The Returners (7 page)

‘Piss someone off, did you?’

He shakes his head. ‘No.’

I shrug. Dad says Yan’s whole family don’t belong here. He says they’re thieves. ‘Must’ve done. Someone’s given you a great little shiner. Must’ve upset them.’

He shakes his head more vehemently. ‘No one did this,’ he says.

‘No one.’ I nod. ‘OK.’

He is sitting now; painfully, he pulls himself up to standing.

I feel like I need to say something. He looks so pathetic. Like an injured animal.

‘Sorry about your brother,’ I say. I’m an idiot for even mentioning Yan. I should have just let him leave, should have kept my mouth shut.

His eyes widen, his lips start to tremble. ‘You’re not sorry. He’s a dirty foreigner.’

He looks scared after he speaks, like he didn’t mean to. His eyes widen.

‘You said it,’ I say. Although I’m surprised. Weird way to describe your own brother.

His head shoots up. He looks scared. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘No need to be sorry.’ I shrug.

He says nothing. But he doesn’t go either.

‘So how is he? All right?’ I’m just making conversation now, filling the space.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. My father . . . He has been to the prison. He won’t let me go. Me and my mother. He says it is a bad place.’

‘Yeah, I guess it’s pretty bad,’ I say uncomfortably. ‘But that’s what you get for killing someone, right?’

‘He didn’t kill no one.’

There’s a defiance in Yan’s brother’s eyes that I haven’t seen before.

I shrug again. ‘Maybe. Didn’t look like it from where I was. But the police seem pretty sure, don’t they?’

‘You were there?’ He’s looking at me incredulously.

I look back at him blankly and he edges away. I’m relieved. I don’t want to have this conversation.

‘See you then,’ I say.

His eyes cloud over and he nods, then turns and runs.

I look at my watch. It’s already the end of morning lessons. Time has fast-forwarded in a good way. Must be the sunshine. I put my hand in my pocket. I pull out 50p along with a piece of paper. I grin. It’s a fiver. Another fiver I don’t remember. I’m getting good at this. Time for lunch, I think.

The canteen is a low, red brick building that’s tacked on between the science block and the main school. It’s a jarring sight – the school is Victorian, old yellow brick, tall, imposing, gothic even. Then there’s the squat canteen with small windows out of which the smell of burger fat spills. I survey the queue, which is wending its way along the wall and out into the courtyard outside. There’s always a kink in the corner – with a bit of clever manoeuvring it’s usually a good place to queue-jump. Once I’m in, I wander over, peer at the sausage rolls in their clear plastic cabinets.

‘You want one of those?’ one of the dinner ladies asks with a sigh. I turn my head a fraction – behind me is a group of girls, two years below me, absorbed in giggles about something.

‘Yeah,’ I nod. ‘With chips and beans.’ Pushing the boat out here, I think to myself. I take the plate greedily, put it on a tray. Maybe I was wrong when I said you didn’t need more than lemonade in hot weather. I’m starving. I pay and look for a table. There’s an empty one, down in the far corner. I head there, put my tray down, then realise I’ve forgotten to pick up any cutlery. I look at my plate. I could take the tray with me and risk losing the table, or I could leave it, save the table but risk losing my food. I curse myself inwardly – so stupid. Could I eat with my fingers? Steal cutlery from someone else?

‘You need a fork?’ I turn around, my heart lifting at the sound of Claire’s voice. Then I redden, I’m not sure why. She’s holding out a fork. ‘I noticed you didn’t pick one up.’

I frown. ‘I didn’t . . .’

‘Didn’t see me? No. You were in another world.’

‘Aren’t you meant to be in French?’ I regret the words as soon as I utter them. Why do I know her timetable? Now she’ll know I do.

‘Teacher’s off sick. We were meant to sit there reading
Le Grand Meaulnes
. Which doesn’t strike me as the best possible use of our time. I’ve read it twice already.’

It’s so long since I last spoke to Claire I don’t know what to say. Don’t know how to act. I take the fork. ‘Thanks.’

She eyes my table. ‘You sitting here?’

I nod. ‘You want to join me?’

‘Sure.’

And then she’s sitting down opposite me like it’s perfectly normal, like two years haven’t passed since we last made proper eye contact, as if it’s all just disappeared like the smoke: evaporated, dissipated, forgotten.

g

CHAPTER EIGHT

The truth? I used to be in love with Claire. The sort of love that consumes you – hopeless, soft, vulnerable love. I wanted her to be there all the time. She just had this way of listening to me, putting her hand on mine, all soft and warm, not like Dad who would punch me on the shoulder if he touched me at all. I can’t put it into words without sounding like a sap. She had this way of making me feel . . . cherished. That’s what it was. Sad, right?

Like I said, it was a long time ago when I was younger. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Loads of the stuff. And to be honest, not having her around has had its advantages. I mean, she’s difficult, Claire. She used to contradict me, argue with me, challenge me. All the time. She’d never just accept what I said, never just let an opinion be expressed – she had to question it, analyse it, suggest alternative viewpoints. Basically, she complicated everything. Like I said before, she was difficult. Still is, probably.

‘So you were there. You saw what happened.’

I looked up sharply. News travels fast. Did Yan’s brother run straight to Claire? I berate myself silently for saying anything.

‘Saw what?’ I say. I feel deflated. Irritated with myself for thinking . . . What? That she cares about me? Grow up, Will.

‘What happened – with Yan. You were there, weren’t you?’

‘Kind of. I didn’t really see . . .’ I look down. Don’t give anything away. Trouble is, Claire’s the sort you want to confide in. She makes you feel a better person for letting things out, saying how you feel. She’s clever like that – she wheedles stuff out of you, then pounces when she hears what she’s known all along you were thinking. She’d be a great interrogator. People would be queuing up to tell her stuff.

‘Right.’ She looks disappointed. She looks as though she doesn’t believe me. I feel disappointed too, but I can’t put my finger on why.

‘So how’s it going? Otherwise, I mean.’

Crap question. Stupid question. But what else do you say?

‘Good,’ she says. ‘I mean, you know, fine.’

I nod. She nods. It’s one of those awkward silences. I hate them – I usually just walk away. I’m tempted to do that right now, but I don’t. That’s the thing with Claire. You can’t walk away. I can’t, I mean.

‘You’re not eating,’ she says.

‘Not hungry,’ I lie. Although I do seem to have lost my appetite a bit.

She nods again. ‘You want to go for a walk?’

I get a funny feeling in my stomach. Surprise maybe?

‘Sure.’ I wait for her to stand up first, just in case. In case of what? Who knows. She does stand up, though, and I follow her out of the canteen. I feel self-conscious, too big all of a sudden. I’ve always been taller than her but in the last two years I’ve grown even more. When we’re in the courtyard outside the canteen, she slows down a bit and I catch up so we’re walking side by side. My heart’s beating rapidly and my palms are sweating. I tell myself to calm down. I tell myself this is no big deal.

‘So what happened in History?’

We’re out of earshot of anyone; now I know why Claire wanted to go for a walk. Again I get a slight surge of disappointment, but not as much this time. She’s interested in me at least.

‘I dunno.’ I put my hands in my pockets. I feel stupid. I want to tell her, want to admit that I really don’t know, that I lost it, that it was terrifying, that the pain was so unbearable I didn’t know what to do with myself, that I could hear voices in my head, see things that I recognised but couldn’t place, feel things that I didn’t understand. Like fear, hatred, anger. I want to tell Claire that I’m afraid I’m going mad. I want to ask her for help.

But it’s not going to happen. I mean, why would she want to help me? Part of the reason I don’t talk to anyone, don’t hang out with anyone, is because of what I know about myself. I mean, the truth is, why would anyone want to hang out with me? Claire obviously doesn’t – otherwise we wouldn’t have been virtual strangers for two years. It’s bad enough hanging out with myself; I wouldn’t want to impose it on others.

‘That’s it? You don’t know?’

She’s looking at me intently, those eyes of hers boring into mine. She doesn’t let you get away with anything, Claire.

‘I just . . .’ I look away awkwardly. ‘Look, let’s drop it, OK?’

She always used to tell me I was evasive. I realise no one’s told me that for a long time; it occurs to me that maybe no one’s cared enough to notice.

‘I don’t mean to be evasive,’ I say, to make her realise I know what she’s thinking, to remind her of what she used to say to me, to tell her I haven’t forgotten.

She rolls her eyes. ‘Well, you are,’ she says, but there’s a little smile playing on her lips. ‘For the record, you did look awful. Really ill. Mrs Draper should have realised.’

‘Yeah, well.’ I manage half a smile too. You’d have to look hard to see it, but it’s there.

Another pause, then, ‘How’s your dad?’ I look at her in mock surprise. Claire and my dad don’t get on. He doesn’t like her family and he doesn’t like her. She’s never been anything but polite about him but I know she thinks he’s an idiot, a right-wing ignoramus. She’s wrong. He’s not an ignoramus.

‘He’s working on Yan’s case, isn’t he? He’s going to be the prosecutor, I mean.’

Back to Yan again. I’m silent for a few seconds. ‘Yeah. Yeah, he is,’ I say moodily. ‘He thinks Yan did it. Other than that, he’s fine.’

‘He thinks he did it? Based on what? Based on what evidence?’ Her voice has gone about an octave higher; her hands are in fists. All because of Yan? What’s the big deal?

‘I guess the fact that he was there. Holding the knife,’ I say.

‘He took the knife out, Will. He’s terrified. He went to help Mr Best and now he’s being accused of murder. But he didn’t do it. Why would he? You know Yan. You know he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’m really scared for him, Will.’

I’m feeling uncomfortable; I want to change the subject. I remember being in Yan’s garden, years ago, remember him coming across a baby bird, still half in its egg, on the ground. It had fallen out of the tree, Yan said. I remember the way he tended to it, taking it inside, keeping it warm, feeding it milk. Remember how devastated he was when it died anyway.

But that was a long time ago. People change. Everything changes.

I push the image from my head.

‘How are your parents?’

Claire’s cheeks are slightly flushed; she looks at me warily. ‘They’re fine,’ she says. ‘Mum had to have an operation last month but she’s much better now.’

‘Good. That’s good.’

We drift into silence again. We’re near the school gates – time to turn back, to walk along the fence, back around the netball and baseball courts. I stop. I can see him outside the gates. A man. He’s looking at me. He’s one of them, I know it; I can see it in his eyes. Pain, hope, a recognition. I feel my stomach clench with fear.

I look back at Claire; her face is pointed in concentration. Maybe she’s trying to think of something to say. Maybe there
is
nothing else to say.

The man is still there, hunched slightly, standing on the other side of the road looking right at me. You’d think someone would have arrested him or something, hanging outside a school like that. He looks dodgy. Looks like a freak.

I glance at Claire furtively. ‘You see that man?’

She frowns as though I’ve startled her slightly. ‘What man?’

‘There.’ I point; she looks over.

‘Sure. What about him?’

‘You think he looks weird?’

Her frown deepens. ‘Weird? Not really.’

‘What’s he doing there, though?’ I ask. ‘I mean, he’s just standing there staring at us.’

‘He’s not staring at us; he’s looking into the middle distance,’ Claire says. ‘And I imagine what he’s doing there is waiting for the bus.’

I do a double take. I hadn’t seen the bus stop. I feel stupid.

‘I’ve got a class,’ Claire says. ‘You coming in?’

I look back at the man. He’s looking at me reproachfully, like I shouldn’t have said anything. It makes me angry; there is no secret between us, nothing that I should protect. He is nothing to do with me. I’ll do what I want, tell who I want.

‘He’s still looking,’ I say.

Claire shakes her head. ‘You still think people are following you, don’t you?’ She says it sympathetically. ‘Come on. Let’s head back.’

She’s a few feet away from me; I could walk with her, back into school, back into normality.

‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I have to go.’

‘Where?’ she asks. Always direct; Claire doesn’t have any truck with subtlety, with dancing around a subject tentatively.

‘I just . . .’ I look back at the man, then I turn to her. ‘I’ll see you later, OK?’

‘Sure,’ she says. She looks vaguely dissatisfied; she opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. She walks away. I turn and start to walk quickly towards the school gates. I want to know if she’s watching me, but I can’t look back. It would tell her too much.

It started with trees. Yan’s dad said he was going to plant some. He had an idea for a semicircle of them at the bottom of his garden. Said it would create symmetry with the semicircle patio at the top of their garden. He told Mum and Dad about it when we were in our garden one day. Mum had invited them round. She’d argued with Dad about it; told him that she wasn’t succumbing to the ‘hideous prejudice that seems to have built up around here’. I remember wondering what prejudice was.

Anyway, they were all drinking beer; Yan’s mum wasn’t there because she was cooking something for us at home, but Yan and his brother were in our garden kicking a football about; Claire and I were watching them and pretending we found the adults’ conversation utterly boring. Her parents were at a conference; she was spending the day with us until they picked her up much later.

Mum went inside and brought us some lemonade. It was a really hot day; we glugged it down and fell down on our backs on the grass. One of those hot summer days when you don’t want to go inside, not even when it starts to get dark.

My parents and Yan’s dad sat there all afternoon; then, at some point, must have been early evening, Yan’s mum appeared with all this food. It was hot and spicy and I remember seeing Dad looking at Mum uncertainly, but she just gave him one of her looks, and I saw it and made sure she didn’t see me look uncertain, even though spicy food wasn’t exactly what I had in mind on a hot balmy evening either.

She was right to shoot us a look, of course; the food was incredible. Warmed you up on the inside and cooled you down on the outside. Not that Dad would have known that; he barely touched it, instead just sat silently and regarded it with suspicion. But Mum and I did. We started tentatively, then we fell upon it and Yan’s mum looked all pleased and proud as it was all devoured in front of her. She said next time she’d make more and Mum moaned and said she couldn’t because she’d have to eat it and her stomach was already stretched beyond capacity. Yan’s mum started to clear everything up, but Mum wouldn’t let her; she pulled out a chair and poured her some lemonade and told her to stay. And Yan’s mum protested a little bit but my mum didn’t take no for an answer, so she stayed, and we all just sat there, watching the sky slowly get darker, listening to the crickets chirruping, thinking to ourselves that things didn’t get much better than this.

And that’s when Yan’s dad mentioned the trees. He said he’d been looking into it and he was going to buy some conifers. Small ones. He was going to watch them grow. He said that British people grew British trees and he smiled to himself and said that the trees would be like his family; they would put down roots and grow big and strong.

I remember noticing my mum and dad exchange glances and I got that feeling when you know something’s going on that you can’t see or understand yet.

‘Conifers?’ my mum said, with a little smile. ‘You know they grow very fast. And very tall.’

Yan’s dad grinned. ‘Exactly,’ he said, rubbing his hands together.

‘They’d better not grow too fast,’ my dad said. ‘Don’t want a whole bunch of them blocking out our sun, do we?’

Yan’s dad laughed. ‘We shall see how big they grow, shall we? You could plant some too. We could have a race.’ He opened another beer. ‘Conifers,’ he said. ‘I think they sound like very good trees. Very good trees indeed.’

Claire’s gone, disappeared through the school’s main door. She’ll be in a classroom now, getting out her books. Organised, punctual, responsible, that’s Claire. I wonder briefly what she thinks of me, then I decide I probably don’t want to know. I’m still at the school gate, looking at the man at the bus stop.

Slowly, as though I’m being pulled by a magnet, I walk towards the school gates. I cross the road. The man is still there, still looking at me; he knows I’m walking directly towards him but he doesn’t move, doesn’t look away.

I keep walking; I’m inches away from him now. Then I stop.

‘Leave me alone.’ I say it in a deep, low voice for maximum impact. ‘I don’t know who you are but I know you’re one of the freaks. I’m not interested in you or your weird cult. Just leave. Now.’

He looks even more tired close up. Not tired like he hasn’t slept; it’s more than that, like the weight of the world is pressing down on his shoulders. It’s oppressive. I feel like if I look at him too long I’ll be sucked in, that I’ll be carrying the weight too. It scares me.