Natalie was bent over the scanner again, working her way from the 80 million parties the Lambtons had held in the Seventies so she could get onto the 95 billion they’d held in the Eighties, when her phone rang.  She’d put it on silent, so as to be professional, but she felt it vibrating and took it out almost by instinct.

She would have let it ring off- everyone knew she had work this afternoon- but the screen said “Mariam,” and normally Mariam would have been the last person to annoy her friends when they were busy.  Even so, if Mama Lambton had been in the room, Natalie would never have dared to answer it, but she was on the phone in the living room again, discussing dinner plans with a friend of hers.  Natalie decided to risk it.

“Hello?” she said, but Mariam didn’t reply.  There were muffled voices and rustling and bumping noises, and then, just as Natalie was about to dismiss it as a pocket-dial, there was a scream.

But “scream” was the wrong word.  It wasn’t just a shrill, high-pitched wail- you could tell it had words in it, even though you couldn’t hear what the words were.  It was tearful and frantic, and it was recognisably Mariam’s voice.

“Mariam!  Can you hear me?”  Even as she said it, Natalie knew she might just be making things worse.  What if Mariam was being mugged, and Natalie had just shouted loud enough to let them know she had a phone on her?  She turned up the volume on the side so she could listen for more details, but it was no good.  The voices had stopped now.  All she could hear was a strange, watery sound.

All of a sudden, Mama Lambton appeared in front of her.  “Explain yourself.  Now.”

Natalie’s face and hands and body had gone numb.  Her phone was still connected.  The watery sound was still there.  Maybe there was a way of tracing where Mariam’s phone was through hers.  “I just got a call from…”

Mama Lambton held a hand out.  “Give me that.”

Natalie passed her phone to Mama Lambton.  Maybe she’d know what to do.  “It’s my friend Mariam.  She sounds like she’s in danger.  I don’t know where she is, but maybe we can…”  She caught her breath.  “I don’t know…”

Mama Lambton pressed the red button, hanging up.  “I have never seen such disrespectful behaviour in my life,” she hissed, “How dare you betray my trust like this?  Did you think I was paying you to gossip on the phone?”

Natalie’s breath hitched in her throat.  She couldn’t seem to get her voice loud enough to be heard. “She’s in trouble.  I heard her screaming.” 

Mama Lambton acted as if she hadn’t said anything at all.  “My son told me that you were a bright, capable girl.  I’m afraid I haven’t seen much evidence of that so far.”  She seemed to notice that she was still holding the phone out in front of her, and opened her jacket to tuck it into an inside pocket that Natalie couldn’t see.  “The rest of your life might revolve around your phone, but when you’re here, I expect you to do the job you’re paid for.”

“Please!”  Natalie finally got to her feet.  Her legs almost seemed as if they wouldn’t support her, they were shaking so badly.  “We need to call the police!”  And tell them what? she thought, That a crime’s been committed somewhere in Greater London, probably?  By the time they work out where Mariam actually is, she’ll…  “At least let me try and call her back!  If I reach here and she’s fine, I swear I’ll work an hour’s overtime to make up for it, but we need to…”

“This isn’t a negotiation.”  Mama Lambton walked out of the room, Natalie’s phone still in her jacket pocket.

Natalie stayed still, almost unable to believe what had happened.  It was as if Mama Lambton hadn’t heard anything she’d said.  Had she genuinely not understood, or just not cared?  Either way, somewhere Natalie couldn’t hear it, Mariam was screaming.

If she stayed still for too long- if she let herself think for too long- she’d end up collapsing on the floor in tears.  As far as she could see, she had two options:  Run out of the house and get the train back to Berrylands (wasting time travelling when she should be helping Mariam), or go after Mama Lambton and somehow persuade her to give her phone back (wasting time talking when she should be helping Mariam, and if she hadn’t listened to what Natalie had said already, what would she listen to?).

Natalie made her choice.  She got to her feet and ran down the hall to the front door.

Mama Lambton appeared at the top of the stairs.  “What on Earth are you doing?  Come back here!”

Natalie slammed the door behind her.  She was pretty sure she could make it to the station in five minutes if she ran.  She was pretty sure she remembered there being a taxi rank around there somewhere.  If she got back to Pallas House, maybe Isaac or Alex or Rosalyn would be around, and they might know what was going on.  At the very least, they might have some ideas about what to do next, because Natalie didn’t have a clue.

*

Rosalyn had got Mariam’s text just as her lecture finished, and she’d decided to walk up and meet them.  She got there just in time to see a man raise a hammer, a black one with a wooden handle like Rosalyn’s dad had in his toolbox, and bring it down on somebody’s head.

She didn’t recognise Bradley at first.  She didn’t even realise it was Alex he’d hit.  All Rosalyn knew was that it was a normal day, with pleasant weather and shoppers bustling around, until suddenly one man decided to break another man’s head open.

In the split-second before the people around them saw what had happened and started screaming, Rosalyn found herself walking towards the man with the hammer.  She didn’t know why.  Somehow it just seemed like the next thing that should happen.

She was behind the man when he raised the hammer again.  He hadn’t noticed her yet, but the only way Rosalyn could think of to stop what was going to happen next was to reach out and tap him on the shoulder.

He whirled around, his hammer leading him onwards in a wobbly circle.  When he saw her face, he let out an outraged noise, as if he’d just caught her trying to pick his pocket.  Rosalyn wasn’t scared.  She didn’t know why.  Maybe things had happened too quickly for the fear to get started yet.

The man raised the hammer.  Rosalyn couldn’t see any blood on it.  Maybe it was just invisible against the black, or maybe it had come away from the other man’s head before any blood had had time to flow out of the wound.  He was wobbling again, and this time he stumbled, his legs taking him off to the side, and Rosalyn saw her chance.  Before he could bring the hammer down on her, she brought her knee up and tried to kick his legs out from under him.

*

Mariam was underwater.  That Guy had her underwater.  She hadn’t recognised him until it was too late.  She couldn’t breathe- probably wouldn’t have been able to breathe even if her head had been above the surface, because he had something around her throat- and Alex was dead.  He was lying in a pool of his own blood on the pavement because Mariam hadn’t said anything in time, because she hadn’t quite believed that Bradley would smash somebody’s head in on a crowded street in broad daylight.

Mariam could feel herself thrashing about and trying to escape, even though she knew it wasn’t going to work.  That Guy had whatever it was wrapped tight around her neck, and he hadn’t budged an inch.  No matter how difficult she made it for him, no matter how long she refused to give him the satisfaction of just buckling under his weight and going quietly, Mariam was going to die.  She might not even have a minute left to think.

That Guy gave her an extra shove, pushing her further downwards, and when Mariam reached out behind her, she felt something solid.  There was mud, slimy and soft beneath her fingers.  It shouldn’t have been surprising.  If That Guy was able to keep such constant, unmoving pressure on her, the river must have been shallow enough for him to stand up in.

Mariam kept her hand on the mud.  Without even being sure what she was trying to do, she bent one leg back and braced it against the bottom of the river, and kicked out as hard as she could with the other one.  The thing around her neck loosened.  She thrashed about some more, and managed to break the surface, the air feeling like shards of broken glass in her throat.

In a moment, That Guy was on her again, trying to get the thing- it looked like a black electric cable, Mariam saw now- back around her throat.  Mariam could see some of the crowd running towards the riverbank and wading in, but if she relied on that, she’d be dead.  That Guy tried to force her underwater again, but Mariam was standing now, and she drove her elbow into his stomach, trying to throw him off her back.  It wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it was going to be.  All the energy had been knocked out of her when she’d been underwater, and at first it just felt as if she was pulling a muscle, not using it for anything useful.  But after the second or third try, she found herself able to take a step forward.  When That Guy tried to follow her, she threw a punch and hit him in the side of the jaw, then dived forward and swam the rest of the way.

Somebody helped her out of the river.  Quite a few somebodies, actually- most of the people on the riverbank had gathered around this particular spot .  A few of them formed a protective barrier behind Mariam, preventing That Guy from pulling her back in, and somebody else gave her their jacket.  She’d barely even noticed she was cold until now.

A lot of people tried to talk to her in the minute or two before the police and ambulances started to arrive, but when Mariam thought about it later, the only thing she remembered hearing was what Peps said.  Mariam spotted her crouched next to Alex, one hand on his chest and the other holding onto her own left shoulder, as if something had happened to it.  Not far away, a couple of men were holding Bradley, writhing and screaming, down on the ground- no sign of where the hammer had got to, but as long as he didn’t have it, things were probably under control.  Mariam looked at Peps, trying to work out how much she’d seen and how either of them could possibly put the last, awful few minutes into words, but Peps spoke first.  As soon as Mariam approached her, she looked up, met her eyes, and said, “He’s still breathing.”

*

They’d been walking for hours, and, while they hadn’t exactly been ready to call it a day- they were in this for the long haul, him and Judith- the last of that morning’s optimism had drained away a little while back.  By three in the afternoon, they’d been walking along the path they’d laid out for themselves out of sheer stubbornness, not because they still expected to find something.

The, for about the seventeenth time that day, they’d spotted something tall and brown through the trees, and gone to get a closer look.

It was a railway bridge, alright.  Or some kind of bridge, anyway- if there were any actual tracks going under it, they’d disappeared under the weeds years ago.  The letters, starting from twenty feet up and stopping just above Isaac’s head, were white and faded, so you had to read it through twice to be sure what it actually said.  Isaac had read it so many times in the last ten minutes that the words felt seared onto his brain.

The Story of Coney Park

Let’s say there was a man who stole a seal-woman’s skin and forced her to marry him, and, after she finally found where he’d hidden it and made her escape, took to the seas in a rage and didn’t rest until he’d slaughtered her new seal-husband and all their seal-children.

(The silkie)

Let’s say there was a man who saw a beautiful woman bathing in a lake, and, after deciding to swim up to her, found himself pulled underwater and feasted upon.

(The kelpie)

Wouldn’t the world be a much fairer place if it was the same man in both stories?

(Kelpie and silkie)

They’d actually done it.  They were actually here.

“Can I borrow your notebook?” he asked Judith, “I want to copy this down.”  He’d taken a picture with his phone, but he didn’t know if Rosalyn would be able to make out the words from that- and besides, the signal was so spotty out here that he was probably going to have to wait until they were back on the train before sending it to her.

Judith passed it over, along with a biro.  “Where do you think Coney Park is?”

“I don’t know,” said Isaac.  He felt light-headed, as if he was about to either take off and fly or faint dead away.  “But I bet Rosalyn will find out, if it’s the last thing she does.”

Judith turned to him, as if surprised, with a big, warm grin on her face.  Isaac thought he knew what she was thinking.  This would take her mind off the graffiti round the university.  And if they were really lucky, it might take everyone else’s mind off it as well.

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.

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.