By Any Other Name (21 page)

I’ve never been in the house before, but I know where the back door is and Joe’s hanging out of it. ‘Hurry up, I’m brewing!’ he calls. I go into a large kitchen
that looks much as I expected – a big range cooker, pine kitchen units, large table in the middle and a tiled floor. Except there’s a difference between this one and the ones in the
magazines Mum used to buy in her escape-to-the-country moments. And that difference is mud and mess.

The dresser is crammed with stuff, what looks like bills and farm paperwork, balls of twine, and keys, and heavy work gloves.

‘Sugar?’

‘No thanks.’

Joe slops some milk into a mug of tea and shoves it at me across the table along with a plate. I pick my way across the pile of muddy boots and wellies near the door, trying not to step on the
clumps of mud that’ve dropped off them on to the floor.
Those tiles are in need of a good mopping
, I hear Mum’s voice exclaim in my head; there are paw prints all over them.

‘Pick a cake and cut,’ he says, waving an enormous knife at me. It looks like the kind of thing you could behead someone with. There are three cakes lined up in front of me. One is
definitely chocolate, the next looks like lemon and the last is a carrot cake with frosting. They look delicious.

‘Where’s the knife drawer?’

He gestures behind him in surprise. I take the giant cleaver thing off him and swap it for a bread knife.

‘Ohhh!’ he says when I come back to the table. ‘That’s why I always make a mess when I cut things.’

It’s incredible how some boys can be so uber-intelligent, or able to fix cars, or do . . . boy . . . stuff. And yet be so domestically
dumb
all at the same time. I decide on the
carrot cake and cut a slice.

‘Which one do you want?’

‘The same.’

I put a slice on his plate and he grins at me before taking a bite that practically demolishes the piece in one go. I take a small bite and chew it pointedly. It’s wasted when he fails to
notice. However, I was right about one thing – the cake is awesome.

We’re on our second pieces when he comes out with: ‘So I thought we’d trade.’

I swallow. ‘Trade what?’

‘Information.’ He grins. ‘You and me. We’ll swap.’

‘Oh, look, I told you –’

‘Nah, keep your knickers on, I didn’t –’

‘What? Er,
what
?’

‘Oh, sorry . . . just something my dad says . . .’ He chuckles and flushes at the same time. ‘I didn’t mean you to tell me something you really can’t. Just
something you can but you haven’t yet. And I’ll tell you. Fair?’

Possibly. ‘You’ll tell me what?’

He puts his cake down. ‘I’ll tell you about Matt.’

His brother. A proper trade then. But can I?

‘You first then.’ He waits expectantly.

‘I don’t know . . . no, I . . . OK, I can tell you this bit, I guess.’ His eyes remain on me, dark and watchful like the collie’s by his feet. ‘Most of what I said
wasn’t true. I’m not from Gloucester and we never moved around. Actually until now I’ve lived in the same house all my life. You were right about that. But I can’t tell you
where I’m from or why we’re here now. Sorry.’

He smiles. ‘That’s all right. Anything else?’

‘I missed my friends really badly when I came here, and I missed home. That’s probably why I was so grouchy, and snotty – if I was snotty.’

‘You were a bit.’ He nudges me gently with his foot under the table. ‘You’re all right now though.’

‘What about you?’

He sighs and lays his hands on the table, clasping them. ‘I owe you, I suppose, for being so touchy with you and biting your head off when you mentioned my brother. You weren’t to
know why.’

‘Gemma told me you two are really close.’

‘Yeah, we are. I went mental with him when he joined up. Not because of the farm because Dad can just about manage with me to help, and Matt said he’d come back to take over when
he’d done a few years’ service. But because he left me here. He’s my best mate and him going away did my head in.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Nineteen. He joined up straight from school.’ Joe’s holding his knuckles so tightly they’ve gone white and I’m starting to get a bad feeling. ‘You know I
said I’d had a bad day when I first saw you? Well, we’d just got bad news that morning – Matt got injured in a roadside bomb in Helmand last year and –’

I gasp and my hand flies to my mouth.

‘He was critical for days and he lost both his legs, one above the knee and one below. They flew him home but he’s still in hospital in Birmingham. He was supposed to be coming home
for the first time that day I saw you, but the hospital called to say he wasn’t well enough. I was gutted.’

‘Oh my God, Joe, I am so sorry . . .’

What do I say? What can you say? He’s not crying, but he looks like he’s screaming inside and I know how that feels. When you can’t let it out, because if you did it would
never stop.

He shakes his head. ‘You didn’t know.’

‘He’s going to be OK though . . . oh God, no, stupid, stupid thing to say . . . I mean, he’s going to . . .’

‘Live? Yeah, though he picked up a secondary infection so it was hairy for a while, but yeah, he’s going to make it.’

But without his legs. Nineteen, and the rest of his life . . .

‘What happens now? How long will he be in hospital?’

‘He’s doing well. He always was stubborn. We’re hoping they’ll let him out for a visit soon. But then he has to move on to the rehab place before he can come home for
good.’

‘So he’s . . . in a wheelchair . . .?’ I say it hesitantly because how
do
you ask that?

‘At the moment, but they’re building him up so they can give him prosthetic legs and he’ll be able to walk on those after they’ve finished with him. Then he can come home
for good.’ He closes his eyes for a minute and I think he’s crying, but when he opens them again, he’s not. He’s still holding it inside. ‘Don’t know what
he’s going to do when he gets here though.’

No. Of course. Coming home and unable to do things around the farm. I can see how that could be awful. I get up and walk round the table – I’m really not sure Joe will want this but
it has to be done.

I bend down and hug him.

He’s stiff with shock at first, then he relaxes into my shoulder and I hold him for a moment. Then I let go.

‘Thanks,’ he says dully.

‘Do people know?’

‘Not yet, only family. Mum and Dad don’t want people going on at them about him all the time.’

Only family. So why did he tell me?

Maybe he needs someone too. How would I feel if it was Katie? That’s what I keep thinking as I walk home. If someone hurt Katie that badly. If Katie had to live her life with limbs
missing.

I judged Joe for being miserable and antisocial. When his most important person had had his life ripped apart.

You think you know people and then you find you don’t know them at all.

He said they go to the hospital at least once a week. Apparently Matt’s in some military wing. Joe wants to go more often but the farm gets in the way.

Always the stupid farm.

As I walk through our front door, I understand something. Matt was supposed to come back after the army, to work on the farm. Joe would have been free to go then. He could have gone to uni. He
can’t now.

I think over what he said about it and I know that has to be a blow. I wonder if he’s ever blamed Matt for it – even if only in the privacy of his own head? I know how thoughts like
that can eat you up. They can make you hate yourself.

I know that, don’t I, Katya?

I’m still reeling from his news when I open up my laptop and see there’s a message from Tasha. I can’t be bothered with it right now. Instead I lie on the bed and stare at the
ceiling, wondering what Joe’s doing right at this moment. Hoping he’s OK.

I felt something when I hugged him. I don’t know exactly what it was. Weird.

I try to find a word for the feeling. All I can come up with is ‘right’.

T
he scent of the pine needles was crisp and sharp through the darkness. My bones were cold, my muscles frozen into immobility. I couldn’t
feel my fingers or toes. But I could feel the memory of the man leaning on me from minutes earlier, crushing my body into the car seat.

Wet soil underneath me, and the Christmas tree aroma all around.

I lay motionless on the ground.

I still couldn’t seem to breathe right; as if he was still leaning on my ribs, all the air squashed out of me. My heart should be pounding in fear but it wasn’t. It beat steadily in
icy temper.

They would not win.

No matter how impossible it seemed to overcome them, to get away, they would not win.

My life would not pour out here, accompanied by the smell of Christmas and the sound of harsh voices. It would not end this way. I would not let it. I psyched myself up to run again.

I wake sweating and I realise I’m in bed. Then I throw off the covers to cool myself down and force myself to relax. I’m almost used to it now. The dreams come all
the time. Even during the day, if I close my eyes for a few minutes. Will they stop after the trial? I don’t know. Maybe they’ll never stop.

Maybe I’ll be eighty-three and still dreaming of the night three men tried to put a bullet in my brain.

Will I still dream of Katya lying pale and unmoving on the summer grass?

I wish there was a pill I could take to stop the dreams. To make the bad stuff go away. But Mum won’t let me take sleeping pills. She says all they’ll do is knock me out so deep I
won’t know if I’ve dreamed. Right now, in bed, clammy with sweat and sick with fear, being knocked out deep sounds pretty good.

As the bell goes at school the next day, I can’t believe it’s already the end of the spring term. The geography teacher is giving out packets of past papers for us
to practise over the holidays. I’ve got six similar packets for other subjects in my bag and a couple already on the tiny desk in my bedroom at home.

Home.

To use that word for the house we live in still feels strange and wrong.

Joe’s waiting for me by the gate, looking even more down than the rest of us. I’m still pleased to see him. Stupidly I always feel safer walking home with him. Very stupid – as
if he could do anything against Them.

‘What’s up?’

‘Matt. He just texted me. I was hoping they’d let him out over Easter but it might only be for a day. He might get to stay with us overnight, but even that’s not certain at the
moment.’

‘Oh, that sucks then. Sorry.’ I think about giving him a quick hug, but as I go to put my arms round him I see Fraser watching sidelong. He’s seen me notice him. I don’t
want him thinking I hugged Joe to try to make him jealous so I draw back. ‘But they might change their minds again.’

‘Yeah, and a day’s better than nothing.’ We start the walk home. ‘You should come round and meet him.’

‘Oh, you think? Won’t I be in the way? I mean, of family and stuff.’

He shakes his head. ‘Mum’s changed her mind about not telling people now he’s due to come home. She wants a party for him. She says if it’s all quiet and normal
day-to-day things, he’ll be noticing that we’re off doing farm work and he can’t do that now. If there’s loads going on and it’s all focused on him, he won’t get
the chance to. Dad doesn’t agree with her – he says Matt’s got to get used to how things are. Mum said yes, but it’s too soon and to give him time, not the first day he
comes home.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think he’ll feel shit whatever we do. It’s not like you can avoid noticing missing legs. She’s right about needing stuff to distract him, but I’m worried if
there’s loads of people there that they’ll look at him funny or say things about him being injured and make him focus on it that way. So maybe Dad is right.’

‘Why did you ask me around then?’

‘Because you know how not to stare and say stupid things.’ He bites his lip a little as he says that, as if he’s unsure whether I’ll be annoyed. Or maybe even upset.

I’m not. I know exactly what he means, and I’m not. ‘People who do that can make you really mad, you know. Are you prepared for that?’

He sighs. ‘It’ll be harder outside the village, I suppose. Here it’ll just be annoying amounts of people wanting to be sympathetic. Or if Matt’s really unlucky, and
they’re really stupid, pitying him, because he’ll hate that.’

I grab his arm and hug it briefly. It’s thin but surprisingly hard and muscled in a wiry kind of way. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’ll cope better with it than I do
when people treat Katie like that.’

He looks at me and I can see the shadows of worry in his dark, dark eyes. ‘No, I won’t. If it was me they were being stupid about then yeah, maybe. But not when it’s
Matt.’