Last Child Read online

  Out of nowhere, nostalgia overwhelmed me. I longed to go back ten years, to when I used to sit around that big pine table with Harry, Erin and a cherubic three–year-old Jaz, when we would play games together and eat dinner like a real family. How simple everything was then. I remembered Jaz throwing his arms round me one day, and saying, ‘I love you, Mummy’. A treasured memory. Erin said she wished her dad would marry me. And Harry—oh, lovely Harry. He was too bright and golden to just not exist anymore. That was the winter of our little affair, such as it was. The last man I slept with, doubtless the last man I would ever sleep with. That lump stuck in my throat as I thought about him, and I tuned out the noise of Ned’s renewed snarling.

  I was snapped back into 2008 by the sound of Jaz wailing, “I wish Dad was still here.” He flung his head onto his arms on the table, and let out a huge sob. Ned stopped, mid-sentence; he looked very sad, and patted the boy’s shoulder, a little awkwardly.

  “It’s Aiden who’s to blame,” Angie said, rushing to put her arms around Jaz. “Think of everything Jasper’s been through—can we spare the punishments, this time?”

  Ned nodded. “Yes—yes, yes, okay. Okay.” He turned to walk out of the door. A few hugs and words of comfort later, Angie followed him.

  Ned had said enough; Jaz and I, we had a bit of a cry together, and then I got Pat down and stayed for dinner, dubious though I was about stuffed butternut squash. Afterwards we did one of my favourite things: we got out the old photo albums.

  I lingered on the pictures of Isabella’s mother, Cathy, and her exotic successor, Annette. I’d only met Cathy once, at Harry’s funeral; she must have been in her mid-fifties, and looked older, with that same rather ‘tight’ look I saw in her daughter, but in those faded photos of the early 1970s I saw a warm, open, happy young girl. How life changes one. Annette was like some distant, impossibly glamorous figure from a magazine. There was one of her on some faraway beach, in a turquoise bikini, with a huge flower behind her ear; how could any man have resisted her? I began to regain my affection for Erin that day, when I looked at her beautiful parents—she’d lost them both, poor love.

  All I could do was be there for all three of them, and try to put back some of that stability, before one or all of them set off down dangerous roads. The problem was, of course, that sometimes the wolves presented themselves as amiable colleagues, friends and lovers.

  That day, I felt more convinced than ever about my given role as one of life’s carers. I’d looked after my sister throughout my teens and twenties, and as soon as she no longer needed me I found myself enmeshed in the lives of the Lanchesters.

  The difficulty would be in finding that balance between guidance and poking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted. A wilful boy of nearly thirteen and an eighteen-year-old vixen; I had my work cut out for me, for sure.

  Chapter Two

  Jaz

  January 2009—July 2010

  January 2nd, 2009

  Ummm, hello. Welcome to the wonderful world of Jasper Lanchester the second! I’m thirteen years old and I live at Lanchester Hall, Woodville, Hertfordshire.

  My old nanny, Hannah, suggested I do this. Keep a diary, I mean. I couldn’t be arsed to type it, though, and I even more couldn’t be arsed to write it with a pen, ’cause that’s too much like being at school, so she gave me this Dictaphone thing instead. It’s good, because I can just wind back and re-record if I say anything that makes me sound like a tool.

  Hannah calls it an ‘outlet’, because of all the stuff that went down at Christmas. She said it would help if I talked about what was on my mind instead of bottling it up. Bloody Auntie Angie and Uncle Ned were talking about me seeing the school counsellor, or even a therapist—yeah, right! Boys only go to see the school counsellor if they’re grassing someone up for bullying them, and Ollie would piss himself if he thought I was going to a therapist. Why do adults always reckon that if you don’t do exactly what they want it’s because there’s something wrong with you? I bet Uncle Ned got rat-arsed now and then when he was a kid. No, actually, he probably didn’t. Bet Uncle Aiden did, though. He was cool. Shame he’s gone. Him and Hannah, they’re the best of all my pretend parents. Kate was okay but a bit, y’know, strict. Pat the housekeeper’s not too bad. Izzy gets on my nerves some of the time. I know she’s my sister, but she feels like a parent. Erin’s my other sister, and she’s cool. Bit of a slapper, but cool.

  I used to have a half-brother, too, or would have done if he hadn’t been killed in a surfing accident just before I was born, in California. Way to go, or what? His name was Harry, like my dad, who’s also dead. So’s my mum.

  So, anyway, back to the people who’ve managed not to get themselves killed. I’m still in everyone’s bad books ’cause of Boxing Day. Big fuss. I went over to Ollie’s house ’cause they were having this big family party. His house is awesome, it’s got a swimming pool and a real proper games room, not like the poxy one Dad put in our house with a snooker table and bugger all else. No one ever goes in it now. Ollie’s games room has got PlayStations and a karaoke machine. Izzy went all sniffy when I told her about the karaoke machine, and said Ollie’s family are nouveau riche. Think that means they know how to spend money and have fun, neither of which Izzy has a clue about.

  There were some seriously fit girls at the party, and these two cousins of Ollie’s who were trying to be emos. Ollie had made a dick of himself on the karaoke and then we hung out with the cousins, mainly because they had some vodka. We were drinking it with coke and I thought I was handling it pretty well, but then it kicked in and I went mental. We started chucking each other in the swimming pool, and then Ollie was sick in it. I mean, really honking up, he couldn’t stop. I was nearly sick, too, from laughing so much. His mum came out (she was off her face as well) and started wailing about what he’d done, and then—da da daaaa! Izzy came to pick me up. Well, you can imagine, can’t you? I can’t remember much about it, just this haze of being dripping wet and shouted at. Result—I’m grounded for six weeks. Sucks!

  I wish Aiden was still here. He used to bring me new games when I was stuck in the house, and get me extra money if I signed all these dodgy purchase orders, but they found out about that so Aiden’s been banished. Actually, I say I wish he was still here but I felt a bit funny round him when I found out about him and Erin shagging. That was out of order, ’cause of him being married to Kate, apart from being too weird. Kate must have been thick not to know something was going on, though. I caught them with their tongues down each other’s throats a couple of times. Well, I mean I spied on them. Oh—nobody’s told me he shagged Erin, I suppose they think they’re protecting my innocent ears, but Kate wouldn’t have left if it was just snogging.

  So it’s been a pretty crap holiday since Boxing Day. We had this boring party here for New Year’s Day, just a half-hearted one at lunchtime, and Erin was giving it large in front of all the guys—arsewipe Eddie Courtenay, and Superboy. That’s Rob Dudley. He’s J.Dud’s son. J.Dud’s running Dad’s company for me with Uncle Ned. Uncle Ned’s in charge but J.Dud wants to be. His name’s really Jim Dudley but I call him J.Dud because he rolled up at Erin’s sixteenth birthday barbecue in a flash car with darkened windows and he had on this thick gold chain round his neck and a big gold ring. Me and Ollie said it was his bling and called him J. Duddy (like P. Diddy), but it’s got shortened now. Izzy says he thinks he has to show off his wealth, because he’s a working class oik. He comes from somewhere near the Arctic Circle called Gateshead and I can’t understand what he’s saying half the time. He makes lots of jokes about soft southerners, and everyone laughs, because they’re too stupid to realise he means it. Sorry, I should have saved the word ‘arsewipe’ for him, instead.

  January 28th, 2009

  I’m supposed to be doing this diary thing so I can ‘express my feelings’, or some crap like that, but when it’s winter and I’m grounded I don’t do anything worth talking about, and everyone just leaves me alone to do what I
want in my room, mostly, so I haven’t got anything to say. I go on the PlayStation mostly. As long as I go downstairs for meals, do my homework and go to visit my grandparents once a week—Auntie Angie picks me up on Sundays—they don’t hassle me too much. I could tell you about how brilliant I am at Oblivion, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want to show off. Ha!

  February 15th, 2009

  My grounding is officially over. To celebrate, me and Ollie went to this Valentine’s Day party. Some girl Ollie knows called Flora. It was super lame, no drink, and the girls were all well sad, just kids, getting up to dance to X Factor shit. Me and Ollie had a ping pong tournament with these lads, it was that boring. For money. I won a tenner.

  April 18th, 2009

  I’ve been dragged to some of the Lanchester Estates meetings recently, because Dad wanted me to start going to them once I was thirteen. I was just going to say, ‘bor-ring’, but it’s quite a laugh seeing Uncle Ned and J.Dud fighting. They seriously hate each other. I feel like Harry Potter with all the teachers arguing about what’s best for him, except it’s my company they’re arguing about. J.Dud wants to ‘diversify’ and ‘explore our full potential’ which means building hotels and big posh holiday complexes, but Uncle wants to ‘stay close to the company’s roots’ and continue with ‘modest residential estates’—the ‘bread and butter’ of Lanchester Estates, apparently—and what he calls social housing, which means houses for poor people who rent them off the council. He says all these phrases about twenty times per meeting. He has the final say ’cause Dad left him in charge, but J.Dud’s actually got some shares in the company, which is, I’m told, bang out of order. The company is supposed to stay in the family but Erin, the daft tart, sold him some of her shares. Anyway, Uncle Ned’s got in with some bloke called Hamish Cleugh (Pinkie to his mates) up near Glasgow, and they’re building a big housing estate in some dead scary area where everyone talks like Rab C. Nesbitt. J.Dud’s well vexed ’cause this Pinkie bloke is ‘no better than a gangster’. One thing I will say for J.Dud is that when he says something like that he only says it once, and waits for it to sink in, unlike Uncle Ned who says the same phrases over and over again to make sure we’ve caught on.

  Pinkie Cleugh is called Pinkie because he used to cut off his enemies’ little fingers. But Uncle says he’s a sound businessman who’s put his past behind him. He doesn’t look as if he really believes that. I reckon he’s just doing all this to annoy J.Dud.

  May 27th 2009

  Surprise! Dad, if you’re up there, it all clicked the other day, and I’m starting to take a bit of interest in our company. It’s been sinking in that it’s mine. I like walking in and thinking, I own all this. That chair you’re sitting in, J.Dud, that’s mine. That urinal you take a piss in, that belongs to me. Fucking A!

  I went to another meeting today. Uncle was dead nervous, I think he took me to remind everyone else that it’s his nephew who owns the company, and that therefore he’s in charge. I could tell he was worried ’cause he was smoking in the car when he picked me up and he’s not supposed to smoke round me. That was one of Kate’s rules. Like I give a shit. So the meeting started and it turns out that Uncle’s over-reached himself with Pinkie Cleugh, big style, and says he’s going to have to close two of the ‘negatively performing’ branches of Lanchester Homes——they’re the estate agencies—my estate agencies!—in order to get the cash together to fund it. This fella Ray Kett was there, he’s the manager of the agencies in Norfolk and Suffolk, and he was well pissed off. So Kett and Uncle Ned were going at it hammer and tongs, and J.Dud loved it, he kept looming up from his chair like a Death Eater. Next to him was his mate, John Dee, who runs the art department and designs the website and brochures. He was nodding and agreeing with J.Dud. John Dee looks like Dumbledore—I was waiting for the two of them to do an Avada Kedavra on my uncle. That’s the worst spell you can do in Harry Potter, it kills you and shit like that.

  “You cannit take away people’s livelihoods just to finance a project you started solely to give me a poke in the eye, man.” said J.Dud, dead menacing, like a cross between Professor Snape and Ant and Dec.

  Turns out Pinkie Cleugh is still no better than a gangster after all; he got Uncle to sign something that makes him liable for nearly all the costs. I feel sorry for Uncle—he’s good at organising the office and telling people to buck their ideas up, but he’s not a sharp businessman like Dad or J.Dud.

  Then J.Dud brought me into it, with a wide, sweeping gesture.

  “This is your nephew’s inheritance, do you want to run it into the ground?” he said, in an oily, hissing voice just like Snape, and it dawned on me that perhaps it wasn’t so funny after all, ’cause I don’t want that to happen.

  I think Uncle Ned is Professor Lupin, but although Uncle Will is my godfather he’s much too daft to be Sirius Black. Dad and Mum are James and Lily Potter, of course.

  Izzy is that loony one with the big glasses. Ha!

  The meeting was like school with people taking sides: Bill Paget and Izzy on Uncle Ned’s side, with Uncle Will (he’s not really my uncle) doing bugger all in the middle, as usual, and the rest of the room siding with J.Dud.

  Izzy took me home, and when she came in she told Erin all about it.

  “I know Ned’s made some stupid mistakes, but I’m very, very wary of the way Jim’s using this against him in front of the whole board of directors,” she said.

  Erin twiddled with her hair. “Yeah, well, maybe Ned’s not up to the job,” she said. “I know you’ve got this thing about Jim but he’s a good businessman, and he got on well with Dad. Don’t you fancy the idea of us building smart hotels? And actually running them, too, not just building them for clients. It’d be cool!” She giggled. “We’d be like Paris Hilton, minus the chav clothes and porn videos.”

  Iz looked as though she was going to burst. “That’s not what the company’s about, Erin.” She put her teacher face on, so I knew we were in for a lecture. “Haven’t you got any respect at all for the legacy Great-Great Uncle Edmund left? His commitment was to provide decent but affordable housing throughout the country, not build flash hotels for the moneyed few.”

  “Yeah, but companies, you know, expand and change, don’t they,” said Erin, who was starting to looking a bit bored, “and if Ned’s been making huge mistakes, then perhaps he shouldn’t be in charge.”

  “You don’t understand,” Izzy said. “Jim just wants to take over, which he’s been trying to do ever since you were stupid enough to sell him your shares.”

  Erin said, “Oh, don’t start all that again. And I still think broadening our horizons is a good idea. You’re just being short-sighted.”

  Then Izzy sniffed and said, “We’re not hoteliers, we’re a construction company. Remember the vineyard fiasco? Your mate Aiden made a right mess of that, didn’t he?”

  Erin went pink, muttered something like he’s not my mate, and marched out of the room. I could see that Iz wanted to start on me next, so I nipped upstairs and went into Oblivion.

  June 16th, 2009

  Ollie says he doesn’t want to be Ron Weasley, because he’s a ginge. I said he’d have to be Hermione, then. Ha!

  I wish Hagrid would show himself. Preferably with his motorbike. Up, up and away…

  July 13th, 2009

  Big, big stuff going down. I don’t understand it all, exactly, but Hannah said I might like to make a verbal note of it ‘for posterity’.

  “In not too many more years that company will be yours,” she said, “and you’ll be glad that you kept an account of this sort of thing.” I suppose she’s right. It’s getting a bit addictive doing this, anyway. I like playing it back and remembering how I felt about things, at the time. My voice sounds quite cool, too; I was scared I would sound like a dork. Shit, maybe all this ‘expressing my feelings’ is working—sad, or what?

  Anyway—what’s happened is that Uncle Ned’s been a total retard. This deal with Pinkie Cleugh didn’t have full proper planning
permission, and Uncle didn’t even run it past anyone else to make sure it was a good idea because (I think) he wanted to act the big entrepreneur like Dad. Stupid bozo, he let Pinkie have access to all the funds in the project account, only it turned out it was some sort of scam. The PPs—pretend parents—all came over here last night to talk about it. Auntie Angie was in tears, saying, Izzy, they won’t vote him out, will they? No one answered her when she said that, they just looked embarrassed. I didn’t think they could vote him off ’cause of Dad leaving him in charge, but apparently they can do this ‘vote of no confidence’ thing. So what’s happened is that they’ve ‘allowed him to resign’, so it will be easier for him to save face and find another job. They’ve lost faith in his ability to run the place, Uncle Will told me. The vote happened today, and only Iz and Bill Paget wanted to give him another chance. Even Uncle Will said he should resign, and of course Erin did. So now they’ve got to vote for a new acting chairman and managing director.

  “They don’t realise what they’re doing!” Izzy was raging afterwards. “They’ve all but delivered the company into the hands of Jim Dudley.”

  Doesn’t half do dramatic, our Izzy. I bet J.Dud thinks it’s all ‘canny’, which is one of his stupid Gateshead words.

  July 18th, 2009

  School finished yesterday!

  I got Pat to take me over to Ollie’s today, ’cause he’d invited these girls over, Laurel and Sonya. They go to Eltham Comp; Ollie and Zach met them in Starbucks last week. Zach couldn’t come today, though, so it was a win-win for the Jaz man! Laurel’s as fit as. Sonya had two spliffs that she nicked off her older brother, and kept instructing me to ‘chillax, chillax’ when she handed me one. She’s fit, too, killer legs, but stupid; she tries to talk like a black girl from The Bronx, or something, and it sounds dead lame. Ollie’s mad about her.

  July 21st, 2009

  I reckon Laurel likes me, too. I mean, I know she fancied me on the first night ’cause she was eating my face off, but I think she likes me as in wants me to be her boyfriend. Ollie said that Sonya said so. I sent her a friend request on Facebook. Suppose I should have waited for her to send me one first. Glad it’s the school holidays so I’ll be able to see her if she wants to go out with me.