Rise and Fall Read online

  Rise and Fall

  by

  Casey Kelleher

  Copyright © 2012 by Casey Kelleher

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or

  used in any manner whatsoever with express written permission

  of the author/publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editing and proofreading by Sam Szanto: http://www.samszanto.co.uk

  Cover Design by Leanne Phillips: http://www.leannephillips.co.uk

  Casey’s Website: http://caseykelleher.wordpress.com

  Twitter: @caseykelleher

  For my family

  For always encouraging me to rise,

  and for catching me when I fell.

  “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”

  ~ William Shakespeare

  Chapter 1

  “Why ain’t you at school?” Maura Finch leant forward with exaggerated effort as she switched on the TV guide to check what the time was on the telly; her son, Jamie, had normally left for school by now.

  Jamie Finch stood, feeling awkward, in the middle of the lounge, where his mum was sitting. The curtains were still drawn, and the place had a familiar musty stale smell. He could see his mum’s flabby belly poking out from under the threadbare top she was wearing, and she had her early morning fag on the go already. Smoke poured out of her mouth as she spoke.

  Jamie looked over at Kevin in his playpen, trying to divert his attention to anything he could so that he didn’t actually have to make eye contact with his mother.

  Maura had bred four kids, including Jamie and Kevin: each had been born to a different man, none of whom she had managed to hold onto. Jamie felt that his mother wasn’t exactly what you would class as a catch.

  Jamie’s father had been just like his siblings’ dads. He had only stuck around long enough to impregnate her, and God knows how she had managed to even get that far. Jamie had never witnessed a flirty, womanly side to his rough, intimidating mother and couldn’t imagine her with a man in her bed.

  Jamie’s dad had scarpered long before Jamie was born and hadn’t been heard from since. Jamie couldn’t blame the bloke, really; he had obviously cottoned on to what a nasty, vindictive woman he had got himself involved with.

  Jamie wasn’t that bothered by the fact that he never had his father around when he was growing up. He had never known it any other way and had always reasoned that you can’t miss what you’ve never had. He couldn’t imagine a man with a strong enough backbone who would be willing or able to endure this miserable existence with his mum. Jamie knew that first hand.

  Maura was a beast of a woman, a complete tomboy. She was nothing like the other mums at Jamie’s school. She never bothered to wear make-up or to go to any kind of effort with her appearance and her feminine mannerisms were non-existent: she would sooner be sitting in a pub downing a few pints with the local lads and shouting encouragement at the big screen for her team, Fulham. Maura loved football, she lived for it; it was her religion. Jamie and his siblings had practically grown up in pubs, even as small children they had been forced to endure their mum’s passion. There had been many nights when they had had their dinner substituted for crisps and fizzy pop, and they had been left to fall asleep on grotty pub chairs, with nothing but their coats to keep them warm, instead of being tucked up at home, snug in their beds where most normal children were. When the football was on they were ignored by their pissed-up mother who was always too busy trying to ponce drinks from the locals who mainly gave her a wide berth, all too familiar with her blagging ways and her foul mouth if she didn’t get what she wanted. It was because of that, that Jamie hated football.

  Even when Jamie had been younger, he had taken on the role of man of the house, and because of this he felt wise beyond his years, and more than capable of looking after the lot of them. At fifteen, Jamie was the eldest of his siblings. He had two sisters, Fliss and Kara, who were thirteen and eleven, and he could pretty much take or leave the pair of them; they were selfish cows, two little clones of his mum.

  Standing in the lounge, he smiled over at his little dribbling brother Kevin. He could sense his mum getting agitated with him for not answering her, and he knew what would happen when she heard his news. He hadn’t wanted to tell her last night as he really couldn’t be bothered with the earache she would no doubt inflict upon him. She loved an argument.

  Jamie couldn’t get over how much things had changed since Kevin had come along. Jamie had only just turned fourteen when he had found out his mum was up the duff again. This time there wasn’t even a man on the scene, and it disgusted Jamie to realise that his mother had probably got herself pregnant through some cheap and nasty one-night-stand. Probably with someone too pissed to remember what he had done the next day. The idea of having a screaming baby around the house again really hadn’t appealed to Jamie. It just meant another mouth to feed and more hassle for him in the long run, especially seeing as his mother was such a lazy cow; he had known that she would leave many of the chores that came with a needy baby to him and his sisters. But as soon as his mother had come home from the hospital with little Kevin wrapped in his blue blanket all such thoughts had instantly disappeared. Jamie fell in love with the gorgeous, tiny baby.

  Jamie adored Kevin; he hadn’t in a million years expected to feel so protective over the little thing, nor had he anticipated feeling so much love for the boy. Kevin had been so small and vulnerable-looking that Jamie had felt an instinctive protectiveness towards the little fellow: he had never known a feeling quite like it.

  “Jamie, I asked you a question; why ain’t you at school?” his mum said.

  As cocky as Jamie could be, he could admit that his mum scared the shit out of him, especially when she was in one of her moods. She was like the anti-Christ then. She was as wide as she was tall and had a mouth twice the size of the Dartford Tunnel. You would hear her before you would see her, and boy, did she always have plenty to say.

  “I’m not going back to school.” He shrugged as he spoke, knowing this would infuriate her even more.

  “What do you mean you’re not going back?” Maura looked at him suspiciously, she had barely taken a sip of her first cup of tea of the morning and Jamie’s forthright attitude was pissing her off. “Are you sick?” He didn’t look very sick. Jamie was a slip of a boy, five foot six and paler than milk. He had a sprinkle of freckles over his nose and just looked like an average kid of fifteen. Although unlike most fifteen year olds he could more than handle himself if he needed to. Chip off the old block he was, she always thought to herself, quick with his fists when he needed to be, and even quicker with his tongue; he had been blessed with the ‘gift of the gab’ and could pretty much talk himself out of wet cement.

  “Am I sick? Yeah, as a matter of fact I am. I’m sick of bloody school. I’ve jacked it in; I told Mr Rudgewick where he can bloody well shove it yesterday, and I ain’t going back.”

  Jamie knew that sugar-coating his words was pointless; she was going to be angry about him leaving school, so he may as well tell it to her like it was. He knew why she would be so cross, too; she wanted him to do well at school so that he would get a good job, and he only had a year left until his GCSEs. Although mothers usually hoped that their kids would do well, Jamie knew that his mum’s wish for him to be successful was driven by selfish motives. She had drummed it into him from a very young age that he would be helping support her and the kids when he left school; she had made it seem like it was his duty as the eldest. He needed good grades so that he could get himself a decent job. She didn’t want him ending up working somewhere like their local chippy, like Janice’s boy who lived next door; that spotty little git wor
ked all the hours God sent and barely made the minimum wage. No, her Jamie would do better than that. Maura wanted Jamie to earn big money and went on about him getting himself a job at one of the posh offices down by the river, overlooking the Thames. She had seen all those snobby-looking pen-pusher types making their way to work in the mornings, when she had been out early herself, on the rare occasions she had to go and fetch her own fags. That lot strutted around like they thought they were the dog’s doo-dahs, all suited and booted, chatting away on expensive mobiles. Maura knew that they must earn a fortune. Jamie could do that and support her and his brother and sisters with the money.

  Jamie had other ideas; if his mother had bothered to ask him what they were, he would have gladly told her. But his mum was too wrapped up in herself to even realise that he had no intention of following her plans. She practically lived like she was disabled; in fact Jamie was pretty sure that she had actually declared that she was disabled to the Social, so that she would be able to claim more benefits. She wanted anything she could get her hands on. From as far back as he could remember, Jamie couldn’t recall ever seeing his mum do a full day’s work. As far as he could make out, the only real thing his mother suffered from was terminal ‘lazyitous’. Watching football matches in the pub and cashing her giros in at the post office were just about the only physical activities that Maura did when she wasn’t slobbing out at home thinking she was Lady Muck.

  Jamie had much bigger plans for himself than this kind of a life; he wasn’t going back to school, and there was no way he was sticking around in this dump any longer than he had to either. His mum could think again if she imagined he was going to go out and make a living so that she could continue to sit on her arse all day long.

  “Er, no, I don’t bloody think so, Jamie.” Maura laughed at her son’s audacity. He had lost the plot if he thought that he could jack school in. Those teachers at that school might claim that the boy was clever, but he didn’t half come out with some stupid bloody things sometimes, she thought.

  “You’re going back now,” she insisted.

  “No, Mum, I’m not, I've just told you...” Jamie barely got his sentence out before his mum bellowed at him, her patience gone: “You will do as you’re fucking told, my boy. Go and get changed into your school uniform right now and get your arse down to that fucking school, and tell Mr Rudgewick that you're back. Do whatever it takes. Get on your hands and knees and bloody beg him if you have to.”

  Maura’s face was beetroot red with rage as she glared at her son as he stood in front of her. Jamie may be stubborn as hell, but he had got that trait from her and there was no way she was going to back down on this one. She was depending on him, and there was no way that he was going to fuck up her plans.

  Jamie was furious; how dare she think that she had any right to try and control his life; all she did was sit on her fat arse all day long, smoking fags and watching crap on telly.

  “I said I ain’t going back." Jamie gritted his teeth in annoyance and glared back at his mother defiantly as she sat looking gobsmacked.

  Jamie was done with school. He knew that he was clever: really clever. His grades were the highest in his class, and that was without him ever really bothering to try. His teachers had always told him that if he had made more of an effort, he would be able to get into a good university. The problem was Jamie didn’t want to make an effort; the whole school thing bored him to tears.

  “Well, you can’t just fucking leave, what would we do? What about bringing some money in, Jamie? We haven’t got a pot to piss in.”

  Leaning forward to stub her fag out, Maura pulled up her leggings which had sunk down to reveal her arse crack. Her blonde hair was lank and greasy as always, and her skin was red and blotchy. She looked a mess.

  As Jamie looked at her, a familiar feeling of disgust washed over him. His mother was a lazy fat pig who was content to just sit in her flat all day, every day, festering in her own filth. She was right; they didn’t have a pot to piss in: they had barely any food in the cupboards and the carpets were stained and worn. Fair enough if they didn’t have any money, but it didn’t cost anything to run a vacuum cleaner about the place or empty an overflowing bin: as far as he was concerned that was just pure laziness.

  He looked over to his little brother, sitting happily in his playpen. The poor little thing didn’t have any idea of what was in store for him; he cooed and smiled at any attention he was given while he wore a filthy babygrow and no doubt a nappy that was probably full to the brim with shit from the night before. It was all the poor mite knew.

  His sisters were just as bad as his mum, lazy mares the pair of them, probably still asleep in their pits upstairs, when they should have been up and getting ready for school. His mum never bothered to moan at those two to get their arses to school, probably because she knew they were both thick as shit anyway and would end up just like her. Why bother wasting her breath?

  They had never had money from what Jamie could remember; their food barely lasted the week and they had to live off toast or cereal half the time; every once in a while his mum would really push the boat out and do them all a microwave meal as a bit of a treat, although that didn’t happen very often.

  It was the way it had always been. Jamie saw so many kids at school with flash phones and cool trainers. He had neither. He was lucky if his trousers weren’t swinging up around his ankles, or his school shoes weren’t pinching his toes, as they were always a size too small for him. Luckily, unlike some of the weaker kids who got bullied for being poor, or having short trousers, or pretty much anything that made them stand out against being ‘normal’ like everyone else, Jamie had never been a victim. He had an air about him that he wouldn’t stand for bullying, and he reckoned it was because of that no-one had messed with him.

  Even so, there had been many occasions when, despite the brave face he had put on, he had felt mortified that his clothes were dirty, or that he had to go to school wearing ankle-swinging trousers. However, he had gone to school, no matter how he looked or what he had been wearing, and he had always kept his head held high and made out if he needed to that it didn’t bother him.

  He wasn’t prepared to do that anymore. This life might be enough for his mother, but it was a far cry from what he wanted for himself.

  Jamie felt a pang of anguish as he looked over at Kevin again. Poor little Kevin. The kid had it all to come. The screaming matches, the guilt trips, the demands. Jamie hated the thought that when he left, Kevin may be next in line for his mother’s plotting and scheming, but Jamie just couldn’t do it anymore; if he stayed here even a second longer he would lose his mind.

  Jamie had made a plan last night as he lay in bed thinking about his new life, which would be a better one, and he had made a vow that he would make sure that Kevin was alright. He would get himself sorted out and then come back for him.

  Jamie walked past a garage on the way to school each day. It was near the high street. The owner looked like he earned a few bob, Jamie had seen him getting out of his flash motor all suited and booted, and Jamie had decided that this morning he was going to go there and see if he could sort himself out some sort of a job. He fancied having a go at learning the motor trade and had high hopes that even though he was young he would be able to start at the bottom and work his way up, even if it meant just cleaning cars and sweeping floors, he was prepared to do anything if it meant getting away from his mother.

  Kevin smiled up at Jamie and held out his little chubby arms, wanting to be lifted out of the playpen, but Jamie couldn’t pick him up. He knew if he held his baby brother even for a second, he’d end up staying out of pure guilt.

  “What are you doing standing there looking gormless? Go and put your uniform on. Get your arse into gear, boy,” his mum demanded. Maura thought she had won, as Jamie seemed to have nothing to say for himself.

  “Yep, you’re right, Mum.” He nodded.

  Smiling at the thought of Jamie finally doing what he
was told, Maura picked up the TV remote ready to turn the volume up; one of her favourite programmes was about to start.

  “You take care, Mum, I’m off.” Jamie walked out of the room, ignoring Kevin’s cries as the poor little sod realised he wasn’t going to get picked up.

  As Jamie grabbed the bags that he had left by the front door, his mother hoisted herself out of her chair and made it out to him in the hallway in record-breaking time.

  Grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, she dragged him in close so that their faces were almost touching; the stench of stale cigarettes on her breath hit him full in the face, making him recoil.

  “You’re off? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Maura was seething. Jamie would do as he was fucking told, she thought.

  It was a step too far for Jamie; he was fifteen now, and his mother still felt she could control him; with every bit of balls he could muster, he let her have it.

  “It means, Mother, I’m off,” Jamie spat back. “I’m leaving. I’ve had enough of your fat fucking gob and your constant fucking demands. I can’t bear to even look at you. You fucking disgust me. Now what part of that do you not understand you fat, lazy bitch?”

  Jamie spat the words with as much venom as there was truth. For the first time in his life, he witnessed his mum rendered speechless. Shrugging off his now silent mother, he pushed past her and slammed the front door.

  Breathing in the cool fresh air, he felt a surge of relief wash over him. This was the moment he had dreamt of for so long. He had finally broken away from her; at last, he had told her what he thought of her. He was the master of his own destiny now, instead of his mother’s mule, and for the first time ever Jamie Finch felt free to be his own man.