‘What’s your name?’ I stutter.
‘Leila.’
‘Leila,’ I reply, testing out the two syllables in my mouth, my tongue nudging twice against the crest of my palate. ‘I’m Joshua.’
‘Choshua,’ she says, with the smallest of smiles. ‘Choshua.’
‘Yes, Choshua.’
On the street, Leila’s father moves quickly, faster than I can walk.
‘Don’t run,’ he snaps, when I speed up to avoid falling behind.
‘You’re too fast.’
He slows a little. ‘And don’t speak. Not this language.’
I nod, and the man leads me onwards, a complicated, winding route through back roads that I don’t recognise, until we emerge on the main street, opposite the flying cake bakery.
‘This is –’
He cuts me off with a hand shoved against my chest and a sharp ‘shh’.
I want to tell him he doesn’t need to take me any further, but he’s already accelerating into the alley, so fast I can no longer stay next to him without running.
We’re halfway to the bins when I hear a raucous, scooping whistle above us. I look up and see a face in a window overlooking the alleyway. It’s the boy who gave me that regretful shake of the head as he blocked the tunnel entrance, the first time I crossed over. He’s waving his arms at someone behind me.
I turn and see a boy standing in a diagonal shaft of dusty sunlight between the alley and the bakery. It’s one of the gang who chased me. He waves up at the face in the window and lets out a shout, whether at me, or the person in the apartment, or someone else, I have no idea. I break into a run, sprinting for the tunnel, overtaking Leila’s father. He, too, is running now, but from here, if he doesn’t go down the tunnel, he has no escape. His only other option would be to climb over the chain-link fence, but judging by the stiff, slow way he runs, and the speed of the boys, he doesn’t stand a chance.
Almost immediately, I hear several sets of footsteps following us down the alleyway, and more angry shouts. I turn back as I squeeze between the bins and see that Leila’s father has been pushed to the ground. The first boy down the alley, who now has three others following behind, kicks him in the stomach with vicious force. The sound of it, like a heavy sack dropping on to concrete, echoes down the alley towards me.
He pulls his leg back for another kick, then lifts his head and looks at me. For an instant he freezes, his eyes locked on mine. ‘Run! Run!,’ I think, but I’m not running. I’m just standing there, staring at this felled man, Leila’s father, this person who only minutes ago announced himself as my friend, but is now spluttering and choking, writhing on the dusty ground.
The boy abandons his half-finished kick and sets off at speed towards me. Now the message gets through to my legs. I sprint towards the tunnel and shove the hatch aside. If I jump in, rather than using the rope, I’ll gain an extra few seconds. I crouch and look back down the alley one last time.
I can only see feet now, under the bins: two sets running towards me, several more landing kick after kick on the body and head of Leila’s father. He’s curled into a ball to protect himself. It seems unforgivable to leave him there, when he’s in the alleyway to help me escape, when the whole situation is my fault, but I know I’m powerless to help, and that to turn back would be suicide.
I twist and jump into the darkness. The ground arrives sooner than I’m expecting and whacks against my feet. Something in my ankle wrenches out of place with a hot little internal twang, like a tiny bubble of boiling liquid bursting deep inside the joint.
Pain shoots up my leg in darts that feel intense, but also strangely abstract and far away, as if the wiring of my body somehow knows it has to prioritise my escape. There’s no time to worry about a mere ankle. I begin to crawl, not using my knees, but squatting like a dog, touching the ground only with my hands and feet. It’s the closest I can get to running. I’m some way down the tunnel, and already in pitch darkness, when I remember that the torch is still in my bag, stashed behind me near the entrance.
I stop crawling. I know it would be insane to go back, but for an instant I feel I simply can’t go through the tunnel again without a light. Then I hear a voice, close and echoey. Someone is down in the tunnel with me. No – two voices: a conversation, accompanied by the sound of shuffling against the soil. They’ve followed me into the tunnel. I haven’t got away.
I lurch into motion, resuming my dog-like sprint. I can see nothing, not even my hands pushing and scrabbling at the soil, sending me hurtling onwards into the pitch blackness. My lungs heave the thick, mushroomy air in heavy rasps, driving me onwards with all my might; but despite those two voices echoing through the space, one second seeming far behind, the next right on my heel, despite delving into myself for every last drop of energy, I soon begin to sense that my pace is slowing.
On and on I go through the soupy blackness, my hands and arms more sore and tired with every second, my throat constricting into an acid knot. The skin of my palms feels as if it is being grated. There isn’t the time or the light to see if I’m drawing blood, but something feels sticky and strange in the contact my hands are making with the soil.
Part of me is praying for the end of the tunnel, part of me is dreading its arrival. It’s unnatural and terrifying to be pushing on as fast as this, using every muscle and fibre for speed, knowing that ahead is a hard earthen wall, invisible in the darkness, which at any moment will smash into my head. The voices are still behind me, a little fainter perhaps, but still following, occasionally shouting bursts of what sound like threats, so I can’t worry about the wall. My job is just to get away, out of the tunnel and over the building-site fence, before they catch me.
If I falter or fall, if they catch up with me, down here they’d be able to do anything, and no one would see, and no one would find out what happened to me. I’d be the boy who disappeared: the boy who went to a football match that didn’t exist and never came back.
The dangling rope gives the faintest of brushes against the crown of my head as I surge forwards. I raise my arm as quickly as I can, turning my head to the side, but I can’t stop in time. The soil smacks into my cheek. I reel back, my head seeming to empty itself, like a computer switching off. If I’d been standing up, I would have fallen. Even on my knees I feel a toppling sensation, as if I might be blacking out. Everything is black already, of course, so I can’t even tell if my eyes are still working, but I feel a momentary sensation of weightlessness, as if I’m coming loose from my own body.
A buzz ripples through my spine, my brain reboots, and I remember where I am. I flail with both hands, searching for the rope. I have no idea if I fell unconscious, or how much time has elapsed since hitting the end wall of the tunnel, but the voices now sound closer than ever, tumbling towards me in booming, overlapping echoes.
Two dancing pinpricks of light at first seem like nothing at all, perhaps some strange underground insect flying in front of my face, then I realise it is a pair of torch beams, moving towards me.
My arms swipe at the air, my heart beating out a non-stop rhythm of incessant heavy blows, no gaps, no pairs of beats, just a constant fast thump like crazed dance music heard through a wall.
I feel a tickle at one wrist and grasp at the swaying rope, then spring to my feet and climb. With what feels like the last residue of strength in my body, I shove and shove against the heavy trapdoor, which at the third attempt shifts aside.
I reach up towards the hot whiteness, squeeze through and wriggle out into the wasteland. Sunlight forces itself against my eyeballs with overwhelming, blinding power, disabling my vision as completely as the darkness below. Contracting my eyes into tiny slits, I stagger through the building site, not sure if I’m heading in the right direction, just trying to get myself further away from the tunnel, from whoever is following me.
As the whiteout dissolves into glimpses of stony ground, I cast my eyes up towards the wooden hoarding around the building site. My legs seem
to give way underneath me as I plunge against it and slump to the ground, flattening myself against the hot, dry soil.
After a while, with my eyesight restored, I crane my neck and look back at the tunnel. No one has yet emerged. I freeze and stare at the hatch, waiting and watching, my breath slowly returning to normal as I scour the area around me for a better hiding place.
I know I ought to carry on running, get up and out, over that fence into safe territory, but I feel strangely immobilised, afraid to go any further. The ground, millimetres from my nose, smells curiously sweet, wafting into me an odour of grapes and flesh.
The hatch doesn’t move, and nobody climbs out. As it begins to seem as if no one is going to follow me out of the tunnel, I notice, at first with mild curiosity, that I’m in terrible pain. My ankle is drumming out a pulse of insistent complaint, sending a signal that only now, like the return of a distant memory, seems to get through to my brain. My body’s ability to keep the bad news at bay has run out. It is sprained, and the pain suddenly feels like pain: vicious and shrill.
Diagonally across the building site I see my heap of clothes. If those men had caught up with me in the tunnel, if I’d never got home, someone would eventually have found those clothes and connected them to me. From here, it looks like the scene of a suicide.
This thought sparks an image back into my mind – the last thing I saw before jumping down into the tunnel – Leila’s father, curled into a ball, two men kicking at his head and back. If they figured out I was from this side, and that he was with me, they might take him for a collaborator. If that’s what they thought of him, anything was possible.
I have a clear view of The Wall from where I’m lying. If I could see through it, I’d be able to see him, probably lying in a pool of blood, perhaps still under attack. Then I remember there’s a mobile phone in the pocket of my trousers. Ignoring the howls of outrage from my ankle, I run across the building site, wrestle the phone from the floppy material of my empty trousers, and dial.
Their first question is the location of the incident.
My head spins, struggling to think of a response. ‘I’m next to The Wall, near the building site at the edge of Amarias. I can hear something over The Wall. I think someone’s being attacked. I can hear them screaming for help.’
There’s a sceptical silence on the other end of the line. ‘How old are you?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything? Someone’s hurt. It’s urgent.’
‘Is this a prank?’
‘No! You have to help!’
‘They have their own ambulances. Stop wasting my time.’
‘But –’
The line goes dead.
Fighting back tears of helpless rage, I hobble towards The Wall, over mounds of rubble, then smooth soil marked with bulldozer tracks.
‘HELLO!’ I shout, craning my neck skywards. ‘HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?’
No sound comes back. I flatten my ear against the rough concrete. Nothing. I realise I never even asked the man his name.
‘CAN YOU HEAR ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?’
Silence.
Like a tree sucking moisture from the soil, I feel a wave of remorse rise from my feet, up through my legs, stomach, chest and neck. Tears begin to leak from my eyes, slowly at first, then a surge of uncontrollable sobs gushes out, crumpling me to the ground.
I lie there, curled into a ball, weeping. My plan had backfired in the most appalling way. I tried to help the girl who helped me, but I’d done the exact opposite. Her father had taken a brutal beating, and it was my fault. I only wanted to do one small, good thing. I only wanted to give the girl what I owed her. But here, that was impossible, dangerous, stupid.
Eventually, I roll on to my knees, force myself upright, and hobble away from The Wall, limping on my stiff, swollen ankle. I look down at the trousers and shirt I chose that morning from the drawers in my bedroom, and they look like a costume, almost like fancy dress. It is as if these clothes belong to a boy who doesn’t exist any more.
I peel off my muddy, honey-stained jeans and put on the clean outfit. I scuff my football kit into the soil, so it will look as if I’ve played, then turn and look for a hiding place where I can conceal the charity shop clothes. Seeing the tunnel, the hatch still ajar, I realise that I’ll never go through again, not if my life depends on it. The clothes can stay where they are. I don’t need them any more, and I don’t care who finds them.
I take one last glance at the demolished house, then place my hands against the splintery hoarding and begin to climb.
Part Three
The ankle is easy enough to pass off as a football injury, but the flayed skin on my palms is another matter. I try to convince Mum that it happened when I skidded off my feet during a warm-up on tarmac. She’s sceptical, and a conversation with David’s mother ends up exposing the entire football match as a ruse.
My backup excuse is feeble. I say I wanted to be on my own in the hills. I tell her I was desperate to go rock climbing, but I knew they’d never allow me, so I just set off and did it on my own. A fall scraped my hands and twisted my ankle. This isn’t much more plausible than the football story, but I stick to it.
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ says Mum. ‘Why would you do that?’
I shrug.
‘You can’t just go off like that! There are people out there!’
I shrug.
‘It’s forbidden!’ says Liev. ‘Who do you think you are, just going off and doing these things?’
I shrug again. Later, they try a different approach.
‘Look at your hands! It’s both of them – the same scrapes! How did you do it?’ says Mum.
‘I told you.’
‘We don’t believe you.’
‘I’m not lying,’ I lie.
‘We think you are,’ she says.
I shrug.
‘The football story was a lie! Why do you think we’re going to believe this?’
I shrug.
‘This insolence!’ barks Liev. ‘Where did you learn it? What on earth makes you think this is acceptable?’
I shrug.
‘STOP SHRUGGING!’
I shrug.
‘He’s impossible,’ says Liev, lifting his arms and slapping them down against the side of his thighs.
‘Why are you doing this?’ says Mum.
‘He’s impossible! What are we going to do with him?’
‘Look at your hands!’ says Mum.
‘I just scraped them,’ I say. ‘I slipped.’
Liev’s mouth opens and closes again, like a goldfish. Mum stares at me, squinting, as if I’m so far away she can’t quite tell if it’s really me.
It is strangely enjoyable to lie, quite consciously and deliberately, and to stick at it in the face of whatever evidence or outrage is thrown at me. Mum and Liev both know I’m lying, and I know I’m lying, but we all discover this brings us rapidly up against the limits of their power over me. They shout, but I’m not afraid; they confiscate possessions, but there’s nothing I miss; they ground me, but I don’t care, since I can barely walk, and there’s nowhere in Amarias I want to go, and no one I want to see.
Their final punishment is to confine me to the house for three weeks, outside school hours. I take it with an indifferent shrug, and make a point of never complaining or asking for a single outing. I can’t help finding it funny to see them discover how many little errands I usually run for the house, which they now have to do for themselves. Liev barely even knows where to buy bread.
I leave my room only when I have to, and speak as little as I can to either of them, scuppering their attempts to ignore me by ignoring them first.
The one time we’re all together is when we eat, usually in near silence. Liev scoffs away, seemingly unbothered by the tense atmosphere. Mum picks and nibbles at her food, looking tragic, as if she’s the one being punished. She’s thinner than she used to be. The skin un
der her eyes is loose and dark. The way she behaves, you’d think she was working night shifts down a coal mine or something, but she’s not. She’s not doing anything. I don’t know how she doesn’t die of boredom.
It’s weird listening to Mum and Liev trying to have conversations as if I’m not there. What they talk about more often than anything else is her back. Mum’s bad back is her hobby. When Liev can’t think of anything to say he asks her how her back has been that day, and she often comes out with an incredibly long answer. You can see the effort in his eyes as he attempts to look interested. Sometimes I make a point of watching him listen to her, which I know annoys him, but he can’t say anything.
Every month or so there’ll be some new cushion to sit on, machine to stretch with, or exercise to perform, but none of them lasts long. At the moment she’s into a huge inflatable football-type thing. She goes crazy if I kick it. Genuinely crazy.
Before we moved to Amarias, her back was fine. If I ever said this, she’d go even crazier than if I volleyed the ball-chair into the TV.
In the course of my three weeks at home, something under the surface of the whole family shifts. Their attempt at a punishment proves to be a liberation. In some strange way, I feel suddenly free of them: free to tell them nothing; free to live among them while at the same time remaining entirely concealed. It’s as if something has been dragging me back all my life, and I didn’t even know it was there, but now it’s been snipped away, and I’m lighter and faster than I ever thought was possible.
I feel as if there is a new line around me: an edge, where I stop and Mum starts. Before, it was a blur. She’s still my Mum – I still love her and need her and want her to be less miserable – but I realise that I have now, in some way, got rid of her. It’s a delicious feeling, like putting down a heavy bag, like jumping off a high wall, like sprinting into the sea.
I examine the map every night. After the house goes quiet, after Liev begins to snore, I creep to the drawer where I hid the food for Leila and there, under my winter clothes, is the small, cryptic diagram drawn for me by her father.
The Wall Page 11
