Happiness is Wasted on Me E-Book

Kirkland Ciccone

• Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 381

Beschreibung

Cumbernauld was built to be the town of the future; that is, if the future looked like a really rubbish episode of Doctor Who. It's also home to Walter Wedgeworth, a child stuck in a uniquely dysfunctional family controlled by the tyrannical Fishtank, whose CB Radio aerial is a metal middle finger to all the neighbours on Craigieburn Road. When 11-year-old Walter discovers the corpse of a baby inside a cardboard box, he resolves to ignore it, pretend it didn't happen. He knows the price of being a grass. But the child's fate haunts Walter, bringing him into conflict with the world around him. Walter's journey will lead him from childhood to asexual adulthood; school, college, bereavement, Britpop, his first job, Blackpool, the Spice Girls, feuds with his neighbour, and finally; face-to-face with a child killer. Taking place in the 90s, Happiness is Wasted on Me is a genre-blending tale that spans a decade in the life of Walter. It's a coming of age tale, a family drama, a mystery, and a biting dark comedy. Ultimately, it's the story of how even the strangest people can find their way in the world. Happiness is Wasted on Me is Kirkland's first novel for adults.

Leseprobe

What’s it called? 

Chapter 1

12th April 1992

Life would have been better if I hadn’t looked inside that box, but not much better. The box itself wasn’t particularly large. Neither was the baby inside. He was dead, of course. I found him by accident, because there’s no such thing as fate. Everything that happened after that day only happened because I was forced to make a simple choice:

Do I go one way or the other?

I chose the other.

I looked inside the box.

I spent most of that day waiting for the sound of a bell. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Not my teacher’s voice, nor the sound of dogs yelping in the distance or pencil scraping roughly on paper. Just the bell. When it finally happened, I reacted immediately. Jumping up from my chair, I tore through the classroom, flinging myself straight out the door so fast I almost fell down the stairs. I sprinted as fast as possible (not very fast at all) to get away from Gary Dowds and his gang of cromags. If they wanted to get me, they had to catch me first. I’d spent all morning planning an escape route in my head. It took me along a field behind the football pitch, past the tall trees, thick grass and the sloping hill that caught a thousand empty crisp packets whenever the wind blew west.

The sky was bright, beautiful and blue.

It wouldn’t last, of course.

It never did.

The mud beneath my feet squelched despite the summer heat. Deceptively slick, I found myself slipping down a slope, my arms flapping like a coyote falling off a cliff in a cartoon. It didn’t help, of course, but anything seemed possible at that age, even flouting the laws of aerodynamics with my skinny arms.

I slid, tumbled, and finally came to rest at the edge of some bushes.

My school uniform (a pair of black trousers, a grey V-neck sweater, white shirt, and navy tie with the Langland’s Primary School logo) were caked in thick wet muck. I shuddered. The uniform was brand new, paid for by a clothing grant. My mother had a habit of loudly announcing the cost of something, quickly following this with a complaint about price increases. I knew she’d explode when she saw the state of me, but I wasn’t too concerned. Not yet. That was another few hours away, a lifetime really. My main priority was to hide from Gary Dowds and his gang. Their voices followed me, a warning they were still close by. There was still a chance they’d catch up with me.

So I ran and ran and ran and ran.

Eventually, I stopped running.

My first hiding place wasn’t good enough. One of the lads found me and yelled for Gary. I had to run again. My legs took me outside the school grounds, at the far end near St. Joseph’s Primary, a rival school built next to Langland’s and dangerous territory for me. Desperate to get out of sight, I hid by some bushes, counting the seconds until they became minutes until they became hours. At one point I realised I’d been holding my breath too hard and too long. Releasing the stockpiled air in my lungs made the world bend slightly. I fell back, landing in some muck and old empty crisp packets. Sitting there in the muck, the stark reality of my situation was obvious: my uniform was more than just dirty, it was now ruined beyond the limit of anything Persil or Daz could do to fix it. What would I say? I couldn’t tell my parents. Fishtank wouldn’t be sympathetic, not one bit. I could imagine him saying something completely unhelpful, something like — If someone hits you, then you hit back harder. Okay?

Dark clouds seemed to come from nowhere, hanging above me, reflecting my mood. Eventually they burst and I found myself running for shelter under some thick trees, wishing my time away until the downpour stopped. In my rush to escape, I’d left my jacket in the school cloakroom. Shivering, I waited. The rain seemed to last forever. Worse, it was cold. Whistling, desolate wind parted the branches of the big trees, allowing the rain to get in at me. I felt submerged in my clothes. It was just me, all alone in the storm. However, the rain had an unexpected side-effect: it made Gary and his friends give up. We’d all been soaked under the same sky. Once again I was safe, until the next time Gary decided he had a problem with me. Moving quickly out of the rain, I headed towards a small expanse of trees, trying to find one perfect place to rest. Somehow, without realising it, I found myself behind a set of flats in Sandyknowes Road. It was a dingy little place. It seemed cut off, somehow. Distant from both the rest of the town and sunlight itself.

Just up ahead, there was a forest and a small grassy field.

I headed in that direction. I made that choice.

I wish I’d gone the other way.

I stood beneath the trees, wondering what to do next.

Something at the edge of my eye caught my attention.

Something in the muck.

It wasn’t a badger hole. Not even badgers wanted to live here.

I peered closer at my discovery.

Half-buried in the soil was a recently dumped cardboard box.

There was a logo on it, washed-out by exposure to the rain.

AMSUNG MICR WAV OV N, it said.

Bending down, I reached out and pushed aside a cardboard flap.

It disintegrated into watery mush and my hand went into the box itself. I felt something slimy smear itself across the top of my fingers, and an evil-smelling stink escaped, covering me completely. With a cry of fright, I pulled myself away from whatever I’d disturbed. Seconds later, after wiping my hand on the sleeve of my jumper, I went back for another look. I hadn’t imagined it. There was a plump little hand with five perfectly formed fingers reaching out for me. The hand was connected to an arm that joined a torso. By the time I reached the face, I already knew what I’d found in the undergrowth.

A baby in a box.

A dead baby in a box.

Its skin was mottled grey, the colour of slick mushrooms.

I bit my knuckles to stifle a scream.

When I realised I’d used that same hand to open the box, I felt nauseous. I spat into the grass a few times, trying to get the feeling of dirt and vileness out of my mouth.

The longer I looked in the box, the more I learned about the baby.

It…he…was a boy. Possibly days old? I wasn’t sure. The only experience I had had with a baby up until then was my little brother, Laddie. He was a few years younger than me. We both attended Langland’s Primary, though I’d soon be leaving for high school. The baby still had skin on his tiny bones. I didn’t want to touch that skin again. There was movement beneath the thin surface of the flesh, the start of the putrification cycle. As I peered into the box, I felt a strong sense of protectiveness. I didn’t just want to leave the kid lying about in the mud, surrounded by trees and changeable weather. But what else could I do? I couldn’t tell the police. My parents wouldn’t want me to get involved. Never ever. If you went to the police, you were a grass. It was that simple. But…leaving the baby to rot seemed somehow monstrous. I had to keep myself out of it, but still help him.

I wanted the baby to have a bit of dignity in death.

That one pure thought helped me come to an important decision.

There used to be a phone box at Beechwood Road. It had holes on the side where glass windows used to be and the British Telecom logo above the door, the blue and red one with the man blowing a long thin horn. Keeping the phone box in one piece was a tireless, thankless task, one that BT had given up long ago. Glass panels in public phone boxes never lasted long in this town. Bored kids, breakable items. A logical conclusion.

The little shelf inside the phone box should have had a phone book on it, but it had been taken and slashed up, the sliced remains thrown into the wind. A nearby bush had caught some of the tattered pieces of paper. It didn’t matter to me anyway: I already knew the number I needed to dial. Three digits. A triple tap of a button. Nine. Nine. Nine.

It should have been the easiest thing in the world to do.

The right thing to do.

But knowing the number and dialling it were two different things altogether.

Ten minutes passed as I stood in the box with the receiver propped against my chin. Finally, I gave in to the choice I’d already made: I jabbed the ‘9’ button three times and waited patiently as the tone quavered in my ear. Suddenly, I had an unpleasant notion that it might be better for me in the long run if I disguised my voice. It was the sort of idea only a mistrustful child, one constantly hiding from bullies, would seriously contemplate.

Every accent I attempted sounded like a Dalek on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

—Operator, said the voice on the other end. —Could you please state your emergency?

It was a quiet voice, both calm and smooth. The opposite of my own voice.

—I found a dead body.

Her tone immediately shifted. Just a little. But enough for me to catch the variation.

—Where did you find the body?

—Down in the forest behind the flats at Sandyknowes Road.

—Okay, give me a second to find it.

A second passed. She was as good as her word.

—Cumbernauld?

—Yes.

—Have you touched or moved anything?

That seemed like an odd question, but actually it was the only question that mattered in that moment. I had to be honest. Honesty hadn’t always served me well in the past, but on this occasion, it felt important to be as straightforward as possible.

—Yes. It’s a dead body in a cardboard box. A dead baby actually. I opened the box.

She probably thought this was a crank call, but once the police headed down to the trees behind the flats, they’d see I wasn’t a liar, that I’d been honest.

—Right. I need you to do something for me. I need your name. Are you okay with that?

A surge of paranoia suddenly made me reconsider being too honest. Primitive, sometimes destructive, but it was always there, the sense someone was taking notes on me.

There was only one way I could respond:

I put the phone down.

A shower started as I left the phone box. Rain was this town’s default weather. But any attempt to wash away Cumbernauld was doomed to failure. A concrete kingdom, or an urban jungle, this town did everything to extremes, including the sudden changes in weather. As I shivered in the downpour, my first thought was for that poor baby, stuck inside a box, all alone in the cold.

Dead but not quite buried.

In the distance…sirens…

I call them sadness sirens, because that’s how they’ve always sounded to me.

Mum went nuts at me when I got back home. She saw the state of my school uniform and literally screamed her anger in my face.

I told her everything.

Everything but the truth.

Chapter 2

Antenna

The reason Fishtank didn’t work was because there were no jobs out there for him. Also, he was far too intelligent for menial labour. This meant Mum had to go out and work four jobs in order to feed and clothe her kids. Anytime someone asked her why she married him in the first place, Mum explained that when she first met Fishtank back in the 70s, he had a good career at Clyde Shipyard as a welder.

Except…

Fishtank later admitted he hadn’t worked as a welder.

He’d worked as a cleaner.

For three weeks.

By then it was too late. Mum had already fallen pregnant.

Not having a job meant Fishtank could stay at home with his kids and indulge in his two favourite pastimes. We didn’t understand these hobbies, but they kept him occupied and for that we were truly grateful. Anything that kept Fishtank’s mercurial moods at bay was absolutely fine by us! His first hobby, his main passion, was spending the day (and a lot of the night) upstairs in his bedroom on his CB radio. That radio meant we could do whatever we wanted without fear that he’d beat the shit out of us with a belt, or in the case of Jake, my eldest brother, a piece of wood from the garden fence.

Fishtank seemed to have endless planks of wood from that fucking fence.

There was one large drawback to the CB radio. Literally. In order to use it, Fishtank had to fit a tall ugly antenna up on the roof. We all watched him put it up, a large metal middle-finger right at our neighbours, an extension of his power to do whatever he wanted without consequence.

—I hope the old bastard falls and breaks his neck, said Jake rebelliously.

Lorna, my eldest sister, shushed Jake.

—You hate him too, said Jake accusingly.

But Lorna said nothing.

She kept her hopes and horrors locked tightly inside her heart and head.

Only one person stood up to Fishtank and his ugly radio antenna. Mr. Moore, our neighbour four doors up, was a kind older man with a beard and moustache. He always seemed to wear a tweed hat and jacket, the sort with large patches on the elbows. It looked wonderfully out of place in Craigieburn Road, a grey area furnished by the council. We all knew Mr. Moore from The Boy’s Brigade. I didn’t care much for The Brigade, feeling eternally out of sync with the other kids, but it was one of my only ways out of the house at night during the summer and Mr. Moore never failed to ask if I was doing okay.

Instinctively, I knew he hated Fishtank and felt sorry for my mum.

The antenna was his opportunity to strike.

—That’s a cancer rod, he yelled as Fishtank struggled on the roof.

Fishtank’s response?

—Fuck off and mind your own business.

—Take it down, John, or I’ll report you to the council.

If I’d known Fishtank needed planning permission to stick the aerial on our roof, I probably would have gone straight back to the phone box in Beechwood Road and reported him myself. But I had no idea about these things. It was all part of the mysterious adult world I dreaded, a world I expected to enter in the future.

—Go to the council, yelled Fishtank. —Fucking go! I don’t care. I’ll just go to the police.

Any mention of the police spiked my anxiety above my usual level, especially since I knew Fishtank hated them. Mr. Moore, however, wasn’t backing down to this threat.

—Go to the police? For what?

—To tell them you’re a fucking pervert.

Mr. Moore (not a pervert in the slightest) looked absolutely sickened that Fishtank would stoop so low. Sounds that couldn’t quite form words came from his throat. I wanted to tell him he was a good man, but he shouldn’t have tried to take on my father.

He didn’t stand a chance against Fishtank.

No-one did.

Fishtank’s second passion was far more…niche…and a little bit difficult to understand. Sometimes, whenever he felt a certain way, he’d take me out and together we’d go for a walk up to Cumbernauld Town Centre, the ugliest building in the world. It looked like an experiment conducted by insane Lego enthusiasts on LSD. A rabbit warren on stilts, or a decapitated alien’s head, the shopping centre evoked strong feelings from everyone. In fact, the only time the people of Cumbernauld could unite as one was whenever someone insulted the town. We didn’t like that. And yet…we loved insulting it ourselves. Ugly or not, Cumbernauld Town Centre was the core of culture in our town – and the place Fishtank needed to go for his other favourite pastime.

It was always the same. We went to The Royal Bank of Scotland, where I’d wait as Fishtank popped into the Loans office for a quick bung. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t pay the money he owed back to the bank. Mum always ended up getting into more debt to pay off his debt. It was an endless circle of financial peaks and poverty.

Anyway, he’d emerge from the Loans office looking triumphant. This familiar look of self-satisfaction was the same as all of his other facial expressions. Once he had his money (usually a grand, maybe a bit less) he would take me to the Cumbernauld branch of John Menzies. I pronounced it ‘Men-zeez’, but he always called it ‘Ming-ez’. He had to be different, make himself stand out in some stupid way. In all honesty, I never liked John Menzies. All those toys on their shelves that I wasn’t allowed to play with, that I’d never get at Christmas. It was a Greek tragedy that Homer didn’t put in his Iliad; the tale about the boy who wanted toys so much he ended up trapped inside a shop full of toys he couldn’t touch.

Fishtank would strut through the shop entrance and I’d tag along like a poor puppy.

—Walk properly, snarled Fishtank. —Like me!

So I changed my walk to make him happy. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

The first thing Fishtank always did after entering John Menzies was head over to the counter. It was part of his weird hobby. Once there, he’d select the cheapest product he could lay his hands on. I’d watched him do this a few times over the years. It was like a tired comedy routine. He never changed it, and the only applause he needed was in his own head.

On this particular occasion, he picked up a measuring tape that cost one quid.

—That’ll be one pound exactly, said the girl at the checkout.

This was the bit of his routine Fishtank loved the most. He would put his hand deep into his rain jacket, then bring out one thousand quid. He’d drop that thick wad of notes onto the counter, take a few agonising seconds so that everyone could see the money. Then finally, always with a big arrogant smile on his face, he’d look up and say:

—Have you got any change?

Depending on how well the staff were trained (and John Menzies usually trained its staff to a good standard), this would always end in one of two ways: the girl would either gasp and look at Fishtank like he was some sort of secret millionaire, or she would sullenly snatch a note from the roll sitting on the counter, go away, and return with almost too much change to carry, some of it slipping through nervous twitchy fingers.

Eventually, all the staff had to help. Tills were emptied. Safes were opened. Cloth bags crammed with clinking clanking coins were emptied just so Fishtank could get change owed from buying something cheaply at a quid.

He thought this was a hoot.

Like, the funniest thing ever.

Really, what chance did I have?

Chapter 3

Haircut of Revenge

It was my own fault. My folks sent me to Aff Yer Heid, Cumbernauld’s premier barber, with only one thing to keep in mind. Get a short back and sides. It was right across from The Royal Bank of Scotland. I had a pair of headphones pressed hard in my ears, the thick wire from the headset trailing down to an old Walkman playing Shakespears Sister on cassette tape. It belonged to my second eldest sister, Donnie, (don’t ever call her Danielle). I sat in the shop thinking everyone was staring at me, seeing something I couldn’t see. Then finally, the time came.

I’d rehearsed it in my head on the way up to the shop.

—I want a short back and sides.

Actually, I didn’t want a short back and sides. That’s what I was told to get.

—Alright lad.

The barber grinned, revealing gaps in his smile. He was completely bald. The idea of a man who worked with hair having none of his own seemed funny to me, but I said nothing.

Instead, I sat down and waited for my haircut.

—You need to take those out your ears, he said.

Oh. My headphones. The music wasn’t so loud that I couldn’t hear what was going on around me, but I’d always thought life was better with a backing track. Sheepishly, I removed my headset, which played a blast of You’re History to everyone else in the shop. Some people sniggered, though I didn’t know why. Feeling self-conscious, I looked away.

Finally, the barber started on my hair. Halfway through, I knew something was wrong. These days I speak up if I feel something isn’t right. But back in 1992, when I was a quiet little kid, I would never have said anything out of turn. You were raised to trust in the supreme authority of the adult. Barbers knew what they were doing, didn’t they? And I kept that in mind as huge tufts of hair dropped onto my lap.

By the time the cut was finished, I was completely bald.

I looked like a grumpy boiled egg.

—That’s what you get for skipping the queue, laughed the barber.

I’d been so deep in my head, rehearsing what I needed to say, that I’d skipped the queue without realising it. When you lived inside your own head, you lived away from other people. I hadn’t noticed they were before me. It hadn’t crossed my mind.

Looking up at the barber, still in mid-laugh, I said:

—I’m bald….just like you.

He stopped laughing.

I ran out the shop and didn’t stop until I got back home.

When I went back to school on Monday, it was with not a single hair on my head. People laughed, of course. Kids see wet eyes and sense weakness. My first tactic was to pass it off as a deliberate decision to do something different. I wasn’t merely bald, but a pioneer! Yes! An icon of future fashion. Me, the glorious Walter! Besides, it would grow back.

My attempts at presenting myself as an innovator didn’t go well.

—You look like that baldy from The Crystal Maze, shouted Gary Dowds as soon as he laid eyes on me. And when Gary said something, everyone agreed. Like they had a choice.

—Has anyone seen Walter Wedgeworth?

—Yeah, he got a job on Channel 4 presenting The Crystal Maze.

It didn’t take long for the gossip to reach every nook and cranny of Langland’s Primary School. Soon enough, I was a tourist attraction in the playground. People wanted to touch my scalp, feel the stubbly skin that had been thick with brown hair only a couple of days beforehand.

Teachers were especially interested. One of them asked if I was okay.

—I think so, I said.

Teachers always seemed concerned about me. It got a bit much at times.

By the end of the day, people stopped caring about my stupid new haircut. There was always something new happening in Cumbernauld to get excited over.

A week had passed since I’d called the police about the baby. I couldn’t think about anything else except that mottled little face in the soggy old box. He’d been in the newspapers, of course. He even had a name. Not his real one, of course. No-one knew that. But in the absence of a real name, the papers christened him Baby C, which was how he would remain until his real parents were found and his actual name recovered. Naming the baby after a single letter seemed quietly terrifying to me. I couldn’t help but think there was an entire alphabet full of letters for other dead babies. The whole ordeal soon got much worse. According to the report in The Cumbernauld News, Baby C had been asphyxiated, which was a nice way of saying someone stopped him breathing on purpose. Apparently, police were on the look-out for witnesses. They especially wanted to talk to an anonymous caller, someone who’d led police to the baby’s body.

Apparently, the caller sounded like a ‘little girl, possibly 8-12 years of age’.

—A little girl! I shrieked in the middle of Mr. Ali’s cornershop.

Wounded, I put the newspaper back on the shelf and headed off back home. Well…not home, as such. Just the house I lived in with my family and Fishtank.

Chapter 4

Entertainment

Fishtank always made sure we had the latest in-home entertainment technology. We must have been the only house in the entire town to have a Betamax video recorder in the living room and bare cupboards in the kitchen. We also had a fancy record player with lots of vinyl records, all of which were piled up on the cabinet shelf near our 32” Panasonic television set. Next to that cabinet was a fully-furnished fish tank that had unintentionally given Dad his nickname. It was full of bright tropical fish, plastic furniture, and pink neon lights that cast shimmering shadows across our living room. Oh, it couldn’t just be a tank with some water like every other fish tank. It hadto have a light show. Sometimes, during the dark winter nights, I felt like I lived in an aquarium. Yet, despite all these wonderful toys, we were completely at the mercy of a coin-operated television. We had BSB/Sky TV before everyone else in Craigieburn Road, but couldn’t watch most of its scheduled programming because we had no money to fill the little box. I hated that fucker. If one of your few escapes in life was television, then a coin-operated TV was the bane of your existence. Worse, it gave Fishtank more power over everyone living under his roof. I could swear he deliberately timed when he’d top up that meter, just so it would cut out during Going Liveon Saturday morning.

During the summer, I spent most of my spare time at Danny McDonald’s house along with other friends. His TV was free and so was his Super Nintendo. Danny’s bedroom was the closest thing me and my friends had to a club house. An only child, Danny got everything he asked for and everything he didn’t. His mother worked the day shift at William Low’s in Cumbernauld Town Centre, which meant she was out of the house for hours. No-one knew much about his father, not even Danny, but I suspected his dad was probably married – and not to Danny’s mother. I didn’t care. I was happy so long as I could play games and watch television. Danny was a laugh. He’d say random stuff, nonsense he’d rehearsed before I arrived at his front door, but he did it with such nonchalance that it looked spontaneous. Even if Danny’s jokes weren’t funny, I’d laugh anyway. Laughing kept me in his house, far away from Fishtank and his extortive television set.

There were certain special situations that would take Fishtank out of our house for a good few hours. A trip to the pub, a day out with his fishing rod, or football. Fishtank loved football so much he couldn’t just sit and watch it at home. He had to see it live, be part of the crowd, wave his scarf around in front of everyone. He fancied himself as a football player. Actually, he just fancied himself. I loved football too, but not because I watched or played it. I wouldn’t waste my time. No, whenever a big match happened (and they happened often), Fishtank would head out to Ibrox Stadium with my two brothers, giving me a break from his mercurial mood swings. My two sisters used this time wisely, invited all their friends to our house for a party. They wouldn’t dare do that if Fishtank was around, but bravery thrived in his absence. Lorna, the most sensible of my sisters, always managed to balance out Donnie, the loud and brash show-off. They were perfectly matched as siblings, twins born three years apart. Deceptively resourceful, they pooled their meagre resources to buy Fishtank a season ticket to Ibrox. Birthdays, Christmas, and Father’s Day were all opportunities to get Fishtank out the house so we could live our lives, if only for a while. Anything to let off a bit of steam. Anything for a bit of fun.

One night, after a day playing Nintendo with Danny, I returned to my house and a party in full swing. My sisters were using Fishtank’s new CD player to blast Happy Mondays at full volume, giving their shindig a soundtrack to show off their moves. My initial instinct was to warn them that Fishtank would go nuts if he knew they’d touched his CD player, but my second instinct told me to ignore my first instinct. The lights of the fishtank had been switched on, bathing the room in lo-fi psychedelia. Lorna and Donnie had been to a lot of raves, always returning home in the early hours of the morning with big happy smiles and wide dark eyes. This seemed like one of those nights, except instead of a field with a DJ, it was my house and a CD player.

Donnie immediately acknowledged my arrival with hugs and kisses.

She didn’t look drunk, so it had to be drugs.

—Come and dance with us, Walter!

—Leave me alone.

—Come on. Don’t be boring! Just one dance.

One of my sister’s friends, a freakishly tall girl named Steph (she later ended up in prison for stealing money from a food bank to fund a glam holiday in Turkey) yanked me across the room by my arm, throwing herself around while everyone laughed and cheered.

Not knowing how to rave, I simply stood around waiting for the song to end. I was relieved when it happened. Once everyone else headed outside into the garden for a cigarette, I took the opportunity to sneak out of the living room and tip-toe upstairs to the safety of my bedroom. I couldn’t relax around my sisters when they were in this sort of mood. Their idea of fun might have been dancing like they’d dropped their hairdryer in the bath, but at the tender age of 11 and a half, my idea of fun was a mug of hot chocolate and a Nancy Drew novel – and we were all out of hot chocolate. Alone in my room, I relaxed with a book and got through the first chapter. Halfway through the second chapter, I realised I needed snacks and a drink. It was part of my special thing. We had plenty of biscuits (Trio! Triiiiiooooo!) in the cupboard downstairs, but I needed a mug or a cup in my hand. Something to sip for every turn of the page. Rolling off my bed, I fell onto my feet and headed out the door in the direction of the kitchen.

The first thing I did was raid the cupboards in a desperate search for a bottle of American Cream Soda. It was Fishtank’s favourite. He loved it with scoops of ice-cream. Mum called it a glass of diabetes. We usually had at least one bottle of American Cream Soda.

Usually, but not this time.

Admitting defeat, I looked for something…anything…to drink that wasn’t water.

No Irn-Bru. No Solripe. No Soda Stream.

No luck!

I returned to my room, opened my book and didn’t stop reading until the last page. By the time Nancy cracked the case, Fishtank was back and my sisters had cleaned away all evidence that anyone but us had been in the house that night.

Beer cans. Wine bottles. Cigarette stubs. All gone.

Party? What party?

Chapter 5

A Miracle On Christmas Eve

It was obvious something was wrong with Mum on Christmas Eve. There were no presents under the tree which was odd, considering Mum always prepared in advance, buying presents as far back as April. Her theory was that Christmas shopping was cheaper at Easter, so buy the lot months in advance and avoid the stress of doing it in December.

Anyway, the house was empty when I got back from the library. Fishtank was off to see Granny. Lorna and Donnie were away to a rave with their friends, Tia and Maria. Jake was out at the Job Centre, or so he said. And my little brother had taken his bicycle (an old thing with bendy wheels passed down over the years) out for a ride.

That left just me and Mum.

I headed into the kitchen to make a cuppa. Tea had replaced hot chocolate as my favourite thing in the world. It was quick, easy, and most importantly…teabags were cheap.

It didn’t take me long to hear a strange sort of snuffling sniffing sound.

Someone was taking drugs, suffering a bad bout of hay fever, or crying.

In my house, it could have been any one of the three.

The sniffing was so loud I heard it over the sound of a boiling kettle.

—Are you okay, Mum?

Mum looked up at me from behind the kitchen bench.

Her expression answered my question. Her face was streaked with tears, the sort that left incriminating evidence along the cheeks. Normally she’d hide the evidence. But today she didn’t care. That’s how I knew this was a bad situation.

—I can’t afford to pay for this year’s Christmas, she said.

—What?

—We’ve got no money, son.

—But…what about your jobs?

—My wages were frozen so debts could be paid off.

—At Christmas?

Mum laughed at that comment. My naïveté was good for something, at least.

—They don’t give a shit, so long as they get their money back.

—Who?

—Creditors. They got permission from the banks, the cunts.

—Can’t Fishtank get another loan?

—Don’t call him that, said Mum sharply. —He’s your dad, alright?

—Okay, can’t Dad get another one of his loans?

Mum could have lied, but on this occasion she knew that wouldn’t work on me. To her credit, she treated me not like a stupid little kid but as someone intelligent, whose opinions were worth hearing. That wasn’t always the case. Mostly, I stood in the background, watching and listening to the world around me. In this instance, the truth wasn’t pleasant. Unfiltered, the truth usually isn’t. Yet no matter how unpleasant, I’d always found the truth to be beautiful in its own strange way.

—Your dad has never taken out a loan by himself.

—That isn’t true. I’ve been with him when he went into the bank for his cash.

Mum said nothing. She wondered whether or not I’d get the hint.

It took a few seconds for my brain to crunch the data.

She’d said Dad had never taken out a loan by himself.

Finally, I understood.

—All his loans were joint loans.

She nodded up then down.

—And your dad can’t pay his share of the debt because he doesn’t have a job.

—Because he relies on you for all his money, I said.

It was a rare moment of bravery on my part. I never usually said these things aloud.

—Now do you understand why I can’t afford Christmas?

Then and there, I noticed how poor my mother looked. Literally, she looked like poverty. Her clothes were old, with her pink and white striped blouse looking raggedy and shabby to my young eyes. She’d had that blouse for as long as I could remember. Likewise, her jeans were tattered and torn, worn to whiteness, though they used to be dark denim blue. I’d never considered her anything other than my mother, but ever since I found that baby, I couldn’t help but see the world differently. And I saw my mother for what she really was: a downtrodden wife desperately trying to keep everything together against terrible odds.

I didn’t know what to do. What would a normal person do? They’d comfort their mother, wouldn’t they? I had to tell myself to move around the table and wrap my arms around her, give her a squeeze, try desperately to shift the sadness from her to me.

This didn’t help. She burst into tears again.

—Christmas doesn’t matter, I said quietly.

But that wasn’t true, not really. Christmas always mattered at my age. Everyone at school would want to know what everyone else got ‘from Santa’ and all of us would silently loathe Danny as he rattled off a long list of stuff, because he always got the most. Perks of being his father’s dirty little secret, I suppose. But for as long as I could remember (and I remembered everything) no-one had ever turned up at school having had nothing for Christmas. It was unthinkable! Maybe they’d laugh if I told them Santa didn’t have time to deliver my presents because Rudolph caught pleurisy and his nose stopped glowing?

It didn’t matter. I’d already become proficient at masking problems and telling lies. I’d learned from my mother, of course. No-one could know we were in debt because of Fishtank. Mum couldn’t have coped with the shame. She didn’t have much in her bank account, but she worked hard and held her head high. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t pay the bills. And there were a lot of bills to pay. We had poll tax, rent arrears, bank and Provident loans. We owed the milkman. We owed Betty, two doors down, a tenner that Fishtank had tapped for cigarettes. The list was endless. We owed and owed and owed.

Getting money wasn’t difficult, but paying it back always seemed impossible.

Mum was already cleaning up her face when Donnie got back from work. She’d managed to get a position at a local frozen food shop named Capital. There was a branch in Cumbernauld Town Centre and as a result our cupboards were now full, as was our freezer. Donnie had brought back a dozen bags of shopping to unload, which is how she got involved in my conversation with Mum. Immediately sensing something wasn’t right, my sister put the bags down and blinked at the two of us, her eyes taking in everything, including her mother’s swollen eyes.

She asked a simple question:

—What’s wrong?

Mum gave a simple answer.

—Nothing.

Sensing a lie, my sister shifted her attention towards me.

—What’s up with her?

—We’ve got no money for Christmas.

Mum glared at me, but I didn’t care.

Donnie sighed slowly, then sat down on the wooden kitchen bench.

She immediately identified the cause of the problem.

—Is he at it again?

I nodded, but made sure only Donnie noticed. Mum could be unpredictable, giving praise, then taking it away with a slap to the back of the head. Donnie, however, was completely loyal to me. We were the same, in a lot of ways. Both of us looked more like Fishtank, with our thick brown curly hair and sullen expressions. Lorna, Jake and Laddie took more from Mum’s side of the family with their blonde-to-ginger hair and good strong faces. When they smiled (which wasn’t often) they glowed, if only for a moment.

I rarely smiled. Still don’t.

The only time I smile is when I’m happy.

Christmas came a few days early for the Wedgeworth household. We were all busy doing our own thing. Lorna was upstairs in her room having a secret ciggie. Laddie was with me in our room, both of us playing our Sega MegaDrive on a small colour television. Sega was for people who couldn’t afford a Super Nintendo. We didn’t care. We loved our Sega. Donnie and Jake weren’t in, having opted to spend the night getting drunk with their pals. Fishtank was out and we didn’t question it, just hoped he’d be out for hours. Mum was apparently downstairs watching EastEnders.

The noise of Albert Square was too loud.

Until suddenly it wasn’t.

Surely our TV hadn’t run out of coins again?

I opened my mouth to shout downstairs when I heard…well, something unexpected.

—Ho! Ho! Ho!

For a moment, I thought I’d imagined it.

—What was that? Laddie asked with a frown on his little face.

—I don’t know, I said.

—Ho! Ho! Ho!

—I heard it again, Walter!

I pressed the PAUSE button on the Sega game pad and listened intently.

—Ho! Ho! Ho!

—Do you think it’s Dad? Laddie asked.

He was only seven-years-old and still in the mindset that a father automatically deserved to be called Dad. Really, the only time the rest of us called him Dad was when he was there in front of us. Laddie would grow out of it, of course. It would take a while though.

—It sounds like Santa.

—Walter, there’s no such person as Santa.

—Ho! Ho! Ho!

—Then who’s that? I asked in the full knowledge that it wasn’t actually Santa.

Laddie leapt up and bolted for downstairs. I followed behind, not quite as enthusiastic, but intrigued nonetheless. Together, we barged into the living room to find Fishtank holding a large burlap sack around his shoulder, dressed head-to-toe in an ill-fitting Santa Claus costume. The bushy beard, however, was all his own.

—Hello boys! Santa’s here with some very special presents for YOUUUUUU.

Laddie sparkled with excitement. He loved his father in that moment. Loved being treated like the most special kid in the world. Me? I watched balefully in the corner.

Fishtank seemed to enjoy this rare moment of benevolence. A consummate showman, he made his audience of two wait while he prepared the next part of his surprise. With a dramatic flourish, Fishtank swung the sack around his shoulder and emptied the contents onto the carpet at our feet. Laddie literally cried aloud in glee as parcels rolled over, landing in random piles. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Yes, I was actually impressed. Not only had Fishtank gone out and found presents for us to unwrap on Christmas Day, he’d made sure we’d be able to unwrap them. I knew from bitter experience that Fishtank couldn’t even fold a dishtowel properly, let alone wrap a present.

How the hell had he managed all this?

None of us questioned it. None of us except Mum.

Wisely, she kept quiet.

—Merry Christmas everybody, said Fishtank.

And just like that, I’d be able to show everybody at school what I got for Christmas.

Chapter 6

New Year

The fight between my parents on New Year’s Eve happened because of a steak pie. Not just any steak pie, it was the wrongsteak pie. Fishtank was brand loyal to the point of obstinance and wouldn’t dream of having anything other than the famous Malcolm Allan Family Steak Pie, which sounded to me like a pie with a family in it. Eating a Malcolm Allan steak pie was one of our curious family traditions. We had to have one on New Year’s Eve. It was every bit as essential as having a turkey on Christmas Day. Fishtank insisted on this above all else. Malcolm Allan pies had the fattest cuts of beef, the thickest gravy and the lightest pastry. It was always the same meal, just a different year. Steak pie, garden peas (not mushy under any circumstances), roasted potatoes, and – bizarrely – some mint!

The fight started as soon as Mum unloaded her shopping bags. She’d been to William Low (Willie Low’s to everyone else) for the weekly shop, and was starting the long process of getting dinner sorted. Fishtank, in a bad mood for whatever reason, sauntered into the kitchen looking as miserable as a kicked cat.

I should know. I was there. I watched it happen.

—What’s this? He asked.

—It’s a steak pie.

—Don’t get smart with me. I’ll ask again. What’s this?

—It’s…a steak pie. What’s wrong with you?

—I asked you to get a Malcolm Allen pie, you know, my favourite kind.

—It’s the same pie, just a different box.

—That’s a lot of shite.

—I got it from Willie Low’s. It’s as good as any other.

—BUT IT’S NOT THE ONE I WANTED.

As though to punctuate his point, Fishtank grabbed a cup from the sink and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and detonated into shards, all of which rained down, scattering widely. Mum seemed startled, but kept herself calm and composed.

They still hadn’t noticed me sitting on the kitchen bench with my book.

I wondered if invisibility was my secret superpower.

—You’ve fucked it up, hissed Fishtank. —You’ve fucked it up!

—It’s just a steak pie.

—It’s the wrong steak pie!

—You didn’t mind last year.

—…

—I got you this one last year.

—You told me you got a Malcolm Allen Steak Pie.

—I know, but I didn’t. And you ate it. You really liked it. This is a good steak pie.

Oh my God. All this over a sodding steak pie. A powerful urge to rampage across the kitchen and smash the steak pie with my fists nearly overwhelmed me, but I kept it at bay.