They find a clearing that contains the last few broken branches of a den they built earlier in the summer where they drank Babycham and smoked six menthol cigarettes and were violently sick. Let’s do it here. Sean finds a log to use as a shooting gallery and Daniel is sent in search of targets. He climbs the boundary fence and roots around among the hawthorn bushes which line the hard shoulder, coming back with two empty beer bottles, a battered plastic oil can and a muddy teddy bear with both arms missing. He feels exhausted by the heat. He imagines standing on the lawn at home, squeezing the end of the hose with his thumb and making rainbows in the cold falling water. He arranges the objects at regular intervals along the log. He thinks about the child who once owned the teddy bear and regrets having picked it up but doesn’t say anything.
Sean raises the gun and moves his feet apart to brace himself. Daniel sees the pad of Sean’s forefinger flatten as he begins to squeeze the trigger. A deep, cathedral quiet. The traffic stops. The blackbird no longer sings. He can hear the shuttle of his own blood.
He is not aware of the shot itself, only the loose rattle of scattering birds. He sees Sean being thrown backwards as if a big animal has charged and struck him in the centre of his chest mid-leap. The oil can, the bottles and the bear are still standing.
Oh my God. Sean gets to his feet. Oh my God. He begins dancing. He has clearly never done anything this exciting in his life. Oh my God.
A military plane banks overhead. Daniel is both disappointed and relieved that he is not offered the second shot. Sean breathes deeply and theatrically. He braces himself again, wipes the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his T-shirt and raises the gun. This time the noise is breathtakingly loud. It seems obvious to Daniel that many, many people will have heard it.
What are you doing? It is the youngest Robert Hales.
They jump, both of them, but Sean recovers his composure quickest. What do you think we’re doing?
You’ve got a gun. Despite the heat, Robert is wearing a battered orange cagoule.
Duh.
Let me have a go.
Yeh, right, says Sean.
I want a go, says Robert. He steps forward. He is taller than Sean by a good six inches.
Just as he did in the bedroom, Sean lifts his arm until the gun is pointing directly at Robert’s face. No way, José.
Daniel realises that Sean may kill Robert. He is excited by this possibility. He will be a witness to a crime. People will respect him and feel sorry for him.
Robert doesn’t move. Five, maybe ten seconds. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Daniel can’t tell if Robert is terrified or utterly unafraid. Finally he says, I’m going to kill you, not in the way kids say it to one another in the playground but in the way you say, I’m going to the shop. He walks away without looking back. Sean aims at him till he vanishes. The two of them listen to the fading crunch of twigs and dry leaves under his trainers. Spastic. Sean lets his arm slump. Bloody spastic. He walks up to the teddy bear and places the barrel in the centre of its forehead. Daniel thinks how similar they look, the bear and Robert, uninterested, staring straight ahead. But Sean can’t be bothered to waste another bullet. Shit. Robert’s appearance has made the adventure seem mundane. Sean throws the gun into the Gola bag. Let’s go.
They walk back through the woods, taking the long route that loops up the hill and comes out on the far side of the scrapyard, avoiding the Roberts’ house altogether. Gnats and dirty heat. Daniel has dog shit on his left shoe which he has not been able to scrape off completely.
His sister, Helen, was unexpectedly born breech. The cord became trapped while her head was coming out and she was deprived of oxygen. Daniel is not told about this until he is sixteen. He knows only that there is a light in her eyes which stutters briefly sometimes then comes back on. He knows only that she has trouble with numbers, counting objects, telling the time.
She will leave school at sixteen with no qualifications, living at home and working in a furniture warehouse, then in a greengrocer’s. She will change doctors and get better drugs. Ethosuximide. Valproic acid. The petit mal will stop. She will be easily confused but she will be plump and blonde and pretty and people will like her instinctively. She’ll meet Garry at a night club. Overweight, thirty-five, detached house, owner of a taxi firm, a big man in a small world. They will marry and it will take Daniel a long time to realise that this is a happy ending.
The noise is nothing more than a brief hiss followed by a clatter of foliage. Crossbow? Catapult? Then a second shot. It is the oddest thing, but Daniel will swear that he saw it before he heard it, before Sean felt it even. A pink stripe appears on the skin just above Sean’s elbow. He yelps and lifts his arm. Bastard.
They squat on the path, hearts hammering. Sean twists his arm to inspect the damage. There is no bleeding, just a red weal, as if he had leant against the rim of a hot pan. Robert must be somewhere farther down the hill. The hole in the windscreen, the hole in the driver’s body. But Daniel can see nothing without lifting his head above the undergrowth. The best plan would be to run away as fast as they can so that Robert is forced to aim between the trees at two moving targets, but Sean is taking the gun out of the bag. I’m going to get him.
Don’t be stupid.
And what’s your brilliant idea?
Another hiss, another clatter. They duck simultaneously. For a couple of seconds Sean looks frightened. Then he doesn’t. This way. He starts to commando-crawl through a gap in the brambles.
Daniel follows him only because he doesn’t want to be alone. Sean holds the gun in his hand as he crawls. Daniel thinks how easy it would be for him to pull the trigger accidentally. Cracked seed cases, dry leaves and curls of broken bark. They drag themselves between the gnarly trunks. Born and bred in a briar patch. He tries to pretend that they are in a film but he can’t do it.
They are moving in the wrong direction, away from the scrapyard. And this is Robert’s back garden. He will know every inch of the wood. Daniel scratches his cheek on a thorn and squeezes his eyes shut until the pain dies away so that he doesn’t cry out. He touches his face. Blood on his dirty fingers.
They find themselves under a low dome of branches just big enough for them to lie stretched out, a place where an animal might sleep, perhaps. Improbably, they hear the sound of an ice-cream van, far off.
No fourth shot.
What do we do now?
We wait, says Sean.
What for?
Till it’s dark.
Daniel looks at his watch. At six his mother will call Sean’s flat, at seven she will ring the police. He rolls onto his back and narrows his eyelids so that the light falling from the canopy becomes a shimmer of overlapping circles in white and yellow and lime green. The smell of dog shit comes and goes. Is this is a safe place or a trap? He imagines Robert looking down at the two of them lying there under the brambles. Fish in a barrel. The way Donnie wept when his fingers snapped.
After twenty minutes the tension begins to ease. Perhaps this was what Robert intended after all, to scare them then go home and sit in front of the TV laughing. Forty minutes. Daniel hasn’t had anything to drink since breakfast. He has a headache and he can feel little gluey lumps around the edge of his dry lips. They decide to run for it. They no longer believe that Robert is waiting for them, but the running will amplify the excitement of their escape and recapture a little of their injured dignity.