One of the ambulance men tells her that they should examine her nevertheless, and she says, ‘I don’t want to waste your time. There’s no need to fuss.’
I stand up and move towards the door. I want to talk to her.
‘You need to stay in here,’ says the social worker.
‘I want to talk to her.’
‘You can talk to me if you want,’ he says.
‘Aren’t the guards going to get a statement or something?’ I say. ‘Aren’t they going to question me and make a tape recording?’
‘Yes, that will happen later, but we can talk for a while first, if you like.’
‘Will they fingerprint me?’
‘Don’t worry yourself about that now. Why don’t we talk for a while? Hmmm?’
‘But what if I tell you something, and then I tell them something different? What then?’
‘What you say to me will be off the record.’
‘That’s a bit stupid. I think I’d rather just be quiet,’ I say.
‘Suit yourself.’
After a few minutes, I feel like I wouldn’t mind talking, but the more I think about what I want to say, the less I’m able to get things clear, and then I become confused about what happened, and then I can’t say it at all and it gets so that I wonder if I’ll ever speak again.
The female guard knocks on my door. She smiles at me, as though she likes me all of a sudden. ‘We’ve finished talking to your mammy and we’re ready for you now,’ she says. ‘In the kitchen.’
I go to the kitchen and my mother waits in the living room, which seems strange. Since she’ll be able to hear everything we say, she might as well come into the kitchen and sit with us.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ asks the social worker.
‘No, thanks. There’s nothing but water anyway. There isn’t even any milk. Not that I’d want milk anyway. I’d only want Fanta.’
They look at me and nobody speaks for a minute.
‘How old are you, John?’ asks the female guard with the big nose.
‘Eleven,’ I say. ‘Twelve in July.’
‘You look quite a bit older,’ says the guard.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I know.’
‘Do you want to tell us what happened?’
‘Hasn’t she already told you?’
The guards look at each other and it seems they don’t believe what they’ve been told. The female guard shrugs and the male guard shakes his head at her as though to tell her to keep her gestures to herself.
‘Yes, but don’t you want to tell your side of the story?’ says the male guard.
‘There’s only one side,’ I say.
‘Did you try to help your mother to get to sleep by putting a pillow over her head?’ asks the female guard.
‘I helped her.’
‘Yes, but how?’
‘Didn’t she already tell you?’
‘Yes, but why don’t you tell us? We’re here now.’
‘I helped her with a pillow.’
‘Did you want to hurt her?’
‘No.’
‘What did you think would happen when you put the pillow on her face?’
‘I thought she’d go to sleep.’
‘Didn’t you think that you might hurt her?’
‘No.’
‘But you did,’ says the male guard. ‘You did hurt her. That’s what you did.’
‘No I didn’t. I just did what she wanted. She wasn’t the same any more. I just did what she said she wanted, to make things better for her.’
‘How so?’
‘You don’t understand anything. Why does nobody understand anything?’
‘If you explain, we might understand,’ says the social worker. ‘Why don’t you tell us? Help us understand.’
‘Waste of time,’ I say.
They ask more of the same sort of questions, but when I refuse to say any more they leave me alone in the kitchen and go into the living room to talk to my mother.
‘Helen,’ says the female guard, ‘we need to take him with us now.’
‘Yes. Take him,’ she says. ‘I can’t stay here with that monster.’
Monster? Monster? Who is she talking about? I knock a kitchen chair over and rush into the living room, but I stop near the end of the settee when the male guard moves towards me. I stand with my hands folded across my chest and look at her over the top of his head.
‘I only did what you wanted,’ I say. ‘It’s not my fault you changed your mind. Is it? It’s not my fault you changed your mind. You changed, not me.’
She looks at the female guard. ‘Take him,’ she says.
‘Take me where?’
‘You’ll see when you get there,’ says the male guard.
The social worker tells me to pack a bag with enough clothes for a week; some schoolbooks, a pen and something to play with.
‘Like what?’ I ask. ‘Like a football? Like what?’
‘Use your imagination,’ he says.
The guards stay with my mother. The social worker and I leave the flat together and he doesn’t speak until the lift arrives. As we get in, he puts his hand on my back. I cover my mouth because of the stench of urine, but he seems not to mind.
‘Your mother is very upset,’ he says, ‘but she says she loves you still. You’re lucky for that. She’s a good woman.’
I look at the graffiti on the wall — pigs are fucking animals — and I smile and pretend not to hear him. But, in some way, I’d like to show the graffiti to the social worker, and say, ‘This graffiti has a double meaning.’
‘I’ll be coming with you to the Children’s Court in the morning,’ he says. ‘The judge will decide what to do with you until the hearing.’
‘What’s a hearing? Is that like a trial?’
‘Maybe we should talk more when we get you to your room.’
‘You’re the one that mentioned the hearing. I didn’t even ask.’
‘That’s true. I did bring it up. I’m sorry.’
The ambulance is parked downstairs outside the lift; one door is open, one closed. It says LANCE.
The social worker’s car is blue and the smell inside is like the smell of new shoes.
‘Right, so,’ he says. ‘The place I’m taking you might seem a bit scary at first, but it’s not a bad place, and everybody there will want to look after you and see that you are all right. I know you must be feeling a bit overwhelmed after what’s happened and maybe it won’t sink in until later.’
‘I’m not a baby,’ I say. ‘You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a baby.’
He shrugs and lets a truck overtake us.
‘Can I’ve a cigarette?’ I ask.
‘In the glovebox,’ he says.
I root around and find a packet of Silk Cut. ‘Matches?’
‘Use the car lighter,’ he says.
‘Oh yeah,’ I say.
I’m having fun. I shouldn’t be having fun. I want to stay in this car; keep driving; take the car on a ferry across to France or England and drive all the way to Switzerland and go on a funicular, then drive to the airport and fly to America. Keep driving for the hell of it. It’s warm in the car and there’s a tape playing.
‘I suppose this is jazz,’ I say.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Yeah.’
He nods, but doesn’t speak, and so we drive in silence while I smoke two cigarettes, lighting one from the other. As we get closer to the city I wind down the window and hang my head out like a dog does. I look out at the dark sky, and up at the fingernail moon, and I feel happy. When we turn into a big square near the statue of Parnell, I look at the lights in the windows of the big terrace houses and hope that I’ll be staying in one of them.
‘We’re here,’ says the social worker.
He points to a four-storey house with a blue front door, bars on the windows, and stone stairs leading down to a basement. There are lights on in all the windows and a Manchester United football jersey stuck to the inside of a window on the top floor.