Part Twelve – Leonardo’s Ill-Timed Headache

Here is the next part of my series: Stookey Hill. Today we meet Leonardo who likely regrets getting a day off school!

Part Twelve – Leonardo’s Ill-Timed Headache

On reflection, it wasn’t the best day of the week for Leonardo to decide he was ‘ill’. But then, he hadn’t been ‘ill’ for at least seven weeks, so in his mind it was as good a day as any, really. His mother, Alice, had been dubious but was also in a rush.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, as she shoved her packed lunch into her handbag, forgetting she had put some tinned fruit in a tub. Later, she would find the juice had leaked out into her handbag and into her purse. Her credit cards were going to end up stuck together.

“I think it’s my head…” Leonardo had learned over the years that head problems were good ones to have. You literally could have a sore head and no one could argue with you. Unlike, say, sore throats.

“It doesn’t look red,” was the response to peering eyes into the back of his throat.

Also, you can’t pretend to have a fever.

“It’s reading completely normal,” was the response to the thermometer.

He had tried to have a cough once, and a cold, but again – easy to start with, but difficult to maintain.

“You haven’t coughed in three hours,” his mother had observed.

So, head it was. She looked at him with suspicion, but she didn’t question it.

“I think we might need to get you seen at the surgery,” Alice absentmindedly put her coffee-to-go cup in her handbag. That also would leak once she pulled away in the car.

Leonardo nodded. She had said that a few times, and it had so far led to absolutely nothing. She was too busy and he and his headaches relied on that being the case.

“I’ll just stay in bed, mum,” Leonardo tried to look suitably pathetic. And it worked a bit because his mother looked at him sadly.

“Poor little love,” she said, patting his head, “go back to bed. I’ll check in with you later.”

Leonardo didn’t need to go back to bed because in the next eighteen seconds, she was gone. Juice and coffee leaking slow trails in her handbag.

He stood at the back window to check she definitely left. He could see her walk across the back and up the hill to where she parked the car. Then she was away. He thought she hit Mr Treehorn’s truck, but he couldn’t be sure.

Leonardo felt a moment of triumph. The house and day to himself. And while he couldn’t go out – well, he could nip to the shop, lay out his sob story and buy some crisps – he didn’t even care. He was more than content to be missing double Physics and outdoor PE. He hated outdoor PE. They were doing cross country and it always felt like such an effort. He appreciated that running might come in useful during a zombie apocalypse, but beyond that – waste of time.

He settled into the sofa and turned his Xbox on. Then he played a variety of car chase shoot-‘em-ups before deciding that a nap was in order. Yawning, he made the decision to take himself back to bed.

Leonardo and Alice lived in the small, two-bedroom terraced house next door to the pizza takeaway. He had no idea where his dad was and he had no idea that he actually had an older sister on the other side of town. Alice kept that to herself. Mainly because the girl – Cherrie – lived with her father. Out of a combination of dread and spite, she had elected not to make either of them known to Leonardo. Cherrie didn’t know about them and the father had agreed to keep it all quiet too. He also harboured sufficient hatred for Alice to keep well out of her way.

As he passed his mother’s bedroom, Leonardo glanced in. There, on her bedroom wall, was his namesake. Leonardo DiCaprio. Alice had a small, dog-eared poster of the actor just above her bedside. It was from his Titanic days, though, so he was all floppy hair and smouldering eyes. Leonardo wished she had been in love with Matt Damon or Brad Pitt. He’d have liked to have been a Matt or a Brad.

But no. He was a Leonardo. And no one was allowed to shorten it.

Sighing – a perpetual activity for Leonardo when recalling his moniker misfortune – he closed her door and went to his own room.

He had the bigger room of the two. It overlooked the backs of all the shops. A few lawns, a few washing lines. And directly opposite was Tenmore Terrace, the road that ran parallel to Stookey Hill. The backs of the houses were large and imposing. They were terraced houses too, but they were three storeys and distinctly more luxurious. And not every other one had been turned into some sort of business.

Leonardo would sit at the window and watch the backs of them, fancying he lived there instead. The back lawns were obscured by tall fences and leafy trees. But the upstairs windows were mostly visible, and they betrayed themselves. He could see pretty lampshades and fine curtains. It was a far cry from Stookey Hill.

But Leonardo hadn’t even opened the curtains yet. He was in no mood to contemplate the lives of the rich and famous. Well, at least the richer and better-known-locally.

Crawling into bed, Leonardo felt very satisfied. While his poor mother was at the big supermarket running herself ragged, he was going to enjoy doing quite the opposite. And he very nearly did – in fact, he was almost asleep when he heard voices. He opened his eyes and frowned. Where were they coming from?

His bedroom shared a wall with Pamela’s lounge, but he never heard her apart from when she was watching the horse-racing and whatever horse she had bet on was not going to win. She was loud then. And coarse.

He might have thought the voices were coming from downstairs, but – no. He strained his ears.

Someone was in the house!

His heart was racing at first and then he laughed. It was a female voice. It must be his mother! She must have come back. Maybe with a friend. He wasn’t sure. Climbing out of bed he made his way downstairs, relieved at least she had come home when he was in bed…with a bit of luck he might get two days off if she thought he was really ill.

“Hi, mum, can I take some more paracetamol yet?” Leonardo opened the door to the lounge, making sure his shoulders sagged a little so as to convey the vaguest notion of visible illness at least.

It was hard to say who was the most surprised. Leonardo, it would be fair to say, was the most alarmed. The two women in his lounge managed to stay calm, although one was clearly more agitated than the other.

“Who are you?” Leonardo had never seen them before in his life – how were they in his house? How had they got in?

The calmer one sighed and pulled a mobile phone from the inside pocket of her suit jacket. She pressed a few buttons, never breaking eye contact with Leonardo. He thought, as he pondered the situation later, that it was impressive to make a phone call without looking at the phone itself. He barely knew how to turn his on.

“Mark, you said no one would be here,” the woman’s voice was cold as ice. So much so, Leonardo even shuddered a little bit.

“Excuse me…” Leonardo made a move to take a step forward. No one had answered his question. Who were these people in his house?

That, it seemed, was a mistake. Because the other woman – the agitated one – pulled a gun from her handbag. Leonardo nearly fell over. He had never seen a gun in real life. Suddenly, his ability to use a virtual one with his thumbs and index fingers seemed shockingly inadequate.

“Oh no!” he said, putting his hands up. That’s what you did, isn’t it? When someone has a gun? Although she wasn’t exactly pointing it at him. It was more like she was showing him.

“Put your hands down!” calm woman on phone spat the words. He lowered his hands, bewildered. His heart had accelerated again and he felt the onset of a headache. At least he could now legitimately tell people he had been off school with a sore head. Hopefully that was all, and it wasn’t to be coupled with a gun shot wound.

“Who are you?” he tried again, but calm woman turned away, still speaking to whoever Mark was. Agitated woman waved the gun a little, staring him down. He didn’t know whether to look at her or it. Both seemed a little wild and unreliable.

“Shush,” she said. She sounded as agitated as she looked at him.

Leonardo glanced at the front door. Could he make a run for it?

“Don’t even think about it!” agitated woman snarled. It was as it she had read his mind. Leonardo was a little impressed.

Calm woman hung up her phone and slid it back into her suit pocket.

“Well, this is an unexpected turn of events,” she said. She looked calm but sounded irritated now. Then, she reached into her other pocket and pulled out a pair of small, black gloves. Leonardo thought they looked like the ones forensic scientists used in those American TV shows.

She pulled them on and they snapped at her wrists. Why was that such a threatening sound, he wondered? After all, what could she do with a plastic glove?

As it turned out, the answer was quite a lot.

Leonardo couldn’t remember all the details as he sat in the back of the Mercedes he was not-so-politely asked to get in to. He might not have had he not seen the gun. But he was in no mood to enter into a skirmish with an agitated woman and a loaded weapon. At least he assumed it was loaded. He wasn’t keen to find out.

As the car pulled away and down Stookey Hill, Leonardo pressed his forehead against the glass. His head was definitely pounding now. It was most definitely a headache he wouldn’t have managed at school with.

It wasn’t until the roundabout at the top of the hill, however, that he was sick. And it was a lot of sick too, since he had eaten a whole bag of tortilla chips and three small bags of Maltesers while he had played his games just an hour earlier.

“You’ll have to just sit in it!” barked the agitated woman. He thought that was a bit harsh. It smelled horrible.

And then he remembered the gun.

And as the car drove further and further away from the city, Leonardo wondered. What would Leonardo do? This wasn’t entirely helpful. He had no intention of sacrificing himself in a body of water and thought the opportunity had passed for him to make out he was actually an airline pilot.

Sighing, Leonardo asked if they could open the window a bit because of the smell, wondering if he’d ever see his little two bedroomed house on Stookey Hill again.