Chapter 72 Damon
Damon
For now, I watch us in his lounge, logged into his dad’s Xbox account, building animated fantasy football teams and competing against one another in FIFA tournaments.
A few months earlier, Callum moved into the flat next door with his father, following the death of his wife from cancer.
As kids often do, we built up an instant rapport, spending most evenings and weekends playing together.
I’m drawn to his dad, Lloyd, as much as I am Callum.
Mum says my own dad has begun working on a building site nearby, but he hasn’t bothered to drop by.
He has a knack for making me feel worthless even when I haven’t seen him in months.
So why as an adult did I think he’d died a couple of years earlier? More unanswered questions.
However, my relationship with Callum at school isn’t mirroring our time away from it.
From morning until mid-afternoon, I don’t exist in his life.
He is a year above me and has his own friends.
He gives me the cold shoulder each time I try to become a part of their group.
Being pals in public with someone younger than you isn’t cool, he reminds me. And I reluctantly accept it.
Mum has taken a shine to Callum and the feeling is mutual.
Especially when his dad begins travelling cross-country as a delivery driver.
Lloyd slips Mum money each week to keep an eye on his son and ensure he’s fed and dressed in clean clothing.
So Callum is a regular face around our breakfast and dinner table and Mum makes us both packed lunches for school.
The extra responsibility seems to bring out something different in her.
Maud visits less frequently, and Mum smiles more.
I enjoy having a brother figure, even if it’s only on his terms. But it’s all odd. Until it isn’t.
Now it’s a hot Sunday afternoon and I watch as Callum and I return to my flat.
I’m pouring us drinks when I hear him giggling by the lounge door.
It’s slightly ajar, and when I peek through it, I see Mum and Callum’s dad together on the sofa, kissing.
His hand is down the front of her joggers.
Up until this point, I thought I liked Lloyd.
But watching him and Mum together makes me uncomfortable.
Going by the smile enveloping his face, Callum thinks differently.
Our parents are red-faced and flustered when they realise they’ve been caught.
My gaze fixes on Mum, but she struggles to maintain eye contact with me when they sit us down and explain how they enjoy spending time together.
I suddenly feel stupid for believing Mum has begun wearing make-up and started doing her hair because I’ve made her better.
It’s all for him. And it makes me wonder why he’s enough to keep Maud away, and I’m not.
Soon after, Lloyd and Callum are spending all their time here with us, even though their own perfectly adequate home is next door.
Dad must still have some friends around here who have told him Mum now has a boyfriend, because I’ve spotted him inside his van in the car park opposite.
For twenty minutes I watched him from behind the net curtain, waiting for him to come up.
He’d driven away by the time I gave in and made the first move.
I spotted him again yesterday driving slowly past the flat.
Being around Callum is becoming a strain and I resent him for taking Mum’s attention.
I’m also angry at Lloyd because I’m sure him being around is stopping Dad from coming by to see me.
The stress of it is making my childhood nosebleeds heavier and more frequent.
A handkerchief becomes a permanent fixture in my pocket, much to the amusement of Callum and his friends.
He says my initials on the edge, DL, stand for ‘dick licker’.
One day they jump on me in a quiet corner of the school playground, pushing me down and shoving two tampons up my nose.
Then they wrap brown tape around my head to keep them firmly in place, and laugh as they run away.
I rip out so much hair taking it off. Mum’s response is that it’s only a bit of fun.
‘Your mum is dead,’ I cruelly remind Callum the same week, to hurt him like he’s hurting me. ‘And you’ll never have another one.’
‘We’ll see,’ he replies cryptically and wanders off.
My situation further declines when Lloyd’s job expands into Europe.
He’ll be gone for days at a time. I cry and shout when Mum announces Callum is moving in with us permanently.
I beg for it to be her and me, even telling her I don’t mind if Maud comes to stay again.
The argument ends when I storm out of the kitchen to find a smug Callum in the hallway.
Our flat only has two bedrooms, so Lloyd gives Mum money to buy a bunk bed.
Callum sleeps on the bottom. Sometimes I imagine waking up to find he has died in his sleep.
Or I fantasise about holding a duvet over his face until he stops breathing.
I feel it with such clarity, it’s less like a fantasy and more of a re-enactment.
I grow to hate everything about him. The clicking noise his jaw makes as he chews; his constant sniffing and tuneless singing along to songs on the radio.
And how he instinctively knows how to goad me, frequently finding ways to make me jealous of his relationship with Mum.
He’ll wait until I’m in the room before telling Mum how much he loves her.
She soaks up every word before wrapping him in tight hugs.
All the time, he’s looking my way to view every second of my reaction.
Callum and I get into our first fist fight the day he starts calling her ‘Mum’.
He wins, and I’m left bruised in body and ego.
Our relationship at school further deteriorates.
He lies to everyone, telling them I’m a bedwetter; that I’m a pervert who likes to listen through the wall as our parents have sex, and that my real dad is a child molester and that’s why he doesn’t live with us.
My life there becomes equally as miserable as it is at home.
I report him to my teacher, who gives him a week of detentions, but Callum is still too pig-headed to stop.
He just keeps on and on. I start doing stupid things to pay him back, like setting fire to his favourite West Ham football shirt and two of his schoolbooks with a box of matches I find in the kitchen.
I do it in the bathroom, failing to understand it will warp and melt the bath itself.
Mum catches me and puts it out with the shower before it can spread, then screams at me and grounds me for a fortnight.
She also takes all my birthday money and spends it on a new shirt for Callum. I wish I’d set fire to him instead.
‘You know you’re not going to be living here much longer, don’t you?’ Callum begins one afternoon, out of Mum’s earshot.
‘We’re not moving,’ I reply.
‘We aren’t, but you are. When Dad gets back from Estonia, he’s going to ask Mum to marry him.’
My heart sinks. ‘Liar.’
‘He showed me the ring he bought her. And once they’re married, you’re going to live with your paedo dad. She said there’s not enough room in here for two kids, so you’ll be staying with him. But don’t worry, you can visit us. I might even let you stay in my room, once Dad’s redecorated it.’
His words tap into my worst fear – being separated from Mum. A fear generated years earlier by Dad’s departure. Maud hasn’t succeeded in pushing us apart, but this cuckoo is.
And I won’t allow it to happen.
Something takes charge of me, a raw, unrelenting rage that’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
I hate this boy so much that it burns each part of my body.
It radiates from the blood surging through my veins and boiling my skin, to my skull that wants to explode under the seething pressure.
And I instinctively know the only way to release this suffocating tension is to hurt the source of it.
I grab a pair of scissors from Mum’s knitting basket. Then I turn to face Callum.