by T. M. Logan
Awe and fear. It was a dangerous combination.
The three of them were sprawled in the shade of a tall oak at the bottom of the vineyard. The sun was intense, a baking, non-stop heat that stuck the T-shirt to Daniel’s back and made his glasses slide down the bridge of his nose.
Jake leaned forward, his long dark fringe falling over his eyes. ‘Do you want to see something cool?’
‘Yeah,’ Daniel said automatically.
‘Not here. Come on.’
The older boy stood up and led them deeper into the woods, Ethan following Jake and Daniel bringing up the rear.
When they had gone further in and the view from the villa was fully obscured by trees, Jake reached into his back pocket and produced a wedge of hard black plastic, a line of metal along its length. He held it out in the palm of his hand.
‘D’you know what this is?’
Daniel wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t want to look stupid in front of the two bigger boys.
‘Erm . . . penknife?’
‘Penknives are for little kids. It’s a lock knife. Look.’
He pressed a stud on the handle and pulled a blade out until it locked into place with a snap. The shining steel wasn’t much longer than Daniel’s index finger, but it was wide and sharp and curved to a wicked point like an animal’s fang.
‘What’s it for?’
Jake frowned.
‘Tactical knife, doofus. For hunting, skinning animals, sharpening things, stuff like that. Do you want to hold it?’
Daniel looked at the point, the sharpness of the blade, and thought: No. I don’t. I really don’t.
‘Sure,’ he said, and held out his hand.
The expression on Jake’s face changed and he lunged suddenly, bringing the knife down in a shallow arc as if to stab the point into Daniel’s palm.
The smaller boy flinched, crying out in alarm.
Jake pulled back at the last moment, an inch before the blade plunged into the younger boy’s hand. He and his brother dissolved into honking laughter.
‘Joking, mate, just joking!’ Jake said. He flipped the knife, caught it by the flat of the blade and held it out again, handle first. ‘The look on your face, though. Brilliant. Did you really think I was going to stab you?’
Daniel felt the quick heat of tears behind his eyes and swallowed hard, pushing them back.
‘’Course not.’
No tears. Not now. Not in front of them.
Instead, he forced himself to hold his hand out, still shaking, and took the knife from Jake. The plastic handle curved into the shape of his palm and there was a little hollow where your index finger went. There was hardly any weight to it.
It felt good in his hand. Powerful. Like you could do anything with it.
Jake indicated the blade.
‘Razor sharp, titanium coating. It’ll slice through anything, that will.’
‘Cool,’ Daniel said.
‘Anything at all. Try it.’
‘What?’
‘Try it. On the tree.’
Daniel drew it gingerly across the bark of the olive tree next to him, leaving a hairline cut in the gnarled wood.
Jake took the knife back off him.
‘Goes in better like this,’ he said, thrusting the knife overhand into the bark, burying a half-inch of blade and leaving it quivering there, embedded in the tree.
‘Goes through skin much easier, though.’
‘Skin?’
Jake wrenched the knife from the tree, studying the point for a moment. ‘Hey listen, can you keep a secret?’
‘Yeah.’
Jake studied him for a moment, his face blank. ‘We have an actual gang, me and Ethan.’
Daniel looked from one teenager to the other.
‘A gang with two people?’
‘It’ll be three if you get in, if you want to be a proper full member.’
‘So how do I get in?’
‘You have to do the initiation.’
‘The what?’
‘Initiation,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s like a test.’ He put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. ‘We’ve both done it already,’ he said.
‘What do I have to do?’
Ethan reached behind him, to a dip in the ground. He lifted out an empty plastic bottle, the top cut off.
‘I made a trap. Take a look.’
Daniel gingerly leaned forward and peered into the plastic bottle. It stank. There was some mouldy old fruit at the bottom, some leaves and stuff and –
Something moved at the bottom of the bottle. Quick and black and shiny.
Daniel flinched backwards.
‘Ugh! What is it?’
Ethan grinned.
‘Stag beetle, a big one. Come on, have a proper look.’
Daniel leaned forward again, expecting Ethan to shove the half-bottle in his face. But the older boy just held the bottle steady for him to get a good look inside, tapping it with his free hand to stop the beetle climbing too far up the side. It had a long black body shaped like a bullet, six legs and a big head with two massive pincers growing out of each side, each with three sharp points that made him itch just looking at them.
It was absolutely minging.
‘We made an arena,’ Jake said. ‘Check it out.’
Behind a fallen log, he pointed out a small area of cleared earth that had been surrounded with rocks, like a cub camp firepit with no fire in it.
‘What’s that for?’
‘Your initiation.’
Daniel looked from one boy to the other, unease crawling up his spine. He’d seen some gross stuff on I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here, like when a celebrity person had to be covered in insects and they crawled up their pants and into their ears and stuff. It was grim. And the beetle was massive. He didn’t want to go anywhere near it.
‘What do I have to do?’
Ethan tipped the bottle out into the makeshift arena. The beetle tumbled out and began running from side to side.
‘Simple,’ Ethan said, flicking at the beetle with a stick to keep it contained. ‘You have to kill it.’
‘The beetle?’
‘Yes, numbnuts. The beetle.’
‘Oh.’
Daniel balled his hands into tight fists and thrust them into his pockets.
Jake held the knife out to him, handle first. ‘Are you going to do it, then?’
‘Erm . . . not sure.’
‘Are you chicken?’
‘No.’
He desperately wanted to be part of what Jake and Ethan did. Part of their crew, they called it. He wanted to be included, to be one of the cool kids for a change. And most of all, he didn’t want to be on the outside. Because he knew that if he wasn’t their friend, he’d be a target instead.
However, the beetle may have been a long, long way down his list of favourite animals, but he didn’t want to hurt it.
Ethan took the knife from his brother and pressed the handle into Daniel’s right hand.
‘Do it. It’s just a beetle, it would do the same to you if it could. If it was big enough.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. Kill or be killed. Just do it.’
Ethan suddenly seemed very big, very broad and tall. There was a strange light in his eyes.
Daniel stood, frozen. He wanted, more than anything, to be back with his dad at this moment, messing about in the pool, or with his mum, telling him to wash his hands before dinner, or even with his sister. Even if she was being mean and ignoring him. Anywhere but here, looking at the knife in his hand.
‘I don’t like blood,’ he said in a small voice.
‘We’re all blood.’ Ethan shrugged. ‘We’re all just big bags of blood, that’s all. There’s pints and pints of it inside you. That’s all we are, really, bones and muscles and blood.’
‘Can I do it next time? Tomorrow?’
‘What? Are you chicken?’
‘No.’
‘Do it, then.’
He braced himself for an onslaught of mocking laughter and swear words, glanced up the hill towards the villa, wishing, praying, that one of the grown-ups would walk through the trees right now to tell them all to come back for tea, or something. To rescue him from this.
But they didn’t laugh, or swear. They just looked at each other, then back at him.
Ethan took the knife from his hand, shaking his head. With one swift thrust he impaled the beetle on the end of the blade. There was a soft crack as its shell was pierced. He drove the point all the way through and held it up, studying it, legs flailing in its death throes.
Daniel flinched backwards.
‘If you don’t want to do this,’ Ethan said, turning the blade from side to side, ‘there’s another way you can do the initiation.’
Daniel blinked up at him, confused. Was this a trick?
‘What other way?’
Ethan flicked the dying insect into a bush and wiped the blade on his shorts.
‘Come on. We’ll show you.’
49
Daniel
The edge of the cliff was jagged and uneven, with some bits that stuck out and some that looked like they’d sort of crumbled away. In the middle of it, where the trees gave way to the clearing and the clearing gave way to the edge, there was a crescent-shaped gap in between two scraggly low-down trees, a semi-circular space that looked as though it had just kind of sheared off and fallen into the gorge, maybe like a million years ago, Daniel thought.
The crescent-shaped gap was about five feet across – about as wide as Daniel was tall, he reckoned.
‘Here,’ Ethan said, standing right on the edge, in the gap between two spits of rock. ‘It’s just like doing long jump in PE.’
PE was Daniel’s least favourite lesson at school. He always got picked last for football and when they had to play tag rugby – ugh, he hated tag rugby – he made a point of running in the opposite direction to where the ball was. He was OK at running and jumping, though. Running and jumping he could do. Well, everyone could do them, really. They weren’t really sports, were they?
‘Long jump?’ he said, trying to stop his voice from going high.
He would never have jumped this gap on his own. Not in a million years. But he wasn’t on his own, he was with his friends, his crew, even if they were a lot taller and bigger and better at jumping than him.
‘You have to jump from here,’ Jake indicated his side of the gap, ‘over to there. We did a jump like this in Army Cadets. ’Cept it was wider.’
‘Cool,’ Daniel said, playing for time. ‘How old do you have to be for Cadets?’
‘Dunno. Not in it any more.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Didn’t like being shouted at and ordered about.’
‘They kicked him out,’ Ethan said with a smirk.
‘No they never!’ Jake punched his brother on the arm. ‘It got boring, all the marching and that shit. There was hardly any shooting.’
Daniel checked over his shoulder in case a grown-up was there. He couldn’t help it. He always did, when someone swore.
‘It’s easy,’ Jake said. ‘I’ll show you.’
He took a short run-up and jumped across the gap, landing hard on the other side in a cloud of dust kicked up by his trainers.
Ethan followed suit, only just making it, sprawling to his knees when he hit the far side. He stood up quickly, brushing himself down and coming to stand next to his brother. They both stared at Daniel.
‘Your turn,’ Jake said.
Daniel inched a bit closer to the edge and looked down into the gorge. Blue water sparkled in the stream at the bottom, sunlight glinting like diamonds in the sun.
‘It’s a long way down, isn’t it?’
‘Kill you for sure, a drop like that,’ Ethan said.
‘Are you chicken?’ Jake said.
‘No.’
‘You are, you’re a chicken-man,’ Ethan said, adding suddenly with a cruel smile, ‘Chicken-man Dan!’
He began to make buck-buck-buck chicken noises, flapping his arms at his sides. His brother joined in.
‘Chicken-man Dan! Chicken-man Dan!’ Both brothers capered in circles, arms flapping. ‘Buck-buck-buck!’
Daniel felt the heat rising to his cheeks. Suddenly he needed a wee, really badly. It was like the worst bits of school all rolled into one, PE and bullies and high-up things and always getting picked last for the football team.
He might have been scared, but he wasn’t a chicken. He wasn’t.
He would show them.
‘I’m not chicken.’
Ethan stopped flapping his arms, his smile turning cold.
‘I think you are, little man.’
‘Not!’
‘Prove it then.’
Daniel stepped back six paces and took a couple of deep breaths.
He wasn’t a chicken.
He ran towards the gap, fists pumping, feet slapping the dusty earth, eyes fixed on the far side—
And jumped.
50
The three of us ordered coffees and found a table in a shady part of the village square. The only other customers were a couple of whiskery old men, sitting on a wooden bench with their walking sticks propped beside them. The French tricolour hung listlessly from the town hall next to the restaurant, no breeze at all to stir it in the early afternoon heat.
‘I have a confession to make,’ I said.
Rowan and Jennifer both looked up from their drinks.
‘That sounds a bit dramatic,’ Rowan said.
‘Is everything all right?’ Jennifer said.
I shook my head.
‘No, not really.’ I looked down. ‘It’s about as far from all right as it could possibly be.’
‘What’s up, honey?’ Jennifer said, her voice soft with concern. ‘What’s happened?’
I watched as an elderly lady in a stretched black dress emerged from the little church across the square, walking stick in her hand. Very slowly, she began to make her way towards the café.
‘It’s a confession with an apology thrown in.’
Quickly, without going into too much detail, I told them what had been happening over the last five days, my suspicions about Sean – suspicions that had hardened into the cold, hard knowledge that he was having an affair. How I had suspected first Rowan, then Jennifer, of being the other woman. And how confirmation had arrived yesterday that I had been wrong on both counts.
‘That ring,’ Rowan said. ‘I found it in the gym. I didn’t know it belonged to Sean – I thought it might have been a previous guest, so I just picked it up and put it in my drawer for safekeeping. Was going to ask everyone but it slipped my mind.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And apologies for thinking bad thoughts about you both. I’m really sorry. I just haven’t been able to see the wood for the trees. And the worst thing is, I bloody talked to Izzy about this earlier in the week and she assured me that Sean would never go behind my back. Which of course is exactly what you would say if you were the other woman. I was so stupid.’
They greeted my revelation with a moment of silence.
‘This is mad, I can’t believe it,’ Rowan said eventually, shaking her head. ‘I thought you’d been a bit weird these last few days. Couldn’t put my finger on what it was. You poor thing.’
‘Me too,’ Jennifer said. ‘I sensed something wasn’t right, was going to ask you. It must have been terrible for you, having to find out like that.’
Rowan stirred her coffee.
‘How certain are you? How sure?’
‘Pretty certain. He’s denied it point-blank but I know he’s hiding something. I just don’t know what to do next.’
‘Do you want us to talk to her?’ Jennifer said, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair. ‘The two of us?’
And say what? Tell her to back off, find her own man? Why would that have any effect?
‘I don’t know
,’ I said. ‘Maybe. Not yet. She told me the other day that she was seeing someone, but she didn’t want to tell us yet because he’s still married. He’s in the process of getting a divorce, apparently, but she didn’t think we’d approve.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘She wouldn’t say.’
‘Or we could talk to Sean,’ Rowan said.
‘No. Not that. I’ve tried already, anyway.’
‘Maybe he’ll come to his senses. Give him a little bit of time.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s too late for that. I’ll go mad if I don’t do something; I just don’t want to make the wrong call.’ I looked pointedly at Rowan. ‘Not again.’
She gave me a little nod of understanding; she knew who I was referring to.
‘But that was different,’ she said softly. ‘With Henry.’
‘Was it?’
Henry, Rowan’s first husband. My mind drifted back to a time when the shoe had been on the other foot, the part I had played in the end of her first marriage. Would I have wanted to know, too, if I had been in her shoes?
The question brought me up short. I was in her shoes. It was my turn now.
I stirred my coffee slowly.
Ten years ago – almost to the day – Rowan and I had sat drinking coffee in the sitting room of my small end-of-terrace house in north London. The Sunday roast finished, dishes washed, Sean and Henry dispatched to the park with Lucy wobbling along on the new bike she’d received for her sixth birthday, shiny pink streamers trailing from the handgrips. Talking about school catchment areas and nurseries, Rowan announcing that she had come off the pill and was taking folic acid instead. And I had hesitated, and changed my mind, changed it again, put down my coffee and come out with seven words that would end up changing the course of her life.
I think Henry might be playing around.
I had heard it on very good authority that he was cheating on Rowan and had grappled with that knowledge for weeks as I tried to decide whether to tell her. Trying to work out what to do for the best, to do what was right – however hard that might be. Rowan, oblivious, talking about trying for their first child. What was I supposed to do with the information that I had? Stay quiet while everyone talked about it behind her back? Let her find out for herself? Watch her being taken for a ride by the man she’d married? Sean had counselled caution, but in the end I went against his advice and told Rowan what I’d heard. Told her, in good faith, the stories that were doing the rounds about Henry.