CHAPTER 1
Danny Malooley was four years old when he learned the hard way that lemon-scented soap tasted nothing like lemons and everything like soap. When he was twelve, while saving a cat that may or may not have needed saving, Danny learned the hard way that there was no such thing as a painless, nor dignified, way to fall out of a sycamore tree. When he was seventeen, he learned the hard way that all it took to become a father was a three-liter bottle of cheap cider, a girlfriend to share it with, an awkward fumble on the Hackney Downs, and a general disregard for the basic laws of nature; and when he was twenty-eight, he learned in the hardest way imaginable that all it took to dim the stars, stop the clocks, and bring the earth to a shuddering halt was one small, invisible sliver of ice on a country road.
A screech of tires tore Danny from his sleep, or it could have been a scream, he wasn’t quite sure. He sat up and scanned the room, trying to connect the sound with his surroundings until his brain woke up and told him it was a nightmare. Lying back down on his sweat-soaked pillow, he looked at the clock on the bedside table: 6:59 a.m., the digits bright in the morning gloom. He switched off the alarm before the numbers rolled over and gently ran his hand across the empty pillow beside him. Then, heaving the clammy duvet aside and crawling out of bed, he ignored his reflection in the wardrobe mirror and slowly dressed in yesterday’s clothes.
Will’s bedroom door was ajar, so Danny pulled it shut on his way to the kitchen. Filling the kettle and setting it to boil, he dropped some dry but not yet furry bread into the toaster and turned on the radio, more out of habit than a desire to know what was happening in the world. The newsreader murmured to herself in the background while he surveyed the postcard view from the window—“postcard” due to the size of the window, not because of the beauty beyond it. The sky was as blue as the Victoria Line, but the beaming sun did little to brighten the landscape. Danny often thought the housing estate actually looked worse in the sunlight, mainly because more of it was visible. Just as poor lighting could make a Tinder date attractive or a run-down restaurant quaint, so too could a leaden sky help to partially conceal the full grim reality of the Palmerston estate. As he gazed at the wall of concrete housing blocks that mercifully obscured his view of even more concrete housing blocks, Danny once again resolved to move, just as he had done yesterday, and just like he’d do again tomorrow.
He ate his breakfast at the dining room table, his eyes fixed on the same wall he’d stared at so much over the last fourteen months that the paper had started to curl beneath the weight of his gaze, but Danny hadn’t noticed. Nor had he noticed the darkening patch of carpet in the hallway, sullied by the work boots he kicked off every day without first banging the mud from their soles, or the film of grime on the windows that gave whoever looked through them an early glimpse of what to expect from cataracts, or the potted carcass on the windowsill that had once been a healthy philodendron but now resembled a clump of irradiated potato peel. He wouldn’t even have noticed the post were it not for the fact that it always arrived during breakfast, causing him to flinch as it clattered through the letterbox and landed on the mat.
Two white envelopes sat in the hallway. The first contained a passive-aggressive reminder from his water provider that he was two months behind on his payments. The second was a final notification about his unpaid electricity bill, much of it written in bold red letters, especially the words court, bailiff, prosecution, and, somewhat bizarrely, thank you, which made it seem more like a threat than a common expression of gratitude.
Danny frowned and stroked his stubble, the four-day bristles rasping beneath his nail-bitten fingers. He looked at the whiteboard on the wall where a thick wad of paper was held in place by a couple of souvenir magnets from Australia. Above it, written in bold black letters, was the word UNPAID. Two sheets of paper hung next to the bundle. This was the PAID pile. He added the new arrivals to the bigger stack, which held for less than a second before the magnets gave way and dumped the bills in a fluttering mess across the floor. Danny sighed and gathered them up. Then, using a third magnet, this one shaped like the Sydney Opera House, he reattached the bills to the whiteboard and scribbled Buy more magnets! beside them.
“Will!” he shouted from the kitchen doorway. “You up?”
Will heard his dad but didn’t respond as he continued to examine the bruise on his arm. It looked like a storm was raging between his bony shoulder and what passed for his bicep, a blue-black cloud on milky-white skin. Will gently probed it with his finger, unaware of just how tender it was until the slightest pressure triggered a dull ache that seemed to engulf his entire upper arm.
“Come on, Will, breakfast!” shouted Danny, his voice already weary.
Will plucked his crumpled school shirt from the door handle and winced as he carefully fed his arm through the sleeve.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” said Danny as Will shuffled past the kitchen door and slumped down at the table. Danny joined him a few minutes later with a mug in one hand and a plate of toast in the other. He put them down in front of Will and took the seat opposite.
Will studied the plate through his sandy-blond fringe, which covered the two-inch scar at his hairline. Thomas the Tank Engine peered at him between two slices of peanut-buttered toast while James the Red Engine grinned almost mockingly from the mug.
“Eat up or you’ll be late,” said Danny. He took a mouthful of cold tea and grimaced.
Will swiveled his mug until the train disappeared from view. He took a tentative bite of his toast and placed the remainder over Thomas’s face.
“Remember it’s your mum’s birthday today,” said Danny.
Will stopped chewing and stared at his plate. The murmur of the radio crept into the silence between them.
“Will?” said Danny.
Will nodded once without looking up.
The doorbell rang and Danny stood to answer it. He squinted through the spyhole to find Mohammed waiting in the open-air corridor. The boy was chubby with thick-rimmed glasses and a hearing aid behind each of his ears. London lurked over his shoulder.
“Hi, Mr. Malooley,” he said as Danny opened the door. “Did you know that a blue whale’s fart bubbles are so big you can fit an entire horse inside them?”
“No, Mo. I can honestly say I did not know that.”
“Saw it on Animal Planet last night,” said Mo, who enjoyed watching wildlife documentaries as much as most eleven-year-olds enjoyed watching people seriously injure themselves on YouTube.
“Sounds a bit cruel,” said Danny. “How did they even get a horse inside a whale fart?”
“Don’t know,” said Mo. “They didn’t show that bit.”
“Right.” Danny frowned as he pondered the logistics of such an experiment.
“Is Will ready yet?”
“Give him two mins, he’s just eating—”
Will barged past Danny and into the corridor before he could finish his sentence.
“Bye, Mr. Malooley,” said Mo as Will roughly guided his friend towards the stairwell.
“Bye, Mo. Will, see you after school, okay?”
Will didn’t respond as he disappeared around the corner.
Back in the living room, Danny gathered the cups and plates from the table. He poured Will’s untouched tea down the sink and tipped his uneaten toast into the bin. It was the same routine he’d performed almost every day since the accident.