The Dead of Summer Read online

  He shut me down there with them, pulled the boards and the girders across so I couldn’t get out. I don’t know why he did that. Why would he do that? Why would he keep me down there with the other two dead? They’re saying he was a psycho, that’s what the police are all saying but he was my best friend. I sat there for hours. I had my arms wrapped around my knees and my eyes closed tight because I didn’t want to see how black it was and I didn’t want to touch anything or anything to touch me. And I didn’t know what was worse, the whole time I was down there, I couldn’t make up my mind which would be worse: being left down there, or him coming back.

  By eight o’clock the next morning I was up, dressed, and staring out the window like a dog needing a walk. Had Denis said ‘See you tomorrow’ when he got off the bus last night? Or had it just been ‘See you later’? Had he meant that he’d be seeing both of us later, or just Kyle? What if yesterday had been a one-off? Eventually I left my spot behind the front-room curtains and wandered irritably back upstairs.

  My sisters were lying in bed, chatting about the night before. Esha, a cigarette in one hand, a can of Coke in the other, was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling while Bela painted her toenails pink. They both had yesterday’s eyeliner on their cheeks and matching Care Bears on their pillows and they were deep in conversation.

  Esha was saying, ‘So then he goes to me, “Was your mum and dad retarded?”’

  Bela looked up from her foot. ‘Cheeky git! Why’d he want to know that?’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ replied Esha. ‘So he goes, “Cos, my sweetheart, there’s something really special about you!”’

  Bela cocked her head for a moment to consider this, the nail varnish brush poised in mid air. ‘Aw! So what did you say?’

  ‘I said, “In that case I’ll have a Martini and lemonade, ta very much.”’ My sisters both cackled appreciatively.

  ‘So then,’ Esha shot me a glance and lowered her voice. ‘So then he goes, “Do you want to come outside and look at my motor?” ‘

  ‘Nah!’

  ‘Yeh! So I goes, “Not bloody likely, you’re old enough to be my dad, you!”’

  ‘As if!’ agreed Bela.

  Esha stared thoughtfully at her cigarette for a moment. ‘But I did, like. In the end.’

  ‘Yeh,’ said Bela, squinting at her toes.

  ‘Well,’ said Esha. ‘He had bought me six Martinis and lemonades after all.’

  ‘Aw,’ said Bela. ‘Well, that’s nice then, innit?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Nit,’ Esha suddenly shouted. ‘Will you please just pack that in?’

  ‘Pack what in?’ I asked, continuing to bash out the ‘Match Of The Day’ theme tune on the window with a cigarette lighter.

  ‘That!’ She threw her pillow at my head and I went back downstairs.

  The possibility of seven empty weeks filled with bollocks-all to do finally forced me first onto our front step and then to the kerb outside No. 33, where I sat with my feet between two parked cars, looking down the street for Denis.

  Two hours later and I was still there. I had brought Push’s PacMan out with me and eventually became so caught up in beating his highest score that I didn’t even hear the door behind me open. I looked up to see the old man from the night before staring down at me, Kyle hovering just behind him and clearly not thrilled to see me sat there, like a fag butt in the gutter.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  Kyle nodded briefly. The old man was staring at me in surprise. ‘Hello, dear,’ he said. ‘Was it Kyle you were waiting for?’ His voice was gentle, a bit Scottish or something. He was buttoned up in a smart tweed jacket as if he was going somewhere special.

  I shrugged and looked at Kyle. ‘You and Denis coming out today?’

  Kyle barely glanced at me. ‘Nah,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’

  I looked up at Kyle’s granddad who was smiling now like something was funny. But he had a nice face. I looked at his white, bushy brows for a bit. Finally, to fill the silence, I said, ‘I’m Anita.’

  I saw Kyle roll his eyes. The old man held out his hand. ‘Very nice to meet you, Anita. I’m Patrick.’

  ‘I live opposite,’ I muttered, jerking my head towards the other side of the road. The old man nodded and looked politely across at our tatty little house, put there to fill a hole a bomb had left once, the bins spilling beer cans and Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes onto our steps. I blushed, aware of how crappy it looked compared to theirs and the other big old-fashioned ones in the street.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And were you waiting for my grandson here?’

  I looked at Kyle and said pathetically, ‘Wondered what you and Denis were doing today.’

  Kyle glanced at me. An expression in his eyes that made the hopeful feeling that had been bobbing around behind my ribs all morning sink to my feet and seep out of my toenails.

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ he told me. ‘Denis will be at church.’ I didn’t know what to say to that. Denis was a God-botherer? It was news to me.

  The old man said, ‘Well now,’ and, doing a little bow like old gents do in films, put his hand on Kyle’s shoulder and they walked off down the street. Great, I thought. Fanfuckingtastic. ‘Bollocks,’ I said to no one, to myself.

  That night I lay awake listening to our neighbours arguing. A steady crescendo of pissed-up rage from the burly, beardy bloke from No. 34, his stringy, mean-eyed wife bitching, goading, crowing, their voices entwining to seep through our flimsy walls, bubbling behind our wallpaper like water from a leaky pipe until at last a sudden bellow, a crash, then silence. I got up to smoke a cigarette.

  Sticking my head out of the bedroom window I watched the foxes and drunks weave and stagger up Myre Street. At half-one I saw Kyle creep out of his front door then slope off into the night again. ‘Where do you go?’ I asked him silently. ‘Where do you go to at night?’

  I smoked my cigarette and thought about Katie Kite. I pictured a little blonde girl with Kyle’s big grey eyes and wondered who had taken her and where. I gazed at the still, dark house opposite and tried to imagine what had happened there a year ago. I wondered if she was dead or not, and whether the person who broke into people’s houses to snatch kids would be coming back to Myre Street any time soon. Eventually I threw the fag butt out the window, lay back down on my bed, and tried not to think about anything at all.

  A few empty, tedious days passed. There was no sign of Kyle or Denis and my family were driving me round the bend. When Push was in, he was as bored as I was and if we ever found ourselves in the same room together it was only a matter of minutes before we wanted to rip each other’s throats out. Dad was either parked in front of the telly with his beer, or he was listening to Janice talk bollocks in the kitchen.

  One morning when Push was out I wandered into his bedroom to look for his PacMan. Esha and Bela were still in bed, watching telly on the black and white next door. I liked it in Push’s room, its cool blue walls and uncluttered calm were lovely to me after the stuffy, hairspray-stinking chaos of our bedroom. His room didn’t get the sun like ours did, and I lay back on his bed in the chilly stillness, idly listening to the telly next door and Janice shrieking with laughter in the kitchen below (she had to be the only person alive who still found my dad that amusing). I was enjoying the fact that Push would go spastic if he knew I was in there. I rolled on my side to face the open window, and felt something hard beneath the duvet.

  I’d seen porn mags before of course, on the top shelves in shops, but this was the first time I’d ever looked inside one. There was no one there to see me but still I felt my cheeks burn as I leafed through its pages. I stared at the centre spread of three women, their breasts enormous, their legs spread, their expressions varying from comatosed to surprised.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  I jumped to my feet and the magazine fell onto the floor, flopping open to a picture of a girl sucking her own nipple, her fingers spreading herse
lf down below. Push was standing in the doorframe, his green eyes cold and furious.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I—’ Push looked from me to the magazine and sprinted across the room. ‘You little bitch,’ he said. ‘You dirty little bitch! Having a good look, were you?’ His face was red with shame.

  ‘I was looking for the PacMan,’ I said feebly. I couldn’t look at him and felt almost as if it was I who was naked in the pictures of the magazine.

  I can see now how it must have been for Push back then. Not easy to get laid when you looked like him. All those blonde, big-titted Lewisham High girls who wouldn’t be seen dead going out with ‘an Asian’, how they’d kick themselves now if they could see the man he was to grow into – if they could see the beauty that was to come. But there in that room I didn’t think any of that, of course. I was innocent for my age I expect, but those pictures were a smack in the face; a rude awakening.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t doing anything.’

  ‘Keep the fuck out of my room,’ he ranted. ‘Look at you. Dressed like a bloke and staring at girls’ knockers. You a fucking lezzer or what?’ And suddenly my left ear was ringing and burning where he’d slapped it. We stared at each other for a couple of seconds then I ran from the room, down the stairs and out the front door, where I fell smack bang into Denis who was about to ring the bell.

  Denis trotted beside me while I gradually calmed down. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his flab jump about. Eventually we stopped at a railway bridge and hung over the wall, looking down at the train tracks below us. The bridge was covered in graffiti and I recognised one of the tags. I’d seen that same word sprayed in various colours and sizes on every wall, lamppost and bridge in south-east London. ‘Enrol’, it said, and whoever he was he’d been a busy lad. As I stood there with Denis I found myself wondering about this Enrol person; why he felt the need to announce himself like that in foot-high letters wherever he went. Maybe he just wanted to prove he was there, I thought. Show the world he existed. As I stood there that morning looking at his name repeated fifty times on the bricks, I thought that that was a strange thing to want to do. But I wonder what ever happened to him? I wonder where he is now? I guess his plan worked: I didn’t forget him, did I?

  ‘You seen Kyle?’ asked Denis eventually.

  I turned to look at him and felt my mood lift a bit. It was good to see him even if he did stink of BO that day. ‘Nah,’ I said.

  He pulled a Mars bar from his pocket and began to munch. ‘Me neither.’

  We walked on, towards Deptford.

  ‘Where do you think he is?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Denis. ‘He said something about going to Point Hill.’

  I didn’t know where Point Hill was, and didn’t much care if we found Kyle or not. It was just good to be out of the house and going somewhere. Denis started telling me a long and complicated story about his Uncle Richard who lived in Broadstairs and had once met Big Daddy and we got on the bus up to Blackheath. From there we walked over the common towards Greenwich Park but instead of heading towards the donkey rides and ice cream vans, Denis led me to a little side park – a field at the top of Blackheath Hill from which you could see all of London stretched out below. Denis pointed to someone sitting on a bench. Kyle.

  When we reached him he didn’t seem particularly surprised to see us and barely glanced up. He looked tired, his eyes dull and sunken in his scrawny face. We sat in silence for a while, listening to Denis get his breath back and looking down on the city below us. The river flickered green and silver through the mangled, scrambled, silent mess of streets and parks and cranes and buildings, a billion windows blinking back up at us. Denis went off to buy ice lollies and we lay on our fronts on the scratchy yellow grass to eat them.

  ‘There’s a cave underneath this hill,’ said Kyle, finally.

  ‘I know,’ said Denis, sucking the big toe off his Funny Foot.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Kyle.

  A sharp bite of pleasure. ‘A cave?’ I said.

  ‘It’s called Jack Cade’s Cavern.’ He began carefully squashing ants with his lolly stick.

  I listened to Kyle talk, his face so animated suddenly he almost looked like a kid. He told me about the tunnels and caves beneath Greenwich. Chalk mines, some of them, the biggest one right beneath our bellies. Now long closed up, Kyle said it had been where smugglers stashed their loot two hundred years ago. ‘No one knows where the entrance is, though. I’ve looked, I’ve looked all round this hill hundreds of times but it’s all just grass now.’

  We ate our ice lollies in silence for a bit. Then Kyle said, ‘There are others, further into Greenwich; old sand mines and secret bunkers from the war, and some people reckon there are smugglers’ tunnels by the river and then of course there are the chalk mines under Blackheath and the water conduits in the park.’

  I could barely believe it was the same Kyle, his pale, usually flat grey eyes were actually shining.

  ‘I’ve read all about them,’ he said. His voice became lower and he looked at me carefully. I scarcely breathed. ‘And I reckon there are more. Sand mines and that. There must be. Secret places that no one’s found yet.’

  ‘But Kyle’s gonna find them!’ said Denis, proudly. ‘And he’s gonna live in one, just like Seany Bean!’

  ‘Seany who?’ I asked.

  ‘He was this bloke in Scotland who lived in a cave with his family and they’d set traps for people and rob them and take them back to the cave and eat them!’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up, Denis,’ said Kyle.

  Eventually we got up and walked to Greenwich. The day burned and glittered and on the way down the hill I said, ‘Your granddad seems all right.’ Kyle looked at me then quickly away again. ‘He live with you then?’ I asked.

  Kyle shook his head. ‘He just comes at weekends, and he’s staying for the summer holidays to look after me.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’

  Ahead of us a rare breeze was causing a shower of pinky-white petals to fall from a blossom tree and Denis was staring at it transfixed. ‘It’s snowing!’ he grinned. We went and stood underneath the tree, raising our faces to the falling flowers. Denis started heaping together petals from the ground and throwing them in the air and at me, and I laughed and threw them back at him. Kyle stood watching us for a while, before shrugging and walking on.

  We made our way to East Greenwich, ducking in and out of warm bricked alleys that smelt of baked dust and yeast, brief and secretive respites from the burning sun. We cut through hostile, empty, little streets then trudged through aimless wasteland, the river always nudging, edging, pushing somewhere below like a cat circling your ankles.

  We got to the shore and hung over the railings to watch the people with metal detectors hoover the beach below us. ‘Look,’ I said, spotting a family of ducklings. Kyle picked up a stick and threw it at them. ‘Don’t,’ I said before I could stop myself, as the ducklings scattered for safety.

  ‘There’s still one there,’ said Denis, peering between the railings. On the beach one of the parent ducks was struggling to get up. Every time it staggered to its feet it fell back again. We watched for a while. ‘Think it’s dying,’ said Denis.

  Kyle was scrabbling about in the flowerbed behind us. He came back armed with pebbles and small rocks. We watched as he aimed them one by one at the duck’s head. The duck flopped its long neck and its head fell back onto the beach. It seemed to give up. ‘No, don’t,’ I said again.

  But Kyle didn’t seem to hear me. He jumped over the railings onto the beach. Denis and I looked at each other before following him. Kyle was crouched down by the duck with a large rock in his hand. It was still alive, its eyes staring up at Kyle, its beak working but no sound coming out. Half-heartedly it flapped its wings. Before either me or Denis could say anything, Kyle smashed the rock into the duck’s head, bashing it again and again until it was pulp, and bits of brain a
nd beak and eyes and feathers were stuck to Kyle’s rock. Denis went and sat on a step until it was over. And still Kyle kept bashing it, like it was just another stone, long after it was clearly fucking dead.

  Eventually he got up, blinking in surprise at my repulsed face. ‘What?’ he asked. When I didn’t reply he shrugged and said, ‘I was doing it a favour,’ and without a word we walked to the bus stop, leaving the annihilated bird where it was. Kyle behaved as if nothing at all had happened, Denis ate some Wotsits. And me? I ignored the sick feeling in my stomach.

  We spent nearly every day of that summer by the river. We loved it. Even when we ventured up to the park or the heath we’d keep it in our sight, as if we couldn’t quite bear to leave it completely – and sooner or later we’d always end up by its banks again. But every time we returned, it was like an entirely different river to the one we’d left. Sometimes the water had shrivelled away to reveal the naked, oily wreckage of its shores. Or the water would be so high it licked at our shoes as we stood on the walkway. Sometimes it’d be brown and restless in the heat, a great, panting dog. Other days it would be still and shiny as pale-green glass, stinking like the fish stall in Lewisham market. At twilight it would glow pink and gold, touched with tender pools of blue light and smelling yeasty and sweet. At night it flopped and slurped black and angry in the moonlight, a light whiff of sewage.

  We loved it. We loved its moods and twists and stenches, we loved searching the silty shore for washed-up junk, or hanging out in the vacant lots, the scrap and boat-yards that flanked its edge. We loved the little houses that lined the nearby cobbled streets, the power stations and the jetties, the boats and muddy swans, the driftwood and the cranes and the mountains of scrap metal reflected in its endless pull and tug. We loved it.

  One evening on our way home we stopped at the Quaggy to smoke a cigarette. We hung over the railings, staring down at the putrid green water below us. Next to us on a bench was a pile of empty beer cans. Kyle pointed at a shopping trolley that was half-submerged in the muck and said, ‘Bet I can hit that before either of you can.’