ONE

Call me Chaz.

It's not my name, but what the fuck? I've always quite liked it and if you think I'm going to use my real name, you must be soft in the head. I mean, I don't mind talking and all that, but it's got to be down to me to decide how much I'm going to tell you.

See, I know all about people like you. You always make out like you really want to help me and stuff like that, you say you understand the pressures I was under, the things that made me flip and all of that chesney. Only there weren't any pressures. I had it pretty easy, if you want to know the truth. But I still killed my mam and dad and that scares you, doesn't it? It scares you because you want to find a reason for everything that happens in the world and you can't see the reason for this.

And you know why? Cos there wasn't one. Well, not much of one. To tell you the truth, I was just bored. I wanted to change my life and my parents were kind of in the way.

You probably want to hear about my childhood and stuff, how my dad beat me every night or made me do grunts with him; or how my old lady was always going on at me. Well, I guess that last bit's true but then you couldn't blame her. I did act like a complete twonter most of the time.

But see, it's a waste of time doing these hypnosis sessions. The guy who does them, Doctor McVie, he says I tell him lots of stuff when he puts me under, he says sometimes it goes back years to when I was a little kid, but I don't remember saying anything and even if I do talk, I can't see that it's going to be any use to anyone. They don't call me Gobshite for nothing.

See, you've got to remember, I was living in this council estate in the arse end of North Wales. It was called Riverside Park and you need to understand that the place was a dump, nothing ever happened there. I mean nothing. You know the old joke about how they don't bury the dead, they just stand them up in bus shelters? Well, that could have been written about my neighbourhood.

To hear people talk about it, it must have been big news at one time, when the steel works was going strong and all that. My old man still had some kind of a job down there, though don't ask me what it was. He did tell me once but I wasn't listening. The steelworks had been cut down over the years and now only a couple of hundred people worked there and it was like when the jobs went it drained all the blood out of the area. You saw people on the street and they looked dead, pale white, all the blood leeched out of them. That's how my Mam and dad looked. Like extras from one of those zombie films.

I was going to the local school and was trying to decide what I'd do with myself when I left, but it seemed a long way off. At weekends I'd lie in bed until midday and then I'd go out with the pathetic twonters who liked to call themselves my friends and get khybered on cider down by the river.

Yeah, I know. Not very constructive. If I had a fiver for every adult who's said that to me I'd have… forty five quid. And look, I'm not trying to find excuses for what I did, I'm really not. It's just the way things were.

----

We're up the river, drinking White Lightning, listening to some music on Jonno's boom box. I Am The Resurrection, bloody brilliant. There's this judy who hangs around with us, Chantelle I think she calls herself, never did get her last name. She's this dumpy-looking slag, mickies all around her neck like trophies and she'll go with anybody if you so much as look at her, doesn't even want paying for it which is a novelty. We take her up to this bit of the river where there's long grass and the four of us take turns to grunt her. She just lies there, not making a sound, looking up at the sky. It's boring but it's something to do. Jonno even asks her if she can move about a bit, make it more interesting, maybe make a few noises. She looks at him dead blank, like why would she do something like that? Grunting her is almost pointless but I do it anyway. Mind you, I always use a jobber, there's no way I'm sticking my Lionel into something like that, unprotected. I mean, I'm easy but I ain't stupid.

Jonno's OK and he looks older than he is, so he's handy for getting in places or buying cans from the offie; but the others are just a bunch of twonters who I let think are my friends. I mean, they're as thick as pig shit, the lot of them, but sometimes they have dazzle I can scrounge or booze or whatever; and for some reason, they look up to me, like they think I'm special, I don't know why. Somebody once said that having friends makes you weak. I can't remember who said it or even where I heard it, but there's probably some truth in it and besides, friends usually want something from you, don't they? I prefer to keep myself to myself, know what I mean?

So anyway, we finish with Chantelle and she goes home to do her Geography homework. The others are having this bullshit conversation about what they'd do if they won the lottery, which is stupid cos as far as I'm aware, none of them even do it and I'm lying there feeling a bit khybered, looking at the river, and I keep thinking that it's flowing somewhere… I mean somewhere else and that as soon as I can, I'm going to get out of here and go to a better place, a place where something's actually happening.

I have this idea about Manchester. 'Madchester' people are calling it now. I like the sound of that and there's some great music coming out of the place, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, bands like that and I think to myself, you know, there's bound to be cool stuff going on there and I fancy being a part of it. And I think to myself, 'Why wait?" School is shit and there's things waiting out there for me. I need to get my skates on.

But of course, when I mention the idea to my parents that evening, it's like, "Chaz, you're only fifteen years old, you aren't going anywhere until you've finished school and got yourself a decent education."

That makes me laugh. Like you'd get one at the shit hole where I go to school. The teachers there are like everyone else round these parts. Pale, slow, just another bunch of zombies. They can't keep any of us in order, we run rings round them, if they try to tell us off, we just give them a mouthful and they back down, every time. I mean, I ask you, how am I supposed to learn anything from ring-pieces like that?

----

It's Friday afternoon and I've got Geography, which let's face it, has to be the most useless bloody waste of time ever, learning about all these places where you're never likely to go. Today we're looking at Africa. I ask you, a bunch of jigs living in mud huts and eating their babies. I've tried asking Spoke if we can study something closer to home, like Manchester for instance, but he wasn't particularly helpful.

Spoke is Mr Wheeler and he's a supply teacher, which means he does fuck all. He just tells us to open our books to page whatever and then he sits there picking his nose and reading a newspaper, so of course, we all start talking amongst ourselves and the noise gradually gets louder and louder, until he's forced to look up from his paper and tell us to shut the fuck up.

Spoke is around thirty, thirty five years old I suppose. His hair's already nearly gone and he has that same pasty white face that all the other zombies round here have. When he looks at you, he doesn't look you in the eyes and I know that's because he's constantly bricking it, afraid that one of us is going to smack him in the tazzles and quite a few of the lads in the class are big enough to do it too. Some of the older teachers at the school, you can tell they still care about what they're doing, they get all enthusiastic when they're talking about something and it's obvious they expect us to do the same. Must be a real kick in the gozos when we don't. But Spoke isn't like them, you can see he's given up years ago and now he's just putting in the time, ticking off the days to his first heart attack. I suppose I should feel sorry for him, because he's missed his boat and he'll never get the chance to jump aboard again. But I don't feel sorry for him, because he's getting paid a wage for absolutely nothing.

Anyway, today I just can't be arsed, I haven't even brought in my Geography book, so when Spoke asks us to open our books, I just sit there looking at him, waiting for him to notice that I'm not doing anything. It takes him ages, mind. We must be on our third, 'keep the noise down!' when he glances at me and sees the empty desk top. He swallows and he looks even more pasty than usual and I know that he's thinking to himself, should he say something or just let it go? And unusually for him, he decides to say something.

"Chaz," he says. He's one of those grunters who thinks that if he calls you by your first name, you'll think of him as a friend and you'll respect him for it, when of course, you just feel that he's a pathetic twonter. "Chaz, you don't appear to have a book in front of you."

I do this thing where I look slowly down at the desk and give this look of complete surprise and I make this 'huh?' sound. It gets a laugh anyway. But not from Spoke. He looks uneasily around and then even gets up from his chair and comes to my desk to stand in front of me.

"Ever the comedian," he says. "Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me exactly where your book is."

I give him a long blank look.

"Fucked if I know," I tell him.

His expression changes. For a moment, he looks shocked that I would say that to him, then he tries to smile, but it doesn't quite come off.

"There's absolutely no need for that kind of language," he tells me. "When did you last have it?"

"Last weekend, down by the river," I say, throwing a look in Chantelle's direction. "Not that it's got anything to do with you." Jonno and the others break up when they hear this and Chantelle sits there blushing bright red. Spoke looks around at them, not understanding what's so funny.

"This class," he says, "is the most unruly I've ever had the misfortune to teach."

"Thanks very much," I say. "We like to make an effort. And don't think I'm being funny or anything, but I thought there was more to teaching than sitting on your mooney and reading the paper."

Yeah, I know I shouldn't have said it, but it just comes out; it's how I got me nickname, Gobshite. It's supposed to be a put-down, but it's something that I'm quite proud of. Anyway, the whole class cheers like England just won the World Cup or something. Spoke's face goes purple like he's going to drop down with a heart attack any minute. He takes a step towards me and what else am I going to do? I stand up to face him.

"You…" he says. "You…" It takes him a while to get the words out. "You are the most insolent, disruptive…" He lowers his voice and leans closer, as though he has a secret to tell me. "Why are you like this?" he whispers. "I can understand the others, but you… you're intelligent, you have so much ability if you'd only use it."

"Use it for what?" I ask him. "what would I do with it here?'

We stand there looking at each other for a minute.

"If I hear another word from you, I will send you to the headmaster," he tells me.

Big threat. Like I'm standing there shaking in my boots. Mr Barrett, (Syd) the headmaster is a weedy nance with sticky up hair and a pacemaker, the worst he can ever do is send you home, which let's face it on a Friday afternoon would be the best news ever. But I just stare into Spoke's eyes and after a few moments, he looks away. Then he turns and goes back to his desk.

"Next time you attend one of my lessons," he says, "I expect you to bring the appropriate literature." He jerks a thumb at the kid who sits to my left. "For now, you can share Gryff's book. Don't let this happen again."

I make no move to go and sit with Gryff, who never washes and smells like a Chinese takeaway, but Spoke doesn't even notice. He sits down again, but instead of reaching for his newspaper, he takes out a lined pad and starts writing something down, trying to give the impression he's a real teacher, but he's not fooling anybody and when the bell goes for the end of class, I'm straight out of there and heading for home, even though we've still got science.

I've had enough for one day and besides, I've got things to do.

 

TWO

I kept thinking about Manchester. Every time I picked up a magazine, it was there in front of me. "Ian Brown says this, Shaun Ryder says that," like it was taunting me or something and I knew I had to be there. I tried telling my mam and dad lots of times, but they had no sympathy for me. They'd just go off on one.

My mam was the worst of the two. I could pretty much get my dad to agree to anything if I worked at it but she was a right cow. I mean, if nagging was an Olympic event, she'd have been World Champion, no contest. She'd start saying I was ungrateful and all that, how I'd all the advantages in life and I wasn't making the most of them.

But I ask you, what fuckin' advantages? I was living in a crap housing estate, going to a rubbish school and hanging around with a bunch of shit-for-brains kids who'd probably never leave Deeside. They'd finish school, get some stupid job in the area, get some slag up the paddy and end up staggering around with all the other zombies, pushing a pram around the estate. I mean, we're not talking brilliant careers. That's pretty much what had happened to my big brother, Wayne. He's six years older than me, he left school at fifteen to go and work at John Summers, but he didn't have a trade or nothing, he was just a labourer. Anyway, he'd only been working there a couple of years when he started running around with Alison from up on the Welsh Land and the next thing you knew, she was up the paddy and he'd got his name down for a council house.

Mam didn't care for people from the Welsh Land, said they were common and all that and somebody had told her that Alison's Mam and Dad weren't much better than gypos. She begged Wayne to tell Alison to get rid of the baby, even offered to pay for it, but Wayne said no, Alison had always wanted a kid and it was up to them what they did. So some time later, they had Leon and they moved into a council flat in Bagilt and Wayne fell out with Mam big time, never called round, never even phoned her. After that, Mam changed. I never heard her laugh after Wayne moved out and that's when she first started treating me and Dad like shit. Like it was our fault what happened to Wayne.

Looking back, it was my mam who was the main problem. My dad would at least listen to what I had to say, but she had stopped listening years ago. She always got her way around the house and we just had to go along with her decisions, no matter how stupid they were. It would be like, "we need to get a new three-piece suite," or "the back bedroom needs decorating," chesney like that. And if you ever stood your ground about something she'd just go monkoid and start squawking about how she wasn't appreciated and what did she ever do to deserve such ingratitude?

It was the same when she cooked some fucking awful meal and put it in front of me. She'd get all choked up when I wouldn't eat it. She'd say, "you're sitting there refusing to eat your dinner, when there's Children In Africa starving to death, right now." I'd tell her to package it up and send it out to them, if they were so fond of burnt meat and dried-up spuds; and then she'd start shouting the odds. All that time, my dad would just sit at the end of the table, saying nothing, except maybe the odd, "Listen to your mother, son", like she was fucking Yoda or something.

You know, I used to feel a bit sorry for him. It was like over the years, my mam had beaten all the fight out of him and now he was just her little 'yes' man. I'm telling you, when she gave an order, he jumped! And I knew for a fact he hated his job in the steelworks, he was just counting the days to his retirement; not that he had any idea what he'd do when he got there. The poor old sod.

He had this one thing that he did once a week and I think it was what kept him going. He went with some of his pals to this firing range in Sealand and he'd spend an hour or so shooting at targets. He fancied himself as some kind of marksman and to hear him talk when he got back, you'd think he was a top army sniper or something. Used to bring back these cardboard targets with big holes blasted in them and he'd show me them, dead proud of his skill. He even let me look at his rifle once, though he kept saying stupid things like, 'don't point that at anyone,' even though we both knew it was empty. I don't know what kind of gun it was, it had some kind of German-sounding name… but I knew where he kept it and though he tried dead hard to keep it secret, I knew where he kept the ammunition too. Get this. It was in the top drawer of the bedroom cabinet, where he kept his gruds . Like I wouldn't know, with Mam nagging him about it the whole time, saying there'd be an accident. Like that could really happen when the gun was in its case in the wardrobe and the ammunition was in a different place entirely.

I remember, the first time I heard about where he kept the bullets, I kind of underlined it in my head, like it meant something. After that, I used to have this daydream about how an armed burglar broke into the house and tied up my mam and dad and was like beating them up. And I crept up to their bedroom, got the gun, loaded it and bang! Shot the bastard right through the forehead. Then, in the daydream, I ended up on the news and in the Daily Mirror and I even got a special award for bravery from the Queen. Of course, as it turned out, I did get in the news, but they weren't handing out awards for what I did. Unless you count the jail sentence.

----

I come down from my bedroom one morning and Mam's standing in the kitchen, crying.

"What's up with you?" I ask her.

"Timmy's sick," she says.

Timmy's our mutt, we've had him years. He's not a pedigree or anything, just some kind of mongrel. He's mostly border collie but somewhere down the line he got crossed with a corgi and he has these stupid little short legs. He's been around since I was a kid. Timmy isn't sick so much as old. He's deaf, half blind and he's started to smell terrible. He doesn't do much these days but lie in his basket and fart.

I stick my head in the dining room and there's Dad, on his knees beside Timmy's basket, stroking his head and I can see Dad's been crying too. It's a bit embarrassing to be honest. Dad looks up and says, "I think it's time."

"Time for what?" I ask.

"Time we did the kindest thing."

I look at him. I honestly do not have the foggiest idea what he's on about.

"I've decided to take Timmy up to the vet to have him put down. If you want to say goodbye to him, now's the time."

I give him a look like yeah, I'm really going to say goodbye to a dog.

"Why not just let him die natural like?" I ask.

"Because he's suffering. You can't leave a creature like that. The way the vet does it is quick and painless."

"Well, can I come and watch?" I ask. "I've never seen anything die before."

Dad looks at me like I'm something he stepped in.

"Why do you have to act like this?" he asks me. "There's no shame in admitting that you're sad about something."

I shrug. "I'm not saying there is," I tell him. "But… you know, it's only a dog, after all."

Dad looks disgusted.

"He's a member of our family," he says. "We've had him nearly twenty years! Now he's in a bad way and it's our duty to look after him."

I think for a moment." What about Grandma?" I ask.

He glares at me.

"What about her?" he asks.

"Well, she's sick and she's started to smell pretty bad. You gonna have her put down?"

He looks at me for a few moments. Then:

"Get off to school," he says. "Before I lose my temper."

That's the thing about Dad, you can push him so far and he'll go along with it. But then he gets to a point where he doesn't see the joke anymore.

"Look," I say, "seriously, if it bothers you, I'll take Timmy to the vet. It's no skin off my nose."

Dad shakes his head.

"He's my dog," he says. "I'll do it."

Which makes me think of this film I saw on telly once when I was just a kid. It was called Old Yeller and it was about this faithful mutt, who tries to fight a wolf to save the lives of these two kids. Only the wolf has rabies or something and the mutt, who's called Old Yeller, he starts frothing at the mouth and trying to attack people, so the dad in the film gives this little lad a rifle and says, "he's your dog, son, you'll have to do it." And you see this kid walking outside in the night, crying and you just hear this big bang and I'm not kidding, everyone who was in the room watching that film starting crying - Wayne, Alison, Mam, Dad… everyone except me. And I'm thinking to myself, how come I'm not crying, is there something wrong with me? And then I think, well, no, the kid's only doing what's right, the mutt would have bitten him and given him rabies if it could. So yeah, put the fucker down, remove the problem. And the problem with Timmy is, he's old and he's stinking the place out.

"Well, it's up to you," I say. I go over and I give Timmy a pat on the head, which seems to please the old man no end. So I tap him for a fiver and then I bugger off to school.

----

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, it was the start of the summer holidays and I was there in the house, wanting to be somewhere else, hating my life, hating my parents, hating my so-called mates, hating just about everything around me. Mam and Dad were dropping hints about me getting 'a summer job' even though I tried that last year and it was a fuckin' disaster. And like, I kept telling them that I wanted to leave, go somewhere else and they kept saying that I wasn't old enough to make those decisions and it was obvious that we were never going to see eye to eye about this, so I kind of came to the decision that it was down to me to do something about it.

At first I thought about just running away to Manchester, but I knew that they'd go to the Scuffers before I'd taken twenty steps and I'd be dragged back again and made to do the same old things, so there was no point in that. I can't remember the exact moment when I decided to kill them. It wasn't in my head for ages and then one day, it just was and I don't know if it had been there a long time or if it was fresh new. But it seemed to make sense. I had to buy myself a little time and the only way to do that was to make it so that Mam and Dad couldn't go to the Scuffers and if I was lucky, it would be a week or so before anybody found them and by that time, I'd be far away. Then it would be up to me to hide myself away for as long as I could. Sure, the Scuffers would get me in the end, they always did. But if I could have a few weeks of fun, then it would have been worth it. But when to do it? That was the thing.

Then out of the blue the next door neighbours said they were going off to Benidorm for two weeks and I knew I'd never get a better chance than this. They were the only people close enough to hear what went on in our house. If I played my stereo a bit loud, you could be sure they'd be there, banging on the wall with a broom handle before you got to the end of the first track and I wouldn't have minded if they'd just kept the beat.

I hated the neighbours, they were called The Williams's and they really were up their own moonies. He had some manager's job at the local paper mill and reckoned he was it, because they could afford to go on holiday abroad every year, while we always ended up in Rhyl. That's another shit-hole, by the way, but don't get me started!

Mrs Williams was this dozy fat cow, who thought she was better than everyone else, and they had a couple of fat, sub normal sons who I wouldn't even lower myself to say hello to, they were so fucking stupid. Anyway, I heard Mrs Williams telling Mam that they had to catch this flight from Ringway, they were leaving in the early hours of the morning and she hoped the sound of the taxi wouldn't disturb us (which was her way of saying that they didn't have to get a bus to the railway station like we always did when we went to Rhyl) and then I heard Mam say that nothing would wake her up before the alarm went off, even if a bomb went off outside; and I thought, 'well that's it, it has to be tomorrow morning, when everyone's asleep." Just kind of came to the decision and then there was no going back.

I didn't feel guilty about what I was planning to do, not for a minute. I kept thinking about what Dad had said about Timmy, how it was 'the kind thing.' And the more I thought about it, it seemed that I would just be putting Mam and Dad out of their misery. I mean, they weren't happy, they really weren't. She was just eaten up by the fact that Dad wasn't as well off as Mr Williams. She was always shouting at Dad, telling him that he needed to get a pay rise and how he should go in to talk to his boss and demand one. "Be a man for once," she'd say, which is pretty fucking insulting, let's be honest.

And Dad, poor old Dad, he was never going to get a rise and he knew it. All he had to look forward to was going down to that gun club once a week and firing at some cardboard targets, probably seeing Mam's face on every bullseye he fired at. They were sad cases really. They'd had their lives and they'd fucked them up, big time. Me, I was just starting mine and they were planning to make my life every bit as miserable as theirs. I couldn't let them do it.

----

Jonno's joined this band and he keeps asking me to go along and listen to them rehearse. The band's called The Broken Biscuits. They need a good front man, he says and he thinks I could fit the bill. I tell him his band's got a stupid name and I can't sing for toffee, but he says that doesn't matter, Shaun Ryder hasn't got much of a voice and look at him! I tell him no chance, I'm not standing up and making a fool of myself fronting a bunch of wankers called the Broken Biscuits but he keeps on at me, saying that they need to write some songs and he can't write lyrics. Don't know what makes him think I can, but he won't let it lie and in the end, I give in and I go along one Saturday afternoon.

They rehearse in an old scout hut in Flint. When I turn up, there's this terrible racket coming out of the place, you can hear it three streets away. Inside the hut it's deafening. Jonno plays bass or at least, he tries to, but he's only been going a few weeks and I don't think he's much cop. The guitarist is this little guy with glasses who keeps sucking on an asthma inhaler, but seems to be able to play pretty well. There's a drummer, a spotty kid with a mass of long curly hair and there's an older guy with a cheap-looking keyboard who keeps shouting into a microphone but you can't even hear what he's singing, because the guitar and drums are so loud. I stand there, trying to recognise the song, but I can't and it's only when they take a break and Jonno asks me what I thought of She Bangs The Drum, that I'm any the wiser. I tell him to keep practising.

He introduces me to the other members of the band. The guitarist is called Steve, the drummer is Chris and the keyboard player, who clearly doesn't like me, is called Gerald. The others call him Gerald the Bacon, because his dad's a butcher and he lets the band use his delivery van to take the equipment around, but they have to hose it out before they can use it and no matter how hard they wash it the van always stinks of mince.

Jonno asks if I'd like to try singing a number with them but I tell him no, they're making a bad enough row as it is without me making it any worse. So he gets the guy called Steve to play me this song he's written, that doesn't have any lyrics. It's just a riff really. I tell him to keep playing it over and over and I go to this table where they've got pens and some sheets of papers and I write down some words. I don't plan them or anything they just kind of tumble onto the paper and I'm a bit surprised because I never tried writing anything before. Anyway, the song's called Breaking Out and it goes like this.

Sick of living in this town
Where everybody gets me down
Telling me to take my time
Be polite and toe the line
But I ain't buying what they sell
I tell them they can go to hell
Because I'm breaking out (there's a riff here)
Yeah, I'm breaking out (riff again)
I tell you now without a doubt
I'm breaking out

I show the words to Jonno and he and the others (apart from Gerald who doesn't say anything) get very excited and say they're just perfect and can I write some more verses like this one? I tell them yeah, sure, later, when I get home. But for whatever reason, I don't get around to it and anyway, the band breaks up a couple of weeks later. Jonno says it's because of 'musical differences' but somebody else tells me that Gerald has accidentally reversed into a concrete post and knocked out a rear light on his dad's van, so that's the end of my brilliant career as a rock lyricist and I go back to drinking White Lightning with my cronies. Jonno's fed up. He tells me he had high hopes for the Broken Biscuits, figured they'd be on Top Of The Pops inside of a few months and he starts talking about starting another band with me as singer/songwriter, but I don't say anything and after a while, he stops talking about it. He sells the bass to his cousin, who's working with a cabaret band playing the clubs around Rhyl and Prestatyn, making good money by playing Tony Christie and chesney like that. One day at school, Jonno hands me the scrap of paper with my lyrics on them. He says he found them in the bottom of his guitar case and thought that I might want them.

I make out that I'm not bothered but I do keep them and from time to time, I look at the sheet of paper and think about writing those other verses. But no words come.

 

THREE

It was a Friday night, the night before the Williams left for Benidorm and we were all sat around watching some crap game show on the goggle box. Dad had decided to really go wild and had opened a can of Kestrel lager. I asked him if I could have a bit and he would have given me some too, but Mam fixed him with the old evil eye and told him not to encourage me. I wouldn't mind, but I'd put away a couple of cans of Special Brew earlier that day so a mouthful of piss-weak beer wasn't going to make any kind of difference but Mam had spoken and that was that.

In the middle of the show, I said I had to phone Jonno about something.

"Don't be on their hours," Dad said. "The bill's bad enough as it is."

"OK," I said. Out in the hallway I called Jonno's house. He came on after a bit and asked what I was up to and I told him that we were going on holiday, next morning.

"You never mentioned that before," he said.

"I know. I only just found out about it myself," I told him. "Mam and Dad wanted it to be a surprise.'

"You going to Rhyl again?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Benidorm." It was the only place in Spain I'd heard of. "We're going for two weeks."

"You lucky bugger! So… what am I supposed to do for two weeks?"

"I don't know," I said. "get khybered with the usual bunch, I suppose. But I thought I should warn you, you know, there's no point in coming around here, the place will be empty."

"Uh, yeah, right."

"But listen, there's something else. Mam forgot to cancel the papers so I said I'd ask you if you'd pop into old Mrs Riley at the Post Office tomorrow and ask her not to deliver any more. You wouldn't mind, would you?"

"No, course not. When shall I say you'll be back?"

"Err… I'm not sure. Just say until further notice, OK?"

"OK," he said. "Well, er… send us a postcard, eh?"

"Sure," I said. "Don't forget now." I put down the phone and went back in to watch the game show. I felt pretty pleased with myself. It had been bothering me, a great pile of papers on the doorstep would be a dead giveaway that something was wrong, so as long as Jonno remembered to go to the Post Office, I'd be laughing. Well, not laughing exactly, but you know what I mean.

The only thing I was worried about now was Wayne. He'd fallen out with Mam and Dad months ago and they weren't supposed to be speaking, but supposing he called around to try and patch things up? Where would I be then? I thought about calling Wayne and spinning him the holiday bit, but I knew he'd never fall for it, there was no more chance of our lot going on holiday to Benidorm as there was them going to Mars. I'd just have to hope that he'd stay out there in Bagilt with Alison and the baby.

I didn't go up to my room until I was told to. I even complained about it because I didn't want anything to seem out of the ordinary. I went upstairs and straight to their room. I pulled the rifle out of the wardrobe and got the box of cartridges from the drawer. I was taking a risk but I guessed that dad wouldn't be likely to look in either of those places before crawling into bed. I carried the stuff to my own room and stowed it under my bed. I rooted out my rucksack and I put some clothes into it and a few bits and pieces I thought I might need in Manchester, my Walkman, some of my favourite tapes, stuff like that. Then I sat down on my bed and waited. After a little while, I heard Mam and Dad coming up the stairs and going through their nightly routine, washing their hands, cleaning their teeth, using the toilet. After a while, it all went quiet and after a bit I could hear Dad snoring like he always did. I stayed right where I was. I cranked up my Walkman, the Happy Mondays doing 24 Hour Party People and I thought, this is where it all starts. From tomorrow morning my life is going to change and nothing will ever be the same again. I was so excited I fell asleep.

----

It's summer 89, school's out and I'm skint. Dad wants me to try and get a temporary job down the steelworks, but I ain't going there. I've heard too many horror stories about people getting burned on the coke ovens, or having their fingers snipped off on the shears, not even realising they've gone till they go to say goodnight to the foreman. Mam tells me that Bees Seeds over in Sealand are looking for casuals to work in the fields budding roses, whatever that is. It sounds dead boring but I need some cash and Mam and Dad say they can't afford to keep subbing me, it's time I started earning my own money. I tell myself that at least I'll be working out in the open air, getting a decent sun tan, instead of sweating my guts out in the stink and smoke of a factory.

So one morning me and Jonno get up dead early - I mean like six o clock - and we walk over to Sealand and join a group of other kids waiting outside this big hut and after a while this bearded guy in overalls comes out and teams each of us with one of his regular workers. I get put with this Scottish guy called Hamish, must be forty, fifty years old, face lined and grizzled from years in the sun. He looks at me like he thinks something's dead funny and he asks me if I'm up for some hard work.

I say yes and he hands me a canvas bag full of what look like wide elastic bands and he leads me across all these fields to this one that's full of rows and rows of little rose bushes. Then he bends down and shows me what we're going to be doing. What it is, right, he takes this little knife and slices into the side of a stem. Then he takes another little bit of a rose from a bag he's got slung around his neck, slices the end of it and tucks it into the cut he's made. Then it's my turn. I have to take this thick elastic band, wrap it round the place where the two roses meet and snap it tight with this like metal staple thing. The first one I do, the ends of the staple go into my thumb and draw claret. I ask him if he's got any gloves but he says you can't wear gloves for this, the job's too fiddly.

Then he says were about ready to start. "Don't get more than three plants behind me," he says. "Or the splices will dry out and the budding won't work."

"Well, don't go too fast then," I say.

He laughs at that.

"Are you kidding, sonny? This is piecework, the more rows we do, the more we get paid."

And with that, he's off along the first row, bent over double like the Hunchback Of Notre Dame, his hands going like the clappers and I'm shuffling after him like some bloody twonter, trying to snap the bands around the roses. I have no idea why we're doing this or what happens to the rose after we've budded it. Hamish doesn't bother telling me and to tell you the truth, I'm not interested in anything except the money in me hand at the end of the day.

But I begin to realise pretty quick that this is no picnic. After just a few plants, my thumb is raw and bleeding and my back is killing me. Whenever I look up all I see is Hamish's mooney, moving further and further up the row, increasing the gap between us. From time to time, he looks back at me and says something like, "Come on you lazy bastard, what's taking so long?"

We work on for what seems like hours. I look past Hamish and see that we're not even a quarter of the way down the first row. I ask him how much we get paid for each one and without lifting an eyebrow, he says "Ten quid." And I'm just thinking, that's not bad, when he adds, "of which you get one pound."

And that stops me in my tracks. I stand up, back still killing me and I say, "you are joking?' and he says., "No, and what are you doing standing there? Get on with it," and I'm like, "you cannot be serious, one pound a fucking row, that's slavery,' and he says, "We'll get twenty rows done today if you get your finger out and I'm thinking, that's nearly two tons for him and twenty quid for me? No way!

So I just drop the bands and stuff and turn round and start walking off and he's like, "Oi, where the bloody hell do you think you're going?" and I say, "I'm going home, obviously,' and he comes after me, saying that I can't just walk off like this, he's going to lose a lot of money if I quit now and I tell him tough, he'll have to find some mozzle who doesn't mind being ripped off. Then he starts saying he shouldn't do this, but he'll go to one pound fifty a row, just as a one off and I tell him thanks, but no thanks and he can shove his stupid job up his stupid Scottish mooney and the last I see of him, he's standing there in the field, waving his arms about and bellowing at the sky, like he's blaming God or something.

I go past the field where Jonno's working and he glances up and sees me and in a couple of moment's, he's dropped his stuff and is following me towards the sign marked WAY OUT.

"Bugger that for a game of soldiers," I tell him. "One pound a row, that's slave labour that is."

Jonno hasn't even asked anyone how much he'll be paid but he agrees with me and besides, his back is killing him.

"What we going to do for money?" he asks.

I don't answer him. I don't have a clue but I know I'd rather have nothing than put myself through something like that.

That night, when Dad hears what happened, he laughs at me.

"I knew he wouldn't be able to stick it.' he says. "Agricultural wages, it's the worst paid work in the world." He tells me he'll pull a few strings at the steelworks if I want, get me a nice cushy little job sitting at a conveyor belt. I tell him I'll think about it, but I don't think for very long. There's got to be easier ways of getting money. It's just a case of figuring out how.

----

It was the sound of the taxi that woke me. I got up and went to peep out of the window and there were the Williams', looking more twonterish than ever in their shorts and summer shirts. I tell you, I was tempted to pull the gun out from under the bed and take a few shots at them, just to wipe the smiles off their stupid faces. But they climbed in, slamming the doors behind them. The black cab moved slowly away out of sight and it was time to get started.

Up to this point I'd been as calm as anything but the moment I picked up the gun and started to load it, I went to pieces. My heart was going like the clappers and my hands were shaking so badly, I could hardly get the bullet in - it was the kind of gun that only shoots one bullet at a time - and it took me an age to get it in there and slide the bolt home. I put some other bullets into the pocket of my jeans, telling myself that I'd have to move fast once the first shot had gone off; and then I had to sit down on the bed and take some deep breaths, because I thought I was going to have a heart attack or something. But eventually, I managed to gather my nerve and then I took a firm grip on the rifle and I went out to the landing.

I'd never noticed before how creaky it was. Every step I took seemed to make a terrible noise and I half expected to hear Mam or Dad ask me what I was doing wandering about at four o clock in the morning. But as I got closer to their room I could hear Dad snoring. I pushed open the door and looked in. There they were, Mam lying on her back, Dad on his side. I stood there looking at them in the gloom and they were like a couple of people that I'd never even seen before. It made it seem easier somehow.

I walked slowly into the room and I noticed that my hands had stopped trembling now. I went around to my Mam's side of the bed. I'd decided to do her first because she was the one that went on at me the most and I didn't want her to wake up and see that I'd killed Dad. I don't know, it didn't make a lot of sense back then and it still doesn't but I knew it had to be done in this order. I walked right up to her and then I lifted the rifle and put the barrel up to her forehead.

For one moment, I thought, I'm not going to do this. I saw myself lowering the rifle and walking back to my own room, climbing back into bed and going back to sleep. But then I pictured myself carrying on as normal, working at some crap job through the holidays, then dragging myself back to that stinking school, counting the days until I could escape and I knew that I couldn't live with myself if I let that happen.

Then my finger squeezed the trigger and it was too late to change anything.

----

I'm maybe ten or eleven years old and I'm at my cousin's house. Gary is a year older than me and his lot lives a few miles up the road from us in Shotton. He's got an older brother and three sisters, the house is always noisy with them bellowing at each other. Mam always turns her nose up at them because she thinks they're 'common', which lets face it is a horrible thing to think about your own sister. I suppose they are a bit though, because they have chips every night and they tear up old newspapers and magazines and use them as bog paper. But Gary gets to do pretty much what he wants and his Mam's just got him a .22 air rifle out of the Littlewood's catalogue and we're sitting up in his bedroom, looking at it. I want an air rifle but Mam won't let me have one, she always says I'll have somebody's eye out with it. Like, if you shot somebody by accident, what are the chances of the pellet hitting them in the eye? About ten million to one or something?

Gary's a pretty good shot, he says, and he reckons we might go out to the woods later and shoot some birds. He's killed loads of them, he tells me. He says the .22's OK but it's not a 'real' gun and he's planning to get a licence when he's a bit older and get himself a 12 bore. "You can really do some damage with one of those," he tells me.

It's a sunny day and his bedroom window looks down onto the back garden and we're sitting on his bed talking, when he notices this movement outside and he points. I look and out by the dustbins, past the shed, we see this little mouse creeping about, looking for food I guess. From this distance it's not much more than a speck, but Gary goes to the sash window and slides it up. He grins and slots a pellet into the air rifle.

"I'll take first shot," he announces. "If I miss, you can have the next go." It's fair enough I suppose, it's his rifle, but I really, really wish I could have the first shot. I watch as he raises the sights to his eye and he rests one bare arm on the window sill. I hold my breath and think to myself that he can't possibly hit such a small target at this distance, nobody's that good a shot. I tell myself that when it comes my turn, I'll really take my time lining it up. Gary's finger whitens on the trigger and I'm crouched beside him thinking, Miss, miss, miss…

But then there's this dull swish and the mouse does like a somersault and lies there twitching. I feel my heart leap and at the same time, I'm disappointed, because now I won't be getting my shot. Gary jumps to his feet and legs it downstairs to the garden and I follow him, thinking, It should have been me, me, ME! We get outside and we go up to the mouse and it's lying there and it's still twitching, like it's not quite dead. You can't see a mark on it, there's no bullet hole, no blood, but I notice that its tail is coiling like a fat grey worm. Gary is still holding the rifle and I say to him that we should put it out of its misery, thinking that he'll shoot it again. But he just lifts a foot and stamps down hard and when he lifts his foot, the mouse has kind of exploded and all its gozos have squeezed out from its mouth.

We go back up to the bedroom and sit by the window for a while and Gary hands me the rifle and I'm like praying that another mouse will come, but it doesn't, so in the end, we go down to the fields and we find a fresh cow pat covered with flies and we take turns shooting at the flies and it's really great because you can see how close you're getting, when the pellet slaps into the chesney and every so often, you hit a fly and it gets punched right into the soft green-brown mess and I say, "I wonder what's the last thing that goes through its mind," and Gary says, "it's arse," and I laugh, even though I've heard it before and we do that until we run out of slugs and then we go back to Gary's house and we jerk each other off and then we watch horror videos, until its time for me to go home.

----

I was thinking about the mouse when I shot me Mam, seeing it do that somersault through the air, thinking that this time I got the first shot in, I didn't have to wait until somebody else had taken a turn.

It was weird. You know how in films, you get all this blood and brains spraying out the back of someone's head? It wasn't like that. Mam just kind of jerked a bit as the bullet went through her forehead and there was hardly a mark or anything, just a neat little hole. And the noise wasn't what I expected either. Her eyelids fluttered a bit and she let out this long breath and that was that.

I didn't have much chance to look at her though, because the noise of the rifle woke Dad. He came awake with a grunt, like he'd been having a dream or something and then he lay there looking at me for a moment and what I was doing was trying to get another bullet into the rifle, only my hands were shaking even worse now and I couldn't seem to do it right.

"Chaz?" he said. "What are you doing in here?"

And I think to myself, It's all right Dad, I'm just here to kill you, but I didn't say anything, I just carried on trying to load the gun and then he must have realised that something was wrong with Mam. He stared at her for a moment and now there was blood on the pillow under her head and he made this funny little noise and he put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a shake.

"Chaz, what have you done?" he asked me and his voice didn't sound anything like him, it was all high and girlie and I might have laughed if things had been different, but then at last, I got the bullet into the slot and slid the bolt home and I pointed the gun at him and he said, "No,no,no,no,no," in that funny little voice and I said, Sorry Dad," and I shot him. Only I really botched it. I knew I should have shot him in the head, I knew that from videogames and stuff, but for some reason, I went for the bigger target which was his chest and it just knocked him down beside Mam. At first, I thought I'd killed him, but then he started moaning, really loud and I panicked. I ran around the bed and hit him over the head with the stock of the rifle. The first time I didn't do it hard enough and he just made this noise like, "aaahhh, ' so I hit him again, but this time I put my weight into it and his forehead kind of caved in a bit and this grey stuff shot out of his nose and he didn't move or make any more noises after that.

It was very quiet then and I stood there looking at the two of them, but that made me feel funny and then I felt really hot and the next thing I knew, I was bursting to take a chesney and I had to run to the bathroom and I barely got my pants down in time and all this stuff came pouring out of me and when I was finished in there, I felt like I needed to take a bath, so I had one and I scrubbed myself down from head to foot and then I felt better, so I got dressed again.

I glanced in the bedroom, just to make sure they were still where I'd left them. I know it sounds stupid but I had this idea that they might have crawled away while I was in the bath. In horror movies, people never seem to die the first time you kill them, they keep coming back at you, over and over again. But they were still lying there, so I went to the dressing table where I knew Dad kept his spondoos and I took everything that was in there. I didn't stop to count it. I took his chequebook and card too, though I wasn't planning on using either of them because I knew from watching telly that those things are too easy to trace. You see a couple of coppers sitting at their desk and then some bloke from the computer department puts his head in the room and says, "The suspect just spent £200 in Debenhams," or whatever and the cops grab their jackets and go out of the room and the next thing you know, they've got the guy they've been looking for and they're asking him questions. So no, I wasn't going to make that mistake.

I went back to my room, picked up my rucksack and went downstairs. I peeped out of the curtains and saw that it was nearly full light outside. I felt hungry, so I made myself some toast, spread it thick with butter and wolfed it into me. I was walking up and down the whole time, I couldn't sit because I was so anxious to be off and then I got this funny feeling in my gozos, and two minutes later, I was running to the jax for the old technicolour yawn. It felt like my guts were turning inside out and I wondered if I was getting ill or something. Bad time to get sick, I thought. Just when I'm about to head off on holiday.

I thought about making some sandwiches to take with me, but the idea of food made me feel all queasy again, so I just took the rucksack and let myself out of the house. I locked the door behind me. I didn't know how long it would be before people came looking for me or my parents, but I figured I had a least a fortnight. The Williams' wouldn't be back for two weeks, and Jonno would tell his Dad about the surprise holiday, and Jonno's dad worked alongside my Dad, so the story would go round at the steelworks, but there'd be a stink because obviously, Dad wouldn't have booked any time off. Some of his work cronies would come sniffing around after that. I hoped I'd get at least a few more days before somebody broke the door down and went looking upstairs.

I suppose if I'd planned it a bit better, I could have bought myself more time. Phoning Jonno had been a last minute idea. Maybe I could have sat down and figured out a few more angles, made some more calls, that kind of thing. But I figured I'd wasted enough time hanging around in a place I hated. Sooner or later, I'd have to pay for what I'd done and the idea was to cram as much in as I could before the axe fell on me. Right now, I needed to make a move.

So I started walking and I didn't look back.