Little Big Man Read online

‘If I’d have just walked away, if I’d have just kept my cool, not been so fucking drunk,’ he said and the blood rushed to my face. ‘I’ve never thrown a punch at someone, ever.’

  ‘Look, Liam,’ I said. I felt compassion for him at that point – after all, Jamie wasn’t dead yet, was he? And there was still the hope that everything would be OK, my family would get back to normal, and we’d get another chance. ‘You can’t think like that. And anyway, I …’ I started, but I couldn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t say the words, even then. But I told myself I couldn’t think about me then, anyway; or Liam. All I could think of was Jamie and how much I needed him to be OK.

  A&E was packed. It was Saturday night after all, and it was bedlam in there: babies crying, phones ringing, nurses dashing, queues growing and my son lying, clinging to life, somewhere in the middle of all this. Liam sat there, thighs jiggling, biting his fingernails down like a scared little boy. Suddenly he sat up straight, and I knew, just by the look in his eyes, it was because Lynda had walked in.

  I stood up and turned around. She was making her way towards us, wild-eyed and white as a sheet. I could tell she’d seen Liam, but she didn’t speak to him, she didn’t even look at him. Of course, she already had her ideas about the man our daughter was in love with, and right then it must have seemed that her worst fears were about to be confirmed. They were, but she didn’t know that yet.

  We barely said a word to each other – there were no words. A nurse came and said she was taking us to the relatives’ room. And so we began walking down various corridors, past cubicles – some with curtains closed, some without. There were tubes and machines; relatives in coats on plastic chairs, speaking in hushed voices, holding hands. It was stark and quiet in the relatives’ room – lamp-lit, rather than the bright strip lighting of the A&E reception, as if they were trying to cocoon you from the horror. It didn’t work. My heart just seemed to bang harder, my panic growing in intensity in the fake calm of that room.

  The doctor – he didn’t call himself Dr, he was ‘Mr’ Lazarus, and he said he was a neurosurgeon. Just the word made me go cold all over. He explained that Jamie had come round in the ambulance and arrived conscious at the hospital but that, as sometimes happened with the sort of head injury he had, he’d deteriorated rapidly. They’d already scanned him and found a ‘significant’ bleed to the head. He was unconscious now and we weren’t to be ‘alarmed’ by the sound and sight of the tubes and machines but he was on a ventilator, to help him breathe. These words, these facts he was telling me, I couldn’t take them in. It was like he was talking about somebody else’s son.

  He’d been taken to intensive care and they were doing everything they could, but there was a strong possibility that he wouldn’t recover, he told us.

  Silence hung then.

  ‘But he will, won’t he?’ Lynda said eventually. I couldn’t look at her. I was staring at a coaster on the table in front of us, which advertised some drug or other.

  ‘Like I say, I’m afraid there’s a high possibility he won’t. The prognosis with a head injury like this is poor.’

  ‘But there’s still a possibility he will, isn’t there?’ I said. My teeth had begun to chatter.

  ‘There is a small possibility,’ said Mr Lazarus. ‘But the bleed on his brain is, as I say, significant and there’s a strong chance it could get bigger.’

  Lynda started to sob then and I knew I should hold her hand but somehow my hand wouldn’t move from my thigh. I was wondering what the doctor must be thinking of me when Lynda placed her hand on top of mine and took a big breath as if to ready herself for the onslaught of angry questions and accusations that followed: ‘How on earth could he arrive at hospital conscious, talking, and then be close to death? Explain that to me.’ What had they done to him? What had they not done? Not tried? How long did it take for the ambulance to get to him? ‘My Jamie is not the fighting type,’ she said. ‘He would never, ever, have started a fight. Whereas Liam, Liam, sitting outside perfectly fine … HOW IS THAT?’ She was raising her voice and I tried to shush her but she threw me a look.

  We were allowed in to see him. He was a big lad, was Jamie: chunky, with big feet, a loud voice – we used to joke that even his hair was big. But he looked like a little boy lying there, under all this equipment keeping him alive, and it felt like the first time in so long, maybe the first time ever, that I’d seen him like that: my lad, to protect. I’d failed.

  Lynda was stroking Jamie’s hair and talking to him: ‘Hello, baby, it’s Mummy. You’re going to be fine, OK? You’re going to be absolutely fine. I love you.’

  It was then that I told her about Liam. I don’t know why I told her then. I suppose I felt she ought to know and I wanted her to have the truth, or some of it, anyway, rather than throwing around accusations – even if those accusations were true. And most importantly, let’s face it, this was the only truth I could give her.

  She didn’t utter a word as I was telling her. There was just a mother’s love in her eyes, the grim, tight set of her mouth the only indication of her fury.

  At first I didn’t notice Liam standing by the gap in the cubicle curtains, but when our eyes met, he flinched, because he knew he shouldn’t be there. I glared at him, wanting him to go, for his own sake. At that stage, I still felt for him, I understood this must be terrible for him too, but also that Lynda wouldn’t see that, nor care.

  I had no idea she knew he was there until she started to speak to him. She must have seen him too – if only the shape of him behind the privacy curtain.

  ‘You did this,’ she said. ‘You started it. Why the hell were you fighting, Liam, when this was meant to be a night out to celebrate becoming a father? What sort of father are you now? Tell me that. What sort of man?’

  She was shaking all over, and I’ll never forget the downturn set of her mouth. It was like it set that night, and has remained like that. The wind had changed after all; a cold front had moved permanently in.

  ‘I want you to know that I blame you for this. You’re just like your father!’ she added, her voice rising. Liam stood there, out of Lynda’s eye-shot, but I could still see him. I tried to calm Lynda down. Like I say, Jamie wasn’t dead yet. But then, of course, he did die.

  At 3.34 a.m. on 12 June 2005, my only son died from a cardiac arrest. They took the tubes out; he didn’t need them now after all.

  As he slipped away the nurse told us, ‘Take as much time as you need with him,’ which was the emptiest of statements, the most heartbreaking, because no length of time is as much as you need. When do you decide you’ve had enough time with your child to last you a lifetime? After an hour? Two hours? When rigor mortis has set in?

  Lynda climbed up on the bed and cuddled him, like she did when he was little and he’d had a nightmare. But me, I was too panicked, too wretched. I literally couldn’t stand myself. Everything had changed, and I left the cubicle and pursued Liam like a wild animal then, like a man possessed. I didn’t have to go far to find him, walking slowly, sadly, towards the exit, and I grabbed him by the shoulder and I swung him around.

  ‘That figures. Leave just as he dies, you coward,’ I said.

  His eyes were unblinking. ‘He’s dead?’ It was a whisper. ‘No, he isn’t. He can’t be.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said, and he actually staggered with the shock. I thought his legs might give way.

  I got right in Liam’s face. I couldn’t help myself, the words flew out of my mouth, spit spraying everywhere. I was white with rage but it was fear, mostly; total fear. ‘I want you to know I blame you too,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t listen to Lynda. She was right. You’re just like your father, Liam. You’re no better than him. You’ve got it in your blood, you can’t help it. You say you’ve never started fights before but this is just the first of many, I assure you. This is where it all begins.’

  ‘No, no. Jesus, Mick.’ Liam was crying, tears running down his face. ‘Please I—’ I told him he needed to go,
to leave this family and this town, because ‘You will never survive here,’ I said. ‘I promise you that.’

  Our eyes met then. I remember my teeth were still chattering. And I knew what he was probably thinking. I fucked up, but I’m not the only one and you know it.

  ‘You’re just like your father,’ I said again, as if to stop him saying those thoughts, and he seemed to dissolve right in front of my eyes. ‘Never forget it.’

  He looked into my eyes, as if imploring me to say something, to soften, but I was merciless and when he realized I was standing my ground, he turned, and he left. I watched him walk down the corridor, went back in to see my dead son and broke down.

  ‘I didn’t protect him, Lynda.’ I was holding his lifeless body, sobbing, rocking him in my arms. ‘I told you I shouldn’t have had kids, that I wasn’t capable of protecting them.’ Lynda reached across Jamie and took my hand. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. That’s all I keep going back to in my head. It’s not your fault.

  Chapter Eight

  Juliet

  ‘So this here is our selection of notebooks.’

  The woman helping me in Gifts Galore looks like the sort of person who uses a notebook. She’s wearing a silky scarf and dangly silver earrings. ‘As you can see, there’s everything from your hardback decorative ones to your bog-standard ring-bound, or what about a Moleskine?’ she says, picking up a plain black one with a bit of elastic around it. ‘Now they’re lovely notebooks. Hemingway used a Moleskine apparently.’

  ‘How much is that?’ I say, taking it from her.

  ‘Ten pounds.’

  I swiftly put it back on the stand, feeling my cheeks burn. Ten pounds? For a plain black notebook? You must be joking. I don’t care if Barack Obama uses them, you could buy a week’s food for that in Aldi if you were clever.

  ‘But as I say, Moleskines are a special type of notebook,’ she says, clearly noting the look of horror on my face. ‘Is it for something or someone in particular?’

  ‘Oh no, no,’ I say, running my fingers up and down the stand over the other ones, but then I think about it. ‘Well, yeah, actually, I suppose it is. It’s for a sort of project I’m starting.’

  I have a project, a plan to help Zac, and it feels good, more than good. It feels amazing. I’m buzzing. The idea to get a new notebook for it came to me this morning while I was lying in bed. I’ve been making notes on my phone so far, but Zac is always playing Clash of Clans or Plants Vs Zombies on it, which means the chances of him seeing them is high and the last thing I want is for him to think I’m up to something, that he’s officially on ‘a diet’. That would make him run a mile (if he could even run a mile, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t) and I don’t need that right now, I have to get him on board.

  I decided I’d get the notebook on my way to work, so I’ve already been to Tesco and looked at the no-frills £1.50 jobs there, but I even ummed and ahhed about those. (Actually, I even considered you-know-whatting one because, as I say, every penny I have is accounted for.) But then I thought, no, no, this is sacred – this is my boy’s future we’re talking about here. If I can’t afford to give him a new life, then I sure as hell can afford to buy a notebook in which to record ways to make the one he has better. And so I’ve come here to Gifts Galore to get a nice one. I never come into shops like this ordinarily, though, because they sell nothing you need and everything you don’t: tin boxes with ‘Beer Money’ written on them that cost ten quid themselves. I’d been wandering around, looking a bit lost, until this sales assistant took pity on me.

  ‘I think I’ll take that one,’ I say, picking up a purple hardback with pictures of old-fashioned bikes all over it. I think it might, you know, inspire me – and also £3.50, although still an unprecedented amount for me to spend on something as frivolous as a notebook, seems almost sensible compared to a tenner. I pay for it and leave the shop, taking the shortcut through Freshney Place as I always do. But then I can’t even wait till I get to work; I sit down on a bench in the middle of the precinct and I get the notebook out of the posh paper bag. It feels lovely and solid in my hands and smells of newness. I rummage in my handbag – I only have a red felt-tip on me – and I write in the inside cover THE GET ZAC FIT CAMPAIGN. Then I think about it, cross it out and write THE GET ZAC HAPPY CAMPAIGN.

  I walk my normal route to work, a route I’ve taken every day for the last three years. It’s 9.45 a.m. on an ordinary Monday in February and yet I feel different, I feel alive; I notice things. Like how the shaft of sunshine jutting from a fat grey cloud, which is no doubt about to unleash its torrent any moment, is just now turning the canal into liquid gold. I notice how there are buds on the trees, and snowdrops everywhere, clusters of them around the churchyard and in the town square; little spotlights of nature and beauty, in amongst the mangy pigeons pecking at litter dropped on the damp pavements of this town, with one road in and one road out.

  How long has it been since I’ve had a plan? Besides getting through this day and living to see the next? (And losing weight. But then, this is about Zac now, not me and my endless, idle threats to myself.)

  I used to have plans all the time when I was little – before real life didn’t so much take over, but careen into me, sending me off the edge. If I wasn’t building my business empire from peddling bottles of rancid homemade ‘rose’ perfume, I was making badges and selling them at school, or thinking of ways to save the drunkards and homeless of this world – ‘this world’ being the East Marsh of Grimsby where there were plenty of those to keep me going. Me and my brother used to hatch schemes all the time. We used to play this game called, cunningly, Murder, We Wrote, which basically consisted of making up a murder then trying to solve it. We’d trawl the streets looking for ‘evidence’: a broken beer bottle wasn’t just a bottle, it was a murder weapon; that glove found in a bush was one our victim had had to surrender when they fled … I remember going to bed so excited to get up the next day and carry on with our project, and this is how I’ve felt for the last week since hatching my new plan. I’ve felt like a proper mum looking after her child. I’ve felt like a good mum, and I haven’t felt like that for a very long time.

  I decided I needed a Plan with a capital ‘P’ the night of the hideous chocolate incident, two weeks ago. The snow had delayed the buses, so the school was shut, everyone gone home, by the time I got there, which I’m glad about now. I’d calmed down by then anyway, and as I peered inside the window of Mrs Bond’s office, all I could see staring back at me was Zac, back at Sandwich King, covered in chocolate, going, ‘Mum, please don’t go to school, you’ll just make it worse!’ So, while if it were up to me, I’d have Aidan Turner receive the wedgie of his life, hauled up to the rafters by his kecks in front of the whole school, I agreed I wouldn’t call this time. There’s a ‘bully box’ at school where the kids can post names of bullies anonymously, which means staff can deal with them in a way that doesn’t point the finger at the dobber, as it were, so as a compromise Zac promised me he’d put Aidan’s name in there and we left it at that. That evening all he wanted to do was go to bed early, me cuddled up next to him, and do a quiz from his Factblaster book.

  I’ve never known a kid with a hunger for facts like Zac. It’s like he needs his daily dose, like they make him feel safe. And when I see him with my dad watching one of those nature programmes they both like so much, Zac firing a gazillion questions at Dad and Dad talking to him, explaining everything like Zac is the most important person in the world, I worry about my inquisitive boy and all his unanswered questions. I imagine all those questions he must have about his dad and me floating around in his mind, like driftwood on the sea, questions he knows he can’t ask. Where do they go? I wonder. And what is that doing to him?

  Zac slept in my bed the night after the chocolate bullying incident and went out like a light while I tossed and turned, looking at my boy’s freckled, sleeping face in the moonlight; his mouth open, his body slack – it felt like the ultimate show of trust. And
I wracked my brains for ways to help him lose weight and be accepted in a way that wouldn’t affect his confidence. (Even though I felt resentful that that was what we’d have to do to get the bullies off his back. Why couldn’t the world love and accept him as he was?)

  I’ve started to use my breaks at work to think about ways I can help Zac – to lose weight and get fitter, be less of a target for bullies; to be happier, basically. It was the obvious stuff at first: stop buying chocolate biscuits and multi-packs of crisps and pizzas and sausage rolls and those bloody gorgeous chocolate champagne truffles for a quid (a quid!) from Aldi; encourage him to exercise. But there was a stumbling block right away, because you won’t find a more exercise-shy kid than Zac: he baulks at the mere mention of ‘walk’. I’d always thought it was lucky he wasn’t sporty because sport costs, clubs cost. It’s £3.50 to take him swimming, £7 a week to do football or cricket and, frankly, that’s £10.50 a week I need for other things. But if I wanted to help him lose weight, then I knew we’d have to confront his exercise phobia. Not to mention mine.

  ‘So, what about running? Running’s free,’ says Laura now, sitting across from me and my new notebook. (Laura’s delighted I have a plan – a little too delighted if you ask me. She has the air of someone who thinks this should have happened ages ago.)

  ‘I said, I’m more than happy to come running with you, Juliet,’ she adds, when I’m clearly not listening. ‘Seriously, it’ll be fun.’

  I look at her. ‘With all due respect to Zac,’ I say, ‘does my son look like a runner? And do I look to you like I could run anything but a bath?’

  ‘Oh Juliet, who I’d love if she were twenty-six stone or six, if I can just state the obvious,’ says Laura witheringly, ‘the only way you’re going to look more like a runner, or feel like one, is if you start actually running, and I’ll help, I’ll take Zac running. I’ll take both of you! We can go along Cleethorpes Prom, up over the sand dunes, it’s glorious out there. Seriously, you’re missing out.’