Free The Lost Child by Julie Myerson Page A

chat.
    Please, darling, I beg you not to wake your brother up on a school night!
    What the fuck're you on about? What's it to you? I swear he doesn't mind.
    He tells you he doesn't mind. But look at him, he's shattered.
    But I needed someone to talk to. Seriously, what else was I supposed to do?
    His brother and sister stagger around, tired and bad-tempered. Both go off to school looking like they've been punched in the eyes.
    Meanwhile he sleeps in. Despite being woken by me and offered breakfast each morning, he hardly ever gets to school on time and sometimes doesn't make it in at all. He skips school and sleeps in, his cat hunched on his shoulder, a satisfied, protective look on her face.
    He starts almost every day with a roll-up, smoked in the garden with his coffee.
    What is it he's smoking, his father asks me as he glances out of the kitchen window. Is it just tobacco?
    I think so, I say. I smelt it just now. It's not cannabis.
    And a part of me thinks how it's quite funny really - his father and I have never smoked cigarettes in our lives, and I never dreamt the day would come when we'd both be openly, innocently relieved that our baby was inhaling tobacco smoke.
    He sits outside in the sun and smokes and writes poetry in a red leather-bound journal.
    Where did you get that book? I ask him, because it looks expensive and we know he has no money.
    He smiles. His eyes are as frank and blue as when he was five years old. He hesitates a moment.
    I helped myself to it, didn't I? he says.
    You mean you stole it?
    He shrugs. Call it that if you like.
    That's the only thing I can possibly call it.
    He shrugs, carries on writing.
    Do you mind? he says. You're disturbing me. I really need to get on with my work.
    Sometimes we try to talk to him.
    We can't live like this, we tell him.
    What do you mean? Like what?
    You're disrupting family life. Making life impossible for all of us.
    Oh yeah? So what're you gonna do? Kick me out again?
    You know that's the very last thing we want to do, we tell him.
    He says he wants money. He needs money. He says that if he just had some money, everything would be all right. He'd feel more relaxed and he'd be able to behave. So we try to draw up a contract.
    We'll give you a generous allowance (so you don't have to steal) and total freedom at weekends to do what you want, stay out all night if you like. In return, you stay at home in the week, eat supper with the family, do some studying, don't wake your brother and sister, get to bed on time.
    He tells us these conditions are cracked, warped, insane. He calls us cunts. He says our standards are ludicrous, restrictive, monomaniacal, middle-aged and middle class.
    We plead guilty to the last bit.
    All we want, we tell him, is for you to be able to fulfil your potential.
    He laughs. He says it's up to us. If we don't give him money, he'll take it anyway. He'll help himself. And by the way, it's no good our putting locks on our study doors. Because he'll just kick them down anyway. A few cheap little locks aren't going to stop him.
    Please don't make threats like that, his father says.
    But a few days later he does exactly that. Takes a running leap with his foot up the way he's seen them do in the movies. Our nice Victorian bedroom door is broken, a jagged fist of splinters sticking right out. I pull the lock out of the wood and lay it carefully on the windowsill. Then I go on making the bed.
    Everyone in the house is exhausted now. Everyone is having trouble getting up in the morning.
    We ask for a meeting with his teachers. He hardly ever gets to school on time now and - unsurprisingly - we keep on getting phone calls, warning notes.
    We sit in a little room in the art block, sunshine pouring in.
    Please, we tell his warm, open-faced young tutor, be as tough with him as you like. We'll support you all the way. He needs to know that the rules still apply, that he isn't special, that he can't get away with this kind of behaviour.
    She and her