Chapter 18
‘Everyone, this is Eve. Eve, this is Jess, Madison, Mikey and Keanu.’ Jack pulls the door shut, walks round the front of the van, and swings himself into the driver’s seat.
‘Are you his girlfriend?’ a voice asks, as Jack pulls away from the kerb.
Eve swivels in her seat. Jess has lank brown hair and tooth braces, and appears to genuinely want to know the answer to her question. ‘No. We were at school together, years ago.’
Jess digests this information. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend,’ she confides.
‘You never,’ says pale-eyed, narrow-featured Keanu. He reaches across and shoves Jess’s shoulder.
‘Get off me.’ Jess scowls. ‘Fucking retard.’
‘You never got a boyfriend. Never will, with that face.’
‘Guys, wind your necks in,’ murmurs Madison, smearing sunblock on her broad, freckled face.
Eve glances across at Jack, who’s gazing serenely through the windscreen at the road ahead and detects the ghost of a smile.
Ten minutes later they reach a car park in a chalk quarry. They disembark, and as Jack makes a phone call, Madison opens the back of the van and distributes KitKats, supermarket sandwiches, water bottles and backpacks. To her own pack she adds a prismatic compass and a pair of binoculars.
As Eve watches, she becomes aware that she’s being watched by Mikey, who so far has yet to open his mouth. He’s probably about sixteen, with melancholy eyes and long prehensile fingers.
‘All set?’ she asks him with a smile.
He nods. ‘Where we’re going, yeah, you know there’s no broadband?’
‘Right.’
‘I’m just warning you. We’ll have to use compasses.’
‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’
‘I s’pose it is, but I do wonder.’
‘Wonder what, Mikey?’
‘Like, is this whole day just a level in someone’s game?’ He gestures to the hills and woods surrounding them. ‘Is this all, like, a world?’
‘I’m… I’m not quite sure—’
‘Because if it is a world, where’s the edge? Or is there no edge. And are we PCs or NPCs?’
‘I’m lost.’
‘Me too. Because if I’m a player character, then at least someone’s playing me. But if I’m a non-player character…’ He shrugs his backpack onto his shoulders. ‘It’s like free will. Suppose this conversation, that we think we’re making up as we go along, is actually scripted.’
‘Do you worry about this sort of thing a lot?’ Eve asks.
‘Yeah, I do. I really do.’
They set off behind Jess and Keanu, who are still shoving and swearing at each other. Madison leads, setting a steady pace, and Jack brings up the rear. They appear to be heading for a patch of woodland a few hundred metres up the track.
Bird’s-foot trefoil. That’s what that yellow plant is called. The one we used to call scrambled-egg plant. If you see it, you usually see those little metallic blue butterflies, because their caterpillars feed on it. Memory’s such a strange thing. Who was I then? Is part of me still her?
Madison signals for them to halt. Slowly, she lifts her binoculars and trains them on a patch of grassland some twenty metres away. Eve looks but can see nothing. Madison beckons to Keanu and Jess, hands them the binoculars, and points. Eve and Mikey follow cautiously behind.
‘What am I looking for?’ Jess asks.
‘A hare,’ Madison says. ‘You can just see the tips of his ears.’
Keanu picks up a lump of chalk from the path and throws it in the direction of the hare, which immediately bolts, streaking through the long grass.
Madison turns to him. ‘And what was the point of that, exactly?’
‘He can’t help it,’ Jess says. ‘He’s literally a moron.’
In answer, Keanu jumps up and down, barking like a dog. Jess kicks furiously at his shins, but he bounces out of reach.
Eve glances enquiringly at Mikey.
‘Jess’s father’s been banned from keeping dogs for five years,’ Mikey murmurs.
‘Why?’
‘Organising fights.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Yeah. It’s mental, isn’t it?’
‘So did you see the hare?’ Eve asks.
‘Yes. It was beautiful.’
‘And real?’
‘It did seem real,’ Mikey admits. ‘But I guess we’ll never know.’
‘Why don’t you lead for a bit?’ Madison says, handing Keanu the compass.
Keanu stares blankly at it, turning it over in his hands.
‘Do you remember how to use this?’
Jess sneers. ‘No fuckin’ chance.’
‘Keanu?’ Madison asks, but he doesn’t reply.
‘OK, Jess, you’re obviously the expert,’ Madison says. ‘Show us how you find north.’
But Keanu won’t hand over the compass. Instead, he tightens his fist around it. His jaw sets, his body becomes rigid, and he starts to tremble.
‘Here we go,’ says Mikey.
Jess rounds on him. ‘Shut your fucking mouth, freak.’ She approaches Keanu. ‘Hey,’ she says, laying a wary hand on his forearm. ‘It’s OK. It’s me, Jess.’
He stares at her with frozen, suspicious eyes.
‘It’s OK,’ she repeats. ‘It’s me. It’s me.’ She wraps her thin arms around him. ‘Come on,’ she murmurs. ‘Let’s just keep goin’.’
He disengages, sniffs, and wipes his nose on the back of his hand. ‘You’re still fuckin’ ugly,’ he mutters.
‘And you’re God’s gift, I s’pose? Gimme that compass.’
Fifteen minutes later, Eve and Jack are sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree at the edge of the woods.
Nearby, Madison and Jess are sitting on opposite sides of a stile.
Madison is eating a cheese and piccalilli sandwich, Jess is painting her fingernails, and Keanu is chasing Mikey across a ploughed field and throwing stones and clods of earth at him.
‘They’re quite the handful,’ Eve says, snapping off a KitKat finger.
‘I’d have warned you,’ Jack says. ‘But I was worried you wouldn’t come.’
‘I’d have come.’
He smiles and unscrews the cap of his water bottle.
‘Is it just these four, or do you take other kids out?’
‘In total, I’ve got eighteen signed up. It just depends whose parents want them out of the house for the day.’
‘I’ve noticed you let them sort their own issues out.’
‘I’m there if it gets out of hand, obviously. But yeah, you’re right. They have to learn to deal with each other.’
‘Madison’s impressive.’
He nods. ‘She wants to join the military, and I think she’d do brilliantly. I’m encouraging her to apply to the Army Foundation College.’
‘And the others?’
‘They’ve all got their battles to fight. But there’s something about all this open space that makes that easier.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
‘In a flat or a small house issues get shelved, because tired parents can’t deal with the drama.
Out here, you can let things play out. Shouty teenagers can’t dominate a place like this.
They can’t even make an impression on it.
Roman legionaries climbed these hills. These fields have been laid out like this for centuries. ’
‘You’re giving them a sense of perspective, then.’
‘I’m not giving them anything, I just bring them here. This is deep England. It teaches its own lessons.’
Oxana will have left for the Greek Islands by now.
She may already be at sea. There’s certainly no way of contacting her – not that I want to.
I could contact Johnny Fernandes, I suppose, but not without giving away my whereabouts.
Who am I kidding? Johnny could find me in five minutes if he really wanted or needed to.
But I can’t imagine that he’s got much use for me right now.