Page 50 of Straight to Me

“It still is.”

“You know, you can tell me,” she says softly, lifting up on her elbow and resting her chin on my chest. She looks beautiful, having chucked on some of my clothes after we made it upstairs. Her tousled dark chestnut hair hangs loosely down her back.

I love that she wants to know, but my time living in Australia is tarred by tragedy. “I’m not really sure where I should start,” I reply with a sigh.

She nestles in closer. “Start at the beginning.”

The beginning.

“Okay. Well, my dad is Ronnie’s younger brother. He and my mum married quickly after having me and lived in this very house.”

“This very one?” she says.

“This very one. I’ve tarted it up some since then mind.”

My mum and dad were broke and fought almost every night. Money was always the issue. The house was a shit hole. I grew up with nothing, little food and even less in the form of future prospects.

“We didn’t have very much so Uncle Ronnie would send Rocco round with money and clothes for me. My mum was happy to accept charity, but my dad always threw it away or spent the cash on alcohol, rather than food for us. Eventually Rocco stopped coming.”

“So, you’ve known Rocco pretty much your whole life?”

“Yeah. I stayed with him for a while after mum died but he decided that I was to go to Australia, to spend some time with my uncle. He didn’t fly with me, he simply rode me to the airport, handed me a passport he’d ordered and gave me two-hundred pounds in cash.”

“That was thoughtful of him,” Mads whispers, and I’m sure I detect a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

Truth is, Rocco did me a favour.

My mum was my rock, always telling me that happiness is not about getting everything you want but making the most of everything you have. She had me. I had her. Until she was gone. I could get up and go to school when mum was around, but without her, I never bothered.

Instead, I stayed home, alone, watching TV or hanging out with a few mates after school hours. Occasionally, schoolteachers or social workers would come by and knock, but I always hid, refusing to ever answer. If ever dad was there, he pretended I was still grieving, or he was helping me with schoolwork.

Dad worked away most weeks, leaving me to cook, clean and generally fend for myself. Usually though, he would come home on a Friday afternoon. I’d always make sure the house was clean and tidy. A lesson I learned once after leaving pots and pans by the sink, dirtied from my supper from the night before. He gave me my first beating after that, cracking a rib and bruising my legs bad. I was a skinny lad back then. My legs were about the meatiest part of my body. The easiest part for him to hit. I didn’t blame him though. I grew to hate him, but I never blamed him.

Mum’s death had hit him hard, both financially and emotionally. She had worked at the local school as a cleaner most evenings before she died. Her wage wasn’t a lot, but without it, he had nothing.

I was always his target to vent his sadness and anger on.

As I approached thirteen, there was a day when he came home that he didn’t like the way I'd made his food. The beans were ‘too stewed’, he’d said. He went to belt me across my face, but I hit him first. He woke up later to an empty house.

I crashed on a few mates’ beds, still not attending school, but their parents took pity on me, feeding me and giving me clothes that actually fit.

After two weeks, I decided to pluck up the courage and return home. It was a Friday; he would be there. I knew I could take him if he started on me.

When the key opened the door though, the smell of rotting flesh smashed against my face. I threw up in the hallway, uncontrollably heaving and emptying my guts all over the carpet.

I eventually walked to the kitchen and found my dad, dead at the small dinner table. He’d swallowed a whole bottle of pills. He must have died horribly after their consumption; his cold, rigid hand still held the small pot. His swollen belly protruded his small frame, covered in foam and vomit. I remember calling an ambulance.

Within minutes, my house was invaded with police and paramedics. My dad was bagged up and taken away. I never even said a goodbye.

A police officer drove me to hospital where I was checked over. They asked if I had any family to call. “I had no one, Mads,” I tell her, “the only family friend, or close enough I knew was Rocco. Even then, I only knew him as the man who delivered food and money. Sending me to Australia, with any money at all, was more than he owed a kid like me.”

Not knowing a number but able to give a name, I also gave my uncle’s name in Australia. Low and behold, the following day Rocco arrived and collected me.

“That must have been difficult for you?” she says. She gently strokes her fingers in light circles across my chest and I lean into her, kissing her hair on the top of her head.

I didn’t speak for the next few days whilst I stayed with Rocco. On my thirteenth birthday, he took me to my dad’s funeral, having bought me a suit, but he had a business to run. I watched him, the club, the money, the drugs. It certainly was a lifestyle that appealed to me, having had nothing.

“Yeah, it was difficult. When she died the day after my twelfth birthday,” I feel Mads’s body flinch, “I remember feeling as though life was pointless. Like, I couldn’t find happiness without her.”

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