The One Plus One

34. Nicky

This is the story of a family who didn’t fit in. A little girl who was a bit weird and geeky and liked maths more than makeup. And a boy who liked makeup and didn’t fit into any tribes. And this is what happens to families who don’t fit in – they end up broken and skint and sad. No happy ending here, folks.

Mum doesn’t stay in bed any more, but I catch her wiping her eyes as she washes up or gazing down at Norman’s basket. She’s busy all the time: working, cleaning, sorting out the house. She does it with her head down and her jaw set. She packed up three whole boxes of her paperback books and took them back to the charity shop because she said she’d never have time to read them and, besides, it’s pointless believing in fiction.

I miss Norman. It’s weird how you can miss something you only ever complained about. Our house is weirdly quiet without him. But since the first forty-eight hours went past, and Mr Adamson said he was in with a chance, and we all cheered down the phone, I’ve started to worry about other stuff. We sat on the sofa last night after Tanzie went to bed and the phone still didn’t ring and then I said to Mum, ‘So what are we going to do?’

She looked up from the television.

‘I mean, if he lives.’

She let out a long breath, like this was something that had already occurred to her. And then she said, ‘You know what, Nicky? We didn’t have a choice. He’s Tanzie’s dog, and he saved her. If you don’t have a choice then it’s actually quite simple.’

I could see that even though she really did believe this, and it might actually be quite simple, the extra debt is like a new weight settling on her. That with each new problem she just looks a bit older, and flatter and wearier.

She doesn’t talk about Mr Nicholls.

I couldn’t believe after how they’d been together that it could just end like that. Like one minute you can seem really happy and then nothing. I thought you got all that stuff sorted when you get older, but clearly you don’t. So that’s something else to look forward to.

I walked up to her then, and I gave her a hug. And that might not be a big deal in your family, but I can tell you in mine it is. It’s about the only stupid difference I can make.

So this is the thing I don’t understand. I don’t understand how our family can basically do the right thing and yet always end up in the crap. I don’t understand how my little sister can be brilliant and kind and some sort of damn genius, and yet pretty much everything she loves has disappeared, just because she’s a bit different. I don’t understand how it is that she now wakes up crying and having nightmares and I have to lie awake listening to Mum pottering across the landing at four a.m. trying to calm her down, and how she stays inside in the day, even though it’s finally warm and sunny, because she’s too afraid to go outside any more in case the Fishers come back to get her. And how in six months’ time she’ll be at a school whose main message is that she should be like everyone else or she’ll get her head kicked in, like her freak of a brother did. I think about Tanzie without maths, and it just feels like the whole universe has gone mad. It’s like … Morecambe without Wise, or Jaffa Cakes without the orange. I just can’t imagine who Tanze will even be if she doesn’t do maths any more.

I don’t understand why I had just got used to sleeping and now I lie awake listening for non-existent sounds downstairs, and how now when I want to go to the shop to buy a paper or some sweets I feel sick again and have to fight the urge to look over my shoulder.

I don’t understand how a big, useless, soppy dog, who has basically never done anything worse than dribble on everyone, had to lose an eye and get his insides rearranged just because he tried to protect the person he loves.

Mostly, I don’t understand how the bullies and the thieves and the people who just destroy everything – the arseholes – get away with it. The boys who punch you in your kidneys for your dinner money, and the police who think it’s funny to treat you like you’re an idiot, and the kids who take the piss out of anyone who isn’t just like them, whether they’re posh and at a maths competition, or a stupid, ignorant idiot who doesn’t know the difference between a username and a password. Or the dads who walk right out and just start afresh somewhere new that smells of Febreze with a woman who drives her own Toyota and owns a three-piece with no marks on it and laughs at all their stupid jokes like they’re God’s gift and not actually a slimeball who lied to all the people who loved him for two whole years. Two whole years.

Mum always told us that good things happen to good people. Guess what? She doesn’t say that any more.

I’m sorry if this blog has just got really depressing but that’s how our life is right now. My family, the eternal losers. It’s not a story, really, is it? It’s a flipping cautionary tale.