Free The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest Page A

was a goofy kid with little tight curls and dimples, and a sweet manner. As time passed, he became like a brother to Becky. He’d push her over and give her Chinese burns and lock her in cupboards.
    Becky’s Uncle Ron was short and round, and had a laugh like a broken engine, stuttering and guttural. He was south London Jewish and was proud of his heritage. He was a softy really, but in public he scowled and swaggered and cut his eyes at anyone he didn’t like the look of. He wore what Linda picked out for him. His dark hair was long at the topand neat at the sides, swept back off his head in a little baggy quiff. He had a happy mouth full of teeth, ground down from cheap teenage speed and yellowing from sweets and fags, piercing bright blue eyes that shone when he thought hard, set deep in his face, and a brow that stood out like a headline. He walked with his arms linked behind his back, chest pushed out, greeting people he knew with a bow of the head.
    Ron had met Linda in the early 1980s. He was a ska boy, and she was a DJ at the clubs he used to go to. The process was not without its dramas, but it all ended well; she got the boy, and he got the girl and he still felt gooey in her arms. He had tattoos on his wrists that Becky knew meant something but she never asked what, and a dark temper that would flare up suddenly when roused and hands big enough to break faces.
    Ron and Linda ran a caff together called Giuseppe’s on Lewisham High Street. There was a market there and lots of people and shops and noise. Becky liked going to Giuseppe’s after school and sitting at the counter and drinking the milkshakes that Linda made especially for her.
    Paula told Becky that her dad was in jail because the police were scared of him. Her family hid the papers from her in the first few weeks after John’s arrest, and they were careful with the telly.
    They never talked about it. Every time she tried, her mum got panicky and tore at her hair and tears came to her eyes,so Becky learned it was best to stop asking and soon the silence around her father’s absence seemed too prevalent and painful to challenge.
    In Becky’s earliest memories, her mum was always strong and funny, beautiful and talented, no nonsense. Smoking fags out the window of Ron and Linda’s house. Shouting at the telly when they sat and watched
EastEnders
. Holding Becky’s hand while Becky learned to roller skate, walking round and round the field eating endless ice creams. Showing Becky photos of all the famous people she had shot; beautiful black-and-white moments from a time when Becky hadn’t happened yet. Going out for tea and cake in town together, looking through the pages of high-end magazines at all the colours and the clothes. She remembered her mum taking her to dance class and staying when the other mothers left, sitting quietly and watching all the steps her daughter learned.
    But Becky would hear her crying in the night. And when no one else was in, Paula would stand in the doorway of the room she shared with Becky, drunk, her eyes drooping and her voice shrill, and she’d start the same old monologue Becky had heard hundreds of times. ‘I could have been a legend, you know. Before I met your father I was famous. I was destined for great things . . .’
    The crying mum and the happy mum were like two different people, never in the same space at the same time, but both lived in Paula, and you never knew which one you’d get. Overtime, Becky grew scared of getting home from school in case her mum was still in bed and drunk and crying. When she was like this, nobody was safe, she would surface in a silk dressing gown, make-up smudged and smoking fags and shouting foul abuse at people who weren’t there, and at people who were.
    It was a Saturday morning in the middle of December, Becky had just turned thirteen and Paula wanted them to go ice skating, like they used to, but Becky was embarrassed to be seen out with her mum, temperamental as