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You’ve never been asked what your favourite bird is before. But if somebody did, right now, then you think you’d say a robin.
You know what robins look like. Robins have a bright red tummy, the colour of Hanni’s hair, and black, beady eyes, like a pair of currants in a bun. Robins mean winter, and winter means Christmas, and it might mean that you’ll get a package in the post, if you are fingers-on-lips good, and quiet, and you remember to get your hiccups to shush, so that Mr. Walker doesn’t have to send you to stand outside in the corridor again like he did last week, even though you were trying and trying to get them to stop.
You remember a lot of things that happened that day.
You remember biting and biting the inside of your mouth to try and make your hiccups shush, and the metal-y taste of blood when you bit too hard.
You remember the strange and sick feeling in your head when Mr. Walker brought the ruler out from underneath his desk, and everybody went very, very quiet.
Everybody except for you. Because you couldn’t be quiet.
Even when a noise whistled through the air, and the cold air grazed against your cheek, and the ruler smacked down against your desk, close to where your hands curled into fists.
Your hiccups like to go on, and on, and on, until they decide to be finished. You can’t make them be finished.
But you couldn’t say that to Mr. Walker. Just like you couldn’t say it to Mrs. Colclough last year, and like how you can’t say it to Hanni.
And you definitely, definitely can’t say it to your daddy.
The thing you remember most from that day didn’t happen at school, though. It happened afterwards, at home.
From the hall, you heard footsteps coming up the path outside, and so you hurried, scrambling up the stairs on your hands and knees, until you were right at the top and could peep out from the landing.
The door opened, and in came your daddy, in his big black coat that smells of fags, and covers everything in dark.
You stayed very still, and very quiet for a while, feeling his shuffling, grumbling noise buzz up the stairs and rattle through your prickling skin, his shadow bending and stretching against the wall.
And then, another shadow. Smaller than your daddy. Not twisting and turning like his, but still instead. Hovering.
The daddy-shaped shadow turned. More buzzing, and then flickering out of sight.
There was the noise of a snog, and after that, a new voice. A lady’s voice.
You shuffled forward, peering around the banisters to watch as your daddy swept out of the hall and into the living room.
The lady didn’t follow him straight away. You followed her eyes as they jumped from the floor to the walls, to the ceiling of your house.
And then they found you.
The air was quiet. You held your breath, squashing every hiccup right down into your shoes.
The new lady looked at you. And you looked at her.
And from the top of the stairs, you saw her smile.
*
Your daddy’s new lady is called Robyn. Which is a bit like robin, but with a ‘y’ in it. She has dark-coloured hair, and a shaggy haircut, like the man from the Rolling Stones, and she even has a little picture on her arm, like the one of the soldier’s helmet that Hanni’s mates drew on his neck in your bathroom, and he shouted and swore.
You wonder if Robyn shouted and swore when she got her picture drawn. Hers is a picture of a flying bird. It doesn’t have any colours on it, but if she lets you colour it in, you think you’ll give it a red tummy, and lots of brown, and grey, and some white.
Hanni gets cross and tells you to bugger off whenever you ask to colour his one. He called your colouring ‘babbie scribble’ last time, which is wrong, because you are six, and you’ve been trying very hard to stay in the lines when you colour, even though your hiccups sometimes decide that they don’t want to do that.
You don’t think Robyn would be like that. She doesn’t shout, or even swear at you, and sometimes she buys a big newspaper full of chips for you all to share on the days when your daddy isn’t here.
And even though you’ve already had your school lunch from Mrs. Mullovely, you gobble the chips up extra quick, because it’s a Friday, and your daddy probably won’t be here again tomorrow, and so your tummy will need to be extra-specially full.
Robyn calls you ‘duck’, which isn’t your name, but sometimes you get hiccups that sound like quacking noises.
Robyn doesn’t know about your hiccups, but you think it’s very clever of her to come up with that name for you, because it’s the name of a bird.
When you tell him about it, Hanni scoffs, and rolls his eyes. He’s hunched over a sheet of newspaper on the floor in his bedroom, staring at the little pieces from one of his model plane kits.
‘Ent nowt special abite it, titch,’ he grumbles, splodging a blob of smelly glue onto the plastic.
‘Why na?’
‘Cause every bleeding one of oursel’ is ducks, yer blither. Ent yer bin tine?’
Your tummy squirms, and you give your lip a nibble. ‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, so,’ Hanni carries on in a smug sort of voice, pressing two pieces of plane together hard enough to make his hands shake. ‘Sooner yer get that bird out yed, the better. Ent so thick t’na know how it’s gonna go, ay?’
You don’t say anything.
Hanni carries on scowling over his plane. As you watch him, you want more and more to pick it up off the ground and smash it into little pieces.
Instead, you rock yourself back and forth on your heels, and without looking at him, you mutter a very quiet and very secret thought.
‘Yer just dunna like her cause she ent yer’s mum.’
The glue bottle clatters to the floor.
Hanni whirls round. ‘I dunna like her cause she’s a fucking slapper.’
‘She dunna slap may,’ you glare. ‘Or yer. She brung yer chips, an’ yer jus’ pretended yer didna like them cause—'
‘A tart!’ Hanni yells back. ‘A prossie! Jus’ like every hother bird he’s ever had!’
You stop. And you think of Robyn, and the pretty red lipstick she was wearing when she smiled at you, and her black stockings like a witch would wear, and her Rolling Stones haircut, and the beautiful bird drawing on her arm.
‘Yer’s a ligger!’ You bellow in your loudest and most shouting voice ever. But inside where your voice is, you feel a lump. A different-feeling lump to a hiccup.
You look away from your brother as you storm out of his room, and away from the dizzy-making glue smell.
Your face feels sore, and wet, and stings a little bit as you stomp your way right down the stairs, and the stairs wail and moan like ghosts, but you don’t listen. You go straight into the living room, and you stare down Hanni’s record player. The record player you’re not supposed to touch, and definitely not supposed to play records on.
But when you hear the front door bang closed, and Hanni’s stompy footsteps disappear, you decide you’re going to play a record on Hanni’s record player. You’re going to play three, or four, or five, or a hundred records on Hanni’s record player.
So, you climb up to the high shelf where the records are, and you look through all the pictures, and sound out all the names, until you spot the Rolling Stones with their shaggy haircuts, and you hold it against your tummy to drop down from the big cabinet.
You’ve watched Hanni do a lot of things to make his record player work. Carefully, you put the record onto the pointy spoke and turn all the dials to the right numbers. Then you move the arm to the edge, and turn the player on, and make the music as loud as it can go.
Your heart thuds in a crackly quiet place for a few moments, before The Rolling Stones fill the house with bass, and drums, and guitar, and singing, and it’s the loudest sound in the entire world.
You start to jump, and flap your arms, and dance in time with the thunder of music, until you can’t see anything but blurry colours, and the room is shaking and shaking and shaking, and you wonder if you might tear your whole house apart. You wonder how it would feel, to not live anywhere at all. To fly away to this place where it’s too loud to think of anything.
You scream-sing along with The Rolling Stones, and hiccups bubble and burst, but you can’t hear them over the you noise. The other you, who feels no worries about hiccupping. He feels no worries about anything. Because music is all there is now.
When the first song starts to fade away, you hear a quiet noise behind you. A pair of arms reach out to take you by both hands, and you jump, and you jump, and Robyn jumps with you, and you think that you don’t ever, ever want to stop jumping. You don’t ever want the song to end, or for Robyn’s bird to stop swooping up and down. She matches every one of your jumps, and everything else fades away.
You watch Robyn’s face. Her red lips move, but your heart is loud and banging in your head, and the record player screeches sound, and you just can’t hear her.
She smiles again, and holds you close enough to wrap her arms around you.
‘Slow dine, ay, duck?’
And you shake your head because you can’t slow down. You mustn’t slow down.
The whole of your body jumps, and jumps, and jumps, and keeps jumping, until you realise that Robyn has stopped jumping.
You keep holding her tightly. Still jumping, but starting to feel again.
Starting to feel soreness in your feet, in your legs, and your arms. Aching in your head, and in your teeth from where they’ve been clenched into a smile. A tight feeling in your chest from where you’ve had to huff and puff for air.
And slowly, slowly, you start to slow down.
You gasp, and wheeze, and feel your body shaking.
Your feet take a wobbly step, and Robyn catches you.
She starts to twist your curls around her fingers. You bury your face in her shoulder, eyes closed.
For a long time, the only sounds are the soft crackle of the finished record, and your breath being all muffle-y against Robyn’s soft dress.
‘Those yer’s records? Didna know yer’s a Stones fan, duck.’
‘Mm.’
‘What else dost like?’
You chew your lip and watch the bird drawing move instead of her. ‘Beatles. A bit.’
Robyn nods. ‘Thought so. Did thesen a song called ‘Blackbird.’ Han yer heard it?’
You shake your head. ‘It’s pansy music. Hanni says.’
‘Dunna matter what Hanni says, duck.’
‘M’ na a pansy,’ you tell her quickly.
‘I know.’
‘I dunna like The Beatles that much. Only a little bit. Na the pansy songs.’
‘It ent a pansy song, promise. How’s abite we go up tine tomorrow, and yer can take a listen for yersel?’
You lick your lips and think to yourself for a moment. ‘Jus’ may and yer? Na Hanni?’
And Robyn shakes her head and does her special smile. ‘Jus’ us two.’
Just you two.
It rings in your head, like the school bell at the end of playtime.
Nobody else.
Just you and Robyn.
*
You wake up in the dark, and the first thought in your head is that you and Robyn are going to go to town, Just You Two.
Your second thought is that it is very, very dark. Probably not even daytime yet.
The thought you have next is that you can hear noise coming through the wall. A low, rumbling, buzzing kind of noise that makes you go very still in your bed.
Your daddy's back.
You close your mouth, and hold it tightly shut, like when you have bad hiccups, even though you can only feel the body sorts of hiccups now. They crawl around like ants on your shoulders, and spiders coming down from the dark, dark ceiling to scuttle along your neck.
Whilst your hiccups keep quiet, you listen to more noises that you know. The squeaky, creaky bed noise that comes from your daddy’s room, and the huffing, puffing noise that comes from your daddy.
And then, you hear a noise that sounds like it’s coming from Robyn.
You close your eyes and try not to think about Robyn being had. You put your hands over your ears and try not to think about Robyn being had.
You try, and try to think about you and Robyn, going to town Just You Two. But your daddy is so, so loud, and his having sneaks between your fingers and sits right inside your ears and turns your insides strange and hot and wobbly.
All your thoughts about sleeping have gone. Instead, you pull your covers off, and slip out of your bed.
Then you have to get some big neck hiccups out quick, quick. You hiccup, and hiccup, but then you hiccup too much, and out comes a noisy quack hiccup by mistake.
And the sounds in your daddy’s room stop.
Your heartbeat booms in your head.
Until you hear another creak. Another squeak. And the huffing, puffing starts again.
You wonder if Hanni might let you into his room instead.
Hanni doesn’t like you going into his room at night. Hanni especially doesn’t like it when you squidge into his bed with him, and make the wooden slats underneath go all bendy.
Sometimes, you go into Hanni’s room after there’s been an accident, and Hanni makes you sleep on the floor instead.
You don’t think you’d mind sleeping on Hanni’s floor now. Even though there hasn’t been an accident this time.
So, you carefully push your door open, holding it tightly so it doesn’t make a single squeak, only a quiet brushing noise against the snarly carpet.
Through the little rectangle you’ve made, you can see Hanni’s door along the hallway, shut tight.
You take a tiny pigeon-step outside, and you notice different noises. The low, buzzy sounds have come back. Louder this time.
Your daddy’s door is open almost wide. You squash yourself flat against the wall, and shuffle along, until you’re standing right next to the doorway.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ says your daddy, in his growly way. ‘Conna be happy with owt I do, can yer?’
‘How long’s it gonna be necks tarm?’ That’s Robyn’s voice, close to where your ear’s pressed.
‘Wassit han to do wit’yer?’ Your daddy’s voice sounds like a rumbling thundercloud ready to burst. ‘Dunna be needing an earful from any bird abite mar own business.’
Your nails dig into your hands.
'Yer’s kiddas wutner had nowt t'eat if na for may! Littlun's skin an' bone, the poor mite!'
'Theyt the lady, ay? Ent mar job t'be bent o'er th'oven like a slag.'
There’s a slap.
A shape staggers backwards. All the breath in your lungs whooshes away.
You’re frozen. Silent.
In a snarly sweary sound, your daddy trips through the doorway with his hand over one side of his face, and no clothes on. He looks very strange, and very thin. Not much like your daddy at all.
For a moment, your daddy only holds his face, and huffs loud breaths, and spits to nobody.
But then, his eyes snap onto you.
'Little pervert. Dost think theyt clever, skulking abite outside?'
You shake your head, staring at a little round hole you can see in the carpet, with black around the edge.
A very slow and very tiny thought comes. A thought about crawling inside that hole and disappearing in front of your daddy's eyes.
He takes a noisy step forward, and you shrink against the wall. 'Bin listening th'ole night, ay? Abite tarm I finally caught the little freak show in th'act, ennit?'
The words fill up your ears like thick black treacle, sticking everything together. There's a tight feeling in your tummy, and knots in the strings that make your voice work.
You can't think of what to say. You can't think of anything at all.
Quick as a flash, your daddy grabs a handful of your hair, and starts to pull. The floor squeaks and scrapes against your knees
Inside your head, you whisper to your body. You tell it not to make a sound, even when a hiccup climbs into your mouth.
Your daddy tugs, but no sound comes out of you. Instead, you feel a strange and floppy feeling all over, and your daddy drags and drags you right into his bedroom.
The floppy-feeling you doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t do anything, even when its daddy lets go of its hair, and its whole body drops to the floor.
It hears Robyn make a little gasping sound and follows the noise with its eyes to see her sitting on its daddy’s bed in her silky black nightie dress.
'The bastard's put yer up t'this, rate?' Your daddy points the arm without a hand towards you, but his loud and shouting voice is shouting right at Robyn.
You feel like you might be very, very sick on the already sick-coloured carpet.
'The kidda's six, Jacob.'
You blink. That didn't sound like your daddy's name.
For a second, you think about asking who Jacob is, and why Robyn forgot what your daddy is called, but then he's shouting again, and the thought flies right out of your head.
'Dunna play coy wit'may, yer little floozy. The two o' yer've bin in cahoots since yer pitched up!'
You're not sure what a cahoot is, but it reminds you of an owl, and so you try to think of all the owl facts you know, as a secret, silent game.
You think about how owls can turn their heads almost right round, and about how some owls have one ear higher up than the other, and about how owls can see in even the darkest dark, and they probably never have hiccups, and—
A whistling birdsong hiccup bursts out of your mouth, as loud as a train.
Your daddy's head whips around.
Behind him, Robyn stares. Not at your daddy.
At you.
You feel your face go red as Hanni’s hair. As hot as a fag end.
More and more hiccups crackle in your body. In your head, you scream at them in your loudest and most shouting voice to shut up, shut the fuck up.
You can't look at Robyn anymore. Your head drops down to watch your daddy from behind your hair where it flops into a tangly, curly curtain.
The little table goes bump-bump-bump. Your daddy reaches around to put his hook on without looking. His eyes are bright, and sharp, and fixed on you.
There's a metal noise. Your eyes can’t move away from your daddy. You need to keep looking.
He creaks closer.
'Jacob—’
'Shut it!' Your daddy's teeth flash, snapping near to Robyn's face. You bury your hands in the carpet and hold it with all your strength. 'Didna esk for thar input.'
'Mar input?' Robyn says, in a loud and shouting voice of her own. 'S'the only input thar kiddas ever get!'
'And I pay yer handsome for it, dunna forget!' He spins back round and reaches for the drawer beside his bed with more banging and bumping noise. 'Least yer could do is be grateful for the roof o'er yed! Yer'd be nowt but a common whore if na for may!'
Robyn does a strange sort of laugh that makes your tummy feel funny.
There's a loud rattle from the other side of the room. You jump, and a hiccup makes your head jump too. Your daddy's pulled his drawer right out of the table. He dangles it in his hand, and you don’t get a proper look before it comes flying towards you.
You press yourself right into the floor, and smell dirt and fag ash, and sticky booze smell and you have to hold your breath and tell your naughty body not to be sick.
A bang comes from above your head. When you peek open one eye, there’s a big cloud of paper money, fluttering down on top of you like tiny birds.
Like wrens and like robins.
*
‘Up yer get, duck.’
You feel Robyn put her hand on your shoulder. She doesn’t shake it like Hanni would. She doesn’t pull, the way your daddy does when you’re too slow.
You blink and blink. The sleep melts away from your eyes like clouds, and you wonder if you might’ve just had a bad dream.
Your head feels strange and sore. Maybe you bumped it, and that’s what made the dream so scary. Hanni says that sometimes people bump their heads, and their brains get knocked around inside them and start coming out of their ears.
You put a finger in your ear, to check.
No brain. Only goopy, orange-y wax that sticks to your skin.
Robyn smiles at you from the doorway. ‘Wossat theyt doing, kidda?’
‘Mar brain’s still in.’
‘Coss it is, duck. Ent gonna run away like that.’ She makes her fingers do a snap together, and you spot that some of the special paint has come off in little flakes. ‘Dost want to put thar clothes on, quick?’
‘Is Daddy here?’
Robyn shakes her head, and you feel a loose feeling go right through your whole body.
You remember about town, and how you and Robyn are going to go. Just You Two. Today.
And that makes you jump out of bed, quick.
You choose a shirt made of Terry’s cloth, even though you don’t like Hanni’s mate Terry very much at all, and you choose some brown and cordy bottoms that were long shorts on Hanni when he wore them but are whole entire trousers on you.
Once you’ve tied the bunny ears on your shoes, you wander to the bathroom, and you watch Robyn rolling up her witch stockings, and drawing on her lipstick. Her lips go out, like she’s doing a snog on the air.
When she isn’t looking, you get some body hiccups out of your tongue and your head. You know today will be a tricky day for hiccups. They’re all sitting in your body, like a row of starlings, watching you from a telephone wire.
You try not to even look at the wire all the time you’re walking into town. Instead, you point to other birds. You tell Mr. Magpie good morning and show Robyn the pigeons as they hop along the cobbly path, and peck at old food crumbs.
‘Can I esk yer summat, duck?’
‘Wossat?’ You blink up at her in the bright sun.
‘What makes birds so special to yer?’
It takes you a long time to think of an answer. People start to pass you in the street, but you stay still so the words can come out right.
‘Birds fly away.’ You tell her. ‘Birds can always fly away.’
Robyn smiles at you, but you think her eyes look strange and sad.
You turn away so you don’t have to look at it or think about it. Instead, you decide to think about your hands.
Robyn has peachy-pink skin, a lot like Hanni's. You look down at your fingers wrapped around hers in a pattern of pink and brown, with her bright red nails, and yours that are cracked and bitten.
Other people are looking at Robyn as well. They’re looking with their eyebrows right up, and you can hear them making tutty noises. Maybe they think that Robyn can’t hear them or see them looking at her short skirt.
You like Robyn’s short skirt. It’s not like a skirt you’ve seen anybody else wear, except for the pan people you’ve seen on Top of the Pops. Pan people look like ordinary dancing ladies to you, but maybe they’re different. Maybe that’s why they get to wear special clothes that nobody else does.
For a while, Robyn says nothing at all. You walk, and walk, until you’ve walked right past the record shops where you were meant to go.
You’re about to remind Robyn about that, and about looking for the Beatles record like she said.
But then she stops where things are very very quiet, and there’s nobody at all to hear.
She crouches down so that she’s looking right into your eyes.
‘I conna be with thar daddy anymore, duck.’
‘S’alright,’ you tell her ‘Daddy’s na here now.’
Robyn bites her red lip, and pulls you close to her. The smell of flowers goes right up your nose.
‘I need to fly away.’
Your body turns to ice. It breaks away from her.
Birds flutter down, and land on the wire. More birds than you can even count.
Your legs sway and wobble under the weight of the birds, the hiccups piling up, and crowding round.
You scrunch, and un-scrunch your toes, again and again, and again, where nobody can see, but the hiccup feeling gets tighter, and tighter, until you feel it everywhere, and it’s squeezing at every bit of you, and you can’t breathe.
Through the tightness, you think your body might be running. You feel wind going past you, and then a loud sound of a beeping car horn.
You don’t look, and you don’t open your mouth until there’s nothing around you except dark and damp and bricks and smelly bins.
You hiccup on, and on, and on, and your hiccupping head bangs against the wall, but you don’t even move. Your neck pings and snaps so hard that it might break in two.
Your hiccups echo, echo, echo in a big circle, like a laughing vulture above your head.
Your tongue clicks. Louder, louder, louder. You whistle.
You quack.
Your hands clamp tight over your mouth, teeth biting and biting until your tongue tastes blood.
In a tiny moment with no hiccups, you hear heel-y shoes against the ground.
‘Yer dine here, duck?’
‘Fuck off!’ You scream. The noise rumbles like thunder.
But Robyn gets closer, and closer. You hold your hands against your head and curl up so you can’t see anything at all.
Robyn’s flower smell floats in the air. There’s a noise of her sitting down next to you in the dirt.
She pulls you into her arms, and holds you as you hiccup, and hiccup, and hiccup.
*
Your robin leaves before winter comes.
And for a long time, you can’t think of anything but that.
You don’t want to go to school.
You don’t want to come home from school and see the missing heel-y shoes in the hallway, and have the icy feeling fill your body up again, and again, and again.
You sit on the groaning, moaning stairs, and you stare at the door. For minutes, or maybe for hours. Your hiccups don’t even feel like hiccupping.
Things are very still inside your body. Just in case. Just in case your hiccups were the thing that made everything wrong.
And then, the door comes open. Not with a slow and careful creak, but a rough bang.
You don’t jump at the noise. Just sit and carry on staring.
Hanni chucks his big jacket over the banister, and sighs when he sees you.
‘Told yer that ent gonna help owt, titch.’
‘Dunna care.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he stomps over, and squashes up onto the stair beside you. ‘Yer conna be getting this narky o’er every sodding bird that comes through here. ‘M’giving it a wick till he gets an hother.’
‘I dunna want an hother one.’
‘I didna want an hother one after mar mum but look how that turned out.’
For a moment, you look at your brother, and you see that he’s only doing his little scowl, and not his whole scowl-y face. His big hands are holding a very thin, very square package in brown paper. You didn’t even notice.
‘Wossat?’
‘Yer didna hear may earlier?’ Hanni sniffs. ‘Yer’s precious Robyn gev us the dosh to buy yer summat.’
‘Oh.’ The sound rushes out before you can catch it. You watch your shoes, and feel your toes curl where your brother can’t see.
‘Dunna yer mean “Ta very much, Hanni”?’
You nod. Hanni rolls his eyes, grabbing your wrist and pulling you down from the stairs with a bump.
You let yourself get tugged into the sitting room and watch Hanni setting up his record player. He unwraps the paper, but when you try to peep around his shoulder to look, he hides the cover out of sight, and shoves it behind all the others in the cabinet.
Your brother flings himself onto the sofa with a grunt, and you climb up next to him, waiting in the quiet crackle-pop moments for the song to start.
First, a sound like footsteps, and then a quiet guitar.
And then a voice you recognise. Beatle Paul.
Nothing else. You listen to the words about a blackbird who is broken, but can still fly. Who can still be free.
Your body’s shaking.
And when birdsong happens, there’s a hot whooshing feeling.
You cry. First with no noise, and then with a sobbing sound that prickles your mouth and makes wobbly tears spill out.
Your brother strokes your shoulder.
You lie in his lap until the music stops.