The Dark Inside Page 2

  His stepfather grinned. Shook his head.

  ‘Nice try,’ he said, flexing his leather-bound fist, then raising it as he began to shout.

  But another voice was shouting too.

  The man in the greatcoat thundered over the floor towards them.

  A stray boot caught James in the knee and he cried out and collapsed into the corner. The floorboards beneath him were as hard as bone.

  When he looked up, he saw his stepfather flat against the wall, the sharp edge of an old kitchen knife lying against the soft white pipe of his throat. The man in the greatcoat was holding it, his free arm pinned across the other man’s chest. On the floor was the green woollen beanie with raspberries and tiny wild strawberries spilt around it. A handful of hard red cherries rolled like marbles in the moonlight then struck the wall and stopped.

  James’s stepfather struggled to breathe. Spit whistled in his teeth and white streamers unfurled and stuck to his chin. A leg began to jerk. And the jerkiness spread until his whole body shook.

  When the man in the greatcoat let go, James’s stepfather tumbled to all fours and stayed there, panting like a dog, looking down at the floor.

  ‘You try to hit that boy again and it’ll be the last time. We go hurting children and the world’s gone mad. MAD!’

  He looked at James. The gash on his cheek had almost healed and he was far stronger than he had been before. But James dared not speak or ask a single question.

  ‘I’ll be watching you both. All the way home.’ Then he turned to look out of the window and dropped the kitchen knife into the pocket of his greatcoat and waited for them to leave. When they reached the door, he turned back around. ‘Bad things happen to good people,’ he said to James who paused, hoping for more. But the man in the greatcoat clicked his tongue. Shook his head. ‘I’m damned if I can tell you why.’

  The two of them walked back down the hill towards the village in silence. The one time James looked back he saw a figure, silhouetted in one of the upstairs windows, watching them as he said he would.

  James did not sleep at all. Every creak in the house was his stepfather pacing up and down the landing, back and forth past his bedroom door.

  Eventually, he pulled back the curtains so he could see the house on the hill. So the man there might be able to see him too.

  The man who had been fine, just like he said he would be.

  Who was stumped by the same sort of questions as him.

  5

  The school was in Falconbury. It sucked in kids from the villages scattered outside the town. You could learn what was happening miles away by wandering round the playground at break. It was like turning the dial on a radio.

  James was kicking a stone across a hopscotch court, his hands turning sweaty in his pockets, when he heard about the fair on the outskirts of town. Three boys from his year were sitting against the black wire fence, talking, as he walked past.

  Everyone knew about the travellers. They came to Falconbury each summer and set up camp. A fairground would blossom on the rough ground just outside the town for a few days and then disappear, leaving snowdrifts of food wrappers and fish-and-chips papers. James used to go with his mum every year. The last time had been the best. He had won a goldfish in a bag by throwing a hoop around it. And an old woman had read his fortune, telling him he would travel the world. He hoped she was right.

  James edged a little closer to hear the three boys properly, keeping close to the fence, kicking at a tuft of grass that had grown through the black wire eyes. His stepfather would not allow him to go to the fair. So this was as close as he could get.

  ‘. . . and there I am, in the dark, peeing up the side of this caravan with bright green writing on it, when the door opens. And I’m thinking, You div.’ One of the boys was telling a story and the other two laughed. ‘Because, suddenly, there’s two blokes standing on the steps, looking down at me, and one of them’s holding a shotgun.’

  ‘And your pecker’s out?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m like full stream.’

  All three of them laughed.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘The one with the gun asks if I’d like him peeing up the side of my house.’ One of the other boys laughed again. ‘So I start saying sorry and zipping up and walking away all at the same time, trying not to piss myself, when one of them shouts out and asks if I’ve seen anyone else around the caravans. Because they’re looking for somebody.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A man. Black hair. Wearing a blue greatcoat, they said.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘No. Because all I’m thinking is, I need to disappear before they shoot me. Or worse. But before I can run I hear the gun clicking and a voice telling me to stand still. And then there’s footsteps. And I’m thinking, this is it. I’m dead. Till one of them spins me round and asks if I’m sure I haven’t seen the man they’re looking for. And I tell him no again. But this time he opens up a little bag and drops something into his hand for me to see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gold, mate. A piece of fricking gold. And he tells me if I hear anything about who they’re looking for then I could end up getting rich.’

  There was a hushed silence in the group until one of them burst out laughing and shook his head.

  ‘It’s true, mate. If anyone here knows anything, I’ll split it with you.’

  ‘Gold? Really? You’re joking.’

  James was already walking away when he heard a shout and someone getting up behind him, the wire fence rattling and springing back. But he kept looking ahead, walking straight towards a teacher who was patrolling the playground and teasing a group of kids complaining about their homework.

  When a ray of sun drifted over him, he held out his hand, imagining it was gold warming his outstretched palm. He wondered how much he would need to buy every one of his dreams.

  6

  James wandered up and down the muddy avenues between the caravans, looking for the right one. Somewhere bacon was cooking. He passed a cube of hay bales and walked golden stalks into the mud.

  Rounding a corner, he came upon a group of boys not much younger than him, lounging on the grass, their torsos browned in the sun and the whites of their eyes shining back at him. One of them shouted out about his school uniform and the others laughed. When something pinged against his backpack, he disappeared behind a veil of red sheets drying on a line between two caravans. They smelt of the hospital he had stayed in after the accident. The cool of their shade made him shiver as he stood waiting for the laughter to stop.

  After taking off his tie and putting it in the front pocket of his backpack, he walked on with his blazer bunched under his arm.

  The fairground was pitched on a patch of waste ground in the distance, quiet and gloomy, like a grounded ship in the daylight. Gulls rose suddenly from the peak of the helter-skelter tower, wailing to each other, as though the silence had spooked them, or perhaps bored them. Suddenly, the fair looked so worn and small that James felt like an old man trying to remember what had been so fascinating about all the whirr and colours and noise.

  When he spotted the caravan with bright green lettering on the side and a small set of wooden steps in front of the door, he stopped. Somewhere a dog growled. James saw it. Large and black, lying in the crawl space underneath the caravan, with its ears pricked towards him.

  It crept forwards, a thick metal chain uncoiling behind it, its hindquarters swelling as it stood up.

  When it growled again, James turned round to leave.

  And then he heard a door opening.

  ‘Hey,’ said a man’s voice behind him. ‘Whatchoo want, little man?’ The nape of James’s neck bristled. He kept staring back the way he had come. ‘Whatchoo want, I said?’

  The dog barked.

  The chain danced and clinked.

  James turned back around.

  The traveller was standing on the top step. He was wearing a waxy green coat, even though it was w
arm, and a flat cap was pushed back on his head. Another man was standing with him, peering out from the doorway.

  The lie James told them was exactly as he had planned to say it, shot through with glimmers of truth to make it seem more real.

  His hands were clenched inside his pockets the whole time.

  7

  The old brown car smelt of stale beer and the spent butts squashed into the ashtrays his stepfather left lying round the house. The footwell was ankle deep in receipts, newspapers and flyers for the fair. The plastic back of the driver’s seat had been slashed diagonally from top to bottom and nuggets of orange sponge had settled everywhere like down.

  The two men in the front seats said nothing. The one wearing the green jacket and the flat cap was driving. The other one coughed and spat a foamy, stringy missile through his half-open window before winding it shut. He pulled down the sun visor and inspected his face in the mirror, picking at a spot on his nose. Eventually, he said something to the driver in a language that James did not understand and both men laughed.

  When the driver’s eyes caught James watching him, the boy looked away. The nugget of gold was still there in his hand when he opened it, shiny with sweat. He had puffed out his chest and demanded it before agreeing to show the travellers where the man in the greatcoat was hiding. They had told him he bargained like a man when it was placed in his outstretched palm, promising him more if they found who they were looking for.

  But James knew that, however hard he tried, he was not a man like them. The travellers were brawny with stubbled faces. Great lines of black hair ran down the backs of their fingers. There was a musk about them like woodsmoke.

  ‘Yoo’se gonna be even richer, boy, if we catch him,’ said the one in the passenger seat who had turned round to look at James. The driver in the flat cap laughed out loud.

  ‘Long as he’s telling us the truth.’

  ‘Course he is,’ said the other one and kept staring until James heard the hammer of his heart.

  ‘Course I am,’ he said and forced himself to stare straight back.

  And the man just nodded.

  ‘Well, don’t go spending it all at once now,’ he said and smiled. His teeth were rickety stumps, whittled through and browned like rocks suffering the trickle of water.

  8

  ‘The barn’s beyond the village,’ said James, leaning forward. ‘You can go round the back road to get there. Take the next left.’

  The car took the turning. Both travellers looked up at the house on the hill as they passed it.

  ‘What’s that place?’ asked the driver.

  ‘The house on the hill. No one ever goes there.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Too dangerous. It’s all falling in.’

  The one in the passenger seat shook his head.

  ‘That wouldn’t bother our man,’ he said and gave it another glance.

  ‘It was definitely the barn,’ said James, rolling the piece of gold between his fingers. ‘That’s where I saw him. Looked like he was making a bed up in the hayloft.’ Silt gathered in his throat. It was difficult to swallow. James knew that lies were better when they were told simply. The driver watched him in the mirror, his eyes flicking back and forth to the road.

  ‘Don’t worry, son,’ he said eventually. ‘We all gotta learn to look after number one. Yer mam and da en’t gonna be around forever.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said James, nodding. ‘I know.’ And then he looked down into the footwell and listened to the rumble of the car on the road.

  He wondered what his mother would say if she could see him sitting in this car, lying to these men to get their gold. He wasn’t sure if there was a place for people who had died. Sometimes he wished there was. But there were other times when he told himself such a place couldn’t possibly exist because the stories about it seemed so old and worn through and of a different world entirely.

  The barn was shut. Two big black doors, with a metal bar hanging down. The travellers approached the building cautiously, one from the front, the other circling round and approaching from the back. They kept low to the ground, creeping like mist. James watched them, leaning against the old brown car parked down the track near the turning they had taken off the lane.

  He knew that they would not find the man in the greatcoat, however hard they looked, amongst the old farm machinery on the lower floor. And, even though there was a ladder up to the hayloft, all they would find upstairs would be grain sacks, some piled as high as the boy’s waist, others laid down to make a bed for whenever he lied to his stepfather about ‘pretend’ friends having invited him to a sleepover.

  Sacks.

  And a makeshift bed.

  Puddles of grain.

  And rat droppings.

  He stared at the gold in his hand, trying to calculate how much this one piece might be worth. Turning it round in the sunlight, his smile disappeared as it occurred to him how easy lying was. He placed the nugget between his teeth, remembering how the prospectors during the Gold Rush in America had tested their treasure to see how soft and golden it really was.

  When he bit down, it was as hard as iron. Fool’s gold was what the prospectors had called it.

  Inside him, hope turned to dust.

  He had lied.

  But the travellers had lied too.

  He was a fool.

  But the travellers were less foolish than him.

  They were men and he was just a boy.

  When the two of them emerged from the barn, they stood in the sunlight, talking. One of them lit a cigarette. The golden wheat fields surrounding them hissed in the breeze. Eventually, the man stubbed out his cigarette and both of them walked back to the car.

  ‘He could have gone to Hemingsford. That’s the next town,’ said James, pointing away from Timpston. ‘It’s not too far. An hour’s walk maybe, if you stay on the footpath.’

  ‘Could be,’ said the one in the flat cap. And then he held out his hand. A large, callused palm. Deep creases blackened with dirt. ‘Change of plan. You come and see us next year instead. We’ll let you into the fair for free and throw in a couple of rides. I never forget a face.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said James, nodding, ‘I will.’ And he placed the nugget of make-believe gold into the open palm in front of him. And the man in the flat cap stared at him for what seemed like an age.

  The other one coughed.

  ‘Hemingsford, you reckon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. But the man was not talking to him.

  ‘Nah,’ said the other one and dropped the lump of gold back into his drawstring bag and pulled the cords tight.

  James was walking back down the dusty track to the lane with his backpack over his shoulder and his blazer under his arm when the car drove past him and a window rolled down.

  ‘Nice working with ya,’ one of them shouted and both men laughed.

  At the end of the track the old brown car turned left, away from the village. James watched it until it disappeared into the shimmering line of wheat.

  And he kept staring for a good while after that.

  9

  He walked back along the lane towards the village for about a mile before taking a footpath that cut through hazel and waist-high bracken and joined the road winding up around the hill towards the house. Below him, Timpston was hazy in the warm. He picked out his house, a terracotta cube. Nearby, the cross on the church tower flashed golden in the late afternoon sun.

  He watched for the old brown car and the travellers, but there was no sign of anybody. So he crept in through the kitchen as he usually did.

  He was in the bedroom, sitting on the old green sofa. James knew the man must have heard him walking up the stairs. Seen him on the landing. Yet there he was, still slumped on the cushions. So he smiled. And the man nodded back.

  ‘There’s a couple of men from the fair looking for you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I heard about them at school.’


  ‘And you thought you should tell me?’

  James shrugged and looked down at his black school shoes. His mum had picked them out a week before she died, and now his toes were touching the ends and the tops were scuffed with tiny half-moons.

  ‘I owe you,’ he said.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘For last night.’

  The man got up from the sofa and looked out of the window, keeping close to the wall, careful not to show himself to anyone who might be outside.

  ‘I told them I saw you in a barn, on the other side of the village.’

  But the man kept looking out of the window anyway and only when he seemed to be satisfied that nobody was outside did he turn back round.

  ‘So you’ve spoken to them then?’

  James curled his fingers into fists and then released them. He nodded. But the man was waiting for him to explain.

  ‘They’re giving out gold to anyone who can help them find you. Only it’s fool’s gold.’

  ‘Well,’ said the man, laughing lightly in his throat, ‘there’s a lesson for you. Not everything in this world is what it seems. Not gold. Or men. Or even boys, come to that.’ He sat back down on the sofa and wrapped his greatcoat around him. The deep cut on his face was now just an angry scar and James began wondering again how it had healed so quickly.

  ‘What do they want with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. It’s a misunderstanding.’ And then something occurred to him. ‘I wouldn’t ever hurt you,’ he said sternly.

  ‘I know,’ said James in a tiny voice and nodded to make sure the man believed him.

  ‘What were you planning on doing with the gold? If it had been real?’

  ‘Leave. If it was enough.’ He dragged the edge of his school shoe backwards and forwards, drawing hazy rubber lines on the wood. ‘He’s my stepdad.’

  ‘And he crashed the car?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said James, remembering what the man must have heard last night. ‘Over a year ago.’

  ‘So you blame him for what happened to your mum, and he’s angry at being left to look after you?’ James said nothing because the man already seemed to have worked everything out. ‘There must be someone else. What about your real father?’ But James just shook his head. ‘Was it always like this?’