Black Rabbit Summer (17 page)

‘Well, kind of… I mean, I remember some of it, and I know we
started
doing something, you know…’ She put her hand to her head. ‘God, I just remember feeling so
weird
… like my body was exploding. It was like I was totally out of control or something.’

I let go of her hand and gave her back the lipstick.

Nic looked at me. ‘I’m sorry, Pete… I mean, if I messed things up…’

‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘No one messed anything up. It was just a really weird night…’

She nodded sadly. ‘Yeah…’

I gazed back at her for a moment, wondering what to say, and then we both looked up as a helicopter passed low over our heads. The chopping sound of the blades filled the sky for a moment, and I shielded my eyes against the sun and watched the dark shape of the helicopter as it banked to the left and started circling over the recreation ground.

‘What’s going on?’ Nic asked me. ‘Is that a police helicopter?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Do you think it’s something to do with Raymond?’

‘I don’t know… probably not.’ I looked at her. ‘Listen, I’d better go…’

‘Are you going back to the fairground?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘No… it’s all right, thanks. I’m just going to have a quick look round…’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah…’ I smiled at her. ‘You look as if you could do with getting home anyway.’

She looked at me. ‘OK… well, I’ll call you if I think of anything…’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

We stood there for a moment, neither of us quite sure how to end things, then Nic touched my arm, said ‘See you later,’ and started walking off. I watched her for a second or two, wondering briefly what kind of night she’d had with the waltzer guy, and whether or not she really couldn’t remember anything about what had happened in the den…

Then I shook it all from my head and got going.

In the summer light of a Sunday afternoon, the fairground seemed to have died. Without its lights, without all its music and its noise, it just seemed to lie there, jaded and dull. All its energy had gone. All its madness, its movement, its life… all that remained was a formless scattering of machinery, scaffolding, canvas and vehicles.

The funfair was moving on.

Some of the rides had already been dismantled and packed away, leaving large patches of dead yellow grass where they’d stood, while others were still in the process of being taken down. The sound of hard work drifted in the air as I wandered around – buzzing drills, thumping hammers, the dull clink of scaffolding
coming down. The fairground people were too busy packing up to take much notice of me, and if any of them wondered what I was doing there, they didn’t seem to show it. I got a few glances, a few curious looks, but that was about it.

The whole place seemed a lot smaller than I remembered, and it didn’t take long to walk round and take everything in. There wasn’t much left to see. The Portaloos were all gone, and most of the surrounding litter had been swept up and cleared away. The fortune-teller’s tent wasn’t there any more. There was no waltzer, no dodgems, no children’s rides. And in the place where the old-fashioned merry-go-round had been, or the place where I
thought
it had been, there was absolutely nothing. No patch of yellowed grass. No litterless imprint in the ground. No sign that it had ever been there at all.

I should have felt puzzled, I suppose. Or, at least, a little bit curious. But as I stood there by the fairground entrance, gazing over at the empty space where I thought I’d seen Raymond riding a horse-sized black rabbit, everything seemed so ordinary and drab that it was hard to feel anything at all. Even the sight of the police helicopter, standing alone in the middle of the recreation ground, and the patrol car parked down by the gates… even that didn’t seem to mean anything. The two uniformed police officers from the patrol car were just strolling round the fairground, occasionally stopping to talk to some of the fairground workers, but they didn’t seem to be in any great hurry. And the two figures inside the helicopter were just sitting there, not doing anything at all.

I looked over at the area where all the fairground vehicles and trailers were parked, and I wondered if I should try to find the fortune-teller. Rationally, I knew it was pointless, a complete waste of time. No matter how much she’d
seemed
to know about Raymond, I knew it was all just an illusion. Words, mind games, trickery… whatever you want to call it. It’s simply not possible to know about things that haven’t happened yet.

‘Excuse me.’

The voice came from behind me, and when I looked round I saw one of the uniformed police officers coming towards me.

‘Do you work here?’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Are you with the fair?’

‘No…’

He stopped in front of me, wiping sweat from his brow. ‘Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’

‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said. ‘I was just… I don’t know. I was just looking around…’

‘Just looking around?’

‘Yeah…’

He looked at me. ‘What’s your name, son?’

‘Pete Boland.’

‘Boland?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where do you live, Pete?’

‘Hythe Street.’

‘Number?’

‘Ten.’

He nodded. ‘Were you here last night?’

‘At the fair, do you mean?’

‘Yes, at the fair.’

‘Yeah… yeah, I was actually.’

‘What time did you get here?’

‘About ten thirty, I think.’

‘And what time did you leave?’

I shrugged. ‘Around midnight.’

He nodded again. ‘So, you just came up here this morning for another look round the fair… is that it?’

‘Yeah… well, no… I mean, I didn’t really
mean
to come up here. I was going to see some friends in Recreation Road, but they weren’t in, so I just came up here to hang around for a bit, you know… to pass the time.’

‘Right. So you’ll be going back to your friends’ place now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘In Recreation Road.’

‘That’s right.’

He smiled at me. ‘Off you go then.’

As I turned round and started walking away, I could feel him watching me, and I wondered why I hadn’t told him about Raymond, and why I hadn’t asked him what was going on…

God, why was I so
pathetic
?

I didn’t look back to see if the police officer was still watching me until I’d reached the recreation ground gates. Even then, I was feeling so stupidly paranoid that I didn’t risk looking back until I’d actually turned left at the gates and taken a few steps towards Recreation Road, just in case he
was
still watching me. But he wasn’t. I couldn’t see him anywhere. I looked again, just to make sure, then I quickly turned round and headed back the other way, towards Back Lane.

Apart from a bunch of skateboard kids hanging around the gas towers, the lane was quiet and deserted. There were no dog-walkers around, no dossers, no weirdos, no odd-looking men with moustaches. No sign of Raymond either. In fact, there was
no sign of anything. I was keeping my eyes open as I walked, looking all around – down at the ground, up at the bank, into the trees – but I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I was just looking, I suppose. Just looking…

Actually, come to think of it, I wasn’t really looking at all. I mean, my eyes
were
open, and they
were
moving around, and if I
had
seen something… well, that would have been fine – or
not
fine, depending on what I’d seen – but all I was really doing was trying to keep my mind occupied so I wouldn’t have to think about what I might find when I got to the den.

I knew that everything might be all right, that I might get to the den and find Raymond sitting there, alive and well… and I also knew that I might not find anything at all. But there was another possibility, and that was the one that was bothering me, the one that I didn’t want to think about. But the closer I got to the den, the harder it was
not
to think about it, and as I started clambering up the bank, threading my way through the bushes and brambles, I couldn’t help imagining the worst.

It was the rabbit, I suppose… the image of Black Rabbit’s severed head on the gate, its blank eyes staring at nothing. I just couldn’t get that picture out of my mind. And I couldn’t stop it from playing tricks with me either, making me see things I didn’t want to see.

A rabbit’s head with Raymond’s eyes…

Raymond’s head with rabbit’s teeth…

Black fur, black clothes…

Whispered voices…

Blood and flies…

There it is.

I’d reached the top of the bank now, and as I stood in front of the den, breathing hard, everything looked the same. The
overgrown brambles, the wooden boards, the faded blue paint on the roof. Everything was just the same.

I glanced over my shoulder and looked down the bank. There was nobody there. I turned back to the den and stepped up to the door.

I paused for a moment, listening to the echo of Raymond’s voice, then I stooped down and opened the door.

There was nothing in there. No nightmares, no bodies, no blood… just a scattering of empty bottles, a stale smell of cigarette smoke and sweat, and a sweetly dark memory I wanted to forget.

Mum was watching TV in the living room when I got home. She was perched on the edge of the settee with a cigarette in one hand and the remote control in the other, and she was so engrossed in whatever she was watching that I didn’t think she’d seen me come in.

‘Hey, Mum,’ I said. ‘Has Dad rung –?’

‘Hold on,’ she said, turning up the volume on the TV. ‘I think this is about Stella.’

‘What?’

‘Sky News,’ she said, nodding at the TV. ‘They’re talking about Stella.’

I turned to the TV and stared at the picture.
breaking news
it said at the bottom of the screen,
teenage celebrity feared missing.
The newsreader – a smartly dressed woman with a very small head and very big hair – was holding a piece of paper in her hand and peering at a laptop.

‘… these reports are still unconfirmed,’ she was saying, ‘but we understand that Essex police were alerted by Mr and Mrs Ross earlier this morning, and officers are currently carrying out an investigation in the area of St Leonard’s where Miss Ross was last seen.’ The newsreader put down the piece of paper and looked gravely into the camera. ‘Stella Ross,’ she said in summary,
‘apparently reported missing this morning.’ She glanced at her laptop again, pressed a button, then turned back to the camera. ‘Our reporter, John Desmond, is in St Leonard’s now, and we’ll be going over to him shortly for a further update. In the meantime, I think we can go back to Sheila McCall in Baghdad…’

Mum hit the mute button and looked at me. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it looks like Dad’s going to be busy.’

‘Yeah…’

‘This is going to be a big one.’

‘If it’s true.’

‘What do you mean?’

I sat down. ‘I don’t know, Mum, it just seems a bit… I don’t know. I mean, I saw Stella last night at the fair. She was with loads of people. There was even a guy with a camera there.’

‘So?’

I shook my head. ‘It just seems a bit strange, that’s all.’

‘What’s so strange about it? She’s a young girl, her parents don’t know where she is –’

‘Yeah, but she’s Stella Ross, Mum. She’s a star, she travels all over the place, all over the world… her parents probably don’t know where she is
most
of the time. And now, just because she didn’t come home from some stupid little fair, they call the police straight away?’ I looked at Mum. ‘Doesn’t that seem a bit odd to you?’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe they know something we don’t.’

‘Yeah, maybe…’

I glanced at the TV. A woman with a microphone was standing in a rubble-filled street, talking and waving her hands around. Behind her, dead bodies in black bags were being loaded into the back of a truck.

‘Did you find Raymond?’ Mum asked me.

‘No,’ I said, looking at her. ‘He’s still not home.’

‘Have you talked to his mum and dad?’

I nodded. ‘They don’t care.’

‘I’m sure they do –’

‘They don’t,’ I said bitterly. ‘Nobody cares… not about Raymond. I mean, he’s not a
celebrity
, is he? He’s not good-looking, he doesn’t have famous parents, he doesn’t have millions of sad old men ogling him on the Internet… why
should
anyone care about him? He’s just a dumb-looking weird kid.’

‘Come on, Pete,’ Mum said softly, ‘it’s not like that.’

‘Yeah, it is. He’s just as
missing
as Stella, isn’t he? He’s just as vulnerable as her… in fact, he’s
more
vulnerable. But they’re not talking about him on the news, are they?’ I looked at the TV again. They were showing a photograph of Stella now. It was a publicity shot – all golden hair and shining eyes, lots of cleavage, a superstar smile. ‘See?’ I said to Mum, waving at the screen, ‘I bet they wouldn’t show a photo of Raymond like that on the news.’

She gave me a slightly puzzled look, and I knew what she meant – yes, it
was
a stupid thing to say, and, no, it
didn’t
make sense – but I think she knew what I was trying to say. I stared at the TV as she turned up the volume.

‘… is the daughter of Justin Ross and Sophie Hart,’ the newsreader was saying. ‘She first came to fame as a feisty teenager in a popular and award-winning series of TV commercials, and has since gone on to star in pop videos, soap operas, glamour magazines…’

As the newsreader jabbered on about Stella’s famous parents, her shielded upbringing, and her more recent tabloid notoriety, a series of pictures and TV clips flashed across the screen showing Stella in all her glory: dancing in videos, posing for magazine covers, acting badly in soaps. The more intimate photos from
the Internet weren’t shown, of course, and they weren’t actually mentioned either. But there were enough hidden hints and unseen winks to put us all in the picture.