In the Bag (22 page)

I walk on. I still feel really rough. I need to get back to the house, have a shower, change my clothes and eat something. Maybe even have a sleep. Cos I don’t wanna be feeling like this. Especially not if I’m gonna be home when Mum and Dad get home. I wanna be fresh, thinking straight.

Joe

I am now a free man. School is officially out and all I have left is exams. It feels really good. And tonight it’s Rabbit’s party. After the weird week I’ve had, I think I deserve a good night.

School today was a bit of an anticlimax, to be honest. Everyone was going on about how all this stuff was gonna happen, like a water fight, and an egg and flour fight. And none of it happened. Everyone just signed each other’s school shirts, we had a leavers’ assembly, and loads of girls started crying. Then that was it. We were free to go.

Right now, I’m upstairs in my room. I’ve been here since I got home. First thing I did was check the news on the internet to see if there was any mention of the bag or anything. But there was nothing.

Since then, I’ve been rereading the messages people wrote on my school shirt and then messing around on my guitar. But now I’m bored of playing guitar. So I put it down on the bed, get up and go over to my wardrobe. I’m gonna choose what to wear tonight to the party, though looking for clothes in my wardrobe is always depressing. My clothes are all . . . what’s the word? Lame? Unfashionable? Shit? All of the above, really. Apart from my new trainers. And every time I look at them, I feel a little pang of guilt. There’s nothing I can do about it now, though.

After standing in front of my wardrobe for ages, I choose a band T-shirt – a black one that really could do with a wash – a zip-up hooded top, a pair of dark blue jeans and my trainers.

Ash

I slept most of the day. I feel a little better for it – not hungover, at least. Right now, I’m sitting on the sofa in the lounge. I see Mum walk up the drive. I feel nervous. My hands are sweaty. I don’t know what’s about to happen. I don’t know how I’m gonna react, or how Mum’s gonna react. I don’t even know what I want to happen here. I don’t know what would be worse – Mum and Dad splitting up, or Mum and Dad trying to make things right.

The front door opens and then shuts with a plasticky
clunk
.

‘
Ashley? Are you home?’

‘In here, Mum,’ I say.

A few seconds later, Mum pokes her head round the door. She smiles. At least, she tries to. Only, when she looks at me, I can see a tear appear in the corner of her eye. She walks over to me with her arms outstretched. I stand up and we hug.

‘
Are you all right, Ashley?’ she says into my back.

I nod. ‘Yeah.’

We both sit on the sofa. I still feel nervous as hell. This is strange and horrible. I look at Mum. Her make-up has run. She wipes a tear away and smudges her mascara even more.

‘I’m sorry, Ashley,’ she says. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t say sorry, Mum. It’s not your fault.’

Mum shakes her head. ‘It’s . . .’ she starts. But then she falls silent and stares across the room.

I close my eyes and put my head in my hands. I take a couple of deep breaths. I feel like I wanna cry. I feel hopeless. But I don’t wanna cry in front of my mum. Someone’s got to be strong. Someone has to be the grown-up here. I look up. ‘What happened last night?’ I say.
‘
After I left?’

Mum doesn’t answer right away. I can see her thinking. What’s she thinking about? Maybe she’s trying to work out whether to tell me the truth or not. Maybe she’s trying to think what I want to hear, so she can say it. ‘We had an argument,’ she says after a while.

‘Yeah?’ I look at her. She doesn’t look back at me.

She nods. ‘I called him all the names under the sun.’

‘Good,’ I say. My voice sounds flat.
‘
And what did he do?’

Mum stiffens a little. ‘He cried, he begged me to forgive him. He said he’d made a mistake. He said he’d already ended the affair.’

I nod. ‘Did you believe him?’

Mum shrugs. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. Then there’s a pause and all I can hear is the sound of birds singing outside. ‘I think so.’

I sigh. I can’t believe she bought his lies, that she’s gonna give him another chance. I mean, I want to believe that what Dad told her is true. It would make everything easier. But why should I believe him after what he’s done?

We sit in silence.

‘How was your last day of school?’ Mum says eventually.

It shocks me. My stomach turns. Guilt. I make sure I look her right in the eye as I answer. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t easy to concentrate, though. I was just thinking about you and Dad.’

Mum nods. She sighs again. ‘Sorry.’

I shake my head.

‘
And you stayed out of trouble?’

I nod. ‘Of course.’

I wonder whether this is a trap, whether she knows that I didn’t go to school today. But then she doesn’t say anything. She looks sad and small and not really like my mum at all.

‘Your dad should be home after seven,’ she says.

I nod my head.

‘Maybe we should all sit down and talk things through. Iron all the problems out.’

I snort with laughter. And then I wish I hadn’t. It’s just that it’s stupid, what Mum said. How on earth can you iron out a problem like this? I shake my head. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

Mum looks back at me, disappointed. ‘Oh. Where?’

‘Rabbit’s house.’

‘Do you have to? Can’t you go out another night?’

I shrug. ‘I want to go,’ I say. ‘It’s my last day of school. Why should I sit here while my mum and dad split up and my life falls to pieces? I wanna be out with my friends.’

Mum just sits there. And I feel guilty, like I shouldn’t have said that. But, you know what? I mean it. I don’t wanna be here when Dad gets home. It’s up to them to sort this out. I wanna be anywhere but here. I get up from the sofa.

‘I’m gonna get ready,’ I say.

Joe

I have a bag from the off-licence balancing on my handlebars as I ride through the woods to Rabbit’s. A few cans of cider, that’s all. Ash has a half bottle of vodka in his pocket and a bag with a big bottle of Coke in it resting on his handlebars. He has some weed as well.

It’s overcast and windy tonight, though it isn’t really cold. Feels like it should rain at any moment, but it hasn’t so far. The woods smell earthy and damp. And I feel kind of weird and scared riding through them.

We cycle past the part of the woods where we found the car last week. It’s gone. Taken away by the police, I s’pose. You wouldn’t know that anything had happened there now, except that the tree which had been knocked into the other trees has been chopped down. There are still some tyre tracks, but they’re not fresh any more and they blend in with all the others. You’d only notice them if you knew what you were looking for.

We don’t say anything to each other for a while after we’ve gone past the spot where the car was. I don’t know about Ash, but I’m thinking about what’s happened in the last week and feeling paranoid, like we’re still gonna get found out by someone. Even though I know in my head that I’m being stupid. Because the facts are:

1. No one saw me and Ash pick the bag up.

2. There’s nothing left to link us to the bag except a gun that’s buried in the woods. Finding the gun would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

3. Whoever it is that the bag belongs to has it back now. They’re not gonna take it to the police and complain that there’s a couple of hundred quid missing.

4. We dropped the bag off before we told them where it would be. So there’s no way that they can know who we are – they won’t have seen us.

But, you know, even as I think about all the reasons why we’re not gonna get found out, I can find little loopholes in them, like:

1. We
think
no one saw us pick up the bag, but we don’t know for sure. Anyone could have seen us last Friday. We were both half cut. Who knows who else was in the woods that night?

2. It’s possible someone could find the buried gun, even if it’s unlikely. And if they handed it in to the police – like we should have done with the bag – the police might link it to us. I mean, they have forensics. All they would need to do is find one fibre of clothing and they could link it to Ash or Rabbit.

3. We don’t know for sure who took the bag after we left it on the common. For all we know, someone walking their dog picked it up and took it to the police. And if they did, the police could get my fingerprints and Ash’s and all sorts off the bag, couldn’t they?

4. We went back to make sure the bag had been taken from the common, and we could have been seen then.

I know I’m being paranoid, but I can’t help it. I wish I could be more like Ash and just treat everything like it’s a joke. But I can’t.

Ash

There are a lot of people at Rabbit’s. More than he expected, I think. But he’s cool with it. Anyway, it’s not as if he has any neighbours who can get pissed off at the noise or anything, seeing as he lives in the woods. And so far tonight no one’s being a dick. Everyone’s behaving themselves, just having a nice time – having a little drink, having a smoke, having a dance and a kiss and a cuddle to celebrate the end of school.

Not me, though, not yet. I mean, I’ve had a little drink. Quite a big drink, actually. But I haven’t done anything else. No dancing, no kissing or cuddling. But I’m on the case. It’s all in hand. It will happen soon.

Right now I’m sitting in Rabbit’s garden with a couple of people from school. We’re about to have a little smoke cos I brought some of the weed with me. I light the joint and have a puff on it, take the smoke deep down into my lungs and keep it there for as long as I can manage. After about twenty seconds, I blow it out slowly and break into a massive grin. I feel good. I take another drag and then pass it on to Dylan, who’s sitting next to me. He does the same as me, takes two drags from it and passes it round the circle.

I kind of drift away as I watch the joint go round the circle. My mind feels empty for the first time in ages. The joint gets round to Joe, who takes a puff on it and coughs. Trust Joe. He couldn’t be cool if he tried. He makes me laugh.

As I sit there, my phone starts to ring. I take it out of my pocket. It’s Manky Mark calling. I bet he’s after another smoke.

I put the phone to my ear and answer the call.
‘
All right, Mark?’

‘
Ash,’ he says. He sounds serious.

‘What’s up, Mark?’

‘Listen, man,’ he says, ‘it might be nothing, right, but . . .’

‘What?’

There’s a pause at the other end of the phone. ‘Some geezers was at the rec looking for you earlier,’ he says.

The joint comes back round to me. I take it off Joe and have a drag. ‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘Probably my dad. Was he stupid-looking?’

‘Nah, it weren’t your old man,’ Mark says. ‘Big geezers. There were two of them. They was driving a BMW. Pulled up at the wall.’

I break off in mid-drag and choke a little. I don’t like the sound of this. ‘You what? In a BMW? Who were they? What did they want?’

‘One of them said he wanted to buy some skunk,’ Mark says.

I pass the joint on and stand up. I need to talk in private so I walk over to the pond, away from everyone else, to a rickety bench that overlooks it. I sit down. ‘Who was this man?’ I say. ‘What did he say? Was it a cop?’

There’s a pause. ‘I told you what I know.’

‘Did he say my name?’

Mark shakes his head. ‘Not exactly,’ he says.

‘What do you mean, not exactly? Either he did or he didn’t.’

‘They pulled up by the wall, got out the car and said that they heard there was some kid selling skunk in Fayrewood and they wanted to buy some. Said he might go by the name of Layzee Eyez. No one said anything. I just shook my head, said I didn’t know nothing about any skunk or Layzee Eyez. But then one of them got his wallet out, pulled out a wodge of twenty-pound notes. And Suzie jumped down off the wall and went and talked to him.’

‘Fuck!’ I say. ‘Didn’t you stop her?’

‘I shouted at her,’ Mark says, ‘but I couldn’t do nothing else. They was big geezers, man. Gold chains and all that. I didn’t wanna get messed up in their business, you know what I’m saying?’

I close my eyes. This is bad. ‘What did Suzie tell them?’

‘Dunno,’ Mark says. ‘She went off and talked to them and she ain’t come back to the rec. I called you as soon as I could.’

I run my hand through my hair. I don’t say anything. I’m in shock, I think. I can’t quite take this in. Who would have known that I had the weed? ‘Where are they now?’ I say.

‘Who?’

‘Suzie. The men in the BMW.’

‘I don’t know where Suzie went,’ Mark says, ‘but the geezers in the BMW went off somewhere. Revved the engine and did a wheel spin and they was gone.’

I stare at the reeds in the pond. ‘Shit!’ I say.