At school the next day, all Mariam could think about was her shift that afternoon.

“He’ll be in a better mood then,” Gavin had said, but better than what?  Better than flinging two yards of steel across the room?  Better than almost stabbing his son through the wrists with fifty rusty nails?  There were a lot of things that were better than the way Mr Bridger had behaved yesterday that were still pretty damn horrible in their own right.  The way Mr Bridger behaved every other day, for a start.

Half of it was fear, the not knowing what would happen this afternoon and whether she’d be able to deal with it.  The other half was Gavin.  Her mind kept going back to it, the way he’d looked at the floor instead of at her.  The night stretching out ahead of him, dark and empty, with nothing to do but pray that his father’s path didn’t cross his before morning.  There was a sour, aching knowledge of how unfair this was.  Gavin was a good person, but he’d been given that dark, empty night anyway.  It was wrong, so wrong that it made the whole universe seem out of joint.  Mariam would have given just about anything to put it right.

As she turned onto the side road near the High Street, Mariam steeled herself for something unpleasant.  She didn’t expect to see Gavin sitting on the kerb just outside Swordpoint Books, waiting for her.  In the shop window, the shutters were down and the “closed” sign was up.

“Gavin?” she called out, “What’s going on?”

He leapt to his feet as soon as he saw her.  “Thank God you’re here.”  He put a hand on her upper arm to guide her into the shop.  “Quick, come in.”

Mariam held up a hand, and took a good look at him.  He was pale, much more so than usual, with big shadows under his eyes.  He hadn’t looked this shaken when she’d last seen him.  And what could possibly have happened that was worse than what had happened yesterday?  “Gavin, seriously, what’s going on?”

His eyes darted from side to side.  “I can’t tell you out here.  Let’s go into the shop.”  He opened the door and stood aside for her to go in.

She could tell there was something wrong as soon as Gavin closed the door behind them.  It was completely silent.  No smoker’s coughs, no low, grumbling breaths, no loud smacks of the lips.  No sound out here, and no sound from behind the door of the break room.  It was as if every trace of Mr Bridger had departed from Swordpoint Books.

“He’s dead,” said Gavin, “I found him in the break room this morning.”

Mariam stared at him.  It’s a joke, she thought, It’s got to be.  “What?  How?”

Gavin shrugged.  “Heart attack?  A stroke, maybe?”

“Didn’t the doctors say?”  Mariam hadn’t moved from the spot since they’d got inside.  Part of her thought she should step forward and pull him into a hug- if any other friend of hers had told her their dad had died, she’d have done that before asking stupid questions- but another part thought that would be the most hypocritical thing she could possibly do.  She’d probably wished Mr Bridger dead fifty times last night.

Gavin didn’t reply.  He just looked at her, face completely blank.

“Well?  Didn’t they?”  But even before she said it, Mariam was pretty sure she knew what the answer was going to be.

“I haven’t told anyone,” Gavin said quietly, “He’s still in there.”

There were two or three sets of shelves in between them and the break room door, but Mariam looked in that direction anyway, as if she thought its new ghastly aura was going to penetrate through everything else.  Mr Bridger was dead.  There was a dead body in this building, less than twenty yards away.  Mariam should have been scared, or disgusted, or something other than vaguely cold and queasy.  She swallowed as sharply as she could.  “Why not?”  It came out as a whisper.  She wasn’t sure if she’d meant it to.

Gavin held his arms out helplessly.  “I don’t know.”

“Well… we’ll do it now, OK?”  Mariam felt in her coat pockets for her dad’s old phone- he’d given it to her a couple of months ago, for emergencies.  “Do you know what number we need to call?  I guess 999 wouldn’t be…”

Gavin’s hand shot out and rested on Mariam’s wrist.

She stopped looking.  “What?”

“Please don’t.  Not yet.”

Mariam took her hands out of her pockets.  “Gavin, someone needs to…”

“Yeah, but… I don’t want to be here when they do.”  He took in a long breath.  “This is my only chance to get away.”

Once again, Mariam looked in the direction of the break room door, and she thought about what was behind it.  They couldn’t just leave it like that.  They couldn’t.  But here was Gavin, with his big blue eyes boring into her, begging her to hear him out.

“Whoever comes to collect him is going to take one look at me and call Social Services,” said Gavin, “And the next thing you know, they’ll put me in a foster home halfway across the country.  I’ll have to start all over again with nothing.”

“Well, what’s the alternative?” asked Mariam, still whispering, “We can’t leave him there forever.”

Gavin shook his head.  “Not forever.  Just for today.  I need a little money and a little head start.  That’s all I’m asking for.”

Mariam shook her head.  She was completely lost here.

“Let’s open up the shop this afternoon.  We’ll get customers.  With any luck, someone’ll buy something expensive.  And after closing time, we can split the money from the till, and I’ll be gone.  Off to wherever I want.”  A wistful look crossed his face.  “Then after a couple of hours, you can call the police and give them an anonymous tip.  That way, he’ll still get found.”

Mariam wanted to say something sensible, but her brain wouldn’t cooperate.  All she could think was, That might actually work.  She’d use the payphone at the end of the road- that way they couldn’t trace her number- and she’d tell them that there was a weird smell coming from Swordpoint Books.  Or that she thought she’d seen intruders.  Or…

“But where are you going to go?” she asked Gavin.

He shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Away from here.”  For a moment, the words You could come with me hung in the air, unspoken, and Mariam honestly didn’t know how she’d have replied to that.  She had a family.  They’d miss her.

But he hadn’t said it yet, so she didn’t have to think about it right now.  “OK,” she said, looking him in the eye, “We can open up the shop.  Just for the afternoon.”

A relieved smile broke out on Gavin’s face.  Before Mariam knew what was going on, he stepped forward, took her face in his hands, and kissed her.

(To Be Continued)