know why I bothered.’
‘Here.’ I offer him the pills one at a time and hold the water glass to his lips as he leans forward and up and gulps everything down.
He seems to choke, and splutters. ‘All right! Don’t fucking drown me!’ He collapses back amongst the pillows. His lips look livid against the pale skin of his face. They’re a sort of strange purple-brown, like the lips of giant clams on the Great Barrier Reef. I wipe the glass, top it up from the bottle.
‘I think that’s everything. Are you all right now?’
‘Of course I’m not fucking all right! Do I look fucking all right? Look at me!’
‘I meant—’
‘You meant can you fuck off with a half-clear conscience and play your stupid fucking game and leave me to die, that’s what you meant.’
‘I think it’s time we both went to sleep.’
‘Put to sleep,’ he mutters, though his eyelids are fluttering with tiredness. ‘Put to fucking … yeah, you go. Just leave me,’ he says, voice fading. ‘Fuck off.’ His eyes are closed now. ‘Oh, fuck … I’m sorry, son,’ he says, sighing, eyes still closed, lids fluttering. ‘Shouldn’t talk to you like that. Know you’re just trying to help. You shouldn’t listen … You’ll be better off without me.’ He sighs again, as if it’s his last breath easing out of him. ‘You go. Have a nice wank. Wish to fuck I could.’ But he can’t even manage the hard ‘-ck’ sound; the word comes out more like ‘fuh’, and while I’m still tidying up the lid of drugs he relaxes at last and with a long sigh his breathing slows and his face goes that slack way, mouth opening a little, giving him that look that people get, so that he seems even older, or already dead.
I stand over him for a short while, looking down at him as he sleeps. Then I put the light out, turn the night light on, and leave.
I don’t go out much. I never liked having to go to school every weekday and it’s a relief that that’s over. I didn’t hate school; I learned things and even met one or two people I still keep in touch with, plus I was too big to bully efficiently – and I have been known to lose it and lash out – but I always hated leaving the house.
My main exercise is walking round the garden. From my bedroom window I can see a large part of my regular walk. My bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from Guy’s and looks out to the north-east, over the back garden and the trees towards the wall and the quarry. My regular walking route takes me from the kitchen door, curves away to skirt the rear of the garage and the sides of the outhouses, passes between the vegetable patches, disappears into the rhododendron clump, crosses the lawn at a diagonal, veers past the weed-choked bowl of the long-drained pond, weaves between the trunks of the trees – mostly alder, ash, rowan and sycamore – before arriving at the remains of the old greenhouses and the tall stone wall defining the rear limit of the property.
The wall is about two metres high but there is one place where a pile of stones at its base and a projecting piece of ironwork a metre up allow you to climb it and see over the top and into the quarry. On the other side, there is only a metre to two metres of level, sparsely grassed ground before the earth falls away. The quarry is at least forty metres deep, stretches back for over a kilometre and widens out in a giant, irregular bowl shape nearly half a kilometre wide. It is tiered, with stone ramps for trucks cut into the different levels; big rocks line the edges of the clifftop roadways to stop trucks falling in. The bottom is a series of flat arenas on different levels, the lowest filled with green-brown water. The rock is the grey of old warships.
At the far end, where the remains of the hill curve round like cliffs, with just a small gap giving a glimpse of the agricultural land beyond, there are some tall, gawky structures made of rusting iron. A few stand like upside-down pyramids on
‘Here.’ I offer him the pills one at a time and hold the water glass to his lips as he leans forward and up and gulps everything down.
He seems to choke, and splutters. ‘All right! Don’t fucking drown me!’ He collapses back amongst the pillows. His lips look livid against the pale skin of his face. They’re a sort of strange purple-brown, like the lips of giant clams on the Great Barrier Reef. I wipe the glass, top it up from the bottle.
‘I think that’s everything. Are you all right now?’
‘Of course I’m not fucking all right! Do I look fucking all right? Look at me!’
‘I meant—’
‘You meant can you fuck off with a half-clear conscience and play your stupid fucking game and leave me to die, that’s what you meant.’
‘I think it’s time we both went to sleep.’
‘Put to sleep,’ he mutters, though his eyelids are fluttering with tiredness. ‘Put to fucking … yeah, you go. Just leave me,’ he says, voice fading. ‘Fuck off.’ His eyes are closed now. ‘Oh, fuck … I’m sorry, son,’ he says, sighing, eyes still closed, lids fluttering. ‘Shouldn’t talk to you like that. Know you’re just trying to help. You shouldn’t listen … You’ll be better off without me.’ He sighs again, as if it’s his last breath easing out of him. ‘You go. Have a nice wank. Wish to fuck I could.’ But he can’t even manage the hard ‘-ck’ sound; the word comes out more like ‘fuh’, and while I’m still tidying up the lid of drugs he relaxes at last and with a long sigh his breathing slows and his face goes that slack way, mouth opening a little, giving him that look that people get, so that he seems even older, or already dead.
I stand over him for a short while, looking down at him as he sleeps. Then I put the light out, turn the night light on, and leave.
I don’t go out much. I never liked having to go to school every weekday and it’s a relief that that’s over. I didn’t hate school; I learned things and even met one or two people I still keep in touch with, plus I was too big to bully efficiently – and I have been known to lose it and lash out – but I always hated leaving the house.
My main exercise is walking round the garden. From my bedroom window I can see a large part of my regular walk. My bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from Guy’s and looks out to the north-east, over the back garden and the trees towards the wall and the quarry. My regular walking route takes me from the kitchen door, curves away to skirt the rear of the garage and the sides of the outhouses, passes between the vegetable patches, disappears into the rhododendron clump, crosses the lawn at a diagonal, veers past the weed-choked bowl of the long-drained pond, weaves between the trunks of the trees – mostly alder, ash, rowan and sycamore – before arriving at the remains of the old greenhouses and the tall stone wall defining the rear limit of the property.
The wall is about two metres high but there is one place where a pile of stones at its base and a projecting piece of ironwork a metre up allow you to climb it and see over the top and into the quarry. On the other side, there is only a metre to two metres of level, sparsely grassed ground before the earth falls away. The quarry is at least forty metres deep, stretches back for over a kilometre and widens out in a giant, irregular bowl shape nearly half a kilometre wide. It is tiered, with stone ramps for trucks cut into the different levels; big rocks line the edges of the clifftop roadways to stop trucks falling in. The bottom is a series of flat arenas on different levels, the lowest filled with green-brown water. The rock is the grey of old warships.
At the far end, where the remains of the hill curve round like cliffs, with just a small gap giving a glimpse of the agricultural land beyond, there are some tall, gawky structures made of rusting iron. A few stand like upside-down pyramids on
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