We Can Be Heroes (24 page)

‘Oh,' I say.

I try to picture my dad and Uncle Ian as small boys, making a bonfire in the garden.

‘And by “keepy-uppies” do you mean the thing that Jed does when he bounces the ball off himself over and over again?'

I nod.

‘Well, he wasn't very good at those. Not as good as Ian – or Jed for that matter.'

Me neither
, I think.

‘But I do know that he was a morning person,' Granny goes on, smiling now. ‘And that he'd definitely have been good cop because he would let you get away with murder he loved you so much.' Then she adds, a fraction too late, ‘As I'm sure your mum does too.'

She peers closely at the paper again, scanning down the page to the last few questions.

‘What did he smell like and what did it feel like to hug him? I liked this one.' She smiles again. ‘And it's really two questions, you know, so you did come up
with ten things to ask about your dad after all.'

She looks at me and I nod, because I guess she's right.

‘So, what did he smell like? Well, for the first year or so, I remember him smelling of baby sick and milky poo.' I giggle and so does she. ‘Then later he smelt of farts as all little boys do! Then there was that horrid teenage deodorant he wore and VO5 hair gel and spot cream.'

‘And when he was grown up?' I ask.

‘He had some aftershave – I don't know what it was called, but when I smell it, I always think of him. And then he went back to smelling of baby sick again after you were born because you kept throwing up everywhere. He always had a milky blob on his shoulder, but he never did mind.'

I imagine my dad with baby sick all over his shoulder and the thought makes me smile, but when I look at Granny, she has a faraway look in her eyes, like she's trying to remember something – or perhaps forget.

‘I kept a jumper of his that he left here once,' she says a little distractedly. ‘I used to think I could smell
him on it, but I'm not sure now. But here it is anyway. If you want to put it in your box or just keep it, that's fine.' She passes me another bag from under the table, but I don't open this one. I just sit with it there on my lap – Dad's jumper, still with the scent of Dad in it. I daren't open it in case I don't recognise the smell.

‘What did it feel like to hug him?' she reads and I can see tears in her eyes now. ‘That really is a good question. These are very good. She smiles, but doesn't look at me. Her voice is crackly as she says, ‘Let me see. As a baby, he was such a one for hugs. I felt as if I could hold on to him forever.' She hesitates and I can tell she's trying not to cry. ‘And when he grew up, he still gave wonderful bear hugs. He seemed so big – my tiny boy all grown into a man.'

She stops for a long while after saying this. I sip my hot chocolate and try to think of Priti in her sari hitting the wedding guests with flowers (which is what they do apparently). They're celebrating a wedding while me and Granny are here: an old lady and a boy sitting at the kitchen table talking about someone who is never coming back.

Granny is properly crying now so I get up and put my arm round her shoulder, which is what I always do when my mum cries. Granny looks up and wipes her eyes. ‘Sorry – silly old Granny,' she says. ‘Now what's the last question? What did he think of you, little man?' She looks up at me and puts a hand to my face. ‘He thought the same as me,' she says, smiling through tears. ‘He thought you were the best boy in the world.'

We finish our hot chocolates (Granny's must have been stone cold by the time she drank it), and Granny goes to get changed and put her face on. I sit at the kitchen table, but I don't take my notebook out. I look at Dad's book, but not at the picture or the jumper.

When Granny comes down again, we get the chess set out. Since Jed's been here we haven't had much chance to play.

‘Dad played chess, didn't he?' I say, thinking of the chess trophy in the little bedroom.

‘He did,' says Granny. ‘He was school chess champion two years running!' She looks dead proud
when she says this, just like Mum does when I do something good.

‘Mum can't play,' I say, starting to set out all the little pieces on the board. ‘So I'm glad you do.'

And then Granny says, ‘Your mum is coming home this weekend.'

I look up quickly as an electric pulse shoots through my stomach.

‘She's just going to see how she is on her own for a bit,' Granny continues.

Another pulse. This one makes me feel sick. The good feeling from all the stuff about my dad drains away.

‘If she's up to it, perhaps you can join her before school starts.'

But the word ‘if' hangs in the air between us, big and resonant.

‘And if she's not?' I say, looking down again.

‘We'll see,' says Granny.

‘Will Gary be there?' I ask, still not looking up.

‘Yes,' says Granny. ‘He's going to pick her up tomorrow.'

‘So she won't be on her own. Gary will look after her.'

‘Yes,' says Granny.

I can't think about my mum, going home without me. So instead, I try to think about Shakeel's wedding: the groom drinking sherbert; the newly-weds looking at each other through mirrors. I even try to imagine Shakeel blowing himself to smithereens in the middle of the party, an eruption of colour as guests and banquet explode into the air.

‘That's good news,' I say.

One time, when we were looking on the Internet, Priti found this thing about bereaved kids who blame themselves for the death of a loved one. ‘
Sometimes you blame yourself. Did you cause the person to die?
' it said. ‘
Was it because of something you thought? Was it because you argued, stayed out late or were untidy or noisy? Feeling this can make you angry with yourself and everyone around you
.
But you did not cause the death, however naughty or badly behaved you think you have been. Death has many causes, but
is never a result of the way you think or behave
.'

Priti asked if I thought it was my fault my dad died. Did I do something really bad that caused his death? ‘No, of course not,' I said at the time. But I've been thinking about it a lot since and, despite what that website said, I've been wondering if maybe I did.

Mum says when I was a toddler, I once pulled nine keys off her laptop keyboard (she only got her thing about computers after dad died) and threw them down a crack in the floorboards. My dad was away working at the time and she had to send him an email without using the ‘e' ‘f' ‘s' ‘t' ‘a' ‘r' ‘l' ‘o' or ‘d' buttons, which was hard work as there aren't that many words you can make without using at least one of those. Try it sometime and you'll see.

Another time I dug up all the bulbs dad had spent hours planting in the garden (he was into gardening – that's one thing I know about him, I guess) and scattered them all over the lawn. And another time I took a bite out of the washing machine – the rubbery bit round the door that stops the water coming out – and it leaked all over the kitchen floor. I also did a
poo on the floor then trampled it all over the carpet before putting my hands in it and smearing it all over my clothes and my face and hair. I was only a toddler and I guess I wasn't such a clean freak back then.

So I was naughty, but then all toddlers are naughty, aren't they? That's what they're supposed to be like. That's why they call it the terrible twos, isn't it? And the things I did, although they must have been pretty annoying, don't sound bad enough to have killed my dad. Do they?

But my mum told me once that Dad had resigned from his job just before he was killed. He handed in his resignation in August and was just working out his notice period. He didn't want to work away from home so much, she said. He wanted to spend more time with his family. With me.

So maybe if I'd been a nicer baby, and more fun to be around, he'd have handed in his resignation a month earlier and then he'd never have been in New York at all that day. He'd have been at home with us.

Perhaps it's like a football match, when your team is playing and you don't want to go to the loo in case
the other side scores while you aren't looking. Maybe it was like that with my dad: I didn't keep my eye on the ball, didn't will him to stay alive enough. Because if I had, he wouldn't have died.

When it comes to my mum, I've always tried to be extra, extra careful. I've tried to look out for her: make sure she eats even when it means sitting at the table with her for over an hour; tell her I love her at least once a day; tell her she looks beautiful, that she's a great mum.

And I've always tried to be good, never get in trouble, never break the rules. Because I don't want to lose another parent.

Only maybe I already have.

Despite what Uncle Ian said about Asian weddings he stays overnight again and hangs around today to go to the street party. And for some reason he's in a really good mood. Jed, on the other hand, is acting even weirder than usual. I ask him what it was like meeting his dad's bomb-squad buddies and if they talked about any of the terror suspects they'd apprehended. But he just said, ‘It's confidential. Need-to-know basis, OK?'

‘So they really are bomb squad?'

‘I told you they were, didn't I?'

‘Um – sort of,' I say. ‘So what did they talk about?'

‘Well, I can't say, can I? It's classified.'

‘Just tell me if it's to do with Shakeel,' I say.

‘I'm afraid you need higher security clearance for that sort of information,' he says smugly. And then he refuses to talk about it any more.

So we help Priti and her brothers get things ready for the party. We set up long tables at the end of the cul-de-sac, in the bit where people normally turn their
cars, and we hang bunting from the lamp posts. Mik helps us set up a huge pair of speakers which blare out tinny music with a lady wailing (which is really cool in Pakistan apparently). Then a white van – like a fish-and-chip van – turns up to serve everyone curry from big steaming saucepans, the biggest you've ever seen, like witches' cauldrons.

Then loads of people turn up – old grannies and little kids too, all dressed up for the wedding. More Asian people than I've ever seen in my life. Zara is there with a bunch of girls wearing saris. Her sari is sky blue and it makes her look so beautiful I can hardly look at her. Mik – who looks totally different in a robe, like one of Shakeel's – hovers close to the sari girls, trying to talk to them, until Zara tells him to get lost.

And then the neighbours come out of their houses, wearing a funny assortment of clothes like none of them could decide quite what to wear to an Asian wedding. Granny (who's wearing her Sunday best, but not a hat, on Grandad's advice) says it's just like a royal-wedding street party. Grandad (who always wears a shirt and tie and isn't about to change for a
load of ‘foreigners') just goes ‘
Hmmph
!' although I reckon he's impressed too.

Uncle Ian (wearing jeans and a polo shirt) goes to stand with Stevie's mum and dad (strappy sundress; shirt and shorts combo) who've set up deckchairs on their drive and are drinking beer. The rest of the neighbours (in a mix of church clothes and stuff you might wear to the beach) all hang around the edges, hovering on their driveways and not mingling with the guests around the tables.

But then the curry is served and it's a free-for-all because it smells so good and that's when the colours start to mix up a bit. I even see my grandad chatting with Ameenah (who's wearing a red sari, the colour of poppies and the lipstick my mum wore the day she left for the hospital), while Granny chats to the ladies who made the curry about the ingredients they used.

The good thing about it is that there are so many people that nobody's really looking out for me and Jed and Priti, so we can do whatever we want. We skip curry and just eat bowlfuls of pudding, then we crawl under the tables to play Bomb-busters and Priti's
beautiful sari gets covered in dirt. We make a base under the largest table and check out people's legs for a bit. (I remember what Priti said about shoes having a personality and I imagine them with faces, wigs, accessories.) Then Jed suggests we go mine-sweeping.

‘What's that?' I ask.

‘It's when you swipe the dregs of all the beers that the grown-ups leave around,' he explains. ‘It's great. You can get really pissed.'

‘Right,' I say.

‘Bet you've never even had lager before,' says Jed.

‘I have,' I lie.

‘What does it taste like then?'

‘It's nice,' I say, trying desperately to seem more convincing. ‘And it makes you feel like laughing.'

‘Liar,' says Jed.

‘No alcohol at a Muslim wedding,' says Priti. Her face is smudged with pudding and her hair is coming loose from the tight plaits her mum put in this morning. She's persuaded her mum to let her wear her wheelies today, so, all in all, she looks a bit more like her normal self.

‘My dad's drinking,' says Jed. ‘And so are some of the neighbours.'

Jed's right. Uncle Ian has brought along a couple of six packs and is drinking straight from a can. Stevie's mum and dad are drinking too, although I'm sure my mum told me once that you're not meant to have alcohol when you're pregnant.

‘I thought you weren't supposed to drink when you're having a baby,' I say.

‘Maybe by the time you're that fat it doesn't matter any more,' suggests Jed.

Stevie's dad has taken his shirt off and his chest looks red from the sun. He and Uncle Ian are laughing loudly about something. They sound like they've drunk quite a lot already.

‘What's your dad doing here anyway?' says Priti. ‘Shouldn't he be off catching some terrorists or something?'