by Nick Gifford
He started to row. At first he scooped the water too shallowly and went nowhere. Then he started to get the hang of it and the boat headed out into the channel.
As he rowed, he faced the mainland, and so he could see the school flags, a Union Flag and a European Union Flag. His slow progress across the water seemed to be rubbing it in that he was leaving that all behind: what he had understood to be his world.
The boat grounded on the far bank, and, looking back, he saw that the surface current had dragged him south along the creek so that he had crossed at a sharp diagonal.
He scrambled to the prow of the punt and jumped up onto the shingle. He was tempted just to leave the boat to float away into the North Sea, but he couldn’t. He had to protect his options, and it was possible that he might need to use the boat again.
Exhausted, he forced himself to haul the punt up onto the shingle: no easy task, as the stones kept giving under his feet and the bank here was steeper than on the other side.
Eventually, he had managed to pull the boat up above where he judged the high water mark to be. He turned, on his hands and knees, and crawled up the shingle bank, sliding back with each move upwards, but eventually reaching the top. There was a flat area here, covered with brittle, dried moss.
Liam crawled across it until he was out of sight of the far bank, and then he slumped, face down, the moss prickling his cheek.
~
He woke, his throat dry, his face itching, his head pounding.
It was mid-evening now, and the sun was low in the western sky.
He rolled onto his side, then sat up, hugging his knees to his chest.
He was alone, in the middle of nowhere, and that part of the world which had not tried to forget him had turned against him.
Of more immediate concern, he was hungry and thirsty and soon it would be night. He was just as powerless about the first two of these as he was about the bigger picture: there was no food or drink out here.
But there was shelter, after a fashion.
The boat crossing had brought him further down the Point, so that the ruined buildings of the old camp were much closer than he had expected.
He walked for a few minutes across the shingle. The stones were more tightly-packed here, but still difficult to walk on. Every so often, gulls hauled themselves into the air, screeching at him until he was past. He came to an area where the shingle was covered with a tight mat of creeping silvery-green vegetation with white, bell-like flowers, and smaller, pin-head blue flowers with white centres. The going was easier here, as he trod the flowers underfoot.
He came to a concrete road and followed it.
A line of posts with a single strand of barbed wire cut across the road, and the surrounding shingle. A battered yellow sign warned: DANGER.
Liam ducked under the wire.
The watchtower loomed up into the evening sky to his right. It was only a shell, a supporting metal post in each corner and a framework marking the level of the platform where the guards had once sat. The steps up to it had long since collapsed, and the floors, too.
Clustered around the watchtower were some ruined buildings. To one side there was some kind of hangar, collapsed at one end and open to the elements, and around it a small group of concrete huts and garages. Farther along was a big block-like building with gravel heaped up against its walls. To the other side, there was a row of single-storey brick buildings with doors and windows boarded over. These might once have been living quarters, Liam guessed. Or maybe offices. They looked more inviting than the hangar and garages, at least.
Farther out on the Point there were more buildings, but Liam didn’t feel up to trekking any further. He had sought out shelter and found it. He wanted to stop now. He wanted to sit down and try to get things straight in his head.
He tried the first one, and the board over the door came away easily.
It was gloomy inside but, as his eyes adjusted, the bare, stripped out, interior, empty and abandoned as it was, reminded him painfully of the last time he had seen his home.
The floor was concrete, covered in drifts of sand and shingle which must have blasted in through the gaps between boards and door- and window-frames.
Exhausted, Liam sat, leaning his back against the cold brick wall.
He took out his mobile to check for messages, wondering whether to call Kath or not. He flipped it open and its small screen lit up. No signal.
He really was on his own.
~
The night was bitterly cold, but Liam was delirious. He slept fitfully, uncomfortably, waking from vivid dreams, one moment feverish, the next chilled to the marrow. His head ached, a relentless, pounding pain behind his eyes. And his empty stomach burned.
He woke with a violent screeching cry filling his head.
He jerked upright, and bolts of pain stabbed through his stiff body.
The cry came again, and he realised it was a gull, welcoming the new day from the low roof of this building. He looked up and saw that there were wide holes in the roof, and blue sky high above. A white head appeared in one of these gaps, a heavy yellow beak. The head drew back and the gull gave its cry once more.
Liam went outside.
He propped the board up over the doorway again, and then set out on the concrete road, heading north towards Wolsey.
Soon, he came to the barbed wire fence again and ducked under it. Further along, he came to another sign. “DANGER,” it read. “UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE.”
He had been lucky, he supposed. If so, that was the first time in days.
7 What’s good for you
Sometimes, it is possible to be a prisoner without there being any locks on the door or bars on the window. You may not even realise that you are constrained.
Sometimes, though, the cage can help to clarify matters.
~
The Point narrowed here, as the Mere opened out on Liam’s left, the water sparkling in the morning sun.
And all the way across the narrow neck of the Point, cutting off the camp from Wolsey and its surroundings, stretched a high, chain-link fence.
Liam came to it and leaned forward so that it took his weight. The fence stretched above his head. At the top, an extension jutted out on the north side, metal arms with three strands of razor wire stretched tight. Off to the left, the fence dropped down into the Mere, and to the right it stretched down into the angry waters of the North Sea.
Liam slumped to his knees, then sat back on the shingle.
He should have expected something like this. He had seen enough signs warning about the dangers of the Point: unexploded bombs, contaminated and derelict buildings, concealed entrances to pits and other underground facilities.
Of course they would want to keep the public out.
Beyond the fence, he could see the wooden building that housed the local sailing club, and the network of yachts and jetties that spread across that part of the Mere. Principal Willoughby kept a boat here, he knew, and that thought put him even more on edge. He could hear the randomly rhythmic clanking of the boats’ rigging, like Alpine cow bells. A short row of Coastguards’ cottages sat diagonally across the top of the Point, and Liam could see someone outside one of them, doing something to a pale car.
Beyond the cottages, where the Point joined the mainland, was the town itself. Two and three-storey houses crowded together among the trees, each building painted either white or in subtly differing shades of blue, red, pink, yellow.
He was so close...
Liam had been walking on the tight-packed stones in the central strip of the Point. Now he clambered to his feet and moved across to the concrete road. There was a gate here, but it was just as high as the fence, and secured with a heavy padlock and chains. They must use this for access when the Preservation Trust people came out to work on the Point. But they made sure to lock up after themselves.
Just then, Liam saw something that reinforced his sense of hopelessness. On the other side of the fence the grass
was cropped close to ground level, and little round rabbit droppings were scattered all about. On this side of the fence, the grass grew in tall tussocks. If even the rabbits couldn’t get through, or under, the fence, what chance did Liam have?
~
The headache was back, and Liam’s throat was dry and sore. Each step left him dizzy, the world spinning precariously.
This place ... the Point ... it was a desert. It was surrounded by sea-water, and the few pools he found were all salty. Rain, when it came, would just drain away through the sand and stone. As for food, he could probably make a meal of raw gulls’ eggs, but even the thought made his stomach heave.
He came to the wide area of dry moss, just above the gravel shelf where he had grounded the punt.
It was still there, the oars still resting inside.
The sun was blazing down on him now, reinforcing his sense of being marooned in a desert. He needed to rest, but he should do so in the shade.
He took several deep breaths, and tried desperately to work some saliva into his mouth.
After a few more seconds, he slithered down the steep shingle wall to the punt. After another pause to gather himself, he stood, went to the boat and started to heave it into the water.
He had intended to row up-creek to the Mere, but the current was too strong. He had not thought to check the tide, but now, out in the middle of the channel, it was clearly dragging him down-stream towards the sea. He had only wanted to get as far as the fence, but however hard he hauled on the oars it was no good.
Exhausted, he dug one oar deep into the water, trying to use it to steer. Gradually, the punt began to drift towards the far side of the creek.
A few minutes later it grounded, and Liam struggled out onto the narrow sandy bank. Again, he made himself drag the boat out of the water, and then he collapsed back into a bed of coarse grass.
It wasn’t quite sleep that he found, but a feverish drifting that lasted for much of the morning. In those short times when his head was relatively clear, he found himself wondering that just one day without food or drink could do this to him.
Clouds had covered the sun by the time he was able to gather himself and sit upright.
He looked around. He recognised the group of trees here. This was where school legend had it that Miss Carver did her skinny-dipping. The narrow trail from these trees led up through the gorse to Senior House and the sports pavilion.
He had to keep pausing to rest, as he threaded his way up through the trees and onto the narrow trail that led through the gorse. He had to keep taking breaks, leaning against a tree if there was one nearby, taking deep breaths. He had to keep his goal in mind: the tap on the rear wall of the pavilion.
At the edge of the trees, he paused to put his tie on again, in the hope that if anyone spotted him he might at least look as if he belonged here. There was a PE lesson going on, out in front of the pavilion, a group of Year Sevens in the cricket nets.
It was only a short distance from the trees to the back of the pavilion, and Liam decided to stroll across as if he was meant to be there.
He stepped out from the trees and immediately he felt exposed. He hesitated, then strode out towards the back of the pavilion. Everything seemed so normal. The voices, the occasional shouted instruction from Mr Hughes. The regular, hollow knocks of cricket balls on willow.
But Liam knew that the so-called normal world had never existed. It had been a skin, a thin covering over a world horribly more complex and frightening than he could have imagined.
He reached the building, and the tap. A hose was attached, so Liam unscrewed it.
He turned the tap on, and marvelled at the gush of beautiful, clear water. He scooped his hands under the chilly flow, raised the water to his lips and drank.
It was so cold it almost burned his parched throat. He took another double-handful.
Then he squatted, tipped his head sideways and let the water flow directly into his open mouth. He splashed water over his scalp and face, aware that it was soaking into his shirt and trousers.
Eventually, he turned the tap off and sat back on the grass, realising too late that the ground was wet from the running water.
Only now did he think to take his phone from his pocket. He flipped it open. No messages. No calls missed while he had been out of reach of the signal.
And then he heard a clattering sound, as someone dropped something metal inside the pavilion.
Instantly on his feet, Liam crept along the back of the building. A frosted window was partly open and he looked in through the gap.
He was peering into the small canteen area where the catering staff prepared teas and snacks for matches with visiting teams. There were squirts of white foam over one of the work surfaces. Someone was cleaning.
Liam glanced over his shoulder, but there was no-one watching him. He looked back into the canteen and saw that it was Jake, the catering assistant, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth as he swiped a cloth through the foam.
Liam considered his options.
The safest was to slip away from the pavilion, find one of the many paths through the trees to the creek and head up to the road into Wolsey.
But he wanted to find out what was happening to him.
Weird things had taken place both in Norwich and here at NATS... They must be connected somehow. He wanted to know what had happened to his parents, and he wanted to understand why his friends no longer seemed to know who he was, why Principal Willoughby did recognise him but had suddenly tried to trap him. Was Willoughby really behind it all in some way, as he had thought earlier?
Would Jake know anything about what was going on here? Even if Liam had been erased from his memories, too, Jake might be able to tell him something useful.
“Jake,” he said, plunging in the moment he had made his decision. “Jake – over here at the window.”
Jake looked up, narrowing his eyes as he spotted Liam through the gap. He came over, opened the window and leaned there, tapping the ash from his cigarette against the frame. “Yeah?” he said, straightening his long black fringe with his free hand and a bobbing motion of his head.
Liam had stepped back as the window swung open. Now he studied Jake. Were there any signs of recognition there?
“I...” Liam stopped. He hadn’t worked out what he was going to say.
“What you after?”
“Do you ... do you know who I am?”
Jake intensified his look. “This a joke, or something? You lost your memory?”
Liam shook his head. “No. Not me. But...” He shrugged. How to explain, without having to try to explain too much?
“Why shouldn’t I know you?” said Jake. “You’re that kid, ain’t you? Finished at the school last Friday. I gave you a lift to the station, didn’t I? I might work skivvying in the kitchens, but I ain’t stupid.”
So they hadn’t done anything to Jake’s memories of Liam, then, although he appeared to think Liam had left altogether on Friday, rather than just gone home for the weekend. Liam didn’t know if that was good or bad. The only other person here who knew who he was had been Willoughby...
Liam eyed his escape route, across the narrow strip of rough ground to the trees.
“What’re you doing back here, then?” Jake nodded towards Liam and added in a softer voice, “You look like you’ve been sleeping rough – you okay, kid?”
Liam shrugged. “I’m starving,” he said. “I feel ... rotten. I came here to get water.” He hesitated, then continued, “And to see if I could work out what’s going on here.”
Jake didn’t seem put out by what Liam was saying. “What, here at the National Academy for the Twisted and Spooky?” He chuckled. “I’ve been here two years, an’ I ain’t worked it out yet. I just keep my head down and do what they pay me for. I ignore all the freakish stuff.”
“‘Freakish’?”
Jake chuckled again. “I’ll tell you later. Listen. We don’t keep food here, but I can
get you some. You want to meet up when I’ve finished? I’ll be done at four.”
He must have seen Liam’s expression change to one of suspicion. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not setting you up. I went on the run myself when I was about your age. I know what it’s like.”
As he spoke, Jake had been rooting through one of the low cupboards. Now he straightened up, holding an empty plastic bottle with a handle moulded into one side. He filled it with water and handed it to Liam. “Drinking water,” he said.
Liam took it. “Thanks,” he said.
“Listen, kid,” said Jake. “Steer clear of this lot. Don’t try to talk to them. Do you understand? Talk to any one of them and the freaks’ll be after you. They know everything that happens in this place. You’re lucky you didn’t come up to the house. The Principal’s people would have been onto you in seconds. I finish at four. You got a watch? They won’t think anything if I ride home on the bridleway, so I can meet you up at Meregate, okay? You should be able to keep out of view up there okay.”
~
Liam hid out for the afternoon in the pines near where he had grounded the punt. He didn’t see another person in all that time, which was just as well. Despite the water, the headache and dizziness were getting steadily worse. He wouldn’t have had much chance of evading anyone.
Some time in the middle of the afternoon, he staggered to his feet and followed a path along the creek, heading north. Meregate. That was where Jake had said.
He was almost certainly walking into a trap. But there was just a small chance that Jake would turn out to be on his side.
Meregate was up at the northern boundary of the school, where the manor’s wall still stood. Inside the wall there were more pine and birch trees, and just beyond the wall the bridleway ran from the road to the inner shore of the Mere. The gateway was in the north-east corner of the wall.
Liam reached the opening shortly before four. He went to sit in the pines by the Mere. He could see through the trees to Wolsey from here. So close across the water, yet still a two hour walk. He wondered if Jake would give him a ride again. He would ask, although he didn’t know what he would do when he reached town. At least it would be farther away from here.