How the Trouble Started (11 page)

The man didn’t even look at me as he bagged the drink. I didn’t expect to be asked for ID, people always think I’m older than my age because of my height, but it could have been a toddler stocking up with booze and they’d have got served the same. I carried the drink back to the haunted house, got settled in my chair and opened a can. I’d bought eight cans of lager and a bottle of gin. I wasn’t sure if it would be enough, but I thought I could always go back for more if I needed it. I drank a can of lager quickly and felt nothing so I tried some of the gin, but it was like drinking petrol and the only way I could get it down was by mixing it into the lager. After the lager and gin together, it started to hit. But Jake’s mum had been in a proper state when I saw her so I ploughed on to try and get to where she’d been. It didn’t take long. I remember I went to the quarry. I remember I shouted to the moon that it was a big silver-faced bastard and thought that was funny. I don’t remember how I cut my hand, I don’t remember how I hurt my knee. I do remember trying to sneak back up to my room and getting caught by Mum and not being able to stop laughing as she shouted at me and slapped me across the head. I don’t remember being sick out of my bedroom window but I know that I was because I was made to clean it up the next morning and the smell and sight of it made me sick again, and then I was cleaning up new sick on top of old. And at the end of it all I was no nearer to learning if Jake’s mum would remember seeing me. The only thing I’d found out was when you drink like that, the next morning you feel like you’ve been poisoned and you want to die.

I couldn’t stand not knowing. I would rather have been in an interview room, answering questions, than sat in my room at home wondering if every car coming down the road was a police car heading to the house. I hadn’t gone to school, the way I’d felt that morning I wouldn’t have made it to the front gates without being sick again, and Mum didn’t even try and make me. In the afternoon I still felt terrible, but I needed to know what was going on. I set off to try and intercept Jake on the way back from school, to ask if his mum had said anything, but my head was a mess and my timing was all wrong and I got to the school just as the last few dawdlers were leaving, and Jake was long gone. I set off on his route, to see if I could catch him up, to see if he was at the playground, but it was hard to walk fast, every footstep sent a jolt of pain to my brain, a kick of queasiness to my stomach, so I had to slow down just to make the distance. As I was about to turn onto Fox Street I saw the police car parked outside the front of Jake’s house. Right outside, no mistaking, no room for hope. I veered back onto Waddington Road, my legs suddenly drunk again. I headed to the river, to where me and Fiona had walked a few days before. I left the road as quickly as possible, crossed a field and walked down to the riverbank. I found a spot by a bend where the water chops its way around the corner. I dropped myself into the grass. I didn’t think about anything. I watched the water hit the rocks and negotiate its way around the turn. Groups of gnats lowered themselves over the water and flickered together like TV static. A brown fish launched itself into the air and hung for a second before dropping back into the water. I’d been there at least two hours before I finally got up to leave. I felt strangely calm as I walked through town and home. It was like I’d reached a conclusion somehow. It was a warm night and people were out and a friendliness hung over the place. Dogs gave me an interested sniff as they passed, neighbours were chatting over hedges in front gardens, and windows and doors were open everywhere. I was reminded that I liked Raithswaite. That it had been good to me, considering. The terror edged its way back in before I turned the last corner to our house, but when I saw there was no police car in sight I knew I had a while longer as a free man. I went straight up to my room and was in bed early. Before I drifted off I realised that these things could take a while. She didn’t have a clue who I was and Jake didn’t know where I lived exactly. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know my second name. They would be coming, I was sure of that, but they hadn’t worked me out yet.

When nothing had happened by Thursday I didn’t understand. I knew the bullet was speeding through the air but didn’t know when it would hit. My stomach was a mess; I’d hardly eaten in four days and I jumped at the slightest noise, the smallest provocation. I didn’t see Jake in the library at all and I wanted it over and done with so I dragged myself to the bullet to get it done. I planted myself at the end of a quiet street on his route home from school and waited. I half expected him to be walked home flanked by police, helicopters hovering, but he made his way down the street alone as usual, his hands holding his rucksack straps, his bouncy step pushing him forward. He saw me from a way off and speeded up. I couldn’t help the pleasure that gave me, to have him happy to see me. I called out to him. He was walking fast and I had to up my speed to walk with him. I asked what the police had been doing round at his. He narrowed his eyes and looked like he was trying to think back to a time impossibly long ago. ‘There was a police car parked outside your house on Monday, after school,’ I reminded him. It was coming back to him now and he started to nod.

‘They came because of the trouble. They asked me questions,’ he said.

‘What trouble Jake? What were they asking you?’

‘They asked if I’d seen anything unusual.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

‘I told them I hadn’t seen anything,’ he said.

‘Did your mum ring the police Jake?’

He shook his head. ‘It was Mrs Holt next door,’ he said.

‘Why did she ring the police?’

‘She was crying. They took loads, but she said it wasn’t the money, it was the stuff she couldn’t replace, like the letters from Mr Holt.’

‘She’d been burgled Jake?’

‘Yeah. She says she feels like her home isn’t safe any more. She was crying at our house.’

‘And that’s why the police were at your house?’

‘They were asking what was taken,’ Jake said.

I wanted to hug him.

‘Did your mum say anything to you after I’d been round Jake? Did she mention seeing me?’

He shook his head.

‘So she didn’t say anything to you on Sunday?’

‘She wasn’t well,’ he said. ‘She had a tummy bug and spent the day in her room and then at night we watched TV together.’

‘And she didn’t mention anything to you about anyone being in the house?’

He shook his head again. She was too drunk to know that a stranger had spent the night in her house with her eight-year-old son. The stupid cow. I didn’t walk with him much further. I thought it best not to risk it. I turned to head home. I was hungry for the first time in days.

The next Saturday morning I decided to go to the library with Mum. I thought it would do us good to spend some time together, doing the things we used to do, and I wasn’t seeing Jake until the afternoon at the playground. I wanted to try and repair some of the damage from the last few weeks. It wasn’t just me being kind; she’d hardly spoken to me at all since my drunk night and it was hard work to live like that, in even more silence than I was used to, so I was hoping to make life easier for myself. I was expecting a cold reaction but she nodded straight away when I suggested I went with her. On our way across town I found out why she was so keen. I had to check that I hadn’t misunderstood, but she repeated her words as clear as day. We were booked on the internet for half an hour from ten o’clock. After the half-hour was up we’d be charged so we would have to be quick. ‘You’ll have to work it, the internet, 
Donald
,’ she said, ‘I haven’t a clue.’ It was a shock because she doesn’t believe in computers, especially not in the library. The day after they first arrived she wrote a letter to the council telling them to think about all the books they could have bought with the money instead, and wasn’t that what a library was supposed to be for anyway? But recently she’d heard a programme on the radio about the invasion of privacy and at some point the talk turned to the internet. ‘They say they’ve filmed every street of every town in the country. That you can see it all on the screen in front of you. Every street, like you’re there.’

My heart sank.

‘I’d rather not see it,’ I said.

She glared at me.

‘Well you’ll have to see it because you’ll have to help me. I think that’s the least you can do. And we won’t go near Hawthorne Road, so don’t get silly. I just want to see the town.’ We walked on in silence.

It wasn’t just Clifton I was keen on avoiding, it was the whole of the internet. The thought of it makes me uneasy. Nothing ever dies, nothing is ever left be or left to disappear. Fingers prod away, adding to it, making it bigger and bigger, like they are gathering sticks for a bonfire nobody ever lights. But what I really mean is that there is a memorial page to Oliver Thomas. I only looked once, but there he was, 
smiling
 back at me. His name across the top of the page, four photographs of his short, happy life underneath. At the bottom it said, ‘Always loved. Never forgotten.’ The dates of his life underneath, the years so close together it broke your heart. There may be other pages out there about him, news articles, that kind of thing, but I never found out because I shut the computer down and haven’t looked for him since. That’s why I don’t go online; I know I could find him in a few seconds and I don’t trust my fingers.

At the library we settled ourselves in front of the computer, Mum letting me take charge. Within a couple of minutes she was sat forward, her hand to her mouth, as we made our way down Moor Lane in Clifton. ‘Stop,’ she said after a few seconds, ‘Jackson’s is still there, look, just the same. And look on the right, Nettletons Jewellers too. It hasn’t changed.’ Her face was inches away from the screen, her eyes flicking from Jackson’s to Nettletons and back again. ‘Try King Street,’ she said, and we turned the corner and walked slowly down King Street. Then I showed her that you could turn and look at shops and houses directly, and she glanced at her watch, rooted in her purse for a pound and told me to pay at the counter. When I returned she told me what she wanted. She wanted to see all of the town centre and then old friends’ and enemies’ houses. We went to the Watson house on Cross Lane first: ‘They’ve still not replaced that garage door!’ We went to the Fearnhead house on De Lacy Street: ‘New curtains and front door.’ She was nearly overcome when we did a turn down Rathbone Road and saw old Mrs Armer on the left-hand side of the screen, walking along, carrying her shopping. We made it up and down nearly every street in Clifton. With ten minutes of our time left I showed her how to work the mouse. I typed in the address and went to wait outside. She came out a few minutes later, her eyes damp at the edges, looking a little unsteady. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that was a blast from the past. Clifton as I live and breathe.’ She was quiet on the walk home and quiet when we got back. She didn’t even grumble when I left the house straight after lunch.

That afternoon Jake was a broody version of himself. He was as snappy and sullen as Mum on a bad day. We didn’t head to the haunted house; we didn’t even leave the playground. He appeared on the cliff edge of tears from the moment I found him. The tears did eventually spill over and become real when he took a tumble, but he wasn’t crying because of the fall and he wasn’t for telling me what was upsetting him. He was so short with me, so miserable and unwilling to be helped that I got annoyed with him. He didn’t see that other people had problems too. He didn’t realise that I didn’t have to be with him on Saturday afternoons, that there was plenty of other stuff I could be up to. I had my books to read, Mum had asked me to varnish the shed, and I could always go and see if Fiona was down in the quarry. But here I was, making sure he was all right, doing the best I could for him. I tried to snap him out of his blackness, but nothing was working. When I suggested all sorts of things we could spend the afternoon doing he shook his head at everything I could think of. I was fed up of making all the effort, and he was so miserable that I asked him if he just wanted to go home, but he said that his mum wanted some peace and quiet so we had an unhappy afternoon mucking around in the wood behind the playground. I thought to myself more than once that if I wanted misery and sulking I could get it at home just as well. He kept asking what the time was, and when I told him it had gone five he ran off back home, no happier than when we’d met.

When I got home Mum was still quiet. No doubt still thinking about Clifton and everything she’d left behind. I took myself off to my room for some thinking of my own. Something was wrong with Jake. As I lay there on my bed I realised that it wasn’t just that he’d been upset; he’d acted differently towards me. He’d been cool. Dismissive. He’d kept skulking off and I had to keep my eye on him not to lose him. And I did lose him at one point, when he’d snuck off into the woods, and it took me a while before I found him sat down behind that tree. The more I thought about it the more I realised that he’d been acting fed up with me. Like at school when the people you are with just want you to go away and make looks at each other, and you don’t cotton on until you catch one of the looks and then you realise and you feel sick. My insides turned cold at the thought of it: Jake didn’t want to be friends any more.

In bed that night I thought about it more and calmed myself down. Something was upsetting Jake but it didn’t have to be anything to do with me. It could be something at home or school that wasn’t right and that was why he’d been grumpy. He was a sensitive kid having a tough time and I had to be the grown-up, I shouldn’t be the one getting upset over nothing. And if I could find out what the problem was I could probably help. I made it down to the school for the Monday lunch break. I hung back and waited for them to come out and play. I wanted to see how he was, to see if he’d improved at all. Eventually he charged out of the red door, quickly followed by Harry, and they ran to their tree in the corner and jumped around and laughed and looked to be having the time of their lives. There was no sadness to Jake at all. Harry whispered something into Jake’s ear and Jake fell about laughing, like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world. Harry put his arm around him then, pulled him close and whispered something else and Jake laughed even harder. Stupid little Harry had him in stitches. The silly goggle-eyed redhead who’d abandoned him to play football with the football lads was now making him laugh like a drain. I tried not to be angry with Jake but I couldn’t hold it back. There I was, looking after him, giving him time, setting up the house, seeing he wasn’t scared at night, and now he was bored with all that. And he was probably laughing with Harry about it. Laughing at stupid old Donald who had no friends of his own.

I didn’t go back to school. I walked to our house and went up to the room and sat down. There was still some gin in the bottle by the chair, there were still some cans in a bag on the floor. I’d felt so drunk on that night that I was sure I must have drunk everything I’d bought, but there was enough left if I wanted another go. But I didn’t want to cloud my thinking. I wanted to be able to see clearly, to try and understand what was going on. I started at the beginning and slowly worked through it all in my head. And then I began to see. Jake had been fine with it at first. He’d enjoyed the attention and the stories and the house. And when Harry had dumped him and his mum wasn’t bothered and I’d looked after him, he’d been happy with that too. But since Harry had come back, since the popular lads had rejected him, something had changed. Thoughts started jumping in my head like fleas. The night I went to stay with him, to look after him, he’d locked the back door before I got there. I’d told him five times in the afternoon to leave it open or to unlock it if his mum locked it. He might be young but he’s not stupid. And the day I went to see him, to check if his mum had said anything about a stranger in the kitchen, he’d seen me and speeded up – I thought he was pleased to see me, that he was rushing towards me, but now I understood that he was trying to get away. When he went into the wood, when I found him sat down at the foot of a tree, he hadn’t just wandered off, he’d gone when my back was turned, he was hiding from me. I knew then, I understood what had been going on. Harry knew about me and the haunted house and Harry had poisoned it. Harry had made it all wrong. I was sure of it.

My upset grew throughout the week. It started like a fist hammering in my chest but then it spread into my blood and wouldn’t go away. I thought I’d found something pure with Jake. I thought it was something honest and good at last. A little lad who needed someone and I could be that someone. I knew it didn’t make any difference to what happened in Clifton, but it wasn’t about that, I thought I was making a difference for Jake, that I was doing something good, something kind. And I liked him. He was fun. He was good for me. But now it had gone wrong. Saturday I wasn’t going to bother with him. I was going to head up into the hills and walk up and down steep climbs until I was wiped out with exhaustion. And I did intend to get on the bus out into the country, but instead I was there again at the playground, waiting for him to show. I didn’t wait on the bench as usual, I stood at the edge of the wood, at the bottom of playground. I was in luck – his mum must have wanted some quiet time with her new man again, and he did appear, his head poking around the bushes at the entrance. When he saw the coast was clear he wandered over to the climbing frame. I wanted to march over to him straight away but a couple were playing with two young ones over by the slide, so I hung back. If Jake made a run for it I didn’t want to cause a scene. Luckily one of the kids banged his head and wouldn’t stop screaming so the family packed up to leave.

Jake was sat at the top of the climbing frame. He looked weary when I came into view, like I was the toddler and he was the exhausted mum.

‘Are you all right Jake?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Do you want to do something?’

He shrugged. ‘I was going to go home now.’

‘You just got here.’

He shrugged again.

‘That’s a shame,’ I said. ‘Because I was going to tell you what happened at the haunted house.’

‘Right.’

He wasn’t interested.

‘The other week, I was up there alone, sat in our room, and I saw her. I saw her right in front of me. The ghost woman.’

He was still acting bored, but he must have been interested a little at least, I was sure. I didn’t say any more though. I waited for him to join in. He had to make some effort at least.

He tried to sound sceptical.

‘You didn’t see her.’

‘I did. She walked right into our room, stopped and looked down at the floor, fell to her knees and let out a wail. I was so scared then that I ran out of the room and down the stairs.’

‘You
did
see her?’

‘Right there in front of me.’

‘Did she see you?’

‘She wasn’t interested in me. She fell to the floor and started to groan.’

‘It was probably where she got shot.’

‘She
was
over in the corner where the bullet came through.’

‘And you were scared?’

‘I was terrified Jake. It was the sounds she was making, the noises coming out from her mouth were horrible. I’ve never heard anything like it. You would have been scared.’

‘I wouldn’t have been scared.’

I did his sceptical look back at him.

‘Have you been back? Have you seen her again?’ he asked.

‘I’m not going there again.’

A fragile silence hung between us. Then, finally,

‘Do you want me to come?’

‘You wouldn’t be able to scream, we don’t know what she might do if she heard us scream, if we drew attention to ourselves.’

‘It’s OK,’ Jake said. ‘I’m not a baby, I won’t scream.’

We walked out of the park and straight to the haunted house. I tried to chat to him as we went, but he wasn’t interested. All he wanted to do was get to the house, see if there was a ghost there, and then, when there wasn’t, get away from me. I was hoping that if I got him back in our room he might be reminded of the fun we’d had, and it might be like things used to be again, back when he was happy to see me, back in the early days.

It was a grey day, as dark as a day in December, and the house sat back under the trees looking as haunted as it had ever looked. I felt hopeful for the first time in days.

‘It’s been a while since we’ve been here, hasn’t it Jake?’ I said, as friendly as I could. He didn’t say anything. He went first and I followed. Inside it was even darker than usual. Jake wasn’t bothered; he strode through the shadows, a little man with no fear. He did pause, just for a moment, before he went into our room, but you had to be watching him closely to see that. He walked to the middle of the room, scanned the four corners, looking for a ghost that didn’t exist, and turned to me for an explanation.

‘We have to give her a chance,’ I said. ‘She won’t turn up right now just because we want her to.’

He looked around the room again.

‘I don’t believe you saw her,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you sit down in your chair for a while and we’ll give her time to show? I’ve brought some books,’ I said, ‘to pass the time.’

‘I don’t read books any more.’

‘You don’t read any more? Don’t be silly Jake.’

‘I don’t. I’m bored of books.’

I started to get them out of my bag anyway. It gave me something to do. I didn’t like how he was behaving. He was acting cocky and stupid, like one of the idiots at school.

‘I don’t think this is a haunted house,’ he said. ‘I think you’re a liar. I think you made it all up to get me here.’

He looked right at me and said, ‘I think you’re weird.’

We stared at each other.

He rallied himself.

‘Harry says you’re probably one of those bad men.’

The house was silent, all sound sucked away by his words. I took one step towards him and his face ran over with panic. He sprinted past me to the door and was halfway down the stairs before I was after him.

I was slow. My legs were wobbly and cold, as useless as water. He was gone by the time I made it out of the back door and into the garden. I ran to the wall at the bottom of the garden and saw him, his blue jumper giving him away, over in the quarry, still running fast. Up and down he went, up and down over the steep little hills. I ran into the quarry and to the top of the steepest mound I could find. I shouted that he should stop being silly, that he should come back. The only reply was my own voice bouncing back at me from the tall quarry wall. But then I saw him. That blue jumper was as good as a flashing light. I went after him again.

I found him hidden in a bush. I wasn’t stupid, I didn’t go charging in. I waited outside and tried to talk him out. I told him that he was being silly, that I would never do anything to hurt him and I was upset that he could even think that. Then, when he didn’t reply, when he didn’t appear, I said I could wait there all day, I could wait all night if need be. He took me by surprise. He charged out of the bush and walloped me on my shin and sprinted off. He got me right on the bone and the pain felled me. But I was quicker to get going this time and I was stumbling and limping after him again in seconds. I lost him down one of the many tracks, behind one of the little hills. I headed back to the top of the mound to see if I could get a sight of him anywhere. I shouted his name again, and again there was no reply. I began to panic. I’d never known him so determined. I scanned the quarry over and over but there was no sign of him. When I finally spotted him it knocked me cold. He was ten feet off the ground and making his way up the northern wall of the quarry, climbing like a spider, desperate to escape.

I was below him in less than a minute. I shouted for him to come down. He didn’t answer. He was concentrating too hard, planning his route. He was a good climber, and he was doing well, but this wasn’t a tree in a back garden and he wouldn’t be able to make it to the top. I carried on shouting for him to stop, telling him he had to come back down, but he didn’t reply and continued pulling himself further up. What terrified me was that he didn’t have a clue how easily he would smash if he fell. He was too young to know that he’d crack like an egg if he slipped and dropped into the quarry. All I could think of when I saw him up there was Oliver Thomas, already dying by the time I left him. And it was that thought that made me go after him. But I’d only got about five feet off the ground when he looked down and saw me coming. He panicked and sped up, nearly slipped and let out a scream. I let go of the wall and dropped back to the ground.

‘I’m not coming Jake,’ I shouted. ‘I’m not coming up. You have to be careful and slow down.’

But he’d stopped moving altogether. His left leg was stuck out awkwardly and his hands were high above his head. I could hear him crying.

‘I’m stuck!’ he screamed.

‘I’m slipping!’ he screamed.

‘Jake, I’m coming now. You aren’t slipping. Stay where you are, don’t move. Just look at the wall in front of you.’ He looked down and screamed again. There was terror in the strangled noise coming from his mouth. I threw myself into the wall and climbed as fast as I could, shouting up to him, trying to keep him calm. I would reach him, get him down safe, and he would see that I was a good person, that I was only ever trying to help. It might make everything better again.