August 2002

They had limited access to running water.  They lived mostly on a small supply of fruits and root vegetables.  They were squatting in an abandoned campsite, and it was freezing in winter.  And yet, Alex didn’t think he’d ever been happier.

“All those years, we thought we needed stuff,” said Virgil, cracking open a can of Stella.  The three of them- Virgil, Bradley and Alex- were sitting on the veranda outside the meeting house (which was, essentially, just a big version of the cabins everybody slept in), listening to ‘Knights in White Satin.’  One of the few CDs they had was The Best 60s Album in the World, Ever, and they’d been listening to it on a loop since June.  It seemed appropriate.  The people who’d written those songs had wanted to change the world, too.

“I remember being a kid,” Virgil continued, “thinking I would die if I didn’t get a skateboard for Christmas.  Ridiculous!  That was what was keeping me up at night!”

The sun was setting.  Part of the reason they’d come out was to watch the sky and see which colours the clouds turned before it got too dark to see.  It was different every evening.  Alex had never really appreciated that until he’d got here.

He sent a letter to Roxanne every month.  If the rest of them wanted to know what he was doing, they could just talk to her.

Across the clearing, by the toilets, Alex spotted the new guy.  “Denny!” he called, waving.  Denny looked up and waved back.  “Come on over!”

Denny rushed up to them in an eager little trot.  He’d been here for a couple of weeks now.  Pinder was still declaring him to be his new best friend.  A true thinker.  A real poet.  He’s going to make the world sit up and listen.

Alex didn’t know if he agreed with that, but he liked Denny, too.  He was kind of upper-crust, but not in an obnoxious way.  He looked at everything with wide eyes, drinking it all in with every second.  It was as if he’d been locked in a tower his whole life, and now he was finally getting to see the world.

As Denny approached, ‘Knights in White Satin’ turned into ‘Blackberry Way,’ as if it was his theme music announcing his presence.  “Hi guys!” he chirped, “What are you drinking?”

“Whatever we can find,” said Bradley, with a laugh.  It was true- they had a pile of cans of various different brands and ages.  It was entirely possible that some of them were years past their sell-by date.  “Go on, take your pick.”

Denny rooted through the pile, picked out a tall can of John Smiths, and settled own beside Bradley.

“This is living properly,” declared Virgil, “This is getting it right.”  He shook his head and laughed.  “All these years, philosophers and intellectuals have been losing sleep wondering…  And we could have just told them.”

Alex shut his eyes, and felt the breeze on his face.  The Rhymers had everything they needed.  They grew their own food.  They made their own clothes.  They were working to change the minds of the rest of the world.  There was nowhere Alex would rather have been, and nothing else he’d have rather been doing.

October 1996

It was early evening, and Mariam was looking out of the window at the end of the upstairs hallway, trying to see what Mrs Simon was up to. 

It was probably the first time she’d had a moment to herself all week.  Last Wednesday, Aunt Leila had shown up out of the blue and asked Mariam’s parents if her daughters (Jana, the older one, and Kia, who was the same age as Mariam) could come and stay while she sorted a few things out to do with her house.  That meant that Mariam was sleeping on a mattress on the floor while Kia took her bed, but she didn’t care.  Mariam had spent her entire life living with three brothers- having their cousins here meant that there were finally as many girls in the house as boys.  Everything felt just a little bit fairer with them around.

The window at the end of the hallway was tiny, and you had to stand on your toes and lean on the bookcase to see through it,  but once you did, you could see Mrs Simon’s whole house.  She lived across the road, and she was probably the most glamorous woman Mariam had ever seen.  She had long black hair and sparkling silver jewellery, and she painted a lot.  She was standing on the balcony at the side of the house, smoking a cigarette (Mariam knew you weren’t supposed to smoke, but Mrs Simon didn’t seem to do it that often, so it was probably OK.)  In the dark, you could only really see her silhouette, an outline in dark blue, and she looked like she was on a movie poster.

Jana’s voice echoed up from the dining room.  “Mariam!  We’re going to play Sardines!”

You couldn’t say no to that.  Mariam took one last look at Mrs Simon, and headed off downstairs.

*

The next day, Mariam showed Kia the view from the window.  Mrs Simon up on the balcony again, but this time she was painting at her easel.

“So is she a famous artist or something?” asked Kia, shouldering Mariam to the side a little so she could see better.

“Maybe,” said Mariam.

“Well, either she is or she isn’t.  Have you ever heard of her?”  (Kia had sworn up and down that she hadn’t been crying last night, no matter what Mariam thought she’d heard.  Mariam had dropped it, but decided to try and cheer her up anyway.)

“Well, no, but I don’t know many famous artists.  Just the ones we learn about in school, and most of them are dead.  Mrs Simon could have pictures hanging in galleries all over the world, and we just haven’t heard about it.”

“Hm,” said Kia.

Mariam stretched sideways, trying for a different angle so she could see what Mrs Simon was painting, but gave up when she realised it was just making her neck hurt.  And she couldn’t just knock on Mrs Simon’s door and ask to see her paintings, because that would be weird.  She just had to hope that she’d turn the easel around one of these days.

*

It was three in the morning, and Mariam had been woken up by Kia’s snores.  She trudged to the toilet, and then, on the way back to her room, looked out of the window at the back of the hallway, just in case something was going on.

(Kia had been sleeping in her bed for three weeks now.  Mariam didn’t quite dare to ask Mum and Dad where Auntie Leila was, in case she didn’t like the answer.)

She hadn’t expected to see anything, and at first, she didn’t.  Then somebody walked up to the driveway to Mrs Simon’s house, and Mariam realised it was Mrs Simon herself.

She was walking in a strange, squiggly pattern, almost tripping over and bumping into things.  Mariam looked closer, and saw that she had bare feet.  She was carrying her shoes in her hand- they must have got uncomfortable while she was walking home.

 Mariam watched her get the door open and close it behind her.  And once Mrs Simon was safely indoors, Mariam went back to bed.

*

Mrs Simon was having a party this evening.  Mariam had been watching the guests arrive for about half an hour.  They drove up and parked their cars on the kerb or in the driveway, and got out in their black suits and long white gowns, shining like movie stars at the Oscars.  It was impossible to look away.

You couldn’t hear the music properly through the wall- you could just hear that the music was there.  Mariam tried to imagine the kind of tune that would be suitable for a party like this.  Grand opera singers.  Sultry saxophones.  Neat little pianos that you could tuck away behind the champagne fountain.  Mariam could barely even imagine the kind of thing that might happen at a party like Mrs Simon’s- what they’d do, what they’d hear, what they’d talk about- but she was happy to watch it, just a little longer.

*

The only reason Mariam saw any of it was that she was the only one upstairs.  Kia, Jana and the boys were in the front room, watching telly.  Mum and Dad were out front talking to a delivery guy.  And Mariam had just gone up to fetch a book from her room when the phone rang.

It was six in the evening- not full dark yet, but getting there.  Mariam, remembering Dad’s lectures on the environment and electricity bills, hadn’t turned on any of the hallway lights.  The streetlamps were shining through the window at the end, and that was enough to see by.  Before she heard the phone, Mariam had been meaning to take a look through and see how Mrs Simon’s party was going.

She dashed into Mum and Dad’s room and picked up the receiver from the set on the bedside table.  “Hello- Gharib family?”

“Mariam!  It’s me- it’s Auntie Leila!”

Mariam blinked, and stood there stupidly for a moment.  “Auntie Leila?”

“Listen, I can’t talk long, but…”

“Hang on- let me get Dad!”  She didn’t want to put the phone down, not if Leila really didn’t have long, but if they wanted to know anything about where Leila had been for the last three weeks, then Dad was definitely the one who needed to ask the questions.

“No!” snapped Leila.  Then, less harshly, “I don’t have time to…  Just tell him I’m alright.  I’ll be away for a while, but I’m alright.  Will you tell him that for me?”

“OK, but when are you coming back?” asked Mariam.  But it was no good.  Auntie Leila had already hung up.  Almost on instinct, Mariam dialled 1471, meaning to write down the number and see what Mum and Dad could do with it, but all she got was a recorded message saying that the number had been withheld.

Nothing for it but to go downstairs and tell Mum and Dad what had just happened.  But, since there was no way of getting back in touch and therefore probably no rush, Mariam stopped on the way and looked out of the window.

Mrs Simon was on the balcony round the side of the house.  Mariam thought she’d probably come out to have a cigarette.  She moved to the side, to get a better look at exactly what Mrs Simon was doing, and noticed something strange.  She was climbing onto the safety barrier.  In a moment, she was standing right on top of it.

Later, Mariam would marvel at how stupid she’d been for not working out what was going to happen.  But in the moment, all she could think about was how angry Mum had been when her brother Sadiq had tried to climb out of his bedroom window last month, and how she hoped Mrs Simon knew what she was doing.

Apparently she did.  Mrs Simon set her feet apart, took a breath, and jumped.

*

Every day for the next few months, Mariam went out of her way to walk past the house across the road and glance into the window.  But she never saw Mrs Simon again.

Her dad said that Mrs Simon must have still been alive when they drove her to hospital, otherwise they wouldn’t have put the ambulance siren on.  He said that the second floor balcony wasn’t very high up, so there was no reason to assume that she’d have got any injuries she couldn’t recover from.  Mariam wanted to believe him.  But the house stayed empty for most of the next year, and then the “For Sale” sign went up.  That seemed like an end to it.

A couple of years later, a crack appeared in the window at the end of the hallway, and Mariam’s parents decided to have it boarded up.  She was almost relieved.

The End

Mariam had heard that you could find most things on the internet, if you knew where to look.  Time to find out if that was true.

She had a couple of hours between the end of her seminar and the start of her shift, and she’d decided to spend it in the library, getting whatever she could out of those damn computers.  Shaun Pinder Oakmen.  Shaun Mandeville Oakmen.  She typed in the terms and she combed through the results, trying to see what led where.  And she couldn’t relax, not for one second, no matter how much her muscles ached with the tension.  She was still on edge from last night.

Mariam hadn’t minded Natalie coming through the door with a triumphant shout of, “Boom!  Look who I found!”  She’d texted ahead, so they’d all known she was bringing Alex.  That wasn’t a problem.

No, the problem had come an hour later, after Alex sat them around the kitchen table and explained everything.  Mariam, after having been calm for quite a while, was suddenly compelled to get to her feet and rip him to shreds.

“So, to recap,” she’d told Alex, “Your friends get injured by a bomb.  Then, a little while later, you find out that your old bomb-throwing pals are in town and stalking us.  But instead of telling us about this and letting us do what we could with that information, you piss off to hide in Brighton for two weeks.”

Alex sighed.  “Mariam, I’m…”

“While leaving us a cryptic message on the laundry room wall, where we may or may not have ever seen it.  Sorry, I forgot about that.  That was your big insurance policy, was it?”

Alex waited a second or two to check that she’d finished, then said, “You’re right.  I didn’t handle this at all well.  I’m sorry.”

“Why, though?  Why did any of that seem like a good idea?”

“Because I was underestimating you.  And underestimating Shaun, too.  I thought that if I let sleeping dogs lie…”

“You thought that we were a bunch of stupid kids who shouldn’t bother our silly little heads about grown-up things.”

She’d intended that to needle and provoke him, but he just carried on looking sad.  “I suppose I must have.  Not that I ever thought any of you were stupid, but…”  His face twisted a little.  “You aren’t much older than I was when I first met Pinder.  And I wanted to keep you as far away from him as possible.”

“You could have done that by tellingme how you knew he was bad news.  Instead of just dropping hints that maybe he put that first guy up to it.”

Alex nodded.  “I should have trusted you.”  He looked around.  “I should have trusted all of you.  I’m sorry.”

After that, the argument had more or less petered out, because there was only so much energy you could muster to yell at someone who just apologised and agreed with everything you said.  It didn’t help that none of the others had backed her up.  She’d thought she could at least count on Isaac taking her side.

Well, fine.  She’d knuckle down and do her research, and see if that made her teeth stop grinding.

It took a while before she got anything, but eventually she found an article in some local paper from May 2004- by Alex’s account, not long after he’d left.  Self-improvement group raise £2000 for town hall.  They were still calling themselves The Rhymers then, but Mariam definitely thought she recognised a couple of people in the photo.  “Every little helps”- (l-r) Joy Wellington, Charity Stobart, Shaun Pinder, Bradley Simmons.

 “Enjoying yourself?” said a voice by Mariam’s ear.  She knew it was Adrian before she even turned around.  Even if she hadn’t recognised his voice, the ham and onions on his breath was unmistakable.

He was standing by the next computer as if he was about to sit down and use it, but he was leaning over Mariam as if that wasn’t going to happen for another few minutes.  His hair looked even more of a mess than usual- you could have hidden a badger in some of those tangles.  “Looking up anything interesting?”  He smiled, catching his lower lip between his teeth, as if he was assessing what was on her screen and finding it to be below his standards.

“Nothing much,” said Mariam.  Her first instinct had been to cover up the screen, but why?  She’d already reported the Oakmen to the police.  If she was looking for more information on them, it wasn’t exactly a state secret.  “What are you up to?”  She’d almost said, What do you want?, but then she’d decided not to pick a fight before the working day had even started.

“Been reading a forum.”  He swung himself down onto the seat instead of just crouching like a normal person, and logged onto the computer in front of him.  “There’s an ex-policeman posting about all the things he used to see in his work.”

“Right,” said Mariam, and turned back to the screen.  That woman in the photo- the skinny one with the glasses and the sticky-out teeth- she’d definitely introduced herself as ‘Jo’ at the meeting, right?  But the caption called her ‘Joy’ instead.  Easy mistake to make, Mariam supposed.

“Like, one time he had to find some kids who’d got lost in the woods…”  Adrian breathed in sharply and shook his head, still smiling.  “They found two of them under a bridge.  It turned out they’d got hold of some berries that made them cough out blood and die.  They were only a few yards away from the main road.”  He shook his head again, tutting.  “That should give you some idea of it.”

“Mm,” said Mariam.  She’d typed Jo Wellington into the search bar.  She didn’t know if she’d have any luck- if the paper had screwed up her first name, then it might have screwed up her last name as well- but it was as good a place to start as any.

The third result had a picture next to it.  She had her hair down, but it was definitely her.  Appeal for information: Joelle “Jo” Wellington.

“But the thing about that story is, there was actually a third kid, and he survived.  They found him wandering in the woods a little while later.  He said he’d tried to stop the other two from eating the berries, but they just told him to mind his own business.  And he realised that he had to go on ahead, to save himself.”  Here came that tutting noise again.  “And the policeman said that the dead kids’ parents, they tried to make out that he’d done something wrong, leaving his friends behind.  But the policeman- the one who started the thread- he said the kid had done the right thing.  And all the other police agreed.  ‘Cause the sad truth is, there isn’t always a nice answer.  Sometimes you have to do hard things.”

The article was from 2001.  The parents of missing schoolgirl Joelle Wellington have appealed to anyone with information on their daughter’s whereabouts to come forward.  Joelle, 15, who is known to her friends and family as “Jo,” failed to return home from an after-school club on Friday.  Friends have described her as…

So, she’d be twenty now.  And for all Mariam knew, she’d been in touch with her parents since this, and put their minds at rest.  Still… definitely worth bringing up with the police.  They’d been given a case number on Tuesday- Mariam would just ring the non-emergency line and ask.

 She could smell Adrian’s breath again.  He made that tutting sound right in her ear.  “2001?  Yeah, she’s dead.  They’re deluding themselves if they think otherwise.”

“Could be,” said Mariam, logging off, “Listen, I’ll see you at work, OK?  I just need to make a pho…”

“The world’s a lot uglier than people like to tell themselves,” said Adrian, “You can take that to the bank.”

“Sure,” said Mariam.  She picked up her stuff and went out to use her phone.

“It doesn’t just go away if you don’t think about it!” Adrian called after her.

*

Mariam was inside the house with the green blinds.  They’d all been summoned there this afternoon to discuss “the plan.”  Whatever that was.

Russel, a big guy with a square head, was standing by the fireplace, pontificating.  “I bet you didn’t know I was on telly back in the Eighties.”

“Were you?” asked Isaac, probably just because he was the one Russel had been looking at when he said it.

“I was!”  Russel laughed.  “God’s honest truth!  Ask your Mum and Dad about Traffic Lights.  They’ll remember.  I was rubbing shoulders with all the greats.  But, you know, it’s all fake.  It’s all acting with them.  I realised that early on and got out.”

Mariam out her drink down.  She was trying not to touch the table- it felt weirdly weirdly sticky.  Natalie and Peps had shared a few details of their own visit to the green blinds house, but they’d left out the stickiness, and the smell in the background, like something sweet that had just started to go off.  There was also the way that all the surfaces gleamed, as if they’d been laminated.  The table, the chairs, the mantelpiece- all of it.  On sunny days, it must have been enough to make you go blind.

Just to her left, Alex was watching Russel curiously, as if he was studying him.  Mariam had brought up the Jo thing with him, and if she’d ever got back in touch with her parents, he hadn’t heard about it.  He hadn’t known that she’d been so young or that she’d had people out looking for her, but he hadn’t been very surprised to hear it, either.  “Denny and I were both still in school when Shaun recruited us,” he’d told her, “Though we were a year or two older.”  That had almost sent Mariam into another tirade about why he hadn’t reported Shaun to every legal authority he could find, but she’d bitten her tongue and stopped herself.  No use having the same argument two days in a row.  What was done was done.

Russel was still banging on about his TV career.  “I think I managed to maintain my character throughout it all, but some of them…  Disgusting people.  Disgusting people.”  He looked out of the window for a moment, then turned back to Isaac.  “So, the plan.  What I had in mind was, you, me and him” – he nodded towards Alex, without looking at him- “take turns standing watch.  Standing guard.”  He pointed outside.  “That tree just outside your front drive?  Perfect hiding spot.  One of us stands there with an old wooden cricket bat from ten ‘til six.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Alex.

 Russel turned and stared at him in disbelief, as if it was Remembrance Day and he’d just burped in the middle of the two minutes’ silence.

Before Russel or Alex could say anything, Natalie spoke up.  “Wouldn’t it make more sense for all five of us to take turns?”

Mariam gave her a look.

“I didn’t say it was a good idea!” Natalie protested, “I just didn’t think it was fair to make the boys do all the work!”

Russel ignored this.  “And what exactly do you not approve of?” he asked Alex, pronouncing each word carefully as if he was desperately trying to hold his temper steady.

In Mariam’s opinion, Alex did a much better job of getting that impression across, just by raising his voice and lowering his brows a tiny amount.  “I just don’t think it will help.  Shaun Pinder doesn’t usually go for direct, physical violence.  He prefers to…”

“So I’m lying, am I?” Russel suddenly roared, sweeping his arms through the air, “I didn’t see them light those torches?  They weren’t trying to burn your house down?”

“I’m sure they were!  But…”

“And if they come around and start threatening those girls?  That’ll be OK, will it?”

Mariam heard herself speak before she’d even decided to.  “For fuck’s sake, they’ve already threatened us!  They’ve already done more than that!”  She stood up, avoiding the sticky table.  “They set a bomb in the park and it nearly blew us up!  You can’t stop bombs from going off by hitting them with a cricket bat!”

Russel turned to her.  “Oh!  Oh!  And if…”  But Mariam didn’t hear the rest of it, because she was already out of the door.

She didn’t even know what had made her get so angry so quickly.  Leftover anger at Alex from last night?  Maybe, but Alex was the one Russel had been yelling at!  If anything, she should have wanted to join in!

Mariam crossed the road towards Pallas House… then turned around, hearing voices behind her.  Natalie and Isaac were running towards her, trying to catch up.  She wondered why Alex and Peps hadn’t come.  Maybe they’d needed someone to stay and distract Russel.

The three of them met up on the corner, just by the tree Russel had mentioned.  As soon as he got close enough to whisper, Isaac shook his head and said, “What.  A weirdo.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Mariam.  The oily way he’d said “those girls.”  The way he’d acted like he had the solution to all their problems when all he’d come up with was take a bat and hit things with it.  The fact that she hadn’t even wanted to spend her afternoon in his weird, sticky living room, but oh no, he knew best.

“I don’t think I even know how to hold a cricket bat,” said Isaac, trying to make her laugh.  It didn’t work.  She felt too churned-up for that.

Natalie gave Mariam a little smile.  “Sorry.  I shouldn’t have encouraged him.”

“Ha.  You had a point.”  Mariam put her hands in her pockets for warmth.  “We can probably swing a cricket bat better than he can.”

Across the road, there was a bit of noise outside the house with the green blinds.  Russel stood in the doorway, making outraged noises, while Alex and Peps talked him down and gradually inched towards the pavement.  So they had stayed behind to distract him.  Mariam smiled.

She watched as they finally managed to wave away the last of Russel’s and-another-things and escape.  Alex waved to Mariam and the others as he and Peps jogged towards them.  Mariam didn’t know if it was Alex’s self-control that was preventing him from breaking into a terrified run, or just his dodgy leg.

As soon as the five of them were together, Mariam made an announcement.  “We are never going into that house again.  The man’s a lunatic.”

She didn’t get any disagreements.  It occurred to Mariam that this was the second time in a fortnight that they’d collectively stormed out of a building after their host started talking nonsense.  Probably best not to make a habit of it.  They did still have to sit through lectures, after all.

Russel had been right about one thing (exactly one thing)- they needed to be more proactive about protecting themselves from Shaun Pinder.  And, possibly, protecting other people.  Getting them banned from the university grounds had been a good start.  “Alex, we’re going to the police tomorrow morning, right?  About the Jo thing?”

“Absolutely,” said Alex.

 “Well, after that, can you try and put together a list of all the people you remember from when you lived with them?” She frowned. “Current members, former members…  I want to see if we come across any other big secrets like Jo’s.”  It was more than that- if they’d brainwashed Alex, Denny and Jo while they were still in school, then they’d probably targeted a lot of other vulnerable people.  Maybe some of them had family that could be tracked down.

*

Jo was still upstairs, snuffling, but Shaun had called a house meeting anyway.  He’d given himself half an hour to decide how to play this, and by now he had a couple of ideas.

He’d half-expected the police to show up again.  He hadn’t expected them to ask for Jo, especially not by her full name.  She’d been signing herself Jo Pinder for the last couple of years, just to avoid that.  Anyway, the police had taken her down to the station and made her account for the last five years, and now they had to worry about the possibility that her parents would be in touch.

“It was Alex and his friends, wasn’t it?” asked Debbie, her eyes flashing with fire.  There were six of them in the conservatory.  Everyone except for Maya, who was in the next room, playing a video for her kids, and Jo herself.  “They dug up all the dirt they could, and they found something they could use against us.  They’ve basically told her abusers where she is.”

Shaun remembered Jo’s parents- two whiny, unimaginative trolls skulking around their shabby council house like rats in a sewer.  Definitely not the kind of people they wanted around.  “It… seems quite likely, yes.”

“But Jo was Alex’s friend!” Wade protested.  He was a blond, broad-shouldered man who looked as if he’d have been at home on a Viking longboat, but this had horrified him practically to tears.  “I remember when he was here- they liked each other!  They used to play cards together!”  Wade looked around the room.  “How could he treat her like this?  What’s he getting out of it?”

Debbie spat.  “He’s just fucking vile, simple as that.  And to think we took him in when he needed us.”

I took him in, thought Shaun, Not you.  You weren’t even here yet.

“But who the fuck do they think they are?” asked Greg (who’d been Shaun’s second when he’d first introduced himself to Mariam), “Do other people not matter to them anymore?  Is that how he’s got them thinking?”

“That’s how he’s got them thinking,” confirmed Debbie, “It’s messed.  Up.”

Bradley thumped his fist on the table.  “You know what?  No more pussy-footing around.  We mix up a bucket of chlorine and household bleach, and pipe it through their letterbox.  Gas them like the vermin they are.”

An odd silence descended.  No-one contradicted Bradley, but they all seemed to edge away from him.

“We’re all going to have to face it one of these days!” insisted Bradley, “It’s the only language they understand!”

Shaun was going to have to do something about Bradley.  If he was going to go around talking about gassing people to death and waving torches at their houses (“I was just trying to scare them!”), then he could do it without the Oakmen’s protection.  The police were bothering them enough without being able to trace something like that to them.  “Not now,” he told Bradley, “I have a different plan.  I’ve been in touch with some other Berrylands students, and it turns out Alex and his friends are not popular.”

“Surprise, surprise,” muttered Debbie.

“And there’s something else.”  Shaun nodded towards Viv Fontaine, the only person in the room who hadn’t spoken yet.  She was a hunched little thing with buck-teeth and an unflattering bob.  “While Viv was on campus, she managed to pick up a copy of the university paper.  Viv, can you read us what you found?”

This was the important thing.  If you looked hard enough, you’d always find a weakness.  Everyone had a chink in their armour.  With Alex, it had been his mummy issues.  With Mariam it was the way she’d pissed off her co-workers without even realising it.  And then there was this.

Viv stood up, looked around the room, and clutched the paper to her chest.  “It’s called ‘The Bell,’” she said in her mushy, lisping drawl.  She opened it up, folded it back, and began to read.  “On the Trail of Kelpie and Silkie, by Rosalyn Pepper.”

March 2000

There was a girl in Alex’s fundraising group named Melanie Spencer, and his heart gave a painful lurch whenever he saw her.  Her eyes were huge, with dark shadows underneath, her face was just a little too thin, and her hair was long and tangled.  Alex was worried about her.  There was something wrong- he just didn’t know what it was.

Every Friday night, they’d stand on the station concourse, rattling their tins and collecting for this month’s charity, and every twenty minutes, Alex would look around to see where Melanie was.  Usually she’d be in a group with two or three other girls from her class, and Alex would relax.  Sometimes, though, she’d wander off to the side on her own, and then Alex would try to keep an eye on her.  Nothing too overbearing- just making sure that he intercepted any drunken middle-aged businessmen he saw heading her way.  Sometimes he even managed to get them to put a few pounds in the collection tin.

Alex didn’t think he’d ever heard her speak.

*

Alex had eighteen months left until he could go away to university, and sometimes he wondered how he’d get through it.

He had fundraising on Friday, Maths tutoring on Wednesday and Thursday, football on Sunday, school council on Monday and his shift at the residential home on Saturday.  That still left Tuesday afternoons stuck in the house.

Marley was in the front room, playing Resident Evil and occasionally muttering curses as a zombie dodged his attack.  He sat back, slouched, with his legs spread wide, and he looked as though he was trying to merge with the sofa.  There was a strong smell of smoky bacon crisps in the air.

Alex sat in the chair opposite, making some notes for his English coursework.  He could have done it in his bedroom or the dining room, but he preferred to have company.  Marley was concentrating too hard on his game to say much, but at least he was there.

Angry, raised voices came through the ceiling.  Alex caught his breath.  Ancient Romans and their many methods of killing people.  “Do you know what they’re arguing about?”

Marley didn’t turn around.  “Oh.  Apparently Serena complained to Dad about something.  Then Dad talked to Mum about it, and now her feelings are all hurt.”

Alex nodded.  Their father had lived in Ireland for nearly three years now.  They talked on the phone, but none of them had ever visited.

The voices went on for a while.  Alex did his best to forget about it and concentrate on what was in front of him, and he thought he sensed Marley doing the same thing.  Then one of the upstairs doors slammed open, and the argument spilled down the stairs and into the hallway.

“I’m sorry I don’t have time for your sick little power play!” Mum spat from the landing.  Alex wasn’t going to go out and see.  He was just going to concentrate on his English notes.

“You don’t have time?!  What, in your busy schedule of sitting on your arse all day?”

“How dare you?”  Alex heard Mum’s footsteps on the stairs, but Serena was too quick for her.  The front door had already slammed shut behind her by the time Mum was halfway down.

Alex badly needed to find something to do on Tuesdays.

*

The weather was miserable that morning.  Alex drove through the rain, doing his best to account for the poor visibility and slippery roads, when he spotted a hunched figure in the distance, up against all the grey.  It was Melanie Spencer.

He pulled up to the curb a little way behind her, so that he could be sure that he wouldn’t hit a puddle and splash her.  She didn’t see him until he wound down his window and called out to her.  “Would you like a lift?”

A smile slowly spread across her face, as if she had to test the waters before fully committing to it.  “Thanks!”

It was all simple- you saw a classmate struggling in the rain, so you offered them a lift to school because it was the decent thing to do- right up until Melanie had sat down and closed the door behind her, and Alex remembered that he’d never actually talked to her before.  To the best of his recollection, that little thanks was probably the first word she’d ever spoken to him.  And now he didn’t know where to start.  Do you live around here?  No.  He’d sound like he was prying.

He cleared his throat.  “Would you like the radio on?”

She shrugged, still smiling.  “I don’t mind.”  She looked at the windscreen for a while, her eyes seeming to follow one particular raindrop as it travelled, then said, “Is Marley Rudd your brother?”

Alex started a little.  “Yes, he is.  Do you know him?”

Melanie nodded.  “I used to help run the Drama Club last term.  You know, during lunchtimes.  And Marley always came up with great ideas for things his group could do.  He seemed like a smart kid.”

“Well, thanks for saying that.  I’ll tell him you said hi.”  Alex remembered Marley mentioning Drama Club a few times last year, but he was almost certain that he didn’t go anymore.  Marley seemed to have checked out of a lot of things lately.

“You look alike, you know,” said Melanie.

Alex laughed.  “Really?”

“Yeah.  Around the eyes and nose.”  Melanie circled her own eyes and nose with her index finger.  “I haven’t seen him in a while- how’s he doing?”

And once again, Alex had no idea where to start.

*

Mum and Serena hadn’t spoken for nearly a week.  Whenever they were both in the house, each of them retreated to opposite corners of the house and expressed their frustration by slamming doors and playing music extra-loud.  It was at times like that that Alex missed Roxanne the most.  The house had seemed less cold and echoey before she’d gone to university.

This afternoon, however, Mum was out, so Serena came into the living room, flopped onto the sofa, and, without acknowledging Alex at all, grabbed the remotes and switched to MTV.  An All Saints video came on, followed by Blink 182, and Serena glowered at them both as if they were her mortal enemy.  

Serena’s hair was stringy, and there was always the faint smell of sweat under her perfume.  She looked as if she was falling to pieces.

Alex left it a while, then asked, “How was your day?”

Serena looked at him in surprised irritation.  “How do you think?”

“I… don’t know?”

Serena rolled her eyes.  “It was fucking fantastic, Alex.  Same as always.  Now let me listen to this.”  And she turned back to the TV.

And how was Alex supposed to respond to that?  Yell at her?  Hadn’t there been enough yelling around here lately?  Alex thought about Roxanne, who, as far as he could remember, hadn’t raised her voice to any of them in years.  If she wasn’t there, he needed to do his best to keep things to the standards she’d set.

He wouldn’t say anything.  He’d sit here in the living room, doing his homework, and wait.  If Serena decided she wanted to talk, whether that was in five minutes or two hours, he’d be there.  If not, then at least they wouldn’t be alone.

*

It was on the bulletin board in the Sixth Form building, and Alex saw it almost as soon as he got to school.  Through the crowds of people milling around looking for their friends and getting ready for their first lessons, he caught a glimpse and was sucked right in.

Self-improvement through meditation, Tuesday evenings.

Tuesday evenings.

Alex’s first thought after making a note of the address (St Andrew’s school for Boys, on the other side of town) was that he needed to find Melanie.  She’d never given him any hint that she was interested in meditation or that she was free on Tuesday evenings, but you never knew.

He found her in the corner, reading a battered old paperback whose title he couldn’t quite make out.  He manoeuvred his way through the crowd until they were fact-to-face.  She looked up and grinned, her top lip twitching oddly.  “Hi, Alex!”

“Hi, Melanie.  Did you see that flyer on the message board?”

“No?”

“Self-improvement through meditation.  It’s at St Andrew’s tomorrow.”  He gave her what he hoped was a winning smile.  “I’m thinking of checking it out- do you want to come with me?”

Melanie’s face lit up.

*

Marley had gone to the shops a few minutes ago, probably to get away from the screams in the hallway.  Serena had finally annoyed Mum into acknowledging her existence again.

“I could smell the cigarette smoke from all the way down the stairs!  How dare you?” 

Alex stared down at his coursework, rereading the same sentence he’d started reading when Mum had driven Serena’s friends out of the door.  It didn’t help him block it out.

“Disrespecting me, disrespecting this house…”

Serena gave a laugh that sounded like a gas explosion.  “Respecting this house?  What do you want me to do, salute the bricks?”

“This house, where I allow you to sleep…”

“You allow me?”

“Where would you be if I decided, sorry, you’re not sleeping under my roof anymore, find somewhere else?”

“Um… in touch with Social Services?”

Alex heard a sound.  It was muffled by the door, but he thought it might have been a slap.  Mum’s voice afterwards was a low growl.  “You are the most selfish, cruel, despicable person I have ever met…”

“Mm,” said Serena, “Says the woman who faked a suicide attempt just because she didn’t like her daughter’s A-level choices.”

Mum went silent.  Alex wasn’t surprised.  That had made him feel as though he’d been punched in the stomach, and he wasn’t even in the same room.

As Mum began to sob, Serena made her getaway.  Alex heard the door slam, and felt a little relieved.

He wondered if he should go out into the hallway and talk to Mum.  It might help, or it might just mean putting himself in the firing line.  Before he could decide one way or the other, though, Mum came into the living room.

Her eyes were red, but there was no hint of tears in her voice.  “Look at all this!”  She held her hands out to the middle of the room.  Marley had left a couple of crisp packets on the sofa.  “How can you stand to live in this filth?”

Alex put his book to one side.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t see…?”

“Don’t you care?” she demanded staring at him in shocked disgust.

“Well, like I said, I didn’t…”

“Some days, I think about turning you all out until you learn to act like human beings.”

Alex froze in the middle of standing up.  Suddenly it was hard to breathe.

“Some days I wonder how I managed to end up with you.”

Alex got his voice under control.  “Mum, I know you’re still upset about Serena…”

“I’m upset because my children all seem to think that they can go through life just being catered to!”  She looked over her shoulder, plucked up the crisp packets, and threw them at Alex’s chest.  They hit home and fluttered to the ground.  “Seventeen?  You act like a twelve-year-old!  I’m surprised you don’t still need someone to wipe your backside for you!”

Alex could gave turned around and left the room, but she’d just have followed him and come up with worse things to say by the second.  But if he shut his eyes and stayed still and silent, maybe she’d get fed up and leave.

*

St Andrew’s was just similar enough to their own school to be confusing- corridors that you expected to end in doors to the main hall ended up outside, and corridors you expected to take you outside just led to more corridors.  The gym was the same size as the one Alex and Melanie were used to, but the floor was more brown than yellow, with markings that were cracked and faded.  The air had that cold, dusty smell you always got in rooms that were suddenly empty.

The meeting started with trust exercises.  The idea was that one person would jump off the wooden bars, and the rest of the group would catch them and bear them down to the floor, like crowd surfing at a rock concert.  Melanie went first.  For a few seconds after she jumped off the bars, she looked like a bird flying through the air.

When it came to Alex’s turn, he was nervous.  He expected it to be awkward and uncomfortable- so many opportunities to land wrong and hurt yourself or someone else- but it wasn’t.  It felt almost like falling onto a mattress.

It wasn’t long afterwards that the guy in charge blew the whistle.  “Right!  Everybody shake yourselves out and come and sit down!”  He motioned towards a circle of chairs at the other end of the gym.  Once everyone had followed his instructions and settled down, he bounded into the middle. “I’m Shaun Pinder- Head Oakman!  Now, did everyone enjoy that?”

There was a happy rumbling sound from the circle.

“I said, did everyone enjoy that?”

This time, there was a ragged, self-conscious shout of, “Yes!”

“That’s better!  Now, do you know why I got you all to do it?”

Everyone shook their heads.  Even the ones who might have ordinarily taken a guess were far too worn out from the crowd surfing.

“I got you to do it because that’s how I think she world should be.”  His voice lowered to an awed whisper.  “Everybody supporting everybody else.  Knowing that there’s somebody there to catch you when you fall.  Or support you when you try to fly.”

Alex felt that echo in his head.  That’s how I think the world should be.  But whose fault was it if it wasn’t?

“People have been tricked into caring about money, or what’s on TV, or whether or not the bus is going to be late.  But that’s nothing.  The truth is, there is nothing more important, nothing more lasting, than your connections with other people.”

Alex’s eyes started to sting.  He tried to hold his face still, but he couldn’t.  That’s how the world should be.  Everything else is nothing.

Beside him, Melanie’s eyes widened in concern.  She put a hand on his back and whispered, “Alex, what’s wrong?”  But all he could do was shake his head.

*

The meeting went on for another hour, but Alex didn’t hear much of what was said.  All he could think about was people catching each other when they fell.

“Alright, guys,” said Shaun, “I’m going to call a short break.  Get yourselves a drink, go to the toilet, be back here in five minutes.  Go!”  He clapped his hands once, and people started getting up.

Alex turned straight to Melanie.  “I’m sorry about earlier.  For alarming you like that.”

Melanie shook her head.  “No.  No-o-o.  You don’t need to be sorry.  But what was…?”

“Heeey.” Came a voice from behind his shoulder.  He looked around and saw Shaun Pinder standing over him.  “Are you alright?”

So he’d noticed, too.  Alex swallowed and said, “Yes.  I’m sorry if I…”

“No!  Don’t apologise!  Sharing feelings is what tonight’s all about!”  And he flashed Alex a brilliant smile.  Alex still felt like crawling into a hole and never coming out, but he tried to smile back.

Shaun Pinder’s voice softened.  “Would I be right in thinking that you don’t have as many human connections as you’d like?”

Alex thought about Roxanne, hundreds of miles away, Dad, all the way across the ocean, and Marley, Serena and Mum, who made rooms feel empty even when they were in them.  “…Yes.”

“Well, that’s not necessarily a reflection on you.”  Pinder put a warm hand on his shoulder.  “You’re not stuck with the family you’re born into, or the friends you have at school.  And you’re not stuck with what they want to make you into, either.”

Alex smiled, genuinely this time.  “Well, that’s a comforting thought…”

“It’s the truth!” said Pinder.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex could see Melanie frowning.  He wanted to ask what was wrong, but then Pinder was talking again.  “What did you say your name was?”

“Um, I didn’t.  Alex.”

“Well, listen, Alex, we’re going to be doing some hot-seating in the second half.  Does that sound like something you’d be up for?”

Alex laughed.  “Sure.”

“Brilliant.  I’ll reserve a slot for you.”  He turned round and blew on his whistle, calling everybody back to the circle.

Natalie shut Alex’s door and cleaned up downstairs, so that the others wouldn’t panic when they got home.  Then she sent them a text saying she might not be home til late, and she was off to the station.

The train took nearly an hour to get to Brighton, and Natalie spent the whole of that time staring at the back of the seat in front of her, listening to her pulse thumping in her ears.  She was going to get some answers.  She was going to see Alex again and she was going to make him tell her exactly what he was up to.

So… This doesn’t look like Amsterdam, she’d say.

Or, Boy, have you got some explaining to do.

Or maybe just, Alex!  Long time, no see!

The train pulled into Brighton Station.  Natalie’s stomach gave a lurch, and then she was on her feet and stepping out into the sunlight.

It was a twenty-minute walk to the hotel, all uphill.  Honestly, Natalie was quite glad about that.  She liked the momentum- it was easier to be sure of yourself when you were upright and moving forward.  It was easier to dismiss thoughts like, What if he’s already moved on to the next place?  What if he sees me coming and manages to sneak off?  What if I’ve just wasted my time?

If Alex had actually been in the hotel lobby, Natalie might very well have panicked and blown the whole thing.  But besides the staff, there were only three people hanging around the bar.  She’d have time to prepare herself.

“Can I help you?” asked one of the women on reception.

“I’m a friend of one of the guests,” said Natalie, trying not to sound so overexcited that she came across as a potential troublemaker, “I told him I’d wait for him in the bar- is that alright?”

The receptionist shrugged.  “I don’t see why not.”

Natalie smiled at her, then went up to the bar.  She’d get an Archer’s and lemonade.  A bit of liquid courage, that would be useful.

*

Isaac’s friend had photos of graffiti and notes she’d found, all saved on her phone, and she talked as she flicked through them, as if she was giving Isaac and Denny a slideshow.  “They turn up everywhere,” she said.  They were sitting at a table in the theatre café, drinking tea out of cardboard cups.  “I must have heard from fifteen or sixteen people since the first article went out.  There’s messages written in old textbooks, there’s stuff on the internet, there’s things scratched on the underside of tables and things…  It’s like a secret code, but it means whatever we like.”

Isaac had been up in the office with Denny all day- Jonathan said he shouldn’t be out front if Pinder was still around.  All day, Isaac had seemed like he was on the verge of mentioning something, but he never had.  Jonathan had told him not to ask Denny about anything to do with Pinder; Denny knew it.

Anyway, they’d been working together all day, and then, just before the end of work, Isaac got a text from his friend Rosalyn, saying she’d meet him in the café if he wanted to walk home together.  And just as Denny had been saying goodbye for the evening, Isaac had asked him to come down and meet her.

Denny still didn’t feel right.  Being down here made his eyes feel scratchy and his skin feel too warm.  His stomach was churning like a washing machine, and part of his mind was screaming at him to get out of here before he hurt someone again.  But…

“How do you think it got started?” he asked her, looking at the photo of the scratched-up table.  He wondered what they’d used to do it.  A penknife?  Maybe a scalpel?

Rosalyn’s eyes widened.  They were very blue.  “Well…  So, this is only based on what one guy said, OK?  But there was a student at Berrylands ten years ago, named Ben Sugar, and he said it was based on something they’d all seen written on a railway bridge somewhere near Croydon.  So that might be the original ‘Kelpie and Silkie’ message… or it might have been based on something else, even earlier.  Either way, it would be great if I could find it.”  She sounded like an archaeologist in a film, putting together a team of adventurers to search the jungle for a mysterious artefact.

“Would have been great if he’d been more specific,” said Isaac, with a twisty smile.

Rosalyn shrugged.  “Well, it was a long time ago.  Give him credit for remembering some stuff.”

Isaac made a noise of disagreement.

“Anyway, if he’d been more specific, I wouldn’t have anything to base those articles around, would I?”  Rosalyn smiled at Denny.  “As it is, a lot of it’s just me and Judith wandering around the woods.”

Denny smiled.  “Well, if you can make it entertaining…”

“He’s right, you know,” said Isaac, “People have written whole novels about being stuck in the woods with nothing to do.  At least you guys are actually looking for something.”

At that point, Denny looked up and spotted his sister.  She hadn’t done anything to draw attention to herself- she was just standing there, blending into the background.  Waiting.

Denny jumped to his feet.  “Tavia!  I’m sorry!”

She shrugged.  “For what?”

Isaac and Rosalyn were staring at him.  Denny’s throat went funny.  “For…  Well, you were going to meet me in the office, and…”

“Relax.  I saw you as soon as I came in.  I just didn’t want to interrupt, that’s all.”  She nodded at the others.  “Isaac, isn’t it?  And you’re…?”

“Rosalyn.”  She eyed Tavia warily, as if she was a strange animal that might be about to bite her.  “I’m one of Isaac’s housemates.”

“Octavia Lambton.  Pleased to meet you.”  She put out a hand, and Rosalyn warily shook it.  Denny could see why she was nervous.  Tavia must have been a foot taller than her, easily- she sometimes gave you the impression that her skeleton had been built with a few extra bones to everyone else’s.  When she was younger, she’d got some modelling work because of it.  “I’m sorry about all the trouble you’ve had.”

“Hm?  Oh, I wasn’t really the one who…”

“It’s fine,” said Isaac, a little abruptly, then caught himself.  “I mean, things should be OK now.  We’ve talked to the police.”  He sounded perfectly polite, but he was still giving Tavia an odd look.  Not like the one he’d given Denny after he jumped up.  More surprised.  Less concerned.  It was almost as if he wanted to protect him from her.

Denny struggled to make sense of it- if anything, it should have been the other way round, shouldn’t it?- but then he remembered jumping up and stammering out an apology when she’d come in.  They thought he was scared of her.  They thought she was the one who’d turned him into a nervous wreck.

It was almost funny.

He cast about for a way to put them at ease.  “Are you in a hurry to get home?” he asked her, “Because Rosalyn’s been showing me some messages she’s found around town, and I think you’d be interested.”

Tavia did a double-take- usually Denny was the one in a hurry to get home, and they both knew it- but she played along.  “I can spare a few minutes.  Do you two mind if I join you?” she asked Isaac and Rosalyn.

Isaac looked at Denny, to check everything was OK, then pulled out a seat for her.  “Sure.  Kelpie and Silkie could always do with a bigger audience.”

Tavia’s brow furrowed.  “Kelpie and…?”

“You’ll see,” said Denny, with a grin.

*

Natalie had been waiting in the bar area for twenty minutes when Alex turned up.  She saw him before he saw her.  He was walking through the front entrance, head down, shoulders hunched, and he looked as if he was going to go straight to the stairs.  Slowly, Natalie rose to her feet.  “Alex!” she called out.

His head snapped up, and his eyes went wide.

She met his gaze, and held out her hands in a pleading gesture.  “What the hell?” she added quietly.  Her voice sounded strangely wounded, almost disappointed.  She’d meant to say something a lot cleverer, but she felt she’d got her point across.

Alex stared at her for a few seconds, then, slowly, moved towards her.  He looked more like he was swimming underwater than walking.

“What happened to your eye?” he asked, as soon as he was close enough.

For a moment, Natalie wondered what he was talking about, but then she remembered being shoved face-first into the doorframe.  There must have been a bruise by now.  “Some woman keeps coming to the house, saying she’s your mother,” she told him, “In fact, Mariam sent you a text about her on Monday.  Why didn’t you reply?”

“My phone’s been in the hotel room safe this whole time.  I thought that if I…”  He broke off and shook his head.  “I don’t even know where to begin.  Can we sit down?”  He pointed to a table in the corner.  Natalie nodded.

He pulled her chair out for her before he sat down himself.  Natalie didn’t see the point of that- they were great big armchairs that towered over the little coffee table- but it seemed to be one of those things that Alex did without thinking.  “I know where we can begin,” said Natalie, “Why did you tell us you were going to Amsterdam if you weren’t?”

Alex made a slow, swallowing motion.  “I thought I was keeping you safe.  The four of you.  I…  How much do you know about the Oakmen?” he asked, his head snapping up again.

“Quite a bit, as of yesterday.”

Alex raised his eyebrows.

“Shaun Mandeville showed up at Mariam’s work and tried to convince her that I was a psychopath.”

“Why did he…?”

“Because we went to one of his meetings, and I made fun of his warm-up game.  Then Isaac ran outside to throw up, and we all followed him out.  It was an evening, alright.”

Alex looked at the floor, and sighed deeply.  “Well, that goes to show how wrong I was.  I thought that if I was out of the picture, he’d lose interest in the rest of you.”  He looked up at her.  “Natalie, I’m sorry.  I should have been honest with you from the start.”

“Well… why weren’t you?”

“I was worried that if I told you about the Oakmen, you’d want to do something about them.  I thought the safest thing was to lie low and wait for them to move on, and I didn’t think you’d want to do that.  Especially not you and Isaac.”

Natalie nodded.  “Still…”

“Still,” agreed Alex, “I should have trusted you.  I’m sorry.”  He took a deep breath, and put his fingers to his temples, clearly gearing up for something.  “When I lived with the Oakmen, Pinder… Shaun… would send us out at night to vandalise shops and government buildings.  We never hurt any actual people- I wouldn’t want you to think we were that far gone- but we caused a lot of property damage.”  Another deep breath.  “And sometimes we used small explosives to do it.”

Natalie swallowed.  “You’re talking about the bomb in the park.”

Alex nodded, his eyes big and sad.

Natalie didn’t even know why she was surprised.  She’d brought up the possibility herself, two days ago.  They’d all talked about it!  Why had the blood suddenly rushed to her head like that?  “But… they couldn’t have known we were going to be there.  It’s like Rosalyn said- if she hadn’t picked up that exact book in the library…”

“I think it was a coincidence,” said Alex, “They probably didn’t even know I was in the area until my name came up afterwards.”  His mouth twitched.  “Although it probably wasn’t a coincidence that they were in the area to begin with.  They’d have known that Denny had family there…”

Suddenly, the air around Natalie felt heavy.  She thought about the pressure at the bottom of the ocean, enough to crush a human in seconds.  “I’m glad you got me to sit down,” she mumbled.

Alex reached out and put his hand over hers.

Natalie took a few deep breaths, clearing her head a bit.  It must have been the day catching up with her.  “What about the woman who came to the house?  Do you think she really was your mother?”

“Definitely,” said Alex, without any hesitation, “And I don’t think she worked out where I was on her own, either.”

“You’re not really in touch with her, then?” said Natalie- stupidly, because why would Mrs Rudd have had to bully her way into her son’s house if they’d been in touch?  And why wouldn’t she have known that Alex was at Berrylands?

Alex shook his head.  “Not since I was seventeen.  I lost touch with them all after I joined up with the Oakmen.”  (Natalie noticed that his hand was still over hers.  She didn’t try to move it.)  “The only person I did get back in touch with was my sister Roxanne, and that only happened when I turned up on her doorstep out of the blue four years later.”

“Was that when you left the Oakmen?”

Alex smiled.  “Mm-hm.  Showed up with nothing but the clothes on my back.  I’d had to ask some passers-by for enough money to get a train ticket.”

 Natalie took a shaky breath.  There was a decision ticking over in her head.  In a few seconds, she’d have made it.  “And that’s what you had to do to get away?”

Alex nodded.  Not smiling anymore, but still holding her hands.

She thought of Alex having to sneak away from everyone he knew, people he’d lived with since he was seventeen.  Probably (given what Natalie had seen of his mother) the first people he’d ever lived with who didn’t scream and threaten at the slightest excuse.  She thought of him leaving behind everything he owned because he didn’t want them to suspect he wasn’t coming back.  She thought of him begging hostile strangers for money, all so he could travel far enough to take a chance on a sister he hadn’t seen in years.  Natalie had thought her journey this afternoon had been tense, but what had actually been at stake?  Even if she hadn’t seen Alex, or if she’d seen him and he’d refused to speak to her, she’d still have had somewhere to go back to and sleep that night.  What had gone through Alex’s head when he’d been on that train?  And how long had it taken him to find his sister’s place afterwards, and then to confirm that she still lived there and was willing to take him in?  There must have been a million horrible possibilities going through his mind every second.

Natalie made up her mind.  “Well, OK.  I think I understand why you went to so much effort to get away from them this time.” 

Alex let go and sat back, sighing deeply.  “I still shouldn’t have put you all in that position.  There I was, thinking I was protecting you, and I just made it worse.”

“Why not give us a chance to protect you instead?”

Alex’s mouth opened a little wider, then twitched back into position.  “You want me to come back to London with you?”

“Yeah.”  Natalie tried not to blink.  If she maintained eye contact, then he couldn’t wriggle out of it.  “We’ll all be safer if we’re all in the same place.”

Alex’s mouth curved up into a fond smile.  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to put all your eggs in one basket?”

“Nope.  She buys them in packs of six.  It’s cheaper.”

That had been a bit of a gamble, but it paid off- Alex laughed.  “I meant, if we’re all in the same place, and the Oakmen know where to find us…”

“Well, at the moment, they know where to find everyone but you,” Natalie pointed out.  A bit of a guilt trip, true, but definitely worth it if it worked.

Looking down at the table, Alex let out a long, wavering breath.  Finally, he nodded.  “If you’ll have me back… then yes.”

June 1997

For the third time since they’d started driving, Alex opened up the tape deck and put in Hard Day’s Night.  He heard a faint groan from the back of the car (it might have been Serena’s favourite, but it wasn’t Roxanne’s and it definitely wasn’t Marley’s), but it was a more good-natured groan than it would have been an hour ago.  They were closing in on Chester.  Soon the journey would be done.

Alex was in the passenger seat, with the printed-out directions in his lap.  It was his job to tell Mum which junctions to look out for next.  “You’re the official navigator,” she’d told him with a laugh, and it was funny how happy that made him.  They had to take Exit 15, then Exit 12.  After that, it all turned into street names.  The end of the motorway was almost in sight.

“Alex?” asked Serena.

“Hm?”

“Would you rather be hanged or beheaded?”

Alex laughed.  He knew, without even turning around, that she’d got her nose into one of those Horrible Histories books again.

“I’d rather escape and not die,” said Marley.

“Yeah, but if you had to.”

“I don’t know, Serena,” said Alex, “What would you choose?”

Serena answered immediately- she’d been thinking about this.  “I’d rather be beheaded.  It’s quicker.  As long as they use an axe instead of a sword.”

Their mother, who’d been doing a good impression of somebody who hadn’t heard any of this, made a little excited noise and turned to Roxanne.  She was in the back with the two younger ones, presumably so that she could calm them down when they got restless.  “Roxy, I just thought- if you end up taking Economics, you can talk to your Uncle Jack about getting a Saturday job!  He was just telling me the other day, they’re always looking for people.”

Roxanne fidgeted with her hair.  It was thick and golden-brown, and she never tied it up, which meant that you almost didn’t recognise her when you could see her ears or shoulders.  “Mum, I already said…”

“You’d be learning things that’ll help you on your course, and you’d have a bit of spending money!”

Alex looked up at the sign ahead, then down at the print-out.  “Mum, Exit 15 is…”

“Think about it, Roxy,” said Mum.

“Mum, I’m not taking Economics!  I’m not even predicted an A in Maths!”

“You would be if you tried.”

Alex looked up again.  “Mum, Exit 15 is right ahead.”

“Oops!” Mum laughed, “Almost missed it!”  And she wrenched the car sharply to the left.

*

Dad had been on a business trip for the last week, and he and Mum had arranged for them all to come up and meet him so they could spend the last few days together.  “Better than going home on the train,” Dad had said.  They’d be staying at the Plaza Hotel.  Supposedly, that was one of the expensive ones. 

When they finally arrived, they thought they’d come to the wrong place.  It was a dull brick building, a little like an office block, on the corner next to a flyover.  But when they got inside and saw the gold-and-white walls and the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, their minds were put at rest.  It was like being on the inside of a champagne glass.

“We’re with Sidney Rudd,” Mum told the black-clad woman on reception, “Can you call and tell him we’re here?”

The woman nodded.  She was all in black- her suit, her hair, even the thick frames on her glasses.  The other receptionists were the same.  Alex could imagine the Grim Reaper dressing a little like them.  The woman picked up the phone, spoke quietly, then nodded and smiled.  “He’s coming down,” she told Mum, “Have a seat.”

They sat down on a set of red velvet seats.  They looked so pristine that Alex felt the need to brush down his jeans before he sat down, in case he was the one who gave it its first smudge.

“Marley, please stop singing,” said Roxanne.  Ever since they’d left the car, Marley had kept up a constant chant of, Where did you come from, where did you go, where did you come from, cutting off my toes.  They were the only words he knew.  Alex suspected that he was getting revenge on Serena for making him listen to so much of the Beatles.

“Marley,” said Mum, a little more severely, and he stopped.  Marley would be twelve next month, and Mum had been making some pointed comments lately about acting his age.

One of the doors off to the side of the room swung open, and Dad came through.  “Look who it is!” he cried cheerfully, “You made good time!”

He went up to Mum first, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.  Then he ruffled Marley and Serena’s hair, just to annoy them.  There were a couple of grumbles and outraged whines of, “Dad!”, and then he moved on to the older kids.

“Alex, I swear only you would look that perky after spending hours in the car,” he said, clapping his hands on Alex’s shoulders.

“Well, he was the navigator,” said Mum, “I couldn’t have got here without him.”

“I doubt that,” said Alex, but her was pleased to hear her say so.

“Right!” said Dad, “How does everybody feel about dinner at Pizza Hut?”

Marley and Serena instantly brightened up.

Mum sighed.  “Just tell me it isn’t far.”

“Right across the road, honest.  We’ll be there in two minutes flat.”

“Good.  Because we’ve got unpacking to do first, remember.”

As if on cue, Roxanne bent down to pick up the suitcases.  Alex put out a hand, and she passed one of them to him.

*

They’d finished the garlic bread, and they were waiting for their main course.  Serena and Marley were colouring in a puzzle page with “The Hut Mutts” printed at the top.  There wasn’t a Pizza Hut where they lived, so this was a nice treat for them.

“I don’t think you’ve thought about the job opportunities,” Mum told Roxanne, “An Economics degree could get you all kinds of…”

“Give it a rest, Julie,” muttered Dad.

“But she could…”

“Let her finish her GCSEs before she starts wondering what degree to take.  OK?”

Serena twirled her crayon in her fingers as she eyed the picture she’d been working on.  “I think the worst form of execution would be being burned at the stake,” she told Alex, “And the second worst would be being boiled alive in hot oil, like Henry the Eighth did to all those monks.”

Alex nodded.  That didn’t surprise him.  A few Christmases ago, Serena had burned her arm quite badly after catching her sleeve on a candle, and she’d been terrified of fire for months afterwards.  Not that that was the only possible reason for somebody to be afraid of burning at the stake, of course, but it would certainly influence your opinion.

Mum cleared her throat.  “Your dad and I want to go to the hotel bar for a bit this evening.  Will you be alright in the room on your own?”

“101 Dalmatians is on,” Dad added, “The new one, I mean.”

Roxanne looked at Alex and the younger two.  “Yeah, that’ll be OK.”

“Good.”  Dad laughed.  “You keep your eye on them, Roxanne.”

Mum suddenly grimaced.  “Just as long as they don’t…”

“Oh, that’s not on ‘til later.”

To nobody’s surprise, Marley and Serena looked up, intrigued.  Discussing it in front of them hadn’t been one of Mum and Dad’s wiser moments.  Alex didn’t know what it was that they didn’t want them to watch, but he did know that he and Roxanne were going to have to keep a close eye on the TV remotes later.  Young kids could move pretty fast.

*

“I wish dogs lived forever,” said Marley as the ending credits rolled.

Alex nodded.  Their dog, Ace, was thirteen years old.  They’d got him the year before Marley was born.  These days, every time they dropped him off at the kennels, they worried that they wouldn’t see him again.

Serena was on her stomach on one of the beds, drawing something in her big refill pad.  Alex looked over, and saw that it was a scene from the movie- a group of raccoons and other wild animals breaking into the villains’ truck and using it to chase them.  “That’s really good, Serena.”

She grinned.  “It’s OK.  I wish I could make it look more realistic.”  Of the four of them, Serena was the odd one out, in terms of looks, anyway.  While the rest of them had dark hair and stocky builds, Serena was tiny, freckled and blonde.  Well, you know how Mum had that affair with that pixie? Roxanne had said once, with a rare grin.

“King of the Hill’s on next,” said Roxanne, nodding towards the TV screen, “What do you think?”

Alex thought about it.  “Should be OK.  It’s a cartoon- it can’t be that bad.”

“I can tell you’ve never seen Fritz the Cat.”

Alex, who was pretty sure Roxanne hadn’t seen it either, smiled.  “It’ll be fine.  There won’t be anything a ten-year-old can’t handle.”  He patted Serena’s shoulder.  “Especially a bloodthirsty ten-year-old like this one.”

*

The next morning, they toured the shops and the market stalls.  Alex, who had some money from his Saturday job and was in a generous mood, bought a cowboy hat for Marley, the new issue of Quiz Kids for Serena, and a bag of iced donuts for all three of them.

“They never look as nice in real life as they do on The Simpsons,” grumbled Marley as he examined the one in his hand.

“It’s not what they look like, Marley- it’s how they taste.”  Alex took another donut out of the bag for himself.  “And I think we can both agree that fictional donuts don’t taste of anything.”

Marley shrugged his agreement and polished it off, licking the icing off his fingers as he finished.

Occasionally, Mum and Roxanne’s voices drifted over to them from a few yards back.  They sounded like they were arguing about something.  “Serena,” said Alex, “I forgot to tell you before- there’s a Roman wall somewhere in Chester.”

“Really?”

“Mm.  I bet if we asked around, we could find it.”

“You know, the Romans were great, but I’d have definitely been on the Ancient Britons’ side,” said Serena, looking around for any signs that might point the way to the wall, “For one thing, their women had more rights.  And for another thing, they had druids.”

Alex fished the map out of his pocket so he could check to see whether the wall was nearby.  “Well, there you go.  I’ve got to admit, the druids were interesting people.”

“And they got to live underground, in mounds.”

“I’m pretty sure they only got buried in mounds after they died.”

“No, they lived underground.  It was great.”

Alex chuckled.  “The Roman wall’s about half a mile that way,” he told her, “Let’s go.”

*

Back at the hotel, they ordered room service, and room service turned out to include enormous slices of cheesecake with black cherries on top.  “We’re living like kings, here,” declared Marley.

“Couldn’t agree more,” said Alex.  The three of them were sat in a rough triangle around the table they’d put their plates on- Alex sitting on his bed, Marley on the desk chair, and Serena on the floor, more interested in her refill pad than in the food.

“If I was going to write a great novel,” she asked her brothers, “what should it be about?”

“Ancient Romans and their many methods of killing people,” said Alex.

“A guy who invents a pill that makes you glow in the dark,” countered Marley.

Serena nodded, taking both ideas into account.

Mum’s voice had, up to now, been a series of frustrated grunts muffled by the adjoining wall, but now she raised her voice loud enough for them to hear individual words.  “Your school’s offering a first-class Economics course, one that could get you into any university in the country, but no!  You read a picture book about vets when you were three, and that’s all you want to do!”

“You know you can get into university with a Biology A-level too, right?”

“Fine.  You know what?  Fine.  Ignore me!  Reject all my suggestions out of hand!”

“Look, Mum…”

“No!  I’m not even here, am I?  I don’t matter!”

Alex heard those last few words a lot clearer, because the door swung open for Roxanne to storm out.  Before it slammed shut behind her, Alex heard the beginnings of a sob.

Alex thought about saying something to his sister, then decided against it.  Instead, he just moved aside so that she could get to her share of the food.

*

Their dad was due to meet them upstairs as soon as he finished work, so everyone made sure to get showered and changed for dinner before it got too late in the evening.  By five-thirty, there wasn’t really anything to do but sit around and wait for him to arrive.

Roxanne, who’d calmed down a bit from earlier, was listening to Serena talk about the epic novel that she was going to dedicate the next ten years of her life to writing.  “Authors don’t make much money, though,” said Roxanne, “You’d have to get another job as well.”

“Nope,” said Serena, still writing in her pad.

“You’ll be a starving artist.”

“Yep.  Suffering feeds my art.”

Roxanne burst out laughing.

Alex heard the sound of keys in the door, and was on his feet before their father even got into the room.  “How was work?” he asked, sounding annoyingly chirpy even to his own ears.

Dad chuckled.  “Don’t ask.  Let’s just say I’ve never been more ready for a good meal.”  He looked around the room.  “Where’s your mother?”

 “She’s still in the shower,” said Marley, nodding towards the bathroom, and Alex went cold.

He hadn’t seen Mum since they’d got back to the hotel.  First she’d been in her and Dad’s room, arguing with Roxanne,  and then she’d stayed in there, waiting for an apology that was never going to come, until everybody else had finished in the bathroom and she’d gone in there herself, locking the door behind her.  How long ago had that been?  He wanted to believe that it had only been half an hour, maybe forty minutes at most, but the more he thought about it, the surer he was that it had been closer to an hour.

“Well, I’m going to need one before we go out,” said Dad.  He went up to the bathroom door and gently knocked.  “Julie?”

There was no answer.  Alex could hear the water flowing in there, but nothing else.  Wouldn’t it have gone cold by now?  How long was Mum going to put up with that?

Dad knocked a little harder.  “Julie?”

Roxanne’s head shot up.  From the look on her face, wide-eyed and sickly, she’d thought the same thing.

Dad turned to Alex.  “How long’s she been in there?”

“I don’t know.”  His mouth had gone dry.  It was getting harder and harder to breathe properly.

He didn’t need to say anything else.  Dad knew everything, just by looking at his face.  He knocked one last time.  “Julie?  I’m coming in!”

Alex watched him fiddle with the lock, and knew it wouldn’t work.  He knew, before it happened, that Dad would have to ram the door with his shoulder, breaking the lock after a few tries, but probably not before he hurt himself as well.  And he knew what they’d see once the door was open.  He knew the shower would still be running.  He knew there’d be blood on the walls.

He knew, minutes before it all happened, that none of them would ever be the same again.

(From the StarrComix forum)

Kool-Ade                                                                      Saturday 11^th of March 2006

14:00 GMT

I’ve decided that what I really need is a warning label, like you get on cigarette packs.  Maybe then people would stop trying to mess with me and winning themselves a free trip to A&E.

Tom Dockin                                Saturday 11^th March 2006                                                                                                                                                                            14:02 GMT

Lol, yeah.  People like that are why McDonalds has to put “Warning- Boiling Water Is Hot” on their coffee cups.

HungryHungryHippo           Sunday 12^th March 2006

08:00 GMT

Nah, why bother to warn them?  Let them find out first-hand what happens when a sheep instigates a wolf.

Tom Dockin   Sunday 12^th March 2006

08:03 GMT

LOL, walking Darwin Awards.

*

(Excerpt from “Letting Shakespeare lead the way- an interview with Josette Lambton”, Mail on Sunday, 12^th March 2006)

At seventy years old, Josette Lambton is still chic as ever in a pink Armani suit topped off with a white hat.  “At my last party, I personally designed the outfits for each guest,” she tells me, “You can’t leave such things to chance.”  Lambton, who describes herself as “a great believer in the great British thank-you note,” considers it her duty to instil a sense of decorum and chivalry in the younger set.

Once the belle of London society, Josette Lambton now prefers to hold court in her Sussex estate, a quaint, beautifully maintained old house in the Elizabethan style.  “My son keeps trying to persuade me to move back to London,” she laughs, “Over my dead body!”

Later on, however, there is an unguarded moment in which Josette admits to me that her life here has its fair share of loneliness.  “One is often neglected and left to a cold world that keeps managing to her colder and more aloof and petty.”   Ask her how she feels about her daughter Octavia, and her face falls into a scowl.  “I don’t speak to her.  I don’t want to hear from her.  She has no gratitude for anything I or the rest of the family have done for her.  She has no job, no talent, and no morals.  All she knows how to do is leech off other people.”

Her relationship with son Jonathan, curator of the theatre founded by his late father, is far more congenial…

*

Written on the underside of a table in the Railway Café, Sutton:

Every country needs a healthy distrust of its elected officials- Kelpie and Silkie

Written on page 35 of Medieval Lifestyle, a textbook given out to Year Seven History classes at New Malden High School:

Ego non tu Latinum scio- Kelpie and Silkie.

Written on a discarded order form in Argos, Wimbledon Broadway:

DANCE FOR ME, CLOWN! – Kelpie and Silkie

*

(From the StarrComix forum)

KoolAde                                                  Friday 17^th March 2006                                                                                                                                                                            15:33 GMT

Tom Dockin:  What many don’t realise is, people are fucking insane as a baseline.  Put anyone in the wild, and they become an animal.

Lol yeah- and some of those animals are fucking PARASITES.  Can’t imagine half the losers at work surviving without their parents paying the rent.

Tom Dockin  Friday 17th March 2006

15:35 GMT

Haha.  Big surprise for them if they ever came up against something they couldn’t use Daddy’s credit card against.