by S. L. Powell
Gil looked up at Jude. In the cold gloom of the little room Jude’s face hung above him, alive with emotion, his sun-coloured hair falling into his eyes. The face almost seemed to shine with its own light, and Gil found it hard to look away. He kept his eyes fixed on Jude’s face until at last he had the sensation that he was falling upwards, as if he was being pulled into a black hole. Once you stepped over the boundary of a black hole, there was no way back. Dad had told him about it, long ago, in the days when Gil was interested in science. The black hole’s enormous gravity sucked you in to its centre. The problem was that you couldn’t tell where the boundary lay until you were travelling towards it at nearly the speed of light. And by then you were doomed.
It was like that with Jude, Gil thought. He’d come too close to Jude to be able to move away now. Jude had pulled him in, and Gil was falling towards him in a great slow curve.
They played the video twice more from the very beginning up to the point where Dad dived through the plastic curtain, while Jude checked his plan carefully. He didn’t watch the footage of the animals again. Then he deleted the film. It was one less thing to implicate Gil, he said, if things went wrong.
‘Think about everything and give me a call when you’re ready,’ Jude said as Gil got up to leave. ‘Don’t use your own phone. Borrow this.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out an ancient mobile phone. ‘It’s got some credit on it. Try and let me know by the weekend. And if you decide to do anything at all, use these.’ He pushed a pair of thin disposable gloves into Gil’s school bag.
It was getting on for lunchtime but Gil couldn’t face going back to school. He ate a sandwich on the bus and then went to the library, where the librarian gave him a funny look but didn’t actually challenge him. Gil curled up in a heap of cushions in the picture-book area and waited for a computer to become free. He played pointless computer games and endless rounds of Solitaire until his time ran out and he was kicked off the terminal. Then he went back to the safety of the cushions and read Wibbly Pig and Postman Pat books until it was just after school finishing time and he could finally go home without anyone asking any awkward questions.
‘Hello, darling,’ said Mum at the front door. ‘Good day at school?’
‘Actually, I feel crap,’ said Gil.
He slid into bed with relief while Mum fussed around him with thermometers and cool drinks and painkillers, and let the world outside his bedroom disappear for a while.
The next few days passed in a haze. Gil was aware of his body keeping everything going, like a plane on automatic pilot. His body got out of bed and dressed itself and ate breakfast and managed to produce a few words for Mum and Dad and walked itself to school and found its way to registration. His body waded through lesson after lesson and solved problems and answered questions and handed in homework. But Gil himself wasn’t there. He sat quietly to one side and struggled with the weight of the thing that Jude wanted him to do.
What was the right thing to do? When you were little, right and wrong were easy. Share your toys. Don’t snatch. Don’t hit people, or bite them. Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in the right places. But he wasn’t little any more, and all at once Gil found himself in a place where nothing was so clear-cut. No one was going to tell him what to do – or rather, Jude and Dad were both telling him what to do, and they were both claiming to be right. How could they both be right? Obviously it was wrong to steal Dad’s keys, but was it still wrong to steal Dad’s keys if it helped to prevent the suffering of innocent animals? Maybe some crimes were allowed, if they prevented bigger crimes. Even Dad had been prepared to break the law because he thought that nuclear weapons were wrong. But were Dad’s mice suffering? And if they were helping to find cures for diseases, did that make the suffering acceptable?
Gil felt as if he was tumbling through the space between the stars with nothing to stop him falling. He sat in his room for hours at a time, staring, unable to do anything. He woke up often in the middle of the night, imagining he could hear noises from Dad’s study, and wondering at what point Jude would decide to take matters into his own hands.
‘Gil, we’d like to go out for the day on Saturday,’ Dad said over supper on Thursday.
‘OK,’ said Gil, not really listening.‘Where are we going?’
‘Actually, I meant just your mother and me. I want to take her out for lunch. Would you mind very much?’
‘Oh. No, I don’t mind at all.’
‘I guess you’ll be going ice-skating with Louis on Saturday morning, won’t you?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ Gil said automatically. ‘I haven’t been for ages.’
‘Do you think you could go home with him afterwards, so you don’t have to be here on your own? We’d be back late afternoon.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure I could. I’ll sort it out with Louis at school tomorrow.’
Maybe there was no need to make a decision, Gil told himself. He would just drift along until he bumped into something that would make the decision for him. But of course he wouldn’t talk to Louis. Even if he’d wanted to it would be difficult. They hadn’t spoken all week. Gil caught sight of Louis occasionally, eyeing him from the other side of the classroom or the canteen. Sometimes he was on his own, sometimes he was with Ben, but he always looked away again as soon as his glance touched Gil’s.
Gil allowed Mum and Dad to drive him to the ice rink on Saturday morning. Before they left the house Gil opened his bedroom window a fraction, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed. When they got to the rink Dad escorted him in, paid the entrance fee, gave Gil enough change to buy a drink and a snack and took him through the door that led to the ice.
‘Have a great time,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back at about four.’ Dad waved cheerily to someone on the ice below and gave the thumbs-up. Gil knew without looking that it must be Louis. As Dad disappeared back out to the car, Gil stood at the top of the stairs with his skates slung over his shoulder and scanned the ice. There was Louis, standing as still as an ice sculpture in the middle of the rink while dozens of other skaters whirled around him. Louis’ eyes were huge, staring up as if Gil had just emerged from the land of the living dead. Gil stared back, judging the time it would take for Mum and Dad to drive out of sight of the ice rink. When he thought he’d waited long enough, he turned round and walked out of the door.
Gil walked slowly home with the skates bumping at his back.
It was about two miles. No plans, Gil told himself. No plans. But a plan began to seep into his head without permission. His bedroom window would still be open, unless Dad had checked and shut it before they’d gone out. So he’d be able to scale the conservatory roof and climb in the window. It must be possible – after all, he’d practised it the other way round as part of Dad’s fire drill. And once he was in the house . . .
Gil’s mind slid away from the thought, as if it was too slippery to keep hold of. It would be nice to have the house to himself for a change, that was all. Gil began to count footsteps, trying to empty his head. One, two, three, four . . . how many till he got home?
It took nearly four thousand steps, but Gil still felt he was there far too quickly.
It was hard to tell if his bedroom window was open or not. Gil thought he could see the tiniest crack, but he couldn’t be sure. He stood looking up at the window for ages, listening to the quiet noises of the gardens around him – leaves rustling in the bushes, birds cheeping, the occasional plop of a big fish diving in the pond next door. Well, if the window was open it was fate, Gil thought at last. He wasn’t really making a choice. He was just following a thread.
He dumped his ice-skates on the lawn and pulled the garden table across to the fence so that he could scramble up on to the wall at the edge of the conservatory roof. Then he inched his way across the wooden beams between the glass until he could reach his bedroom window. He tugged at the crack with his fingernails. The window was stiff, or perhaps it really was shut, Gil thought, his heart sinking. Trust Dad. He was ob
sessed with security. But suddenly the window swung open and Gil hauled himself head first through it, falling awkwardly on to the floor of his bedroom.
For a moment he lay there, and then he sat up carefully. Don’t think about it, just do it. He’d need the gloves. Jude had told him to wear gloves so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. Gil reached over for his school bag and dug about till he found them. They were made of thin clear plastic, not like the rubber ones Dad had made him wear in the labs. The plastic was both crackly and slimy and as Gil pulled the gloves over his fingers he felt as if he was preparing for some disgusting medical procedure.
It’s bound to be locked, Gil thought, creeping down the stairs. But the study door wasn’t locked. The handle was cold through his thin gloves, and the door felt even heavier than the last time he’d pushed it open. Well, the drawer will be locked, anyway, Gil decided as he stepped towards Dad’s desk. It was, and this time the key was nowhere to be seen. Gil hesitated. Was it fair to look for it? Did that still count as fate, or was he making a decision? Maybe if he just lifted a few things here and there he could give himself permission to give up. He’d go and phone Jude and tell him he hadn’t managed to do it and then . . .
Gil picked up the holiday photo that always sat on Dad’s desk. Immediately a small key slid out from somewhere at the back of the frame and tinkled on to the desk. Gil stared at it. He really hadn’t searched very hard. So that must mean the key wanted to be found. And that meant the desk had to be opened.
The top drawer slid open. There was the box, the one that held Dad’s keys and the magnetic door release pendant. Gil took the whole box. He left the key in the drawer for now, and stumbled to the kitchen to make the phone call on the battered phone that Jude had given him. He had a completely irrational fear that if he made the call from Dad’s study Dad would somehow be able to hear it.
‘Jude here,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone, sharp and crisp as a cooking apple.
‘It’s Gil,’ said Gil huskily. ‘I’ve got what you want.’
There was a cry so loud it hurt his eardrum. ‘Woo-hoo! You star, Gil! I knew you’d pull it off!’
Somehow the praise didn’t make Gil feel any better this time.
Jude launched into the plan so quickly that Gil knew he’d had it all thought out way in advance. It would be better if Gil wasn’t seen at Jude’s house, and it was definitely too risky for Jude to come to Gil’s. Instead they would meet at the local library. Gil would bring Dad’s key box hidden in his bag and sit in the kids’ section. He’d put the bag down nearby, but not too near. Then Jude would come in and sit down too, and after a while he would pick up Gil’s bag and walk out with it. They wouldn’t say anything at all to each other. Gil would go home and wait for Jude to phone to say his friend had copied the keys, and then they’d repeat the process to get the bag back to Gil.
‘It’ll only take an hour or so,’ said Jude over the phone. ‘As long as your dad doesn’t come home early it’ll work like a dream.’ He laughed loudly, although Gil couldn’t see anything in the plan that was at all amusing.
It took about two minutes to get his bag from his room and then Gil was ready. It was far too early to leave, but he couldn’t bear to hang about the house. It made his stomach churn. As he was about to pull the front door closed behind him Gil hit a problem. How was he going to get back in? He really couldn’t face scaling the conservatory roof again. The only option was to leave the front door unlocked. Gil set off up the road, hoping that the local burglars would all still be in bed.
It was only a short walk to the library but by the time Gil got there his knees were shaking. He felt as if there was a hole in his ribcage and someone was poking at his heart with a pointed stick. It’s a normal day, a totally normal day, he told himself, but when he pushed open the library door he nearly ran away. It was packed. The children’s section was full of tiny kids with their parents and there was nowhere for Gil to sit. One or two of the older kids at the computers looked uncomfortably like people from school. The parents had occupied every single cushion and chair and the toddlers were climbing over them as if they were in a playground. Gil found a small piece of floor in a corner. He dumped his bag and sat down, swivelling round so he couldn’t see the bag. Then he pulled a book off the nearest shelf and tried very hard to pretend he was reading it.
Some time later Gil felt behind him and found his bag had gone. It gave him a prickly feeling in the back of his skull to think that Jude had been so close and he hadn’t even seen him.
When he got home, Gil sat in the front room and waited for Jude to phone. Time slowed to a standstill. It was midday, but Gil didn’t want to eat. He couldn’t even watch television. He had time to go over every single thing that could possibly go wrong. Mum and Dad would come home early. Jude would find that Dad’s keys were special keys that couldn’t be copied and then he would disappear and never bring the keys back. Mum and Dad would crash on the way back from lunch and he would never see them again – oh, this was ridiculous. Now he was starting to think like Mum. Get a grip, he told himself.
By the time the phone finally rang in his pocket, Gil had heard the sound in his head so many times that he was convinced he was imagining things. It was almost a shock to find Jude on the end of the line.
‘Hi, Gil,’ he said. ‘We’re all done. You can have your keys back soon.’
‘Oh. Good. I was worried you weren’t going to be able to copy them.’
Jude laughed quietly. ‘Even uncopiable keys can be copied,’ he said. ‘You need to know the right people, that’s all. Now, there’s just one thing I want to ask you about. I think you might have more idea than me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s a note in the tin and I’ve got a hunch it might be some sort of code, maybe for the burglar alarm. The paper’s got some dates and times on it, and then it just says Sigma. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘It’s Greek,’ said Gil. ‘Sigma is the Greek letter S, but it doesn’t look much like an S. It’s a maths symbol. You see it on spreadsheets and stuff
Yeah, well, I was always crap at maths,’ said Jude. What does it look like?’
Sigma was . How could he describe ? Gil drew it in the air with a finger, zigzagging backwards and forwards while he talked.
‘It’s hard to explain,’ he said. ‘Sort of like a pointy number 3, only backwards. Or a z with an extra line.’
As Gil spoke, he glanced at the house phone sitting on the table next to him and had a sudden idea. Numbers on keypads were always arranged in a square – 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, with the zero on its own underneath the 8. What if you were meant to press the numbers in the shape of the Sigma symbol?
‘It might be something to do with the way the numbers are set out on the keypad,’ said Gil, thinking aloud. He imagined the Greek letter drawn on top of the numbers on the phone, and started to trace the shape with his finger. ‘If you have one number for each point of the Sigma symbol, that would make . . . um . . . 3-1-5-7-9. Or possibly 2-1-5-7-8. Or even 3-1-6-7-9 if you had an extra long middle bit.’
There was a pause, and Gil knew Jude must be scribbling.
‘Excellent,’ said Jude after a while. ‘That’s really helpful. We could try disabling the alarm but it’s a lot simpler if we’ve got the code. See you back at the library, then?’
‘Yes, OK. Uh – Jude?’
‘What?’
‘When are you planning to do this?’
‘Soon. Look, let’s get this stuff back to you, all right?’
‘OK. And then what?’
Gil waited for Jude to say something else, but there was just a dull silence that told him Jude had ended the call. What was he expecting Jude to say, exactly? ‘Come with us, Gil.’ Something like that?
This time Gil saw Jude come into the library. He was wearing a smart black jacket over his jeans, and his hair was brushed and tied back. Gil’s school bag was slung casually over his shoulder. It made him lo
ok camouflaged somehow, as if he was making a deliberate effort to blend in with his surroundings. Gil watched Jude’s eyes as they swept over him and completely failed to make contact. He felt a little flash of pain at being ignored. Of course it had to be like that, Gil said to himself, it wasn’t safe for Jude to acknowledge him. But the hurt stayed, like a burn.
Before Gil returned Dad’s key box to the drawer in the desk he looked for the piece of paper that Jude had mentioned. 12 noon 20th March to 12 noon 3rd April, it read. Sigma. The note was in Dad’s handwriting, and ‘Sigma’ was underlined twice. The third of April was the next day, Sunday. So if Sigma was the code, it would be changed at twelve noon tomorrow. Surely that meant Jude’s raid would have to happen tonight?
Gil searched his school bag, hoping and dreading to find a note from Jude. Midnight, it might say. Join us. Be there.
But there was no note this time.
He waited in the front room until it was nearly time for Mum and Dad to come home, half-watching the television while he ate snacks. He hadn’t really done anything, he told himself. He hadn’t stolen Dad’s keys, just borrowed them for a short time. The video he’d taken in the labs didn’t exist any more, except in the memory of two people. What Jude chose to do now – well, that was his business. Everything was back in its place as if nothing had happened. So nothing had happened, had it? Gil went back over his fictional account of the day’s events, adding little details here and there to make it more likely that Mum and Dad would believe it. By the time he’d finished it was so convincing he almost believed it himself.
The house phone rang twice while he was waiting. Each time Gil picked it up and said ‘Hello?’, and each time there was a little click before the line went dead. It spooked him slightly. But there was nothing to be spooked about. Everything was fine. And at half past three he went out of the front door and deliberately locked it behind him. It would be much more convincing if Mum and Dad found him hunched up on the doorstep when they got home.
