The man didn’t even look at me as he bagged the drink. I didn’t expect to be asked for ID, people always think I’m older than my age because of my height, but it could have been a toddler stocking up with booze and they’d have got served the same. I carried the drink back to the haunted house, got settled in my chair and opened a can. I’d bought eight cans of lager and a bottle of gin. I wasn’t sure if it would be enough, but I thought I could always go back for more if I needed it. I drank a can of lager quickly and felt nothing so I tried some of the gin, but it was like drinking petrol and the only way I could get it down was by mixing it into the lager. After the lager and gin together, it started to hit. But Jake’s mum had been in a proper state when I saw her so I ploughed on to try and get to where she’d been. It didn’t take long. I remember I went to the quarry. I remember I shouted to the moon that it was a big silver-faced bastard and thought that was funny. I don’t remember how I cut my hand, I don’t remember how I hurt my knee. I do remember trying to sneak back up to my room and getting caught by Mum and not being able to stop laughing as she shouted at me and slapped me across the head. I don’t remember being sick out of my bedroom window but I know that I was because I was made to clean it up the next morning and the smell and sight of it made me sick again, and then I was cleaning up new sick on top of old. And at the end of it all I was no nearer to learning if Jake’s mum would remember seeing me. The only thing I’d found out was when you drink like that, the next morning you feel like you’ve been poisoned and you want to die.
*
I couldn’t stand not knowing. I would rather have been in an interview room, answering questions, than sat in my room at home wondering if every car coming down the road was a police car heading to the house. I hadn’t gone to school, the way I’d felt that morning I wouldn’t have made it to the front gates without being sick again, and Mum didn’t even try and make me. In the afternoon I still felt terrible, but I needed to know what was going on. I set off to try and intercept Jake on the way back from school, to ask if his mum had said anything, but my head was a mess and my timing was all wrong and I got to the school just as the last few dawdlers were leaving, and Jake was long gone. I set off on his route, to see if I could catch him up, to see if he was at the playground, but it was hard to walk fast, every footstep sent a jolt of pain to my brain, a kick of queasiness to my stomach, so I had to slow down just to make the distance. As I was about to turn onto Fox Street I saw the police car parked outside the front of Jake’s house. Right outside, no mistaking, no room for hope. I veered back onto Waddington Road, my legs suddenly drunk again. I headed to the river, to where me and Fiona had walked a few days before. I left the road as quickly as possible, crossed a field and walked down to the riverbank. I found a spot by a bend where the water chops its way around the corner. I dropped myself into the grass. I didn’t think about anything. I watched the water hit the rocks and negotiate its way around the turn. Groups of gnats lowered themselves over the water and flickered together like TV static. A brown fish launched itself into the air and hung for a second before dropping back into the water. I’d been there at least two hours before I finally got up to leave. I felt strangely calm as I walked through town and home. It was like I’d reached a conclusion somehow. It was a warm night and people were out and a friendliness hung over the place. Dogs gave me an interested sniff as they passed, neighbours were chatting over hedges in front gardens, and windows and doors were open everywhere. I was reminded that I liked Raithswaite. That it had been good to me, considering. The terror edged its way back in before I turned the last corner to our house, but when I saw there was no police car in sight I knew I had a while longer as a free man. I went straight up to my room and was in bed early. Before I drifted off I realised that these things could take a while. She didn’t have a clue who I was and Jake didn’t know where I lived exactly. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know my second name. They would be coming, I was sure of that, but they hadn’t worked me out yet.