Hanging in the Mist Read online

  Hanging in the Mist

  PETER LANCETT

  For my darling wife Alexandra,

  the sine qua non of my life,

  and for my Cara Soror,

  Luxcandida…

  Lux et Gemina Lumina

  Love is all. Love under will.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  In the Same Series

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  Well I think that this is working out pretty good. This recorder, I mean. It’s dead light so it’s no big deal to hold it, and when I tried it out earlier, the sound was dead good as well. And it records for hours on one of them little ‘flash’ cards. And it was dead easy to nick from that market stall. I’ve had loads of stuff from there. Mostly batteries and little stuff like that. But when I saw this thing, I just had to have it. It’s dead trick. There was about six of em on the stall and it was a busy afternoon, so it was easy just to stuff one in me jacket when the bloke wasn’t looking. A bit harder than slipping a packet of batteries up your sleeve, but no big deal. I wasn’t scared or anything.

  Market stalls are better to nick from than the shops. They have cameras and all that in the shops. And the big ones have store detectives and stuff. I’ve never been caught. But I know people who have. I stay away from the big shops. The guy that runs this stall is a dick anyway. He’s a big bloke and he’s big headed with it. I hear him when he’s talking to people who’re asking about the stuff he’s selling; the cheap cameras and watches, and radios and DVD players and that. He’s talking out of his arse and he doesn’t know any better than the people who are asking.

  Anyway, screw him. I’m back in me bedroom now, and it’s funny standing on this wobbly computer chair in here. It’s funny cos you’d think I’d be up high enough already, wouldn’t you? Our flat being on the tenth floor of the block and everything. I hope this recorder thing is getting all this.

  I can see out of the bedroom window from here. It’s another shit day and it’s dead cloudy and it was cold outside when I was down at the market. I can see chip papers blowing around and all the crap that people can’t be arsed to put in the bins. I can even see one of the big bins in front of the shops and the chippie. It’s been dented and bashed, and even though it’s fixed into the ground, it’s almost leaning over. Somebody’s had a right go at kicking it out of the ground altogether. I know this for a fact, because I was one of the ones doing it. We’d already ripped one out over the other side of the estate and it was a bloody good laugh doing it. But this one just wouldn’t budge. It’s been a few months now, and nobody’s come to fix it up or anything. Me mate Johnno has said we should finish it off properly sometime. But that would just be boring. Everything’s boring around here.

  I can see Marina Surtees now, crossing the big grass area in the middle of the estate. She’s sticking to the path, even though it will take her the long way round. It makes sense cos I can see from how she’s taking these dead little teetering steps that she’s got her usual high heels on. It’s late in the afternoon, but it’s still daytime, and it’s windy and cold and everything, but she’s got this denim mini skirt on and a black tee shirt. I can’t see from here but I bet it’s got Metallica or something like that on it. She’s well into metal and that, and her hair is dyed black all the time. Although sometimes you can see the roots showing through where it’s growing out. Like me mum’s.

  One thing I can see from up here is Marina’s tits. She’s got big tits has Marina and she always has had. Well, for a long time anyway. She was an early starter. First to grow tits, first to go on the rag. All the other girls in school were always dead jealous of her back then. I’m buggered if I can see why. It’s a bloody messy and smelly thing to have to go through every month if you ask me. If I was a girl, I would be praying for it not to happen. But I suppose for them, it’s like a sign that they’ve grown up and everything. And I suppose us boys were no different really. I can remember all of us in the changing rooms at school inspecting the skin around Eddie Bassett’s dick to see the first pubes that any of us had grown. We’d have been about ten or eleven then. And it wasn’t long after that when the word went around that Eddie Bassett had fetched spunk. I can remember Johnno when he told me with a voice full of wonder. “He’s more mature than us,” Johnno had said at the time. I don’t know why I remember those words, but I do, and the way he said them, and the look on his face. Funny what crap sticks in your mind, eh? Anyway, after that you can imagine loads of us boys wanking away every spare minute in an effort to be as ‘mature’ as Eddie Bassett. Sometimes we’d be doing it in a group, all of us inspecting each other like scientists looking for signs of jism. What a fucking laugh.

  Mind you, I bet none of us have stopped doing it, even though all of us have been fetching spunk for years now. The evidence is all around for anyone to see. Four of the girls who were in the same class as me and Marina Surtees are already pushing prams and we’re all only fifteen and sixteen. One girl, Kylie Erickson has two kids. They don’t come to school much, the girls with babies, and you see them hanging out around the estate, smoking and talking to each other, babies either asleep in their pushchairs or screaming fit to bust. And the girls seem pretty natural as mums, like it’s what they’d always wanted to be, and that all they were waiting for was to be sixteen so they’d get a council flat of their own and even more benefit money. One of the girls I know who has a baby was dead clever and all. She was right brainy, but here she is, a mum at fifteen and she acts and talks like this is all she ever wants to be. All she ever wanted to be. And maybe that’s true, even though it seems stupid to me. She will at least get a council flat and her rent paid for and everything, and then she can live off benefits, and if she wants more money or a bigger place all she’ll have to do is have more kids. It’s more of a future than I’ll ever have though.

  And anyway, it’s none of me business. I’ve thought about being lots of things, but what I wanted more than anything is to be a mechanic. I love cars and engines and that, and I love fixing things. I don’t mind the oil and stuff. I just like cars and motors. I can see a car over there, all burned out and rusted. Somebody must have took it and then burned it out when they’d had their fun with it. You can hear cars at night, screaming round the estate. A little kid was killed by one last year. They never caught the kids who were driving the car, neither. I know who they are. I think a lot of people do. But you just don’t talk when you live around here. Especially to the filth.

  All the same, looking at that wrecked and burned out car, I can’t help wanting to get a set of tools and go about fixing it up. It would take a long time but I could do it. Except for one thing. I haven’t got any tools any more. Fucking bastards have pawned them. I bloody hate them, me so-called mum and dad. Bastard one and bastard two is more like it. It’s not the first time they’ve taken stuff of mine and pawned it. Fucking pair of crack heads.

  Funny thing is, despite what I said, I don’t really hate em. I don’t much like em though. But they’re me mum and dad, and I live with them. We’re not so unusual. Well actually, maybe we are. There aren’t that many two parent families on this estate! Ha ha! Still, I’m used to them doing shit like this. All me life I’ve been promised stuff, had stuff to look forward to, but it’s always turned out shit or never happened at all. There’s always been some excu
se.

  There’s a teacher at school who tries to encourage us to work. He’s not such a bad bloke, I suppose, even though he is a bit of a div wearing market stall clothes and them crappy Jesus sandals all the time, but he wants us to do the best we can. He keeps saying that we should make the most of every opportunity because you only get one bite of the cherry. That’s what he actually says: one bite of the cherry. Well I know what he means. And there have been loads of times when the cherry has been close to me mouth, but I’ve never had that bite. Bastard one or bastard two or both of em have always made sure it got knocked away.

  Marina Surtees is just disappearing from sight now, round the back of the little council office with the wire over the windows. It’s a shame. I liked watching her tits jiggle as she walked. Makes me think of the times I’ve seen em for real. Not that I’ve ever got off with Marina, or anything. But I did used to go out with her best mate, Sharlene Stokes, when Marina was going out with this biker bloke who was twenty. We used to go round his place a lot and all we ever did was watch telly and smoke and fuck. Sharlene’s tits were nothing like Marina’s. They were dead small actually. But I liked them. I liked Sharlene, come to that. But that didn’t end well. Just another thing taken away from me.

  Woah, shit! Nearly fell off the fucking chair. Cheap piece of crap. Wobbles all over the place.

  It’s getting darker outside now. Not properly dark yet, but I can see lights are on in a lot of the flats in the other tower blocks. And the street lights have just come on down below. There’s only a little lamp on here in me bedroom and if I try, I can see me reflection back from the window. It’s not a pretty sight. Both eyes black, bottom lip all swollen up on the left side and me cheeks are all swollen and bruised. It’s shit being me.

  CHAPTER 2

  The last two weeks have been shit. And not just cos it’s been cold and rainy most of the time. I don’t suppose I’m ever going to be a mechanic. Me mum was supposed to have filled in this form and sent it to the school. Well, she didn’t even have to fill it in cos I’d done that. All she had to do was sign it.

  What it was, was that the school had arranged this week away at this place where you can have a practice at what it’s like to be a mechanic or an electrician or a plumber or whatever. It’s dead good and I know people who’ve been. Well part of it is, you have to get your mum or your dad to sign the form to say that it’s all right for you to go, and that you have got the stuff that they want you to take with you. It’s mostly clothes and overalls and that, but for the mechanic course, they need you to have a socket set and a screwdriver set and an adjustable wrench. I reckon they must have had that stuff there at one time but they’ve got so sick of having it nicked that they make you bring your own now. Anyway, I have me own socket set, one that I got from a car boot sale. It’s only a cheap one, but all the bits are there and I’ve used it when I’ve helped fix up the cars of some of the petrol heads on the estate. Not that they need my help, but some of em let me help them anyway, and I learn tons off them. Sometimes they even take me out for a burn in their cars and that is well cool. Kyle Watson has this dead trick Vauxhall Corsa. It’s got these green LEDs under the sills that match the metal flake paint job, and an oversized air box and filter in the engine and stuff, and a stiffened suspension. I helped him fit that. It sounds amazing when he floors it. He’s eighteen and he works at Halfords, the big car parts place on the retail park. He gets a discount, so his car always looks dead good.

  Anyway, I gave bastard number two – me mum – this form to sign, over a month ago. The one thing I hadn’t got was an adjustable wrench, but I said I’d save up and get one. I never nick anything from car or hardware shops; those are places that I like going to and I get advice from the blokes who work there and that, which is well cool of em. Bastard number one – that’s me dad – chips in and says not to worry and that he’ll sort me one out. Not that I believed a word of that though. They was both spaced out on skunk when I asked em, so all I was interested in was getting the form signed. Me mum said to leave it out for her and that she’d sign it later. Well that was OK, but I know better than to trust anything she says when she’s spaced out, so I wrote a note reminding her, that she’d read when she was sensible again. Probably the next morning. But I wasn’t worried, cos there was two weeks to get that form back to the school. Well next day the form wasn’t on the table, so I figured me mum had taken it and signed it and that it was probably in her bag. Anyway, I asked her for it when I saw her, and she said that she’d taken it in to the school when she’d been passing earlier in the day. I believed her, cos she has done that once or twice before. And it’s not like she has work or anything to consider, so she does have the time.

  All the same, I should have checked, I should have checked. Old man Cooper, who takes us for metal work and who had organised this trip away, had been off sick. I could have gone to the office and checked though, but I couldn’t be arsed. She promised me she’d taken the form in, and cos she had done before, I just believed her. Of course, she hadn’t taken it in. Two weeks ago last Friday was the last day to get the forms in, and when we went for metal work, which was the last class of the day, Cooper asked me where me form was. I told him me mum had brought it to the school. Cooper gave me a bollocking in front of everybody, saying how I’d been lucky to have been chosen and that somebody else could have had me place. All the same, he went to check with the office and I had to stand there in class with everybody taking the piss out of me and that. And when he came back and said that nobody had brought the form in, and that it was too late now and I wouldn’t be going, I could feel meself getting madder and madder. Me cheeks were going red, I could tell, but worse, me eyes were beginning to fill up. I couldn’t let everybody see me cry, so I just pushed past everybody and ran out of that classroom, with Cooper shouting out after me. I wasn’t listening, so the only word that I could remember was “detention”. As if I cared.

  Out of the school I ran, through the streets all the way home, and the freezing cold wind burned against me cheeks where the tears had run down, but I didn’t care. I don’t even know if I wanted her to be in when I got home. I can’t remember if I wanted to shout at her or if I felt like I never wanted to see her worn out face ever again. She knew how much I wanted to be a mechanic. She knew how much going on this course meant to me. It wasn’t like I’d asked her for money or anything. I’d paid to go on it out of me own pocket and everything. All she’d had to do was sign a poxy fucking form. And she couldn’t even be arsed to do that. How could she do that to me, eh? Being a mechanic was all I’d dreamed about since I was little. She knew that. She fucking well knew.

  And when I got in she was there, with bastard number one. I could hear em talking and whispering in their bedroom. I just burst right in cos I was past caring. They were sitting on the bed with nothing on, me mum with her sagging tits showing and everything, and him with it all hanging out and neither of them with a care in the world.

  “Hey babe,” she drawls, “how yer been? Come on in and sit down a minute.”

  I saw it in her eyes before I ever noticed the gear on the bed between them. Cranked up, both of em were. Then I could smell it, and I could see the glass pipe in his hand. I know there’s rocks of filthy crap in that glass bowl, and he’s holding a light under it so that the rocks inside start to splutter and crackle, and then he’s sucking on it, sucking all the smoke in, but I don’t care about him. It’s her, the bitch.

  “How could you do that to me?” I screamed, but her glazed eyes told me she didn’t know what the fuck I was on about. So I scream it at her again.

  She starts to get up off the bed like she’s in slow motion and I can see the white stretch marks on her sagging tits, and everything else as she unfolds her legs from under her with no shame whatsoever. I’m ashamed and embarrassed though, even while I’m angry, even though I’ve seen them like this more often than I’d like, and I can’t look at her other than to stare into those blank black eyes. Come t
o think of it, seeing this sight once would have been more often than I’d have liked. And it’s been loads more than once.

  She hasn’t answered me, so I scream at her again. “How could you do that to me?”

  “Do what babe?” she asks, all innocent, holding her arms out towards me. “What’s the matter? What’s happened? Come and sit here and tell me, eh?”

  I hate that slurring voice she has when she’s spaced, and I just pushed her away, so that she fell back on the bed, giggling. She turns to him, like he’s even noticing that either of us are there at this point. “Oooh,” she drawls, “Was it something I done then, babe?”

  Right then I could have killed her. I was biting me bottom lip and I know that me fists were clenched tight. “It’s what yer didn’t do, yer fucking crack whore!”

  “Ay, watch how yer talk to yer mother.”

  I just turned on him when he said that. “Or what’ll yer do?” I screamed “C’mon, yer whacked out bastard, what’ll yer do?”

  “Chill out man,” was all he could reply and I’d heard him say that so many times that I still can’t understand why I didn’t just give him a few good slaps right then. But it was her I was more interested in.

  “You knew how much it meant to me. You knew! It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do and all you had to do was sign the fucking form! Why did you lie to me? Why?”

  I’m screaming, but she just sits there with her arms wide open so I can see old track lines on the insides of em, and her mouth is open and she’s shaking her head like she really doesn’t understand what I’m on about. Which is probably about right.

  I spotted that big suede hippy bag of hers on the floor by the bed, so I lunged down and grabbed it, tipped it up so that everything fell out all over the place. Old hankies, half empty boxes of Tampax, pens, a purse, and loads more dirty crap that it’s not worth listing. But one thing stood out to me. The form I’d given her. The form she’d told me she’d handed in to school. I snatched it up from among a load of used tissues, and I waved it till me arm was fit to drop off. “You said you’d handed this in at school for me. And now it’s too late, and I can’t go on the course! Why did you tell me you’d handed it in?”