The Curfew

Everybody on the Estate knows Josiah’s parents.

Brother and Sister Grant. Front row at church on Sunday, first to the door when somebody’s mum goes into hospital, the ones who still say good morning to the lads by the bins and mean it. His dad fixes the church minibus with his own tools. His mum runs the food bank table on Thursdays and remembers every child’s name.

Which means everybody knows Josiah too. Or thinks they do.

He’s nineteen. He’s got an older sister, Ruth, who is training to be a nurse and has never once been late for anything. He’s got a little brother, Caleb, who is eleven and still thinks Josiah is the funniest person alive. And he has a curfew. Ten o’clock. At nineteen.

“Under this roof,” his dad says, every time, like the roof is a person.

The lads on the wall by the shops have a name for him. Choirboy. They say it with a grin, like it’s a joke he’s in on. He laughs along. He always laughs along.

Dre is the one who started it. Dre has a new jacket every few weeks and nobody asks where from. When Josiah walks past, Dre shouts, “Choirboy! You allowed out, yeah?” and the others laugh, and some nights Josiah stops and stands with them for ten minutes longer than he should, just to prove that he can.

He knows what they’re doing on that wall. He’s not stupid. He was raised knowing right from wrong the way other people were raised knowing the bus times. But there’s something about being laughed with instead of watched. It pulls.

* * *

It all comes out on a Friday.

He walks in at ten twenty-two. His dad is sitting in the front room with the big lamp on and the telly off, which is never a good sign.

“Twenty-two minutes,” his dad says.

“I’m nineteen.”

“Then act like it.”

His mum says his name from the kitchen, soft, the way she does when she wants everyone to calm down. Caleb is at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas, pretending not to listen. Ruth’s door is shut, but the light under it is on.

Josiah says things. Things about being treated like a child. About how everyone at church thinks they’re perfect. About how he can’t breathe in this house. His dad says nothing at all, which is worse than shouting.

Josiah goes upstairs, stuffs a hoodie, a charger and his work trainers into a bag, and texts Leon.

Can I crash at yours for a bit?

Leon replies in less than a minute. Course. Door’s open.

* * *

Leon lives in Block F, on the other side of the green. They were in the same year at school. Leon was the one who always had his own key on a shoelace round his neck, from about age eight.

Josiah used to think that was the coolest thing in the world.

The flat is dark when he gets there, except for the telly. Leon’s mum is asleep on the sofa with the sound up and an ashtray on the arm. Leon steps round her like she’s furniture. He doesn’t even look.

“She’s alright,” he says. “Long week.”

In the kitchen, the fridge has a bottle of ketchup, half a pint of milk and nothing else. Leon’s little sister, Tia, is nine, and she’s sitting at the counter doing homework at eleven o’clock at night, because that’s when it’s quiet enough.

“Has she eaten?” Josiah asks.

“I did her noodles,” Leon says. “She’s fine.”

There’s no curfew here. That’s the first thing. Nobody waits up. Nobody says under this roof. For the first night, Josiah lies on Leon’s floor with his hoodie as a pillow and feels something like free.

* * *

By the second day, he’s starting to notice things.

He notices Leon checking the electric meter before he puts the kettle on. He notices that Leon’s phone has his mum’s bank app on it, and that Leon is the one who moves money around to cover the gas. He notices that Tia’s school letters are signed in Leon’s handwriting, pressing hard so it looks older.

He notices that nobody here says good morning.

On the second night, Leon’s mum wakes up angry. Josiah hears it through the wall. Not words exactly. Just a voice getting bigger and bigger, and Leon’s voice staying low and flat and careful, like someone talking a dog down off a road. Something gets knocked over. Then a door. Then Tia, small, in the hallway: “Leon?”

“Go back to bed, Ti. It’s fine.”

Josiah lies on the floor staring at the ceiling. At home, when it goes quiet like this, it means everyone’s asleep. Here, it means everyone’s waiting.

* * *

On the third afternoon he’s walking back from the shops with bread and eggs he paid for himself, when Marcus falls into step beside him by the bins.

Josiah knows Marcus a little. Everyone does. Older, quieter now than people say he used to be.

“You’re Brother Grant’s boy,” Marcus says.

“Don’t,” Josiah says. “Please.”

Marcus nods, like that’s fair. They walk a bit.

“You’ve been at Leon’s,” Marcus says. It isn’t a question. On this estate, nothing is. “How’s that?”

Josiah thinks about it. About the meter. About Tia’s homework at eleven at night. About Leon’s voice through the wall.

“He does everything,” Josiah says. “Like, everything. He’s nineteen and he’s basically the dad.”

“Yeah,” Marcus says.

“I thought it’d be…” He can’t finish it.

“Free?” Marcus says.

Josiah doesn’t answer. Marcus doesn’t push. He just stops at the corner and says, “Your old man came by the wall last night. Asked Dre if he’d seen you. Dre laughed at him.”

Josiah’s face goes hot.

“He didn’t laugh back,” Marcus says. “Just said thank you and walked home.” Then he lifts a hand and goes.

* * *

That night, Josiah cooks. Eggs and toast, nothing clever. Tia eats two plates and says it’s the best thing she’s had all week, and he can tell she isn’t joking.

Later, when Tia’s asleep, Josiah and Leon sit on the balcony with their knees up.

“Your dad’s mad strict, innit,” Leon says.

“Yeah.”

“Ten o’clock.”

“I know.”

Leon picks at the paint on the railing. “When I was little I used to come to yours after school, remember? Your mum used to make us take our shoes off. And your dad used to ask what I learned that day. Like, properly ask. Wait for the answer.”

Josiah does remember. He’d forgotten that he remembered.

“I used to think that was the best house on the Estate,” Leon says. He laughs, but it isn’t a happy laugh. “Still do, to be honest.”

Josiah doesn’t say anything for a long time. Down on the green, he can see the wall by the shops. Dre is there, with his jacket, with the others. From up here they look smaller. Like boys waiting for somebody to tell them to go home.

Nobody is going to tell them.

* * *

He goes back on the Monday.

His dad opens the door. For a second neither of them speaks. His dad looks tired in a way Josiah has never let himself see before. Older. Like he’s been sitting in the front room with the big lamp on for three nights.

“You eaten?” his dad says.

That’s all. Not where were you. Not under this roof.

“Not yet.”

His dad steps back to let him in.