When I Was Joe (19 page)

Janet is stunned, you can tell, and not sure whether to be angry or not. I can see her adding it all up – little Claire plus dark room plus chair against door,
multiplied by violent boy (whose mother was obviously a teenage slag) – and failing to work out a satisfactory answer.

She obviously has the same opinion of Claire's pulling power as my mum had of mine. I'm sure that any minute she's going to notice that Claire's shirt is not done up to her chin as usual.

‘Oh. You're still here, Joe? Maureen rang and asked where you were and I told her you'd gone home hours ago.'

‘We were talking,' I say uncomfortably, and Claire says, ‘Joe was just leaving, weren't you?'

Janet is still looking a bit suspicious. ‘Thank you very much for lunch,' I say, and she says, ‘You can stay for supper if you like. It's nearly six.'

‘No, thanks, but I'd better get back if Maureen was looking for me.'

I sprint down the stairs and say goodbye as quickly as possible. Claire is looking pink and embarrassed, and I can hear her mum hissing at her, ‘Claire, what was wrong with coming downstairs if you and Joe wanted to talk?' As I leave, I turn around and mouth, ‘Call me.' And Claire nods and smiles.

Maureen's looking a bit annoyed when I get home. ‘Where have you been? Janet said you left there at about three.'

‘What's the big problem?' I don't really think it's any of Maureen's business where I've been. She's not my mother, after all.

‘No problem, but I'd suggest you have a rest now. Doug's going to be here at midnight and we're taking you to see your gran.'

Maureen does a kind of reverse disguise on me before we go to the hospital. I have to take the contact lenses out and put on a black woolly hat, pulled down to cover up all of my hair – which looks pretty stupid and feels way too hot.

She wants me to wear shades too, but I tell her she has to choose between them and the hat because otherwise I will look like a total freak. Who wears shades at night? She pulls out some fake tan but I protest so strongly – after all, I'm due back at school on Monday – that she backs down. ‘The main thing is not to draw any attention to yourself,' she says, which is pretty rich considering she was trying to turn me into a cut price Craig David.

And then Doug arrives and we drive and drive on nearly empty roads, and almost immediately we get in
the car I fall asleep and I don't wake up for ages. And when I do, I lie quietly on the back seat and listen to their conversation without letting on that I'm awake.

‘DI Morris seems to be happy to go with his evidence,' says Doug. ‘He'll be interested in your input now you've spent a bit of time with the lad.'

‘Oh, he's not talked to me about the evidence at all, sorry to say. He's very bound up in the here and now. Very upset he was when he thought he was going to be kicked out of school. It's good that the school scared him like that. He's learned a lesson. He's a good kid really, nothing like as hard as you made out.'

‘Well that's your feminine intuition speaking, Mo, but I'm not so sure. Very manipulative, and the mum's no match for him. You know one of the defence teams is going to go on the line that he was involved? Went along with the whole thing, initiated it even, then ran off to get the ambulance. Pretty cool-headed if that's the case.'

‘Don't believe it myself. That'd be a hell of a lot of lying for a young kid to sustain. And I thought there was no blood on him? That's what the bus witnesses say.'

‘Took his time coming forward though, didn't he?'

‘Hmm,' says Maureen, ‘I can't see it. Why make up such a twisted story and come forward as a witness if it's going to make you a target for one of the biggest criminal
families in London? These people have the money and the contacts to eliminate him like they're swatting a fly. He's pointing the finger at their son and they want him to disappear. Poor kid, I think he had no idea what he was getting into.'

‘True enough,' says Doug.

They're quiet for a while – and I try not to let them hear that my breathing's gone a bit fast and shallow – but then I hear her say, ‘So the sister's kicking off? Can't say I blame her.'

‘She'll see sense,' says Doug, ‘but it hasn't been plain sailing, believe me. Lots of aggro. Hard for our girl. Not in a great state.'

‘Dear, oh dear. They'll go, though?'

‘Have to. First Julie's got to be well enough to travel, and that's not so certain.'

Julie's my gran. Where are they sending her?

‘Sooner the better, even if she's not well enough to go with them,' says Maureen. ‘I wouldn't be happy having them hanging around that hospital. Not exactly secure, is it? How about our two? I think young Ty wants to stay where he is. I suspect there's a girlfriend in the picture somewhere.'

‘Not decided what to do with them. That little stunt at school, bloody kid, made me think we'd better send them too. Crack down on him a bit, keep him out of
trouble. But it's all expensive, you know. They'll be querying the costs on this one. If we can leave them be, all the better.'

They talk a bit softer and I'm desperate to hear what they are saying and make sense of it.

‘No more news on . . .
mumble, mumble
?' asks Maureen.

‘Not that I know of. Cliff's on surveillance. They're bloody clever, though. Know how to cover their tracks. We've not been able to prove any link.'

‘Always the way. We switching cars on the way back?'

‘Yes, it's all organised.'

‘I wish we weren't doing it though,' she says. ‘It's too bloody risky for the boy.'

‘They think it'll help his granny,' says Doug. ‘We don't want it turning into another murder investigation.'

‘Exactly,' says Maureen. Then she looks around and says, ‘Time to start waking up Ty. We're nearly there.'

I make a good act of stretching and yawning and Doug brings the car round to a side entrance of the hospital. I look at my watch. It's 3 am. Not exactly normal visiting hours.

He pulls out a police radio and talks into it for a while, and then a burly man approaches the car. Doug gets out and talks to him for a minute and then reappears.
‘OK, Ty, you go with Dave here, and we'll see you later.'

‘Aren't you coming with me?'

‘No, we'll pick you up later. Don't worry. Dave will sort you out.'

What if Dave's some sort of a double agent? What if, when they're gone, he shoots me or something? I take a deep breath and get out of the car.

‘Come with me,' says Dave, and we walk into the hospital. We walk up some stairs and along a corridor. He never speaks to me the whole time. Then through some double doors and up in a lift and we walk for a bit until we're in a corridor where there's a policeman in a uniform carrying a huge gun. Like a machine-gun sort of thing. Dave and he nod at each other.

‘OK, this way,' says Dave and we walk into a ward. I wonder what the other families that come here make of the police guard. I wouldn't like it much if I had to worry about some sort of potential shoot-out at my relative's bedside. I feel incredibly guilty to have caused so much hassle to so many random people.

Dave opens a door to a side room, and says, ‘Thirty minutes.' I don't really believe him. We've driven for three hours to stay for thirty minutes?

He stays outside. I walk through the door, nervous and jumpy. What am I going to see? Who's going to be there?

There's a bed and lots of bleeping machines and my gran in the middle. Just her and me. I thought Mum and my aunties would be here too. Where are they? Didn't they want to see me? It's so creepy being here by myself.

Gran's almost unrecognisable – she looks really old and her face is a kind of greeny-white colour, except for the bits which are purple and swollen. Her eyes have big blue-black bags underneath. She doesn't even smell nice, and her head is all bound up in bandages.

I'm only certain it's her because, in between the tubes coming out of her arm, I can see the little tattoo on her arm – the heart with Mick, my grandad's name, written inside. Gran had that tattoo done when they went on honeymoon. ‘All the girls were getting them in those days,' she would tell me when I was little and wanted to know what it was.

It's only her heavy, rattling breaths that let me know she's even alive. She'd hate me to see her like this. I hate seeing her too. I take her hand. ‘Gran, it's me, it's Ty,' I say. ‘I'm really, really sorry, Gran. It's all my fault.'

She moans and her eyes flutter. My heart is beating really fast and my hands are sweating. I don't know what to say next. Then I remember Doug and Maureen's conversation in the car and I begin to wonder. Maybe this is some kind of trap? Maybe they've put me in here
by myself because they think I'll tell Gran something that I've never told anyone else. Could they be secretly filming or recording me?

‘Gran, I'm trying to do the right thing, like you said,' I say. ‘I never hurt anyone. I just tried to keep Arron out of trouble. I didn't know what to do for the best.'

I tried and failed. I failed so badly. . .

The door opens and I spring round. Oh my God. It's my auntie Lou, but looking so pale and gaunt, and her roots are so dark that it's like the ends of her hair have been dipped in yellow paint. We hug, and it's amazing to be able to feel her and know that she's really here with me in this stuffy room.

‘Ty, my love, what do you look like?' she says. ‘You must be boiling in that ridiculous hat.'

‘I am, but they said don't take it off,' I say nervously. Sweat prickles on my forehead and the hat feels really itchy.

‘Idiot police,' she says, reaching over to hold Gran's hand. ‘We think she's regaining consciousness, that's why we asked them to bring you here. She's opened her eyes a few times and even said a word or two, but she goes back again. We thought it might just nudge her in the right direction if she heard your voice. She adores you so much. We never thought they'd leave you in here on your own. You must have been terrified.'

‘I'm OK.'

‘Look at you, how you've grown,' she says. ‘You're becoming a man.'

‘Yeah, well. . . Where's Mum?'

Lou gives me a strange look. I suppose she's never heard me call Nicki ‘Mum' before. ‘Nic's in the waiting room with Emma. You'll see them later. They only want two or three of us in with your gran at any one time and they said that you and me and him' – she nods towards Dave, stationed outside the door – ‘were more than enough. Talk a bit to her. She'd be so happy to see you again.'

I lean over the bed again. ‘Gran, please will you wake up for me? I'm only here for a little while – they won't let me stay.' Again her eyes seem to flicker a little.

Lou coughs. ‘Ty, you know what she's like. We've had the chaplain here every day. We thought if you said a prayer for her, it might just. . .'

‘Oh bloody hell, Lou.' I'm not at all sure that I'm up for that.

‘Just try it, Ty. It wouldn't work if any of us did it. She'd know we didn't mean it.'

And I would? ‘Do I have to?' But I know I do. ‘Where's her rosary?'

‘It's still in her flat. The police won't let us go back in there and I asked them to bring it but they haven't yet,
but the chaplain gave us this one.'

It's very simple – ivory plastic beads, nothing like Gran's beautiful olive-wood rosary which Grandad bought her when they went to Rome and is her most special possession. But I suppose it'll do.

I put the rosary in one of her hands and take hold of the other. I stick my head as near to Gran's as possible and reach across to hold the rosary too. I like the way the beads feel smooth and slippery, and they remind me of being a little boy when we still lived with Gran.

‘Hail Mary, full of grace,' I say really slowly. I'm kind of hoping that my thirty minutes will be up before I have to get to the end. ‘The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. . .'

Gran makes a kind of coughing noise and her eyes move again. Louise pinches my arm: ‘It's working, keep going. . . I knew this would work.'

‘. . . and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.'

She opens her eyes. She opens her eyes! It's a flaming miracle.

‘Holy Mary, mother of God . . .'

Gran's hand is clutching mine. Her eyes are open. She's mouthing the words with me. I'll have to finish.

‘. . . pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our . . . our . . .'

‘Death,' says Louise. Her eyes are full of tears and
she kisses me on the stupid woolly hat. ‘Amen.'

‘Amen,' echoes Gran in a really frail and wobbly voice. And then she says, ‘Louise, is that you? Can you help me?'

After that, everything seems to move really quickly. Dave wants me to go after thirty minutes but I say no, it's too soon. The nurses and doctors need to see to Gran and Dave says I shouldn't be in there with them, so he takes me to the waiting room to see Mum and Emma. ‘We'll give you fifteen minutes together and then fifteen minutes back with the old lady and then that's that.'

‘She's not an old lady, she's only fifty-eight,' I say. Gran looked about a hundred and eight in that bed.

‘Fair enough, son. Well done for bringing her round.'

The waiting room is just as hot as Gran's room. My mum's asleep on a sofa. She looks totally different – a bit like her old self again, because her hair is long and blonde. How did they manage that? Oh. It must be a wig. Emma's sitting in the dark, reading
Grazia
magazine with a little torch. She jumps up when she sees me. ‘Ty! I can't believe it!'