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

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

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

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

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

Alex sighed.  “Mariam, I’m…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mariam gave her a look.

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

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

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

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

“I’m sure they were!  But…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Absolutely,” said Alex.

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Surprise, surprise,” muttered Debbie.

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

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

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

March 2000

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex badly needed to find something to do on Tuesdays.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex laughed.  “Really?”

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

“I… don’t know?”

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

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

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

*

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

Self-improvement through meditation, Tuesday evenings.

Tuesday evenings.

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

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

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

“No?”

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

Melanie’s face lit up.

*

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

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

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

“Disrespecting me, disrespecting this house…”

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

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

“You allow me?”

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

“Um… in touch with Social Services?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, like I said, I didn’t…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

There was a happy rumbling sound from the circle.

“I said, did everyone enjoy that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s the truth!” said Pinder.

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

“Um, I didn’t.  Alex.”

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

Alex laughed.  “Sure.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaac made a noise of disagreement.

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

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

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

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

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

She shrugged.  “For what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was almost funny.

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

His head snapped up, and his eyes went wide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Quite a bit, as of yesterday.”

Alex raised his eyebrows.

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

“Why did he…?”

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

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

“Well… why weren’t you?”

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

Natalie nodded.  “Still…”

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

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

Alex nodded, his eyes big and sad.

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

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

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

Alex reached out and put his hand over hers.

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

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

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

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

“Was that when you left the Oakmen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 1997

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

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

“Alex?” asked Serena.

“Hm?”

“Would you rather be hanged or beheaded?”

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

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

“Yeah, but if you had to.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Think about it, Roxy,” said Mum.

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

“You would be if you tried.”

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marley and Serena instantly brightened up.

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“But she could…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, that’s not on ‘til later.”

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

Serena nodded, taking both ideas into account.

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

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

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

“Look, Mum…”

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“You’ll be a starving artist.”

“Yep.  Suffering feeds my art.”

Roxanne burst out laughing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dad knocked a little harder.  “Julie?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

(From the StarrComix forum)

Kool-Ade                                                                      Saturday 11^th of March 2006

14:00 GMT

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

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

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

HungryHungryHippo           Sunday 12^th March 2006

08:00 GMT

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

Tom Dockin   Sunday 12^th March 2006

08:03 GMT

LOL, walking Darwin Awards.

*

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

Ego non tu Latinum scio- Kelpie and Silkie.

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

DANCE FOR ME, CLOWN! – Kelpie and Silkie

*

(From the StarrComix forum)

KoolAde                                                  Friday 17^th March 2006                                                                                                                                                                            15:33 GMT

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

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

Tom Dockin  Friday 17th March 2006

15:35 GMT

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

Shaun wasn’t worried when the police showed up at his door.  These things happened sometimes.  Plan for every contingency, that was his motto.

Jo called him to the front door, and he greeted them with a smile.  “Good morning, officers.  How can I help you?”

“Are you Shaun Mandeville?” asked one of the coppers.  He was a stocky, shaven-headed type who looked as if he might have a bunch of lumpy blue tattoos under his uniform.  The type who believed in the rule of law, which usually meant throwing suspects down the stairs two or three times a week.  That might have scared some people, but not Shaun.  Guys like him were basically attack dogs- they’d follow whoever had the loudest voice.  All you had to do was redirect him to another target.

“Yes,” said Shaun, “May I ask what this is regarding?”  It was hard for him to get a read on the other officer.  He had more hair than the attack dog, and a thinner face.  He looked more like a deliveryman than real police.  Shaun would have to look a little closer at this one.

“We just want to ask a few questions,” said the attack dog, “Can we come in?”

“Of course,” said Shaun, “Right this way.”  He led them past Jo, who closed the door behind them.  If he led them to the conservatory at the back of the house, then that would give him an excuse to give them a tour of the house, maybe fill them in on the Oakmen’s good works so that they’d be more sympathetically inclined by the time the interview began.  The house itself was a little place they were renting from somebody’s relatives, but it made a nice backdrop.  No-one questioned your respectability when you were surrounded by mahogany tiles and tasteful beige carpets.

“Excuse the mess,” he said, nodding towards the baked-bean cans piled up on the living room table, “You caught us in the middle of our food drive.”

“Is that so?” asked the deliveryman, taking care not to sound interested.

Shaun shot him a winning smile.  “Help for the homeless.  We can’t do much, but I think it’s important to give back, don’t you?”

The deliveryman didn’t reply.

They passed through the kitchen, where Debbie was teaching Wade and Maya’s kids how to make fajitas, and down the back hall, where Jo’s Medieval-style tapestry hung, and finally into the conservatory, where they kept their musical instruments.  When Shaun pointed these things out, he was careful to address the attack dog rather than the deliveryman- guys like him always had a sentimental streak a mile wide.

“Take a seat,” he said, moving a set of bongos off the sofa so they could sit down.  He sat on the chair opposite, and leaned forward, trying to look as engaging as possible.  “So!  How can I help you?”

The attack dog cleared his throat.  “Well, there’s been some complaints.  Do you know a girl named Mariam Gharib?  University student?”

In a split-second, Shaun had to think the whole thing through and decide how he was going to play this.  Did he deny that he’d ever met Mariam, and hope that her co-workers hated her too much to ever mention that they’d seen him too?  Did he talk about her affectionately, and try to play it all off as a misunderstanding?  Did he do his best to convince the cops that everything she’d said was born out of a delusional obsession, a desire to feel important?  The trouble was, he had no idea what she was actually saying about him, although the fact that they were having this conversation in his house rather than at the police station suggested that it couldn’t be anything too dire.

He decided to go for the charm offensive.  “Mariam?  Yes, she came to a couple of our meetings.  Seemed like a very bright girl.”

“Well, she says you bothered her at work.”

“I wanted to check that she was OK.  She’d seemed upset at the meeting the day before.”  He hoped he’d phrased that right.  The last thing he wanted was to give the coppers the idea that the meeting had made her upset.

There was also the Natalie situation to deal with.  The cops would probably bring that up next.  Shaun needed to play himself as a concerned friend, trying to get Mariam out of a toxic friendship that was hurting her in ways she couldn’t see… but if he was giving the cops the idea that he didn’t know Mariam very well, then how could he have known about that?  The signs would have had to be particularly obvious, Shaun decided- stolen money, screeching fits in public, threats of suicide.  And the Oakmen were all about helping people, so Shaun would have had to…

“Do you know a man named Alex Rudd?” asked the deliveryman.

Shaun was temporarily thrown off-balance.  “Um…  I think I recognise the name.”  He nodded, righting himself.  “Yes, he was a guy who stayed with us for a few weeks.  This would have been five, six years ago.”  Jo and the others had practically pissed themselves in delight when Alex’s name came up after the bombing, but there had been no sign of him since this whole thing had started.  Even when all his housemates had come to the meeting, Alex was nowhere to be seen.  Hiding, or secretly pulling the strings?  Shaun wished he had a clue.  “We had to ask him to leave in the end.  He seemed… well… a little unhinged.”

If Alex had told the police anything about what had happened in Dorset, then he was an idiot.  The only evidence of any of their little adventures would have been things he and the rest of his team had left.  He’d only be incriminating himself.

“Well, Alex Rudd lives in the same house as Mariam Gharib,” said the deliveryman, triumphantly, as if he’d just pinned Shaun to the wall with a brilliant piece of evidence.

Shaun just winced in sympathy.  “Really?  God.  Poor Mariam.”

He’d surprised them there, he could tell.  The two of them went quiet for a moment, then looked at each other, like, Help, what do we do now?

Eventually, the attack dog cleared his throat.  “Mariam said that she heard someone trying to get into her house last Friday night.  One of her neighbours said he spotted a group of people in black outside her house.  You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Shaun was going to kill Bradley.  He’d told him over and over, they had to go about this subtly if they were going to draw Alex out, but when Mariam didn’t show up to that first meeting, guess who decided that getting a posse together and trying to smash the door down was the best idea?  Ridiculous.  “…No?” he said, “Was everyone OK?”

Before the attack dog could reply, the deliveryman let out a long, nasal sigh.  “Look, the point is, Mariam and her housemates have made it clear that they don’t want you around.  You might not think that’s fair, you might not know why, but you need to take them at their word.  Don’t seek them out, don’t go to places you know they’ll be…  Just maintain a healthy distance.  OK?”

Shaun did his best to put on a sad, hangdog expression.  “Well, I’m sad to hear it, but if that’s what they want, I’ll honour their wishes.”  He remembered Mariam’s co-worker, the guy behind the bar.  Adrian, she’d called him.  He hadn’t seemed to like her much, had he?  That might be a good place to start.

“And I’d stay away from Berrylands University in general,” the attack dog broke in, “We checked with the university staff, and they never gave you official permission to be there.  Don’t make trouble for yourself, eh?”

Shaun felt like poking the attack dog’s eyes out with his thumbs.  “You’re right.  I’ll be sure to keep my distance.”

He just needed a way to get in touch with Adrian.  Then he could decide what to do next.

*

Mariam had told her over and over about what had happened on Monday, but, even so when Natalie opened the door to a strange woman with long grey hair, it didn’t ring a bell.  Her mother had often told her that she needed to be a better listener.

“I’m here to see Alex,” the woman said, and then Natalie remembered.

“I don’t know what to tell you.  He’s not here.”

The woman’s expression didn’t change.  “Let me in, please.”

 “Nope.”  Natalie folded her arms.

Mrs Rudd (if that was really who she was) took a harsh, ragged breath.  “I really think you’ll want to let me in this time,” she said, nodding towards her right hand.

Natalie looked down.  Mrs Rudd’s hand was mostly hidden in her handbag, but there was something in there.  Something grey, possibly tube-shaped.  It looked as if she was holding it in the way someone would hold a gun.

Natalie’s first thought was, That’s almost certainly fake.

Almost, though.  Could Natalie take that risk?  Because even if Mrs Rudd didn’t exactly strike her as a master gangster, even if Natalie had no idea how she’d even begin to get hold of a real gun, there was always that small chance that she was and she had.  And if it was real, then from what Mariam had said, Mrs Rudd seemed like exactly the sort of person who’d lose her temper and pull the trigger at the slightest provocation.

Trying her very best not to sound threatening, Natalie asked, “What do you want?”
Mrs Rudd’s mouth gaped in exasperation.  “I just told you…”

“No, I know you want to come in,” Natalie said quickly, “But what do you want to do once you have?  Alex isn’t in.  He told us he was going to Amsterdam.  If he’s not there, we don’t know where he is.”  And then she accuses me of lying and shoots me in the stomach.

But instead, Mrs Rudd stayed calm.  “I want to see his room.  Maybe he left something in there that can tell us something.”

Alright.  She had a plan, and that plan wasn’t ‘run amok through the house destroying everyone’s possessions.’  That was better than Natalie had expected.  She stood aside and let her through.  “I should warn you, I don’t actually have a key for Alex’s room.”

 Mrs Rudd didn’t seem to hear her.  She was looking at a couple of opened and discarded envelopes that had fallen on the floor.  She nudged them with her foot.  “This what you do, then?  Leave your rubbish all over the carpet?”

Natalie caught a glimpse of Isaac’s name on one of the envelopes, and silently cursed him.  “I’m sure it was just…”

“If it was my house, I’d make you eat it.  Who do you think’s paying for this place? The fucking tooth fairy?”

Natalie was pretty sure there wasn’t any answer to that question that wouldn’t infuriate her even more.  “Alex’s room is just upstairs,” she said, pointing at the staircase.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”  Mrs Rudd took Natalie’s arm and all but dragged her up.

Her hand wasn’t in the handbag anymore.  Assuming it was a real gun, how quickly could Mrs Rudd get hold of it if Natalie tried something funny?  And how much damage could it do if it went off unexpectedly?

They arrived at Alex’s door, just across the hall from Natalie’s.  Mrs Rudd looked at her expectantly.  “Well?” she asked, after a few seconds had gone by.

“I told you.  I don’t have a key for his room.”

Mrs Rudd exploded.  “Use your own key!  Your own key!  They’re all the same in places like this!”

Obediently, Natalie took her own key out of her pocket.  She knew it wasn’t going to work, but she tried it anyway.  And she kept her eyes focused on the key and the lock, because she knew if she looked around and saw Mrs Rudd’s hand disappear into her handbag again she might actually lose her mind.

After a few tries, Natalie heard an angry, snorting groan from behind her.  “For fuck’s sake!  Move!”  And she elbowed Natalie aside so that she could try rattling the key in the lock herself.

The bag was still under her arm, squeezed between her ribcage and her elbow.  There was no chance for Natalie to snatch it.

Eventually, Mrs Rudd let out another groan, and turned around, leaving Natalie’s key stuck in the lock.  “There’ll be a spare key downstairs.  Move.”

Natalie followed her back down the stairs.  “I don’t think we’ve got…”
Mrs Rudd whirled around to face her.  “How about you stop talking and listen for a change?  Hmm?”  Then she turned back round and headed for the kitchen.

Natalie didn’t know why she thought the hypothetical spare key was going to be in one of the food cupboards, but apparently she did.  Mrs Rudd ransacked them, opening them wide and throwing all the cans and packets she found onto the floor behind her.  “Look at this!” she snapped, waving a multi-pack of Haribo Starmix in Natalie’s face, “Are you honestly going to tell me this is how a mature person lives his life?”

“That’s not Alex’s,” said Natalie.  Isaac had bought it from Tesco yesterday, so that they could share.

“I should just accept the fact that he’s never going to grow up, shouldn’t I?”  She threw the Haribo packets down.  “I mean, I get a letter from Berrylands University telling me he’s getting expelled for drugs.  First I heard of it!  First I heard that he was even at Berrylands University!”

Natalie couldn’t talk for a moment.  “Expelled for drugs.”  So that’s why he vanished into thin air.  That’s why he started writing weird messages on the wall.  That’s why…

Wait.

Alex was twenty-three.  Why would the university write to his mother, even if he was getting expelled?  All of Natalie’s post had been addressed to her, not her parents.  Even the Conditional Offers, and she’d still been seventeen when some of those had come through.  Wasn’t that how universities worked?

Who do you think’s paying for this, the fucking tooth fairy?

First I heard that he was even at Berrylands University!

If she hadn’t known he was at Berrylands, then she couldn’t have been paying his tuition.  And it couldn’t have just been a case of her sneakily reading his letters after he’d given her house as an alternative postal address, or she’d have read other letters from the university before.  “Where did you think he was?” asked Natalie.

“I had no idea!  He threw me away as soon as he didn’t need me anymore!”  Her face hardened into a tight scowl.  “That’s what your generation does, right?  Everything’s disposable.”

Natalie mumbled something noncommittal.

Mrs Rudd fidgeted with the cupboards for a few more seconds, then suddenly turned back to Natalie, her face lighting up with inspiration.  “You know, even if we can’t find a spare key, I bet we could break the door down.  The two of us together.”

Right.  Because I’m on your side all of a sudden.  “I… really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
 Mrs Rudd reached out and grabbed Natalie’s arm just below her bicep, digging her fingers in like one little kid trying to intimidate another.  “We’re doing it.  Come on.”
They went back upstairs, Mrs Rudd talking all the while.  “He’s barely matured since he was seven years old.  They only thing he’s leaned is how to manipulate people better.  He’s manipulated you into being a human shield for him, if you’d just wake up and see it.”

Natalie said nothing.  She was thinking about something else.   If the university didn’t send her the letter, who did?

Actually, how sure am I that there even was a letter?  Maybe she imagined it.  Maybe she just needed an excuse to barge into her son’s house with a fake gun.

Probably fake.

They reached Alex’s door again.  “Right,” said Mrs Rudd, “We kick that spot at the exact same time.”  She pointed to a spot just to the left of the doorknob.  “The exact same time, understand?”

Natalie mumbled something.

“Right.”  Mrs Rudd took a step back, and pulled Natalie with her.  “Three…  Two…  One!”

It didn’t work.  Natalie’s foot hit the door a second or two before Mrs Rudd’s, and before she could put her foot down, Mrs Rudd stumbled and barged into her side, knocking Natalie against the wall.  She braced her arms against it and straightened herself up.  If I’d hit my head and been knocked out just then, she’d have had no-one left to threaten.  Maybe she’d have got bored and left.

They gave it another try.  There was less stumbling this time, but that was pretty much the only improvement.  They were about three seconds apart this time, and the door creaked a bit but didn’t budge.  Mrs Rudd rounded on Natalie.  “You might as well not even be here!”

Natalie had no idea what to say to that.  I might as well not even be part of this home invasion.  People expect more co-operation in these things.

“This might seem like a silly game to you, nut it’s real life to me!”  Mrs Rudd shoved her.  “Would you treat your own mother like this?  Are you that heartless?”  She gave her another shove.  “Answer me!”  She shoved again, and Natalie’s head hit the doorframe.

Her first instinct was to grab her head and curse until the pain faded.  Instead of doing that, she shut her eyes and let herself drop to the floor.

It was impulsive and it was a serious gamble, but now that Natalie had done it she had no choice but to see it through to the end.  She lay perfectly still as Mrs Rudd snapped at her to get up.  She lay perfectly still as Mrs Rudd crouched down and shook her.  She even stayed perfectly still as Mrs Rudd slapped her cheeks to try and shock her awake.  She’d made this stupid decision, and now she had to tough it out and turn it into a smart one.

Natalie heard the floorboards creak as Mrs Rudd got to her feet, and then a scared whimper of, “Oh God, oh God…”

Scared, not angry, she told herself, That’s a good sign.

Yeah, until she decides to burn the house down around you to get rid of the evidence.  Or to shoot you in the head and make it look like a burglary gone wrong.

Natalie stayed still, and she listened.

Mrs Rudd stayed there for a few minutes of short, whiny breaths.  After that, Natalie heard retreating footsteps across the hallway and down the stairs.

Natalie didn’t dare open her eyes until a full minute after she heard the door slam.  That was how long it took to be sure that Mrs Rudd was definitely gone and this wasn’t some kind of trick- Natalie could see her slamming the door and hiding in the house, but she couldn’t see her staying quiet this long.  It was safe.  The coast was clear.

Natalie sat up slowly, in case it turned out she really did have concussion.  When she was upright and her head didn’t feel like it was swimming, she got to her feet.

Her phone was in her room.  She’d call the police first, then try and get hold of the others.  They would not be happy when they saw the state of the kitchen.  Natalie could only hope that…

Something was wrong.  Natalie knew it was soon as she stood up.  There was a ray of light coming from behind her that hadn’t been there before.

Natalie turned around, and saw Alex’s door hanging open.  That last thump must have done the trick.  Mrs Rudd must have been panicking too much to notice.

There was enough of a gap for her to see inside.  Enough to see that Alex wasn’t still in there, slumped on the bed or hanging from the ceiling.  She hadn’t even known that she’d been worried about that until right this moment, but the relief was so sharp it was almost painful.

Part of her wanted to turn around and respect Alex’s privacy, but a lower, nastier part said, Well, Alex should have thought about that before running off, shouldn’t he?

Alex’s room had the same bed, wardrobe and desk as all the others in the house, and he hadn’t brought in any extra furniture, so it wouldn’t be too hard to search.  Natalie opened the wardrobe (you pressed the door in for two seconds and then released it, just like hers), and saw that it was only half-full.  A quick check of the floors revealed only one pair of shoes, a battered pair of sandals she’d never seen him wear.

That was a good sign.  People who snuck off to commit suicide probably didn’t pack their clothes before they did it.

Natalie checked the desk drawers.  No phone, no wallet, no laptop.  No drug paraphernalia, either, so odds were good that Mrs Rudd had been talking out of her arse.  On the windowsill were a few figures carved out of jade.  They looked as if they were meant to be little animals- the Chinese Zodiac, maybe?- but she didn’t dare to pick them up for a closer look.  They looked quite fragile.

She turned round and noticed the wastepaper basket.  It was actually full of paper, like it was supposed to be.  Natalie’s mainly just had crisp packets and used cotton buds, but Alex seemed to have got through a ream or two of A4.

She went over and picked out a crumpled ball of paper from the top.  That was another thing- Alex had crumpled them all, but he didn’t seem to have torn any of them up.  Natalie unfolded the ball, smoothing it out as well as she could, and saw that it was something Alex had printed from the internet.  One of those useless sheets you got at the end of whatever it was you actually wanted to print off, the kind with a few stray words or the copyright information on it that usually amounted to just a waste of ink.

But this time, Natalie noticed something interesting about it.  The date at the bottom was the Thursday before last, and on the top, near the website information, was a little logo reading, Travellodge Brighton.

Mariam got to the Lambton Theatre at six-thirty, half an hour after Isaac’s shift was supposed to finish.  She was all prepared to tell Jonathan Lambton that Isaac didn’t know she was there and he shouldn’t blame him if it all turned out to be a waste of time.  Assuming she was even able to get in to see him in the first place, obviously.  Yeah, Alex had told them to go and talk to him, but that could have just been wishful thinking.

The foyer was an enclosed, velvety place that looked as if it had been built to discourage people from hanging around while they waited to be called to their seats.  Hopefully there was also a bar or café somewhere in the building.  “Hi,” said Mariam to the guy on reception, “Would I be able to speak to Jonathan Lambton sometime this evening?  Alex Rudd sent me.”  There.  She’d pinned the blame on Alex.  Either Jonathan Lambton would know who he was and the message on the wall would actually have a point, or he wouldn’t, and Mariam could forget the whole thing and go home.

“Well, I’ll call up, but he might be busy,” said the guy behind the desk.  Mariam didn’t recognise him, but going purely on his age and the fact that he was working here, it was a safe bet that he was a Berrylands student.  “If he is available, you might have to wait.  Is that OK?”

“Sure,” said Mariam.  It wasn’t as if she had anything else on this evening.

The guy turned slightly away from her and picked up a phone handset from the left side of the desk, just hidden behind the edge of the screen.  He went to key in the number, then looked back at her.  “Who should I say is calling?”

“Mariam Gharib.”  She felt a little embarrassed for not saying her name as soon as she’d come in.  How was Jonathan Lambton going to know whether or not he wanted to speak to her if he didn’t even know who she was?  Bloody moron.

The guy keyed in the number, and turned a few degrees away from her.  “Hi, sorry to interrupt- there’s a Mariam Gharib who wants to see you?  She says she’s representing someone called…  Alex Rudd?” he checked, turning back to her for confirmation.  Mariam nodded.  “Yeah, Alex Rudd.  Right…  OK.  Brilliant.  I’ll send her right up.”

Mariam, who’d prepared herself for no end of obstacles, suddenly felt like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

The guy at the desk put his phone down.  “He’s free.  His office is just through that door and up those stairs.”  He pointed to a little grey door in the adjacent wall.  “Once you’re up there, it’s the first door on the right.”

“Thanks,” said Mariam.  The door was labelled Staff Only, which gave her a weird sense of wrongness as she went through it.  As if she was going to set off an alarm, or get a stern telling-off from the security guards.  The fact that the staircase was so dark and narrow didn’t help- it was very obviously not a place for customers.  And definitely not customers who were about to waste Jonathan Lambton’s time.

There had been sections about the Lambton Theatre in all the university prospectuses.  How it had been founded by a great Shakespearian actor Mariam had never heard of, and then inherited by his eldest son and daughter, who had been very generous to the university over the years, hosted events, put their dad’s name on lecture halls, et cetera.  Since getting here, Mariam had seen Jonathan Lambton’s face on the front of the local paper a couple of times, and she’d always thought that he looked like a film star who’d been to just a few too many parties and had just a bit too much plastic surgery.  He definitely didn’t seem like the sort of guy who’d give up his evening to humour some scruffy nineteen-year-old.

Except, when Mariam opened the door to his office, Isaac was already in there, sitting in the chair opposite the desk.  He gave her a little wave.

Jonathan Lambton stood up to greet her.  “Mariam, is it?  Come in, take a seat.”

Mariam stopped opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish for long enough to walk in and sit down beside Isaac.

“Now, would I be right in thinking that you’re here because of a group called The Oakmen?”

It was a moment before Mariam could get it together enough to reply.  “…Yeah.  Has Isaac told you about the message on our wall?”

“And the meeting last night, yes.”  Jonathan Lambton sat down.  He didn’t look quite as plastic in real life, when you were close enough to see the pores and the stubble, but there was still something about him that was a little off.  His hair alone looked like it had hundreds of pounds spent on it every month.  “He said it was run by a man named Shaun Mandeville?”

Mariam finally remembered what she was doing here.  “Yeah.  He just turned up at my work, actually.  That’s why I decided to come here.”

Isaac twisted round to face her properly.  “Really?  What did he say?”

“Um…  He tried to guilt-trip me for us leaving early, and then he told me that his friend almost had to go to hospital after Natalie elbowed her, and we should stop talking to her because she’s a sociopath.”

Isaac’s eyes widened.  “What?” he said, with a laugh.

“She’s a sociopath.  On account of how she elbows people, I guess.”

Jonathan Lambton, having waited patiently for them to finish, continued.  “Shaun Mandeville was called Shaun Pinder when Denny and Alex knew him.  I believe Mandeville was his mother’s maiden name.”

Mariam frowned.  “Alex knew him?”

Isaac looked as if he was going to burst.  “Alex used to live with him!”  He turned to Jonathan.  “Tell her what you told me.”

Jonathan closed his eyes and breathed in.  “I met Alex two years ago.  He made an appointment to see me in this office, and he told me he’d escaped from a cult located somewhere in Dorset.  He told me that my younger brother Hayden- Denny- was still part of the cult, and asked for my help in rescuing him.  The group was run by Shaun Pinder, and they called themselves The Rhymers.”

“Like in the song, remember?” said Isaac, “Thomas the Rhymer.”

Mariam was still stuck on the word ‘cult.’  “Was your brother OK?”

Jonathan’s lips thinned.  “We managed to get him back.  He hasn’t been quite the same since.”

Mariam felt cold.  She folded her arms and drew herself in.  “Why didn’t Alex tell us any of this himself?”

Jonathan gave a brief shrug.  “He thought it would be safer that way.  He thought if he was gone, Shaun Pinder would lose interest in the rest of you.  But since that doesn’t seem to have happened…”  He looked around the room, trying to find a way to end that sentence.

After he’d been silent for a while, Mariam plucked up the courage to ask another question.  She didn’t quite have the guts to ask about the bomb in the park- not yet- but she could ask about this.  “Um, a few days ago, a woman came to our house and said she was Alex’s mother.”

Jonathan tapped his fingers on the desk.  “I can’t say I’ve ever met Alex’s parents…  What did she say?”

“Quite a lot… but mainly, she said that she didn’t think Alex was in Amsterdam.”

Jonathan looked down at his desk.  Suddenly, he looked a whole lot more human than he had before, and it was all thanks to how morose he looked.  “I don’t know where he is,” he sighed.

*

Tamsin’s living room was cramped.  There were other things you could have said about it, but “cramped” came first.  There were paintings on the wall that you couldn’t see because the plants were in the way.  There were windows that you couldn’t see out of because a big widescreen TV was in the way.  There was a cardboard box with the “Happy Shopper” logo printed on it, wedged under a shiny brown coffee table covered with glossy magazines.  There was a fireplace that jutted out in front of the sofa, trapping your knees.  There were glass ornaments on every surface in sight.

Russel, who Rosalyn had thought was Tamsin’s dad until she’d introduced him as “my one and only”, had given everyone a glass of wine.  So far, Rosalyn had only pretended to sip hers.  She didn’t know whether or not Natalie was doing the same.

“So,” said Russel, sitting down opposite them with his legs spread out, “the plan is, me and your man put our heads together, find out who it is that’s been bothering you, and hit ‘em where it hurts.”

“‘Our man’?” asked Natalie.

“Your mate with the bandages,” said Tamsin.  She’d sat down on the arm of Russel’s chair.  Out of nowhere, Rosalyn thought about pirates with parrots on their shoulders.

“Neither of us are…”

“Only way,” said Russel, “Hit ‘em before they know what’s happening.”

Rosalyn remembered that weird woman from Monday, the one who’d said she was Alex’s mum.  “You know when you said you’d seen people hanging around our house…?”

“A whole group of them!”  Russel waved his arms.  “Black knitted caps, lockpicking gear…”

Oh.  So much for that theory, then.

Tamsin rolled her eyes.  “No way you saw lockpicking gear.  Not from all the way across the street at night.”

“Pipe down, or I’ll make you pipe down.”

Tamsin threw her head back and laughed.  “I’d like to see you try!”

Russel sighed, a low, rumbling sound, and turned back to Rosalyn and Natalie.  “I bet your man with the bandages doesn’t have to deal with this.”  He pointed to Tamsin with his thumb.

“Isaac,” said Natalie.  (Rosalyn could see her glass properly now, and it was still full.)

“What?”

“That’s his name.  Isaac.”

Russel nodded.  “Right.  Isaac.  I spoke to him one day last week.  Told him he had to defend his territory.  Cause if those guys in the knitted caps are any indication…”

There was a sound from upstairs.  Rosalyn had to listen for a few seconds to be sure, but she was pretty certain it was a baby crying.

Russel stared at Tamsin.  After a while, he said, “Well?”

“What?”

“I am in the middle of something,” he said, almost primly, “Go up and sort it out.”

“You always…”

Russel gave the back of her shoulders a soft shove.  “Go.  Go and see to it.”

Tamsin got up and strode out of the room, giving an indignant huff at every turn.  Russel watched the door close behind her, listened to her footsteps on the stairs, and then continued.  “Protecting your territory.  Only thing that matters in life.”  He put a hand on each spread-out leg and drummed his fingers on his knees.  “Once a man’s sure of that, he has everything of value in the world.”

Natalie glanced at Rosalyn, then back at Russel.  “How do you…?”

“Your home, your property, your blood…  People have forgotten.  They used to say an Englishman’s home was his castle.  People have forgotten.”  He sat there for a while, ruminating.  “I didn’t want to say this in front of Tamsin,” he said, in a quieter, rougher voice, “but there’s something else.”  He hunched down, leaning a little further towards them.  “When I saw those people on Friday night, I saw one of them take a branch from a tree and set it on fire with his cigarette lighter.” 

Rosalyn glanced at Natalie, who shrugged.

Russel smacked his lips, as if he was enjoying himself.  “It fizzled out quickly enough, but…  I reckon he was trying to burn you out.”

*

It turned out that it had been an eventful day for everyone.

“So they’re a cult,” Natalie said flatly (sociopathic Natalie of the hospitalising elbow, that was).

“That’s what Isaac’s boss said, yeah,” replied Mariam.  She’d poured herself a glass of orange juice, but she hadn’t drunk any yet.  The four of them were sat around the kitchen table, trying to digest everything they’d all heard today.

Isaac didn’t know about the rest of them, but he was feeling a little better than he had.  Sometimes it was a relief to find out that something wasn’t all in your head.

“What kind of cult?”

“Well, I don’t know!  What kinds are there?”

Isaac looked at the ceiling.  “According to Mr Green Blinds, they’re the house-burning kind.”  You’d have thought that, after having been knocked for six by getting caught in a bomb blast, the idea of having your house burned down with you in it would be equally upsetting, but Isaac felt a perverse delight.  Like butterflies in your stomach, if the butterflies were juggling chainsaws.

“He said his name was Russel,” said Rosalyn quietly.

Isaac shrugged.

“Look,” said Natalie, “I know he said that, but I’m not sure how much we can trust him.  He also said he saw lockpicking gear, and even his wife called him out on that one.”

Mariam’s brow furrowed.  “But there was somebody trying to break in on Friday.  We know that.”

“Yeah, we do know that.  But we’ve only got one guy’s word about the fire and the lockpicking gear.”

“But the break-in combined with the harassment is definitely enough for us to go to the police.  Right?”  Mariam looked about ready to start tapping her fist on the table to emphasise her remarks.

Natalie, sensibly enough, didn’t even try to argue.  “Right.”  She looked around the table.  “Right.  Are we all free tomorrow morning?”

“We can be,” said Isaac, who had a seminar that he wasn’t too bothered about.  Mariam and Rosalyn both nodded their agreement.

There’s a cult trying to burn our house down.  Everyone agrees.  It’s not just me.

Natalie breathed out through her nose, and a smile appeared on her face.  “You know,” she said, “it’s almost flattering that I’m the one he hates the most.”

Mariam replied in a hot burst of frustration.  “I don’t think it’s flattering, Natalie, I think it’s bloody terrifying.  Now if you could please take this seriously…”

“Hey!” said Isaac- partly out of a desire to defend Natalie, but also out of guilt.  If Mariam knew some of the things he’d been thinking just now, she probably wouldn’t be too pleased with him, either.

Natalie held up her hands.  “Whoa.  I’m sorry.  And I am taking it seriously.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Mariam, shrinking back until her head was in her hands, “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s just… what a fucking creep!”  Natalie’s sentence ended with the suggestion of a laugh, but it was more disbelieving than mocking, so Mariam didn’t look annoyed.  “He felt that threatened when I made fun of his alphabet game?”

“Stamping out dissent,” said Mariam, massaging her temples, “Straight out of the dictators’ playbook.”

“Well, he’s only got about ten people to dictate to.  And he won’t be getting any more once we’re done with him.”

Isaac felt warm inside.  Yeah, they could topple a dictator, alright.  The four of them, they could rip him to smithereens.

Claire had put up a poster in the Student Union.  It said, underneath photos of Stephen Hawking and Paris Hilton, If you know who she is and not who he is…  Congratulations!  You’re what’s wrong with humanity!

“Better be careful about that,” Adrian told her, “Mariam might not like it.  Might find it offensive.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Mariam might have asked Claire how much she actually knew about Stephen Hawking, but today, she said nothing.  Adrian didn’t need any encouragement. 

“Give it a rest, Adrian,” said Wayne.

Mariam had her back to Adrian, but she could just feel him shaking his head from side to side, like a dog trying to keep the flies away.  “Nah, mate.  Nah.  Some things…  This is just fucking it!”

Mariam had heard variations on this every two minutes for the last three days.  Adrian loudly insisting that he’d never forgive Mariam for talking to the Obscure Metal Band girls and “trying to get him fired.”  Mariam hadn’t asked him to forgive her, but Adrian still felt the need to carry on reminding her.  It put Claire, Robin and Wayne in an awkward position, but Mariam didn’t feel too sorry for them.  It wasn’t as if they were the targets of an extended nerd-tantrum.

In a roundabout way, though, Adrian had done her a favour.  He’d made sure that she was properly boiling with rage by the time Shaun Mandeville came along, so she wouldn’t be polite to him by accident.

He sauntered into the Student Union, all golden-brown hair and nonchalant swagger, and wandered up to the bar.  “I thought I’d find you here,” he said.

“Good morning to you, too,” replied Mariam.

Shaun did a double-take, raising his eyebrows at her sheer rudeness.  “Seriously?”

Mariam said nothing.  She’d had a bit of practice saying nothing this afternoon.

There was a snorting sound at Mariam’s shoulder.  “Yeah, don’t go expecting much out of her, mate,” said Adrian.

Mariam ignored him.  “What is it, Shaun?”

“I wanted to see if you were OK,” said Shaun, “After Wednesday.”

And now, Adrian was leaning over her shoulder.  In her face.  So close that she could smell his breath.  “Oh.  So he came round to be sympathetic.  That’s nice, isn’t it, Mariam?”

Mariam flared her nostrils and inhaled.  “Adrian, I’m sure there’s something else you could be doing.”

  Adrian stepped back a bit.

Shaun sighed.  “Look, there’s something I need to talk to you about in private.  What time do you finish?”

“Not til four…”  But if Isaac’s (and Alex’s) suspicions were correct, then it might be best for their conversation to have a pretty tight time limit.  Just to be on the safe side.  “…but I’ve got a break in about twenty minutes, if you’re free to talk then.”

Shaun nodded.  “Alright.  See you then.”

*

Most days, Denny didn’t even leave Jonathan’s side office.  He’d been nervous the first few times he’d been here- Jonathan never locked the door when he left, in case there was a fire- but he’d soon worked out that no-one was going to come in.  It was a quiet little island in the middle of a public building.  Denny could hear people walking and talking in the corridor outside, but they didn’t even know he was there.  He was safe, and so was everyone else.

He’d get there at nine, start photocopying and laminating stuff, and only stop for long enough to eat whatever Jonathan had brought up from the café for lunch.  Then it was more of the same until Tavia came to pick him up at four or five.  Seven hours where he was no danger to anyone.  Seven hours where he knew exactly what he had to do.

But today, he wanted to talk to Isaac again.  It was stupid, he knew- Denny missed Alex, and Isaac was Alex’s flatmate, but that didn’t mean that Isaac was just an extension of Alex or anything like that.  You couldn’t just replace one person with another one, like they were toys.

But if Alex was friends with Isaac, that probably meant he was a decent person, right?

Denny left the office and went down the corridor.  No-one was there.  They never were at this time of the morning.  Denny stopped at the top of the stairs and listened.  He could hear Isaac’s voice from the front reception.  He was talking to someone- a guy buying tickets, maybe?  Denny wasn’t sure.  He sat down on the top step and stared at the patterns on the wall.  Strange, fractal vines ending in triangular bunches of grapes.  It made Denny think of pictures he’d seen with people squashing the grapes into wine with their bare feet.  If Denny had that job, he’d be too worried about bringing in bacteria and making their customers sick to do his work properly.  And if he said that to Alex, Alex would seize on it and say that he just worried a lot, and maybe every other time he worried about hurting people was just more of that.  As if Denny never hurt people.  As if he couldn’t.  It was ridiculous- everyone hurt someone.  He was no exception.

The other voice had disappeared.  Denny got up and went downstairs.  He had no idea what he was going to say to Isaac.  If Isaac snapped at him and asked if he’d been following him around spying on him this whole time, Denny wouldn’t have any answer.

Denny knew he should turn back.  But he really, really wanted to talk to someone.

He still might have chickened out, even after opening the door, if he hadn’t seen right away how pink Isaac’s eyes were.  It was as if the bombing had left a burn mark right across them.

Even so, Isaac’s face lit up when he saw him.  “Oh, alright, Denny?  I was wondering when I’d see you again!”

“Thought I’d get a bit of fresh air,” Denny explained.  All the way down the stairs, he’d wondered if he should say he had a job to do downstairs, but he hadn’t been able to think of what.  He barely knew what the downstairs part of the theatre looked like these days.  “How are things on the lower deck?”

“Pretty quiet.  Saskia says there was a guy who came in yesterday and tried to get free tickets because he said he was a friend of one of the playwrights, but I haven’t seen him yet.”

“Good!”

Isaac smiled into the middle distance for a second or two, then snapped his gaze back to Denny.  “Hey, you’ll never guess what happened to me last Wednesday.”

Denny wondered if it had something to do with why his eyes looked pink.  “What?”

“Well, a while back, my friend Mariam got a flyer for this self-improvement group that meets up every week.  So we all decided to go this week, just for a laugh.”  Isaac let out a long, slow breath.  “And it turned out that they were completely insane.”

“What do you mean?”

“They started out by getting us to play a game where we described ourselves with an adjective that began with the same letter as our names.  My friend Natalie made a joke out of it, and honestly, I thought they were going to try and stone her to death.”

Denny had gone cold.  My name is Shaun, and I am spectacular.  My name is Alex, and I am astounding.  My name is Denny, and I am delectable.  “What kind of joke?”

Isaac smacked his lips.  “Um…  ‘My name is Natalie, and I am not enjoying this.’”

“Oh.  And they got insulted?”

“You’d think she’d gone to church and spat in the holy water.”

He’s probably exaggerating, thought Denny.  It’s probably a different group anyway, but he’s probably exaggerating.  Or his friend was ruder than he remembers.  Or…  I don’t know.  “Maybe they were just a bit highly-strung?”

“That’s just the start!”  Isaac leaned forward across the desk.  “They got us to play ‘Simon Says.’  Which was quite fun for the first five minutes, but it just went on… and on… until we were all wheezing and sweating and about to collapse.”

“Oh,” said Denny, “That is weird.”  He used to get tired at the end of games, too.  He’d always assumed that everyone else was into it, until Alex had told him that he felt the same way.

And Denny didn’t think Isaac was exaggerating.  He’d been crying, and he was trying to pretend he hadn’t been.  If he’d been playing up how bad it had been, then he’d have mentioned the crying part as soon as possible.

“And that’s when they started in on the ‘pretend to be happy all the time and never trust your own judgement’ routine.”  Isaac was twitching as he spoke, his eyebrows knotted together in the middle of his forehead.  “It was like being trapped in someone’s basement and… grinned at for hours.  Terrifying.”

Denny could practically hear Pinder’s voice in his ear.  Isn’t it sad how quickly people reject positivity?

“Did they get you to sing a song about Thomas the Rhymer?” asked Denny.

Isaac looked up at him, the tension draining out of his face.  “…Yeah.  Do you know them?”

“I used to.”  Denny’s mouth had gone numb.  “Were they calling themselves the Rhymers?”

Isaac shook his head.  “The Oakmen.”

“Oh.”  Denny settled down a little.  “Maybe it’s an off-shoot or something.  It was two years ago that I knew them.”

“How did you know them?”

This was it.  Denny didn’t know how he was going to tell him.  “I lived with them.  They had a… it was like a farm, and we…”  He felt himself choke on the words.  He couldn’t explain about the Rhymers’ camp to Isaac.  He hadn’t even been able to explain it to Jonathan and Tavia- Alex had done that.  So Denny gave up.  “You should probably talk to my brother.”

Isaac raised his eyebrows.  “Why?  Did he live with them, too?”

“No, but he’ll know what to do about them.”  That was just about the only thing Denny could be certain of anymore.

*

Mariam sat on the bench outside the front entrance, with Shaun beside her- leaning back, legs spread wide in a weird pantomime of laid-backness.  “This isn’t easy to talk about…”  He paused.  “Well, I suppose I should ask how your friend Isaac’s doing, first of all.”

“He’s OK.  He said the other night just brought back some bad memories.”  She couldn’t exactly say, He ran off because he thinks you’re up to no good, and I think he might have a point.  Not this early in the conversation, anyway.

Shaun raised an eyebrow.  “Bad memories?”

“All that talk about changing the way you think and so on.”

“So he’d rather carry on in the same way forever, is that it??”

“Maybe,” said Mariam, as frostily as possible.

Shaun at least had the good sense to look away.  “Look, it’s not really Isaac I came to talk about.  He seems great.  Rosalyn, too.  It’s your friend Natalie I’m worried about.”

“Natalie?”

“You saw how she shoved Jo when she left, right?”  He met her eyes again.  “She almost cracked her head on the side of the table.”

Mariam vaguely remembered Natalie elbowing one of the Oakmen, but she didn’t say anything.  She wanted to see where he was going with this.

“Does she do that often?” asked Shaun, “Resort to violence straight away?”

Pretty loose definition of “violence,” there.  “No.  She was just worried about Isaac.”

“And I’m worried about Jo.  Did you know we almost decided to take her down to A&E?”

“What, because Natalie elbowed her?”

Shaun sighed, and stared disdainfully at her.  Mariam waited.

After a few seconds of making his point, Shaun continued.  “Look, I wouldn’t be telling you about this if I didn’t feel there was a part of you that’s good enough to care.”

Mariam neither confirmed nor denied.

“I’ve met people like her before.  There’s no empathy there.  No moral compass.  What she did to Jo…  That wouldn’t have been the first time.”  He was leaning into her now.  “Violence.  Manipulation.  Things you can’t even imagine.”

Mariam thought this over.  She felt strangely calm, for somebody who was being harangued by a madman.  “And you’re sure you’re not just overreacting because she made fun of your alphabet game?”

Shaun jumped to his feet, making an angry huffing sound.  “Fine,” he said, dusting himself off, “Be blind.”  As he walked away, he added (over his shoulder), “If you don’t like what I’m saying, that’s probably because you know deep down that it’s true.  You can tell that to Isaac, too.”

Mariam watched him go.  She sat on the bench for a few minutes, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists on and off.  I wouldn’t be telling you about this if I didn’t feel there was a part of you that’s good enough to care.  The smug twat!  And how had he expected her to react to being told that her friend was a manipulative psychopath?  Believe him right away and kick her out of the house?  Had other people reacted like that?  They couldn’t have, could they?

Mariam still wasn’t sure what this all meant, but it was pretty clear that Isaac had been onto something on Wednesday night.  The Oakmen were bad news, and she didn’t want anything to do with them.  And, if she could get through the rest of her shift without murdering Adrian, then as soon as it ended, she was off to the Lambton Theatre to talk to Isaac’s boss.

*

Natalie and Rosalyn were walking home from university together, talking about anything under the sun.  Specifically, by the time they got to the corner of their street,  Rosalyn was telling Natalie about a guy from her course who’d tried to convince everyone that a local McDonalds was being sued after a little boy had died in the play area.

“But that McDonalds doesn’t even have a play area,” said Natalie.

Rosalyn nodded.  “I said that.  He said it was round the back, where you can’t see it.”

“Ha!”

“That was how the adder got there, you see.”

“Right.  And when was the last time an adder bite actually killed someone?  Maybe if they were stranded hundreds of miles from a hospital and couldn’t get it treated in time…”

“Oh, but it was a whole nest of adders, you see.  She’d laid her eggs under the ballpit…”

“The fictional ballpit…”

“Right, and they’d just hatched.  So when the boy fell on them, they all attacked him at once.”

“In a co-ordinated attack?  Those are some smart baby snakes.”

“Yes.”  Rosalyn’s face was so resolutely straight that you could tell how close she was to bursting out laughing.  Her mouth had started to look like a duck’s beak.  “Seven snakes at once.  There was too much venom.  He didn’t stand a chance.”

            “Poor guy.  Let’s buy some Archers and drink to his mem…”

            And then the woman appeared in front of them.  She actually stepped sideways just so that she could block their path.

            “Hiii!” she said, in a high-pitched trill.  She had a shiny silver coat, shiny platinum blonde hair, and shiny white teeth.  Before she’d even glanced to the right, Natalie knew that she’d come out of the house with the green blinds.  She remembered Isaac telling them about the guy lecturing him on phantom burglars last week.  “I’m Tamsin.”

            “Hi,” said Natalie.

            Tamsin looked at her expectantly.

            “Um, I’m Natalie, and this is Rosalyn.  Do you live…?”

            Tamsin whirred back to life.  It was like clicking the play button on a CD player.  “My husband spoke to your mate with the stitches the other day.”  The spoke with a bit of a lisp, the put-on kind that girls did on TV to sound cute.  “He said we ought to get together and talk about all that trouble you’ve been having.  Those guys trying to break in.”

            “Yeah?” said Natalie, interested to know where this was going.

            Tamsin looked them up and down.  “So you’re coming back from university now…  Want to come in for a drink?” she asked brightly, her smile widening so that her cheeks turned into two little circles.

            Natalie glanced around.  “Well…”

            “Come on!”  Tamsin reached out and linked arms with her.  “What else have you got on for the next half-hour?”

            Natalie glanced at Rosalyn, who wasn’t giving her any clear ‘no’ signals.  “Alright, then.  Just as long as we’re home in time to meet the others.”

            “What?” Tamsin laughed, “Can’t they come along as well?”

            “Maybe.”  Natalie really didn’t have anything on in the next half-hour.  And she had to admit, she was interested in seeing the house with the green blinds from the inside.  It would be something fun to tell Isaac and Mariam about when they got home.

            Still…  As soon as Tamsin loosened her grip on Natalie’s arm, she quietly reached into her bag and checked that her phone was fully charged and within reach.  Just in case.

From “The Bell,” week beginning 6^th March 2006:

On the Trail of Kelpie and Silkie

Rosalyn Pepper

The wood looked sombre in the rain.  Beautiful, too, with the way the water dripped off the edges of the leaves, but sad.  A smell of stone and wet earth.  A dead mouse at the side of the path.  The grey skies bearing down on us all afternoon.

My friend Judith said that days like this give her the idea that the world is fragile.  “You can see mortality wherever you look.  I think it’s because there’s so little daylight.”

We didn’t find any new Kelpie and Silkie messages today.  We didn’t find anything as weird and mesmerising as the Chimps’ Tea Party, either.  But just as we were about to leave, as we could see the streetlamps in the distance, yellow dots against the grey, I stopped to pick up a stone from the ground.

In pencil, I wrote, The rain will stop eventually- Kelpie and Silkie.

I’ve got to admit, it was cheating a bit.  And I’m not even sure what I meant.  But I do know that I couldn’t have ended today any other way.