by Ross Welford
My little sister had – I found out later – done a thing at Brownie camp called ‘Explore Your World’, which involved going to places near your home that you’d never been to before. I think you were meant to go to a new park, or new shop, or something.
Not go over the back fence and discover a boy hiding in a sleeping bag in an old workmen’s hut with a broken neon GARAGE sign over it.
But that was what Libby had done.
Now, for the second time in three days, the street was alive with people in uniforms – mainly police, but there was an ambulance with paramedics as well. The ambulance doors were open, and two paramedics were sitting on the back ledge, looking unconcerned.
Inside our house were more people, and whatever the atmosphere between me and Jasper and Dad had been had disappeared. There was something much bigger going on.
Aunty Alice was making a pot of tea, the third, she said.
‘Put a shirt on, Jasper, for goodness’ sake,’ she grumbled. Jasper was still in his sleeveless vest, a tangle of chest hair spilling out like a burst cushion.
Two of the strangers were plain-clothes police officers, a man and a woman. Another woman was something else with the words ‘child’ and ‘protection’ in her title.
One of the police officers, the woman, was talking to Libby, who looked terrified.
‘It’s all right, pet. You’ve done nowt wrong, really y’haven’t,’ said the woman, but it didn’t look as though Libby believed her. ‘Now tell me again what you saw.’
She was making notes as Libby spoke. The doorbell went again, mobile phones were pinging and buzzing all over the place, the kettle gave its electronic whistle to say it had boiled, a helicopter clattered above the woods. It was chaos.
Just then, a shout went up from outside our front door, which was open.
‘They’ve found him!’
The news got passed around and repeated. Voices barked and crackled everywhere.
‘They’ve found him … found him … found him …’
‘Bring him up the back way …’
‘Injured arm, not critical …’
‘Not confirmed his name yet …’
‘Presume traumatised, Sarge, treat with caution …’
I felt a dig in my back. Turning, I saw that it was Roxy. She murmured, ‘Big surprise that, eh?’
Roxy didn’t seem at all worried by the fact that she and I might be in big trouble for ‘aiding a fugitive’ or whatever you call what we’d done. I couldn’t share her lack of concern, and my stomach – already a bit wobbly from the boat ride – turned over again.
A uniformed officer appeared through the gap in the fence and beckoned to the ‘protection’ lady, who stomped out purposefully.
Then everything went quiet for about twenty minutes. The male plain-clothes officer chatted quietly to Mum and Dad and Aunty Alice, while the woman took out her notebook and went round us all, taking our names and addresses, that sort of thing. She stopped at Aunty Alice.
‘Do you live here, madam?’
‘Oh no, officer,’ and she gave her address in Warkworth, up the coast.
‘And your full name?’
‘Alice Hooke. Mrs. With an E.’ The officer wrote it all down.
Just then, there was movement at the end of the garden. A policeman squeezed through the fence gap first, followed by a very dirty and bedraggled Alfie, and another uniformed officer.
They paraded up the garden and into our kitchen. The people left in the kitchen parted, creating space for them to walk through.
Alfie’s whole being seemed to be weighed down by a cloak of unhappiness as heavy as iron.
And then he looked at us, me and Roxy, and the fury that burnt from his eyes was alarming. He said nothing but I knew that he thought we’d betrayed him, told Libby about him, or something.
I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t say, ‘We didn’t tell on you, Alfie,’ because that would have revealed our deception to the adults fussing around in our kitchen. Instead we stayed silent, and Alfie looked so angry.
There was a moment – maybe ten seconds – as he stood there, shirtless and filthy, when nobody said anything while they stared at Alfie.
There was plenty to stare at: his hair caked in mud, his jeans with the sparkly sequins, the strange, faded tattoo on his back and the scars on his upper arm.
Libby looked him up and down, but didn’t seem to recognise her jeans, thank goodness, probably because they were so muddy.
Then, through the throng of people in our kitchen, came Jasper, who did this weird thing. He bent down in front of Alfie and examined him like a specimen in a museum: lowering his tinted glasses, looking left, looking right, then turning Alfie round to gaze at the tattoo.
Alfie didn’t seem to mind everyone looking. I thought he was just dazed – like this examination was part of being caught.
Then I noticed Jasper blinking and gawping at Alfie, and he saw me looking at him, and turned away suddenly. Alfie’s eyes were cast down at the floor and he didn’t notice anything, but Jasper’s eyes went back again and again and I realised he was gazing at Alfie’s scars. Although he said nothing, his ruddy face had gone completely pale.
He was behaving oddly, to be sure, but then nothing about this was normal.
The policewoman intervened.
‘Excuse me, sir?’
Jasper looked at her as though he was coming out of a trance. He was pulling on a shirt, and it was only then that I noticed his upper arm had two horizontal scars in exactly the same place as Alfie’s.
A little equals sign.
Strange, I thought. But, in the whole kitchen confusion, I didn’t dwell on it.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ the policewoman repeated.
‘Yes?’ said Jasper.
‘We just need some details from you, please …’ She took out her notebook.
I looked around, for Alfie, to see if I could get him on his own and explain, but he had already been taken away to the waiting police car.
It was a coincidence, surely?
The double scars, like an equals sign.
It could not be.
I just saw his arm quickly, I tell myself. Surely I am deluded? The stress, the fire, my mam, everything … I cannot be thinking straight.
I am in a police car with a blanket round me, people talking above my head into radios and telephones, a blue light flashing in the rear-view mirror, and a lady with too much perfume sitting next to me, patting my arm (which is somewhat annoying).
But, when everything and everybody one knows and loves is destroyed in a single night, it can affect one’s judgement.
One’s judgement? Your judgement. You see, I do not even speak like you, although I try. I am trying very, very hard.
OK?
(Mam and I listened to the wireless, although the people on the wireless do not usually speak the same way that people around here do. I try to talk like them, but I get it wrong: I can hear it myself, and I can tell when I talk to other people – which is not often – that they sometimes think I speak oddly.)
As if from a distance, there is a voice in the car: ‘… Alfie? You OK, Alfie?’
It gets louder.
‘Alfie!’
I turn; it is not loud at all. It is just the lady next to me on the back seat of the car, and she is patting my hand even more forcefully. I would like to move my arm out of her way, but that would seem rude, so I endure it for a little longer before saying, ‘Please stop that.’
She looks at her hand, startled, and then withdraws it.
Was that rude? I said ‘please’.
‘We’re going to take you somewhere safe, Alfie,’ she is saying. ‘You can get cleaned up, and we’ll get you something to eat. I bet you’re hungry, love?’
I say nothing. I am not hungry at all. Before betraying me this morning, Roxy had brought me bread rolls, cheese, two apples, a banana and a chicken leg in foil. I had eaten it all, like a condemned man’s last meal.
&n
bsp; Then the little girl (Liberty? Something like that) had done their dirty work for them.
I was on my own in the shed, the one that Roxy calls her garage, which I think is quite funny. She is a clever girl. Mam would call her wordsnoterlic (said like ward-snotter-lick). It means wise and sharp.
Aidan? Flarath she would have said. Traitor. I begged them both to say nothing. They told Aidan’s sister. She told everybody.
Now I sit in a police car with a blanket and a lady called Sangeeta who is a Child Protection Officer, whatever that may be. She said she was working with the police to ensure my safety.
This is what she says in a breathy, sing-song voice, as though I were six or something.
‘Hello, Alfie? My name’s Sangeeta. I’m a designated Child Protection Officer working with Northumbria Police. I’ve been assigned to you to ensure your safety. Do I have your permission for physical contact?’
She speaks like this a lot, I think. It is as though she has memorised phrases like the actors in plays that Mam and I liked.
Frankly I am not really listening. My mind keeps going back to the man in Aidan’s kitchen.
The double scars. A coincidence, surely, I tell myself.
I wonder what Mam would have said. A lady in jeans and sandals protecting me, Alve Einarsson, who once protected Mam from a bear by shouting at it, although that was a long, long time ago when things were different from now. (For a start, there were bears. Well, at least one.)
Everything around me brings every thought back to Mam, and I feel a tear roll down my cheek. Sangeeta sees this and starts to pat my arm again, but I look at her hand and she stops.
Can we please get going? There is nobody in the driver’s seat. Come on, you have found me now, what is the delay?
Here is what happened.
I was in the garage when I heard someone approaching. I had assumed it was Roxy coming back, or Aidan, so I did not bother to conceal myself. That was my mistake. I should have known better. The door opened and Libby (that is her name, I recall now) stood there, staring at me.
A little girl, maybe seven, eight years old. I knew immediately that I had been betrayed: no one would come looking for me unless they knew I was there.
So I left everything and started to run into the woods. I know those woods better than anyone. I could easily hide myself for a while if anybody came looking, then I would make my way back to the garage, and restart the plan devised by Mam and me.
Ludicrous. Unworkable. A fantasy. I know – but I was desperate.
There is a hollow on the north side of the woods: a depression beneath a fallen tree that is overgrown with gorse and spiky juniper and impossible to see just by walking past.
I should have known when I heard the helicopter thudding in the sky that I would not be allowed to escape quietly and get on with my life, our plan.
I heard the voices first, then the footsteps coming nearer. I shuffled a little deeper into my crevice. There was something else, though.
A dog.
The police dog found me in the ditch. It was sniffing furiously, then whining. I had left a T-shirt in the garage. They must have allowed the dog to sniff it, then ‘game over’, as I think you say. I should have expected it, I suppose.
‘Come on, son,’ said the dog’s handler, a policeman in a bright yellow jacket. He held his hand out for me. ‘Mind the thorns.’
I thought about running but what was the point?
I would simply endure what was to come. It could not have been as bad as I was imagining.
How wrong I was there. As the driver got into the car, and reversed out of the space, a journey started that was to get worse than I could possibly have dreamt.
First, though, I have to answer the question that has been scuttling around in my head like a cockroach:
Do I tell the truth?
Of course I do not tell the truth. I told the truth to Aidan.
I trusted him. Hours later, I found myself in the back seat of a police vehicle proving to me that, in situations such as this, telling the whole truth is – to say the least – unwise.
Besides they probably already know. Why would Aidan – and Roxy, since he certainly told her – have held back the information about my age when they betrayed my whereabouts? They would not have, would they? It would have been:
‘We know where the missing boy is, and you’ll never guess what? He says he’s a thousand years old!’
So I say nothing, nothing at all. That was the tactic that had saved me and Mam countless times over the years. If you say nothing then nothing can be used against you.
Fortunately this Sangeeta lady does not fire a lot of questions at me. In fact she says very little at all, other than factual stuff, instructions. Such as:
‘All right, Alfie. We’re going to the police station at North Shields first, but it’s nothing to worry about. You haven’t done anything wrong. There’s a clinic there, and we’ll get that arm of yours checked out by a doctor, all right?’
I nod. I have a headache. I lost my dark glasses in the fire and the daylight is hurting my eyes.
If all this were not strange enough, no sooner had the car’s engine started than that man came out of Aidan’s house, the bearded man who had been there in the kitchen when I came in. A relative? A friend?
The double scars.
He brushed past everyone and tapped on the car window. I shrank back into the car seat. At that point, a policeman’s arm came between him and the glass.
‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘I need to speak to Alfie,’ he said. Turning back to me, he leant down at the window. ‘Alfie! Alfie!’
‘Sir, sir. Sorry, but … you can’t just …’
‘Unhand me, officer!’
‘Sir, I must stop you. Are you a relative?’
‘No. No. I just need …’
‘Sir, if you continue to struggle, I’m afraid I’m going to have to …’
‘Jasper! What on earth is going on?’ A woman – Aidan’s mother, I think – had appeared in the doorway and was yelling at this Jasper character.
By now, we were backing out of the driveway. As we turned, I craned my neck. The man was being spoken to by a police officer and the woman, and he seemed quite agitated.
‘Who was that?’ asked Sangeeta. I shook my head.
‘I have no idea,’ I said, which was true.
Yet, through my daze, I kept thinking of what that man had said: ‘Unhand me, officer!’
Nobody speaks like that. Do they?
There was something else, though. Some thing I could not identify, because it was not a thing. It was a feeling. It was a feeling that lasted a moment, a second, when he stared into my face through the car window and our eyes met. When I tried to recall the feeling, it slithered away, as if I were attempting to catch a fish in a barrel with my hands.
It was the feeling that I had seen him before, and it did not feel good.
The rest of the day was to be like this: a seemingly endless parade of people talking gently to me, pretending they were my friend in order to find out everything about me.
At the police station, I was taken to a room labelled FAMILY SERVICES where there were sofas, and a television playing a cartoon film about a little fish to the empty room. A plastic sit-in police car was next to a bookshelf with mainly picture books and one or two battered children’s paperbacks, and a box of soft toys.
Sangeeta pointed out the books before asking, in a voice that proved she had practised sounding as natural and relaxed as she could, ‘Can you read OK, Alfie? And write?’
The truth? This would be the truth:
‘Thank you, Miss Prasad. I am proficient in Old Norse, Old English, Middle English and Modern English, plus French, Latin, Greek (ancient and modern, although they are not so dissimilar) and a smattering of Welsh and Scots Gaelic.’
I did not say that, of course. Instead I just nodded. I was not insulted. I knew she was just doing her job.
She showed me
the shower room, and left me with soap and a towel, and a pile of clothes from Marks & Spencer, all new, with the labels attached, that appeared in the changing area as if by magic. They must have had a cupboard full of them. I had never worn proper boys’ jeans before. They were thick and stiff, with machine stitching, quite well-made. The white shoes were nice. Trainers? Sneakers? I think they are trainers.
Lunch was something in a box called a Happy Meal from McDonald’s, which I have heard of, of course, but I have never had before. For some reason, there was a plastic toy with it. The food was nice but the drink was too sweet and I had water instead from the tap.
The doctor was all right, but she asked more questions than Sangeeta. As she removed the bandages that Roxy had put on, she said, ‘Hmm. Not a bad home dressing, Alfie. Who did that for you?’
I said nothing as she set about cleaning the burn. It hurt like flaming hell, but I gritted my teeth and made no sound.
‘You’re a tough lad, Alfie.’
I wished they would all stop using my name so much. I know it is to make them seem friendlier, but it is annoying.
‘How did you come by this injury?’
I stayed quiet.
They cannot force me to talk.
She gave me a thorough check-up: head lice, blood pressure, saliva samples, height, weight, everything.
‘And how old did you say you were, Alfie?’ she asked, her pen poised over a printed sheet, which she was filling in.
I had not said. I could have said one thousand and eleven.
If I had, what then? Would things have been different?
‘I’m eleven,’ I said.
‘Uh-huh. OK. And your date of birth.’
This was trickier but I had worked it out earlier. I told her the year that would make me eleven, and added, ‘September the first.’ Everything was part of the plan.
Then, with fresh bandages, and a full stomach, the questions began in earnest. I knew they would.
Sangeeta came into the sofa room with another woman who introduced herself as Vericka from North Tyneside Social Services. She was older, with short white hair, glasses on a chain round her neck and a face that looked permanently slightly annoyed.