The Red Road (3 page)

“Look at her, standing around so
everyone can see that it’s her bloody car,” Baz continued,
glaring at the woman. “I’d not be surprised if she starts draping
herself across the bonnet in a minute.”

“She used to be an actress, didn’t
she?” I asked.

“
Failed
actress,” Baz
smirked.

“When are your parents getting
here?”

“Not until seven. My dad’s
coming straight after work, and my mum’s in hospital.”

“Really? Is she okay?”

“It’s just an x-ray,” Baz said
dismissively. “She’s just getting a fracture looked at.”

“Are you going to stay for dinner,
then? They’re doing it half an hour early tonight.”

“Nah. I’ll probably go to
McDonald’s on the way back,” he said with a grin I knew was meant
to annoy me.

Lucky git. “Wish they’d take us
to McDonald’s,” I said.

After vomiting up my lunch on the Road
earlier, and unable to get anything else down at teatime as I was still
recovering from the shock, I was starving. I wondered if the school
were going to open the tuck shop at all, so I could at least grab a
packet of crisps or a bar of chocolate, in case I didn’t fancy the
evening meal.

A Lion Bar would really hit the spot right about
now
, I thought. “They could at least have ordered pizza for the
ones that are staying tonight,” I said.

“You’re definitely staying?”

“My mum and dad aren’t back
until tomorrow morning now, so yeah.”

“What happened to Sam?”

“He’s gone to Dave’s house, in
London.”

“Doesn’t Rob live in Baconsdale?
You should have gone home with him.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t find out my
mum and dad weren’t coming back until just a while ago, and Rob had
already left.”

“Oh, that was unlucky. How many
others are here?”

“No idea,” I said. “I think my
entire dorm is leaving tonight. All first years, so not unexpected.”

Mrs Timpson turned her head, looking
about her surroundings, seemingly unimpressed by the other parents’
chosen methods of transport. She gave the passing cars little more
than a cursory glance before she looked back to where Baz and I were
leaning up against the stone doorway. Presently, a somewhat
diminutive second-year boy came struggling down the stairs with an
oversized and overstuffed bag. He paid us no attention whatsoever as
he walked past, waddling his way through the front doors and towards
the red sports car.

“Funny how little Eddy went from
the B stream up to the A stream at the start of the year,” Baz
said.

“Yeah, I noticed that,” I said.
“It came right after the school received that generous, anonymous
donation towards the music department, too. What’s the bet he’ll
become head of house?” I added as Mrs Timpson strutted around the
front of the car, opened the boot and helped her son lift the bag in.

“Not high at this point,” Baz
said. “But a few new textbooks and a computer for the library would
probably see to that.”

“A prefect at the very least,” I
said as the boy skipped gleefully around to the passenger side of the
car and hopped in.

“Spoilt bastard,” Baz muttered
as the car sped off.

“Think he left the laptop? He has some cool stuff
on there.”

“Doubt it,” Baz snorted, pushing
off the wall, now clearly bored of people watching. “I think he
threw that one away, anyway. He’s got a new one that’s in colour.
Not even my dad has one of those at work.”

“
Colour
?” I said. “He’s
got a
colour
laptop?”
It shouldn’t have surprised me to be honest.

“Yep. I actually think it’s been
nicked about a million times already. He’s the only one in the
school with one, apart from AJ Long, and he just gets all that stuff
dirt cheap from Hong Kong when he goes home, anyway.”

“No one’s going to be stupid
enough to go nicking anything off him,” I said. “Size of him, he
could probably kill you with a head butt.”

“He still does judo, too. What do
you want to do now?” Baz asked, as we wandered back into Butcher
House. “Want to play the game?” He nodded to the switched-off
arcade machine that sat in the corner.

“Nah, it’s crap,” I said.
“They’re all crap this term. Let’s go to your dorm and listen
to some music, until your dad gets here.”

~ ~ ~

Baz’s father arrived a little
after seven, just as we were wandering down to the refectory to get
dinner. We had steadily made our way through Baz’s CD collection,
as well as raiding some of the other boys’ while we waited for his
dad to turn up. But as dinnertime approached, it appeared that the
man was going to be late.

Still looking forward to his McDonald’s,
Baz had decided to go down to the refectory and grab a little snack,
as I ate whatever was being served up. We decided to walk the long
way, rather than go straight into the main school through the west
wing where Butcher was situated. The trip took us out the side
entrance, walking the road down to the huge front doors of the main
building as we effectively circumnavigated it. We sighted Baz’s
father’s car about halfway around, and so we doubled back to
Butcher, Baz striding a great deal faster than me.

Mr Green
stepped out of the car, wearing what I guessed was his work suit; he
must have driven straight from the office. As expected, Baz’s
mother wasn’t with him. Baz headed up to his dormitory to grab his
bag, leaving me to engage in small talk with his father.

“Evening, Joe,” Mr Green said,
shaking my hand. “I’d have thought you’d be gone by now.”
Unlike Baz, the man’s accent wasn’t in the slightest bit cockney.

“No, not yet,” I said. “My
parents aren’t going to be here till sometime tomorrow morning.”

“Oh dear,” he said with genuine
concern. “Are you staying at the school overnight?”

“I am, yes.”

“Are you going to be okay here all
by yourself?”

“There are some other boys staying
here tonight, too,” I explained. “So I’ll be okay.”

“Hmm,” was all he answered. The
school might not have told the parents all the details, but it seemed
as though some had figured out the story for themselves.

I had only met Mr Green once, and I
didn’t know a great deal about him. I had never really paid that
much attention to what the other boys’ parents did for a living,
most of them simply working in an office somewhere. Baz’s dad
worked somewhere in London, in the City, but that was about as much
as I knew.

“It’s awful what has happened
here,” the man said, scratching at the stubble on his face and
looking around the grounds.

“What have they told you?” I
wanted to know.

“That the body of a boy who
disappeared last night was found on a road not far from the school
grounds. No details other than that. Do they know who it was?”

“I can’t remember his name, but
it was one of the younger boys from the junior school,” I said. “He
wasn’t actually wearing any clothes when I saw him.”

“Oh!” the man’s eyes widened
in surprise. “You saw him?”

I only nodded.

“Where they found him?”

“Uh huh.”

“Oh, that must have been a
terrible thing to see.”

“It was. I threw up everywhere
when I saw him,” I admitted. “I didn’t think I’d be able to
eat for the rest of the day, but I’m hungry now.”

I wasn’t sure
why I told him that; he probably didn’t need or want to know.
Perhaps I wasn’t actually as all right as I thought. Perhaps the
shock would hit me a lot later on in the coming weeks.

Baz returned then, carrying his bag
with him. His father opened one of the rear passenger doors, and Baz
threw the bag in the back rather unceremoniously. He looked keen to
escape the school as quickly as possible. I envied him there.

“See you later, Joe,” he said,
getting into the front like a bolt of lightning and pulling on his
seatbelt.

Mr Green seemed to take note of his
eagerness, but paused for a moment, thumbing his car keys. “Barry,
Joe tells me he has to stay at the school tonight.”

Uh oh. I knew what was coming.

“Would you prefer to come home
with us tonight instead, Joe? Your parents could pick you up from our
place in the morning,” Mr Green went on to offer.

I caught Baz’s eye for a brief
instant, able to recognise the signs of trepidation within. The vast
majority of the pupils at St Christopher’s saw their home as a
sanctuary away from the school, and the idea of another boy violating
that sanctuary was never high on anyone’s list. Unless they were
very nearly blood brothers, there was always a certain degree of
reluctance to take anyone home with you. There was a sense of pride
in that no one ever wanted someone else to see how they really lived,
in case their house was small and poky, or that outside of brief
encounters such as these, their family were an embarrassment to them.
Being as close as we were, Sam had stayed with me on a number of Exit
Weekends, not having any family in England. My parents reluctantly
permitted this; Sam was always grateful for the invitations, and he
was polite and easygoing whenever he stayed. Though Baz and I were
close and spent a lot of time together, there was an unwritten rule
that this didn’t permit home visits.

Mr Green added, “Your parents live
in Richmond, don’t they?”

Saved. “No,” I said, shaking my
head. “Baconsdale, near Guildford, so quite a bit further.” I
caught Baz’s eye again. He seemed to have relaxed.

“Not all that far,” Mr
Green said.

“I’ll be okay here,” I
reassured him (and Baz). “It’s just for one night, after all. I
might have some duties to do, too. I’m a dorm prefect this term, so
Mr Somers might want me to look after some of the younger boys who
are staying.”

Mr Green nodded. “Well, if you’re
sure?”

“I’ll be okay,” I repeated.
“I’ll call you next week,” I added to Baz.

“Better hurry to dinner,” Baz’s
father said. “Otherwise there might not be anything left worth
having.”

“There usually isn’t, anyway,”
I chuckled, shaking Mr Green’s hand before the man got back into
the car.

I started off once more for the
refectory, catching snatches of words of Baz and his father’s
conversation as I went.

“McDonald’s.”

“Sweets. Proper dinner.”

“Late. Long drive. Quarter
Pounder. Milkshake. Please.”

“Give them to Joe, then.”

“Joe,” Baz called after me. “Do
you want these, in case dinner is shit?”

“Barry!” his father scolded.

“Oops! Sorry, Dad.”

I returned to the car, seeing Baz
holding up a white plastic bag filled with an assorted of sweets –
chocolate and other treats. They looked like they’d been bought
from a petrol station. I spied a Lion Bar. I was sold. “Yeah,
okay,” I said.

Baz passed the bag over, but I
hesitated to take all of it; it seemed somehow rude. I rummaged
around inside, extracting a few snacks for later, before handing back
what remained.

“No, don’t worry,” Mr Green
waved it away. “Share it with the other boys that are staying if
you don’t want to eat all of it.”

“Ah, good point. Thank you,” I
said. I thought for a moment about taking the bag back to my dorm and
locking it away in my tuck box for safekeeping, rather than taking it to
the refectory with me, on show for everyone to see. It occurred to
me, however, that I was hardly likely to get mugged for it on a night
like this.

Barry’s father finally started the
engine. “See you later, Joe,” he said, as the car began pulling
away. “I hope all of this doesn’t give you nightmares.”

I chuckled. Yes, so did I.

~ ~ ~

Dinner that night wasn’t actually
as bad as I had at first feared. The cooks had produced a more than
acceptable chilli con carne, not nearly as watery or tasteless as it
usually was, and with a fair amount of spice for a change. The kidney
beans, too, had been cooked properly and weren’t crunchy. Starving
as I was, I polished off my first plateful rather quickly, returning
to the front for seconds. There was more than enough to go around,
what with only a few pupils remaining at the school. There were
almost as many teachers in the dining room as there were boys.

I counted about thirty boys staying
at St Christopher’s for the night, a lot more than I had originally
expected there to be. Ordinarily, we would eat our meals at tables
separated out by our respective years, but tonight the teachers had
us sitting together, regardless of age.

No one spoke very much, and I
noticed that some of the first years were taking great pains not to
make eye contact with the sixth formers, staring at their plates most
of the time. When you’re thirteen, small as you are and still
growing, it was understandable not to want to cross a
testosterone-fuelled eighteen-year-old whose only outlets tended to
be punching small boys on the arm, smacking heads on rugby pitches,
and attempting to talk to girls at the sporadic disco nights that
occurred during term time.

A couple of years before, when I
myself had been in the first year, I had been rather like those at
the table and avoided the sixth formers as much as possible. It
worked in my favour for the most part, and while some of the other
boys in my year had been known to have been beaten (and in some rare
cases suffering broken limbs in the process), the sixth formers had
for some reason never done anything more than just shout at me a lot.
That wasn’t what had bothered me, though, as I could deal with the
verbal abuse. What bothered me were seven simple words –
I’m
putting you on the Murga List
.

Thankfully, I was too old to be
given serious punishments by the sixth formers now. They could only
levy such penalties to the first and second years. I wasn’t immune,
however. The teachers could still put third-year boys on the
List
,
though it was rare and reserved only for the most serious of
offences. By your third year, you should have learned your lesson.