The Missing (21 page)

‘Don’t you care about your brother?’ Karen, this time. ‘Don’t you miss him?’

Tears are stinging at the back of my nose but I won’t cry in front of them, I won’t.

Denise comes even closer. ‘My mum says that your dad knows where he is. My mum says that your mum and dad are covering up what happened to him. They’re just pretending he’s run away. My dad says he’s probably dead.’

There are other children crowding around us now. Someone shoves me in the back, hard, and everyone laughs. I turn around to see who did it. Michael Brooker is nearest. He is bright red with excitement, but his face is expressionless. I know he did it – everyone is looking from him to me and back again.

‘You pushed me,’ I say at last, and his eyes go wide.

‘Me? Me? I didn’t, I swear. What do you mean, pushed you? It wasn’t me.’

There’s a smothered laugh. Someone else jostles me from the other side and I turn, starting
to
panic, outnumbered. Looking around, I can see nothing but malice in their eyes. Before I can think what to do, a long arm reaches through the crowd of children and grabs hold of me.

‘Fuck off, all of you,’ a rough voice says, and I recognise Danny, Charlie’s best friend. Danny, who goes to the secondary school up the hill – Danny, who is like my guardian angel at that moment. ‘Come on, Sarah. I’ll walk you home.’

I push through the crowd of my classmates and no one tries to stop me.

‘I’m supposed to wait for Mum.’

‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll probably bump into her on the way home.’

I feel a wave of gratitude to Danny, who has always been nice to me, even when Charlie told him to ignore me. ‘Thanks for making them leave me alone.’

‘Little shits, they are. I was just walking back from school when I saw you.’ Danny leans down, his face close to mine. ‘Listen, Sarah. If anyone ever tries to give you a hard time about Charlie, just tell them to fuck off. If they won’t leave you alone, tell me, and I’ll get rid of them for you.’ He balls his hands up into fists. ‘I’ll teach them a lesson. I’ll look after you.’

‘Until Charlie comes back,’ I say, and regret it as Danny’s face drops.

‘Yeah, until Charlie comes back.’ Danny looks
ahead
and nudges me. ‘There’s your mum. Go on, run.’

Before I can say anything else – even goodbye – Danny has gone, crossing the road without looking back. Mum is standing at the corner, frowning. When I reach her, she says, ‘You’re supposed to wait for me.’

I can smell that she has been drinking again. I shrug. ‘I didn’t know if you’d come or not.’

I think she is going to say something else – argue with me – but instead she sighs. We walk the rest of the way home in silence, while I think about Danny and what he said about looking after me, and I feel warm inside for the first time in a long time.

I HAD TO
walk home in the end. When Carol was finished, she gathered up her things and hurried out of the café without a backwards glance, and certainly without the offer of a lift. On the way back, my mood worsened as the ache in my knee intensified. I just hoped I hadn’t said too much.

Turning in to Curzon Close, I found myself staring at Danny Keane’s house. I bit my lip. I was coming to realise that I couldn’t avoid him any longer. He was an important link with Charlie. It was time – past time – to talk to him, no matter what had happened between us, even though the thought of it washed colour into my cheeks. I shook my head, as if I could physically dislodge the memory from my mind. I couldn’t allow teenage humiliation to stand between me and the truth. Reading about what the Keanes had endured made it easier. We were both survivors. He’d understand what was driving me as no one else could.

The Keanes’ house was in a poor state of repair. A car had leaked oil on the paving that covered the front garden, leaving a greasy patch the shape of Australia. Weeds flourished between the slabs. The doorbell had been dismantled and electric wiring spilled down from the disabled fitting in a way that didn’t look entirely safe. In a nod to suburban respectability, there were net curtains in all the windows, but they were grey with dirt and torn
in
places. The house looked deeply unloved, which it had in common with the one I occupied. Both houses looked like lifeless wrecks.

Danny’s motorbike wasn’t outside, but on the off chance that he might be there I decided to knock on the door anyway. The door was a cheap, acrylic one that made a flat, dull sound as I rapped on it with my knuckles. There was no other way to announce that I was there; the holes left for door furniture had never been filled. Someone had stuffed them with toilet paper to block out draughts. I felt slightly self-conscious on the doorstep, hoping that Mum hadn’t spotted me, wondering how long I should wait before knocking again or giving up. After a minute, there was a scuffling sound from behind the door, but it didn’t open. I knocked again with the same result, then crouched down to the letterbox.

‘Hello … it’s Sarah. Sarah from across the road. Sorry to bother you. I – I just wanted to talk to Danny, if I could …’

At the mention of Danny the door swung open, revealing a hall littered with cardboard boxes and unidentifiable machine parts. It was mildly chaotic and none too clean. From behind the door, a greasy mop of hair and a small, suspicious eye appeared.

‘Hello,’ I tried again. ‘I’m Sarah.’

The mop didn’t answer.

‘Er … are you Paul?’

‘Yuss,’ the mop said, nodding sanguinely.

‘I live across the road,’ I said, gesturing behind me at the house. ‘I, er, used to know your brother.’

‘I know who you are,’ Paul said.

About to carry on with my explanation, I stopped, mouth open. There was something about Paul’s tone that surprised me. It was flat, uninflected, but somehow loaded with significance. It was not a little unsettling.

‘Great,’ I said lamely. ‘Well. We’ve never met, have we?’

A shoulder appeared, apparently for the express purpose of delivering a shrug.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Paul. Is Danny here?’

‘He’s at work,’ Paul said slowly, his voice edged with insolence. Silly me. Of course, it was mid-afternoon. Ordinary people were at work. I wasn’t because the school was closed. Which led neatly to my next question.

‘Why are you at home at this time on a weekday? Shouldn’t you be in school?’

I had slipped into my teacher tone of voice and got a cheeky grin in return.

‘Don’t go to school no more.’

I must have looked confused, because the boy pulled the door back and shuffled into view. He was obese. Not fat – huge. He was taller than average for his age, but that in no way made him look proportionate. Flesh hung in rolls down his arms, creasing around the joints. His torso was wreathed in soft bulges under a tent-sized T-shirt. He wore stained tracksuit bottoms and his swollen, misshapen feet were bare. His toenails were long and jagged, yellow against the bluish-grey skin, suggesting poor circulation, a body too strained to manage effectively. With difficulty, I looked away from them to meet his gaze again. His face was defiant, but there was a hint of hurt too.

‘Got bullied,’ he explained. ‘Home-schooled now.’

‘Oh, right,’ I said, understanding. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine that studying alone in a house like that would be too easy. ‘How do you like it?’

‘It’s all right.’ The boy shrugged. ‘Got a high IQ, don’t I. School was boring, anyway.’

‘Good. That’s really great.’ I smiled. ‘Well, as I said, it was Danny I came to see. Do you know what time he’ll be back?’

‘Nah. He comes in whenever.’

‘Right.’ I started to edge away from the door. ‘It was nice to meet you, Paul. I’ll catch up with Danny some other time. Maybe you could let him know I was asking for him.’

Paul looked disappointed. ‘Don’t you want to come in?’

I did not want to go into the house. Paul wouldn’t know anything about Charlie, which was why I had gone over there, and I didn’t know when Danny would get back, or even if I would have the nerve to talk to him when he did. Besides, the house was squalid beyond belief. But I could also tell that Paul was lonely. If he didn’t go to school, and Danny was out all day, he probably didn’t get to talk to many people. I’d never seen him coming or going – not that that meant much. I kept my head down when I was at home, and I didn’t exactly keep sociable hours. But I had a feeling that Paul just didn’t spend any time outside his own house. And he was how old – twelve? Too young to be shut in. I would feel guilty if I walked off, I knew. I would be letting him down. We survivors had to stick together.

‘Thanks,’ I said brightly, stepping across the threshold and just managing not to hold my breath. The house smelled like a locker-room – old socks and damp clothes and sweat. Paul shut the door behind me, then led the way down the hall to the kitchen. The house was a carbon copy of ours, but the hall felt different, darker. Looking around, I saw that the door into the sitting room was closed. The one at home was panelled glass; this one was solid. It made the hall feel smaller. I was glad to get into the kitchen, where the afternoon sunshine picked up every mote of dust that hung in the air. The room was warm and quite comfortable, with a sofa against one wall and a table in the middle that was covered in books and loose sheets of paper, a laptop sitting in the middle of the mess. It seemed to be used as a living room as well as a kitchen, and even though it was strikingly untidy, there was something homely about it. The draining board was piled high with dishes and pans, but they were clean. Storage was limited to a couple of cupboards, the remains of a fitted kitchen that had left marks on the walls where most of it had been ripped out. One door hung off its hinges, revealing row upon row of tinned beans and boxes of cereal, bought in bulk. A battered microwave in the corner looked as if it had seen hard service over the years. In the corner, a giant freezer hummed to itself beside a large, dented fridge. But on top of the fridge was an expensive-looking sound system for an iPod, and a massive TV was mounted on the wall opposite the sofa. Danny seemed to spend his money on home entertainment, if not home comfort.

‘Have a seat,’ Paul said, gesturing towards the table, and
I
went over and pulled out one of the vinyl-seated chairs. It pitched violently to one side as soon as I let go of it, and I saw that it was balancing on three legs.

There was a chuckle from behind me. ‘Not that one. The leg’s here, look.’ Paul was pointing at the kitchen counter, where the chair leg lay, splintered at the top. ‘Danny broke it the other day, and–’

He broke off for no reason that I could see, but he looked flustered. Affecting not to notice, I chose another chair and sat down.

‘Cup of tea?’ Paul padded over to the kettle.

‘That would be lovely.’ I crossed my fingers that the mug I got would be free of botulism and watched him move about the kitchen, gathering mugs and teabags. He was quick and deft in his movements, in spite of his bulk, though the mild exertion of making tea was causing him to wheeze. There was, underlying everything, a certain confidence in the way he behaved, something that I wouldn’t have expected from a boy of his age. I was starting to like my neighbour. He caught me watching him and smiled cheekily; I had the feeling that he was pleased I had agreed to come in, though why he should be, I wasn’t sure.

‘Milk?’ he asked, opening the fridge with a flourish to reveal several two-litre cartons of full-fat milk, a tray of lager, chocolate desserts in pots and packets of cheddar and sliced ham. No vegetables. No fruit.

Paul was waiting for an answer, carton poised over one of the mugs.

‘Just a splash,’ I said quickly.

‘Sugar?’

‘No, thanks.’

Paul dropped four heaped teaspoons of sugar into his mug and stirred it in. I winced, suddenly protective of the enamel on my teeth. He pushed some papers aside and put my mug down in front of me, then scuttled sideways to retrieve a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits from a cupboard. I shook my head when he offered them to me. He threw himself into the chair opposite mine and lifted three biscuits out of the packet, dunking them into his mug for a couple of seconds, then forcing them into his mouth in a single sticky wad. I watched, fascinated, as his cheeks bulged like a python’s belly full of live prey.

When he could speak, he said, ‘Got to get ’em in in one go.’

I nodded. ‘Good technique.’

‘I’ve been practising.’

I smiled into my mug. He was a bright kid, just as he had said. A stack of several fat books was on the table in front of him and I turned the pile to read the spines. Programming. Computer language. Theories of computing. Higher maths. The philosophy of technology. I was lost; I could barely understand the titles.

‘Do you like computers?’ Paul asked, opening the top book on the pile and riffling through the pages. His face had brightened at the very word and for a second I could see the young boy hidden in that shroud of overstretched skin.

‘I don’t know much about them,’ I said apologetically. ‘How about you?’

‘Love ’em.’ He had started reading, eyes glued to the page. ‘They’re brilliant.’

‘Are you … good with computers?’ I didn’t even know what questions to ask.

‘Yeah,’ Paul said, sounding matter-of-fact rather than boastful. ‘Built my own. Got my own operating system – well, it’s based on Linux, but I’ve done my own thing with it. Computers are what I want to do.’ He looked up from the book briefly, his eyes shiny with enthusiasm. ‘They’re what I do now.’

‘What do you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s all internet, yeah? No one knows I’m only twelve. I do a bit of testing for people, try things out. Do websites for people. Work on stuff. I’ve got a friend in India; he’s at university there. We’re trying to solve an equation that no one’s ever worked out.’

I had been wrong about him being trapped. As long as his broadband worked, he could go anywhere, meet anyone, be himself without being judged.

‘Where do you get the books?’

‘Off the internet, mainly. You can get them second-hand – they don’t cost that much. Sometimes I order books from the library; Danny picks them up for me. I don’t like that so much, though. You can’t keep them for as long as you like. It’s annoying.’