2

I changed after the trouble. Mum says that I went into myself. I see it as the opposite – that I escaped myself. I called it ‘vanishing’ and quickly became good at it. The first time I tried it was just a few days after the police had talked to me for the final time. I can see now, looking back, that for a first vanishing it was quite ambitious. But back then I had no real idea what I was up to; I hadn’t the understanding of a vanishing that I have these days. At the time I just wanted to escape Mum’s upset and the darkness that had descended on us since the day the police knocked at the door. The idea came from an author’s visit to the school. He talked to our class about his writing and his books and I didn’t like him or his stories much, but one thing he said stuck with me. He told us that he spent his days in other worlds. He said that when he started writing and inventing the everyday world disappeared, and when it was going well he ended up somewhere that felt more real to him than the world he woke up in. I wanted some of that for myself, I wanted that magical escape, and whilst I couldn’t get the words down onto the page like he could so easily, I was good at disappearing to other worlds in my head.

The first time I tried it, my bed was a spaceship and I went to Neptune. I was space-crazy in those days – the books I’d been borrowing from the library were all about space, the pictures I’d been drawing in the play room at The Happy to Be Here Centre had been planets, stars and spaceships, and any film or programme that was set in space was likely to get me excited for days. I remember there was a school trip booked to a famous telescope, the Pilchard Telescope, where they said you could see other solar systems if the conditions were right. I was counting down the days, but in the end we moved just before the trip and Mum wrote me a note to take in on my last day, asking for the money back. I’d never known disappointment like it, and it seemed to me probably illegal to build a child’s hopes up so high before dashing them like they were nothing. I was sure that someone in authority would step in at the last minute and make it right. When they didn’t, and I finally realised that I really wasn’t going to see the giant telescope and far-off solar systems I let my displeasure show.

‘Good God Donald, this better not be about a telescope,’ Mum said. ‘After everything that’s happened you’d better not be mourning a cancelled trip to see a big daft telescope.’

That’s exactly what I was mourning though. I couldn’t understand how she didn’t see the injustice of it – the only boy in the class who was desperate to see space was being dragged away from any chance of ever seeing it, whilst his classmates, who weren’t even half as bothered as him, would be getting on the coach in a couple of days. It seemed to me a miscarriage of justice of epic proportions. Now I shudder at how upset I was. I’d killed a little boy a few weeks before and there I was crying about a cancelled trip to a telescope. But it meant more to me than that. The idea of space was a comfort. The thought that these planets existed so far away from daily life, that I could be sat in class at school whilst these huge bodies of rock and gas were up above me, travelling through space, was something that fascinated me. It was so foreign to everything I knew, so alien to everything down here, that it helped make everything seem unimportant. Nothing that happens down here ever makes any difference to anything up there is what I was thinking. And thinking like that helped make life more manageable. That was why I was so upset when my place on the trip was cancelled. I couldn’t explain it at the time though, and my behaviour was taken as further evidence by everyone that I was nothing but a cold fish.

Neptune was the planet for me. I don’t know why. I enjoyed aspects of all the planets, but Neptune was the one that won my heart. Other planets were enjoyed, maybe even courted for a while, but when it came to it, when I had to nail my colours to the mast, it was always Neptune. Maybe because it was blue; blue was my favourite colour, three my favourite number. I’d done my research. I knew about spaceships and I knew the training astronauts went through. I knew the food they ate, how they went to the toilet, where they slept. I was fully prepared. I was so excited about my plan that I went to bed half an hour before I had to. I lay there and couldn’t wait for night to kick in and the room to turn from shadows to black so I could count down to lift-off and blast away. The lift-off went without a hitch and soon I was out of orbit and cruising. I waved at the planets as I passed. Jupiter was as impressive as I’d read, the rings of Saturn spectacular. And then, eventually, I saw the blue crescent of Neptune drift into view and my journey was almost complete. For the next few nights I relived the trip and each night I was keen to get to bed. For however long it took me to fall asleep I escaped Clifton, everyone in it, and everything that had happened. I would get into my pyjamas straight after tea and be impatient until bedtime.

‘Is everything all right Donald?’ Mum asked after a few days. Everything was fine, I told her, I’d just been very tired lately that was all. She looked like she’d remembered something and said, ‘They told me that might happen. It’s completely normal Donald so don’t worry.’

I knew what she was referring to, but I had no idea why the trouble would make me feel tired. I let her think that she’d stumbled into understanding though; I was happy to keep the vanishings to myself.

The vanishings have changed over the years. I’m no longer as interested in space travel for one thing, so they tend to be more grounded these days, more realistic. Lossiemouth will be the next attempt. I found Lossiemouth on page ninety-six of the Times Atlas of the World. It’s a tiny white dot on the map, nothing else, but all you need is a name and a destination and the rest you invent. I try to get the details right, I look in books at the library, but it doesn’t matter too much, nobody will be testing and as long as you have a good idea of who you are and where you’re headed, it normally works out. For Lossiemouth I’ve imagined a small white cottage overlooking the sea. The town is quiet and safe – there are no boy racers throwing their cars down tight, busy streets, nobody rushing anywhere. In the cottage there is a kitchen table, made by my own hands, the plastering and electrics done by me also. There is a pale blue boat rocking in the harbour, a sheepdog waiting behind the front door and a wife: a tall brunette with a wide red mouth and a gentle smile. My name is Jack and I’m not too tall and I don’t have daft muscles, but I am strong and handsome. But when the women of Lossiemouth smile and flick their hair, I pretend I haven’t noticed – I’m just walking my dog along the beach before tea, that’s all, just living my life. I always remember that I have a beautiful wife waiting in the cottage, waiting for my return, and I always return. Since the trouble they’ve been good to me, my vanishings. They’ve helped keep my head above water, helped me to breathe more easily, help me escape the little boy.