Numbers

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I sat there, listening hard, with every bit of me ready to jump up and run. I was waiting for his footsteps, for the leaves to rustle, for a whispered instruction. In the background, each noise was heavy with significance – the hum of traffic, the odd shout far away, a couple of sirens. What the hell was going on? Where was he?

Two minutes turned to ten. Ten minutes turned to twenty. As time went on I started to get glued into my position – hunched up, hugging my knees. I made myself breathe slowly, almost in a trance, trying to suspend everything until Spider came back for me.

How long was it until I realized he wasn’t coming back? I don’t know, but gradually it seeped through me like the freezing rain that had started soaking down from the leaves above and up from the ground below. Something had happened to him. Because I hadn’t seen it, I didn’t feel shock, not then; it was like something even darker than the night all around, settling on me, in me, a chill going right through to my bones. I didn’t move or make a sound, I just kept on sitting there, curled into a ball, only rocking a little, backward and forward.

I must have gone to sleep, because at one point I woke up lying on the ground with one thought in my head: He’s gone. I was cold and wet, curled up in the dirt. I held both hands up to my face, covering my nose and mouth. My own breath warmed my face as I whispered over and over, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” I had no idea what to do – I was too scared to cry.

My whispered words filled my ears, but suddenly I was aware of other voices filtering through, and another sound, a swishing and flicking noise. Somebody was going through the bushes with something.

“Got one of them; the other won’t be far away.”

“Not often you catch a terrorist, is it?”

“Do you think he is? A terrorist? Kid like that?”

“Could be. Get them young, these days, don’t they?”

“He didn’t look very bright to me, when they took him to the station.”

“Don’t need to be bright, do they? Better if they’re not. Fill their head with stuff, they’ll believe anything, these blacks. You don’t know what’s going on with them, do you?”

That was it, then. He was locked up in a cell somewhere. I could feel stuff rising up into my throat. I swallowed hard. The voices were getting nearer. There were lights, too. Beams moving this way and that.

“We’ll search this park, then move on to the scrubland by Manor Road School.”

“Righto.”

I straightened out my body and tried to flatten myself against the wall. The slapping sound of the branches and leaves being hit was only a few feet away. I held my breath – stupid thing to do, but you don’t always think straight when you’re backed into a corner.

Suddenly, something ripped through the bushes, a foot or two from my face, showering me with the water from the leaves. A stick – they were poking around with sticks.

“Go under, too. Run it along the ground.”

“OK.”

The stick came back in, sweeping along the surface of the ground. It started far enough away, but swished toward me, tracing a semicircle. I sucked in my stomach as far as I could. The stick passed within an inch of me before moving away again. The air inside me, already under pressure, was squashed further by my stomach. It felt like I was going to explode. I kept my mouth shut and breathed out through my nose, trying to control it, unable to stop a little explosion of snot. It sounded like a nuclear bomb to me, but it was nothing against the smacking of the leaves, the sound of those tossers’ voices. They missed it. I could hear them moving farther away.

I can’t say I relaxed, but my breathing got easier. My mind was still panicking, though. I was alone now, really alone. Spider and I, our adventure, had only lasted for three days, but it felt like I’d always been with him. We’d packed the amount of living most people do in a lifetime into those days. More than that, I’d learned to rely on him. Let’s face it: He’d done most of the thinking, the decision-making, ever since we agreed to cut and run. I was going to have to think for myself now.

I sat up slowly, even now trying not to make any noise. Those two, with their sticks, might have gone, but who was to say there weren’t more like them? I knew that this place was safe, or relatively. I could wait here for as long as I needed to. But what was I waiting for? Spider wasn’t coming back.

I tried to think what he would want me to do. But if I pictured him now, I saw him fighting, arms and legs flying everywhere; I saw him being held down, pinned to the ground; I saw him bruised, curled up in the corner of a cell. I didn’t want to think of him like that – I wanted to see him loping across endless fields, or close to me, wrapped around me – but the wounded Spider, the captured and confined Spider, wouldn’t stay out of my head. It was no good, I’d go mad if I stayed here. I was going to have to move, and keep moving.

The way to keep faith with him was to carry on our journey. He’d spoken of Weston like some holy grail. He believed in it – he believed there’d be happy times for us both there. And if he believed it, so would I. I’d carry on, and I’d hold on to the hope that I’d see him there. Somehow, he’d know that’s what I was doing, and he’d meet me there. I didn’t know how, but I did know when – before the fifteenth, before the end, we’d be together again.

I waited until I couldn’t hear anything above the background buzz of traffic – no footsteps, no deep voices, no helicopters, no dogs barking. After the exhaustion and despair, I felt an edginess kick back into me. I was anticipating the moment when I’d emerge from the bushes, trying to picture myself crawling out into a dark, empty park. Part of me really wanted to get on with it, part of me was shit-scared.

I crept forward on my hands and knees, sticking my face out gently between the leaves, trying not to think about all the dogs that must have peed there over the years. It was too dark to see much; the swings and slide in the kiddies’ playground were just ghostly shapes on the other side of the grass. The coast was clear, but I hesitated for a minute. It felt sad leaving our hideout, the last place we’d been together. Was I just imagining it, or could I still smell his rankness, clinging to the leaves?

“Good-bye, Spider,” I said quietly, in my head. “I’ll see you in Weston.”