Pa had been out working on Hook Island all night and had gone to bed, tired out, at about one thirty. Ma was next door at Uncle Tom’s and she must’ve crashed there for the night. Riley had gone to bed a couple of hours ago and she always slept like a log.
Skye had her own rooms in the warren-like attic on the second floor and she loved the higgledy piggledyness of them. She’d also started to appreciate the bonus of having her own separate staircase which led almost directly to the back door. The only thing she had to be careful of was Woolly making too much noise. She knew he wouldn’t bark at her arrival, but his claws made an awful clattering racket on the old wooden floors as he twirled around and around in a mad frenzy of greeting.
Luc was delicious – seventeen, dark haired and popular in an ‘I don’t care’ sort of way. Even her parents loved him. Both sets of parents were really buddy-buddy and they were always going on group family picnics together or visiting each other’s houses for barbeques, parties, Christmas drinks and stuff.
However, Skye knew their parents would go ballistic if she and Luc started seeing each other, not least because she was only fourteen. Skye guessed Luc had a bit of a thing for Riley, but he hadn’t a hope of getting anywhere with her as she always set her sights on older, harder to obtain boyfriends. Skye thought she was mad. Luc was the fittest bloke in the Perimeter, if not the whole of the country.
Jamie chewed his lip as he looked at the hole. He’d get drafted, beaten up or shot if he got caught, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. It was fate. What treasures might he find on the other side? At the very least, he might find some more food, or a comfortable place to sleep. That decided him. He would sleep in relative safety tonight, away from the scavs and muggers and he would still set off for Boscombe in the morning.
He took off his coat and put it and his bundle through the hole first. Then he made himself as small as possible and squeezed his way nervously through, ignoring the sharp pain in his injured shoulder and tensing his body, fearful of getting a shock from the fence.
Once he was safely through, he shrugged his jacket back on and found himself surrounded by fruit trees and manicured shrubs and bushes. He yanked a small golden apple from a low bough and put it into his other pocket. Then he picked a tiny under ripe plum and took a bite, spitting it out in disgust at the sour taste.
He was obviously in someone’s garden, some rich person’s garden by the look of it. He saw a large white timber summerhouse in front of him. It was octagonal in shape and he crept closer to investigate. The summerhouse, or poolhouse, sat about twenty feet away from an Olympic-sized swimming pool and its underwater lights cast a dancing glow over the area. He could see the main house the garden belonged to. It was more mansion than house and looked miles away from where Jamie stood, staring. No lights were on.
He turned back to look at the poolhouse. It had round blue glass windows, set into each of the eight sides, like portholes. The door had a white wooden frame with a large stained glass window depicting scenes of picture-book sailing boats on stylised waves under a blue sky. A generator hummed and Jamie deliberated over whether or not to break the beautiful stained glass, to gain entry. But he hesitated, worried about alerting the guards and strangely reluctant to destroy this tranquil scene.
It stirred a distant memory of his childhood that made him feel oddly nostalgic. He rolled his eyes at his own sentimentality and half-heartedly tried the wooden door knob, before preparing to smash his elbow through the door. But to his surprise, he turned the knob and the door opened.
Jamie smiled in disbelief and gave a low whistle. ‘Yeah, I could cope with a bit of this,’ he said out loud.
It was a poolhouse, but most people would have been proud to have it as their main residence. The door opened onto a lounge with comfy looking furniture. Next to the lounge, was a luxury shower room, sauna and a small kitchenette. Jamie did a little dance over to the fridge, forgetting the pain in his leg for a moment and, oh my God, ice cold beers.
He was sure now he had died when the AV hit him and he had now arrived in a heaven invented just for him. He pinched himself hard. It wasn’t even cheap home-brewed beer, it was the almost-extinct foreign stuff.
He popped the cap, using his fist and the hardwood coffee table, then he downed half the bottle in one greedy slurp. Nectar, ambrosia, liquid paradise. His head fizzed and his body relaxed. He lay on one of the striped sofas, sighing as he took the weight off his injured leg. Draining the bottle, he opened a second and began tucking into a party-sized packet of crisps that lay on the table. He hadn’t eaten crisps for half a lifetime. He tasted artificial flavourings, combined with excessive salt and his taste buds went crazy.
Sod the berry bar, he thought, beer and crisps are the way to go. I’ll just finish these and then I’m going to try out the shower, get some hot water on my poor neglected skin. He smiled to himself and wriggled comfortably into the sofa. Pretty soon, he was asleep.
Skye was most definitely upset. Luc had as good as rejected her and she felt stupid and humiliated. He had unconvincingly faked tiredness and gone back to bed, but she could tell he wasn’t really tired, tired of her more like. She allowed a few tears to fall and kicked her legs half-heartedly against the side of the pool. She knew she should probably go back to bed, but a small spark of hope within her thought maybe Luc would change his mind and come back out to her.
She sat there for ages, dangling her legs in the water, until she realised she was shivering. She was freezing cold in fact. She swung her legs out of the pool and stood up stiffly, deciding to warm herself up with a hot shower in the poolhouse.
She’d have to pretend tonight hadn’t happened. She couldn’t have borne it if she and Luc were no longer friends and so she decided she’d have to wait a while before she made a move on him. It was probably her age putting him off. Once she hit sixteen, he would declare his undying love for her, she was sure of it.
Skye opened the poolhouse door and walked through the darkened lounge, to the large, tiled shower room. A strange, stale smell permeated the air, but she only noticed it on the edge of her consciousness, she was too preoccupied with her thoughts. She pulled the shower room light switch, stripped off her bikini and stepped into the large glass octagonal shower unit. The hot water felt amazing on her cold, clammy, prune-like skin and she stood there for ages, letting the water heal her tender heart and her bruised ego.
Reluctantly, she turned off the jets and reached for a towel, feeling suddenly exhausted and longing for her bed. Then she froze. What was that? She heard a thud, like something falling on the floor, followed by… a snore?
‘Hello?’ she tentatively called out. Who would be sleeping in the poolhouse?
She tiptoed into the main room in her bare feet. It was dark, but the light shone into the lounge from the shower room. She made out the form of someone unfamiliar lying on one of the sofas. Before she could stop herself, she gave a scream, instantly waking the person from their illegal slumber. It was a man, an outsider from the look of him. He was wild-looking, filthy, with matted hair and now she had unwittingly woken him up.
Jamie must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, he was awoken by a high-pitched scream. He jumped up, quickly realising where he was. Years of travelling around strange, inhospitable places, had meant his mind was always finely tuned to his surroundings, whether awake or asleep.
He saw a young, naked girl backing away from him, groping around for her towel, which lay on the floor. The light from the shower room made him blink and he tried to refocus. He felt oddly fuzzy and strange, realising he must be slightly drunk.