughy cheeks in various shades of red, while her thick black eyebrows crashed down over suspicious green eyes. The click came. He slapped a hand against his face.

    'Jacob? Did you hear me?' He flinched, writhed slightly, felt the urge to curl up small. Her voice had crept up a level, strangled with self-righteousness. She was always right, wasn’t she? Some people are like that, he thought, always right. It’s the way they see things. Unshakeable. No doubts. He pictured her top lip rolling in distaste as she spoke his name. She had always spoken it as if it offended her.

    'Yes.' He closed his eyes and groaned softly. One hand found his thigh, fingers crawling outwards, clutching denim. Twenty-nine years old and his voice had belched out like the horrified squeak of an eleven-year-old caught with his hands down his trousers. He tried again. 'Yes.' Firmer. Deeper. His eyes rolled again. His spine curled over. He shifted his legs and found the floor with his bare feet. Was she still there? Maybe he was dreaming. He opened his eyes and faced the floor. Saw that one foot rested on a damp copy of The Big Issue. Pain was yawning into life around his temples, reminding him of last night's drinking. The pain seemed cruel, somehow metallic, as it crept in stealthily from behind his ears and tightened its grip across his forehead.

    'Dad has fallen,' she said again. He shrugged, and thought so what? Why are you telling me? But his mouth remained empty of words. Instead he felt his stomach try to shove something nasty up his windpipe. He swallowed it back down and tried to get his eyes to focus on the magazine beneath his foot. He remembered buying it from old man Sullivan on the corner of the high-street yesterday morning. His toes flexed. They were being bothered by something sticky. 'You have nothing else to do,' she told him. His mouth fell open, his eyes blinking at the level of disgust in her tone.

    'No?' he asked her, scratching at his head blearily, trying to remember if this was true or not.

    'No responsibilities,' she went on, and every sentence that she spat at him felt like she was picking up his faults and his flaws from a pile by her feet and hurling them one by one at his mind. 'I’ve got a job, and the kids.' He rubbed the heel of one hand into his eye. He then squinted towards the small square window on the other side of the room. The wooden blinds were only half drawn. Gaudy yellow street-light lit up his desk, and aside from that, darkness. What the hell was she doing calling him in the middle of the night? He could do nothing but yawn and allow his body to tilt back onto the bed, his big toe still poking at the sticky patch on the magazine, dipping in and out of it as he swung his feet up and down.

    'You have nothing better to do,' she informed him again. He bit his lip and stared at the massive cobweb above his bed. It stretched from the broken light bulb, to the top shelf, and he had been registering its progress for some time now. His eyes followed the web to the shelf, and he thought about his books up there, probably covered in dust and mites, probably keeping an entire mini eco-system alive. He found himself wondering about their tiny little unseen insect lives. 'He’s really hurt himself this time,' she said, slicing into his brain, sounding angrier now, as if it was his fault entirely that the old man was hurt.

    'What’s he done?' he asked with a sigh.

    'Fallen down the bloody stairs,' she responded, her brittle voice ripping into his ear canal, making him hold the phone away from his head. 'Again.' A massive sigh followed. 'Only this time he’s fractured his wrist and his bloody ankle. So, he can’t do a thing for himself, do you get it Jacob? And you have nothing else to do in your life, do you?' He knew how she was stood. Arms crossed. Foot tapping against the floor. He blinked and waited. Was she expecting him to answer that?

    'Um...'

    'I know you’re getting evicted.' Her tone had lowered, and came sneering through the telephone line with a level of contempt he thought he had escaped from years ago. And yet here it was, on the phone, in his room, inside his head. He answered her with silence. Listened to her sigh again. 'Jan told me,' she added.

    'It’s not definite yet.'

    'Yes, it is,' Gina argued. 'She told me you’ve got two weeks to get out because you didn’t pay the rent again, because you lost your job again, now if that’s the case, you know what you can do don’t you?'

    Jake Morgan sighed. Unlike his sister, he was slow to anger, but he recognised the tight feeling now growing in his chest. 'You tell me Gina.'

    'You can go home and help look after Dad.'

    He thought of something then, thought of it and reached for it like a drowning man clawing out for a lifesaver. 'Why can’t Jan do it?'

    She laughed at him. It somehow both felt and sounded like a cold wet slap. He closed his eyes against it, and listened to a laugh that made him imagine mirrors being smashed. Finally, he heard her take a deep breath to compose herself. 'Jan is seventy-six years old and riddled with arthritis, you selfish child.' He physically bristled at the scathing tone of her voice, his limbs stiffening one by one, as the urge to hurl the phone at the floor grew stronger and stronger. 'You would know that if you bothered to see her, or stay in touch with her. You would know that is completely out of the question! There is nothing she can do to help Dad Jacob, nothing.'

    'I do stay in touch with her actually,' he replied sulkily. 'She never says she’s ill, or whatever.'

    'The odd pathetic text message does not count as staying in touch Jacob,' she said curtly. He could picture her now. One arm folded on top of her ample bosom, the other arm bent at a right angle, hand on her hip, and hip cocked to one side. Her full lips pouting in between sneering. And she sounded bored now, bored of talking to him, bored of trying to reach out to him. He was boring her. 'Look, you’ll have nowhere else to live soon, so go home and look after Dad. You have nothing else to do in your life and he needs you.'

    Gina hung up the phone. He had been told. It was amazing, he thought, how she could still do that. Just pick up the phone and attempt to take the reins of his life from him. For a few minutes, he just sat on the edge of the bed and let the time pass. He drifted between indignation and fury, before returning to the more familiar guilt and shame, until he could stand it no more and stood up. He reached out for the blinds, scrambled around until he found the cord and yanked it up. It was dark, but there were cars moving up and down the road, and as he peered through the smeared glass of the window, he could just make out the hunched figure of old man Sullivan on the corner as usual. If he strained his ears hard enough, Jake Morgan could even hear the old man’s endless hacking cough. His bundle of sleeping bags and blankets was tucked behind the lamppost closest to him, and he wore his big khaki bag across his chest, already filled with the Issue’s he hoped to sell today.

    Jake pulled back from the window and slipped his hands inside the pockets of his jeans. He yawned and grimaced against the growing mountain of pain inside his skull. He thought briefly of three rounds of beers in O’Neil’s, washed down by whiskey chasers and topped up by red wine and his stomach grumbled accordingly. He didn’t want to sit in his room and think about Gina, or his father, or going home, and he knew he would not be able to go back to sleep while his room and his mind were full of them all, so he decided to go down and talk to old man Sullivan. You have to have someone to talk to, he remembered the words spoken by some nameless counsellor, years and years ago, Barry was it, or Gary? Maybe Harry.

    Jake shrugged, not knowing. He found a t-shirt on the bed, tugged it on, slipped his shoes on over his bare feet and grabbed his black denim jacket from the hook on the door. He checked his keys were still in his pocket by patting them, and left the room. Outside the room was a long, narrow landing. The lights flickered on and off, making a drowning buzzing sort of noise as they struggled and failed to do their job properly. He crept past the other rooms on his floor. There was an eerily accusing silence following him as he tiptoed down the stairs, into the lobby, and out of the front doors. Outside, the cool sea air twitched his nostrils and he could breathe again. He pulled his jacket across his chest and stalked down the road towards The Big Issue seller, smoking his roll ups in the last dusky remnants of the night. Where do you go at night old man Sullivan? He placed the words as if they were a lullaby in his head, as he headed down towards the white-haired figure. Sully had told him once that he never slept at night, only in the day. Safer that way, he had said. Oh, where do you go old man Sullivan, where do you go at night?

    The old man had matted white hair he wore in a ponytail, and it hung over one shoulder, as Jake approached smiling gently. Old man Sullivan was sucking on his roll up, inhaling the life out of it, and adding to the nicotine stains that discoloured his thick beard and moustache. His blue eyes twinkled when he spotted Jake. His face was weathered, like the wind beaten bench he slept on in the day. His cheeks permanently sunburnt, his eyes almost lost in folds of wrinkles and sagging skin. But when they caught you, you stayed still.

    'Oi it’s you, sunshine!' he called out with a hearty laugh which quickly disintegrated into a coughing fit. Jake arrived beside him and felt the urge to pat his back for him, but didn’t.

    'Morning Sully,' he addressed him fondly. The old man hawked up a gob of phlegm in reply and spat it into the gutter. His shoulders shook sporadically and uncontrollably with the coughs that constantly threatened him. He tipped Jake a wink and did a little dance while he coughed. It was nearly always the same jaunty dance, Jake thought appreciatively. Both arms pumped up and down at chest level while his feet flew out to each side.

    'You not been to sleep yet, sunshine?' Sully sucked the last bit of life from his smoke and hurled the butt into the road.

    Jake responded with a sigh, his shoulders dipping. 'I was asleep. Then I got a phone call from my sister, and that was weird, so...Saw you out here, thought I’d come and say hi. You know, see if you needed anything.'

    Old man Sullivan’s smile was so wide and reached so high, that his eyes disappeared completely. 'You know what I’m gonna’ say, doncha’ sunshine, eh?'

    Jake grinned and nodded at the off-licence across the road. 'They’re not open yet Sully.'

    'Damn and blast it,' Sully replied, stamping one foot. Jake peered down at his boot. Black. Scuffed to death. Army surplus. Bound up tight with silver gaffer tape. 'You got any money?' Jake retrieved some change from his back pocket and delivered it into the old man’s waiting hand. Another little dance followed. Jake watched Sully spread the coins across his weathered palm. '

    All I got,' he shrugged. Sully shrugged too. He shoved the money into one of the many pockets on his tattered green coat.

    'It’s a start. Come to keep me company then, ‘ave you?'

    'Don’t know what I’m doing up at this time.'

    'Oi, the day waits for no man,' Sully told him sternly, one bushy white eyebrow rising while his mouth twitched behind his grubby beard. 'You listen to me. I’m an old bastard now, I ain’t got much time left. I’ve got where I don’t wanna sleep at all, you know? You know what I’m sayin’ sunshine? Might not wake up one bastard day. Think about it this way. The more you’re awake, the longer you’re alive! Yeah?' He blew his breath out through wiry wisps of his beard and removed a packet of tobacco from one of the pockets. Jake watched as he begun to roll himself another smoke. His eyes remained cast downwards, the wrinkles on his brow deepening as he concentrated. Jake sniffed. Sully had a certain smell about him, but it wasn’t particularly offensive. It was a mixture of all the things he loved; tobacco, Special Brew, fish and chips and sea air. Jake smiled. Found his pockets with his hands. His shoulders relaxed, his spine dipped. He opened his mouth and breathed in the salt. Sully nudged him with an elbow. 'How ‘bout you?'

    'Hey?'

    'What’s your excuse for this pointless and wasteful life you been livin’?' Jake watched him finish the roll up, jam it between his grey and mottled teeth and flick the flame of his lighter. The sky was rapidly growing lighter. The sun had reached the horizon, sprawling orange and red across the dark rippling sea. He remembered how fascinated he had been with the sea as a child. All that water. All that nothingness. Stretching on forever, just like the sky.

    'Well my sister...' he began to explain. The old man nudged him again, more sharply this time, as if he was running out of time and patience and just wanted the gist of it...the short story not the long one. 'You don’t get on? Hate each other’s guts?'

    Jake grinned. 'Yeah, something like that. Anyway, she’s got wind of my recent troubles and thinks I should go back home.'

    'Oh people like to say that, don’t they? Go home, go home, never mind that some bastards never felt at home in the first place!' Sully started to cough, and reached out to grip Jakes arm. He steadied himself, leaning down and forward, the coughs ripping through him, high pitched and wheezing. Jake winced, and waited. When he had finished, the old man straightened up, released his arm and wiped his mouth on the back of one sleeve. 'Thing is, people can say that all they like, these people, these people that care and worry. But what the hell is home anyway sunshine? Means one thing to one bastard, another to someone else. Go home. Ain’t as simple as that. Bollocks.' Sully smiled a wicked smile, and his pale blue eyes twinkled under the curls of hair that danced across his forehead.

    'It’s not just that. She said our dads had this bad fall, and can’t do anything for himself. She thinks I should move back in and help him, or whatever.'

    'Oh. See.' Sully’s eyes seemed to narrow in on him then, as he stuck the roll up between his teeth and puffed on it continuously. Those things are gonna’ kill you one day, Jake thought about telling him, but didn’t, because who was he to tell anyone anything? 'Well then, there’s a dilemma my lad. A little moral dilemma for you to question on this dawning new day. Bet you didn’t expect to wake up to that?' Jake shook his head, suddenly feeling increasingly grim about it all. The news, the information she had given him, the request, (or was it an order?) to go home, it all seemed to be sinking through his body, dragging him towards the ground. He felt like sitting down on the kerb, but instead he took a long breath, dragging the sea air up into his nostrils and taking it deep inside him. What an endless child you are, Gina told him inside his head. He watched a trio of huge gulls come flapping lazily in from the sea, squawking too loudly for the silence of the rising sun, and settling themselves on the roof of the off licence where they continued to bitch and bicker.

    When he looked back at Sully, he could see the old man staring at him intensely, his sharp blue eyes somehow giving Jake the impression that he could see right through him, right into the core of him, right into his soul.

    'You not got many options left round here, sunshine, that right?' Jake made a face, God knows. Sully remained unimpressed.

    'I heard you fell outta’ favour with the big boss man. Spies tell me he’s got people lookin’ for you.' Jake swallowed a groan and brushed his hair from his face. He wished Sully had not brought it up. He did not appreciate worries, concerns, entering his mind or his thoughts. There should always be a way to chase them away, he mused, chase them away, duck and dive, drop low. Avoidance.

    'I was never gonna’ be any good at that job,' he tried to defend himself. He gave a small laugh at the absurdity of it.

    'Collecting debts? First you have to be a big muscly bastard for work like that, or people just laugh in your face. And secondly, I’m too big hearted Sully!' Jake placed one palm over his chest, just below his neck and made another face; what can you do? 'I kept feeling sorry for the bastards and letting them off!' 'Ah well, best out of it then,' Sully agreed.

    'You’re right about one thing. You are too big hearted to be running errands for the likes of them. Mixing with the Brandon brothers was a wrong move from the start sunshine. So now you can’t pay the rent.' He said it as a statement, and again Jake shrugged at it casually, flicking it away with a jerk of his head, a shake of his hair. He swatted it away before the truth of it could permeate his mind or infiltrate his guts, where he knew it would lie low and curl up, waiting for the chance to cause untold pain.

    'I’ve got a bad stomach,' he threw out the age-old excuse, the mantra of his boyhood days. He grimaced at it regretfully. What a shame. What can you do? What do people expect me to do? 'Plays me right up when I get stressed. I can’t be doing stressful jobs like that.'

    'All jobs are stressful,' Sully scoffed at him, with a dry-eyed wink. 'Life is stressful, you young fool. So now what? You got no home and no job. Ain’t that just what you arrived here with?' He grinned as Jake frowned, then released a loud and raucous laugh and clapped him hard on the shoulder. 'You fool sunshine, you fool!'

    'Lay off,' Jake said.

    'I had a job in the chippy for ages.'

    'Til you nearly set fire to the place!' howled Sully.

    'Then I worked in the bloody Bath hotel! I was a porter!'

    'Oh aye, didn’t you quit that one after a week? It wore you out. You’re your own worst enemy lad!' Jake said nothing. He could see that the old man was enjoying this. Instead of attempting to defend himself, he blew his breath out steadily and stared back at his building with a mounting sense of dread. Where would it all end? See, that’s the thing about life I don’t like, he thought, you just want to relax and not worry and it won’t let you...

    'You won’t want those Brandon brothers to find you if you can’t pay the rent, son.' Sully’s tone was softer now, and for that reason it made Jake shiver. He didn’t like it one bit, this homeless man feeling sorry for him.

    'You’ll have to do something else for them sunshine. Things could get nasty. That’s all I’m sayin’.'

    'There’s always the YMCA,' Jake murmured, looking away.

    'They might help me out again. Help me get sorted.'

    'Again?' Sully shook his head firmly.

    'That’s the problem right there sunshine. Are you special or what? They won’t let you back again. You blew it. They sorted you out with the chippy job, and the hostel. You’re meant to pay them back by behaving yourself. You’re meant to do the mind-numbing job, pay your rent and sit in your little square box of a room eating beans from a can and being bloody grateful!' Sully spat the last two words out angrily, but his blue eyes were still twinkling with amusement at it all. He stuck his roll up between what was left of his teeth and thumped his chest with a fist.

    'That’s what they want son, that’s what they expect, that and taking the Lord God as your saviour. Didn’t do that bit either did you eh?' He threw his head back and cackled joyful laughter at the sky. Jake could hear it echoing up and down the dark street. He looked down at his feet and felt like sobbing. Sully straightened up and slung his arm across his shoulders.

    'Oh you’ll be all right,' he said then. 'Go home and see your old man why don’t you then? Time you gave it another try maybe, eh? What do you know? Things might have changed. There’s folk on these streets would do anything to have some place they can run back to if they need to, you know.'

    'I know.' It was all he could say and he knew that it was true, but the truth of it all pressed down on his shoulders with an unbearable and deadened weight, numbing his mind for a moment as he tried to mentally prepare himself for it.

    'But I’ll come back,' he looked at Sully and told him, and he suddenly wanted to give the old man a proper hug. The kind that friends shared. But Sully had already pulled away from him and turned on the little radio he kept inside one of his pockets. Jake watched his scruffy black boots shuffling back and forth on the pavement, as he danced along to The Jam’s ‘A Town Called Malice.’ He walked away without saying anything. People were like that on the streets, he thought. They had their minds on other things.

    He looked back up at his building, one of the many crumbling Victorian dwellings that lined the road, and decided that if he did go home, he would get Sully something nice before he left. A decent meal maybe and some cans of Special Brew. The hostel had links to the YMCA at the other end of the road. People spilled over from there into the hostels and the half way houses, when they were more or less able to stand on their own two feet. Local businessmen like the Brandon brothers owned a lot of the rooms and bed-sits though. Jake sighed in misery as he keyed his security number into the keypad and pushed his way back through the doors.

    Before long he was encased in his room again, Sully’s words about square boxes and tins of beans ringing in his ears as he found himself back at the window, staring out. He realised he had spent much of his life staring out of windows, or staring up at skies, or across seas. Staring and thinking, and dreaming and wondering, and where had any of that got him? Well, he argued, that wasn’t the point, some people don’t want to get somewhere, some people just don’t want the hassle. At the same time though he wanted to tell someone that it was not his fault. All this failure. All this standing still. No one had showed him how to make a success of life, had they? No one had pushed him on or encouraged him to do his best. When he thought of his family, a twist of pain started to tighten in his belly and he remembered how good they all were at watching you fail and then berating you for it. An echo of an old song marched accordingly down his ear canal; Shed 7 singing High Hopes. His lips curled in response, he blew out his breath in annoyance. And I don’t have either; I never had either, not high hopes or roots.

    He looked down at the street, where a white builder's van had pulled up in front of next door. They were renovating that one, he remembered. The dossers and tramps had been moved on long ago. They had a sign up already, even as they ripped and tore the guts out of the old house plank by plank, brick by brick, a big sign reading; ‘luxury penthouses with sea views available soon.’ Available for some, Jake mused, watching the first burly builder hop out of the van. He wondered how long it would take the Brandon’s to flog off this building, and replace it with these modern, open plan flats, with balconies overlooking the sea. No room for the likes of us anymore, he thought, his breath misting up the window pane, we’ll all be shoved out and moved on anyway before long, so what does it matter? He decided not to be in a hurry about it though. There was no rush. He didn’t want Gina to think she could control him like that from afar. One phone call at an unreasonable hour, the usual insults and judgements, and he would come flying back home to please her? He snorted at the idea. Make her wait a few days, make her sweat a bit, he decided. Make her call again. Maybe she would offer to pay his train fare. He chewed on his thumbnail for a long time, lost in his thoughts, wanting to rail against it all, them forcing him out, and her forcing him back. He had no choice and she bloody knew that, and he knew it too, but try as he might to feel neutral about it all, Jake let his shoulders drop in defeat and knew the fact was he was not ready to go home. It didn’t matter what Sully said about trying it again. About other people wishing they had the choice. He was not ready to go back there. He didn’t want to go home.

    3

    The front garden of the cottage was small and edged with flowerbeds. In the long summer months, the beds were alive with the thrum of bee’s wings and the silent busying of butterflies. To the untrained eye the garden looked rambling, cluttered, a pleasing array of colours, scents and textures. As if seeds, had been scattered to the wind, and left to their own devices. But Jacob knew there was far more to it than that. Because he had seen his mother out there on her knees, wearing her green gardening gloves, her forehead creased in concentration as she dug in new shrubs and poked in new seedlings. His father liked to call the garden and its stunning show of colours a work of God. Jacob knew that it was his mother, not God, who rolled up the sleeves of her loose striped shirt and plunged her hands into the earth, and who stood out there alone in the evenings, dutifully spraying the hose pipe over it all. He knew it was her who waged a war against the blackfly and the greenfly and the slugs and the snails, and he knew this because he often helped her.

    She would pluck the offending creatures from precious plants and drop them into his bucket. She told him who the gardener’s friends were; bees and butterflies and ladybirds and worms, and who the gardener’s foes were; slugs and snails and various flies, and of course the greedy birds, and next door's cat who liked to defecate among her beds. So, it puzzled him when he heard his father declare the beauty of it all to be the work of God. Jacob had never seen God out there watering the plants, or pruning the roses, although he often looked out for him. His mother did it all, and she had the scratches on her arms and the dirt under her fingernails to prove it.

    The front garden and its borders stuffed tight with clusters of foxgloves, lupins, delphiniums and lavender, was surrounded by a thick green holly hedge and enclosed by a long wooden gate painted bright white. Jacob liked to stand on the gate and unhook the latch and let it swing him back and forth. He liked to lean over it and watch the lane, see who was coming and who was going. There were blackberry bushes on the opposite side, and when he was allowed he would go out of the gate with his bucket and fill it to the brim with the plump purple berries.

    If he lay on his stomach on the small green lawn that his mother kept so painstakingly free of weeds, he was hidden. People would walk past the garden and not know he was there. Sometimes he would hear the clip clop of horse hooves, or the pattering of children’s feet rushing past, skidding energetically after a football. He would lie hidden and listen and try to work out who was who. A slow, dragging gait and the sound of a walking stick being thwacked against the stony ground, meant old Mrs Harlow going by. She lived all the way down the lane, past Twisty Corners and around the bend, down near the ford, and she walked by every day to get her newspaper from the corner shop. When he was feeling particularly brave or rebellious Jacob would use his water pistol to fire jets of water over the hedge at unsuspecting victims, or he would try to mimic the sounds the birds made in the trees, to see if he could fool people.

    The organised chaos of the front garden, with its climbing honeysuckle and pots of geraniums and pansies and violas, and beds jammed full of flowering shrubs and towering beauties like his favourite red hot pokers, belonged to his mother. He knew it and he felt it. Just like the back garden belonged to him. It was a glorious garden for a boy, when the most important thing in life was climbing trees. A large expanse of lawn, burnt brown by the summer sun, was surrounded by trees; fir trees and fruit trees and best of all the huge majestic sycamore that stood at the far end, overseeing it all. Jacob dreamt of having his own tree house up there, sprawled across its wide branches, but his father deemed it too dangerous. He climbed it anyway, as often as he could. He would scale the heights of it and feel like he was at the top of the whole world. From up there he felt like part of the clouds, like he was in Heaven, looking down on them all. There was nothing about being so high, so far from the flat hard ground, that scared him. He mostly looked up. He could see for miles. The farmers’ fields behind the two cottages, into next-door’s garden, along the lane and as far as the three cottages further down. The main road was to the left and he watched it growing busier every year, making his father flinch and twitch in his armchair, as if they were getting closer and closer, like sharks circling their prey. Jacob didn’t mind the big road, or the cars. Sometimes there was the thrill of a fire engine screaming past the garden. Sometimes there was a traffic jam, and he would strain his ears to hear the different music that came from the cars. Madonna, Sinead O'Connor and Mariah Carey; they were the kind of things that his big sister listened to. He was not allowed in her room, but he would lie on the carpet outside her bedroom and try to peer under her door and listen to the records she played.

    There was a wind getting up today. It danced through the leaves that surrounded him, and lifted his hair from his face. It was late August and the summer had been stifling. A scorcher, his dad called it, often rolling up his newspaper and waving it about like a fan. Jacob sat in the tree, his bare legs straddling the thickest branch he had found; the one that he knew could hold his weight forever. He was using his penknife to sharpen a stick into a spear. He was concentrating so hard on not cutting himself that he did not hear his mother calling him from the house. The branches of the old sycamore waved slowly and calmly, the thick cover of leaves making a comforting swishing sound as they rustled and shook all around him. He imagined he was hidden in a deep green cave, somewhere secret. It was his secret place and he would need to defend it, hence the spear. He had already fashioned two of them, and stuck them proudly into the waistband of his shorts.

    He heard her before he saw her. She was down below, calling his name. He frowned, trying to work out if she was cross. 'Jake?' he heard her ask, and this time he peered down through the leaves, and he could see her stood there, staring brightly back up at him. His mother had long brown hair and it was loose and the wind was flicking it up and down and side to side. He watched it for a moment before answering her; he watched the way the invisible wind made it look like it had a life of its own, and it made him think of an octopus. Her hair was like a collection of tiny arms waving and swaying, ducking and swinging and whipping around her face. 'I can see you up there, you know,' she said to him, and he saw her smile, so he smiled too.

    'Hi Mum.'

    'You know you’re not supposed to be up there.' She had her hands on her hips. She was wearing her favourite faded bell-bottom jeans, and a loose white shirt. She wore a long beaded necklace with a feather hanging on it, and Jacob still liked to rub that feather, on the rare occasion that he climbed onto her lap for a cuddle or a story. He waited, wondering what to do. 'Come on,' she said to him. 'Down you come before your father catches you.'

    He sighed, folded his penknife away and tucked it inside his pocket. Taking care not to get jabbed by the spears he had made, Jacob swung his leg over the branch, felt for the knot on the tree that helped him down to the next one, and slid nimbly and easily down the tree to meet his mother. She used one hand to hold her hair back and held the other out to him. 'It’s getting very windy, you know. Dangerous to climb a tree when it’s this windy.'

    'I was okay,' Jacob shrugged at her, slipping his hand into hers and letting her lead him back to the house. 'I was holding on tight.'

    'You know your father hates you climbing that tree.'

    Jacob looked at the ground and felt a muscle in his face twitch. His mother’s hand squeezed his and when he looked up at her face she was still smiling, so he smiled back, and he felt like she was telling him something then, like they had a secret, like they agreed on something. 'Where are we going?' he asked her, and she squeezed his hand a bit tighter, and this time her smile was in her eyes as well, and she put one finger to her lips and said;

    'Ssh.'

    Inside the house, the kitchen was cool and dark, and two lurcher dogs were sprawled out on the tiles, tongues lolling from their long narrow snouts. Jacob’s mother stepped over their gangly limbs and led him to the table where she had set the cake tin. His heart started to beat faster. Had his mother been baking? Where were his father and sister? He tried to remember if they had gone out somewhere. They were usually all together, and for a moment he was so confused, he didn't know what day it was. It was Sunday, wasn’t it? They were always together on a Sunday because that was the day of rest, and so they had to go to church, and then do quiet, orderly things. His father would sit in the lounge and read his Bible and drink tea.

    Without saying a word, his mother picked up the tin, kept her hand over his and led him back over the lolling dogs, and through to the lounge. She put the cake tin down on the edge of the sofa, and did not even let go of his hand while she lifted the plastic lid of the record player. Jacob watched, feeling the heat climb up his body and fill his cheeks. His heart was thudding. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and he looked around wildly. Where had they gone?

    She had picked one of her favourite songs, and she looked at him with her bright green eyes and as the opening chords to Pink Floyd's ‘Wish You Were Here’ started to play, she took his other hand and started to dance. Jacob was confused; he always was around his mother, but the music filled his body and made it feel like he could burst with love for her, and somehow he wanted to cry when she did this, but he was too afraid to. He did not want her to think it made him sad when they danced together, when she put her records on, or she might stop doing it.

    She laughed and pulled him close and twirled him around, and he wanted to ask where his father and sister were, but he didn’t want to interrupt her or break the spell. She let go of his hands to change the record, and now she ushered him over to the sofa and pulled the lid from the cake tin. 'Your favourite,' she grinned, as he reached in and picked up a slice of angel cake. He bit into it and she pulled him onto her lap,

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