Lottery Boy (8 page)

“Cortnie! Shut it!” Phil was there in the room now. He was worse than Bully for noises. He couldn’t put up with any of them any more.

“You back then?” he said, looking at Jack.

“It’s all right. I’m not stayin’.” His mouth felt sticky and dry from the Coke and biscuits.

He expected Phil to lose it, go off on one, but all he said was, “Suit yourself.”

He tried to work out how long he’d been asleep. The TV was still on. News and quizzes and stuff. Must be getting on.

“You want tea or what?” Without waiting for an answer, Phil went into the kitchen.

“You stayin’, Bradley?” Cortnie asked, getting a little braver and sidling up to him. It felt like it had been a long time since anyone had called him that. It was strange hearing this other name as if he was watching the news about himself, about this Bradley boy who’d gone back to where he used to live with his mum and half a sister.

“Shut up,” he said.

She tried another tack. “We been out, Bradley… Bet you don’t know where we been? We’ve been to see
Em-ma
,” she said, speaking like a dolly did.

“
She
not here then?” he said sarcastically. He refused to use her name. “Is that
her
cat?”

“No. She’s
mine
, Bradley.”

He was flabbergasted by that. “That’s
your
cat? Who got
you
a cat?”

“Daddy did.”

Bully winced. He’d had to put up with the
D
word since Cortnie was born but he hadn’t heard it for a while now.

“Yeah, so it’s all right for you, is it? To have
cats
?”

She looked confused. She didn’t understand why he was so angry.

“She’s called Chloe. And we got the
best
one from the … litter,” she said, remembering the right word but thinking it might be wrong because it meant rubbish too. “We’ve been … to see Emma – and we got a takeout to celebrate… D’you know where we’ve been then, Bradley? We been to see Emma and someone
special
, Bradley… Bradley…” She shook his arm. “You’re not listenin’.”

He wished she would stop calling him that. But this was good news. Maybe
she
wasn’t living here after all. She was supposed to be moving in the day he moved out. Phil had been seeing her on the side, he knew that. He’d been smelling the scent of someone else on Phil’s clothes months before his mum died. And before
she
was even in the flat she’d worked Phil up to getting rid of his mum’s stuff: her clothes, her shoes, her knick-knacks; all down the chute into the bins, along with the rest of her.

“Here.”
Phil handed him his tea and Bully tasted it, then took a mouthful, a big rinser. It was how he liked it: not too hot and sweet. He heard himself mumbling, “Cheers.”

“Porr! You
stink
. Off that couch now and get and have a wash.”

Bully didn’t take it personally, it wasn’t something that bothered him, but he denied it all the same.

“I won’t say it again,” said Phil. And Bully knew he wouldn’t, so he went. “And take that dog with you,” Phil added as Jack followed him into the hall.

In the bathroom Bully ran the hot tap. He sat on the edge of the bath, watching the water creep up the side. He took his coat and top off and shoes and socks. The last time he’d got undressed was at Waterloo where he’d had a wash in the toilets,
in
the toilet for a bit of privacy – didn’t want to show his bits, did he? Flushed it first of course.

Jack was up at the door, trying to get at the cat. It reminded Bully of Declan wanting to play out. Phil shouted something about paintwork from the lounge.

“Stop scratching!” said Bully. He still had his mug of tea with him and every few sips he dipped his toes into the water, testing the temperature like he was thinking about going for a paddle but not for a swim. It was too boiling hot. His mum always ran the cold first – to be on the safe side, she said. But it was a long time since she’d run him a bath. He turned the cold tap on and knocked some tubes of make-up into the water.
Her
stuff.

“You in there?” Phil opened the door as he asked the question and Bully held his coat up to cover his top half.

He pointed at Bully’s hair. “
That
needs cutting. And
they
want binning,” he said, pointing at his jeans. “I’ll hook you out a pair of mine for now.” Bully didn’t ask where his stuff was. He could guess.

“What’s all that doin’ in there?” Phil’s voice hardened. He was looking at the make-up in the bath, the tubes bobbling about under the taps.

“Fell in…”

“Well, it’d better fall out then.” He expected Phil to go for him but he was just staring, still measuring him up. “You got taller?”

Bully nodded.

“Phil…” he said, though he hadn’t used his name for …
years
.

“Yeah, what?”

“You ever got lucky? You know, like,
lucky
lucky?”

“Took one for my country,” he said, looking down at his chest where the bullet had gone in. “That lucky, was it? Why? What you done? What you been up to?”

“Nothin’.”

Phil looked him up and down as if he was inspecting him, like in the army. “You had any trouble? Turn round,” he said and he looked Bully over until he was satisfied there was no sign of any visible wounds.

Jack started growling. “I’m all right, mate,” Bully said to his dog and put his coat back on.

“If that thing goes for me,” said Phil.

“I’m not stayin’.”

“So what you doing here for, then? What’s up? What’s going down?”

“Nothing. Just … came back… That’s all.” He paused for Phil to ask him where he’d come back from, what he’d been living off, but all he said was, “So you stayin’ for any of this takeout or what?” Bully shook his head then nodded. “Right, get and have that bath then. And clean this lot up. And while you’re here, keep that dog out of my way…”

Phil went into the hall and then turned back with his hand still on the door. “I know she’s not your mum, but Emma’s all right. She was worried about you, you know? I told her you were staying with my dad until we got settled. So you don’t say anything when you see ’er, right? She’s coming back tomorrow. Cortnie told you, did she?”

Bully nodded, looked down, showed his disappointment to the carpeted floor. So she had moved in then. Where was she? Out shopping, wasting money, he expected. On
clothes
.

“It’s been hard for us all, Bradley, all
this
… Not just you, you know – me and your sister as well. I know you were close to your mum but life goes on,” Phil said. “You can stay if you like but that thing’ll have to go sooner or later. You can’t have a dog like that around little ones.”

Bully said nothing, just waited for the door to close again. He didn’t feel anything when Phil had spoken about his mum. He thought he would get angry with him but there was nothing there. He didn’t understand it.

He didn’t get in the bath but sat on the side, thinking about whether he could trust Phil enough to tell him about the ticket before
she
got back. He didn’t particularly care about Phil saying Jack had to go sooner or later. It wasn’t in his plans to come back to the flat for good anyway. Now he could get his own place, with his own money, what did he need a crappy little flat for? But maybe he could stay tonight and see how it went and maybe tell Phil about his ticket when Cortnie went to bed. He still hated him for the bad thing that he’d done, but he might still be good for something.

He put his hand into the water and splashed it about. It was nearly right, nearly time to get in, and he looked around the bathroom for a towel. There weren’t any. He wouldn’t bother normally, just drip dry, but there was no lock on the door. He didn’t want Cortnie coming in and doing more screaming.

“Stay, stay…” he said to Jack and went to see if they still kept towels in the airing cupboard. Along the hall the smell of the paint became stronger. He looked in on Cortnie’s room. It was still pink but the posters were different on the walls, pop stars now instead of made-up things. He picked out a towel from the airing cupboard, one he remembered with the face of a washed-out train running through it. He walked along to his bedroom because that was where the smell was coming from. The door was shut. As he opened it he thought about why the roots of the paintbrush were blue.

The colour hit him like a back-hander. Everything was sky-blue, except for the ceiling. And there were pictures of cars and trains running around the top, and his bed was gone and in its place was a tiny, tiny white cot.

She
was having a baby. She’d
had
the baby … s
omeone special
. And from the colour on the four walls surrounding him he could see
it
was a baby boy.

He went back to the bathroom. He put his clothes and trainers on and tiptoed to the front door with Jack whining, knowing something was up. He unplugged his mobile, took one of the tenners off the electric meter and just before he let himself out, he felt for his glasses in his pocket and threw them on the floor.

And back through the hallway he could still hear the cold tap running.

He could not trust Phil. He should have known he was way too far down his list. If he gave the ticket to Phil, he wouldn’t get his money back.
He
would waste it all on
her
, and
it
, the new boy.

There was no one left in his family now. Cortnie didn’t count. It was just him and Jack.

Less than a Scooby-Doo later, he was back on the next train to London. There was no guard and he sat with his feet on the seat, Jack there too, waiting for someone to say something. He could tell they wanted to but nobody did, not with Jack beside him, showing her shiny little teeth. And he liked that feeling of upsetting the passengers around him, knowing they were thinking about him, that they couldn’t ignore him. It made him feel better for a while.

It was nearly dark when the train began to slow down, looking for its platform, and he could see the lights squaring up the houses that ran along the track. He got straight off when the doors opened. He didn’t look for anyone to go through the gate with, just forced his way through the automatic ticket barrier, Jack slipping underneath.

He bought three burgers and loped around the station, feeding bits of them to Jack. He spent his time adding up how many hours he had left to claim: four days = 24 x 4 + 1½ left from tonight = around 100. He didn’t give it an exact number in case it was less.

With the last of his big money he bought a sausage roll that left him with nothing to top up his phone, just shrapnel.

He turned it on anyway. He got a message. Before he could open it, he got another and another and another … and another. They kept coming.

He didn’t know any Riz but the name and the kisses made it sound like a girl.

No, he didn’t know
Chaz
or her nan.

The two Sammies must have passed his number round. And he hated them now, especially the other Sammy because she said mushy things about wanting to be his mum.

He read the rest of them: begging, pleading and even threatening him for money he didn’t have. Then his phone started ringing – numbers he didn’t know. He looked around as if it might be someone in the station – then he hit the red button and turned his phone off. He weaved through the late-night zombies and headed for the train drivers’ steps, changed his mind and left the station by the taxi-rank entrance.

He walked round the back of the building, past the end of Old Paradise Road, the dancing lady on the brick wall laughing her head off at him; at how stupid he’d been to think that he could trust Phil.

He kept licking his lips. He was thirsty from the burgers and tired, his feet dragging, his trainers paper thin at the toes. But in less than five minutes he would be dossing down in his usual spot. And tomorrow he would have to make a move and start heading for Camelot. His thinking now was that he would find someone on the way to help him, someone like the nice lady who gave him twenty quid. It was a pity he couldn’t find her again, he thought. But that was the problem with people who weren’t on the streets; you didn’t know where they lived.

Before he got to his place it started raining, and he went to McDonald’s to get a drink. He put Jack in her bag and struck lucky on the first table by the door: a hot chocolate, still warm. He picked up some sugars and took it downstairs to the toilets because he needed to wee. He filled his water bottle. The plastic crackled as he forced it to fit under the tap. His head and heart were calmer now he was back on his territory but his legs were heavy as if all that anger and upset had melted right down inside them. He couldn’t face even walking back up the stairs, let alone outside in the rain to get to his alleyway. He would take a short cut.

He went out into the corridor, past the crew room to the emergency exit and put Jack on her feet. The alarm would go off when he opened the door but the manager would just think it was rubbish being dumped. He pushed on the metal bar to break the fire door open and the alarm rang the way it always did, though louder right in his ears.