Stories Written on Lined Paper - 16. Memorabilia

Jason took his time walking home from school. There was no need to rush. His mum wouldn’t be there waiting for his return, to complain at him if he was late. She was now working full-time, not just mornings, and wouldn't get home until after six o'clock. But since they moved from their old house to this flat, his journey to school had doubled in length.

He would walk back from school, not bothering with the bus he took there. Walking home gave him time to be by himself and let his thoughts wander. Home at the flat, there was barely enough room for him and his mum - the flat was so small, far smaller than their old house. At school there were too many people around. Harrison Williams and his gang (they called themselves a "crew") were still calling him “Paedo Boy” and his teachers were still barely talking to him. They still seemed embarrassed to see him in their class and barely looked at him and never called on him to answer a question, but that was fine with Jason. He’d had far too much of people talking to him and asking him endless questions. Now, his mum was even talking about them going to see a counsellor together. Jason just wanted to be left alone.

Like most days, he walked home through the shopping precinct. He didn't go into any of the shops: money was so short now that he hadn’t had any to spend in ages. He liked to go to the precinct because he could sit on one of the benches there, just sit there and think and no one would bother him. He used to walk home via the playing fields at Deek Park, but Harrison Williams and his gang used to lay-in-wait for him there. They had lost interest in "punishing” him weeks ago, but he now liked walking home via the precinct.

Today he didn’t sit and wait in the precinct. It had rained that afternoon and the wooden benches were still wet. He liked his time alone but he didn't want a wet bum from doing so. Instead, he slowly walked through it. The record shop was having a sale. He would love to have gone in and seen what CDs they had, but even if he did, he didn’t have any money to buy anything, so what was the point? They only had low bandwidth Internet at the flat and he wasn't allowed to download anything. His mum was afraid of going over their tiny bandwidth limit. He'd been listening to the same music for months.

When he reached their block, he swiped his fob key across the entry lock and pushed his way in the hallway. The lift, on his way up to the tenth floor, smelt of soap and disinfectant. Today, they must have cleaned the common areas of the building. They never seemed to clean the place on the same day each week but the place always seemed clean. The lifts never smelt of urine or such.

It was a council tower block but it wasn't the stereotype of squalor and crime he used to see on television. It had a secure entry, the hallways and lifts were kept clean, and the flats all had central heating; but it wasn't the semi-detached house - with plenty of space inside and a large garden outside - where he’d lived his life until six months ago. He missed that house. Every day he returned back here, he was reminded of his old life at his old home and he missed it.

They’d had to move here, his mum and him. Their old house had to be sold to pay off the family of Lisa Peffermill, but the council had agreed to let them move here because of all the harassment they had been suffering, and the strings his grandmother pulled.

Their house had almost been the constant victim of vandalism. Words written on the walls and garage doors in bright paint, stones and bricks thrown at the windows, dog faeces pushed through the letter box - his mum always said it belonged to dogs but how did she know? - and the obscene and anonymous phone calls, often in the middle of the night.

His mum was soon a nervous mess, jumping or shivering every time the phone rang or if they heard a noise outside the house. Jason hated it as well, but he'd dealt with it in the way he always did - he’d hidden himself away in his bedroom. At least his bedroom there had been large and comfortable.

The last day they’d spent in the house had been a Saturday. Two weeks earlier, his mum received a letter saying Lisa Peffermill’s parents were suing them. It had been delivered by a courier who had banged angrily on their front door at six o’clock in the evening. His mum had thought it was the police again. Since that letter had arrived, his mum had been complaining almost constantly, snapping at him that she didn’t know what to do.

When they returned back to the house that Saturday from the weekly visit to the supermarket which his mum now demanded he did with her, they found their dog, Beckham, dead on the front doorstep. Someone had stabbed him.

Jason had just rushed up to his bedroom, wanting the safety of his bedroom, ignoring his mum's cries and screams. Beckham had been his companion throughout all of it. He could talk to Beckham about all the bad things happening, about his dad, Harrison Williams and his dickhead friends, and all the things happening at home. Beckham would listen to him and only offer affection in reply, never pushing him away. Beckham had always been happy to see him, but now Beckham was gone. Jason didn't want any more of this - he just wanted to stay in his bedroom until it all went away.

That evening they left their house and went to stay with his grandmother, his mum's mother. A week later, they moved into the flat. His grandmother had arranged it all. She was very involved with local charities and groups, and she knew her way around the local council - she had enough friends on it. She was able to get them fast-tracked into the flat.

His mum had been delighted with their new home but Jason hated it. It was tiny and cramped, no space for him to be alone in. It was the last punishment for something he’d not done, that he had no control over. He hated it.

He let himself into the flat with his key. He hung up his coat in the tiny cupboard in the hallway and then took his schoolbag into the sitting room. He could at least get started on his homework before his mum got back from work. It was Tuesday and she would be tired and in a bad mood. She always was on a Tuesday. It was always a bad day at work she said.

He dropped his bag on the sofa and was going into the kitchen to get a drink when he saw it. It was just left there on the round table at the far end of the room in front of the full-length glass windows, on the other side of which was their tiny balcony. The table on which they eat their meals. The table had been covered with his mum's paperwork that morning, when he left for school. Had she been looking at it the night before, after he went to bed? It was that laptop’s fault that they’d ended up in this cramped and unhappy flat.

It was a flat, grey cased laptop, with a silver logo embossed into the lid. It was his dad's old laptop, the only thing of his dad’s that his mother had kept. They couldn't use it - it was password protected and neither of them knew what it was; the battery had probably gone flat by now as well. Jason resented the sight of it. Why did his mum bother keeping it? They couldn’t even use it. He had to do his home on the big, old desktop computer that sat at the other end of the room on an old desk. Both of them had come from his grandmother. There was no privacy on that computer. His mum could see everything he did on it. He could only surf on it when she was at work and the machine took ages to start up or do anything.

It had been a simple mistake that had exposed everything, that had cost him his old life. One Thursday evening, after work, his dad had taken out his key memory from his jacket pocket and plugged it into his laptop. He was preparing to do some work at home. He often brought work home with him, and he always did it using his key memory.

He had barely plugged it before he was leaping up and shouting that it was the wrong key memory. His mum passed it off as just an accident, but his dad ignored her. He was panicking as if he’d lost something precious and expensive. He even knew who had his key memory and he was shouting angrily about it.

Jason couldn't see the point of all the fuss, his dad always brought too much work home with him. But his dad had snatched up his mobile phone and called his work colleague, the one who had his key memory. He spoke to the other man for a minute or so and then hung up.

He announced he was going to get his key memory back, even though it was now past nine o’clock at night. He’d driven off into the evening in his prised BMW car, and Jason would never see him again, not alive.

No one told him what happened to his dad for several days. It was as if his dad left the house and vanished and no one would tell him what had happened. Then, when he did find out, it was at the same time as everyone else: he wasn’t even allowed a few hours forewarning.

The first hint he got of the true nature of what had happened was when the police arrived at their house on Saturday morning to search it. Before that, all his mum would say was that his dad had left them, and nothing more. He’d sat out in the garden with only Beckham for company, as inside the police seemed to be tearing apart their home. They were even searching his bedroom.

What seemed like an age later, the police had finally left, carrying a lot of their possessions away sealed into clear plastic bags, including his dad’s laptop. When he returned inside the house, he’d found his mum just sitting on the sofa in their lounge with the room looking like it had been violently trashed. He’d asked her if she wanted him to start tidying up, she’d snapped, “Leave me alone, Jason!”

He’d gone up to his bedroom and started to tidy it up. The police had even searched through his underwear drawer.

His mum just refused to say what was happening - where his dad was, why the police had been there - for the rest of the weekend. He soon stopped asking after she’d started shouting at him for doing so. That didn’t stop him wondering. Was his dad a secret criminal? Was his dad involved in a big bank robbery? What law had his dad broken? His dad had to be a criminal. Otherwise, why had the police searched their house?

Monday morning, the truth had come out - so loud that no one could ignore it. His dad’s story was splashed across off the news. News websites were naming his dad and making the most awful allegations. His mum, in floods of tears, had retreated to her bedroom, refusing to come out of it. Jason hadn’t gone to school that day: he knew he’d have been a target. Instead, he stayed at home, reading those news websites, even the more sensational ones, and slowly piecing together what happened with his dad.

On that Thursday night, his dad had left their home to retrieve his key memory. When he reached his colleague’s home, he found the police waiting for him. His colleague had looked at the key memory and found naked pictures of two young girls on it, and handed it over to his wife, a police officer, who had called in a colleague.

Two police officers arrested his dad that night, taking him into custody. The next day, while being interviewed, his dad confessed to the rape and abuse of two young girls - Lisa Peffermill, aged thirteen and the daughter of one of his mum's work colleagues, and Michelle Hasnarth, who lived on the same street as them. His dad had drugged them, raped them and photographed them afterwards. He'd done it several times to both girls. That key memory had contained those photographs.

On the Tuesday morning, Jason hadn’t gone to school again. There was a loud knock at the front door. It was his grandmother with two women police officers. His grandmother was wearing a dark blue dress under a black suit jacket, not her usual clothes of jeans and a jumper. His grandmother ushered everyone inside the house, but it was one of the police officers who spoke.

“Mrs Tamworth?” she asked his mum.

“Yes,” his mum said.

“I’m very sorry but your husband was found hanging in his cell this morning,” the police officer said.

“Is he all right? Was he hurt?” his mum asked, panic in her voice.

“I’m sorry but your husband is dead. He couldn’t be revived,” the police officer said, her voice soft and yet still forceful.

“No! The coward!” his mum screamed before succumbing to floods of tears.

His grandmother had wrapped his mum up in a tight embrace and then steered her into the lounge, followed by those two police officers. No one had noticed him, sat there halfway up the stairs, listening to them.

He didn’t know why his mum had called his dad a coward. What had she meant? He couldn’t understand her. She’d cried for days after his dad died and mostly locked herself away in her bedroom, ignoring him. Why had she called his dad a coward?

He’d returned to school the next week, but by then, everyone seemed to know his dad was a dirty paedophile. That was bad enough, but suddenly everyone at school was calling him "Paedo Boy", and none of the teachers seemed be stopping them, not seriously. When he returned home, everybody on their street seemed to hate them. He could see the open and angry expressions directed at him and his mum, and several of their neighbours didn’t stop there. Suddenly his quiet little life was destroyed and he only had his bedroom to retreat into. He’d been so relieved when the half-term holidays rolled by, two weeks later, but they were only for a week, and during that week the vandalism started.

His life was ruined and he’d done nothing wrong. He hated it. Yet, there was nothing he could do to make any of it go away.

He ran his finger along the edge of the laptop's case. Every time he looked at that thing, he had the same thought: what was the point of keeping it? It was one of the few things that his mum had kept from their old house. So many of their belongings had to be sold when the house was. But they couldn’t even use the laptop. It needed a password to open it and neither he nor his mum knew it. The laptop now sat there, on that table, unused. What was the point of having it?

Two weeks after his dad’s death, the police had returned all the things they had removed from their home that Saturday morning. It was early evening and a police van had pulled up outside their house. Jason had felt fear snap at his throat: what did they want now? Two male police officer had stepped out of the van and then started to unload clear plastic bags full of their belongs. They had just dumped the bags in the hallway, gave a receipt to his mum and then left. His mum had burst into tears again, but Jason had just left her - he knew by then not to try and comfort her - it only seemed to make her angry. Much later, when they eventually got around to sorting through those bags, they found his dad’s laptop in one of them, but neither of them knew the password to open it.

When they had first moved in here, into their flat, he’d seen his father's laptop at the top of one of the few boxes of belongings they’d brought with them. He’d looked down at it and asked his mum, “Why have you brought that useless thing?”

She snapped back, "You don't touch that! It's all I've got left of him.”

“It doesn’t work.”

“I’m still keeping and that’s that.”

That was all she would allow on the subject. The few times he’d again asked why they kept it, she had always snapped the same answer at him. So quickly, he’d stopped asking her. He’d quickly learnt what upset her and what didn’t, and he avoided what did.

Why had she chosen to keep that laptop? There was no reason to. It was the stupidest of all things to keep. They couldn't even use it. All it ever did was sit there on end of the dining table, usually half-buried under papers or one of the free newspapers she always brought home each evening. It was a useless thing, like so much in his new life.

Again he ran his finger along the edge of the laptop and then pulled his hand back. What was the point of keeping that thing? They’d never get the password for it. They’d never get it working again. He’d never get his old life back.

His dad had died eighteen months ago. They had moved into this flat two months later, sixteen months ago, just over a year ago. His grandmother had found them this flat. She had also found his mum her new, full-time job working in the office of a local children’s charity and… But none of that had changed anything, hadn’t eased anything.

His stupid dad had ruined his life. People at school still called him “paedo boy”, Harrison Williams and his crew were always laughing hysterically at it. He’d lost all the friends he’d had. There were now only a few kids at school who would even speak to him. His grandmother told him he was clever, and if he studied hard, he could go to university and escape here. But he was still in Year 9 and had two more years to go. Could he last that long here? Would he go mad first?

He stepped back from the table. Why hadn’t they thrown away that stupid thing? Jason turned his back on the laptop and walked into the tiny kitchen, which opened straight off the sitting room, in search of a drink before he started his homework on that slow, old desktop computer. There was nothing else to do here. They only had the Freeview TV channels and repeatedly, his mum had told him she couldn’t afford for him to have his own phone. He hated his life.

<><><>

Holby City, the medical soap opera, was on the television and his mum was watching it intently. Since they had moved here, she had quickly grown interested in the TV soaps. Now they had to watch them every evening, no matter what else was on the TV. He hated those soaps - they just seemed to go on and on without any end, and no one in real life spoke like they did in those soaps. Whenever she put the soaps on, he’d just read a book and ignore them, or pretend to read a book.

Tonight his mum was sat in her armchair, still wearing her work clothes, intensely watching Holby City. Jason was slouched back onto the sofa and pretending to read a book. It was a book he’d found in the school library about the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. He’d found the book fascinating: it wasn’t dry and dull, as his history books usually were, an unimaginative retelling of dates and facts. This book went into the full political background that led up to the massacre, the characters involved in it, their motivations and a lot of the corruption around it. The author of the book, a woman with a double-barred surname, certainly could write and it had held his attention. But tonight, he couldn’t even concentrate on it.

His mum had arrived home late from work, finally arriving at nearly a quarter-to-seven. She’d looked tired and drawn. Her mood was tense, so he knew not to ask anymore. Instead, he’d asked her, “Shall I make dinner?”

“Thanks Jason,” she’d replied, with a half-smile.

They’d had chips and sausages for their dinner, both taken from the tiny freezer in their kitchen and cooked in the oven of their equally small cooker. He’d quickly learned to cook their dinners from the frozen food in the freezer and, occasionally, fresh food from the fridge. So often now, she would return home tired and late from work. Now, she was the only full-time person working in that office and so much work fell onto her. Often, she’d tell him this over their dinner. Jason would listen to her, but he didn’t know what to say or do to help her with her stress: he’d just listen to her and hope one day that it would stop.

He glanced up from his book and over at his mum. She was watching the television though her face looked tired and her eyes were blinking slowly, as if she was trying to keep herself awake. She did this so often in the evening now. If she did fall asleep, he’d just let her sleep. She’d usually wake up after half an hour or so. He looked down at his book again, but he had no interest in reading it.

His first lesson that afternoon had been English with Ms Heard. They were studying To Kill a Mockingbird. Fortunately, they were doing a book that he was interested in. But he was distracted throughout most of the lesson, as always happened in English. Sitting across the little aisle to him, between their tables, was Alfie Sherman. And just the presence of Alfie Sherman was too distracting.

He’d felt his attention repeatedly drawn over to Alfie Sherman’s profile on his right-hand side. It was too distracting not to sneak a glance at him every few minutes or so. Alfie’s thick hazel brown hair was in its usual style - parted on the right-hand side but swept over his head in a casual and haphazard way, looking like he had just raked his fingers through rather than combed it. His green eyes were sparkling, catching the bright afternoon sunlight, and seemed permanently alert. His softly featured face was very handsome, even in profile, and that afternoon his skin seemed soft and smooth, not a blemish to distract the eye. Alfie was wearing the same school uniform as everyone else, a dull grey blazer and a red and yellow striped tie, yet on him it actually looked good.

Jason knew he was attracted to Alfie Sherman - he wasn’t stupid - and Alfie was more than just attractive. Alfie was one of the few kids at school who still talked to him, who actually spoke to him and not just to call him “paedo boy”. Alfie only really talked to him when there weren’t other kids around, usually when it was just the two of them, certainly not in any classroom, but at least Alfie talked to him. Jason always looked forward to those conversations with Alfie, even if they were short-lived.

He also knew what being attracted to Alfie meant: it wasn’t just a friendship he wanted from Alfie. So often he dreamed of kissing Alfie, pressing his own lips against Alfie’s pale and soft lips. He wanted to do more with Alfie than that though. He knew how men made love and he’d dreamed of doing all that with Alfie, and that was the problem.

Alfie was fourteen, the same age as him. He wanted to have sex with a fourteen-year-old boy. If he was really gay, shouldn’t he be attracted to big, muscular men, like the ones who paraded around in swimming trunks on Love Island, a reality show his mum also liked watching? He knew the type of men gay men found attractive: he’d done enough Google searches in the time he had to himself before his mum got home from work. They were muscular men with broad shoulders, defined abs and muscular buttocks, but they were grown men. He was attracted to another fourteen-year-old boy.

What if he wasn’t attracted to Alfie because he was gay? What if, as he grew older, he carried on being attracted to fourteen-year-old boys? What if he was just like his dad, except he liked boys and not girls?

Everyone said he looked like his dad – well, his mum always said it and his grandmother often commented on it. Did it go further than that? Was paedophilia hereditary? Was it in your DNA? He didn’t know and hadn’t been able to find out for certain. He’d done many Google searches on it after he got home from school. He’d found lots of websites that ranted about how evil paedophiles were, lots of ones blaming paedophiles’ parents for their actions, other websites that claimed the children of paedophiles were a danger too, even one that ranted how evil his dad was, but nothing that gave him any direct answers. The nearest he found were articles that speculated on the causes of paedophilia. This ranged from being a victim of child abuse to abnormal hormones, to a differently wired brain, to access to porn on the internet and also DNA factors. But none of them provided him with any solid answers. There was nothing out there that gave him the proof one way or the other. He was left not knowing and that was the most frightening part.

His dad had hurt so many people, not just the girls he abused: he’d destroyed Jason and his mum’s lives with what he did. Jason couldn’t do that to anyone else - he couldn’t destroy lives the way his dad had, but could he be strong enough not to. He was so hung up on Alfie: he wanted to be with Alfie and touch Alfie and… Could he resist such an attraction, especially as he got older? But he had to. If he just hurt one other person the way his dad had hurt so many others then he’d kill himself. He just knew he would.

Why was it all so difficult and complicated? Other people didn’t have lives as complicated as his. Harrison Williams’s life was simple and easy - Harrison Williams was simple. Jason was so alone now. He didn’t even have Beckham to confide in anymore. Maybe if he had a few friends, people he could trust, maybe if he could talk to someone about all this? Maybe? He wasted half his time wishing his life was better. It didn’t change anything, but it didn’t stop him doing it though.

He stretched out on the sofa. His life had reduced down to going to school and spending what other time he had in this crappy flat.

Holby City’s theme music flowed out of the television as the end credits played. The program had finally come to an end. Jason turned his attention to the television. There was a police drama on next. He liked police dramas - they didn’t go on and on forever, and the bad people were always punished. After the police drama was finished, the ten o’clock news would be on and he would have to go to bed. Maybe watching the police drama would take his mind off things.

His mum let out an almost grunt, somewhere at the back of her throat, and sat herself more upright in her chair. She had been asleep - he knew it, but he didn’t say anything.

“God, I was tired,” she said, an almost yawn in her voice.

“Silent Witness is on next,” he said, nodding at the television screen.

“Good, yesterday’s episode was a good one.”

Jason looked more intensely at the television screen. She was right - the previous night’s episode had ended on a really good cliff-hanger.

“I’ve been thinking about your dad’s laptop,” his mum suddenly said, without any prompting.

“What about it?” he asked. Hopefully, she was going to smash the thing into tiny pieces.

“I was thinking you could have it.”

“What?” He’d had no idea that was what she meant. Did he even want it?

“You could use it for your schoolwork.”

“It’s useless. We don’t have the password.”

“Your gran knows this start-up that reconditions old laptops. They wipe the memory, take it back to its factory settings and then install all new software on it. They even speed it up. Your gran says the software is opensource, whatever that is, but she says they make them as good as new. And she says they owe her a favour so it won’t cost us anything. Seems everyone owes your gran favours. But you’ll have a whole new laptop, you can use it for school.”

“Will they paint the openside red?” he asked.

“Whatever for? The outside isn’t important.”

“Because if it’s the same colour, it would still be his laptop. I don’t want his laptop. I want my own.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want anything that looks like his. I’m nothing like him,” Jason said.

“But you are the image of your dad.”

“I’m nothing like him and I never will be!” He snapped back at her. He could feel the anger and fear rising in him. She had to see he wasn’t like his dad, she had to.

“All right, if you say so.”

“I’m not him and I never will be.”

“Jason, I know that. You might look like him, but you don’t sound like him and… Well, you’ll never break my heart the way he did,” his mum quietly said.

“I won’t.”

“And I’ll speak to your gran tomorrow about the laptop and I’ll make sure they paint the outside red.”

“Thanks,” he said, meaning it.

“Now, let’s watch Silent Witness. I want to know who the murderer is.”

He turned his attention back to the television too, as the recap of the previous episode quickly began to play on the screen.

He would have his own laptop. He could Google search for whatever he wanted to, He could finally find out if it was hereditary. He could finally go onto social media. Maybe he could find friends there, people he could talk to. He’d have his own, private laptop, one that didn’t look like his dad’s, that wasn’t his dad’s. The thought felt good.