June 1997

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

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

“Alex?” asked Serena.

“Hm?”

“Would you rather be hanged or beheaded?”

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

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

“Yeah, but if you had to.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Think about it, Roxy,” said Mum.

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

“You would be if you tried.”

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marley and Serena instantly brightened up.

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“But she could…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, that’s not on ‘til later.”

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

Serena nodded, taking both ideas into account.

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

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

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

“Look, Mum…”

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“You’ll be a starving artist.”

“Yep.  Suffering feeds my art.”

Roxanne burst out laughing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dad knocked a little harder.  “Julie?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

(From the StarrComix forum)

Kool-Ade                                                                      Saturday 11^th of March 2006

14:00 GMT

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

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

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

HungryHungryHippo           Sunday 12^th March 2006

08:00 GMT

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

Tom Dockin   Sunday 12^th March 2006

08:03 GMT

LOL, walking Darwin Awards.

*

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

Ego non tu Latinum scio- Kelpie and Silkie.

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

DANCE FOR ME, CLOWN! – Kelpie and Silkie

*

(From the StarrComix forum)

KoolAde                                                  Friday 17^th March 2006                                                                                                                                                                            15:33 GMT

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

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

Tom Dockin  Friday 17th March 2006

15:35 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The deliveryman didn’t reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

 “Nope.”  Natalie folded her arms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wait.

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

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

First I heard that he was even at Berrylands University!

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

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

Natalie mumbled something noncommittal.

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

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

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

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

Probably fake.

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

Natalie mumbled something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natalie stayed still, and she listened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mariam frowned.  “Alex knew him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“‘Our man’?” asked Natalie.

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

“Neither of us are…”

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

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

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

Oh.  So much for that theory, then.

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

“That’s his name.  Isaac.”

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

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

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

“What?”

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

“You always…”

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

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

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

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

Rosalyn glanced at Natalie, who shrugged.

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

*

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

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

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

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

“What kind of cult?”

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

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

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

Isaac shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Give it a rest, Adrian,” said Wayne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Adrian stepped back a bit.

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

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

Shaun nodded.  “Alright.  See you then.”

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good!”

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

“Oh.  And they got insulted?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaac shook his head.  “The Oakmen.”

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

“How did you know them?”

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

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

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

*

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

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

Shaun raised an eyebrow.  “Bad memories?”

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

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

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

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

“Natalie?”

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

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

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

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

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

“What, because Natalie elbowed her?”

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

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

Mariam neither confirmed nor denied.

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

“Ha!”

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

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

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

“The fictional ballpit…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

            “Hi,” said Natalie.

            Tamsin looked at her expectantly.

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

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

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

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

            Natalie glanced around.  “Well…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Trail of Kelpie and Silkie

Rosalyn Pepper

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

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

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

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

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

The Oakmen were meeting in the back room of The Lion and The Unicorn on Linden Street.  When Mariam and the others got there, they saw a circle of chairs- about twenty of them, ranging from heavy wooden ones with rectangular backs to tiny ones that were little more than footstools- and Shaun Mandeville, who caught sight of them, beamed, and waved them over.

They’d all seen the message Peps had found, and they’d come anyway.  Because, honestly, this was probably their best chance to actually work out what was going on.  ‘If you have trouble with the Oakmen…’  OK, but why would they be having trouble with the Oakmen?  And why not just tell them about it instead of leaving them a cryptic message and vaguely hoping they actually found it?

Alex had written it.  They didn’t exactly have to compare handwriting samples to figure that out.  Alex couldn’t be bothered to reply to any of Mariam’s texts, even after she’d had to deal with his crazy mother, but he could ruin the wall with the best of them.

Once the chairs had been filled near enough to capacity, Shaun looked around and nodded at the woman on his right, who got up and shut the doors.  As soon as she got back to her seat, Shaun sprang to his feet in the middle of the circle.  “Right!  Hello, everyone!  Thank you for coming out tonight!”  He and the man and woman on either side of him all wore white T-shirts with the Oakmen’s logo, a kind of stylised triangular leaf, printed on the front.  “We are the Oakmen, and tonight is going to be all about connections.  So, on that note, I want you to stand up, turn to the people on either side of you, and give them a big hug!”

It took Mariam a moment to realise he was serious.

Isaac and Peps were lucky- they’d sat on the inside of the group, so they weren’t stuck hugging complete strangers like Mariam and Natalie were.  Mariam and the girl on her right exchanged embarrassed smiles, and then went in for the hug.

It was strange.  Even with all her doubts about Alex, Mariam still found herself looking around the room before she sat down, to see if she could spot That Guy.

“Right!” said Shaun, “Let’s play a game!”  He smiled and waved his hands.  “You can stay sitting down for this one, don’t worry!”

(Mariam hadn’t seen That Guy.  Of course she hadn’t.  Even if he and the Oakmen were in cahoots, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come to the same meeting as someone he’d met before.)

“It’s simple enough- you just introduce yourself.  Give your name, and an adjective that describes you… but the catch is, they both have to begin with the same letter.  Got that?  OK.  I’ll start- my name is Shaun and I am spectacular!”

He turned to the guy on his left, who said, “My name is Bradley, and I am badass!”

“My name is Debbie, and I am delicious!”

“My name is Janine, and I am joyous!”

“My name is Natalie, and I am not enjoying this.”

There was a little bit of laughter, but it quickly died out in the face of the stony, ominous silence coming from Shaun and his compatriots.  Mariam screwed her eyes shut.  Typical.  Can’t take that girl anywhere.

Shaun and co stared at Natalie for just long enough for it to be uncomfortable, and then Shaun cleared his throat and said, “OK, reminder- this only works if you’re prepared to be mature about this, OK?  Bring an open mind.”  The other two carried on staring, looking at Natalie as if she was something they’d found under their shoes.  Natalie herself had kept her face perfectly blank.  If they were waiting for an apology, they were going to be really disappointed.

The game continued, a little more chastened than before.  “My name is Isaac, and I am imaginative.”

“My name is Rosalyn, and I am relevant.”

“My name is Mariam, and I am marvellous.”  And, despite herself, she thought, That was a bit of an overreaction, wasn’t it?  Because yeah, OK, Natalie had been a bit of a dick just then, but you didn’t glare at somebody for nearly a minute just for not taking your vocabulary game seriously enough.  Not unless you had a serious stick up your arse.

They heard from the rest of the circle, and then the game was over.  Shaun sat down and ceded the floor to Badass Bradley, who rocked back on his heels, made thoughtful popping sounds with his lips, and said, “Show of hands- how many of you have ever had a recurring dream?”

A few people put up their hands.  Mariam couldn’t be bothered.

“Right!  Good!  Because I had a recurring dream once.  From a very young age, I would have this dream where I’d be running down the stairs in my house.  I’d be running, running, like there was something after me… and then I’d trip and fall.”  He paused, hands in the air near his face.  “But I wouldn’t hit the ground.  I’d float down the rest of the stairs.  And nothing bad would happen.”  He brought his hands together and smiled.  “When I got older and told my friends about that dream, every single one of them gasped and said, ‘You too?’”

Bradley clapped once, and did a sort of dance on the spot.  “And I found out, that dream… it’s one that nearly everyone has had at one time or another.  It’s in all our minds, waiting to get out.  So remember- don’t be too afraid of falling.  Because sometimes, when you fall… you float.”

*

Fifteen minutes later, they were all out of breath.  Shaun had got them to play a marathon game of Simon Says, and they’d hopped on one leg and done star-jumps and spun in circles until every one of their muscles ached.  Rosalyn fell back down onto her chair like a sack of potatoes.  She wondered if she’d see actual steam coming out from under her blouse if she knew where to look.

Shaun had sat down too, and Jo, an Oakwoman, got up to talk.  She was small and slight, with big teeth and glasses that made her look like a clever little mouse in a cartoon.  ”Humanity, let us say,” she intoned, “is like people packed in an automobile which is travelling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child.  The signposts along the way are all marked ‘Progress’.”  She made a little ‘Ta-da!’ motion with her hands as she finished.

After a few seconds of confused silence, Jo spoke again.  “That’s a quote from the great intellectual, Lord Dunsany.”  She smiled wryly.  “By the way, you all know what an intellectual is, right?  It’s somebody who’s very stupid, but covers it up by using long words whenever they can.”

A few people laughed, including Natalie.  Rosalyn would have bet anything that she was thinking about that Bryn Cornwell guy.

“Because the thing about Lord Dunsany- and I want you all to be sitting down for this-is that he was a human, too.”  She made a shocked face, and slapped her hands to her cheeks like the Home Alone poster.  “You’ve got to wonder- would he have said the same things if he’d been born into a different species?  If he’d been a giraffe, would he have gone around talking about what a lifelong disaster it was to be a giraffe?”

They were back to animal metaphors again.  It was funny- Rosalyn had just been thinking that one of the things Bradley had said earlier sounded like a Kelpie and Silkie quote.  Sometimes, when you fall… you float.  It hadn’t hit her anything like as hard as the graffiti round the back of Fabric City had, but it gave her a warm, pleasant feeling whenever she thought about it.

“Because, yes, humans can be our own worst enemies… but we also have the intelligence and imagination to make things so, so much better.  We might have invented the atom bomb, but we invented heart transplants as well.  Remember that.”  Jo gave a little punch to the air- not much more than a flick of the wrist, really, but pretty charming anyway.  “And I’ll let you in on another big secret- all of our problems could be solved in an instant if everyone did what benefitted humanity instead of just what benefitted themselves.”

Rosalyn leaned forward, eager to hear more.

*

Natalie hated to admit it (especially after Shaun had been such a miserable git about the adjective game), but she actually quite liked that song they’d just sung.  The lyrics, about a guy called Thomas the Rhymer who’d spent seven years with the fairies and gained a lot of useful wisdom from it, had sounded like a traditional ballad, but the tune Bradley had played on the guitar had been more like something by Travis or Coldplay.  Natalie didn’t know if it was a new tune, or if it was just the way he’d played it.  She might look it up when she got home.

Shaun got up and jogged into the middle of the circle.  It was only a couple of steps, but he jogged anyway.  Because he was a wanker.  He looked up and down, trying to look thoughtful (because, again, wanker), then said, “Have you noticed how often people make themselves miserable for no reason?”

There were a couple of murmurs around the room.

“It’s true!  They worry about things that are ever going to happen.  They let things bother them for years after they’re over and done with.  So that’s the past and the future giving them trouble- what are they going to do about the present?”  He chuckled.  “No good ever comes of dwelling on your own misery.  And the crazy thing is, your own personal experiences have taught you that, but you carry on doing it anyway!”

Beside her, Natalie heard Isaac breathing funny.  His mouth had gone into a tight, straight line, and his nostrils were flared as if he’d just smelled something bad.

“Joie de vivre.  That’s what it’s all about.  Take as much joy out of life as you can.  And sooner or later, you’ll spread it all around you.”  He waved his hands around his head.  “And you’re saying, Shaun, it’s not that simple.  I’ve got responsibilities, there’s rules I’ve got to follow.  But I say, forget about the rules.  Forget about the boundaries.  Forget about the ideas you’ve been fed your whole life.  And once you’ve taken all that away, what’s left?”  He held out his hands to the people in front of him.  “You.  Your truest self.”

Natalie heard a chair scraping, and turned sideways to see Isaac spring to his feet and run to the door.  She was up and after him in a nanosecond.

Shaun’s friend, what’s-her-name with the glasses, got up and tried to head them off before they reached the door.  She had a slightly indignant look on her face, too, as if they were schoolkids trying to leave assembly early.  Anyway, it didn’t work- as soon as Natalie saw her in her peripheral vision, she stuck out an elbow and jabbed her out of the way.  There were a few seconds of light and voices as they raced through the pub, and then they were out and halfway across the road.

*

Isaac reached somebody’s garden wall, and couldn’t run anymore.  Natalie watched him fall to his knees and throw up on the pavement.

Isaac had tried to stick it out, he really had.  Even though it had been like having his head crushed in a vice, even though Isaac could feel the screws tightening every time that guy said the word “you,” he’d told himself that he was going to stay til the end.  But it had just got too much.  You think the wrong things.  You keep doing stupid stuff no matter how much everyone encourages you to be better.  You don’t even know who you truly are.

The all of a sudden, Isaac was kneeling on the pavement outside and staring down at the remains of his lunch.

He felt a hand on the back of his neck.  Mariam.  “What’s wrong, Isaac?  What happened in there?”

Isaac swallowed, took a few deep breaths, and looked up.  All three girls had gathered around him.  He noticed with some surprise that they’d got about a hundred yards from the pub.  He’d even crossed the road without noticing it.  He took another breath.  “OK,” he told them, “OK, listen.”

“What is it?” asked Rosalyn, inching closer.

Isaac swallowed again.  “That place was evil.  No matter what’s going on with Alex, we need to stay away from those guys.”

“Fine by me,” said Natalie, crouching beside him and Mariam.

“What do you mean, though?” asked Rosalyn, who was still standing a few steps away.  Probably didn’t want to crowd him.  Or didn’t want him throwing up on her shoes, which was understandable.  “What was evil?”

“Those people.  The Oakmen.  I don’t know if…”  He took a deep breath, and tried to get up.  “Rosalyn, I need you to promise me you’ll never go to one of those meetings ever again.”

Rosalyn stood still, tightly clutching her coat around her, and gave a little nod.  “OK.”

“We won’t either, Isaac, if that’ll make you feel better.”  Mariam squeezed his shoulder.

Isaac stared at the ground, because he was pretty sure that as soon as he looked up his eyes would start brimming over.  And the worst thing was that he couldn’t even have said why.  It made no sense that a bunch of smug jerks in the back of a pub had made him feel as if he was being shaped into something hideous against his will, but they had.

My name is Isaac, and I am imaginative.

After a few seconds, Mariam patted him on the shoulder again.  “Come on, let’s go and sit by the river.  Get ourselves some fresh air.”

At this time of night the river was just a freezing stretch of sinister-looking black water surrounded by weeds, but the air was fresh and it did make him feel better.  A couple of gulps of the stony smell, and you felt like yourself again.  Isaac saw Mariam messing about with her phone.  “Texting Alex,” she explained, “He’ll have to reply when he hears about this.”

It hadn’t rained lately, so they could sit in the grass at the banks without getting their clothes covered in mud.  “What do you think set you off?” asked Natalie.

Isaac stretched out across the dead grass.  “It felt like they were trying to get into our heads.”

Mariam tsked.  “People like that always do.”

“They wanted to… replace all our thoughts with other thoughts.”  Isaac shrugged.  “They wanted us to ignore our own judgement and listen to them instead.”

Rosalyn sang absent-mindedly.  “Preacher was talking, there’s a sermon he gave, he said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved…”

The four of them went silent, huddling under their coats as the cold river wind blew by.  Then Natalie said, “How much do you want to bet that the Oakmen were the ones who set that bomb in the park?”

It was a joke.  They could all tell that she hadn’t meant it seriously, just a dark little aside to laugh at for a second and then forget about.  But in the cold, dark night, as the wind whistled by, Natalie’s words gained a little more weight than they might otherwise have had.

Mariam made a little uneasy noise.  “No-one’s claimed credit for it yet…”

“Well, they wouldn’t, would they?” replied Natalie, “It was a dud.”

Mariam continued as if she hadn’t said anything.  “They showed up on campus two days after it happened, and they instantly tracked down me and Natalie.  Two of the people who’d been there at the park.  Other people too, yeah, but Shaun specifically went out of his way to talk to me.  And, Natalie, you said that girl looked back and gave you a dirty look…”

Natalie nodded.  “I don’t think I saw her at the meeting, though…”

“Right, but that doesn’t…  Look, you can’t have been the only person who threw away one of those leaflets after being given them, right?  But she definitely noticed when you did.  She was looking out for you.”

They all went quiet again, mulling over what Mariam had said.  Eventually, Isaac chewed his lip and said, “It’s all circumstantial, you know.  We’d never be able to actually prove anything.”

“No,” said Mariam, “Not even unofficially.  But at the very best, I think the Oakmen saw us getting hurt in the bombing as an opportunity.  Get ‘em while they’re vulnerable, something like that.”

Isaac sighed, and got to his feet.  “Come on, let’s go home.  If we’re going to have this conversation, we can have it somewhere warmer.”

Isaac’s first lecture on Tuesdays was at ten.  He didn’t know if the man had found that out somehow and made sure to be standing behind his front gate at twenty to, or if he’d have been prepared to stand there all morning on the off-chance that he’d come by.  Either way, when Isaac passed by the house on the corner with the green blinds, there was a man out front, staring right at him.

“Been meaning to talk to you,” said the man.  It was hard to tell how old he was.  He had grey hair and the kind of thick, square glasses that Isaac associated with Seventies comedians, but you could see his muscles right through his T-shirt.

Isaac stopped where he was.  Five months him and his friends had lived here, and they’d never once seen any of the people who lived in the house with the green blinds.  Just heard their arguments and seen their rubbish on the lawn.  For all they’d known, there weren’t any people living in the house, and it was just haunted by a particularly messy poltergeist.  “…Yeah?”

The man leaned on the gate.  “The other night, I was coming home late, and I saw some suspicious types hanging around yours.  Looked as if they were trying to get over the fence into the garden.”  He smacked his lips as he thought.  “About half past midnight, this would have been.”

“Right,”  Isaac glanced at the end of the road, wondering how late he was going to be.  “When you say ‘suspicious’…”

“All dressed in black.  A couple of those black knit caps on.”  His lips smacked again.  “Twitchy, too.  Jumped about a mile in the air when they saw I was looking their way.”

“Then what happened?”

“They made themselves scarce, pretty quick.”  At a guess, the man was probably about sixty.  Maybe a bit younger, if you assumed he just had one of those faces that gets lines early on.  “Just wanted to talk to you about it.  It didn’t seem right for you not to know.  Not with all those girls in the house.”

“Right,” said Isaac.  In the front garden, behind the man, there were still little scraps of rubbish left over from the big pile a few weeks ago.

“Your mums and dads would want someone keeping an eye on you,” said the man, “Making sure you’re safe.”

And now he was really getting on Isaac’s nerves.  “Right…  Well, thanks,” he said, and began to walk away.

The man didn’t seem to notice.  “Got to look out for yourself, in this world.  Only way to survive is to be the scariest thing in the jungle.”

“Right,” said Isaac, taking another few steps away.

“Mark my words.  Only way to survive.”  The man turned round and began to wander back to the house.  Isaac made sure to get away quickly in case he decided to come back.

*

Rosalyn had got in touch with Judith and told her about Ben Sugar’s news.  The old railway bridge, somewhere in the woods, somewhere near Croydon.  When Judith suggested picking a random bit of woodland and seeing if they could find it, she’d probably just meant it as a joke.  But to Rosalyn, it sounded like a fantastic idea.

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Rosalyn, as they passed through the gate that separated the wood from the pavement, “Just wander about until we find something?”

Judith made an odd face, pressing her lips together and sticking them out like a duck.  “Hm…  The ‘finding something’ part isn’t actually necessary.”

Until tomorrow, it was still February, which meant that it was still cold.  But that didn’t stop it from being the sunniest day since October.  As Rosalyn and Judith got further into the woods, the light shadows cast by the branches cast ever more intricate patterns on the ground.  Spring was getting ready to come.

“I don’t know the names of any of these trees,” said Rosalyn, by way of small talk.

Judith hummed again.  “Well, that one’s a hawthorn.  They’re supposed to keep away ghosts.”

Rosalyn looked over at the spindly tree she’d pointed at.  It looked a little shabby without its leaves.  “Just ghosts?  Does it work on anything else?”

Judith shrugged.  “I don’t think anyone’s ever tested it.”  Judith had told Rosalyn that she was twenty-one.  She didn’t look it.  Or maybe she did, and Rosalyn was just really bad at judging people’s ages.  Both were possible.

There was something about her- maybe her smile, maybe her athletic build, maybe just the fact that she was wearing a skirt outside in February- that made Rosalyn think of characters in Enid Blyton books.  There was something about her that made you wonder if she was about to whip out a bottle of ginger beer and ask you to play hockey or solve a mystery.  She was the sort of person it was good to wander round the woods with. 

“What are we going to do if it rains?” asked Rosalyn, “Other than get wet, I mean.”

“Well, if we’ve found the railway bridge by then, we can hide under it til it stops.”

“That’s another thing I’ve been wondering about.”  They’d come to a sort of mini-hill, more of a rocky slope than anything else, and Rosalyn had to watch her footing so that she didn’t over-balance.  “If it’s a railway bridge, then what’s it doing in the woods?  Wouldn’t they have cut the trees back to let the railway through?”

“I don’t know,” said Judith.  They reached the bottom of the slope, and relaxed a little.  “We’re sort of going on third-hand information, aren’t we?  What Isaac said about what Ben Sugar said.”

“Yeah,” said Rosalyn.  She sighed.  “I still feel a bit guilty doing this without Isaac.  After he was the one who got all that information for us.”  She’d asked him to come, but he’d said he had lectures, and he’d come along some other time.  With that in mind, Rosalyn almost hoped they didn’t find the railway bridge today.  It felt like Isaac should be a part of that.  “But you mean there might have been a miscommunication, right?  Like, maybe it’s not really a railway bridge, but Ben Sugar picked the wrong word to describe it.”

“Maybe.  Or maybe it’s just a disused bit of railway that’s had all this grow up around it.  I’ve seen things like that before.”

“Me too.  There’s one near my grandma’s house in Oxford, an old wooden one.  Me and my brother used to walk along it and scare ourselves by pretending the train was about to come through.”  Rosalyn remembered staring into the distance, imagining that a random set of shapes on the horizon was an old steam engine, seventy or eighty years late.

Judith laughed, in a way that made her duck her head and show her front teeth.  “Did you ever see Stand By Me?  With the scene on the…”

“…railway bridge!  I can’t watch that bit!”

“Because how would you escape?  There’s a fifty-foot drop into the water…”

“You’d just have to decide whether or not that was worse than being squashed by a train.”  Rosalyn pantomimed a shiver. 

Up ahead of them were a row of bushes, a lighter green than the trees around them, and behind that was a row of fields.  It was just a few yards into the first field that Rosalyn saw the signpost.

It was about knee-high (the perfect height to trip over if you weren’t watching where you were going), and covered in chipped red paint.  In faded gold letters, it said, Chimps’ Tea Party 100 Yds.  An arrow pointed right, towards a nearby hill.

Rosalyn and Judith looked up from the sign and exchanged a glance.  Judith was the first one to speak.  “D’you think it’s still there?”

“The chimps’ tea party?”  Rosalyn looked back at the sign.  It was old- you could tell.  Of course, it would have looked pretty weathered even if it had only been outside for two weeks, but this sign had the look of something that had swollen and cracked every time it had rained in the last ten years.  Rosalyn found herself wondering how long chimps actually lived.  “It can’t be a real chimps’ tea party, can it?”

Judith shrugged.  “Probably not.”

“Do you think somebody stole it from a zoo and then put it where it would point right at their friend’s house?”

Judith laughed.

They began to follow the path, towards the hill and then up its side.  As they got closer, they saw that there was a small black building at the top, all canopies and verandas.  “Is that a pagoda?” asked Rosalyn.

“I think so,” said Judith, “It looks like it’s hexagon-shaped, doesn’t it?”

Rosalyn didn’t know if that was a requirement for something to be a pagoda, so she just said, “Hmm.”

Under the veranda, the building itself was covered in full-length windows, making it look like a cage at the zoo.  And inside the building…

“Do you think it’s taxidermy?” asked Judith in a whisper, as if she was worried about waking the chimps up.

“It definitely looks like it,” said Rosalyn, remembering the animals at the museum last week.  These chimps weren’t as well-put together as those ones, though.  Their mouths gaped.  Their eyes were at different heights.  The teacups hung from their hands at strange angles.  “It looks like something from a horror movie,” she said, “Isaac would have loved this.”

They looked around for a plaque or a sign on the wall that would tell them who’d put this together, but they couldn’t find one.  It was anonymous, just like Kelpie and Silkie.

Later, as they were walking back, Justine asked, “Does your university have a newspaper?”

Your university, Rosalyn noticed.  “Yeah, ‘The Bell’.  Why?”

“Well, you could apply to start a weekly column.  All the strange things you’ve seen on the trail of Kelpie and Silkie.”

Rosalyn grinned.  “I think that might just convince everyone that I was a bit nuts.”

“Go on.  I bet there isn’t anything half as interesting in it at the moment.”

“Mm.”  Rosalyn looked sideways at Judith, and asked the question that had been on her mind for a while.  “You never went to Berrylands, did you?”

“I never went to any university.  Couldn’t sit still for long enough.”  She laughed.  “I think I just naturally took to the working world.  Going out and making your fortune.”

“But that’s my idea of hell, having to stand behind a desk all day and talk to people.”

“Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.”  They’d come to the edge of the woods, where the pavement started again.

“Yeah… some people’s idea of hell might be to walk through the woods for hours and run into a bunch of taxidermied monkeys.”

Judith laughed again.  Rosalyn didn’t remember the last time she’d made someone laugh so much.  “You know they’re apes.  Not monkeys.”

“I don’t think that’s the point.”

“And I meant it about the newspaper, you know.  They’re probably crying out for decent content.  You’d be doing them a favour.”

Rosalyn smiled.  “We’ll see.”

*

It was two hours before Mariam got to clock off, and she wasn’t sure how she’d get through it without killing somebody.  She was concentrating firmly on sorting out the till, while Claire stood behind her, droning on in that way that made her sound as if her nostrils had been glued shut.  “It was supposed to be about Bertolt Brecht, right?  But all he did was try and relate it back to George W Bush.”

“Sounds annoying,” said Mariam.

“I mean, if it was up to me, I’d place an embargo on any more George W Bush jokes.  They’ve all been told already.  But Edwin actually got really angry.”  She pronounced it an-graaay.  “He said he was sick of only ever hearing one side of the story.  You know, talking about a left-wing bias.”

“He got that from a few George Bush jokes?”

“At the time, I was like, ‘Oh, come on,’ but I thought about it, and, you know what, he’s actually right.  You only ever hear one side of the story.”  Claire waved a hand at the nearest wall.  “I mean, look at these posters.  They’re all about freeing political prisoners and marching against the government, but if a Christian group tried to put a poster up in here…”

“They’d be fine,” said Mariam, trying not to sound surly, “There are loads of Christian groups on campus.”

“Yeah, but none of them ever put up posters in here.  Because they know how they’d be treated if they did.”

“I’m pretty sure they’d be fine.”

“I just don’t like it when they use lectures to push an agenda.  We’re paying to learn, not to have the lecturers’ opinions shoved down our throats.”

Mariam didn’t think that a couple of George W Bush jokes constituted throat-shoving.  You didn’t even have to be left-wing to think the man was an idiot- you just had to be observant.

Adrian came in from the kitchen, and instantly snorted in disgust.  “Look at that,” he said, nodding towards a group of girls sitting near the pool table, “Corpse Bride Barbie.”

The girls (who made up approximately thirty per cent of the customers in the Student Union this afternoon) all had dyed hair, heavy eye makeup, and bags and sweaters covered in the names of weird metal bands Mariam had only vaguely heard of.  They seemed to be minding their own business.

Robin, who’d been restocking the glasses under the bar, let out one of his honky-donkey laughs.

“Guarantee you, this time last week they were listening to Girls Aloud,” Adrian continued, “It’s all just a trend.”  He grimaced.  “And they actually think that’s how the world works.  Deluded children.”

Robin grunted in agreement.  “Hate stuff like that.  They’ll be sitting there talking about My Chemical Romance, and I’ll be like, stop now, before you embarrass yourself.”

Claire tutted.  “Yeah.  I mean, for some of us, it’s actually about the music?  Not just the pretty men?”

 “Nothing but unreflected fangirl wank,” concluded Adrian.  He wasn’t even bothering to keep his voice down.  The Weird Metal Band girls couldn’t have been more than three or four yards away.

It took Mariam a moment to decide what she was actually going to say.  Adrian, I actually like having customers.  Adrian, are you trying to get us fired?  In the end, she went with, “Adrian, if that lot put in a complaint, I’m not going to defend you.”

Adrian spluttered in outrage. “Suit yourself,” he said, with an air of great dignity.

“What’s the matter with you today?” Robin asked her.

Mariam made a split-second decision, and stepped out from behind the bar so that she could go up to the Weird Metal Band girls and clear away their empty glasses.  She told herself that she just wanted to subtly check that they hadn’t heard what Adrian had said and felt hurt, but she knew, deep down, that she also wanted to terrify him a little bit. 

“Everything alright?” she asked, transferring the glasses to her little black tray.

“Yeah, thanks,” said one of the girls.  Her friends variously nodded and held up their half-full glasses in a toast.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mariam could see Adrian shitting bricks.  She decided to linger for a few seconds longer.  “Oh, I can’t remember if you were told or not- you get a free refill on any non-alcoholic drinks.”

“Yeah, they did say.”  The girl smiled.

“Cool.  Good to know.”  Mariam turned around and went back to the bar, enjoying the scandalised gawp on Adrian’s stupid face.

“What did you do?” he whispered.

Claire was gawping too, in sympathy.  “Mariam!  You didn’t…”

Mariam walked past them into the kitchen, aiming to clear out the dishwasher now that things were quiet.  Adrian followed her in.  “Mariam, I swear to God, if you said anything to them…”

Mariam turned round and looked him in the eye.  They never expected you to do that.  “What?”

No reply.  Adrian, frozen mid-threat, shuffled a little awkwardly.  “So you didn’t, then?”

“Just let me do my job.”  Mariam turned her back on him and opened the dishwasher.

*

Rosalyn knocked on Isaac’s door. “I’m taking my laundry down. Do you have anything that needs to go in?”

Isaac’s voice came through the wood. “No, that’s ok.”

“Alright.” Rosalyn shifted the basket in her arms and walked on. She was a bit worried about Isaac at the moment. He never wanted to talk for long, and when he did talk, it always seemed to be with a weird, falsely-happy sheen over everything he said. Once again, Rosalyn wished he’d been able to come with her and Judith today. It might have cheered him up a bit.

The laundry room (if you could call it that) was in between Isaac’s room and the kitchen. It had a paved floor, bare plaster on the walls, and no heating. It felt like an afterthought. Apart from the washing machine, the only things in it were two doors- one for the downstairs toilet and the other for the garden. It was the one room in the house where you always had to wear shoes.

Rosalyn crouched down and started loading her clothes into the machine. She thought about what Judith had said earlier. Maybe the paper really would take her on as a writer. Natalie was always complaining about the articles in it. There had been one last month that had blamed Theodore from The Chipmunks for the child obesity epidemic, and Natalie hadn’t stopped grinding her teeth for days. Rosalyn was pretty confident she could do better than that.

She pressed the button to start it, and spotted something on the wall. It was grey, half-hidden behind the machine, and exactly at Rosalyn’s eyeline when she was crouched down like this.

She moved closer, and saw that it was a message written in pencil. If you have trouble with the Oakmen, go to Isaac’s boss – Kelpie and Silkie.

Mariam didn’t have any lectures on Monday morning, so she was the only one both in and awake when the doorbell rang.  She put down her book and went into the hall to see who it was.  Most of the time, the only people who used the bell were the pizza delivery guys, so Mariam didn’t know what to expect.  After Friday night, though, she was wary enough to look through the letterbox to see who it was.

She saw a short, scrawny woman with grey hair tied back in a ponytail.  Not an army of rampaging housebreakers, then.  Mariam relaxed a little, and opened the door.  “Hello?”

The woman grinned.  “Hi!  Are you a friend of Alex’s?”

“Um…”  Mariam hadn’t expected that question, and took her a moment to work out what to say.  “Yeah, I’m Mariam.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mariam.”  The woman nodded in acknowledgement, but didn’t take her hands out of her coat pockets.  “I’m Alex’s mother.  Can I speak to him, please?”

Mariam had never met any of Alex’s family before.  She had no way of knowing whether or not this woman was telling the truth.  True, she had brown eyes and a small nose like Alex’s, but so did a lot of other people. 

Luckily, though, Mariam remembered that she had a way out.  “Oh, I’m afraid he’s in Amsterdam this week.  He should be back the Monday after next.”

The woman’s grin didn’t change.  “I’d really like to speak to him, please.”

Mariam shrugged.  “I could give you his mobile number…”  It wasn’t until the words were out of her mouth that Mariam stopped to wonder why Alex’s mother didn’t have his mobile number in the first place.

The woman (Mrs Rudd?  Should she call her that?) chuckled.  “Look…  Mariam, is it?  I know you’re just saying what he told you to say, but this really is important.  Could you let me in so I can speak to him, please?”

Mariam lowered her eyebrows.  “Saying what he told me to say?”

“You’re not the first one he’s drawn in.  Believe me, you’re not.”  The woman sighed.  Her eyebrows went up in the same way Alex’s did when he was in a reflective mood.  “Please.  Let me in.”

“Look, at this point, even if he was in…”

The woman’s elbow jabbed into Mariam’s side.  It was more surprising than painful, but the result was the same- Mariam flinched backwards, and that gave the woman enough space to shove past her and dart up the stairs.

 Didn’t look like an army of housebreakers, eh? thought Mariam, while she steadied herself enough to follow her up.  At the last second, she remembered to shut the front door behind her.  There was already one intruder in the house- no sense in inviting any more.

Mrs Rudd, if that’s who she was, had stopped at the first door after the stairs, hammering on it and calling through the keyhole.  “Alex.  Alex, I know you’re in there.”

Mariam reached her side.  “For the third time, he’s in Amsterdam.  Not here.  Now can you please…?”

“Alex!” Mrs Rudd shouted, drowning her out.  She carried on pounding on the door.

“That’s not even his room,” said Mariam.  It was Natalie’s, and she wasn’t in, either.  Alex’s room was further down the hall, on the other side of the bathroom, but Mariam wasn’t about to tell her that.

 She wasn’t frightened.  Part of her thought she should be, but Mrs Rudd looked thirty years older and three inches shorter than her.  Even if she got really nasty, she didn’t look like much of a threat.  At the moment, it looked like all Mariam had to do was wait patiently until Mrs Rudd finally got it through her head that Alex wasn’t around, then escort her out of the house so that she didn’t break anything on the way.

“Alex!” yelled Mrs Rudd.  She turned to her left, finally noticing Mariam was there.  “Do you mind…?”

“I mind.  And he still isn’t in.”

 Mrs Rudd made a dismissive tutting sound, and hammered at the door all the harder.  At that point, one Miss Rosalyn Pepper appeared on the second-floor landing, drowsy and rumpled-looking.  She was all pinks and reds, her hair sticking up in a way that reminded Mariam of copper wiring and her face still warm and flushed from being pressed into her pillow for the last seven hours.  Peps caught Mariam’s eye and mouthed, “What’s going on?”

All Mariam could do was shrug.

“Alex!” snapped Mrs Rudd one last time before giving up.  She seemed to sink against the door.  “He’s not answering.”

“Because he’s not in,” Mariam reminded her.

Mrs Rudd gave her a dirty look, then spotted Peps at the top of the stairs.  “I don’t suppose you could tell me where I might find him?”

“What, Alex?”  Pepper blinked in confusion, then looked at Mariam.  “I thought he was in Amsterdam this week?”

Mrs Rudd scowled.  “Fine.  Don’t help.”  And she headed downstairs.  Mariam rushed to follow her in case she tried to check anything else out while she was here, but she needn’t have worried.  Mrs Rudd went straight to the front door.

She opened it, then paused.  “Nothing in life comes free, you know,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Mariam, “You might want to remind Alex of that.”

“Right…”

“I can guarantee you he’s not in Amsterdam.  Most likely everything he’s told you about himself was a lie.”  And before Mariam could ask her what exactly she meant by that, she was gone, with the door slammed shut behind her.

Mariam looked around and saw Pepper, halfway down the stairs, looking as if she’d just been slapped.  “What the hell was that?”

*

Natalie had actually really enjoyed today’s lecture, which had been on 19^th Century poetry and hadn’t involved any necrophilia at all, and she was just about to ask Felicity if she wanted to go down to the pub when she saw Rosalyn and Mariam waiting in the corridor just outside.

“Guess what just happened,” said Mariam, as soon as Natalie met her eyes, “Go on, guess.”

Natalie shrugged, and looked at Rosalyn to see if she could get any clues from her.  “Another Kelpie and Silkie note?”

“I wish,” said Mariam, “No, what actually happened was that some crazy woman knocked on the door saying she was Alex’s mother.”

 “What?”

“And then she wanted to go upstairs and knock on his bedroom door to check if he was really out, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“That was when I woke up,” said Rosalyn, smiling meekly, “I heard banging sounds from downstairs and I thought someone was in trouble.”

Natalie looked from Rosalyn to Mariam, thinking through what she’d been told.  “You managed to get her out in the end, right?”

“Yeah.”  Mariam sniffed.  “She left before she could do any damage.”

“And you told her he was in Amsterdam?”

“She seemed pretty convinced that he wasn’t.  But then, I don’t know if we should trust the judgement of somebody who thinks it’s alright to elbow her way into other people’s houses.”

Natalie tried to remember whether Alex had ever mentioned his family.  Obviously he was a bit older than the rest of them, so he probably hadn’t been living at home as recently, so references might well have been few and far between no matter what.  She remembered everyone else’s parents coming to pick them up for Christmas break, and she was pretty sure she remembered Alex saying he was going to spend the break with his older sister in Cardiff.  But she didn’t think he’d ever mentioned his parents.  Not once in the five months she’d known him.  “Do we know for certain that she is his mother?  Not some random lunatic who just wandered in off the street?”

Mariam shrugged.  “I guess we don’t.  But she did look a bit like him, for what it’s worth.”  She sighed.  “Anyway, I’ve sent Alex a text about what happened, but he hasn’t replied yet.”

“They can take a while to get through, overseas,” said Rosalyn.  (The other thing Natalie remembered about Alex last Christmas was that Rosalyn’s mum had flirted shamelessly with him while Rosalyn had been upstairs getting her stuff.  But she decided not to mention that.)

They’d been standing to the side, against the wall, letting the stream of people pass them by, but then, out of nowhere, one of them broke away and slapped Mariam on the back.  She started, then turned round to look at him.  “Shaun!” she said, with a big grin.

He was one of those tanned, square-jawed guys who always reminded Natalie of a Ken doll.  “Mariam!  How’s tricks?”

She laughed.  “Tricks are OK.”

Shaun the Ken doll nodded, then looked down and behind him as if he felt awkward about whatever he was going to say next.  “So…  Didn’t see you at the meeting on Friday…”

 “Yeah, sorry about that.  Our flatmate announced he was going to Amsterdam for a couple of weeks, and he wanted to take us on a goodbye museum trip.”

“And you couldn’t have done both?”  He said it with a laugh, but Natalie didn’t think that made it sound any less dickish.  If she was Mariam, she’d be congratulating herself on her lucky escape right about now.  “It’s OK.  I know it can seem a bit intimidating, the thought of all these ideas being thrown at you.”  He looked around at the three of them, probably trying to assess how many ideas would be too many for their tiny girly brains to handle.  “But if you do want to come, we’ve got another meeting on Wednesday.  You’re all welcome.”

“And do we have to talk about our favourite spoons?” asked Natalie.

The guy blinked.  “What?”  He looked to Mariam for help.  “Favourite…?”

“Like on the leaflet,” Mariam reminded him.

“Oh!”  He chuckled.  “That was just a joke, OK?  I wouldn’t want you to take it too seriously.”  He gave Natalie a pat on the shoulder, which was remarkably brave of him, under the circumstances.  “Anyway, I’ve taken up too much of your time.  Be seeing you, Mariam.”  And he walked off with a little wave.”

Natalie waited until he was out of sight, then turned back to the others.  “We’ve got to go to that meeting,” she told them, “I want to see just how big a trainwreck this can be.”

*

Isaac was cleaning up the seats in the back row when his chest started to feel tight again.  It was a pretty easy job, even after a big performance (the other attendants had told him horror stories about finding dirty nappies and used condoms back there, but he was pretty sure they just made that stuff up to scare the newbies), and that meant that your mind had plenty of time to wander.

It could happen at any moment…  It could happen at any moment…

He powered through, picking up the sweet wrappers and checking for spilled-drink stains on the chairs and carpets, and then, once he’d reached the end of the row, he went through again and double-checked it, because damn it, he had some professional pride. Then he went out into the foyer and fetched those leaflets he’d been told to put on display afterwards.

It could happen at any moment…  It could happen at any moment…

His hands were shaking.  He was trying to put a neat stack of each leaflet into each of the plastic stands, but it was hard to count them out.  It was hard to hold onto them.

Then two things happened, and, even in the moment, Isaac wasn’t sure which one triggered the other.  A voice from behind him said, “Are you OK?”, and he dropped a bunch of leaflets all over the floor.

For a moment, he just stood there looking stupid.  Bound to happen eventually, he thought, and he did his best to smile at the guy behind him instead of curling up into a ball and screaming a lot.  “Yeah- just a bit clumsy today, apparently.”

The other guy didn’t look like he was buying it.  He was small and young-looking (maybe a couple of years younger than Isaac), but he had a crumpled-up look, like a piece of schoolwork you forgot about and then found squashed at the bottom of your bag months later.  Creased clothes, tangled blond hair, and dark circles under his eyes.  “You’re Isaac, right?”

“Yeah.”  He looked for the other guy’s name badge, and saw that he wasn’t wearing one.  “And you’re…?”

“Denny.  I work up in the office most of the time.  Secretarial stuff.”  He pointed downwards, at the scattered My Fair Lady flyers on the carpet.  “I’ll help you with that.”  He crouched down and began to pick them up.

Isaac quickly dropped to his knees, as if he thought he could tidy up the whole thing under Denny’s nose if he moved fast enough.  “You don’t need to.  My mess.”

“It’s OK.”  Denny didn’t make eye contact as he spoke, just stared down at the leaflets and scooped them up as quickly as possible.

Isaac gave up on the idea of talking him out of it.  “How long have you worked here?

“About a year.”  He still didn’t look up.  “I’m not even here officially- I’m just a volunteer.  Helping out family.”

That sounded a whole lot like old Johnny Lambton was scamming him for free labour, but it wasn’t Isaac’s job to point that out.  “Something to look good on your UCAS form?”

“Hm?”  This time, he almost looked up.  Or at least, there was a twitch in that direction.  “Oh.  No, nothing like that.  Not really university material.”

That definitely sounded like a scam.  ‘Not being paid’ plus ‘not really university material’ equalled ‘basically slave labour.’  He didn’t know how Jonathan Lambton had suckered Denny into it.  Maybe that was something they taught you at business school- ‘Hoodwinking Kids into Working for Free 101.’  “Why not?”

Denny gave a bit of a shrug.  “Just kind of missed the boat.  I’m better off here.”

Isaac didn’t want to pry, but he might have done, if his hands hadn’t picked that exact moment to start shaking again and make him drop a whole bunch of leaflets.  Denny darted forward and picked them up.

Isaac watched him place them neatly in the plastic stand where they belonged.  At least someone was being professional around here.  “Look, um…  As a favour to me, can you not say anything about this to anyone else?”

“About what?” asked Denny, glancing backwards.

“You know, the shaking fingers and that.”  Something occurred to him.  “I’m not hungover!  It’s just…”

Denny met his eyes.  “You’re scared of something.”

“I…”  Isaac sighed.  There was no denying it when someone was staring right at him.  “Well, it sounds really stupid when you put it like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”  Isaac looked around.  He was the one avoiding eye contact now.  “Anyway, I think we’re done.  Thanks for helping.”

(From the SWLondonMums forum)

TequilaGal                                                                  Thursday 2^nd of March 2006

So, we live two streets down from Berrylands University, which leads to some… interesting interactions with the local students.  Picture the scene: it’s around eight yesterday evening, I’m taking the Littlun back from Brownies, and we’ve been stuck in traffic for an age.  All of a sudden, a young man runs out of a nearby pub.  As we watch in horror, he runs across the street, runs into a garden wall, and throws up extravagantly into some poor family’s front drive!

Luckily the traffic eased up and we were able to drive away before I said anything I might have regretted.  A few streets on, we stopped again, and I turned to my daughter and said, “I want you to remember something.  No matter what happens in life, it’s never OK to disrespect people’s property like that.  Life’s hard enough without people creating problems for each other, and a little consideration goes a long way.”

Say what you want about students, but they don’t half make useful object lessons!