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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

Oh.  One of that lot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Says Alex,” Debbie reminded her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She didn’t know…” began Mariam.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Blimey,” said Russel.

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

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

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

“She’s into him, is she?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Part 1 of April 2006 coming soon.)

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

*

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

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

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

(A poster on the wall of the Student Union)

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

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

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

*

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

Feeling suicidal?  Just Do It ©

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

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

*

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

Darwin wants you gone!

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

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

“Mariam…”

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

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

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

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

“Well, they’ve got one now!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Exactly.”

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

Isaac blinked.  He wasn’t prepared for that.

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

“Right,” said Isaac.

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How come?” asked Natalie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(CONTENT WARNING: Ableism. And terrible parents.)

*

April 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Autumn 2003

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 “But it wasn’t…”

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex closed his eyes and floated away.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“It’s just that Alex wanted…”

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“We need to get him some antibiotics.”

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

Denny piped up.  “I can talk to…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Look, Shaun…”

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

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

*

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

“Alex?  Are you awake?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes?”  Pinder leaned in, wide-eyed.

“Why do you hate Denny so much?”

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

*

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

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

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

You’d have to ask him about that.

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

“Yeah?”

“What went wrong between you and Pinder?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except…

“Did you say before Easter?” asked Alex.

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

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

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

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

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

“It was in all the papers…”

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

“No!” snapped Denny, finally looking up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I feel sorry for you!”

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“What kind of horrible things?” asked Rosalyn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re not that different.”

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pathetic.  Delusional.  Stupid.

August 2002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 1996

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

“Maybe,” said Mariam.

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

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

“Hm,” said Kia.

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

“Listen, I can’t talk long, but…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

The End

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

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

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

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

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

Alex sighed.  “Mariam, I’m…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mariam gave her a look.

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

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

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

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

“I’m sure they were!  But…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Absolutely,” said Alex.

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Surprise, surprise,” muttered Debbie.

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

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

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

March 2000

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex badly needed to find something to do on Tuesdays.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex laughed.  “Really?”

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

“I… don’t know?”

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

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

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

*

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

Self-improvement through meditation, Tuesday evenings.

Tuesday evenings.

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

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

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

“No?”

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

Melanie’s face lit up.

*

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

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

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

“Disrespecting me, disrespecting this house…”

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

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

“You allow me?”

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

“Um… in touch with Social Services?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, like I said, I didn’t…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

There was a happy rumbling sound from the circle.

“I said, did everyone enjoy that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s the truth!” said Pinder.

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

“Um, I didn’t.  Alex.”

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

Alex laughed.  “Sure.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaac made a noise of disagreement.

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

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

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

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

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

She shrugged.  “For what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was almost funny.

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

His head snapped up, and his eyes went wide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Quite a bit, as of yesterday.”

Alex raised his eyebrows.

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

“Why did he…?”

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

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

“Well… why weren’t you?”

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

Natalie nodded.  “Still…”

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

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

Alex nodded, his eyes big and sad.

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

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

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

Alex reached out and put his hand over hers.

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

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

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

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

“Was that when you left the Oakmen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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