How the Trouble Started (13 page)

I shouldn’t have pestered for the bike. And normally I didn’t nag Mum for new things. I wasn’t a pain like that; I knew we couldn’t afford much. And I was easily pleased as a child – it never failed to amaze me that I could walk out of a library with a bag full of books for free. But something changed when I was seven years old, when I decided I must get my hands on a bike. I knew the chances were slim, that it was unlikely we would have the kind of money needed to buy a bike, but I longed for one in a way I’d never longed for anything before. I talked about it so much that Mum tensed at the mention of the ‘b’ word. She must have told a friend about the situation because one afternoon I was marched to the garage of an older boy’s house and was told to sit on his bike, to see if it was a fit. The bike was too big for me, even with the seat as low as it would go, but not too big that Mum could turn it down at the price it was being offered. The sale was agreed, the garage door slammed shut, and I was told I wouldn’t see it again until the morning of my birthday. I was delighted with the bike. The fact that there were dirty stickers stuck to the frame and the handlebar grips had long since started to wear away didn’t bother me at all. That it was battered and too big didn’t come into it. It was a bike and it was going to be mine. I finally gave Mum’s ears a rest and waited impatiently for my birthday to arrive.

The morning of my birthday I was more excited than I’d been in previous years. I wanted to get out and start riding. Feel the wind in my hair. Ride along with the front wheel up in the air. Skid to a stop on the waste ground behind our house, scattering stones in my wake. Before any of that could happen I was called into the kitchen to eat my breakfast, which I wasn’t even hungry for. ‘The sooner you eat, the quicker you get your bike,’ Mum said. I sped up and worked my way through the toast whilst Mum sat opposite fiddling with her camera. I should have guessed something was up when she followed me into the hall to the bike under the dustsheet with the camera in her hand. I lifted the sheet up and stopped mid-reveal. I was looking down at a new black tyre, shiny silver spokes and a bright red frame. No rust anywhere, no stickers or scratches, not a blemish in sight. I must have stared for a while because Mum became impatient and said, ‘Come on then Donald,’ and pulled the sheet from the rest of the bike herself. She uncovered a bright red, brand-new Raleigh. I was stunned. She took a picture of me, standing there staring, like I was seeing something I couldn’t quite understand, but the next photograph must have been from a few minutes later when I’d come to a bit, and I’m stood holding the handlebars of my new bike, a beaming smile plastered across my face.

I was well aware that most boys and girls my age had been riding bikes for years before I got my hands on one. That was partly the reason I wanted a go. I’d watched them shooting up and down the street, chasing each other around, getting shouted at by neighbours, beeped at by cars. It looked great fun. What I hadn’t considered was that a skill was required; that there was a knack to be mastered. I’d seen kids fly past my window and I wanted some of that. I wanted a go and I thought that once you got yourself sat on a bike, the battle was won. So after the euphoria of pulling the dustsheets off and discovering the new bike underneath came the disappointment when I realised I was completely unable to do anything with it. I wheeled the bike out to the track that ran down the back of our house and sat on it and had no idea what to do next. I lifted one foot off the ground and placed it on a pedal, and then as soon as I lifted the other foot up, the first foot shot back down to the safety of the earth. I must have done this over and over again for about twenty minutes. Riding a bike seemed as impossible as flying to me right then. I went back to the house and asked Mum how it was done, but she shrugged at the question and I understood, her part of the miracle had already been performed.

In the afternoon I hit on the idea of taking the bike round to the front of the house and using the kerb to help me along. I kept my left foot on the ground and pushed the pedal forward with my right foot. I shuffled the bike along and I was moving at least, and movement felt like progress. As my confidence grew I could do a couple of revolutions of the pedal with my right foot, lift my left foot off the ground for a couple of seconds in the knowledge that the kerb was close by to save me. By the end of the first day I could wobble my way forward for a good two pedal revolutions. I was out until the street lights buzzed on and Mum dragged me in. I was shattered at night, but I went to bed knowing that I was further on than I had been that morning. By the end of the second day I was riding in a wobbly line for a good few yards. Turning around had yet to be mastered and I couldn’t see how it could be done, so each time I wanted to head in a different direction I dismounted and turned the bike to face the way I wanted to travel. But it came in time. When I finally managed a circle with no feet touching the ground it was a great moment. I’d taken my bike to the piece of waste ground at the end of the track behind our house and did the turn, which was so gradual it had the circumference of a cricket pitch. As my confidence grew the circles became tighter and faster and I made myself dizzy and had to sit down to let the spinning subside. Two weeks later I could skid and wheelie like any other kid. I spent most of that summer on my bike. I wasn’t allowed to stray too far so it was mainly up and down the road to number sixty-five and down the back track to the waste ground behind the houses. I’m not sure what happened to the bike in the end – it didn’t come with us to Raithswaite but I don’t remember leaving it behind in Clifton either. I do remember that the police had it for a while. Maybe they never gave it back. Maybe it’s still in a room somewhere in Clifton, covered in dust and rust with a faded evidence tag tied around the handlebars.

If I was in Iowa I would get up early. Walk the dog before work. Have a breakfast of eggs, coffee and orange juice with Lucy before jumping in the pickup and driving to the store. I would push open the door to the warm smell of wood and dust, make myself another coffee and get to work on the accounts at the counter. At Raithswaite police station there aren’t any nice smells. There are two policemen, a man in a suit, my mum and me. We are all sat in a small hot room. One policeman is asking all the questions.

‘How would you describe your relationship with Jake?’

‘We were friends.’

‘A sixteen-year-old and an eight-year-old boy?’

I nodded and said, ‘Yes.’ My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too high and scratchy.

‘Did it not strike you as inappropriate?’

‘I didn’t think so.’

‘Do you understand what “inappropriate” means?’

I nodded that I did.

‘You spent a lot of time at the playground on his street?’

‘Sometimes, yes.’

‘Aren’t you too old to be hanging around a playground?’

I didn’t answer that one.

‘Why this playground? It’s nearly two miles from your house.’

‘I walk all around Raithswaite. I go all over.’

‘You go to all the playgrounds?’

‘No. I go all over Raithswaite.’

‘Sixteen-year-olds and eight-year-olds don’t normally meet and become friends.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘Did you approach him first?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Somebody must have spoken to someone first. Today I spoke to you first. Who spoke to who first? You or Jake?’

‘We just got chatting at the library one day. I saw him in the library quite a bit. He looked lonely. His mum was never with him, she never looked after him.’

‘And this is what you were doing? Looking after him?’

‘Sort of. Sometimes.’

‘So you spoke to him first then, because he looked lonely?’

‘Maybe. I can’t remember exactly.’

‘Don’t you have any friends your own age?’

‘Not too many.’

‘Why is that?’

I thought about Neptune up there. All that space and silence.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘What happened when he fell?’

‘I was trying to help him. Trying to get him down, but he panicked and slipped and fell.’

‘He said you were chasing him.’

‘I was chasing him, but when he got into trouble on the quarry wall I was trying to help him.’

‘Why were you chasing him?’

‘I was trying to get to him, then I could walk him home safely. He’d gone silly and run off.’

‘He says that you dragged him to the house to show him a ghost and he tried to escape and you went after him.’

‘But he wanted to see the ghost.’

‘The ghost that you’d invented. To get him to go to the house.’

My mum put her head in her hands. I wished I lived alone in a house on top of a high hill. I’d sleep in the attic. As close to space as possible.

‘I only invented it for him. So he could have fun.’

‘We’ve been in the house. We’ve seen your room.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘Did you set all that up? The table and chairs?’

‘I didn’t steal them.’

‘But you put all that stuff in there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why? What did you and Jake do there?’

‘Read books.’

‘You read books?’

‘Sometimes. Horror books. He liked them.’

‘You took an eight-year-old boy, walked him nearly two miles across town to an abandoned house and read him horror books?’

‘Yes.’

He looked at me for a long time.

‘Is he OK?’ I asked.

‘He’s out of hospital now. Still battered and bruised.’

‘Will you tell him I’m sorry?’

‘What are you sorry about Donald?’

‘That he fell and hurt himself.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘I’m sorry he was scared.’

‘Why was he scared?’

‘He got silly thoughts in his head.’

‘Silly how?’

I didn’t know if I should say it.

‘His friend had told him that I might be a bad man.’

‘What type of bad man?’

‘I don’t know. But suddenly he didn’t want to be friends.’

‘And you were angry about that?’

‘Not angry, sad.’

‘But you were chasing him. A sixteen-year-old takes an eight-year-old to an abandoned house, to see a ghost that he’s invented, and when the young boy gets scared the older boy chases him, so he thinks his only way to escape is to scale a sixty-foot wall. What are we to make of that Donald? How scared must he have been?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘What was it like?’

Whatever I could say to them would only make it worse.

It did get worse when they found out that I’d spent the night at Jake’s house. I hadn’t told them, but they must have spoken to Jake again and got it from him. It was lunchtime when a car arrived at the house and me and Mum were driven back to the station.

‘You broke into the house and stayed in his room?’

‘I didn’t break in. He was scared of being alone.’

‘So you were looking after him? Making him feel better?’

‘Yes, I was. He wanted me to stay with him.’

‘That’s not what he told us. He told us that you turned up one night at the back door and you pushed yourself in.’

I shook my head. It wasn’t like that.

‘Did you force your way in?’

‘I didn’t push myself in. He let me in.’

‘He told us that he was scared of you, that you wouldn’t leave him alone.’

I didn’t know whether to believe them or not. I wished I could talk to Jake. I didn’t think he’d been scared.

‘Ask him about the storm. Ask him about the night of the storm. There was thunder and lightning and he was terrified and I stayed with him. I helped him fall back asleep.’

‘How many times did you go to the house at night?’

‘Twice.’

‘Twice?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you not see how inappropriate that is? To turn up like that and spend the night with an eight-year-old boy.’

‘But his mum wasn’t there. She left him all the time.’

He stopped going at me for a second then and said,

‘It wasn’t your place to act on it. Not in this way. You should have told someone.’

‘I was just trying to look after him. Trying to make him feel better.’

‘Were you taking advantage of the fact that he was left alone?’

I shook my head.

‘I was trying to make him happy.’

The detective looked at me. He didn’t seem to know what he was looking at.

‘How did you try and make him happy?’

‘With the books, and looking after him when he was alone, and he loved the house, and sometimes we played outside.’

‘And that made him happy?’

‘Sometimes, I think.’

‘Did you ever do anything else to make him happy?’

‘I bought him cans and chocolates. Sweets. Played with him, read him stories.’

‘Not like that Donald.’

He stared at me and I tried to stare back but I couldn’t keep it up.

‘No. I didn’t do anything else to make him happy.’

He looked at me and I felt as guilty as if I’d touched Jake all over.

This time it was worse than graffiti on the door and lads shouting at the house. I tried not to go out much, and I wasn’t going to school anyway, but sometimes you have to leave the house. I didn’t know what was happening with the police, I was waiting to hear and desperate for something new to read, something to help me escape, so I went to the library. I got there without any trouble, but in the library, a place I’d been going to for years, I felt uneasy. I chose my books quickly, used the self-service machine and headed back home. Whenever I passed anyone, or anyone glanced at me, I knew what they were likely thinking and I wanted them to know that whatever they’d been told, whatever they thought about me, was probably wrong. It doesn’t work like that though; you’ve just got to let them have their stare and think what they want. I started using the back alleys and side streets.

I was halfway down an alley behind Lime Street, about half a mile from home, when I heard running feet behind me. Before I could turn around and protect myself, something hard and heavy smashed into the back of my head. It didn’t hurt straight away but the force of it sent me to the ground. There were two of them. One kept smashing down on me with the weapon, the other used his feet. I curled up as much as I could and tried to wrap my arms around my head to protect myself, but it was like getting caught in a storm on a hillside where there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do other than take what comes. I was scared at first but the longer it carried on the less I cared. After a while I blacked out. When I came to they had gone, but I wasn’t sure I could move, and then I must have blacked out again because the next thing I remember a lady was crouched down beside me, rubbing my hand, saying, ‘It’s Sarah, love, Sarah from number twelve. Just stay still, stay where you are. I’ve rung for help.’ She brought me a glass of water. I tried to drink but I couldn’t tell where my lips ended and the glass began. As they lifted me up into the ambulance Sarah said she was sorry that she couldn’t come to the hospital with me but she had to collect her children from school, there was nobody else could do it. I should have thanked her for helping but they closed the ambulance doors before I got the chance.

At the hospital nobody sat near me. I don’t know what I’d rolled in in the alley, but I smelt terrible. Everything started to hurt more as time went on. There was a burning pain in my chest and the left-hand side of my torso turned from roasting hot to cold and back again in seconds. My right hand was a mess too. I was sure that something was broken. A nurse assessed me when I arrived but then I waited for two hours before I was seen properly. A man in blue trousers and top finally called out my name and led me down a corridor to a bed and pulled the curtain closed around us. Fingers were held in front of me and I had to say how many I could see. Different shapes and symbols were traced on my forehead with a finger and I had to describe what shape had been drawn. I was asked questions about what month and year it was. Then I had to get undressed and was examined all over before being X-rayed. When I came back out of the X-ray the police were waiting to talk to me, but I didn’t want to talk to them. I’d caught a glimpse of the face of the lad who was bringing down the blows on my head. It was Tyler, Fiona’s brother. I told the police I didn’t see anything, that they’d attacked me from behind and I didn’t see anything.

I lied about blacking out; I told the man in blue that I’d been conscious throughout it all so after they bandaged me up I was allowed to go home. I had two broken ribs and two fingers on my right hand were broken and there were bruises all over. I finally looked at my face in a mirror. It was swollen out of shape and looked like everything was sliding out of place. I was told I was lucky, with the extent of the bruising it could have been worse, they said. Pain rolled through my body and they gave me some pills for it. Nothing happened until I doubled up on the amount I was supposed to take and then they started to work. When I was discharged the man in blue said reception would ring a taxi for me, but I had no money so I said I would walk. They wouldn’t let me do that and, when I told them there was nobody to pick me up, a nurse arranged for me to have a lift in an ambulance. I asked the ambulance woman to stop a couple of streets away so Mum wouldn’t see, but she said they had to see me to the door. I snuck in and got lucky, Mum didn’t see the ambulance or me, and I went straight to bed. The next morning I came down for breakfast. ‘Look at you,’ Mum said, and started crying. I felt terrible. There had been trouble for her too. Not fists and punches, but they might as well have punched her in the face the damage it did. And at least I had my vanishing to look forward to. I had an escape that I knew was coming. I’d ruined Clifton for Mum and now I’d ruined Raithswaite too. I’d left her with nowhere to go.

I had somewhere to go. The vanishing came to me on the bus journey back to Raithswaite, after I’d spent the night at the Pilchard Telescope. It presented itself fully formed, like the best vanishings always did. It was a beautiful morning and everywhere people were smiling. Women fell in and out of conversation on the bus and looked out of the windows and watched the hills and villages as we rolled along. Out on the streets people waved to each other, walked their dogs, walked to the shops. Everyone looked comfy, they all looked like they were in the right place, doing what they were supposed to be doing. The vanishing appeared for me then. I suddenly saw my way forward.