Autumn and Winter 2005

After signing the tenancy agreement in their new kitchen, Alex and his flatmates went to a nearby Burger King to celebrate.  The conversation flowed, taking in everyone’s taste in music and TV, a couple of opinions on things in the news, and the reasons they weren’t staying in halls for their first year (somebody hadn’t wanted the university breathing down their neck, somebody else had forgotten to file the paperwork until it was too late, and Alex was technically a mature student and therefore not allowed).

“I bet they don’t ask for your ID when you go to the pub,” muttered Isaac, a scrawny boy whose face made Alex think of a good-natured chipmunk.

It was only by sheer luck (Roxanne having insisted that he come out and be social last Christmas) that Alex wasn’t forced to admit that he’d never tried to order a drink in a pub.  “I think some places are more militant about it than others.”

At first, Alex had found himself carefully stepping around certain subjects- no sense in alarming potential new friends by telling them he used to be in a cult and his friend’s rich brother was paying his tuition – but, as dinner wore on, he’d found that he didn’t really have to.  The other four didn’t poke at holes in his stories or ask why he didn’t have this or that thing in common with them.  He was older.  He probably knew something they didn’t.  They bowed to his experience.

Not one of them had had their nineteenth birthday yet.  Alex didn’t know why that was so strange for him to contemplate, but it was.

*

Sometimes it was easy to tell that Denny was having a bad day.  Today, his knuckles were covered in tooth marks, some of which had clearly broken the skin.  Alex had seen him do it hundreds of times, looking like he was trying to shove his entire first in his mouth to prevent any words from coming out.

“Good thing you can’t chew all the way through the bone,” Alex told him, looking at the red, bumpy mess.

Denny laughed bitterly.  “If anyone ever managed to do it, it would be me”

*

Alex didn’t think he was supposed to hear the conversation, but Natalie had left her door open and by the time he realised what it was about, it was too late.

“We were this close!” said Mariam, pacing round Natalie’s room, “We were about halfway to the bed, and then he let it slip that he’s a virgin.  So I had to shut it down.”

“Why?” asked Natalie, sitting on her bed with a magazine on her knees.

“Because his first time shouldn’t be with a girl he barely knows after six pints of cheap beer!”

“I don’t think Isaac…”

“He would!” snapped Mariam, “Boys are supposed to say they don’t care about that, but they do!  Trust me, I’ve got three brothers, I know this stuff.”  She noticed Alex standing outside in the hall.  “And I don’t want to hear any contradiction from you.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” replied Alex.  His own first time had been with the older sister of a friend while said friend had been asleep upstairs, but it would have felt somehow crude to mention that to Mariam and Natalie.

Natalie smiled.  “We’d appreciate it if none of this got back to Isaac or Rosalyn.”

“Of course,” said Alex.

*

“It’s called the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” said Rosalyn, sitting at the kitchen table with her notepad and her dinner in front of her on the table.  She was doing an impressive job of keeping them apart.

Alex nodded.  “I’ve heard of it.  It’s where you have to make decisions based on whether or not your friend is going to sell you out, right?”

“Yeah, kind of.  The way our lecturer put it, if you stay quiet you both get a year in prison, if you both betray each other you both get two years in prison, and if one of you betrays the other they go free but the other one gets five years in prison.”  Rosalyn reminded Alex of a robin.  Part of it was the red hair, and part of it was her height and her quick little movements.  “Apparently most people say they’d keep quiet.  Though they might just be talking about what they’d like to think they’d do.”

“Do you think you’d keep quiet?”

“I think so.  I think it comes down to whether you’d rather be kept up all night by being furious or by feeling guilty.”

“And being furious is a lot more fun.”

“Yeah.  That’s what I think, too.”

*

Alex still called Roxanne every evening.  It seemed like the least he could do.

“I was hoping they’d be closer to your age,” she said a few weeks after Alex had moved in, “They’re definitely all eighteen?”

“Well, Mariam’s birthday’s next week,” said Alex, “And either Rosalyn or Isaac turns nineteen before Christmas.  I can’t remember which one…”

“But you won’t have anything in common with them.  They’ll be out chugging WKD and vomiting into the gutters until three in the morning.”

“They don’t do that,” said Alex, mostly truthfully.

“Their parents might as well be paying you to babysit.  And that’s on top of what the Lambtons have got you doing.”

“It’s not like that.  Either of them.”  Alex swallowed.  “They’re not getting me to do it.  I want to.”

Roxanne made a sceptical noise, and changed the subject.

*

“You have no idea what it’s like,” snapped Denny.  There was a feeling of heat to him- the red in his cheeks, the tears.  “You have no idea how fucking exhausting it is.”

“It doesn’t need to be.  It…”

“Yes!  It!  Does!”  He sniffed and swallowed at the same time, trying to draw everything back inside at once.  “You don’t have to wake up every morning and remember what you’ve done.”

“Denny, we’ve been over this.  I showed you the papers.  Amy Kirwan is aive.  She’s still working in the same shop.  She’s fine.”

“And the boy who went missing from my school?  Is he fine?”

“Well… no, but…”

“See?  You can come up with as many excuses as you want, but the truth is the truth.”

*

It seemed as if Alex was just going from one tearful, furious face to another.  Natalie had just come off the phone with her sister, and she was all but spitting with rage.

“Her boyfriend’s birthday is coming up,” she told him, her teeth clicking on the consonants as if she was trying to bite the words off one by one, “And when she asked him what he wanted, he asked for her to get a boob job.”  She was sitting against the wall outside the bathroom, her arms folded so tight that it looked as if she was about to cut off her circulation.  “He wants her to change her body, permanently, as a present for him.  Because he isn’t happy with it.”

Alex was crouching beside her, just far enough along the wall to be polite.  “Do you think she’ll do it?”

Natalie shook her head.  “He said it was just a joke.  But you know the kind of joke where you half-hope the other person takes you seriously, right?”  Her nostrils were flared.  Alex almost expected to see smoke coming out of them.

“How long have they been together?  Maybe…”

“Oh, they’ll split up eventually.  But her next boyfriend will be exactly the same.”  Natalie unfolded her arms and brushed her hair out of her face.  She had wavy, reddish hair, like an ancient warrior woman.  “Andrea’s got a Master’s degree in Archaeology, she was practically headhunted by the British Museum, but she settles for guys who treat her like a fucking blow-up doll.”  Natalie held her hands out in front of her, as if she was imagining strangling all of Andrea’s bad boyfriends, past, present and future.

Alex reached out and patted her on the back.  “Well… no matter how badly they treat her, there’s one person in the world who cares about her as much as she deserves.”

“Whole lot of good that’s doing her now,” Natalie sniffed.

*

The bookshop was like a warm, bright little nest in the middle of the frosty high street.  It was one of the big chain stores, the kind where they had a coffee shop on the top floor and a selection of DVDs in the basement, but the staff were easygoing enough to let groups of university students spend whole afternoons there without buying anything.  Alex suspected that, if the central heating was warm enough and you had nowhere else to be, it would be easy to fall asleep in one of those round red armchairs at the end of the aisles.  It was the sort of place that welcomed you.

This evening, in what must have been some sort of reward for tolerating students’ quirks all this time, the shop had been chosen to host a book launch.  The author was one of Natalie’s professors, which was how she and her flatmates had managed to score free tickets.  They sat in the back row, their damp coats hanging on the back of their chairs, and did their best to listen.

After about half an hour, Isaac leaned over and whispered, “This is shi-i-it.”

Alex made a weighing motion with his hand.  “It… has its moments.”  The professor, Viola, was reading an extract from a novel about a couple coping with their teenage son’s sudden death.  She’d made it clear from the start that it wasn’t autobiographical and was based on a case she’d read about in the papers, which was probably why Isaac felt comfortable making fun of it.

“I say we take a shot every time she says, ‘every parent’s worst nightmare’,” said Isaac.

From his right, Natalie leaned over and said, “Bet you a fiver she says, ‘He had his whole life ahead of him’.”

“I’m going to bet on, ‘Our house no longer feels like a home’.”

“You’re on.”

Mariam sighed.  “Guys, people do actually say those things.”

“Yes, when they’ve actually lost a family member and they’re grieving.  I expect a bit more originality from somebody who’s been paid to write a book.”

Alex knew a little about houses that didn’t feel like homes, so he had more patience than Isaac did on that front.  On the other hand, you could never count on anyone having a whole life ahead of them.  Or a life worth living if they did.  “We should be charitable.  She’s giving us free wine.”

“Can’t argue with that,” said Isaac with a grin, and became a bit quieter.

*

If he’d been asked to pick out Rosalyn’s mother from a random selection of forty-year-old women, Alex would probably have chosen somebody small and cautious-looking, like Rosalyn herself.  He almost certainly wouldn’t have picked a woman with long, bleach-blonde hair, stiletto heels and gold jewellery, who reminded him a little of a gangster’s moll in a 1940s movie.  But a week and a half before Christmas, that was who turned up.

“Tea or coffee?” he asked, turning on the kettle.

She clucked her tongue.  “Look at you!  So polite!  Black coffee, please, Alex.”  She sat down at the kitchen table, opposite Natalie.  “And please tell me my daughter doesn’t make you make the tea every time.”

Alex laughed.  “No, no.  Rosalyn is a very considerate girl.”  He got out five mugs- one for Mrs Pepper, and one each for himself, Rosalyn, Natalie and Isaac.  Mariam had already left the day before, after a drawn-out phone conversation with her father in which she refused to let him spend eight hours on the road coming to get her when there was a perfectly good train from St Pancras to Leeds.  Rosalyn and Isaac’s parents would be picking them up in the next few days.  After that, Alex would say his goodbyes to the Lambtons and go to Roxanne’s for a week.

He worried about leaving Denny behind, but he’d also have worried about leaving Roxanne alone at Christmas.  Given the choice, he’d have had them both living in the same place.

Mrs Pepper nudged Rosalyn.  “Did you pay him to say that?”

“Mum!” protested Rosalyn, half-amused and half-aghast.

Alex felt a strange warmth inside of him, tinged with a little envy.  It wasn’t just that Rosalyn seemed to have a kinder mother than he had; it was the whole first-year student experience, discovering the wider world before you had a chance to become jaded.  Alex should have been here, doing this, four years ago.  He should have stayed in school, gone out with Melanie Spencer, been there for Marley and Serena, and then started his own life.  And the only thing preventing a wave of despair from coming over him was the knowledge that, if he had, there might not have been anyone to help Denny when he’d needed it.

He finished the tea and handed it out.  “Did you have a long journey?”

“Not too far.  Up from Colchester.”  Mrs Pepper took a sip of her coffee.  “I keep telling Rosalyn that she needs to learn how to drive.  Maybe one of you can teach her.”

Alex smiled.  “Maybe we will.”

Natalie was at the scanner.  You put the photo on the glass, you pressed the button, you saved the file, and then you moved onto the next one.  Mindless, repetitive work.  Which meant that her brain decided to occupy itself by listening to Mama Lambton on the phone in the next room.

“No, she asked me for the facts, and I gave her them.  I’m sorry if she doesn’t like it, but I can’t help that.”  There was a pause while the other person spoke.  “No, I’m sorry, but if I’m going to be donating the money, I want a say in what it’s spent on.”

Natalie wasn’t even trying to listen in.  Mama Lambton’s voice was just that loud.

“Let her use it as an incentive.  If she…  No.  No, I’ve said my piece.  That’s all there is to it.”  There was another pause, presumably the person on the other end trying to get a word in edgeways, and then the sound of the phone being put down.  Not slammed down, because Mama Lambton thought she was far too classy for that, but the sentiment was probably the same.

Natalie heard Mama Lambton’s footsteps in the hall, and turned just in time to see her in the doorway.  Natalie was kneeling on the floor to work the scanner, so Mama Lambton could literally look down her nose at her.  She probably didn’t get the chance to do that as often as she’d have liked, so she was making the most of the opportunity.

“I can’t help but notice that you’ve been singularly incurious,” she said, after thirty seconds or so of glaring.

Natalie frowned.  “I’m… sorry about that?”

“Look at this!”  She slapped the pile of photos on the sideboard, the ones still waiting to be scanned in.  “Any other girl would be delighted to learn about this time in history.  The people.  The atmosphere.  But you just sit there looking bored.  Are you really so dull?”

Natalie wasn’t sure what she was expected to be interested in- as far as she could tell, Mama Lambton had just given parties for a bunch of theatre hangers-on- but, for the sake of not making things awkward for Isaac, Alex and Jonathan, she stuck to her previous line.  “I’m sorry about that.”

“Sheer ingratitude,” Mrs Lambton spat, “I wanted to encourage you to use your mind.  Now, I’m beginning to wonder if you even have one.”

She was being surprisingly vitriolic.  That person she’d been talking to on the phone must have really pissed her off.

Mama Lambton stared at Natalie for another few seconds, waiting for her to answer back or burst into tears or something.  When Natalie did neither, she let out a huff of disgust and walked out of the room  Natalie was suddenly sure that Mama Lambton had wanted to dramatically scream at her to get out of her sight, but was too worried that she actually would.  And then she’d have nobody to scan in her stupid photos.

Natalie went back to working the scanner.  Speaking of photos, she hadn’t seen many of Jonathan or his sister around the house.  She wondered what their childhood had been like, with Mama Lambton around.  Some things just didn’t bear thinking about.

*

Judith had made them an annotated map.  She’d drawn a big spiral centring on Merstham Station, and that was going to be their path.  “I drew it a little bigger than it needed to be, just in case,” she’d explained on the train, “But I’m generally taking Kim Peacock at her word.”

They were at the top of a hill.  The sun was bright, gradually making its way to the centre of the sky, and the little row of houses in the distance looked like wooden toys.

Judith nudged him in the side.  “Not a word to Rosalyn until we actually find something, right?”

“Right,” said Isaac.  Now that they were out here, he wondered how likely that really was.  They’d probably have to comb through every inch of the countryside to get anything even resembling what they were looking for.  But if there was a chance…

He and Judith walked down the hill towards the fields and hedges at the bottom.  The whole area reminded Isaac of a kids’ picture book.  He kept expecting to see the Brambly Hedge mice running by.  He’d probably lose that feeling when they ran into actual people (most likely farmers or posh twats who didn’t want any scruffy students wandering round their land), but it was a nice thought, anyway.

The first field they passed had a couple of black and white horses, who glanced their way momentarily before turning back to their oats.  Judith smiled at them, as if they’d brightened up her day just by being there.

Isaac took a wild guess.  “Have you ridden horses before?”  (She had that vibe.  It was the accent, mainly.)

“Yes.  Not for a while, though.  There was a riding school near where my aunt and uncle lived, but it got harder to find time for it once I started secondary school.”  She put her hands in her coat pockets.  “Have you?”

“No- my parents got me to play football instead.”  He grinned.  “Then later on, I was too busy going out and creating havoc.”

Judith smiled back.  “Sometimes we need a little havoc.”

They rounded a corner and ended up in a kind of miniature wood.  A grove?  A spruce?  There was probably some kind of specialised countryside term for it that no-one had ever bothered to teach him.  “Judith?”

“Yes?”  She had an inviting smile, like a primary school teacher who never lost her temper.

“How come you’ve been so helpful?  With the Kelpie and Silkie thing?”

Judith thought about it for a moment.  “Well, at first it was just because I was excited to show you the graffiti.  There’s something thrilling about being the one to let new people in on a secret.  But when I saw how Rosalyn reacted to it…”

“I know what you mean,” said Isaac.  Rosalyn had always denied it, but he’d swear that there had been actual tears in her eyes.

“When I saw how gobsmacked she was- and how happy you were for her, of course- I couldn’t not have tried to help out.”  She smiled again, a little more dreamily this time.  “It’s rare to see somebody struck with a sudden passion like that.  It’s infectious.  You just want to be around them.”

“Right,” said Isaac.  He’d suspected it before, but now he was almost certain- Judith had a crush on Rosalyn.

And now he had to figure out how he felt about that.  Was he jealous?  A little bit, maybe… but, if he was honest with himself, Isaac had to admit that he’d happily sleep with any of his female flatmates.  Even Alex would probably just have to get him drunk and ask nicely.  In a situation like that, jealousy seemed kind of ridiculous- he couldn’t very well keep all of them to himself.

Besides, on a day like this, picking fights over who fancied who seemed…. Shallow.  Beneath them.  The point of today was to find the original Kelpie and Silkie message.  They’d walk through the countryside, not resting until they were done, and they’d clear Kelpie and Silkie’s name and make Rosalyn happy.  Just making her happy, even if it turned out she wasn’t into either of them, would make today something to look back on with pride.

Judith looked at the map.  “Better go that way,” she said, pointing to the right.

Isaac smiled.  “Off we go.”

*

In her follow-up emails, SciFiChick had suggested meeting at the Starbucks on the High Street.  It wasn’t until they were nearly there that Mariam thought to text Rosalyn and ask if she wanted to come and meet them after her lecture.  The other two weren’t around (Natalie was at work, and Isaac had gone down to Merstham for some reason), and Mariam didn’t want Rosalyn to go home to an empty house if she didn’t have to.

She put her phone away and looked around.  They’d decided to walk along the river, past all the expensive pubs and restaurants, and there were a few ducks gathering around the side of the pavement looking at passers-by and begging for bread. There were a lot of passers-by, all around them.  Public place, she reminded herself.

She turned to Alex.  “when you were choosing universities, did you pick Berrylands just because it was near where Denny lived?”

“Not even as proactive as that, I’m afraid.  Jonathan Lambton paid my tuition for Berrylands just because it was near where Denny lived. Otherwise, I’d be living with my sister and working at Asda to help her with the rent.”

“So it was his idea for you to go to university?” A guy walked past them, and Mariam was sure she recognised him from somewhere.  Short and stocky, with brown hair.

“Oh, I’d probably have got round to it eventually, but I’d have had to save up.”  (The stocky guy crouched down to feed the ducks.  Mariam and Alex walked on past him.)  “At the time, my only real goals were mending fences with Roxanne and getting Denny back on his feet.”

The Starbucks was just a little way down the road.  Mariam could see the green mermaid sign spread out above the customers on the outside tables, who were numerous even though it was only just spring and the breeze over the river was sharp as buggery.  People did strange things.  “He wasn’t the one who got you to study photography, was he?”

Alex laughed.  “No.  I’d been thinking about it for a while.  I don’t know if it’s what I‘d have done if I’d gone to university straight out of school, but I’d probably have taken it up eventually.”

Mariam would have replied with something bland like, Well, I’m glad you’re here now, anyway, but at that moment, a face appeared over Alex’s shoulder.  And unlike the stocky guy from before, Mariam recognised this one right away.

My name is Bradley, and I am a badass.

She didn’t have time to say anything before he raised the hammer.  In the moment afterwards, she tried to warn Alex, to give him a split-second of reaction time, but she’d barely opened her mouth when a pair of hands went over her head and he felt something cold around her throat, stopping the words from coming out before they even got started.

It was a public place.  There were people around.  But none of them moved fast enough to stop Bradley from bringing that hammer down on Alex’s head.

Mariam felt herself being pulled backwards.  Before she could do anything to stop it, she was in the river, being held underneath.

Debbie had been summoned into the living room, along with everyone else Jo could find.  The police were back.

“Shaun and the other man have both been taken into custody,” explained Sergeant Bowen, one of the officers, “What we need to…”

“Excuse me?” snapped Jo.  She was the only person in the room to be on her feet.  The others sat around, flanking her, like she was the queen and they were her court.  “Why has Shaun been arrested when he was the one being beaten up?”

“They’ve both been arrested,” repeated Sergeant Bowen, “In Shaun’s case, it was because we suspect him of harassing a group of Berrylands students.”  He looked around the room.  “I assume you all know which students we mean?”

“And they haven’t been harassing us?” demanded Jo, “Getting us banned from campus?  Telling my parents where to find me?”

Trying to guilt-trip us at the newsagents, thought Debbie.  Except, obviously, Jo didn’t bring that up, because Debbie hadn’t told her.

She’d asked around about Denny.  Bradley said that he complained a lot, never pulled his weight, and had a high opinion of himself.   “Typical rich kid, really,” he’d concluded, “I think maybe there was some other stuff, but you’d have to talk to Shaun about it.  Anyway, eventually he went crying to his rich folks and they took him back home.  No great loss, if you ask me.”

Jo had said something different.  According to her, Denny had disappeared one day and they’d all been really worried about him.  So either they’d kept the real story from Jo for some reason, or Bradley had just said what he’d assumed had happened.  Debbie would have believed either.

Sergeant Bowen pinched the bridge of his nose.  He wasn’t one of the ones who’d come round before- he was shorter and fatter, with a ginger beard.  (His partner, PC Warren, reminded Debbie a bit of Eddie Murphy.). “As we told you before, all your parents have been told is that you’re still alive…”

“Well, maybe I didn’t want them knowing that!”

“…and none of that explains what Shaun was doing on Nursery Road yesterday.”

“So he’s not allowed to go to Nursery Road now, is that it?” snapped Wade, from the side of the room.

PC Warren turned his head towards Wade.  “Nope.  Not without a good reason.”

There was a kind of angry mumble from Wade and the people around him, and Maya tightened her arms around Seth and Lydia’s shoulders.  “You’re scaring my children,” she told the officers, giving them a dirty look.

Debbie didn’t think Seth and Lydia looked all that frightened.  Apparently neither did Sergeant Bowen, because he carried on as if she hadn’t said anything.  “Look.  All I want to know is, did any of you know that Shaun was going to Russel and Tamsin Doggett’s place?”

“No,” said Jo, folding her arms.

“And that’s a no from the rest of you, too?  Fine.  Now, has Shaun made any remarks to you about Alex Rudd and his flatmates?”

“He said he was upset about Jo,” replied Wade, “That’s all.”

The police were looking more and more fed-up by the minute.  Hopefully that meant they’d decide this wasn’t worth it and head back to the station soon.  And thank God nobody had said anything about the graffiti or about Adrian Goldsmith.  As long as the police didn’t know about that, things would probably turn out ok.

*

Dear Isaac and Judith,

Always glad to help a fellow Berrylands alumnus!  We’ve got to keep the old traditions going, after all.

As a matter of fact, the railway bridge you heard about isn’t in Croydon- its about two miles from Merstham Station, near Reigate.  I’m sorry I can’t be more specific, but 1994 was a long time ago!

Wishing you well,

Kimberley Peacock

*

“More drama at yours last night?” chirped Claire, as soon as Mariam got into work.  She decided not to reply.  At least this might make everyone shut up about the graffiti.

Anyway, “more drama” was putting it mildly.  The police had spent half the night at Pallas House, going over every interaction they’d ever had with Shaun and Russel.  At one point, one of the officers had theorised that Shaun might have fixated on them because they’d all been caught up in the bombing, and Mariam was pretty sure all five of them had simultaneously bitten their tongues.

At least Russel had forgotten his plans with the cricket bat.  Things could have been a whole lot worse if he hadn’t.

It was a slow morning, which was probably why Claire felt she could make smug remarks instead of doing her actual job.  At this point in the morning, most people were either in a lecture or still in bed.  Mariam only had a few minutes left to twiddle her thumbs by the till before it was her turn in the kitchen, but even then it would probably just be busywork for the first half-hour or so.  She’d probably end up putting the cutlery through the polishing machine for the fiftieth time in a row, just because she liked the noise it made.

The police had promised to keep tabs on Nursery Road for the next few weeks.  It was probably too much to hope that the Oakmen would be scared off for good, but at least they weren’t being forgotten about.

Mariam was watching their one singular customer sip his beer as if he was trying to make it last all day, when there was a loud clattering crash from behind her.

The kitchen, thought Mariam, and rushed towards the door.  At the last moment, she found enough presence of mind to stand in the doorway instead of going straight  in, so that she could keep an eye on the till and the customer.  But even so, she saw everything.

Adrian had been thrown back against the sink, with enough force to knock all the pans and dishes that had been piled up onto the floor.  He lay slumped against the unit, one arm bent upwards as if he’d tried to catch the counter as he fell.  It took Mariam a moment to notice the microwave on the counter opposite, sitting there with its back off and its circuits exposed.

Mariam felt sick.  It was obvious what had happened here- there had been a problem with the microwave, and Adrian had decided to try and fix it himself instead of calling in a technician like any sensible person.  It was just pure bad luck that none of them had been there to stop him before it was too late.

Mariam blinked, and suddenly Claire was at the plug socket and Wayne was bent over Adrian, or as far over him as he reasonably could without risking getting electrocuted himself.  “He’s unconscious,” Wayne proclaimed as he straightened up, “Mariam, can you call an ambulance?”

 Mariam nodded, and went to the phone.  They should have been in there.  So what if that one customer had stolen all the cash from the till?  He wouldn’t exactly have been stealing food from the mouths of orphans if he had.

She punched in 999, took a deep breath, and tried to collect herself.

*

Rosalyn must have been talking to Alex, because she’d decided to lend Denny a book.  It was a fantasy one called Small Gods, which had been one of her favourites when she was at school.  “My stepmum would have smuggled this book away and burnt it, if I’d let her,” Rosalyn told him, by way of recommendation.

“Why?”

“Well, she’d have said that it was because it was blasphemous to have a god being turned into a tortoise and having to rely on a human,” said Rosalyn, “but really it would be because she didn’t like the part where the monk stands up to the inquisition and tries to get the church to be kinder to people.”

When they’d decided to sit out in the garden, they hadn’t anticipated it getting this breezy.  At the edge of the garden, the trees were swaying from side to side as the wind picked up.  When Denny had been a little kid, he’d been frightened when he’d seen the trees moving like that- no matter how often he’d had it explained to him, he’d been sure that they were moving on their own, probably preparing to attack.  It was amazing, the way little kids could see threats everywhere.  Something about not yet knowing how the world worked, combined with knowing all too well how vulnerable they were.

And that made Denny think of Amy’s son.

Rosalyn was small and gentle and she liked people, and here she was, out in the open, alone with someone like him.  As if it was safe.

Denny got up so quickly he knocked the chair over and nearly tripped, but he steadied himself in time and made it across the patio to the back door.  He knew Rosalyn was following him, but he put enough distance between himself and her to get indoors and up the stairs and into his bedroom, with the door safely locked behind him.  He climbed onto his bed, pressed his ear into the pillow, and listened to the mattress army.

He probably should have known that Rosalyn would try knocking on his door, instead of leaving the house or running off to get Jonathan.  Denny heard the knock over the mattress army, and then he heard her voice.  “Can I come in?”

“No.”  Even his voice sounded too loud, as if it could deafen everyone in earshot if he wasn’t careful.

There was a little pause.  “Then… is it alright if I just sit by the door for a bit?”

No harm in that, Denny supposed.  He couldn’t break down the door from all the way over here.  “Alright.”

Time went by.  Denny listened to the mattress army, marching along.  He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but whenever he got close to nodding off, the thought of Rosalyn sitting against the door made him feel strange and put him off.

Eventually he got up and went to sit by his side of the door.  “Jon and Octavia have got you acting like an unpaid nurse,” he said, once he was sure he was close enough for her to hear.

“Nah,” said Rosalyn, more cheerful than anyone who’d been waiting against a door for their friend to stop having a nervous breakdown really should have been, “I’m more like a companion.  Like in Rebecca.”

Books again.  But Denny didn’t mind.  “I haven’t read Rebecca.”

“Well, have you read Jane Eyre?  It’s a bit like that.”

“Don’t know that one, either.  They barely ever let us read full-length novels at my school.  It was mostly short stories and poetry.”

“Yeah…  I remember my Year Seven teacher set us a poem that went, I remember, I remember the house where I was born every lesson for about three weeks.”  There was a shuffling sound behind the door- Rosalyn moving so she could sit more comfortably.  “I actually liked it at first, but by the tenth time, I never wanted to hear it again.”

Denny liked Rosalyn’s laugh.  It was lower and more growly than you’d expect.

“My friend Jodie said in her analysis of it that it sounded like it was written by someone who never got over finding out that there wasn’t a Santa Claus.  The teacher wasn’t pleased, but, like she said, he was the one who asked for our opinions…”

Denny laughed.  Then he stood up and unlocked the door.

He was worried that seeing Rosalyn on the other side would set him off again, but it didn’t.  She didn’t look quite so small and fragile anymore.  That feeling he’d had had passed.  “Are you feeling better?”

“A bit.  But I think we should stay indoors for a while.” 

She glanced out of the window.  “We can do that.  Too cold out there anyway.”

*

It was only four in the afternoon when Mariam got in, but it felt as if she’d been out all night.

“Apparently he’s in stable condition,” she told Alex, the only other person who was in at the time, “The Student Union’s going to be closed tomorrow while they check that there isn’t a bigger problem with the electric, but if you ask me, that’s just a formality.  We all know what happened- Adrian tried to fix the microwave.”  She put her arm over her eyes.  Silly, really- all she was blocking out was the sight of her own ceiling.  She’d fallen backwards onto her bed, her knees bent and her feet still on the carpet, and she was too tired to move.

Alex had probably sat down at her desk, judging by the direction of his voice.  “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

“Thanks.”  She was more worried about Adrian than she’d ever have thought she would be.  That morning, at the hospital, they’d thought every footstep was someone coming over to tell them he’d died.  It had felt like somebody was twisting their stomachs from side to side every time.  “Robin’s gone into full conspiracy-theory mode.  He says the equipment was probably faulty, and that if Adrian’s got any permanent injuries, his family should sue the university for everything it’s got.”

“Hm.  How much has it got?”

Mariam let out an approximation of a laugh.

“In any case, if there was a fault with the equipment, I’m still glad you weren’t the one who got hurt.”

Mariam was pretty sure that hadn’t been it- human error, that was all it was- but she smiled anyway.  “Thanks.  For what it’s worth, I promise not to try and take the backs off microwaves without professional advice.”

She lay there for a while, knees still bent, wrist still over her eyes, while Alex got his laptop out and made clattering noises on the keyboard.  Mariam herself wasn’t planning to even look at a laptop screen this evening.  If there was ever a time to give herself a night off, it was now.

But then Alex said, “We’ve got an email.”

Mariam sat up.  “‘We’?”

“It’s copied to both of our addresses.  Somebody called SciFiChick?”  He glanced at Mariam, who shrugged.  “She says she’s a former Oakman.  Doesn’t give her actual name, but…”

Mariam moved over so that she could read over his shoulder.  Her feet were starting to ache- she should really have taken her shoes off when she got in, but she’d been too tired.

“I hope you don’t mind me contacting you,” Alex read aloud, “but I heard about the thing with your neighbours, and I’m worried that Pinder’s planning something worse.”

“She calls him ‘Pinder’?” asked Mariam, “Not ‘Shaun’?”

Alex nodded.  “I’m actually going to be in town tomorrow- on the high street.  Would you be free to meet up sometime in the afternoon?”  He looked up and met Mariam’s eyes.

She thought about it.  “I guess it’s a public place…”

“Mm.  She doesn’t give her name, though.  I’m wondering…”  He leaned on his elbow.  “I know she said ‘Pinder,’ but the fact that she’s in the area…  And the email address isn’t one of the ones on our list…”  He looked at the screen again.  “I think this might be a current Oakman.  Maybe one who’s being cagey in case Pinder finds out what she’s up to.”

Mariam frowned.  “What do you think?  Do we trust her?”

Alex thought for a moment.  “Well, you said yourself, it’s a public place…  Yes.”  He nodded along with himself.  “The risk is small enough.  I think we should go.”

Early 2005

There was a quick trip to the doctor, where it became clear that Denny wasn’t suffering anything worse than malnourishment and minor infections.  After that, they went back to Jonathan Lambton’s place.

Alex hadn’t seen his house before.  He’d met him at his office in the theatre, after making an appointment and spending all day worrying that he wouldn’t be believed.  The home was a three-storey Victorian building hidden from the main road by trees and ivy.  Alex felt better upon seeing it.  Denny needed a place to hide. 

They installed Denny in the spare bedroom.  He didn’t have any things to unpack, so that amounted to dimming the lights and tucking him under the chunky duvet.

“They” were Alex himself, Denny’s older brother Jonathan, and their sister Octavia.  None of them spoke much.  They were all still processing what they’d seen in that cabin.

But at one point, after Alex had brought Denny his fourth or fifth cup of tea.  Jonathan stopped him in the hallway outside.  “Alex, I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.  You don’t know how much it means for us to have Denny back.”

Alex nodded.  “I just wish I’d been quicker.  Then maybe…”  How long had Denny been locked in that cabin?  Just a few days, or more like a month?

“The important thing is that he’s here.”  Jonathan cleared his throat.  “Do you think your sister could spare you for a few more days?  I think Denny would respond well to a familiar face.”

For a moment, Alex wondered what a desperate situation they were in if somebody Denny hadn’t see in nearly a year was more of a familiar face than his own family.  “I’m sure she could.”

*

“A few more days,” turned into two weeks, then a month.  Roxanne wasn’t happy about it, but Alex made sure to phone her every evening so she knew he wasn’t disappearing on her again.

It had taken nearly a week to get Denny to talk, and even after that it was mostly just yes” or “no.”  Denny spent most of the day squeezing his eyes shut and pushed his face into the side of the pillow, as if he was willing the whole world to go away.

Pinder had just locked him in that cabin and forgotten about him.  There had been a bike lock on the door- nothing that a healthy, determined person couldn’t have broken through, but Pinder had put in a lot of effort to make sure that Denny was neither of those things.  The walls had been covered in scratches and little smears of blood.

It didn’t take long for Alex to decide to read to him.  Denny had got him through his recovery with stories, so the logical thing was to return the favour.  And while Jonathan Lambton’s house wasn’t quite grand enough to have its own library, there was definitely more of a selection here than there had been at the campsite.

Alex found The Chronicles of Narnia– all seven books, lined up neatly in order despite their creases and cracked spines- on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the dining room.  He knew, right away, that they must have belonged to Denny- neither Jonathan nor Octavia had any children, and the books weren’t old enough to have been here since their childhoods.  They’d be a comforting memory for Denny, and relatively easy to follow while he was still in his spaced-out state.  They were the perfect thing to read to him.

“I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided to get in touch with Denny’s mother,” said Jonathan wearily.

Alex nodded.  He knew very little about Denny’s mother, besides the fact that she existed and was named Niamh.  “Do you think she’ll come?”

Jonathan sighed.  “Maybe…  I don’t know how much good she’ll do, but it’s worth a try.”

While Alex was reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to Denny, watching for any reaction beyond a tired hum, he realised that it was an even more appropriate book than he’d thought.  He should probably have seen it coming with all the Christian symbolism, but there was a lot of redemption in it.  Maybe not for the White Witch, who enjoyed sacrificing lions and turning people to stone too much to give it up, but Edmund and Mr Tumnus came out OK despite having screwed up at the start.  That was exactly the kind of thing Denny needed to hear about right now.

*

“She ran off and abandoned him when he was twelve,” Octavia told Alex, “Her new boyfriend didn’t like him, so out he went.”  She was cooking pasta for Denny (besides soup and toast, it was pretty much all he ate), and as she clattered the pans and cutlery around, she seemed to vibrate with anger.

“And that’s when he came to live with you and Jonathan?”

Octavia waved her hand.  “Just Jonathan, at the time.  He was still married to Jeannie, back then.”  She stirred the pasta, one hand on the spoon and the other planted on her hip, staring at the pan as if daring it to disappoint her.  She was quite pretty, in a sharp, imposing way, but it always alarmed Alex to see how thin she was.  “She just phoned them up one weekend- Please take my kid.  He’s cramping my style.”

Alex poured a glass of orange juice.  “Did Denny ever see her after that?”

“They spoke on the phone.  I don’t know if they ever saw each other face-to-face.”  She made a smacking noise with her lips and teeth.  “But you can’t treat children like that, can you?  Shoving them into the background as soon as you get bored?”  She gave the pasta an extra, indignant stir.  “I mean, God knows Jonathan and me saw more of our nanny than our parents most weeks, but I expected better from her.  Maybe just because she was younger.”

*

“It’s not the sort of place where things happen,” Alex read, “The trees go on growing, that’s all.”

Denny smiled.  “Sounds nice.”

*

Denny’s mother had long, ash-blonde hair, and an expression like someone in chronic pain.  After they’d let her in, she stood in the downstairs hallway wringing her hands and looking from side to side as if waiting for instructions.

“This is Alex,” said Octavia, surprisingly gently considering how angry she’d been at the prospect of this visit.  (Jonathan was standing off to one side, looking as intimidating as possible.)  “He helped us get Denny back.  In fact, he was the one who told us where he was in the first place.”

Denny’s mother nodded, and held out a hand.  “Pleased to meet you.  I’m Niamh.”

Alex shook her hand, which felt surprisingly small in his.  He was beginning to suspect that the reason Octavia hadn’t been able to stay angry was that Niamh seemed so fragile in person.  “I’m glad you’re here,” he told her, “Denny will be pleased to see you.”

Niamh grimaced, as if she doubted that.

When they got upstairs (Octavia having volunteered Alex to show Niamh up), Denny didn’t seem to recognise her at first.  His eyes seemed to focus and unfocus, and after a moment, Alex noticed how rapid his breathing had become.

“Denny?” asked Niamh, “Are you…”

Denny had collapsed into himself, shoulders hunched, face buried in his hands.  “I’m sorry!” he wailed, “I’m sorry!”

Alex looked sideways at Niamh, and saw her backing away, a look of sheer horror on her face.

*

“This was a mistake,” said Niamh, on the landing, “I shouldn’t have come.”

So far, Alex had managed to convince her not to run straight out of the house again.  He didn’t know if he could keep that up for much longer, but he had to try.  “You coming was exactly the right thing to do.  Denny needs as many people in his corner as possible.”

“But you saw what happened…”

“He had the same reaction to us, the first couple of weeks.  Shaun messed with his head.  He convinced him that he’d done terrible things.”  He could tell by Niamh’s face that she didn’t believe him.  “Please stay.  I think you being around will be good for him.”

Niamh gave a disdainful splutter.  “It never has before.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven’t they told you?”

Alex tried to think of a diplomatic way to put it.  “They told me you’d given custody to Jonathan…”

“Yes!   After years of hearing from them that I wasn’t good enough!”  She wasn’t crying, but she sounded on the edge of it.  There was a damp quality to her words.  “You’d think they’d be pleased.”

Alex looked at the wall opposite, working out what to say next.  If he asked her what had happened, she’d probably tell him a slightly different story to the one Octavia had- not necessarily because either of them were lying, but just because they’d seen things from different sides.  But he didn’t think that going over what had happened four or five years ago was going to help things now.  “If they didn’t think you were good enough, they wouldn’t have asked you to come.”  He listened out, making sure that Jonathan and Octavia weren’t coming upstairs to interfere, then added, “Please stay.  I think Denny really needs you around.”

*

In the end, Niamh sat in while Alex and Denny finished The Magician’s Nephew.  Alex noticed that there was a lot of emphasis on how otherworldly and terrifying the White Witch was, but that never seemed to stop the human characters from mouthing off to her.  There was a lesson there, if Shaun Pinder ever showed up in their lives again.