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two hands shaking themselves out over the podium as he spoke, a bit like mine.
Then. Eighteen screens of our living room. Our sofa, times eighteen, Rashid, times eighteen, Aunt Gloria, with her white sweater, her orange lips and pale cheeks, times eighteen. She was talking. The cameras went in close. I could see the word. Please. Kat gasped.
‘Auntie Glo!’ Kat squeaked. ‘Our living room! On TV!’
‘I forgot to tell you,’ I said.
‘You forgot to tell me?’
‘They called in the press.’
‘The press?’
‘They came in a big van.’
‘They came while I was gone?’
‘Yes, Kat.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘No.’
Kat rolled her eyes.
‘I didn’t have a chance, Kat. Not with all those motorbikes.’
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We watched as the eighteen shots of our living room switched to eighteen pictures of Salim – the one of him in his school blazer looking neither happy nor sad – then to a telephone number for contacting the police.
The story ended. The next was about the latest mission to Mars and showed a robotic probe collecting specimens from the planet crust. Kat stared at it without seeing it, chanting, ‘Our living room. On TV,’ to herself. I was interested in the pictures of the bare landscape, wondering what the Martian weather conditions were like and if life might ever have existed there. Neither of us noticed until it was too late. A firm hand grasped my shoulder. And Kat’s. I turned round. So did Kat. We were face to face with the strange man.
He smelled of alcohol. His eyes were slits. His lips were pressed up tight. I knew what that meant. Anger. Extreme.
His grip hardened on my shoulder so it hurt. ‘You again,’ he hissed.
237
THIRTY
The Road to Nowhere
K at said nothing. I said nothing.
His grip relaxed. He took a step back. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You followed me, didn’t you? You followed me here from the scooter show.’
Kat nodded.
‘That missing kid. The one on the news. Is that who you’re looking for?’
‘Yes,’ said Kat. ‘He’s not just some kid. He’s our cousin, Salim.’
‘Why d’you think I had anything to do with it?’
‘Because it was right after you gave us that ticket. Salim went up the London Eye. But he never came down again.’
The strange man looked at us with one side of his lip up, the other down, his nose scrunched up, his eyebrows bunched together. ‘Crazy kids!’ he said. But he wasn’t looking at us. He had his eyes raised 238
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upwards as if we were floating above him in the air.
‘We’re not crazy,’ Kat said.
He looked down again and gave a strange kind of smile. ‘This cousin of yours – he went up the Eye and never came down, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kids don’t just vanish into thin air.’
Kat sighed. ‘That’s what the police said.’
The man’s eyes shifted round from her face to mine.
‘It’s serious,’ Kat said. ‘The police are looking for him. And now it’s all over the TV.’
‘I don’t know anything about it. I told you before.’
‘Did you really just buy a ticket – and not decide to use it?’
The man looked around and backed away. ‘It wasn’t exactly like that,’ he said. A bus crammed with passengers had pulled up at the nearby stop. A woman with a buggy struggled to get on. The driver stared at her with his lips turned down. The strange man glanced at the bus, then looked at us. 239
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‘It was this bird,’ he said, his words speeding up. The bus revved up. The wheels of the buggy spun as the woman seesawed it onto the platform. My hand was shaking itself out.
‘This bird in the queue. That’s who I got the ticket from.’
‘A bird?’ I said, thinking of crows and pigeons.
‘A dark-haired chick. Nobody I knew. I was just passing. She called me over and said how her boyfriend hadn’t shown and she didn’t want to waste his ticket but she didn’t want to lose her boarding slot either. So she asked me to go over and give it to you.’
‘Why us?’ said Kat.
The man shrugged. ‘Dunno. You were kids, right at the back of queue, I guess. She took pity on you.’
Suddenly he dashed over to the bus just before the driver shut the doors. ‘It’s her you need to talk to. Not me. If you can find her.’ Then he gave a strange laugh.
‘Wait!’ screamed Kat. ‘Don’t go! Wait!’ She ran after him, but the cross-looking driver shook his 240
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head at her and shouted, ‘Full up!’ and shut the doors in her face.
The strange man raised his palms upwards as well as his hands and the bus jerked forward and gathered speed down the high street.
‘Hell!’ said Kat.
‘Hrumm,’ I said.
‘Shut up!’ Kat shouted.
The bus, along with the strange man, disappeared under a bridge. Kat clenched her fists and banged them on her thighs like she was a boxer fighting herself. Then she kicked a Coke can on the pavement into the gutter. ‘The road to nowhere,’ she said in a voice so loud that passers-by stared at us. ‘One great big bloody waste of time.’ On the word time, she crushed her boot down on the Coke can. ‘Road to bloody nowhere.’ The boot stamped up and down. The Coke can went pancake-flat. ‘Nowhere.’ She burst into tears. ‘And which way’s the bloody tube? I’ve bloody well forgotten.’
241
THIRTY-ONE
Tornado Touchdown Time
S omehow Kat found the way back to the tube. She stomped up the high street with me trying to keep up and my hand flapping and then she asked directions from a man who was painting a railing and he pointed a finger and she stomped on, acting as if I wasn’t there, and I kept up after her until we got to the tube.
We travelled the long way home in silence. Then we walked back up the main road and into our street and she still said nothing but she let me walk beside her now and her lips were turned down, which meant she was sad more than angry.
Outside our house she stopped and said, ‘We’re for it, Ted. Our hair isn’t even wet.’
I touched my hair, confused. Then I remembered. We were supposed to have gone swimming.
‘Maybe we can just sneak in,’ Kat whispered. She got out her key and was about to put it in the lock when the door flew open.
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Mum stood in front of us, barring the way. Her hair was messy and her eyes were as wide as volcano craters. She dangled our swimming gear before our eyes: Kat’s bikini, two sets of goggles, my trunks. She spluttered, dropped the lot, hugged us, cuffed Kat round the ear and screeched, ‘You disobedient, lying, cheeky chit – and as for you, Ted, I’m shocked, I don’t know what got into you, writing that lie about going swimming, I’ve been worried witless, I’ve—’
Kat walked past her with her hands over her ears.
‘Don’t you swan off like that until I’ve finished with you!’
I hovered in the doorway, frowning and thinking of swans gliding away in the pond in the park. Then I mumbled, ‘Sorry, Mum, sorry, Mum,’ because I knew she was angry, but she didn’t hear me. I picked up the things she’d dropped. She yanked me into the house and slammed the door.
‘That Mrs Hopper across the road’s peering out again. God only knows what the neighbours think!
TV crews, police cars, I’ve just about had it, Gloria’s 243
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gone mental, you two vanish. Have you any idea how I’ve been feeling?’
Kat laughed. She kicked the skirting board and hooted. ‘The neighbours,’ she screeched. She
doubled over. ‘Typical grown-up crap.’ Her voice went up an octave and she crooned, ‘ God only knows what the neighbours think. Is that all you care about, Mum? What the neighbours think? We’ve been trying to help. Trying to find Salim. But you’re not interested, are you? You don’t want to know what we think, do you? All you care about is what the neighbours think. Salim might be dead for all you care.’
Mum stood eyeball to eyeball with Kat. I realized they were exactly the same height.
‘Don’t you dare say that – don’t you dare . . .’
Mum’s hand darted up as if to hit Kat hard on the cheek, but it froze about a centimetre off target. Her voice trailed off.
The temperature in the hallway seemed to plummet to minus thirty degrees.
Kat stared at Mum, her eyes round. ‘Go on, hit me,’ she hissed.
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Mum shook her head and I could see tears falling down her cheek. Her hand fell to her side. I stepped forward. ‘Mum? Kat?’ I said, but they paid no attention.
Then Kat’s lips started to wobble. She pushed Mum out of her way, wailing, ‘ I hate you, I hate you. ’
She ran upstairs, tripping halfway. Hate you, hate you. A bedroom door slammed. Then something upstairs crashed.
It was Tornado Touchdown Time, or T x 3, in our house. This is my way of describing what it’s like when people have really bad arguments and it is the worst place to be in all the world.
Mum slumped on the bottom stair, head down in her hands. Her shoulders heaved and she made a strange noise.
I’d never seen Mum like that before.
‘Oh no,’ she moaned, rocking herself. ‘Is there no end to this?’ I wasn’t sure whom she was talking to and looked around. I was the only one there. Which meant she was talking either to me or to God. ‘Oh God, oh God,’ she said.
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So it was God, not me, and I was free to go. I decided to check out the weather in the back garden.
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THIRTY-TWO
Solar Wind
I walked fast through the kitchen and out into the back garden, my hand flapping. The general synopsis at eighteen hundred issued by the Met Office: Fitzroy, mainly northerly, four or five, becoming variable, thundery showers . . . I did my pacing, counting the strides it took to get from one side of the back garden to the other. Twelve-and-a-half strides long, seven across. I ducked under the line of dry clothes, grabbing onto a sheet. I left a grubby stain. My fingers were still black from going through the phone book earlier. Eye of the Needle Solutions. That’s what I needed. A solution for the impossible. How you get through a needle point. How you disappear from a sealed pod. I thought of the girl on the motorbike, the pink sleeve in the photo, I thought of Dad’s razor blade, I thought of the strange man and the lady saying how he was fired and him saying we should find the ‘bird’ with the dark hair, and I thought of what Aunt Gloria had said earlier. ‘If 247
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brains alone could bring Salim back, yours would do it, Ted.’
I held my hands over my ears and shook out my head. My brain felt like it was overheated, going into melt-down. I paced the garden and recounted my steps, only this time the number came out wrong –
eleven-and-a-half strides instead of twelve-and-ahalf, so either my legs had grown in the last few minutes, or the universe had shrunk, instead of expanded. ‘Wreuurrrrr,’ I went, like the Earl’s Court motorbikes. I looked up at the sky. Evening. High strata cloud, fresh southwesterly, but air pressure falling. One of Dad’s shirts on the line flapped against my head. The wind was picking up. I walked over to the garden shed and kicked it a few times. I’m not a philosopher. I’m a meteorologist. But I believe in meditation. Buddhists believe that if you empty out your head, that’s when you find enlightenment. Kicking the shed is a good way of emptying out your head. It’s like jumping on a trampoline. You kick or jump, you jump or kick, and eventually all the thoughts march out of your ears, 248
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like a line of toy soldiers heading for the edge of the table. You’re left with nothing – the empty nothing I told Salim about, which is frightening and lonely, but simple and clear.
I shut my eyes and imagined a vast, silent void. I kept up the kicking. By the eighty-seventh kick I was empty inside and a kind of solar wind arrived in my brain. A storm of charged particles rushed through my head like lightning, giving off strange flashes of coloured lights. A picture formed. It was like the Aurora Borealis burning in my brain. It sparkled so hard it hurt. The pattern I’d half glimpsed earlier that day flooded back. But this time it didn’t vanish. I caught it. I hung onto it. I made it freeze, like ice.
Then I knew. Not where Salim was. But how he’d vanished like he had.
249
THIRTY-THREE
The Sound of the Storm
W hen you try to talk to people in the middle of a storm, they can’t hear. They can’t catch your words for the sound of the storm.
Thunder, rain and wind.
And the things the storm moves – leaves, roof tiles, rubbish.
I came in from the garden, eighty-seven kicks of the garden shed wiser, but I couldn’t make myself heard. Dad was just coming in from work. Mum was still sitting on the stairs. She ran to him before he took off his coat. Her arms went around him and she put her head on his shoulder.
‘Oh, Ben, I’m so glad you’re home.’
‘Faith, love – what’s wrong? Has there been bad news?’
‘Not since we spoke earlier. The press has been here. Twice. Glo’s been terrible all day. This afternoon she had a panic attack. She couldn’t breathe. I called the doctor. He gave her a sleeping pill. She’s 250
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upstairs, flat out, the first proper sleep she’s had since Salim went missing. Then the kids just took off somewhere without asking. And Ted left a note about going swimming. Imagine! He lied, Ben. I didn’t know what to do. I thought we’d lost them too. Then Rashid went out to walk the streets. He said he was going mad sitting around, waiting. And just now the kids came back. Oh Ben, the relief. They came in the door, and Kat and I – Kat and I—’
‘Shush . . .’
‘We had a row.’
‘So what’s new?’
‘A terrible row, Ben. I nearly hit her, I came this close . . .’ She held out her finger and thumb, a centimetre apart. Then she started wailing again. Dad said ‘Shush’ but she didn’t stop. I stood a couple of metres away.
‘Dad,’ I said. He didn’t answer.
‘Mum,’ I said. She didn’t answer.
I waited and tried again. ‘Dad. Mum.’
Mum looked round and swallowed. She said, ‘Oh, 251
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Ted. There you are. Can’t you go upstairs and read a book or something?’
‘But Mum, I’ve worked out—’
‘Shush, Ted,’ Dad said. ‘Now isn’t the time.’
The words were hard and short, not like Dad’s voice at all, and Mum started crying again, so I went upstairs.
In my room Kat lay face down on the lilo, her fist clenched up and pressed between her eyebrows. I noticed that my alarm clock was on the floor, broken into bits. That was the smashing sound I’d heard earlier at Tornado Touchdown Time.
‘Kat,’ I said.
She shook her head. Her eyes scrunched up. A tear slipped out and trailed down her nose. She didn’t wipe it away.
‘Kat. I think I’ve got it.’
She moaned.
‘The theories. The nine theories. I think I know the right one.’
‘Oh, Ted! You and your theories.’ She grabbed a pillow and buried her head under it.
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I went up to her and tapped her shoulder. ‘The theories, Kat,’ I said.
She looked up from the pillow. ‘Go away,’ she said. br />
‘Kat,’ I said. Then I added, ‘Sis,’ because she likes me calling her this as she says it makes me sound normal. But this time it didn’t work.
‘Ted – I don’t want to know. Go to hell.’
‘Kat . . .’
She took the pillow and banged me on the shoulder with it. ‘That’s to stop you looking like a bloody duck that’s forgotten how to quack,’ she said. Then she threw herself down and sobbed.
Next I crept into Kat’s room, where Aunt Gloria was. ‘Aunt Gloria?’ I whispered.
But Aunt Gloria was fast asleep. This was not surprising as Mum had said she’d had a sleeping pill. Sleeping pills make your brain waves calm down into a sleep pattern. (I would like to try one, not so much because I have trouble sleeping, but more to see if my brain with its different operating system would respond.) Aunt Gloria lay on her back diagonally across the bed, her foot hanging over the 253
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edge and the duvet crooked. Her mouth was half open, her breathing loud and low. Her eyelids were a bruised colour, a purple smudge. I couldn’t have woken her even if I’d tried.
I was about to creep out again when I saw Kat’s copy of The Tempest, face down on the duvet. Kat, like Salim, had been studying it at school. Had Aunt Gloria been reading it too? Salim had said he’d acted in it and that it was right up my street. I realized now that he’d meant that I would like it, because it was named after a dramatic weather condition and weather is what interests me most. I picked it up, sat down at Kat’s desk and began to read.
First there was a long list of people. This is how plays always start. The author tells you who is who and how they are related to each other and it is called a cast of characters. This one had a lot of men and some strange-sounding spirits and a female called Miranda, who I remembered Kat saying was a dishrag. Then I read the first scene. I didn’t understand it because the language was almost as hard to understand as French, which is my worst subject at 254