Niven Govinden - Graffiti My Soul

Peter Platinum, a kid my age, is the gayest runner you’ll ever see. Runs like he’s in some fricking stage show. Eyes and teeth. Eyes and teeth. Hands swaying all over the place. Shame he’s faster than the wind. On a good day he can beat everyone. Pete hasn’t told anyone about the kid, apart from me; no one else knows, but it seems to satisfy Casey. The cupboard doors in the kitchen stop panic slamming.

‘Keep it to yourself, lad, same as Peter. This kid’s a good runner. I don’t want to ruin it for him by having gossip started.’

‘I wonder if you’re doing the same for me?’

‘What? Speak up, young Turk. What have I told you about mumbling?’

I’m thankful for the kettle boiling and leave it. Now is not the time to be asking about my place in the world, where I fit in the scheme of things. I think for a minute.

‘What was your dad like?’ I call.

‘My dad…’

‘Did you get on with him? I hate mine, that’s why I’m asking.’

‘Your dad’s your dad,’ he calls back.

‘That’s helpful.’

‘He’s the only dad you’ve got, so you have to lump it. Make the best of a bad situation.’

‘Don’t see the point.’

‘Well, maybe it’s time you should. My dad was the most sociable man you’d ever meet. Loved to talk to people. Big drinker. Never caused trouble or nothing, but he did like to have a drink.’

‘Was he what you’d call a good drunk?’ I go, thinking that it made me sound clever. I’d heard Mum use it before when she used to talk about one of her old patients.

‘Yeah, you could say that,’ is the reply that doesn’t make me any wiser.

‘Sounds like Jason,’ I go, trying to stop him from getting serious, but he’s not listening to me being a smartarse, he’s on a roll.

‘Loved my dad. Had some of my best times with my dad. Whether you drank with him or not, he always treated you good. Wasn’t the type of greedy bastard to sue a poor man ’til he has nothing. I think about him every day.’

Cuckoo. Best not to ask about the mother. Hear she had a heart attack in her warden-assisted flat in Hackbridge when the Harrier news broke. It was one of Mum’s district nurse friends out on one of her rounds who found her. Last summer’s business, all twenty days of it, nearly finished the pair of them off.

We bump into each other in the kitchen. He’s about to poke his head into the fridge, I’m taking my plate to the sink like a good boy. If I stay at that table one moment longer, he’s going to come over and hold my hand or something girly. Too much sincerity brings me out in a rash, but… what do I expect? I’m the one who asked him about the emotional stuff. I’m an idiot. A big one.

‘It’s not too late, you know. There’s no shame in having your dad as your best friend. Look how I turned out.’

My head’s full of more steam than his poxy kettle. Him telling me off about something is preferable to hearing any more talk about dads. I smash his plate into the sink, reducing his crockery capacity by fifty per cent. The bollocking comes like a summer shower. It drowns out everything else.

Summer holidays. Mum working; not a district nurse yet, still at the hospital. Dad has the day off from the office and is babysitting.

I’m eight years old, too old for babysitting, I tell him. I’m the tallest in my class. If you passed me in the street you’d think I was ten.

‘Don’t listen to him, Jeya,’ Mum goes, ratty because she’s late and can’t find her keys, looking everywhere but in her pocket. ‘He can moan all he likes. He’s being looked after by his dad today and that’s final.’

Yesterday, me and Jason were caught trying to pinch a Twix from the newsagent by the stupid old man that works there, who isn’t as slow as he seems. Bloody double mirrors. I don’t tell Mum that it was my idea, that I bullied Jason into it, almost having to knee him in the nuts to get over his wobbles, as we asked the old man to hunt in the back for a spare couple of cardboard boxes for our den. And we almost had it too. He popped back out just a microsecond into the crucial moment, when hand stashes gear into pocket. Next time we’ll know not to pansy around and be quicker.

Mum has a different version of the story in her head, something related to Jason’s dad being investigated by the council for fraudulent accounting. Lumps the criminal minds together. The mammoth tongue-lashing I receive only stops when I agree to spend as little time with him as possible — hence Dad being here.

Dad was looking at us funny last night. He doesn’t always seem used to how me and Mum go on at each other, snapping and moaning and nagging. Doesn’t realise that we don’t mean half of it. Some days it makes him fractious and prone to shout, especially when he comes home tired, but today, because he’s had a big fry-up and relaxed, he takes it all in his stride. Like Kindergarten Cop , he rolls his sleeves up, no nonsense.

‘I’m not babysitting you, my big grown-up Veerapen,’ he goes, quite seriously. ‘I’m just hanging out. Every dad needs to hang out with their son every once in a while.’

‘Uh huh,’ I go, dropping the Godzilla and listening to what he’s got to say.

He gives me a rundown of what he’s got planned, and the food we’re going to sneak into the house and eat, and he makes it sound good. Less babysitting, more day camp. It’s an excellent plan.

Dad is always working, home really late, so it feels like I never see enough of him. His office at the chambers in town is like his second bedroom. If he’s worked late on a file and drunk a bottle or so of wine, he’s been known to sleep there. Been stopped drink driving once before, and too tight to take a taxi. If he’s not home and the phone rings around ten-thirty, you know where he’ll be kipping, in an office the size of the cupboard, on a sofa covered with a blue check blanket, which smells fuzzy, like how your mouth gets when you haven’t brushed your teeth for three days. And absence does funny things to my memory. The odd day goes by when I forget him completely.

The day is a scorcher. One of those when I’ll be able to take my T-shirt off and still feel like I’m wrapped up like a roti in the oven. I already have my plans, to run wild around the garden like an Indian boy all day long — especially as Mum can’t do her hourly sunburn check. Examining my shoulders and back like a mortician, cool palm never leaving my forehead. But Dad’s plans come first. We’re hanging, those are the rules. Also, I am not allowed to use the garden because Dad laid turf at the weekend. If I’m found running over it between now and next weekend, I’ll get a bigger verbal than the one I received for the Twix. And a smacked bottom too, probably. Dad’s words, not mine.

Mum has been shouting at him all summer to get the garden fixed. It had been OK last year, but winter had messed things up real good, and nothing had been done since. Mum and Dad have this deal — Mum will cook dinner every night if Dad does a spot of painting every once in a while, and more importantly, tends the garden. And what with Dad’s sleepovers, nothing has been done. It had all come to a head last Thursday. It was a beautiful day and Mum exploded, fixed her radar on Dad and let rip. Annoyed that she couldn’t sit outside because it looked so fucking ugly (her words, not mine). A couple of plates were smashed, nothing as bad as normal, but enough crashing about to create an atmosphere. I hid at Jason’s on the pretext of Playstation. In these situations home becomes how I imagine Mars to be: gassy and unbreathable. And usually I’m right. Two days and two sets of shattered glasses later, Mum gets her result: a stony, weedy plot levelled and transformed into parkland. It’s lush. All you can see is green. Thick, flat green that runs for miles — or so it seems.