Splintered Ice

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

Cold, like bitter iced fingers ran along his spine.

       The nightmare was real. Terrifyingly real. He didn’t wake up from it until the world he knew appeared no longer recognisable, but one turned upside down.

Jed knew he should respond more positively, allowing some of the sun’s warmth to percolate inside him and rise to the surface. This required effort, but somehow he never quite managed it, often forcing himself to smile regardless of the weight that hung like a yoke around him. Others turned away, avoiding his stare; no one ever stopped him to say ‘hello’ or ask how he was. Not that he cared. It was something he had come to terms with, accepted. His days were all like this one, inside and out. Heavy, black clouds, threatening to break but never doing so, bearing down on him, cloaking him in depression. And this particular day, as he came around the corner, the wind pinching at his face, he saw the people and groaned.

       He usually reacted this way and shunned company. Ever since Mum had left.

He remembered the day as clear as those rare ones when the sun broke through. He’d come home from school, not feeling too well. The usual routine meant he stayed for school dinners, not that he ate very much of them. Slop, that’s all it was. Slop followed by cake smothered in pink custard. Craig Watson, big fat cheesy face beaming like a buffoon, brainless, piling up his plate by taking everyone else’s. God, he could put that stuff away! That particular day Jed had stood up to him, sick of his antics, sick of him. “Give us your dinner,” grumbled Watson, voice like a constipated buffalo – which he must have been, given the amount of slop he shovelled into his ever-open gob. The others pressed against the dinner table, obediently did his bidding, staring down at the meagre scraps Watson had allowed them to keep, with all the grace of a nightclub bouncer. “No,” said Jed. They’d all blinked at that, especially Miles, Jed’s friend. Reaching over, he touched Jed’s arm, trying to calm him. But Jed fumed inside, too far gone to notice, the limit reached. Watson looked as though he’d been yanked back by a winch, his whole body becoming stiff, head jerking, mouth dropping open. Sixteen years of age, grossly over-weight, Watson was a formidable bully. Despite being almost two years younger than Jed, he looked considerably older. Feared throughout the school. Nobody said ‘no’ to Craig Watson. But Jed had. And the whole world waited to see what would happen next.

       Jed shoved back his chair, the bottom of the legs scraping across the bare floor, and he climbed to his feet.

       “Pick it up!” Roared Mr Malone from the far end of the hall. Mr Malone used to be a professional rugby player, about a thousand years ago. But he looked more like a football now, the glory days long gone, as wide as he was tall, puffed up and red-faced, as if he were going to burst at any minute. But Jed liked him, thought him decent, in a gruff sort of way. Malone didn’t take much messing from the kids, but very rarely paid any attention to what they got up to. A dinner monitor, not a teacher, just a poor old pensioner trying to earn a few extra bob to pay for his cats’ upkeep. Apparently, so Jed heard, Malone owned lots of cats. But no one else. No wife, no family. Just the cats. And this job. Jed liked him and felt sorry for him and he thought, with no evidence to support his view, that Mr Malone liked him too. But it didn’t look that way at that moment as Jed stood there, simmering quietly. “I’ve told you a thousand times,” screeched Malone over the collective buzz of the dining hall, “not to scrape those things across the floor – to pick the damn things up! And what are you doing standing up anyway?”

       “Don’t feel well,” said Jed, as quick as a flash. He glanced down at Watson, who glared at him. No longer the buffalo, he was now the predator, eyes narrowed into slits.

       “I’m going to get you, Meres.”

       “In your dreams, Watson.”

       “Yeah, well it’ll be your worst nightmare when I’ve finished with you.”

       “Jed, just leave it, yeah?” Miles said. Always the protector.

        Jed smirked. He didn’t feel particularly brave, more that he had woken up. The night before he’d heard his parents arguing. They always argued, so nothing unusual in that, but this sounded different. On another level. Dad had stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind him, and he never did that. Mum had stayed in the living room, television on low, and from his room Jed could hear the sobs. He listened to her padding across the hall, picking up the ‘phone. She talked rapidly, in a whisper. He knew he shouldn’t, and he felt guilty doing so, but he crept over to his door, pressed his ear against the crack, and listened. He couldn’t make out most of what she said, but there were lots of, ‘It’s not going to be easy...as long as we’ve got one another...you’ve been so good...I know, I know, but...all right...please, just a little while longer...’. What did it all mean? Something stirred inside him, a sudden lurching in the pit of his stomach. Ominous, like a premonition of something...something massive. So he’d gone back to his bed and slumped down, looking at the ceiling, feeling like everything had begun to close in. Stifling him. Nothing could change the fact Mum and Dad had drifted...anything they had long gone. Mum and Dad. For how much longer could he put those two words together and conjure up any meaning? Did anything have any meaning if they weren’t going to be a family anymore? Because he suspected this was going to happen. The end. And it churned him up inside, making him angry, tying his stomach in knots and he rolled over, brought his knees up to his chest, and gnawed at his lips. Why? That was the question that burned – why?

So school and that day with Watson, they were like nothing. Little bits of trivia that had come along to test him. And he had decided to take the test full on, meet it, steel against steel. “You can try, Watson. But I tell you this,” Jed leaned forward, grinning, “by the time you’ve filled your guts up with all this,” he waved his hand over the other dinner plates, “you’ll be so full of shit you won’t be able to move...and I’ll kick your fat, stinking head in.” And with that, to the disbelief of everyone, Jed took up his plate of sponge and pink custard, and ladled it onto Watson’s stack of beef-stew-slop.

       The table gave a collective gasp, all of them stunned, especially Watson, who sat there, gaping in disbelief. Jed span on his heels and marched out. Malone followed and Jed pulled up, looking at him. The man’s eyes had something like respect twinkling within them and Jed gave him a little nod, “I’m going to go home, Mr Malone. Sleep it off.”

       But when he got home, the house greeted him still and silent. Jed stood in the hallway for a moment, sensing something, something which didn’t feel quite right. More than the usual atmosphere of nobody being home. Empty. Cold, unfriendly, any homeliness stripped away, like wallpaper replaced by something flat and lifeless. And charmless. No soul. Just a building, a house, not a home.

       Moving quickly, anxious now, he went into the kitchen, the usual hub of the house. Everything looked tidy, almost too tidy, he thought. He ran a finger across the tabletop. Clean. He pressed the finger to his nose, breathed in the disinfectant. Like a hospital. Clinical. Now, into the living room. All the clutter gone, magazines and books neatly stacked, coffee-mugs and plates put away. It reminded him of one of those show-homes Mum and Dad used to drag him round to some years before. Very nice, but not real. A place in which you walked around on pins, afraid that you might spill something, or misplace a cushion and undo the careful fabric of the sanitised furnishing.

       Jed ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and burst into his parents’ bedroom, ripping open the doors to his Mum’s wardrobe. He stopped, hardly able to breathe. No clothes. Drawers, the same. Make-up, perfumes, hair dryer, straighteners, the everyday necessities of the modern woman, all gone. Decks swept clean.

       Dropping down on the corner of the bed, he sat there for a long time, just staring into space, not daring to admit what he knew to be true. She’d left. Gone. That phone call, that had to be the key. But to whom had she been speaking, he had no idea. Jed racked his brains, thinking of her old friends. Men. He dismissed each and everyone. When he looked up and caught his reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall opposite, he saw staring back at him a young man, vulnerable all of a sudden. He didn’t like what he saw and he straightened up, the anger rising. He knew he would find out who had stolen her. And when he did...

       No...no, he had to think about this. Be realistic. If she had left, then life had suddenly become bleaker. All at once, he felt trapped, useless, unable to do anything. For all his bravado, how could he find out who the man was? Life wasn’t a movie. He had to get real, accept it, try and live through it. And prepare himself for what Dad would do. He glanced at his wristwatch. Dad would be home in a little under four hours. Jed groaned at the prospect of his dad’s reaction.

       The hours dragged by. Jed spent most of the time sat in the lounge gazing at the clock as the hands crawled slowly around.

       Then the sound of the key. Dad had come home, at his usual time. He’d gone upstairs without a word, as usual. Jed waited, staring at his hands. He could hear the stomping of feet, imagining his dad sitting down, pulling off his boots, taking off his shirt, getting ready for a shower. Then the opening of the wardrobe and the stunned silence. Jed put his face in his hands. Hell had come to visit.

 Dad had come down, heavy footed, and when Jed saw his face a surge of real fear raced through him. He’d never seen his dad’s face so dark, so filled with barely contained fury. “I’ve got some bad news,” Dad began, voice low, unsteady, close to breaking.

       “I think I know, Dad,” Jed mumbled.

       For a moment, it looked as if Dad would explode. He wrestled with himself, face twisting into a horrible scowl. “Well, you knew a damn sight more than I bloody did!” He went out, slamming the door behind him.

       After a moment, spent trying to quieten his booming heart, Jed gathered up what little courage he had, and went out to find his dad in the kitchen. “What are you going to do?”

       Dad busied himself at the sink, washing a plate. A clean plate, taken down from the rack. Jed realized that his dad was in shock, doing things mechanically, without thinking. Jed wanted to reach over and put his arm around him. His dad, strong, dependable, just an ordinary bloke really. But his dad nevertheless. And special for that. But Jed couldn’t. There had always been a barrier between them, a reluctance to show affection. It was just the way they were, and the habits of half a lifetime could not be broken, even when tragedy had struck.  

       “I’m going to have my tea,” Dad said and that was the end of the conversation.

       They hardly said a word all night and later, as he lay in his bed staring up at the ceiling, Jed could hear his dad in the next room, crying. It had to be the most awful sound he had ever heard. It grew so bad that he turned over, pulling his pillow over his head to muffle the noise. But it didn’t work. He could still hear that mournful sound and it stayed with him all through the night.