Judith’s flat reminded Isaac of a doll’s house.  Partly because it was so tiny, but also because of all the disconcertingly cute furniture and decorations stuffed into the space.  The wallpaper had a cherry pattern at the top.  The lampshades all had fringes.  The carpet was fluffy and rose-coloured.  It just wasn’t natural.

“Alright,” said Judith, perching on one of the (beige, flower-patterned) armchairs and propping up a refill pad on her knees, “What information do we have so far?”  She looked like an intrepid reporter in a black-and-white film.

“Ben Sugar said it was in the woods around Croydon,” said Isaac, who was trying to look alert and not sink backwards into the sofa.  It felt as if it was trying to absorb him.

“Ben Sugar,” repeated Judith, flicking her pen up and down the page, “Would it be worth getting in touch with him again?”

Isaac shrugged.  “I doubt it.  He said he couldn’t remember anything else.”

“Well, let’s put him down anyway…  What about others from his class that year?  They might not have worked at Fabric City, but if he heard something, they might have, too.”

“I guess.”  Isaac thought.  “It was the Linguistics class.  1996, I think.”

“And then there’s the boys he mentioned.  The ones who worked at the shop next door…  What did he say?  Andrew or Anthony?”

“I think so.  But if we wanted to get in touch with them, we’d have to work out what shop it actually was first.”

Judith held her pen sideways and waved it from side to side.  “Who was the other student who worked at Fabric City?  Besides Ben Sugar?”

“Kimberley Peacock.  But she never answered her phone.”

“Might be worth trying to find another way to get in touch with her.”  She thought for a moment, then put her pad and pen to one side and stood up.  “I’ll fetch my laptop.  It can’t be too common a name.”

Isaac leaned back into the sofa, breathed in the faint, fruity smell of the living room, and briefly thought about the witch’s house in ‘Hansel and Gretel.’  What were the chances of this actually working?  What were he chances of Kelpie and Silkie’s name being anything other than mud, no matter what they did?  Even if there was a full expose about what the Oakmen did and how none of it were his or Rosalyn’s fault, there would always be people who, years from now, just vaguely remembered that Kelpie and Silkie had been attached to something dodgy and would self-righteously turn up their nose every time it was mentioned. 

If this doesn’t work out, then I had my face blown to bits for nothing.

“Here we go!” said a voice at his ear, “Kimberley Peacock, Managing Consultant.  She even lists Berrylands University in her bio, see?”

Isaac leaned forward to look at the laptop screen, and Judith nudged it sideways so that he could see it better.  There was a photograph of a woman with a beige suit and the kind of layered haircut that looked as if it could be used as a weapon.  New world- new thinking, said the caption next to her photo (which Isaac was pretty sure she’d ripped off from a Fruit Shoot ad).  “Great!  Is there an email address?”

“Right there,” said Judith, pointing out a link further down the page, “Shall we send her a message?”

*

The only reason Debbie had gone to this particular newsagent was that apparently Shaun really, really needed this one specific chocolate bar that they didn’t sell anywhere else.  She could have told him to go and get it himself, if it was that important to him, but then he would have just done what he’d done last time, which was to drop mile-wide hints about how Maya (just Maya, not him, obviously) thought she was selfish.  All told, it was easier just to get it over with.

Debbie had just finished paying for the chocolate bar (along with the milk and bread that she’d been planning to buy at the shop near their house before Shaun had made his request), when she heard a little voice behind her.  “Debbie, right?”

St first, Debbie couldn’t place her, the girl behind her in the queue.  She was a little squirt with red hair and big eyes, probably one of the students who hung around this part of town.

“It’s Rosalyn, remember?” said the girl, “Alex’s friend.”

Oh.  One of that lot.

Debbie wanted to turn her back on her and storm out of the newsagent’s.  She only held herself back from doing that because she didn’t know for sure that Rosalyn had been the one who’d talked to the police about Jo.  Even if she hadn’t, though, her friends definitely had.  If you laid down with dogs…

“I’m the one who used to write that article about Kelpie and Silkie,” said Rosalyn, furrowing her little pink brow, “There’s a bunch of new graffitit up around the university.  Do you know anything about it?”

Debbie swallowed.  “A better question is, did you know that Alex told Jo’s parents where to find her?  Because it’s a bit rich playing innocent when you’ve done something like that.”  Her heart felt tight in her chest, going at a hundred miles an hour.

“They just saw that she was fifteen when she went missing,” said Rosalyn.  She was still frowning, but she hadn’t raised her voice.  Neither had Debbie- even if this wasn’t her local newsagent, she still didn’t fancy being chucked out and banned.  “They wanted to check she wasn’t in danger.  I mean, after what happened to Denny…”

“God, you’re naïve.  Of course they were going to tell her parents- what else did you expect them to do?”  Debbie wanted to wipe that sulky look off the girl’s face.  Didn’t she have any shame?  “And what about Denny?  I’ve never met him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”  Denny had left a few months before she’d joined.  The others didn’t talk about him much.

“Well, he was only seventeen when he met Pinder… Shaun, I mean.  And Shaun really got into his head.”

“Says Alex,” Debbie reminded her.

“Says Denny.  Shaun made him think he’d done horrible things, and…”

“And how do you know he didn’t?  You weren’t there, were you?”

Rosalyn lowered her voice.  “He told him he’d killed people!”

“You can’t just convince people they’ve done something when they haven’t!” snapped Debbie.  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she checked herself, and looked around guiltily to make sure she hadn’t yelled.  A couple of the other customers had turned to look at them, but they didn’t seem too outraged.

Rosalyn had taken a step back.  By now, her frown had faded away.  “So… do you know anything about the graffiti?”

Debbie didn’t lie if she could help it.  “I know you’re naïve as hell, and your friends are fucking abhorrent.”  She turned around and left the shop.

*

Normally it annoyed Adrian when the girls argued at work, but today he was kind of amused.

“They’re vile and disgusting,” said Claire over her shoulder as she dealt with the till, “End of.  I don’t care what her excuse is.”

“She didn’t write any of those messages, Claire!” said Mariam.

“No.”  Claire’s lips were squeezed together in a smug smirk.  “She was just promoting them.”

Adrian just had to laugh.  Honestly, he worked with a bunch of deluded children.

Yeah, it was good to see Mariam brought down a peg or two (should have cleaned her own house before judging other people), but compared to what was going to happen to her, this was a day at Disneyland.  People didn’t realise that Adrian was actually a really nice person, right up until you pushed him too far.  That was when the big guns came out.

“She didn’t know…” began Mariam.

Robin cut in.  “If she’d just reported the graffiti in the first place, she’d have nothing to worry about.  She can’t disregard the law one moment and expect it to protect her the next.”

“Come on, guys,” mumbled Wayne, for the fourth or fifth time.  Once again, everyone ignore him, but he probably thought he was being helpful.

Adrian was one of the few who understood how the world really worked.  Just a few nudges in the right place could change everything.  Take him to a military base, and he could destabilise the whole world.

And rewire the back of the microwave in the kitchen, and he could destabilise Mariam’s whole world.

Some guy on the StarrComix forum had pointed him in the right direction.  There were ways of rigging up any electronic device so that it would give a fatal electric shock.  Adrian had checked the rota- Mariam was on kitchen duty for two hours tomorrow.  So he’d just have to visit the kitchen ten minutes before she started.

Adrian had a zero-tolerance policy for stupidity.  If Mariam was going to talk shit, then she was going to take the consequences.

*

Things were heating up with Adrian.  The new Kelpie and Silkie messages had gone down a treat.  With a little digging, Shaun had managed to find a guy named Johnny Sandbrook, who’d been to school with Natalie Clements and said he could tell the Oakmen some stories.  That was three fronts they were attacking on.  But Shaun had always liked to hedge his bets. 

The next pressure point was the neighbours.  Alex and co had been seen running out of a house across the road a few weeks ago, apparently after some kind of row.  It hadn’t taken long for Shaun to dig up some information about the neighbours in question.  Russel and Tamsin Doggett.  A washed-up TV gameshow host and his child bride.  This was going to be fun.

“Me and my dad used to watch it on Thursday nights,” he told Russel, his eyes wide with starstruck awe, “It was our time to spend together.  I cherish those memories now, you know?”  (In actuality, Shaun’s dad was into Six Feet Under and The West Wing, and probably hadn’t watched a gameshow in years.  But Russel and Tamsin didn’t have to know that.)

Russel preened like a peacock.  It was amazing- he’d barely been famous in the first place, it had been at least twenty years since anyone had even thought of him, but you could tell by his face that he expected to find hordes of adoring fans around every corner.

“Aww,” said Mrs Doggett, leaning forward so that Shaun could get a better look at her chest.  Russel’s living room was a lot like his wife- colourful, shiny and plastic.  The smell in the air told Shaun that neither of them bothered to clean up properly after they spilled something.  Sour wine and spoiled milk, just under Mrs Doggett’s perfume.

Shaun lowered his voice.  “When I heard it was you who had that run-in with Alex Rudd and his mates a few weeks ago…  Well, I felt I had to come over.” 

Russel raised his eyebrows.  “What do you know about Alex and his mates?”

“I’m at university with them.  They’re…”  Shaun paused, averted his gaze, then looked Russel straight in the eye again.  “I wasn’t surprised when I heard they’d threatened you.”  (That ought to work.  Guys like Russel saw everything as a threat.)  “Look, I don’t want to stick my nose in where it’s not wanted.  I just wanted to warn you to be careful.”  He glanced over at Mrs Doggett, who was twirling her hair around a finger.  It looked like tatty old wool being pulled off a sheep.  “It’s Isaac you’ve really got to worry about.  He’s vindictive.  You know he got one of our lecturers sacked last year?”

“Blimey,” said Russel.

Shaun nodded.  “One morning he was just gone.  His office was locked up and none of the other lecturers would tell us why.  I didn’t know what had happened until I heard Isaac laughing about it in the pub afterwards.”

Russel folded his arms.  They looked like furry slabs of meat.  “What did he do- accuse him of feeling him up or something?”

“Exactly.  I think he just liked accusing people.  He gets a rush out of it, turning on the waterworks and making everyone do what he says.”  Shaun folded his arms, mirroring Russel.  “And obviously Natalie backs him up every time.”

“She’s into him, is she?”

“I don’t know.  She might be.  But I think it’s more that she gets a kick out of it too.  I mean, just look at her own behaviour.”  He gave Mrs Doggett a sideways glance.  “She likes to steal other women’s men.  It makes her feel powerful.”

Mrs Doggett stopped pouting just long enough to smirk instead.  “So, you’re saying that Natalie’s going to try and steal Russ from me?”

“I’m saying it’s a possibility,” said Shaun smoothly.

“Which one’s Natalie?” asked Russel, “The one with all the hair?”  He broke into a wide grin.  “Well, I wouldn’t say no…”

Mrs Doggett elbowed him in the side, and they both laughed their heads off.

Shaun was beginning to feel concerned.  “They’re such violent people.  Manipulative.  Trust me, you don’t want them around you or your son.”

Russel was still grinning.  “Let me ask you a question.  Were you one of the guys hanging around outside a few Fridays ago?”

Shaun froze.  Bradley…  “I don’t know what you’re…”

“Now I wonder why a guy like that would want people to think that Isaac made false accusations.”  Russel was tensed up like a lion getting ready to pounce.  “I wonder why?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that!” snapped Shaun… then cursed himself for no holding his tongue.  Now Russel knew there was a “that” to talk about.

Mrs Doggett’s perfectly glossed upper lip curled in a sneer.  “What did they ever do to you, that you’d spread lies about them like that?”

“It’s not what they’ve done to me you ought to…”

“And Natalie likes to steal other women’s men?”  She laughed.  “What did she do, turn you down in front of your mates?”

Of course she’d jumped to that conclusion.  She had that sort of mind.  “I was trying to help you!  But if you don’t want that, fine!”  Shaun got up from the sofa.  “Good luck dealing with them!”

“Don’t talk to my wife like that!” roared Russel.

“Hope they don’t burn your house down next time!”  Shaun turned round to leave… which was a big mistake, because it meant he didn’t see Russel picking up one of the ornaments on the mantelpiece and throwing it at him.  The thing whizzed past Shaun’s ear and exploded against the wall, and that was when Russel gave chase.

Shaun managed to get out of the house, but before he could get to the end of the garden path, Russel slammed into him and pushed him back up against the wall.

There were shouts from other people in the street, but Russel didn’t seem to care.  The first punch shattered Shaun’s nose, the second his front teeth, and by the end of it his face felt as if it had been completely obliterated.

(Part 1 of April 2006 coming soon.)

(CONTENT WARNING: Unpleasantness from the get-go.)

*

(On the back wall of a building across the road from the university)

Don’t fall for the diversity deception- kill the parasites.

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

(A poster on the wall of the Student Union)

We the undersigned demand that the university make a statement condemning the recent “Kelpie and Silkie” graffiti found in and around the campus.

These messages express disgusting anti-disability ideas.  As well as making disabled students feel unsafe, they are in direct contrast to everything the university stands for.

We call upon the Berrylands administration to prove that they genuinely care about the needs of their students and stand with us against this hate.

*

(On a cubicle wall in the women’s toilets near the front entrance)

Feeling suicidal?  Just Do It ©

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

“I know you didn’t have anything to do with those messages, Rosalyn, but given the current climate…  I mean, I always liked your article.  I’ll be sorry to see it go.  But, you know, needs must.  My hands are tied.”

*

(On the back of a chair at the Lion and the Unicorn)

Darwin wants you gone!

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

“It was the fucking Oakmen.  You know it and I know it.”

“Mariam…”

“They found the one perfect way to hurt Peps, and they just went for it!”

“It… it could have been somebody who’d read her articles and wanted to cause trouble.”

“We should never have started digging.  We should have just been satisfied with them leaving us alone.”

“They…  I don’t think they would have.  Pinder gets fixated on things.  Groups like the Oakmen work best when they have a target.”

“Well, they’ve got one now!”

“Mariam, none of this is your fault.  We could make a case for my fault, but not yours.”

“Yeah?  You were the one who wanted to lie low in Brighton.  I was the one who went poking about on the internet.”

“Laying low in Brighton wasn’t getting us anywhere.  We’ve agreed on that.”

“I didn’t want to get us anywhere!  Not if ‘anywhere’ means that Peps gets posters condemning her in the Student Union!”

“It wasn’t condemning her.  People know she wasn’t the one who…”

“Do they?  Do they, though?  You really think people are smart enough to make that distinction?”

“I…  I think we ought to talk to Rosalyn.”

“Grovel on our knees to Rosalyn, more like.”

“She’s the one being affected, so she’s the one in charge of deciding what to do next.”

“I…  Fine.  If she says drop it, we drop it.”

“Exactly.”

*

It was a nice enough day for Denny and Rosalyn to sit out in the garden.  Octavia had poured them some lemonade and then made herself scarce.  (Denny never knew in advance how much time Octavia was going to spend at the house.  Sometimes it seemed as if she could disappear at will.)  It had taken a few minutes to get Rosalyn to talk about what was bothering her, but eventually- sluggishly, bit-by-bit, almost apologetic- she told him about the messages.

“I mean, I know it’s just someone trying to cause trouble,” she said, “I got that as soon as I calmed down.  They’re new messages- it’s not like they’ve been there this whole time and I never noticed.”  She looked down at the table, fiddling with the straw.  “But it’s like the universe wanted to slap me in the face with what a bad idea it was to get emotionally invested in some anonymous graffiti.”

“It’s not the universe,” said Denny, “It was just some guys causing trouble, like you said.”  Rosalyn had said that Alex and her other flatmates thought it might have been the Oakmen, trying to intimidate everyone, but she thought it might just have been somebody who’d read her articles and seen an opportunity to upset someone they didn’t know.  “It’s not your fault for finding something interesting.”

“I guess.”  Rosalyn chewed on her thumbnail.  “It just gets to me.  I don’t want them thinking of Kelpie and Silkie like that.”  She paused.  “And I don’t want to worry that everyone I meet secretly thinks I hate disabled people.  So there’s that.”

“They won’t,” Denny reassured her.  He was very aware that he wasn’t much use in this conversation.  All he could do was repeat things that she’d probably heard before from people who’d put it a lot better.  All he could do was act as an echo.

Rosalyn smiled.  “You know what Natalie told me?  She said that if the Oakmen were going after me, then I must have done something right, because it meant they saw me as a threat.”  Rosalyn looked down at herself, and back at Denny.  He took her point.  It was hard to imagine anyone being threatened by someone like her.  “And she seriously thinks that’s a good thing.”

Rosalyn wasn’t threatening.  Rosalyn was small and trusting and she liked people, and Denny was scared that if he had one of his blackouts around her, she wouldn’t stand a trust.

“Yeah,” said Denny, “Being a threat definitely isn’t a good thing.”

*

It took Isaac two days to get through to Judith.  He’d probably have had better luck if he’d actually thought through the times she was most likely to be available instead of just punching in her number at random moments in the day, but Isaac wasn’t in any state to think things through this week.  It seemed like every twenty seconds, his train of thought would be derailed and he’d be stuck thinking about how unfair it was.  The Oakmen (Alex was saying that they didn’t know it was the Oakmen, but yeah, the Oakmen) had taken Kelpie and Silkie- their thing, his and Rosalyn’s thing- and used it to punish them for not letting them into their heads.  Every thought just led back to that, which just led to stewing in your own bile until you wanted to scream.

So when Judith finally answered the phone, all he could get out at first was, “There’s something up with Rosalyn.”

It turned out that Judith hadn’t seen the messages (probably because the Oakmen had focused mainly on the university and the area around it).  “Poor Rosalyn.”  She sounded as if the news had knocked the breath out of her.  “That must…  It must really have affected her.  I know she’d never have wanted…  That’s the last thing she’d sign her name to.”

“I’ve got a plan,” said Isaac.  It was one of the few thoughts that had managed to stick, and Isaac had no idea whether or not it was any good, but it was all he had.  “We need to pull out all the stops and find the original message.  The one Ben Sugar told me about.  If people know where it came from, then they’ll know it’s not about what the Oakmen are making it about.”  He was probably talking complete nonsense.

Judith took a deep breath.  “I think that’s a good idea.”

Isaac blinked.  He wasn’t prepared for that.

“After all, there’s a finite amount of woodland around London, isn’t there?  It isn’t as though we’re dealing with the Amazon rainforest.  We should be able to narrow it down.”

“Right,” said Isaac.

“We can meet up sometime this week, if you like.  Pool our resources, write down all the information we have, that sort of thing.”

Isaac swallowed, and got his voice back.  “Sounds like a plan.  Wednesday?”

*

Josette had wanted to write a memoir- had, in fact, started one time and time again- but apparently nobody read books anymore.  It was a wrench, having to pander to illiterate electronic hordes, but she had no choice.  To stay relevant, one had to move with the times, no matter how distasteful.

Natalie, the girl Jonathan had found for her, was bent over a box in the attic where Josette kept some of her old papers.  Magazine articles, society pages, and gossip columns.  She said she was going to collect as many as she could, and scan them into her laptop, then use them to create Josette-Lambton-dot-com, or whatever it was eventually called.  It felt so sordid, but maybe Jonathan was right.  Maybe a website did increase the likelihood of some young person coming across Josette’s pictures and being inspired.  There was always hope.

“Is this you?” asked Natalie, holding up a sheet of paper, ragged around the edges from having been cut out of a magazine long ago.  A Christian Dior advert- Josette had worn ten thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds on her neck and wrists.

“Yes,” said Josette, “1956.  I was twenty.”  Natalie, Josette recalled, was a year younger than that, but already the rot had set in.  In the photograph, Josette was youthful, fresh and elegant- clad in a silk evening gown, her waist cinched in to a tight eighteen inches, and a look of regal sophistication on her face.  In contrast, Natalie was a mess.  Her hair hung in tatters and tangles around her shoulders.  Not a speck of makeup on those tired bags under her eyes.  And Josette doubted that Natalie even owned an evening gown.  More likely, her idea of dressing for dinner was an outfit that would show off her thong to its best advantage.

It was a shame.  Josette had always believed in a woman’s duty to be beautiful.  All it took was a little discipline- but discipline, of course, was out of fashion at the moment.

“How about this one?” asked Natalie, holding up a newspaper cutting, “It’s smaller than the others, but…”

“Absolutely not,” snapped Josette, as soon as she saw which one it was.  That godforsaken party, six months after Bobby’s death.  The photograph showed Josette in the centre, desperately feigning a smile, flanked by Jonathan and Octavia, as she should have been.  But there was an extra person there, someone who should never have been invited in the first place.  “I’d like it burnt, if anything.”

“How come?” asked Natalie.

Josette hesitated.  How much should she share?  Could she possibly make Natalie understand the shame of it all?  It had been an official event, after all.   Their family had been representing the theatre to its patrons.  Her father’s legacy on the line, and Octavia had dragged that creature in just to rile everybody up.  She might as well have spat on his grave.  “There were people at that party I would rather not have invited,” Josette told Natalie, “The event was supposed to be a sort of memorial to Jonathan and Octavia’s father, and it was turned into a mockery.”  Octavia hadn’t done it out of charity- no friendship had ever existed between the two girls.  She’d done it to shock and get attention.  Josette could have slapped her.

Natalie was still examining it, reading the names in the caption.  “Is Niamh Denny’s mum?”

“Don’t talk to me about that boy,” said Josette.

If Natalie had continued to press the issue, Josette would certainly have had some sharp words for her… but, wisely, she didn’t.  She put the accursed clipping to one side and continued to look through the box.

They were coming to the clippings from the society pages, Josette noticed.  She’d enjoy looking through them.  Perhaps Natalie would, too.  Perhaps she would learn something, comparing the pages of the past to those of today.  Perhaps Natalie, like Josette, would find herself saddened by the fact that newspapers no longer discussed people of quality and significance, preferring flash-in-the-pan pop stars and women famous for their breast implants.  But all that remained to be seen.

(Being a glimpse into the future of one particular supporting character.)

(CONTENT WARNING: Ableism. And terrible parents.)

*

April 2019

Wendy’s mum had written a book.  There had been a kind of mini-book-launch down at the centre in town yesterday, but that had been during the day, and Wendy had had school.  So this was the first chance Wendy had had to read it.

She crouched beside the bookshelf in the dining room, and held it out in front of her, looking over the cover in order to put off actually opening the thing.  It was a chunky hardback in baby-blue, with a picture of a teddy bear and a pile of letter-blocks on the front, designed to look as if someone had thrown them around and made a mess.  The front cover said, “Sally Pepper- Developmental Issues.”  The back cover said, “In this touching memoir, Sally tells how, through love, faith and humour, she learned to love her daughter for who she is.”

Wendy had deliberately waited until the rest of her family was either out or doing something elsewhere in the house.  She couldn’t have stood them watching her read it, hungry looks on their faces as they eagerly waited for a reaction.  Wendy was alone in the dining room, with the table between her and the door, when she finally plucked up the courage to open the book and read it.

It was like knives in her stomach and worms in her brain.  Wendy flicked through, reading odd paragraphs, and felt the world go dark around her.

One chapter was called ‘The Epic Zoo Tantrum.’  It told the story of Wendy throwing such a screaming fit in the reptile house that they’d all nearly been banned from the zoo.  People around them had been disgusted.  Wendy’s younger brothers had been disappointed at having their day ruined.  And Wendy’s mother had once again questioned how she was going to cope.

(Wendy remembered her mounting terror as she’d asked her mum over and over if she could stay outside while they went in to see the snakes, and her mum pulling her by the wrist and hissing at her not to embarrass them.)

One of the later pages said, “Now that Wendy’s a teenager, I find I’m worrying more and more about boys and sex.  Sometimes I wonder if the best thing would be to book her in for a hysterectomy.  It sounds terrible, but I can’t bear the thought of her passing it onto my grandchildren.”

(There were a couple of boys Wendy liked at school, but nothing serious.  She thought about her friends and the other people in her class getting hold of this book, and felt sick.)

Towards the end, there was a bit where Wendy’s mum had parked at the top of the multi-storey car park in town, and seriously considered picking her up and jumping over the rail, putting them both out of their misery.  This would have been when Wendy was about eleven or twelve.  Her mum had pulled herself back from the brink for the sake of Wendy’s brothers.  Apparently this was the low point of the book, because the subsequent chapters were all about her getting help and support from other parents who knew what it was like to deal with a horrible child like Wendy.

The floorboards creaked.  Wendy looked up and saw her mum standing at the door.  “You’re reading it!” she said, sounding touched.

Wendy said nothing.  She felt like she did at the dentist, when they numbed her mouth before putting in fillings.

“I hoped you would,” said Mum, “I think it’s good for you to see how far we’ve come.”  She smiled warmly.  “You know I’ve always valued honesty more than anything.”

Autumn 2003

Alex was never put on Guy Fawkes duty- they’d worked out early on that he wasn’t chemically-minded- so he didn’t know what had gone wrong with this particular bomb.  Maybe it was something to do with the way the wires were connected, or maybe there was too much of one ingredient and too little of another, but the only important thing was that it went off before Alex was a safe distance away and sent him hurtling across the car park.

It was just as well that they’d decided to put the explosives down outside the front window of PC World instead of trying to break in or- God forbid- putting them down during the day when there were customers around.  The last thing they wanted to do was hurt anybody.  “It’s not the people who are our enemies,” Pinder always said, “It’s the epidemic of mindlessness.  If they knew what was really going on, they’d thank us for blowing up their TVs and laptops.”  They were heirs to Thomas the Rhymer, poets and artists fighting against cultural degradation wherever they saw it.  Except that this time, the thing that had come off worst in the fight was Alex’s right leg.

The next thing he knew, they were doing ninety in Charity Stobart’s Ford Focus, and Pinder was screaming in his face.  “How could I have made myself more clear?  Put the bomb down, flip the switch, and then fucking get away!  Did you think these were toys?  Did you think this was a fucking game we were playing?”

If Alex had been in a position to think about anything besides the pain in his right thigh, he might have pointed out that the explosive had gone off less than ten seconds after he’d flipped the switch, and that three or four steps was, in fact, a reasonable amount of ground to have covered in that timeframe.  Instead, he just lay on the back seat, stared at the ceiling and tried to keep his leg still.

“If they find DNA evidence at the scene, that’s it, you understand?  The whole camp shut down.  Every single one of us carted off to prison, because of you.  I just hope you can live with that, because I know I couldn’t.”

“It wasn’t his fault!” said Jo, and Alex properly registered, for the first time since getting into the car, the fact that he was lying across her knees.  He felt as if he should apologise, but he was having too hard a time keeping his head together for that.  “You saw it!  The bomb went off before…”

“Don’t tell me what I did and didn’t see, understand?”

 “But it wasn’t…”

“Jo, listen.  Don’t.  Tell.  Me.  What I did and didn’t see.  Understand?”

There was more after that, but Alex didn’t catch most of it.  He just drifted in and out, wondering if it was worth the effort to remain conscious, and if it was even possible not to when his leg felt as if it was burning up from the inside.

He knew better than to ask to be taken to the hospital.  They’d ask how it had happened, and then they’d compare notes with the police.  The Oakmen were just going to have to do the best they could with what they had.  It was what they were used to doing anyway.

*

They got some ice on the burns, made a splint mostly out of yardsticks and duct tape, and put him in his bed.  And that’s where he stayed, day and night, staring up at the same ceiling and desperately trying to distract himself.  At least there were people around at night, but during the day, everyone was out on duty.  The only time Alex wasn’t alone with his own thoughts was when Denny visited.

Later, Alex found out that Denny wasn’t actually supposed to be there- he’d been on cleaning duty, but he’d snuck away when nobody was looking.  When Pinder found out about Denny’s visits, though, he didn’t put a stop to them.  “He might as well make himself useful somehow,” he told the others.

Denny usually brought Alex water, and sometimes food, too.  Sometimes he moved Alex to somebody else’s bed while he changed the sheets.  Sometimes, when Alex really needed him to, he’d help him hobble over to the portable toilets behind the cabins.  But the most important thing he did, as far as Alex was concerned, was tell stories.

Sometimes he’d read from an actual book, one of the battered old paperbacks from the shelves in the big cabin, but usually it was something out of Denny’s own head, something he’d heard, seen or experienced.  Alex laid there, eyes closed, and tried his best to concentrate on Denny’s voice instead of the spiky, splintering pain in his leg.  Just close his eyes and try to float away.

“Did you know I was still at boarding school when I met Pinder?  I snuck out with some of my friends, and…”

“The funny thing was, they really didn’t want us to leave the school grounds in the evenings.  Some of the form tutors would stand along the corridors near the front and back entrances just to try and catch us out.  But what we worked out was, if you acted like you were heading towards the library, and you walked as if you knew what you were doing, you could sort of slip under the radar…”

“The Rhymers were meeting in a café in town, once a week, and then one week, Pinder said it was alright if I didn’t go back.  And I had… there was some English coursework I hadn’t done.  Really!  That was what decided me!  So I went…”

Alex closed his eyes and floated away.

*

Now that Alex thought about it, it had been a long time since Pinder had talked about how insightful and wise beyond his years Denny was.  Lately, it seemed like all he did was make mistakes.

A couple of weeks ago (before the trip to PC World), Denny had said something at one of the morning meetings.  Something about the recycling bins on the corners of the streets in town.  Charity thought they were a great idea, but Pinder didn’t think they went far enough.  He said that the people in town would do the environment a lot more favours if they gave up their sports cars and designer clothes, and started growing their own food like the Oakmen did.  The recycling bins were just a sop to their conscience.

Denny had laughed and said, “Well, baby steps…”

Pinder had gone ballistic. The people in town were not babies, he’d explained to Denny.  They were adults who bore responsibility for their choices.  Did Denny think that the impending destruction of their planet was something to laugh at and shrug off?  Denny might feel he was insulated from any consequences, but there were other people who didn’t have a rich family and a trust fund to hide behind.  Denny had tried to reply, but Pinder had shouted him down at every turn.  “I don’t have time to explain basic human decency to you!” he shouted before leaving the cabin and slamming the door behind him.

Today, though, Denny had brought Alex some painkillers.  Actual, heavy-duty ones, the kind you usually needed a prescription for.  “Basic human decency,” nothing- Alex was just about ready to write to the Pope and have Denny declared a saint.

“How did you get these?” he asked, staring down at the cardboard boxes on the table.

Denny grinned.  Alex had never seen him smile so much- he’d rushed in, practically bouncing up and down with excitement, and yelled, “Check it out!”  He didn’t look as if he’d just staged a smash-and-grab raid on the local pharmacy, but Alex couldn’t rule it out.  “I talked to some guys in town.  They said they could help us.”

That should have alarmed Alex (How did Denny know he could trust these guys?  How did he know these pills were what they’d said they were?), but there wasn’t enough room in his head for that.  He’d been sitting in this sweat-stained bed and doing nothing but feel his leg ache and itch- even if these pills made his liver swell up and kill him, at least it would be a change.  Without even waiting for Denny to pour a glass of water, Alex popped open two of the capsules and swallowed the pills.

They didn’t take long to kick in, and for a while, Alex just… drifted.  Things were a lot lighter without the pain weighing him down.  A lot looser.

After a while -it could have been ten minutes or two hours- Denny asked Alex if he wanted to risk having a shower.  The shower block was about a hundred yards away from the cabin they were in, so they hadn’t even considered it until now.  “I don’t have to come into the stall with you, if you’re worried about that.  I can just turn the water on and wait outside, and you can do everything sat down.”

Alex nodded.  It felt as if he was moving through water instead of air.  “Why not?”

It was amazing how long a short walk could seem when you were limping and hopping, leaning on someone else’s shoulder and worrying that the next twig or stone on the ground would be the one to trip you up and knock you face-first into the mud.  Alex tried to imagine what the walk would have been like without the painkillers, and couldn’t.  He could just about deal with what was in front of him, but hypotheticals were too much for now.

They arrived at the shower block- a little red-brick cube behind a grove of trees- but when Denny tried the door, it was locked.  He tried it again, in case it was just stuck, and got the same result.

Denny looked sideways at Alex, who was still clinging to his shoulder like a baby koala, and grinned apologetically.  “No use turning back now,” he said, and knocked on the door.  “Hey!  Who’s in there!”

There was a moment or two of silence, then an echoing yell of, “What do you want?”  It took Alex a moment to recognise the voice as Pinder’s.

Denny winced.  “Sorry!  I just wanted to know how long you’re going to be?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“It’s just that Alex wanted…”

“I’ll be done when I’m done, alright?  Or am I not even allowed two minutes’ peace anymore?”

Denny looked down at the ground.  “OK.  I’m sorry.”

Pinder didn’t say anything else.  There was the sound of a door slamming inside the shower block, then nothing.

Denny said sorry to Alex, too, as he settled them both down on the ground to wait for a bit.  Alex felt as if he should say something, but he couldn’t think what.  He was tired from the walk down here, and he’d began to drift again.  It was a good feeling.  Light and loose.

When Denny finally nudged him awake, telling him the shower was free, Alex was alert enough to notice that the sky had got a little darker.  But he couldn’t think of anything to say about that, either.

*

Things got worse.  Alex’s leg swelled up until it no longer looked as if it belonged to the same body as the other one.  After a while, he could barely go an hour without throwing up into the basin at the side of the bed.  If Denny hadn’t been there, it would have just overflowed until it spilled out over the floorboards.

He’d suspected it for a while, but now he knew:  He might not get better outside a hospital, and Pinder would never let him go to one.

They’d moved him to the old supply cabin, so that everyone else could sleep at night.  Pinder was here, arguing over him with Denny, Virgil and Bradley.  Arguing over him in more ways than one- they were right at the foot of his bed.  Any closer, and he’d have worried they were about to start a full-on tug-of-war.

“We need to get him some antibiotics.”

“Yeah?  Where from?  Are they going to grow on trees?”

Denny piped up.  “I can talk to…”

Pinder pointed at the door.  “Go.  Just go. I can’t deal with your shit right now, on top of everything else.”

If Alex had had the energy, he’d have sat up and told Denny to stay.  He’d have explained to Pinder that Denny was the only thing preventing him from descending into panic these days, and that was more important than whatever trouble Pinder thought he was causing.  But Alex didn’t have the energy, so he just watched, feeling useless, as Denny slipped out of the door.

“Look,” said Virgil, “What if we break into a pharmacy…”

Pinder laughed in his face.  “You can’t be serious.”

Bradley sighed.  “Then the only other option is to take him to the hospital.”

“Fantastic, guys.  Brilliant.  Let’s take him to the hospital.  Let’s tell the authorities about everything we’ve done.  Let’s get ourselves arrested and ruin everything we’ve worked for.  Why not?”

“Look, Shaun…”

“No, go ahead!  It’s pretty clear you’ve got no respect for anything I’ve got to say.  Why not?”

Within seconds Pinder was gone, with Virgil and Bradley running after him to apologise.  Alex was alone again.

*

Later (he didn’t know how much later), Alex woke up and found himself in the dark.  Trapped alone in the pitch-black cabin that stank of sweat and vomit.  For all he knew, he was already dead.  For all he knew, this was what death was like- an eternity of darkness, dirt and pain, with no hope of anything different.

“Alex?  Are you awake?”

Oh, thank God.  It was Denny.  He’d come back.

He wanted to hug him.  He wanted to burst into tears.  He felt ridiculously tender and vulnerable, skinless, in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a little kid sniffling over a scraped knee or a lost toy.  Back then, the one thing that would always make the tears spill over had been Roxanne leaning down to look at him properly, with a worried, Alex, what’s wrong?

She’d seemed so much older than him, so wise and comforting, that it was strange to remember that she’d have only been six or seven at the time.  It was even stranger to think that he hadn’t seen her in three years.  He should never have let himself fall out of touch with her that easily.  He’d never deserved to have a sister like her.

Alex swallowed, pushing the tears back where they’d come from.  “Yeah.  I didn’t hear you come back in.”  Denny was sat beside his bed, in the plastic chair that looked as if it had been used for twenty years of school assemblies.  Alex wondered if he’d been planning to sleep there, or just sit up all night.

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t wake you.”  Denny shifted closer, scraping the chair across the floor.  “How are you feeling?”

“Better for having some company.”  In fact, Alex felt completely wretched, but at least he didn’t feel like throwing up right at this minute.  By the standards of the last few days, that was quite good.

They sat in silence for a little while, only just able to make out each others’ faces in the dark.  Then Denny said, “Do you want to hear about when I first started boarding school?”

“OK.”  Alex patted the side of the bed, and Denny moved so he was sitting next to him.

“When I was twelve, I went to live with my older brother, Jonathan.  And when I say ‘older,’ I mean, like, almost twenty years.  His mum was our dad’s first wife, and mine was his third.   Anyway, Jonathan decided to send me to Gradlon Boys, which was the same school he’d been to as a kid.  You know, family tradition.”  Denny almost stammered on that ‘f’ sound.  “First thing that happened when I got there was, the headmaster invited me to his office and told me what a good student Jonathan had been, and how they were expecting great things from me as his brother.  But I think he kind of knew, even then, that wasn’t going to happen.  There was just something in his face.

“There were just so many rules, you know?  They told you all of them on the first day, but there were too many to keep them all in your head at once.  So, you’d forget to flip your mattress first thing, and they’d give you detention.  And the next day, you’d remember about the mattress, but you’d forget that the older boys were supposed to go first in the breakfast queue.  And the next day, you’d remember that, but you’d forget that you weren’t supposed to talk in the study room.  And the trouble with that was, sometimes the teachers on duty would kind of turn a blind eye if the boys from their class talked, so you’d see them talking and forget that you weren’t supposed to.

“The worst thing was during showers, about two weeks in.  The other guys had been saying I took too long in there, saying I was just spending time on my skincare routine, asking if I needed a few extra minutes to get my makeup on.  You know.  But one day, some of the boys who got out before me hid my clothes and wouldn’t tell me where.  And I was really panicking because I had English in about ten minutes and the teacher was really strict, so I went to ask the Games teacher for help.  It didn’t work.  He just told me to stop being spoilt and babyish and fight my own battles.  So I was stuck in the changing room for ages after the others had left, trying to find my clothes.

“In the end, I found them stuffed behind the bin.  And the English teacher gave me two detentions for being late and looking scruffy.”  Denny laughed.  Alex couldn’t bring himself to join in.

*

“So, at the start of Year Nine- they called it ‘Third Form’ on all the official stuff, but everyone just said ‘Year Nine’ anyway- I made a decision.  I thought, everything bad that happened last year was because I got emotional about stuff, so this year, I wouldn’t have emotions about anything.  Like a robot.  No matter what happened, I’d say, ‘Who cares?’  If I got detention, if someone destroyed my stuff, if I got my head pushed underwater again- ‘Who cares?’

“It wasn’t that hard.  There wasn’t much I did care about then.  I didn’t really enjoy reading and drawing anymore, and it’s not like I missed my brother and sister.”

It was nearly dawn.  Alex had only thrown up once.  The rest of the time, he’d been listening to Denny’s stories.

“So, um, it worked.  The other boys lost interest in me and started picking on someone else.  A boy called Carling.  He was one of the scholarship kids, and he had really bad asthma, so, you know, kind of a soft target.  And one time I joined in making fun of him- he’d said something in French about not knowing that ‘s’il vous plait’ was three separate words, and I said, ‘Oh my God, Carling, you’ve learned French here for three years, and you actually think…’  You know.  Stuff like that.  And the other boys jumped on it and carried on making fun of him throughout the lesson.  He managed not to cry.  That was probably just as well, for him.”

Denny wasn’t laughing anymore.  He wasn’t even looking at Alex.  He was fidgeting with his fingers in his lap, and staring down at them.

“Later that day, I heard the French teacher say to one of the other teachers, ‘You know, I like Lambton a lot more this year.  He’s really grown up.’”  Denny took a deep breath.  “And then I realised that I could still feel things, and what I felt was that I completely hated myself.”

Alex sat up, careful not to jar his swollen leg, and put his arms around Denny’s shoulders.

*

Alex was still sweating, little beads forming on his skin as soon as he wiped away the old ones, but at least he’d managed to keep his food down so far today.  He’d allowed himself a little bit of hope.

At some point, Pinder came in.  Alex saw him open the door and walk across the cabin so he could sit by his bed.  Alex watched him in every step of his journey, and wondered where Denny was.  Had Pinder just waited for him to leave, or had he ordered him out again?

“I’m glad to see you’re doing better,” Pinder told him.

Alex mumbled his thanks.  He was still nervous of opening his mouth too wide, in case it gave his stomach ideas.

“I hope you understand about the antibiotics.”  Pinder reached out and took his hand (which, Alex knew, was probably unpleasantly damp.)  “It would have been a security breach.  There are so many people just waiting for us to show a chink in our armour…  We just couldn’t risk it.”

Alex made an agreeing noise.  Hopefully Pinder would leave in a moment, and he could go back to sleep.

“But I hope you realise we’re all rooting for you.  We’ve lost sleep with worry.”  Pinder clasped Alex’s hand between both of his.  “You can endure this.  You’re a Rhymer.  Thousands of years of history, running through your veins.  If anyone can get through this, its you.  For the Rhymers.”  Pinder gave Alex’s hand a shake.  “For your family.”

Alex thought, I should ask him now. If he gets angry, I can just blame it on being feverish.  “Pinder?”

“Yes?”  Pinder leaned in, wide-eyed.

“Why do you hate Denny so much?”

Pinder’s hands went still.  For a moment, he didn’t say anything, and when he did, his voice was dripping with disgust.  “It’s not my place to tell.  You’d have to ask him about that.”

*

With a little support, Alex could stand up.  There weren’t any crutches available, but if he leaned on the windowsill, the bookshelves, and Denny’s shoulder, he could finally move around the room.

“Don’t put too much weight on it yet,” warned Denny, glancing down at his bad leg to check that it looked right.

Alex nodded.  “Yep.  Slow and steady.”  Baby steps, he almost added, but that phrase gave him a strange, uncomfortable feeling.  It took her a moment to remember why.

You’d have to ask him about that.

Alex’s stomach felt strange, but he asked anyway.  “Denny?  Can I ask you something personal?”

“Yeah?”

“What went wrong between you and Pinder?”

Denny stiffened.  Alex saw it happen, in a second, as if he’d turned to stone.  There was a gap of a few seconds before he spoke, just long enough for Alex to curse himself for blundering in like that.  “I was afraid you were going to ask that,” he replied dully.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No… No.”  Denny shook his head slowly and mechanically.  “You deserve to know.”

Alex sat back on the side of the bed, and watched Denny fidget, his eyes trained on his hands.  “There was something I should have told Pinder,” he said finally, “About myself.  He’d never have let me join if he’d known, but by the time he found out, it was too late.  He was stuck with me.”

Denny looked back down at his hands again.  Alex waited.

“Um, at my… at my school, about two years before I met Pinder, there was a…  A boy went missing.  A younger boy.  He was only twelve.  And they never found him, not even his body.”  Denny took in a long, shaky breath.  “And I don’t remember what I was doing that evening.”

Alex swallowed.  There was a sense of dread building up inside him, but even as he felt it, he thought, That sounds more like something that would happen in a film than in real life.

“It happens all the time,” whispered Denny, “People disappear around me.  Children disappear around me.”  He choked on his words.  “I swear, I’d slit my wrists if I thought it would help.  I’d go back in time and strangle myself in the womb.”

He looked like he was shaking hard enough to make himself sick.  Alex put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.  “OK, but what makes you think that you had anything to do with him disappearing?  Just because you can’t remember…”

“It’s not just him.”  Denny looked up, tried to meet Alex’s eyes, but flinched away at the last moment.  “Do you remember Amy Kirwan?  From the art shop in town?”

Alex didn’t know if ‘remember’ was the right word- they saw her practically every time they went into town- but he nodded.  Amy’s shop sold the usual landscapes and sunsets, but there were also colourful, surreal dreamscapes that had caught Jo and Pinder’s attention.  As far as Alex knew, none of the Oakmen had ever bought anything from Amy (they couldn’t afford that), but she still greeted them happily every time they came into her shop.  Alex supposed you didn’t become a painter in a tiny seaside town expecting to get rich.

“Well, Amy disappeared just before Easter.  Along with her son.  He… he was two.”  Denny’s face crumpled.  “And I don’t remember where I was that night, either!”

For a moment, Alex almost believed it.  He’d been stuck here for nearly two months now, and he hadn’t seen Amy since the last time he’d been into town.  Plenty of time for her to disappear, and for the police to search for her and come up with nothing.  It might have happened.  Even if it had nothing to do with Denny, Amy might have disappeared.

Except…

“Did you say before Easter?” asked Alex.

Denny nodded.  He couldn’t speak at the moment- his teeth were gritted against sobs.

“Denny, I went into town a few times over the summer, and I saw Amy just about every time I was there.”  It could still have been true.  Denny could have just misremembered the date.  But somehow, Alex didn’t think so.

The dread was still there, but by now, Alex knew it wasn’t Denny he was scared of.

“No,” said Denny, “It couldn’t have been her.”

“It was.  I went into her shop and talked to her.  Ask Virgil- he went with me at least once.  Who told you she’d disappeared?”

“It was in all the papers…”

“I’ve never seen you reading a paper.”  It was so obvious.  It was such a flimsy lie.  And maybe Denny had talked himself into believing it all on his own, with no outside encouragement, but then why would he think it was the reason that Pinder didn’t like him anymore?  If Pinder knew what Denny thought, then why hadn’t he told him there was no truth to it?  “Did Pinder tell you?”

“No!” snapped Denny, finally looking up.

That settled it.  Denny might have been a champion at lying to himself, but he wasn’t any good at lying to anybody else.

Alex sat in the old supply shed where Pinder had moved him.  He felt the leg Pinder hadn’t let him get treated itch and ache.  The leg that had only been broken because one of Pinder’s bombs had gone off too early.  And compared to what had happened to Denny, that all felt insignificant.

We’ve got to get out of here, thought Alex.

Henry Pepper had had a stressful week.  Between that extra load of legal papers that management had clean forgotten to tell anyone they had to look over and sign until exactly the last minute, Sally constantly arranging meetings with the adoption people without checking with him first, and the sure knowledge that the car was on its last legs and he didn’t know where he was going to get the money for a new one, he’d barely had a chance to sit down.  But looming at the end of the week was the scariest thing of all.  He and Sally were going to take his kids out for dinner, sit them down, and tell them they’d decided to adopt another child.

Henry didn’t know how they were going to react to that- tears and jealousy, or just plain indifference?  Because, yeah, the kids were eighteen and nineteen, but nobody liked having their lives shaken up when they were counting on smooth sailing, did they?

Making things all the more complicated was the fact that it would be the first time Sally and Rosalyn had been in the same room for about two years, and Henry didn’t know if he trusted either of them not to make a scene.  Heaven knew Sally had come up with grand plans to confront Rosalyn over her perceived wrongdoing before now.  “I think there’s still a small part of her that isn’t happy about the choices she’s made,” Sally would say, “I say we try one more time.”  And then Henry would have to talk her down from showing up at Rosalyn’s school to expose the hollowness of her lifestyle.  If she’d pulled a stunt like that, it would have been exactly the excuse Henry’s ex-wife would have needed to completely deny him access.

He’d been pleasantly surprised that Rosalyn had even agreed to this dinner, but that didn’t mean he could drop his guard.  When they met the kids at the Taj Mahal, Henry had prepared himself for the two girls to glare at each other and instantly go on the warpath, probably egged on from the sides by Oliver.  But so far, it hadn’t happened.  They’d been here an hour, and both kids were making polite conversation, as if they and Sally had never had a screaming argument over a Franz Ferdinand CD.  Maybe this evening wouldn’t be so terrifying after all.

“So you’re a journalist now?” Henry asked Rosalyn as they finished off the naan bread.

“More like a publicist.”  Rosalyn looked better-groomed than Henry had seen her in years, with her hair neatly tucked back under a blue-and-mauve headband that matched her dress.  “People send me new messages every ten minutes.  It’s mad.”

Henry smiled.  He’d never heard of these ‘Kelpie and Silkie’ messages, but apparently they were a big thing around Berrylands.  Students had always found silly ways to amuse themselves, he supposed.  “But how do you know which ones are real and which ones are fake?”

“Well… they’re all real.  Even the ones they just wrote in the last thirty seconds.  If they exist, they’re real.”

“So you don’t care much about provenance?”

“I do, but I think the messages themselves are the important thing.”

Sally cleared her throat.  “If you ask me, they all just want to be part of something bigger than themselves.”

Rosalyn turned to Sally, and- wonders would never cease!- gave her a warm smile.  “Yeah, I think so, too.  It’s like my RE teacher said- ‘humans are by nature social.’  People form communities around anything they can find.”

Sally peered at Rosalyn over the top of her glasses.  “The funny thing about life is…”

“What if you start getting really weird ones?” Oliver interrupted, “Like if a Neo Nazi group gets hold of it?”

Rosalyn frowned.  “I don’t know.  I guess I’d have to start filtering some out.”

“The funny thing about life is,” Sally repeated, a little louder, “people can build a life around minutia, and forget what’s really important.”

Henry shut his eyes.  Here it came- the lecture.  Since Rosalyn had started university, Sally had made constant insinuating remarks about the student lifestyle she was sure Rosalyn was living.  Now here was her chance to turn her away from sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, and back to Jesus.

But Oliver interrupted again.  “Well, you’ve got the names of people who send you things, right?  If you get any Nazi ones, you can just report them to the university.”

“Yeah,” said Rosalyn.  Suddenly, her face brightened up.  “Oh, that reminds me!  My friend Mariam…”

Sally spoke over her.  “I think you need to think about your end goal in all of this.  Collecting little bits of graffiti?  It’s fun, I suppose, but is it really going to help you in later life?”

Oliver turned to her with a heavy-lidded, sage-like expression, and recited, “He knows not where he’s going / For the ocean will decide / It’s not the destination / It’s the glory of the ride.”

Henry looked over at Sally.  Her mouth had seized up like a cat’s bottom.  “Go ahead, Oliver!  Spend your whole life quoting birthday cards at people!  I’m sure that will lead to a fulfilling life!”

Henry put a hand on her arm.  “Sally…”

“I try so hard with you two!”  Henry heard her voice start to break.  “You want me to respect your beliefs, but you can never quite bring yourself to respect mine, can you?”

Henry didn’t know where to look.  Let’s have a nice family dinner, we said.  Reconnect with the kids, we said.

Rosalyn did her best to calm things down.  “I don’t think Oliver was being…”

“My faith doesn’t come from a birthday card!”  Definite tears in her eyes now.  People at nearby tables were looking around to see what all the hubbub was.  “It doesn’t come from some graffiti on a toilet wall!  And if you expect that to give you anything meaningful, then I feel sorry for you!”

Oliver’s voice almost a squeak.  “All I did was…”

“I feel sorry for you!”

There was a long pause.  Sally glared daggers at Oliver.  Rosalyn fidgeted.  And eventually the awkwardness got too much, and Henry cleared his throat and said, “Rosalyn, what were you saying about your friend Mariam?”

Apparently that was exactly the wrong thing to say, because Sally slammed her fork down on her plate, stood up, and stormed towards the exit.  The three of them sat open-mouthed, watching her go.

After a while, Oliver turned to Henry.  “All I did was quote the ‘Zen Dog’ poem!”

Henry sighed.  “I know, son.  I know.”

*

For the last year, Jonathan Lambton had worked constantly to try and get his little brother to come out of his shell.  It had taken them weeks just to persuade him to get out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time, and when they’d got him to come in and do some secretarial work at the theatre, it had felt like a triumph on the level of climbing Mount Everest.  Denny seemed to shrink back from anything new, hiding in his room or in the back of Jonathan’s office, doing his best to disappear.  Until this month, the only person he’d interacted with outside his family had been Alex Rudd.

But a couple of weeks ago, Octavia had told him about coming across Denny in the café downstairs, and seeing him sitting with Alex’s friend Isaac and one of the girls they lived with.  “It wasn’t him doing most of the talking, but he was definitely joining in,” she’d said, her eyes lit up, “Now, how long’s it been since he’s done that?  Even with us?”  It was true.  Denny often had to be prodded into conversation.  It was as if he thought anything he had to say would be the wrong thing.

So it wasn’t so surprising that Jonathan wanted to encourage Denny to spend more time with Alex’s friends.  It was a little more surprising that when his mother asked him to find a Berrylands student who’d be prepared to work for her part-time, he’d thought of them first.  But they were easy to get ahold of, and if you wanted to encourage one connection, it made sense to form others, right?  When Jonathan had asked Alex which of his friends was best suited to scanning things into a computer all day, he’d suggested Natalie.  So, Natalie it was.

“It’ll be six or seven weekends,” he explained to her in his office, “Maybe fewer, if you’re willing to work some weekdays as well.”

“Fantastic,” said Natalie, with a wide-eyed shrug.  She seemed a little tougher and more composed than some of Alex’s other friends, which was probably why he’d recommended her.  You needed a thick skin to deal with Josette Lambton.  “I’ve been looking for a part-time job since September, but I couldn’t find anything that fit around my lectures.  This’ll be great.”

Jonathan wondered if he should tell her that their mother’s initial idea had been for Octavia to do the work, and for free.  Octavia, who hadn’t spoken to their mother more than twice a year since she was sixteen, had laughed in Jonathan’s face when he’d asked her.

Instead, he said, “Now, this will involve you having to put up with my mother…”

“Couldn’t be worse than putting up with Alex’s mother,” said Natalie, with a grin.  Jonathan had to admit that was probably true.  His mother might not be the easiest person to deal with, but she’d never held somebody at gunpoint and smashed their head against a doorframe.  “What kind of things will I be sorting out?”

“Old family documents.  Invitations, newspaper articles, society pages.  My mother knew a lot of interesting people when she was younger, and she wants to document it.”

Natalie gave another happy shrug.  “Sounds good to me.”

Jonathan smiled.  You strengthened connections by building up additional ones.  Just as long as Natalie didn’t hate his guts in six weeks’ time.

*

Rosalyn had come by the theatre again.  This time, she wanted to tell him how her weekend had gone.  Denny didn’t have much to contribute- his weekend had gone the way it usually did, with plenty of visits to the mattress army- but he liked hearing her talk.  Her voice had a low, gentle sound to it.

Anyway, this weekend, Rosalyn and her brother had been out to dinner with their dad, and their stepmother had lost her temper and left the restaurant for no good reason halfway through the meal.  Rosalyn’s stepmother went to the kind of church that thought the Crusades had been a good idea.  “Not the killing,” explained Rosalyn.  Then she thought for a moment, and added, “Well, probably not.  But the bit where they were trying to convert everyone to Christianity by force- Sally and her friends would be all for that.”  Her face tightened in what was almost a scowl.  “They’d um and ah and I-know-it-sounds-terrible-but, but they’d definitely be in favour of invading the holy land.”

Denny nodded.  Pinder had never ummed and ahhed.  He’d just come out and said horrible things, whenever you were least prepared.  And before that thought could go away, before he could squeeze his eyes shut and tell himself that Pinder had had his reasons and he’d never get anywhere trying to make him into some sort of villain, Denny realised that he’d said it out loud.

“What kind of horrible things?” asked Rosalyn.

Something in his mind was still screaming at him to stop it, that this train of thought couldn’t lead anywhere good, but Rosalyn had already heard him.  There was no backing out now.  “Well, he’d wait until the end of a really hard day, or when you were sick, or when you’d just fallen out with someone, and then…”  Denny tried to call as many of them to mind as he could.  There had been a few.  “You’ll never really be happy.  I think you just need to accept that.”  He counted it off on his fingers.  “I think your problem is that you’re mediocre.  You’re just smart enough to have an ego about it.”  That one had been spooky- some of his teachers had said the exact same thing.  “You already know that no-one will ever really like you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be useful.”  Three was enough.  He didn’t want to dominate the conversation.

Rosalyn was quiet for a moment.  It was hard to read her expression.  “Did he just say that stuff to you, or to everyone?”

Denny’s first instinct as to say that of course it was just him, that he’d been a special case… but then he remembered hearing something Pinder had said to Jo.  Something about the marks on her legs.  Pathetic.  There are people in the world with real problems.  “Um…  I don’t know.  He didn’t usually say it where other people could hear.”

Rosalyn took a sip of her coffee, and looked off into the distance, thoughtful.  “I think…  I think Sally’s church assume that if something they say sounds terrible, that automatically makes it true.”

Denny smiled.  “Yeah.  Because they’re such wonderful people that they’d never dare say such terrible things unless they were completely convinced.”

Rosalyn held his gaze for a few seconds, studying him.  “Well, lots of people are absolutely certain but still wrong.”  She took another sip.  “And lots of people think they’re good, but aren’t.”

*

Natalie’s bedroom smelled of fruity shower gel and the bags of sweets she kept in her top drawer, which probably made it the most pleasant room in the house (Isaac’s room smelled of the weird starchy washing powder his mum had made him pack, for example.)  That was probably why they’d ended up there this afternoon.  While the TV played in the background (Natalie had put in one of her Comic Strip Presents DVDs), Mariam sat in the office chair by the window and read her new emails. 

Alex had given her fifteen names, Mariam had managed to find working email addresses for eight of them, and so far, two of them had replied.  The first guy, Colin Mitchell, had only really lived with them for a couple of months in 2001, but that had been long enough for Shaun Pinder to fuck up his degree by insisting that he fill his thesis with references to unrelated things that Shaun was supposedly an expert in.  Charity Stobart had lived with them for two and a half years, and her story was a lot scarier.  She’d annoyed Shaun somehow, and then, a couple of days later, she’d had horrible stomach pains just after lunch.  She managed to sneak off to the nearest A&E, where they pumped her stomach and found traces of a number of toxic substances.  “Not enough to have killed me by themselves, but definitely enough to stop me complaining for a while,” Charity had said.

“When did it happen?” asked Alex, who’d perched on the right arm of the chair.

Mariam checked the email.  “Last May.  That would have been not long after you got Denny out, right?”

Alex nodded.  “Did she say what happened afterwards?”

“Her parents made her move back in with them and cut off contact with Shaun and the others.  Can’t imagine she argued much.  The police didn’t manage to prove anything, apparently, but I bet that’s why they left Dorset and changed their name.”  Mariam looked back at the screen for a moment, then something occurred to her.  “Hey, do you think he’s done that before?  Changed the group’s name and moved them about when a scandal happened?”

Alex considered this.  “I don’t know.  He’d have only been in his early twenties when I first met him, though.  There wouldn’t have been him for him to go through too many identities.”

“So you don’t know his exact age, then?”

“No.”

As far as Mariam was concerned, that meant he could be any age at all.  Alex might have thought he’d been in his early twenties when they met, but there were some very fresh-faced thirty- and forty-year-olds.

Mariam hadn’t been sure to what extent the others had been listening to her and Alex’s conversation- the TV was on, and she and Alex were no French and Saunders- but just then, Natalie asked, “Do you know anything about his parents?  Or where he grew up?”

Alex sighed.  “He’d tell us different stories.  One week, he’d be talking about how oppressive and religious they were, and the next, they’d be free-thinking hippies who’d taught him all he knew.”

“So why did it take you so long to work out that he couldn’t be trusted?”  Mariam hadn’t originally planned to say this- just think it sarcastically- but, on reflection, it seemed like something that ought to be said.

Alex didn’t take offence.  “I’ve asked myself the same question.  I suppose part of it was that he never said anything that directly contradicted anything else- there are religious hippies, and I guess most parents are oppressive in some areas and free-thinking in others.  But that’s really just splitting hairs.  I think the main reason was that it’s easy to overlook things when you’re already emotionally invested in someone.  If you notice something that doesn’t fit, you rationalise it.”

Well, that was basically Mariam’s entire romantic history on a nutshell, so she accepted it.  “Jonathan Lambton said ‘Mandeville’ was his mother’s maiden name…”

“Really?  Maybe he did some research of his own.  We should talk to him.”

“What, you think he might have hired a private detective?”

Alex shrugged.  “More likely he just asked around and found out what he could.  Just like we’re doing now, in our own way.”

Isaac leaned back against the bed.  “Bet you anything he heard a lot of stories about him torturing small animals and setting fire to stuff.”

“That’s serial killers,” said Natalie, “Not cult leaders.”

“They’re not that different.”

Mariam wished they wouldn’t say stuff like that.  She was worried enough already.  For a moment, she thought about saying, Guys, stop it- you’re upsetting Peps, but she decided against it because of the very real possibility that Peps would turn around and say, No, they’re not.  That would be embarrassing.

“I don’t know about that,” said Alex, “but maybe he knows the area that Shaun grew up in.  There might be family members we can talk to.”

Isaac looked round.  “What are you going to do with all this research once you’ve finished?”

“Dunno.”  Mariam closed her laptop.  “Just have to hope that knowledge really is power, I suppose.”

*

Natalie had half-expected the door to be answered by a maid or a butler in full uniform, but no- Mama Lambton opened it herself.  She shook their hands, then took them through the hallway, pointing out pictures and items she thought they should see.

“Meiji Period,” she explained, jabbing her finger at a painting of a group of Japanese girls sitting under a tree, “1908.”  She looked at Natalie as if she was challenging her to say something.

“Right,” said Natalie, doing her best to sound impressed.  As opposed to how she really felt, which was completely out of her depth.  Mama Lambton was quite an elegant old lady, with her silver hair and neat designer suit, but the way she spoke and looked at you made it seem as if she was constantly trying to pick a fight.

Apparently disappointed, Mama Lambton turned away and led them into the living room.  “Them” being Natalie and Jonathan, who’d given her a lift into Richmond so she wouldn’t have to catch the bus.  And probably so she wouldn’t have to face his mother on her own.

The living room wasn’t huge, but it was covered with little details and designs in the furniture and rugs and wall hangings that told you even the smallest thing cost more than your house.  Mama Lambton sat down in a pink armchair that looked more like a throne.  “Sit, sit,” she told them, waving a hand.  Jonathan perched on the sofa, and Natalie joined him.  The whole room smelled of dust and dried flowers.

Mama Lambton fixed her eye on Natalie and took a deep breath.  “May I ask how old you are?”  She sounded almost sarcastic, as if she’d asked Natalie a question before and got her head bitten off.

“Nineteen last month,” said Natalie, making sure to sit upright and fold her hands politely in her lap.  This was definitely not the kind of house where you sprawled all over the sofa, even if you weren’t here for a job interview.

Mama Lambton snorted.  “Nineteen?  Appreciate this time while it lasts, then.  I can safely inform you that the rest of your life will be a complete anti-climax.”

 Jonathan leaned forward.  “Natalie’s studying English Literature, Moth…”

“Age takes everything from you,” continued Mama Lambton, raising her voice to drown out her son, “Good looks, vitality, friendship.  Mark my words- no sooner does a flower bloom, but it starts to wither.”

A thought popped into Natalie’s head.  She thinks she’s acting in a play.

“You’re not withered, Mother,” said Jonathan patiently.

“In my opinion, all artists should be shot at the age of twenty-five to avoid disappointment.”  She chuckled.  The same goes for athletes, but then I think they should be shot on general principle.”

Natalie thought about bringing up Johnny Cash or Ian McKellen, wondered if it would be worth it, and quickly decided it wouldn’t.  Instead, she said, “Jonathan says you used to know a lot of artists…?”

Mama Lambton waved her right hand in the air, holding an imaginary cigarette.  She definitely thinks she’s in a play, thought Natalie.  “Yes, ‘used to’ is the key word, isn’t it?  Because we actually had artists back then, not just dullards selling their unmade beds to galleries.  I don’t suppose you’ve ever even…”

“I think what Natalie was saying, Mother,” said Jonathan (getting his own back for her talking over him a minute ago), “is that you knew a lot of interesting people, and it’s worth documenting.”

Mama Lambton sighed.  “Is anything truly worth documenting?  The past is the past.  All you can do is present it to the younger generation and hope they might take an interest.”

Suddenly, Natalie remembered what she’d said when Shaun had asked them to the Oakmen meeting.  We have got to go.  I want to see just how much of a trainwreck this can be.

*

Mariam tried to hide it from her, standing in front of the phonebox and blocking the message, but it was too late.  Rosalyn saw.

A few seconds ago, they’d been languidly walking to university, listening to Isaac explain why he thought all Bratz dolls would someday come to life and kill their owners.  Rosalyn had been laughing.  She hadn’t thought…

And then she’d seen it.  Written across the window of the phonebox on the corner, in white paint or Tippex.  Save the world, stab a spastic- Kelpie and Silkie.

The air went right out of her lungs.  She read the words, and then read them again, trying to make them mean something different.

Isaac shot an arm out and pointed at it.  “That wasn’t there yesterday!” he said quickly, for Rosalyn’s benefit, “Mariam, you saw it, right?  It definitely wasn’t there yesterday!”

Rosalyn read the words over and over, trying to absorb them properly.  If she read them enough times, the shock would go away.  They’d sink into her mind and become part of the general background of what she knew about the world.  The deeper they sunk, the duller the pain would get.

“Someone must have come along last night and written it!  They’d have known we were going to be coming this way in the morning!”

“OK, Rosalyn, I think you need to sit down, alright?  Sit down and breathe a bit.  Come on.”

Save the world, stab a spastic.  Save the world, stab a spastic.  Save the world, stab a spastic.

Well, of course, thought Rosalyn, barely noticing as Mariam manoeuvred her towards a nearby bench, You didn’t think Kelpie and Silkie were going to be kind, did you?  You didn’t think you could actually trust them?

Isaac was pacing about, still ranting about something, and Mariam was crouching in front of her, telling her to lower her head and take deep breaths.  But all Rosalyn could think about were those words.

You brought this on yourself.  Who pins all their hopes on some random stranger who writes notes on walls?

She lowered her head all the way.  She stared at the pavement.

Pathetic.  Delusional.  Stupid.