Free Billy Elliot by Melvin Burgess Page A

finished, aren’t you? Since Mam died you’re nothing but a useless old idiot.Stop me then! What are you gonna do about it, eh?’
    He made to push Dad to one side, but Dad had had enough. He suddenly pulled his arm back – it was so quick I hardly saw it – and then, bang! He got Tony right on the side of his face. Tony went down like a log.
    ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ I screamed.
    Dad turned to look at me. I’d never seen him look like that. He was white and red and his eyes were shining like he’d gone mad. ‘What the f*** are you looking at?’ he yelled. I backed off – I was scared he was going to turn on me. I never saw him so angry. Tony picked himself off the floor and staggered forward at Dad. For a moment I thought he was going to use the hammer on him, but he just shouldered him to one side and ran out the door.
    ‘You’re not concentrating, Billy! Billy! Chin up!’
    ‘What?’
    That was Miss. I was lifting up my arms and holding my chin up but all I could see was Tony and Dad – that hammer in Dad’s face, Dad’s face so white and red, Dad’s fist going smack into Tony, Tony falling.
    It was all I could think of all day long.
    ‘Billy!’
    ... Dad’s fist going back and bang! ...
    ‘You’re not concentrating!’
    ‘I am, miss, I am concentrating.’
    ‘You’re not even trying!’
    It was stuck in my mind. That hammer in Dad’s face ...
    ‘Do it again!’
    ‘What?’ Dad’s fist – bang!
    ‘Do it again!’
    ‘I can’t!’
    ‘You do it again! You do it again right now!’
    She had her face right up into mine. She was as bloody bad as they were, practically spitting on me, that dirty fag smoking away in my eyes.
    ‘I said, you do it again.’
    … ‘No.’
    ‘What?’ She took a step back, like she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.
    ‘No,’ I said again, and then that was it. I’d had enough. On and on and on and on and on at me, the bloody old bitch. I ran out of there and into the changing rooms. Didn’t I have enough on my plate? She thought my whole life was built around her – well, it wasn’t! I ran into a cubicle and locked the door. Sometimes you just ... well. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, could I? That hammer. He was bloody going to smash my dad with it. With a f***ing hammer! What was going on? And Dad, smacking him like that. Fighting each other, pulling everything to pieces. If our mam was here, it’d be different. She’d never let Tony and Dad go on at each other like that.
    Everything had fallen to pieces ever since she died.
    The door to the changing rooms opened. That old door is as squeaky as anything. She came walking down past the cubicles. She couldn’t see which one I was in. There was a gap under the doors but I had me feet up on the bench so she couldn’t see me.
    ‘Billy?’
    I was saying nowt.
    ‘I know you’re in there Billy. Billy, I’m sorry.’
    Sorry, she says. What good’s that? I’d really had it with her.I banged the door open and jumped out on her, sudden like. I made her jump and all.
    ‘It’s all right for you, it’s not you who has to do it!’
    She looked scared. I was almost as big as she was. Actually, I was bigger.
    ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I get carried away.’
    ‘You don’t know bloody anything,’ I shouted. ‘Sitting there in your posh house with your husband that pisses hisself. You’re the same as everyone else, all you want is to tell me what to do.’
    ‘Now wait a minute, who do you think I’m doing this for?’
    ‘Well, I don’t want to go to your stupid f***ing audition. You only want me to do it for your own bloody benefit ...’
    ‘Now, look here, Billy,’ she said, but I wasn’t having any of it.
    ‘Just because you’re a failure!’
    ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’
    ‘You don’t even have a proper dancing school. You’re just stuck in some crummy school gym and you just pick on me because you f***ed up your own life – ‘
    That’s when she slapped me. Whack,