The moment Harry, the new rabbit, came out of his carrying box and spotted the brute of the balcony, he leapt on to his back and started rogering away like a lunatic. Like so many bullies, Buck crumpled instantly once his bluff was called. He cowered down, looking wide-eyed and terrified and just sat there taking it. It went on and on and on. Harry just never stopped, day and night, until all the hair had been ripped off Buck’s back and he was shaking like a nervous wreck. The newcomer had also brought fleas into the house, which ganged up and bit Mum half to death. She decided this was my fault now, too.
We were due to go away on holiday and Mum asked a friend of mine, Zoe, to look after the rabbits while we were gone. When we got back Harry had disappeared and Zoe confessed that she had been standing up on the balcony just before we arrived, playing with him, when he had given a gigantic kick and propelled himself to freedom over the balustrade. She and I set off to see if we could find him in the grass near the buildings, but all I managed to come up with was his head and chest, a local cat or dog having eaten the rest. Like the road kill we encountered on the way to Walsingham, this stark illustration of how quickly death can strike reduced me to a sobbing heap. Mum was having some people round for supper that night and she made them all swear not to mention the missing rabbit, but one of them wasn’t able to keep it in – another Tourette’s victim, maybe?
‘So, Pete,’ he said, ‘what’s this about a rabbit? I hear there were some remains found?’
I rushed from the table in renewed floods of tears at the tactless reminder of my bereavement.
After that Mum decided that maybe Peckham wasn’t the best place to keep rabbits, so we took Buck back down to the West Country to a friend of Nan and Grandad’s who had a smallholding with a pen full of rabbits. I felt very sad seeing my half-bald old friend lolloping off into the crowd, but Mum looked distinctly relieved.
Mum had got well into the Church by then, having found that one of the best ways to stop her panic attacks was to repeat the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. A bit like having a tic, I suppose. She was exhausted from all the stress of her years on the road and from being a single mum, struggling to get enough money for us to live, and her religion seemed to soothe her, the Church making her feel like she belonged to a community. It suited me fine. I liked the singing and I liked watching Mum playing the violin in Frets, the clubroom behind the church hall.
Constantly on the look-out for ways to make some extra money while still being there for me, Mum got a job working for a lady called Heather, who was a high-flying Fleet Street journalist. Her job was to cook and help look after her children, AJ and Dean. She was going to be a sort of housekeeper, I suppose. It was a great gig and Heather quickly became one of our best friends, which always seemed to happen with anyone who came into Mum’s life. I used to love going round to Heather’s house. They had a dog called Bonzo and, even though the pit bull had tried to eat my face, I still loved dogs.
‘Can we get one?’ I kept nagging Mum. She kept promising that one day soon we would go to Battersea Dogs’ Home and find a suitable one, but we just never seemed to get round to actually making the trip. One afternoon AJ was having a confirmation party and we were all sitting around in their house. I think Mum and Heather might have been a bit pissed on champagne; they often seemed to have a bottle on the go when they were together. I kept hearing someone tapping at the front door, but I didn’t think it was my place to answer it – it wasn’t my house after all.
‘There’s someone at the door,’ I kept saying.
‘Then go and answer it, for God’s sake,’ Heather said, irritably, obviously having had enough of children’s voices for one day.
Shrugging, I made my way down the hall, but when I got there I could see through the glass that there was no shadow. It was like there was no one there. It seemed spooky and I didn’t like the vibe. I hovered around for a moment, trying to pluck up my courage, but failed and went back to them to confess my failure.
‘I think there’s someone there, but I can’t see anyone,’ I explained.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Heather said and flounced down the hall in exasperation. She threw the door open, with me standing behind her, peering out.
A collie/Labrador dog walked straight past both of us, into the room where the party was happening, and rested its chin on Mum’s lap, whimpering and staring up at her with pleading eyes. Her feet were all sore and bleeding from walking on pavements.
‘Said I was going to get a dog, didn’t I?’ Mum said, as if it was perfectly normal for a stray dog to come knocking on a stranger’s door.
Sometimes it seemed to me like my Mum had magical powers.
We called her Lassie and took her home with us at the end of the party, although we should have been able to see that she was really too much of a street dog to ever be happy cooped up in a first-floor flat. We couldn’t leave her in the flat when we went round to Heather’s house to work because she would crap on the carpets and chew the furniture, so the next day we took her with us. Bonzo jumped on her the moment she arrived, just like the horny little rabbit. I could see them stuck together in the garden and immediately had a feeling things had got serious. We tried turning the hose on them, but nothing worked and a few weeks later we had eight puppies in the flat. There was one honey-coloured one, four black ones and three browns and they all yapped like seagulls whenever Lassie escaped through the window and left them on their own, which seemed to happen most days, driving the neighbours into a frenzy of annoyance.
I thought the whole pet thing was really cool – the more the merrier as far as I was concerned – but Mum had just bought herself her first fitted carpets ever and Lassie was crapping all over them whenever the urge took her. As if that wasn’t enough, there was some sort of back surge in the plumbing system in the flats at the same time and everyone else’s sewage came roaring up into our toilet and overflowed over the rim, like some sort of horror scene from Trainspotting. We were back to bare boards and for a while Mum thought the Devil might be coming after her again.
Eventually it was obvious we couldn’t keep Lassie any more, although Heather gave a home to the honey-coloured puppy, which lived to a great age and finally passed away while I was in the Big Brother house. I was heartbroken to see Lassie go because I really loved her. Someone came in a car to take her away. She jumped in through the back door, all excited about this new adventure, and as the car drove off she gazed out the back window at me as if she was waving goodbye. It was horrible.
After that we just had cats.
Nan and Grandad had a black mongrel called Buster who I used to draw all the time. Grandad knew a bit about art and he was always telling everyone how brilliant my pictures were. Buster was a good friend to me and one night I had a vision about him. In the vision we were staying at Nan and Grandad’s house and Buster was beckoning me to the end of the garden because he wanted to say goodbye. He turned round, gave me one last look and then disappeared into a golden light, a bit like the light that had surrounded the Angel Michael. I knew immediately he was dead and told Mum. The next day my aunt rang to tell Mum that Buster had been put down because the vet had said his bones were starting to snap with age. We worked out that the vet must have been doing the deed at the same moment I had the vision.
Having visions like this frightened me sometimes. At the same time it was also pretty cool to be able to see little glimpses of the future, as if I had a few magical powers myself, an in-built crystal ball.
Even though Mum had lots of men friends, not all of them were raving poofs; they were mostly colleagues,