Devil On Your Back E-Book

Denny Brown

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Modern Dreams
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 110

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Tracey, a teenage single parent in London's East End, pregnant for a second time, is desperate not to end up like her mother: overworked and defeated. Denny Brown was first prize winner of the 2012 Café Three Zero Short Story Competition and was shortlisted for the 2012 Writers Reign Short Story Competition. She was longlisted for the Greenacre Writer's Short Story in 2013. Tracey, a teenage single parent in London's East End, pregnant for a second time, is desperate not to end up like her mother, overworked and defeated. Having seen her mother beaten and embittered by her violent relationship with unemployed partner Pete, Tracey still feels bound to the house she grew up in and the manipulative step-father who calls her princess. Ted, Tracey's twin, is addicted to smoking marijuana, and suffers with OCD and an increasingly disturbing fear of the human body. Having abandoned his childhood dream of playing football for West Ham United, and surrounded by friends who supply him with drugs, and a girlfriend he doesn't like, Ted, in a moment of drug-induced paranoia, kills the dog of an old woman who offers him help, and hides the body in the local park. The separate threads of this compelling story draw both Tracey and Ted back to their mother's house, where Tracey makes a terrifying and life-changing discovery — download Devil On Your Back now.

Leseprobe

DEVIL ON YOUR BACK

Tracey, a teenage single parent in London’s East End, pregnant for a second time, is desperate not to end up like her mother: overworked and defeated.

Denny Brown was first prize winner of the 2012 Café Three Zero Short Story Competition and was shortlisted for the 2012 Writers Reign Short Story Competition. She was longlisted for the Greenacre Writer’s Short Story in 2013.

Tracey, a teenage single parent in London’s East End, pregnant for a second time, is desperate not to end up like her mother, overworked and defeated. Having seen her mother beaten and embittered by her violent relationship with unemployed partner Pete, Tracey still feels bound to the house she grew up in and the manipulative step-father who calls her princess.

Ted, Tracey’s twin, is addicted to smoking marijuana, and suffers with OCD and an increasingly disturbing fear of the human body. Having abandoned his childhood dream of playing football for West Ham United, and surrounded by friends who supply him with drugs, and a girlfriend he doesn’t like, Ted, in a moment of drug-induced paranoia, kills the dog of an old woman who offers him help, and hides the body in the local park.

The separate threads of this compelling story draw both Tracey and Ted back to their mother’s house, where Tracey makes a terrifying and life-changing discovery.

DENNY BROWN was born in East London in 1961. She won first prize in the Cafe Three Zero short story competition in 2012 with ‘The Echelon’, which was subsequently published in an e-book compendium entitled Random in 2013. Her short story ‘If the Shoe Fits’ was long-listed for the Greenacre Writers competition in 2013. She now lives in Essex and longs to own a cottage in Scotland.

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Denny Brown, 2014

The right of Denny Brown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2014

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-005-8 electronic

For Dan, Jade, Ruby, Maxime and Meghann whose love keeps me going

Chapter 1

Staying the Night

THE KEY SLIPS from Tracey’s numb gloveless hands before she can slide it into the lock. The front door is greying, the paintwork thin, patchy, as if it grows old.

‘Dammit,’ she says as she places her heavy carrier bag onto the stone step and fumbles for the missing key.

The fog they had woken to this morning had barely cleared, and the lingering stringy strands were now swollen into grey-white mushroom clouds that shifted eerily behind them, smothering the world beyond the rotten front gate.

‘Cold, Mummy,’ says Lulu, in the nasal high-pitched voice peculiar to two-year olds and cartoon characters.

‘I’m cold too,’ says Tracey. They are both wearing thin cardigans and Tracey can feel chilly air seeping through the ladder in her stockings, popping goose bumps beneath the flesh of her calf. ‘Where the hell has it gone?’ Her fingers scrape against cold rough stone, clogging the underside of her painted nails with dirt. ‘Did you see where it went?’

Lulu sniffs loudly and shakes her head. Her bottom lip is rolled out and quivers with tears that threaten to spill at any moment.

Tracey stops fumbling, rubs her daughter’s arms briskly in a vain attempt to instil calm and warmth, the way her own mother used to do with Tracey when she were little. They came directly from the mother and toddler group held in the Methodist church hall, and Lulu’s pink and white polka-dot dress is too flimsy to offer any form of heat. Rummaging in the carrier bag, which is piled high with layers of fabric, Tracey produces a hand-sewn, patchwork table cloth, which she wraps around her daughter’s shoulders. As she does so, the key clinks onto the uneven path at their feet.

‘Found it,’ Tracey breathes an audible sigh of relief. ‘Better?’

The child nods, shiny jet-black pigtails swinging around her face, as she clings tightly to the multi-coloured cloth now bunched up beneath her chin.

Index finger held to pursed lips warning Lulu to be quiet, Tracey opens the front door to her mother’s house and ushers her daughter inside, into the dim, windowless entrance hallway. With the door closed behind them it is difficult to see. She fumbles for the light switch, disorientated within the confined space.

She jumps visibly as her fingers make contact with warm skin instead of the knobbly painted switch that she was expecting to feel. Bright light from an un-shaded bulb floods the narrow passageway, illuminating the brown and orange swirls of the peeling wallpaper, and the mottled grey-green patches of damp, where glossed wooden coving had once hidden the join between wall and ceiling.

‘Hello, Trace.’ The silver-haired man still has his finger on the light switch, in his other hand, a rolled-up newspaper. His back is slightly hunched, giving him the appearance of someone much shorter than his actual height. He wears a royal blue velour dressing gown in the middle of the afternoon, and red striped carpet slippers, the kind that are brought home from shoe shops in dusty narrow boxes with ill-fitting lids. The loose flaps of his jowls overhang the stiff white collar of the shirt beneath the dressing gown, but despite the slackness, and the slowing movements, he still retains traces of the handsome man he once was.

‘Bloody hell, Pete,’ says Tracey. ‘You scared the life out of me.’

‘Blood hell, Pete,’ says Lulu, mimicking her mother.

‘Lulu, that’s naughty.’

Pete laughs out loud. His breath smells of cigarette smoke and Tracey turns away, not wanting his breath on her face. It is bad enough that the scent of his cologne has seeped into the hallway, and under her skin, and into her nostrils.

She recalls when her mum first met Pete, at the working men’s club; how he brought her mother home, tipsy on port and lemonade, and stayed the night on the couch, just to make sure that she was okay. A week later, his cologne appeared in the bathroom alongside Tracey’s mother’s cheap lavender-fragranced talc from the local chemist. He wore Brut. Tracey often caught her mum, in those early days, dabbing the strong woody scent on to her own wrists. That was more unsettling than the appearance of male-coloured socks and underpants on the washing line; she could never tell which one of them had been in her bedroom.

‘Leave her be, Trace,’ says Pete. Turning to Lulu, he says, ‘Come here, my little princess. Come give me a hug.’ Bending as far as his arthritic joints will allow, he tucks the newspaper scroll into his armpit and hold his hands out to the child. She rushes into his embrace eagerly, still clinging to the tablecloth around her shoulders. ‘And what’s this?’ he says scooping her into his arms, and straightening slowly. ‘Your princess cloak?’

‘No,’ the child says, with an expression of seriousness on her face. ‘Mummy made it.’

Pete turns to Tracey, eyebrows raised, but she is preoccupied with covering her daughter’s exposed plump legs with the patchwork cloth.

‘Are you staying, Trace?’ he asks.

Tracey glances at the dingy staircase, to the upper level, as if she might see what lies above them in the darkened rooms.

Behind Pete, the door to the living room opens and a tall blonde-haired man in a raggedy coat and beige paisley-patterned scarf emerges. In his hand, he also carries a folded newspaper.

‘Hello, Tracey love,’ he says. ‘And Lulu.’ He tickles the child awkwardly beneath her chin. Lulu turns her face away from the stranger’s fingers in disgust, hides her head against Pete’s shoulder.

‘Jimmy,’ says Tracey, with a brief nod in the man’s direction.

‘You’re looking se … lovely as ever,’ says Jimmy. He smiles, head bowed, as if embarrassed by his own compliment.

Ignoring the comment, Tracey says to Pete, ‘Is Mum in?’

‘Tracey Batchelor, where’s your manners, girl?’ Pete shakes his head. ‘Your mum would be-’

‘It’s fine, mate,’ says Jimmy, interrupting.

‘It is not fine,’ Pete persists. ‘Show some respect.’

For an interminable second, Tracey stares at Pete. ‘Thank you, Jimmy,’ she says, forcing a smile to her lips. ‘You’re looking lovely too.’

Now, the fair-haired man blushes, cheeks staining a mottled ruddy shade of pink. He stares at his feet, at his clumsy, misshapen trainers. ‘I’d best be going,’ he says.

‘Don’t want to miss the race.’ Tracey raises her watch-less wrist to her eyes. ‘Heaven forbid you would have the time to look for a job.’

‘Tracey!’ says Pete.

‘It’s fine,’ repeats Jimmy, squeezing past Tracey in the stark light, back pressed against the wall. His coat smells stale, fishy, and is studded with tiny, black-tipped hairs. ‘Really it’s fine.’

Eyes fixated on her daughter’s legs, Tracey avoids meeting the man’s eyes.

‘Good to see you again, Trace,’ he says, before he closes the door behind him, trapping the fog outside.

‘What’s happened to you?’ says Pete, shifting Lulu so that her weight rests on his other arm. ‘What happened to the little girl with her hair all up in ponytails, and her long white socks? It wasn’t that long ago.’

‘Is Mum in?’ Tracey again looks towards the staircase.

‘Look at you: holes in your tights and a dress up to your backside. Your mother didn’t bring you up to be a tramp.’

‘No, my mother was too busy working to keep you in beer and fags.’ Tracey chews her bottom lip. Pete always has this abrasive effect on her, in spite of her good intentions to remain unruffled. From the smell of cigarettes, and the squint in Pete’s eyes, she guesses that he and Jimmy have spent most of the day studying form. It’s Friday, and she was expecting him to have been at the club as usual. His Saturdays are generally spent watching the racing; Mondays he has to sign on, and the rest of the week is divided between the bookies, the pub, and the chippie.

Lulu, bored with incomprehensible adult conversation, bucks her legs, almost spilling from Pete’s grasp. ‘Gan-dad Pete,’ she says.

‘Just a moment, princess,’ says Pete, holding the child’s arm still. ‘Are you staying tonight, Trace?’

Tracey shakes her head. ‘I don’t live here any more.’

‘Your room is all made up, got your favourite quilt cover on your bed. Your mum would love it if you stayed.’

‘I have to go see someone. I wanted Mum to watch Lulu for a bit.’ Tracey fondles her daughter’s pigtails, twirling the silky hair around her fingers. ‘I said I’d start dinner for her.’

‘Gan-dad Pete,’ Lulu says again. ‘Learned new song.’

‘Just a sec, princess.’

The child wriggles her arm free, cups Pete’s face with her hands, determined to have his attention. ‘Gan-dad Pete,’ she says more loudly.

He plants a brief kiss on the child’s cheek, turns back to Tracey. ‘You know I don’t like it when she calls me Pete.’

‘And what do you suggest she calls you?’ says Tracey.

‘Gan-dad Pete.’ Lulu grips the man’s cheeks tightly, rubbing noses with him. ‘Learned new song.’ Without waiting for a response, she sings into the man’s face, ‘Twinke, Twinke, in a star …’

On the wall, behind Pete and Lulu, is a framed photo of Tracey, her twin brother Ted, and their mum, taken when Tracey was not much older than her own daughter. Faces together, they smile at the camera, really smile; the three of them blissfully in love with each other and with the world. Fleetingly, Tracey wonders if her mum is proud of her, of the young woman that she has become.

Lulu has stopped singing, the new words lost somewhere between the expanding sponge of her mind, and the lack of encouragement from her audience.

‘I’ll go wake Mum then,’ says Tracey.

‘Let her sleep, love, she’s knackered.’

Tracey glances at the staircase again, swallows the comment that she was about to make. ‘I’ll start dinner, then,’ she says, taking her carrier bag from the threadbare carpet.

‘Make us a cuppa, love, while you’re at it.’

Pete nudges open the door to the living room with one foot. ‘Let’s go, princess,’ he says.

As they turn away, Tracey snatches the makeshift cloak from her daughter’s shoulders, revealing Pete’s hand beneath the child’s frilly skirt.

Chapter 2

That Kind of Boy

A WET MUDDY sock slaps against the back of Ted’s neck as he bends to tie the laces of his trainers.

‘Whoa, what a shot.’