Little Big Man Read online

  I didn’t want Mum to be on her own, so I got into her bed and we ate our sausage sandwiches – Mum was dropping ketchup everywhere because she was still drunk, you could tell.

  Afterwards, I lay on her boobs. I love doing that ’cause they’re so soft, like pillows. I even have names for them. One’s Larry (he’s a bit bigger) and one’s Gary. Nobody but my mum and me know.

  ‘What am I going to do, Zac?’ Mum said suddenly. Her voice was all funny like she had a bad cold, because she’d been crying so much. ‘I’m never going to get myself a man like this, am I? Never going to get you a dad. And then you’ll leave me and marry a gorgeous girl, because you deserve a gorgeous girl, and I’ll just be a lonely old woman with cats.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be lonely if you had cats, would you?’ I said. ‘Plus, you can get really friendly cats. And anyway, I’m not moving out – ever. Even if I do get married, I always want to live with you.’

  Mum laughed. ‘You won’t always feel like that,’ she said, kissing my head. ‘I promise you.’

  ‘Anyway, you will meet someone. Nan says Liam ruined all your confidence but you’ll get it back when you get a new boyfriend. You’re dead pretty. I think you are.’

  That was when Mum said the thing that made me glad this night had happened after all. ‘But that’s the problem, Zac.’ She was stroking my hair; it felt dead relaxing. ‘I only ever loved Liam. I don’t think I even want a boyfriend if it’s not him.’

  My heart was going boom. I didn’t dare speak in case she stopped talking.

  ‘I loved him and he loved me – so much. He did, I know he did. And I just can’t imagine finding that again.’

  She was quiet for a bit then, and I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she did a big sigh.

  ‘Bastard,’ she said.

  Chapter Two

  Juliet

  ‘Right,’ I say, holding my head at both sides as if it might explode or topple off if I don’t – I’m at the limit of human headaches; nothing would surprise me. ‘What would you like for your main breakfast, Mr Zac? You can have anything you want.’

  Zac’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘What, anything?’

  ‘Yeah, if we’ve got it. Come on, what’s your death row breakfast? Bacon, eggs, Uncle Jamie’s pancakes …?’

  Hangovers always make me emotionally wobbly and an image pops up, bringing a lump to my throat with no warning whatsoever: my little brother, cooking his special pancakes in our childhood kitchen, all big, curly bed-hair and purple hooded dressing gown. He used to make us pancakes every Sunday morning, showing off his culinary skills with how high he could toss them, and every single Sunday morning Dad would joke, ‘That’s my boy – a professional tosser!’ And every single Sunday morning Mum would snap, ‘Michael, please, it is not funny. What would people think if you said that in public?’

  And Jamie and I would snigger to ourselves – more at the fact that Mum got cross every time than at Dad making the same rubbish joke.

  ‘You have to say your death row breakfast first.’ Zac grins at me, bringing my attention back to him, to now, making the tears that were threatening to leak retreat to where they belong at seven fifteen on a Friday morning. He seems cheerful enough after last night, which is unnerving to be honest. What promises did I make? What did I say? I used to trust myself, even under the influence, not to say anything I might regret, especially about his father. But now, worn down by ten years of single parenthood, I don’t so much.

  ‘Oooh, Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes followed by two boiled eggs and a gigantic mug of coffee,’ I say, still holding my poor, throbbing head. That’s if I don’t die of natural causes before my execution. (Imagining the Last Suppers of soon-to-be-executed serial killers might not be everyone’s idea of fun but it seems to be ours.)

  Zac inspects me suspiciously with his gorgeous aqua eyes. (He gets those from his dad, worst luck.) He can smell overcompensation all right, but he’s all for exploitation and I don’t blame him.

  ‘Okaaay, pancakes then,’ he says, his face lighting up. I briefly wonder how long we have left of his face brightening at the mere mention of his favourite food or TV programme; how long it will be before simple pleasures don’t cut it anymore. Will I be able to keep up? Will I be enough?

  ‘But can I make them and you toss them?’ he says. ‘And can I have syrup and bacon with them like Uncle Jamie says in his recipe?’

  ‘You can, darling.’

  ‘Really?!’

  Normally the chances of me letting him cook before school are basically zero. I’m definitely still drunk.

  Zac slides off the breakfast-bar stool. ‘Yes! Uncle Jamie’s pancakes for breakfast!’ he sing-songs, padding to the fridge to get the ingredients.

  My son has the look of my brother – the coarse, fair hair that tends to grow out rather than down; something about the openness of his face, the wide-set eyes. But even now, ten years on, when I hear my brother’s name, the shock that he will never again be on this earth occasionally – like now – hits me the way it did the day I found out. And then I get a pang of hate for Liam for his part in what happened that night. And I’m glad of that feeling, because you know where you are with hating someone, don’t you? It’s safer. Cut and dried.

  A few years ago, when Zac was about seven, we went on a day trip to London. It was absolutely brilliant. I’d saved up my Tesco vouchers to go to the London Aquarium. Zac still talks about touching the stingrays and eating a crepe (you can imagine the hilarity) but for me, the main thing I’ll remember about that day is what happened on the train home, which is that I went to the loo, closed the door but forgot to press ‘lock’ – only for someone to come and press ‘open’ seconds later and the door to open as slowly as it’s surely possible for a door to open, revealing yours truly with her knickers round her ankles to a packed rush-hour train. The walk of shame back to my seat was torture; teenage boys applauded me: ‘What happened? Get your arse stuck in the toilet seat, did you, love?’

  If anyone ever asked me, ‘What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you?’ I used to tell them this story; but now I fear what happened last night has surpassed it.

  Obviously I don’t normally go to school with Zac on the bus (Zac makes me get the early bird one, it just not being acceptable to get the bus with your mum when you’re in Year 6 apparently) but, as luck would have it, what with me being unable to string a sentence together and stinking of wine, I’ve been called in for a meeting today with his teachers.

  We sit at the top at the back, Zac nearest the window, me in the aisle seat. The snow has turned to grey sludge, making this part of Grimsby look grimmer than ever as we pass the tired low-roofed offices and shops of Freeman Street: Poundstretcher and Iceland, Khan’s Fashions and the Carpet Warehouse. A cold wind’s blowing a gale just to add to matters, and a trolley has made a break for it from the queue of them in front of Iceland. It’s alone and desolate, turning slowly and almost elegantly like a big fat silver fairy.

  ‘Mum, how much did you have to drink last night?’ says Zac suddenly, and my stomach flips.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just want to know.’

  Now, how do you answer that? Because either way you’re screwed, if you ask me.

  ‘Only half a lager, son.’ Really, and that was the state you were in? I think you should give up drinking, Mum.

  ‘A bottle and a half of white wine.’ (That is the truth.) Really? – rings AA or Childline – I think you should give up drinking, Mum.

  Actually, in my defence, I don’t normally drink like I did last night. Booze isn’t my drug of choice – you only need to look at me to figure out what is – but I was a bag of nerves and I made two basic errors: going out on an empty stomach and drinking white wine. There’s only one way that ever goes.

  I put my hand into Zac’s chubby, tanned one – I still love to hold his hand – and say, ‘A little bit too much, I think, Zac.’

  I shouldn’t be allowed on dates – I’m a
liability. When I look at my dating history over the past ten years, it’s a car crash. I should do everyone a favour and just forget it. After Liam and the awful events of that June weekend in 2005, I didn’t dare go near another man for seven years. Then, in August 2012, Jason popped up – literally, from behind the bar at The Pavilion nightclub in Cleethorpes. He was working two jobs back then, fitness training by day and bar work at night. I, meanwhile, was on a rare evening out with my best friend Laura, who – worried I was depressed (I wasn’t arguing) and beginning to take on a deathly pallor because I was in the flat so much – had insisted on paying for me. I hadn’t been out in months and I went a bit off the rails, although to the outside eye it probably looked like I was having the time of my life. But even if no one else could spot it, I knew that when I pounded that dance floor till I was pouring with sweat; when I downed those shots of tequila and banged the empty glass on the bar, it was with a rage I kept suppressed the rest of the time. Fuck you, Liam. Fuck you. And when Jason accepted my very slurred request for a date, which I only remembered doing when he called me the next day, he had unknowingly been handed an exploding bomb.

  The bus rounds a corner and we pass Your Fitness where Jason works. I pass it every single morning, just to add salt to the wound, and every single morning I feel a pang of regret about that messy year I put him through. If there had to be a messy rebound boyfriend, after all, I would really have liked it to be someone less lovely and more deserving than Jase. Just to give you some indication of what I passed up (besides the most beautiful biceps you’ve ever seen in your life), when I finally stopped running hot and cold, and admitted I was in no state for a relationship, Jason still wanted to be friends. Zac was delighted, because he adored Jase, but I’m just not one of those girls who thinks that being mates with exes is a good idea, so I’m trying to cool the whole friendship thing off. I think we both need to move on.

  ‘Mum?’ Zac says, nudging me suddenly, making me jump.

  I have a moment’s worry he’s noticed Your Fitness too and is about to start asking when we can next see Jason.

  ‘I said, you do remember, don’t you?’

  ‘Remember what?’ I ask warily.

  ‘What you said last night? You know, about Dad?’

  I freeze. My stomach rolls horribly. So I did say something – but what and how much? Did I just blab everything when I was pissed? Deliver the news that would blow his whole world apart and I can’t even remember? Oh yeah, so, you know you’re upset about your dad abandoning you? Well, actually, that’s the least of your problems, because the whole truth is about a thousand times worse.

  My hangover suddenly intensifies and my heart starts going like the clappers, but then I look at Zac’s smiling, inquisitive face. Surely if I’d told him everything, he’d be upset this morning? I study his expression for a few panicky moments and only when I’m completely satisfied it isn’t one of horror do I allow myself to exhale.

  ‘Of course I remember, Zac,’ I say, like, What do you take me for?

  He leans his head on my shoulder. ‘The last bit, Mum,’ he says, chuckling to himself. ‘That was well funny. When you just sat up and swore …’

  Oh God.

  We pass the park and the pebble-dashed sprawl of the Goode Estate, with me frantically trying to piece together last night. But there are huge gaps in my memory. I can’t even remember what Dom and I talked about; I just remember the feelings: the flutter when I fancied him the moment I saw him, and the excitement as we seemed to click – or, at least, I thought we did; the giddiness when he gave me a lift home in his sports car and I gushed drunkenly about how flash it was, splaying myself all over it, stroking the seats. Jesus … Us walking arm in arm across the estate, everything so white and perfect in the snow. (That was how I saw it, anyway; he probably only had his arm in mine to hold me up.) I remember lifting my face up to kiss him, closing my eyes – and then the rejection, like a slap in the face, when he turned his cheek.

  There was just this rage then – like there was that night I first met Jason – that rose up in me like a … like a bottle and a half of white wine, let’s face it, and suddenly I was shouting, ‘Why? WHY? WHY?’ even though I knew why; it was obvious why. But I can’t help thinking, why did he go on a date with me then? He’d seen a picture (albeit head and shoulders only but the absence of any visible bone – collar, cheek or otherwise – is clear as day).

  There are fat-girl brush-offs, however, and Dom went for the classic ‘Look, you’ve got a really pretty face’ – after he’d as good as recoiled from it. I would have laughed if I hadn’t already been crying.

  I close my eyes and rest my pounding head on the cool window. Christ, Juliet, I think. You love your boy so much but it didn’t stop you last night, did it? It wasn’t enough to make you rein in the wine and the general self-loathing?

  Mercifully, back home is also patchy. I just remember tears – from me, and possibly Zac because he absolutely hates it when I cry – and that when I stepped out of bed this morning, I went flying on the remains of a sausage sandwich that I’d obviously made when I got home, pissed. Because not only does white wine bore huge holes in your memory, it also makes you crave lard like there’s no tomorrow and before you know it, you’ve knocked up an extra five hundred calories inhaling a sausage sandwich that you can’t even remember eating.

  There are three of them waiting for me after I drop Zac off at his classroom: Miss Kendall, Zac’s teacher – pretty, young, slim (naturally, Zac’s in love with her); Mrs Bond, the headmistress; and Brenda – a school counsellor.

  ‘Brenda will just be someone to emotionally support him at school,’ they said when they brought her in at the beginning of November last year. Zac was struggling a bit – he’d even bunked off one day, which was most unlike him – and they said Brenda was someone he’d be able to talk to, who was totally on his side. (I wondered who I was then – the enemy?)

  ‘Nice to see you, Juliet. How are you?’ says Mrs Bond as I take off what feels like never-ending scarves and jumpers, revealing a slightly smaller me each time like a Russian doll. Except, of course, even without all the layers, I’m not exactly small. I’m sweating like a pig from the hangover and the chair is much lower than I anticipate, meaning a little yelp slips out when I eventually land.

  Three pairs of eyes then, all staring at me. I can feel the sheen of toxic sweat pooling on my top lip.

  ‘Well, this looks serious,’ I say cheerily, realizing it might be precisely that. ‘Oh God, what’s he done?’

  He hasn’t done anything, they say. He just seems like a different boy to the one they knew in Year 5; he’s not fulfilling his academic potential; he seems angry sometimes and upset, anxious.

  ‘But he’s a kid,’ I say, ‘not a robot. Surely he’s allowed off days like anyone else?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Brenda, soothingly. ‘Of course he’s allowed off days. But it doesn’t feel like it is the odd “off day”, it feels like he’s fundamentally …’ She tilts her head to the side, searching for the right word. I’m dreading what it might be. ‘Struggling at the moment.’

  My throat constricts. I know that feeling.

  ‘Obviously, I only met him in November, but even I can tell that this is a child who’s got a lot on his shoulders. And maybe nothing has changed since Year 5, but for whatever reason, he’s not coping as well as he was.’

  ‘Can we also just chat about his issues with food?’ interjects Mrs Bond, and I actually laugh.

  ‘Sorry, issues with food? I don’t think so. Zac’ll eat anything.’

  You can practically hear the tumbleweed.

  Brenda leans forward, as if she’s a cancer doctor about to impart bad news. That’s how it feels, like she’s telling me he has a disease, that my perfect boy is somehow defective. ‘We’re just a little concerned about Zac’s weight. He does seem to have put on quite a lot more since starting Year 6, and we just wanted to raise that with you.’

  The alcohol has as go
od as worn off now, the post-drinking paranoia is setting in and I’m suddenly aware of how my thighs are spilling over this ludicrously small chair, like a Pizza Hut cheesy crust. I even start to feel like they might have given me this chair on purpose, to make a point. I wonder about the possibility of it breaking, right now, into two, and how I’d never survive the humiliation, how I’d have to make Zac change schools …

  ‘Has anything happened at home that might have triggered the sudden weight gain?’ she asks.

  Sudden weight gain? What is she on about? I live with him; surely I’d have noticed?

  ‘Is he perhaps eating in secret, you know, taking food you’re not aware of?’ suggests Brenda. ‘Some children do that if they’re upset in any way.’

  I feel my cheeks flushing; tears threatening. How do you know? I think, you who can probably eat anything you want and still stay skinny? I hold the words – just – behind gritted teeth.

  ‘He was found in a corner of the playground – almost as if he was hiding – eating a doughnut on his own,’ she says, and at first I laugh, partly because I’m nervous and partly because she’d have looked less serious if he’d been caught with a four-pack of Special Brew.

  ‘Well, I never gave him a doughnut. If anyone’s having a doughnut, it’s me!’ I say. Then I burst into tears.

  ‘It’s the hangover,’ I say. ‘Hangovers … they always make me emotional,’ which unsurprisingly is met with icy stares.

  Brenda passes me a tissue. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, dabbing under my eyes. ‘I really don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s a very emotive issue,’ says Brenda, which only makes me feel worse.

  ‘Look, he must have bought the doughnut on the way to school, because I always just put an apple in his bag.’ God knows we’ve had enough letters come home saying they can only have fruit or vegetables for their snack.