The boy puts a blanket over the two of them and he turns off the light. His mother stirs but the delicate frame of his little sister remains still. He finds the remote and considers turning the TV off, but instead he presses mute and cancels the racket of Sunday-night primetime entertainment. He leaves the colours from the screen to dance over their faces and animate the room.

            He gathers the plates and takes them into the kitchen. He pushes cold beans into the bin. From the baking tray he shakes blackened chips, burnt until they sound hollow. The air in here stings your eyes with the smell of singed fish fingers. He knows its cold out and that again they’re down to the emergency fiver on the gas card but someone’s got to open a window.

            He checks his mother’s phone. He wipes down the sides, sweeps, then does the dishes. The washing machine makes a noise and he removes his and his sister’s uniforms. He hangs them out to dry on an old clotheshorse, some of the thin metal bars now missing: Used over the years as wands, swords, spears.

The boy goes back to the window and looks down nine floors. He scans left and right, watching the entrance to the block. It won’t be long now.

            His mother hadn’t gotten home until ten this morning. The boy slept on the sofa in this new place, and at half eight his sister Cheyenne had woken him up to let him know that she still wasn’t back. At that point the boy wasn’t concerned but had gotten up anyway. He folded his duvet as small as he could and crammed it into the top of the wardrobe in the bedroom his mother shared with his sister. It was an effort but he knew that if he’d left it out then Cheyenne would start telling him it smelled and he wasn’t in the mood to debate with a seven year-old.

They were sat at opposite ends of the sofa when their mother came in. He had tried to ignore her at first, keeping his eyes fixed on the TV. Cheyenne sat up and called out, breaking the illusion. Then his mother had somehow gotten her coat caught in the light shade in the hallway. The thing was a relic, made of metal with glass beads hanging from it.  The boy had to get up then and unhook her sleeve, setting her free, avoiding more damage. His mother found this hilarious and couldn’t see why no one else was laughing. Without trying, the boy could already smell the alcohol and fags and someone else’s perfume on her.

The boy left her as she went straight into the bedroom and took off her boots. She complained that no one had made the bed. She laughed again and then came out to greet them.

“You alright?” she said.

For a moment she sounded serious. It was hard to tell. She looked at them both and settled on Cheyenne. She sat down next to her. 

“Come here,” his mother said, squeezing his sister hard. Cheyenne laughed and pushed her off.

“Mummy’s home now,” his mother said, and she yawned. “What you two been up to?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just chilling,” Cheyenne said.

“Just chilling? Good.”

That was it for a while. The three of them, sitting there, watching TV. Cheyenne and his mother on the sofa, him on the armchair now.

For about an hour no one said anything. The boy could see out the corner of his eye his mother’s head begin to drop and he knew that any minute she’d be snoring. Her blinking became more deliberate, slow, until eventually her eyes were closed altogether. Then her phone started and they all looked up. His mother had woken with a jerk, and her head yanked backwards, which must have hurt because she winced and rubbed her neck. On seeing the number on her screen she got up and left the room to answer. The boy couldn’t help but hear her in the bedroom – quiet at first.

             When she came back she tried to resume her position on the sofa. When she couldn’t get comfortable she blamed Cheyenne. Cheyenne must have moved. Still the boy said nothing. It was at this point that the text messages started coming through and his mother was no longer interested in sitting so much anyway. The boy must have watched her half a dozen times pass from the front room to the bedroom to the bathroom and back again.

            Just after midday – not long before she eventually passed out on the sofa – his mother was in the bathroom and he overheard her on the phone to Gary. The conversation started out as a yes/ no exchange but soon grew. Gary wanted something from her. Apparently it had been going on for a while; a few weeks, months – the boy couldn’t quite tell from where he was sitting. It was since they’d moved into this new place.

“Fucking Gary?” the boy called out without looking up when his mother appeared from the bathroom.

“Mind your fucking business, you,” she said, then dropped down on the sofa. For the first time that day the boy looked directly at her. She caught him trying to read her and he could tell she didn’t like it. She looked away and buried her face with a kiss on Cheyenne’s head. If he had a bedroom, he thought, that’s where he would have taken himself. He’d have slammed his door like they do in films. As it was, he remained in the armchair, turned his head and stared hard in into the TV; tried to take himself somewhere else.

He thought about where they lived before. About the friends he’d had to leave behind, who he said he’d meet up with once he’d settled but never has. How mad that last summer had been and how distant it felt now. How fucked up it had been. Good and bad. It had started even before they broke up from school. How close he’d come to going out with that Sabrise. She wasn’t the one – no, that was Gemma but no one was going to get a chance with Gemma – but still, Sabrise would’ve been just fine, and now he wish he’d just done it. Just asked her. Everyone said she would’ve said yes. And the thought of the opportunity missed, made his stomach clench even now.

Then when school had broken up, him and Joseph had gotten licked for the first time, proper licked, on White Lightening one morning after Joseph’s dad had left for work. When Joseph’s mum found out, Joseph got beat. The boy however had gotten away with it, no one had even noticed. The boy hasn’t heard from Joseph since.

The boy had a passing thought about Jay, his mum’s last boyfriend. His mum had started seeing Jay that summer. It wasn’t long after things finally seemed to have finished with Tony, Cheyenne’s dad. Jay didn’t stand a chance against Tony. Ran at the first sign of danger, the first site of Tony. His mum didn’t need a pussy like Jay in her life anyway, the boy thought. Thanks, but no thanks.

The boy’s mind kept going back to this Gary: The cunt. Like Tony, and probably his own dad. And Jay if he’d hung around – who knows? In the end they were all cunts. Bunch of cunts, the boy asserts. I’ll knock the man out who does this to us again. I swear down. In his head, he carried on this way for a time until his mind was made up, and he knew exactly what needed to be done.

Once the boy was certain his mother was asleep, he nudged Cheyenne down the sofa so he could put her feet up. He fetched her pillow from the bedroom and put it under her head. His mother said something then like, “what the fuck are you doing?” It scared him at first and she went back off. He fetched her a glass of water. Later on she turned to face the other way and with her eyes still shut, she had told him, “You’re such a good boy.”

            Cheyenne spent much of the afternoon drawing unicorns, watching You Tube on the boy’s phone and asking for something to eat. By three o’clock the boy had exhausted all food options. Cereal, biscuits, the ends of the bread, an old banana. He was hungry too. Anything else they had he was now saving for dinner. Thankfully they didn’t need stuff for pack lunches anymore. Cheyenne had gone back to school dinners. She had begged to be pack lunch but their mum had told her that school dinners were better for her – especially now it was winter. The boy knew it was because they were free.

            Over the course of the day the boy had contemplated going to the shop but hadn’t wanted to leave his mother or Cheyenne – there were too many risks involved. His mother might be sick, choke on her own vomit. She might wake up and upset Cheyenne or may be even leave before he got back. Garry could turn up. The boy thought about taking Cheyenne with him to the shop. That this might reduce some of the risks, but she’d all but cried when he’d suggested it. The whole thing made him think of that riddle with the dog and the chicken and the bag of grain in the little boat – or something like that. The one where you’re next to a river and you have to choose which one to ferry over first? In the end he didn’t know why he was bothering playing that game – it’s not like they had a boat or grain or any money anyway.

            The shop on the estate was only small, and most of the food they sold was in tins or packets or frozen. It had crossed his mind to go rob something. A tin of beans and sausages, a loaf of bread. But he liked the man who owned the shop, and his brother who worked there too. He’d feel bad if he got caught, and embarrassed. Even though the boy hadn’t lived there long they made him and his mum feel welcome. Let them off a few pence when they came up short, gave Cheyenne the crappy toys that came with the kids’ magazines they were throwing away. The men in the shop didn’t seem like cunts. Plus if he’d gotten caught, where would he go to charge the gas card when the time came?

May be he was just done with being in the flat. He had looked out the window a few times today. He had seen the morning mist reveal the bronze tree tops below; seen the sky they were now living in gradually shift from one shade of lead to another. November made it difficult to tell what time of day it was.

He’d gone through his mother’s phone to get a better idea of what was going on: A few missed calls and some texts from Gary. The boy hadn’t wanted to read too much. He knew it was a violation of privacy, and there were some things that any fourteen year-old boy doesn’t want to know about his mum. He knew enough already.

Last week Cheyenne had told him that their mum had been crying in bed about something. She had thought Cheyenne was asleep. Then the other morning the boy had caught his mum getting changed and had seen the bruises under her bra-line. His mum hadn’t seen him. It was as if her life was stuck on loop. He couldn’t understand it. It drove the boy mad – why these same geezers came sniffing round his mum all the time; why she put up with it.

Last time, with Tony, when the boy had made her go to the hospital – he wasn’t a grass –, but when the nurse had asked him what he had seen he had told them. But then the police and social services and the stupid school got involved and that’s how they ended up here and it was all his fault. This time he was going to deal with it properly. See to this cunt himself this time: This Gary.

Out the window the boy watched as the sky quickly grew dark. It was all happening so soon. It all felt so inevitable. He did his science homework – a cursory job. Right then science, his new school, lessons, marks, Sabrise, Joseph were the furthest things from his mind. He knew that if it all went to plan, he might not even be going to school tomorrow or the day after. But if that plan were to work then he’d need to carry on as normal. It was all part of it. Besides the homework provided a distraction. Especially since the signal up there was shit, and Cheyenne had chewed up his data watching videos of kids not much older than she was making slime from stuff most people were supposed to have in their cupboards. They were all looking for a distraction.

            At about five his mother woke up and asked if there was any food in. She had wrinkled her nose when the boy had said fish fingers. She used his phone to text his aunt and ask her to transfer some money for a takeaway. The aunt didn’t have it either.

            The boy cooked while his mother showered. She tied her wet hair back and changed into her pyjamas. She had made Cheyenne do the same. The boy and his mother sat and ate on the sofa. Cheyenne sat on the floor, her plate on the coffee table that came with the flat.

“Thanks. This was needed,” his mother said. She looked up from her plate and smiled. The boy nodded.

“Cheyenne, say thank you to your brother,” she said.

“I did!” said Cheyenne.

The TV was on but only Cheyenne was paying attention to what was on the screen. The clatter of canned laughter occasionally interrupting the sound of knives and forks scraping on their plates and the sound of them chewing.

“Cheyenne, why aren’t you eating your dinner,” their mother said.

“I am,” said Cheyenne. “It’s burnt,” she said.

“Cook your own dinner next time,” the boy said. “I’m not used to that oven am I?”

“Chill out,” said Cheyenne. “Idiot.”

“Please,” said their mother.

“Shut up!” the boy said to his sister. “Sit up when you’re eating.”

“I said please,” their mother said.

“It’s only chips. Hardly MasterChef!” said Cheyenne.

“Stop it. Both of you –”

“Cheyenne, you don’t even know how to turn the oven on!” said the boy.

“I said stop!”

Cheyenne went to speak.                                      

“Stop!” said their mother. She put a hand over her eyes.

The sound of scraping and canned laughter resumed. Cheyenne sat up.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

The boy nodded.

            After they ate, his mother stacked the plates and put them on the coffee table. She took her place back on the sofa and invited Cheyenne to join her. The two of them curled up together.

His mother hadn’t picked up her phone since she’d gotten out of the shower. If she had she would have seen seven missed calls from Gary and just as many texts. She would have read in the last text that at nine he’d be coming up for what he felt he was owed. The boy had seen it all.

At half eight the boy closes the kitchen window, all the while looking down at the front entrance to the block. He puts his homework in his bag – still, all part of it.

He goes over to the fridge. He takes out a lime they have left from something – already halved; dried out, brown nearly. He runs the tap.

On the kitchen side he places the white plastic chopping board they’ve had since they moved into the last place. From the draining board he fetches their one good knife, which is older still. He cuts a wedge from the lime and drops it into a glass and fills it with water. He turns the tap off.

The boy leaves the rest of the lime – getting dryer by the minute –, and the uncleaned knife on the board. Next to it, he puts down the glass. He doesn’t take a drink. The uniform, the homework, now this.

            The boy goes back to the window, the streets below becoming enveloped in the mist again. There aren’t many people out. You’d be hard pressed to make out a face from this distance, in these conditions, but you’d recognise someone from their height, what they were wearing, the way they walked. He’d recognise Gary.

            He checks in on his mother and his sister in the front room – still soundo. Gently, he closes the door behind him. He pulls up the fold-out chair that was here when they moved in. Metal, black, spattered with paint. It makes a creaking noise when you open it, rattles when you sit on it. He positions the chair in the hallway – close to the front room, with a clear view of the front door. He sits in silence. He hears everything.

            Shortly before half nine, the sound of the lift stopping on their floor. Someone steps out. The boy quietly heads into the kitchen. His hand trembling, as he sips the lime water and picks up the knife.

By Sam Robson

care childhood domestic tension poverty social realism