iBoy

...my mind is all in bits.

Goethe

Fragments again. Snapshots.

Disconnected moments.

... Lucy getting to her feet — her knees all scratched and bloodied, her face cut and bruised, her nightgown cut open ... both of us sobbing our eyes out...

... Lucy's fumbling hands, and her desperate silence, as she tries to untie me from the girder — pulling and twist­ing and tearing at the wire, cursing every now and then as the metal slices into her fingers ...

Shit.

Fuck it.

Bastard bloody thing ...

... Lucy and me, standing there in the pale yellow light, holding each other, hanging on to each other ... our bodies shaking, our tears pouring out, neither of us able or willing to talk ...

... and the carnage all around us. Bodies, blood, bits of flesh ... we can't think about it, can't look at it, can't care about it. Dead or alive, we can't afford to care about them.

We just have to go.

Get out of there. Leave them. Go...

... walking home in the early hours of the morning, both of us shivering with cold and shock, Lucy wearing my jacket over her mutilated nightgown ... hobbling awkwardly in my socks and trainers ...

Are you OK?

Yeah ... no.

Holding hands, holding each other, helping each other.

All right?

Yeah ...

We can't talk about it — what happened, what's going to happen, what I've done, what it means — it's all too much for now. Too complex, too confusing ... too many unanswerable questions.

We can't do it.

Not now ...

... Crow Lane, Compton House, flashing blue lights in the darkness ... the police are all over the place. I barely have time to say goodbye to Lucy before we're both taken away for questioning.

11010

To love is not to look at one another: it is to look, together, in the same direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Terre des Hommes (1939)

Questions. That's pretty much all there was over the next two days: questions from the police, questions from doctors, questions from Gram ... what happened? how did it happen? who? why? where? when?

What could I say?

I don't know ...

Can't remember ...

I'm not sure ...

It was never-ending. Question after question, hour after hour, day after day ... and it wasn't until the Thurs­ day evening that I finally managed to get a bit of time on my own. I knew that I wouldn't have long — Gram had just nipped out to the shops, and the police were coming back later to talk to me again — so I didn't waste any time, I just grabbed my jacket, left the flat, and headed up to the roof.

And now, here I was again — sitting alone on the edge of the world, watching the sun go down. It was another mild night, the air clear and still, and the sky was layered with an evening redness that glowed with the promise of long hot summer days to come. But as I sat there on the roof, gazing out at the horizon, I couldn't imagine any days to come. Tomorrow, next Wednesday, next month, next year ... there was nothing there for me, nothing at all. There was nothing beyond the horizon.

Not for me.

My mind was still all in bits.

I closed my eyes and looked inside myself.

I could see a past, the last few days, yesterday ... I could see Gram sitting next to me on the settee in the front room, her greying hair shaved to her scalp around the stitched-up wound on her head, and I could hear myself telling her most of what Ellman had said about my mother, her daughter, and I could see the tears in Gram's eyes when I asked her if any of it was true.

'Georgie wasn't a bad girl,' she'd told me, smiling sadly. 'But she was always a bit wild, a bit rebellious ... not that I minded that, of course ... but when she was about seventeen she started taking things a bit too far, you know ... mixing with the wrong kind of people, getting into drugs ...' Gram shook her head at the memory. 'She lost her way, Tommy. And you know what it's like when you lose your way around here ...'

'Did she know Ellman?'

Gram nodded. 'He was the man, you know ... everyone wanted to know Howard Ellman. He had the drugs, the money, the cars, the girls ...' She sighed. 'Georgie thought he was exciting. I tried telling her what he was really like, but she just wouldn't listen ...'

'Was she ...?' I asked hesitantly. 'I mean, were they...?'

'Sleeping together?' She nodded again. 'Georgie was out of her head most of the time — she didn't know what she was doing ...'

'Ellman called her a whore,' I said quietly.

Gram looked at me, her eyes moist with tears. 'Your mum made a lot of mistakes, Tommy. Like I said, she lost her way ... but in the end she found herself again. When she found out that she was pregnant, she pulled herself together, got off the drugs, got away from Ellman ... and that took a hell of a lot of guts, a lot of courage.' Gram paused, putting her hand on my shoulder. 'She was your mother, Tommy. If she was still alive now, she'd love you as much as I do, and you'd love her.'

I could see us holding each other then, both of us crying our eyes out, and I could hear Gram saying sorry to me, over and over again, for not telling me the truth about Mum before, and I could hear her trying to explain that she hadn't kept the truth from me because she was ashamed of Mum or anything, but simply because she couldn't see what good it would have done for me to know all the ugly details of her life.

And I understood that.

Because, in exactly the same way, I couldn't see what good it would do for Gram to know all the ugly details of what Ellman had said about Mum. She didn't need to know that Ellman might have killed her, or that he might ... just might... be my father ...

She didn't need that pain.

So I kept it to myself.