Num8ers (19 page)

He put one of his long fingers up to my lips. “I told you. We’re gonna eat ice cream and fish and chips and walk along the pier.” He was saying it like he believed it. Perhaps he did.

I gently took hold of the hand that was shushing me and laid it on my open left palm, softly tracing along his bony fingers with my other hand.

“What you doing?”

“Nothing. You’ve got lovely hands.”

“You’re soft in the head, you are.” He leaned across and kissed me tenderly. “OK,” he said, like his mind was suddenly made up. “I know you’re tired, so you stay here and be ready to run when I come back for you. I’ll find us some wheels, don’t worry. I won’t be long.” He started to crawl out from under the branches.

“Spider.”

“What?”

“Be careful.”

“’Course. Be ready, OK? I’ll only be a few minutes.” And he was gone, the branches swishing for a minute where he’d pushed his way through. I watched as their movement slowed and stopped. And I sat in the gathering dark, and waited.

I sat there, listening hard, with every bit of me ready to jump up and run. I was waiting for his footsteps, for the leaves to rustle, for a whispered instruction. In the background, each noise was heavy with significance — the hum of traffic, the odd shout far away, a couple of sirens. What the hell was going on? Where was he?

Two minutes turned to ten. Ten minutes turned to twenty. As time went on I started to get glued into my position — hunched up, hugging my knees. I made myself breathe slowly, almost in a trance, trying to suspend everything until Spider came back for me.

How long was it until I realized he wasn’t coming back? I don’t know, but gradually it seeped through me like the freezing rain that had started soaking down from the leaves above and up from the ground below. Something had happened to him. Because I hadn’t seen it, I didn’t feel shock, not then; it was like something even darker than the night all around, settling on me, in me, a chill going right through to my bones. I didn’t move or make a sound, I just kept on sitting there, curled into a ball, only rocking a little, backward and forward.

I must have gone to sleep, because at one point I woke up lying on the ground with one thought in my head:
He’s gone.
I was cold and wet, curled up in the dirt. I held both hands up to my face, covering my nose and mouth. My own breath warmed my face as I whispered over and over, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” I had no idea what to do — I was too scared to cry.

My whispered words filled my ears, but suddenly I was aware of other voices filtering through, and another sound, a swishing and flicking noise. Somebody was going through the bushes with something.

“Got one of them; the other won’t be far away.”

“Not often you catch a terrorist, is it?”

“Do you think he is? A terrorist? Kid like that?”

“Could be. Get them young, these days, don’t they?”

“He didn’t look very bright to me, when they took him to the station.”

“Don’t need to be bright, do they? Better if they’re not. Fill their head with stuff, they’ll believe anything, these blacks. You don’t know what’s going on with them, do you?”

That was it, then. He was locked up in a cell somewhere. I could feel stuff rising up into my throat. I swallowed hard. The voices were getting nearer. There were lights, too. Beams moving this way and that.

“We’ll search this park, then move on to the scrubland by Manor Road School.”

“Righto.”

I straightened out my body and tried to flatten myself against the wall. The slapping sound of the branches and leaves being hit was only a few feet away. I held my breath — stupid thing to do, but you don’t always think straight when you’re backed into a corner.

Suddenly, something ripped through the bushes, a foot or two from my face, showering me with the water from the leaves. A stick — they were poking around with sticks.

“Go under, too. Run it along the ground.”

“OK.”

The stick came back in, sweeping along the surface of the ground. It started far enough away, but swished toward me, tracing a semicircle. I sucked in my stomach as far as I could. The stick passed within an inch of me before moving away again. The air inside me, already under pressure, was squashed further by my stomach. It felt like I was going to explode. I kept my mouth shut and breathed out through my nose, trying to control it, unable to stop a little explosion of snot. It sounded like a nuclear bomb to me, but it was nothing against the smacking of the leaves, the sound of those tossers’ voices. They missed it. I could hear them moving farther away.

I can’t say I relaxed, but my breathing got easier. My mind was still panicking, though. I was alone now, really alone. Spider and I, our adventure, had only lasted for three days, but it felt like I’d always been with him. We’d packed the amount of living most people do in a lifetime into those days. More than that, I’d learned to rely on him. Let’s face it: He’d done most of
the thinking, the decision-making, ever since we agreed to cut and run. I was going to have to think for myself now.

I sat up slowly, even now trying not to make any noise. Those two, with their sticks, might have gone, but who was to say there weren’t more like them? I knew that this place was safe, or relatively. I could wait here for as long as I needed to. But what was I waiting for? Spider wasn’t coming back.

I tried to think what he would want me to do. But if I pictured him now, I saw him fighting, arms and legs flying everywhere; I saw him being held down, pinned to the ground; I saw him bruised, curled up in the corner of a cell. I didn’t want to think of him like that — I wanted to see him loping across endless fields, or close to me, wrapped around me — but the wounded Spider, the captured and confined Spider, wouldn’t stay out of my head. It was no good, I’d go mad if I stayed here. I was going to have to move, and keep moving.

The way to keep faith with him was to carry on our journey. He’d spoken of Weston like some holy grail. He believed in it — he believed there’d be happy times for us both there. And if he believed it, so would I. I’d carry on, and I’d hold on to the hope that I’d see him there. Somehow, he’d know that’s what I was doing, and he’d meet me there. I didn’t know how, but I did know when — before the fifteenth, before the end, we’d be together again.

I waited until I couldn’t hear anything above the background buzz of traffic — no footsteps, no deep voices, no helicopters, no dogs barking. After the exhaustion and despair,
I felt an edginess kick back into me. I was anticipating the moment when I’d emerge from the bushes, trying to picture myself crawling out into a dark, empty park. Part of me really wanted to get on with it, part of me was shit-scared.

I crept forward on my hands and knees, sticking my face out gently between the leaves, trying not to think about all the dogs that must have peed there over the years. It was too dark to see much; the swings and slide in the kiddies’ playground were just ghostly shapes on the other side of the grass. The coast was clear, but I hesitated for a minute. It felt sad leaving our hideout, the last place we’d been together. Was I just imagining it, or could I still smell his rankness, clinging to the leaves?

“Good-bye, Spider,” I said quietly, in my head. “I’ll see you in Weston.”

I hurried as fast as I could along the path, back toward the town center. I was peering into the darkness ahead of me, looking out for danger. I didn’t even notice the figures coming across the wet grass until it was way too late.

“Oi! There’s a lot of people looking for you, including my dad,” a voice called out to the left of me. It was young, female, with the sort of accent you only hear on TV, like a yokel in a sitcom. I stopped in my tracks and turned to face whoever it was.

“And?” Give them a bit of attitude, don’t show them any fear. I could see them now, three kids emerging from the gloom. Kids like me, about my age, jeans and hoodies.

“And I reckon he’ll be earning good overtime. I could hit him up for a few extra quid this week.” The other two laughed. Two more girls, with nose studs and lip rings. They walked up to me, looking me up and down.

Maybe before, I would have started running, or at least hunched my shoulders, stared down, but now I stood my ground, looked right back at them. Their numbers came up, of course. They all had another sixty, seventy years — the
piercings a sign of middle-class rebellion, nothing more; these girls were heading for comfortable lives, maybe even a husband and two-point-four children.

“You don’t look like a terrorist,” the first one spoke again. “Did you do it?”

“ ’Course not.”

“What are you runnin’ away from, then?”

“Don’t like the cops. No offense,” I added, thinking of her dad.

“None taken.” She almost smiled. “But you ran away from the bomb.”

“Yeah, just one of those things, you know.”

“Not really. What things?”

I didn’t have the energy to lie. “It just…I just…I felt something bad was going to happen.”

“And it did.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you often feel things, what’s going to happen, like?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“So you know whether we’re going to turn you in or not?”

I hesitated for a second or two. I wasn’t going to beg.

“I don’t think you are,” I said evenly.

“Why shouldn’t we?”

“You don’t look like a snitch.” It was a compliment, intended to flatter. It worked.

“No, I’m not. You’re right there.” A pause. “You’re not going to last five minutes goin’ up that way, though. Not through the
town center. Too many people. Where you goin’, anyway?”

“S’posed to be heading west, Bristol way.” I didn’t want to say Weston — that was our secret, Spider’s and mine.

“On the bus?”

“Walking.”

“Walking! Get out! Are you hungry?”

My eating pattern had been so odd, I didn’t know if I was or wasn’t. When I thought about it, my last real meal had been breakfast, and that seemed like years ago.

“Yeah, a bit.”

“Hang on, I’ve got an idea. Come on, we’ll cut down the back to mine.”

The other two looked at her like she was mad.

“Wait a minute. That’s not such a good idea, is it?” one of them said.

“Shut up — it’s a great idea. Last place they’re going to look.”

“But you’d be in a shed load of trouble if they did….”

“But they won’t. It’ll be cool.” She cut off any further discussion by turning around suddenly and starting to walk back across the grass. “Come on!” she hissed.

I set off after her, with the others following me. I didn’t know whether to trust her or not, but I didn’t really have another option. We walked along quickly, in silence. She led us down back alleys and footpaths, between garden fences and alongside playing fields. Eventually, she stopped, and we all caught up with her.

“I’ll just go in and check what’s goin’ on. Wait here.” And she disappeared ’round a corner. The three of us left behind didn’t have anything to say to each other. They were pretty wary of me, and I was too tired to care.

“It’s OK.” She’d returned. “Dad’s still out and Mum’s glued to the telly. We’ll go in the back way.”

The other two looked at each other.

“Britney, you’re crazy. We’re going home.”

“You’re bailing on me?” They nodded. “Alright, suit yourselves. But listen. Don’t say nothing to nobody. I mean it — nobody.”

“Of course not.”

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah, see ya.” They trooped off down the street.

“Can you trust them?” I asked.

“’Course. They’re sound. Anyway, they know I’ll kill them if they don’t keep quiet. They wouldn’t dare. Come on.”

We went ’round the side of the house and in through the back door, then straight through the kitchen and upstairs. A little plaque on the bedroom door had a border of roses and the words
B
RITNEY’S
R
OOM
in the middle. Underneath were more recent additions: a skull and crossbones, a big sign saying
K
EEP
O
UT
.
Inside, the walls were painted dark purple, and there were posters and pictures cut out from magazines all over them — Kurt Cobain, Foo Fighters, Gallows. The bed had loads of pillows on it and a sort of blanket, which was black and fluffy. It was all pretty cool, really. I thought of my
last room, at Karen’s, my few bits and pieces all smashed up.

“You can sit on the bed, or the beanbag, whatever.” I perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed. Britney sat next to me.

“So,” said Britney. “I’m Britney and you’re…Jemma?”

“Jem,” I said.

“Right.” Now that she’d got me there, into her room, she didn’t look quite so tough. In fact, she was pretty nervous, making me think the front she’d shown out in the park was just that, a front. Underneath she was as worried as the rest of them. After about a decade of sitting in silence, she found some music to put on and then decided to fix some food, leaving me on my own.

I sat there and looked around. It was a proper girl’s room. As well as all the posters, there was a real dressing table with makeup and jewelry stands on it, and framed photos all over the place: pictures of family and pets. There were a couple of her with a boy, younger than her — in one of them he had thick, curly hair, in the other he was bald, but still with the same big grin on his face. So there was a brother somewhere, was there?

The central heating was stifling after a few days in the open. I was starting to sweat, and I was pretty sure I was smelling rank, too. I took off the green coat, but I was still uncomfortable. I stripped off my hoodie and dropped it on top of the coat on the floor. Lying in a forlorn heap on the rug, they looked disgusting. They were filthy and, looking down, so were my jeans and shoes. Even though Britney’s room wasn’t exactly tidy, I felt really out of place, like a turd on a carpet.

Britney came back into the room, with a big pizza on a plate and a bottle of Coke and a couple of glasses. The smell of the food made me feel hungry and sick at the same time. She held a plate toward me. “Just cheese and tomato, that alright?”