The World Out There - 50. Fifty

Liam pulled his chair closer to the table and said, “I’ve got something for us to read together.”

“I ain’t reading no kids’ book,” Richie said, glaring back at him.

“It isn’t a kids’ book,” Liam replied, pushing the book in front of Richie.

“Five… Days,” Richie slowly said as he read aloud the book’s title. “What’s this shit?” Richie’s top lip curled up in a snarl that was the mirror image of Elvis Presley. Did the kid practice it in front of a mirror? Liam pushed down his frustrations - they had been here before and only yesterday.

“It’s a good book. I’ve read it and we’re going to read it now.”

“What you going to do if I don’t?” Richie now stared straight back at him, that plastic snarl still plastered on his face.

“Then I have to tell Mrs Williams you won’t, and she will have to tell Marianne, your Ward Manager. How are your privileges doing?” Liam replied.

“Okay, we’ll read your book,” Richie said, turning his attention to the book, that snarl finally dropping off his face.

Richie had made a fuss about reading aloud the day before, such a fuss that they hadn’t read anything. He’d snarled, complained, and even shouted back at Liam. In the end, Mrs Williams had to intervene. That’s when he learnt about her reporting back to Richie’s Ward Manager and his loss of privileges.

Liam resisted taking a deep breath but Richie was frustrating him, doing anything to press Liam’s buttons, or was this the way Richie just behaved with everyone? Richie had been just as rude and belligerent with Mrs Williams until she left to inform his Ward Manager, then Richie became silent and sulking.

Liam opened the book at its first page. “We’ll start here,” he told Richie, pointing to the first word on the page.

“You first,” Richie snarled back at him.

“That’s not how it works. You start.”

“I hate this,” Richie said, but he sat up and lent over the book. “Boy… Boyon,” Richie started reading aloud, but in a hesitant and almost nervous voice.

“Byron,” Liam quietly corrected Richie.

“Byron, that’s a stupid name.”

“No, just a strange name. Read on,” Liam said.

“Byron bow… bounced the ten-ace ball against the brick wall, over and over.” Richie’s voice was flat, almost monotone, but he was reading aloud and that was something. Liam pulled back the desire to smile. Richie continued. “He threw the ball at the… the row of bricks above the old… gaf… gaffy…”

“Graffiti,” Liam quietly read the word.

“Graffiti, which years ago… his mother had pay… painted. No g… g…”

“Gulf,” again Liam quietly read the word.

“No Gulf War. What was the gulf war?” Richie turned to face him as he asked.

“It was a war in the middle east, back in the early nineteen-nineties,” Liam said. There wasn’t much need to go into any more details with Richie.

“Sounds dead boring,” Richie replied.

“Come on, you haven’t finished the first paragraph.”

“All right, granddad,” Richie turned his attention back to the book and started to read again, in his halting manner.

“No Gulf War, the graffiti streamed…”

“Screamed,” Liam quietly corrected him.

“Screamed in faded day-go letters.”

“Day-glow,” Liam again corrected him.

“I’m not fucking doing this! I’m no good at this!” Richie throw his body back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“And if you don’t read then you’ll never get any better,” Liam replied. It was an uphill struggle with Richie whatever they did.

“It’s fucking stupid!”

“I’m not laughing at you, and there’s no one else here to hear you,” Liam replied. They could have finished the book’s first chapter by now, even with Richie’s poor reading, but he had to push down any and all his frustrations.

“No, you’re not,” Richie very reluctantly agreed.

“Come on, we’re going to read this first part this afternoon.”

“Okay,” Richie quietly replied.

“Right, let’s read from here,” Liam tapped the ‘No Gulf War’ on the book’s page.

“No Gulf War,” Richie read,” the gra… gra…”

“Graffiti,” Liam quietly read.

“Graffiti streamed…”

“Screamed,” Liam quietly corrected him.

“Screamed in the faded day… glow… letters,” Richie continued. “But Boy… Bryon ig… ig… ignored it, arming…”

“Aiming,” Liam quietly read.

“Aiming the ball… at the bri… bricks above it.”

This was his work experience in the Education Centre. Mrs Williams and Mrs Devine both said he was working as a Teaching Assistant for them, but most of what he did was sitting with other kids and helping them with their work. He’d help them with their maths problems, talking them through how they would plan and write an essay, talking them through their history or geography work, but so much of his time was taken up with helping other kids to read, like with Richie this afternoon.

Mrs Williams had been firm that he was there to help other kids to do their work - he wasn’t there to provide them with the answers. So, if he was helping them with their maths, then he was there to help them work through the equation, he wasn’t to do the actual multiplication or division for them. If he was helping them planning an essay, then he could show them how to structure the plan but not what to put into it.

Mrs Devine had told him, “When I read with a pupil, I use phonics and help them breakdown a word they don’t know or can’t read. Don’t you worry about that. If the pupil can’t read the word, you just read the word for them, just don’t make a fuss about it, that’s really important. I need you to give these pupils reading practice - that will be so important. Many of our pupils struggle to read when they come to us. Most of them can’t read the way you did when we first met here.”

He’d nodded his agreement with her, though her always referring to other kids as pupils was strange. It wasn’t until he started working with the other kids, Mrs Devine’s pupils, that he saw how poor most of them were at reading and other subjects.

He would do a multiplication or division question for another kid when they struggled over it. He’d tell a kid what they needed to include in their essay when they struggled with what to include, which seemed to be often. But it was reading with the other kids which had shocked him. He didn’t realise how poor they were at reading, struggling to read the simplest of sentences. He had never had such reading problems: as long back as he could remember, he loved reading and found it so easy. He didn’t tell those kids that, and he tried his hardest to hide it - they didn’t need to hear that. Why were so many other kids here struggling to read?

He liked working with Mrs Williams and Mrs Devine. Both those women were so intelligent and didn’t hide it around him. But teaching wasn’t that interesting or even being a “teaching assistant.” Again and again, he had to hold himself back and let the other kid slowly, and often painfully slowly, work out their own solution. So many times, he just wanted to step in and solve the kid’s problem in a fraction of the time, but he didn’t. Mrs Williams and Mrs Devine said that wasn’t the way to teach someone, but it was so frustratingly slow.

Richie was such a painfully slow reader, but he was also a pain with it. The kid knew he had problems but treated it with arrogant refusal. The day before, Liam had tried to get Richie to read a book that was appropriate to Richie’s reading age, but it was a children’s book and Richie had thrown an angry fit when he saw it was a children’s book. Richie was only fourteen - why was he getting so up himself? But Mrs Williams had sorted out Richie’s tantrum.

Liam read Five Days the year before and it was an adult’s novel. It was told from a child’s point-of-view, the boy Bryon, but it was about him watching his mother die. That should engage Richie, and it was short.

“B… B… B…” Richie stumbled over another word.

“Bouncing,” Liam quietly read the word.

“Bouncing a ball… off the… wall filed Byron’s mind.”

“Filled Byron’s mind,” he quietly corrected Richie.

“Filled Byron’s mind,” Richie read. “topping… stopping him thinking.” Richie turned away from the book. “That’s stupid, why he’d want to stop thinking.”

“Let’s read on,” Liam said. Shit, this was so frustrating. He had to let Richie just read or fail to read.

Sighing loudly, Richie turned back to the book.

<><><><>

Liam was sat at the long table, there in the office, his back to the rest of the room. He should be focused on the work he had to do, but he couldn’t pull his concentration away from Shelly and Jacqueline’s latest conversation. It was inane again, but he couldn’t not listen to it.

“My Kingsley said he was going to get himself a new car and it was going to be a saloon car,” Shelly’s voice carried across the office. “I thought, ‘nice, a nice BMW, all black and silver chrome.’”

“BMW… that’s…. a lovely car,” Jacqueline’s voice replied. “My Uncle Rodney had one of them and it was all lovely on the inside.”

“Isn’t he the one who’s in prison?”

“Yes,” Jacqueline’s voice said. “His car disappeared when he went inside.”

“Well, I’m all fired up that Kingsley is finally going to get himself a decent car,” Shelly’s voice continued. “And then last night he turns up at our place, finally driving his new car and… and… and it’s a Ford Mondeo. A Ford Mondeo!”

“Oh, that’s nasty. Those cars are dead common, like everyone has one.”

“I know and I have to take the shame and be seen in it.”

“You should leave him for that, or until he gets a BMW,” Jacqueline’s voice said.

“I know, but Kingsley is so loyal and stupid. He’d never look at another girl. Not like my ex, Lester. He’d chase after any other girl, really any other.”

“He tried it on with me once.”

“He must have been desperate that night,” Shelly’s voice said.

Liam looked down at the table in front of him. Again today, he was stuffing papers into envelopes. Valerie Mann, who ran the office and was nowhere to be seen, again, told him, the day before, that they were “student introduction packs” and it was “important” they were done correctly. Each envelope had a name and address printed on it, which corresponded with a name and address on an introduction letter, but the other five pieces of paper to be added, were generic printed information sheets, so it didn’t matter which named letter they were placed with.

He’d put the envelopes and letters into alphabetical order so they matched. Now he had everything laid out in piles. There was the pile of envelopes, the pile of matching letters, and then five separate piles for each of the other pieces of paper to go into the envelope. He had his own production line now. He picked up the next envelope, it’s corresponding letter and then one each of the five different pieces of paper, finally placing them all inside the envelope. It was easy work but numbingly mindless.

When Mrs Williams told him that she’d arranged work experience for him in the administration office at Cowgate Sixth Form College, he felt excited. He knew Cowgate College: he’d sat his A Levels there, and Ed was doing his cabinetmaking course there. Working in their administration office could be so interesting. He could see how a college was run; it could give him ideas. He’d had so little experience of the outside world and… well, he needed to think about what was he going to do with his life when he left Nurton Cross. It wasn’t going to be right now, but at some point he would be leaving Nurton Cross. Mrs Williams also said that she’d arranged all this with the help of Ted Morrison. He liked Ted Morrison, so this all sounded very interesting.

The reality was the opposite. The work was dull. So far, all he’d done was stuff papers into information packs. The office was poorly run. Valerie Mann, the office’s manager, would stomp around the place, issuing orders and demanding that things get done, but they never seemed to get done. Shelly and Jacqueline, her assistants, never seemed to be doing much work. Either Shelly and Jacqueline were gossiping away, usually about Shelly’s boyfriend Kingsley, or Shelly was talking to someone else on her phone and Jacqueline was reading off her phone, but neither of them were busy doing work. How did anything get done in this office?

“I’ve put a lot of hard work into Kingsley,” Shelley’s voice rang out. “I got him to dress properly, to stop wearing jogging bottoms, Puff Daddy t-shirts and over-large boxers.”

“I remember that,” Jacqueline replied, “but not the boxers.”

“I got him to cut his hair into a decent style and keep it cut like that.”

“And he looks a lot better for it.”

“I got him to shave off that bum fluff off his face - ‘designer stubble’ right? And I got him to clean under his fingernails.”

“Yes and he’s really better for it,” Jacqueline said.

“And I’m not going and dumping him so that some other skank can benefit from all my hard work.”

“Yes but he’s still got a nasty car.”

“And I’m working on it. Haven’t you listened to a thing I’ve said?”

The office door almost exploded open. Liam jumped at the sound - he still wasn’t used to it. Then, Valerie Mann stomped through the open door. It was the way she always entered this room. For a short and rather rounded-figured woman, Valerie Mann was always a commanding presence. Was it because of the dark, power suits she always wore, or was it because of her distinctive hair style? Her bright brown hair was cut short but styled as it was swept back from her face, the sides swept back as if blown by a wind and swept over the top her head in a raised/bouffant style. It emphasised her carefully made-up face. Liam didn’t know why this woman was such a commanding present, but she was.

He turned around in his chair to watch Valerie Mann. What would happen this time?

Valerie Mann stopped in front of Shelly and Jacqueline’s desks, which sat side-by-side on the opposite side of the office.

“Why aren’t you two doing anything?” Valerie Mann almost barked.

“I’m waiting for Jimmy, the new caretaker, to get back to me about the leak,” Shelly replied.

“And I’m waiting for Thames Water to call me back about the leak,” Jacqueline replied.

“Oh right, good,” Valerie Mann said, and all the ‘bark and bite’ seemed to disappear from her body.

And that was why nothing got done around here. Did Valerie Mann even see through Shelly and Jacqueline pathetic excuses? Liam could, and he’d only been here two days.

Valerie Mann turned her attention to him, stepping over to where Liam was sat. “Liam, you seem to be doing so well here,” Valerie Mann said as she looked down at the little production line he’d set up. “You’ve done over half of these already. You’re a faster worker than Shelly and Jacqueline.”

“Thanks,” he replied, not looking over at Shelly and Jacqueline. They were probably glaring back him.

“I’ve got two more mailshots I need collating. You can do them when you’ve finished here. Shelly and Jacqueline would take all day on them.”

“Thanks,” he replied. Great, stuffing more envelopes with useless pieces of papers. What experience was this? Liam smiled back at Valerie Mann, but she had already turned back to Shelly and Jacqueline.

<><><><>

The woman behind the coffee shop’s counter was wearing a black and white checked shirt, but she didn’t look back at him as Liam handed over his sandwich and bottle of diet coke.

She glanced at his sandwich and announced: “Three pound fifty.” She barely glanced at his drink before she announced: “One pound thirty. That’s four-pound-eighty in total.” She glanced back at him with her last sentence.

He handed over his five-pound note.

“Twenty pence change,” the woman said, as she handed him a twenty pence piece.

Liam took his change and picked up his lunch off the counter, before turning away from it. Ed was now sitting at a table by the window, his lunch already on the table in front of him. Liam started to make his way to Ed’s table.

When did things get so expensive? His lunch cost almost five pounds. Before he came to Nurton Cross, five pounds was a significant amount of money. He’d get a five-pound note as his Christmas present from Aunt Sadie each year. He would spend it on a couple of books if his mother didn’t make him buy socks and underwear with it first. A five-pound note had felt so special, back then; now, it barely covered the price of his simple lunch.

Liam sat down at Ed’s table.

“What’s up with you?” Ed said, looking up at him.

“My lunch is so expensive,” he replied.

“This place is okay. They don’t rip you off or anything.”

“My lunch nearly cost five pounds.”

“That’s not bad.”

“I remember when a five-pound note was something special. I used to get one as a Christmas present, from my Aunt Sadie.”

“And how long ago was that?” Ed asked.

“Ten years or so. Well before I came to The Place,” Liam replied, using their code name for Nurton Cross when they were outside of the hospital, when they didn’t want anyone over hearing that they were from Nurton Cross.

“The prices of everything goes up, it’s a bitch.”

“I know, but I don’t like thinking about it. Everything has gone up in price.”

“What’s up with you? Something’s eating away at you.”

Ed was also doing work experience that week. He’d got a placement, through Peter John, at a Darlingham woodworking workshop. It was Ed’s idea that they meet for lunch, and that they travel into and out of Darlingham together. Again, Ed had made the right decision. Having Ed with him, traveling to and from there and meeting for lunch, was a comfort. He didn’t have to wait until the end of the day to see Ed again.

Liam bit into his sandwich and chewed it for a moment. He wasn’t that hungry, but he needed to do it. He needed to eat to get his strength up for another afternoon of stuffing envelopes. He swallowed his mouthful of sandwich.

“I hate work experience,” he quietly told Ed.

“Why?”

“Because all I do is fill shitty envelopes all day. There’s two admin assistants there, but all they do is gossip and avoid doing any work.”

“My work experience is shit too. All I do is sweep up the place and make them loads of mugs of tea. The others there are all middle-aged men and all they do is fucking gossip. They made this big deal about they’re all skilled craftsmen, and I’m too junior to be even allowed to cut up a piece of wood. But all they do is sit around, drink loads of tea and bitch about their wives.”

“Then what’s the point to it all?”

“Peter John says it so we can show employers, when we do start looking for a real job, that we know how to behave in a job. You know, turn-up on time, do what they ask us to do, and not piss off early, well not all the time.”

“But we get the dull and shitty jobs to do.”

“Because these places don’t know what to do with us. We’re not employees or apprentices or shit, they don’t know what to do with us, so they give us the simplest jobs to do.”

“How do you know that?”

“Peter John told me. He gave me this talk about how to survive work experience and get a good report. He’s sent loads of kids from The Place on work experience before. He knows all about it.”

“I wish he’d told me,” Liam said.

“I remember everything he said. Do you want to know it?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Peter John said, first don’t be late back from lunch…” Ed began to tell him, as the two of the lent close together over the table.

<><><><>

Liam followed Pearl along the main corridor. As usual they were having to stop as Pearl unlocked each door and then locked them again once they had walked through it.

It was Saturday morning and he’d been sat with Ed in the Common Room. Both of them were reading - he was reading his latest book, and Ed was reading that day’s newspaper. Peter John had got Ed into reading a newspaper. Though Ed did like the entertainment and gossip sections of it, it was still good to see Ed enjoying reading. As the two of them were sat together, on one of the Common Room’s sofas, reading together, Pearl walked up to them.

“Liam, you’ve got yourself a visitor today,” Pearl said.

“A visitor?” Liam replied. This wasn’t the Saturday, each month, when Mark visited him. Who was it?

“Come, you don’t wait to keep them waiting,” Pearl replied.

“I’ll look after your book,” Ed told him.

“Thanks,” Liam said as he stood up from the sofa.

“Who’s visiting me?” he asked Pearl, as the two of them left the Common Room.

“Sorry, we just got a call that you’ve got a visitor. They didn’t say who.”

When they reached the Visitors Room, Pearl unlocked the door there and led Liam inside. Sat at the Nurses’ Desk, just inside the doorway, was the nurse Anthea, and a stocky man, with a short black beard and a completely shaved head, a man Liam didn’t recognise. But this happened so often there had been as so many new nurses had joined the other wards there.

“Liam, your visitor is over in the far corner, sat at that table on her own,” Anthea told him, pointing to the far corner of the room.

“I’ll come back for you later,” Pearl said to him, before she left the room.

Quietly, Liam walked between the tables there, half of them still empty, towards the one were the woman sat.

Halfway across the room, something caught in the back of his throat. Was it his mother? No, no, this woman was too frumpy and plain. Even if his mother had lost all her money, she would never let herself become frumpy. She always talked about the pride she took in her appearance. But the woman did look like his mother. The woman’s face had similar features to his mother’s, though her face was more round. Her mousy brown hair was styled into a neat bob, which hung down either side of her face, but its centre-parting showed off the grey roots underneath. The woman was wearing a simple-styled dark green jumper and equally simple black trousers. She was sitting upright, at the table, looking around herself.

It was his Aunt Sadie! It had to be his Aunt Sadie!

Liam stopped at her table and said, “Hello Aunt Sadie.”

“God, Liam love, you’ve changed!”

Aunt Sadie almost jumped up from her chair, and in the next moment was in front of him, giving a quick kiss on his check. The next moment, she was sitting herself down on her chair. She’d just kissed him on the check, a dry and quick kiss, but still a kiss. She hadn’t warned him or told him she was doing it. She’d just kissed him.

He sat down on the other chair there, careful to hide his awkwardness.

“I can’t get over how all grown-up you are now,” Aunt Sadie said, her voice was still light and soft, no hard edges to her words. Not the way his mother had. “You remind me of your father now, not that I knew him well.”

“How are you?” He asked back. Why was this woman being here and now? He’d last seen her… well before he was arrested, seven or more years ago. This was her first visit to him. Why after so long?

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m still working at Market Road GP Practice. They’re lovely people there. There’s a new Advanced Nurse Practitioner started, and she started taking her own clinics on her first day… Here’s me prattling on. I guess you’re wondering why I’m here.”

“Yes,” he quietly replied.

“I haven’t been to see you before because it’s so difficult to get here. You are so out of the way here. I couldn’t get here on public transport, so I would have had to get your Uncle Maurice to drive me here, and he hates driving on the south part of the M25. He calls it the Road to Hell or the Hell Road, whatever, but he always refuses to drive on it.” Mark was always able to reach here to visit him and never complained about the drive. But Uncle Maurice, Aunt Sadie’s husband, was nothing like Mark, Uncle Maurice never paid him any interest before he came here, Uncle Maurice was always busy arguing with Liam’s mother.

“How did you get here today?” Liam asked.

“Your Cousin Bobby drove me here. He’s got his driving licence now and his own car.” She referred to her son and only child, Bobby. “He’s working as an estate agent and doing so well for himself.” Bobby was two years older than him and had looked down on Liam when they were children, as if that two years’ difference made him an adult. He only had two topics of conversation - football and how great he was - and all he did was play video games, refusing to let Liam play them too. Well, he was an estate agent now. Why wasn’t that surprising? Bobby was now a dull estate agent.

“Bobby stayed out in his car, out in the car park there, playing on his game-boy thing,” Aunt Sadie continued. “Hospitals have always given him funny terms, right from when he was a little boy. Anyway, why I’ve come to see you today.”

“Yes.”

“I thought it was best that it came from me and not one of those doctors or nurses.” Was she ill or something?

“What is it, Aunt Sadie?”

“This person, from here, contacted me the other week, and they said that they were looking at releasing you in a year or so and could you come and live with me. Had to say no because we just don’t have the room.”

“Have you moved from your house?” he asked. Aunt Sadie and Uncle Maurice had lived in a big, three-bedroom, semi-detached house. His mother was always complaining that their house was wasted on Aunt Sadie who hadn’t decorated it “tastefully” enough in his mother’s opinion.

“Oh no, we’re still living there. But we just don’t have the space for you, I’m sorry. I mean, your Uncle Maurice and I have the front bedroom. Your cousin Bobby has the back bedroom, and with his poor luck with girlfriends, he won’t be leaving home soon. Plus, your Uncle Maurice is using our box room for his model railway.”

“Model railway?”

“He’s going to be taking early retirement from the council, next year. Well, they’ve told him he has to, and I said to him that he has to get himself a hobby. I’m not having him sitting there reading the newspaper all day, getting under my feet and complaining he’s bored. So, he went and bought himself a model train set and started playing with it. He’d now taken over our box room to build his model railway. It’s a bit childish but he enjoys it. He’s also joined a model railway club too. It’s full of old men drinking tea and building their model railways. It’s harmless enough.”

Without his mother there, Aunt Sadie could really talk, well when she wasn’t arguing with his mother.

“Oh right,” Liam replied. What else could he say to her sudden and unrequested flow of information?

“That’s why it isn’t possible for you to come and live with us.”

“I understand,” and he did. Live with Aunt Sadie, who now seemed to be able to witter on about anything, Uncle Maurice, who had barely said a handful of words to him all through his childhood, and his cousin Bobby who looked down upon him for no reason. That would be a mind-numbing place to live. Would he have gone crazy there? Was this an escape?

“You were always a good boy, well before you had your trouble,” Aunt Sadie’s cheeks actually flushed with embarrassment for a moment. “How is it here? Not too bad I hope, I mean you hear such terrible stories and all.”

“It’s really great here. The nurses are great and have really helped me. Plus, the Education Centre is really good. I’ve got a load of GCSEs and three, good A Levels.”

“Bobby said he didn’t want to do A Levels - they’re a waste of time and not what employers want. He did a vocational course in Business Skills and Hospitality, and he did well at it, in the end.” Bobby had never been good at school, nothing seemed to have changed there.

“How’s my mum?”

“You should know better than me.”

“What?” Liam asked. Surely Aunt Sadie still saw his mother. The two sisters always argued, and often bitterly, but it never stopped them seeing each other.

“I haven’t seen her since she moved out of her flat on the Roman Road Estate, since she became so ‘important,’ being on the TV and everything. Seems I’m not important enough for her now. She still visits you, though.”

“She stopped visiting me after I’d been here for only two months. She said it was too stressful for her seeing me and… She refused to come back and see me.”

“But that was years ago,” Aunt Sadie said, her face staring back at him with surprise.

“Yes.”

“Now I haven’t seen her in years too, but I still follow what she says. She’s always being quoted on some website or other. She is still my only sister. Well, Bobby set up a Google alarm thing on my phone so I can read what she says. She’s always talking about visiting you here and… Well, she says some terrible things about crime and punishment and all that.”

“She was always a liar,” Liam quietly said.

“That’s no way to talk about your mother.”

“She is a liar and a really… really bad mother.” He wanted to call his mother a “shitty mother,” but would that have just upset Aunt Sadie?

“Your Uncle Maurice always called her a ‘fucking awful mother,’ pardon my language, but you’re old enough now. Well… I used to tell him off for saying that, but I stopped when you got sent here because he was right and… Well, if your mum had been a better mother you won’t be here. I’m just saying.”

“I know and you’re right. I’ve known that for a long time now,” Liam said. It was a hard truth, but he didn’t deny it anymore.

“Listen to us, getting all serious and stuff,” Aunt Sadie smiled awkwardly back at him.

They fell into a moment of silence, Aunt Sadie glancing down at the table in front of her. The thought just leapt into his mind, unprompted. This was his only chance to ask this question, Aunt Sadie was in front of him, and she was the only person who could answer him. This was his only chance to find out, to find the missing piece from his life.

“Can I ask you something?”

“As long as it isn’t rude.”

“Can you tell me about my father?” His mouth suddenly ran dry. This was his only chance to find out.

“What do you want to know?”

“Who was he?”

Aunt Sadie seemed to take a deep breath and placed her hands down on the table.

“His name was Donald Andrews.”

“That’s all I know about him, from my birth certificate,” Liam told her.

“He was one of your mum’s boyfriends, but she was really serious about him. I think she loved him, but your mum would never admit something like that. There was a problem though: he was married and didn’t seem to want to leave his wife. He carried on with your mum for long enough.”

“What happened?”

“She wanted him to leave his wife to be with her, so she decided to get pregnant. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but your mum never listened. Suddenly, she’s pregnant and Donald Andrews was really angry at her. He wanted her to have an abortion, but she refused. She suddenly became all pro-life. Well, she had you and gave you Donald Andrews’s surname, which he didn’t like, but it did do something, because when you were born he did leave his wife. He got your mum the flat on the Roman Road Estate. He had some contact somewhere, and he moved in with her and you there. He furnished it and sorted it all out for her, but it didn’t work out. After just over a month, Donald Andrews left your mum and went back to his wife.”

“Do you know why he left her?”

“No, but you lived with your mum. She’s not the easiest person to get along with. I think real life with your mum was too much for him. Your mum was so angry at him but there wasn’t anything she could do. I know because she complained about it enough. And your gran, our mum, wouldn’t let your mum move back in with her…”

“My mum lived with her mother?”

“Oh yes! She lived at home until she was twenty-seven, when she got pregnant with you. She left home because Donald Andrews had arranged a flat for her. I left home when I married your Uncle Maurice, when I was twenty-two but I’m eleven years older than your mum.”

“What was my gran like? I don’t remember her,” Liam said.

“Well, you won’t remember her - she died when you were only little. I think you were four when she died.”

“What happened?”

“She had this huge stroke. She was in this coma for a week, in hospital, before she just slipped away. I am sure all the stress your mum put her through caused her to have that stroke, but your mum wouldn’t listen to a word of that.”

Had the sisters every liked each other? Weren’t sisters always supposed to be close? Liam changed his position on his seat.

“What was my gran like?” he asked her.

“Your gran was from a different age. She was very upright and proper and moral and all. She was heart-broken when your mum got pregnant with you. You were going to be born out of wedlock, and your father was a married man. Your gran was so upset. She’d been over-the-moon when Bobby was born, only two years before. Your gran… Well, she was a shadow of herself after you were born.”

“What about my grandfather, your dad? What was he like?”

“He left your gran just after I got married. He just walked out on your gran one Saturday morning. He packed his bags into his car and drove away, not a word to your gran why he did it. She was crushed by it,” Aunt Sadie said. For a moment, she shook her head slightly.

In only a few questions he’d found out so much about his family, especially his father, more than he’d ever done in the years living with his mother. Why had his mother been so tight-lipped about it all? It wasn’t as if she was hiding any awful secrets.

“Listen to me, chattering on like a chatterbox. Bobby will have thought I’ve abandoned him,” Aunt Sadie said, pushing her chair back from the table. “I promised him we’d go home via the outlet centre at Chatham. He says he needs some new shirts for work, but I think he just wants to buy more new clothes. He’s got more clothes than me.” Aunt Sadie stood up from the table, so Liam did too. “It’s been lovely to see you.”

“You too,” he replied.

Suddenly and again without any warning, she leant forward and kissed him on the cheek. Another dry and quick kiss.

“Now don’t be a stranger, when you do leave here. Byeee.”

“Bye.”

Aunt Sadie hurried off towards the Nurses’ Desk.

This was the first time he’d seen her in over seven years. Surely that made them nearly strangers. Would he be welcome at her home, even if only as a day visitor? Probably not. Liam slowly walked towards the Nurses’ Desk, he’d wait there for Pearl to collect him.

<><><><>

“But that’s good news, isn’t it?” Ed said.

They were together in Ed’s room, both sitting on Ed’s bed, though Liam was sat upright at its far end and Ed was slouched over his pillows. Liam had just finished telling Ed about Aunt Sadie’s visit and the things he’d found out about his family, especially all the things he’d finally found out about his father.

“What do you mean?” he asked Ed. He’d told Ed how messed up his family was… How was that good news?

“Because if they’d spoken to your aunt about you living with her, after you leave here, then that means they’re planning your release. That’s good news.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” he told Ed.

“You were all caught up in how screwed-up your family really is.”

“Yes, I was.”

“All families are screwed up in their different ways. They just don’t talk about it.”

“When did you start studying psychology?”

“Shit, no. I talk a lot with Peter John. He’s dead cynical, but what he says makes sense.”

“Yes, he does.”

“Tell us more about your dad. He sounds a real twat.”

“I think he was,” Liam said.