Almost True (10 page)

‘Right. Now. Helen and Danny are going to take you to the hospital. But you have to remember not to use your own name. I think we'd better use Archie's.'

‘Can't you come? Not him?'

He sighs. ‘To be honest that was all a bit much for me. I'm not as young as I was. Helen thinks I need a rest. And Danny insists it should be him.'

‘But you know . . . about the ghosts . . . you can tell better. . .'

‘I'm sorry.' His face is grim and he doesn't look sorry at all. ‘Just be honest with them at the hospital. That's all I ask you.'

Then my dad comes in and they haul me up and we stagger to the front door. Once there, they hesitate – I've got no shoes, and it's pretty obvious that my trainers aren't going to go on easily. Helen shoves some slippers on my feet and somehow they manage to get me into the car. I look carefully for Alistair and Rio but they're not there. So I sprawl over the back seat while they sit in the front.

Helen drives, and my dad's looking over his shoulder at me.

‘So, Ty, what was it?' he asks, really casually. ‘Skunk? Or maybe shrooms?'

‘Danny, just leave him be,' says Helen. I try and ignore him.

‘Pa says you were hallucinating.'

‘He's running a very high temperature, Danny,' says Helen. Her voice is a bit shaky and I wonder if she's scared of her own son. Her son who beats up women. Possibly. ‘It might not be drugs. He's probably delirious. He might even have . . . meningitis.'

‘Oh,' says my dad. He sounds – I don't know – disappointed maybe. Maybe he thinks we can do some father and son bonding over a spliff or two. He certainly looks the part. He's just a grungy old stoner. Huh. No wonder my mum thought he was a waste of space. I hope I have got meningitis, whatever that is. That'll teach him not to make assumptions about me.

We get to the hospital and they agree that Danny will help me into A & E while Helen parks the car. We're alone together for the first time. I'm so tense that when he puts his arm around me to help me walk I'm pulling in the opposite direction. As soon as possible he finds a chair and spills me into it. We avoid looking at each other.

‘I'll go and get you on the list,' he says. He stands
up and I realise that he can't give my real name to the hospital.

‘Joe Andrews,' I say. Luckily there's no one sitting near us.

‘What?'

‘That's the name to give them.'

‘Why? Nicki hasn't . . . she didn't change your name, did she?'

He doesn't seem to know what's been going on in my life. He doesn't seem to understand that I'm living with a gun to my head all day, every day.

‘Whatever. Just tell them Joe Andrews. And my birthday's September 5
^th
and I've just turned fourteen.'

He's looking at me, completely puzzled.

‘What are you talking about? I know when you were born. Jesus, I'm not likely to forget that day.'

He doesn't sound like it was an especially happy memory. I wave my hand at him. ‘Just do it. Joe Andrews. My leg is killing me.'

He frowns and mutters something about using Archie, but he goes off anyway. I have no idea what he was on about. Idiot.

By the time he's come back – he takes ages – Helen has found me. I'm leaning against her whilst she strokes my head like I'm a puppy or a baby and it is quite comforting actually, and it really seems to annoy my dad
who starts pacing around the waiting room.

It takes about half an hour before we get taken into a cubicle to be seen by a nurse. Helen tells her the whole story, including the hallucinating bit, and I have to pee into a cup – not the easiest thing to do with a busted ankle. The nurse takes my temperature again, tutting a bit when she looks at the thermometer. Then she says she's going to arrange an X-ray and find a doctor.

Helen goes to find a coffee machine. My dad slumps down in a chair next to my bed. ‘Look . . . Ty. . .' he says, ‘This isn't exactly easy for me, you know.'

Like I care.

‘Please don't think that I didn't want to be involved in your life,' he says. ‘Nicki froze me out completely, wouldn't let me near you. I don't know what stories she's told you about me, but I always wanted to be a real dad to you.'

Fuck off
is what I want to say.
Fuck off. Leave me alone. Go away. Not interested. Shut up. I don't need you and I never have and I never will and I don't want to hear it. You're too late. You weren't there for me and I'm not interested in knowing why.

‘Oh, yeah, right,' is what I actually say. My head's hurting too much to start getting angry.

He's crying. He's actually crying. For Christ's sake. I might be lying here dying of meningitis or whatever
and all he can do is cry. What sort of a wimp have I got for a father?

‘I have thought about you every day . . . every day. . .' he says, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand.

Where's Helen? She's meant to be protecting me from this kind of crap. I turn my head away, blinking in the bright hospital lights and then I see Alistair. Sitting at the end of the bed. Laughing at us.

‘Well,' he says, ‘Found your daddy, have you? Touching.'

‘Go away. . .' I say, faintly.

‘You should make the most of it,' he sneers, ‘Enjoy it. My kid's not going to have a dad, is he? My parents don't get to see me. Rio's dad's never going to see him again, is he?'

‘Go away . . . leave me alone . . . go away. . .'

My dad stands up. ‘What's going on, Ty?' he asks. But I'm only thinking about Alistair. I don't know what's real and what's not.

‘What's your daddy going to think when he finds out what you've done?' he sneers. ‘When he finds out that you stabbed your friend?'

I gather all my strength and lunge at him, screaming as loud as I can, ‘Go away . . . leave me alone, I don't want to hear it any more . . . leave me alone. . . Shut up. Shut up about me stabbing Arron. . .'
I'm spitting and swearing, using the kind of words they don't even use on TV.

I grab his neck as I lunge forward. I'm throttling the wavering phantom, squeezing tight, trying to choke the sound of laughter out of him – but my hands hit cold air and my legs can't keep me on the bed and I'm falling, falling, crashing on to the ground, slamming my head on the hospital trolley.

And then the lights go out.

‘Apparently,' says Archie, handing me a box of chocolates, ‘you thought you could fly. And you were trying to fly across the room, shouting and screaming, and when Grandma came in the room you yelled out—'

‘I know what I yelled out,' I say, stuffing a strawberry cream into my mouth. I'm not so sure about this flying business, but I'm happy to go along with whatever they think.

‘I don't think she'd ever heard that word before,' says Archie. ‘It's the one I tried on the headmaster at Allingham Priory. But I'm not sure it worked.'

We're sitting together on the iron bed in the attic, Meg curled at our feet, and we're watching a DVD on the TV which has appeared in our bedroom.

I've been home from the hospital for three days and my ankle is feeling much better. It was sprained, not broken and the high temperature was flu, not meningitis and when I crashed off the end of the hospital bed I just got a big lump on my head and mild concussion.

They reckoned the hallucinations, the ghosts, were caused by the high temperature. ‘It's not unheard of,' said the doctor, ‘especially when someone's been under a lot of stress.' Since I've been feeling a bit better, they seem to have disappeared.

Now I've just got a hacking cough and an aching ankle. There's no real reason for me to be lying in bed eating chocolates really, except I'm keeping a low profile and avoiding my dad. It's pretty easy. Whenever he comes into the room I either pretend to be asleep, or so intent on whatever film I'm watching that I can't really hear whatever he says to me.

Today he's tried once to talk to me, but I just kept my eyes on Cameron Diaz – she's pretty gorgeous, shame she's so old – and kind of flicked my hand dismissively and he stopped in mid-sentence and went back downstairs. Obviously he's not all that bothered or he wouldn't let me get away with it.

If it was anything really important I think he'd try a bit harder.

Once I'd got rid of him, he had a long conversation with Helen and Patrick about my chat with the hospital's duty psychiatrist. None of them realised that Archie was hanging over the banisters, listening to every word.

‘They're all pretending to get on and be very concerned about you,' he says, ‘but you can tell that Grandpa and your dad hate each other's guts, and Grandma doesn't know what to do about that.'

‘Yes, but why? Don't you know? Didn't your mum ever tell you anything?'

‘I've never met him before,' he says, ‘All I know about him is that he fell out with his parents ages ago and he hates children. So he meets up with my mum and her sisters sometimes, but he never has anything to do with me or my cousins.'

He's tapping four words into his laptop.

‘Post . . . traumatic . . . stress . . . disorder. There you go. That's what they think you have. It's a reaction to having a bad experience, like being in a war or something. It says here that it used to be called shell shock in the First World War.'

‘Oh yeah?'

‘Were you in a war?' he asks hopefully.

‘Yeah, Archie, I've just got back from Afghanistan.'

‘
Really
?'

‘No, you muppet, obviously not.'

I stop gazing at Harry Potter taking on a guy with a melting face. Patrick chose the DVDs and some of them are a bit random, but loads are in French, which is really cool. Lots of the others are a bit young for us, but Archie and I decided we didn't mind watching some of the Harry Potters again because it's a waste to watch new films when you're ill and can't concentrate properly, and they're quite good actually.

I've vetoed all thrillers. I don't feel great about watching people get shot. I can't watch anything that's almost nearly true to life. I'm sure Archie thinks I'm a big girly wuss.

I squint at the computer. There's about a million entries on Google.

‘OK,' says Archie, ‘Brace yourself. Here are the symptoms. Flashbacks. Nightmares. Frightening thoughts and memories. Shaking. Sweating. Not talking about the event. Numbness. Feeling distant from other people. Loss of memory. Fear of dying. Lack of interest in life. Problems with sleeping. Outbursts of anger – yes, I'd say you've got that one covered. Hyper-alertness to possible danger. And something called “fight or flight response”.'

Most of it sounds familiar. ‘What's fight or flight response?' I ask. Maybe it means that I'll start hitting people if I get on an aeroplane.

‘Hang on, I haven't finished yet. Long-term
behavioural problems. Alcohol abuse. Drug dependency.' He looks at me meaningfully. Archie still thinks I sneaked out to smoke some weed, and refuses to believe that the hospital tests proved I was totally drug-free.

‘Is that it?' It sounds like some doctor has made a random list of bad stuff and lumped it all together to frighten me.

‘Failed relationships, divorce, severe depression, anxiety disorders or phobias, headaches, stomach upsets, dizziness, chest pains and general aches and pains. A weakened immune system, and employment problems.'

‘Oh. Well, I haven't had any employment problems.'

‘You're not exactly employed are you?' he says. He's typing some more into the search engine. I think uneasily about how Joe Andrews was suspended from school not once, but twice.

‘Fight or flight response. Oh, this is quite interesting. It's the way our body is programmed to respond to things like sabretooth tigers.'

‘You what?'

‘It's about getting ready to fight or run away. Your body makes loads of chemicals and stuff. But if you don't get to fight or run away then you become aggressive, hypervigilant and overreactive.' He flicks through a few pages. ‘This article here says, “Fear is
exaggerated and thinking is distorted. Everything is viewed through the filter of possible danger.” You bottle up stress and it buggers your hormones. It can cause—' he starts sniggering ‘erectile dysfunction, constipation and difficulty urinating.'

I give him a light slap on the head, ‘Yeah, well, luckily I do a lot of fighting and running away.'

‘Seems to me the whole thing is basically that scary events make you go bonkers,' says Archie cheerfully.

‘Yeah, that's about right,' I say.

We've been getting on OK in the last few days. He's incredibly impressed because he thinks I'm a raving druggie nutcase and he voluntarily swapped beds just in case I try to throw myself off the top bunk. Obviously having a TV, a stack of DVDs, lucozade, two boxes of chocolates and a fruit bowl has also helped our relationship.

Last night, Patrick watched one of the French films with us – a comedy – and then he and I discussed it almost totally in French, which was not only really cool but also massively outclassed Archie, who has been going to France on holiday twice a year all his life but isn't nearly as fluent as I am. Patrick ruffled my hair and said he was proud of me. ‘My mother was French,' he said – which explains how he speaks it so well. ‘She'd have been delighted to hear how you speak
her language.' I'm beginning to think he does like me after all. It's a bit confusing.

Meanwhile, my dad was downstairs talking to Helen. Archie heard them when he went down to make us hot chocolate. He didn't pick up much though, he told me later, just my dad saying, ‘Look Ma, believe me, that's all behind me now.'

I help myself to an After Eight and think about whether I'd rather be me or Harry Potter. Harry Potter, I think, because you kind of know it'll all work out OK in the end and at least he gets to go to school and do fun stuff like quidditch. Also I'd like to be able to talk snake language.