He could live off the land, eating wild meat. People eat squirrel meat, and there is always the river. Or he could be a wandering ascetic surviving on roots and berries. But, thinks Futh, don’t some of them die? They starve to death, or go missing in deserts.
He thinks about the big meals Gloria made for just the two of them after his mother left. Despite his father, Futh had begun to go to Gloria’s house as often as he could come suppertime. Sometimes she gave him drinks, wanting him to try a new liqueur or a cocktail, and sometimes she fed him. Even if he’d had supper with his father, he still went over to Gloria’s for more. ‘You’re hollow,’ she told him, ‘you young boys.’
Futh had supposed that Kenny — whose father’s work had always meant a lot of travelling and who had sometimes been in Europe for weeks and months at a time — was living a long way away. He had expected postcards and letters with foreign postmarks. He had started collecting stamps although so far he only had one from his Aunt Frieda.
But now Futh was quite often at Gloria’s kitchen table, in the middle of his second supper, when Kenny came in, dropped off by his father after football practice or jujitsu or some other activity. Kenny lived, it turned out, just a few miles away and regularly spent a night at his mother’s.
Kenny would eat but then he would go to his bedroom and shut the door. Sometimes Futh would go into Kenny’s room and hang out with him, and sometimes Gloria would say, ‘We’d better leave him be. We’ll keep each other company.’
Kenny had started smoking. Futh, going into Kenny’s bedroom, found him leaning out of the window so that the smoke would go outside. He went over and stood beside him, looking out at the back of his own house, inside which his father was crashed out on the sofa, the only light — flickering, flashing — coming from the television whose sound Futh had turned down before coming out.
Kenny was making smoke rings, blowing them out of the window, blowing one in Futh’s face, and Futh closed his eyes as the smoke enveloped him.
‘Here,’ said Kenny, passing the cigarette to Futh, who took it.
When Gloria, whose footsteps Futh had not heard on the stairs, opened the door saying, ‘Are you smoking in here?’ Kenny was on the bed, reading a bike magazine. Futh did try to say that he had not been the one smoking but Gloria was not having any of it. ‘You’ve been caught red-handed,’ she said. ‘Either you’ve been smoking in here or you were just about to.’
She sent him home to his father. ‘I’m going to call him,’ she said, ‘and tell him why I’ve sent you home.’ And even though Futh had never so much as put a cigarette to his lips, he knew he was going to be punished for it. It was only much later that Futh wondered why Kenny, hearing Gloria coming up the stairs, had not just dropped the cigarette out of the window.
On one occasion, Gloria rented a video which Kenny wanted to see, and Futh was to see it as well and to sleep over afterwards. Futh’s father had not been keen on the idea but Gloria had spoken to him, had taken care of it.
Futh packed his pyjamas, his toothbrush, his sleeping bag and his torch, none of which he would end up using. Gloria made slabs of ham with apple sauce and they all sat together in the kitchen to eat. When they had finished, she sent the boys into the living room to draw the curtains and put in the video while she made popcorn. ‘You’ve got to have popcorn with a film,’ she said to Futh, ‘haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Futh, even though the smell of popcorn made him feel nauseous.
Kenny took the video out of its box and pushed it into the player and then sat sullenly at one end of the sofa with the remote control. Futh closed the curtains and sat down at the other end, leaving space for Gloria in between them. He wanted to wait for her but Kenny was already playing the video and would not stop it. While the trailers were on, Futh picked up and unscrewed the lid of a pot of Gloria’s hand cream which was on the arm of the sofa. He put the pot to his nose to smell its blissful scent of tangerines, all the more potent in the dim room.
‘Why are you here?’ said Kenny.
Futh, surprised, said, ‘You asked me over.’
‘No I didn’t,’ said Kenny. ‘My mum invited you.’ He looked at Futh who was still holding the hand cream. ‘Stop smelling that,’ he said. ‘Stop touching her things.’ Futh put the pot down but Kenny was standing up anyway. ‘I’m going to my room,’ he said. He left, and Futh reached for the remote control left behind on a cushion, pressing ‘pause’.
Gloria appeared in the living room doorway with a bowl of popcorn in her hands. ‘Where’s Kenny?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think he wants to watch the film,’ said Futh.
Gloria went to Kenny’s room and when she came back she said, ‘Did you two have a fight?’
‘No,’ said Futh. He had started toying again with the pot of hand cream.
‘Well, he’s being difficult,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to watch this with just me, do you?’ But even as she said this, she was advancing with the popcorn. Futh wondered if he should go and talk to Kenny in his room. Perhaps he should just go home. But Gloria was settling down next to him, unpausing the video. The film was starting and he did not move. She put the bowl of popcorn in her lap, telling Futh to help himself. ‘I always make too much,’ she said, ‘and it’s just the two of us now.’ She retrieved her pot of hand cream, dabbing some onto the back of each hand and rubbing it in and the smell of popcorn got mixed up with the smell of tangerines.
Futh fell asleep on the sofa, on Gloria, and Gloria must have put him into bed with Kenny rather than into his sleeping bag on the floor because that’s where he was when he woke up in the morning and Kenny was pulling back the covers and saying, ‘Fucking get out.’
After that, Kenny’s visits to Gloria’s house never coincided with Futh’s. Futh, opening Gloria’s back door, would ask if Kenny was around, but Kenny was always at his father’s or out doing something. ‘But,’ said Gloria, ‘come in anyway and keep me company.’
Futh, feeling peckish, stops to pick some blackberries, eating them quickly so that he won’t think about the grubs which might be inside them. When he reaches into the bush for more, unseen thorns tear his skin, the palm of his hand. Extricating himself, he walks on, sucking at the scratches, without his second helping of blackberries. It is only when he stops to look at his map and sees the red smear he leaves across it, when he looks at his hand and sees the blood still coming out of him, that he realises how deep the wound is. But still, he thinks, as he shrugs off his rucksack and takes out his first-aid kit, opening a packet of disinfectant wipes, this is nothing compared with the way a head wound bleeds.
Not long after the sleepover, he ran into Kenny unexpectedly when, following Angela home from school, Futh missed his turning and ended up on a strange estate. Afterwards, looking at an A to Z, he would be astonished to see how close to home he had been, but at the time he didn’t know where he was, could only guess which way to go, and set off in a direction which would take him a long way round, taking the wrong alleyway out of the estate.
The alleyway had six-foot walls on either side, although here and there it was lower where the bricks had fallen away, and it curved so that Futh could not see all the way from one end to the other. He was more than halfway down it when he caught the smell of cigarette smoke, and as he rounded the bend he saw Kenny standing against the wall blowing smoke rings.