LITMIR.BIZ

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       2.

      We’ve lived in Brighton for two years. Before that we lived in Oxford and before that, somewhere else. Mum and Dad would decide that this move would be the last; that a change of scene would do it. It wouldn’t, of course, so then they’d decide that Sam would manage on his own if they paid his rent, but nothing lasted. After a few months, he’d turn up on our doorstep looking dirty and desperate, and Mum and Dad would let him right on in. I would have just shut the door in his face, brother or not, but no one listened to me – and now we are three.

      You can still see us as a whole family in the photo on my bedroom wall – Mum, Dad, Sam and me. It’s taken in the before; you can tell because we’re smiling. The photo shows us on holiday, wearing shorts and squinting in the sun. I’m just a toddler, and Sam is about ten. He stands in front of us grinning, one hand brushing the curls from his eyes and the other waving into the future with no idea of where he’s heading. I leave it up so I can remember that it wasn’t always like this.

      Our house is in a long row. It has three storeys and two front doors: a normal one that leads into the hall and another for what used to be a downstairs room and is now Mum’s antiques shop. Two people are coming out as I arrive, with a glass lamp and a curly legged table tucked under their arms, which makes them look like escaping thieves instead of customers. There’s a little tussle on the doorstep while we do that dance people do when they’re in each other’s way, and it’s as I stand aside to let them pass that I see him. The mad tramp is right there at the end of our row, watching. His hair, lifted by the wind, is held back by a grubby claw and he says nothing, only stares at me for a long moment before baring his teeth in a yellow grin.

      I’m frozen in place, staring back while he begins to move towards me, dropping a can into the gutter as if he wants both hands free…

      I clutch the door handle. If I go inside, he’ll know it’s where I live, but I’m scared to stay out here. He takes another step and stops dead. Someone is behind me.

      ‘Corinne?’

      I jump before I realise it’s Matt, my friend and near neighbour. I turn and get behind him, shaking my head.

      Matt steps forward and stares at the red-haired man who’s standing half in the gutter. ‘You want something?’ he asks.

      The tramp looks at him – slowly, up and down. He starts at Matt’s pointy leather boots and goes up all the way up to his blonde hair. His mouth curls open in a growl. Finally he spits out words: ‘Gotta message for that girl… Need to give it to her…’

      ‘Get lost,’ Matt tells him and leads me across the road to where he and Ben had been unloading their car.

      ‘Who the hell is that?’ he nods, but when we look back, the street is empty.

      ‘Thanks,’ I say.

      ‘Just being a good neighbour.’

      ‘Just getting out of helping me with this, you mean,’ Ben says.

      We look down at the thing they were unloading and Matt laughs. ‘What the hell is it anyway?’ I say.

      Ben sighs. ‘It is a statue of Pan,’ he explains. But to me it’s still just a weird sort of half-man-half-goat thing tootling away on some pipes.

      ‘Where are you putting it?’

      ‘Heaven knows,’ Ben says. ‘It’s a present from my sister. Probably stick it by the bath with a towel over its head.’

      ‘You didn’t make it to school then?’ Matt says to me, ignoring Ben. He nods at my uniform, then his watch, his pale eyes unblinking.

      ‘I meant to,’ I tell him.

      He sighs. ‘Come round anytime. I could give you a lift.’

      I look at my feet and nod. He’s not fooled.

      Mum and Dad don’t have many friends here. Nor do I. When you have someone like Sam threatening to burst in on things at any moment, you tend to keep yourself to yourself. Ben and Matt are different, though. They knew all there was to know from the start – from the first day they moved in.

      It was about a year ago and past midnight when I heard the hammering of fists on wood and Sam’s voice blaring into the night from across the street. I let Mum and Dad sleep and darted over to find him slumped on someone else’s doorstep with a cut on one eyebrow and tears on his face. The door opened and two men peered out, looking nervous.

      ‘It’s my brother,’ I said. ‘Sorry – he can’t help himself. We live over there, if you could just help…’

      I was shivering in my dressing gown and one slipper, as they looked from me to Sam and back again.

      ‘Is he violent?’ one asked. ‘If not, bring him in. I don’t think we can move him any further. Don’t worry about disturbing us, we haven’t gone to bed yet.’

      Between them they hoisted Sam up and carried him inside, feet echoing in the empty hallway. They dropped him on an old sofa and covered him with a throw.

      ‘We just moved here,’ the one with fair hair said. ‘Not much unpacked.’

      Sam lay still on the red velvet as if he was dead; I sat with my two neighbours on the floor looking at him and tried to explain. I told them he was an alcoholic. I told them that even Mum and Dad were sometimes scared of him, and I told them I hated him. It poured out of me like water and they just sat there and took it all in. When I said sorry for the rubbish welcome to the neighbourhood, they smiled and one of them got up to offer me his hand, which seemed the thing to do. ‘Matt,’ he said, ‘and that’s Ben. Would you like some hot chocolate?’

      While we drank it, they told me a bit about themselves. They looked as different as cloud and sun. Matt was blonde and trendy with tattoos from shoulder to wrist, and Ben was dark and neatly dressed. Perhaps he saw me looking from one to the other, because he grinned and nodded at Matt. ‘I’m the sensible one,’ he said. ‘I work for a software company while Matt is all creative and arty.’

      ‘Graphic design,’ Matt said. ‘He’s just old and stuffy, take no notice.’

      I laughed. Ben must have been about thirty, but Matt wasn’t that much younger.

      ‘I don’t know why I stay with you, brat,’ Ben sniffed, but he didn’t mean it. They were so obviously happy together, they made me feel calm and safe.

      They brought Sam home the next morning and Mum and Dad were so embarrassed they insisted on cooking breakfast. After that they were often round, especially Matt. I think mum liked to talk to him, and so did I. Things would have been different if he’d been my big brother. It was Ben and Matt who looked after me the night Sam died – my body curled into the same old sofa. They were my first grown-up friends.

      I leave them to it now, fair head behind dark, carrying the weird statue inside – the same way they’d carried Sam that night we first met.

      Once they’ve gone, I scour the street for any sign of the red-haired man. There’s only his dropped can, still leaking orangey stuff into the drain, so I slip indoors and stand in silence while my heart stops thumping, then creep down the hall to spy on Mum. She’s in the shop. I can see her through the glass door, counting cash, brown eyes narrowed in a frown and her fluffy hair caught up in a tortoiseshell clip. She’s got really thin since Sam died. Her hipbones would make a supermodel envious. Sometimes Dad creeps up, puts his arms round her and takes hold of them like he wants to steer her off somewhere, but she mostly pushes him away as if she has something urgent to do elsewhere. Her name is Karen, but one night – just after Sam died – she said that ‘Karen’ was gone and she was someone else now. I think that may be true.

      I slip upstairs and take out the ‘Thought Diary’ I’m supposed to fill in for the psychologist – the ‘Shrink Woman’, as I call her. I open it and read:

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