I never used to be frightened of anything – figuring that life had already thrown about the worst it had at me by the time I was six – but the last few months had shaken all that up, the last few days, especially. All I wanted now was to find somewhere safe to bed down for the night, to curl up and sleep. I wanted to switch off, blank out the world for a while. A deep chill swept through me. Is that what my mum was doing when she was shooting up? Escaping for a few hours? Was it all too much for her? Looking after a kid on her own? Living in a grotty flat? Let down time after time? I’d never understood it before. Why she’d do that. But I was beginning to see how attractive a bit of oblivion could be – it was just that I didn’t want to find it the way she had…
There was something strange about this place. Where I come from, canals are dirty places, running along the backs of warehouses and factories. This was different. It was edged with white-painted metal gates and fancy bridges, with carvings in the stone.
Soon the path left the canal and led to a road. I was actually on a hill – weird when you’ve been walking on level ground all day. The road went up and down to the left and right of me, while the canal carried on flat, underneath it, on the other side. I crossed over and peered over the stone bridge. Couldn’t see a great deal now, but could make out the shapes of boats tied up. Not sure there’d be anywhere to kip down along there. I’d be better off if I could find a park, or the bottom of someone’s backyard. I set off up the road and then turned right into a quieter one. It was like something off the TV, a movie set, with a cobbled pavement and tall houses.
It was the time of day when people had their lights on but hadn’t yet drawn their curtains. Every second or third front window was like a little TV screen, bright in the gathering gloom, drawing your eye in. People on their computers or watching the telly, some sitting reading.
Made me feel lonely, seeing a snapshot of other people’s lives. They were warm, secure; there were cooking smells wafting out, soon be dinnertime; they had people, they belonged. I made myself move on – no good thinking what other people had. I needed to find somewhere to sleep.
On the other side of the road, the houses stopped. A fence ran along the edge of a field. I started looking for a place to get through; didn’t fancy getting caught up on more barbed wire. I was so tired, I felt like I was in a daze. A breeze whipped up, its icy edge cutting through my clothes. I needed to find somewhere to shelter or else be found frozen solid in the morning.
I crossed the road to follow the line of the fence. A few feet along, there was a stile and I climbed over – or rather hauled myself, my legs pretty much shot after a full day’s walking. As I clambered down the other side, first thing I did was put my foot in something. A big, slippery pool, stinking to high heaven. Oh, great, cows again, but not safely penned in this time.
The grass sloped upward into the blackness. I followed the fence along for a bit – it was flatter, and you could see a bit better here with the streetlights – until I reached the corner of the field and there was no option but to climb, away from the road and into the darkness. The sky seemed to have disappeared, blocked out by the hill and, I discovered, a clump of trees. They were on the other side of the fence, but there was a gate, so I hauled myself over again and blundered up, bushes tearing at my jeans, until I found a flatter bit underneath the trees – actually a bit of a dip in the ground, a hollow. I checked for cowpats as best I could, and sank down.
I curled up like a baby in the blanket Britney had given me, wrapping it around my body and over my face. It hardly kept the wind off me at all. As usual, I thought I’d never sleep: My head was full of Spider, always Spider. Was he asleep now? Was he lying somewhere, awake like me, chest rising and falling? How many breaths did he have left? But when I’d stopped shivering and my body’s own warmth started to heat the space inside the blanket, I drifted off, the darkness around me sweeping into my head, switching off the thoughts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
There was someone chasing me, so close I could hear his breath, feel it on the back of my neck. I was running faster than I’ve ever run. My chest was bursting, and I was running, running, but he’d got me, there was nowhere left to go. It was too much, I couldn’t cope with it anymore. I wrenched myself back to the surface, becoming aware of my surroundings, opening my eyes slightly to see the gray light of dawn.
Just a dream after all. But the noise was still there, someone near me, so near I could hear the breath in and out, in and out. Spider? Just for a minute, I thought he was next to me again. Oh, Jesus. I rolled over slowly. There was a dark shape right on top of me, an animal of some sort, snuffling around. Cows? I’d thought they were in the other field. But it wasn’t a cow, it was a dog: a big, black dog with its nose in my backpack.
I froze. Ray may have been a sheep in wolf’s clothing, but I still didn’t trust dogs, and this was a big one, tall and skinny, but with bulging muscles in its shoulders and back legs.
Another noise broke in now, a woman’s voice. “Sparky! Come here! Come here!” I saw his ear twitch. He’d heard her, but the last of the bread Britney had put in my bag was more interesting. The owner of the voice came ’round the corner now: wellies, furry coat and scarf. When she saw us, she broke into a run.
“Oh, shit! Sparky, come here!” He looked up, then dipped his head again. Time was running out for him. One last chance to grab a mouthful. The woman got her fingers into his collar and yanked him right away. “I’m so sorry, so sorry. It’s the food. He’s an incurable scavenger. Oh, God, he’s eaten your food. I’m so sorry.” Her voice was anxious, posh.
There was an awkward silence. I was still lying on the ground, woozy with sleep. The woman and her dog loomed over me. She was waiting for me to say something, worried about my reaction. I sat up and shuffled away from them on my behind.
“I’m sorry, he woke you up, didn’t he? Scared you. He wouldn’t bite you. It was just the food. Look, I only live down there. You could come and have some breakfast, a cup of tea.” It didn’t look like she meant it; she was probably just trying to say something to make things better.
“No,” I managed. “S’alright.”
“He’s eaten your food. I could bring you something…?”
“No, honest. I’m alright.”
“I don’t think I’ve got any money on me.” She reached into her pockets. “Oh, look. You could buy some breakfast with this.” She held out a handful of change toward me. I just wanted this all to stop. I wanted her to take her bloody dog and her middle-class niceness and her do-gooding pity away.
“I don’t want your fucking money, I’m alright.” That did the trick.
She recoiled visibly, tightened her grip on the dog’s collar. “Right, OK. OK. Sorry.” She backed off, then bent to clip on the dog’s leash.
They took a wide semicircle below me on the hill and went through the gate into the next field, where they stopped for a moment. The woman unclipped the dog, dug about in her pocket, and then looked back at me. Then the dog took off suddenly, stretching out its legs and tearing across the field. The movement rippled along him, like a wave, as if he was a little black racehorse. She set off walking after him along the path, and I stood up to watch them go. He circled around her three times, then trotted up close and followed along, steaming gently in the morning light. Watching them made me feel lonelier; hadn’t thought it was possible.
My gaze shifted from the two of them, getting smaller as they reached the other side of the field, to the view beyond. The wind from last night had disappeared completely. The sky above was a clear, pale blue, the last few stars still visible. Beneath, clouds of the whitest, fluffiest cotton streaked across the scene at ground level. Honey-colored spires and towers stuck up through them, islands in a billowing sea. I’d never seen anything like it. Somewhere beneath the fog, people were sleeping and waking, farting, scratching, taking a morning piss, but on the surface it looked like Disneyland.