by Tom Hoyle
Then Dr Richardson rushed in, sweaty and out of breath. The pile of books she was carrying spilt across the table and about ten fell on the floor. The Twins were down on their knees immediately, picking them up and asking if there was anything they could do to help.
I couldn’t help looking at them as they responded to whoever was talking. When Dr Richardson spoke about Henry VII and the royal finances, they smiled and nodded with interest and understanding, or raised their eyebrows if surprised. When someone else was unsure, they frowned in sympathy. They seemed to give whoever was talking their complete attention.
After the lesson, we wandered along the corridor and I asked how they knew Caroline.
‘Never seen her before,’ said Sam.
‘But you knew her name . . .’ I started.
‘Oh,’ said Jack. ‘We saw it.’
‘On the Geography book poking out of her bag,’ added Sam.
The conversation slid to magic. ‘You’re a natural,’ Jack concluded. ‘It must be in your blood.’
‘I’m not sure what’s in my blood,’ I mumbled. Something made me rush to the truth. ‘I might as well tell you . . . I don’t know my dad.’ I spoke so quietly that my lips hardly moved. ‘My mother’s dead. The only relation I have is my gran.’ I shouldn’t have been embarrassed.
Sam bent his right hand back so that I could see the inside of his wrist, then pointed at one of the veins with his left thumb. ‘Look at that blood,’ he said. ‘It looks just the same as the blood pumping through you. You’re no different to us.’
‘I don’t think I’m anything like you,’ I said.
‘You will be,’ said Jack. ‘Give it time. You will be.’
I only saw The Twins once more on that second day, in the Sports Hall as I headed to my after-school film club. There were about ten boys inside kicking a tennis ball around. I stood in the doorway, thinking that they were using the smaller ball to show off skills, but then saw that they were trying to kick the ball up so that it nestled behind one of the overhead lights – practically impossible. Jack’s second attempt was weighted to perfection, but even that bobbled out, despite everyone cheering for it to stay.
‘Come on!’ said Sam as he bounced the ball from knee to knee before kicking up upwards. ‘This is a Challenge. You can’t fail a Challenge.’
Soon after I walked away, I heard a huge cheer.
The Twins. The Challenge. You have to hear everything for a first time.
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SEPTEMBER 2011
FIRST BLOOD
Apart from Will, no one from Wordsworth Academy lived in Compton Village, so I couldn’t easily see friends after school. The Twins moved into a large house about four miles away, but it would only have been just over a mile away if Lake Hintersea hadn’t been in the way. This chance nearness – I had no reason to think it was anything other than chance – was another reason I became close friends with them.
My only slight regret, as I became embedded near the centre of a large group of friends, was that Blake wasn’t sure about them. He irritated me, but because of him I had never been entirely isolated.
‘Come on, Blake,’ I said on one occasion. ‘Sam and Jack really want you to join us after school down the Rec.’
‘Sam and Jack, Sam and Jack,’ he echoed in a voice that was more nasally and nerdy than ever, ‘Marcus and David, Marcus and David.’
I shook my head dismissively. ‘What are you going on about? Marcus and David? I don’t know anyone called Marcus. David who? Has something snapped in your brain? Well, don’t pretend I didn’t offer,’ I huffed. Much later, I learnt Blake was comparing Sam and Jack to human-looking robots from the Terminator films.
It was great to be able to talk about the Rec, a sort of tatty park, as if I were a veteran. It was where all the cool kids hung out after school, including lots of girls, though not Caroline. The Twins said their dad would take a detour through my village, the long way round Lake Hintersea, on the way back to their house, so I was able to go for the first time. It was Thursday of the second week of term, and we were there with Anna Whitney, Ethan Wingate and some others – all people who wouldn’t have said a word to me a week before. We didn’t do much to begin with, just played around the bandstand and jumped over the little stream. Just beyond the Rec was the river. The path and riverbanks were strewn with rubbish, and Ethan spotted two discarded supermarket trolleys.
‘How did they get down here? The world’s going to ruin, man.’ Ethan played up to his reputation as a hippy. He was vegetarian and smoked weed from time to time.
‘A Challenge,’ said Sam.
‘Do you want to ride, or do you want to drive?’ Jack asked his brother.
It soon turned into races, one person riding in the trolley and another pushing.
After a couple of goes, Jack asked me if I wanted to be his driver.
‘You bet,’ I said. It was incredible that they’d had an effect so quickly. Jack was in one trolley, Sam in the other, and Anna volunteered to push him. That made the contest a fairly equal one, given that The Twins were identical in size and Anna and I had more or less the same strength.
Against the background of noise, Jack turned to me and whispered, ‘Just go as fast as you can and as near to the edge as possible – see, the path’s smoother there.’
‘I don’t want you to fall out.’ I chuckled.
‘I want it to be the fastest and best it can be,’ Jack said. He looked me deep in the eyes, but I couldn’t hold his gaze for long – it was as if The Twins looked right into my brain. ‘Remember: I’m indestructible,’ he muttered.
‘Come on!’ shouted Sam. ‘If you’ve finished with the health and safety checks, it’s first to the bench.’
Ethan stood to one side and lowered a tissue as if it were a flag in an American car race.
We raced along the path, The Twins urging us onward as if they were desperate jockeys. The bench was about 200 yards away, and it was a fast journey. The path was hardly wide enough for two, but we overtook them, they overtook us, and then we drew level as we passed the bench.
It was getting late after several races and a couple of people said that they had to get home.
‘Just one more go,’ said Sam. ‘Jack and I’ll take on anyone in a Challenge –a tenner says no one can beat us, even if they run and we have to push the trolley.’
It was surely a ridiculous bet, and Anna immediately took them up on it. She was one of the best athletes at school and even Usain Bolt couldn’t have won if he had the disadvantage of pushing a trolley with someone in it. In fact, Anna did win – easily. But that’s not the important thing.
Anna raced off – with no trolley to push, she was ahead from the start. The Twins’ trolley rattled along very quickly, front wheels spinning and twisting, the carriage rocking from side to side. Jack was in the cart on his knees, leaning forward, his hands holding the metal at the front. Everyone else had sat in it like a baby in a pram, but Jack didn’t see the danger – or maybe he just didn’t care.
Sam leaned into the trolley and pushed with all his might. Neither Twin spoke.
It’s hard to judge how fast, but they hurtled along the path near to the edge at a speed that would have been reckless for a cyclist. Suddenly, the front right wheel hit a dip, the trolley stopped, buckled, and Jack was thrown out. Sam also fell, bruised by the trolley. But Jack was on the river side, and he went towards the drop – his hand grabbed for the trolley and then for the edge of the path, but not even he could overcome the power of gravity.
Sam was on his feet straight away, then disappeared over the edge to join his brother. Anna came back from the end of the path, took one look, and pressed three numbers on her mobile phone. We ran towards them.
I thought I’d see Jack bobbing around in the water, but he had fallen short and was in the muddy fringe immediately below the wall. Both of them were in the mud up to their knees, and it was difficult to tell which brother was which. But then I worked out that Sa
m was on the left, and they were both looking down at Jack’s right leg.
‘I’m fine,’ said one.
‘He’s fine,’ said the other.
Anna, who had a slightly different angle to me, continued with her call, asking for an ambulance immediately.
Moving along the path, looking at the imprints on the mud, and then seeing Jack, I saw what had happened: Jack had fallen on a piece of metal that had knifed through his upper leg about halfway between knee and hip.
The fifteen minutes before the ambulance came were surreal. The metal spike was poking out both sides of his leg, but Jack didn’t cry, or scream or complain. He even limped along the muddy river edge to the point where he could get to the path, as if being speared was a minor inconvenience.
The ambulance crew didn’t see it like that.
‘Aren’t you in pain, son?’ one medic asked as he grimaced at the injury.
‘Yes. I am,’ said Jack calmly, his face expressionless.
‘I think he’s in shock,’ whispered the medic.
‘No,’ said Jack, as if it were a ridiculous suggestion. ‘I’m not in shock. I just want it dealt with and know my leg will bleed a lot if I just yank it out.’
We were interviewed by a couple of policemen, but it was clear from the crumpled trolley that the injury was the result of nothing more than a bunch of kids messing around.
I saw Jack sitting in the back of the ambulance, his brother leaning on the open rear door, when their dad arrived. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Mentally logging him as The Twins’ father meant that I didn’t question it again.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ Jack said to him, shrugging with annoyance, then smiling at me as I appeared a few paces behind.
My gran would have had a nervous breakdown if she had seen me with a metal rod skewered through my leg, but Mr Thatcher didn’t flinch: ‘Has it gone through bone, or just muscle?’ Those were his first words. Everything he said was practical.
‘I think he’s going to be fine,’ said the paramedic in charge. ‘Jack, how much does it hurt? Out of ten?’ Perhaps he said this to get a more sympathetic tone from his father.
‘Probably eight or nine,’ said Jack. ‘It’s hard to measure because I’ve no comparison. It’s a pain I’ve never felt before.’
‘Well,’ said another medic, ‘you’re being very brave. Let’s get you to hospital and operate as soon as we can.’
‘First, I need to speak to Ben,’ Jack said, holding something in his hand. The paramedics tried to stop him, but Jack was insistent. ‘I have to speak to Ben before we leave.’
I edged forward, struggling to draw my eyes away from the raised sheet that was draped over his leg.
‘Here,’ said Jack. ‘Give this to Anna.’ It was a crumpled and slightly bloodstained ten-pound note.
I asked Jack afterwards how he managed to put up with so much pain. Did he feel pain less than other people? He said that he didn’t know what others felt, but pain was just a feeling created in his brain that didn’t actually mean anything; it was just something that you had to put up with.
‘Pain’s just a warning siren in your brain,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to listen to it. It doesn’t have to bother you.’
Jack spent the night in hospital and had to stay in the next day. Incredibly, against all medical advice, he returned to school on Monday using crutches, his leg bound up. He even hobbled around playing football at break.
Within two weeks, it was difficult to tell which twin was which again. I once saw a faint blood stain appear on Jack’s trousers and asked him how long it would take for his leg to fully recover.
He said, ‘It’s annoying that we bleed, isn’t it?’
SIX DAYS TO GO
Draft Email
To:
Cc:
Subject: The Past
Someone else has to know the whole truth.
‘Christmas Eve, 2016. The middle of London, next to Big Ben. Midday,’ he said. Then I watched him disappear into the woodland. With anyone else, they’d be empty words.
It was so far in the future I thought we’d never get here.
I came close to telling you everything when we went to Compton for Gran’s funeral. You mentioned the view from the houses in Compton across Lake Hintersea and how it must be full of memories. ‘Yeah,’ I said. Just Yeah – not I can remember what we did as if it was yesterday. Not I can remember the faces of those who died.
Someone else |
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SEPTEMBER 2011
SHADOW OF THE PAST
Compton Village was on a road that snaked between Lake Hintersea, one of the largest lakes in the Lake District, and Ward’s Fell, one of the highest hills (we called it a mountain). It’s on a hundred postcards. But in September 2011, Compton Village was still best known for a very rare thing: the mysterious death of a fifteen-year-old boy. ‘Compton Village’ was heard as ‘Murdered Boy’. More than four months after the event, the police still hadn’t found out what happened to Will.
One minute he was with me, circling in the road, and then he was gone – to be found two days later washed up on the shore of the Lake with a wound to the head. He had drowned.
His bike was left in the cemetery next to the church, and his boat was still tied up at the bottom of his garden. It was as if the Lake had grabbed hold of him while no one was looking – while I wasn’t looking.
The newspapers were determined to get a van, driving slowly through the village, into the story. I hadn’t seen one. Sailors on Lake Hintersea were interviewed; the police tracked down ramblers who walked down from Ward’s Fell and past the churchyard; we were all spoken to several times. Nothing.
Locals believed he had been murdered. And they claimed to know who had done it. Mike Haconby was the fifty-something builder who lived in the house next to Will’s, directly opposite me. His garden was overgrown, full of rubbish, a bicycle frame here, an old fridge there, a caravan rotting on his driveway. He had threatened us more times than we could remember in his slow, agitated voice.
‘I’ll kill you if you keep screeching and skidding your bikes in the lane’; ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t keep quiet on the Lake’; ‘If that ball comes into my garden, I’ll destroy it and I’ll kill you.’
He swore at us, which worried my gran in a way that his threats didn’t. To be honest, Will wound him up on purpose.
For several days, forensic experts turned Mike’s house upside down looking for a speck or fibre that would connect him to the murder, but found nothing. They dug up his garden. The panels of the old caravan were prised open. He didn’t move away, though, despite the constant hounding and the whispered insults.
‘Leave me alone. I’ve done nothing wrong – I don’t want to leave Compton – it’s my home,’ Mike had said. His failure to move was seen as proof of his guilt. I’m sure that if he had moved, that would have been seen as equal proof.
Mike Haconby had discovered the body. He had been walking Bullseye along the shore of the Lake and just found Will there, among the lapping waves, just beyond the church, only a few steps from his bike. If you’re the first to find the body, you’re the last to see it alive – that’s the logic. Guilty as charged, people said.
‘He knew where to look.’ Guilty as sin.
‘Just look at that old caravan he has,’ they said. ‘I always knew he was weird.’ Guilty. ‘And all he does is walk around with that monster of a dog.’
But no one could explain how he did it. There’s no way that Will would have gone with him without a fight. We all heard it a thousand times: It was broad daylight; someone must have seen something.
On the Saturday after Jack’s accident I wanted to cycle to The Twins’ house to see how he was, but was stopped before I left. ‘Don’t forget it’s the last Saturday in the month,’ my gran said from her chair in the front room.
I had forgotten. ‘Gran, I’m on it.’
‘And don’t forget to speak
nicely to everyone,’ she added.
‘Gran, I have done this before.’ A million times.
‘You’re a good boy, Benny.’
For the last year, Gran had been more or less housebound, apart from church. She stayed in Compton Village, despite the remoteness, despite Will’s death, even despite worries about me. I was also determined to stay. If anyone came to do the same to me as they did to Will, I would show them how much I hated them.
The village church (and its handful of old ladies) was the main thing in Gran’s life, and delivering the monthly newsletters had been her job for forty years. Now, irritatingly, it had become mine.
I did all the houses on the eastern side of the Lake – eleven in total, of which seven were actually in the village. There was a twelfth house that I didn’t deliver to: Will’s. His parents had moved away ‘temporarily’ soon after his death. I suspected they moved because Mike Haconby hadn’t.
It was crazy that Compton Village had a church. The village was only 300 yards from end to end with one much bigger house on the far side of the church: Lakeside House, where Mr and Mrs Winter lived. She was an artist and her husband was a recluse who, Gran said, was in a wheelchair. My mum worked there as a cleaner before I was born.
I usually saw no one as I cycled round, trying to get the job done in record time, but Mike Haconby was in his garden and it would have been awkward not to go straight to him.
‘It’s just the church newsletter,’ I said.
Bullseye, his Leavitt Bulldog, barked and barked, always the same bark-bark-bark tune; even when I bravely put my upturned hand out to him, he aggressively danced around howling bark-bark-bark, closer and closer, until I lost my nerve and held my hand to my chest.
Mike was moving a large plant pot from one random location to another. His time would have been better spent tidying up the mess or mending the caravan. The innards of a broken lawnmower were sprawled across the lawn. Mike sniffed and scratched.
