The Song From Somewhere Else Page 8

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ her stomach muttered, cutting through all the nonsense. ‘You know who’s really to blame.’

  ‘But …’ she said, not having any good comeback to hand.

  Her mind was playing tricks: it was Quintilius Minimus’s fault for going missing; it was Nick’s fault for saving her bag; it was Frank’s fault for being weak, for being a bad friend.

  Her mind was blaming everyone but the one person whose fault it all really was: Neil Noble. It didn’t dare blame him, as if that would just draw him closer, make him pay her more attention.

  ‘See what I mean?’ her stomach said, twisting round.

  ‘But what can I do?’ she asked.

  Her stomach said nothing: an answer that was filled with a silent, smug superiority.

  Should she phone Nick and apologise? Tell him what she’d done?

  But what could she say?

  She’d already lied once and apologised. What would he think? Would he be able to forgive her again?

  What sort of a friend had she turned out to be?

  She didn’t even worry about the word ‘friend’ any more: that’s what they’d become … until she’d ruined it all.

  Poor Nick.

  And then the letter box rattled and she found a postcard from Jess.

  Apparently it was sunny in the south of France and she’d been bitten by insects and had swum in a river and had eaten some French bread. But she didn’t say what all postcards ought to say: ‘Wish you were here.’

  If only Jess had taken her with them, then, once again, none of this would have happened. And so yet another blameless person was added to Frank’s mental list of fault-makers.

  Her stomach gurgled to itself, bored.

  She went back upstairs and put the postcard on her bedside table.

  It was only then that she saw the picture on the front. It was an ugly gargoyle, carved in stone and hung up on some French church, its tongue sticking out and its eyes bulging. It was so ugly, so silly, so ludicrous that it made her smile.

  They were put there to keep evil spirits away, she’d read – that and to be drainpipes for the church roof. She felt slightly better for seeing it. Maybe the gargoyle was working, even just a picture of it.

  And as she looked she saw that it wasn’t as ugly as she’d first thought. Sure, everything was out of proportion, was distorted like in the political cartoons in the newspaper, but there was something likeable about the gargoyle, something mischievous, perhaps.

  In an odd way it reminded her of Nick.

  They didn’t look the same, save for a similar dusky grey skin tone, but still, there was something. She hoped Nick would be able to keep bad luck away too.

  And so the morning went on.

  Frank was playing Lego with Hector. They had all the pieces tipped out on a blanket in the front room and were searching for bits of just the right size to complete their models. It was raining outside. The day had turned grey to match her mood.

  There was a banging at the front door that didn’t sound like a postman.

  Her dad was upstairs cleaning the bathroom. She could hear his jangly old music playing on the radio. He obviously hadn’t heard the door, so Frank carefully set down her half-finished spaceship and answered it.

  She was surprised to find Nick looming on the front step, dripping wet. His bike lay on the path and he left it there as he stepped indoors.

  ‘You’re soaked,’ Frank said, hoping the worry she felt wasn’t showing in her voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He was agitated.

  ‘I didn’t know where else to go, so I came here. Frank, I think … something’s happened.’

  He pulled a crumpled envelope out of his pocket.

  She shut the door.

  ‘You’d best take your shoes off,’ she said. ‘Dad’s only just hoovered.’

  He handed her the envelope and bent down to undo his laces.

  She didn’t know if she was supposed to open it or not, so she just looked at the front. In thick felt tip it said Nicholas Underbridge. That wasn’t that surprising, but it meant that the letter hadn’t come through the post: there was no stamp and no address on there, just his name. A fat raindrop had blurred the ink in the middle of the Underbridge.

  ‘Someone shoved it through the door this morning,’ he said. ‘Look inside.’

  She turned it over and lifted the flap. It didn’t look like it had been stuck down at all, just tucked in. She pulled the sheet of paper out and unfolded it.

  Her stomach turned over and said, ‘Look Frank, he’s dripping on the carpet. Tell him to get lost. Tell him to take his letter with him.’

  Written there, in the same ugly felt tip writing, was an internet address, a URL, and glued to the sheet of paper, made up from cutout pieces of newspaper, was the single sentence: we’re watching you, freek. It looked like a ransom note from an old TV show.

  ‘What’s there?’ Frank said, pointing at the URL.

  ‘We don’t have the internet,’ Nick said. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘You don’t want to look,’ said Frank’s stomach. ‘Go have a lie down, maybe. Pull the curtains. Go back to bed.’

  At the back of the house, behind the dining room, her mum had a little office. She didn’t use it much because she was usually away working, but sometimes, especially at the weekend, when she needed to catch up on something or deal with what she’d just been told in one of her dinner-interrupting phone calls, she’d hide herself away in there and grumble.

  Frank led Nick in, waving at little Hector in a friendly, smiley way as they passed through the front room, and switched on the power. The computer whirred and the monitor hummed into life.

  She carefully typed the address into the browser.

  When the page loaded a video began playing.

  The footage was shaky, obviously shot on a phone.

  On the screen was a film shot at the back of Nick’s house. It was almost dark, late evening perhaps or early morning. The camera was tiptoeing up to the long low windows of the cellar, and there, coming into view, was Nick’s mum. It wasn’t clear (it wasn’t really obvious unless you knew what you were seeing) but there, in that basement room, something large was moving, something person-shaped, something not exactly human.

  A hand came into shot and began to tug at the bottom of the window. It shifted and lifted up a few centimetres.

  Someone behind the camera muttered something wordless and a second hand slapped at the first.

  The window fell shut with a small thud.

  The camera whizzed round, showed Neil Noble’s face for a fraction of a second before he covered the lens with his hand, saying, ‘Don’t film me, you idiot.’ Then there was a crackle and the video ended.

  Frank sat back in silence and switched the computer off.

  They were both, it seemed, too stunned to speak.

  She heard Nick’s stomach rumble, but hers said nothing.

  Eventually Nick broke the silence.

  He looked paler than ever.

  ‘They’d never really noticed me before,’ he said. ‘Not really. Not especially. Never cared enough to have a go, I guess. No challenge. But now … well, now I’ve become a … an irritation, haven’t I? I know they’ve been bullying you,’ (Frank flinched at the B word,) ‘and now they’ve moved on to me. Because I helped. Their sort hate people who help, Frank. Which is why you have to help. They must’ve come back last night looking to make trouble and instead they found …’

  As he trailed off, Frank said, ‘I hate them. Nick, I hate them so much.’

  ‘What if the papers find out?’ Nick said. ‘What if Dad reads it in the paper? Imagine the headline: MONSTERS IN OUR MIDST. He’ll kill me. No one’s meant to know. If it gets out I’ll lose –’

  He was interrupted by a scream in the front room.

  They ran back to the lounge as soon as Hector started bawling.

  He had a nosebleed and a long piece of Lego sticking out of one nostril.
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  He was dripping blood down his T-shirt.

  ‘Dad!’ Frank shouted.

  For a while she thought they might have to go to hospital to have the flat one-by-sixer removed, but her dad managed to ease it out with a little bit of wiggling and promises of chocolate.

  ‘When I was a boy, I remember once …’ he began as he waved the liberated piece of plastic in the air.

  Frank stopped listening and trudged upstairs to get Hector a clean top.

  She sat on his bed and rootled through his drawers and thought about what she’d just seen. Not the Lego business, but the video.

  Her first instinct was to own up and tell Nick that it was her fault.

  But her second instinct was to hide under the duvet and never come out again.

  If he found out what she’d done, he’d never want to see her again, wouldn’t want to be friends any more. He’d be so upset and angry, and rightly so.

  Her third instinct, after overhearing the second instinct, said, ‘But that would be OK, wouldn’t it? You didn’t want to be his friend in the first place, did you?’

  ‘But it’s not as simple as that,’ she replied.

  ‘It rarely is,’ said her third instinct, before it shuffled off into the shadows, whistling.

  She made her way back downstairs and helped her dad get Hector changed and quietened down with a choc ice.

  Her dad was asking Nick about school and about what his dad did and how he’d met Frank and embarrassing things like that.

  As far as she could tell, Nick hadn’t said anything, or nothing much. He certainly knew that he shouldn’t mention her problems with Noble. He understood about private things and about not spilling the beans or blabbing to people who didn’t need to know. Frank knew about that stuff too, but she wasn’t as good at it as he was.

  ‘Do you want to stay for lunch?’ her dad asked. ‘I’m making pickled herring and olive pancakes with a maple syrup dressing and crunchy bits from the back of the cupboard.’

  ‘Um,’ said Nick.

  ‘Ignore him,’ Frank said. ‘He’s just being silly. He thinks he’s funny but he’s really not.’

  Her dad stuck his tongue out at her.

  ‘We could have beans on toast,’ she said.

  ‘With sossygus,’ added Hector.

  ‘Sossy-gooses,’ her dad corrected.

  Frank’s life was a battle between shame and embarrassment, and today both sides were winning.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ Nick said. ‘If you don’t mind?’

  ‘You’d best ring your mother and/or father,’ her dad said, making Frank cringe even deeper. Why couldn’t he just talk normally? Why’d he have to try to be ‘fun’?

  Having to avoid Hector’s bean-juice-covered fingers and to deal with her dad seemed to take Nick’s mind off his other problems for a while though. Or at least if he was still worried, he didn’t let it show. Not to Frank.

  Not having any better plan, they cycled back to Nick’s house.

  The rain had been letting up and was more like a fine drizzly mist than a shower. It was enough though to mean no one was in the park; no one was hanging out in the rec as they went past, splashing through puddles.

  ‘He’ll have to move, have to go away,’ Frank’s stomach said as they turned the corner into his street. ‘That’s what happens when you get famous, and he’s going to be dead famous when the world sees his secret. Won’t be able to move for paparazzi.’

  Frank had no answer to that.

  They dumped their bikes in the back garden and went into the kitchen.

  Mr Underbridge was there eating cornflakes.

  ‘Just having my lunch,’ he said, smiling at them. ‘You guys all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nick said.

  He didn’t sound convincing to Frank, but that was because she knew what she knew. To the rest of the world that one word had sounded like the response of any ordinary slightly bored kid.

  ‘Good, good,’ his dad said.

  He crunched the last mouthful of cornflakes and stood up to put the bowl in the sink.

  As he turned the tap to run the hot water there was a ringing sound, distant and chiming like a far-off doorbell.

  ‘It’s the doorbell,’ he said, sounding slightly surprised. ‘It’s too late for the postman … I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Frank and Nick were left alone in the kitchen.

  ‘Squash?’ she asked.

  She knew where the glasses and the bottles were and thought getting on with things as if it were an ordinary day might help defuse the tension. Nick didn’t look like he was going to do anything.

  And then she heard it, faint and at the edge of hearing as always, but growing louder, growing sweeter and warmer: the music.

  In her mind’s ear a silvery ball of fish swirled together, never touching, darting past each other as, underneath, in the depths something huge moved, darkly, until the fish burst out of the water, becoming like a flock of starlings, a hundred melodies weaving through the sky in coiling, smoky shapes. The music was complicated, hard to follow, unlike anything she’d heard in this world, but it moved straight through her, filling her heart and lullabying her worry to sleep.

  ‘I’d listen while you can,’ her stomach said.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  She wanted to open the cellar door and go down there, but she got on with making the squash instead.

  As she turned the tap to fill the glasses, Nick stood over by the kitchen door watching his dad.

  She carried the glasses over to him and said, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Shhh,’ he said. Then, ‘Thank you,’ as he took the cold drink from her. ‘It’s Auntie Mimi.’

  She peered round him into the hall.

  Mr Underbridge was stood in the doorway, one hand on the door as if he were about to close it. Beyond him she could just make out the figure of a woman. It was hard to see since the afternoon light cast both of them in silhouette.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Mr Underbridge was saying, not raising his voice, but shaking his head.

  ‘Time’s up,’ the woman was saying. ‘It’s over now.’

  Her voice was soft; it was hard to make out everything she said.

  ‘We both knew this day would come. I’m surprised it has taken this long to be honest.’

  ‘I don’t …’ Mr Underbridge said. ‘I can’t …’ Then, ‘Think of the boy.’

  ‘It was thinking of the boy that got us here today. It was my soft heart, my soft head, that let you talk me into leaving the leechway open in the first place.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘It was highly irregular.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Now the secret’s spilt, Paul, it won’t be long. It’ll be hours, probably. Maybe a day. But people will be looking for the leechway. They always are. We’ve been lucky. And if they get control –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Nick’s dad said, sounding tetchy, cutting the woman off with a wave of his hand. ‘I see.’

  ‘I can shut it now,’ the woman said. ‘The work of a moment. I’ve got a charge in my case. I’ll do it right away and we’ll be safe.’

  Mr Underbridge said nothing for a moment. The door wavered in his hand.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t let you do that.’

  ‘It’s easy,’ she said. ‘Just let me in.’

  ‘No,’ he said again. ‘No. You can’t come in. Don’t you need a warrant or something?’

  ‘Paul. Please,’ she said. For a moment it sounded like she was pleading with him. Then she said in a firmer, take-charge tone of voice, ‘Don’t play games. Don’t make this hard.’

  ‘A warrant,’ he said, and pushed the door closed.

  The darkness in the hallway was sudden and blinding.

  Nick’s dad didn’t move.

  The doorbell rang again and again and still he didn’t open the door. Frank stood behind an equally immobile Nick.

  This was her fault, whatever it was, and she didn’t know what to do.


  And then, finally, Nick moved. He shifted backwards and Frank got out of his way.

  He looked stunned. His grey skin was paler than normal, almost white.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, just wanting to say something friendly. She already knew, already thought she knew.

  Nick took a long swig of his squash as he shuffled further into the kitchen.

  ‘She wants to shut the window. She wants to shut my mum out,’ he said.

  ‘Nick, we need to talk,’ his dad said, coming into the kitchen.

  Frank shuffled backwards, towards the door.

  Although it couldn’t be true, it looked as if Mr Underbridge had been crying. His eyes were red and glittering and she thought his cheeks were damp.

  ‘Oh, Frank,’ he said, ‘you’re still here.’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ she said.

  ‘You need to go,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to Nick. Alone. Sorry.’

  ‘O-O-OK,’ she said.

  She was happy to leave. The atmosphere had turned sour (she hadn’t noticed when the music had gone, but it had). But she also wanted to stay. She wanted to be there for Nick, to be with him in the face of all this … mess. He was her friend and it was her fault, after all, even if no one else knew that.

  But his dad, Mr Underbridge, was looking at her, sucking his bottom lip and staring as if he wanted her gone.

  She realised she wasn’t moving and stepped out on to the back step.

  She turned and said, ‘Cheerio, Nick,’ in a voice that was meant to be light and friendly, but which caught in her throat and just sounded weird.

  ‘Bye, Frank,’ Nick said, not quite looking at her.

  She went out into the garden and turned to leave, but stopped in front of the cellar windows. The clouds were beginning to blow away overhead; the general greyness was lifting. The world smelt like it had been washed in clean water, but with something like gunpowder in the distance.

  A stray shadow slid across the patio, as if it were meant to be underneath a weasel or mouse or something, but wasn’t; it slid away from the windows into the undergrowth.