TROY THE LONELY BOY

TROY THE LONELY BOY

image credit to internet
An excited shout of “Mum, mum, come and see,” made Elizabeth frown. She knew without looking that ten year old Troy was on the re-homing site for stray dogs. She looked over his shoulder at the half grown black and white collie dog staring into the camera a dejected look on its face. “That kind of dog belongs on a farm – not in a block of flats,” she said flatly.
“Please Mum, let me get it. Please Mum, please,” he begged looking up at her with bright expectant look in his eyes. “I promise I’ll walk him every day.” He hunched his thin shoulders and she knew the tears weren’t far away. Elizabeth hesitated. A sense of guilt washed over her. Troy was lonely. He missed his friends. Having their house repossessed by the bank had forced them to take this one-bedroom inner city flat in this rundown Tower Block. They’d lost everything – even their pets.
The seething feeling of anger that seemed to be just bubbling below the surface these days grew stronger. She tried to calm her voice but her words came out loud and strident.” “And what if it’s a bitch? And she has pups? You know we can barely get by as it is. I can’t afford to feed a dog. And a dog like that will grow and grow.” She cringed inside as she watched the now familiar closed expression slip over her son’s face. But somehow she couldn’t stop. She clenched her fists and beat on the table. . “With your father gone why oh why Troy do you always want something I can’t afford to give you?” Without warning all her pent up worries and frustrations overflowed. Words she had never intended to say poured over her son’s bent head like a fountain.
Troy grew wary and began to edge away from her. Quickly he slipped from the chair and backed out the door.
Outside, he hunched his back and wandered aimlessly. She doesn’t mean what she says; he reasoned. “Investing your money, our money – other people’s money – in stupid, mad money making schemes,” she’d screamed at him. As if I was Dad, Troy thought. He kicked the loose rubble and empty beer cans and chip papers that littered the shared walkway and wished he was back living in his nice house with its garden for playing football in and a place to keep his bike. He knew he was never going to see it again. The Bank owned it now.
Someone fell into step beside him. Without lifting his head he knew it was Blossom the girl from the flat below his. He could hear her wheezing as she walked. Without any words being spoken she turned up a back alley behind the flats.
Troy followed.
After a few turns and twists she stopped and leaned against the gate of a rundown house. “Who lives here,” Troy asked.
“Nosy wee bugger,”ain’t ya,” Blossom sneered pushing against the gate. The gate resisted. With a deft movement Blossom slammed her knee into the rotting wood. There was a short sucking sound as the wood splintered and broke away from the gatepost.
The key to the back door turned noiselessly and Troy found he was in a kitchen as icy as the walk- in coldroom there had been in his other house.
His heart pitter-pattered in his chest. Had they just broken into somebody’s house? His hands began to shake and cold sweat gathered on his palms. To his mother’s disgust every night the police came knocking on their neighbors’ door. His mother would kill him if he brought the police to her door.
Blossom eyed him from under her long black fringe. “It’s cool. It’s me Nan’s house. She’s in hospital, “she said as if reading his mind.
Troy didn’t know whether to believe her or not. He had never heard her mention her Nan. Blossom knew how to lie without blinking. He let out a breath he didn’t even know he had been holding in. “Won’t she mind us being here?”
“She pays me to switch on the lights.”
Troy wondered why she’d waste money on electricity when there was nobody living there.
“I’m getting a dog,” he said his words echoing back to him.
Blossom threw him a mocking look. “You little liar. Your Ma said she had enough mouths to feed.”
Troy closed his fists so tights his nails dug into his palms. “You were listening again,” he said accusingly.
Blossom shrugged. “Yeah. It’s better than listenin’ to Ma and the rent man going at it in the bedroom.” Troy’s cheeks flamed. His mother said Blossom’s mother was a slut.
He supposed it was alright for Blossom to hear his mother shouting at him. She was his friend; his only friend. He often heard the other neighbours fighting and cursing at their children. When he had moved into the flat at first he too had listened fascinated by the sounds of fighting, screaming and laughing that came through the thin walls.
He watched as two snails keeping close to the skirting board in the kitchen hurried to get away from the light from the naked lightbulb. There were cockroaches in his house and an empty flat next door. At night he could hear something scraping behind the wall in his bedroom.
Blossom opened the larder and taking a packet sprinkled a line of damp moldy salt in the path of the snails. They both watched in silence as the snails scuttled frantically to get away. After a few minutes Blossom grew bored and crunched the snails slowly under the heel of her doc martins.
“That’s cruel.”
“It ain’t as cruel as your old man’s. runnin’ away with people’s money,” Blossom said as she went around turning on the hall and stairs lights.
“He made a bad investment. He didn’t embezzle people’s savings.” Tory said heatedly parroting what he’d heard his mother tell his grandmother.
“He’s a tea leaf.”
Embarrassed, Troy shifted from one foot to the other. “What does that mean?”
“Your big-time da banker is a bleedin’ thief. That’s what it means.”
Blossom came back and stood beside him. “How come you never curse and tell lies? Didn’t learn any at that posh school of your?” she asked nudging him with her elbow. She leaned in closer to him. “I know curses you never even heard of,” she gloated.
Troy looked down awkwardly at his feet. “I’m not allowed to use swear words.”
Blossom sniggered. “ Aint ya go any family other than your snooty arsed Ma,” she asked suddenly. Troy snatched his eyes away from her curious gaze. His Grandmother Cantwell hadn’t wanted them to stay with her. “You’ll never get re-housed if you live here with me,” she’d sniffed as she’d swept her hand around her big house. “Live at that Centre place. I hear they get you a place to live…” She’d been right. They’d got them a flat on the estate. Troy had never seen so many broken windows and so much ugly drawings and writing on the walls of the closed up houses.
Bored with his silence Blossom shoved him in front of her out the door and locked it behind them. As the locked clicked into place Troy wondered why she’d bothered. There was nothing there to steal.
“A couple of quid – you could get your own dog.”
Troy swiveled his eyes around and looked at the side of Blossom’s puffy face. He hadn’t thought of that. But where would he get money. He didn’t get his pocket money anymore. His father had promised to send him some but he never had. “Do you know somewhere I could get a job? I suppose I could run to the shops – do errands,” he corrected himself. His mother was always warning him not to be adopting the casual way the other children in the Tower Block talked.
Blossom sniggered. “Who would trust you with money? Your da a thief, Remember?” She paused and glanced surreptitiously at him. “You’re a skinny runt. Ma says you’d be handy for gettin’ in an’ out of windows and places.”
Troy stopped under a broken lamppost and gave her a perplexed look “Why would I want to climb in and out of windows?”
Blossom glared at him. “So you could open the door and let me in.” Lost for words he just stood there and looked at her. He had often heard his father say that he didn’t understand women. He thought he knew what he meant now. “I’ll ask Mum would it be alright.” He squared his shoulders. With Dad gone I’ll have to be the man of the house now, he resolved.
He stumbled over a brick as Blossom shoved him into the gutter. “You can’t tell your Ma. It’s a secret. And you have to pass the test to prove you can keep a secret before you get the job,” she hissed at him.

Gemma Hill 2020 copyright
(