by Kevin Brooks
KEVIN BROOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
PENGUIN BOOKS
Kevin Brooks was born in Exeter, Devon, and he studied in Birmingham and London. He has worked in a crematorium, a zoo, a garage and a post office, before – happily – giving it all up to write books. Kevin is the award-winning author of nine novels and lives in North Yorkshire.
Praise for Kevin Brooks:
‘Kevin Brooks just gets better and better, and given that he started off brilliant, that leaves one scratching around for superlatives’
– Sunday Telegraph
‘He’s an original. And he writes one hell of a story’
– Meg Rosoff, author of How I Live Now
‘A masterly writer’
– Mail on Sunday
Books by Kevin Brooks
BEING
BLACK RABBIT SUMMER
CANDY
IBOY
KILLING GOD
KISSING THE RAIN
LUCAS
MARTYN PIG
NAKED
THE ROAD OF THE DEAD
For Phil, Pete, Sid, and Kenny
1
My heart was born in the long hot summer of 1976; my life was made, my love was sealed, my soul was lost and broken. It was the summer of so many things – heat and violence, love and hate, dreams and nightmares, heaven and hell – and when I look back on it now, it’s hard to tell the good from the bad.
It was all good and bad.
Altogether, all at once.
It was everything.
It was the summer I turned seventeen. It was the summer that burned for weeks on end, melting the tar on the roads. It was the summer of madness, the summer of punk, the summer of wasted lives …
It was all these things.
And more.
Much more …
It was the summer of William Bonney.
William’s story has been with me for almost thirty-five years now, hidden away behind the cross of my heart, and although I don’t have to hide it any more, I can’t start telling it until I’ve told you something about Curtis Ray. Because without Curtis, I would never have met William. In fact, without Curtis, there would never have been a story at all.
2
I didn’t actually know Curtis Ray when I started at Mansfield Heath School in the autumn of 1970, but I knew who he was. Everyone knew who Curtis was; he was that kind of kid. Although he was still only twelve at the time – a year older than me – he was already known for being different. He was Curtis Ray, the second-year kid with the long blond hair and the bolshy attitude, the hippy kid who wore surf beads and earrings and a black leather jacket, the kid who played electric guitar. He was the kind of boy you either loved or hated – and I’m pretty sure that even those who professed to hate him were secretly a little bit in love with him. And that applied to both the girls and the boys.
Of course, being a year older than me (and light years beyond my social circle at the time), Curtis wouldn’t have known of my existence. I knew that he existed. I saw him in passing almost every day. But that’s all he could ever be to me – a passing figure in the corridors at school, a reverently whispered name – ‘look, there’s Curtis Ray’ – a boy from another planet.
However much I dreamed about him – and I don’t mind admitting that I did dream about him – I knew that they were only dreams. He was from another planet. He was cool, hip, rebelliously different. I was just different. He was so good-looking that even the girls who hated his long hair and his hippy music simply couldn’t resist him. I, on the other hand, was generally considered to be ‘not bad-looking … if you like that kind of thing’. And while Curtis seemed to know exactly who he was and what he wanted to be, my early teenage years were spent in a perpetual state of bewilderment. Not only did I have no confidence in myself, I also lacked faith in the sanity and purpose of everything around me. I just couldn’t understand what the world was about, what it was all for, what it was supposed to mean …
All in all, I was a pretty confused kind of girl. And although Curtis’s girlfriends over the years were both numerous and varied (in age, type, and character), the one thing they all had in common – apart from being beautiful and sexy – was a total absence of confusion. So there was simply no reason for me to believe that Curtis Ray could ever be anything more than a dream to me.
But on a blue summer’s day in the first week of July 1975, my dream became a reality.
I’d been playing piano since the age of five, when my mum had taken me along to my first lesson. She’d always wanted to play the piano herself, so she claimed, and it was a constant source of regret to her that she hadn’t had lessons when she was a child.
‘It’s not too late, Mum,’ I used to tell her. ‘I mean, it’s not like you can only learn when you’re a kid, you know.’
‘It’s my fingers,’ she’d say. ‘They’re not supple enough any more.’ Or, ‘You know what my headaches are like, darling … I just wouldn’t be able to concentrate.’
I think the real reason she didn’t want to learn was that she knew it took a lot of hard work and dedication, and the only thing that Mum was dedicated to – apart from her various addictions – was avoiding hard work at all costs. Of course, she was perfectly happy to insist that I practised long and hard at the piano … and I did. But it wasn’t hard work for me, because I enjoyed it. From that very first lesson when I was five years old, I just loved everything about it – the music, the magic, the wonderful world of sounds and songs … melodies, tones, structures, rhythms … it was all so enthralling. And I was good at it too. I wasn’t a virtuoso or anything, but it all came very naturally to me, and by the time I was eight or nine I was already quite accomplished. For my tenth birthday I was given my very own piano – a really nice Bechstein upright, which I still play quite a lot now – and I carried on taking lessons and studying for my grades right up until I was almost seventeen. In fact, that’s what I was doing on that hot summer’s day in 1975 – I was in the music room at school, practising one of the pieces I was learning for my Grade 8 piano exam, which I was due to take in a few weeks’ time.
Mansfield Heath School was a medium-sized public school in Hampstead, North London, where I lived. It was one of the first co-educational public schools in the country. The main school building, built in the seventeenth century, was one of those imposing old redbrick places with turrets and gargoyles and solid
oak doors, and it was surrounded by lush green playing fields and ancient trees. The music room was in a small brick annexe building next to the chapel on the other side of the playing fields.
It was a Friday afternoon, that day, about two o’clock, and I had the room to myself. My music teacher – Mr Pope – let me practise whenever the room was free, and as I had a couple of free periods that afternoon and the room wasn’t being used until three, I’d taken the opportunity to do some work on a particularly tricky passage of the piece that I was studying. So … there I was, alone in the music room, sitting at the piano, playing this passage over and over again, and I was concentrating so hard that I wasn’t aware of the door opening and someone coming in. I just carried on playing. I’d just about got the hang of this problematic passage now, and I wanted to see how the work I’d done on it fitted in with the piece as a whole, so without pausing to rest I went back to the beginning and began playing the entire thing through.
It was a piece by Debussy, Arabesque No. 1. It’s a wonderful piece of music, as light and dreamy as a perfect summer’s day, and although I was still struggling slightly with some of the more technically difficult sections, that didn’t stop me from losing myself in the beauty of the music whenever I played it. And when I got to the end, and the last quiet chord faded softly into the echoed silence … well, that was always a special thing for me. The sudden hush, the sense of the music floating in the air, the wonder of the melody still playing in my head …
I always took a quiet moment to savour it.
But that day, as I was sitting there enjoying the moment, the silence was broken by a soft round of applause from behind me. I turned round quickly, slightly startled, expecting to see Mr Pope, but instead of seeing the grey-bearded face of my music teacher, I saw the smiling face of Curtis Ray.
‘That was amazing,’ he said, still clapping quietly. ‘Absolutely amazing …’
I stared at him. He was leaning languidly against the wall by the window on the other side of the room, his piercing blue eyes fixed on mine … and he was smiling at me. I couldn’t believe it. He was Curtis Ray … he was here, with me. He was smiling at me.
‘It’s Debussy, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘The music … the piece you just played, it’s Debussy.’
‘Oh, yeah …’ I said, still quite dumbstruck. ‘Yeah … the first arabesque.’
He nodded. ‘It’s really nice.’
I couldn’t help glancing at the sheet music on the piano then, wondering if that’s how he’d known it was Debussy – by reading it off the title page. But the title page wasn’t showing. And by the time I turned back to him, I was already feeling embarrassed by my condescending assumption that he couldn’t possibly have recognized the music by ear alone.
‘Sorry,’ I started to say. ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘You’re Lilibet Garcia, aren’t you?’ he said, pushing himself away from the wall and wandering casually towards me.
‘Lili,’ I told him.
‘Don’t you like being called Lilibet?’
‘Would you?’
He smiled. ‘I’m Curtis Ray.’
If the term duh! had been around then, I would have said it … or, at least, I would have thought it. But these were pre-duh! days, and I had to be content with thinking sarcastically to myself, ‘No, really? Curtis Ray? I’d never have guessed …’
Actually, come to think of it, sarcasm was probably the last thing on my mind just then, and I probably didn’t think anything duh!-like at all. I was too embarrassed, for one thing. Embarrassed by the tingling feelings in my heart, by my inability to stop staring at Curtis, by the sudden realization that while he was looking as cool as ever in his cool white T-shirt and jeans (because he was in the sixth form, and sixth-formers didn’t have to wear school uniform), I was dressed in a totally uncool, and completely unflattering, pink school dress. And ankle socks, for God’s sake. Embarrassing white ankle socks.
But the thing that embarrassed me most, the thing that made me feel really uncomfortable, was the simple fact that I was embarrassed. I was tingling and staring and squirming. I was behaving like a stupid little teenybopper. I was embarrassed by the clothes I was wearing. And that was all just so pathetic, and I hated myself for it.
But I just couldn’t help it.
‘You play really well,’ Curtis said to me.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled.
He was standing in front of me now. Not too close, but close enough for me to really see how stunningly good-looking he was. He’d always looked really good, even when he was going through that awkward thirteen/fourteen-year-old stage, but now – at seventeen – he’d grown up into a lean and hard-looking young man with a face that in some ways was almost too perfect to be true. It was the kind of face that seemed to have the ability to change, letting you see in it whatever you wanted to see in it. So if you looked at Curtis and believed that you were looking at the most beautiful boy in the world, that’s what you saw. But you could also look at him sometimes and see a face of sadness, or heart-aching emptiness, or even cruelty …
But there was no sadness or cruelty in his face that day. Just a mind-blowing smile, a sheen of beauty, and those mesmerizing bright-blue eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked me.
‘Yeah, sorry …’ I mumbled. ‘I was just …’
I was just staring at him again, that’s what I was doing. He’d taken a packet of cigarettes from his pocket now and was just about to light one.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ I said. ‘Mr Pope might be here any minute.’
Curtis laughed. ‘Old Johnny won’t mind,’ he said, lighting the cigarette. ‘He’s always cadging fags off me. I’ve even shared a joint with him out here a couple of times.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah … Johnny’s a bit of an old hippy at heart.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and tapped ash to the floor. ‘So, anyway,’ he went on, ‘do you play anything else?’
I looked at him, not sure what he meant.
‘Apart from the piano,’ he explained. ‘Do you play any other instruments?’
‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘Well, not really … I mean, I can play the guitar a bit –’
‘Yeah?’
I shook my head, realizing that I was talking to someone who – rumour had it – was an absolute genius on the guitar. ‘I’m not any good,’ I muttered. ‘I just know a few chords, that’s all …’
He smiled. ‘What’s your favourite?’
‘Favourite what?’
‘Chord. What’s your favourite chord?’
‘G major,’ I said without thinking.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s a good one. It’s got a kind of bigness to it, hasn’t it? An openness.’
I smiled, knowing exactly what he meant. ‘What’s your favourite?’ I said.
He looked at me. ‘Have a guess.’
I paused for a moment, giving it some thought, but I didn’t really need to. The answer was instinctive. ‘E major,’ I said.
His smile told me I was right.
‘Can you play bass?’ he said.
‘Double bass?’
‘No, electric bass, you know …’ He mimed playing a bass guitar. ‘That kind of bass.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never tried.’
‘Do you fancy giving it a go?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m looking for a bass player,’ he said. ‘For my band.’
‘You’re in a band?’
He nodded. ‘We haven’t played any gigs yet, but we’ve been practising on and off for about a year or so, and we’re starting to get pretty good. The trouble is, Kenny – he’s our bass player – well, he’s suddenly decided that he doesn’t want to play bass any more, he wants to play rhythm guitar.’ Curtis took a long drag on his cigarett
e. ‘Actually, to tell you the truth, Kenny’s pretty shit on the bass anyway, so he’s doing us a favour by packing it in. But now we need to find someone else …’ He looked at me. ‘What kind of music do you like? Apart from Debussy, obviously.’
It was a tricky question to answer. Or rather, it would have been a tricky question to answer if I’d tried to guess what kind of music Curtis liked and pretended that I liked it too, which I did actually consider for a moment or two. But although he wasn’t really hippyish any more – his once-long hair was now hacked into something that looked like a lunatic bird’s nest, and his scruffy old jeans were unfashionably, but very coolly, not flared – I naturally assumed that the kind of music he was into was the kind of music that I neither liked nor knew anything about, namely progressive rock – bands like Genesis and Yes and Pink Floyd. And if I’d told him that I liked Genesis, and he’d asked me which of their albums was my favourite, I wouldn’t have been able to name one. And that really would have been embarrassing. So instead of trying to impress him, I simply told him the truth.
‘Well, I’ve just got the new Cockney Rebel album,’ I said. ‘And I really like that.’
‘Which one?’ Curtis asked. ‘The Best Years of Our Lives?’
‘No … the one before that.’
‘The Psychomodo?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’
He nodded knowingly. ‘It’s not as good as The Human Menagerie.’
I smiled. ‘What is?’
He dropped his cigarette to the floor and stepped on it. ‘Who else do you like?’
‘I’ve been listening to the Sensational Alex Harvey Band quite a lot recently, and David Bowie … and I like some of the old Rolling Stones stuff –’
‘What about the Stooges? Have you heard of them?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Iggy Pop and the Stooges … you’ve got to hear them. They’re incredible. Really loud and dirty, you know?’
‘Right,’ I said, not quite sure what he meant. ‘And that’s the kind of stuff you like, is it?’
