She'd left them. "Just to nip to the shops," she'd said, but that excuse had fallen flat after the first few times she'd stayed out until the early hours of the morning. Ryan had grown used to taking care of him and his sister, making them cereal for dinner and falling asleep on the sofa once the CBeebies channel had ceased its broadcast, so he wasn't too bothered anymore by her absence. It was run of the mill in their household, and Chloe was just as accustomed to this arrangement as he was. She was barely a year younger than him, and she was well versed in what to do when their mum was gone. Sit in the living room, watch TV, play with her toys, and wait. Ryan had drilled this into her, and considering he'd never really had any trouble keeping her in check beforehand, he was confident that she would be okay for just an hour or so alone.
When the neighbour's kid came round that afternoon and asked Ryan if he wanted to go next door to play, Ryan said yes. Ryan had played there many times before, and his neighbour had never batted an eye to him showing up whenever he felt like it, so saying yes without a single thought otherwise came naturally to him. Chloe was busy watching her favourite show, and she refused to join them for fear of missing it. Ryan didn't really want to wait, so he told her to stay exactly where she was until he'd returned.
"You know what to do when mum's not here," he reiterated. "Just watch TV or play in your room, and don't touch anything in the kitchen or in the bathroom unless you need the toilet, okay?"
"I know." She tried to look around him and focus back on the TV screen, but Ryan stood adamantly in front of her, hands on his hips.
"Don't you dare answer the door to anyone, and if you're not playing with your toys or watching the TV, then don't do it, okay?"
"Okaaaay."
"Promise me you won't get into any trouble."
"I promise."
"I'll leave some cheerios for you to eat, but don't go into the kitchen."
"You already said that."
"I'm just gonna be next door, and I won't be long, so just stay where you are."
"Uh huh." She didn't even tear her eyes away from the screen long enough to watch the front door shut behind him.
The neighbour's kid was called Elliot, and he'd made a rocketship out of bottles and tinfoil that he wanted to show off. Ryan thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen, and worth the quick few steps across the alleyway that separated his building from Elliot's to play with it. He didn't think to say goodbye to his sister. His mum regularly left them for hours at a time without so much as a quick "see ya!" to mark her exit, so he didn't think a goodbye would be necessary for only half an hour. That was it. He was only supposed to be gone for thirty minutes, and he trusted that Chloe would be sitting at home waiting for him.
How could he possibly know that the window had been left slightly open, and Chloe had decided— for whatever reason— to clamber out and lose her balance? Perhaps she hadn't even intended to climb out, but was simply trying to close the window when a gust of wind sent her barrelling towards the concrete pavement below.
Ryan didn't see the fall, but Elliot's mum heard the commotion outside and went to see what all the fuss was about. He was still playing with the toy rocket, helping it to land on the moon named Elliot's Bed, when she rushed into the room and knelt down in front of him. Her face was noticeably ashen, and the deep frown on her face made him stand up straight and alert, wondering what trouble he must have caused. Grown ups only ever looked at him like that when they were about to tell him off.
"Sweetheart," she began softly. "Do you know where your mummy is?" Ryan froze for a second. His mum had told him time and time again to never let anyone know when he was on his own, and if worse came to worse, then he had to repeat the same line no matter what.
"She's just gone to the shops," he replied, almost instinctively. "She'll be back in five minutes." There was a beat as Elliot's mum stared at him. He noticed the glistening of tears in her eyes, and he folded his hands behind his back.
"I'm sorry," he said. She shook her head and took his hand. Her palm was as soft as her voice, and she held his hand as gently as if it were made of glass. He tried not to pull away, expecting her nails to dig into his skin, but he felt nothing except the warmthness from her fingers. It scared him more than if she'd dragged him away, because he wasn't sure what gentleness was supposed to signify. Was he in so much trouble that Elliot's mum was beyond yelling?
"Did I do something wrong?" he asked.
"No, darling," she said, standing up and leading him from the room. "I'd like you two to come into the living room for a bit, where I can see you."
"Oh, whyyy?" Elliot whined. "We're still playing!" She frowned at him, wordlessly. A look was enough to shut him up, although it didn't stop him from stubbornly dragging his feet against the floor as they made their way to the living room. It was identical to the one next door, save for the decor, which was significantly more homely and instantly gave way to the existence of a child. Ryan was always jealous of the brightly coloured pictures and drawings and play-doh sculptures that lined the shelves, when his own mum never even looked at the stuff he drew. Usually she grunted at it, eyes fixed on the television and told him to throw it away when he was finished. "We don't need all that paper clogging up the place and making the walls look ugly," she said, when he asked why he couldn't hang up his art like all the other kids at school.
The two boys were deposited on the sofa in front of the TV, where Elliot changed his tune immediately once Tommy Zoom started playing. Ryan tried to watch along with him, but he couldn't help but spy Elliot's mum out the corner of his eye, talking quietly on the phone to somebody. It made his heart jump in his chest, and he finally began to regret leaving his flat. His mum had told him thousands of times before to never leave the flat when she was gone, but Ryan had always been an incurable wanderer, no matter how many warnings he was given. As soon as he'd realised that his mum rarely returned home before dinner time, he and Chloe would regularly pop out the front door and play in the stairwell or go downstairs to the newsagents for free sweets. Going next door was certainly adventurous, but still within the realm of safety, as long as Ryan didn't breathe a word about where his mum was. Now, however, the ticking of the clock suddenly became the loudest sound in the room.
After a few minutes, he heard sirens from outside, growing nearer and nearer until they seemed to bounce around the walls of Elliot's flat. He'd never heard sirens this close by before, and it gave him a vague sense of uneasiness that began to grow more and more as time ticked on. He watched Elliot's mum closely, the way the frown lines on her face deepened, the way she fiddled with her necklace and brushed a hand across her face and glanced out the window every minute or so. The sounds from the TV were pounding against Ryan's ear, and he suddenly felt sick. Thirty minutes had been and gone, and he really needed to check on Chloe.
"Um… ." He slid off the sofa and walked over to where Elliot's mum was tapping at her phone's keypad. He didn't mean to interrupt her, but Chloe would start to wonder where he was, and the sounds of sirens from outside made him nervous. What if they alerted his mum back home and he wasn't there to greet her? She'd kill him for leaving Chloe on her own. He urgently tugged at the woman's sleeve. "Excuse me, but… I really need to go home now."
"It's okay, darling, you can stay here until your mum gets back." Ryan's eyes widened, breath quickening at what sounded like a threat to him. He shook his head.
"No, I want to go home!" She tried to place a hand on his shoulder, but he flinched away and clasped at his t-shirt. "Please let me go."
"Ryan, calm down, it's okay." He kept shaking his head, the familiar feeling of his nose stinging and his throat closing up as the tears began to stream down his face.
"My mum's waiting for me, I need to go home and see my sister!"
"Shh, shh… ." She bent down so her face was right in front of his, and held out a hand, slowly and carefully so as not to alarm him. He felt her wipe the tears away with her thumb and hold his hands to stop them from shaking. He had scrunched up his t-shirt so tightly that it clung to his skin, creased and damp.
"I just went over there, when you were in Elliot's room, and your mum's not home. Did you know that?"
"She just went to the shops," he said, without a beat of hesitation. He noticed a slight purse of her lips.
"I know, I remember you saying that, but do you know when your mummy left to go to the shops? Do you know when she'll be back?" He couldn't focus on the questions. They frazzled his brain and hurt his chest. He desperately searched his mind for something to say that would put an end to all of this, just one sentence that would make everything disappear, and send him straight back home to his sister without a single person questioning why he'd left in the first place. He crouched onto the floor, hands over his ears, head buried into his knees and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Ryan?" He could see the living room where Chloe was sitting, and he prayed so heavily to be sitting next to her that he felt sparks exploding behind his eyelids and blurring the image. He'd obviously screwed up, and now his mum was going to know that he'd disobeyed her, all because he'd wanted to play with a stupid rocket ship.
"What's wrong with him?" He could hear Elliot's voice somewhere in the distance, from a thousand miles away, and a response that came from under water. Everything sounded muffled and warped, like a Snoopy cartoon, and the tears in Ryan's eyes were weighing them down until a wave of exhaustion finally crashed over his fragile body. It could be picked up so easily, by two strong hands that felt nothing like his mother's.
"I wanna go home," he tried again, in a voice so weak it scratched at his throat.
"I'll take you home, sweetheart." He fought to stay awake, because a small part of his conscious mind was still warning him about the certain doom he was surely in, but the rest of his mind needed a break from the stress of hiding his mum from the neighbours. He wanted nothing more than to drift off into oblivion and wake up back in his own bed, with his sister sleeping soundly on the opposite side of the room.
He didn't get a chance to dream for long. Instead of waking up to the quiet sounds of Chloe snoring, or the early morning birds that sat outside their bedroom windowsill, he thought the world must have come crashing down around them, because all he heard was screaming.
He recognised that scream. He heard it in his nightmares sometimes, or in the middle of the night when the front door slammed shut and his nose was accosted by a haze of alcohol from the shadows.
It was his mum, and unfortunately— as he soon found out— this wasn't just a nightmare.