Bad Company(5)

There was a tear in my eye too, but it was with anger.

‘You haven’t opened the present Dad got you,’ Mum said later.

And I don’t intend to, I told her. How could she think anything else? He’s not buying me with a cheap present. ‘I don’t want anything from him. He’s a crook.’

‘You know he’s paid for that, Lissa. He’ll be paying for that for the rest of his life.’

Good! Why shouldn’t he suffer, I thought, the way he’s made us suffer.

He even tried to talk to me. He came into the living room while I was searching for a video to watch. He sat across from me, watching me silently.

I pulled out video after video, throwing them on the floor behind me, as nosily as I could.

‘I don’t blame you, Lissa, for not being able to forgive me.’

Ha! How kind of him, not blaming me. I don’t think.

‘I tried to explain so often, in the letters I sent you. Explain and apologise.’

Another couple of videos were thrown on to the floor.

He sat there still. Couldn’t he see I wanted rid of him? ‘I want to beg your forgiveness. I was greedy. The money was so easy and gave us all such a good life. I got in with the wrong people, though I didn’t realise they were the wrong people at first. I thought it was the job of a lifetime, and when I was asked to cover things up, change a few items on the accounts, I kept telling myself I wasn’t hurting anyone. I suppose I pushed to the back of my mind that the kind of people I was working for didn’t care who they hurt.’

Was he just realising that? Because that had been the thing I couldn’t take, couldn’t understand. The people he was protecting, covering up for, were evil. They killed people. Contract killings, it had said in the papers, gangland bosses, mobsters. People you think only exist in old movies. And stupid old J.B. had gone to prison rather than tell everything he knew about them. I found the video I wanted right at the back of the cabinet. I pushed it into the recorder and switched it on, totally ignoring him. J.B. gave up then. He left the room without another word.

I wish I could run away. I wish I lived anywhere else but here.

If Christmas had been bad, going back to school after was even worse.

‘I had the old man home for Christmas as well, Lissa,’ Ralph shouted as I walked into the classroom. ‘Did you have as good a laugh with yours as I did with mine?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But you had to press the suit with the arrows for your dad going back, didn’t you?’

Ralph jumped from his seat and blocked my way. I only stared down at his big clumsy feet and said nothing.

‘See if I was you, I’d keep that suit handy. He’ll need it when he goes back. They always go back. Look at my dad. He’s spent more time in jail than he has with us. He’s a serial jailbird. The leopard cannot change his spots. And your dad’s another leopard.’

There was always that bit in me that rose to Ralph’s bait. I never knew why. Why did I want to make J.B. look better than he was?

‘Actually, J.B. is starting in another position soon.’ I said it as if he was about to be made general manager of some big corporation. ‘He’s sifting through the offers right now.’

That only made Ralph giggle. ‘Would that be the offers he can’t refuse?’ he said, referring to some old gangster movie.

But it was true. I’d heard my mother and him discussing it over Christmas. He had been offered a job. A position. ‘I have to take it,’ he had said. ‘It’s a start. And that’s the most important thing. To earn money. To build my self-esteem again.’

His self-esteem. As if that was all that mattered.

I had just taken my seat when Murdo slammed into the classroom and almost threw his briefcase at the class.

He was in a bad mood. His face was red and his fiery ginger hair stood on end as if he hadn’t combed it: either that or he’d had an electric shock this morning.

‘There are people here who are not working hard enough.’ His angry gaze surveyed the room, lingered for a second too long on me. ‘The results of the tests you all did before Christmas were A-BOM-IN-ABLE,’ he bawled. ‘You will all do better this term or you will be suspended.’ He paused, then his bawl became an earth-shattering roar. ‘From the top balcony of the English corridor!’

To add more effect he slammed down his desk lid. The whole classroom shuddered.

Then, in that surprising way that Murdo had, he suddenly changed and beamed a smile. ‘Let’s hope our new girl will do better.’

The new girl had made the mistake of sitting right in front of Murdo, but as I watched her wipe her cheek discreetly with her finger, I knew she’d learned her first lesson and would never sit so close to Murdo again.