Lisa Ballantyne - Guilty One

All my love

,

Mam

He folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. He finished his beer and stood for a moment with the back of his hand pressed to his lips. His fingers were trembling.

2

‘He’s a runner,’ the social worker said to Minnie.

Daniel was standing in Minnie’s kitchen next to a holdall that contained everything he owned. Her kitchen smelled funny: of animals and fruit and burnt wood. The house was cramped and dark and Daniel didn’t want to stay.

Minnie looked at him, her hands on her hips. Daniel could tell right away that she was kind. Her cheeks were red and her eyes moved about a lot. She wore a skirt that hung right down to her ankles, man’s boots and a long grey cardigan that she kept pulling closer around her body. She had big boobs and a big stomach and lots of curly grey hair that was piled on top of her head.

‘Runs away any chance he gets,’ said the social worker in a tired voice to Minnie, and then, louder, to Daniel, ‘You’ve nowhere to run to now, though, eh, pet? Yer mam’s poorly, isn’t she?’

Tricia reached out to squeeze Daniel’s shoulder. He twisted away from her and sat down at the kitchen table.

Minnie’s sheepdog, Blitz, began to lick his knuckles. The social worker whispered overdose to Minnie, but Daniel still heard her. Minnie winked at him to let him know that she knew he had heard.

In his pocket, Daniel pressed his mother’s necklace in his fingers. She had given it to him three years ago, when she was between boyfriends and sober. It was the last time he had been allowed to see her. Social services finally stopped all but supervised visits, but Daniel always ran back to her. Wherever she was, he could always find his mother. She needed him.

In his pocket, with his forefinger and thumb, he could feel the letter of her first name: S.

In the car, the social worker had told Daniel that she was taking him to Brampton because no one in the Newcastle area would have him.

‘It’s a bit far out, but I think you’ll like Minnie,’ she had said.

Daniel looked away. Tricia looked like all the other social workers who had been entrusted with him: piss-coloured hair and ugly clothes. Daniel hated her, like he hated all the others.

‘She’s got a farm, and she’s on her own. No men. You should be all right if there’s no men, eh, pet? No need for all your carry on. You’re lucky Minnie said yes. Yer proper hard to place now. Nob’dy wants boys with all your nonsense. See how you get on an’ I’ll see you end of month.’

‘I want to see me mam.’

‘She’s not well, pet, that’s why you can’t see her. It’s in your best interests. She needs time to get better, doesn’t she? You want her to get better, don’t you?’

After she was gone, Minnie showed him to his room. She heaved herself up the stairs and he watched her hips knock back and forth. He thought about a bass drum strapped to the chest of a band-boy and the furred beaters that thump time. The bedroom was in the eaves of the house: a single bed looking out on to the back yard, where she kept the chickens and her goat, Hector. This yard was Flynn Farm.

He felt like he always did when he was shown his new room. Cold. Out of place. He wanted to leave, but instead he put his holdall on the bed. The bedspread was pink and the wallpaper was covered in tiny rosebuds.

‘Sorry about the colour scheme in here. They usually send me girls.’

They looked at each other. Minnie opened her eyes wide at Daniel and smiled. ‘If it all goes well, we can change it, like. You can choose the colour you want.’

He looked at his fingernails.

‘You can put your underwear in there, love. Hang the rest up in there,’ she said as she moved her weight around the restricted space. A pigeon was cooing at the window and she knocked the window pane to shoo it.

‘Hate pigeons,’ she said. ‘Nothing but vermin, if you ask me.’

Minnie asked him what he wanted for tea and he shrugged his shoulders. She told him he could choose between cottage pie and corned beef and he chose cottage pie. She asked him to wash up for dinner.

When she left him, he took his flick knife out of his pocket and put it under his pillow. He also had a pocket knife in his jeans pocket. He put his clothes away as she had asked, his socks and clean T-shirt sitting to one side of the otherwise empty drawer. They looked awkward on their own, so he pushed them up close to each other. The drawer was lined with flowery paper that smelled funny and he worried that his clothes would smell like that too.

Daniel locked the door in Minnie’s long thin bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath. The bath was bright yellow and the wallpaper was blue. There was dirt and mould all round the taps and the floor was covered in dog hair. He stood up and began to wash his hands, standing on his tiptoes so he could look in the mirror.

You’re an evil little bastard.

Daniel remembered these words as he stared at his face, his short dark hair, his dark eyes, his square chin. It had been Brian, his last foster father, who had said that to him. Daniel had slashed his tyres and poured his vodka into the fish tank. The fish had died.

There was a little porcelain butterfly on a shelf in the bathroom. It looked old and cheap, painted in bright colours that were yellow and blue like her bathroom. Daniel put it in his pocket, wiped his hands on his trousers and went downstairs.

The kitchen floor was dirty, with crumbs and muddy footprints. The dog lay in its basket, licking its balls. The kitchen table, the fridge and the counters were cluttered. Daniel bit his lip and took it all in. Plant pots and pens, a small gardening fork. A bag of dog biscuits, enormous boxes of tinfoil, cookery books, jars with spaghetti sticking out of them, three different-sized teapots, empty jam jars, dirty, oily-looking oven gloves, cloths and bottles of disinfectant. The bin was full and stacked beside it were two empty bottles of gin. He could hear the cluck of her chickens outside.

‘You don’t say much, do you?’ she said, looking over her shoulder at him as she ripped the leaves off a lettuce. ‘Come over here and help me make the salad.’

‘I don’t like salad.’

‘That’s fine. We’ll make a small one just for me. This is my lettuce and my tomatoes, you know. You haven’t tasted salad until you’ve grown it yourself. Come on, help me do these.’

Daniel got up. His head was level with her shoulders and he felt tall beside her. She placed a chopping board in front of him and gave him a knife, then washed three tomatoes and placed them on the board in front of him, next to the bowl of lettuce leaves. She showed him how to slice the tomatoes into wedges.

‘Don’t you want to try one?’ She held a wedge out to his lips.

He shook his head and she popped the slice of tomato into her own mouth.

He sliced the first tomato, watching her as she put ice into a tall glass, squeezed lemon juice over it then emptied the remainder of a bottle of gin over the top. When she added the tonic the ice cracked and fizzed. She stooped to place the gin bottle with the others then returned to his side.

‘Well done,’ she said, ‘those are perfect slices.’

He had thought about doing it since she gave him the knife. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he wanted to frighten her. He wanted her to know the truth about him right away. He turned and held the knife up to her face, the point about an inch from her nose. Tomato seeds bloodied its blade. He wanted to see her mouth turn down in fear. He wanted her to scream. He had tried it before with others and it had made him feel powerful to see them flinch and recoil. He didn’t care if she was his last chance. He didn’t want to be in her stinking house.