Lisa Ballantyne - Guilty One

Another day they had played pirates and she had made him walk the plank blindfolded off the footstool in her living room. He liked her laugh, which always began with three big booms and then turned into a cackle and a giggle and would go on for several minutes. Just watching her laugh made him smile now.

Last weekend they had decorated his bedroom, and Minnie had let him pick the colour. He chose a pale blue for the walls and bright blue for his door and the skirting boards. She had let him paint with her and they had spent the whole weekend with the radio on, stripping away the rosebuds and painting the walls.

The door to the house slammed and Minnie stood there with one hand on her forehead.

‘What’s up?’ Daniel asked.

He now understood Minnie’s face. Often she would frown when she was perfectly happy going about her work. When she was worried or angry, her frown would vanish and her lips would turn down slightly.

‘Come in, lad, come in. Tricia’s just off the phone. She’s coming to get you.’

Despite the warm summer breeze and the fact that he had been sweating as he went about his afternoon chores, Daniel felt suddenly chilled. The sun was still high in a sky of aching blue, but he felt the shadows creep as if cast from his own mind over the yard, darkening the hue of the butterflies as they toyed with petal and bud.

Daniel rested one hand on Hector again, and the old goat started away, skipping to the length of his rope in the dried-mud yard.

‘No, I’m not going. M’not leaving … I’ll …’

‘Hold yer horses, will ye. I don’t think she’s going to move you, but there’s a meeting set up with your mum.’

Minnie stood in the doorway and clasped her arms. She looked at Daniel with her lips pressed together.

The air seemed noisy to Daniel suddenly; the bees roared and the chickens screamed. He pressed his hands over his ears. Minnie came to him but he twisted away from her and into the house. She found him curled behind the piano in the living room, which was where he went when he felt like this. He didn’t feel like this a lot now.

He watched her feet as she approached, fat in dirty slippers, and then saw her ankles appear as she sat in the chair nearest the piano.

‘You don’t have to go, love, it’s your choice, but I think it might be best. I know it’s unsettling. Long time since you saw her, isn’t it?’

Daniel shifted slightly and kicked the piano a little; it sounded, a hollow moan as if wounded by him. Daniel sniffed. In

his position, he could smell the unvarnished wood of the piano and breathed it in. The smell comforted him.

‘C’m’ere.’

Normally Daniel would not go to her. He would stay where he was and she would either wait near him if he was upset, or go next door to wait if he was quiet. Today, not wanting her to go, he got up and sat on the arm of her chair. She pressed him into her. He liked the fact that she was so big. Even when he was a small child, his own mother had seemed fragile. When she held him the bones of her sometimes hurt him, needled him with their insistent pressing.

Daniel felt the round edge of Minnie’s chin on the top of his head. ‘I think they just want to have a chat with you, OK? Then you can come back and I’ll make you roast beef for tea. When you’re out I’ll buy it specially. We’ll have Sunday roast on Saturday, just for you.’

‘With Yorkshire puddings?’

‘But of course, and gravy, and some of your carrots that you’ve grown yourself. They’re the tastiest that the earth’s ever produced. You’ve got a knack, so you do.’

She eased him up off the chair. ‘All right then, go clean yourself up. Tricia’ll be here soon.’

Daniel looked over his shoulder at Minnie as Tricia led him towards her car. He was wearing a checked, short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans. He had a familiar feeling in his stomach, as if his insides had been taken out and replaced with pieces of crushed paper or dried leaves. He felt stuffed, but empty and light. He had put on his mother’s necklace and he now rubbed it between finger and thumb as he sat next to Tricia in the car.

‘You’ve been doing a lot better, Danny. You keep it up.’

‘Am I going to live with me mam?’ he asked, looking out of his side window as if a passer-by might answer.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Are you putting me someplace else?’

‘Not for now, I’ll take you back to Minnie’s tonight.’

Still looking out of the window, Daniel bit his lip.

‘Will I get to be on me own with her?’

‘Yer mam? No, Danny, it’s a supervised meeting, I’m afraid. Do you want to listen to the radio?’

Daniel shrugged and Tricia twiddled the dial until she found a song she liked. Daniel tried to think about collecting eggs or planting carrots or playing football, but his mind was dark and blank. He remembered sitting in the wardrobe in his mother’s smoke-blackened flat.

‘What you sticking out your tongue for?’ said Tricia suddenly.

Daniel withdrew his tongue. He could taste the charcoal.

‘Eeeh, wee man, look at the size of ye.’

The bones of her were still painful to him. He tensed even before she embraced him in expectation of rib and elbow. She looked the same, but her eyes were black underneath. Daniel was shocked that he didn’t want to touch her.

Tricia stood holding her handbag in two hands. ‘I’ll go get us something to drink, give you a few moments to catch up, then I’ll come back and help you through it.’

Daniel was not sure who she was talking to. He didn’t know what they needed help with.

He saw that his mother was about to cry. He stood up and stroked her hair in the way that she liked. ‘It’s all right, Mam, don’t cry.’

‘You’re always my hero, aren’t ye? How you been? You living somewhere nice?’

‘S’all right.’

‘You been playing football?’

‘Bit.’

Daniel watched as she wiped her eyes with her bitten nails. She had bruises on her forearms, and he tried not to look at these.

Tricia came back with two cups of coffee and a can of juice for him. She sat down on the sofa and placed one cup of coffee in front of his mother. ‘There you go. How you getting on, eh?’

‘I can’t do it. I need a fag first. Have you got one?’ She was standing up, looking down at Tricia with her hands in her hair. He hated when she did that; it made her face seem thinner. ‘Have you got one, Danny? I need a fag.’

‘I’ll go get you one,’ said Daniel, but Tricia stood up.

‘No, stay here. I’ll … I’ll get some cigarettes.’

They were in the social work office in Newcastle. Daniel had been there before. He hated the sloped-back, orange and green chairs and grey linoleum floor. He slumped down in one of the chairs now and watched his mother pace back and forth. She was wearing jeans and a tight white T-shirt. He could see her spine and the sharp angles of her hip bones.

With her back to him, she said, ‘I won’t say this in front of her, but I’m sorry, Danny. Sorry I’ve been rubbish. You’ll be better off, I know that, but I just feel shit, like …’

‘You’re not rubbish …’ Daniel started.

Tricia came in and handed cigarettes and a lighter to his mother. ‘Managed to scrounge half a pack of Silk Cut from a colleague. He says you can keep them.’

Daniel’s mother leaned over the table and lit her cigarette with her hand cupped around it, as if she were outside in a wind. She sucked hard and Daniel watched as the skin of her face clung to her skull.

‘Yer mam and I were at court this week, Danny,’ Tricia prompted.

Daniel watched Tricia’s face. She was looking at his mother with too-wide eyes. His mother was looking at the table and rocking slightly. The hairs on her arms were sticking up.