How the Trouble Started Read online

  ‘I always thought you were going to be an astronaut,’ Mr Mole said and looked at me and smiled. I managed a smile back.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You’ll stay for some tea?’ Before I had time to answer he was already up and walking off, and a minute later I could hear him chopping away. I sat back in the chair, closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of the room. The house was the happiest place I’d ever known and to be here like this felt like I was ruining it.

  As I tried to eat something he said, ‘Do you want to ring your mum Donald? Let her know where you are?’ I shook my head, and he smiled and said, ‘That bad is it?’ I tried to smile back but it was impossible. After he’d washed up I was ready to leave, I had an idea where I was going next, but Mr Mole said, ‘The spare room can be ready in minutes Donald.’ As soon as he said it my legs nearly gave way with tiredness and I had to sit down. I went to bed early and slept until lunchtime. Mr Mole insisted I had some food when I finally came downstairs. He left me to it and went out to work in the back garden. When I’d finished eating I went out and helped him for the rest of the afternoon, just like I had done years before. When it got to four I told him I’d better be on my way, I had somewhere I wanted to go. ‘Let your mum know you’re OK Donald. She’ll be worried sick.’ I nodded that I would and Mr Mole walked me to the front gate where we shook hands like men in a film. He closed the gate behind me and resumed his position with his hands dangling over into the street, watching as I walked down Hawthorne Road, back towards the centre of Clifton.

  I asked at the library. A bus from Clifton would take me to a village called Hethersby, from there it was a three-mile walk. Most people drive, I was told. The bus took for ever, winding its way through villages, waiting at stops for ten minutes without anybody getting on. The driver turned to me and said, ‘This is it, this is Hethersby’ at one of the stops in one of the villages. As soon as I stepped off the bus I could see it. There was nothing else to look at; it was massive, the only thing on the horizon. A huge white satellite dish supported by crisscrossed scaffolding. An antenna in the middle of it all, pointing to the sky. The Pilchard Telescope, finally. It didn’t look anything like a telescope. I set off walking.

  I found my way to the entrance, walked through the car park and followed the signs to the visitor centre. I tried the door but it was locked. A man in a blazer with a walkie-talkie appeared and told me it closed at five, but I could walk to the base of the telescope, he said, walk the path around it. He said that they locked the gates at eight, so I had forty minutes. He pointed out which path to follow and I set off walking again. No one else was around that late so I stood alone, staring up at the telescope. Faded boards with facts about Thomas Pilchard and the telescope were spread out along the route. I stopped at each one, but couldn’t take any of the information in, the words refused to add up to anything that made any sense. I stared at the telescope again but could only see Jake lying in the quarry. My legs felt weak and I sat down on a bench. Eventually an announcement crackled out of a speaker somewhere. The site would close in ten minutes, would visitors please make their way to the exit. I looked around and saw a wooden shelter over by a small clutch of trees. I walked into the trees. After a few minutes the man with the walkie-talkie appeared and walked the path around the telescope, whistling. He walked over to the shelter and peered inside. On his way out he picked up a little teddy that had been dropped in the grass. He looked it over and put it in his blazer pocket. He locked the gates behind him. I heard a car start up and drive off.

  I moved into the shelter and sat down on the floor and looked over at the telescope. Massive and silent. Miles above the sky ended and space began and planets and stars existed. Somewhere up there Neptune was spinning, like it always had done. Nothing down here making any difference to anything up there. Dusk fell, the sky darkening, slowly at first, and then suddenly, the huge telescope fading impossibly away. I fell asleep easier than I thought I would but slept badly. I dreamt of falling boys, and broken boys. I woke at dawn when the birds started singing. It was worse than the morning I’d found out Oliver Thomas was dead. It was a long time before anyone arrived but eventually the man in the blazer turned up, walked around the path again, and ten minutes later opened the front gate. After half an hour visitors began to arrive. First through the gate was a man holding a little girl’s hand. They approached the blazer man, the man explained something, the girl stood shyly at his side. He ruffled the little girl’s head as he spoke. The blazer man crouched down and pulled the teddy out of his pocket and presented it to the girl. A smile raced over her lips, she took the teddy quickly, pulled it into her chest and wiggled. The men laughed and shook hands, the little girl was made to say thank you and they turned and walked back to the car park, the girl still clutching the teddy closely to her chest. I waited until a few more visitors turned up and left the shelter and walked to the exit. Nobody noticed me leave. I walked out through the gates, across the car park and onto the country road. I was in the middle of nowhere.

  28

  I shouldn’t have pestered for the bike. And normally I didn’t nag Mum for new things. I wasn’t a pain like that; I knew we couldn’t afford much. And I was easily pleased as a child – it never failed to amaze me that I could walk out of a library with a bag full of books for free. But something changed when I was seven years old, when I decided I must get my hands on a bike. I knew the chances were slim, that it was unlikely we would have the kind of money needed to buy a bike, but I longed for one in a way I’d never longed for anything before. I talked about it so much that Mum tensed at the mention of the ‘b’ word. She must have told a friend about the situation because one afternoon I was marched to the garage of an older boy’s house and was told to sit on his bike, to see if it was a fit. The bike was too big for me, even with the seat as low as it would go, but not too big that Mum could turn it down at the price it was being offered. The sale was agreed, the garage door slammed shut, and I was told I wouldn’t see it again until the morning of my birthday. I was delighted with the bike. The fact that there were dirty stickers stuck to the frame and the handlebar grips had long since started to wear away didn’t bother me at all. That it was battered and too big didn’t come into it. It was a bike and it was going to be mine. I finally gave Mum’s ears a rest and waited impatiently for my birthday to arrive.

  The morning of my birthday I was more excited than I’d been in previous years. I wanted to get out and start riding. Feel the wind in my hair. Ride along with the front wheel up in the air. Skid to a stop on the waste ground behind our house, scattering stones in my wake. Before any of that could happen I was called into the kitchen to eat my breakfast, which I wasn’t even hungry for. ‘The sooner you eat, the quicker you get your bike,’ Mum said. I sped up and worked my way through the toast whilst Mum sat opposite fiddling with her camera. I should have guessed something was up when she followed me into the hall to the bike under the dustsheet with the camera in her hand. I lifted the sheet up and stopped mid-reveal. I was looking down at a new black tyre, shiny silver spokes and a bright red frame. No rust anywhere, no stickers or scratches, not a blemish in sight. I must have stared for a while because Mum became impatient and said, ‘Come on then Donald,’ and pulled the sheet from the rest of the bike herself. She uncovered a bright red, brand-new Raleigh. I was stunned. She took a picture of me, standing there staring, like I was seeing something I couldn’t quite understand, but the next photograph must have been from a few minutes later when I’d come to a bit, and I’m stood holding the handlebars of my new bike, a beaming smile plastered across my face.

  I was well aware that most boys and girls my age had been riding bikes for years before I got my hands on one. That was partly the reason I wanted a go. I’d watched them shooting up and down the street, chasing each other around, getting shouted at by neighbours, beeped at by cars. It looked great fun. What I hadn’t considered was that a skill was required; that there was a knack to be mastered. I’d seen kids fl
y past my window and I wanted some of that. I wanted a go and I thought that once you got yourself sat on a bike, the battle was won. So after the euphoria of pulling the dustsheets off and discovering the new bike underneath came the disappointment when I realised I was completely unable to do anything with it. I wheeled the bike out to the track that ran down the back of our house and sat on it and had no idea what to do next. I lifted one foot off the ground and placed it on a pedal, and then as soon as I lifted the other foot up, the first foot shot back down to the safety of the earth. I must have done this over and over again for about twenty minutes. Riding a bike seemed as impossible as flying to me right then. I went back to the house and asked Mum how it was done, but she shrugged at the question and I understood, her part of the miracle had already been performed.

  In the afternoon I hit on the idea of taking the bike round to the front of the house and using the kerb to help me along. I kept my left foot on the ground and pushed the pedal forward with my right foot. I shuffled the bike along and I was moving at least, and movement felt like progress. As my confidence grew I could do a couple of revolutions of the pedal with my right foot, lift my left foot off the ground for a couple of seconds in the knowledge that the kerb was close by to save me. By the end of the first day I could wobble my way forward for a good two pedal revolutions. I was out until the street lights buzzed on and Mum dragged me in. I was shattered at night, but I went to bed knowing that I was further on than I had been that morning. By the end of the second day I was riding in a wobbly line for a good few yards. Turning around had yet to be mastered and I couldn’t see how it could be done, so each time I wanted to head in a different direction I dismounted and turned the bike to face the way I wanted to travel. But it came in time. When I finally managed a circle with no feet touching the ground it was a great moment. I’d taken my bike to the piece of waste ground at the end of the track behind our house and did the turn, which was so gradual it had the circumference of a cricket pitch. As my confidence grew the circles became tighter and faster and I made myself dizzy and had to sit down to let the spinning subside. Two weeks later I could skid and wheelie like any other kid. I spent most of that summer on my bike. I wasn’t allowed to stray too far so it was mainly up and down the road to number sixty-five and down the back track to the waste ground behind the houses. I’m not sure what happened to the bike in the end – it didn’t come with us to Raithswaite but I don’t remember leaving it behind in Clifton either. I do remember that the police had it for a while. Maybe they never gave it back. Maybe it’s still in a room somewhere in Clifton, covered in dust and rust with a faded evidence tag tied around the handlebars.

  29

  If I was in Iowa I would get up early. Walk the dog before work. Have a breakfast of eggs, coffee and orange juice with Lucy before jumping in the pickup and driving to the store. I would push open the door to the warm smell of wood and dust, make myself another coffee and get to work on the accounts at the counter. At Raithswaite police station there aren’t any nice smells. There are two policemen, a man in a suit, my mum and me. We are all sat in a small hot room. One policeman is asking all the questions.

  ‘How would you describe your relationship with Jake?’

  ‘We were friends.’

  ‘A sixteen-year-old and an eight-year-old boy?’

  I nodded and said, ‘Yes.’ My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too high and scratchy.

  ‘Did it not strike you as inappropriate?’

  ‘I didn’t think so.’

  ‘Do you understand what “inappropriate” means?’

  I nodded that I did.

  ‘You spent a lot of time at the playground on his street?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘Aren’t you too old to be hanging around a playground?’

  I didn’t answer that one.

  ‘Why this playground? It’s nearly two miles from your house.’

  ‘I walk all around Raithswaite. I go all over.’

  ‘You go to all the playgrounds?’

  ‘No. I go all over Raithswaite.’

  ‘Sixteen-year-olds and eight-year-olds don’t normally meet and become friends.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Did you approach him first?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Somebody must have spoken to someone first. Today I spoke to you first. Who spoke to who first? You or Jake?’

  ‘We just got chatting at the library one day. I saw him in the library quite a bit. He looked lonely. His mum was never with him, she never looked after him.’

  ‘And this is what you were doing? Looking after him?’

  ‘Sort of. Sometimes.’

  ‘So you spoke to him first then, because he looked lonely?’

  ‘Maybe. I can’t remember exactly.’

  ‘Don’t you have any friends your own age?’

  ‘Not too many.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  I thought about Neptune up there. All that space and silence.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  30

  ‘What happened when he fell?’

  ‘I was trying to help him. Trying to get him down, but he panicked and slipped and fell.’

  ‘He said you were chasing him.’

  ‘I was chasing him, but when he got into trouble on the quarry wall I was trying to help him.’

  ‘Why were you chasing him?’

  ‘I was trying to get to him, then I could walk him home safely. He’d gone silly and run off.’

  ‘He says that you dragged him to the house to show him a ghost and he tried to escape and you went after him.’

  ‘But he wanted to see the ghost.’

  ‘The ghost that you’d invented. To get him to go to the house.’

  My mum put her head in her hands. I wished I lived alone in a house on top of a high hill. I’d sleep in the attic. As close to space as possible.

  ‘I only invented it for him. So he could have fun.’

  ‘We’ve been in the house. We’ve seen your room.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Did you set all that up? The table and chairs?’

  ‘I didn’t steal them.’

  ‘But you put all that stuff in there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? What did you and Jake do there?’

  ‘Read books.’

  ‘You read books?’

  ‘Sometimes. Horror books. He liked them.’

  ‘You took an eight-year-old boy, walked him nearly two miles across town to an abandoned house and read him horror books?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me for a long time.

  ‘Is he OK?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s out of hospital now. Still battered and bruised.’

  ‘Will you tell him I’m sorry?’

  ‘What are you sorry about Donald?’

  ‘That he fell and hurt himself.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘I’m sorry he was scared.’

  ‘Why was he scared?’

  ‘He got silly thoughts in his head.’

  ‘Silly how?’

  I didn’t know if I should say it.

  ‘His friend had told him that I might be a bad man.’

  ‘What type of bad man?’

  ‘I don’t know. But suddenly he didn’t want to be friends.’

  ‘And you were angry about that?’

  ‘Not angry, sad.’

  ‘But you were chasing him. A sixteen-year-old takes an eight-year-old to an abandoned house, to see a ghost that he’s invented, and when the young boy gets scared the older boy chases him, so he thinks his only way to escape is to scale a sixty-foot wall. What are we to make of that Donald? How scared must he have been?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  Whatever I could say to them would only make it worse.

  31

  It did get worse when they found out t
hat I’d spent the night at Jake’s house. I hadn’t told them, but they must have spoken to Jake again and got it from him. It was lunchtime when a car arrived at the house and me and Mum were driven back to the station.

  ‘You broke into the house and stayed in his room?’

  ‘I didn’t break in. He was scared of being alone.’

  ‘So you were looking after him? Making him feel better?’

  ‘Yes, I was. He wanted me to stay with him.’

  ‘That’s not what he told us. He told us that you turned up one night at the back door and you pushed yourself in.’

  I shook my head. It wasn’t like that.

  ‘Did you force your way in?’

  ‘I didn’t push myself in. He let me in.’

  ‘He told us that he was scared of you, that you wouldn’t leave him alone.’

  I didn’t know whether to believe them or not. I wished I could talk to Jake. I didn’t think he’d been scared.

  ‘Ask him about the storm. Ask him about the night of the storm. There was thunder and lightning and he was terrified and I stayed with him. I helped him fall back asleep.’

  ‘How many times did you go to the house at night?’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘Twice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you not see how inappropriate that is? To turn up like that and spend the night with an eight-year-old boy.’

  ‘But his mum wasn’t there. She left him all the time.’

  He stopped going at me for a second then and said,

  ‘It wasn’t your place to act on it. Not in this way. You should have told someone.’

  ‘I was just trying to look after him. Trying to make him feel better.’

  ‘Were you taking advantage of the fact that he was left alone?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I was trying to make him happy.’

  The detective looked at me. He didn’t seem to know what he was looking at.