The Boy Who Hit Play Page 5

  We walk down to the fjord where the river opens out into bigger water and finds what it is looking for. I think of it sighing out when it gets there. I think about us running north.

  Fairy lights click on in between the lamp posts.

  And Mulki shows us a sculpture of a paving slab with an army of miniature people hiding underneath it.

  I think about things underneath things.

  Things that are hidden.

  That you have to looks sideways to see.

  Like when you lift a rock up and a millipede springs out.

  You should expect it but you don’t – it’s always a surprise.

  I don’t see any weird shadows or green jackets.

  And I wonder if Floyd got what he wanted with the passports.

  And I link Dad’s arm and record the sound of:

  being happy to be lost in something new.

  And I think happiness is like sparklers. Bright and fizzy and gone quicker than you expect and I keep a lookout for flamethrowers.

  Complicated

  Back in the flat Mulki helps us to book the train tickets.

  ‘Do you work in travel?’ Lloyd asks.

  She laughs. ‘No. I’m a human rights lawyer,’ she says.

  ‘The world needs all the help it can get.’ Lloyd kneels on a chair and she nods.

  ‘I do my best. I see so much more than I am able to take on. It’s frustrating.’ She moves her hands like she wants to join them. ‘I do the Airbnb as it brings people together.’

  ‘Like us.’ I click on the train site.

  ‘Yes,’ she nods. ‘Like you.’ She feeds Colin, her guinea pig, and we buy tickets for trains that go all the way up to the north. One train, one sleeper. I look at photos of the compartments with little water bottles and square chocolates and bunks and their own sinks.

  I look at the times. ‘It takes eighteen hours. Seriously?’

  Mulki laughs. ‘Yes seriously,’ she says.

  I have a turn with Colin on my knee. He’s hot and squeaks.

  ‘Then we get a car,’ Dad says. ‘And a ferry.’

  I look at the map. At the bobbing island in the middle of nowhere. My island.

  I wish I could plug in my brain and see what I saw then.

  I wish brains were like hard drives.

  Mulki shows us photos of some sculptures we missed. Two kids riding their mum like a horse and a man kicking kids off his legs.

  ‘You think my city is ugly now?’ she says.

  ‘It’s interesting ugly,’ I say and we put Colin back in his house.

  She smiles and goes out for a run and I have a bath and thoughts swirl around in my brain.

  I think about Floyd and Lloyd and make a tower of bubbles. I think that everything basically comes down to three things:

  A – What did Floyd want the passports for?

  and

  B – Why is he trying to scare Lloyd?

  and

  C – How exactly does he know where we are?

  I split the bubble pile in two and think about me and my parents.

  The piles drift apart.

  And float back together again.

  Like us.

  Getting closer.

  I get out and my thoughts go down the plughole. I can feel the heat coming up through my feet on the green glass tiles.

  In the bedroom Dad opens the window and squats next to the camp bed. I get in. It traps my arms by my sides like I’m in a drainpipe.

  ‘You OK?’ he says.

  ‘I feel like a ruler.’

  ‘You want my bed?’

  ‘Nah. It’s OK.’ I want him to be happy and comfy. ‘Mulki’s nice.’ I try to wriggle my arms. ‘Do you wish you had someone?’

  ‘I’ve got you,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t mean me,’ I say.

  ‘It’s difficult isn’t it.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘it is. Now go to sleep.’

  He hums ‘La Bamba’ and goes into the lounge with the bottle of whisky and a book.

  I lie there and listen to the sound of the city outside, and the clock and the pigeons and cars and people going off places with clacking shoes and laughing, till a stone flies in through the window gap and lands on the floor.

  There is a note tied around it. The note says:

  I am going to kill you.

  I take it through to the lounge. Dad looks up from his book.

  Lloyd stops stroking the plants.

  And I say, ‘Lloyd, why did you fall out with Floyd?’

  And Lloyd says, ‘It’s complicated.’

  About Lloyd Partington

  As long as I’ve known, there’s always been a Lloyd Partington. Jumping in and out of our house and our windows. Planting a new apple tree every July and telling Mr Singh what a great job he’s doing with his bees. (I asked him if bees are really that important and he said yes, bees fertilise apple trees and without them we’d be destroyed.) Living in a caravan with a wood burner and a home-made veranda extension on the front, by the river in a field. Sometimes with rat infestations. Sometimes without.

  I didn’t know how much I didn’t know about him until now.

  I didn’t know he even had a brother.

  Or a castle.

  Sometimes the things you don’t know open up in front of you like strange presents that you don’t really want but have to pretend to like, and people you know feel like places you don’t know.

  In my head I imagine a 3D hologram of Lloyd spinning in a spy-film green light with stats typed out in computer writing underneath.

  Lloyd: friend

  History: unknown

  Roll Over

  ‘Lloyd,’ I say. ‘How dangerous is Floyd? Seriously.’

  ‘He’s three times national champion at rifle shooting,’ Lloyd says. ‘But now he hasn’t got a rifle.’

  ‘He’s got a crossbow.’

  ‘I don’t know where he got the crossbow.’

  ‘And our passports.’ I hold up the note. ‘And rocks.’

  ‘Can’t you just say sorry?’ Dad says.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About selling the Winchester.’

  ‘We haven’t spoken since my dad died.’ He looks at the floor. ‘Ten years ago.’

  ‘I don’t like getting attacked,’ Dad says.

  ‘We just need to be observant.’ Lloyd lifts a ladybird out of a plant pot. ‘He won’t follow us everywhere. Floyd gets bored. Eventually. Eventually he’ll just go back home.’

  Dad’s face looks pointy. He shuts the window and we all go to bed.

  I put my headphones on and listen to:

  being happy to be lost in something new.

  And try to get back to my happy place.

  But my head keeps saying:

  I’m going to kill you.

  I put my headphones round my neck.

  ‘Does he mean it, Lloyd?’ I whisper.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he whispers back. ‘When I was nine I accidentally trod on his Hornby train set and he took my pocket money for two years afterwards for repayments.’ Lloyd closes his eyes and rolls over. ‘Scaring people’s all Floyd knows.’

  And I think Floyd is going to be around for as long as it takes.

  And I roll

  around

  and around

  and around.

  And I must get to sleep at some point ’cos I wake up.

  Brain Scuttle

  I look at the clock. 2.23.

  Something’s in my mind and won’t let go.

  I pick my jeans up off the floor and creep into the lounge.

  The moon is up and the street is full of gentle rumble.

  If anyone is out there, they’re shuffling.

  I take my birth address and the stone note from my pocket.

  Colin scrabbles about in his house.

  The birth address is crisp and folded and keeps trying to close back up like a hand.

  The rock note’s crumpled and a
mess, like it’s trying to hide its words in the cracks.

  I put them on the glass table, smooth out the paper and look at the writing.

  Blue biro.

  Black felt marker.

  They’re both completely different.

  Apart from the Ks.

  Bending down with flicky-up ends.

  The Ks are exactly the same.

  EXACTLY.

  EXACTLY.

  EXACTLY.

  I look at

  I’m going to kill you.

  and

  Skriva.

  Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.

  Maybe lots of people write weird Ks?

  But I hate the feeling that Floyd and my birth address are in any way connected.

  Creepy Feeling

  Mulki has already gone to work when we get up. She’s left a note with her mobile number and cheese and crackers and juice and raisin buns with dark red raspberry jam. We eat and crunch with cups of tea.

  Dad wraps some buns up in cling film for later, then we pack up. I write, Thanks! on the blackboard wall in the kitchen. Lloyd picks up the chalk and writes:

  Tusen Tak, Lloyd

  I stare at it. The K is the same as Floyd’s.

  EXACTLY.

  EXACTLY.

  EXACTLY.

  Lloyd looks at me looking. ‘It means thanks very much,’ he says.

  ‘OK,’ I say. Right, so do loads of people have weird flicky Ks?

  We put the key under the mat and walk back out into the world.

  The people sea is sweeping down the street. We step into it. The sun is bright and twinkly. We give coins to people who look hungry and have signs we can’t read and avoid a suspicious flying golf ball from behind a billboard.

  Lloyd squat-runs with his hands over his head. ‘Run, Elvis, run!’ he says.

  Dad turns round and shouts into the air, ‘I’m not running!’

  I pull him along.

  ‘I hate bullies,’ Dad says.

  I try to shrug off the creepy feeling of being watched.

  ‘Maybe we should just pretend we’re on a different platform?’ I whisper to Lloyd. ‘Then sneak off on to another one.’

  ‘Yes.’ He nods.

  ‘No!’ Dad says and helps a kid who’s just fallen over by the vending machine. ‘No running, no hiding. If Floyd’s got something to say, he can say it to our face.’

  ‘What if he punches our face?’

  ‘He won’t,’ Dad says. ‘He’s a bully. Bullies don’t take on gangs.’ He puts his hand on Lloyd’s shoulder. ‘We’re your gang, Lloyd.’

  ‘Hmmn.’ Lloyd squeezes his eyes shut and just misses a lamp post, and we speed-walk past two men balancing on invisible sticks and homeless people with magazines which Dad buys, even though we can’t understand them, into the archy mouth of the station and into three seats heading north.

  Dots to the Left Mean

  You’re a Procrastinator

  On the train the seats go in single rows of two on each side. I sit on my own behind Lloyd and Dad.

  I snap the footrest down and we clunk off.

  I use the train Wi-Fi to google:

  What does your handwriting actually say about you?

  And find out that:

  Narrow L loops mean you may be restricting yourself, which could lead to feelings of tension

  and:

  Rounded letters mean you are creative and artistic.

  But nothing about weird flicky Ks.

  I hope my letters are rounded.

  I watch out the window and try to make videos of mountains that go up and up and water that throws itself off the top and lakes and jetties and forests but the tunnels keep getting in the way.

  Tree blur

  Black

  Lake

  Black

  Bush

  I think about Floyd.

  If he wanted to kill Lloyd, he’d have done it by now.

  But he didn’t.

  I think about animals.

  Animals threaten each other when they want to mate or when they’re scared, if they’ve got something to hide. Like a den with cubs or its babies. I learnt that at the zoo. People are basically animals. Rats wash more than humans.

  Humans threaten you when they’re scared. Of what?

  What does Floyd care about?

  People?

  Him and Lloyd haven’t spoken in years. If he was bothered, he would have sorted it. He didn’t.

  Money? He lived in a castle.

  He must have had money.

  Lloyd doesn’t.

  I tap Lloyd’s head. ‘Lloyd, how come you don’t have any money if you lived in a castle?’

  ‘I invested it, in other things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Good causes.’

  That figures.

  And I think:

  1 – Floyd stole the passports not the money.

  2 – Floyd said he was going to kill Lloyd, but he didn’t. He didn’t try to kill us – he tried to scare us.

  3 – People can’t travel without passports. If people are scared they go home.

  Floyd wants us to go home?

  WHY?

  The train stops at a yellow wooden station and a boy with a massive rucksack and cool Afro hair gets on and sits next to me.

  ‘I’m Bjorn,’ he says.

  ‘I’m Elvis,’ I say. ‘Not that Elvis.’

  ‘Not what Elvis?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You are from England?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Cool.’

  He shares his paprika crisps and tub of spicy nuts and shows me a game he’s made on his phone called Chainsaw Badger – it’s actually great. You have to run out of the way of the chainsaw.

  ‘I want to be a programmer,’ he says.

  I shrug. ‘Nice.’ I show him one of my videos. He laughs at the bit with the snail eyes.

  ‘Sick. You’ve been on a train in Norway before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Let’s go,’ and we walk down the carriages in our socks and press buttons to go in and out of doorways and into the buffet car with red plastic seats and posters of waffles and people serving behind a shiny silver bar. We look at Coke and meatballs and things in the click-down fridge cabinets that we have no money for. We lean in close to see what our reflections look like in the silver worktop. Our noses look massive. Bjorn makes some horns with a serviette and I make giraffe ears.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the person behind the counter says. We shake our heads and back away.

  ‘Let’s do Train Run,’ Bjorn says.

  ‘What’s that?

  ‘This.’

  We bomb it through the train playing Train Run, where you run as fast as you can along the carriage and try not to fall over on to people. The train grinds on the rails underneath us. My feet wobble. I try to keep up. I slip and grab a seat. I miss a baby’s head. We go round a bend. I balance to the right. We go into a tunnel and my head spins in the dark and we fall over in the bendy, joiny section and Bjorn shouts,

  ‘BRAK.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It means crash.’

  ‘BRAK,’ we shout. No one even looks at us.

  ‘Trains are so long in Norway no one cares,’ Bjorn says.

  We play Train Run until our third BRAK and Bjorn tears a hole in his knee and bleeds through his jeans. I bang my head on a railing.

  I think about Lloyd banging and bleeding.

  ‘Someone wants to kill my dad’s best friend,’ I say.

  ‘Who?’ He pokes the blood. I watch the red spread out over his dark skin.

  ‘His brother.’

  ‘I wish I could kill my brother.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ he says. ‘He’s so annoying.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Hmmn.’

  ‘He might not mean it.’ He rubs at the blood.

 
‘He shot at us with a crossbow.’

  ‘OK.’ He shrugs. ‘People do a lot of hunting in Norway.’ He licks the blood off his finger. ‘But not usually people.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How does he follow you?’

  ‘He watches,’ I say, ‘I think. Actually, I don’t know.’ I look round like I might get sprung and tell Bjorn everything.

  The bench.

  The paper.

  The passports.

  My birth address.

  He listens and looks out the window. ‘If I were you I’d ring it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The address. It feels connected.’ He spits on his finger. ‘Floyd and you.’

  ‘It isn’t connected.’ I push the thought away like a nettle. I don’t mention the Ks.

  He gets out his phone. Chainsaw Badger bounces along the screen. The trees run out of the way of the chainsaw. ‘When I made this, I made the badger follow the trees by programming them to go to the same place. You think he’s coming to get you … so you run away. Actually you’re just going in the same direction. Get it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe he isn’t following you. Maybe you’re both going to the same place. Stop going and see if he follows you.’ He puts it back in his pocket.

  ‘How does he know where we’re going? Him and Lloyd fell out. They don’t speak.’

  Bjorn shrugs. ‘Maybe he needs to follow you to get there.’ He gets up.

  I press the door button. It hisses. ‘Maybe Lloyd’s lying. Maybe they do speak.’

  ‘Why would he lie?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  And we walk back down the train and I think it’s funny how you can meet someone for three hours and talk about everything.

  And know someone for years and not.

  Off

  We get back to our seat and Bjorn starts putting all his stuff in his rucksack. The train pulls up to the station. ‘This is my stop.’ He writes his number on the back of my hand. I write mine on the back of his and we bump knuckles goodbye.

  A woman with grey hair and snow boots climbs off a four-by-four quad bike and trailer to meet him. I watch him on the platform and wave.

  He waves back and goes. The train pulls away.

  I wonder if he is one of my life threads, if we were meant to meet?