‘Good God Donald, this better not be about a telescope,’ Mum said. ‘After everything that’s happened you’d better not be mourning a cancelled trip to see a big daft telescope.’
That’s exactly what I was mourning though. I couldn’t understand how she didn’t see the injustice of it – the only boy in the class who was desperate to see space was being dragged away from any chance of ever seeing it, whilst his classmates, who weren’t even half as bothered as him, would be getting on the coach in a couple of days. It seemed to me a miscarriage of justice of epic proportions. Now I shudder at how upset I was. I’d killed a little boy a few weeks before and there I was crying about a cancelled trip to a telescope. But it meant more to me than that. The idea of space was a comfort. The thought that these planets existed so far away from daily life, that I could be sat in class at school whilst these huge bodies of rock and gas were up above me, travelling through space, was something that fascinated me. It was so foreign to everything I knew, so alien to everything down here, that it helped make everything seem unimportant. Nothing that happens down here ever makes any difference to anything up there is what I was thinking. And thinking like that helped make life more manageable. That was why I was so upset when my place on the trip was cancelled. I couldn’t explain it at the time though, and my behaviour was taken as further evidence by everyone that I was nothing but a cold fish.
Neptune was the planet for me. I don’t know why. I enjoyed aspects of all the planets, but Neptune was the one that won my heart. Other planets were enjoyed, maybe even courted for a while, but when it came to it, when I had to nail my colours to the mast, it was always Neptune. Maybe because it was blue; blue was my favourite colour, three my favourite number. I’d done my research. I knew about spaceships and I knew the training astronauts went through. I knew the food they ate, how they went to the toilet, where they slept. I was fully prepared. I was so excited about my plan that I went to bed half an hour before I had to. I lay there and couldn’t wait for night to kick in and the room to turn from shadows to black so I could count down to lift-off and blast away. The lift-off went without a hitch and soon I was out of orbit and cruising. I waved at the planets as I passed. Jupiter was as impressive as I’d read, the rings of Saturn spectacular. And then, eventually, I saw the blue crescent of Neptune drift into view and my journey was almost complete. For the next few nights I relived the trip and each night I was keen to get to bed. For however long it took me to fall asleep I escaped Clifton, everyone in it, and everything that had happened. I would get into my pyjamas straight after tea and be impatient until bedtime.
‘Is everything all right Donald?’ Mum asked after a few days. Everything was fine, I told her, I’d just been very tired lately that was all. She looked like she’d remembered something and said, ‘They told me that might happen. It’s completely normal Donald so don’t worry.’
I knew what she was referring to, but I had no idea why the trouble would make me feel tired. I let her think that she’d stumbled into understanding though; I was happy to keep the vanishings to myself.
The vanishings have changed over the years. I’m no longer as interested in space travel for one thing, so they tend to be more grounded these days, more realistic. Lossiemouth will be the next attempt. I found Lossiemouth on page ninety-six of the Times Atlas of the World. It’s a tiny white dot on the map, nothing else, but all you need is a name and a destination and the rest you invent. I try to get the details right, I look in books at the library, but it doesn’t matter too much, nobody will be testing and as long as you have a good idea of who you are and where you’re headed, it normally works out. For Lossiemouth I’ve imagined a small white cottage overlooking the sea. The town is quiet and safe – there are no boy racers throwing their cars down tight, busy streets, nobody rushing anywhere. In the cottage there is a kitchen table, made by my own hands, the plastering and electrics done by me also. There is a pale blue boat rocking in the harbour, a sheepdog waiting behind the front door and a wife: a tall brunette with a wide red mouth and a gentle smile. My name is Jack and I’m not too tall and I don’t have daft muscles, but I am strong and handsome. But when the women of Lossiemouth smile and flick their hair, I pretend I haven’t noticed – I’m just walking my dog along the beach before tea, that’s all, just living my life. I always remember that I have a beautiful wife waiting in the cottage, waiting for my return, and I always return. Since the trouble they’ve been good to me, my vanishings. They’ve helped keep my head above water, helped me to breathe more easily, help me escape the little boy.
3
It was the week before the trip to the Pilchard Telescope and a few months after the trouble when we left. I don’t know why Mum chose Raithswaite, we didn’t know anybody there, and I’d never heard her mention the place until she told me that was where we would be living. But she probably had leaving in mind from day one, and the incident in the garden at midnight didn’t help matters. After that night, and another visit from Tracy, Mum was constantly checking where I was in the house, making sure I hadn’t snuck out to be somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. I’d tried to explain what I’d been up to in the garden, but she didn’t understand, and thought I’d gone insane and couldn’t be trusted not to torment the parents of the little boy I’d killed. When she told me we were moving I didn’t understand why, but back then I had the black-and-white understanding of a child: it was an accident, the police had let me go and I’d promised never to go back to the house again. Why did we have to move? But Mum said it was impossible to stay. I didn’t believe her at the time, but I wasn’t old enough to understand, I wasn’t even old enough to realise that girls were worth looking at. Now I can see that she was right – we had no option but to leave. The trouble upset her, I could see that, but I’ve always suspected that leaving Clifton hit her harder. She really did love the place. She used to say it was the town she’d grown up in and the town she would die in. She sorted the plot at Waddington Road Cemetery just before we left. It was her last phone call. ‘At least I have that to look forward to,’ she said, ‘that one day I will go home.’ At the time I didn’t think it was an unreasonable idea that she would be able to move back when I no longer lived with her, but when I put it to her she told me that it was a ridiculous notion, that she would never be able to return to Clifton alive. ‘What if I see them Donald? What if I see the family? Have you considered that?’ She shuddered at the thought of it and I understood then that as far as she was concerned, when she went home she would be cold and they would lower her into the ground.
She never put it to me directly that I’d ruined everything but it’s an understanding that’s clear between us. It’s evident when she bangs pans away into the cupboards with as much volume as she can muster; it’s there in her furious mopping of the kitchen floor, which she swears can never be got clean. She hasn’t made a single proper friend since we moved to Raithswaite. She hasn’t even tried. She rebukes all comers and wallows in her suffering. Everyone and everything in Raithswaite is tainted as far as she is concerned. Everything is dirty. She thinks we ended up in a filthy town. If she could she would take her mop to every street. ‘Cramped, dirty and crumbling’ is how she described it on the phone the other week to Aunty Sandra. ‘This house is just about the cleanest thing in the whole place.’ It’s not true. When it comes to Raithswaite Mum is like those skinny women who look in the mirror and only see fat. I’ve tried to reason with her but the truth doesn’t suit her thinking so she keeps it buried. She will hide the sun behind a penny coin if it helps her story to do so. And that’s a big difference between us. She sees the world as she wants to, I try to see it as it is. I’ve come to understand that I sometimes misjudge, but I am willing to at least have a proper look, to try and take a balanced view of the world and the people in it.
4
For now the world is Raithswaite and there aren’t too many people. There is Mum, of course, and Fiona Jackson from school, I sometimes see her down in the old
quarry, but I’ve fallen between the gaps as far as friends go and there isn’t really anyone I hang around with. I’m one of the few sixteen-year-olds who isn’t out and about on a Friday and Saturday night. The day this started I’d spent the previous night dreaming about the little boy. I’ve never forgotten, not for a second, but during the last eight years there have been bad times and better times. There have been days, sometimes weeks, when I’ve managed to think of it as a tragic accident, that fate had her way and there was nothing to be done. When I’m doing well I’m able to cut my thoughts off like that, before they dive too deep. But on a bad day, in a bad week, I can’t forget that I killed someone – I see the stark truth of the matter and it floors me. A single thought can stop me in my tracks, make my blood run cold and steal the breath from my lungs. It wasn’t quite as bad for the first couple of years, but as I’ve got older and begun to understand more, it’s been harder. And lately it’s been bad day after bad day, no respite, and I can’t even remember what happy or glad feels like. I know those feelings do exist, but I can’t see that I’ll ever find my way back to them. On a stinging cold winter’s day, when it’s so cold your teeth are hurting, your fingers are numb and you can’t feel your own face, you know you were uncomfortably hot four months before, but you can’t remember what that actually felt like. That’s how far away from happy I’ve been.
I'd slept badly, dreams had cast a shadow, and I’d woken too early for the mood I’d woken into. More sleep was the only way to deal with it, but sleep was hiding anywhere other than behind my eyelids, and there was nothing to do other than get up and face the day. School was closed for an inset day and Mum had forgotten and was annoyed at the thought of me around the place. The irritation buzzed off her and up through the floorboards and I knew that even if I stayed in my room and did nothing I would do it in a way that would provoke her. And after the dreams my chest was tight and panic was hovering in the corners of rooms, waiting to pounce. It was hard to breathe and I needed air. I needed to escape. I left by the back door and wandered towards town. I wanted to put some distance between me and the house and Mum. I really wanted to put some distance between me and myself but that’s a tricky thing to do, and the closest I could get to it was walking. I’ve been doing it for years, walking around Raithswaite, finding out where all the tiny backstreets lead to, walking to the fringes of the town and seeing what’s out there, trying not to think about the little boy, trying to disappear somehow.
The sun was bright and kids from school were already out and about, in pairs or groups, planning and nattering, enjoying the free day. The odd shout came my way from across the road, from up on a bridge, but it wasn’t having any effect. My brain was caught up in its thinking. I ended up at the cricket ground at the end of Chatburn Road. I wandered around the pitch and noticed that it wasn’t even close to being properly flat and I wondered how they ever got a decent game out of it. As I continued on I started thinking about why the latest vanishing hadn’t worked. I’d planned Lossiemouth to the last detail. I had the house and the wife and I could see it all clearly and easily, but when I tried to disappear, it didn’t work. I’ve planned less and had moresuccessful vanishings in the past. It was a worry that recently my brain was unwilling to be tricked.
The day was warming up and heat was easing over my body and working its way through to my bones and I was thinking that at least something felt good. I was coming up to the scrubland at the bottom of the cricket pitch, just beginning to relax a little, when a man flew past me on a bike so close his jacket toggle nearly whipped my face. I was frozen in my tracks. I hadn’t heard him approach at all. He should be more careful. He should have rung his bell. It set my heart racing and I had to take a minute to calm down. I stepped forward again but I’d only walked a few steps when I heard singing. I stopped to listen and for a second there was nothing, but then I could hear it again – lots of little voices wobbling their way around a tune that drifted across the air in front of me so slowly I could almost catch it in a net. It was faint but I could make out the intended melody and it immediately took me back to a school hall with a battered wooden floor, big burgundy curtains and a climbing frame that locked against the wall. I couldn’t quite make out the words but it didn’t matter because they leapt into my brain as quickly and completely as a fully formed vanishing used to:
Think of a world without any people
Think of a street with no-one living there
Think of a town without any houses
No-one to love and nobody to care.
We thank you, Lord, for families and friendships,
We thank you, Lord, and praise your holy name.
It was my favourite of all the songs we used to sing in school assembly. When Mrs Eccles started playing the opening notes on the piano it always had the same effect on me, a lump would appear in my throat and I would stand with my shoulders back, my chin out and my feet together, just like you were supposed to, ready to sing as well as I could. My eyes hunted out the source of the sound and rested on the back of Gillygate Primary School, about thirty yards away, over scrubby grass, behind a patch of trees. I wandered closer to see if I could get a clearer listen and settled down in the grass, resting against a tree trunk. I must have caught the end of their practice though, because there was only one more chorus to come, and then the piano struck its last high ringing notes and there was only silence and no more singing seeping out into the world for free. My legs weren’t for moving me on so I stayed where I was looking onto an empty playground and the school building. The school was red-bricked and old-fashioned-looking – ‘Boys’ was inscribed in stone in a fussy font over one red door and ‘Girls’ above another. The schoolyard was sketched out with a caterpillar, numbers running up its wiggly body, a hopscotch grid, and a couple of other designs that were so faded I couldn’t tell what they were without getting closer.
After a couple of minutes the ‘Boys’ red door slowly opened and boys and girls bumbled out into the playground. It was the proper small ones first – ones that looked so tiny and useless you couldn’t believe that they’d been let out of the sight of their mums and dads, even for a second. A minute later a lady teacher in a long green skirt pushed through the door and the little ones ran up to her and wrapped their arms around a leg, or grabbed hold of an arm, and she walked around the playground like a slow-moving maypole with kids orbiting her, bumping off one another like dozy bees. Bigger children started pouring out through the other door but they were less interested in the teacher and were off doing the things they normally did at break in a separate part of the yard.
It was obvious within a minute or two of watching which kids were in and which kids were out. I’d clocked two outs within seconds. They were playing together in the corner by a tree. One of the lads had big red hair that grew like a helmet and desperately needed a cut. He had the widest eyes I’d ever seen, like he was permanently startled, like it was always the second after someone had shouted ‘BOO!’ in his face. The other boy looked like he’d just been released from a prisoner-of-war camp – head shaved and so skinny you feared he would be chilly out, even on a summer’s morning. There was nobody else near – just them and a tree in the corner. God knows what they were up to over there, but they appeared oblivious to all the playing going on around them as groups of kids yelled and had fun and shot about one way then the other. These two were huddled together chat, chat, chatting and it was good, I thought, that they had each other at least. At one point a ball bounced over to them, a stray shot from a game going on over the other side of the yard. The lad with the red hair took a wild swing in an attempt to kick it back to the lads who were calling for it, but the ball ended up behind him, to the laughter of the football boys. It took the two of them a further couple of attempts before they managed to send the ball in the intended direction.
I let my eyes move over to the middle, where the girls congregated and the princesses ruled. Not yet eleven years old and you could already spot the
m, the two of them, pretty little things, one blonde, one brunette, pristine uniforms and shiny shoes, ponytails bobbing along after them, as were the plainer girls, eager to keep up, to be in on the chat. I could have sat there all day and watched the mucking about and daft games, but a whistle blew and the long process of them all heading back behind the red doors began. The last one finally disappeared, the door banged shut, and the playground was empty again. The sun went behind a cloud, I was back to thinking about the dead little boy in Clifton and I felt so sad that I couldn’t move for a few minutes. An old man passed with his dog and gave me a wary look, like I was about to jump up and throttle him with his own lead and kill the dog. I waited until he was long gone so he didn’t think he was going to be done over and then I pulled myself up and carried on around the cricket pitch and back home. That night I didn’t even try a vanishing; I knew it wouldn’t work. I just lay there thinking about those kids, about how small they were, how vulnerable. How easily they would break. It made me shudder to think like that. I hoped someone was keeping an eye on each and every one of them.
5
I’ve only ever come close to telling one person about what happened in Clifton. Mum always said that it was important to keep the door shut on the past, and over the years she’s watched like a hawk to make sure I’ve done that. She said we were lucky that I was too young to have my name in the paper, and I shouldn’t go ruining our fresh start in Raithswaite by talking about things that can never be changed. And I was careful for years until I nearly told Fiona Jackson. I first met her when we were both nine years old, not long after we’d moved to Raithswaite, and she was just the same then as she is now – dark eyes and darker hair. Stern and lovely. The only difference is that seven years later her beauty comes complete with curves. There’s an old limestone quarry called Crosshills between our two houses. The back wall of the quarry is sixty feet of vertical rock with trees and grass growing out of it; the bowl below is a maze of tracks, sudden big rocks and tiny steep hills. A few years ago the shrubs and trees began to take over and the place is mainly green now with only the odd patch of grey quarry rock showing through.
How the Trouble Started Page 2