Like This, for Ever

3




AS LONG FINGERS closed around his neck, Barney dropped his Coke can, the wheels of his skates slid and he almost fell. Two strong hands kept him upright.

‘Steady, Barney Boy. Don’t piss your pants.’

Aw, shit-shit-shit! Every nerve-ending singing, sweat breaking out all over his body, Barney wondered if being proved right was any consolation for being made to look an absolute tit. What the hell was Jorge playing at?

‘Prat,’ he managed.

Jorge, his best mate’s older brother and the gang’s undisputed leader, had been hiding on the roof of the bikeshed. To cover up the fact that his face would be bright red and that he’d snorted snot out of his nose, Barney bent to pick up the now-dented Coke can. ‘How long have you been up there?’ he asked, when he’d wiped his nose on his sleeve and straightened up.

‘Couple of minutes.’ Jorge didn’t even bother trying not to grin. ‘Spotted you at the corner.’

OK, deep breaths. It was dark, maybe no one would see the sweat on his forehead. He hadn’t wet himself, thank God. ‘You been rehearsing?’ he asked, in an attempt to sound normal.

Jorge nodded. ‘Mum texted me to say I had to collect Harvey on the way home. Come on.’

Leaping on his skateboard and kicking off, Jorge set off towards the others, leaving in his wake a sense of pent-up energy that was unusual, even for him. Harvey had been complaining lately that Jorge came back from rehearsals completely hyper. That it took him several hours just to calm down. If he pulled tricks on a regular basis like the one he’d just played, Barney could understand Harvey being pissed off.

The rest of the gang watched as first Jorge and then Barney made their way up the ramp towards them.

‘Your hair’s green,’ said Hatty, looking at Jorge.

Jorge tossed his head and ruffled his short, usually silver-blond spikes. ‘Hairdressing wanted to try it out,’ he said, as though it were perfectly normal for ‘hairdressing’ to take an interest in a fourteen-year-old boy’s hair. ‘Green hair to match the green costume. They’re going to stick leaves in it as well. The other two are well pissed off because they both have dark hair and it just doesn’t look as good on them.’

Jorge wanted to be an actor. A couple of months previously, he’d successfully auditioned for a West End show. To his annoyance, though, because he was only fourteen, he had to share the part with two other boys. Boys who, if Jorge were to be believed, didn’t have a fraction of his talent.

‘Did I miss anything?’ Barney asked, conscious he should have arrived an hour ago.

‘Nah,’ Harvey told him. ‘Lloyd won the darts tournament, but then Sam threw one at Tom Roger’s arse and we were kindly invited to leave.’

‘Can’t leave you lot alone for five minutes,’ said Jorge.

‘Did you get banned?’ asked Barney.

‘They said they didn’t want to see us for the rest of the week,’ said Lloyd, a large-eyed, dark-haired boy who was in the same class as Jorge. ‘Then they said we had to go straight home and not hang around outside.’

‘Like this?’ said Barney.

‘Yes,’ agreed Lloyd, his brown eyes wide and serious. ‘Hanging around like this would be very wrong.’

Hatty got up without a word and set off down the ramp. With the possible exception of Barney, she was the best blader of the group. She raced up the other side and stopped herself at the crash barrier. Lloyd, Sam and the two brothers were looking at a bent wheel on Harvey’s skateboard. Only Barney saw Hatty’s head lift like a dog’s that had just caught a scent. She was looking at something in the middle distance. After a few seconds of staring, she turned and sped back to the boys.

‘Guess who’s back,’ she said in a low voice.

The others all turned, some looking at Hatty, others trying to see what she’d seen.

‘Where?’

‘You’re dreaming again, Hats.’

Barney looked past the factory outbuildings that were used for storage now, beyond the wall and railings that surrounded the property, into the streets of South London. Terraced houses on the other side of the road, beyond them the huge abandoned house with its ornate brickwork and blank, black windows. He stopped blinking, stopped looking for anything in particular and waited, letting the focus of his vision shift, until he didn’t see the outline of buildings, the line of the pavement, the skyline. As he knew they would, the pictures in front of him began to break down, to lose their structure and reduce themselves to their simplest form. He waited for the patterns to emerge. And then the discrepancy was obvious. There she was, her face pale against the brick wall, her dark coat smoother, reflecting more light, than her surroundings. He wondered how long she’d been there this time, and whether the being-watched feeling he’d had earlier had been entirely down to Jorge. He blinked and what he could see became normal again.

‘She’s behind the red car,’ he said. ‘You can just see her head and shoulders.’

‘Weirdo!’

‘What she want, anyway?’

‘Bleedin’ perv, spying on kids. I think we should call the filth.’

‘She is the filth,’ said Barney. ‘She’s a detective.’

Silence, then, ‘Are you sure?’ asked Jorge.

Barney nodded. ‘She lives next door to us,’ he said. ‘Her name’s Lacey, I think.’

‘So what’s she doing? Keeping an eye on you?’

‘We hardly know her,’ said Barney, knowing he’d be in big trouble if Lacey told his dad where he went at night.

Jorge stood and stretched his neck, staring directly at the detective. She carried on watching. Jorge’s upper lip began to curl.

‘Shit!’ said Hatty, in a shrill voice.

‘What?’ The others turned from the detective to the girl in their midst.

‘Lost my earring,’ said Hatty, pushing back her hair to reveal her tiny ears. One had a small gold stud in the shape of a leaf. The other was empty.

‘Keep still,’ said Barney, reaching out. He didn’t think he’d ever felt anything as soft as Hatty’s hair, except perhaps the fur on the long-haired rabbits at the pet shop. Touching it sent a sharp sensation right down into the pit of his stomach, making him want to squirm on the spot. Got it! The tiny piece of gold was between his fingers and he dropped it into Hatty’s outstretched hand. Not the earring, just an integral part of it.

‘That’s just the butterfly,’ said Hatty. ‘Shit, it could be anywhere.’

‘Jump up and down,’ instructed Jorge. ‘It’s probably caught on something.’

As Hatty jiggled, making the steel beneath them twang and groan, Barney stood up and rolled down the ramp. Keeping his eyes down, he made his way up and down it several times. No sign of the lost earring.

‘I have to go,’ said Sam. ‘I still haven’t done that friggin’ field-trip write-up.’

Hatty announced that she was leaving too.

‘Me and Harvey will walk you,’ said Jorge, as the brothers rolled down the ramp to join Barney. ‘There’s a perv around, remember?’

‘A perv that kills boys,’ replied Hatty, whose face was still twisted with disappointment at the loss of the earring. ‘What you trying to say?’

‘And just what part of “Bring your brother straight home” did you not understand?’

The gang practically jumped in unison. They’d been so fixated on the detective watching them from beyond the gates that they’d completely failed to notice the other woman, who’d appeared in the yard without any of them, even Barney, seeing her.

‘How did you get in?’ said Harvey, turning to check the gates.

‘Jorge weighs more than I do,’ the small, silver-haired woman replied, ‘and is an inch taller. If he can squeeze through a gap in the railings, so can I.’ She looked round the yard, at the high walls, the dark building, the gates. ‘Why do I get the feeling you lot aren’t supposed to be in here?’

‘You said you were working,’ said Jorge.

Jorge and Harvey’s mother was a freelance photographer. Sometimes she stayed out all night, on call at the offices of a news agency, and Harvey and Jorge were left in the care of their elderly grandmother. Their dad, who’d been a war correspondent for the BBC, had died before Harvey was born.

‘The job’s over,’ replied his mother. ‘And so is this little party. Goodnight, everyone. Straight home now.’

The brothers and Hatty said their goodbyes before making their way across the yard behind Jorge and Harvey’s mum.

‘You coming?’ Lloyd asked Barney.

Barney nodded. ‘My dad’ll be on my case if I’m much later,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to have a quick look for Hatty’s earring. See you.’

Alone, Barney made one last circle of the yard, steering clear of the Indian village. The rain of earlier had made for a narrow drain that ran around the edge. Barney moved slowly, following the flow of the rainwater, until the pipe disappeared underground and an iron grille held back debris. Then he stopped blinking and let his eyes lose their focus. The patterns always took longer at night, but after a moment or two they came. And there it was. Clinging to the underside of a Mars wrapper. He bent, picked the wrapper from the drain and rescued Hatty’s earring.

Beaming, Barney looked round, having for a moment completely forgotten that the others had gone. He’d never been alone in the community centre before. He hadn’t realized quite how high the walls were, or how dark the shadows beneath them became when there was no one around to distract him. He was looking directly at the painted face of a long-haired girl on the opposite wall. She sat on a rock, in the middle of the ocean. She was smiling at him, not in a pleasant way, and her strange green eyes seemed to say that she knew a secret, and she was only biding her time before she told.

A sudden rustle behind him made him jump. The wind, which normally couldn’t make it past the walls, was blowing a crisp packet around. Time to go. He left the yard and skated round to the main street. Maybe he’d get a chance to give the earring back to Hatty when they were alone. He’d reach out and gently push it into the hole in her left ear.

‘Barney!’

He jumped again as though he’d been shot. He hadn’t noticed the policewoman approaching, had forgotten about her completely.

‘Hi,’ she said, when she’d reached him. ‘You on your way home?’

He nodded.

‘We should go together,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty dark.’

‘OK,’ he agreed. He could move at a walking pace if he wanted to, although in fairness, she didn’t hang around. She was taller than he, and thin, with long hair scraped back into a ponytail. She never seemed to care what she looked like. On the other hand, she always seemed to look OK.

‘Are you on duty?’ he asked after they’d walked halfway down the street.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not working at the moment. I’m on sick leave.’

He sneaked a sideways glance. She didn’t look sick. For one thing, she went out running every morning, he heard her leave as he got ready to go to the newsagent’s and often they’d both get back to the house at the same time. Sometimes he’d see her riding off on her bike, a gym bag slung over one shoulder. And in the evenings, she often left the house on foot, coming back hours later.

They’d reached the corner and Barney had a second’s gratitude that he wasn’t on his own. This was the only bit of the journey home that bothered him, having to pass the old house. Even with the security fencing, even with all the ground-floor doors and windows boarded up, he couldn’t help the feeling that someone could be in there, waiting to jump out.

‘This house gives me the creeps,’ he said.

‘You should see it on the inside,’ she replied. ‘Kids and homeless people used to break in before all the windows were properly boarded up. We used to get called out to it quite a lot.’

They turned the corner and left the old house behind.

‘Barney, it’s not really any of my business, I know,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure it’s very safe for you and your mates to be out after dark at the moment.’

‘We stay together,’ replied Barney. ‘We look out for each other. And Jorge and Lloyd are nearly fifteen.’

He waited for Lacey to point out that he’d been alone when she’d met him and got ready to respond that he was fast. That no one could catch him on foot once he got some speed up.

‘Five boys of your age have gone missing recently,’ she went on. ‘None of them lived very far from here.’

‘What happens to them?’ he asked her. ‘The TV never says how they died. Do you think the Barlow twins are dead as well?’

‘I hope not,’ she said, in a voice that told him she was pretty certain they were.