Chapter 15
It was a frosty day in the middle of December when I came home from school to find it wasn’t my home any more.
I had known trouble was approaching, a rumble of thunder in the distance.
A few weeks earlier, the landlord, Lennie, had started turning up demanding the mounting overdue rent.
We’d tried talking to Mum and Dad about it – talking, yelling, crying, pleading.
They told us to stop fussing, leave it to the grown-ups.
Dad’s scrap-metal business was finally taking off; they’d have the money in no time.
Besides, Lennie would never kick his old mate into the street, not right before Christmas, when he had a wife and three kids.
The last time Lennie had let himself into our kitchen, he’d slunk up to Lacey and made a comment about them coming to sort some of arrangement. ‘I can be very forgetful about things like owed rent, if I’ve got something to distract me.’
Lennie was almost Dad’s age. He stank of cannabis, had only three teeth and was constantly adjusting the beer-belly sagging over his grubby tracksuit bottoms. Lacey told him what she thought of old men who tried blackmailing teenage girls into providing sexual favours.
Thankfully, Blake walked into the room before he could respond.
Even Lennie drew the line at hurting a girl in front of her little brother.
Lennie did kick his ex-mate into the street.
It turned out he’d given Dad a week’s eviction notice, then an additional twenty-four hours to get himself sorted.
Any parent with an ounce of sense would have gone straight to the council or Citizens Advice.
A homeless charity. He had children. There was no way we wouldn’t have a roof put over our heads, even if it was in a dodgy area, miles from our schools, my job and everything else we’d ever known.
My dad chose this week to become proud. Having spent his whole life happily accepting whatever help the government offered, whether he qualified for it or not, this time he decided to prove a point.
He was a man who could provide for his family and had everything under control.
Or, more likely, social housing had meant too many forms, too many questions, too many opportunities for someone to twig about the fraudulent benefit claims. He’d been warned last time the magistrates found him guilty of his latest petty crime that next time he’d face a prison sentence.
‘What’s going on?’ Lacey screeched, arriving home right behind me. We both stopped dead, appalled at the piles of bags and lone suitcase strewn across the scrubby bit of grass my dad optimistically referred to as ‘the garden’.
‘Your dad’s taking us on holiday,’ Mum said, lumbering out the front door with an overflowing laundry basket. ‘A Christmas treat.’
‘What?’ I rapidly scanned the bags, hands trembling as I started pawing through one that had my favourite jumper sticking out the top.
‘It’s really exciting,’ Blake said, jumping up and down as he gripped onto his own little rucksack.
We should have known something major was happening when Mum said she was collecting him from school herself.
‘We’re going on holiday, Alexis. A proper one!
Dad said if we’re good, we might see Santa! ’
‘We’ve been kicked out.’ Lacey’s voice was a monotone, but I had no doubt there was a cauldron of rage bubbling beneath her blank expression.
‘What?’ Mum forced a laugh. ‘Why would you say something so ridiculous? Especially in front of your brother. Your dad’s organised a wonderful surprise and, as usual, you two act like a pair of ungrateful brats.
Well, you can keep your moaning to yourselves.
’ Her eyes narrowed as any hint of humour evaporated.
‘Unless you want to stay here, where you won’t spoil everyone else’s festive fun. Lennie’s moving in this evening.’
The message was clear. We were to play along with this farce or find ourselves somewhere else to go.
Which for me would end up being in foster care, leaving Blake to the mercy of my parents.
Lacey could probably persuade one of her dodgy mates to let her bunk with them for a few days, but with no money or long-term plan their hospitality wouldn’t last long.
‘This might not be terrible.’ I spoke quietly, despite rage roaring in my ears at the thought of Mum going in our bedroom for what must be the first time in years, touching my stuff, deciding what to ‘pack’ in this flimsy carrier bag, now lying in the mud.
It was probably easier to feel angry about that than it was about being evicted.
‘If Dad’s found us somewhere else, it can’t be much worse than here. ’
Lacey pursed her lips, considering the likelihood of this. ‘Where is this “holiday” then? A hotel, or some crappy cabin in the middle of nowhere?’
Mum tipped her chin up. ‘We’re staying in a caravan.’
‘You have got to be kidding me,’ Lacey whispered, the blood draining from her cheeks. She walked over to the nearest solid object in the garden – the old sunbed – and kicked it so hard she limped for days.
When she tumbled onto the dirt, gripping her foot as she spat a string of expletives, Mum grabbed Blake’s arm and pulled him against her midriff, jaw set, eyes burning.
‘Are you coming or not, Lacey Nixon? Because if you want to join us, then watch your mouth. And your attitude.’ She swivelled her head to me. ‘That goes for you, an’ all. Try being grateful it isn’t a tent.’
By the time Dad turned up in an ancient people carrier ‘borrowed from a guy’, Lacey and I had gone through the bags, carefully folding and repacking everything we wanted to take, discarding what we felt we could do without and then fetching whatever else we needed from the house that could squeeze into the car.
The ten-pound note and pile of change I kept stuffed in the back of my underwear drawer had vanished.
I was irritated but not surprised. I’d only kept the money there as a decoy, because my parents would suspect I kept some of my wages to myself and I had a couple of hundred pounds stashed in my school locker.
We alternated between speechless waves of anger and devastation to furiously whispered plans and ideas for how we could solve the nightmare of being homeless.
Our house was a dump, but it was our dump.
If nothing else, it had been a place where we could be ourselves, hide from other kids’ cruelty and, for goodness’ sake, it had brick walls and a proper bathroom, with a shower that worked at least some of the time.
To anyone apart from a clueless seven-year-old, it was obvious we weren’t loading up the car for a holiday.
While most of the broken, useless junk from over a decade of Nixon family life and Dad’s schemes was being left for Lennie to deal with, we took our pitifully small handful of photos and the box file where Lacey and I had spent years storing all the important documents we could salvage from the chaos.
When Blake asked why we were bringing the TV, Dad said it was so we could watch the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day.
‘How long is this holiday going to be?’ Lacey asked, as if she had any hope of an honest answer. ‘College doesn’t break up until Friday. I can’t miss three full days.’
Nobody pointed out that she’d already skipped most of her first term, because I was the only one who knew or cared.
‘We’re not going far,’ Mum said as we started to drive away from the only place we’d ever called home. ‘You can still get to school and college. What do you reckon, Blake, fancy staying until the New Year?’
Lacey pressed her forehead against the rear passenger seat window and closed her eyes.
It was even worse than we’d predicted. Lacey had envisioned a spot at the local campsite where, in warmer weather, fishermen pitched their tents and campervans beside the lake. ‘Dad has probably decided to start selling fish.’
Two years of parental disappointment behind my sister, I was hoping for something better. ‘One of those static caravans with a proper kitchen and a bathroom; the good ones are bigger than some houses.’
‘What, like in an American trailer park?’ Lacey shook her head in disdain. ‘Alexis, right now we’re not even good enough to qualify as trailer trash.’
It didn’t take long to discover she was right. Opting for his family to become destitute rather than face the consequences for his crimes, my father had scrounged a caravan off a local farmer, situated in a patch of woodland.
Dad forced the car down a dirt track through the trees, branches on either side scraping at the windows as we bumped and bounced over the dips and holes, until finally he had to admit defeat when the path narrowed to the point we wouldn’t be able to squeeze out of the doors if we went any further.
In fact, Mum had no chance of getting out so she sat there while the rest of us hauled all our worldly possessions back and forth to the small clearing Dad had decided was ‘peaceful’ – or, more like ‘hidden’ – enough for nobody to spot a dilapidated tin can on wheels.
One saving grace was the bedroom. If we’d been forced to spend every second in the same room as my parents, then someone would have ended up murdered.
The other was that Dad had done a deal with the farmer, allowing us to trail an electric hook-up from his barn.
Mum insisted the television was set up on the built-in unit opposite the sagging mattress, which would mean the only time she ventured out of the bedroom was to the bathroom or to replenish her stock of food.
We called the cramped cubicle the ‘bathroom’, but obviously there was no bath, and no shower, either. We left Dad to figure out where to dump the waste from the chemical toilet.
At the opposite end to the bedroom was a worktop with a one-ring cooker and a sour-smelling fridge box large enough for a carton of milk and a couple of cans of beer – Dad fobbed off our concerns about this, guffawing that we had a whole wood to keep fresh food in.
He plonked a crate on the ground outside the flimsy door and said we could use that.
There were mildewed sofa-benches along each side of the main space. Above these, the windows were iced up on the insides. Every surface was caked in dead insects, sticky grime and old food wrappers. The air reeked of stale weed. I was used to filth, mess and chaos, but this made my stomach heave.
‘Where are we supposed to sleep?’ Lacey asked, back to the couldn’t-care-less voice she used to cope.
‘The benches turn into beds,’ Dad snapped.
‘Are you expecting me or Alexis to share a bed with our brother?’ She raised one eyebrow, daring him to pretend this was acceptable.
Utterly exasperated at our determination to find yet another problem, Dad scanned the room. ‘We can make a bed out of cushions, find a cosy spot on the floor. It’s what camping’s all about, isn’t it, Blakey-boy? Adventure. You don’t hear Bear Grylls whining about a bed.’
‘You think this is an adventure?’ Lacey asked, her voice finally cracking.
‘Living in a freezing-cold, dirty metal box in the woods? I mean, our house was a total dive, but at least I had privacy. Alexis could do her homework. My brother didn’t have to sleep on the floor.
What kind of father lets his children sleep in a room where the outside door doesn’t lock properly?
On the floor? How could you let this happen? ’
The dam had burst. She was wailing now, sobbing and stamping her uninjured foot so hard the caravan walls shook.
‘How could you do this to us? You are pathetic, useless, vile excuses for parents. I hate you. I cannot wait until I never have to see either of you again.’
Dad’s face flushed purple, the usual humour in his eyes replaced with steel.
‘Clear off then! No one’s stopping you. Me and your mother were fending for ourselves at sixteen.
Your sister brings in money, but you’d rather party with deadbeats than pitch in when we hit a rough patch.
You expect everything on a golden platter, then have the nerve to moan when things get tricky.
Reckon you can do better? Off you go then.
Find out what it’s like out there in the real world without parents providing for you. ’
‘Are you serious?’ she screeched, loud enough for Blake to scramble off the sofa and press his face into my waist. ‘If I leave, who takes care of Blake? Who buys the food and cooks his dinner and walks him to school? Who hides whatever pennies they can get their hands on, organising, planning, scraping and sorting, so we aren’t sat in the freezing dark all winter?
The only thing keeping me from completely losing it is making sure Alexis and Blake have a chance of getting out of here, someplace better.
Without having to break the law or cheat the system or find a drug dealer to sleep with.
And that means Alexis has to be able to work, and study, so I have to stay and be the parent, because the only thing you and Mum provide is neglect and abuse. ’
She stopped, chest heaving, snot on her face, horrible jerky gasps coming out of her mouth.
‘How could you let this happen to us, Dad?’ Her rasp hung eerily in the sudden silence. For the first time ever, my sister sounded defeated. ‘Why didn’t you put your children first for once?’
Dad turned and left, the broken lock rattling as he slammed the door behind him.
Mum grabbed a bare duvet and retreated to the manky mattress, thanks to Lacey’s ‘outburst’ giving her a migraine, so we shared out a pack of sausage rolls and waited for the water heater to get going.
We then found a comic and couple of toys to keep Blake occupied while Lacey and I did our best to make the caravan less like a kidnapper’s lair and more like a home.
First, clearing up all the debris, then scrubbing until the hot water ran out.
We unpacked what we could and made up one sofa for Blake and the other with my threadbare bedding, Lacey insisting she’d sleep on the floor.
It wasn’t long before we realised that even dressed in jumpers, coats and hats on top of our pyjamas, the only way Blake wouldn’t freeze to death was if one of us cuddled up with him.
By the time Dad came home reeking of whisky, we’d squashed the sofa cushions onto the floor and the three of us were huddled together there, underneath a pile of coats and all our duvets.
Blake wet our makeshift bed at four o’clock that morning, and so the Christmas holiday from hell continued.