The Dark Inside (14 page)

‘Do you know what Cook meant? About the flower? About what to look for?’

But all she did was peer round and shake her head as the indicator started ticking and they turned on to the dual carriageway.

James awoke when the car stopped. He peeled his face off the brown plastic seat and squinted in the daylight. Through the window he could see the white torso of a petrol pump
and three nozzles plugged into their ports.

The grey underside of the canopy over the forecourt was like a patch of winter sky.

The pump whined as Billy filled the tank. Webster stirred, but did not seem to notice where they were or even recognize James. The boy’s eyes were sleepy too and he was about to lay his
head back down when he noticed a car parked on the opposite side of the pump. The driver, a middle-aged man with a moustache, was filling up his estate car. Sitting in the back were two teenagers.
A boy and a girl.

Both of them were staring at James.

He turned slowly and looked over his shoulder to see if anything might be going on behind him. Nothing. When he turned back round, he saw that the teenage boy had rolled down the car window
beside him and was talking to the man with the moustache. The man looked up in the direction of James. He squinted for a moment. Shrugged and shook his head, and looked back at the numbers on his
pump.

The teenagers in the back seat just kept staring. And then the girl had an idea and they bunched their heads together.

Billy clicked the petrol cap shut. He wiped his hands on the squares of his dogtooth trousers and then headed for the cashier, peeling off notes from a springy wad.

The man with the moustache left his car to pay too. When he was halfway across the forecourt, one of the doors of the estate car opened. The girl and the boy dropped down on to the black tarmac.
They kept low over the few metres between the cars and peered in through the window at James.

He blinked at them. They spoke to each other in muffled voices, nodding until one of them tried the handle of the door.

But it was locked.

When the old woman in the front seat suddenly turned round, they ducked down out of sight.

‘How are things, my love?’

James nodded. It was all he could manage. The fog in his head was too thick to think up any words, even though he knew there were lots hidden away inside him. The old woman reached into the red
leather bag by her feet in the footwell and drew out the Thermos flask. She unscrewed the white cup on top and then the cap, and filled the cup with hot tea from the flask. Then she leant around
and held it out to James.

‘It’s the last little bit, my love. Be a good boy and finish it up. We’ve still got a way to go yet.’ Steam unwound and disappeared. A bitter smell curdled the air. She
lifted up off her seat to get closer to the boy. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. James reached forward. But, as his fingers wrapped around the cup and he tried to take it, the old woman
stiffened and did not let go. She was looking into the wing mirror on the driver’s side of the car, and in it she could see the reflection of the boy and the girl squatting beside the rear
tyre, whispering to each other.

The old woman handed the cup to James, and then let herself quietly out of the car, and walked around to the rear and asked the children to stand up. James watched her talking to the two of them
until he felt something warm spreading over his ankle and into his shoe. He looked down. The cup had fallen from his hand into the footwell. He did not remember how it had ended up there. But he
knew he had been holding it. When he reached down to pick it up, he discovered it was empty and the tea had soaked into the black fabric making it boggy under his shoes.

Eventually, the old woman returned to the car and shut out the sounds of the forecourt. James watched the boy and the girl return to their own car without saying a word. They did not look at him
again.

‘All done, my love?’ The old woman was smiling and holding out her hand. James nodded and gave her back the empty cup.

When Billy returned, he was holding a newspaper. After starting up the engine, he nosed the car into a parking space on the edge of the forecourt and spoke to the old woman for
a long time. When he laid the newspaper down on the plastic island between their seats, James saw his own face staring back at him out of the blocks of black print. He thought he should say
something about the picture. But he couldn’t find the words.

When he heard the old woman and Billy laughing, he looked up and saw them staring back at him.

‘We was wondering what to do with you, boy,’ said Billy. ‘Now we know. Cash you in. Yoo’se worth a bit of money.’ James heard gears clicking round in his head as he
looked at them. But his mind was too hazy and it was difficult to understand what was happening.

‘He looks a bit too awake to me, Ma,’ said Billy.

‘I dosed him up good. He’ll most likely sleep the rest of the way.’

‘If that’s what you say.’

‘I do.’ The old woman fished out her black shawl from beneath her and handed it to James. ‘Wrap yerself in this,’ she said. James did what he was told and snuggled
against the shoulder of the seat. Billy leant round and perched an old herringbone cap on the boy’s head, and pulled the front down over his eyes.

‘Sweet dreams,’ he growled with a smirk.

James kept his eyes shut, but the grey mist drifting through him did not swallow him asleep as it had done before. But his thinking was slow. Ungainly. In the odd clear moment
his mind quickened, allowing him to consider what was happening and what he should do. But each one of these passed quickly.

Gradually, as the car rattled on, the mist melted away, leaving nothing but blackness inside him, which felt clean and pure and hard. He stared into it for a while, listening to the soft hammer
falls of his heart and the gentle washing of his breath, remembering who he was and what was happening to him.

He opened his eyes a crack, peeking out from underneath Billy’s cap. The car was old and the leather back of the driver’s seat in front of him was scuffed raw. A starry sky filled
the windscreen. Billy and his mam were staring right into it.

To his left was Webster, his back to the boy, hands for a pillow.

James sat quietly. Listening to the drone of motorway traffic.

His mind began to make plans.

Ideas came and went.

The car was travelling too fast on the motorway for him to open the door safely. And he did not want to leave Webster behind. He had no pen or paper to write a message and hold it up to the
window. Leaping on Billy might cause the car to crash and kill them all.

He was trapped in a box of metal and glass hurtling along at speed.

What the future held he did not know.

‘So then,’ said Billy, stretching his neck and pushing back into his seat, making the springs creak. ‘What’ll we tell the police about the boy?’

‘Nothing,’ said the old woman. ‘He’ll do the talking.’

‘You’ll dose him up to say a story?’

‘I will. And then some. I’ll fix him up with nightmares that’ll rot his brain to mulch. The only thing we got to worry about is who hands him in.’

‘Me?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘No. You won’t.’

‘Then who?’

‘I’m thinking about it. But I know the rest of it.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. Old man Willshaw is perfect.’

‘Willshaw who’s soft on kids?’

‘Willshaw who’s soft on kids. Because if you know it then the whole world knows it. We’ll hide the boy in one of the cages he uses for his dogs.’ The old woman shifted
slightly in her seat. ‘Yer da had some business with him.’

‘He did?’

‘He did. Some business that went bad. That yer da never put straight before he passed away.’

‘So we get two birds with one stone.’

‘Yes, we do.’

Neither of them spoke for a while after that. James listened to the swish of passing cars. He wanted to scream and hammer on the window, but he didn’t. He had to think of something better.
But nothing better came to him.

So he waited.

And waited.

Hoping for a chance.

‘I need to stop,’ said Billy eventually.

James heard the
tick-tock-tick
of the indicator a moment later.

The car slowed as it came off the motorway.

‘Put us somewhere away from the rest,’ said the old woman.

Billy ran the wheel through his hands, looking for a space on its own in the car park. Out of the glare of the lights.

He chose a spot and slid the car up a slight incline between two white lines, and clicked up the handbrake and killed the engine.

‘You’ll be all right with them?’ he asked his mother.

‘Of course I will. They’re dosed. I told ya.’

‘Right then. Two minutes. Unless I get lucky.’ And Billy laughed at his own joke.

‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ said the old woman. ‘A man only gets to know himself through his children.’

‘Is that right?’ Billy leant forward. Pointed up at the big moon. ‘Well, Ma, once the punters start flocking to our new attraction, and the money’s flooding in,
I’ll be beating off the ladies with a stick. Mebbe you can help me choose the right one?’

‘As long as she gives me a granddaughter, you can choose whoever you want.’ She lifted the marionette out of the red bag by her feet and sighed, peeling off a curly white splinter
the width of a hair from its cracked leg. ‘This’ll be hers one day and she’ll love it the moment she sees it, just like I did.’

When she looked up and saw Billy staring at the wooden man, she reached out and held his hand and squeezed it. ‘Little boys and girls are different. It’s just how it is.
They’re all still loved the same.’

James kept his eyes shut as Billy opened the door. And he did not open them even when the door banged shut, making the car rock. He waited, listening to Billy’s footsteps fading along the
asphalt. But when he looked deep into himself for a plan there was nothing there.

And then the other door opened.

And closed.

He opened his eyes just enough to see through the webbing of his lashes. The old woman was standing beside the car, holding up the wooden man against the night sky and inspecting his damaged
leg.

‘Webster,’ whispered James. ‘Webster?’

A turn of the head. A bleary look. The man stared at James as though waiting to be told what to do.

James looked back at the old woman, who was lit by the waxing gibbous moon as it slipped out from behind a grey slab of cloud.

When he was ready, he removed Billy’s cap and started to lean forward slowly into the front section of the car, towards the passenger door, his hand outstretched. But she sensed him moving
immediately and turned round, so he lunged the rest of the way, banging down the small metal button with his fist.

The lock clunked.

The old woman flung herself at the door and pulled at the handle, but it snapped back out of her hands. James did not wait. He scrambled over the seat to the driver’s door and locked that
too. The old woman went to each door in turn, but all four of them were locked. She observed James through the glass for some time, the wooden man crooked in her arm, and James was careful not to
look at her for too long.

But the old woman did not start to mutter. There was no whisper of her voice in his head or a dark haze unwinding. And then he realised why. Her leather pouch, wrapped around with string, was
sitting in the tray between the two front seats. And when he looked up at her she was staring at it too. She smiled, and shrugged her shoulders and looked away, talking softly to the marionette and
pointing towards the buildings at the far end of the car park.

A lone figure was emerging through the sliding doors.

Billy was coming back, walking through the sticky orange glow of the car park lights.

A cloud covered up the moon and the interior of the car dimmed. It seemed to cool James’s heart too.

He stared at the empty ignition in the beige plastic casing beneath the steering wheel and then looked up at the old woman. She was smiling at him again, shaking her head. He had no plan. No
thought at all about what he might do next.

‘What now?’ he whispered as Webster watched him from the back seat. The man licked his lips. Tried to speak. Then tried again.

‘Bra-ke,’ he mumbled and then shuddered as if the weight of just one word was too much. James looked at the pedals. ‘Bra-ke,’ rasped Webster again. James pressed the
pedals with his feet, making them clunk.

Suddenly, he looked up.

Billy was running through the half-dark towards them.

‘What do you mean?’ James shouted at Webster. ‘What should I do?’

The cloud lifted. Moonlight streamed into the car.

It shone off the steering wheel.

Caught the handbrake.

And Webster pointed a trembling finger.

James stared at the glint of the silver button and blinked, and then pressed it in and let the handbrake down.

Nothing happened at first.

And then the car began to trickle backwards ever so slowly.

The old woman slapped a hand on the roof of the car and James heard it squeaking as it slipped away. She banged on the windscreen. Shouted. But James turned away, looking out of the rear window,
manoeuvring the steering wheel to follow the slight camber of the car park.

The car kept to a slow pace as James guided it, until it started rolling backwards more quickly towards the slip road coming off the motorway.

Billy was sprinting. But he did not seem to get any nearer as the car picked up speed.

A horn blared. An oncoming car, its lights flashing, swerved to avoid a collision as it came up the slip road off the motorway. James kept going, as straight as he could, jiggling the steering
wheel as the hiss of motorway traffic became louder. He plugged in his seat belt. Hit the button for the hazard lights. And banged on the horn as the green car slipped backwards on to the
motorway.

Cars swerved.

Horns jammed.

Brakes squealed.

And then there was a thump from behind.