The Boy Next Door

by Emlyn Rees

  ‘Let’s see.’ Lucy lunged towards it.

  ‘No,’ I said, slapping my hand down on it.

  ‘For another milkshake,’ bribed Annabel.

  ‘No! I said no!’ I giggled. ‘It’s private.’

  ‘But I saw it in English,’ Pippa protested. ‘I saw you write it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What does it say?’ begged Lucy, who always hated to be left out.

  ‘Nothing,’ I teased, flashing open the book in a nanosecond, closing it again and stuffing it deep into my school bag.

  ‘Oh, Mickey!’ Annabel and Pippa moaned together.

  I tapped the side of my nose to tell them to mind their own business. Taking up my milkshake cup, I stirred the straw around the bottom.

  ‘It was nothing, anyway,’ said Pippa, put out. ‘Fred Roper …’ She let out a long, fake yawn. ‘Boring.’

  ‘Boring?’ I flushed.

  ‘It is boring. You won’t tell us anything,’ Annabel confirmed.

  ‘That’s because there’s nothing to tell,’ said Pippa.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I said defensively.

  Pippa grinned in her sly way. ‘Ah. So you have?’

  ‘Have you, Mickey?’ asked Lucy eagerly. ‘Have you done it with him?’

  I looked at them all, exasperated but secretly pleased they were so interested.

  I let their expectation hang in the air for a moment. ‘No,’ I said eventually. ‘But I’m going to –’

  ‘Tara Anson’s done it,’ chirped Annabel.

  ‘With who?’ I asked sceptically.

  ‘Paul White in the sixth form.’

  ‘Paul White and Tara Anson?’ I scoffed. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘She has,’ confirmed Lucy. ‘She told Catherine after our Biology mock exam. And Catherine told Lorna, who told Annabel.’

  Annabel nodded. This was exactly the reason I was keeping quiet about Fred.

  ‘But she wasn’t even going out with him,’ said Pippa.

  ‘Yeah. Slag,’ I told them spitefully.

  ‘At least she’s not a tease,’ said Annabel, who quite admired Tara. ‘You’ve been going out with Fred for ages and you haven’t done it.’

  ‘We’ve done most other things, though,’ I rebuffed.

  ‘Fingers and tops?’ asked Lucy.

  I dipped my chip into the dollop of ketchup on the paper carton. ‘And other things,’ I hinted.

  ‘Have you seen it, then?’ asked Pippa.

  ‘Felt it.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Nice.’ I shrugged, not wanting to go into details. Pippa and Lucy crowded together, giggling at this information. Annabel leant in close too.

  ‘Tara said that Paul White’s was horrible,’ she confided.

  ‘Well, Fred’s isn’t,’ I said, spotting the bus across the road and standing up. ‘It’s the best.’

  Intrigued, Pippa followed me on to the bus and we sat in our usual seats at the back. Once the ritual of insult shouting, paper throwing and cigarette trading had died down and the bus chugged out of Bowley, she sighed heavily. ‘Have you done much revision for Maths?’ she asked. I shook my head. ‘Neither have I,’ she continued.

  ‘I bet you have. You always do,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to lie to me.’

  ‘You don’t have to lie to me, either.’ She sounded offended.

  I turned to her. ‘I don’t,’ I said. Surely she knew by now that she was my best friend.

  ‘So? Are you really going to do it with Fred?’ she asked.

  I nodded. ‘I would have done before, but I want it to be perfect. I’ve got it all planned out.’

  ‘Really? When?’

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’ I’d been bursting to tell someone our plan. Pippa nodded. ‘You promise you won’t tell the others?’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’

  I leant towards her, keeping my voice down. ‘We’re going on holiday after the exams.’

  ‘Wow! Where?’

  ‘France.’

  ‘With parents?’

  ‘No. That’s the best bit, we’re going on our own.’

  ‘You’re so lucky. I’d never be allowed to do that. What did your mum say?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. That’s why it’s a secret. We’re not going to tell anyone. We’re just going to do it. We’ll tell our parents as we’re leaving and they won’t be able to do anything.’

  Pippa looked at me, her face a mixture of admiration and worry. ‘But –’

  ‘Don’t say anything. It’s going to be brilliant.’

  Of course it was going to be brilliant. Everything was brilliant. Being in love with Fred was like having a big bubble inside me. Sometimes I wanted to burst it, spill the beans and tell everyone, but most of the time, like now, I was pleased I’d kept it to myself and had only told Pippa a little bit of our plan.

  As I said goodbye to her at the bus stop by the church in Rushton and dawdled up the footpath along the Avenue, reaching out to swing around each of the oak trees, I wanted to kiss each one, knowing that I would soon be saying goodbye to them. Fred and I were on our way and everything, everything was about to kick off. Of course there was the small matter of O levels, but with a bit of luck I’d pass and Fred was bound to pass his. Then everything would start.

  Fred had told me all about the sixth-form college we were both going to apply to. It was on the other side of Bowley and once we got our grades through it shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade our parents to let us go there. If they got worried about the money, I’d get a Saturday job or something. They were bound to relent once they understood how miserable I’d be if I stayed at Bowley Comp. I was ready to meet new friends and if Fred and I were there together we’d be a proper couple. We might even find a flat nearby and we could get a dog.

  But then, maybe a dog wasn’t such a wise idea, because after our A levels in two years’ time we were going to go travelling. Fred said he wanted to go to Australia and we’d both looked at Louisa’s atlas the last time he was home. We’d taken it in turns to flick through the giant pages and the other one would shout ‘stop’. The plan was wherever the atlas fell open we’d visit. That was how we came up with the trip to France.

  It was going to be wonderful, lazing in the sun, cooking sausages on a campfire, snuggling up in our sleeping bags at night. But France was just the start. In a couple of years we’d have saved enough money to go on our world trip. We’d probably spend two years, we reckoned, stopping in various countries. There was so much of Africa to see and Fred reckoned that if we were any good at camping we could go right out into the jungle.

  To be honest, that sounded a bit dangerous – I was more into going to America. We hadn’t decided yet whether we’d fly there before or after Africa, but I reckoned if we got to New York, then Fred could get a job on a big newspaper since he was so good at English and I could work for a radio station or something.

  One thing was for sure: neither of us was ever going to come back and live smelly old Rushton … ever. If we returned to England at all, we were going to live in a big house right out in the country with the sea at the end of the garden. Fred had promised that he’d buy me a donkey, and there would be sheep and pet pigs, oh, and babies. Fred wanted two, but I said the more the merrier. I reckoned on five at least.

  I sighed happily, thinking of our family. We weren’t going to be anything like his parents, or mine, for that matter. We were always going to love each other and go out all the time. And when our kids grew up, we were always going to be on their side and they’d be able to do whatever they wanted. We weren’t going to stifle them with rules, or make them stay in. But that was years and years away. Anyway, we had to have sex first. A lot.

  I couldn’t wait until next year: I’d be sixteen and could go on the pill. Then, when we went to college, everything would be easy. I had it all planned. Dawdling up the hill, I tried to imagine what it would be like the first time we made love. I bit my lip, wondering whethe
r we’d be nervous, or whether it would hurt. No, it would be magical, just like everything else about Fred. God, I missed him.

  Behind me I heard the low rumble of a car. I turn to see Miles’s Porsche stealthily heading up the hill. Miles sat behind the wheel, his face set in a grim, unsmiling expression. I saw him look in his rear-view mirror and turn to me. For a second our eyes met and I smiled, waving, but Miles ignored me, concentrating his attention on the road. I stopped, feeling riled. I knew Fred had his differences with Miles, but he’d always been nice to me. Besides, I hadn’t seen him for ages. The least he could do was wave. After all, I was going out with his son.

  Miles brought the car to a halt outside Fred’s house, not bothering to pull into the drive. I continued up the hill towards the car, watching him quickly getting out, slamming the driver’s door, before rushing into his house.

  I dawdled up towards ours wondering what was going on, but nothing seemed to stir behind the Ropers’ windows and slowly I walked on.

  ‘Hi!’ I called, turning my key in the front door. Inside I could hear the theme tune of the six o’clock news.

  Dad was home early. He sat in the armchair in front of the television, stroking the cat, and I dumped my school bag by the door, before kissing him on the cheek.

  ‘Good day at school?’ he asked.

  ‘All right,’ I replied, walking over to the window and pulling our net curtains aside to have a look at next door.

  Talking about Fred at home wasn’t proving easy. Since everyone was used us hanging out together, the fact that we were officially going out didn’t make as much impact as I’d hoped. My mother infuriated me by being dismissive and admitted that she was relieved I wasn’t going out with Doug, my last boyfriend from Bowley Comp. Whenever I mentioned Fred she’d wave her hand abstractedly, as if she thought the whole thing was transient. When I overheard her telling Rita, the receptionist at the doctors’ surgery, that Fred was my latest ‘beau’, describing our relationship as ‘sweet’, I was furious. Fred and I weren’t ‘sweet’, we were real. To prove my point I put the silver ring I had on my engagement finger, hoping to wake her up to the reality of my feelings, but she either didn’t notice, or just ignored me.

  I took off my jacket and threw it on the sofa, as my mother came in with a cup of tea. She put it down on the arm of Dad’s chair. ‘You can hang that up for a start,’ she said, nodding to my jacket. ‘And don’t get too comfortable. If I were you, I’d make a start on your revision. You can put in a good couple of hours before dinner.’

  ‘Give her a break, Marie,’ said Dad. ‘She doesn’t have to begin right this minute.’

  ‘Her exams are in a few weeks!’ Mum replied. ‘If you want her to fail, then fine.’

  Ignoring them both, I looked back out of the window.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ asked Dad.

  ‘Miles is back,’ I said distractedly, watching as the front door opened.

  ‘Come away from there,’ said Mum, bustling over, but not able to resist having a peek herself.

  Through the window I could see Miles coming out of the house next door. Behind him Louisa, who usually looked so serene and calm, was distraught as she clung on to his arm. I watched Miles angrily shake off her grip, as he marched to the drive. He was carrying a large holdall in one hand and a pile of papers in the other. As he hurried towards the car, I could see him trying to stuff the papers in the bag.

  Louisa put her hands to her mouth in anguish, as she called something out to Miles, but he ignored her.

  ‘Really!’ Mum tutted. ‘They’re arguing –’ But she didn’t get any further, her attention caught by an approaching police car.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Dad, stirring from his chair, as blue light flashed in our front room. I felt a horrible sense of foreboding as the police car slowed, the siren cutting abruptly.

  Quickly, I ran from the front room to the front door, pulling it open.

  ‘Come back here, Mickey!’ I could hear my mum shouting, but I didn’t care, I had to see what was happening.

  The police car pulled up on the kerb on the far side of Miles’s Porsche and the doors opened quickly. I could hear the radio in the car, as a policemen from the passenger’s seat stepped out into the road. The driver put on his hat, as he emerged on to the pavement. They both looked towards Miles.

  There were more sirens in the distance. I looked over at Louisa, whose face seemed to crumple as she shouted ‘No!’ and put her hand out to Miles, but Miles, who was near the door of his Porsche, didn’t stop. He didn’t even look back at her, or at the policemen. Instead, with lightening speed, he yanked open the door of his car. I could see the panicked look on his face, as he threw the bag into the passenger’s seat, and papers flying everywhere. He didn’t stop to pick them up. Jumping into the driver’s seat and barely having time to close the door, Miles turned on the engine. I ran out into our drive, as the Porsche reversed away from the police car towards me. It swung round before, with a screech of tyres, it sped away down the hill.

  ‘Miles!’ screamed Louisa.

  The policemen looked flustered, as they jumped back into their patrol car. I couldn’t believe the noise as the siren burst back into life and within seconds the police car had set off in hot pursuit of Miles’s Porsche.

  Without stopping, I raced out into Hill Drive. I could see the Porsche speeding away down the Avenue, the police car racing after it. At the bottom of the Avenue a second police car was coming up the other way. It swerved round, blocking the road. Meanwhile, the first car was gaining ground on Miles’s Porsche, but even though there was no way he was going to make it round the second stationary car Miles didn’t slow down.

  Instead, he swerved his Porsche at the last minute, up on to the path at the side of the Avenue, trying to slip through. But he didn’t make it. Instead, there was an almighty crash.

  The Porsche concertinaed into the last large oak at the bottom of the Avenue.

  As I ran forward, sprinting down the hill, a large plume of smoke rushed up from the crumpled bonnet of Miles’s Porsche and, a split-second later, there was a huge explosion and flames leapt upwards.

  There was noise everywhere. People were coming out of their houses. A policeman was yelling for everyone to keep back. I ducked, putting my forearm up to my face as the heat of the blaze hit me. Then I felt a pair of arms go round me, yanking me back, and I only had a second to realise it was my father, before he buried my face in his jumper, forcing me away from the choking smoke, hugging me tightly, as I started to scream.

  Chapter VII

  Fred

  Less than a month before my O-level examinations were due to commence it fell to Mr Pearce, the master of my boarding house at Greenaway College, to tell me that my father had died.

  I was called out of my last class before tea by a prefect and asked to accompany him to my housemaster’s study. Here, Mr Pearce sat me down and repeated what my mother had told him: that Miles had been killed outright in a car accident near my home, that there were complications and that the police had been involved. I was to meet my mother at King’s Cross Station in London at eleven o’clock the following morning and I was to pack a bag, as I might be gone some time. ‘It’s going to be difficult,’ he told me, ‘but try to be brave for her as well as yourself.’

  Apart from refusing his suggestion of a glass of whisky and thanking him for offering to write to the examination board concerning my circumstances, I said nothing.

  Later that night, in bed, I stared at the dormitory ceiling until morning broke, with tears of mourning and guilt streaming silently down my face. It had only been the week before that Miles had come to visit me and I’d sat with him in the pub garden, drinking my pint and refusing to listen to what he’d had to say.

  A second blow struck me the following morning as I rode the train up to London. It caught me punch-drunk, reeling as I still was from the news I’d received the night before. Not only was Miles’s death headline news in th
e papers, but so, too, were the circumstances surrounding it. The police had been trying to find him in order to question him, when he’d lost control of his car and crashed. What they’d wanted to question him about and why he’d chosen to run were as yet unclear.

  When I joined my mother she explained that the police were going through Miles’s possessions both at home and at Clan. Although she’d already been interviewed by them herself, and would be so again, all they’d told her was that they were working on a tip-off they’d received concerning a serious crime that Miles might or might not have been involved with. They would let us know, they’d said, any further details as and when they arose.

  I remember little of the next few days. We caught a train to Aberdeen and moved into my grandmother’s house. My mother spent her days in the drawing room beside the telephone, staring at the wall and muttering prayers. I sat next to her, drinking the endless cups of tea which my grandmother provided, determined that Mum wouldn’t see me cry. I listened to the grandfather clock recording the slow passing of time, barely capable of holding a thought in my head for more than a second.

  The information we’d been waiting for came with the morning newspaper a week later. The police had dug up a body in the basement of Clan. To begin with, this information failed to evolve from newspaper copy in my mind. It remained detached in every way from reality, as impossible to assimilate as the horrors that had unfolded in the football stadium at Heysel some weeks earlier.

  The body belonged to Miles’s ex-business partner, Carl. It had been unearthed by the police down there in the concrete in the days which had followed Miles’s death. Before I’d read it in the lead article on the front page of The Times, Carl’s name had meant little more to me other than any of those of the various other people who’d come in and out of Miles’s and Mum’s lives over the years. I’d been eleven when he’d gone abroad and never come back. But now, after I’d read his name afresh and seen the grainy photograph of the man I half remembered, a million unanswerable questions had been launched. It had been an execution-style killing, the cause of death being a single bullet through the back of the head.