15 April 1989
The fact that Eva hadn't bought a new television in twelve years, despite their decrease in price and subsequent down-sizing, was testament to how little money she actually had. All of her spare money that wasn't drained by taxes went towards food and some of it – more than she was comfortable with, really – went to Jim. His new fashion sense was partially funded by weekly pocket money. She simply didn't have the money to buy a new television. It was for this reason that Jim watched the Hillsborough Disaster unfold on an incredibly old TV with a slight orange tint.
He wouldn't usually have bothered with such trivialities as sports matches, but his afternoon reading was interrupted by the house phone. He didn't move until he heard his mum come to the door, and even then he dragged his eyes away from his book with a kind of weary lethargy. "Yes?" He asked Eva, who stood at the threshold of his room but didn't come in. She looked, for a moment, like she was going to say something about his blatant rudeness, but bit the words back.
"There's someone on the phone for you... Ben?" She tried to sound authoritative, but her voice shook in that way that showed she was putting on a front. Jim didn't comment on it though – he let her believe that she was still his mother in something other than title.
"Oh," he said, swinging his legs off of the bed and jumping up with all the exuberance of an ordinary kid. He pushed past her with ease and ran for the phone, which had been left on the kitchen side. Eva followed him slowly, hovering in the doorway of the kitchen. Jim completely ignored her as he picked up the phone.
"Yes?" His voice didn't betray any of his inner annoyance at being pulled away from his reading, but he hoped that Ben had called for some actual reason. When they'd exchanged numbers, Jim had made it clear that he was just doing it so that he could be told when something good happened. There weren't going to be any social calls or anything. He reasoned that he needed some kind of link to the outside world, if only to be kept in the loop, and now that Carl had been dead long enough for Jim to be considered "normal", he could ask for favours and not be looked at with anger.
"Hey, Jim, you watching the game?" Ben sounded wildly excited, a little breathless.
"No," Jim snorted derisively and wrinkled his nose, twirling the phone cord around his index finger in a bastardization of a teenage girl in a cliché film.
"Well, turn on the TV," Ben replied, to which Jim frowned – he didn't like to be told what to do.
"Why?" He asked, giving Eva a look of mild irritation. She hadn't left the kitchen and was still standing awkwardly on the edge of the room, pretending to brush crumbs off of the counter but really just wanting to listen to his conversation.
There was a long pause and Jim was tempted to just put the phone down, when at last Ben said: "People are dying, Jim. On TV."
At that Jim's eyes widened in surprise, and his whole stance straightened slightly. He'd been expecting Ben to say that some boring soap opera had started or someone was one question away from a million quid or… whatever else happened on television shows. But this? This was actually worth the phone call. This was interesting. Eva must have noticed his stillness, his sudden focus, because she stopped the pretence of wiping the side down and looked at him with open curiosity.
"What?" He asked Ben, before lowering the mouthpiece a little to address Eva, pointing in the general direction of the living room next door. "Mum, turn on the TV." He demanded, already walking past her and into the room, stretching the wire as far as it would go.
"They're… Well, see for yourself." There was the faint hollering of a woman in the background, and Ben yelled back: "I'm on the phone!" To which the voice responded that he had to get off right now or else. After a moment of rustling, Ben was back. "I've gotta go. Mum's mad. She doesn't want me to watch it."
Jim smirked at the thought of Eva trying to stop him doing anything. "Alright; see you later." He pressed the End Callbutton and dropped the phone, letting the wire curl back up as it dragged itself a little way across the carpet.
"Mum, I said turn on the TV!" He cried, because she'd just been standing there by the set, watching him on the phone. At that she flinched ever so slightly and turned it on. BBC One: Grandstand. The game was usually broadcast on The Match of the Day – even Jim knew that – so it must have been relayed to the news reporters when they realised it had been a bigger event than just a temporary pause.
At first it was hard to see what was happening.
The scene was chaos: swarms of people in cages on the edges of the pitch. They were jammed against one another, jostling and shoving one another in what little space they had free. The players had left the pitch, but there were a few civilians who'd managed to escape the crush and were sitting on the grass – the neatness of it contrasting awfully with what was happening.
The camera zoomed in and focused on a few people who were being hauled up from the crowd by people above, yanking at their shirts and pulling their wrists. Those who couldn't reach the people above were clamouring to be saved, their arms waving and trying to grab onto someone to save them. But they were so compacted – too many people were in too small a space – and it was obvious what was going to happen: it was clear on even their small screen.
They were killing each other in the fray.
"Jim," Eva whispered, as if she was struggling to breathe, just like the people on TV. "Turn it off."
But he didn't move. He'd frozen on the spot when she'd switched the television on, his every muscle tense and his gaze rapt on the events playing out on the screen. He was almost smiling, if the slight upward curl of his mouth could be called that, and his eyes were wide as he watched the disaster. It was as if nothing else was happening around him, and his entire attention was focused on the television, on the stadium where people were now being trampled to death.
It was a crush of bodies, haphazard shots of people climbing over one another, yanking other people to the ground and pressing themselves against the metal mesh of their cage. It was incomprehensible – people were dying, right that second, right there in front of him. It shouldn't have come as such a shock, after Carl, but the scale of it, the sight of people being reduced to animals as they fought for space and choked and knocked each other down.
"Jim," She snapped, louder now, and walked across the room to switch off the set.
His gaze jerked away from the TV to glare daggers at her, his mouth twisted into an unpleasant line. His hands curled into fists and his whole body tensed. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so shocking – one child having so much rage inside. He should have been outside with his friends, trading football cards and riding his bike; not standing in his living room, livid because he couldn't watch people die on television.
What had happened? What had she done wrong? Watching the small boy seething silently, not making a move to turn the set back on, just quietly containing his rage, Eva wondered if it was her fault. And when her number would be up.
She wasn't stupid. Eva Moriarty had many unpleasant qualities, least of all how afraid she was of her own son, but she wasn't dense. Jim was spending less and less time in the house – he made his own dinners now, spent all evening out without telling her beforehand, virtually lived in his room. It was only a matter of time before he was spending all night out, and she'd have no idea where he was at any given time.
As it was, her role had been reduced to a necessary pain. Of course he needed a mother, to attend parent's evenings and pay for things, and keep the house in good shape. But beyond that? Jim had no use for her. He never came to her with a problem, and she didn't remember hearing him cry once after the night of his ninth birthday. She offered no emotional support. How could she, when Jim had seemed to have cut his own emotions off? When had that happened? Eva felt like she'd turned around to find that her son – who had been angry and violent when he was young, but was still just a child – had become someone else entirely.
"There's no need to look so angry Jim." She said, primly, proud that her voice didn't shake at all. Maybe she could make light of the whole thing, and they'd brush it under the carpet? Maybe.
"I was watching that," he replied, furiously. He had relaxed his tension now, and lowered his shoulders a little. His hands had uncurled and hung at his sides limply, but his eyes were blazing at her. How dare she?
"Yes, well, you shouldn't have been." Her voice was matter-of-fact, as if the subject was closed, and the only sign of her nervousness was how she was twisting and untwisting her fingers. She linked her index fingers in front of her waist, and let them go, repeating the action like a nervous tic.
"Yeah?" He smirked in cold amusement, his tone flatly rebellious. "It's not like I haven't seen someone die before, is it?"
They had never talked about Carl's death. Jim had never seen a professional about it, or even mentioned it to her, so the casual mention of it was a shock. It had been over a year since the accident, and in that time Eva had silenced whatever voices had been whispering to her in the back of her mind.
You have to forgive her: her distrust for her own son could only stretch so far and it was already at its limit. She couldn't even imagine that he would be capable of anything beyond harsh tricks and callous behaviour. It didn't matter that she knew about his penknife, his collection of dismembered bugs in the garden, the hatred which he carried around like a weight. To do so would be to confirm her worse fears, the hissed thoughts that she tried to quell at night. Jim had always hated Carl. Carl was now dead. Jim was evil.
"We never talked about that," she replied, quietly. She stopped twisting her fingers and looked straight at him. Her voice might have been soft and concerned, but her look was saying something different: just tell me, so I know. I need to hear you say it. "Is there anything you want to say, Jim?"
He didn't respond, but just stared at her. There was no hatred in his stare now, none of the anger that had been there only moments ago, or the smugness of hitting her with a controversial statement. But there was something in his eyes, she just couldn't place it. He looked… vulnerable. It was just for the fraction of a second, so she'd probably misread it, because suddenly he was sneering. His nose wrinkled and his upper lip drew back a little in an expression of disdain.
It had been too little, much too late. She was asking him about Carl now, over a year later? Hell – she was asking him anything about his life, after all this time? Eva had never paid any interest to Jim's life before. But now she knew something was very, very wrong, she wanted to know how he was feeling. Jesus, he wasn't a girl.
And besides, they both knew that even if he told her it wouldn't make any difference. Death was death. Carl wouldn't come back from the small plot of land where his parents had left him, even if everyone in the world knew how he'd gotten there. Sure, if Jim confessed, she'd be able to turn him in. But they also both knew that he wouldn't outright say that he'd done it. He wasn't that stupid. And anyway, she would never turn in her own kid. Whatever they had between them – symbiosis or obligation – it was strong. And it prevented Eva from turning in her own flesh and blood, no matter how much she hated him.
It would be like sacrificing Jim for Carl – offering up her own son as a criminal, to put the minds of the Powers family to rest and give them justice. But Eva couldn't think of this stranger as her James. No, she would be branding her James with the label of murder – the little boy who she'd made party invitations for and buttered endless sandwiches for on his ninth birthday. The little boy with too-long hair and a satchel that was stupidly out of proportion with his body. When had she turned around to find this terrifyingly cold teenager in her house? Had it happened overnight – he'd climbed into Jim's bedroom and whisked away her child, replacing him the way a changeling does in a fairy tale? Or had her son been swallowed up by this alien? This foreigner who wore suits and greased back his hair to extenuate his large forehead and pale complexion. If she mentioned the right memory – like the time he'd fallen and grazed his hand and she'd had to stem the bleeding with a dishcloth because they didn't have bandages – would it bring back her son?
Eva felt like all she needed was the right words. If she could find them, she'd take them to the Powers. Look, she would say, I lost my son too. She would somehow put into words the way that you could live with someone and not know a thing about them. How you could teach someone to talk and walk but not manage to teach them how to love. How you could raise a total stranger.
The silence had gone on for long enough, so Jim felt that he should have put her out of her misery. "You know," he said emptily. It wasn't a question. It was a fact. It was all the confirmation she needed.
He headed for the door behind Eva, not waiting for a response, and smartly stepped around her. She hadn't moved since he'd spoken, save for closing her eyes and clasping her hands together in front of her midriff in the mockery of a prayer. She was standing stiffly, like she was being battered by strong winds. She knew. She'd always known, really. Ever since he'd come back in the taxi and smiled falsely at her, before spinning around to put his show on for Mrs Lynch and the taxi driver – his "ordinary grateful kid" act. Even back then, she'd known. Maybe she'd sensed something like this coming, like a black wave, obliterating any chance to ignore that her son was not normal, ever since he'd been a little kid. When she'd wanted to shake him to make him see that throwing stones at cats was wrong; when he'd kept his head bent and focused only on schoolwork; when he'd had no friends.
"Jim?" She half expected him not to respond to the name.
Jim turned at the threshold to look at her. She hadn't turned around. Her shoulders were hunched and tense, and she looked so small and powerless that he could hardly believe he'd been raised by her. How had he come from someone so weak? He waited to see what she would say next, standing with one foot in the room and the other out in the hallway. He didn't say anything, but just stood in silence until she got the message to speak again.
"Why?" She asked in a quiet voice.
He didn't reply for a few seconds, letting the question hang awkwardly between them. They were both waiting to see what he would say, because he didn't even know himself, and he couldn't let her have the last word.
She'd never been there. She'd never known. All the hours he'd spent nursing bruises and sobbing quietly to himself in the toilet, throwing up because he was so scared to go to school. Every hit, every cruel name, every insult. She'd never seen. How could he condense every reason, every moment he'd spent hating himself and hating Carl and hating the world, into one simple sentence?
When he spoke at last, his voice was brimming with barely-concealed rage. "He deserved it."
With that, he turned around and stormed out of the room, opening the front door and walking to the road. He left the door open, swinging on its hinges from the force of his anger. Because those three words hadn't covered it.
It hadn't been that Carl had deserved to die – that wasn't right. It had been that Jim had deserved the right to kill him.