Another Life (22 page)

‘They’re bourgeois bastards,’ he adds. ‘Don’t worry, Archie, it’ll make this place smell of something other than Mr Sheen.’

‘All right,’ I say dubiously. The room smells of beer, weed, Lynx and decaying pizza.

‘Got any money for me, Ozzie?’ he asks. Oscar shakes his head.

‘I’m not doing your thieving for you.’

‘Oscar!’ Lily’s eyes are wide. ‘Poor Marcus! What’s he meant to live on?’

‘Don’t make me laugh. Mum’s been bringing him two bags of food from Waitrose every week.’

Lily glares at him and says, ‘Poor Marcus. Do you get lonely?’

He strums a few chords. ‘So lonely. . .’ he sings. ‘So . . . o . . . lonely. . .’

‘That’s beautiful,’ breathes Lily.

‘And I’ve got no money . . . my folks hate me. . .’

‘That’s so unfair!’ says Lily, blowing smoke rings at his ceiling. ‘So unfair! Poor Marcus. Do you want to come and live with me and my mum?’

‘Are you sure?’ he asks.

‘Hadn’t you better ask your mum?’ says Oscar, but Lily laughs and says, ‘She’ll be pleased! She spends all her time at Peter’s house, anyway.’

The next thing we know, Marcus has left a note at the playwright’s house saying ‘Moved out,’ she’s threatening to call the police about fifty pounds that seem to have
gone with him, and Marcus and Lily are spending most of their time in Lily’s bedroom.

Oscar and I are mutually furious.

‘Typical Marcus,’ he says. ‘He always nicked my stuff, even when we were little kids. It’s Armed Forces Action Man all over again.’

‘I honestly thought I was in there,’ I moan. ‘Lily’s been my personal choice for years, to be the first woman lucky enough to enjoy the pleasures of my body. I’ve
been
grooming
her . . . I thought she was just ready. And it was all going my way, until your stupid brother stepped in.’

Oscar snorts. ‘Grooming her, my arse.’

‘I was! She fancied me too. Look at that night – you know, the Cheese-on-Toast Inferno—’

‘Huh. First, she was stoned. Second, she was only trying to make me jealous. Lily’s been crazy about me for years. Shacking up with Marcus is just a ploy to get my
attention.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Yeah, right, actually.’

My phone rings. I fish it out. Ty? Could it be? But no it’s. . . ‘Shannon!’

‘Hey, Kyle – Archie – hear the news?’

‘What news?’

‘The boxing club – it’s closed down temporarily. Ray’s been arrested. Firearms offences, that’s what I heard.’

‘Oh,’ I say. I wonder what else Shannon heard.

‘I wanted to make sure you knew. Didn’t want you turning up, finding it closed.’

‘Oh right.’ How could I explain that was never going to happen?

‘I’m dying to see you.’

I can’t resist. Lily’s rejected me, Claire’s ignoring me, even Paige has stopped tagging me in Facebook statuses.

‘Me too, Shannon,’ I breathe in my sexiest voice. Oscar raises an eyebrow.

‘I did what you wanted.’

This sounds like it could turn into genuine phone sex, and I gesture to Oscar to make himself scarce.

‘You did?’ I murmur into the phone. ‘What was that?’

Annoyingly, Oscar stays put.

‘I asked Arron if you could come and see him.’

‘Oh! I . . . I . . . well, that’s great,’ I say lamely. Oscar sniggers.

‘Tomorrow. You free?’

Tomorrow’s meant to be first day back at Butler’s. I suppose I could give it a miss.

‘Meet you at Paddington? 10 am?’

‘OK. See you then.’

I turn off the phone. Oscar’s looking thoughtful.

‘Who was that?’

‘Oh, some girl.’

‘Some girl, who?’

‘She’s – I met her at the boxing club.’

His eyes widen. ‘A girl boxer? Wow, Archie, and you’re worried about Lily? That is serious hard core fantasy stuff. Has she got any friends?’

I’m laughing. ‘No, she was there with her brother. Is that your secret, Oscar? Want to find some woman to beat you up?’

‘Very funny, Archie. God, I’m bored. Want to go down Westfield, look at the shops?’

‘Umm . . . not sure,’ I say. Shopping with Oscar is hard work. He takes it dead seriously, tries on piles of stuff, and asks me to take his picture on my mobile at various angles
before he’ll make a decision. I tell him that’s what girls do, and he just says something like, ‘This is the twenty-first century, Archie, and I’ve got no time for your
outdated gender stereotyping. Do you think the Superdry jeans would look good with the Jack Wills stripy jacket?’

‘I’m not going as your personal photographer,’ I say. Last time we went to Westfield, I bumped into two girls from college in Hollister. I was doing really well with the old
banter when Oscar came out of the changing room and said, ‘Let me see the picture of those skinny jeans. . .’

‘OK, OK, if you’re not going to be helpful.’

My phone buzzes with a text. Not Ty. Not Shannon. It’s my dad, suggesting a bike ride. He’s been coming on strong with the father-son suggestions ever since the roof incident. He
looked genuinely upset when he finally turned up at the hospital five hours late.

‘What took you so long?’ snapped my mum.

Dad spread his hands, ‘You know what it’s like. We had to force through the deal before the deadline – we had a lot resting on it. . .’

‘How come I manage to drop everything to find out whether Archie’s alive or not, and you don’t?’

‘Well you know, people make more allowances for women. . .’

I feel a bit bad texting back, ‘No, busy, soz’. It’s actually a really nice day for a bike ride – one of those bright winter days when the air bites at your skin. I can
see he’s making an effort. But I’m still not over the big cheese blow-up, and I can’t forgive him for the time he hit Ty. And we’re never going to talk about that.

I meet Shannon at the station. She’s all dressed up – a mini skirt, low-cut top, massive earrings, five different gold necklaces. It wouldn’t work on lots of
girls, but Shannon looks great. We kiss – more of a kiss than I’d expected. She grins at me.

‘You ready for this?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Arron, he was a bit unsure about meeting you. Said he’d never heard of Ty having a cousin. I think he’s curious, wants to find out who you are.’

‘Yeah, because I never even knew Ty before last year. He just turned up at my grandparents.’

‘Really? How come?’

She’s got the tickets already – I give her some money – and we get on the train. We manage to find two seats where we can sit together. I put my arm around her shoulders.

‘There was some family quarrel. His mum didn’t want him having anything to do with us.’

‘So how come he just turned up?’

‘Oh, well, he was living under witness protection. You know – like in American films. The police give you a new identity and everything. But then his mum’s boyfriend got shot
and they thought Ty wouldn’t be safe, so his aunt took him to my grandparents, to hide out.’

‘Oh my God! That was brave of them, to take him in.’

I’d never thought of that. ‘Yeah, I suppose it was.’

‘Anything could have happened. Especially if they were in London. Right near the gangsters. So brave.’

‘Oh, they don’t live in London. They’re way out in the country. Cambridgeshire. Middle of nowhere.’

‘Oh, but even so.’

‘I know. They are brave. That’s where I get it from.’

‘Oh, well, I’d guessed that.’

I’m dying to tell her how I dodged a gunman by leaping over the rooftops, but as she potentially knows him, it’s not such a great idea. So I tell her a bit about when I first got to
know Ty, how screwed up he was, how he was hallucinating, would wake up in the night.

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ she says. ‘Arron says he was always a bit of a nut-job.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Flaky, you know – would lose his temper.’

‘Oh yeah. He threw a book at me once.’

She sucks in her breath. ‘Ouch.’

‘Yeah, well, I gave back as good as I got.’

‘I bet.’

She’s kissing me, and I’m kissing her, and the rest of the journey we don’t really talk, apart from when the ticket collector tells us to cool it, so we stop for about thirty
seconds.

We get to the station and we get on a crowded bus and we get out by a massive wall. A load of people get off when we do, and they all head for the same door – the door to the prison.

It’s all pretty similar to when I visited Ty, but this time we’re taken to a room with lots of chairs and tables. I realise I’m feeling nervous. I wipe my lips, make sure that
none of Shannon’s gloss has lingered. Arron’s her ex – how’s he going to feel about me?

And then he’s there, sitting opposite us – taller than me, as tall as my uncle Danny. Short dark hair. Light brown skin. Dark brown eyes, staring at me. A wide mouth that smiles at
Shannon. White teeth, long eyelashes.

I’ve got to admit it, I can kind of see that girls might fancy Arron. He can even pull off the orange T-shirt/ grey trackie trouser look.

‘Hey Shan,’ he says, and his soft voice isn’t what I was expecting at all. How can this guy be a murderer? ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

‘Arron,’ she says, and you can see – I can see – that she’s forgotten me, that I don’t exist any more, that she’s just marking time until Arron’s
out of here.

‘Arron, this is Archie. He’s Ty’s cousin.’

‘I can see that,’ he says. ‘You guys – you kind of look alike. You’re thinner than him, though – thinner and taller.’

Neither of those things is true, but I’m not going to correct him in front of Shannon.

‘Hey,’ I say. ‘I’m here . . . I just. . .’

‘I never knew Ty had a cousin,’ he says. ‘We were best friends for years and he never told me. I don’t know why he’d keep that sort of secret.’

‘He didn’t know,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know about him, either.’

Arron raises an eyebrow. I wish I could look that cool.

‘I only met him last year,’ I say. ‘I’m his dad’s nephew.’

‘Oh yeah, his dad,’ says Arron. ‘He told me lies about him as well.’

‘Arron,’ I say, ‘I need your help. Ty, he’s living in fear the whole time. The gangsters are trying to kill him. He only tried to tell the truth about the murder. He
didn’t mean to get you locked up, I’m sure of it. Can you . . . can you help him at all?’

Shannon lets out a hiss. ‘Shit, Archie, what’re you talking about? Why should he? Ty dropped him in it. I bet it was all down to Ty, anyway. Wasn’t it, babe? Didn’t Ty
get you into that gang? Wasn’t he lying to save his own skin?’

Arron shakes his head slowly. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Shannon, you’re wrong. Ty wasn’t doing nothing but telling the truth. He was too dim to realise what trouble
it’d get him into. My fault. I should’ve explained to him . . . how these things work. . .’

‘He didn’t know what would happen,’ I say. I’m not certain about this, but right now I’m giving Ty the benefit of the doubt. ‘I actually think he was trying
to make sure that you didn’t go down for murder all by yourself. He didn’t want the other boys to get away with it.’

Arron laughs. He’s the only person laughing in a room of whispered conversations, and heads turn towards us.

‘Typical. Ty always made a mess of everything. If he’d kept out of it, I’d have done a few years for manslaughter and been a hero for not snitching on my mates.’

‘Oh right.’ I can’t even begin to get my head around that. I remember Rio’s sister sobbing over the dead flowers. How would she have felt? Would she have realised that
people had got away with murder?

Does justice make anything better? Is it worth it?

‘Ty was my friend,’ says Arron, ‘and he always will be. I’m loyal to my friends. You tell him that. And you tell him something else as well.’

‘OK.’

The bell goes. People start standing up, leaving the room. Arron leans forward.

‘Bring him here to see me.’

‘I’ll try, but—’

‘I can call them off. Tell him that.’

‘I’ll try but—’

‘I can set him free.’

W
here to start searching for Ty? Obviously I start with Claire.

‘Hey, Claire,’ I say. I’ve decided not to embarrass her by referring to our snog. Or, more accurately, I’ve decided not to embarrass myself.

‘Archie,’ she says. ‘What do you want?’

‘Well, I was wondering if you’d heard from Ty . . . errr . . . Joe. . . ’

‘No.’

‘It’s just that he’s disappeared and I thought he might. . .’

‘You thought wrong.’ She rings off.

What? I shake the phone, try again. She doesn’t pick up.

Hmmm. Some people might think,
OK, fair enough, she’s answered my question.
Other people might think she’s embarrassed about our kiss. But Archie Stone, otherwise known as
Professor Stone, Master of Freudian psychoanalysis, mind reader and student of human nature, thinks differently.

I think that Claire’s a lovely person who hates lying and would never be rude. Therefore, if she’s being rude, it’s likely she’s feeling bad because she’s lying.
That, my friends, is what they call forensic psychology.

I call Zoe. It’s only when she picks up that I realise that I haven’t spoken to her since Cheese-on-Toast night.