by Sam Haysom
Tim had asked his mum before the move why they were doing it – why couldn’t they just stay in Yeovil? – and his mum had looked tired and told him that his father wanted them to move.
‘But he’s not even here!’ Tim had said, and his mother had turned around and gripped Tim’s shoulder so tightly that he’d been scared. Even though they were in an empty house, Tim’s mum spoke to him in a whisper.
‘He’ll be coming back soon,’ she said. Tim remembered how red her cheeks had been, and how wide her eyes were as she spoke. ‘He’ll be coming to live with us in our new house, and you know how he gets when people disobey him.’ She’d obviously seen the fear in Tim’s eyes at that point, because her voice had suddenly softened and Tim thought she looked as though she might cry.
Don’t cry, Mum, he wanted to say. He was suddenly remembering another of his dad’s bedtime stories from all those years ago – one about a little boy who cried so much his eyes had dried up and stopped working. Please don’t cry.
Anne hadn’t cried, though; she hardly ever did. She was one of those people who always looked like they were close, but who usually managed to hold it in.
5
Tim and Mr Stevens walked back along the footpath together.
When they rounded the final bend, Tim saw Tramper and Matt sat on the grass together talking, and he felt a wild urge to scream at them to run, just RUN and get away while they still could. Instead of doing that he forced a smile onto his face and raised his hand in greeting.
‘Hey guys,’ he said. ‘Anyone need a drink? We’re fully stocked up, probably got enough to last the rest of the weekend.’
He felt his dad’s eyes on him, and told himself to reign it in a bit. Don’t overdo it, he thought. Just keep things light and normal, like we discussed.
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a drink, thanks,’ said Matt. He held his hand up and Tim tossed him one of the bottles they’d filled up back at the stream. Matt caught it, lifted it to his mouth and took a long, steady swig.
‘Thanks,’ he said. He went to hand the bottle to Tramper, but the big boy shook his head.
‘Where’s Tom?’ James asked. ‘I thought he was with you guys?’
Tim paused and glanced at his father, who looked back at him expressionlessly. Then he looked at James, arranging his face into what he hoped was a look of mild confusion.
‘He wasn’t with me,’ said Tim. ‘I went out to fill up, then Dad came and helped me.’
There was a moment of silence in the clearing. Matt was the first to speak.
‘Mr Stevens, you didn’t see him on the path? I thought you were going out looking for him?’
Don’t question him, thought Tim. For God’s sake don’t question him, or he’ll make it worse for you.
He glanced at his dad nervously, but Mr Stevens just smiled.
‘Oh, he’s probably just filling up at another place along the river,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see him on the path, but there were plenty of places he could have broken off. It was only by accident that I stumbled across Timothy, really. I just wanted to loosen my legs up a bit before we set off again.’
James and Matt glanced at each other, and Tim could see the concern on their faces. Mr Stevens clearly saw it too.
‘I wouldn’t worry, boys,’ he said. ‘We’ve only been gone five minutes, I should think Tom will be back any second now. We’ll just wait for him here.’
James nodded his head and stared off in the direction of the path they’d just come from, but Matt frowned and got to his feet.
‘You can wait here if you want,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to go and check on him. I don’t think people should be off on their own after what’s happened with Gary. Come on, James.’
Tramper looked up at Matt and then glanced across at Mr Stevens, nervously.
There won’t be a problem from him, Tim thought. Matt might be a problem, but James shouldn’t be one at all. He glanced over at his dad, and wondered if he’d planned it this way. He’d spoken about how Tim had messed things up with Tom today and how he’d wanted to get them all in one go, but then maybe that was just one of his games. Maybe he didn’t think he could handle all four of them but he didn’t want to admit it, so he’d picked off the strongest two and left the weaker ones for the final night.
Tim stared at his dad, who was now smiling at Matt and nodding in an understanding way, and felt the familiar mixture of feelings – hate, revulsion, fear, guilt – rush through him.
I should have broken his skull with that rock while he was finishing off Tom, Tim thought. I should have done it then, while he was occupied.
‘Absolutely, you’re right of course,’ Mr Stevens was saying to Matt. ‘We should all be sticking together, good thinking. Why don’t you and James go down that path and see if you can hurry him up a bit, and we’ll wait here in case he comes back.’
‘Okay, that sounds good.’ Matt smiled and looked relieved. He nodded to Tramper and the two of them headed off in the direction of the path that Tim and his father had just come from.
When they were alone in the clearing, Mr Stevens looked at his son. His smile was gone. ‘Let’s get the stuff packed up now,’ he said. ‘That way we can hurry them along when they come back. This is the easy bit, now, because we don’t even need to lie; the best bet we have of finding help really will be if we keep going along our planned route.’
He laughed then, a throaty unpleasant chuckle that made Tim think of a frog with something stuck in its throat, and Tim tried to imagine the sound the rock would have made if he’d brought it crushing down onto his dad’s head. A thick, dull crunch, and then silence. No more bedtime stories; no more laughing; no more of that horrible mixture of feelings he felt every time his father looked at him.
Mr Stevens must have seen something in his son’s eyes, because he suddenly stopped laughing. He took a step towards Tim and his eyes flashed yellow. They looked like the eyes of a very old and cunning animal.
‘Don’t forget to stick to the plan,’ he said. ‘You remember what happens to boys who don’t listen, don’t you, Timothy?’
For just a second his cheeks loosened and his mouth opened slightly, and Tim felt his stomach lurch with fear. Then he blinked and his dad was smiling normally again.
‘Let’s get these bags packed and get ready,’ he said. ‘It won’t be much longer now.’
6
Tim’s training started when he was nine years old.
Looking back he guessed it had all been training, in a way – not just what happened in the first half of 1998 but also the absences and the bedtime stories all those years before. Particularly the bedtime stories.
But the real training began when Tim was still in the first half of junior school.
Back in Year 3 he was a tall, skinny boy who stood almost a head taller than most of his classmates. In his first year he’d had some trouble with an older boy in Year 5, but he’d dealt with that one quickly.
The boy had tried to force him to trade GoGos – he’d wanted all of Tim’s 12 GoGos for just two of his own – and when Tim had refused the boy had whispered that he’d get Tim after school if he didn’t do it.
Tim didn’t want to hurt the big kid, but he remembered his dad’s story about the boy who didn’t stick up for himself and what had happened to him – and he also remembered the look in his dad’s eyes as he’d been telling the story – so instead of doing the trade he’d scratched his hand across the bigger boy’s eyes. The boy had screamed and clutched his face, and as he bent over Tim had kicked him as hard as he could in the balls. He’d left the boy crying on the tarmac of the playground, and there had been no more talk of trades after that.
There hadn’t been much talk between him and the other children at all after that, actually; they already kept their distance from Tim, and after the incident in the playground they steered well clear of him.
Tim didn’t mind. He had his mum to talk to when he went home, and if his dad wasn’t around then that me
ant there was no real reason for him to be scared of anything.
Then, towards the end of 1997 when Tim was wrapping up his first term in Year 4, his dad had come back.
Tim came home from school one day to find him sitting on the armchair in the lounge, staring impatiently at the door when Tim entered as though he’d been sitting there waiting for Tim all afternoon. Probably he had.
‘Where’s Mum?’ muttered Tim.
‘What, don’t I even get a hello?’
‘Hello.’
‘She’s upstairs having a lie down. Not feeling too well I don’t think.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t worry, though, I can look after you,’ his dad paused, and that familiar empty smile appeared on his face. His crocodile smile. ‘I’m home now, and we’re going to spend some time together.’
*
Tim never asked his dad where he’d been when he went away. He’d found out early on that his father didn’t like questions, so whenever he was around his dad he kept them to a minimum and tried to concentrate on listening instead. Listening was very important, because Mr Stevens didn’t like to repeat himself.
Over the next few months, Tim listened plenty. He crouched at the top of the staircase when he heard his parents’ voices in the lounge or the kitchen below, and at night he sometimes snuck over to the door of his bedroom to press his ear against the wood, desperately trying to catch what his mum and dad were saying to each other.
It was never easy, because Tim’s mum was quiet by nature and his father never, ever raised his voice. Sometimes he heard his mum speaking in cracked whispers, like she had that time when Tim was younger and he drew all over the wallpaper of his bedroom during one of his rare tantrums; it was the voice she used when she was doing her best not to cry. Other times, when his dad was out of the house, he heard her sobbing softly in her bedroom.
Tim knew it was a bad thing to cry because of the stories his dad had told him, so he always ignored the sound when he heard it. He thought that maybe if he didn’t actually see her crying then it wouldn’t be real.
As the autumn term wound down to Christmas, Mr Stevens started coming to collect Tim from school. He was always charming and friendly to the teachers and the other parents, and the mums sometimes gathered around him in a group while he told little stories or jokes. They’d all laugh and grin round at each other and play with their hair, and Mr Stevens would stand there smiling and adjusting his glasses as if he was slightly embarrassed by the whole thing.
Pretty soon he was friendly with most of the mums and dads of the kids in his year, and Tim even found that some of his fellow classmates were starting to cautiously approach him in the playground to see if he wanted to join in their games of It and Stuck in the Mud.
Tim had no idea what his father did for work, but he once overheard his dad telling one of the other dads he was a contractor, whatever that meant, and Tim guessed he must have some sort of job because every day he left the house early and drove off in his dark blue BMW.
Tim would watch him from his bedroom window, and whenever the car was out of sight around the corner he’d always feel as though a small weight had been lifted off him.
*
One Saturday in late January of 1998, Tim was playing with his Pogs in the front garden when a shadow fell over him.
He looked up and saw his father, and immediately felt his cheeks redden as if he’d done something wrong. It was a mild day for midwinter and Tim was bundled up warm in his coat and scarf, but he shivered nonetheless. He hoped his dad hadn’t noticed.
‘What have you got there?’ said Mr Stevens.
Tim looked down at his Pogs as if seeing them for the first time. He’d been sorting the brightly coloured discs into different sets before his dad came out – first colour-coding them, then ranking them in order of his favourites to least favourites – but that suddenly seemed like stupid kids’ stuff. He opened his mouth to say something, but his dad spoke before he had the chance.
‘Your mother’s out of the house tomorrow,’ said Mr Stevens thoughtfully. ‘She’s not looking too well, and I’ve told her she should go into town for the day with one of her friends. Do her good to get out for a bit.’
He paused and Tim wondered if he should say anything. In the sky behind his dad’s head the sun disappeared behind a small cloud, then peeked out the other side again moments later.
‘We’ll have the house to ourselves,’ Mr Stevens continued. ‘I thought it might be a good time to begin your training.’
Mr Stevens peered down at Tim, as if waiting to see if he was going to ask a question. Tim kept his mouth shut. After a moment Tim’s father smiled and nodded, then turned and began walking back towards the house.
Tim took a breath and began packing his Pogs away.
*
The following morning, Tim found Mr Stevens waiting for him in the back garden. He was wearing a dark blue North Face jacket, gloves, a hat and brown corduroy trousers.
He looked Tim up and down, adjusted his glasses, then smiled.
‘Good, you dressed warm like I told you,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to do a bit of waiting around, I’m afraid.’
He sat down in a garden chair and motioned for Tim to take the chair beside him. They were set up at the edge of the patio, facing out across the back garden. Mr Stevens waited until his son was sat next to him, and then motioned across the garden with his hand.
‘What do you see?’ he said.
The back garden of the house Tim had lived in his whole life was fairly unimpressive. It was modest, Tim supposed, with a poky wooden shed in the far-right corner and a flower bed over to the left. The middle section was a flat expanse of closely cropped grass that ran down to a fence at the back. There was a small wooden gate in that fence that led to a narrow path, which ran along the backs of the houses for the full length of their little street. If you cycled along it – as Tim often had in the past, first on his tricycle and then on his two-wheeled Raleigh Max mountain bike when he was big enough – you could see into the back gardens of all the neighbours’ houses. They were much the same as Tim’s garden – an assortment of bird tables, ponds, sheds and flower beds – but Mr Grealing at No. 64 also had a table tennis table in his, which Tim thought was pretty cool. Beyond the path that ran behind the back gardens was a thick line of trees, and behind them was a field that led on to an allotment.
The fences on either side of their little garden were tall and, in the case of the fence between their house and Mrs Peacock’s on the right, overgrown with vines. It looked messy, Tim’s mum sometimes said, but at least it gave them some privacy.
Mr Stevens cleared his throat, and Tim suddenly realised he’d been staring out at the garden for too long without saying anything.
‘Um,’ he said. He stared around again, frantically trying to work out the right answer, and then his eyes fell on something in the middle of the grass. Something that wasn’t usually there. It was a small red dish, like a dog’s bowl, and it was filled with something brown that looked like food.
‘There’s some dog food in the garden!’ Tim said eagerly. ‘Right there in the middle!’
Mr Stevens smiled thinly and Tim realised he’d got it wrong.
‘Close, but not quite,’ he said. ‘It’s a bowl of catnip, not dog food.’
Tim was about to ask what catnip was, but he stopped himself just in time.
‘I’ve noticed there are a couple of strays around here that keep wandering into the garden,’ Mr Stevens said easily. ‘The neighbours two doors down have a large ginger tom, too, and he clearly thinks he owns the whole street, the way he struts around.’
Mr Stevens let out a low, throaty chuckle that made Tim’s neck itch.
When he next spoke his voice was a barely audible mutter, and Tim thought at first he was talking to himself.
‘We’ll wait here for a while and see if any of our friends decide to show up,’ he said. ‘In this game, it’s all about patience.�
�
Tim stared at him with no idea what he was talking about. The sun slipped out from behind a cloud and lit up the garden, and Tim suddenly noticed just how tired his father looked. His skin was a pale yellowy colour and the bags under his eyes were two purple bruises.
Had he always looked so exhausted?
‘Shouldn’t be too long,’ Mr Stevens said again, softly. ‘Not too much longer now.’
Tim felt a question bubbling up inside him, and before he could stop himself it was out.
‘What are we waiting for, Dad?’
As soon as he’d spoken he felt a wave of fear and his hand shot up to his mouth as if to try to hold in what he’d just said, but Mr Stevens only smiled. A genuine one, Tim thought.
‘We’re going to make friends with one of the neighbourhood cats,’ he said. ‘There are enough of them out here, so it shouldn’t be a problem.’
He reached out a hand and patted his son on the shoulder. Tim forced himself not to flinch.
*
The cat that hopped over the fence at the back wasn’t the ginger tom from two doors down, and it wasn’t a stray; it was a striped tabby that Tim recognised as belonging to Mr Talbot, the old man who lived on the other side of the road from them.
The cat paused at the far end of the garden for a moment, its tail flicking back and forth as it watched them through orange eyes. Tim felt his father tense in the seat next to him, and for some reason he didn’t understand, he began to feel nervous. There was a heavy, unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach, like the feeling he used to get when he his father perched on the end of his bed to read him one of his stories.
‘Come on, come on,’ Mr Stevens muttered.
The tabby sat still for a moment longer, and then finally began to walk across the grass towards the bowl.
‘They can smell it,’ Mr Stevens whispered. Tim didn’t look round at his father, but he knew from the sound of his voice that he was smiling. That crocodile smile that never quite reached his eyes.