Lost Christmas (4 page)

‘Come on, Mutt,' said Goose, rising to his feet. ‘It's cold. Let's go home.' He moved to the mouth of the alleyway and leaned out. He saw the tail lights of the taxi disappearing in the distance and nothing else. Goose trudged off into the night with Mutt trotting beside him.

Daylight poured in through the thin floral-print curtains and Goose woke up, feeling like he had only just got to bed, which wasn't so far from the truth. He was still wearing his clothes and one of his Converse trainers. Mutt was curled up in a tight little ball at the foot of the bed.

Goose rolled over and yelped as he lay on something hard. He reached underneath the small of his back and pulled out the bangle. He held it up and examined it once again. The workmanship was excellent. This wasn't factory made. There was lettering around the inside, but Goose didn't recognize the language. There were straight, horizontal lines at the top of most of the words, then,
beneath curves and squiggles, lots of what looked like the number three. A beam of light snuck in through a gap in the curtains and struck the head of one of the cobras, causing its eyes to flare as if they were bejewelled, but they were not. For a few moments Goose was mesmerized by the bangle, but then he tossed it on to his jacket, which was sitting on a nearby chair, and sat up, stretched and yawned.

He lived in his nan's house now. For a few days after the accident Nan had stayed with Goose in his house, but it was rented and she had said she couldn't afford to keep paying for it. She only had her pension. So, early in the New Year, Goose had gathered all his possessions into three boxes and two black bin bags and now this was where he lived. He had put the boxes, which were mostly full of toys, straight into the cupboard in the corner of his room. He had not opened them once in the last year. His bedroom was about half the size of his old room. It was just as untidy, but looked cold and less lived in. The walls were bare. No posters any more. There were still plenty of books lying around. Clothes, magazines, dirty plates and bowls littered the floor.

Goose knelt up on the bed and pulled back the curtain. It had stopped snowing now, but a thick, brilliant blanket covered everything in sight. Nan's little house was just one of many in a sprawling estate built in the sixties. The
houses were beige, the roads were grey and concrete covered everything. There was no greenery, even in the height of summer, no trees to blossom in spring or leaves to redden in the autumn. Goose couldn't imagine a more drab and uninspiring vista anywhere in the world. He had seen a documentary on TV about Chernobyl, and he remembered thinking it looked more inviting than where he lived. However, today was different. The depressing view that usually greeted him had been replaced with a magical landscape straight out of Narnia. Most of the neighbourhood kids were already out there having more fun than they had ever had: making snowmen and engaging in frenzied snowball fights. Goose watched them dispassionately. He neither envied them nor wanted to join them nor felt irritated by them. He felt nothing at all.

After the crash, Goose had experienced more grief than he could have imagined possible. He had sobbed for days. His eyes stung from crying and his throat felt bone dry. When he couldn't cry any more, his grief turned to anger. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. He wanted to destroy anything and everything. One time in a burst of rage he had kicked Mutt. The little dog had yelped and scurried away, looking shocked, scared and betrayed. Goose was immediately horrified by what he had done. More than that, he was horrified by the fact that he had done it knowingly. It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment reaction. He
had thought about it. He had had time to stop himself, but he had done it anyway. He had wanted to hurt someone or something. And he had.

He'd picked up Mutt gently and held him, stroking him lovingly and apologizing over and over again. Mutt wasn't the sort of dog to hold a grudge. He had licked Goose's face and nipped his ear playfully. That was the first time Goose had laughed since his parents died. There hadn't been a second time yet. As a reaction to hurting Mutt, Goose put away his anger. He locked it up, deep inside himself, and threw away the key. Unfortunately every other emotion had to go with it. That's just how it worked with Goose: lose one, lose them all.

He let the curtain fall back into place and climbed off the bed. He found his other trainer and put it on.

Mutt was awake, watching his master. He yawned and waited to see what Goose would do.

‘Come on, Mutt,' said Goose as he grabbed his jacket and left the room. Mutt jumped up and followed.

Goose plodded down the narrow staircase; Mutt trotted after. Whatever youthful exuberance Goose once possessed was all but gone. There was a time when he would dash everywhere, always looking to escape, but he didn't rush anywhere any more. There was nowhere he wanted to be in any particular sort of hurry.

At school, when he went, he rarely spoke to anyone and kept to himself at break times. At first, both teachers and pupils were sympathetic to his situation. The headmaster had made a moving speech during assembly, urging everyone to give Goose the space he so clearly craved. Then, over time, that just became the way everyone interacted with him. Teachers stopped calling on him to answer questions in class. Not that he ever put his hand up. The other kids didn't even think about approaching him to see if he wanted to play. Goose knew all the quiet, out-of-the-way places in his school. The places he could go and not be disturbed.

Over the last year only one significant event had occurred at school that involved Goose. It was when a new kid started. His name was Darren and he had arrived in Manchester from somewhere south. He was big for his age and had decided his role at school was to be respected through fear. He set out to be a bully and, out of all the people he could have chosen, he picked on Goose to assert his dominance.

He came up behind Goose as he was walking across the playground one lunchtime. Goose was on his way to a small roof behind the gym that practically no one knew about or even thought about if they saw it. Darren shoved Goose viciously. So hard in fact that Goose pitched forward. Goose's hands were in his pockets and he ripped his jacket
in a desperate attempt to get at least one hand free to control his fall. It could have been a lot worse, but he still scraped up one side of his chin and the palm of the hand that he put out to stop himself.

Goose fought back the tears as Darren loomed over him. The new boy sneered down at him.

‘They say you lost your mum and dad. Bit bloody careless of ya, weren' it?' Darren had spent most of the morning thinking up what he was going to say. He grinned at all the kids nearby who had stopped to watch. Had he been paying more attention to Goose he would have noticed him get up and launch a tightly clenched fist straight at his face. It connected, shattering Darren's nose and causing him to bite down through his own tongue. Blood gushed out of his nostrils and from his mouth. Darren hated the sight of his own blood and started shrieking and flapping his arms. Unfortunately for Darren that was the image that stayed with all the onlookers, and from then on his nickname was Scream Queen. Screamer or Queenie for short.

Goose put up no defence when questioned by the headmaster, and it was only several of the other students' saying that Darren had incited the whole thing that meant Goose wasn't permanently excluded.

However, following that episode Goose was labelled a ‘troublemaker' in the minds of the teaching staff and that's how they treated him.

*

Goose reached the bottom of the stairs, turned left and made his way along the dark hallway to the small kitchen at the end. As he entered he saw his nan hunched over the washing machine. She was wrestling with a large turkey, trying to force it in through the door of the machine. Nan had Alzheimer's. It'd been getting worse over the last few years, and when Goose's mum and dad were alive his mum was becoming increasingly worried. However, before the accident Nan could still function normally most of the time. Her condition generally manifested itself in an overwhelming desire to organize and tidy. Sometimes her episodes were funny and even useful, like the time she'd arranged everything in the old kitchen by colour and size. Other times they weren't so funny and not at all useful, like when she hung all Dad's tropical fish on the clothes line to dry. Though it was a little funny that she had also hung out frozen fish fingers at the same time.

Since the accident, Nan's condition was worsening by the day and Goose didn't know what to do. It was amazing that no one had noticed and come calling. Goose assumed they had ‘
slipped through the cracks of the system
'. That's the sort of thing he heard on the news all the time. Though usually it was in connection with some horrible tragedy. Goose was pleased that the system was failing them. He knew Nan needed help, but what would happen to him
if she left? He would be put into care, and he was pretty sure he wouldn't be allowed to keep Mutt. He knew this couldn't go on much longer. He would work out what to do. Soon. But not today.

‘What're you doing, Nan?' Goose asked.

Nan gave a little startled yelp and turned to look at him. ‘Oh, Goose, you gave me a fright. Didn't hear you come in. Morning, you two, sleep well?'

‘What are you doing, Nan?' Goose repeated.

‘What do you mean, love?' said Nan, a sweet-little-old-lady smile on her sweet-little-old-lady lips. Nan was small and white-haired, comfortably plump and rosy-cheeked. She looked like the perfect fairytale grandmother. Except Goose couldn't remember any fairytales where the grandmother forced turkeys into washing machines.

‘What're you doing with that turkey, Nan?' said Goose.

Nan looked down at the bird in her hand and frowned.
What a silly question
, she thought.

‘Well, it's not going to cook itself, is it, darling?'

‘That's the washing machine, Nan,' said Goose.

He saw Nan's features darken as she glanced at the washing machine, then at the turkey, then at the oven on the other side of the kitchen. He could see the moment writ large on Nan's face when she realized her mistake. She looked horribly sad.

‘Oh. Silly old fool,' said Nan in a tiny, pathetic voice.

Goose crossed and took the turkey from her. He laid it on the kitchen table and led Nan to a chair.

‘Don't worry, Nan, it's only Christmas Eve,' he said, forcing a warm and cheery tone into his voice.

‘Is it?' asked Nan.

Goose thought she was about to start crying and he desperately wanted to get out before that happened. ‘Easy mistake to make. I'll help you. We'll do it together. Tomorrow. Yeah?'

Nan nodded and forced a weak smile.

‘I'll see you later, Nan. Come on, Mutt.' Goose edged to the door, itching to leave, but then he stopped and looked back. His nan was staring down at the chequered pattern of the Formica on the kitchen tabletop and wringing an old tea towel between her fingers. Goose wished he knew the right thing to say: the thing that would help Nan and make her all better again. There was nothing, so he bit the inside of his cheek and left.

Nan watched Goose and Mutt leaving. Her brain felt foggy, though she hadn't noticed until Goose had pointed out her mistake with the turkey. She hated that this was happening to her, but she couldn't seem to make it stop. Most of all she felt that she was failing Goose. She knew he was beyond miserable, though he always kept a breezy, cheery tone to his voice when he spoke to her. She loved him all the more
for that. She knew he was sneaking out at night. Part of her knew what he was getting up to, but right now she couldn't really remember. Her mind was like someone tuning a radio. Every now and again a clear signal would emerge from the static.

It was a year ago to the very day that her son and daughter-in-law had died. She had meant to say something to Goose. Maybe he had wanted to mark the day somehow. They could visit the cemetery. A fleeting moment of clarity told her that he wouldn't want that. He hadn't visited their graves once that she knew of. Of course that didn't mean anything. He did lots of things that she didn't know about, but she had tried on occasion to talk to him about his parents and he would always find some way to end the conversation as quickly as possible. She knew she should force the issue, but her mind just wasn't flexible enough any more to even try. She cursed her failing faculties. She was useless.

Her mind wandered, drifting back to the village in Norfolk to which she had been evacuated during the war. She remembered the church that looked over the village green and the bicycle she had been given by the couple she had stayed with. They were called Muriel and Ainsley Fenchurch. He was the first person she had ever met with a beard, and she had a large mole growing on her chin and smelled of rose water. They had a dog called Barney, a red
setter. She remembered the apple tree at the bottom of their garden. She could even picture the red hue of the apples and still taste their tartness as she sank her teeth into them. She could remember the chickens clucking on the Galbraith farm, which was down the road from the Fenchurches' house, left, right and then left again. She would cycle to it at least twice a week to pick up eggs. She could remember the feel of the cloth of the blue and green dress Mrs Fenchurch had made for her rubbing against her thighs as she pedalled. She could remember all that so vividly and yet she couldn't manage to concentrate for five blasted minutes to talk to her grandson and make sure he was okay. She thumped her fist on the table and tears pooled in her eyes.