Blood
for R.P.K.
I.
It was a Saturday in November, and the flat was freezing. The boiler was dead, and Jake’s mother had been on the telephone trying to get it fixed every free moment from Wednesday to Friday. There had been tears. The last calls she made, on Saturday morning, were one to her half-sister, asking if they could stay, just for the weekend, and another, to Matthew’s parents, asking if Jake could stay with them until Monday. In between those calls had been a small crisis, caused deliberately by Jake, in which he had complained relentlessly that he didn’t want to go to his ‘auntie’s; he wanted to stay at home, alone. There was absolutely no way he was old enough for that, and his proposed alternative was treated — with a profane reminder of the lack of hot water and heating — as it deserved to be treated. In the end a compromise was reached, and his mother called Matthew’s parents. They were more than happy for Jake to stay. Jake’s mother was more than happy for a little time off from him, though she berated herself for thinking that.
Jake also felt glum; he regretted the trouble he had caused, and what it had led to, because at least, at his auntie’s, his mother would have been there. Really he had just been protesting because he despised his auntie’s mean little cat, and the fact the vegetables were always slimy. What he had done now was consigned himself to a whole weekend without his mother, in an environment where he felt uncomfortable. Jake liked Matthew, but he didn’t know him very well, and it had been a while since they had seen each other. He was a friend from Jake’s previous school.
So, late morning on Saturday, right in the middle of more stress and whinnying from Jake, Matthew’s parents had pulled up in their shiny family estate. The handover had been easier than expected: Jake’s mother told him to behave, told him that she loved him, and he had got in the car without a fuss. His mother had waved at him and ducked back inside their freezing ground-floor flat, as the tyres crackled on the ground, and Jim drove them into town for lunch.