The Hiding Place(8)

My parents weren’t bad parents. They loved us as much as they could. If they argued and didn’t always have much time for us, it wasn’t because they didn’t care but simply because they worked hard, had little spare cash and were often tired.

Of course, we had a TV and a cassette player and a computer, but still, without wanting to sound like a cheesy ad, a lot of the time we made our own entertainment: I’d play tag and football with Annie in the street, we’d draw chalk pictures on the pavement or play cards to while away rainy afternoons. I never resented entertaining my little sister. I enjoyed spending time with her.

If the weather was good (or at least, not chucking it down), Mum would think nothing of shooing me and Annie out of the house on a Saturday morning with a bit of money in our pockets to buy snacks, and not expect to see us back till dinnertime. Mostly, it was a good thing. We had freedom. We had our imagination. And we had each other.


—



As I hit my late teens things changed. I found myself with a new group of “mates.” Stephen Hurst and his gang. A rough group of kids that an awkward misfit like me had no place being friends with.

Perhaps Hurst mistook my outsider status for being tough. Perhaps he just saw a kid he could easily manipulate. Whatever the reason, I was stupidly grateful to be part of his gang. I’d never had a problem with being a loner before. But a taste of social acceptance can be intoxicating for a teenager who was never invited to the party.

We hung around and did the usual things gangs of teenage boys do: we swore, smoked and drank. We graffitied the playground and tangled the swings over the top of the bars. We egged the houses of teachers we didn’t like and slashed the tires of those we really hated. And we bullied. We tormented kids feebler than us. Kids who were, I tried not to admit, just like me.

Suddenly, hanging out with my eight-year-old sister was not cool. It was mortally embarrassing. When Annie asked to come down to the store with me I’d make excuses, or leave before she saw me go. If I was out with my new gang, I’d turn away when she waved.

I tried not to notice the hurt in her eyes or the way her face fell. At home, I worked doubly hard to make it up to her. She knew I was overcompensating. Kids aren’t stupid. But she let me. And that made me feel worse.

The stupid thing is, looking back, I was always happier hanging out with Annie than with anyone else. Trying to act hard isn’t the same as being hard. I wish I could tell my fifteen-year-old self that, along with a shitload of other things: girls don’t actually go for the quiet ones, numbing your ear with an ice cube to pierce it doesn’t work, and Thunderbird is not a wine, nor a suitable drink to consume before a wedding reception.

Mostly, I wish I could tell my sister that I loved her. More than anything. She was my best friend, the person I could truly be myself with and the only one who could make me laugh until I cried.

But I can’t. Because when my sister was eight years old she disappeared. At the time I thought it was the worst thing in the world that could ever happen.

And then she came back.





4





I prepare for my first day at Arnhill Academy in my usual way: I drink too much the night before, wake late, curse at the alarm and then, reluctantly and resentfully, limp across the landing into the bathroom.

I turn the shower over the bath to max—which elicits a halfhearted trickle of water—then clamber in and catch a few spurts of warmth before struggling out again, toweling myself dry and pulling on some clean clothes.

I choose a black shirt, dark-blue jeans and my tattered old Converse. There’s first-day smart and there’s being in your boogie shoes. Stupid phrase, I know. I picked it up from Brendan, my old roommate. Brendan is Irish. That means he has any number of sayings for any given situation. Most make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but that one I always understood. Everyone has a pair of boogie shoes. The ones they sling on when they want to feel comfortable and at ease. Some days you need them more than others.

I drag a comb through my hair and leave it to dry as I head downstairs for black coffee and a cigarette. I smoke it lurking just outside the open back door. It’s only marginally colder outside than in. The sky is a hard slab of gray concrete and a faint, mean drizzle spits in my face. If the sun has got his hat on, it’s definitely a rain hat.


—



I reach the school gates just before eight thirty, along with the first dribble of students: a trio of girls, tapping away on smartphones and flicking their rigorously straightened hair; a group of boys, pushing and shoving in the jokey way that can turn into a genuine fight in the blink of an eye. A couple of emo kids with heavy fringes from under which to glower at figures of authority.

And then there are the solitary arrivals. The ones who walk with their heads down and their shoulders hunched. The slow, ragged walk of the condemned: the bullied.

I pick out one girl: short, with frizzy red hair, bad skin and an ill-fitting uniform. She reminds me of a student from my own schooldays: Ruth Moore. She always smelled a little of BO and no one ever wanted to sit next to her in class. The other kids used to make up rhymes about her: “Ruth Moore, she’s so poor, gets free meals and begs for more.” “Ruth Moore, ugly and poor, licks up shit from the toilet floor.”

Funny how creative kids can be when they’re being cruel.

Not far behind I spot victim number two—tall and skinny with a shock of dark hair standing up almost vertically from his head. He wears glasses and walks with a stoop, partly because of his height, partly because of the heavy backpack slung over his back. I bet he’s bad at football and all the sports but on his PlayStation he’s a king among geeks. I feel a personal stab of recognition.